I wait for the street guy to leave before I say, “It’s a shame about Dennis.”
George nods slowly. “Mostly you don’t hear what happens to them. They just suddenly go off your radar, so you figure they’re either dead or in Philadelphia.”
“There’s no progress on finding his daughter?”
“No. Not so far as I know.”
“And Luke said it was an overdose?”
“That’s apparently what they said. They pretty much always do say that, of course, and it might be true, or it might be because most of the other possibilities don’t look too good on the stats. And government forms need one cause. Bureaucracy needs simplicity, and the call for simplicity sometimes means you can’t tell the truth.
“There have been some good guys over the years—Winston, Jerry, Michael—a lot of people. Some of those guys used to bring in some great books, and other things as well—maps and paintings and all sorts of things—and all of them are gone now. They weren’t all homeless, but the rents, the changing face of the West Side—they’ve all been forced out. Winston—he was an old guy, he used to live in a tiny apartment that was near that Irish bar on 79th, the Dublin. Never mind being able to swing a cat in there—you couldn’t fit a cat in that place. It was a pitiful place. I saw it when he was leaving—I bought a bookcase from him. It was a piece of crap—I had to throw it away once he’d left. The landlord put up his rent by seven and a half percent.”
“That’s not all that much . . . ,” I say. I am thinking that if you can afford a dollar you can afford seven and a half cents more.
George looks at me, unimpressed. “It depends on how much you’ve got.” He shakes his head and then says, “Listen. I hope I won’t become the victim of a feminist tirade if I say I would rather you didn’t pick up heavy piles of books, or go on the ladders, or do anything too strenuous, for the time being.”
“You are all immovable in your silly idea of what feminism is. Thank you. And thank you for sending Luke. He really helped me.”
George is setting up the books that he has just bought on the counter, and doesn’t reply.
“What’s missing?” he says. “There is at least one missing, I am sure.”
I look. He has green hardcover copies of Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and a two-volume set of Middlemarch.
“There’s no Daniel Deronda,” I say, “but you’ve got all the good ones.”
“On the Upper West Side, that statement amounts to anti-Semitism,” says George.
He gets a big reference book from under the counter and starts to leaf through it. “There’s no Felix Holt, either. Or Romola. Jeez. I am losing my touch.”
“No, these are fine. They are a subset—you can sell these all together.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he says. “Price them, and then find them a happy home, will you? Hi, Luke.”
Luke is just coming in, maneuvering his guitar through the piles of books.
“Hey,” he says. Then another hey to me, and a look of doubt. “You’re sure you’re well enough?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Lift more than three books at once and I’ll wring your neck.”
“Oh, and Luke,” says George, “thanks so much for doing what I—er—asked, and checking in on Esme. That was very thoughtful.”
“No problem,” says Luke, and takes his guitar upstairs.
“Let’s put all the George Eliots in the window,” I say. “With a nice bright sign for their price as a sort of set.”
George is grinning into his reference book for some reason, and isn’t listening, so I have to say it again.
“Sure,” he says, and raises his head to look for Luke, who is still upstairs. He calls out, “Do as the lady says, would you?”
“It’s okay, I can do it, I’m fine,” I say. I take out some of the books that are in the window, to make room, and decide that I am going to tell them about the wedding date. I didn’t tell them about the proposal, and that all went badly wrong.
I say, “By the way, I have a date for my wedding, providing my parents can come, and they are looking for flights today. It’s the seventeenth of June, so quite soon, and it is going to be at St. Thomas’s Church, which is on—”
“Fifth Avenue,” says George.
“Yes. Mitchell and I will send out invitations, I expect, but it is going to be a very small wedding. You are all invited; I really hope you can come.”
Neither of them says a word.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
Luke says, “I thought you were going to wait, going to be married in England, once the baby was born. Didn’t you say something about that one time?”
“Yes,” I say. “I did. And that was what I thought. That way my friends from home would come, and from Cambridge, and I imagined it like that, but Mitchell—he has a friend who is a priest at St. Thomas’s, and he said he wants to marry me before the baby—and they have a space.”
“Is legitimacy an issue?” asks George.
“I don’t think so,” I say. George is waving a torch towards caves best left dark. It is a motive that hadn’t even occurred to me, and now I feel miserable again, unsure of Mitchell again. “I didn’t think of that. It might be that.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” says Luke. “I think he knows a good thing when he sees it.”
I smile at Luke. “Will you come, if you can?” I ask him, and glance at George to encompass him. Luke looks back at me.
“Sure, if we can, we will,” George says. “Won’t we, Luke?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Today is Saturday. I get up to streaming sunshine, as ever. I am six months pregnant. I stand naked in front of the mirror—the bump curves very pleasingly, from the front, but once I am dressed, and I turn to the side, I look like a wobbly man who won’t fall over. How very irritating, that our haywire hormones mean that we can feel so erotically charged while we look like Weebles.
