“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry, Mitch … Only you … your face … look at yourself …! Ha ha ha …”
Well, he’d gotten his back this morning, just before they’d come out with the laundry. “You’re breathing with your mouth open,” he said as they left the apartment. “You sleep that way, too. Your mouth hanging open.”
A real surprise attack. It sounded as if she were the village idiot. She cringed. Wasn’t he the one who said it was cute the way she mouth-breathed?
Then, as if all that didn’t hurt enough, he had snapped her mouth shut with the flat of his hand.
Not a good start to the morning. And now … he was looking at her as if by not having coins for the machines she’d goofed on a matter of national security. She dropped the laundry bag. “I’ll go get some change,” she said flatly. She went outside and saw at once he was right—the stores were closed. She looked around.
“Pardon me, do you have change for—” A woman in a red ski hat brushed Nina aside as if she were an insect. Was that the kind of day it was going to be all day? Next she tried a man. “Change?” he said. “Sure. Come right over here.” He pointed to a doorway with an obscene gesture.
“Oh, bug off,” Nina said wearily. She rubbed her arms. It was one of those raw, not-quite-winter, not-yet-spring days. An old man approached. “Would you have change for a couple dollars?” she asked, deciding that after this the laundry could rot. She wasn’t going to ask anyone else.
“I might, I might.” He gave her a sunny smile, showing big, white, false teeth.
“I need quarters for the Laundromat,” she said, “or I wouldn’t bother you.”
He pulled a black purse out of his pocket. His hands were spotted with brown liver marks. “Let me see … I have a penny, no, two pennies … a nickel here, and here we have one quarter.” He held a quarter up between fingers that trembled slightly. “Now, let’s see what else we have. Don’t get impatient, young lady. Plenty of time.” And again that sunny smile. “Is someone waiting for you?”
“My boyfriend.”
“He’ll wait, he’ll wait.” He was wearing a Wind-breaker and a wool hat pulled down over his ears. “Why wouldn’t he wait for a nice girl like you? Oh, ho, what’s this?” He pulled out two more quarters. “You see! Isn’t it a good day? Looks like we’ll see another spring yet, and that’s something, isn’t it? Aha, more quarters. Here—no, no, you hold these while I look for the last one, and then you can give me the bills.” He dipped his skinny fingers into the purse again.
“I’m really sorry to bother you,” Nina said.
“It’s a pleasure. Here I am talking to a pretty young girl and thinking, What can I tell her to impress her? Can you guess how old I am?”
“Ahh, seventy-five?”
“Eighty-four,” he said.
“Really! That’s wonderful.”
“Eighty-four,” he said again. “I wouldn’t lie to you. What for? I can’t stand these old duffers who lie to build themselves up. Have a little modesty is what I say.”
“My grandmother is eighty-three,” Nina said.
“And still enjoying life, I suppose. Here we are, patience rewarded.” He handed her the last quarter.
“Well, thank you, really,” Nina said. “You’re very nice.” Impulsively she kissed him on the cheek.
“Well! Thank you.” He pulled off his wool cap and bowed.
In the Laundromat Mitch was slumped by a window, hands in pockets. “Mitch, you’ll never guess …” Nina put her arm around his waist. “I met the nicest old man!” Mitch blinked at her, a muzzy, faraway look, as if he’d been asleep on his feet. “Are you all right?” she asked involuntarily, thinking she was saying that a lot lately.
“Oh …” He straightened up, pushed his hands through his hair. “Let’s do the laundry.”
“Yes, let’s,” she said tightly, all at once as blue and discouraged and as near tears as Mitch had seemed last night when her tights dripped purple dye on him.
“Nina? Mitch? Hi.” Lynell put her head into the apartment. Sunday afternoon. Outside it was raining snow. Nina, her books spread out on the table, was trying to draw conclusions for a paper from a statistical analysis of the weight and height of children between the ages of one and ten who were institutionalized, compared to a similar group of children raised in their own homes. She was also trying to ignore Mitch, who, perched on the windowsill, had been wheeling a red yo-yo up and down for the last hour. Up and down. Up and down. He wasn’t bothering her. He’d been quiet. He wasn’t even playing the radio. That was the trouble. It was unnatural for him to be so quiet. Not a word out of him. Just the red yo-yo moving up, moving down.
