by Nina Solomon
Grace finished shopping and made her way to the checkout line. She unloaded her cart and realized that she hadn’t purchased so much as a package of Altoids for Laz, as though, if only in pretense, she was letting him fend for himself and go hungry, too. She presented the super-bonus-savings card that her father had given her to the cashier and glanced at the headlines of the nearby magazines. On the cover of one was a photograph of an emaciated man who was dressed in loose white clothing and standing next to a McDonald’s restaurant in a bombed-out village. Bosnian Prisoner Paid for Story. Grace turned the magazine over and quickly scribbled her address on the delivery slips.
Outside, the sky was obscured by a dense layer of clouds, and there was the feeling of snow in the air. At the corner of Verdi Square, she could just make out the outline of the cupolas of Laz’s old building through the black construction netting. From the exterior, the netting looked impervious and forbidding, as if no light could get through. Griffin was probably still asleep under his plastic-wrapped bed. Grace knew that “first thing in the morning” to a person his age might extend well past noon.
The storefront of Flik’s Video 2 Go was covered with a corrugated metal gate. To the side was a graffiti arrow in red, white, and blue spray paint as well as a sign indicating a drop-off slot. Without the arrow, she could have easily missed it. Opening the slot while holding the stack of videos proved awkward, so she devised a system of dropping them in a few at a time while holding the door open with her hip—until several got jammed at once and she had to put them in one at a time. The videos hit the floor with a crash. She pictured them strewn across the linoleum in disarray. She placed the last one in the slot, and as it descended, she watched with utter dismay as Mr. Dubrovsky’s copy of Oblomov, instead of a video, flew down the chute into the heap of Katharine Hepburn videos.
Grace tried to fish the book out, but the slot had obviously been engineered much like a mailbox, allowing things only to go in. Despite the queer looks that she received from a few people passing by with dogs, she tried to look inconspicuous as she shoved her arm into the chute all the way up to her shoulder blade, persevering for several minutes. Finally, forced to admit defeat, she headed home to wait for Griffin.
22
THE ABATEMENT
Just as Grace was cleaning up the kitchen, the intercom rang. She closed the pantry door and pressed the button.
“Your guest is here,” José announced.
“Thank you,” Grace said. “Send him up, please.”
The Christmas tree sparkled in the living room and the spinach lasagna was covered with tinfoil on the counter, ready to be popped into the oven. Grace smoothed her hair and, feeling very Florence Henderson–like, went to the door. She’d rehearsed her greeting several times in the mirror and had decided upon a welcoming but casual hello, as if she were in the middle of something and hadn’t in fact been waiting for hours for his arrival. She flung the door open, surprised by the sight of Kane standing in the doorway with two white-and-orange bags from Citarella’s.
“Kane?” she said, flustered.
“Glad to see me, I guess.” He remained outside until Grace regained her composure and asked him in.
“It’s just that I wasn’t expecting you.” Kane’s cheeks were flushed from the cold.
“I can see. I ran into your mother buying whitefish this morning. She mentioned that you weren’t feeling well. I brought you some barley soup. Why didn’t you say anything last night?”
“You know how my mother is, always exaggerating,” Grace said, taking the container of soup from Kane. “Thanks. But I’m fine. Was my father with her?”
“He was double-parked outside. I said hello to him on my way out.”
“Did he seem all right?”
“Yes, except he kept mumbling something about battening down the hatches.”
“Yeah. He’s worried about the blizzard.”
It was difficult to pretend with Kane. She fought the urge to tell him about the methotrexate, the Damien Hirst exhibit, the Duro-Lites, Griffin, and the strange Mr. Dubrovsky. And, of course, Laz. Kane was the only one who would understand.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” she answered, looking away. She felt like a bottle of soda that had been shaken but left unopened. Kane put his bags by the door and walked into the living room. Grace tried to look at her watch without him noticing. An accidental meeting between Kane and Griffin in her living room was more than Grace could safely negotiate.
Kane went over to the Christmas tree and touched a branch. The tinsel glistened.
“The tree looks nice.”
“Thanks.” He was about to sit on the couch when Grace steered him toward the window before he knew what was happening, and she took a quick peek to see if Griffin was walking toward the building.
“Greg and I are having a brunch this afternoon. We’d love it if you could make it. Just a few people.” She avoided his stare.
“Thanks, but I have tons to do,” she said, trying to think fast. “We’re going to Chicago on Friday and I haven’t done a thing.”
“To see Chloe?” he asked.
“Yes. Her mother just died,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“And Laz has a conference,” Grace added.
“Isn’t your birthday on Saturday?” Kane always remembered.
“Yes.” She began to grow excited at the prospect of a birthday celebration. Then, like all the other times she’d felt buoyed and optimistic during the past five weeks, Grace realized she had once again fallen into one of her own, well-fashioned traps. Kane reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a canary yellow envelope and handed it to her.
“In case I don’t see you.”
