God I really like you. I was just realizing this. Your letters get better when I reread them. I hope you will let me take you to my favourite cake and tea joint when you get to Bard (although this place is in Rhinebeck — a little hole-in-the-wall of a town near here) and we will talk about all kinds of things. Last time you wrote you said that you thought collage was a nostalgic impulse. I think you’re wrong. Can we argue about this? Kurt Schwitters would laugh up his sleeve at you for saying that. His collages are like writing letters. Letters are collages, aren’t they? Educations are collages, too. That’s why they call it college har har. The café I’m taking you to is called the Blue Chair. They have chocolate chip cookies as thick as your fist. Write me soon.
After crossing the field in a small army of hands, the boxes made it safely to the gallery. Mrs. Vankoughnet seemed impressed with Martin and shook his hand as if he were already important. She gave him some documents describing the gallery’s obligations to him, and vice versa, but he wasn’t interested in them, and two days later, when it turned out he was to have signed them, they’d vanished.
Bringing Martin to campus gave me a kind of celebrity that had previously been Molly’s, and I basked in it. For the rest of the first afternoon, fellow students from the fine arts programs followed us around like trained geese, asking Martin questions in little embarrassed voices. No one knew how famous or unknown he was (the truth was closer to the latter), but the fact of his being from another country made him authentic in the eyes of students who’d grown up in cow-towns all around the state. They formed a semicircle around him, drifting back as we walked through them.
Where do you get your ideas?
I don’t think I have ideas, Martin said, and everyone laughed, as if he were joking. I don’t, he repeated.
But, said one of the girls, there are ideas in your art.
I don’t do it on purpose, said Martin.
Are you a surrealist? said a tall printmaker with a shaved head.
No.
Would a surrealist admit he was a surrealist?
Yes.
You idiot, said someone else. It was the Dadaists who went around saying they weren’t anything.
The little crowd started buzzing. No, said someone else, they admitted they were Dadaists! They all pretended they didn’t care about the art world, but they were soooo big on making sure everyone spelled “Dada” right.
Go ahead, spell “Dada” wrong for me.
I pulled Martin away from them. Let’s have supper somewhere else, I said.
I want one of those cookies you’ve talked about.
We left the freshmen behind, waving their arms.
I made him wait outside the dorm while I changed, then got into a borrowed car in an agonized-over dress that rode up every time I clutched. Keep your hands off, I said, then pointed to the gearshift to clear up any confusion. I’d borrowed a car from a friend who hadn’t witnessed the fate of the other one. Martin sat quietly in the passenger seat, his hands folded over his legs. For the first time since he’d arrived, there was an uncomfortable silence, an appropriate silence for two people who hardly knew each other, and the feeling that I was out of my element briefly took hold. Then I nervously started rambling, shooting in the dark for subject matter that he might want to add his two cents to: the benefits of small schools over large ones; the problems of teenage pregnancy; some thoughts on the differences between Americans and Canadians in which some ideas of the colour of currencies were forwarded, and finally, a short tractate on cows and weather.
Finally he said, I’m not actually Canadian, as you know. I still think of myself as Irish.
You don’t sound Irish, though. I mean you don’t have an accent.
I was convinced of the importance of not having one when I was growing up in Montreal. But hiding it made me feel all the more Irish. Like a man who gets home from work and puts on a dress.
Huh? I said.
I just mean I wanted to fit in.
Did you speak French?
Seulement un peu.
I’ve always wanted to.
Funny, he said. That’s what they say up there too.
I took the turn for Rhinebeck, and we drove down the town’s little main street, with its churches and gas stations. This looks just like where I grew up, I said. A little blot with people living on either side. He looked through his window and nodded. How long ago did you leave Ireland?
Forty-five years, six months, fourteen days, and seven hours, he said, then turned to look at me. I must have been trying to keep a straight, sensitive composure and failing, because he laughed. It was around forty-five years ago. I was eleven, he said.
We went into Bella Notte and the waiter brought us a wine menu without carding me, so we ordered a bottle and toasted each other. The scent of the wine filled my head like a sound, and after a glass, my courage returned.
Let’s go back to this no-ideas idea, I said. You really think your work doesn’t mean anything?
Well, it must mean something, it’s just that I don’t think about it. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me.
But aren’t you interested in what people see in it?
No.
I tilted my head at him and narrowed my eyes. Okay, I challenge.
What?
It’s what you say in Scrabble when you think someone’s made up a word. That made him laugh, and he covered his mouth, muffling the sound. It was strange how he seemed at one moment completely open and the next was concealing everything. The laugh had the effect of looking like he’d been caught in a lie and I pointed an accusatory finger at him. Aha! So you just don’t want to talk about it.
Not so, he said. It’s just that if I was any good with words, I’d put it into words. But I’m not. So the way I feel is the way my work looks, and that’s its meaning, or as close as I can express it. And what other people think about it is, again, a step away from what it “means” because they’re describing something, and —
You’re no good with words.
