by Chris Cander
“Bruce,” she said.
“What?”
“His name was Bruce. Bruce Lundy. He was a tenured professor of Slavic literature at UCLA. He had red hair and brown eyes. And yes, he had a birthmark on his face.”
Greg nodded. “I’m sorry, Clara. I feel bad about being the one to tell you this.”
Clara pushed herself up and used her lifted shoulder to wipe the dust off her face. Her hand was throbbing, and she wondered if she’d broken it again. “I’m still not sure I believe it.” But even as she said this, she felt an encroaching disquiet. She wasn’t even twelve when they died. What could she have known about the inner workings of their marriage? What did she know about either of them, really, except for who they were in relation to her? She had no idea about the histories they brought to their marriage, or the secrets it contained. What child ever does?
“Why didn’t you say anything to me before?” she asked.
“I never expected to see that piano again. It was a shock, let me tell you. I thought it was gone in the fire that took your parents. But then there it was, and there you were, all feisty and innocent. I didn’t want to tell you who I was. Or who you were. I just wanted you to go away.”
“Is that why you’ve been such an ass?”
“Maybe. Mostly, I just am an ass.” He chortled faintly. “Though my therapist says there’s still hope.”
For the first time, she considered Greg’s perspective. How he might have felt upon connecting her, Clara, to his mother’s death. “When did she die?”
“Saturday, September 4th, 1999. A year to the day after your parents died. She made me breakfast. Then she said she had to go run errands. She hugged me for a long time, and said to please try to understand if she wasn’t back soon, she had a lot of things to do. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and she drove all the way from Los Angeles to Death Valley. She went up to some cliffs…” Greg’s eyes glistened in the moonlight, but he didn’t cry again. “There were witnesses. The policemen who came to the house needed someone to identify her, and my father wouldn’t go, so I did.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “They gave me the keys to her car. Under the seat, she’d left a letter and the Polaroids I showed you. She wrote that she’d given it four seasons to see if she could survive him. She begged me to forgive her.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sniffed hard. “I’ve been trying to for thirteen years.”
Clara studied Greg, his profile angled toward the ground, his lame leg stretched out. His mother had chosen death over him, because—if it was true—she’d already chosen Clara’s father. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s not your fault. Not your father’s, either. Anyway, I took off for New York right then, didn’t even stop at home to pack a bag or say good-bye. I just left and didn’t look back. I haven’t spoken to my father once in all these years. Never will. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. This is the first time I’ve been back in Southern California since she died.”
The cool wind picked up, and they felt a few raindrops. “Come on,” Greg said. He heaved himself into the truck bed, then held out his hand to help Clara up. She climbed inside, and they stood facing each other in front of the open door as though on some precipice. He didn’t release her hand. She could see beneath his rigid exterior a hint of warmth, an assurance of mutual understanding. He seemed to be conveying his commiseration, and from the depths of a long perspective.
“How did you break free from it? From losing her?” she asked, searching his face for answers. “How?”
“I haven’t. Can’t you see? That’s why I’m here. I haven’t broken free.”
“Then what hope is there for me?” She looked beyond him into the darkness, at the landscape stretching out in all directions, the rainfall heavy enough that the moon appeared blurry behind it.
He answered by leaning in and brushing his lips against hers, tentatively, as though to be careful she wouldn’t move away. She didn’t. The chasm inside her opened up.
He threaded his fingers up the nape of her neck and into her hair—the intimacy of it was stunning—and kissed her and kissed her. And because he was the only person alive who could understand her particular sense of loss, she wanted to do the same, to touch his neck and his ears, parts of him that he couldn’t control, and she resented that her cast limited the use of her fingers. Instead, she reached around and pulled him toward her. She had yanked flat tires off axle shafts with more finesse, but he didn’t seem to mind. He let go of her hand and held her face, breaking the kiss to look at her, and she saw something beyond lust in his expression, as if he was trying to transmit a silent message, a promise or a plea, and when she smiled, just barely, he kissed her again and she had the feeling that she could be swallowed whole and indeed wanted to be.
Greg finally said, with his lips still on hers, “Can we…?” She breathed the word yes into his mouth, and after a moment he stepped back and threw the moving blankets down one after another, spreading them as well as he could without wasting time. It looked to Clara like a nest, and he led her to it and they lay down so their heads were at the elevated side of the truck, above the tires that were still inflated.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“I am.”
Then, amid their heat, there was an intrusive image: the morning they first met, Greg standing at her car holding that coffee. She’d thought he was an assailant poised to attack her where she slept. He’d offered her sugar and creamers that he’d pulled out of his pocket, then told her to go home. He’d given her a room at the hotel and mostly ignored her for days afterward. He’d invited her to the middle of nowhere and left her amid the sailing rocks, and all along had let her continue her misunderstanding of the Blüthner’s history. Like that last piano piece he’d played, in which he’d alternated his tempos and mixed his tones, he’d pushed and pulled and pushed and now he pulled her with his unexpected music and his sadness and his full, needy lips. Still, her anger about how he’d been the one in control the whole time resurfaced, and she kissed him hard enough to feel it in her teeth. She wanted to strip him of his power, to meet him on an equal level, so with uncharacteristic aggression she said, “Take off your clothes.”
