“Hey, Nance.” Remorseful, Nina leaned across the table and took her sister’s hand. “That was mean of me. A low blow. I’m sorry.”
“Sure.” Nancy shrugged, her eyes down.
“Don’t be mad at me,” Nina said. “Let’s not throw this whole evening away. Nance—I’m really sorry.”
Nancy nodded. “Well, Nina, it’s just—I don’t want you to hurt Mom. You probably forget what it’s like around here. Everybody dumps on her. Me, too. She’s kind of a saint, Nina. If there’s anything I believe in,” Nancy said in a low voice, “anything at all in this world, it’s Mom. Well, you know what they say—ignorance is bliss. So I figure, let her be a little bit blissful.”
They both fell silent. In the living room, they heard the sound of the TV. “Hey, how’s old Emmett,” Nancy said. “You still kiss him on the mouth?”
Nina smiled. “You and Mitch should get together. He can’t stand it when I do that.” She put the empty bottles on the floor. “Okay, Nance. You’re right. I won’t tell Mom about me and Mitch.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Did you take my shoelace?” Mitch said.
“What?” Nina was in the kitchen, opening a can of cat food for Emmett.
“My shoelace. Did you take it?”
“Oh, right; I borrowed a lace from that boot you’re going to have soled. One of mine broke—”
Mitch appeared in the doorway. “I didn’t give you permission.”
“Oh, pardon me, sir. My lace snapped, sir, and yours was handy, sir.…” Mitch wasn’t laughing. Nina put down Emmett’s dish. Could he be serious? Straightening up, she studied his face. “I didn’t realize you were so fond of that particular lace. There it be—safe as houses.” She gestured to her own boot.
“It would be nice if you asked before you took.” His tone was aggrieved. Definitely not jokey.
“Mitch, you weren’t using the boot. My lace broke and—”
“It’s the principle of the thing, Nina. It’s my shoelace. Out of courtesy you might have asked first before you grabbed.”
Grabbed? “Well, I’m sorry.” Bending down, she yanked the lace out. “Here! It’s all yours.” She threw the lace at him and, with her shoe flapping, stalked into the other room. The trouble with stalking in this place was that you couldn’t stalk very far. She got to the bathroom, hesitated, then, sensing his eyes on her, stalked in there and shut the door with a decisive take-that bang. In the bathroom, of course, there was even less space. She sat down on the rim of the tub, seething but without knowing quite what she was seething over. Had they had a fight, or not? A fight over a shoelace? This was ridiculous.
Suddenly she opened the door and yelled, “This is bloody ridiculous!” Then she slammed the door again.
She’d been back from her visit home for two days, and it seemed to her that they had had more stupid fights and pointless arguments in those two days than in all the preceding weeks. Had they really snapped at each other yesterday in the supermarket about which brand of baked beans to buy? And last night about the radio station Nina had tuned to? Good lord! She tapped her foot furiously. She had returned from her visit home full of expectations for their reunion, a kind of glory of rising music in her head. Reunion music. Bugles and sunrises and thudding hearts. Corny movie stuff, but there it was: she was excited, no, rapturous at the thought of seeing Mitch again.
He’d been waiting for her when she got off the bus. A thrill went through her, almost like the first time they’d really connected—that pang of recognition, that trembling in her stomach. She stopped dead still for a moment to look at him, just to take in the sight of him. On the grimy sidewalk, in the midst of all the people in their drab winter clothes with their weary winter faces, he glowed. A scarf was knotted loosely around his neck; his head was bare, and he’d had a haircut. Cut off all his curls! She stared, shocked. His hair was down to nearly a stubble. His eyes in that round skull were large and luminous.
She threw her arms around him. “You cut your hair!”
“You don’t like it?” Then—how strange!—he’d smiled as if he hoped she didn’t like this different-looking Mitch.
