A Perfect Stranger

by Roxana Robinson

  Kingsley stood on the raised stage, flanked by two enormous black wrought-iron candlesticks, macabrely twisted. He set his hands firmly on either side of the podium, taking hold, and the audience quieted.

  “We all love the character of Tosca,” Kingsley began forcefully, looking down at them over his glasses. “How could we not? Tosca is beautiful, loyal, and high-spirited. She is moved by passionate love to heights of unimaginable bravery, and she triumphs over one of the greatest villains in the history of theater.”

  Martha settled into her seat, relieved: she liked it.

  “But Tosca,” Kingsley declared in his sonorous voice, now letting go of the podium and folding his arms with melancholy finality, “must die.” He paused. “In Italian opera, the men are courageous, and the women must die: think of Tosca, Lucia, Bohème, Butterfly, Otello, Norma, Traviata.

  “This happens not because these women are expendable,” he went on, “not because we don’t care about them, but the reverse: these women are beyond price. These women are the vessels of our profoundest emotions, they bear the burden of our feelings. We care more about their deaths than we would about the men’s, which means that their deaths are more powerful, more dramatic, and more utterly heartbreaking.”

  Martha looked around surreptitiously. Jeffrey, beside her, and old Mrs. Cort, who was famously difficult, were both frowning deeply, but in an interested way. They looked intent and absorbed. Jean Singer sat two rows behind her; Martha couldn’t see her without craning her neck.

  Kingsley was going to be a success, and she hoped this would restore her to Jean Singer’s good graces. Her guest was going to be a success, and the rest of the evening was out of Martha’s hands. After the talk was dinner with the trustees, then the opera itself. Tomorrow would be easy: the Sunday paper, then lunch at the Auberge. Afterward she and Kingsley would drop Jeffrey off at home; she would take Kingsley to Lyndhurst— she’d called, and they were open until five—and then straight on to the train. It was practically over.

  She settled in to listen. Kingsley’s deep voice and elegant diction were somehow comforting—his Englishness, his accent, his beautiful manners. And she liked what he said about women— their fragility, their vulnerability, their importance. He was right, she thought. Just listening to him, she felt fragile and important. She hoped Jeffrey was paying attention.

  After all the congratulations and good nights, late that night, Jeffrey and Martha went into the bedroom, closed the door, and were alone again.

  Martha stood by the bureau, unsnapping her bracelet.

  “I’m very pleased,” she said. She shook her head, smiling. “Very pleased. It went really well. What a relief.”

  Jeffrey sat down on the chair to take off his shoes.

  “Didn’t you think?” she asked. She put her bracelet into a saucer on the bureau.

  “Didn’t I think what?”

  Martha looked at him. “Don’t you think the evening went well?”

  Jeffrey shrugged his shoulders. “Well, opera at a small suburban music festival is not going to match up to the Met,” he said. He set his shoes, exactly side by side, next to the chair.

  “I didn’t say, ‘Did you think the performance was as good as one at the Met?’” Martha said, nettled. “Of course it wasn’t. What I said was, ‘Don’t you think the evening went well?’”

  Jeffrey stood and began unbuttoning his shirt, his eyes on the carpet. “Went well?” he said judiciously. “Well—ideally, would I have spent an evening watching mediocre opera and having dried-out chicken for dinner, sitting next to a tedious woman who can only talk about her son?” He looked up at her. “Ideally, no.”

  Martha turned away and stepped out of her heels. She picked them up and put them inside the closet.

  “Thanks for your support,” she said, taking off her skirt. She snapped it onto a hanger. “It’s really great to know I have it.”

  “Any time,” Jeffrey said. He took his shirt off and went into the bathroom. He flung the shirt into the hamper; she heard him slam the wicker lid. He came back into the bedroom and put his hands on his hips. He was wearing only his shorts and his reading glasses, and his eyes were bleary and enormous behind the lenses. “Any time you want to bring around complete strangers, and inflict them on me without asking,” he said, “and don’t bother to even tell me, beforehand, you’ll get this kind of support.”

  “Jeffrey—” Martha began and then stopped. Kingsley’s room was directly overhead, and the acoustics, she knew, were excellent.