He did, and when he reached out to help her with hers, she pushed him away with her good hand. “Get a condom.” From his pants pocket, he withdrew two—wait, had he planned this all along?—then tossed the pants away and waited for her to undress. She took off her jeans and her underwear, but left her sweatshirt on. Out of principle, she wanted to withhold something. “Put it on.”
While he did, she took inventory of him in the darkness. His skin was very pale, and what hair he had on his chest and arms was dark and fine. His shoulders and arms were tightly muscled, though his midsection was soft and bisected by a thin line of fur that drew her gaze down, where it lingered for a moment before continuing to the raised scar that crossed his knee and fissured up his thigh like the crusted edges of the playa’s polygons. The tissue beneath it looked fragile, as if his leg were a piece of china that had been broken and clumsily repaired. Her anger eased as she traced the outline with her finger; that kind of ruin must have come at a great cost. She leaned in with her hands on his chest. How had he compensated for that all these years?
His eyes glazed with animal desire as he kissed her mouth and tipped her head back to kiss her throat, neck, breasts. Oh, she thought, or said, she didn’t know; they were both panting by now, their bodies having overtaken their minds. She held on to the hem of an idea—that she wanted to be the one making all the decisions—but then, after sliding down onto him, she no longer cared who was because it felt so good to be touched. Ryan had stopped touching her long before she’d moved out, and she wanted, suddenly, to feel her heart beat against another human being’s, so she pulled off her sweatshirt after all and pressed herself against him and they found an
intense rhythm, her knees grinding into the rough blanket. Greg fixed her with a desperate stare until he closed his eyes and opened his mouth, and she, feeling the rawness of her power over him, around him, was close, too, so close, and she watched his jaw moving as he crested the apex of sensation and went over it like he was falling off a cliff.
And she closed her eyes and what she saw was Peter, threading the cable behind her television set; Peter, holding out a container of avgolemono; Peter, sitting next to her at the racetrack. In spite of this she came right after Greg, so hard that she trembled for many seconds afterward. Pushing Peter’s image away, she let herself collapse on Greg’s chest and tried to catch her breath inside his meager, gasping embrace.
AFTER TAKING CLARA to her friend’s house, Bruce dropped his car keys on the kitchen counter with a clatter. His Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff CD was blaring from the other room. How appropriate. Alice certainly did have a morbid sense of humor. Well, at least she knew what was coming. That might make it a little bit easier. He poured two fingers of bourbon into a glass and drank it. Then he poured another two fingers each into his and another and carried them into the living room.
Alice was waiting on the couch, her legs and arms crossed, her shoulders back, a cigarette in her hand. He turned the music off, set the bourbon in front of her, clinked her glass with his own, and sat down on the other end of the couch. Her ashtray, the one Clara had made a few years before at camp, was between them on the cushion.
“Alice,” he said.
“I told you to end it, Bruce,” Alice said. “I ended mine. Wasn’t that the deal?”
“Alice.”
“Don’t look at me like that, with that sad-puppy face. You don’t get to pretend to feel guilty now. What’d you do with that hideous piano, by the way? I hope you gave it back to her. I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking, bringing it here. The nerve.” She flicked her ash into the tray.
“It’s more serious than that.”
“Oh? I suppose you want a divorce, is that it? So you can run off with your little Russian princess?”
“Actually, yes.”
She blew a mouthful of smoke at him. “Of course you do.”
He closed his eyes until the smoke dissipated; he hated it that she smoked, but now was hardly the time to criticize her.
“And how long have you been plotting your escape this time?”
“Look, Alice, I really did try to end it, like we agreed. I told her that you and I were going to work things out, and we didn’t see each other for four or five months. But then, I’ll be honest—why not be honest now—after a while it seemed obvious you were never going to forgive me and, well, I was lonesome.” He shrugged. “And I called her.”
“Lonesome! That’s rich. That’s really rich, Bruce.” She took a sip, lit another cigarette.
“Are you telling me that you never thought about what’s-his-name again? You didn’t ever consider picking up the phone?”
“Of course I did! I was lonely, too. But I took you at your word that we were going to get past it. These things take time, Bruce. You couldn’t really have expected a honeymoon again after everything that happened. Not at first. Not even after four or five months. But no, I haven’t talked to him since the day after you saw us at the bistro, because I told you I wouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you most certainly are.”
They hadn’t spoken this many words to each other in months. Except for the cigarette, she looked almost vulnerable.
“Would you like another drink?”
“Sure,” she said, and drained her glass before giving it to him.
