The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  So she doesn’t want him not sad and she also doesn’t want him not tired. She just wants to be there when he comes in. Share the tiredness and sadness. Make the drink and turn on the music so everything will be ready for him.

  She’s seen him naked. Sometimes at night he stands at the window, but the light is always behind him so she only sees a dark silhouette. He looks strong. Wide, heavy bones. Only a little bit paunchy. Not balding though. Lots of curly white hair. He stands at the window a long time sometimes, though usually not naked, looking out, but never up toward her.

  She has stood there naked also. Three times. Twice (they were hot nights) when he was naked, too. “Why doesn’t he ever look up? But then, at her age, even though she’s not fat, things sag. Not just breasts, but under arms, over knees… “What if he had glanced up when she hadn’t noticed and didn’t like what he saw?

  After five-thirty she always hovers by her window. Sits knitting (a man’s tan vest now—she has already made a man’s long scarf), knitting and watching at the same time. She never turns on her TV in the evenings anymore.

  Lately it’s been getting harder and harder for her to sit still and just look out at him. She keeps having the feeling she should hurry up. Do something before it’s too late, though she doesn’t know quite what. It’s hard to look out the window and see him so calm and tired and lying back on his couch, cushions under his head and under his feet, drink on coffee table (she can only see the corner of the table), and that look of listening, his toes bobbing to a beat she can’t hear. How many years now, looking down at him? Three or four? If she had acted back then she’d only have been in her seventies, but then she had thought that too old. Now seventy-eight or seventy-nine seems so much younger. And had been. Fewer aches and pains, better memory for where she’d put things and for what she planned to do next.

  What should she do next? She didn’t want to have to begin. She wanted it to have already happened. She, there in his apartment, his supper prepared. She wasn’t asking for much. Never had asked for much and now, still, only for a little bit. Not even to be loved. Just to be with somebody, anybody, but especially him.

  And it isn’t conversations that she wants. It’s a melancholy quiet. Or that she might walk with him, a few steps behind, which she could do right now, actually, but hadn’t thought of before. And to be just a little bit younger. Is being sixty-nine too much to ask? In a flash it could be so. One magic word, or not even that. One sideways shift-a tiny jump and into a new world. “There’s a whole other universe next door.” She remembers reading that or something like it. Perhaps, just as she was thinking about it, it had already happened. She had felt the lurch, and then the moment of dizziness just afterward. She had staggered. She’d had to sit down. It had been a subtle shift, but it might not take much for a big change. And the plant on the window sill—there was sure proof—all of two inches shorter. Maybe now she can say she is only seventy-eight. She will say it. Or avoid saying anything at all about it.

  And him? What time is it? Only two-thirty and coming home. Is he sick or has he lost his job? There he goes, into his building. A minute later she sees him through his window and then at his window. He looks up. It is, a whole new world, and the half-moon never seemed so bright) in the daylight sky. He’s looking right into her eyes. Is she dressed right? Old baggy sweater she only wears when in the apartment. Why didn’t she get ready for that glance? Especially right after that dizzy spell? But in this new place it might not matter because they must have already met. The hard part is done. She waves, but he’s looking down again. And now he pulls the shade. He’s never done that before. It definitely a whole new world.

  Should she go down, ring his bell and ask him if he’s sick and can she help? But what if, in this new place, this is his usual time for coming home? She mustn’t act as if she doesn’t know. But what if he is sick? Maybe she should wait and see. Except the shade is down.

  Anyway, no time for long-range plans. At her age only time for action. If she goes down and rings his bell, when he asks who’s there, she’ll say, Charlotte, or perhaps Isabel. In this world her name could be anything. Maybe Julia. She would have been a jewel, not a left-out person.

  She’ll wear her best dress and go on over. Third floor, right side of building. Maybe someone will be coming out just as she’s going in. She’ll not even have to ring the bell. Surprise him.

