The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  “I’ll bear your difficulties in mind, sir,” Mr. Laskey said.

  “It does me good to hear you say this,” the driver said, “because in a situation like today I starve.”

  The cab, which had been hurtling from side to side, causing Alice to turn a delicate green, was indeed slowing down almost to a standstill. “It costs me more to hire the fucking car on a day like this than I can make.”

  “I will, as I’ve said, sir, bear that in mind,” Mr. Laskey said. “Jane, human beings do not lead difficult lives for your personal amusement. Our driver is understandably anxious, but once we get past the bridge traffic everything will be fine.”

  But within one more block they had entered a solid mass of honking horns in which Kyla’s fatigue seemed to entrap her like amber. And after a time Mr. Laskey leaned forward. “What’s the problem, driver?” he said. “We haven’t moved for twenty minutes.”

  “What’s the problem?” the driver said. “The problem is we aren’t moving. Or, wait—you mean to ask what’s causing the problem.”

  “That was my intention,” Mr. Laskey said. A pulse had begun to throb in his forehead. “Yes.”

  The driver turned around and stared at Mr. Laskey. “Oh, hey—” he said, and struck the side of his head with his palm “—I get it! From which, ah…planet do you folks hail?”

  “Perhaps you’ll be so kind…” Mr. Laskey said.

  “With pleasure,” the driver said. He turned the radio up savagely, but it was almost impossible for Kyla to hear through the static and the honking what it was saying. There was an apartment building, somewhere near their hotel, and there were policemen—

  “Who?” Janey was yelling over all the noise. “What did he do?”

  “‘Who?’” the driver yelled back. “‘What?’ Incredible. Every radio station in the city. Every television network in the universe. More blood per cubic foot than the siege of Stalingrad. Where are you from, folks, seriously now—New Jersey?”

  “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” Janey was shouting.

  “This is not important, Jane,” Mr.

  Laskey said. “Not important,” the driver said. “Right. Not important. Well, of course it’s not important. You types really stick together, don’t you? Sure, if the guy’s rich enough, if the guy’s handsome enough, if the guy remembers what kind of mineral water each of his patients drinks, it’s just not important if he bludgeons his wife to death with a floor lamp, is it. It’s not important that he pulverized her.”

  “I don’t think this is strictly—” Mr. Laskey began.

  “Oh, pardon,” the driver said. “I have the honor of addressing a gentleman of the law, I’ll wager. It’s been alleged that this guy liquefied his wife; it’s been alleged that the neighbors waded in through body parts; it’s been alleged that he fled, dragging his poor little child with him, to his girlfriend’s apartment where the cops later found a sweater, all gunked up with hair and blood that allegedly matches his wife’s; and now it’s being alleged that he’s up on the roof with this kid and he’s—”

  “Sir, I do not think—” Mr. Laskey said, and Alice began to cry.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Alice,” Janey said. “No one cares about you.”

  “That’s right, Alice,” Mr. Laskey said. “Nothing’s going to happen to any of us.”

  “Oh, hey—” The driver turned around. He looked into Alice’s eyes and took her hand. “Hey, I’m sorry, darlin’. It’s going off, right now.” He turned the radio off. “Click, right? No more depressing stories.”

  “Sir,” Alice said, and rubbed her cheek against his hand.

  Mr. Laskey sighed. “Alice, sweetheart,” he said, “let the man drive.”

  “Why did he do it?” Janey said. “Daddy?”

  “We’ll never know, Jane,” Mr. Laskey said. “Normal people can never penetrate the mind of a sick individual.” He rolled down his window and thrust his head out.

  “The wife was trash,” the driver said. “What do you want to bet? A slut. A nag. A gold-digger. All the same, he should’ve just divorced her.”

  “Girls—” Mr. Laskey looked at his watch. “I’m afraid it would be a great deal faster to walk at this point.”

  “Hey, listen to this guy, kids!” the driver said. “The original rocket scientist. It would be faster to walk! When do you think Mr. Wizard got a chance to perform the calculations? Say”—he turned around with raised eyebrows—“how’s right here for you folks?”

