Willing

by Scott Spencer

  Webb was full of hijinks, showing a playful, teasing side that carried glaring hints of sadism. He hadn’t yet grabbed his Norwegian companion by the back of the neck and run her up and down the corridors; instead, he commandeered the ice tongs and began dropping ice cubes down the back of her shirt. She hunched her small round shoulders and twisted her torso, creating space between her T-shirt and her skin, and allowing the ice cubes to fall to the floor, with minimal contact with her skin. But, wary as she was of him, she did not want to passively endure his childishness. She grabbed a handful of ice herself. Oh no, you don’t, Webb said. His voice was sharp, loud, full of concern, as if by retaliating and putting ice down his shirt she would be placing him in serious jeopardy. Even smiling and pursuing Webb with her handful of ice, the girl looked seriously unnerved. She had the gummy smile chimps dressed in formal wear show to the camera, when their lips are stretched back by the fish hooks of terror. She jiggled the ice cubes in her hand, and then, with the whoop of a girl who has always tried to hold her own with her rambunctious brothers, she lunged toward Webb and shoved the ice cubes down the front of his shirt. You’re going to stop my heart, you crazy bitch, he shouted out. She seemed to take some encouragement from this and began taking ice cubes one at a time out of the bucket and tossing them at Webb, who energetically dodged them. He picked out an ice cube himself, grabbed her behind the neck—his specialty, it seemed—and forced it into her mouth, and then he held her mouth shut so she couldn’t spit it out. She was saying something in Norwegian, muffled and full of high notes, and she was doing her best to pull his hands away from her mouth and jaw. But Webb was hardwired to resist whenever force was used against him. The girl struggled to remove his hand—she scratched him, tried to bite him, shook her head back and forth—but all her efforts only made him grip her tighter. I thought he might end up killing her.

  Let her alone, Webb, I said, but my voice lacked resonance, it was flat and without authority; it was a voice I knew well, a voice I didn’t like to hear: the voice of my childhood. I cleared my throat, repeated my warning, which, the second time through, sounded as if it had a little something behind it, if not the power of enforcement then at least a bit of humanity. We’re just having fun, he said, tossing a quick glance my way. Come on, Webb, I said, trying to strike a tone that implied both reasonableness and determination, and a couple of hand gestures that suggested that here we were once again, going over ground we had already covered, and now it was time for him to behave and act like the generally good fellow I knew him to be. Hey, I don’t tell you how to treat your fucking whore, so don’t tell me. We were already nearly at the fifth floor. Somehow knowing we only had another couple of moments emboldened me. I moved closer to him, drew my shoulders back, stuck my chin out, clenched my teeth. Just leave her alone, Webb. The woman was trying to free herself by turning her head left and then right, and her eyes were showing a great deal of white, like a horse in a burning barn. I didn’t have a plan of action; I had never known what to do when words failed. But suddenly it seemed like a good idea to cause Webb a bit of pain, enough to make him let go of the girl, and I elbowed him in the ribs with all my might.

  His reaction was far beyond the cries of impending calamity he emitted when his escort dared to threaten him with an ice cube. He shrieked, high and shrill as a smoke alarm. Life is moments, isn’t that what people say? Well, it’s billions and billions of moments, so there has to be a lot of editing if you are going to tell anyone anything, and in my editing I like to linger here, with Webb shrieking, with Webb grabbing his side and holding it, as if I might have split him open and his organs were in danger of falling to the ground like trinkets out of a piñata. The girl’s mouth was finally uncovered and she spat out like a rotten tooth what was left of the ice cube. It hit the faux-marble floor of the elevator car and bounced hectically here and there before settling in a corner. The girl tenderly touched her own chin, the sides of her mouth, and she said You’re crazy, which I assumed she was saying to Webb, though there is, I suppose, an outside chance she meant me. Like many men who have had scant or no real experience with physical force, I was filled with illusions about it, and I was reveling in my quick strike at Webb. This was even better than the Blue Lagoon, where my violence might have been somewhat more extreme but, also, wholly reactive and rooted in self-defense. Taking a nip out of someone’s thigh when they are trying to drown you doesn’t exactly make you a warrior.