How could you love someone and still feel so exasperated with him? Contrary impulses had her mumbling under her breath. She wanted to kiss him and shake him at the same time. Wanted to be nice and also shout in his ear. Come on, baby, get out of those blues! Look at me! Give me a kiss! Let’s make love! Yes, let’s make love. She’d been sure they would this morning. Sunday morning. A good morning to hang out in bed, cuddle, and love each other. A good morning to make up for the past draggy week. But instead, Mitch had been up with the birds and out for the Sunday paper, and before the yo-yo got him in its spell, he’d spent two hours on the floor, with the paper spread out, reading it from front to back. Nina could swear he hadn’t skipped a word, not even the pages of small print classified ads.
“I brought your mail, Nina.” Lynell hovered in the doorway.
“Well, come on in.” What was the matter with Lynell? Why so hesitant? So un-Lynellish? Was the whole world out of orbit? Or was it her?
“It’s stifling in here.” Lynell pulled off a heavy maroon ski sweater. Underneath she was wearing a white embroidered blouse, tight-fitting jeans, and lots of silver around her neck. “Hello, Mitch.”
“Hello, Lynell.” He smiled faintly. “Want me to open a window?”
“Sure. Okay with you, Nina?”
“Go ahead.”
Nina and Lynell watched as Mitch heaved up the window. A puff of cool, moist air moved through the room. Something else moved through the room, something unseen but felt—an indefinable current. Nina wound her legs around the chair. Lynell seemed downcast, her smooth, small features a little pinched. “How’s everything, Lynell?”
“Oh, tra la la.”
“What does that mean? Good or bad?”
“Depends on your point of view. Adam and I had a fight.”
“For real?”
“About as real as it could be. A biggie. We’ve packed it in.”
“You broke up? When did that happen?”
“Oh … about a week ago.”
“I’m sorry, Lynell.”
“Don’t be. It had to happen. I wasn’t about to go on forever being one of his many women.”
“You mean—more than that girl in Michigan?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Turns out he has some girl in Washington who is also crazy about him. I told him, he’s like a sailor with a girl in every state.”
“He had three girl friends?” Nina said.
“At least,” Lynell said. “Don’t look so shocked.”
“I am. Adam … I liked him.”
“Sure, you did, that’s the point! Every girl he laid eyes on liked him! The whole thing went on too long. I should have kissed him off a long time ago. My mistake! I asked him, ‘Are you going to miss me?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘How much?’ He said, ‘A lot.’ That’s what I wanted to hear.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “Oh, that greedy greedy punk!”
The phone rang. Mitch answered, and Lynell went to the stereo and put on a record. It was unfamiliar to Nina. “It’s Rampal playing Telemann’s Fantasies for Flute,” Lynell said to her inquiring look. The clear, pure notes filled the room.
“Pretty,” Nina said.
“Pretty?” Lynell sat down cross-legged on the bed. “If I could ever play the flute like Rampal, I don’t thin
k anything else would matter. Including men.”
“For you, Nina,” Mitch said, beckoning her to the phone.
“He’s a master. A genius,” Lynell said.
Nodding respectfully, Nina picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Nina? Hello, it’s Nicholas Lehman. Could you possibly come into the office this afternoon to do some typing?”
“Today?”
“I know,” he said apologetically. “I hate to ask on a weekend, but I have something I’d really like to get off in the mail first thing tomorrow morning.”
“All right. Sure. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Who was that?” Mitch said as she hung up.
“Professor Lehman. He wants me to do some typing.”
“It’s Sunday, Nina. You don’t have to work on Sunday.”
“I know, but it’s sort of an emergency.”
“Call him back, tell him you can’t make it. Let’s go out. Let’s do something—the three of us.”