Yes. He finally exhaled and looked down, smiling, and stared into his soup. He looked fantastic to me, sitting there as real as anything, with his almost-messy hair, his dark blue shirt open at the neck. Sometimes, if he turned just right, I’d see a flash of grey hair within his shirt. I felt like someone who’d suddenly come into more money than she knew what to do with, except it’s not easy to find a place to stash excess feeling. I was also acutely aware that many hours had now passed and I had yet to say the kind of stupid, uninformed thing that was probably inevitable. The wait was killing me. I said, I just want to let you know that I’m setting some kind of record here for not acting like an idiot. And you should probably, you know, make some allowance for me to put my foot in my mouth, or something.
You mean, you haven’t yet.
That’s right. It’s been clear sailing, so far, believe it or not. We laughed. I actually forget what we talked about after that. It disturbs me that I could have lost even five minutes of that first evening, that there is no witness to it. That’s the marrow of all our stories: the forgotten moments that could make everything clear to our future selves (who are also busily losing the present). But I do remember that at one point — I see empty plates in front of us — he said, You’ll understand what I mean one day. You mean, when I’m all grown up?
He held up a hand in surrender. No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.
Are you actually worried you could offend me?
Well, I don’t want to end up sleeping outside.
That could turn out to be good luck for you, I said and turned scarlet, reaching for my wine.
After that, I can see his face, warmed from the heat of the wine, can hear the music filtering through the little room from speakers at the front. The way the room thinned out as the night went on. He was just fine with words. He talked of old packaging and cartoons and how people made early photographs; he talked about automata and magic apparatuses, the old belief of the sphere-within-sphere univer
se, which was the model of the cosmos that still appealed to him most.
Concentric worlds, he said. Easier to keep track of everything. I pictured those glassy spheres in the palm of his hand, and me in the smallest one at the very centre. Curled up in the warmth generated throughout the celestial realms by his hands.
It was late when I got us back to Obreshkove House, and the roads between towns had been so dark that we were driving through the stars. Martin hadn’t seen a sky like that since before he’d moved to Toronto and he opened his window and leaned his head against the bottom of it to watch them.
I carried his bags into Molly’s room and left them on the floor. We stood in the space between the two bedrooms. Do you need anything? I asked.
No. I’m fine. He cruised along the bookshelves, stopping and tilting his head here and there. You read a lot of poetry.
You don’t?
He searched my face. Why does it feel there’s a right answer to that question?
Someone like you would appreciate poetry. It’s one of those things that seems to have made it out of the past. You know what I mean?
His face brightened. Did you hear that someone caught a coelacanth in Lake Ontario?
A what?
It’s a fish, he said. An extinct fish. Someone caught one and now they’re not extinct anymore.
I’m sorry, I said, but I think I fell asleep for the half-hour there when we made the transition from poetry to fish.
You said poetry feels like it shouldn’t have survived, and yet it has.
Mmm, I said. Something hidden in the deep.
Yes.
A fossil record.
We stood there smiling at each other. An old language dusted off for use among people again. He turned back to the shelves, browsing the thin collections. Then glanced sidelong at me. Did you want to go to bed?
My stomach flipped. Uh, god, I said, flustered. I leaned forward to try to catch his expression, but he was squinting at something. I don’t know, Martin …
That’s fine, it’s —
He just looked at me, smiling vacantly.
I led him into the hall, reaching blindly for the light switch as I passed it, flicking it and dropping the apartment into darkness and then I pushed forward into him, tilting my mouth up toward him, and brushed my lips across his. My heart in my throat as I fumbled for the door to the bedroom. We stood there in the threshhold of it, me pressing my mouth to his, his face cupped in my hand, and feeling him … what? You can kiss me, I said quietly, but he remained immobile, as if the touch of my mouth had turned him to stone. What’s the matter?
It’s just …
Oh god! I stepped away from him in horror. You meant did I want to sleep. It’s late, do I want to go to bed, I must be tired. Oh fuck!
Jolene, he said, his voice tight.
Please don’t be laughing.
I’m not.
Turn on a light.
No, he said. Just, let’s …
Oh god, oh god, oh god —
We stood there in the dark, the sound of my heart hammering against my shirt the only disturbance. I was certain we could both hear it, like Poe’s murderer hearing the heart under the floor. I’d had more than my share of exquisite humiliations before, but never with someone I’d actually liked. I imagined myself hurtling through a window.
I’m a complete idiot, I murmured.
No, no.
It’s okay. I knew it was just a matter of time before I said something dumb.
I would never have just come out and asked you like that.
I’m not that kind of person.
I know. You’re decent. I tried to say it like it was an appalling thing to discover about a person, especially at a time like this. I heard him laugh softly.
I don’t want you to think that I —
It’s okay, Martin. I probably should go to bed. Before I accept an erroneous marriage proposal or something.
