by Melissa Bank
“No.”
“Good,” she says. “I know it was hard.” She praises my strength.
“Bob,” I say, “I chickened out.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what happened.” Then I say, “How’s Richard?”
“He’s fine.” She takes a deep breath, and I hope that she’s going to say more. “I went to a lecture he gave at Columbia last week.”
I say, “Does he have kids?” and instantly worry that I’ve gone too far.
“In college.” She reaches behind her and hands me a bag. “Happy birthday.”
It’s a tape of one of my favorite novels, Washington Square. She puts it in the cassette deck and presses Play.
After a minute, she says, “I’m sorry.”
I turn to her. I think maybe she’s going to talk to me about herself or about Richard or about why she can’t talk to me about herself or Richard.
She says, “It’s abridged,” meaning the tape.
. . . . .
We get to the house after midnight. I grab my bag out of the back and walk barefoot on moss and then pebbles across the driveway. When we pass a very old Jeep Wagoneer with wood on its sides, I tell Dena that it’s my favorite car or truck or whatever of all time.
Dena says, “It’s Matthew’s.”
The house has low ceilings and wide-beamed floors that slant. The only light comes from candles, which make everything look soft but also haunted.
Maybe because of the candles, we whisper.
“No lights?” I say.
She says, “We’re experimenting.”
“What’s your hypothesis?”
She says something about lowering the electricity bill, and then she turns on a light.
The kitchen is painted a fifties’ yellow or was last painted in the fifties, and there are tomato-print curtains and a cat clock—its eyes and tail go back and forth on tick and tock. The room manages to be nostalgic without being cute, maybe because its charm borders Rattytown.
Dena calls out, “Margaret, Margaret,” and an ancient yellow Lab lumbers in. Dena pets the dog and says, “Hello, old girl,” which was what she called the female wolfhound, whose name I can’t remember.
I get down on the linoleum, and Margaret is licking my face when I feel the presence of another human, standing above us.
I look up and see a tall and rangy stranger, rumpled, with blond, brillowy hair parted on the side, warm-looking pink skin, and blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles—handsome, though I get the feeling that’s the last thing he wants you to notice about him, which makes him more handsome.
“Hey,” Dena says. “Sophie: Matthew.”
He says, “Hi, Sophie,” and his voice seems quiet, without actually being quiet, and for a second he and I seem to be alone in the kitchen, and then the kitchen itself fuzzes out, and he and I are alone in a moment of placelessness.
Dena breaks the spell. “Is the shower fixed?”
From the floor, nuzzling Margaret, I study Matthew while he and Dena talk house. He’s reserved, I think, and opaque. There’s something about him that seems inaccessible—or, at the very least, hard to know—and I don’t know why: He’s friendly; he’s warm; he answers the questions Dena asks.
She pulls out three wineglasses, but Matthew says he has work to do yet. He puts a kettle on for tea.
I hear myself say, “I think I’ll have tea, too,” even though I want wine, even though I hate tea.
Dena tells him about getting towed.
I tell him how furious everyone at the tow pound was and that I think the clerk has the hardest job in New York, worse even than sanitation or advertising.
Matthew smiles at me, which makes me want to talk more. I think of telling him about the man who offered to pay our fines and then acting out my damsel-villain-hero skit, but I can’t do it again in front of Dena, no matter who taught it to me.
He asks how I take my tea.
I say, “Milk and sugar,” hoping they’ll cut the tea taste.
To Dena, he says, “How’d the meeting go?”
She didn’t tell me about any meeting, and it occurs to me, as it has many times before, that Dena is more forthcoming with her other friends.
“It was stressful,” she says. “But I liked the guy you told me I’d like.”
“Anders,” he says.
“He was nice.”
Dena works in the urban-planning office at Roosevelt Island, but beyond her taking the tram to work, I have no idea what she does. I feel that I should know, too, because she’s been doing it for a long time.
I say, “What was your meeting about?”
“It was with some people from Swatch,” she says. “I want them to do a tram watch.”
I nod as though I understand what a watch has to do with urban planning.
She goes back to telling Matthew how stressed out everyone in her office has been since hearing the rumor about layoffs.
Matthew says, “The worst part about stress is that it makes us all so shallow.”
Once he’s gone upstairs, I say to Dena, “He’s smart.”
She says, “Since when do you drink tea?”
“I have for a while.” I add another spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down and drink as much of it as I can.
While she gets towels and sheets from the linen closet, I try to decide which of my many questions to ask about Matthew. I decide on, Does he have a girlfriend? and say, “Bob?”
When she looks at me, her face is pinched, and I say, “What were the names of your Russian wolfhounds?”
“Ivor and Magda.”
“That’s right.”
As I get undressed, I worry that my description of the tow pound annoyed Dena; she paid a lot of money and I turned it into a joke. I tell myself that I’ll find a way to pay her back. But maybe she’s annoyed that I asked about Richard’s children; maybe it reminded her of how I spoke the night I’d found out he was married, and I can’t undo that.
Lying in the dark, though, I forget about Dena. I’m thinking about Matthew, and the thought of him makes me both excited and calm.
