The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  When we finished making love, the moon was a perfect circle high in the black window. “How about that?” Eugene said. “Nature.” We leaned against each other and looked at it. “You got any food here, by the way?” he asked. “I’m famished.”

  By the time I’d located a robe—a warm, stripy thing in Ivan’s closet—Eugene was rummaging through the icebox. “You got special plans for this?” he said, holding up the violet toilet paper that apparently I’d refrigerated.

  “Let’s see…” I said. “There’re some sausages.”

  “Sausages,” he said. “Suckers are delicious, but they’ll kill you. Preservatives, saturated fats. Loaded with PCBs, too.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Don’t you know that?” he said. “What are you smiling about? You think I’m kidding? Listen, Americans eat too much animal protein anyhow. Fiber’s where it’s at.” He nodded at me, his eyebrows raised. “What else you got?”

  “There’s some pickled okra,” I said.

  “Ivan’s into some heavy shit here, huh?” he said.

  “Well…” It was true that I hadn’t shopped very efficiently. “Oh, there are these.” I undid the bakery box.

  “Holy Christ,” Eugene said. “How do you like that—little Christmas trees. Isn’t that something!” He arranged them into a forest on the table and walked his fingers among them. “Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green,” he sang, and it sounded like something he didn’t often do.

  “Here we come awandering

  so fair to be seen.

  Love and joy come to you,

  and to you your wassail too,

  And God bless you and send you

  a happy New Year,

  And God send you a happy New Year.”

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “You don’t like Christmas carols?” So I did harmony as he sang another verse:

  “We are not daily beggars

  that beg from door to door,

  But we are neighbors’ children

  whom you have seen before.

  Love and joy come to you,

  and to you your wassail too,

  And God bless you and send you

  a happy New Year,

  And God send you a happy New Year.”

  Eugene clapped. Then he made an obscene face and stuck a cookie into his mouth. “Oh, lady,” he said, holding the cookie out for me to finish. “These are fuckin’ scrumptious.”

  That was true. They were awfully good, and we munched on them quietly in the moonlit kitchen.

  “So what about you and Ivan?” Eugene asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m starving with Ivan, but my life away from him—my own life—I’ve just let it dry up. Turn into old bits and pieces.”

  “Well, honey,” Eugene said, “that’s not right. It’s your life.”

  “But nothing changes or develops,” I said. “Ivan just can’t seem to decide what he wants.”

  “No?” Eugene looked away tactfully, and I laughed out loud in surprise.

  “That’s true,” I said. “I guess he decided a long time ago.” I stared down at the table, into our diminished cookie forest, and I felt Eugene staring at me. “Well, I didn’t want to be the one to end it, you know?” I said. “But time does change things, even if you can’t see it happen, and eventually someone has to be the one to say, ‘Well, now things have changed.’ Anyhow, it’s not his fault. He’s given me what he could.”

  Eugene nodded. “Ivan’s a solitary kind of guy. I respect him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I wish things were different.”

  “I understand, dear.” Eugene patted my hand. “I hear you.”

  “What about you?” I said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Who, me?” he said. “No, I’m just an old whore. I’ve got a wife down in the States. Couldn’t live with her anymore, though.” He sighed and looked around. “Sixteen years. So what else you got to eat here? I’m still hungry.”

  “Well,” I said. “There’s a roll of cookie dough in the freezer, but it’s Ivan’s, really.”

  “We should eat it, then.” Eugene laughed. “Serve the arrogant bastard right.” I looked at him. “Don’t mind me, honey,” he said. “You know I’m crazy.”

  I woke up once in the night, with Eugene snoring loudly next to me, and when I butted my head gently into his shoulder to quiet him down he wrapped his marvelous white arms around me. “Thought I forgot about you, huh?” he said distinctly, and started to snore again.

  Sunlight forced my eyes open hours later. “Shit,” said a voice near me. “What time is it?” The sun had bleached out Eugene’s luminous beauty. With his pallor and coarse black hair, he looked like a phantom that one registers peripherally on the streets. “I’ve got a business appointment at noon,” he said, pulling on his jeans. “Think it’s noon?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. It felt pleasantly early. “No clock.”

  “I better hit the road,” he said. “Shit.”

  “Here,” I said, holding out his knife.

  “Yeah, thanks.” He pocketed it and looked at me. “You be O.K. now, lady? Going to take care of yourself for a change?”

  “Yes,” I said. “By the way, how much does Ivan owe you?”

  “Huh?” he said. “Hey, there’s my jacket. Right on the floor. Very nice.”

  “Because he mentioned it before he left,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Eugene said. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll come back for it, like—when? When’s that sucker going to get back?”

  “No,” I said. There was really no point in waiting for Ivan. I wanted to conclude this business myself right now. “He forgot to tell me how much it was, but he left me plenty to cover.”

  Eugene looked down at his boots. “Two bills.”

  I put on the robe and counted out two hundred dollars from my purse. It was almost all I had left of the lively cash. “And he said thanks,” I said.

  I stood at the open door until Eugene went through it. “Yeah, well,” he said. “Thanks yourself.”

