Jane’s office was in a house. Her own house? There was no way to know. There was a taxi parked on the street in front. Was a taxi driver in therapy? Did someone take a taxi to therapy? (A DUI?) Again, there was no way to know. I parked behind the cab. I began to get a light-headed, hysterical feeling. Keep it together, I told myself.
On the front door was a printed sign reading NO SOLICITATIONS. I was glad of this, because a Jehovah’s Witness knocking at the door while I confided my innermost feelings was something I did not need. What did I need?
I was wearing my work clothes. I wanted Jane Stafford to know that I was a professional. Coolly, I estimated her home office/home to be worth about 300K. It was a one-story ranch with ugly siding but a nice yard, room for a pool. I stopped before entering, noting that you could hear MoPac Highway. That would knock 10K off the price, give or take. Some people didn’t care about highway noise, but some people did.
I opened the door. A sparse living room with a pale blue couch led to a hallway. I sat on the couch and picked up an old Glamour. I didn’t open the magazine, just tried to look relaxed and waited. In fact, I did feel a bit relaxed. What could possibly happen to me here? I felt secure, if a bit loopy, in this 3/2 (I guessed) ranch with original hardwood flooring.
After a few moments, I heard a door open and the click of footsteps coming toward me. Hurriedly, I opened the Glamour and shifted my gaze, trying to seem engrossed. I appeared to be in the middle of an article about faux-fur shoes.
“Lauren?”
I looked up into the brown eyes of Jane Stafford, who, despite her WASPy name, was Asian. I stood.
“I’m Jane Stafford,” she said, holding out her hand. She was wearing a cream-colored sweater and dark pants.
“I’m Lauren,” I said stupidly.
“Please,” said Jane, turning and walking back down the hallway. She opened the door to a small room with a sound machine whirring in the corner. She sat down in a chair and gestured to a couch. I sat on the couch, which seemed to be elongated; my feet dangled. I felt like Alice in Wonderland or Lily Tomlin in that big chair. I crossed my hands in my lap and swallowed.
Jane said nothing.
“So,” I said. “I’m …”
Jane was silent, only raising her eyebrows. She had black hair cut in a swingy bob. She was quite a bit older than I was, maybe fifty.
“My father killed my mother when I was eight,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
To her credit, Jane’s face did not change. Her expression was kind and interested, like that of a good bartender. We sat quietly for a while, and then I continued. “I’m here because … my brother is in Iraq. He’s not a soldier, he’s a doctor. I can’t sleep. I’m frightened, more frightened than I should be. Like I’ll crash my car or get cancer or something. I feel out of it. Weird.”
“Weird?” said Jane.
“I get this feeling like I’m about to pass out. I can hear my heartbeat but nothing else.”
“That must be frightening,” said Jane.
“Yes,” I said. “It is frightening.” I felt a wash of relief, as if my fear had finally been validated, as if someone cared. I remembered my mother putting her cool palm to my forehead to see whether I was sick. I knew, if I had a fever, she would take care of me.
“Were you there on the night your mother was killed?”
“Murdered,” I said. “Yes. No. I was in the tree house out back. With my brother. Or I might have been inside. I don’t know. I can’t remember. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“I see,” said Jane.
“It’s not that I don’t want to marry him,” I said. “Gerry. I do want to marry him.”
“You want to marry Gerry,” said Jane, a solid statement.
I nodded miserably. “Sometimes,” I said, “I wake up in the middle of the night and think, I have got to get out of here. I have to go.” I felt my heartbeat speed up, and I struggled for air. “I feel like I have to get out. But I don’t know why or where I have to go. There’s nowhere to go.”
Jane nodded. “Tell me about Gerry.”
“What?” I said.
“Where did you meet him?”
