“No,” she says. “But it was sexy.” She pulls back the covers and she’s wearing a red, white, and blue retro-looking swimsuit. “For some reason, I put on my vintage 1976 bicentennial two-piece. We sang the national anthem.”
I smile. “I usually only mouth that song at ball games. I’m not a strong singer.”
“We did it à la Barry Gibb.”
“I see.” I remember the feel of that swimsuit against my skin. I remember kissing her, too, running my hands up her ribs.
“So why are you freaking out, Godfrey? Tell me that.”
“Shouldn’t I save that for my therapist?” I try to crack a smile.
“Don’t get coy with me now. What happened to the boy throwing pebbles at my window?”
I start to sigh, but Evelyn cuts me off.
“Don’t sigh at me, Godfrey Burkes.”
“Okay,” I say. “How about we make a deal?”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll tell you my family story if you tell me yours.”
Evelyn looks startled, like I’ve asked her to put on a bicentennial bikini and sing the national anthem à la Barry Gibb. She flops backward and rubs her temples with both hands, considering very carefully. “Okay,” she says finally. “Okay, fine. But you go first.”
“I’m a bastard, Evelyn.”
She turns on her side, so she’s facing my right cheek. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I obviously didn’t mind that you came over the way you did.” She points to her bikini. She points to my pants. “Like I said, it was sexy.”
“You’re not understanding me. I’m legitimately illegitimate—a bastard. The Merriam-Webster version of the word.”
“Oh.”
“Mart Thigpen is my biological father.”
“Mart Thigpen?”
“The man who knocked up my mother and then left her.”
“Have you ever met him?”
I shake my head. “My mother sat me down one day after school and said, ‘That man who watches Jeopardy! every night in his underwear isn’t really your father.’ ”
“So your father is actually your stepfather.”
“Technically.”
“And Mart Thigpen is . . .”
“Probably the man who helped us cross the seven-billion population mark faster than we were supposed to.”
Evelyn shifts herself closer to me. I can feel the heat from her mouth, from the tops of her breasts not covered by the bikini, even from her neck and the smoothness of her thighs. “So we can solely blame him for global warming?” she says.
“My father, the Great Mart Thigpen.”
“ ‘Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.’ Margaret Mead said that.”
“And I always thought I was the accident,” Godfrey says.
“You seem handcrafted to me.”
“Well, I hope Margaret Mead is wrong. I’d like to be a nonaccidental father one day.”
She looks at me and smiles—just the corners of her mouth. “I want to mother some kids like crazy.” And there’s something about the way she says that makes me feel like she has a huge vast capacity for love. Her love could stretch on unconditionally and endlessly, like it’s a universe within her. I’m drawn to the edge of that universe. I’d like to fall into a black hole of it somehow. I just whisper, “God.”
“What?”
I shake my head. I feel like I’m going to get in a fight one day about the validity of falling in love so fast. Not a heated one because why would I give a shit if some other person gets it or not? Right now, it’s no longer the big flooding rush like when I saw her naked shoulder. It’s just this honest, frank truth. I love Evelyn Shriner. Love doesn’t start with need. Love meets love and just fucking recognizes itself. I’m supposed to be scared to death. Modern man isn’t built for these kinds of things. But I feel good.
“What kind of animal did your mother say Thigpen was?” she asks.
I have no fucking clue. All of these years—how did I never ask such an obvious question? “I never asked,” I finally say.
“You know, penguins are monogamous. Lassie was based on a true story.”
“Is that right?”
“Everything in black and white is true,” she says. “Besides, you’re not supposed to argue with a girl in a bikini. A girl in a bikini in bed with you, no less.”
“Are you just going to always be mostly naked so I can never really argue with you?”
“Whatever works.”
“That’s not fair.”
I’ll never forget what Evelyn Shriner looks like in a 1976 bicentennial bikini. “Cats will eat their dead owner’s face once they run out of food.”
Evelyn sighs. “Really?”
“I only know where half of me came from. I guess it’s dumb, but sometimes it’s hard to rest myself.”
“Have you ever tried to find out about your dad?”
“I looked him up in high school. He was living in Burlington, probably trying to raise the census level of Vermont. It’s really low, you know.”
“What did you do?”
“I wrote a letter. Even included pictures. I rewrote it three times because I wanted it to look neat. I was on my way to the mailbox when I saw my father . . . well, my stepfather, and he smiled at me. I couldn’t do it.”
“Maybe you should consider doing it again,” she says. “Instead of stamps, there’s science now; the future could tell you a lot about the past.”
“Chin? I thought he only did romantic futures.”
“You could at least ask him. I mean, for a few bucks extra, he’d probably try to find a loophole. Plus, love is love.”
“He does seem financially motivated.”
“Imagine finding out what your future would be like if you and your father knew each other.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
“You have penguins on your goddamn boxers, and you held on to me as we fell asleep last night. But what if there is some animal in you? Would that be all bad? It can’t be because it makes you you, and I like Godfrey Burkes—animal, Thigpen, and all.”