  And the surprise turns out to be even more than that. His apartment door is unlocked. He must be sick. Or in some sort of agitated state. People don’t leave their doors unlocked around here.

  But she won’t just walk in. What if he’s in his underwear, or even less? It’s different when she watches from across the street and can only see little slivers of him, except when he’s on the couch or at the window. She shuts the door and knocks. “Who’s there?” comes out in a kind of croak. She’s never heard his voice before, but she recognizes sickness in it. “Julia…Juliette,” she says. (It sounds younger being Juliette.) “You know. Your neighbor from across.” He opens the door a crack, then wider when he sees it’s just her. His face is oddly puffy and pale. There are circles under his eyes. His hair is damp and some sticks to his forehead. Reminds her of a feverish dog she once saw. Close up, he looks even sadder than she’d thought he looked when she watched him out her window. It’s not just an ordinary sadness. Bigger than that. All-encompassing. Inborn. She loves him for that look. She wants to take him in her arms right away.

  She’s exactly the same height as he is, neither one of them very tall. He’s just the right size for her to reach out and hug. She steps forward, he steps back, and she’s already inside. It’s easy.

  “What do you want?” There’s irritation in his voice, but she knows that’s just the sickness talking and she forgives him.

  “You’re sick,” she says. “I could tell from my window.” She’s thinking how lucky that he is sick. That makes everything so much easier, whether a whole other world or not. “I want to help,” she says and shuts the door behind her, locking it properly this time.

  He backs up and sits down on his couch. She can see he hasn’t the energy to argue with her or throw her out, thank goodness. “Dear,” she says, and then, “Poor, dear man,” because she doesn’t want to have called him “dear” just yet—not until she finds out how far things have progressed between them. But it’s the word “man” that catches her up—that sticks in her throat and almost makes her cry. How long since she’s had occasion to say it or to be standing so close to one—a flesh-and-blood, not a shopkeeper, not the plumber, not in the movies, not on TV, man?

  She dares to go even closer. Plumps up the cushion where he usually lays his head. Then to the other side of him and plumps up his foot cushion. (She can tell it’s been a long time since anybody plumped them up.) She can hardly breathe with the wonder of being there, so close she can smell the sick sweat of him. “Lie down,” she says. “Please do lie down. I’ll get you tea.” She hopes there is tea. She can’t go get her own because she might not be able to get back in so easily. She’s never seen him drink anything except something from the bottles on the end table, but she doesn’t think that would be good for him. Especially now.

  He does lie down. She’s surprised to see him do it—to see how things are turning out so well. “Music?” she asks, but he turns on his side and doesn’t answer. There’s a record of Beethoven’s Fourth on the turntable. She turns it on and then goes to find tea. There is some. Funny how people always have plenty of the things they never use because they never use them.

  After she makes the tea, she finds he’s already asleep, so she opens the blinds, sits down to drink it herself looking up at her own windows across the way, thinking how this is his view. She’s feeling contented for the first time in a long while. She can almost see her poor old self up there, yearning at her window.

  “When she finishes the tea, she looks around his apartment, first pocketing his keys, which are on the end table along with the bottle of Sc
otch. Now she can go home and get him anything he needs from her place and come back in. (He needs plants. She noticed that right away.)

  She checks the bedroom. It’s tinier than she’d thought it would be. And, after all that Beethoven, she hadn’t expected so many dirty socks on the floor. The bed is unmade. She can’t tell if the sheets are gray or haven’t been washed in a long time. She’ll bring over a laundry bag, and her cheerful, yellow sheets with daisies on them. Good for a sick person. She’ll bring the throw she crocheted last year. She realizes she’d made it for his couch. She’d had that, though hardly known it, in the back of her mind all along.