“That’s so sweet of you,” she said, taking the card from him. She took his arm and escorted him into the dining room with the intention of getting him to the front door in what would seem like a natural and unchoreographed progression. As they walked through the kitchen, she hoped Kane wouldn’t notice the tinfoil-covered lasagna.
“Having company?”
“Scrabble night,” she said, her reflexes oiled like a finely tuned machine. In truth, she’d forgotten all about it, but that was the least of her worries. Getting out of Scrabble night was child’s play.
“That’s funny, I thought your mother said Scrabble was canceled because Francine needs to get ready for her trip.”
“I wish someone had told me,” she covered. “Well, you must have lots to do. Thanks for stopping by.” She waited to see if he would take the cue and be on his way.
“Sorry you can’t make it to brunch. Greg really wants to meet you.”
“When we get back from Chicago. That is, if there really is a Greg. We’ll make a date,” Grace promised. Kane put his hands in his pockets.
“Grace?” he said.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Have a nice trip. Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.”
“And I mean anything,” he said again, bending down and picking up his bags.
“Even to change a lightbulb?” she joked, but to her it wasn’t really a joke, considering the unpredictability of the Duro-Lites.
“That happens to be one of my specialties,” he told her.
“You know you’d be the first person I’d call if I needed anything,” she said, although she knew she probably wouldn’t call anyone.
AS SOON AS SHE closed the door behind him, Grace went into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. Her heart was racing. She was still holding the yellow envelope, and unable to wait until Saturday, she tore it open. Out flew dozens of small strips of paper, newspaper clippings, and several fortunes from Chinese take-out.
She picked up a strip of paper to read: Sagittarius. The planets are in line, making this the time to get what you have always wanted. Try it. Close your eyes. Make a wish. Open your eyes. Did it come true? She turned it over. On the
reverse side was the personal ad from Time Out magazine that Kane had cut out the day they went up to get the tree. She felt relieved and foolish to have jumped to the conclusion that Kane was out cruising. He’d always still be Kane—reliable and consistent. She read one of the fortunes: The difficulties of life have been removed. If Kane only knew how ironic that was, and would he agree that Laz was one of them?
After an hour, Grace decided she needed something to occupy herself, so she decided to confirm her flight. She dialed the number for the airline and waited for an operator to pick up. Chloe had recommended the airline, a small, Midwestern carrier that had good rates.
“Thank you for calling Highland Air. How may I help you this morning?” It never ceased to surprise Grace that people could be so pleasant and friendly. She was often told that she didn’t seem like a New Yorker, but whenever she encountered someone outside of the tristate area, she felt as if she needed a crash course in manners. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t match the effortless civility on the other end of the telephone.
“I’m calling to confirm my flight.”
“If you give me your confirmation number, I’ll be glad to help you.” Grace gave the operator the information and waited on hold as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Yes, your flight has been confirmed. That’s two first-class tickets to Chicago on Friday at ten A.M.” It took a second for the mistake to register.
“I think that’s two coach tickets,” Grace said.
“You’ve been upgraded.”
“I have?” Grace asked, confused.
“Ma’am, I’m showing two first-class tickets to O’Hare, with a return flight on Sunday at one P.M. You requested the vegetarian luncheon special with steamed edamame and miso soup, and you have a choice of grilled tempeh or a garden burger.” Grace, who despised being called ma’am, once mistook a slice of tempeh for a scouring pad, but what concerned her was how this operator knew that she was a vegetarian.
“Garden burger, please,” she answered.
“Will you be needing ground transportation once you arrive at O’Hare? We offer complimentary limo service to your destination.” Grace began to feel lulled into a sort of sheeplike compliance.
“Yes, thanks.” She was bewildered when she hung up the phone. But after a few moments to reflect, the only explanation she could come up with was that the upgrade must be an early birthday present from Chloe.
IT WAS NEARLY one o’clock and still no sign of Griffin. Grace considered sitting down and crocheting the time away, but then remembered that she’d neglected to cut down the amaryllis. She’d once left an iris bulb in the soil too long, and the next year, the plant yielded no flowers, just thin, grasslike leaves that eventually turned brown.
Grace got the shears out of the utility closet and went into the dining room. The plant had definitely seen better days—its leaves unfurled and wilted. She cut the stems two inches from the base and placed the crate in a deep shopping bag, folding down the top, which she secured with masking tape.
The coolest and darkest spot she knew of was in the butler’s pantry by the back door. The window faced an alley and received no direct light. Sometimes, through the air shaft, she could hear singing from a neighboring kitchen. Grace stored onions, potatoes, and garlic in metal stacking baskets on the floor. The pantry radiator hadn’t worked since they moved in, and there was a draft from the lopsided, frosted window. She tucked the shopping bag under the sill and, with a sense of having accomplished something, again went to wait for Griffin, busying herself by tidying up and putting the apartment back in order after Dolores’s reorganization.
FINALLY, AROUND FOUR-THIRTY, the buzzer rang and Grace ran to answer it. Unable to restrain herself, she waited by the door until she heard the elevator arrive at her floor. The doorbell rang, and Grace took a breath before flinging the door wide open. Griffin stood in the vestibule wearing a gray-and-white wool hat, a black ski jacket, and jeans. He carried a small duffel bag over his shoulder.