  “What?” Jeffrey asked, but his wife only pointed venomously at the ceiling and shook her head.

  She put on her nightgown and got into bed without speaking, sliding into her side and curling up in a tight ball in her corner. She went to sleep quickly, but in the morning when she awoke she was stiff. She was still curled up tightly, exactly where she’d begun. Jeffrey had slept on the other side of the bed, his face turned toward the window.

  Breakfast was quiet. The three of them sat in the kitchen with the paper until it was time to leave for lunch. They took Martha’s car—newer and cleaner than Jeffrey’s dusty station wagon—and headed north, to a restaurant a dozen miles deeper into the country. The narrow road skirted hillside pastures, where horses in trim plaid blankets stood dozing in the sun; the day had turned bright and cold. Martha drove, pleased by the smooth meadows, the blanketed horses, the wintry sunlight, by the fact that the weekend was all but over.

  At the restaurant, she parked the car, took out the key, and dropped it on the floor mat. In the country she always did this, it saved searching later through pockets and bags. Jeffrey, in the back, got out of the car as Martha did. Kingsley, in front, took longer, slowly extricating his legs. Martha and Jeffrey shut their doors and waited as he unfolded himself. Kingsley, finally outside on the gravel, took careful hold of the door handle, pushed down the inside lock, and then, before Martha could speak, firmly closed the door. Martha heard the smooth electronic internal shifting, the sickening sound of all the locks sliding obediently and irretrievably down into their wells. The car was now impenetrable, shut fast, its key neatly inside on the floor. Martha looked at Jeffrey: he had seen it too.

  “This looks lovely,” Kingsley said cheerfully, gazing around at the bright sky, the big trees. It was hard to walk on the thick gravel without a limp; he moved slowly, to disguise it.

  “It’s one of our favorite restaurants,” Martha said, wondering if the spare key was in her pocketbook. Or was it in the mug over the kitchen sink? “Do you have an extra?” she asked Jeffrey under her breath as they went inside. They were still at odds, but this was an emergency. It superseded their hostilities, or at least she hoped it did.

  “To your car?” Jeffrey shook his head. Perhaps it did not.

  “Bonjour, madame, messieurs,” said the headwaiter. He was bald and smiling, with black eyes. He wore a long white apron wrapped around his waist.

  The new car had a special locking system. The salesman had told them with unctuous pride that, without a key, it could be unlocked only by a registered representative of the company. At the time that had seemed like a selling point, but now Martha wondered how they might find a registered representative of the company on Sunday, out in the country, sixty miles north of New York City. They sat down at the table.

  “I liked your talk very much,” Martha told Kingsley.

  “Yes, so did I,” said Jeffrey with enthusiasm, unfolding his heavy white napkin with an air of settling in. “It was such an interesting premise. I was completely fascinated.”

  Under the table Martha groped for her pocketbook and began rifling through it. Blindly her fingers encountered unknown objects, and she closed on them hopefully. A hairbrush bristle stabbed her deep under her fingernail, into the quick, and she winced.

  “What about German opera?” Jeffrey asked. “How would you describe the differences between German and Italian opera?”

  She wasn’t sure if Jeffrey were declaring a truce, taking
charge of the conversation so that she could devote herself to the search, or if he were simply being elaborately polite to Kingsley and ignoring her. In either case she was grateful for his participation.

  Kingsley began to explain. Under the table he flexed his foot delicately, testing: the throb came at once.

  Martha tried to keep her face bright. “Really,” she said periodically. “That’s interesting,” she offered, during a pause. She gave Kingsley a disconnected smile.

  “Have you always been interested in opera?” she asked.

  What was that, she wondered, as he answered. But it was not the key, it was a fingernail clipper. Why on earth did she have a fingernail clipper in her purse?

  “And did you study music at school?” Jeffrey asked.

  This could be it, Martha thought, if it were encased in a little plastic sleeve. Hopefully she envisioned the key in a plastic sleeve. It might certainly be. But no: it was a tube of lip gloss. Jeffrey glanced at her as he lifted his glass; she couldn’t read his look.

  “Actually, at university I read classics,” Kingsley said.

