People in Trouble

by Sarah Schulman

  The huge marbled ceilings made it cooler inside. It was cool but the air was still. Peter stayed in the back because he was a tourist, and had learned from traveling in Mexico that when you are watching another culture in church it is best to stand in the back. There was music coming from the balcony but it wasn’t the organ he had expected. Instead a harpsichord was being played. Perhaps the dead man had been a harpsichord fan. Peter guessed that homosexuals were probably as creative with their funerals as they were with everything else. But after a while he found the instrument’s tone annoying. Pounding was half the sound and much too abrasive for a funeral. He inhaled the incense and felt again how still the air was. It barely circulated. The smell was beginning to be overpowering, stifling actually. Peter felt faint and sat down abruptly in the nearest pew. Even though he tried repeatedly to relax, he just couldn’t breathe. His lungs would not fill with air, so he left as quietly and respectfully as he had come, stepping back into an almost oppressive heat, only able to take a full deep breath a few blocks away.

  When he got back to the apartment late that afternoon, Kate had just returned from the studio and had brought home her coveralls to be washed. They were laid out over the dresser next to a bag of groceries that hadn’t been put away. She had started changing into more attractive clothing but had gotten waylaid by something real or imagined and seemed halfway about everything. As Peter watched her, he noticed with a quiet sadness how Kate could be euphoric or depressed for no visible reason. All week she’d been irritable, waiting for something, or teary-eyed and deeply regretful. He had actually caught her a few times staring out the window as she was doing at this moment. He stood watching her. The muted sunlight brought out only the surface texture of her face and so he saw every wrinkle and crack in the skin. He saw how her hair would look when it turned white and her features, how they would fall. Then, in one calm and graceful motion, she turned her eyes like the girl in the Vermeer painting being interrupted at her music lesson. The slight twist of her neck and the engagement of her eyes presented themselves with a candor that was always flirtatious. Now that her affair was over and had clearly ended badly, Peter knew that only he could make her happy again.

  9

  MOLLY

  Molly was glad her bed was warm and the night hot because she carried with her a faint but present desire to masturbate to Kate. She thought to her as if it were a gift, but she actually meant to masturbate to a memory of making love with her like one moves to a piece of music.

  She was in a hallucinatory state. It was too hot and her body could not get cool. Each part of her was sore and had a distinct odor. When Kate said ‘I love you,’ its effects lingered on Molly’s skin like radiation. Molly could sail out the window on the strength of that alone. She could fly out into the sky that was always between her apartment and Kate’s like an ocean of buildings instead of barnacles. When Molly sat on the bed and looked out the window she could just make out the shadow of terra cotta surrounding Kate’s rooftop.

  ‘I want to be a good lover to you,’ Molly said to the gray-red funnels and chimneys, the slanted collapsing mountains that formed the boundaries of their pleasureland.

  ‘But I want you to be a good lover to me as well. I want this to be reciprocal.’

  Molly lived with this conflict like an itch, like mites laying eggs under the skin that made her squirm with discomfort, especially at night, when she, without restraint, relived those moments of pure anger. Like waiting for Kate. She seemed to always be waiting, the afternoon getting longer and later until it disappeared into that other time. Then a figure would appear, finally, on the stairs preceded by huge flowers. Molly was immediately reduced to some businessman’s daughter whose daddy tried to replace a forgotten birthday with a gift too large and obvious to have any meaning.

  ‘I couldn’t leave on time because Peter was hanging around. I would have had to say where I was going.’

  ‘You should have told him you had an appointment with me and had to leave.’

  At the same time that she spoke, Molly thought about having to watch those flowers wilt and crumble all over the floor before Kate came back to her again.

  Maybe someday she’ll come while the last bunch is still fresh, Molly thought. If she does that, I’ll sprinkle the petals on her chest.

  She dialed Kate’s number. The phone rang. It rang again and Molly decided not to hang up because she liked knowing the room it was ringing in, having memories in that room. But after a dream that lasted five rings she heard the click that announced the presence of an answering machine, to be followed one breath later by a greeting, perhaps accompanied by music. That was new. Kate had bought an answering machine for her studio. Who wanted to come home to messages? Molly had long ago decided that buying an answering machine would be a public admission of a private sin; waiting for women to call her. It made her rush home from work to sit next to the phone, refusing even to go out for a newspaper. Phone machines were an announcement to the world that a person wanted more calls than they were getting. They thought there was actually more attention out there trying to get through. Who wanted to confirm the nothing behind the fantasy? She’s not really calling you. Besides, those machines changed the way people communicated. It’s so much less personal than a direct call. There was something provocative and challenging about another person’s voice entering, uninvited, into your home at any moment.

  Then again, maybe Kate’s machine was a personal message to her estranged lover, an open door saying ‘I want to know what you have to say.’ Besides, some people gave up if they couldn’t get in touch.

  Molly hung up the receiver without saying a word. She couldn’t take the chance. A minute later, regretting that decision, she dialed again. But, having forgotten to practice a message, hung up one more time. That was one of the dangers of those machines. Once left, the message was out of your control and could never be taken back.

