As satisfied as she could expect to be, Hazel left the bathroom and officially began to wait. Hugh was coming to fetch her, and she couldn’t help being a bit nervous. This was their first real date, and he was the only person in a long while to appeal to her. Handsome and a widower, not many of those around. Twinkly eyes flecked with green. A square, neatly shaven chin. The dignity of small lines framing the corners of his mouth. Kind, intelligent, polite. He was the communications director for a biotech company in Cambridge, which meant that while knowledgeable about science, he was easier to talk to than an actual scientist. Best of all, he was Hazel’s age, early forties, not one of those paunchy older men her friends sometimes set her up with, the pear-shaped ones who wore those enormous plastic sunshades over their glasses.
She had met him that summer at a swim meet; his son Luke was a year ahead of Jessie and swam a slightly flailing butterfly. Hazel had been clocking the lane next to Hugh’s when they began to chat; detecting the Carolina tinge to her accent (light as it was after a decade in Boston), Hugh asked where she hailed from. It turned out he had southern roots, had grown up in Macon before moving north. He still had family in Georgia, though he hadn’t been back since taking Luke to see the Olympics in Atlanta last year. Even after their initial talk subsided, Hugh continued to address Hazel in an easy manner, as if they were already friends.
And so the summer had become an enjoyable one. For the first time, Hazel honestly looked forward to those hours at the public swimming pool, a place she had spent much of the past decade dreading, as it entailed uncovering herself and her mottled arms while Jessie ran blithely around with her friends, their eyes red from chlorine, their plastic swim tags fading from the sun. The water slippery with tanning oil, the retarded boy always lolling on the steps, sucking on a shoelace . . . At least the swim meets gave Hazel something to do—and Hugh had made everything more pleasant.
Then, just this week, she had met him by chance in the parking lot of the middle school when she was waiting to pick up Jessie from the first day of seventh grade. Hugh, too, had stepped out of his car, a shiny gray Civic, to catch some September sunshine. Hazel called to him. It was just as the children began to stream out of the school’s doors that he asked if she might like to go to a movie with him.
As much as she had spent all summer hoping for just such an invitation, his offer surprised her. There were other single women to choose from, and though Hazel didn’t think all that much of most of them, the fact was, you never knew what a man might find attractive. And, in her case, there were the white splotches. Although she could hide the two small ones on her face—one where her chin met her jaw and one below her right temple—they were still visible on her hands for anyone to see.
Ten years ago the first one had appeared, right when Nicholas moved out, when everything fell apart. The way Hazel understood it, just as some people’s hair turned white from shock, she herself had blanched—but gradually, visibly, a living negative tattoo. “I really do wear my heart on my sleeve,” she had joked to a doctor, holding out her arm to reveal a white splotch. The doctor, a humorless man with photographs of his basset hound displayed on all four walls, insisted it had nothing to do with her heart or with shock but rather with loss of melanin. “I can see how this would be troubling,” he had told her, “but it’s not a health concern. It’s just something that happens.” He seemed to think this a helpful thing to say.
Those were the days when Hazel wanted one thing more than anything else: for Remy and Nicholas to be as hurt and humiliated as she had been. Because there had to be some kind of retribution. In order to keep believing in God (for why would He punish honest, clean-living Hazel, who, as frustrated as she had been with Nicholas’s constant travel and general thoughtlessness, had never, ever, cheated on him? What had she done to deserve the disgrace of being that most unpleasant of things, a divorced woman?), Hazel still clung to a belief that everything happened for a reason and that those who suffered would eventually be rewarded, and vice versa. She retained this belief even when the white splotches appeared, on her knees, her calves, her forearms.
Hazel had tried everything to even out her skin: the tonic that smelled of lye, tubes of cream the consistency of wet sand. She had even gone to an acupuncturist recommended by one of Remy’s friends. That was a few years after the divorce, when the biweekly trading of Jessie back and forth had become second nature—though Hazel still dreaded having to glimpse Remy in the process. That day was the first time Hazel had been able to view Remy in a generous light.
“Mommy, what’s that?”