  “Rather a long way from opera,” Martha suggested. She heard herself lapsing again into Anglicisms, and Jeffrey looked at her. She had found a wad of fraying Kleenex, and four pens, the keys to the house and two quarters, or perhaps nickels. The bristle stabbed again under her nail. She was ready to bring the pocketbook up over her head and empty it out onto the tablecloth. The wine came, and the two men tasted it.

  “Very nice,” Jeffrey said, nodding at Kingsley, who had chosen it.

  “Not bad, is it,” said Kingsley, agreeing. He liked Geoffrey, who seemed pleasant and intelligent, but he wondered what was going on between him and his wife. Yesterday they had seemed so amicable, but today they hardly spoke. And he wondered what Martha had been grappling with under the tablecloth since they arrived.

  When the check came Jeffrey reached for it, but Kingsley was firm. “Absolutely not,” he said, with a short triumphant whinny. “You are my guests now.”

  “That’s very handsome of you,” Jeffrey said.

  “How very kind,” said Martha abstractedly.

  The time had come for Martha to make an announcement, to say something that would explain how everything had changed, how the entire configuration of the afternoon was being altered, without revealing to Kingsley even a hint that his small conscientious gesture had locked them all from the car and shattered their plans.

  As they waited for the waiter to return, Martha cleared her throat. It was just past two-thirty, and there was still time to do everything, if things worked properly. She’d thought of a friend who lived nearby: she’d call Linda and ask her to rescue them.

  “Now,” she announced, “we have a slight change of plan.” Kingsley looked at her inquiringly. “We’re going to Lyndhurst, but we might—we might have to go in Jeffrey’s car.”

  Kingsley nodded courteously. “Whatever suits you.”

  Martha looked at Jeffrey. “Why don’t you make the call to the company, and I’ll call Linda. Maybe she can pick us up and take us back to get your car.” She prayed for him to understand, and to agree.

  There was a moment’s silence, then Jeffrey nodded. “Right,” he said.

  Martha smiled brightly at Kingsley. “I’m just going to call a friend.” In the phone booth she dialed Linda’s number, praying for her to be home. She wished she’d thought of Linda earlier and called before lunch—though she’d been hoping the key would turn up in her purse. She listened to the distant burr. Oh, answer, Linda, she thought, answer, answer, answer. On the fourth ring someone picked up.

  “Hello?”

  It was a man’s voice. Maybe Linda’s son? What was his name?

  “Hello—Jordan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hi, this is Martha Truesdale. Your mom’s friend.” Jordan lived in Colorado, and Martha had met him only once.

  “Oh, yeah, hi.”

  “Is your mother there?”

  “Actually she’s not. She won’t be back until around five. Can I take a message?”

  Martha took a deep breath. Well: things were not going to go smoothly, that was how it was going to be.

  “Jordan, I have a huge favor to ask you.” She explained.

  “Sure,” Jordan said. “I’d be happy to come and get you, except that right now I’m waiting for a friend to call, who’s driving across the country and calling from his cell phone and I don’t have his number. He said he’d call at two-thirty, and it’s almost that now. So it should be just a few minutes. Then I’ll come and pick you up.”

  Martha thought for a moment. There was no alternative. There were no cabs nearby; any car service would take an hour to arrive. She knew no one else up here well enough to ask.

  “Great,” she said to Jordan. “Thank you so much. We’ll be in the parking lot.” Before going back outside, she rifled through the bottom of her bag one more time. Jean Singer’s disapproving face floated into her mind.

  Jeffrey had called the car company, and while Kingsley was in the men’s room Jeffrey reported to Martha that, although there was indeed a twenty-four-hour service, the man on duty today was off on a family outing, an hour away. He’d be there as soon as he could.

  “So you’ll stay here and wait for him?” Martha asked.

  “What choice do I have?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Thank you,” Martha said, but Jeffrey was looking past her at the front door. She turned too and smiled radiantly at Kingsley as he reappeared, walking slowly across the gravel.