  There are no pictures on the walls, but there are two photos stuck into the frame around the mirror. One is of a white-haired little boy and the other is of him in a battered hat and hunter’s vest. Behind him there are woods and, in the distance, mountains. She pulls that picture out and puts it in her pocket. His bedside lamp is broken. The base is propped up with a little book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Shakespeare and Beethoven. A little obvious; Surely not particularly intellectual. Or is it? Anyway, it’s clear he really likes them. There’s a big book of Shakespeare’s plays on the floor by the foot of the bed, a sock on top of it. She has a brass Shakespearish lamp at home—a mannish sort of lamp. She’s sure he’ll like it.

  She comes back to the living room and carefully puts the photo of him in her purse. Then she starts to hide the bottle that’s on the side table. Decides to put it under the sink, but there are more bottles in there already. She should empty them all out. It’s hard for her to bring herself to do it, but she does, all of them, including the six-pack of beer she finds in the refrigerator. It’s a good deed. Sick people shouldn’t have alcohol. Nor well ones either.

  Then she moves the chair from the window to just across the coffee table so she can look at him. He’s in a sick sleep, jerking his head every now and then as if trying to avoid something and making noises of discomfort.

  She has him right where she wants him. She can study his bushy, still brown, eyebrows; the lines crossing his forehead. His mouth looks grim, but then, of course, he’s sick. How wide and muscular and hairy his forearm that lies across his chest!

  She sits, leaning forward, looking, studying. She wants to have him memorized for any future references that might be needed in some sadder days to come—if there would be any more of those, though she thinks not. (His main flaw is a short upper lip. Perhaps, later on, she can persuade him to grow a mustache.) She watches for a long time until he seems to be sleeping more deeply, then she runs—actually runs—across the street. (Could she run like this before that dizzying shift? Surely not.) Once there, she takes out two big shopping bags, gets the crocheted throw,juices (he should have plenty of juices), yogurt, the lamp. She’ll make other trips for the plants.

  Hurrying back to his apartment is wonderful—as if they’re already lovers and about to have their second rendezvous, which is true. (Could she have already undressed in front of him? Maybe could have in the dark, but even that would have taken courage. In this world, though, it seems she does have courage.)

  He’s still asleep, snoring lightly, when she comes back. She changes the bed, throws away his broken lamp, arranges her crocheted throw across him, though not covering up his wonderful arm. She makes a second and then a third trip across the street for all her plants. She uses a shopping cart to bring over the biggest one. She can look after them better over here now. Finally everything is ready. She sits down and wishes he would wake up. If he doesn’t soon, she’ll make some loud noises. She wants to see what’s going to happen next. But for the time being she waits in the chair across from him, contented with how nice she’s made things look.

  The record player clicks down the next record. A slow movement. She dozes without meaning to. Dreams she’s pregnant with his child and wants to name it after him but can’t because she doesn’t know his name—doesn’t yet know what name it is she cherishes. She saw his last name on his mailbox as she was going in and out, but she still doesn’t know the precious, private first name that she would have named her son if he hadn’t been just a dream. (Would he have looked like that white-haired child in the picture in the mirror’s frame?)

  She wakes with a start when the music moves on to the scherzo. She’ll check his mail for his first name. There’s a little desk across the room, and here’s A. E. Housman right on top. “When I was one and twenty….” (She’d never wish herself that far back.) And, “Oh, when I was in love with you, then I was clean and brave….” Does this mean he’s old-fashioned and sentimental? That would be nice. Perhaps he writes poems himself and that’s why he looks so sad. Except she hopes they’re not the sorts of poems you’d find in newspapers.

  Under the book she finds the bills. John. As simple as that. Who would have thought she’d ever like the name John? But suddenly it’s full of magic. Just like this whole new world.

  First she says it softly and then louder and then quite loud. In a minute she will wake him, but first she moves his desk over by the window where the chair used to be so he can look out as he does his bills or writes his poems. Then she gets a glass of juice, banging things about in the kitchen. Comes back and kicks the arm of the couch just enough to shake it. Calls out, “John,’’ again. The music has come to a bombastic finale, but she has to kick the couch twice more before he finally opens his eyes. She holds out the drink.