Hazel had reached out to take Jessie’s hand in hers, to lead her away from that happy, sloppy household whose contented disarray revealed a fullness of life Hazel couldn’t help envying. And now Jessie was pointing at a big white splotch on the back of Hazel’s hand. “Mommy, what’s that?”
She was five years old. Only a reasonable, logical answer would do.
“It’s loss of melanin.” Hazel tried not to allow even a hint of resentment that so obvious a cruelty—the fabric of a wounded soul—had been thrust upon her. “Melanin is what makes our skin dark. It makes us tan when the sun activates it. People with dark skin have more melanin, and fair people have less.”
“But why is it missing there?”
Hazel gave a little laugh. “Who knows?” She had wanted to sound lighthearted but instead sounded frantic.
Remy was still at the door, waiting to hand Jessie the purple backpack with the reflective stickers. “You know,” she had said, timidly, “a friend of mine was having skin problems, and she went to an acupuncturist. It wasn’t the same thing you have, but if you want to . . . I mean, if you’re interested . . .” Remy let her voice trail off, as if already knowing there was no way to reverse the process that had overtaken Hazel’s body.
But back then Hazel still believed she might halt the inevitable. She met with the acupuncturist, who also prescribed various herbal teas and, after a few months, when there was no change except in the opposite direction (more splotches of white on her thighs and arms), dared to suggest Hazel stop bemoaning what was happening and accept that she was changing. “You’d be amazed how much better you can feel when you accept change, rather than fight it. You have to embrace it.”
Embrace this! Hazel wanted to say, and clock her, that petite woman with unblemished skin and a ponytail down her back. But instead she had just held her hands together and nodded stiffly.
The ironic thing was that after that, the white patches had slowed. Though each year one or two more emerged, mainly on her arms, it wasn’t at all at the rate of those first two years. And though soon enough, probably, a good 50 percent of her skin would have bleached away, at least the splotches had stayed away from her face. As for the one that came up to her chin, and the one by her temple, she took time to blend her makeup so that no one would notice.
She wondered if Hugh had. She made a habit of wearing pants and long sleeves at the pool, as if sensitive to the sun. Well, if he were a real man, a good man, her skin wouldn’t matter. So far he had proved to be the real thing, and gallant, too. Even tonight, instead of simply meeting her at the movies, he had suggested he fetch her at home. Hazel found that polite. At the same time, she couldn’t help preparing herself for disappointment; it was what she was used to.
She glanced at the clock in the kitchen. As was her habit, she began to tidy up. She had read in one of those women’s magazines that cleaning for just fifteen minutes a day was better than doing longer, less frequent cleanups; apparently people who waited too long to scrub the toilet bowl or dust the bookshelf spent a certain number of hours per month cleaning, whereas people who tidied daily never had to invest large blocks of time in the same activities. The truth was, Hazel had done the math, using the figures mentioned in the article, and it added up to the same amount of cleaning whether you did it daily, weekly, or monthly. But she had still followed the suggestion ever since.
With a sponge Hazel began
to wipe down the kitchen counter. This room always pleased her, with its farmer’s market bounty, the net sack heavy with speckled apples hanging from a peg above the counter, and the little clay bowl heaped with fresh bulbs of garlic. Heirloom tomatoes, skin spidery as if dipped in ink, lay in a woven sweetgrass basket, while firm shiny peppers, green tinged with purple, sat on a Shaker tray. Along the windowsill were miniature gourds whose contortions and warts, white and orange and green stained with brown, managed to look beautiful rather than deformed.
To Hazel these objects had the power of found art, reminders of what sort of shapes a miracle might take. With each year that passed, the importance of such things—beautiful things—became clearer to her. Domestic beauty, the subtle power of unassuming objects . . . Now she swiped the sponge lightly along the edge of the countertop, giving an extra scrub to the small stain near the corner; although it seemed to be permanent, Hazel always gave it another try. She sprayed a generous spritz of cleanser, guiltily wondering if some of the fumes might float over to the nearby terrarium to be inhaled by Freddie, Jessie’s long-neglected pet frog. Hazel wiped away the cleanser and gave an encouraging glance toward poor, depressed Freddie. He seemed to want nothing more than to be put out of his misery.
