“Yeah. Hearing you yesterday, I’m surprised you’re not studying music. You were fantastic.”
“Thanks. When I was younger I used to think I’d be a professional musician. I was a music major as an undergrad.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“Oberlin.”
“That’s where you’re from?”
“No, I grew up in Shaker Heights, near Cleveland. But my dad taught at Oberlin, so…”
“I’ve heard of Shaker Heights. Do your parents still live there?” Frank was aware that he was being rude by asking so many questions, but he couldn’t stop himself. He was charmed at how easily Ellie spoke. She had none of the guarded self-consciousness that often afflicted beautiful women.
“Your childhood sounds happy,” he said, and hated the trace of wonder and envy he heard in his voice.
She looked embarrassed. “It’s that obvious, huh? Guess I’m going to have to keep this a closely guarded secret from my clients. But it’s true—I had a happy childhood. Go figure.”
She smiled, and he felt himself getting flustered. Everything about this woman was throwing him off stride. He didn’t know what to focus on—her flawless, tanned skin, the radiance of her face, the careless way she pushed her shiny hair out of her eyes, the way she moved her hands as she spoke, the rich, silver words that tumbled out of her like a waterfall. Frank knew that he was good-looking. While growing up, he had strangers at the mall telling his mother how cute her little boy was; had Jenny Waight, the girl next door, give him his first kiss when he was twelve; had his male roommate profess his love for him while in college. But he suddenly felt as nervous and uncertain of himself as he had been the night Jenny Waight had kissed him behind the garage.
“Did you hear a word of what I said?” Ellie was saying.
“Oops. Sorry. Guess I wandered off for a minute.”
She pulled a face. “Is the company that boring?”
He realized she was flirting with him, and the realization made him laugh. “Not at all.”
“I was asking about where you grew up.”
“Grand Rapids. A little over a hundred miles from here. That and a universe away.”
“How do you mean?”
He looked at her, unsure of how to explain. “I was born in Grand Rapids,” he said. “But I never felt like I belonged there. It was—there was something defeated about the place. But my first day here in Ann Arbor, I felt like I was home.”
She nodded. “How about your parents?”
“My mom wasn’t too crazy about the town either. But she still lives there. My dad—” He stopped for a slight second, wanting to ensure that his voice would be smooth and matter-of-fact when he spoke. “My dad—he left when I was twelve. So I have no idea what he thought.”
The dark eyes held something in them now, a sharp, probing intelligence. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.
He looked away, afraid of seeing pity in her eyes. He thought back to the day he’d come home from school and found his mother weeping in her bedroom. He had immediately blamed himself, thought back to how defiantly he had spoken to his dad when he’d been ordered to clear the table the previous week, was convinced that he had inadvertently conveyed to his father the growing contempt and animosity that he was beginning to feel. For weeks he had sat on the front porch bargaining with God. In school, he gave Tommy Hefner a bloody nose for asking if he was okay, now that his father had left.
“It was a long time ago,” he now said. His tone was measured, pleasant, as if he was telling her about a recent picnic.
“I see,” she said. She opened her mouth as if to say more, and he stiffened imperceptibly. “Well?” she continued. “Should we go back to discussing the matter at hand?”
He stared at her blankly. “What’s that?” he blurted.
She laughed. “The party? At your friend’s house? I thought I was auditioning for the part? Don’t you want to come up with some dates and look at the music selection?”
Did she know that he had made the whole thing up? He couldn’t tell. At this moment, he hated himself for having made up this cock-and-bull story. Maybe he would’ve been better off if he’d told her the truth—that he would die if she didn’t sleep with him. But just as he was trying to decide whether this was the moment to sit back in his chair and say that he had a confession to make, she pulled out her calendar and something about the gesture told him that she had no idea that there was no friend and no birthday party.
Something stirred in him, a deep tenderness at this trusting, gullible girl with her head bent over her large appointment book. Now she was leaning into her bag and pulling out a notebook and he realized that she had written down possible musical selections. He pulled his chair closer to hers, saying, “Let’s take a look,” and his voice was so husky with sexual desire that he was surprised that she didn’t notice. He felt like a pervert, getting his jollies merely from inching closer to a pretty girl.