Nina stood irresolute for a moment, then shook her head. “I already said I’d come in, Mitch. I won’t be long. Probably not more than an hour.” She pulled a scarf over her head and went to the door.
Mitch threw out the yo-yo, then snapped it back. “Suit yourself. Lynell and I will keep each other company. We can cry on each other’s shoulders.”
“I could use a nice crying shoulder,” Lynell said as Nina went out the door.
Chapter Twenty-one
All through that last week of March the weather was raw, rainy, and windy. Not pleasant, but bearable. Then overnight winter returned, and in the morning, on WYUR, Stormy the Weatherman announced with a note of distinct pleasure, “We’re having a real winter situation, folks, with below-freezing temperatures and lots of snow activity.”
“Winter again?” Nina said. “Blaaaagh!”
“Who’s afraid of Old Man Winter?” Grabbing Nina around the waist, Mitch danced her wildly around the room.
“Mitch-ell! Stop, you idiot.” After narrowly missing Emmett and then a mess of boots and books in the middle of the floor, they came to rest against the door. “You are nuts.” Nina pinched his cheek. “I like you, nutso.”
“Do—do—do you, Nina?” Abruptly his mood changed. He took her hands. “Do you like me?” His eyes were a little bloodshot; he’d had a cold for the past few days.
“Mitch—I love you.” He’d—thank goodness!—come out of his glooms, but he still fell into long moments of brooding and sometimes—it was startling—his usual confident speech was replaced with a kind of stammering hesitation. “Do you?” he said again.
“Do you? Do you love me?”
“What do you think?”
“Yes … but I like to hear you say it.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” he said. The color in his face deepened.
“You’re blushing,” Nina said. Why was it so touching to see a man blush? “I didn’t know you blushed.”
“I didn’t know it, either.” He looked at himself in the mirror over the bureau. “I am not. You’re making it up, Bloom.”
“No, you are. Look at yourself! Know what my grandmother used to say? ‘Blushing like the rosy dawn.’”
“Grandma sounds like a poet.” He shoved Emmett off a chair and sat down to lace up his boots.
“You wouldn’t say so if you met her. She has all these sayings. Hard work never hurt anyone. A stitch in time saves nine. What dodo bird brought you? Look before you leap, etcetera, etcetera. Did you see my keys?”
“On the bureau. Unless Emmett knocked them off. I never heard that one about the dodo bird. What does that mean?”
“That’s the Nancy special.” They left the apartment together, still talking.
When she went to work in Nicholas Lehman’s office later that day, the place was a mess. During the night the pipes that ran across the ceiling had frozen and burst. There were puddles of water on the floor, and everything on the desk was drenched. “Look at this, Nina.” He showed her a pile of smeared yellow pages. “All my latest notes. Not more than a sentence here and there intact. I’m going to have to reconstruct everything.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Well …” He sighed. “No use crying over spilt milk.”
Nina couldn’t help smiling. “That’s one of the things my grandmother is always saying.”
He nodded. “Until they get this office cleaned up, no use even trying to work here. I’ve got an office in my house. We’ll use that. It’s not far from here.” He scribbled directions for her to his house on Elm Place. Nina said she’d show up the next day, at the usual time.
“Good, I’ll be there,” he said, again flipping through the pad of useless notes.
With no work, Nina was on her way home early—and just as well. She’d been having cramps all afternoon, and on this dismal, cold, snowy afternoon she was looking forward to climbing into bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of steaming tea. Later, when Mitch came home, maybe they’d watch TV together while they ate supper.
Her key was turning in the lock when she heard voices inside. Only the week before, two apartments on the first floor had been robbed in the middle of the day. “Who’s there?” she said, banging on the door. Was that smart? She backed off, preparing to run, when the door opened and Mitch looked out. “Nina?”
“Oh, Mitch! You scared the life out of me.” She toed Emmett back into the apartment. “I thought you were a thief.”
“Hi,” Lynell said. She was standing by the window.