This has never dawned on me—not once, not ever. How is that possible?
“Let me put it this way.” Evelyn traces circles around the same piece of skin right above my collarbone. “Thigpen and all, you’re the boy girls want to marry. It’s why Dr. Chin has a job. It’s why his envisioning service is more lucrative than a Chinese restaurant.”
If she really knew the truth. The boy girls want to marry! I think about where Madge might be right now—maybe at work, maybe at an envisioning session, picking someone who understands abstract art and realizes the importance of having friends who will own a yacht.
“So I’m a boost on the economy?” I say.
“Chin should write you a thank-you card.”
I close my eyes. Evelyn is still tracing circles on my shoulder. “It’s your turn.” I spread one of my hands on my chest.
Evelyn’s finger stops tracing. She puts her hand on mine.
“My sister would be thirty-eight this October,” she says.
Would be.
“She was hit by a car when she was twelve,” she says.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I never met her. My parents had me after the accident. The next best thing, I guess. I’m Dolly the sheep.”
“You’re way prettier than a sheep,” I say.
“That might just be the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me in bed,” she says.
“I am part Thigpen. I hear he was charming.”
“You know what’s fucked up? If my sister never died, none of this would be happening right now. It was either me or my sister. Part of me feels grateful that she’s dead. I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Not even your best friend?”
Evelyn shakes her head. She wipes tears from her cheeks. I brush a piece of loose hair behind her ear.
And then I kiss her. It’s a surprise to both of us
.
Evelyn rolls back over to me and slides her leg inside mine. She takes the sheet and pulls it over our heads.
“I like how cloudy it feels under here,” she says.
“Can we stay for a while?” The white sheets make it feel like we’re in an illuminated tent.
“Please.”
This time she kisses me.
She kisses the middle of my chest, letting her lips sit on my sternum. “Do bunnies mean anything to you?”
“Not really. I mean, I grew up with them. My mom rescues them. Someone has to.”
“When I envisioned you, there were bunnies everywhere. As if they were growing out of the ground. And birds the color of pastels. It was beautiful, but overwhelming and sad.”
“Well, my mother does collect them like a boy collects baseball cards. She’d never let them loose.”
“She wasn’t there. It was fifteen years from now. We jump into a pool completely dressed. I’m wearing a dress and you’re in a suit.”
“You were in my parents’ backyard.” Suddenly Evelyn’s giant bed seems very small. I pull the sheet from our heads. “Was my suit black?”
She nods.
“And were you wearing black, too?”
“Yes.”
“I think you envisioned my mother’s funeral.”
“Would we have jumped into a pool?”
“Were we okay?” I ask her. “Tell me we looked all right.”
“It was crazy. Otherworldly. The bunnies, the sky, the pastel colors. Your fingertips were tinged like you’d been finger-painting.”
“I always wanted to work with kids.”
“Teaching?”
I nod.
“I think you’d be good at that.” She looks down at her hand then and says, “I felt your hand through a video screen fifteen years away. We were both sad and happy. We were together.” This is comforting. “I have to tell you something, Godfrey.”
“What is it?” I say.
“I was really scared. It was all of these emotions at once, but mostly love and fear and I couldn’t tell the difference between the two.”
“I envisioned you once, too,” I say.
“You did?”
I nod. “We were in a Habitrail built for children and we’d lost our daughter and then you found her. You slapped me and gave me a speech about how this was proof we’d endure. And I think I fell in love with you.”
“Well, you were already in love with me. You’d married me, and we’d had a kid together.”
“I mean, current-me fell in love with you.”
Her eyes are fixed on mine. She says in a quick rush, “When we jumped in the pool, I just kept thinking, ‘I don’t know how to swim, I don’t know how to swim.’ ”
And it just comes out of me. “You should learn.”
“I should?”
“Yes.” And this feels like a promise—maybe even a proposal—the natural kind, not the popping of the question, the getting down on one knee, the ring. No. This feels right.
“You should learn how to swim,” I say again.
And then she kisses me softly.
“Work!” she says. “I should go to work!”
“Where do you work? What do you do?”
“I’m a librarian. Can’t you tell?”
I tilt my head and think, Yes, sexy librarian, I can see that. “Yes, completely. Which library?”
“The grand old biggie.”
“With the skylights and the intimidating dead patrons of yore in the entryway?”
“That’s the one!” Evelyn hops out of bed. She tugs the edge of the bikini bottom on one cheek as she walks out of the bedroom. I’m in awe of that. Moments later, she comes back into the room with a bottle of water and Advil.
“Thank you.” I untwist the cap, pop three Advil, and take a sip. “Can I ask you a question and you promise not to think it’s weird?” I screw the cap back on the water bottle.
“Look at your clothes pinned to the dresser,” she says. “Look at the penguins on your boxers.” Evelyn lifts up the sheet and looks at them. She smiles and bites her lip again, again !
“How do you feel about abstract art?” I say.
Evelyn scratches behind her neck. She flips her hair to the right side of her face. I smell fruit. Mangoes. “Dots on a canvas, right? Streaks of mixed color simulating emotion?”
