Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories

by Pearlman, Edith

  “You love to travel,” Nancy accused.

  “Sure.”

  “People should stay put.”

  “Should they? You, too, might like to explore new places.”

  “Maybe the Dolomites,” she mumbled.

  Leo wore a battered felt hat, the hat of a peddler’s pony. His amber eye reminded her of decongestant. She yearned to paint his throat.

  “Let’s go to the movies!” Laurette kept suggesting.

  “Let’s!” Nancy swooned the moment she sat down, watched the flick laxly, was always convinced that from this syncope she would emerge altered. Next to movies she liked best to be reading on the porch. By August she had abandoned detective fiction in favor of the fat, lazy novel.

  Sometimes she biked into town and moped at the library. Long windows opened onto sprinkled grass. One day at about five thirty she looked up from her book and saw Leo on the far side of the lawn. Beside him stood a young woman lavishly dressed. In the street was his Renault. Leo examined a parking meter, his thumb over the coin slot, his chin on his chest—the meter had contracted something serious. His companion sucked in her stomach. Presently they walked on. Nancy left the library and pedaled toward home. As usual, she paused at a large rock just off the road, near the country club. This boulder overlooked Leo’s home for the season, a one-room cabin that Nancy had mentally furnished with cot, braided rug, and, on a hook, the nag’s hat … She stood watch for a while, then mounted her bike and churned home.

  I miss you, wrote Cynthia. What are your plans now?

  Nancy lay on the glider like a corpse. A straw hat, a boater, rested on her brow. Sir Charles Grandison guarded her crotch. Flies buzzed on the ceiling. It was eleven o’clock on a Monday, the first morning of Laurette’s vacation. Laurette stalked onto the porch, wearing a housecoat and a headdress of rollers.

  “Nan, I’m going to New York in a couple of weeks. Come along. We’ll stay in a nice hotel.”

  “Okay.”

  Laurette sat down near the rail and presented her face to the sun. “We’ll have a ball,” she declared. “We’ll get you an autumn outfit—a velvet pantsuit, maybe. Wherever did you pick up that hat?”

  “In a charity ward. Will you badger the salespeople?”

  “Yep.” Laurette closed her eyes. “Though comedy is my true thing. My ex-husband chose me because I was droll.”

  Nancy remembered him, a chemist with an off-center mouth. He had married again, fathered four sons. “Why did you give him the gate?” she asked.

  “Thought I could do better.” The woman raised her head and blinked. Sunlight illumined her orange hair. “Do I really—”

  “Like sisters,” Nancy assured her.

  When Laurette had gone, Nancy peeked again at her other letter. I love you, it still said. I consider that it’s time we … She stared at the flies for some minutes, during which Mrs. Hasken drifted onto the porch and sat down.

  “Would you like the glider, Mother?”

  “I don’t think so.” Her face was beautiful despite its extreme thinness. At fifty she had not yet turned gray. She was a woman who had worn hats, hummed tunes, laughed at radio wags. She had endured the illness and decay of the man she loved, and his dying. Alone, she’d attended ballet recitals in drafty barns, clapped at graduations, and waited up for Nancy, lying sideways on a couch whose brocade carved a cruel pattern into her cheek.

  “Remember ‘Glow-Worm’?” Nancy asked.

  “I don’t think so. That pas de deux?”

  “Irma Fellowes pushed me across the stage like a broom.”

  “Chubby Irma. She’s married now.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine!” Fingers flew to cheek. “Don’t I look fine?”

  No. But Nancy had already spoken with their physician, a belly with a beard.

  “High blood pressure,” he’d said. “Under control.”

  “Shouldn’t she be on a special diet?” Nancy had asked.

  “No. How’s life treating you?” he said.

  “So-so.”

  “Ha-ha. Lots of chaps blushing you up?”

  “Too few.”

  “Tsk. Get married, girl,” he advised.

  The message was coming through. Marry, said Laurette’s hot eyes—or prepare to wisecrack your way down the years. Marry, warned Phoebe. Or you, too, may play the fool at someone else’s court. “Marry!” Cynthia had wailed, her train a bandage around her arm. “Hey, Nan, get married yourself. Everyone wants to dance with you!” Marry, sighed Mrs. Hasken. Before I withdraw. Marriage, said Carl’s letter, would benefit us both.