Yesterday I paid my first visit to the midwives recommended by Dr. Sokolowski. They made me feel as if I were back in England. They talked about home birth, about water birth, about natural birth, about all the birth that is far away from a tubular metal bed, far away from all those green hospital garments. I spoke to two of them, and I will meet all seven in due course, so that I will already know whichever one I get on the day. I also have to go to some childbirth classes. They were shocked that I haven’t been already. They let me sign up for them, and I formally signed away my connection with Dr. Sokolowski. They also recommended someone on the Upper West Side for the childbirth classes, who has a practice quite near The Owl. I asked them, as they were all European, if I could ever have a drink, just a small one. They all said no. They told me to drink lots of raspberry-leaf tea.
I am meeting Mitchell for an early coffee at Sarabeth’s. I would like him to stay over more often than he does, but he says he wants there to be a significant difference between being engaged and being married, so last night he went home at midnight. I am supposed to move into Sutton Place once we’re married, and then about six weeks after that, the baby will be born. None of it seems real.
It is quite warm outside—the women walking down Broadway are not wearing coats. They all look pleased to be walking down Broadway in the sun. I look in my cupboard and wonder if I have any clothes at all that can transform me into a desirable woman. The short answer is no. People say pregnant women can look sexy, but I can’t see it.
Mitchell is walking up to Sarabeth’s as I am walking down to it; I feel that stab of happy surprise when I see him.
“You look good,” he says.
As we sit down with our coffees, we pass a girl at a table in the window, with a low-cut blouse on; her breasts look perfect, like two big scoops of vanilla. Even to me, they look beautiful. Mitchell looks, and then looks at me, raising his eyebrows, the naughty schoolboy.
“I know exactly what they’ll be like. Exactly. Round and creamy and firm, with big nipples—nipples, I think, of th
e palest pink. Coral. Delectable.”
“Stop it.”
“I don’t want to stop it. I want you and me to discuss those perfect breasts. Did you like them?”
“They were very nice.”
“I am going back for more napkins.”
He does. I sigh.
He comes back. He asks me how my work is going. I begin to tell him that I have nearly finished the PowerPoint to go with the paper. His face takes on a dreamy aspect.
“Mitchell.”
He looks a question.
“Did you ask me about my work so that I would talk, and you could think about that girl’s breasts?”
“Yes. Yes. Esme? I love how you get me. I love it.”
“That’s nice. But there is a better way. If you want to think about the breasts, sit here and think about them all by yourself. You don’t need me for this.”
I stand up, sling my bag on my shoulder, raise my hand in farewell. He leans back in his seat, grins.
“You’re so wrong. You’re the point of the whole exercise.”
A CHAT MESSAGE comes through around ten P.M., as I am studying in my apartment. It is from Mitchell. It says, —I got her number
—Whose number?
—The girl
—In the coffee shop?
—Yes, ma’am.
—Good for you
—I want her
I am suddenly aware of all my veins, of the fact that they are a network all over and through me, so if my blood goes cold, all of me goes cold. It is always on the periphery of my relationship with Mitchell, that there will be another girl, that I will not be enough for him. My heart is pounding. I must not be long, must not let him think that I have gone cold, or that my heart is pounding.
—Then have her.
—I want her with you.
I gasp now, which just goes to show that gasps, which before this moment I always believed had an element of performance in them, can be real and unforced expressions of shock.
—Are you there?
—Yes.
—Do you understand? That I would like to have sex with you and Elise together?
I think, Elise? Esme and Elise?
—Do you know her?
—I know her now. I went up to her after you left, and explained.
—Explained?
—Yes. I told her that we are engaged. I told her that you are pregnant, and that is making you very, very horny. And that we both found her very attractive.
—You didn’t say that. I didn’t find her attractive, Mitchell.
—Yes, you did—I saw it in your eyes. You were turned on by her breasts too.
—I wasn’t.
I pause. I sound so dowdy. And they were so round, so creamy white, so flawless. Like a Titian.
I write:
—I just have a very highly developed aesthetic sense.
—As do I. I also have a very highly developed erotic sense. In fact, I have buckets of eroticism. Buckets of it.
—Buckets and eroticism don’t go together.
Mitchell is typing. Mitchell has entered text. I wait.
—I want to watch you touch her. I want you both to be completely naked in front of me. I want her to kiss your beautiful belly. You will caress her perfect breasts.
He then lists all the things I am to do to her, and she to me, with a precision that is impressive, although I think he overdoes the adverbs. Greedily, for example.
—Say yes, Esme, say yes. Stretch yourself towards this; embrace it. Don’t shy away, don’t say you can’t possibly, because you’re English. Sexuality is a sliding scale. Just type three letters. Type yes. Say it. Yes, yes, I will. Yes.
My fingers are on the keyboard. I am turned on by what he is writing. The shock and the eroticism merge and mingle. The shock is the eroticism. The transgression is the point.
I type Y-e-s to see what it looks like on the screen, but I do not send it. I look at it, there, the “Yes,” quivering in the comment bar, between being and nonbeing. I backspace it into nothingness and type “no” without a capital, and send it.
There is a silence. The italics do not say that Mitchell is typing.
—I’m sorry, Mitchell, I just could not do it.
Mitchell van Leuven is no longer online.