She had come back full of stories about home, Nancy, her brothers. She talked all the way to the apartment, glancing up now and then at his shaved head. Each time, a shock. Mitch listened to her, nodded, asked questions, but … something was wrong. Nina hung on his arm. Mitch allowed her to hang there. That was it. He allowed it. Allowed the hugs … allowed the kisses she planted on his face at every corner. She was wooing him, but no returns. Just that shaven head. “Well, that’s enough about me.” She kept it light, her voice cheery. Maybe she was imagining all this about his shaven head and his uncharacteristic reserve? “I really missed you.” She hugged his arm. “I want to hear about you. Everything. Every detail,” she had ordered.
“I went to work. Ate. Slept. Watched some TV. Read the newspapers. That’s it. Nothing exciting. Nothing to tell, really.”
“Sure there is. Must be. Did you see anything good on TV? Go to any movies? Did anybody call us? What about work? Did you phone your sister like you said you were going to?”
“Mmm. Called Trissy once, and then she called me a couple of days later.”
“Terrific!” She sounded ridiculous, like a cheerleader. Yay, troops, you’re doing great. Loud and cheerful even when they were losing the game. “Look,” she said in a quieter voice, “are you all right?”
“Why not?” His eyes tilted away from hers. “You’re back, aren’t you?”
“I sure am!” The cheerleader again. “But my woman’s intuition tells me something is not quite right.”
He squeezed her arm. “Everything’s fine.” He changed the subject, said living near a college was unreal. “Where else do you have a neighborhood that the entire population suddenly deserts for two weeks? This whole shebang is like a ghost town. I should have moved a long time ago. I could probably get a much better place somewhere else for the same money.”
“Leave the apartment?” A chill across her shoulders. Was he including her in the plans?
“We’ll find another one.”
All right, he said we.… Still, something amiss. She’d joked about her woman’s intuition, but that was all she had to go on. A feeling. Sensing a shadow over his face even when he smiled.
Back in the apartment, he had turned on the radio, fidgeting with the dials. “So, how does everything look to you?”
“Great,” she had said. A little messy, but so what? “How’re we doing on food?” She investigated the refrigerator. “You know what, Mitch? I really missed shopping and cooking while I was home. Would you believe it? It was like a vacation—my mother did everything, but I kept thinking how we wouldn’t have bought this or we would have bought more of that.” She heard herself chattering. She picked Emmett up again for another long hug. “Was Fatty good? Did he bug you?”
“He was okay. We kept our distance from each other and got along respectably.”
She went to clean the catbox. She had smelled it the moment she walked in. Phew. How did Mitch stand that? Holding out on that, too, until she returned. One chore he flatly refused to do, although he complained like hell if she let it go too long. Well, he’d cared for Emmett the whole time she was away. She wasn’t going to say anything about the awful state of the box. That would definitely be ungracious—ungrateful.
Pouring fresh litter into the box, she had wondered if Mitch was resentful that he’d been left with Emmett. Could that be it? It didn’t occur to her then, nor did it occur to her as she sat on the rim of the tub, seething over the silly shoelace fight, that what he resented, what he was nursing like a wound, was that she had left him in the first place.
Chapter Seventeen
Lynell had also returned early to campus, and the three of them agreed to celebrate New Year’s Eve together. That is, Mitch and Lynell agreed after talking on the phone the morning after the shoelace fight. That had never really been settled. Instead, they
had both seemed to agree to let it drop. Nina had emerged from the bathroom, calmed down and determined to see the funny side of this business. “Safe to come out?” she’d asked. “Or am I about to be beaten with a shoelace?” Mitch laughed, looked relieved, and said, in a half apology, “I guess you never knew shoelaces could be a delicate subject.”
Fine. That was that. But the next morning there was another difficulty. Hanging up after talking to Lynell, Mitch said, “We’re picking up Lynell later when we go out.” Fait accompli.
Nina had heard his end of the conversation of course. “Look, you can’t stay alone on New Year’s Eve.… No, don’t be …” A pause, then “Come with us. Of course you won’t be in the way!” And a moment later, another vigorous protest, “No, Nina won’t mind.”