  At the landing he turned back to me. “Have a good one,” he called up.

  I went back inside and put some eggs on to boil. Then I twirled slowly, making the stripes on the robe flare.

  How on earth had I forgotten butter? The eggs were good, though. I enjoyed them.

  After breakfast I rooted around and found a pail and sponges. It made me sad that Ivan had let the apartment get so filthy. He used to enjoy taking care of things. Then I sat down with a mystery I found on a shelf, and by the time Ivan walked in, late in the afternoon, I’d almost finished it.

  “Looks great in here,” he said after he kissed me.

  “I did some cleaning,” I said.

  “That’s great,” he said. I thought of my own apartment. There would be a lot to do when I got home. “Jesus. Am I exhausted! That was some trip.”

  “How’s Gary?” I said.

  “Well, he was running a little fever when I got there, but he’s fine now,” Ivan said.

  “Good,” I said. “Did he like his presents?”

  “Uh-huh.” Ivan smiled. “Particularly that game that the marble rolls around in. He and I both got pretty good at it after the first few hundred hours.”

  “I liked that one, too,” I said.

  “He’s a good kid,” Ivan said. “He really is. I just hope Linda doesn’t make him into some kind of nervous wreck.”

  “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  “Well, she’s all right, I think. She’s trying to get a life together for herself at least. She’s getting a degree in dance therapy.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “She’ll be O.K. if she can just get over her dependency,” he said. “I’ll be interested to see how she does with this new thing.”

  He would be monitoring her closely, I knew. What a tight family they had established, Ivan and Linda—not much room for anyone else. Of course, Gary and I had our
own small parts in it. I’d probably been quite important in fencing out, oh, Micheline, for instance, just as Gary had been indispensable in fencing me out.

  “Hey,” Ivan said. “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” He bent down and picked up a scarf.

  “Someone named Eugene stopped by,” I said. “He said you owed him money.”

  “Jesus. That’s right,” Ivan said. “Well, I’ll get around to it in the next day or so.”

  “I took care of it myself,” I said.

  “Really? Well, thanks. That’s great. I’ll reimburse you. Sorry you had to deal with him, though.”

  “I liked him,” I said.

  “You did?” Ivan said.

  “You like him enough to do business with him,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know I should be more compassionate,” Ivan said. “It’s just that he’s so hard to take.”

  “Is any of that stuff true that he says?” I asked. “That he shot some guy? That he lived in the jungle?”

  “Shot some guy? I don’t know. He has a pretty extensive fantasy life. But he fought in the war, yeah.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see. Jungle—Vietnam.”

  “I keep forgetting,” Ivan said. “You’re really just a baby.”

  “That must have been awful,” I said.

  “Well, he could have gotten out of it if he didn’t want to do it,” Ivan said.

  “He probably thought it was a good thing to do,” I said. “Besides, people can’t arrange their lives exactly the way they’d like to.”

  “I disagree,” Ivan said. “People only like to think they can’t.”

  “You know,” I said, trying to recall the events of the day before, “I was having some sort of conversation with a butcher about that yesterday.”

  “A butcher?” Ivan said.

  “Yes,” I said. “And, as I remember, he was saying something to the effect that people are only free to the extent that they recognize the boundaries of their lives.”

  “Sounds pretty grim,” Ivan said. “And pretty futile.”

  “Not exactly futile,” I said. “At least, I think his point was that if I know that over here is where I’m standing, well, that’s what gives rise to the consciousness that over there is where you’re standing, and automatically I get a map, a compass. So my situation—no matter how bad it is—is my source of power.”

  “Well,” Ivan said. “That’s a very dangerous way of thinking, because it’s just that point of view that can be used to rationalize a lot of selfishness and oppression and greed. I’ll bet you were talking to that thief over by St. Lawrence who weighs his thumb, right?”

  “Well, maybe I’m misrepresenting him,” I said. “He was pretty enigmatic.”

  Ivan looked at me and smiled, but I could hardly bear the sweetness of it, so I turned away from him and went to the window.

  How handsome he was! How I wished I could contain the golden, wounding hope of him. But it had begun to diverge from me—oh, who knew how long before—and I could feel myself already reforming: empty, light.

  “So how are you?” Ivan said, joining me at the window.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s good not to be waiting for you.”

  “I’m sorry I missed Christmas here,” he said. “Montreal’s a nice place for Christmas. Next year, what do you say we try to do it right?”

  He put his arm around me, and I leaned against his shoulder while we looked out at the place where I’d been walking the day before. The evening had arrived at the moment when everything is all the same soft color of a shadow, and the city seemed to be floating close, very close, outside the window. How familiar it was, as if I’d entered and explored it over years. Well, it had been a short time, really, but it would certainly be part of me, this city, long after I’d forgotten the names of the streets and the colors of the light, long after I’d forgotten the feel of Ivan’s shirt against my cheek, and the darkening sight separated from me now by a sheet of glass I could almost reach out to shatter.

