The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  “But we couldn’t exactly invite them now, could we?” Nick pinched a lock of Jill’s yellow hair into a little switch and brushed at her face with it. “If you want, you can…bring them a casserole.”

  Nick said it to amuse her, Jill knew, but occasionally she would be overcome by an actual little terror that he really did yearn for something beyond their enveloping domesticity, that he might simply disappear one day back into the city, the palace of steel and glass that rose above the lake, bright blowy evenings and nights dense with reflections and murmurs.

  The city. As a child, Jill had driven in with her mother, to go to one of the stately old department stores, or to a matinee when the ballet came to town. She always wore one of her nicest dresses then, and Mary Janes with white knee socks. “Lock your door, Jill,” her mother would say, and at that moment the earth seemed to become transparent, and they would drive toward its center, penetrating worlds and then worlds. When they reemerged on the surface, which was settled on a human scale with houses and shrubs and newly covered driveways, her mother would draw in her breath deeply, and the road would heal up behind them and become opaque. But later the hidden day would emit around Jill the troubling light of a dream, and she could see herself and her mother sitting across from one another in the wood-paneled restaurant that smelled deliciously of rolls; she could see how they’d watched from the red plush seats as tiny figures spun and trembled on the distant stage, how they’d driven without stopping past sidewalks that glittered with glass and heat where congregations of thin black people sat on stoops fanning themselves and staring with inturned concentration and then along lakeside boulevards where the very rich strolled in the breeze and mild sun.

  “Don’t go away,” Jill said, reaching as Nick stood.

  He smiled and disengaged himself. “So, who are we tonight?” he said, disappearing into the dressing room.

  “No one exciting, I’m afraid,” she said. “Bud and Amanda. Kitsy and Owen.”

  “No one exciting!” he said. “Had you not realized that Kitsy has ensnared Bud?”

  “Nick, no.” Jill frowned. “What makes you think such a thing?”

  “A deep source,” Nick said. “No, but after all—subtlety is hardly Kitsy’s strong suit.”

  “What is it about me?” Jill said. “I never see these things.”

  “You,” Nick said, “are not meant to see such things.”

  Jill surveyed her distant toes for a moment. “Poor old Owen. Poor Amanda. Anyhow,” she said, “I don’t believe it.” Jill never believed the intermittent tales about Kitsy. She suspected that people made them up simply because Kitsy was so irresistibly unlikely a subject of the stormy infatuations and disappointments to which she was rumored to be susceptible. And Kitsy and Bud! No, impossible.

  “‘Poor Amanda’?” Nick said. “Is that what I heard you say? ‘Poor Amanda’? Poor Owen, yes. And poor Bud—obviously he’s only obliged Kitsy in order to get some response from ‘Poor Amanda.’ But you watch—Poor Amanda won’t even do Bud the courtesy of being jealous.”

  “Oh, dear. Well, in any case—” Jill sat up slowly, appearing in the mirror behind Nick. “I suppose I should go downstairs and see how things are going.” Was it the light, or were there circles under her eyes?

  Nick concentrated on the mirror, toweling his wet hair. “Amanda’s problem is that she considers herself to be irresistible.”

  “Well, she is very beautiful,” Jill said, letting herself lie back again into the square of sunlight that spilled over the pillow, “as even you must admit. And I think you’re hard on her. She loves Bud, in her own way.”

  “I wouldn’t absolutely count on that if I were you,” Nick said, but he turned from the mirror to smile directly at her.

  Jill really did like Amanda, and so, she was sure, did Nick. Nonetheless, it was partly for the pleasure of Nick’s protests that she would praise Amanda, whom she had known ever since Amanda had arrived, the new girl in Jill’s sixth-grade class, from California, the golden place where people’s fathers went when they got divorced. Amanda, equipped with bright loops of hair and an amazing charm bracelet, had been immediately and steadily the center of attention, and even then, her calm, puzzled stare of dis pleasure had been a terrible thing.

  “Oh, and Susan and Lyle are coming,” Jill said. “Is that better, or worse?”

  “That’s good,” Nick said, returning his attention to his hair. “I like them. And it’s fun to be charming to Susan.”