  But now, in the elevator, my moment of unalloyed triumph was over; once Webb had ascertained that he hadn’t been hurt, his eyes locked in on me with a predatory calm that verged on delight. I ought to have known full well that he was going to come after me, but I was, nevertheless, unprepared. Webb lowered his head like a bull, and then he ran his shoulder into my chest. I either fell or flew backward. My head hit the back wall, where a framed poster advertising the Christofer’s restaurant hung, a slightly faded, out-of-date-looking photograph showing a whole salmon on a silver platter and a bottle of champagne. I heard the glass of it shatter beneath the force of my skull. The elevator stopped; the doors opened. This is my floor, I said, in a surprisingly composed voice. Webb was sweating profusely. His rather small hands, squeezed into fists, circled around and around, like someone gathering up a skein of yarn. I was particularly focused on his gold and garnet ring that sat upon the fourth finger of his right hand, as large as an acorn. What better reason was there to wear such a thing than to now and then ram it into the bridge of someone’s nose? Well, it’s been real, I said, moving past him. I heard the elevator doors shut behind me, and I stood there for a moment, trying to remember which room Lincoln said Romulus and my mother were in.

  At that point, I had no idea that my collision with the back of the elevator had reopened the gash on the side of my head, nor did I realize that my scalp was bleeding. I rapped on the door to Room 625, waited.

  You’re covered in blood, Romulus said to me, as soon as he opened the door. Once he said it, I felt it. Somehow my skin’s registry of the greasy warmth of my own blood hadn’t yet been transmitted to my full consciousness, though, in fact, a little puddle of blood had pooled in my ear, and there was blood on my neck, my collar, and halfway down the front of my shirt. Romulus had opened his door enough to allow me to see a pie slice of his room, enough to put to rest the hope that the woman I had been seeing since Iceland as my mother was in fact some other middle-aged woman, a tan, well-taken-care-of woman in simple, expensive clothes who, because of my own inflamed sense of guilt over the Esquire piece, or because I was simply conjuring the worst thing that could befall me on this trip, merely (and intriguingly) appeared to be my mother. But none of that was the case: the woman seated in a chrome and leather chair near a tall mahogany dresser was without question Naomi Cohen Kaplan Kearney Blake Jankowsky. Now, all I needed to figure out was why she was in the knife king’s room.

  What are you doing here? I asked her.

  Oh my God, Avery, I knew it, I knew it, you’re covered in blood, she said, rising from her chair. Her face was puffy, pale here, red there. She had been crying. She made her careful steps toward me—she always walked as if she were sneaking off somewhere, as if the creak of a floorboard would give her away. Romulus gave up on the idea of denying me entrance. He further opened the door and stood to one side, making room for my mother, who continued her cautious pace toward me. Contrary to what I would have predicted, I was glad almost to the point of mania to be seeing her, even here, even now. Naomi, I said, reaching out for her, Mom.

  MY MOTHER was staying on the Christofer’s top floor. She hadn’t expected to be in Oslo, and the hotel had been fully booked, except for the vast, pricey Explorer Suite, which, out of kindness, the management let her have for less than the going rate, so once again, I thought, her haphazardness and helplessness had worked in her behalf, and someone, a man, in this case a middle aged Norwegian with deeply recessed eyes and a shock treatment haircut, had intervened on her behalf—though to complete the old patt
ern she would have to marry him and I would have to change my last name to Reichelt. After taking our leave of Romulus, we rode the elevator, not exactly in silence but making talk so small that it was worse than finding ourselves with nothing to say. On the eighth floor, the elevator stopped and opened to Dr. Gordon, who seemed awfully surprised to see me. Are you going down? he asked. Not at the moment, I said, and then the three of us stood in silence, like people in a book of photographs waiting for someone to turn the page. When the doors finally slid shut, my mother said Who the hell was he? Dr. Gordon, I said, he’s from Evanston. That old guy’s on this trip with the rest of you men? He’s here because of Jordy, I said. Yeah? Who the hell is Jordy? Jordy is Jordan, his son. The trip’s really for Jordy. Oh my God, Avery, that has got to be the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. I made a low, bitter laughing sound. Stick around, I said.