“Oh!” Hazel hadn’t expected the doorbell so soon. She walked briskly to the door to see Hugh on the front step. Twinkly eyes like Bill Clinton’s. But there was a sadness there, too, a seriousness, in the lines of his face.
“Hi, there!” Hazel opened the screen door for him. “Would you like to come in for a minute? Or shall I just get my purse?”
“Actually,” Hugh said, stepping into the foyer, “I double-checked the movie times, and it’s a half hour later than the paper listed it. So we have some time to kill, if that’s all right.”
“Sure, come on in.” Hazel closed the door behind him. They were going to see L.A. Confidential. She would have preferred to see The Full Monty but thought it might seem silly, so she hadn’t suggested it. “Would you like a drink? I have some wine open. Or a beer, if you’d like.”
“I wouldn’t mind a beer.” He followed her into the kitchen, the faint smell of cologne, something sporty. Hazel opened the refrigerator, pleased to have thought ahead and purchased a six-pack of Sam Adams. Hugh said, “Nice frog you’ve got there.”
“Want him?” Hazel closed the refrigerator door and reached for the bottle opener. “Please, take him!” She pried off the cap and handed the bottle to Hugh.
“You two not getting along?” He eased into a seat at the table.
Hazel had thought they could sit in the living room, where the light was less harsh. But she, too, took a seat. “Minnie van der Veer bought one for her son Brian, and she swore to me it lived all of two months. We’ve had this one for two years!”
Hugh laughed, and Hazel gave a little shrug. “I got him when Jessie was in fifth grade and Mrs. Klinman had the students write a poem about their pet. Jessie said how can I do the assignment when I don’t have a pet? In science they had just done a whole unit on reptiles, and Jessie really wanted a snake, but I couldn’t stand the thought of a snake in the house. And then I remembered Brian van der Veer’s frog. Minnie said it just keeled over one day. Which I thought would be perfect, because you know Jessie: her attention span is almost nonexistent.”
Hugh was laughing harder now, and Hazel said, “Maybe I’ll have a beer, too.”
This just made Hugh laugh again. Hazel took another bottle from the fridge and flipped the cap off with a sense of power, as if she were suddenly alluringly comic and not just a beleaguered single mother—one who had even gone on to research the average life span of that particular species of frog. The book had said at most two years. At most. For all Hazel knew, hers was some sort of mutant that would live forever. To Hugh she said, “What she really wants, of course, is a puppy.”
Hugh said, “Doesn’t every kid? Unless they already have a dog, in which case they want a cat.” He sighed. “Luke and I have an extremely aged cat. I fear we might have to put him to sleep soon, actually.” He lowered his voice, as if confiding something. “He was one of the first things Teresa and I did together, back when we were in graduate school and moved in together. I was thinking the other day that that cat has known me longer than Luke has.” His voice seemed caught in his throat. “And also that Teresa got to spend more years with our cat than she did with our son.” He took a swig of his beer, swallowed, and asked, “Any pets in your past?”
“My former husband and I had a cat. A friend left it with us when he moved away. Well, he didn’t say that. He asked us to watch him for two weeks, and then went to California and never came back.” Hazel laughed, though at the time she had thought it abominable. “The ironic thing is that we were the ones who ended up moving around all the time. Poor thing was always being shipped here and there.” It was the first time Hazel had really thought what it must have been like for Rascal, stuck in that plastic crate with the handle on top; back then it just seemed a huge hassle that only she had to deal with.
“In a way, the cat was one of the casualties of our divorce. He got left back home with my parents. But luckily my father really took to him. He was somewhat immobile in his last years, and that cat would curl up on his chest and just stay there for hours.” Hazel took a quick sip of her beer. “To be honest, I’m not much of a pet person.”