She told him a little bit about each musical piece and he half listened in a semi-delirious state, happy to be smelling her shampoo, inhaling the subtle sweetness of her perfume, glancing at her face every chance he got. “You know what?” he said finally, knowing that she was waiting for him to respond to her many suggestions. “You decide the music. I have implicit faith in your—good taste.” And this time he let his eyes linger lightly on her face, her neck, the sweet place where the white of her dress met her chest. She blushed and looked away, but when she spoke her voice was light and jaunty. “Not a problem. Let’s come up with a date, though.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t you give me three dates and I’ll—run them by my friend?”
“Great.”
He felt a sudden panic at the thought of saying good-bye now that lunch was over. Leaving Ellie would feel like coming down from a drug-induced high. “Hey,” he heard himself saying. “I was thinking of walking down to the art museum. Do you know about the new Chagall exhibit? Any interest in joining me?”
“I’ve already seen it,” she said, and the sun disappeared as if someone had plucked it out of the sky. “But I adore Chagall. If you’re going, I wouldn’t mind seeing it again,” and the sun assumed again its rightful place in the sky.
“Cool. Let’s go,” he said, setting down a twenty-dollar bill, and when she reached for her handbag, he touched her hand lightly and said, “No way. I asked you. This is my treat.” And all the while his mind was saying, Remember this moment. It’s the first time you touched her.
They spent three happy hours at the museum. When they left, Ellie wanted a Coke, so they went to a nearby café and soon Frank was talking about this wonderful Chinese restaurant that had recently opened up on Main. Ellie said she loved Chinese food and he invited her to join him for dinner. It was nine o’clock when they finally parted, after Ellie refused Frank’s repeated offers to drop her off at her home. He walked down the streets to his apartment whistling to himself. A first date that had lasted for eight hours, as long as a workday. While the other schmucks in the city were punching clocks, appeasing bosses, putting in a full day at work, he had just spent eight hours in the company of a woman who seemed to get lovelier with each passing moment. Eight hours. Not bad for a first date, Frankie boy, he told himself, not bad at all.
He phoned her the next day, but Ellie was going out the door and couldn’t talk. But she phoned him back that evening and they talked for three hours. Just before hanging up, he asked her casually if she was free for lunch on Saturday. She wasn’t, she was playing in a wedding, but she had to go to Borders on Sunday to pick up a book she’d special ordered, and did he want to go with her? He did indeed, but what about grabbing a quick lunch before that? Maybe do Ali Baba’s again, if it wasn’t too soon.
He showed up at the restaurant intending to confess his deception to her. He had practiced keeping his tone light, making a rueful face, admitting to being a little starstruck. She was already at the restaurant when he got there. “Hi,” he said brightly, an
d she turned to face him, but her eyes were cold. He sat across from her, a sudden feeling of dread enveloping him.
“What’s up?” he said uncertainly, but she interrupted him. “I want to ask you something. And I want you to tell the truth. There’s no friend, is there? No birthday party that I’m to play at?”
He shook his head, trying to find that rueful, puppy-dog expression that he had practiced. But suddenly he saw it as she did—not as a playful ruse by a love-struck man but a ploy by a man ruthless enough to lie in order to get what he wanted. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was going to tell you today.”
She shook her head angrily, and he saw that what he’d earlier seen as coldness was actually rage. “One thing about me, Frank. I hate being lied to. Even so-called white lies.” She shook her head again. “God. I feel like such a loser. Can’t believe I fell for such an obvious move. I figured it out this morning. Anyway. Guess the joke’s on me.” She pushed her chair back and got up.
“Where—where are you going?”
Her voice was low but deliberate. “Away. From. You.” She moved away and then looked back. “Please don’t call me ever again.”
