The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  “We have to get up really early,” I said.

  “That’s O.K.,” Lee said, but Carlos stood up. He looked exhausted.

  “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Let’s pull the plug on it.”

  Over the next few days I thought of Carlos often. His face had been shadowed when we said goodbye, so I couldn’t recall it, and I thought how if I had been his girlfriend instead of Lee’s I would have stayed there with him in that living room that seemed to just suck up light and would have heard from the inside the door slam and the van’s motor start.

  Lee and I drove back east a bit, to have a look at the Smokies. We parked the van in a campground under a bruise-colored sunset and set off on foot to pick up some food to cook outside on a fire. There were bugs, though, even though it was chilly, and the rutted clay road slipped and smacked underfoot, so we stopped at a Bar-B-Que place, where doughy families shouted at each other under throbbing fluorescent lights.

  I had a headache. “It’s incredible,” I said, “how fast every place you go gets to be home. We’ve only just parked at that campground, but it’s already home. And yesterday Carlos’s place seemed like home. Now that seems like years ago.”

  “That’s why it’s good to travel,” Lee said. “It reminds you what life really is. Finished?” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Let’s,” I said. “Let’s go home.” I inserted my finger under the canopy of his T-shirt sleeve, but he didn’t notice particularly.

  In time we came to a part of the country where mounds of what Lee said were uranium tailings winked in the sunlight, and moonlight made grand the barbed-wire lace around testing sites, Lee said they were, and subterranean missiles. It was quite flat, but I felt that we were crossing it vertically instead of horizontally. I felt I was on ropes behind Lee, struggling up a sheer rock face, my footing too unsure to allow me to look anywhere except at the cliff I clung to.

  “What is it you’re afraid of?” Lee said.

  I told him I didn’t know.

  “Think about it,” he said. “There’s nothing in your mind that isn’t yours.”

  I wondered if I should go back. I could call Tom and Johanna, I thought, but at the same instant I realized that they weren’t really friends of mine. I didn’t know Johanna very well, actually, and Tom and I, in fact, disliked each other. I had gone to bed with him one day months earlier when I went over to borrow a vise grip. He had seemed to want to, and I suppose I thought I would be less uncomfortable around him if I did. That was a mistake, as it turned out. I stayed at least as uncomfortable as before, and the only thing he said afterward was that I had a better body than he’d expected. It was a long time before I realized that what he’d wanted was to have slept with Lee’s girlfriend.

  When I’d returned home that afternoon carrying the vise grip that Tom remembered to hand to me when I left, I felt as if it had been Lee who had spent the afternoon rolling around with Johanna, not me with Tom, and my chest was splitting from jealousy. I couldn’t keep my hands off Lee, which annoyed him—he was trying to do something to an old motorcycle that had been sitting around in the yard.

  “Lee,” I said, “are you attracted to Johanna?”

  “What kind of question is that?” he said, sorting through the parts spread out on the dirt.

  “A question question,” I said.

  “Everyone’s attracted to everyone else,” he said.

  I wasn’t. I wasn’t attracted to Tom, for instance.

  “Why do you think she stays with Tom?” I said.

  “He’s all right,” Lee said.

  “He’s horrible, Lee,” I said. “And he’s mean. He’s vain.”

  “You’re too hard on people,” Lee said. “Tom’s all tied up, that’s all. He’s frightened.”

  “It’s usual to be frightened,” I said.

  “Well, Tom can’t handle it,” Lee said. “He’s afraid he has no resources to fall back on.”

  “Poor guy,” I said. “He can fall back on mine. So are you attracted to Johanna?”

  “Don’t,” Lee said, standing up and wiping his hands on an oily cloth. “O.K.? Don’t get shabby, please.” He had gone inside then, without looking at me.

  Now home was wherever Lee and I were, and I had to control my fear by climbing toward that moment when Lee would haul me up to level ground and we would slip off our ropes and stare around us at whatever was the terrain on which we found ourselves.

  We started to have trouble with the van and decided to stop, because Lee knew someone we could stay with near Denver while he fixed it. We pulled up outside a small apartment building and rang a bell marked Dr. Peel Prayerwheel.

  “What’s his real name?” I asked Lee.

  “That is,” Lee said.

  “Parents had some unusual opinions, huh?” I said.

  “He found it for himself,” Lee said.

  Peel had a nervous voice that rushed in a fluty stream from his large body. His hair was long except on the top of his head, where there was none, and elaborate shaded tattoos covered his arms and neck and probably everything under his T-shirt.

  We stood in the middle of the kitchen. “We’ll put your things in the other room,” Peel said, “and I’ll bring my cot in here. That’s best, that’s best.”

  “We don’t want to inconvenience you, Peel,” Lee said.

  “No, no,” he said. “I’m only too happy to see you and your old lady in my house. All the times I came to you. When I was in the hospital. Anything I can do for you. I really mean it. You know that, buddy.”

  “He took me in,” Peel said, turning to me. “He was like family.” Peel kept standing there, blinking at the floor, but he couldn’t seem to decide what else to say.