  “Do we get to pat the goaties?” Alice said as Mr. Laskey opened the door.

  “Alice,” Janey said, “you’re confused again.”

  Mr. Laskey handed the driver a bill. “Here you are, sir. I sincerely hope this will recompense you for your time.”

  “And I, sir”—the driver dropped the bill into the gutter—“sincerely hope this will encourage you to reinsert your patronizing shit back up your butt, where it came from.”

  “The second we get inside,” Mr. Laskey said as they straggled up the steps to the hotel, “I want you to get yourselves upstairs—It’s way past three. Way, way past three,” he added, shaking his head ominously. “And I want you to wash those hands. Alice’s especially.”

  “Her hands are clean,” Alice said loftily. “She washed them after lunch.”

  “That was after lunch,” Mr. Laskey said. “You’ve touched God knows what since.”

  As they stepped inside the hotel, five or six young men in uniforms—bellboys and desk clerks—swiveled away from a small television on the front desk. Their eyes, brilliant with excitement, dimmed immediately into courteous greeting. “Hello, Mr. Laskey,” one of them said. “Horrifying, this business, isn’t it?”

  “Horrifying,” Mr. Laskey said, glancing at his watch irritably. “Come along, girls.”

  “Oh, Mr. Laskey—” Donald disengaged himself from the group and hurried over.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Laskey frowned back at Donald.

  Donald hesitated.

  “Yes?” Mr. Laskey said. He paused, looking at his watch again, and Alice bumped into his leg.

  “That is,” Donald said, “Miss Shawcross was here for you. I’m afraid she just left.”

  “Didn’t she get my message?” Mr. Laskey said.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Donald said.

  “My mother’s on the phone?” Alice said.

  “Shut up, Alice,” Janey said.

  Alice tugged Mr. Laskey’s sleeve. “Janey said, ‘Shut up, Alice,’” she reported.

  “Be quiet, Alice,” Mr. Laskey said. “But I left her a message at her office. Didn’t she get it?”

  “I don’t know, sir. She didn’t say.”

  Alice sat down suddenly on the carpet.

  “Your dress, Alice!” Janey exclaimed. “Get off your butt. Mother would kill you!”

  “My mother would kill you,” Alice said, but she scrambled to her feet, swatting at her rear end.

  “How are my girls?” Donald said. “Imaginations cooler in the light of day?” He winked at Janey, who gazed serenely at a point on the other side of his head.

  Mr. Laskey appeared to wake from a trance. “Don’t we say hello to people who say hello to us?” he said.

  “Ah, Stan—” Donald said, and one of the uniformed men wrenched himself away from the TV screen to open the door for a man with a briefcase, and the blaring of horns entered the lobby.

  “This is the damnedest business,” Mr. Laskey said. “God damn it.”

  “Horrible, sir,” Donald said. His eyes flicked eagerly toward the TV. “Incredible what a human being can do, isn’t it?”

  “You can play with your toys, Alice,” Janey said. “You don’t have to just lie there.”

  “Yes, I do,” Alice said. “It’s nap time.” A large tear trickled from each eye.

  “What’s the matter?” Janey said. “Are you afraid to fall asleep? Are you afraid of having another nightmare?”

  “I want to go home,” Alice said. “I want to se
e Mommy. I want Billy and the big rope.”

  “Is she all right?” Kyla said. “What does she mean?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Janey said. “She gets Billy Jacobs to tie her up.”

  “I don’t feel well,” Alice said. She rolled over into her pillow.

  Kyla looked at Janey. “Should we get your father?” she said.

  “No,” Janey said. “She’s playing. Are you playing, Alice?”

  “Yes,” Alice said mournfully. “I’m playing Disease.”

  “Nurse—” Janey said. “The patient in bed number one has a horrible disease. She needs a sleeping potion.”

  “Right away, Doctor,” Kyla said, and poured a glass of water in the bathroom.

  Alice fell asleep before she even finished her water, and Janey picked up the big book she’d brought along, but Kyla looked at the dark TV screen. “Don’t you want to see what’s happening?” she said.

  “No,” Janey said. “I’m reading.”

