by Molly Giles
“I said,” the bartender repeated, “what can I get you?”
“Oh! Nothing. I don’t drink.”
“This isn’t a bus station.”
“No. Of course not.” What did that mean? “A Coke?”
“Pepsi all right?”
“Yes.”
“Come and get it.”
I hate Pepsi, Kay thought. She rose and walked to the bar. She had dressed as sexily as she dared, in jeans, black ballet flats, and the red sweater, which she had tried to depill with an emery board and strips of Scotch tape. Her push-up bra pinched and she was wearing so much mascara it took effort to blink. She was still in the act of raising her lids when the bartender plunked one, two, three maraschino cherries into her drink. She opened her mouth to protest, but instead heard herself say, too softly, “Thanks.” The bartender smirked.
She gave him two dollars, waited for change, realized there wouldn’t be any and that she probably owed a tip as well, dug a quarter out of her coin purse, placed it on the bar, and walked back to her table. She tried to stop trembling by propping her chin on her hand. I could balance my checkbook, she thought. I could play Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” on the jukebox and dedicate it to myself. I could buy a whole pack of cigarettes. I could get drunk. The heave of true longing at that thought made her quiver. She smoothed the AA pamphlet out and read it again.
At five-forty she rose to go. Stood up was stood up. The phone rang at the bar and she paused, dum-dum, but the bartender cradled it close to his lips as he talked and bent over the mouthpiece, shielding it. She turned to walk out just as Charles Lichtman walked in.
“Thanks for waiting.” His dark curls bounced, his eyes shone, his full lips shimmered. “I was afraid you’d leave. I hoped you wouldn’t. Sorry I’m late. I was painting.”
Kay swayed, fingering her purse strap. “What were you painting?”
“Blurs. I’m doing blurs. You know. The landscape as seen from a bicycle. Let’s sit down. May I buy you a drink?”
She shook her head and sat back down. Charles Lichtman went to the bar, and returned with a beer, still smiling at her over the top of the foam as he sipped.
“Cool sunglasses,” he said.
“My disguise.” She took them off, blinked. She hoped she didn’t look too homely with her poor face exposed. Charles Lichtman looked appealing as ever, fresh and lightly sheened from a day in his studio doing work he loved. “You always look so healthy,” she said. It came out sounding like a complaint. “Your cheeks are always so pink.”
He grinned. “It’s overcompensation.”
“For what?”
“For being HIV-positive.”
Kay opened her purse, closed it. “It’s only blurred when you’re going downhill, right?”
“Right. So. You okay with that? I thought I should be frank from the start. So you’d know who I am. So we could be friends.”
“Friends.”
“My lover died of AIDS last year. His name was Jimmy.”
Kay looked up. “I’m sorry!”
“I know. That’s why I like you. You are sorry. You even mean it. Well let me tell you, honey lamb, you’re rare. Most people don’t give a shit.”
I don’t give a shit, Kay thought. I didn’t know Jimmy! Don’t think I’m nicer than I am! Blushing so hard she could feel her pulse, she looked away. Her eyes focused on his beer. It looked good. She’d love to have one. What was one beer? Nothing! It would give her just the little push she needed to float offshore from her life, calm, amused, detached. The man she’d dreamed about and devoted her fantasy life to was gay? So what? Ha-ha-ha, as Zabeth said. It was just another cosmic lesson. In something. Heartbreak. She tore her eyes away from his beer, ducked her head, and reached for her Pepsi instead.
“The first time I saw you,” Charles continued, “you were pushing your mother in her wheelchair through downtown Rancho Valdez with one hand and tugging this skinny poodle along on a leash with the other. Your mother was holding an armful of packages and complaining about something and you were listening with this sort of sweet and sour expression on your face and then you said something to her that made her light up. She literally lit up. I remember thinking: now there’s a trick. To make someone smile like that.” He sipped his beer. “And what a beauty.”