  Broken Glass

  As I exited through the terminal gate I thought, for an instant, that the plane had set me down in the exact spot from which it had lifted me up hours earlier, that I was distant only by some uniform tickings of the clock from the things I’d fled: the daily drive home from work past the hospital towers, the sight of the newspaper I’d combed every evening for articles that could penetrate the caul of pain and drugs in which my mother lay, the sounds of my own language, through which the furious chattering in my brain seemed to erupt with terrible force. Airports, train stations, hospitals—one looks much like another, whether it marks the beginning of a journey or the end; and when I reminded myself that I’d just flown several thousand miles, it was borne in upon me that my mother was going to be as dead here, now, as she had been in Chicago this morning.

  Lovers and family members called to one another in the crowded lobby and embraced, and I was claimed by Ray, as he insisted on being called, the real-estate agent who had located a place for me in the town I’d chosen almost at random from a huge and uninformative guidebook. When I held out my hand to him, something like alarm flickered in his face. Had he expected some other sort of woman? No matter; I didn’t want to know. We had about an hour’s drive ahead of us, and I was determined to avoid the sort of intimate, confessional conversation that strangers are said to have. I had not gone into the circumstances of my trip in my letter or over the phone—I preferred to be considered simply a vacationer.

  In the car I sat as far from Ray’s damp heartiness as possible, and I looked out the window while he talked. I’d never been far from Chicago, and I’d chosen to come to Latin America because of its unfamiliarity to my imagination. All the alluring places that during my mother’s lifetime I’d yearned to see belonged sealed now, I felt, in a completed past where they would remain contemporaneous with my mother.

  The colors of the landscape that flowed around me were soft and dense, but the light itself was a rippling gold, and the clumps of trees and the sandy slopes and hollows seemed like moving islands tilting toward, then away from us in the fragile ocean of air. Eventually, we descended into a plateau ringed by mountains, and the disorienting glitter of the air melted in the low warmth, and soon distinguishable ahead of us against the tawny dryness was a tumble of feathery green and blossoms. Ray nodded. “Been a prime piece of real estate for something like a thousand years,” he said soberly.

  We drove downward into a maze of cobbled streets bordered by high rosy walls, and we slowed to avoid a woman with several children who was crossing our path. On the woman’s head was a bundle—wrapped in plastic, I saw, as a pickup truck veered around us, raising a wake of brilliant dust. In the back of the truck was a crowd of men whose copper-colored faces and black hair shone above their work shirts. I glanced at the rather spongy person beside me. “Oh, you won’t be bored,” he said. “We have a wonderful group down here. Very fine people from all walks of life. Tennis, golf, sites of historical interest, pools. Perfect climate, of course—anything you want. To tell you the truth, we think we’re pretty clever. Not that we’d ever say so to our friends back home.” He smiled playfully, buoyed up for a moment by his own wit, and I turned away, mortified, as if I had seen something disastrously personal.

  We parked high up on one side of the town. I followed Ray through a large wooden gate and was astonished to see the lush garden that lay beyond the wall, just off the dry, dusty street. “You’re upstairs over the garage,” Ray said, leading me through the garden and across a slate patio to a white house with a tiled roof. “But we have to get the keys from Norman.”

  The front of the house was glass, and although the sun was too strong for me to see clearly into the unlit interior, I had the impression for an instant that a man, in something that looked like a bathrobe, hovered in back. “Mr. Egan. Mr. Egan,” Ray called, and as a woman came to the door the man I thought I’d seen became shadows. “Oh, hello, Dolores,” Ray said.

  “Mr. Egan is
not available,” the woman said, smiling at me. The words had a fresh, odd sound in her accent, as if their meaning were not quite set. “I will take you upstairs.”

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you, Dolores,” Ray said. “Just let me have the keys and we’ll manage.”

  Ray led me up a flight of whitewashed steps on the outside of the house to the door of what turned out to be a small apartment. “You needn’t worry much about tipping, by the way,” he said. “They don’t expect it. Just meals and that sort of thing. Well—kitchen, closet, bathroom. Oh, bed—well, obviously. Water’s generally potable, but you might boil to be on the safe side. We think it’s a nice little place. Norman’s wife used to use it as a sort of studio, I believe. I understand that she used to paint.” He paused, and something seemed to strike him. “Nice fellow, Norman. Of course, we can all use the extra income.”

  “Is she still living?” I asked.

  “Pardon me?” Ray said.

  “Mr. Egan’s wife,” I said. “Did she die?”

  “I see.” Ray nodded, as if I’d made some sort of point. “Not at all, not at all. Well, looks like Norman’s left you some provisions, but there are plenty of restaurants in town. Food’s quite safe as a rule. Have to watch out a bit for the men, of course, but nothing actually dangerous, I mean.” He held the keys out to me and then put them down on the table. “So,” he said, and looked at me, his arms at his sides.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”

  So he left, and I stood still to let the sound of his voice drain away into the heavy, bright, humming afternoon. Then I opened my suitcase and put my things in the closet and arranged my jars of lotions and creams on the bureau.

  What to do? At work I would have been finishing for the day, organizing my files for the next morning. And soon, at the hospital, the patients would be receiving little paper cups holding pills, like the cups of candies at a children’s birthday party.