  Why not? She was not the sort to set men on fire. She was lanky and ungifted. She was lucky that Carl wanted her. She thought hard about that decent young man, so hard that he appeared before her, scholar, don. To a bunch of small rowdies he might someday be the head. He smiled, nearly destroying her — he had a darling smile. She set him on the rail. Next she conjured up the man she wanted, and after checking him for details—the scar on the knee, the paunch—placed him beside his rival.

  Nancy was sure the three of them could find contentment. Wearing knickers and caps, they’d hide out in a cave. Late on a January night they’d spy wolves sliding across the ice. When spring came they’d drift downriver in a homemade raft … She twisted on the glider as if in pain. Young women of twenty-one did not play Huck Finn. They got married, sensibly, or made themselves otherwise useful.

  What was up, anyway? Truths ducked their heads whenever she drew near. Also she had begun to suffer from sinusitis. The next morning she rose at five and took a walk in the woods, and the day afterward, also. By the third day of tramping out at dawn she was reliably clearheaded in the morning, enraged by afternoon. She abandoned the sport.

  That evening, using some grimy yellow paper, Nancy wrote: Dear Carl, I can’t, I’m sorry. Merciful, she stopped there. Fondly, Nan, and mailed the thing.

  “You don’t look pleased,” Leo said, the next afternoon. No sun, but the fog was scorching. They sat on their bench, Leo wearing his pony’s hat, Nancy her straw one.

  “Dysphoria,” mumbled the girl, uncomfortable under his medical gaze. Her chest was abnormally flat, he’d notice; her shoulders too high; the long chin had been designed as a bookmark …

  “Hey!”

  She roused herself. “Hot,” she explained.

  “Too hot for tennis.”

  “Much.”

  Leo said idly, “Come down to my cabin for a glass of beer.” Whereupon Nancy, in a panic, stammered, “I’m expected at home.”

  “Oh.”

  “… half a glass. Would be okay. Do you own a half glass?”

  “I’ll halve one,” he promised.

  A path dived between the trees. Leo led the way. Nancy studied his nape. Soon they were approaching the cabin. She took the last steep run like a novice, arms outstretched, palms prepared to meet a wall. Leo, still ahead of her, opened the door, and she flew past him into the room. She flopped onto the cot and threw her straw hat onto a table. Leo squatted before a refrigerator. Nancy unhooked her Polaroid cheaters. He handed her a mug. She removed her glasses altogether. A blur seated itself in a chair.

  “My uncorrected eyesight is 20/400,” Nan opened. “The army would never admit me, except as chaplain. The foreign legion requires reasonable vision, also.”

  “Oh.”

  “Many important people have been myopic. It correlates with inventiveness and anxiety.” She plucked at the table, found her glasses. Sighted again, she smiled at Leo as if she had outwitted him. “Do you play squash in addition to tennis?” she inquired.

  “No. Ping-Pong’s my other sport.”

  “Bridge is mine.”

  “I prefer poker.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Outside, the fog abruptly lifted. Sunlight flashed into the cabin. A yellow diamond fell upon the central oval in the braided rug. Nancy examined the intersection of quadrilateral and ellipse, and reviewed the m
ethod for calculating its area. From this exercise she went on to consider certain authors. Oscar Wilde. Thomas Hardy. Shakespeare; Much Ado; Beatrice and Benedick and their raillery. Profitable to avoid such nonsense. “We’re alone in your cabin,” she told Leo’s scar. “I’d like to take advantage of the opportunity.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  “Oh. Nancy, I’m old enough to be your—”

  “Grandfather. I’ll overlook it. Will you marry me?”

  “… no.”

  “… I didn’t catch that.”

  “No.”

  “Unacceptable,” she croaked. “You’re the one I want.”

  “Only at the moment,” Leo said, soberly.

  “I’m not at all impoverished,” persisted Nan.

  “Nancy. Do cut this out.”