He can make me feel desolate in seconds. I think of calling him, but it is too abject; I will not. I think instead of going to bed with my toothbrush, but that’s too depressing considering the realms of sexual experimentation I’ve just refused. When the chat message appeared, I was in the middle of reading an interview with Patrick Procktor before he became old and serious (prior to which he was young and serious). I’ll just carry on with that.
The next day, I text Mitchell to say I would like to see him, and a reply comes back after what I imagine is a carefully timed delay, saying that he is planning to spend a quiet night marking papers. I wish he was in front of me so I could slap him.
However right I am, however wrong he is, I spend far too much of the day wondering if I could do it, and why I said no. Am I just backing away from experience? Am I too conservative, am I bourgeois rather than aristocratic? Was I dishonest as well as unadventurous to say no?
I call up the chat and read it again. Over and over, I imagine saying yes, giving myself to the sensuality of it, slipping into it as easily as slipping between cool white sheets. But then I imagine watching as Mitchell caresses that girl’s body, and I can’t. And what happens afterwards? Well, Elise, that was awfully nice, thanks very much, see you round.
But does that leave me saying no to life? The everlasting no?
For my dinner, in a momentous departure from my normal ordered world, I eat a pint of Stonyfield French vanilla yogurt with cream on the top, followed by most of a packet of those thin ginger cookies that are shaped like flowers. While I eat them, I read W magazine. After that, I have a caffeinated coffee, the first in months. It tastes wonderful.
I have a shower after dinner. At about eight thirty, I open my lovely American closet and get out my mackintosh. It is knee-length, pale blue, with a Peter Pan collar and enormous pale blue buttons. I bought it because I thought it had a Jackie Kennedy flavor.
I take off all of my clothes, all of them, and then I put on the mackintosh. The lining is cool and slick against my skin. I button it up to the top and put on a pair of high-heeled shoes.
I walk to the subway.
I didn’t bring a book, I left them all behind. I wait for the local at 116th Street, it comes, I get on it, sit down next to a woman. The man opposite is looking at me. Ordinarily I would look away; now I force myself to look back at him. I say to him with my mind, Underneath this coat, I am stark naked. Yes. Really. It’s just the coat and the shoes.
He’s the one who looks away. I feel a little rejected.
At Times Square I have to go up and down lots of steps. I hope I don’t trip. I take the Q train, and this time there are no seats. I am jostled, I stand with everyone else, holding the pole.
The secret of it is thrilling. I feel deliciously wicked, subversive, powerful. Everyone else is definitely wearing all their clothes. How boring.
When I get to Sutton Place, I press the button for Mitchell’s apartment, and it is only then, once I have pressed and I wait in the silence, that it flashes into my mind that he is there, and that he is there with Elise, in some sort of balletic and performative erotic congress. I feel every cell that was keyed up to the bursting point suddenly droop. I am not the epitome of sexual daring; I am jealous and ordinary, just a girl in a blue mac.
The buzzer buzzes. Mitchell’s voice, offhandedly questioning. It does not sound as if it was interrupted from astonishing sex. I get buzzed in. In the lift, the keying up begins again. There is a mirror. I look quite pretty.
I stand in the tiny lobby of his apartment for a second to collect myself. There are two huge pottery elephants, a palm. I raise my hand to knock on the inner door as he opens it. He is standing there, looking pleased to s
ee me, looking very handsome.
I step forward, and kiss him full on the mouth. Then I whisper into his ear.
“Underneath this coat, I am absolutely and completely naked.” I did mean to just stand and unbutton, but I changed my mind in favor of the whisper.
Mitchell takes a step back from me, looks me up and down, locks my gaze with his.
Then he says, loudly, without turning his head away, “Mother, Esme’s here. Would you pour her a drink?”
Olivia appears from the sitting room.
“Esme, how charming to see you,” she says. I am given her cool kiss.
“You look a little overheated,” says Mitchell, wickedly. “Is it warm out?”
“Yes,” says Olivia, “Yes, Esme, do take off your coat and come through. I think there is some tonic water in the fridge; would you like some? Or perhaps just water? Have you eaten?”
“Just water, please,” I say, “I—I am not stopping. I was just passing.”
Nobody just passes Sutton Place.
“I came,” I say, “to borrow some New Yorkers. Because they will make the finishing touches to my paper—I was thinking that having a look through your old New Yorkers would help me with what I am trying to say.”
“And what are you trying to say?” Mitchell asks. He lifts his eyebrows.
“That—it is about Lacan, in fact, and the privacy options on Facebook—the idea of feeling yourself under the possible gaze of someone you can’t see, about the possibility of there being someone looking at you that you don’t see, nor even know—that we are aware of how we have access to power only through male power—how that is constituted on Facebook . . .”
Olivia comes back with the glass of water.
“Cornelius is on Facebook,” she says.
“And how do the New Yorkers contribute to your paper?” asks Mitchell.
“The cartoons,” I say, though that is just nonsense. “But more the adverts.”
“Interesting. But surely fashion magazines, or even pornography, would be better targets for your attention? And I am afraid I am all out of those.”
“Mitchell, if you are going to ask her these questions, at least let her take off her coat.”
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