He sat at the table transfixed, watching her stride away until he could not see her anymore. He did not feel sad. He felt angry. Angry at himself for having blown this, for having told a lie in order to get something that he thought he had no realistic chance of getting any other way. Only to lose her, anyway. And he was angry at her for not understanding this, for treating him as if he was a goddamn stalker or something, instead of just a twenty-three-year-old guy with a serious crush on a woman. Screw her, he told himself. She’s not worth it. Probably snores in her sleep. He hardened his heart, became again the twelve-year-old boy who, after he’d stopped keeping his vigil for his father, didn’t allow himself to miss him again. His anger protected him, allowed him to leave the restaurant without dissolving into tears.
The tears came as soon as he turned the key and entered his apartment, which suddenly felt as empty and desolate as a grave. He collapsed on his futon, his mind leafing through the many snapshots he’d clicked in the past few days—Ellie with her head bowed over her notebook, Ellie bent over the cello like a lover, Ellie searching his face with her all-knowing, probing eyes—and then he was a boy again, sobbing his losses, his pain at the loss of his father coming at him fast and evil, like a madman with a knife, and merging with the pain of this most recent loss. His rational mind tried to tell him that this was insane behavior, that he barely knew this woman, that he was crying over a phantom, but it did him no good. He turned on the stereo so that the neighbors couldn’t hear him, and then he sobbed, dimly aware that the sounds he was making were not so much the sounds of a grown man but of someone much younger. He thought of phoning Scott, but that would have required words, and he felt beyond words at the moment.
He didn’t eat for a full day after the talk with Ellie. Didn’t shave for four days. Barely left the apartment. Ignored the two messages that his mother left on his answering machine. Played Jim Morrison on the stereo each night and drank two beers before collapsing in bed.
On the fifth day, he woke up early, shaved, and got dressed. He resolved to stop acting like a goddamn imbecile. He decided to go for a bike ride down to the river. After the ride, he ran into some friends and hung out with them. He was pleased with himself when he finally wound his way home at about four in the evening, proud to have under his belt a day without lamenting the loss of Ellie. He took a shower, and when he came back into the living room, he noticed the flashing light on his answering machine.
“Listen,” Ellie’s voice said. “Just because I asked you to never call me again doesn’t mean that you should—you know, never call me again.”
He was dialing her number before he’d heard the rest of her message.
CHAPTER 15
All that fall, it smelled of watermelons. And burning firewood. The air was glassy and transparent. Ellie and Frank walked in a daze that autumn, under skies that floated like a blue, fast-moving river above them. Some days it seemed as if they were standing at the edge of the earth, barely keeping their balance, about to fall off. The streets, littered with drying, dying leaves, added to the askew feeling. The promiscuous trees bled yellow and red and gold with such an obscene lavishness, it made them blush. Michigan had never seemed this beautiful or this lonely. They spent hours that fall walking through the littered Ann Arbor streets, hiking on the banks of the Huron River, following the walking trails at the Arboretum. On weekends they shunned their friends and took Ellie’s yellow Ford to nearby campgrounds and slept under the stars, staring at moons that went from being plump and round, to a silver scratch in the sky. And inevitably, they made love, made love with such ferocity and passion that it seemed as if they were engaged in some silent, never-ending argument. Their lovemaking left them exhausted, hollow-eyed, spent. They tried to take a break away from each other and found that they couldn’t. Found that they couldn’t keep their eyes, their mouths, their hands, away from each other’s bodies, found themselves acting in ways that shocked and embarrassed them.
Ellie blamed it on the weather. She waited for the weather to turn, for the chill in the air to harden into ice and release them from this tableau of ridiculous passion that they were stuck in. Autumn was not a sensible season—it made everybody act a little intoxicated and loopy. She ignored the fact that her loopiness had started in June, after she’d met Frank for the second time at Ali Baba’s and told him she never wanted to see him again. She had marched off that afternoon full of righteous anger and indignation, but by that night she had felt an ache in her body so acute, she’d thought she had the flu. And four months later, that ache had not dissipated. No matter how many hours she spent with Frank, no matter how many nights they stayed up talking, no matter how many times they made love, roughly or gently, urgently or languidly, it didn’t seem enough. She still felt thirsty for this man, ached for his presence in her life.