  The three of them stood in the pale wintry sun, waiting for Jordan. The impenetrable car stood ten feet away, gleaming, on the gravel. They did not look at it; Kingsley politely did not ask why they were not getting back into it. Martha looked at her watch: nearly three. Lyndhurst was open until five. If they were home by three-thirty, and it took half an hour to get there, they would be fine. When she’d called Lyndhurst, the day before, she’d gotten only a recording with the hours on it. She would have to call again, and wait to get through, for directions. She wished she had already done that.

  Jordan arrived at quarter past. He pulled up in an ancient Volvo station wagon, muddy, and low in the rear.

  “Hi there,” he said, smiling out his window. He had a plump jowly face, a buzz cut, and an offhand manner. “Sorry about that. My friend never called. I finally gave up and came over.”

  “You’ve missed your call for us? That’s so nice of you,” Martha said. She was already pulling the door shut behind her, already in the back seat, which had a grainy feel to it. Discarded objects swirled around her feet. “You sit in front, your legs are longer,” she said to Kingsley. She still did not quite want to call him Michael. “See you later,” she called out to Jeffrey; he lifted his hand stoically as they drove away. Kingsley sat in front like a statue.

  Jordan drove very slowly along the winding roads. He had a standard shift, which sounded troubled each time the gears were changed.

  “Got to be careful with this car,” he said cheerfully. “She’s lasted over a hundred thousand miles. We’re trying for two.”

  “Tell me, where do you live?” Kingsley asked, polite, interested, and Jordan began to explain. Martha, in the back seat, sat with all her muscles tensed, urging the car onward. It took them twenty-five minutes to get home. Jordan drove them up to the back door, still talking.

  “No, man, I really love the mountains,” he told Kingsley. Martha opened the door and got out. “That’s what draws me. The outdoors. I couldn’t move back now. Ever been out west?”

  Kingsley sat in the front seat, not moving. “Not to your part. I’ve been to San Francisco, and Seattle, but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

  Jordan shook his head, grinning. “Come to Colorado,” he said. “I’ll show you what the real West is like.”

  Get out of the car, Martha thought, get out, get out.

  Kingsley turned to Jordan. “How very kind of you. Perhaps I shall.”

 
; “Be my pleasure,” Jordan said, nodding happily.

  “Thank you so much for driving us here,” Kingsley said, beginning to lever himself slowly out of the front seat.

  “Thank you so much, Jordan,” Martha said, heartfelt, urgent, leaning into the window. “I’m going to run, but it was so nice of you to pick us up. I can’t thank you enough. And give my love to your mom. Tell her I’ll call her.”

  She headed for the back door. It was now twenty of four. She unlocked the door and left it open for Kingsley, who was making his majestic way in from the car. She pulled the big telephone book out from its disorderly stack and began flipping through it. Lyndhurst was not in the white pages, she found: it must be in the blue pages, but under what? Government listings in each town? She didn’t know what town it was in. Historic houses? Kingsley came into the kitchen behind her.

  “I’m just going to get directions,” she explained, searching through the blue pages. Where had she found it yesterday? She ran her eye down the columns: Emergency hot lines. Poison center. Domestic violence.

  It was under the “State” section, then Historic Houses. She dialed and waited while the recording listed the hours. At the end of the recording she pressed 0 for operator and waited until she was cut off. She dialed again and waited while the recording listed the hours. She pressed 0 again and heard another message, advising her to wait. She waited while the recording played American folk tunes. Kingsley stood politely by the sink, trying to be unintrusive.

  He wondered what was going on. Somehow the day seemed to have gone off its tracks at lunch, with Martha struggling with her pocketbook under the table and then the silent argument with her husband—was that why Geoffrey had been abandoned in the parking lot? And the mysterious Jordan, whom Martha had evidently never seen before, with his ancient mud-stained car, full of socks and crumpled drinks containers, ferrying them slowly back to their house, his car straining and sighing at every shift.

  Now, somehow, it had gotten very late—he saw Martha keep looking unhappily at the clock as she tried to get directions. He did not actually care about Lyndhurst. A friend in London had mentioned it to him and he’d thought it would be a pleasant outing, something to fill an empty afternoon. But now it seemed more sensible to pack and start out for the train station at once, if the trip there were to be as difficult as this one. Three miles might take hours.