  Up in the suite, I followed my mother into the sitting room. She stood by the window. Despite all the time in the sun, her dark hair was even darker and more lustrous than it had been when she was young. She was quite tan, and her skin practically sparkled with the moisturizer she used to counteract the effects of all that sun. Dark and rich, she looked like food. She had parted the curtains and gripped the right panel with one hand. She was intent, motionless, with all the concentration of a spy looking out for a signal of some kind: a blinking light, a white van circling the block, a man in a bowler walking a Cocker spaniel. I could live here, Naomi finally said, letting go of the curtain and turning again to face me. Except for the weather, she added. That I could do without. Romulus told me winter lasts half the year. Well, it’s not really an issue, is it, I said. You’re in Costa Rica. She waved dismissively, which, I thought, strongly suggested that things weren’t going well down in Nosara.

  What were you doing in Romulus’s room? I asked her. She shook her head, as if the question was rife with complications, though I couldn’t understand how anything could be going on between her and Romulus, much less anything complicated. I was just hanging around this hotel all day waiting for you, she said. I was very grateful for the company, believe me. Rom’s a sweet guy, and he really needed someone to talk to, and I was more than happy to oblige. What was I supposed to do while I was waiting? Eat? She patted her stomach. Anyhow, the winters here aren’t as bad as the ones we had in Chicago. The part I couldn’t take is the darkness. Mom, I said, trying to haul her back to the matters at hand. I’m the kind of person, she said, who is light sensitive. If I don’t get a few hours of light, I mean real light, sunlight, then I can go into a full-blown depression. In that way, Costa Rica has been a miracle for me. All these years I lived with SAD without knowing what it was. She narrowed her eyes, as was her way when she probed for information. Do you know what SAD is? she asked. It was actually something I did know—I had even written about it for an in-flight magazine, a piece about light boxes that counteract the winter’s long gloom—but at the moment I couldn’t recall what the letters stood for. Situational…I began. No, she was quick to say. Seasonal. Seasonal Affective Disorder. And before you snipe at it, let me tell you, Avery, it’s real. It’s as real as erectile dysfunction or an enlarged prostate, or any of the other things they throw billions of dollars at because men suffer from it.

  So, I said, Mom. I brought my hands together, squeezed them. What’s going on? Why are you here? But the winters here? she said. They’re not supposed to be too bad. Nothing like what we—I never said it wasn’t real, Mom. All I’m asking is why you’re here. What were you doing in Iceland and now…I fell silent; for a moment I didn’t know where we were.

  Norway, she said. She had no more hesitation jogging my memory than she had doubting my veracity, or in assuming I knew rather little about the world. She really couldn’t muster much more respect for my autonomy than she had back in the days when she changed my name as if it were a shirt. It may be difficult to grant full dignity to someone whom you’ve toilet-trained; it might be a long day’s journey into empathy to ever fully respect someone after dealing with their diapers.

  So this is about the Esquire story? I said.

  No, it’s not, but, yes, I have not forgotten your little story in that magazine. All right, then let’s talk about it, I said. I have to tell you, Mom, I didn’t think it would upset you. Really? she asked. Because I’m so insensitive? No, not because you’re so insensitive. What has insensitivity got to do with it? Then what? Why didn’t you think it would upset me? Because I’m not educated? Because I didn’t finish college? I had two years, and then I had the misfortune to fall in love. I was foolish. I thought falling in love solved everything. I was an idiot. I was a foolish fucking idiot. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? Her voice wobbled momentarily and her eyes reddened, and I felt a searing stab of remorse. I had only wanted to protect myself from her, not to hurt her.

  I didn’t think it would upset you because there’s nothing in it that you don’t already know. I tried to make my voice soothing. But she waved it away as if my words were a swarm of gnats. And now the whole world knows it, too, she said. You held me up as an object of ridicule, and you slimed me with your patriarchal bullshit. As she said the word bullshit, she looked at me, as if for the first time. Her eyes engaged mine with a sudden frankness, and she even smiled.