  “Nick, that’s wicked. You know it makes her uncomfortable.”

  “It doesn’t,” Nick said. “Why?”

  “Because,” Jill said, and stopped. It amused Nick, she knew, that she considered her Jewish friend exotic.

  “Because why?” Nick said.

  “Because she’s—oh, you know Susan. I mean she’s so…intelligent,” Jill said, and was rewarded as Nick exploded in laughter and gathered her up.

  “You’re wonderful,” he said. “Do you know that? You’re perfect.” And Jill tingled with a sheepish pride, like a child who has fortuitously performed some clever act. “By the way,” Nick said, stepping back to study her, “how are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” she said. Although actually, she noticed, she was feeling rather queasy. “Much better.”

  There had been no need, after all, for Jill to check on anything in the kitchen, where Roo had everything completely in hand.

  “Dressing—” Jill said. “Should I make some?”

  “All done,” Roo said.

  “And the silver?” Jill said.

  “Everything’s done, Mrs. Douglas,” Roo said.

  Four years earlier, when Roo had come to work, Jill had asked to be called by her first name, but Roo had simply, magically, caused the suggestion to vanish. Although the small formality had come to appear to Jill an implicit and constant antagonism, at the time she had hardly noticed—she had been far too grateful to have someone in the house who could take care of things so marvelously well.

  It was Amanda who had arranged it. Jill had been about to have Joshua, but she hadn’t wanted to leave work, and she had interviewed, she told Amanda, full scores of half-wits and psychopaths. Then, one week before Joshua was due, Amanda called. “Lucky Jill,” she said. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Subsequently, Amanda had not only become further involved with Roo but had involved herself with Roo’s family as well. Amanda had helped out financially when Roo had her own baby, James, two years ago, and Amanda had helped Roo’s sister May get into a nurse’s training program. Moreover, Amanda successfully waged an ongoing campaign to shame the entire neighborhood into providing odd jobs for Roo’s older brother, Dwayne, though he was too passive and defeated, Jill thought, to do a decent job of anything, even were he not taking drugs. And so, suppose she were to go completely insane and fire Roo because she couldn’t stand the tension, Jill had several times reminded herself, the fact was she would have to answer to Amanda.

  Happy shouts floated into the kitchen from the yard. Jill went to the window and saw Joshua and James working away with paper and crayons in the back yard, under the casual supervision of Katrina, who lay next to them, sunbathing. “It sounds like the boys are having fun,” Jill said.

  Roo relented and smiled.

  “I think I’ll go out and inspect,” Jill said. She hoped Roo didn’t think her own little smile was cowardly.

  “Joshua is making a portrait,” Katrina said, shading her eyes from the late glare and smiling up at Jill. She pulled up the straps of her inadequate bathing suit and sat up. Jill looked away for an instant. If she were that girl’s mother, she thought, and then remembered that Katrina’s mother was someone far away. “What is your picture, Joshua?” Katrina said.

  “Mommy,” Joshua said, without looking up. He was absorbed, or so it seemed, in his drawing, and Jill obligingly bent over to admire it: yellow crayon hair, round blue crayon eyes, pink crayon cheeks—it could have been a drawing of Nick’s idea of her.
“How pretty, darling.” And what a dazzling little boy Joshua was; how exactly like Nick. “Thank you.”

  “This is a picture of you, Mommy,” Joshua insisted with academic clarity.

  “And what about James?” Jill bent down over James’s squiggle-covered paper, and James looked up at her wide-eyed. He was so dark—much darker than Roo. “What is that, James?” she said.

  “Mommy…?” James said. He looked at Joshua, who did not respond.

  Jill resisted a potent impulse to pick James up. Her new baby would be—she was sure of it—much more approachable than Joshua, sweetly dependent, and cozy.

  “That’s mine—” Joshua yelled, grabbing for a crayon that James had casually reached for, and James started to wail as the crayon split in two.

  “Joshua,” Jill said. “You’ve frightened James.”

  “He broke it.” Joshua’s face was bare with outrage. “It was mine. I was using it, and he took it.”