  This was how it always unfolded. Molly looked for reasons to capitulate because she loved Kate and wanted to be with her. But she hated having to accommodate Peter. He was a straight man. Molly was a gay woman. Why should she have to take care of him? So, Molly just waited for the day when Kate would find it unacceptable to say ‘I’m going to the store’ when she was going to her. Maybe she could learn to act like Peter and exert silent control. Don’t ask for anything. Just expect it. For Peter this process came so naturally he could never be accused of malicious intent. That was his strategic advantage over her. It was called normal.

  Molly knew what her own apartment must look like from the outside; empty, yellow, stark. Alone inside the box her morality was slipping. There was a hot breeze, but it was still a breeze, coming in through the window, and she was planning how to behave. She was so hurt. The only salve was an extended imagining of what she could have if she ever became a full person in the world.

  I would choose her presence, Molly thought. Followed by a quiet spontaneity.

  10

  MOLLY

  What did Molly imagine sitting there that way? She saw the ghost of this woman reclining demurely on the couch with outstretched feet. So, Molly stretched hers out as well and ran her hand over the light red hairs on those spider legs. The woman was saying something from a perspective Molly would never have considered on her own but could now predict from repeated exposures. Then she noticed again how truly beautiful Kate was. Her arms carried carefully defined muscles that she used for texture as she moved. At their first meeting she had been tall and proper, a feminine tomboy like Nancy Drew’s best girlfriend, George. She discussed things with her forefinger sitting in the cleft of her chin. Her eyes looked her age.

  The second time Molly saw her she was naked in the locker room of a neighborhood pool. Her eyes came up to Kate’s breasts, which were small with no weight. Kate’s nipples and her lips were the same color, a pale peach, like tiger lilies. Almost every part of her body reminded Molly of flowers, vibrant colors found only in nature. She could see how carefully
Kate’s body was constructed, how much she stood out physically being so tall, with hair so short it left her ears and neck available to anyone. Molly wanted to keep her talking and give her something to remember so she launched into a story about a writer named Jane, and her Moroccan lover who cast spells against her until she was so confused she could no longer form coherent speech.

  ‘But how do you know?’ Kate said, effusive, meeting Molly’s enthusiasm, engaging it. ‘How do you know it was Cherifa who stopped her?’

  Molly answered leaning against the wet, white tiles. She chose her words carefully, their hair and skin smelling of sweat and hot chlorine.

  ‘If you love someone very much and they want to destroy you, that is enough to destroy you.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ she said. ‘It certainly is.’

  That was their first communication. Both women had been, at least once, destroyed.

  Gestures and snippets of their courtship stood out more clearly than complete conversations. One night, on the way home from somewhere, Kate stopped suddenly to take Molly’s face in her hand and draw flaming red lipstick on her mouth with the other.

  ‘I don’t understand how you can live on three days of work a week.’

  ‘I can,’ Molly said. ‘I have a rent-controlled apartment. I don’t buy anything. I don’t eat out.’

  ‘Okay, you don’t go to the opera, but a person cannot survive taking tickets at a movie theater part-time, not in the consumer age.’

  ‘I’m not a consumer. Look, I don’t have a stereo so I don’t buy records or cassettes. I buy regular food like eggs. I don’t have to pay for organic quinoa. I buy books on the street. Yesterday I found The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter for fifty cents. I obviously don’t buy clothes.’

  But Kate was so convinced that Molly needed a higher standard of living that she started finding her bartending jobs at gallery openings and various private parties, where she could make salary and tips and take home leftover Brie at the end of the night.

  It wasn’t long before Molly was employed as a servant for one of Spiros’s parties. Kate came and stood very close to her a few times and Molly poured, wiped and stared at Kate while she danced. She watched Kate move, and after some wine, Kate began to move for her. She came closer still and then left with her husband. That was Molly’s first sharp sensation of unjust abandonment. She wondered sincerely for the rest of the night if Kate always wanted to leave at precisely the same moment he did. Or was it that no moment was worth experiencing once he was absent from it? Yet, at the same time she felt a certain exhilaration because that was such a beautiful way to communicate with another person, watching her dance.

  Kate had called the next evening. They had chatted. She called again the night after that. They chatted again. She called the third night, which was the Fourth of July. The fireworks started at twenty after nine, but Molly had stayed inside her hot apartment because she knew that Kate would call her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Molly waited a breath before answering.

  ‘Come over,’ she said.

  Molly didn’t change her clothes. She was short and sweaty and hot. Her shirt was too small and her shorts were baggy. She stank. Kate stood in the doorway and after two shy moments they placed their lips dryly on each other’s mouths. Kate was tall. She had red eyelashes and wore a shirt with beige tongues on it. They sat on the roof while things were exploding. Molly was so happy she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t explain anything or answer any questions. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to be really romantic.

  ‘Can I kiss you?’ she said. ‘Let’s kiss.’

