Tucker handed Plum the book of Ann Beattie stories as he joined her on the pew. “I hate to part with it,” he explained, “but I’m only here for a few months, so I’m keeping my possessions as close to nothing as I can get.”
“Rosemary’s Baby,” Plum said, handing him the book. “Rosemary went to a Catholic girl’s school in Omaha.”
Tucker nodded, unimpressed. He asked the waitress for a beer and a whiskey, then said, “I wasn’t sure you got my e-mail about meeting me here today.”
He was joking, of course, making fun. She’d responded to his e-mail immediately, but it had bounced back, “undeliverable,” so she’d re-sent it only to have it snagged in the net of his spam-blocker, then the message from his spam-blocker had gotten caught in her spam-blocker, and by the end of it all, she’d managed to send several urgent-seeming acceptances, full of neurotic apology and explanations.
“Funny,” Plum said.
“I’m glad you made it,” Tucker said. “I’m very curious to know what you really thought of my exhibit.”
“Oh, I don’t want to try to say,” Plum said. “I’ll just embarrass myself. I’m really not very articulate.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, truly. I barely speak my native language, which I think is English. I’m just not so hot with, you know, those whatever those are. Words.”
“Hardy har har,” Tucker said in his soft voice. “You’re very articulate.”
“How do you know? We haven’t even really speaked to each other before.”
“Everything about you is articulation,” he said. “The way you do nothing, just sitting there, touching your drink. I noticed it in the way you turned the page of a book at Mermaids Singing. And the way you put a finger to your dimple to stop and think. Just this, even,” and he touched her wrist, “like you’ve somehow purposefully connected your hand bone to your wrist bone in this very deliberate way. You’ve invented everything about yourself, every habit and gesture.”
“You’re saying I’m affected.”
“Not at all,” he said. “You’re aware of how you want people to see you, so you’ve put yourself together. And how you’ve put yourself together is a fine thing to look at, if you ask me. I could watch you just stand in a room.”
At that moment, Plum did not feel finely put together at all, all dem dry bones ill connected, rattling in her skin. She didn’t know where to put her hands or where to look. “I don’t, I can’t . . . I don’t really know . . .”
“That man you were with at the gallery is your husband,” he said.
“Yes, Mickey. Mickey. Mickey! What can I say?” she said, and she went on to say much too much, relieved, speaking too quickly, and though she tried not to look at Tucker too often, she couldn’t help but notice how he seemed not to be listening but to only be watching, studying. She’d never felt so flattered to be completely unheard.
Naomi
The ice felt good on Naomi’s red cheeks as she walked into the wind, leaving her father behind at the coffee shop. But soon enough she felt her face go numb and her nose drip. She plucked an abandoned umbrella, inside out, its ribs broken, from an alley dumpster. It kept the sleet out of her eyes until a strong gust pulled it from her hands and threw it beneath the wheels of traffic. For the rest of the walk to the thrift store, where she and her best friend, Lee, often spent hours sorting through new batches of old things, Naomi considered skipping college altogether and moving in the fall to St. Augustine, Florida, where her aunt made a living maneuvering a trolley down narrow historic streets with her tongue between her lips as she inched around a tight corner, like she was threading a needle. Naomi was to enroll in business school at the university in Lincoln, but she longed to leave the abysmal winters of Nebraska behind and to open an overstuffed souvenir shop near the ocean. She pictured herself an eccentric in a muumuu, selling faded picture postcards of girls in 1970s bikinis, and mounted crocodile heads, and plastic mermaids trapped in snow globes.
“Your gay boyfriend’s in the dressing room,” said the girl behind the counter, practicing her piccolo. Naomi took off her damp stocking cap and ran her hand through her hair, which tingled her fingers with static. “Your gay boyfriend’s got a new girlfriend, looks like.”
The thrift store had a spacious dressing room in the back, separated from the rest of the shop by a clear plastic shower curtain. The dressing room had a lumpy sofa usually piled with clothes that hadn’t fit. But Lee now sat on that sofa, his sister, Peyton, stretched across it, her cheek on his knee as she examined the yellowing white glove on her hand and up her arm. Peyton wore a lime-green ball gown, its layers of taffeta rumpling noisily with her movement.