  Look at you, she said, shaking her head. Look at you, I countered. How much do you weigh right now, Avery? I don’t know, I said. How much do you weigh? I weigh a hundred nineteen pounds, which is exactly what I weighed when I met your father. Which father? Stop it, you know which father. Your real father. They’re all quite real, Mom. Your biological father. Is that better? I nodded, and Naomi went back to the subject of her weight. It’s five pounds more than my weight when I was with Andrew. It’s about the same as it was with Norman, and it’s actually less than it was with Gene. Gene and I loved to eat. He taught me how to make goulash and stuffed cabbage, and all kinds of other Hungarian delicacies. What are you laughing at? I’m not laughing. I’m smiling. All right, then what are you smiling at? I’m smiling because you even remember your weight in terms of the men in your life. You’re like those kids who give shape to the past by remembering the names of their teachers. Those guys weren’t my teachers, I’ll tell you that much. That’s not what I’m saying, Mom. I’m saying that you can’t even think of yourself just as yourself; it’s always connected to which marriage you were on. Women are about connections, she said, with a simple shrug, as if that’s all there was to say about it. Women are about connections, I said, because they come out of a history in which being connected to a man was their only hope for survival. In which they weren’t able to make their own money or run their own lives. But it doesn’t have to be that way any longer. My mother looked at me quizzically. Let me get this straight, she said, you’re on a sex tour and you’re giving me lectures about feminism?

  She sat at a round mahogany table and gestured me into the chair opposite to her, which put the windows at my back. We sat in silence for a few moments while she took off her rings and placed them in a row. Mom, I said, why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing here.

  As soon as you called me from that emergency room, I started making arrangements to come and see you. You sounded so terrible, and so strange. You were slurring; I could hardly understand you. It was the most terrifying thing. You’re all I have left in the world. I couldn’t just let you slip away; I had to see you. And then when I got to New York and found you gone? She shook her head, remembering her own ordeal. How did you know where to find me? I asked.

  A mother does what a mother must do, she said. All my life, I’ve been too passive. That part of your article I had to agree with. I guess I was always looking for someone to rescue me. But no more of that, not for me. Now when I set my mind to do something, I don’t let anyone stand in my way. As she spoke, she took off her necklace. Between your uncle and your agent I found out enough, and then I got in touch with some very nice woman at Fleming Tours, and when I told her it was an emergency she gave m
e your itinerary. Well, she’ll be losing her job, I said. I can promise you that. Aren’t you glad to see me? she asked. Well, I don’t know, Mom, it’s pretty strange. You’re here. I can hardly believe it, but here you are. That’s not much of a welcome, Avery. All right, Mom, welcome, I’m thrilled that you’re here. Who on an around-the-world sex tour wouldn’t want his mother along for the ride? She had stacked her rings one on top of the other, and now she toppled the tower and they rolled around the table. I hate sarcasm, she said. It’s oppressive. You know what it’s like—clouds that block out the sun, but useless clouds, clouds that don’t ever rain. Big dark empty clouds. She looked at me through the tops of her eyes and then began organizing her jewelry again. Why didn’t you just wait for me in New York? I asked.

  Listen, Avery, I didn’t come all this way to argue with you. I wasn’t going to pay New York prices for two weeks in a hotel, just to wait. Do I think what you’re doing is terribly, terribly wrong? Of course I do. You’re a grown man; you can make your own decisions. But I’m a grown-up, too. And my decision was when my son calls and says he’s been run over by a car, I am going to be there for him. She let the necklace slither out of her hand, winding it into a curl on the tabletop. I wasn’t run over, I said. I was hit. I never should have called. She shook her head. You don’t give an inch, do you, she said.

  The phone made its high electronic purr, and the red message light trembled. My memories of my mother and the telephone were a series of images of her hurrying to answer whenever it rang, as if she was always expecting a call that could change everything. She would make her nervous little steps toward the ringing, her mouth slightly open, her hand extended, and she would snatch it off its cradle and say Hello in a practically breathless voice. She was similarly avid about the mail. She often peeked out of our front window, looking for the postman, and when the mail fell through the slot in our front door she scooped it up immediately, rifling through whatever had come as if she were waiting for an exit visa. Though this time she didn’t answer the phone, the question remained: what had she been expecting, what was she waiting for, all those years? And this long-unanswered question led to a more somber inquiry, not about her but about me: why in all the years granted me had I failed to fathom the source of my own mother’s unhappiness? What had driven her from marriage to marriage? What did she want, from what was she running? What did she think about when she was alone? What most did she wish for? What most did she fear?