Well, as a matter of fact, she did mind. She had thought New Year’s, coming so soon on the heels of their separation, would be a special evening just for the two of them. Besides, there’d been so much tension in these few days, she’d hoped the whole process of dressing up and going out together would break the evil spell. It wasn’t Lynell she objected to. It could have been Sonia. It could have been anyone, and she would have minded. But when Mitch told her Lynell was going out with them, Nina just nodded and said, “Sure, great.” Well, what was she supposed to do? Stamp her foot? Refuse to go?
But she was disturbed. Mitch denied anything was wrong, but it was Nina’s impression that by including Lynell, he was keeping a distance between them—that distance Nina had sensed ever since she returned. A distance he insisted was all in her imagination. But it was there. Oh, yes, it was there! Irritated with her over a shoelace? Come on! Absolutely, something was wrong; only she didn’t have a clue to what it could be.
They met Lynell later that evening. “Mitch!” she exclaimed. “Your hair. You look like one of those handsome young punks from the fifties.”
“You like it?”
“I love it!” Lynell linked arms with him.
“I’m still getting used to it,” Nina said, smarting because she hadn’t reacted with the same enthusiasm Lynell showed.
They walked down the street arm in arm. Snow fell. A hazy moon appeared on the horizon. “Would you believe it’s warmer outside than in my apartment?” Mitch said.
Nina, suddenly sensitive to every nuance, heard that my and said, “It was so cold last night, our teeth chattered,” just so she could say our.
“As friend D.G. would say, literally chattered?” Lynell shivered extravagantly in her down jacket and big fuzzy white mittens. “I believe it. Oh, take me back to sunny Cal.”
“Well, we like winter, anyway,” Nina said, getting in another we, and conscious of how silly this underground war—or whatever it was—was getting to be. A moment later she really regretted her proprietary remarks. Apparently nothing escaped Lynell.
“We?” Lynell said, smiling. “Love the way you say that, little Nina. Is that we, as in the royal we?”
Nina wished she had the nerve to tell Lynell to bloody cut out that little Nina stuff. Just cut it out, Lynell! Stow it! Stuff it!
They made the rounds of several places, drank, danced, and ended at midnight in a bar called the Green Rooster. The lights were dimmed. A feverish excitement leaped through the room. Bells rang. Screams and cheers. “Happy New Year! Happy New Year!” A horn blew, then another. Nina found herself being kissed by a guy with a red ponytail from the next table. He leaned over the space, grabbed her by the shoulders. “Happy New Year, doll.” He smelled of cigarettes and beer and didn’t want to let her go.
She turned to Mitch, who was kissing Lynell. A real kiss, she noted, not just a peck on the lips. Tapping him on the back, she announced, “Okay, my turn!”
They left the Green Rooster with Mitch between Lynell and Nina. “What now?” Lynell asked. “Are you guys going to flake out on me?” Drinking had put unaccustomed color into her normally pale cheeks.
They decided they would stay up all night and listen to John Lennon records in Nina and Mitch’s place. In their apartment Nina put the records on the stereo while Mitch got a bottle of wine, crackers, and glasses. They sprawled on the bed, wrapping blankets around themselves. Thinking about John Lennon as his voice filled the room, tears came to Nina’s eyes. Why should someone so young and talented have died? There was so much sadness in the world. Her grandmother was sick. Her father had been sick for years. Her mother worked too hard. And Nancy was stuck in a lousy factory job. She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“What’s the matter, Nins?”
“I don’t know. I just feel so sad.” But at once she felt better. Mitch had noticed she was sad; his voice had been warm and caring. She hugged his arm and kissed his ear, wishing Lynell would go home.
“You shouldn’t be sad on the New Year,” Lynell said. “It’s bad luck.”
“She’s a little smashed,” Mitch said. And to Nina, “You get smashed so easy, honey.”
“I know,” she sniffled. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it.” Emmett climbed into her lap, and Nina dried her face on his fur.
Soon Lynell and Mitch got into an argument about the difference between truth and nastiness in John Lennon’s music. “Nastiness—I’d even call it malice—was an integral part of his art.…”
“All his songs aren’t nasty. How can you say that?”