Kay nodded, glum. Even dead, Ida outshone her. She saw Ida’s sudden, wide, lipsticky smile, nested in dimples. Ida would have known how to talk to Charles; she would have flirted and teased and made him fall in love with her anyway. “Yes,” she agreed, “she was.”
“Not her. You.”
“Right.”
Charles laughed. “Don’t you look at yourself? Lush ’n’ creamy.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Totally toothsome.”
“Would you mind writing those words down? Just so I can remember them later?” She flushed, trying not to smile. “Now tell me about Jimmy. Was he an artist, like you?” She paused. “Was he a beauty?”
“Not at the end.” He was silent for a second. “I’m not good around sick people. Illness scares me. You were there for your mother. You helped her. Every time I asked for you at the library that lady you work with told me you were gone, taking care of your mom. And I always thought how amazing that was, not to be scared.”
“I was afraid all the time,” Kay said. “And, to tell the truth, I did a terrible job.”
His brown eyes waited.
“I bungled things. I couldn’t turn her in the bed or support her on the commode without feeling I was hurting her. I read the wrong books to her, played the wrong music, cooked things she couldn’t eat, made fun of her priest.”
“Still. When she called, you came.”
“Late,” Kay agreed.
“I couldn’t do that for Jimmy. I couldn’t be around him. He died in Seattle surrounded by strangers. Want to play pool?”
Kay glanced toward the pool table and shook her head. “You really asked for me at the library?”
“Lots of times. I always knew we’d be friends.”
“You’re smarter than I am. I always hoped we’d be lovers.”
“But you’re married.” He sounded so shocked Kay smiled. We’re both prudes, she thought. We have that in common.
“Separated,” she explained. “As of this morning.”
“From that nice old sleepy guy at the frame shop?”
“Don’t tell me he sleeps in front of his customers!”
“No, no. That’s just how I see him, you know, nice guy, no visible fire, but who knows. People who don’t talk can fool me.” He looked at her closely. “He doesn’t feed you, does he. Doesn’t feed the little Kay animal within.”
Kay sniffed, repelled. What sort of therapy was Charles into? SPCA? She rapped her chewed nails on the table then relaxed. Charles was right. There was something alive and wild inside that was starving. Some wimpy little ferret. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t.”
“Well he ought to.” Charles leaned over and kissed her cheek. His breath was warm and beery. For months she had been in an erotic hum about this man, breasts and belly abuzz, but this, she saw, would have to do. Bravely she left her cheek against his lips and kept her napkin down. She would not wipe off his spit, at least not where he could see her. She would read everything she could about AIDS at the library tomorrow; she would learn. She looked across the room at the pool table again. “Do you have any friends who don’t know how to play pool?”
“Sure don’t, honey lamb. Come on. I’ll teach you.”
She was good at pool, not great, but good. The same lucky hand-and-eye coordination that got her through difficult passages in music served her well at the White Oak, and Charles cheered every time she hit a ball, any ball, into any pocket.
“Remember, always take the easy shot,” he said.
“That goes against everything I was raised to believe in,” Kay marveled. She bent, centered, aimed. What a good clean sound that click-click-click was. High on Pepsis, happy, she finally said good n
ight to Charles and headed home. He was going to show her his paintings next week; she was going to play Beethoven for him; they were going to be supportive and nurturing and intimate and honest and maybe, someday, who knew, he might look at her the way a man looks at a woman and she could—no—I am not going to be like that, she lectured herself. I’m not going to think I can change people. I am going to let go of all those romantic idiot fantasies and accept everyone as they are. Still, strange things did happen. And he had called her lush. Not a lush. Just “lush.” Wow. The last compliment she had received from Neal was on her radio skills. “No one can tune a station in like you,” he had said, and she had glowed for days.
It was still early, but downtown West Valley was deserted and she could see a small light in the back of the stables as she drove by. At once she felt her good mood falter. Neal would be alone back there, spooning up some malt and molasses concoction, his shoulders slumped, his long grey hair loose on his shoulders, watching a show about the nesting habits of the blue-footed booby on his miniature TV. She slowed. Neal was her husband and she was still, through no fault of her own, his faithful wife. She should go to him and press his unhappy head to her push-up bra and comfort him until he felt healed and whole and better. She could do it. She knew how.