This time he put the drink into her hand, and their fingers touched. They hadn’t touched each other in months, either. She pulled away, as if she’d been given a shock.
“You realize this will break Clara’s heart, don’t you?” she asked while looking at the ashtray.
“Yes. But I also think that you and I deserve a chance at happiness. That has to count for something.”
“Thank you for your generosity, including me in this grand existential plan. Did you hazard to think that this might break my heart, too? You and Tatiana living happily ever after together while I’m left picking up the shreds of Clara’s and my life?”
“It’s Katya. Not Tatiana.”
“Oh, I’m so glad we’ve got that straightened out. Your order of priorities is quite impressive, Bruce. You’ve just announced the end of our fifteen-year marriage, but the most important point of clarification is your mail-order bride’s name. Katya. There. Did I pronounce it correctly?” She ground out her half-smoked cigarette and lit another.
“I don’t suppose it means anything for me to say I didn’t intend for this to happen.”
“It’s not meaningless to say it. It’s undignified.” She blew a lungful of smoke at him. “Not to mention insulting.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Of course you did, silly. It’s a consequence of fucking someone other than your wife.”
He put down his drink and went to open the window. “You should quit smoking, Alice. It’s a disgusting habit.”
“Close the window. Do you really want the neighbors to hear about your little tryst firsthand? I’m serious—close it. I hope you’ve been discreet, at least. Then I might escape this misery with a bit of dignity. Clara, too. Do you want her to know that the reason her parents divorced was because her father couldn’t keep his dick in his pants? If you’re really going to insist on breaking up our family, then I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from trotting your tsarina out in public until an appropriate amount of time has passed. Try to appear somewhat mournful—if not for my sake, then for our daughter’s. She doesn’t need to know what a selfish schmuck you turned out to be.”
He took a step toward her. “Would it make you feel better if you punched me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It would make you feel better, and I’m not in a very charitable mood.”
She was right, of course. He was selfish. Instead of rebuilding their family for the past year, when he’d had a second chance to do so, he had been slowly destroying it. He’d chosen the easiest paths for himself, those that led to the surest satisfactions. He hadn’t been a very good husband to Alice. Why did he imagine he could be a better one to Katya? Well, he hoped he would. And maybe he could figure out how to be a better father, too.
“I love her, Alice. It’s that simple.”
Alice nodded. She drained her glass, then took a long drag from her cigarette and set it down in the notch Clara had dug out of the side of the clay. Then she stood, looking Bruce in the eye for long enough that he became uneasy, and even, unexpectedly, amazingly, a little bit aroused. It reminded him of when they stood facing each other in front of the preacher and a small gathering of family and friends, on the dividing line between two distinct phases of life, that exhilarating fear as they waited for the ritual to end and the preacher to pronounce their official new beginning. Alice looked sterner now than she had back then, and angrier, but when she stepped forward to kiss him on the lips Bruce didn’t pull away. Except for the taste of cigarettes, it was nice. Not necessarily romantic, but intimate in a comfortable, familiar sense. She ended the kiss slowly, and leaned away from him.
“You used to love me, too,” she said. Then she reared back and punched him, hard, in the stomach.
He doubled over, his arm clasped over his heaving belly. “Shit,” he said, drawing out the word.
“Well, what do you know? That did make me feel better,” Alice said. “And now I think I’ll have another drink. Or six. How about you?”
He nodded, still gasping, and sank down onto the couch. Alice went to the kitchen for the bourbon, and coming back into the living room she turned the Rachmaninoff CD back on, then filled their glasses to the tops.
>
“Cheers,” she said.
“Cheers.”
They drank and Alice smoked in silence, staring at nothing, until the bottle was empty and the music had long stopped playing, saying only the word “Cheers” when they refilled their glasses, until they were too drunk even for that. Then Bruce said, slurring, that it was time for bed, and Alice nodded. She stubbed her cigarette and they staggered together down the hall to the bedrooms.
“I’ll sleep in Clara’s room tonight,” Bruce said. “We’ll figure the rest out tomorrow.”
Alice braced herself upright against the wall and stuck out her hand, and he shook it. “G’night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she said. It was what they liked to say to Clara just before switching off the lights.
He nodded and they went into their separate rooms and closed the doors.
* * *
—
The cigarette that Alice had sloppily put out had fallen off the lip of the ashtray when they stood up from the couch, and it lay there against the woven upholstery, gathering heat on the fabric; that heat mixed with the circulating air and ignited into the tiniest of fires, which burned a dime-sized hole in the cushion, curling the threads into a hard black ring, into which the cigarette eventually fell.
It then came into contact with the polyester fiberfill stuffing and triggered a slow growth of fire in the foundation materials, spreading deeper and broader until enough heat was released to engulf the entire couch, a vintage midcentury model, which Bruce and Alice had purchased shortly after Clara was born.