“Right.”
“Yeah,” she says, “I’ve got nothing.”
It dawns on me that I’m not trying to guess the right answers to the conversation. I’m not trying to think of something interesting to say. I’m not second-guessing what I’ve just said. I’m just talking. And in one fell swoop, I realize that I’ve never felt anything quite like this—talking about the heart of things, words and then more words. With Madge, there’s always been a voice in the back of my mind, a shaky voice, like a guy on a game show holding a buzzer but never quite knowing the answer, just sure that if he doesn’t ever press the buzzer, he’ll never accidentally say the right thing and get some points on the scoreboard.
With Evelyn, I want to be known and I feel like she can know me. I want to know her, and as soon as she says something, I feel like I get it. If, for some reason, this never works out and I never get any more than this one morning with her, I’ll always remember what it’s like: feeling understood. God, it feels good. It feels like the kind of thing that could take two people a long way in life.
She pauses and looks at me. “You know, I was really addicted to envisioning. Chin has threatened to blacklist me. Maybe I’m done with it now. Maybe I’ve finally caught up to it.”
“Caught up to what?”
“The future.”
“You’re even prettier in the morning.”
“You’re less drunk in the morning.”
“And we’re both more naked.” I look at the pieces of her that are pretending to be from 1976, and under the sheet, penguins shift slightly every time I breathe.
There’s kissing. Lots of kissing and then she pries herself loose. She really actually has to go to work.
And then she’s gone.
I call a cab and wait in her apartment alone.
This is her home. This is where she dwells. I don’t want to pry. I don’t even touch anything. I just admire the fact that she’s breathed this air. The real her.
Finally, the cab pulls up. I grab my coat and rush past the doorway to the kitchen. That’s when I see the heights in the doorjamb. She didn’t take my measurement. I grab a pencil off the counter, stand tall against the jamb, and scribble a mark. I turn and jot: Godfrey Burkes, in all caps.
I was here.
WHEN I GET OUTSIDE, the cab’s waiting for me at the curb. The cabbie has a thick paperback propped on the wheel. I get in, give the cabbie my address, and stare out the window as the car begins to pick up speed. I finger the twenty-dollar bill Evelyn stuck in my right coat pocket as she lightly kissed me good-bye. I want to text her something smart and funny but I don’t have my phone, of course, and I feel suddenly like a man without hands or the ability to speak. It’s a momentary flush of panic. My phone, my keys, my wallet—Madge has them all! She’ll give them back, right? Right ?
My eyes are wide with fear and I tell myself to relax my face. It’s going to be okay, I say to myself even though myself disagrees.
To make matters worse, I realize I left my cell phone number on the mirror but didn’t get hers in return. Of course I’m wearing the same pants as last night so I quickly rummage through my pockets and pull out the white page I tore out of the phone book at Fontana’s. There’s her name, address, and home phone number. At least I’ve got this much. If nothing else, a little proof that the whole night happened, that she’s real.
At the first stoplight, I ask the cabbie, “What do you think about love?”
The cabbie looks at me through the rearview mirror. “You know, people think cabdrivers are oracles, that we speak the truth in moments of crisis. We’re not. We drive cabs.”
It’s true, I do expect certain people to be more oracle-like: bartenders, small children, old people with dementia, maybe even the blind and Jedis, but seriously, I’m pretty sure the cabbie is goading me, which is very oracle-like. “What were you reading before I got in?”
“Tolstoy.”
“Well, that’s just my luck.”
“You’ve got a problem with Tolstoy?”
“I’ve got the one cabbie in all of Baltimore reading dead Russians and refusing to be an oracle.”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Ask me again.”
I’m thinking this might be a trick but what do I have to lose? “What do you think about love?”
“It’s rare.”
“What else?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe he means it might only come once in a lifetime. It’s rare so it’s precious. It’s rare so it shouldn’t be squandered. It’s rare so you should fight for it. “How many times a day do you say that stuff about not being an oracle?”
“About four or five. Night shifts call for it a little more than mornings. You must have had one of those nights that fucks with your worldview.”
“I think I did.” I grip the twenty-dollar bill. It’s the last tangible thing I have that proves last night actually happened.
He looks at me through the rearview again. “People are pretty committed to their particular worldviews, especially certain types. It can be disorienting when one gets fucked with. This girl must have shook you up good.”
“She sure did.”
He pulls up outside my apartment building. I pay and let myself out. There’s a blast of wind. I look up the six steps to the front door. After the six steps, it’s three stories and a brown chipped door. I don’t have the first guess about what could be behind that brown chipped door.
The cabbie rolls down his window. I walk back to the cab and put my elbows on the open window. The Tolstoy paperback is on the passenger’s seat.
“Stay shook,” he says.
“It’s kind of terrifying.”
“That’s all your tip gets you,” he says.
“Fair enough.”
I take my elbows off the open window. The cabbie puts the cab into drive and slowly pulls away. About a half block down the street, he honks three times.
The Future for Curious People Page 19