But I don’t want to, she thought. She raised her chin. He screwed me. They all screwed me. Except Charles. Who screwed me by not screwing me. The little animal inside of me is sick of canned food and kibble. Even if that’s all there is, I want more. I want a hot human heart. She touched the gas and headed home.
The house was empty when she entered. Nicky was spending the night with a friend and Coco was at the vet’s with an ear infection. On an impulse, she called Francis. She would be a better daughter. More open and honest. She would tell him about her separation from Neal, ask his advice. She would let him know that Neal was inattentive, absentminded, careless, cold, remote, and timid, and Francis would say, Then of course you ought to leave him. She would tell him that Neal wouldn’t make love, that he wore a dust mask and earphones in the house, that he slept on the couch and sat in his van for half an hour in the driveway every night before coming in after work, that he lied about money, borrowed without telling her, and made business plans on his own, and Francis would say, Good for you, sweetie. You did the right thing. I’m proud of you. She dialed his number, listened to the busy signal, dialed again, and finally, slowly, hung up. She really did live in dreamland. Victor hadn’t understood any of her problems with Neal. Why would Francis? He did the same things Neal did. They were all alike. We marry our fathers, Zabeth had said. But marriage to Francis hadn’t been that bad; Ida had liked it. They’d traveled, laughed, danced; they’d had fun. Maybe now, with Ida gone—and Neal gone—Francis could have fun with her. The cruise boat beckoned, her white dress billowed at the helm. She dialed once more and this time Francis answered. “Dad,” she said, “it’s Kay. I was hoping we could get together next week.”
“Next week? Didn’t I just see you yesterday?”
“Yes. But I have something I need to talk to you about.”
“Next week’s booked,” Francis said.
“The whole week?”
She heard him click his gold pen. “Tell you what. I’ll get back to you.”
Get back at me is more like it, she thought as he hung up. She went in to play the piano, loud, so the notes could crash through and cleanse her. When she came out of the music room a few hours later she saw the light blinking on her answering machine. But it was only Walt Fredericks. He missed the rehearsals, he said. He missed the exquisite pleasure of seeing her play. “Darling girl,” he said. And then again. “Darling, darling girl.” She set the phone down, raised her head, and heard something scamper through the roof beams overhead. Rats? Probably. Tears, for the first time since Ida’s death, ran down her face.
“It’s not fair,” she explained to Zabeth later that week, “the way everyone reaches out for everyone else, and misses.”
“Not everyone misses.” Zabeth stirred her daiquiri with a bone pulled out of her hair and licked the bone. “Most people don’t reach out at all, for starters, and those that do usually know what they’re reaching for. It sounds to me like your Dr. Fredericks has checked you out, knows you’re separated, and has a pretty good idea he can have you.”
“Well he can’t.” Kay heard Walt’s hot liquid voice and saw his eager eyes fixed on her as if she belonged to him. She had always succumbed to people who claimed her. But she didn’t have to. It wasn’t a rule. “I don’t want him,” she added.
“So that’s a start.”
Kay nodded. Who else had used those words? Dr. Tamar, the first and only time she’d seen her? Or had she heard them at AA, the second and last time she’d gone? She looked around the Dark Moon Grill. What was she doing, still sitting in here? Shouldn’t she have moved on by now? Shouldn’t she be someplace else?
“Of course there’s another option,” Zabeth continued. “The old gent could be calling for the same reason he says he’s calling, that is, to talk you into performing again. He could actually think you’re talented and want to see you succeed. Not that you’ll ever believe that.” She paused, thought. “Maybe if you heard it from your father. Or he heard it from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever told Francis what a great architect he is?”
“But I don’t like his houses.”
“So why should he like what you do?” Zabeth pointed her bone. “It’s ridiculous, the way you two treat each other.”