Now he laughed out loud and surprised me by gathering me into him and holding me. Come on, he said. Why don’t we stay up awhile and talk? I don’t want you to think —
We’ll talk in the morning, I said, pushing away. It’s fine. Honest. I felt for the doorknob again, and turned it and slipped into the room. Then stood there on the other side of the door, my face burning, my hair burning, and stayed utterly still. It took me a moment longer to realize I hadn’t even shut myself up in the right room: Martin’s bags were at my feet. Stupid girl! Stupid stupid girl! I felt nauseous with embarrassment, knowing I’d have to show my face again, to go to the door beside this one. I could hear he hadn’t moved either. Martin … I whispered, what are you doing?
I’m standing here.
Uh-huh.
I feel bad.
You feel bad.
You just took me by surprise, Jolene. It doesn’t mean…. He didn’t finish the sentence.
What? What?
He didn’t know how to put it. I would never have just come out and said it like that. How would he have put it? I put my mouth to the door and spoke quietly. Is this a no-good-with-words moment, Martin?
Mm, he said.
I opened the door and stood square in front of him. I don’t want to have a fling. That would be disgusting and I don’t want people to talk. I already like you a lot.
Me too.
I stood there for a moment more shaking my head. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see his face in the faint greyness of the apartment, like something being reeled in from the depths. I didn’t want to risk a change of venue. I went and lit a candle at Molly’s bedside. She was one for candles, said it gave a tinge of intimacy to one-night stands. I hoped it wouldn’t be bad luck for me. I sat on her bed, and watched Martin slowly come over in the yellowy glow of the candle’s light, his face planes of shadow. He sat beside me and I felt his fingers touch down on mine. We sat there and held hands.
Is this more your speed? I stared out into one of the darkened corners of the room, already tired out.
Yes, thank you. Don’t be embarrassed, Jolene.
Me? Embarrassed?
It’s nice to know when someone wants to be with you, he said. It stops a person from worrying.
And you were worrying.
I would have. It hadn’t occurred to me yet.
Thanks.
I do like you, Jolene. I liked you from your letters. I didn’t know if it was going to be okay to tell you that.
Martin, my head’s exploding.
I wanted to feel a certain way when I came here.
How?
Welcome.
I pulled his hand up to my mouth and kissed it. Thank you, I said. That’s a good way to put it. You are. I held his hand against my chest. And I’m glad we finally made it through that door. But I have to tell you, I said, I’m feeling way unsexy right now.
That’s only because an old fool almost ruined your evening. Not because you’re not sexy. He leaned down and kissed me underneath the ear. Okay?
Okay, I said, but I don’t think I actually made a sound.
We lay under the covers, drowsing. I pressed my face against his neck and breathed him in. He didn’t really have a scent, at least not a scent I expected, the pleasantly sour smell of men, with its salt and flesh. He smelled like rain, like clean laundry. Even after lovemaking he gave off nothing, left no path in the air. I closed my eyes against his cool skin and almost fell asleep, but he began to hum. Turned to me and opened his mouth and began singing quietly in a croaky voice. When day is done and shadows fall, I dream of you, Da da da da, da da da da, the joys we knew.
I’m sure that’s not how it goes, I said.
He caught the loose end of the song trailing past and started singing louder. That yearning returning to hold you in my arms, Won’t go love, I know love, Without you night has lost its charms!
I reached up from under the covers and gently pinched his mouth. Most people just smoke, I said. I released his lips. You can tell me what that was, though.
“When Day is Done.” The story is, at night, he misses her. We don’t know the same songs, do we?
The barbershop quartets don’t come to town that often.
He grinned and shut one eye, pained. We’ll have to cross-pollinate.
Really.
I took him back to the bus station when the weekend was over, and we stood outside in a light drizzle, and were mute. I hadn’t told him yet that I’d lost my virginity to him; I felt embarrassed that I had even considered it important, but it seemed the kind of thing you should tell a person. In the end, I didn’t know how to put it, and said nothing. (When I did tell him, more than a year later, he was aghast that I hadn’t warned him beforehand. What would you have done, I asked him. I don’t know, he said, I would have wanted to mark it somehow. You mean an ad in the paper? No, he said, serious. It’s just sad when something important goes by and no one notices …)
The bus pulled in and he took my hands. You haven’t asked if there’s anyone in my life.
I didn’t want to know. Is there?
I’m hopeful.
I smiled and kissed him. I guess I’m sealing my fate, I said.
When I got home, Molly was pulling the sheets off her bed, and we stood staring at each other through her doorway.
Sorry, I said, looking at the bedclothes.
Sorry? I’m having them framed!
Martin and I spent most of our early weekends meeting in other spots around the state. I taught him to drive. I showed him how my father liked to hold the steering wheel, with his hands at the bottom, the wheel lying in his palms. Driving in a relaxed pose like that induced my father to make a sound I used to find strangely soothing: it was the sound of his ring tapping against the steering wheel. Just an occasional, light tick. It was sometimes the only sound on the way home from a dinner somewhere, driving back through Ithaca, or Letchworth, or Albany. A reassuring sound that there was someone awake in the car, watching over you.
Click your ring against the wheel, I said.
Martin Sloane Page 3