  “It will work just as well like that,” Jill said. “Look—poor James. He’s frightened.”

  Joshua stared at her. “This is really not fair,” he announced.

  “Look, Joshua—” Katrina said. “Look at that little animal in the tree! What is that called? Look, look, look—” And Joshua did look while Katrina picked up James, who was now bellowing with sorrow.

  It was too complex, Jill thought as she returned inside, it was too difficult. How could Joshua be expected to know how to behave or to feel? And James—surely it couldn’t be good for James. Of course Jill wanted the boys to be together on an entirely equal basis, but there could be no pretending that their situation was identical—how could there be? With Roo working in the house? It would be transparently false of her to pretend such a thing, and therefore unsettling to both the boys.

  Yet, even as it was, she felt that she seemed to be in the wrong about something, and that no matter what she did—since things would necessarily remain unsatisfactory in one way or another—it would still seem to be she who was in the wrong. But what more could she do? Every action, every thought, was fastidious. Yet it was as if they were engaged in some secret war, the terms of which were known only to Roo. Well, she was just going to have to speak frankly, she decided, as she stepped into the kitchen. “Roo—” she said.

  “Yes, Mrs. Douglas,” Roo said, but the blood that was crashing in Jill’s ears drowned out her thought.

  “I don’t know what I was about to say,” she said. “Isn’t that silly? Oh—in any case, I tried to think of anything I might need Dwayne for, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything right now.”

  Roo didn’t glance at Jill, though she must have known, Jill thought, that she was desperate to have something done about the garage. “Yes, Mrs. Douglas,” Roo said.

  “At least there isn’t anything at the moment,” Jill said.

  Still, perhaps it was best that Roo understand that Jill did not intend to have Dwayne around her house again. After the last time, when he’d done the floors, Jill had been so concerned that she actually checked the silver, as absurd as that was, she realized when she calmed down. But he had been so high—“I’m sorry,” Jill said.

  “Dwayne’s out in St. Louis now, anyhow,” Roo said. “He’s got something steady.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful,” Jill said. Wonderful, though if Roo had only bothered to mention it earlier, they could have avoided this dangerous exchange.

  “Mother,” Joshua said from right next to Jill.

  “Hey, now,” Roo said. “Where did you come from?”

  “Mother, do I get to help you?” Joshua said.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello to Roo?” Jill reminded him.

  “I want to help you,” Joshua said.

  “Don’t whine, please,” Jill said. “We’re all finished. Look, Roo’s even finished with the fruit salad.”

  “Roo?” Joshua said.

  “Yes, baby.” Roo ruffled his hair, and he smoothed it out automatically.

  A year or so earlier Jill had been bringing a stained tablecloth down to the basement to be laundered, and there was Joshua, sobbing in Roo’s arms, absolutely shrieking, really, with an extravagance that was unfamiliar to Jill, as Roo rocked him. When they saw Jill, Joshua stopped crying immediately, and Roo set him down. Joshua walked out then, right past Jill, and Roo turned back to her work as Jill stood, holding the tablecloth. The truth was that Jill had been riven by jealousy at the time. Of course she was ashamed of her jealousy later, and she had regretted that, after the episode, Joshua had become so formal, really rather distant with Roo. Still, even that formality was better than the actual rudeness Joshua was displaying this afternoon. Where could he be picking that up?

  “Roo,” Joshua said, “is James coming back again Tuesday?”

  “Depends on whether May’s working Tuesday,” Roo said. “If May can’t mind him for me, I’ll have to bring him.”

  Joshua sighed theatrically and scuffed his feet.

  “Joshua,” Jill warned.

  But Joshua overrode her. “He doesn’t play right. He breaks things. He’s too little.”

  “I know, baby,” Roo said. “That’s why you’ve got to be patient with him.” But Joshua shook her hand from his shoulder, sighed again, and scuffed his way loudly to the screen door, which he allowed to slam behind him.

  “I don’t know what that’s all about,” Jill said, burning. “He adores James. He’s always asking for James.”