“He started it. The day I was born, he brought his boss to see me in the hospital but I was too scrawny and red-faced and homely to claim so he pointed to another baby. Some rosy cherub in another crib. He said she was his daughter.”
Zabeth winced, and Kay balanced the tippy table with her knees. She had at some level always thought that was sort of a funny story. “So we got off on the wrong foot,” she continued. “And we’ve stayed there ever since. I sure wish I knew what he was doing these days though. His car’s never there. He’s on leave from work. Won’t answer my phone calls.”
“Well, give it a rest. He’s just living his life. You’ve got to grab a life of your own.”
“I have a life,” Kay said. “I’ve quit drinking, I’ve quit smoking, I’ve quit Neal. What more can I do?”
Zabeth shrugged. “How should I know?”
She’s tired of me, Kay realized. Tired of my endless questions, my need for support and demands for direction. I don’t blame her. I’m tired of myself. “Have you and Garret found a house yet?” she asked, and for the rest of the lunch hour she feigned interest in Zabeth’s detailed descriptions of easements, slate roofs, and mortgage rates. I will have to feign everything for a while, she thought. I will have to practice until I can pass as a normal person again, if I ever could.
Practice began that afternoon and continued through the week. She walked Coco through one obedience training exercise after another until Coco, confused, began to heel. She insisted Nicky eat dinner with her instead of alone in front of the television set. She met with Neal in the back of his shop, listened to his plans for the stables without interrupting or wisecracking, offered to help and did not throw boiling ginseng tea in his face when he said, “No, what could you do?” She bought rat traps and baited them. She told Walt Fredericks she missed their rehearsals too but was not ready to perform again and she could not, sorry, see him alone for a drink. She played hymns at Victor’s church when Stacy phoned to say their organist was ill. She played pool with Charles at the White Oak and firmly said “no” to the bartender when he tried to drop cherries into her ginger ale. One afternoon she sat at the piano, felt the spring sunshine come in the music room window at last, decided to lift the lid of the piano to air it now that the rains had finally stopped, and saw something round and bright glittering beneath the golden wires. The ring. She must have taken it off during one of her nights of drunken chord crashing and knocked
it off the music rack. She fished it out, rubbed it clean on the tee shirt over her heart, and held it up to the light. Ida’s eye, implacable and proud. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “Welcome back.”
Sixteen
Francis was doing everything right. The problem was, Jim Deeds explained, he was doing it too late. The damage had been done. The breakages he’d been feeling were real. The arterial sclerosis and emphysema were established and both were irreversible. He had a few years left but they might not be good ones. “At least you have family,” Jim Deeds said, and for one dark moment Francis actually saw Harry, Mick, Kip, Joanie, and Arlene, “the whole crew” as their father used to call them, lined up with outstretched arms. It wasn’t until the next moment he realized the doctor meant Kay and Victor: his frazzle-haired, sharp-tongued, dreamy-eyed daughter and his born-again son. No thanks. They weren’t up to this. Taking care of him was going to take a pro. He stood up and shook Jim’s hand.
“Nothing like bad news,” he said, “to stir the old blood.”
The doctor looked at him appraisingly. “You’re like Ida,” he said. “Brave.”
“She was brave, wasn’t she,” Francis mused.
“She was an amazing woman,” Jim said, using the exact words Francis had heard about Ida so often that he no longer even listened. He had never been sure what they meant anyway. Ida was Ida.
“The thing is,” Francis pointed out, “there’s not a lot of choice. If you can’t go forward and you can’t go back you might as well stand your ground and take what comes.”
“Yes, but not everyone can do that.”
“I’m not sure I can, to tell you the truth.” Francis accepted the half-dozen useless prescriptions Jim gave him and walked out to the waiting room where Glo sat, erect in a designer suit, manicured hands in lap, not reading, she never read, not watching the tropical fish in the tank, she never watched anything but him. Her eyes filled with light as he approached. “I have two questions,” Francis said, stopping before her. “One: how’d you like to go to Greece?”