  Kyla stood up and looked out the window. But of course there was nothing to see except tall apartment buildings, where everyone would be watching television to see what was happening. And below, nothing but stalled traffic stretching on and on, lines of cars like strands of colored beads. Lots of blue and green and black, more yellow, not so many red…If there were fewer than fifteen red, it wouldn’t happen. If there were more than fifteen…The steely hand on the child’s shoulder, the caress of metal against soft hair, the entire universe exploding in her skull, vanishing into thin air. The entire universe exploding—the universe—how many times was Kyla going to have to see it? To hear it? “Please let’s turn it on,” Kyla said. “Just for a second.”

  “No,” Janey said. “I don’t want Alice to wake up. I don’t want Alice to freak out again. My father said we should rest, because we’re going to the ballet tonight. My father’s the one who’s paying for this hotel. My father’s the one who paid to bring you along.”

  “I know,” Kyla said.

  “Stuff like this happens all the time,” Janey said. “Even at home. There was this person at home, in fact, who was a famous judge, but his wife was a secret drug addict, and he was afraid someone would find out. So one day he said, ‘Goodbye, dear, kiss kiss, I’m going away on a trip to get lots of presents to bring home to you, and I’ll be back in a few days.’ So he drove his car down the street and waved to all the neighbors and he put a plastic bag over his clothes so he wouldn’t get blood on his tie, and he snuck back. Lucky for him, it was the coldest winter in a hundred years, and there were icicles hanging from all the trees and houses. So he opened the door and dragged his wife outside and snapped off the biggest icicle he could reach and he stabbed it into her stomach stab stab, and there was splash splash blood all over the place and his wife tried to scream but she was dead. And then the judge snuck back to his car and drove to the airport and flew away. And the next day the sun came out and all the blood and the murder weapon melted into the ground.”

  “So how did they catch him?” Kyla said.

  “How should I know?” Janey said, and turned back to her book. “Nobody, ick, talks about it, obviously.”

  From down below the soft tumult rose gently, like the sounds of a beach, Kyla thought, when your eyes are closed. What was going on out there? What was happening? Everybody else could see. Donald was watching, and the taxi driver and the waitress would be somewhere by now watching, and all the people in all the other rooms of the hotel and in the little buildings out the window, and Miss Shawcross, and far away, in the mountains, Richie was watching—Richie was watching helplessly—and across the body-choked lagoons, Mrs. Laskey and Ellen and Courtney were watching, and her mother and Dr. Loeffler, twisting together on the sofa, were watching, their blood pounding and their eyes shining—

  No—her mother was alone, pale, sitting bolt upright and trembling for the poor little child, not with Dr. Loeffler, that was what Janey thought; Kyla sprang up and turned on the television. “…to de-lethalize the situation—” a voice was saying. Janey reached the dial before the picture even came on, but Alice was awake already, and crying. “Thanks, Kyla,” Janey said. “Thanks a lot, old buddy.”

  “I’m sorry—” Kyla said.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Alice roared. “Where’s my daddy?”

  “Hush, Alice,” Janey said, curling up beside her on the cot. “Daddy’s asleep in the next room.”

  But Alice had begun to scream. “Should we get your father?” Kyla whispered. “Do you think we should go get your father?”

  “Our father’s asleep,” Janey said. “Our father’s resting. Our father’s asleep in the next room, and he doesn’t want to be bothered, and plus, she’s going to get over it.”

  All Around Atlantis

  When do I think about you? Never, these days—almost never. When I was what, about twenty, I suppose, I finally got around to reading the little book you’d written about Sándor. It only took an afternoon, and when I finished, I put the book away, along with various old, disorderly feelings, and just left the whole clutter for about thirty years’ worth of dust to settle over.

  Well, except for once, when Neil (a person who used to be my husband) returned from a business trip to somewhere and mentioned that he’d happened to catch a glimpse, on some highbrow TV talk show, of a man—perhaps the man I’d mentioned at some time—who seemed possibly to have been something of an authority on my uncle, or my mother’s uncle, or whatever it was Sándor had been to me. Naturally, that sort of called you up for a bit, and then you sank back out of my thoughts again.