I had a whole story about this: any half of a couple does. Gerry fed me seaweed, was the story. I was a lonely college graduate taking real estate licensing exams and working at an upscale children’s clothing store in Westlake. The store was called Caramel Apples. Every morning I woke in the run-down house I shared with four of my college friends, bought a giant cup of coffee at Quack’s, drove out 2244, and opened Caramel Apples in time for the barrage of beautiful but bored mothers who arrived almost as soon as I turned on the lights. They settled their kids into carts and shopped, gathering cute T-shirts with dinosaurs and fruit appliqués. Some used the Germ Blockade, a fabric contraption that covered the cart seat, took about five minutes to set up, and cost $25.99; the Germ Blockade was our second biggest seller, after the Hooter Hider nursing apron.
The bookstore in the same shopping center had kids’ story time, and the whole parking lot was jammed with minivans and SUVs from nine A.M. on. The women (and they were almost all women) had already worked out and taken a shower by the time they arrived. They pushed expensive strollers across the parking lot, calling to each other and air-kissing.
I didn’t really know what to make of them. In New York, my mother had dropped me at day care before dawn. My father worked on his poetry at home and picked me up around three or four. When I was in elementary school, he was often late and usually unshowered, sticking out like a sore thumb among the suburban mothers. He’d stand at the edge of the playground with his hands in some rumpled pants, his big tummy hanging over his belt. He had a goatee and John Lennon spectacles. My pride in him remained strong, even as the years went on and his scribblings seemed to amount to little. We would walk home, stopping at the Holt bakery for a snack. He bought me any cookie I wanted, asking only for a piece—the ear of a mouse or the wing of a bat—to dip in his afternoon espresso.
But even the most polished mothers in New York were nothing compared to the Texas crowd. I felt like an anthropologist watching them. I wanted to learn how to be normal, how to be a wife and mother. I didn’t mind my life, but I hoped to transition to something else eventually. Maybe that was why I gravitated to real estate—I could observe people’s homes with a scientist’s detachment. If I could see what a house looked like when it was happily lived in, then maybe I could piece together what had gone wrong on Ocean Avenue.
After work some evenings, I would take in a movie or walk around Hyde Park and West Campus. One night, for a change, I took myself to dinner at a cheap spot called Now and Zen sushi. I was sitting at the counter, surveying all the ingredients, when a white man in a black button-down shirt came from the back room. His hair was a bit long and curly, and he had a spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He seemed genuinely glad to see me. “Welcome,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
“What can I do for you?” said Gerry.
“Feed me,” I said. And he did. After making me the California roll and miso soup I had requested (I had never been to another country; even miso soup was exotic to me), he asked if I’d be willing to taste-test some new creations on the house. Happy to have something to do besides watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns in my room, I agreed. He made me a strong but sweet cocktail and fed me mussels marinated in Kaffir lime juice with fresh cilantro; tuna on a slice of apple with a bit of goat cheese; and sea urchin, which melted on my tongue like salty sea foam. He gave me a foil-wrapped square of chocolate for dessert.
When the chocolate was gone, I didn’t want to depart. As I folded the foil in my fingers, Gerry told me he had grown up in Tokyo: his parents were both teachers at the International School. He was working as a sushi chef to put himself through a computer science degree at UT, and though Now and Zen catered mainly to students and college grads on a shoestring budget (like me), Gerry liked to play around with the fish, se
rving “specials” to customers who seemed interested. He kept his textbooks in the kitchen and studied when things were slow.
“Why computer science?” I asked him. “You don’t seem like a … nerd.” I slurped my cocktail. My face felt warm, and I was smiling too much.
“I thought about trying to work in food or entertainment,” he said, leaning on the polished counter, “but I guess I never felt safe financially while I was growing up. I’m good at computer science. And I want to make a steady living, so I can eat well, travel, you know … wine and dine my wife.”
“Wife?” I said. I made a sound between a choke and a giggle.
“I mean my future wife,” said Gerry. There was a pause as we looked at each other. I felt my damn mouth curling up again. I reached for my glass of ice water. “Would you like to … do you want to … have lunch or brunch this weekend?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. I wrote my number on his hand and felt the inexplicable urge to press my lips against his palm. Thankfully, I refrained.