  Altogether it was a relief when the doorbell rang. Owen and Kitsy were the first to arrive, and when Jill opened the door, Owen was already in the middle of a bow. “Goodness me—” he said. His voice was a graphitelike emollient, a granular medium in which the words spread out soothingly.

  Jill laughed and kissed him. How innocent he made the world seem; he was so completely himself, rueful and mysterious, precariously balanced, like an underwater explorer. Behind thick, gogglelike glasses, his eyes swam in unstable magnification.

  “Mosquito,” Kitsy said, slapping.

  “Uh-oh,” Nick said. He put an arm around Kitsy and gave Owen a pleased, telegraphic nod. “Let’s run for cover.”

  “Let us,” Owen said, wandering inside. “Possibly the shelter of the bar…”

  “What to drink?” Jill asked.

  “They’ve got me on Scotch tonight,” Owen said vaguely.

  “Gin-tonic, please, darlin’,” Kitsy said. “A healthy one. I’ve been doing battle with the tomatoes all day.” Kitsy smoothed back her oat-colored hair as her attention traveled across the room, randomly encountering and dismissing objects. “I don’t know how you do it all,” she said. “And with a job. Jobs, tomatoes, Joshua…” Could it be true, Jill wondered, about Kitsy and Bud? Kitsy was so…like a parakeet on a perch—blinking and rounded over her prim little feet. But when the doorbell rang, Kitsy didn’t move, though her eyes brightened and narrowed.

  Bud and Amanda and Susan and Lyle arrived in a clump and were reabsorbed, after some initial milling, into configurations that left Jill with Bud and Susan. Bud looked controlled, Jill saw—possibly furious, and when, in another part of the room, Amanda laughed, he closed his eyes almost blissfully for an instant, before turning his attention, with surplus force, to Susan. “So where do you get all these wonderful garments, Susan?” he said, tugging at a tassel on the large shawl she wore.

  “Oh—” Susan waved her hand and laughed, but Bud waited unyieldingly with a half-smile and lifted eyebrows. “All right,” Susan said. She cleared her throat. “Well, this particular one’s from Mexico. And it is lovely, thank you, Bud, isn’t it?” She turned to Jill, and her large eyes looked lost, and metallic. “You know, when Lyle and I were back in March, we didn’t see anything of this caliber. Hardly any cotton at all, in fact. Isn’t that odd? It was my understanding that they grew it.”

  “Cash crop,” Bud said. “Grow it for export.”

  “Oh, yes,” Susan said dubiously. “Well, that doesn’t sound so good, does it?”

  Clearly
Bud was beginning to enjoy himself now, Jill saw, that Susan was flustered. Really, he was rather attractive with that little space between his teeth and his raffish, dark halo of receding hair. “Hear you’ve been having the worst kind of trouble with that painter you and Lyle have in your beach house,” he said.

  “Gracious, this drink,” Susan said. “Naughty Jill.” But Bud only looked down at his glass and swirled the ice patiently, so Susan, patting at a fan-shaped ornament that was struggling upward from her heavy hair, sighed and continued. “I’m afraid it did turn into a bit of a melee,” she said.

  “What a shame,” Bud said. “But very generous of you and Lyle.”

  “Well, the man’s an enormous talent,” Susan said. To her astonishment, Jill saw Kitsy direct a damp, shining glance in their direction, but Bud shifted slightly, so that his back was squarely to her. “And the dreadful truth is that Lyle and I hardly ever use the place. So we thought, now isn’t it criminal to waste it like this when there must be—oh, well…” She laughed self-deprecatingly.

  “Not a bad way to pick up a bargain,” Bud said. He laughed along with her, then made an elaborate display of sobering. “Oh, Bud, how vulgar,” he said in falsetto.

  “Not that Lyle and I minded for ourselves,” Susan said, reddening. “But the Foleys found trash all over their beach. And they actually had to call the police about the noise…” Bud clucked sympathetically.

  Susan, having gained momentum, was now irrepressibly confidential. “We did manage to get him out finally,” she said. “But there was quite a scene. He pointed his finger, and accused Lyle of ‘artistic imperialism’ if you can believe it.”