Naomi knew, had his sister not been on his lap, Lee would have made a grandly cornball production of welcoming her home. He would have swept her into his arms and into a dip, and he would have kissed her neck all over. Naomi, last year, had been the first one he’d told that he was gay, and they’d both cried, then made out, then had sex. They still had sex from time to time, on the nights they had what they called their slumber parties, sleepovers at his place where they’d lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling and talk all night, listening to the same Orenda Fink songs over and over.
“Yay! I’ve got both my girls back,” Lee said. He wore a white tuxedo with shiny blue lapels and a black top hat that nearly covered his eyes. He pointed at Peyton’s head. “Look, Naomi, it’s my big sis.”
Naomi detested Peyton. Peyton and Lee got a kick out of faking like they were incestuous siblings from a French movie, and when they got together they leaned and lay on each other, a couple of complete weaklings, and they whispered and giggled and did disgusting things like swap gum they’d been chewing, or use the toilet while the other was right there in the shower. And whenever Peyton popped up out of nowhere, Naomi inevitably would be dressed in her worst, in blue jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, her hair tied back with an unfashionable scrunchy, while Peyton’s hair would be freshly flipped, and she’d look terrific in something designer, and in chic leather boots up to her knees.
“How were the Bahamas?” Lee asked.
“You were in the Bahamas?” asked Peyton’s boyfriend, Tate, who Naomi hadn’t noticed preening nearby in front of a full-length mirror. He wore a very disco shirt of silver polyester and a pair of furry, Muppet-like blue pants. “Then why are you so white? Lose your tan already?” Naomi was ashamed to be so susceptible to his pretty face and goldilocks because he was without an ounce of kindness.
“It rained the whole time we were down there,” Naomi said.
Someone’s cell phone began to ring, but no one moved toward it, and Lee and Peyton and Tate all began to sing loudly along to the ring tone that rang to the tune of “King of the Road.” The three of them performed the song, giving it a slinky, bluesy rendition. They kept singing after the phone quit ringing, dragging out “roooooms” and “pooool” and “broooom.”
“We’re getting better,” Tate said.
“We have to find a costume for you, Naomi,” Lee said, gently sliding out from under Peyton, who crabbed about him leaving her. Lee wrapped his arms around Naomi and kissed her on the lips. Though he’d told her more than once that he was incurably gay, he’d been writing and illustrating a graphic novel that he’d declared semiautobiographical. In it, Lee’s doppelgänger (a word she’d learned from Lee’s mother, Ashley, along with “roman à clef”) was bisexual, and though Naomi had no doppelgänger of her own yet in the book, it was enough to give her the tiniest bit of hope at which to senselessly clutch. And though his kisses were often like kisses a lover would give, she found herself analyzing them, closing her eyes, weighing the press and warmth of his lips on hers, evaluating the kisses for what they lacked.
“Daddy’s so happy when he has all his little girls home with him,” Lee said, nuzzling his head into Naomi’s shoulder and squeezing her hard. He then took her hand and led her from the dressing room back into the shop. “We’ve been trying on things all aft
ernoon, and we’re exhausted. But I think I’ve settled on this tux.”
“This is February, isn’t it?” Naomi asked, discombobulated from her vacation. She was certain of the month, but Peyton went to college in Minnesota, and the new semester should’ve taken her away.
“My dad’s having an affair,” Lee said. He stopped at a rack of vintage party dresses in the colors of those butter mints served at weddings and baby showers. “And Peyton knows. And Dad knows that Peyton knows. He’s been trying to get her on her cell phone every few minutes for the last half hour. Oh, baby, look at this.” Lee held up a slick dress that glowed an iridescent mint green.
“How does Peyton know?”
“He sent her an e-mail by mistake. Meant for his bitch. Some super-obscene little love note, I guess. Peyton won’t even let me see it. She’s being all maternal and shit. Anyway, she drove up here so we could confront him together. We’re going to crash the sex party he’s going to. The sex party doesn’t have anything to do with the affair, it’s like a work thing, but it’s perfect, don’t you think? He’s there all undercover, so he can do some ‘oh, looka the freaks’ inside report on kink for his newspaper, and here we show up, dressed like lunatics, to accuse and humiliate. Here, try this on too,” and he handed her a god-awful sequined minidress with suede fringe.