  Kate was sitting then. Molly was standing, so she held Kate’s head in her hands and kissed her. Kate laughed then, putting her long arms around Molly’s shoulders, and said, ‘You’re fresh.’

  Then she said, ‘This is a strange night. There are pinwheels of firecrackers, spinning and spitting with bursts of gunfire. Emotions explode on a night like this.’

  Molly had never been called fresh before. It was a completely new word. What did it mean? She kissed Kate’s neck, running her fingers back and forth over the bristles of Kate’s haircut. She loved her. Kate was a boy. She was shy and looked down without saying what she was thinking.

  ‘How do you feel, Kate?’

  ‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘I go very slowly in matters of this nature.’

  ‘I go very quickly.’

  Molly knew, of course, that she did not go very quickly but it was obviously the most romantic thing to say. What was she supposed to do, tell the truth and admit to being a nerd? She was, after all, trying to convince a married woman to fall into bed with her and then roll around there for a while.

  They stood at the door again, molding their hands into each other’s, and Molly watched Kate come in to kiss her. Kate turned her neck to both sides, like a soft wave, but in slow motion with her eyes closed. Everything was light orange then, when her lowered lids blocked out the ice blue of her eyes. She was plain. She was effeminate, like a beautiful faggot. Lips in place, they kissed. Even though Molly bit her mouth and licked her neck and grabbed handfuls of muscle from her arms, Kate didn’t move. Molly was excited then and embarrassed and so hopeful and invested.

  ‘Will I see you again?’ she asked and immediately forgot the answer.

  ‘Come back,’ Molly said as Kate walked out her door.

  ‘I will,’ she said, but it was a lie.

  Molly called her for two months. She left messages under the door of Kate’s studio saying she would be home by eight, that she was taking tickets at Cinema Village and could get Kate into Godfather II for free. Sometimes Kate answered the phone but said she was busy and couldn’t talk. Still, Molly persevered because the one thing Kate never said was ‘Don’t call me, I don’t want to see you.’

  In fact, Kate often said she would call back as soon as she wasn’t busy. But she never did. She lied instead. So, Kate’s lack of definition became constant fodder for Molly’s firm belief in everyone’s potential for change, and she continued despite the odds. She was willful. She was desiring. She was very deliberate. Molly decided to change her approach. She stopped calling. She stopped slipping messages under the door. She stopped reading Kate’s horoscope. Instead she sent a very careful letter.

  ‘I held the envelope in my hand,’ Kate told her later. ‘With slight distaste I opened it, expecting to find some unpleasant adolescent cajole, some threat or wail. It was going to take an unimportant example of poor judgment and turn it into a major event. It would make you more important, Molly, than I intended for you to be because fighting with someone is very, very intimate. Tolerating them is condescending but being angry at someone is the best way of keeping them in your life.’

  They sat across a table from each other as Kate said this. There was little communication and not much light. Molly felt cold on the top of her skin and very still underneath.

  ‘When you are angry at someone, they are present. You have something to be mad at, you have them. Then they have to consider you. They have to have an opinion. I opened the letter. It said, ‘bluish carmine, velvety.’ That’s when it all began, of course.’

  11

  MOLLY

  It was very hot that evening, so most people wore shorts and light tank tops. There was a lot of white. There were white balloons on strings, one for every friend who had died. At the beginning of the route people handed out magic markers and passed them along, so each one could write the names of their friends on the balloons. Some people had one balloon. Some people had eight. Some had more. A few were carefully inscribed with detailed information like ‘Thomas Ho 1957–1987.’ Others just said ‘Ray.’ People also held white candles, which gave the anxious something to fuss about, like keeping it lit or catching the wax. Men and women smiled and said quiet soft hellos or kept to themselves. Mostly they just walked down the street. There was not much sound, in the way that New York can be a silent city against a backdrop of solid noise. Molly look
ed over the balloons and read the names. She carried two of her own. She saw the name of someone she had known peripherally and hadn’t even realized was sick.

  By the time they got to the river many of the marchers were dripping sweat from their necks. Drops were sliding down their temples. Everyone stopped then and was even more quiet than before. Each person looked at the water, how dirty it was, how much garbage was floating in it. They looked across to the Jersey side, at the high rises in Fort Lee and the polluted mess that made up the rest of it. Each one had a very private thought about a person who had died or about themself or about New Jersey or why they weren’t feeling anything right then. It was the calmest state of confusion that Molly had ever been in. Then somebody started to sing. When that man made the first sound he startled the other mourners, who felt interrupted. But after the second note every single person who had come to the AIDS vigil realized that the man was singing ‘somewhere over the rainbow.’ Another man let his balloons fly off over the water and one by one as they were singing ‘somewhere over the rainbow,’ other people let their balloons fly away. Molly looked out at the water and the reddish industrial-waste sunset and thought two thoughts. She watched the balloons rising toward the filthy sky and thought, They leave your hand the way they leave your life. She could only really see the sea of them after losing sight of her own. Then she thought, bluish carmine, velvety.