The truth, if she had said it more specifically, was that pets just left hairs all over the furniture and peed on the rugs. “I told Jessie I was allergic to dogs. Isn’t that awful? ‘Temperamentally allergic’ is what I meant. It should be a crime, shouldn’t it, denying your daughter a puppy for no good reason? But I just couldn’t imagine taking care of another living being all by myself!” Hazel didn’t mean to sound self-absorbed. “I thought her dad might let her have one, since he at least has a wife to help out. But they travel a lot, professionally. At least, that’s his excuse.”
Both she and Hugh were silent for a moment, both feeling wounded, she supposed. His wife had passed away just two and a half years ago, so his wound was surely deeper.
Hazel’s own pain was now more of a constant, dull ache—yet there were moments when her wounds felt fresh. The worst was about a year after Nicholas left, when he was unable to pick up Jessie and Remy had arrived instead, with those narrow hips and straight shoulders and thin strong arms, her eyes avoiding Hazel as she waited on the doorstep. What had hurt the most was simply how very different Remy was from Hazel, so that Hazel felt newly rebuffed, at the understanding that Nicholas had chosen to be with someone not at all like her.
At that moment, Jessie had come running with her purple backpack and her favorite Dr. Seuss book and had cried out, “Remy!” with such delight that Hazel felt a knife in her chest. There really was a knife there, twisting.
Remy had appeared almost embarrassed by this greeting, said, “Hey, kiddo” in a soft voice as Jessie propelled herself into her arms. “Here, hug your mom good-bye,” she had told her, pointing Jessie back at Hazel. That gesture itself had enraged Hazel—as if she needed Remy to tell her daughter to do that.
“Bye, Mommy!” Jessie had hugged Hazel and then went with Remy to the brown Volvo that Nicholas had bought after the divorce. Only as Remy helped her into the car did Jessie look back briefly, a sudden expression of complicit guilt on her young face. When the Volvo had driven off, Hazel’s shoulders heaved as she sobbed silently, and she had to sit on the front steps to recover.
Since then Hazel hadn’t sobbed in a long time, although every so often she felt all over again that something awful had happened to her. And it was true that as much as she enjoyed her life and her job at Maria’s fabric shop, through it ran a thread of what could only be called loneliness. No matter how many activities she took up, no matter which new groups she volunteered for, there was always the sensation of being alone in the world. As much as she thought of herself as a strong independent woman, it was one thing to be independent and another to go through life wit
hout an ally, a partner, a hand to hold or to pat her on the back or massage her shoulders when the tension became too much.
She had so much love to give! Thank God she had Jessie. But even parenthood did not rid her of the drifting, lonely feeling, the residue of evenings spent on the couch across from the television, watching Murphy Brown while eating far too many low-fat Cheez Doodles and drinking a too-full glass of sauvignon blanc. At times such evenings felt intimate, at times decadent; other times it felt closer to something embarrassingly prurient, like masturbation. And then there were all the times she found herself in some public place looking around to discover that everybody else—everybody!—had somebody. When, last year, Jessie had let on that she had a crush on the boy in her class who played the bagpipes, Hazel had thought, horribly and against her own will, Even Jessie has someone to love. And I (because of Nicholas, because of Remy) have no one.
Now there was another boy in Jessie’s life—her first boyfriend, though they hadn’t as yet been on an actual date. They had met at a swim meet this summer, and although he went to a private school in Cambridge, Jessie talked to him on the telephone extensively, like a bona fide teenager. Hazel didn’t feel at all jealous, since finally she, too, had someone to be excited about. And here he was, Hugh, sitting across from her, as if Hazel did such things—had handsome men over for a beer—all the time.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose we should head over. Does that sound good?”
“It sounds great,” Hazel told him, feeling fully content. Together they went into the front hall, where Hazel pulled on her autumn jacket and tied her silk scarf, wondering vaguely what the night held in store. Outside, the maples were just starting to turn, the evening’s blueness propped between branches. In another month or so it would be cold enough to wear gloves, and Hazel wouldn’t have to feel self-conscious about the splotches on her hands. Winter was good for her that way. Sometimes she wished it were olden times, so that she could wear gloves in the warm months, too.
Sight Reading Page 12