“Are you sure that’s how you want to go about it?” Naomi asked, feeling queasy from all the day’s talk of affairs. She had been surprised by her mother during art class, her speculations about Zeke’s fidelity. Though Deedee and Zeke frequently competed to be the best loved, Deedee had never before revealed much to Naomi about the end of the marriage, had never spoken of any suspicions of another woman. Naomi had kept her own suspicions quiet too. In the immediate aftermath of the divorce, Naomi had entertained fantasies of having found her father out, having spotted him and another woman stealing a kiss in the parking lot of the Satellite Motel, and of a quiet but chillingly effective confrontation at Ted & Wally’s ice-cream shop, at which point Naomi would save their family, nipping in the bud any inclination Zeke had to stray. Over cake-mix ice cream in waffle cones, she could have painted a vivid picture for him of what he was to become: broke and alone and disrespected.
“It’s how Peyton wants to do it,” Lee said, leaning toward her. “She’s so pissed off. You can’t tell, because her doc just upped her Wellbutrin, so she’s feeling no pain, but, you know, she’s tossing and turning deep, deep down. I’ve never seen her have to get so doped up before.”
“Do you think your mom knows?” Naomi asked. Lee just shrugged. “Poor Ashley,” she said.
Naomi selected a few more outfits, then followed Lee back to the dressing room. Tate sat on the sofa wearing only an unzipped pair of vinyl snakeskin pants as Peyton put makeup on him. His cheeks were pink with blush, his lips slick with gloss. Peyton touched delicately at his lashes with a mascara brush.
On the other side of the room, hiding as much of herself as she could behind a curtain, Naomi stripped down to her underwear to try on a shimmery cocktail dress she liked. In a nearby mirror, she watched Lee checking out his own reflection as he adjusted his cummerbund and fluffed the ruffle of his pink tuxedo shirt. Tate, who clearly loved getting Lee riled up, stepped up behind him, put his arms around him to run his hands across Lee’s stomach, and put his chin on Lee’s shoulder to look at himself in the mirror. He asked Lee if he thought he was pretty.
“Yeah,” Lee said, “but it’s nothing a good jugful of acid couldn’t fix.” Then Tate stepped aside to get naked. He knelt next to a pile of clothes to sort through them, pretending to be totally oblivious to the fact that both Peyton and Lee were silent and mesmerized by his almost complete lack of physical imperfection.
Naomi looked at herself in the mirror. What would it take to make her beautiful? she wondered. She held her hand up to cover her nose. Then she covered her jaw, and her ears, trying to determine the effect of the absence of each piece of her. She thought of the model in her art class, the woman’s back facing her, her head turned slightly to the side, her right arm held up, her right hand holding a freckled pear, her right breast sagging off to the side. The model had not been beautiful, but she’d had a sexy and enviable confidence. Or maybe it was just indifference, a lack of interest in how she looked naked. Whatever it was, Naomi hoped she’d someday have it, and that someone would recognize it in her, and admire her for it.
“Oh, Naomi,” Peyton said with a gasp. She walked up behind her and gently slapped her hands at the dress’s skirt, smoothing out the chiffon and making the crinoline crackle. “This dress is a real bobby-dazzler on ya.” Peyton often adopted some little-known phrase she’d picked up from an old movie or a vintage Vogue and spent weeks overusing it, beating it back into obscurity. Bobby-dazzler was a good thing, Naomi knew. A few weeks before, Peyton had used the phrase to describe the new pages of Lee’s graphic novel, in which Peyton’s doppelgänger looked like a wide-eyed, curvy Japanimation honey with a long curl that coiled in front of her face.
Peyton grabbed the back of Naomi’s fine hair and held it up in an effort to approximate a fancy ’do. “Lee, stop being such a faggot and marry this girl,” she said, and Naomi was grateful for her tone of exasperation. The tone, and Peyton’s wink in the mirror, felt like a sisterly brush of affection, and she couldn’t help but blush. Naomi even appreciated when Peyton bent over to rummage through Naomi’s bag with a best friend’s sense of ownership. Peyton pulled out the box of conversation hearts Mrs. Bloom had given her and began to sprinkle some in everyone’s palms.
Tate was no longer nude, having pulled on a pair of clingy plaid golf pants and a tight T-shirt that showed off his belly button, a babyish outie. “Ever After,” he read from one of the hearts.