“Hi,” Nina said, surprised. What was Lynell doing here? Come to think of it, what was Mitch doing home so early? She put down her knapsack, taking out Mitch’s mail and the bag of kitty litter she’d bought on the way home. “What’s happening?” she said. There was a cardboard pizza box on the table. “It is Thursday, isn’t it? Not Saturday?” She was woozy, as if her belly cramps had gone to her head and were distorting all her perceptions.
“Thursday,” Lynell said.
“Thursday,” Mitch agreed.
Nina blinked at their Bobbsey Twins act. Everything seemed slightly off balance: that strange sensation that comes when you walk into an empty room where a chair rocks, a curtain flutters. Whose body rocked the chair? Whose hand fluttered the curtain? Ghosts?
Lynell and Mitch hardly looked ghostlike. Really, just the opposite. Mitch’s lips struck Nina as especially full and red, and Lynell, who was usually a little pale, almost gleamed with color. A raspberry blouse, kellygreen slacks, and a bright green polka-dotted band tied around her forehead.
“Mitch and I ran into each other and started arguing about the concert the other night,” Lynell said. “We came up to finish our argument and eat pizza.”
“I didn’t go,” Nina said.
“I know. You should have. The soprano was good and—”
“More than good,” Mitch said. “She was impressive.”
“You went?” Nina said to Mitch. “I thought you were playing basketball at the center with Kenny.”
“No, I told you—”
“I thought you were playing basketball,” Nina said again.
“Didn’t you notice she had pitch problems at the top?” Lynell said, ignoring, perhaps tactfully, the little conflict between Nina and Mitch.
“Here we go again. Disagreement road.” Mitch smiled at Nina and picked up their dialogue. “I told you I decided to go to the concert. I remember telling you.”
“I don’t remember,” Nina said.
“Mitch,” Lynell said, doing what, for her, was almost a coy pout, “you know I’m right about Escabardo. She was good, but—it’s going out on a limb to call her impressive.”
“Lynell, you know you’re too critical.”
“How can anyone be too critical, Mitch? If you have standards—”
“Standards, yes. Perfection, no, Lynell. Nobody’s perfect. You have to give a little, make allowances …”
Nina, her head swinging from one to the ot
her, said, “What is this, the traveling Lynell and Mitch Show?” They all laughed. A moment of good feeling. Nina handed Mitch his mail. Lynell put on her down vest.
“Well, I’d better be off,” Lynell said. Then, to Nina, “Are you feeling all right?” She switched her long mane of hair over her shoulder. “You look a little pale.”
“Cramps. They’re making me feel really strange.”
“Do you take anything?”
“I’m going to have some hot tea.”
“Mmm, that’s the best. Well, ciao. See you.” She left.
Nina went into the kitchen and put water on to boil. “Who’s your letter from?” she asked.
“Oh … my father.”
He stood in the doorway, flapping the letter against his open palm.
“How come you’re home so early?” Nina got down a tea bag and cup. “Want some tea?”
“No. Thanks.”
“You’re too full of pizza?”
He half smiled.
“Well?” she said.
“Well, what?”
“How come you’re home now? Didn’t you work today? I didn’t, because the pipes in the office froze.”
“Remember when I told you I might get laid off?” he broke in. She nodded. “Well … it happened. I’m out of work.”
“Oh, Mitch. Everything is happening today,” she said sorrowfully. She leaned against the cupboard, her head buzzing with a distinct sensation of disaster—something bad was going to happen. She was going to flunk out … or, no, tomorrow there’d be a letter for her in the mail, saying her grandmother had died. Her heart pulsed in her throat. “What did they do, just tell you when you came in? No notice, nothing? Why are people so rotten!” She was nearly in tears.
“No, well …” He flapped the letter rapidly against his palm. “It didn’t happen that way exactly.” He sighed. “Actually, Nins, it was a couple of weeks ago.”
“What do you mean, a couple of weeks ago? They laid you off a couple of weeks ago?”
“Right.”
The tea kettle whistled. “Is this, is this some kind of joke, Mitch?”
Someone to Love Page 13