I realize that he reminds me of my father, though I’m not sure why. He seems smart; he seems strong; he seems self-contained. My father could seem inaccessible, too—with everyone but my mother. There was something just between the two of them. And that’s what I want with Matthew.
. . . . .
In the morning, Matthew’s in the kitchen, washing dishes.
He says, “Good morning,” and I love his quiet-sounding voice and his loose-fitting jeans and his bare feet.
I say, “Morning.”
Dena’s at the grocery store, he says. Do I want pancakes with fresh-picked blueberries? He holds up a bowl of blueberried batter.
I say, “Maybe when I wake up.”
He pours me a cup of coffee from an old-fashioned percolator. He’s awkward as he says, “You work in advertising?”
“Sort of,” I say. “I’m between careers.” Then I remember that I have an assignment due on Monday, and I tell him I’ll pay him a dollar if he’ll help me with it. “We have to name a club for people who stay in Comfort Inns a lot.”
He says, “What do you have so far?”
I say, “The Comfort Inn Club,” and ask him what he does.
“I’m an architect,” he says, and I think, Of course you are. Like Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men, you are a man who fights for justice and builds tall buildings. You are a man who will change the skyline of my life.
I ask what he’s working on now.
He says, “A kitchen.”
I get up to refill my coffee cup and stand beside Matthew at the counter. I look out the window at the backyard and the hills in the distance.
He asks if I want to see the vegetable garden, and I say that I do.
Outside, he points out Boston and red lettuces, tomatoes, carrots, basil, mint, and cilantro. He picks two sprigs of rosemary, and we’re chewing on them when
we walk into the house.
Dena’s putting away groceries, and after Matthew goes upstairs, she says, “What were you guys doing out there?”
It reminds me of the time she came home late from the rink, and I waited for her in her sister’s room. Ellen was getting ready to go out, and she let me look through her closet with her. “Wear this,” I said, about a beautiful navy blue sweater with tiny red flowers embroidered at the neck.
“It’s too small for me,” Ellen said. “You want it?”
That was when Dena came home; she appeared in the doorway.
I mouthed, Thank you, to Ellen about the sweater I folded over my arm and followed Dena to her room. She shut her door and said, “What were you doing in Ellen’s room?”
The true answer was, Having the time of my life. But I said, “I thought it was Tracy’s.”
. . . . .
Dena wants to give me a tour of the nearest town. In her car, I taste the rosemary in my mouth, and I think of Matthew tasting it in his.
She points out the farmers’ market, the eclectic bookstore, the restaurant she likes, and the thrift shop where she bought the long madras shorts she’s wearing. We pass an antique store that she says is great and cheap, and I ask if she wants to take a look inside.
She says, “It’s too nice out to shop,” which sounds like a reprimand, one suburban girl scolding another for being suburban.
. . . . .
Dena and I are packing a picnic when Matthew appears and asks if we’re going to the lake.
Apparently we are.
“Would you mind bringing Margaret?” he asks. “You can take my car.”
I say, “Sure,” at the same time Dena does, and it occurrs to me that it is not for me to say.
“If I get enough work done,” he says, “I’ll ride the bike over.”
“You always say that,” she says. “And you never come.”
He says, “I will if I can.”
. . . . .
I love the old-fashioned bulk of the Wagoneer. As Dena drives it up and down a long, hilly dirt road, I picture Matthew and me driving as boyfriend and girlfriend. Then I imagine us older, as husband and wife, my stepdog, Margaret, in the back.
“What are you thinking about?” Dena asks.
“I was thinking I’d like to take a road trip.”
The beach around the lake is just a rim of muddy sand, and the widest stretch is occupied by other lake- and sunbathers. No matter: Dena has a grassy spot staked out, a clearing by a glade of low-slung shade trees.
Margaret goes and sits in the water.
After lunch, Dena closes her eyes, and I think she’s about to take a nap.
I lie beside her. In a sleepy-time voice, I say, “Did anything ever happen between you and Matthew?”
“No,” she says. “Why?”
Her why comes so fast and sharp that I say, “I just wondered.”
She sits up and pulls out a big fat book called The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. She’s wide awake now.
I’m between books, so I’ve brought three, plus the newspaper, which I can’t read because the wind has picked up. I take out my notebook and decide to start my advertising homework. After a while, I have two names—“Comfort Innsiders” and “The Red-Carpet Club,” both of which seem awful, but can a name for a Comfort Inn club be great?
I say that I’m going for a swim.
Dena reminds me to wear sneakers. “It’s mushy,” she says. “And there are snapping turtles.”
I hesitate; I think of Matthew joining us and how I’ll look in my bikini and sneakers.
Dena looks up from her book. “You need them.”
I decide to put off swimming until she takes her nap. I pick up my notebook and try to think of a third name; in advertising, you always need three of everything.
“You’re not going in?” she says.
“Not yet.”
Dena lies down. She’s asleep when I see Matthew riding a mountain bike toward us. I remember Dena telling him, “You never come,” and I think, He came for me.
I watch him set his bike down on the grass. He’s wearing a rumpled shirt over seersucker bathing trunks.
I point to Dena and mouth, Sleeping.