I walked home that night filled with a giddy happiness. I’d had boyfriends but had never felt so electric. Though he was from another part of the world, Gerry seemed just like me, someone burdened by unnecessary responsibility. There was something to be said for precaution, and I felt that Gerry understood this. For the first time in my life, I thought it might be possible for me to share my life, to feel that kind of exquisite joy. I was so happy, and so frightened.
8
“Lauren?” said Jane Stafford.
“Yes?” I said.
“Are you all right?” Jane tilted her head to the right, causing her glossy hair to fall across her cheekbone.
“We met at a sushi restaurant,” I said, “Gerry and me. And I. Gerry and I.”
She smiled, expectant. When I said nothing more, she commented, “That sounds nice.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How long ago was this?” said Jane. She held a cheap Bic ballpoint, a pad in her lap. I felt alarmed, wondering what she would write down, how she would distill me into sentences.
“I don’t know,” I said. She peered at me questioningly. I stared at her large brown eyes, and the room grew hazy.
“I love him,” I whispered, a familiar dread rising in my chest, making me feel feverish. “I’m really hot.”
“You feel hot?”
“Yes,” I said. Jane was intent, looking at me through what seemed to be a room of smoke. I cleared my throat and tried to shake it off. “I’m very dizzy,” I said.
“You’re feeling anxious?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m feeling really hot.”
“Breathe,” said Jane. “How else do you feel?”
I took a deep inhalation, but the woozy feeling remained. “What’s wrong with me?” I said.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” said Jane.
“I’m scared,” I said.
“It’s all right,” said Jane. I don’t know how long we sat in silence—a few minutes? Finally, the fog around the room dissipated, and it was just Jane and me again.
“I feel very small on this couch,” I said.
Jane laughed. I was glad to have pleased her. She looked quickly at the digital clock on a table next to me. “Do you feel okay to leave?” she asked.
“I guess so,” I said.
“That will be twenty dollars for the co-pay,” said Jane.
I fumbled in my purse. Gerry and I had recently consolidated accounts, and he had ordered checks with the University of Texas football insignia. Burnt-orange-colored checks. They were hideous. I wrote one to Jane Stafford. “I’ll see you next week,” she said as I handed her the check.
“Okay,” I said. I felt wobbly as I rose and walked down the hallway. I did not turn in to the kitchen. There was a brunette woman in the waiting room. She was paging through the same Glamour. I didn’t speak to her, just pushed the door open and went into the warm September day. I walked slowly to my car and got inside. I turned my key in the ignition and waited to cool down.
I didn’t want to drive away. I felt—bizarrely—as if I had left something, or someone, inside Jane Stafford’s office, on her couch. A girl. A doll. I had left a part of myself or something similarly weird. I felt guilty about leaving, though I had to get to work—I was meeting a couple from Massachusetts tomorrow morning and had to plan a full day of showings. But it was hard to put the car in gear.
I rested my head against the hot steering wheel. “It’s okay,” I said out loud to myself. I waited for something to come: some memory? Was I going to lose my shit someday and remember that I saw my father kill my mother? Come on, I said to myself silently. Just bring it on. I tried to conjure a vision, my father swinging, the glint of crystal, blood, but nothing came. I punched on the radio, and good old Willie came on singing, Whiskey River, take my mind.
“You said it, Willie,” I said. The taxi was still parked in front of my therapist’s office. I put the car in drive and hit the gas, singing along: “ ‘Whiskey River, don’t run dry, hi-hi-hi! You’re all I got, take care of me.’ ”
On my drive home from work, I bought a bottle of Yellow Tail chardonnay at the Drive-Thru Liquor Barn. Later that night, after three mugs of wine, four Tylenol PMs, and a few hours of the World Series of Poker, I fell asleep.
