“You want some wine?”
“No!”
He reached for the remote and spun it on the table.
“Talk to me, Z.” I leaned over and took his hand. The remote clattered to the floor.
“If I tell you, will you drop it? And then can we go on and talk about something else, like the color of your underwear? Did you really wear white underwear tonight, like you were supposed to? Because I didn’t.”
I dug my nails into his hand. “Z!”
“Okay, okay!” He slipped his hand out of mine and rubbed it. “No. I don’t date. I work. That’s what I do. And occasionally, I hang out with Murmur Lee and Lucinda and Edith. I mean, I used to hang out with Murmur Lee. You know. Not anymore. And I work.”
“Why don’t you date? You’re cute. You’re funny. You’re smart. And why don’t you get a housekeeper?”
“I went into an adult chat room recently. It made me want to vomit. And I went back on a couple of nights later and found this girl on there who lets anyone cyberfuck her, and she has a kid. I told her to stop. I told her she needed to clean up her life.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to go fuck myself. And I did!” He laughed at his own bad joke, then leaned down, grabbed the remote, hit the mute. Automatic-weapon fire from Rambo’s gun popped all about.
“Give me that damn thing,” I said. I took it from him and turned off the TV.
“I don’t want to do this, Charlee! Now, let’s talk about your pretty white underwear.”
“No! Tell me why you won’t date.”
“Because, Charlee, I can’t. I can’t forget her. I can’t stop loving her. I can’t betray her. I just can’t. Okay?”
And then I knew for sure. He was in love with both women. Murmur and Katrina. It had to be. He’d fallen in love with Murmur while his wife suffered. It was easier to love a living, breathing friend than your dying wife. And way less painful. But now Murmur was gone, too. And the only one left was me. That was it. That’s why I’d had to come over and ask him annoying questions. I leaned over and kissed him. He kissed me back. I liked it. A lot. I don’t think my forward behavior or his response could be blamed solely on the martinis. I pressed my forehead against his.
“Oh fuck, Zachary, life is so damned hard.”
“I know, Charlee. Now tell me, what color is your underwear?” He kissed my cheek.
“Cornflower blue.”
He moved my hair aside and kissed my neck.
“Lace. Very pretty lace.”
“So you rebelled against Edith’s edict, too.”
And then there was no chance to respond, not with words anyway, because we locked lips and stayed that way. Ours were tender, soft, aching kisses. For a while—until I gave up thinking—I was aware that we were not only kissing but also honoring the painful endings we had endured for so long: Katrina and Murmur and, for me, Ahmed.
There was nothing bad about this. Nothing at all. Not when our kisses moved from tender to urgent. Not when we pressed our bodies together, allowing ourselves to feel the physical and the unknown. Not when I whispered, “Please, lie down with me. Please. Oh, Z. Please.” Not when we grew naked and vulnerable, surprising ourselves with the prayers we poured over each other’s bodies—prayers composed of touch and taste and sight, everything swathed in a primal sweetness of shadow and light, both of us searching with tongues, fingers, each of us propelled by an urgency that was by turns tender and insistent, both of us gasping over the beauty of skin, of taut nipples and slick hollows. No, nothing wrong.
We were this way with each other until dawn.
At first light, we pulled on our clothes and Z made us coffee, and then we ventured outside, penetrated the foggy morning, held hands all the way down to his dock, which snagged its way into the moss green waters of the Iris Haven River. We were laughing and playful. I was wholly unashamed for sleeping with this man. There would be no acts of contrition over this union. We sat at the end of the dock and snuggled against the cold. The breeze lifted Edith Piaf’s sorrowful voice from that hi-fi in the white house three doors and innumerable dunes down. That’s just the way it was in Iris Haven. Surrounded by the brick and mortar of Cambridge, I had forgotten. But here I was—having returned just a few weeks back—and already I had grown accustomed to the nearly constant sound of Piaf swirling on the wind, finding her way to our idle and busy hearts through open doors and wildly flung windows.
I touched three fingertips to Z’s face. “You are really quite wonderful, you know. You must be kinder to yourself.”