“Sweet talk,” Peyton said.
“Cute stuff,” Lee said. “Naomi,” he said, “what’s yours say?”
“I’m eating mine already,” Naomi said. “But it’s okay, I can read it with my tongue.” She looked toward the ceiling and rolled the broken candy around in her mouth. “Ummmm . . . let’s see . . . wait, wait . . . Fuck me senseless.”
Everyone’s laughter sounded genuine, particularly Peyton’s. Peyton typically kept her cool at all times, but Naomi’s stolen joke caused her to laugh a laugh that worked through her body, caused her to bend forward, to stumble back, to touch her hand to her chest, all the gestures of a girl that Naomi could see herself liking. With Peyton on her side, Naomi could easily conceive of convincing Lee that there were far worse things than marrying a girl who worshipped you.
Viv
After the last of her art students left, Viv spritzed herself and Yvonne the Yorkie with the No. 5 she got from her sister for Christmas, poured into two glasses two fingers each of a single-malt scotch, and put on some Nina Simone, whose thick-tongued growling she was trying to acquire a taste for.
Viv, on the sly, had lately been engaged in some mild making out with Zeke, the ex of her dear friend Deedee. Every week, after Viv’s art class and a cup of coffee with his daughter, Zeke would return to the studio alone, along with some darling cheap gift. In recent weeks, Zeke had brought Viv a handful of tiny origami swans folded from bubble-gum wrappers, a fake Tiffany watch that ran counterclockwise, and a book of heavily dog-eared poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay bought from Mermaids Singing.
By the time Zeke returned this late afternoon, Viv had hung her shiny red robe in the closet and pulled the chopsticks from her knotted-up pile of dreadlocks. She conducted every class in that robe, some skimpy, pricey dress secretly beneath it.
Whenever Zeke arrived, they would begin to kiss, and they would kiss for an hour. Sometimes he’d touch her breast through her dress, but usually not. Usually they kissed, and that was it. This had been going on since New Year’s Eve, when they’d ended up at the same party and shared a chaste midnight peck. The peck had led to two hours of kissing in Zeke’s car in the driveway, the heater full blast, the staticky crackle of a preacher’s yearend doom on an
AM station. Since then, she’d happily regressed, compulsively slicking her chapped lips with Bonne Belle Lip Smacker, raspberry-flavored, her favorite from junior high school. Kissing Zeke tossed her back to rec rooms in the early ’80s, to parties with the lights off, people making out to K-Tel albums of soft rock—the flimsy ballads of Spandau Ballet, REO Speed-wagon, Air Supply.
Woozy from making out with Zeke, her lips nearly numb and throbbing, Viv would then move on to her other Saturday ritual—cocktails up the street at La Buvette with Deedee and Ashley. They’d all been friends for years, and they met every Saturday happy hour, rain or shine, to toast each other with a mix of reminiscence and commiseration. Ashley drank a dry champagne with little white birds right on the bottle. Viv ordered what she remembered her mother always drinking, a whiskey sour served up in a cordial glass with a maraschino. Deedee enjoyed chilled Southern Comfort.
It had become surprisingly easy to face Deedee after kissing her ex for an hour, though the first few Saturdays she’d been so wracked with guilt she’d nearly stuttered out a confession before taking a single sip of her drink. But eventually Zeke started to feel just as much hers as Deedee’s, if not more so. Deedee and Zeke had been divorced for two years. And the way Deedee clung to old slights, the way she trotted out tired tales of Zeke’s every misdemeanor and minor infraction, began to grate on Viv’s nerves. Deedee was simply using Zeke as an excuse for not getting on with her life, it seemed to Viv.
“I made Naomi cry somehow at the coffee shop,” Zeke said when he returned for what they called their “kissing game,” though it really wasn’t a game at all. He handed Viv a gift in a heart-shaped box. The white ribbon, unknotted, drifted to Viv’s feet with a graceful spiral. Inside was an old cassette wrapped in red foil, a Billie Holiday. “I’ve actually had that for years and years, actually dug it up from the bottom of a discount bin of a record store when I was in college,” he said. “I wanted girls to think I was serious because I knew a little jazz. This is a recording of some session from obviously late in Holiday’s life, some slapdash gig. Her voice is all froggy. She yaks in between the numbers.”
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