“I was beginning to wonder about you,” Grace said. All her preparations for a low-key welcome slipped away from her and she felt like a stereotypical overanxious parent.
“I guess I lost track of the time,” he said, taking off his hat and running his hand through his hair. His tan canvas duffel bag was almost identical to one that Grace had had in high school. While hers had been covered with autographs, peace signs, and flowers drawn in magic marker, this one was covered with Pearl Jam and New Order stickers. Dangling from the frayed strap was a miniature snowboard key chain. Grace noticed an ironed-on patch of an airplane with an arrow pointing to a red heart. She wondered if it was a symbol of his trip to New York to find his father.
“Come in,” she said to Griffin. “Let me show you where you can put your stuff.”
Griffin slowly followed as Grace led the way down the hall to Laz’s study. He seemed as if he wanted to take in every detail, stopping every so often to look closely at a photograph or print on the wall. When they reached Laz’s study, Griffin put his bag down. Inside it, Grace could see a pair of brown hockey skates just like the ones the woman had been wearing at Sky Rink. As Griffin walked over to the walnut desk by the window, Grace realized that she had come face to face with his mother now on two occasions. Griffin sat down in Laz’s leather swivel chair. The weight of his body compressed the air in the seat cushion, making a sound much like one of her father’s long sighs, as if the chair, too, was relieved to have a body finally occupying it again.
The room faced north, overlooking the tops of neighboring brownstones. Grace was so used to the sight of Laz staring out the window while he was working that more than once she had mistaken the sight of the sheer curtains blowing in the wind for his silhouette. For however brief a time, those phantom images dulled the sting of his absence. Griffin seemed perfectly at home in the room. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, then smiled at her.
“Would you mind showing me some photographs? I only have this one picture of my parents,” he said, taking a photograph out of his duffel bag. “It must be twenty years old, at least.” Grace looked at the picture. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought she was looking at Griffin. “My mother doesn’t have any recent pictures of my father.”
The full meaning of the words took time to penetrate. Recent photographs. As if looking at them would mean that Laz was nearer to her somehow—but he was no more accessible in the photographs she had than in the one that Griffin was holding. The truth was, Laz was beginning to feel further and further away. Each day, even as she conjured him in her life with the finesse of a sorcerer, she was banishing him as well, sending him into an exile that was comparable to his own abandonment.
Grace pulled out a cloth-covered album with a tea-rose pattern from their honeymoon and sat down on the floor. Griffin sat next to her. She watched as he turned the pages—Laz waist-deep in the blue water; Laz on the porch in front of their thatched hut; Grace and Laz waving as they hiked up a dusty mountain trail before the monkeys chased them halfway down—images so burned in Grace’s memory, she barely had to look at the photographs.
He closed the album and held it on his lap. “It looks like you two are really happy together,” he said.
“We are,” she said, unable to ignore the impact of her choice of tense. The truth fluttered around her like dust motes. We are. We were. We will be, again. But when? Griffin got up from the floor and placed the album back on the shelf. He picked up an ornate oval-shaped brass doorknob that had been painted silver, which was from Laz’s old apartment. Laz had removed it from the front door and replaced it with a reproduction he had found at the flea market.
When Grace had been packing up to move in with Laz, he had come over to her place with a set of screwdrivers and had removed one of the original faceted crystal doorknobs. He’d done it as if it were an ordinary and usual custom, and with the same casual air that Grace’s mother had when she dumped a basket of on
ion rolls or a plate of biscotti into her purse at a restaurant, or when she took a hotel ashtray as a souvenir. It had seemed odd at the time, but now, as Griffin touched the contours of the floral motif on the handle and measured the weight in his hand, Grace understood why Laz had taken it. There were several other doorknobs on the shelf that he’d collected from various apartments he’d lived in over the years, and she looked at them as if for the first time, wondering what other hands had turned them, what doors they had opened, and if perhaps one of them had come from an off-campus apartment Laz might have shared with Griffin’s mother.
Griffin set the doorknob back on the shelf and grazed the spines of the books with his fingertips as if he were reading Braille. Grace had seen Laz do the same thing many times in secondhand bookstores, almost as if he thought he could glean something of the person who’d previously possessed the book. Griffin opened a book of poems and began reading the notes Laz had made in the margins. Then he put the book back on the shelf and went around the room, picking up objects—a silver-plated cigarette lighter embossed with an image from mythology, a small wooden puzzle box, an ashtray from a hotel in Prague, an ivory-handled letter opener.
Everything Griffin touched seemed suddenly brought to life and imbued with new meaning. The desire to discover was infectious, and Grace felt the urge to show him everything. She went to the closet and turned on the light. The closet smelled of cinnamon from a candle that had once been in there. Grace pushed some unpacked boxes out of the way until she located a metal container that was stuffed with letters. She held it to her chest as she carried it to the desk.