At some point, Gerry came to bed. The way he curled around me was one of my favorite things about him. I felt his warm breath on the back of my neck, his slow, sleepy exhalations. It was too good to last, I knew. So I tried not to grow accustomed to being loved, to being held in the night. I tried not to believe he would always be there, so I wouldn’t be too crushed when everything went wrong.
In the morning Gerry told me I had been snoring.
9
I met the Hendrixes outside the main terminal at the airport. A tanned couple wearing bright fleece vests, they were moving from New England to Texas, Betty Hendrix had said in her emails. They were looking forward to warm weather!!! I’d polished off a grande latte and was still so tired I felt stoned.
“Whew!” cried Betty Hendrix as I held open the passenger door of the Neon for her. She had short brown hair and a ruddy complexion, as if she spent time outdoors, cross-country skiing or chopping wood. “It is sweltering!” she said gaily. “Nothing like Boston.” She spat out Boston as if saying poison.
“Can I help you with your bags?” I asked. I felt a headache beginning to bloom.
“Oh, Benny’s got them,” she said, dismissing her husband, a distinguished-looking man who had thick reddish hair, with a swipe of her hand. Amid the gaseous fumes from passing buses and idling cars, I could smell her fruity lotion.
Benjamin Hendrix slammed the trunk shut and joined us, holding out a pink hand. “Hello, hello,” he said. “You must be Lauren.” He smiled kindly, and I wondered if he had children, and if they knew how lucky they were.
“I am,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Hendrix.”
“Ben, please. Ben and Betty.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “Please, climb in. Let’s go find you two a house.”
“Let’s do,” said Betty. She slid into the backseat, and surprising me, Ben settled himself into the front passenger seat. We pulled out of the airport and promptly got embroiled in traffic on 71. “Feels just like home,” said Betty drily.
“Now, come on, dear,” said Ben, gesturing to a topless club along the highway. “We don’t have anything called the Landing Strip near Logan.”
“Hmph,” said Betty.
From my attaché case, I took the stack of stapled papers I had spent the previous afternoon preparing. “Take a look,” I said. “I’ve selected some wonderful homes for you to preview. I think you’ll be pleased.” In fact, the Hendrixes’ price range was well below the cost of fulfilling Betty’s dream of acquiring “a big Victorian-style home with at least an acre of land, four or five bedrooms, and a few fireplaces, but in the city, no gated communities, please.” For a half million, the Hendrixes were either going
to be well into the ’burbs or giving up the land and the fireplaces; and they wouldn’t be getting four bedrooms unless they went for the utility-closet-as-bedroom, which I doubted they would.
Ben slipped his glasses down his nose and peered at my printouts, frowning. “Where are these places?” he asked. “Steiner Ranch? Circle C? Are these the suburbs?”
“Not officially,” I said.
“I’m confused,” said Ben. “I thought we were looking at condos. I want a downtown feel, an urban lifestyle.”
“I told her close in,” said Betty. “I told her, Benny. Oh, look at this one! Three fireplaces!”
Ben took the printout and squinted. “Where the hell is Round Rock?” he said.
“It’s close,” I murmured, “to many things.”
“I can just feel a warm fire with Yo-Yo Ma—our cat—curled in my lap,” said Betty.
“Mr. Hendrix,” I said. “Ben. What are you looking for, exactly? I’ll call my assistant and have him send some more listings immediately.” I didn’t have an assistant, but I knew Jonesey would help me out if the day was slow.
“Well,” said Ben, putting his glasses back on and folding his hands in his lap, “I want to walk or, worst case, ride a bus to work. I’ve been driving for thirty years, and I’m sick of my car.”
“Okay,” I said. Betty had told me her husband worked in finance and that his new office was on Third and Congress.
“Furthermore,” said Ben, “I’d like to try ethnic restaurants. I want to walk to various ethnic restaurants from my home.”
“No problem,” I said encouragingly. After all, the P. F. Chang’s in the Arboretum mall was—technically—ethnic, and you couldn’t throw a rock in Austin without hitting a burrito.
Close Your Eyes Page 5