He pulled me close, kissed my forehead. “We will try.” He kissed me again, this time on the tip of my nose. Z seemed very fond of noses. And then we grew quiet and gazed at the river and listened to the plaintive cry of gulls as they rose into the shrouded sky in search of a new day.
“I saw them.”
“What?”
“I saw them. Murmur Lee and Speare.”
“That night?”
Z nodded yes. I looked at him, scared as to what might come next. He looked stricken, like a man who had just recognized he was breathing in death’s ripe scent. “I’m a Jew, Charlee, but I’m getting ready to make my first confession.”
I had the oddest sensation that an ancient bone—broken for so long—was on the verge of being mended. “There are no sins here, Z. Not a single one.”
“Look here. I saw two boats come up. It was late, past midnight. I heard laughter, and I knew who it was. And that was crazy-making. He was in his skiff and she in hers, and then I saw him offer her his hand and she got aboard. He was the cause of her laughter, see. He was playing music for her. He was holding her, kissing her, God knows what else.”
“Stop it!” Unlike last night, I didn’t want to hear another word. “Please, Z.”
He shook his head, and I noticed a knot rise in the center of his temple. “No, I have to do this.”
“You aren’t supposed to confess unless you know what it is you’re saying. Unless you’re really, really sorry.”
“Bingo. One and two.”
I put my hands in my jacket pocket. Suddenly, I was very cold. And this world composed of fog and crying birds and Edith spinning round and round no longer seemed safe.
“So I come out here just to make myself nuts. I decide I want to see everything. I want it to hurt, so that my rage will snap to bits whatever else I’m feeling. I can see that they’re dancing and close to fucking. Mist is blowing in off the ocean. I’m having a helluva a time seeing clearly, but I can still make out their forms. And then Speare does something insane.”
Oh God. A recognition swelled in my gut. I knew this. Whatever Z was about to say, I already knew it. I could not put it into words, I couldn’t recite it or offer it or sing it, but I sure as hell could taste it. The bile was rising. I heard myself say, flat, hard, “What, what does he do?”
“He changes the music.”
“He changes the music?”
“Yeah, yeah, to something religious. It’s the damnedest thing. And they start arguing, and she puts her hands to her ears and he reaches for her. They’re physical. He isn’t hitting her; it isn’t like that. And then the mist grows heavier. No, not mist. It’s fog. It rolls in and I can’t see. But I hear him calling her name. He’s screaming, ‘Murmur Lee!’ and you know, sound does funny things in the fog. It gets thick and slow. Nothing makes sense in the fog. But I hear him screaming and throwing stuff, and then all is quiet. And I hear an outboard kick in, and I’m sure it’s Murmur Lee. She’s taking off; she has had enough of Speare. And I’m glad about it, see? Really, really glad. I mumble something, like “Stupid son of a bitch,” and then I go back up to the house and lie down, happy that Speare made Murmur Lee angry. Happy that their night has been ruined. And I sleep. I goddamned sleep through the night.”
“Oh, Z, I’m so sorry.” I touched his hair. I needed to lay my hands on him, just a brief contact, to try to ease him, and maybe to ease myself. It was the music. Jesus, M
ary, and Joseph, the music. “It wasn’t your fault. You are not to blame. Do you hear me? What you are is full of grace.”
He turned away from the shrouded river. He grabbed my face, the sides. “It wasn’t her boat. It was his. He took off, not Murmur Lee. And I slept through the night while she was out there drowning. I could have saved her, Charlee. But I didn’t do shit. For the second time in my life, I didn’t do shit.”
At that moment, I made myself really small. I don’t know how I did it; I just did. I crawled into Z’s lap and rested there like a little bird, burrowing into his chest, willing the fog and silence and Piaf to take away our pain, to undo Murmur’s altogether-unnecessary ending. I wanted us to stay like that for a long time. I wanted communion, transfiguration, forgiveness, grace. I wanted God to care more than he did. Z kissed the top of my head and whispered my name.