  He’s having a hard time waking up. Then he looks angry and even shocked. “What are you doing here? Who the hell are you?”

  “Genevieve. Don’t you remember me?”

  “I’ll call the cops.”

  “Drink this. You need to keep drinking.”

  He pulls himself up on his elbow and looks at the end table where there’s no Scotch anymore. “Where’s my Scotch?”

  “This is better for you,” she says and dares to go right to him, hold the juice glass to his lips. He flinches away and sits up, but then leans back, hands to head.

  “Oh, God,” he says. Takes the juice, drinks it all at once as if it were only a little glassful instead of a large one. She’s thinking: That’s the way men do it. Women never do that.

  As soon as he puts the glass down he says, “Where is my Scotch?”

  “Gone,” she says, “but I brought you some aspirin to take down the fever.”

  “There’s some under the sink,” he says.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Damn it, who are you? What right do you have to… ?” He’s getting up, staggering over to the sink to see for himself breathing hard. Looks as if he’s going to cry. Looks as it: after he squats down to see, he can’t get up again. His shirttail is coming but in back and there’s a large, sweaty spot in the middle of it. Now women wouldn’t have that. She can hardly keep her hands off him he’s so man. But she should help him get up. She had the same trouble getting up from there herself and she’s not even sick. He pushes her away. She knows that’s just because he’s sick. She was that way the time she had pneumonia—irritable when there wasn’t even anybody to be irritable at. She’d had to, go through it all by herself, but now he doesn’t have to. ,

  He gets up by holding onto the sink. “Shit,” he says, and, “Shit, shit, shit. Do you know how much that stuff costs?”

  He’s so dizzy he can hardly get back to the couch. She grabs him just before he falls, her arms around—like a hug. How warm he is! How damp! How alive! Especially that. What a strange thing it is to touch another person. Like a stove. And men must be more like stoves than women.

  “My cold’s gone into my ear,” he says. “Inner ear. I’ve had it before. Oh God, it makes me feel sick to get up.”

  She’s thinking, good. All the better if he’s helpless, but she says, “That’s too bad,” hoping it sounds sincere. “But I’m here now. You don’t have to worry.” She still has her hand on him even as he lies down. It’s as though he were the central core from which all life’s energy emanates. Now that she’s found it, she knows
exactly what she hasn’t had all these many years. Never had. Not even for a little while. When had she hugged, and who?

  Why, not even that dour woman, her mother. But now there’s been this shift and things are better. Over here she probably had hugged her mother and been hugged, too. And here she is, happy to have her two fingers touching his arm, the same arm she’d looked at for so long before that she knows it by heart. She keeps her fingers there even though she has to stoop awkwardly because she doesn’t dare sit on his coffee table. It’s not very steady.

  But then he tries to see around her—pushes her away. “What are those plants? Why is the desk over there? What’s happening?” “That’s a golden pothos and a jade, and that big one is a ficus. They’re for you.”

  “I don’t want plants.”

  “But you do. ‘The loveliest of trees,’ for instance, (… is hung with bloom along the bough.’ You do. You know you do.”

  “Oh God, I can’t think about it now. Just go away.”

  “Don’t think, then. And you really ought to get in bed.” She can hardly wait till he sees her daisy sheets and Shakespeare lamp. Also she had brought over a large photo of herself when younger to put in his mirror frame next to the white-haired little boy, to take the place of the picture she had stolen.

  “In a minute.” He says it as though he thinks he’ll never have the energy to walk that far.

  It occurs to her that he hasn’t had anything to eat yet. “Are you hungry?”

  “There’s some beer in the refrigerator.”

  “That’s gone, too.”

  “Goddamn!”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  She makes him toast and tea. He’s so nauseous when he sits up that he nibbles at it lying down with the plate on his chest, but he does seem a little better afterward. He lets her help him to the bedroom, flops down, puts his head on the pillow, but won’t take his feet off the floor. “I can’t sleep on these,” he says.