  While Lee looked around town for parts or worked on the van, Peel and I mostly sat at the kitchen table and drank huge amounts of tea.

  “Maybe you’d like a beer,” he said one afternoon.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Right away. Right away,” he said, pulling on his jacket.

  “Oh—not if we have to go out,” I said.

  “You’re sure?” he said. “Really? Because we can, if you want.”

  “Not unless you want one,” I said.

  “No, no,” he said. “Never drink alcohol. Uncontrolled substance. Jumps right out of the bottle, whoomp!…Well, no real harm done, just an ugly moment…” He blushed then, for some reason, very dark.

  When Lee came home, Peel and I would open up cans of soup and packages of saltines. “Used to cook like a bastard,” Peel said. “But that’s behind me now. Behind me.”

  One morning when we got up, Peel was standing in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Peel,” I said.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Good morning.” He stood there, looking at the floor.

  “Do you want some tea?” I said.

  “No, thank you,” he said. Then he looked at Lee.

  “Well, buddy,” he said. “I got a check from my mother this morning.”

  “Was that good or bad?” I asked Lee later. Lee shrugged. “How does he usually live?” I said.

  “Disability,” Lee said. “He was in the army.”

  At night I felt so lonely I woke Lee up, but when we made love I kept thinking of Peel standing in the kitchen looking at the floor.

  One morning I had a final cup of tea with Peel while Lee went to get gas.

  “Thank you, Peel,” I said. “You’ve been very kind.”

  “Not kind,” Peel said. “It doesn’t bear scrutiny. I had some problems, see, and your old man looked out for me. He and Annie, they used to take me in. He’s a fine man. And he’s lucky to have you. I can see that, little buddy. He’s very lucky in that.”

  I reached over and touched one of Peel’s tattoos, a naked girl with devil horns and huge angel wings.

  “That’s my lady,” Peel said. “Do you like her? That’s the lady that flies on my arm.”

  A day or two later Lee and I parked and sat in bac
k eating sandwiches. Then Lee studied maps while I experimented along his spine, making my mouth into a shape that could be placed over each vertebra in turn.

  “Cut that out,” Lee said. “Unless you want to lose an hour or two.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “Oh, there,” Lee said. “We’re just outside of Cedar City.”

  I looked over Lee’s shoulder. “Hey, Las Vegas,” I said. “I had a friend in school who got married and moved there.”

  “Do you want to visit her?” Lee said.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “It isn’t too far,” he said. “And we can always use a shower and a bit of floor space.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?” Lee said. “If she was your friend.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Lee sighed. “What’s the matter?” He turned and put his arms around me. “Speak to me.”

  “We’ll never be alone,” I said into his T-shirt.

  “We’re alone right now,” Lee said.

  “No,” I said. “We’re always going to stay with your friends.”

  “It’s just temporary,” Lee said. “Until we find a place we want to be for ourselves. Anyhow, she isn’t my friend—she’s your friend.”

  “Used to be,” I said. Then I said, “Besides, if we stayed with her she’d be your friend.”

  “Sure,” Lee said. “My friend and your friend. The people we’ve stayed with are your friends now, too.”

  “Not,” I said, letting slow tears soak into his T-shirt.

  “Well, they would be if you wanted to think of them as friends,” Lee said. His voice was tense with the effort of patience. “You’re the one who’s shutting them out.”

  “Someone isn’t your friend just because they happen to be standing next to you,” I said.

  Lee lifted his arms from around me. He sighed and leaned his head back, putting his hands against his eyes.

  “I’m sorry you’re so unhappy,” he said.

  “You’re sorry I’m a problem,” I said.

  “You’re not a problem,” he said.

  “Well, then I should be,” I said. “You don’t even care enough about me for me to be a problem.”

  “You know,” Lee said, “sometimes I think I care about you more than you care about me.”

  “Sure,” I said. “If caring about someone means you don’t want anything from them. In fact, you know what?” I said, but I had no idea myself what I was going to say next, so it was just whatever came out with the torrent of sobs I’d un-stoppered. “We’ve called all your friends because you don’t want to be with me, and you want people I know to help you not be with me, too, but we won’t even call my parents and they’re only less than a day away because then I might turn out to be real and then you’d have to figure out what to do with me instead of waiting for me to evaporate because you’re tired of me and we’re going to keep going from one friend of yours to another and making other people into friends of yours and then they’ll all help you think of some way to leave me so you can go back to Annie whoever she is or grind me into a paste just like come to think of it you probably did to Annie anyhow.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Lee said. “What is going on?”

  I leaned my head against his arm and let myself cry loudly and wetly.

  “All right,” Lee said, folding his arms around me again. “O.K.

  “Come on,” Lee said after a while. “We’ll find a phone and call your parents.”

  I was still blinking tears when we pulled into an immense parking lot at the horizon of which was a supermarket, also immense, that served no visible town. It had become evening, and the supermarket and the smaller stores attached to it were all closed, even though there were lights inside them.

  “There,” Lee said. “There’s a phone, way over there.” He reached for the shift, but I jumped out.

  “I’ll walk,” I said.