“Oh, baby, baby, you are not to blame,” I said. And even while I sat there nestled in Z’s arms, I plotted. Sometime soon—probably that very afternoon—I would go in search of Speare. And I would goddamned well force a reckoning.
Billy Speare
Forget my nose. It was my manhood that was busted. How did I descend into victimhood, sucker punched by some jerk dressed in a rabbit suit?
Simple. The assault was a curve in the downward spiral I’d been trying to believe was not happening. The kick given Sex’s book sales, thanks to the Times review? Over. Kaput. Preejaculate. That’s the name of that spurt. And forget my agent taking my calls. Once the sales plummeted and it became obvious that the only reviewer in the good ol’ US of A who liked my work was Laughton, both my agent and editor suddenly seemed to be out of the office twenty-four/seven.
So there I was, the morning after, pulled up to the kitchen table, my head back, an ice pack held to the snapped cartilage that was my nose—coffee was brewing. Turkey’d been poured and sipped, five Advil had already been popped—when there was a knock at my door.
“Ah, Christ,” I mumbled, and considered ignoring it, but for some malarkey reason I decided to behave like a good citizen. And you know, I think the pussy in me thought it might be the white rabbit, come to apologize. I set down the ice pack and walked over to the door, which technically was off of the living room, but in this tin can, trying to behave as if the kitchen, dining room, and living room weren’t all jammed into the same rectangle was an exercise in delusional thinking. I cracked open the door. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Speare?”
I eyeballed her. I mean really. I think my right eyeball was the only thing visible. One bloodshot, droopy-lidded eyeball. She was a kid, maybe eighteen, dressed in skintight jeans that barely made it past her bikini line, a midriff stretch blouse the color of wild onions, a pink faux-fur cotton-candy jacket, lots of chains, pierced eyebrow, nose, tongue—Christ, what else?—tattoos (snakes, Celtic symbols, a spiderweb radiating out of her navel), purple lipstick, Cleopatra eyes. She stood in the dirt, one booted foot on my bottom step, Sex in hand.
“Who’s asking?”
“I am,” she answered indignantly, as if that was a sufficient answer.
My eyeball was growing fatigued, so I cracked open the door far enough for both eyeballs to be visible. She made a face, like she’d just swallowed cat puke. “Jesus, what happened to you?”
It took a few seconds for the reason behind her revulsion to register, and I should have known better, but I went ahead and answered. “I got punched by a rabbit.”
She shook her head and stared out toward the river. “I knew you’d be fucked-up.”
“What kind of talk is that?” I opened the door all the way, scratched my ass ’cause I felt like it.
“Are you going to let me in?” She looked at me as if she were sizing up whether to give a bum a buck. “Or what?” She had the bitter countenance of a woman twice her age, someone who’d been through more divorces and selfish men than any one soul had a right to.
I met her disapproving gaze, stayed that way for a good long minute, trying to figure out how to get her off my case, and then I felt something. It was as if the earth had begun a descent into a horrible place. Not hell. It was worse than hell. The rumble started in my chest and then split off, winding its way down into the netherworld of my lower intestines and up into the white hills of my cerebral cortex. I think I was in the throes of what country musicians call “a breaking heart.”
She was a junior at Duke, majoring in English lit, and her name was Ariela. Her mom, divorced from Ariela’s father for three years, had moved to Anastasia Island in the scatter-boned aftermath of her marriage. Ariela had stayed in Swainsboro, Georgia, with her dad to finish out her senior year. I’d been to Swainsboro. It’s about as far from Western civilization (read that: ambition) as a town can get. And now she was at Duke. You had to admire a kid with all that moxie, even if the little bitch was a smart-ass with a foul mouth.
And she was breaking my heart, because sometimes the past shows up on your doorstep in the form of an eighteen-year-old punk kid.
Little Ariela van den Berg, admirer of my work and perhaps a child genius, claimed she had hunted me down by making discreet inquiries at every beach bar from Avenue A to Devil’s Elbow. She also claimed to have medical training.
“Wow,” she said as she tossed my book on the couch and removed her cotton-candy jacket, “it’s a good thing I came over. That cauliflower of a nose needs to be set.”