She had been in love before, and that was why she was so unprepared for this. Blamed it on the weather. Waited for the spell to break, like a dreamer awakening from a dream. She thought it was only a matter of time before she’d tire of this man, waited for the morning he would get out of bed and she would not raise her head from the pillow to drink in his beauty. Prayed for the day his beautiful, chiseled body—the long, muscular legs with the thin scar on the left knee, the tight, dimpled buttocks, the heartbreaking curve of his lower back, the shoulder blades that flared like angel’s wings, the coiled, animal strength of his long neck, the face that was rescued from an almost feminine loveliness by the saving grace of a broken nose—would leave her indifferent. But that day was not yet. Sometimes, when she looked at his naked body she felt a kind of brusqueness, a violence, an arousal that she’d always imagined was male. It terrified her, this degree of carnality, this nakedness of feeling, this lust, because it defied every notion of what she thought of as femininity.
Being with Frank made her feel powerful, and it increased all her appetites. She played Scrabble with more of a killer’s instinct, laughed and talked louder, even ate larger meals in his presence. She sat in his living room with her legs uncrossed, letting her lust register in her eyes until she saw it flare in his. Yet there was nothing coy, nothing about the femme fatale about her behavior. Rather, there was something egalitarian, clean, about their sexual intimacies. She often left his apartment in the morning wearing one of his shirts, smelling him on her body as she drove home, savoring the soreness of her breasts and vagina, reveling in each scratch or mark that he’d left on her body. Once in a while, her reaction and thoughts embarrassed her. But for the most part, they didn’t, because nothing she ever did with Frank cost her her self-respect. If he’d ever suggested she dress up in a certain way or entertain some stupid boyish fantasy of his, she would’ve lost interest in him. But he never did. He was just there, ready to meet her, standing on equal ground, the simple intensity of his gaze the only sexual aid sh
e needed.
Although she had never been this loopily in love with anyone before, she convinced herself she had, sifted through the past and came up with names of boys barely remembered and conferred upon them an intensity of feeling that she’d never had at the time she was dating them. David. Sean. Richard. Jose. She told herself she’d been crazy about each one of them and reminded herself of how abruptly she’d fallen out of love: David because he’d told her he didn’t see any need for the Equal Rights Amendment. Sean because he had farted during the most important scene when they’d rented Bergman’s Persona. Jose because he confided that he’d seen Love Story twelve times and had the movie memorized. Richard because the sex had become predictable, boring. She waited for something like that to happen with Frank, counted the days for autumn to turn into winter and for the delirium to end, for the fever to break.
Instead, he asked her to go to New York to meet his brother Scott in early November. His mother was still living in Grand Rapids at the time, but he didn’t seem anxious to make that introduction. She sensed that her meeting Scott was important to Frank and therefore was about to refuse. But what came out of her mouth instead was a proposal—that if she agreed to drive to New York to meet his brother, they would stop on the way back to see her family in Shaker Heights. That way, I won’t feel too guilty not going home for Thanksgiving, she told him, but the reality was she wanted to introduce this bewitching man to her older sister, Anne, knowing that with a few well-chosen, sarcastic words, Anne would help the scales fall off her eyes.
What she hadn’t counted on was loving Scott. Nothing that she knew about him—Republican, fan of Reagan, pro-life conservative, Wall Street banker—could’ve prepared her for that. What she’d also been unprepared for was the physical resemblance to Frank—despite Scott’s being a few years older, a little heavier, with darker hair and a more stolid manner compared to Frank’s catlike sexiness, there was no question about them being brothers. But what bowled her over was the protective, almost fatherly manner that Scott had around Frank. Until she saw how protective Scott was toward Frank, she had had no idea that Frank had needed protection. It made Ellie realize that the offhand, bare-bones way Frank had told her about his family life—dad had left when he was twelve, mom had raised him and his older brother while running an antique-furniture store in Grand Rapids—had been a deflection, a way of smoothing over pain that he was still vulnerable to. For the first time, Ellie asked herself a dangerous question: could her wild lust for this man ever be tamed into something as steady and consistent as love?
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