  There was a shallow ring of mountains all around, dark against the greenish sky, and night was filling up the basin we were in. The glass phone booth, so solitary in the parking lot, looked like a tiny, primitive spaceship.

  I rarely spoke to my parents, and I had never seen the mobile home where they’d now lived for years. It couldn’t be possible, I thought, that I had only to dial this phone to speak to them. Why would the people who were my parents be living at the other end of that phone call?

  When I sat down inside the phone booth and closed the door, a light went on. Perhaps when I lifted the receiver instructions would issue from it. How surprised Lee would be to see the little glass compartment tremble, then lift from the ground and arc above the mountains. I picked up the receiver, unleashing only the dial tone, and dialed my parents’ number.

  My mother was out playing cards, my father told me.

  “Why aren’t you with her?” I said. “I thought you liked to play, too.”

  “You thought wrong,” my father said. “And anyway,” he said, “I can’t stand the scum she’s scooped up in this place.”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess you’ve probably found friends of your own there.”

  “Friends,” my father said. “Poor SOBs could only make it as far as a trailer park, you’d think they were living in Rolls-Royces.”

  “Well,” I said.

  “They’re nosy, too,” my father said. “These people are so nosy it isn’t funny.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” I said.

  “It’s nothing to me,” my father said. “I don’t go out, anyhow. My leg’s too bad.”

  A tide shrank in my chest.

  “Hear anything from Mike and Philly?” I said.

  “Yeah—Philly’s doing quite well, as a matter of fact,” my father said. “Quite well. Spoke to him just the other week. He’s managing some kind of club, apparently.”

  “Probably a whorehouse,” I said, not into the phone.

  “What?” my father said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What?” he said again.

  “That’s great,” I said. “What about Mike?”

  “Mike,” my father said. “He left Sharon again. That clown. Sharon called and said would we take the kids for a while. Of course we would have if we could. I don’t think she’s too great for those kids, anyhow.”

  A Greyhound bus had appeared in the parking lot, and a man carrying a small suitcase climbed out. I wondered where he could possibly be going. He walked into the darkness, and then the bus was gone in darkness, too.

  “What about you?” my father said. “What’re you up to? Still got that boyfriend?”

  “Yes,” I said. I glanced over at the van. It looked miniature in front of the vast supermarket window, itself miniature against the line of mountains in the sky. “In fact,” I said, “we were thinking of coming to visit you.”

  “Jesus,” said my father. “Don’t tell me this one’s going to marry you. Hey,” he said suspiciously, “where’re you calling from?”

  It was almost totally dark, and cold lights were scattered in the hills. People probably lived up there, I thought, in little ranch-style houses where tricycles, wheels in the air, and broken toys lay on frail patches of lawn like weapons on a deserted battlefield.

  “I said, where are you calling from?” my father said again.

  “Home,” I said. “I have to get off now, though.”

  As soon as I hung up, the phone started to ring. It would be the operator asking for more money. It was still ringing when I climbed into the van, but I could hardly hear it from there.

  Lee and I sat side by side for a moment. “It’s peaceful here,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Lee said.

  “No one was home,” I said.

  “All right,” Lee said—there were different reasons he might have let me say that, I thought—“let’s go on.”

  That night I apologized.

  “It’s all right,” Lee said.

  “No,” I said. “And I really do like your fr
iends. I liked staying with them.”

  “We won’t do it anymore,” Lee said.

  “We can’t stay at motels,” I said. “And it’s nice to get out of the van every once in a while.”

  Lee didn’t say anything.

  “Besides,” I said. “We don’t even know where we’re going.”

  I wondered if Lee had fallen asleep. “What about your friend Kathryn”—I said it softly, in case he had—“that Carlos mentioned? Would you like to see her?”

  “Well,” Lee said finally, “she doesn’t live that far from here.”

  As soon as we climbed out of the van in front of Kathryn’s house, a girl flew out of the door, landing in Lee’s arms. They laughed and kissed each other and laughed again.

  “Maggie,” Lee said, “what are you doing here?”

  “Fact is, Lee,” she said, “Buzzy’s partner got sent up, so I’m staying here awhile case anybody’s looking for anybody.”

  “Yeah?” Lee said. “Is Buzzy here?”

  “He’s up in Portland,” she said. “He said it would be better if we went in different directions just till this cools off. I guess he’s got a honey up there.”

  Lee shook his head, looking at her.

  “Never mind, baby,” she said. “I’ll win, you know that. I always win.” Lee laughed again.

  Inside, Kathryn put out her hands and Lee held them. Then she looked at me. “You’re cold,” she said. “Stand by the fire, and I’ll get you something to put on.”

  “I’m O.K.,” I said. “Anyhow, I’ve got things in the van.” But she took a huge, flossy blanket from the back of the sofa and wound it slowly around and around me.

  “You look like a princess!” Maggie said. “Doesn’t she? Look, Lee—she looks like a princess that’s—what are those stories?—under a dark enchantment.” Kathryn stood back and looked.

  We drank big hot glasses of applejack and cinnamon, and the firelight splashed shadows across us. Kathryn and Maggie and Lee talked, their words scattering and shifting with the fire.