He looks at Margaret sitting in the water and asks if she’s gone swimming at all. I shake my head.
He tells me that she needs to swim—it’s good for her hips—and that he’s going in.
When he takes off his shirt, I see that his shoulders are narrow and his chest almost hairless and almost concave. For a second I’m disappointed but right away I think, Grow up; this is the chest of a husband.
He puts his spectacles in their case and tells me that he’s blind now and depending on me to get him to the lake. I tell him that when I don’t have my contacts in I’m blind, too; without them, I say, the world becomes an abstract painting, and he smiles without looking at anything, the way blind people do.
We’re halfway to the lake when I say, “We don’t need sneakers?”
He says, “Dena thinks we do,” and laughs.
He runs into the water—it’s cold—and dives under. Margaret swims beside him, and, like a good father, he encourages her.
I squish into the lake up to my waist. Standing in the pale brown water, I realize that I haven’t actually swum in a long time. I’m used to the ocean—ducking under waves and floating and getting pulled around in the surf. I try to remember the swimming lessons I took at camp, but all that comes back is the odor of chlorine and wet Band-Aids.
Matthew says, “You want to swim across?”
For a moment, I act like I’m too absorbed in the majesty of the scenery to swim. Then I decide to be truthful with him; I say, “I don’t really know how to swim anymore.”
“Want me to teach you?”
“Teach me,” I say.
He moves his arms to demonstrate the crawl, and then, standing behind me, moves mine. His touch is light but sure.
He says, “And just do a flutter kick.”
I ask the question that has been nagging me for years: “Do you keep your legs straight?”
“Slightly bent,” he says.
I look toward shore, and I see Dena: She’s using her hand as a visor and watching us.
. . . . .
The three of us make dinner together. We have corn on the cob and a salad with tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. When I start to tell Matthew about Dena’s Salade Fatiguee, she says, “Shut up.”
As ever, I want to say, You shut up. Instead, I walk out of the kitchen as though remembering an appointment upstairs.
Matthew grills fish, an unfavorite of mine, but it tastes better than I thought fish could, and I think, He even makes fish taste good, and this seems to be a metaphor for the hard things we will face together.
We sit on the screened-in porch. There’s the sound of crickets. I talk about my dad, and Matthew tells me about his—a priest, still alive, in Kansas.
Dena insists on clearing the dishes herself, and a few minutes later she comes back carrying a chocolate cake with candles and singing “Happy Birthday.”
Matthew joins in: he has a deep, deep voice, which makes me think, Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.
I make a wish and blow out the candles.
When Dena goes into the kitchen for plates, Matthew says, “I didn’t know it was your birthday.”
I tell him it isn’t until Wednesday, and that my brother’s having a party for me. “You should come,” I say. “Dena’s coming.”
We only eat a few bites of cake before Dena looks at her watch and says, “We have to go.”
“Where are we going?” I ask.
She says it’s a birthday surprise.
Matthew pours scotch into a silver flask and tells me to get a sweater. “You don’t think you’ll need it,” he says, “but you will.”
. . . . .
The amphitheater is crowded, and just as we find seats in the bleachers, si
x black women in pastel dresses walk onto the stage. In a perfectly synchronized move, they turn their backs to the audience and place their white pocketbooks on the floor, which seems funny, and Matthew thinks so, too; he catches my eye.
They sing gospel and sound like The Staples Singers, especially on “I’ll Take You There,” one of my favorite songs of all time.
After a while, practically the whole audience is standing, and Matthew and Dena and I are, too. Everyone is clapping along, and if I do not believe in Jesus exactly, I believe in whoever or whatever it is that makes these singers sing the way they do and this night breezy and Matthew’s fingers touch mine a little longer than necessary when we pass the flask back and forth.
Toward the end of the concert, Dena sits down. I ask if she’s okay, and she says, “I’m tired.”
Now it is just Matthew and me and the flask of scotch and our lingering fingers.
Everyone sings the encore, “Amazing Grace.” I close my eyes at “I once was lost, but now am found.” Matthew’s voice is loud and clear for me to love. I myself am tone-deaf, but I mouth the words with all my heart.
. . . . .
“What does gospel mean?” I ask in the car.
“The message of the Lord,” Matthew says.
“The truth,” Dena says.
“So when people say ‘That’s the gospel truth,’ are they saying ‘the truth truth’?”
Matthew shrugs twice.
At home, I announce that I’m going to have another scotch scotch on the porch porch.
The chill in Dena’s “Good night” makes me wonder if I thanked her for the cake and the concert. Maybe I haven’t been helpful enough in the kitchen. I wash the rest of the dishes.
Then I get a glass of scotch with ice cubes and go out to the porch. I stroke Margaret’s back and look out at the moon lighting up the hills. Another minute, I think, and Matthew will come downstairs and out to the porch and he will kiss me, and our life together will start.
An hour passes before the porch door opens.
It’s Dena.
I try to make my face look happy to see her, and I notice that hers is grim.
She sets her own glass of scotch on the table and sits across from me. “You asked me if anything ever happened between Matthew and me.”
She takes a deep breath. “The first year that we rented the house.”