“Now, listen to what I’m saying. I didn’t mean all his songs, but when you examine the lyrics—”
Nina didn’t want to examine the lyrics. She just wanted to listen to the music and feel it. There were times when she didn’t understand what some of the words meant, but the song still swept through her. That was enough for her. Long before either Mitch or Lynell gave up on their argument, Nina, bored and sleepy, yawning uncontrollably, pulled a blanket over her shoulders and fell asleep. Some time later, she was vaguely aware of Mitch getting in next to her.
In the morning, when she woke up, she saw Lynell, covered with a quilt, sleeping on the couch. Her hair fanned out around her shoulders. Her jeans and shirt were on the floor.
Nina’s eyes ached, the inside of her mouth was dry and pasty. An unpleasant thumping started in the back of her head. Damn. A hangover. She stared at Lynell, curled up, her mouth slightly parted; stared at the heap of clothes on the floor. She smelled the light perfume Lynell used. Emmett climbed up on her stomach. She pushed him away. “I’m not in the mood now, Emmett!”
Chapter Eighteen
The room is dark, lit only by the glow from the street. Arms twined around each other’s necks, foreheads pressed together, Nina and Mitch dance slowly between the furniture, slow, shuffling steps interspersed with long kisses. Dancing … humming … stumbling into a chair, catching each other.… Giggling, then more shuffling, slow steps around the table … to the door … past the big old chair. “Dancing in the daaark …” Mitch sings in her ear.
This is the good time, the perfect time. So fine, so fine and good, so much better than the—well, not so good times. The times when they fight, when they irritate each other, when things, for no reason, go sorrily wrong. Like the morning after the night Lynell slept over. New Year’s Eve—weeks ago, but Nina still thinks about it now and then, thinks how unpleasant it was waking up with someone else in their room. What she really remembers: the fragrance of Lynell’s hair filling the air. How it irritated her. And how, as soon as Lynell left, she and Mitch had a huge fight over something so inconsequential, two hours later she couldn’t remember what it was that set them off. A not so good time.
And another not so good time just this morning. Not so many hours ago. Stupid little quarrel. Silly, stupid, awful quarrel … starting over nothing again, over breakfast, over Nina’s not wanting to sit down and eat. I don’t have time, Mitch. I want to get to the library.
Please sit down at least to drink your coffee, Nina. You drive me crazy, pacing up and down.
Okay, okay! No, I can’t. I didn’t feed Emmett yet.
He can go without a meal once in a while. He
could live off his fat for a month.
Oh, come on! How’d you like it if someone said you didn’t need your breakfast? Anyway, I don’t want to argue about Emmett.
Good. Sit down and eat like a human being.
Would you please lower your voice? You’re yelling, Mitch.
Not exactly whispering yourself, Nina.
Oh, for …! Look, let me feed Emmett and—
Emmett, Emmett. You ever think about anything but Emmett?
Jealous of a cat, Mitch? Don’t tell me that!
Sick, Nina. That cat is no more than a bug to me. I could step on him and squash him without a thought.
The remark stuck in her belly, grew, swelled. She went away from the table, came back a moment later, her face blazing. I didn’t like that crack about Emmett. Slapped Mitch on the arm for emphasis. He slapped her back across the cheek. Then slapped her again. Stunned, she didn’t respond. Come on, fight back, he ordered.
No. She had screamed. No.
“Dancing in the daaark … with youuuuu …” Emmett howls painfully.
“He doesn’t like your voice.” They giggle. Emmett doesn’t bother them. Nothing bothers them. They are in harmony once again. A single voice. “Dancing in the daaark …” they sing together.
All day she’d been miserable, thinking about their quarrel in the morning. As soon as he came home from work, she had gone to him. I’m sorry I hit you this morning. I shouldn’t have done that. I started the whole thing, but you know how crazy it makes me when you get on Emmett’s case. He’d put out his arms to her right away. I was terrible. I don’t know what got into me. I got so mad when you socked me. I just reacted, Nins.
I hated you when you slapped me!
I’ve been hating myself all day.
They dip past the table; Mitch reaches out, picks up a glass of wine, sips, holds it to Nina’s mouth.…
Someone to Love Page 11