  But you know what, Peter? Yesterday at the service, I turned around at exactly the moment you showed up and slipped into the back row. So what do you think of that?

  After the service, I walked through the park. It was raining and the sky was a kindly color, soft and gray. The fountains were steaming in the cold. I was glad for the mournful, commiserating weather—the gentle, chilly rain and the vaporous air. I’ll bet you were annoyed, though. You were probably scrambling for a taxi, running home for a hot shower and a nice, relaxing something or other before cocktails or a dinner. Or maybe you ducked in someplace to brood over a cup of coffee. Or not to brood.

  In the park we were all bundled up. Everyone was wearing big, dark coats and silly, serviceable winter hats. I’d grabbed that beautiful old challis scarf of Lili’s—remember it?—from her closet to wrap around my head because I left my own particular silly, serviceable winter hat on the plane, in some fit of pure hysterical disorganization.

  The children were covertly testing their galoshes in the puddles, and the adults were all soldiering on with big, black umbrellas. And then something happened. The rain got gentler and gentler, and then even gentler. And then it simply stayed where it was, hanging in the air like a beaded curtain. Everything halted; the world was between breaths—no motion, no sound…

  And when the world started up again, what was falling was snow—large, airy clumps of it, like blossoms tumbling silently from a bucket.

  In a moment everything was covered with big, white blossoms—us, the trees, the ground…The umbrellas looked like parasols. Everything was silent. Everything was muffled and remote, as though it were a picture. A distant brightness and the scent of flowers swelled into the air, and my heart fluttered as though I’d awakened in a picture of something that had existed briefly a long time ago—a memory.

  But whose memory was it? Not mine, exactly; it wasn’t a memory of mine.

  Did you look for me yesterday? Well, of course, you might not have recognized me. I wish I hadn’t been so timid! But did you look for me—did you have some thought like, Yes, Anna must be here…?

  Imagine, talking about Lili all these years later! What would you have said, I wonder. For that matter, what would I have said, myself?

  Because now, of course, we’re the same age, you and I, but the gap between us used to be so large! Especially when you first appeared—my eleven or twelve to your eighteen or nineteen. And naturally
I developed a habit of thinking of you as the given—immutable, an adult; and I, a child, as open to scrutiny, correction, evaluation…So it didn’t even strike me until last night, hours after catching that glimpse of you (and then it struck me forcibly), that you probably didn’t even notice, back then, the things that felt, from the inside, like me—what constituted me.

  Did you ever hear that once when Lili cut her finger I fainted? The fact is, I’ve been waiting my whole life for her death. When I was little, years before you arrived, I used to watch her so intently…making breakfast, getting dressed for work…as though it was only my vigilance that would prevent her from vanishing off the face of the earth.

  Even years after I left home, I knew when she was sick, I knew when she was frightened, I knew when something had happened to cause her pain. When the phone rang, I knew if it was Lili who was calling. And I thought surely that when she died a jagged line would streak through my heart, cracking it in two.

  Well, as it happened, not at all. When the time came, as it happened, I was out in the desert, working quite serenely on some old bits of a pot, trying to grasp what they had to say about a group of people who seem to have once lived in that area, in vast pueblos. The sky was just shining, Peter—shining and blue—but all day long, messages were flying around right over my head.

  And when I got back to Albuquerque, my answering machine was choked with frantic calls—Lionel’s, from Brooklyn, my son, Eric’s, from L.A….

  But how did you hear, I wonder. I doubt your heart cracked in two. Did you learn from a colleague at whatever university you’re adorning these days? Or maybe one of those old men who sit all curled over on the park benches like fallen leaves spotted you and beckoned you over. Or maybe you saw the tiny notice in the Times; I imagine you’ve begun to check the obits these days, yourself.

  A jolt, yes? Sándor, Lili, the apartment, even the sullen, dark-haired child who was me, shoved out onto the stage in front of you. I can just imagine your face: Human feelings! Right there for anyone to see—irritation, smugness, mortal panic, regret…I’m sure you cleaned it all up immediately, but it must have hurt, really, didn’t it? I’d love to know that it hurt.