“No. No doctors. I detest them. Especially now.”
She wafted by, waving away my words as if they were shredded bits of early, bad drafts. She went straight to the cabinet above my stove and opened it. “Everyone keeps their liquor above their stoves. Why is that?” She pulled down my very expensive bottle of Patrón. “Hey! Good stuff. There’s nothing worse than cheap tequila.”
“Well, just freaking help yourself,” I said, taking note of the peace sign tattooed on the knobby stob of vertebra number one. For a brief moment, I thought I should pull on my jeans, then decided against it. She was the one who had invited herself in. She could damn well put up with me as I was. I started to take my place at the kitchen table.
“No, no! Don’t sit!” She reached into the sink, pulled out a dirty juice glass, rinsed it, and filled it to the rim with Patrón.
“Before drinking another person’s liquor, it is polite to ask for permission first.” I pulled out the chair and sat grandly. I was a king in my shitcan trailer. The ice pack had begun to melt, and the puddle it created looked like a blister. I wrung it out over the linoleum floor and delicately returned it to my swollen, cracked beak.
“Two summers ago, I interned with the EMS in Swainsboro.” She removed the ice pack and closely inspected my schnoz. “That’s got to be set. I can do it. I don’t blame you about doctors. They creep me out. Here. Drink this.” She shoved the juice glass of tequila at me. I didn’t have any idea where this was going, but I knew if I didn’t drink, it would mean that she had won. I couldn’t let that happen, even though the result of my manliness was that I was about to have a tequila back for my Wild Turkey. Thinking about it now, I can see how some people would say that mixing bourbon and tequila was a recipe for disaster. Or at least a bloody wingdinger of a hang-around.
“Drink,” she said, and I did. “Want some lemon? You got any?”
“Nah, I don’t want no fucking Yuppie lemon.”
“Now who’s got the mouth on them, Mr. Literary Genius?” She pulled out a chair, spun it backward, and straddled it as if she were the new James Dean. She tugged on the silver hoop in her brow, and that made me wince.
“Why do you want me to drink this?”
“Trust me. Just do it.” She leaned back and shot me the kind of look that lawyers do when they’re about to reveal the dollars and cents of their required retainer. “I like your book.”
I sucked down more of the agave juice. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Is it the only one of mine you’ve read?”
“Well, yeah!” S
he rolled her eyes.
I carefully considered the clear fluid. Why can’t people be nice? “Just thought I’d ask.” This kid’s attitude was in severe need of an overhaul. Who the fuck raised her? I tossed back the last of the tequila. I let it settle, sort of like a cherry bomb. I had gas, but I couldn’t let her know, so I tried to let it out real slow, soft like, with no noise. I wasn’t sure how successful I was being, because the liquor was starting to impair my worldview.
She made the cat-puke face again. “Why are you such a mess?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for the same reasons you are.”
“Hey!” She jumped up, slammed her hands on her hips. She was going to make some perfectly fine young man miserable one day. “I am not a mess. And neither is my mother.” She screamed those words right before bursting into tears.
“Oh fucking Christ! What? What now?” Like I needed an eighteen-year-old crying female in my life.
“Nothing!” Her face trembled as she searched for control. “Nothing nothing nothing!” She attacked her tears with tiny fists.
I farted.
That’s all she needed. Her Cleopatra eyes hooded. She was an ancient female, having suckled on the breast of that feminine virtue called Gotcha! She crossed her arms in front of her—not a protective gesture, more like the queenly repose of a superior being. “Case closed.”
I farted again. It just happened. Ariela started laughing. She had a beautiful laugh. It sounded like youth and hope, fine-tuned by sadness. “I’m really sorry,” I said, and then I started laughing. Surprised the hell out of myself. I was laughing. And it made my nose pound.
“Come on,” she said, “I think the tequila has done its job.”
“What? What?”
“Get up and go to the bathroom.”
“Now, see here.”
She executed yet another perfect eye roll. “Not for that! I’m going to set your nose.”
The Problem with Murmur Lee Page 19