  “All right,” Nancy said, fast, “then let’s just dwell together. I’ll be your slavey sister. Mend, darn, dish up the stew, rinse out the undies of your paramours …”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Nancy soared. She felt detached, exalted. To be defeated, she realized, is also to be disburdened. One travels the lighter. Nevertheless … Leo’s cough drop eyes shone. His enormous sneakers were like ocean liners. She longed to embrace his midsection and plunge her nose into his belly. She recalled the arid nights on Carl’s pallet. There might be commerce between men and women that she was as yet ineligible for.

  She remained on the cot, in an aggrieved slouch. Stretching one arm she managed to pick up her hat and place it aslant on her head. Then she rammed her fists into the pockets of her shorts. “Care to reconsider?”

  “No, puss.”

  The boulevardier shrugged. “Then that’s that.”

  Leo leaned forward “Hey. Listen. Listening? Fortune favors the brave, Nan. Life won’t find you here. Go somewhere else for a bit. Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong … Hey, sweetheart, don’t cry.”

  “… rarely cry. Not crying now.”

  He crouched before her, his hands soothing her shoulders. “See the world, girl.”

  “Can’t. Have an obligation.”

  “Sure. To yourself. Femme up a little. Try Paris.”

  “Le haute couture?” she asked, curious.

  “La vie. Look at the swans in Zurich. Study the healthy life in Amsterdam. Learn love from Italians, in Rome.”

  “I’d hoped to pick up some pointers from you. In Jacobstown,” Nancy said, crustily. Leo, laughing, kissed her twice: hard, cousinly busses. Since a rejected suitor could expect no more, they had to suffice.

  At five Nancy biked up to the porch. The women smiled as she swung one leg over the rail. Having decided against rooming with Carl, the girl thought, and having failed with Leo, content your-self with riotous reunions like this one. You may recollect that you have an obligation. Every so often you can chase crazily after the impossible. Diverting! Still astraddle, she endured a vision of herself in the seasons ahead—a dandy’s jacket, a ruffled shirt; praised, indulged; androgynous beyond repair. She blinked the rascal away.

  Early the next morning a spare person trousered in denim and stoled in duffel slid out of the Hasken house. On the porch stood three solemn but uncrushed figures. Eyeglasses glinting, Nancy walked steadily. At the bus depot she leaned against the storage boxes. Istanbul? Too thievish. And Zurich was too square. In Amsterdam one could be run down by a bike. She crossed to the counter, bought her ticket, and gazed for a while at the coffee machine. She would make up her mind at Cook’s. Briefly Nan wished she’d enjoyed a more bracing adolescence, wished she’d put to sea before. Then, supporting her duffel bag, she climbed onto the southbound bus.

  UNRAVISHED BRIDE

  “TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF,” Marlene chattered to this Rafferty fellow. The wedding was going to her head, as all weddings did. There was nothing majestic about the suburban parish church, but the late September day was beautiful, and the bride, Marlene’s cousin’s daughter, was certainly pretty—she resembled Marlene’s grandmother. The groom was a salesman for the Raffertys. He was handsome in an untrustworthy way: hair too abundant, eyes too calculating, smile erupting with teeth. He might have passed for a young Kennedy. His name, however, was O’Riordan.

  Somehow during the reception Marlene had become separated from her husband and their children. At these family affairs Paul and the kids always looked so interesting, or just so Jewish, that they got snapped up like savories. So she had begun to move alone through the receiving line, like a widow—no: like a maiden. Then this Hugh Rafferty materialized at her side. Marlene kissed the bride, Peggy Ann, and told the groom she hoped he’d be very happy. Hugh did the same. They drifted together into the swirl, and Hugh grabbed two champagnes from a passing tray.

  “Tell me about yourself.” Not the most sophisticated of openings. But sophistication would leave this man cold—she knew that just by looking at him. She knew, too, that he had been gently bred and properly educated (Harvard, it turned out); he was respectful and observant; his wife was the sort who gets things done (she was director of publicity at a local college, he told Marlene with pride); he loved his many kids. He sailed and skied and played tennis, but a paunch was rising anyway.

  His eyes were bright blue and his smile was the turned-up kind that children put on cookies. She meant to slip away as she often did at parties, fearful that she was restraining people ambitious to be elsewhere. But Hugh pleasantly stood fast, telling Marlene about himself. He managed the family lumber business and lived on the South Shore. He was the third generation to do both; love of work and pleasure in home were strong in him. His smile must once have haunted the dreams of virgins …

  “You were at Wellesley?” he said. “You’d think we’d have met.”

  “I was a fireman’s daughter, on scholarship, from Detroit. It’s my mother’s relatives at this wedding, though she’s gone, so’s my father. My sisters are scattered,” she babbled.

  Paul came up. Marlene introduced the men, then said to her husband, “You’ve been a trooper with Aunt Tess. I was watching you. Is it her gout this time?”

  “It’s her gums.”

  “Are you a dentist?” Hugh asked.

  “I’m a radiologist.”

  “It’s all the same to Aunt Tess,” Marlene said, and they laughed, and then Hugh excused himself, shaking hands first.

  That should have been that. Meeting again seemed unlikely—Hugh halfway to the Cape, Marlene near to town; his crowd rich, hers high-minded. If O’Riordan were to take an ax to Peggy Ann, they might see each other at the funeral, or the trial. Otherwise, no.

  They saw each other five days later. Marlene’s avocation—she was an amateur biographer—sometimes took her to the Boston Public Library. Hugh’s work demanded his presence at the company’s Prudential Center office twice a week. He was headed there at quarter past twelve that Thursday; she was about to enter the library.

  “Hello!” he called.

  The usual flurries. And then—he so easily might not have said it—“Have you had lunch yet?”

  “I … don’t have lunch, usually.”

  “Then you can’t have had it yet. Have it with me.”

  Once in a while at a college party some tall handsome boy, caught by her alert face, had danced with her … She walked next to Hugh, along Boylston Street, along Clarendon. She wished her friends could see her.

  They talked easily. Neither liked to worry a subject to death. They passed up wine and shared a dessert. Afterward they retraced their steps. At the entrance to the library she turned and shook hands.

  “Thank you very much,” she said, looking up at him. “You’ve reminded me of the pleasures of having lunch.”

  “Let me do it again,” he said relinquishing her hand and putting his own in his pocket. Don’t make too much of this, his attitude said.

  “I’m here every Thursday,” she lied.

  “Next Thursday, then? Tell me where you usual
ly work.”

  “I drift from section to section,” she said. “I could arrange to be in bound periodicals. Near Fortune, say.”

  “Fine. At about one?”

  So it began—Thursday lunches. They feasted at taverns and went hungry at salad bars. They ate raw fish wrapped in seaweed. One Thursday when Hugh was in a hurry they sat at a doughnut counter. The next week he insisted on several courses at the Ritz.

  At Christmastime they took an enforced break while Hugh and his family went south. In February, Marlene had a week-long flu; that Thursday morning, trembling, she called his office.

  “Mr. Rafferty, please,” she said to the secretary, who sounded gorgeous. “Ms. Winokaur calling.”

  “Marlene?” he said when he picked up. She had never before heard his voice on the telephone. Her bowels turned to water; but that was probably the flu. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, when she told him she was too ill to come out. “Feel better.” His voice was frank and unashamed. Anyone hearing the conversation would have assumed that they were merely two friends canceling a luncheon appointment.

  And were they anything else? Their weekly meetings couldn’t be more blameless if some Sister made them a threesome. They were as public as statues. They talked about politics, basketball, first communions they had lived through, the lives she investigated, the trees he loved. They talked about the few people they knew in common (the young O’Riordans were expecting a baby already). They were like college boy and college girl on that outmoded, rule-bound thing: a date. But dates were only the beginning, weren’t they—the slow beginning of a series that became hurried, became precipitous, came to a head, and ended in either a broken heart or a ceremony in a stone church. “How did I get here?” more than one panicky bride had said to Marlene. How did we get here? Marlene wondered now. Where are we going?

  On the first warm Thursday in May, they bought a bag of pretzels and ate them on the bank of the Charles. They sat on Hugh’s raincoat. He loosened his tie. Hundreds of men all over the city were loosening their ties in the spring warmth. Yet she had to look away until she felt her flush recede.