by Jane Smiley
“It is good.”
“Someday I’d like to order a bit of everything on the menu.”
“Well, anyway, th—”
“What did you think?”
“Of what?”
“Of the way they were.”
“Noah and Rya?”
“I love your innocence. It’s so librarianly.”
“If I’m so innocent, then you tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Nothing, sweetie. I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?”
“Ray, when did we first meet?”
“Eleventh grade.”
“You were dating Julie Zimansky, right? Julie Zimansky was my second best friend. I know you put your tongue in Julie Zimansky’s mouth. Don’t pull this gay shit on me, Ray. Don’t call me ‘sweetie’ in that tone of voice.” She made a little circle with her finger in some crumbs on the table. There was a silence on the other end of the line. Ray was smoking a cigarette. Finally, he said, “It’s not shit.”
“I’m sorry, Ray. I just think you forget who you’re talking to sometimes.”
“Maybe.”
“Will you tell me what’s going on, then?”
“You really don’t know?” “Do I ever?”
“You did in eleventh grade.”
“I don’t know.”
“If I hadn’t thought you knew, I wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“But you did.”
Ray puffed a couple more times, then said, “Rya’s been sleeping with Craig for over a year now.”
“Says who? Ray, you always think that about everybody! Is that the big secret?”
“It’s not a secret.” He spoke briskly, stung.
“Is this something you’ve intuited or something you know?”
“Both.”
“I really can’t believe that Rya has even registered any other man since Noah. In the first place, she wouldn’t know how to keep it a secret, and in the second, they are an advertisement for passion, which is why they seem so simple minded.”
“In the first place, it was never a secret, or at least, wasn’t for long, and in the second, I don’t know that they do maintain the hottest fever.”
“You’re telling me that Noah knew?”
“He found out. I’m not sure when.”
“And she kept it up? And Craig kept it up? Noah’s been Craig’s bass player from the beginning! This is simply preposterous! Did Denny know? Did Susan know? The mere fact that I don’t know, and I would if Denny knew, is evidence that this is all a figment of your imagination. Did Noah or Craig or Rya tell you?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t believe it. I really don’t.”
“Ask Susan when she comes back.” He sounded so distant and cold that Alice purred into the phone, “Are your feelings hurt?”
He said only, “And there couldn’t have been any smell. Rigor mortis, yes. But decomposition wouldn’t have set in.”
“There was lots of blood. It smelled. It was hot. The windows were closed.”
“I still think—”
“Why do we have to argue about this? I know—”
“It’s been an awful day. I think it’s just hitting me. Isn’t it odd how it’s more exciting than horrifying at first? I really loved Denny. And Craig, too, most of the time.”
“Are you going to be able to sleep?”
“Don’t know.”
She wanted to tell him not to take any pills, but she was afraid to. She settled for saying, “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to anyone else.”
“Alice.”
“What?”
“You saw the cops today, didn’t you?”
“Didn’t you?”
“What did he ask you?”
“About the scene of the crime and stuff. I don’t know. I don’t think he thinks I’m a very promising witness. All I could remember was how shocked I was.”
“Did he ask you about the rest of us?”
“You and Noah? Not really. Not even about Susan, really. I couldn’t detect any trend to his thoughts.”
“You sure?”
“How did he talk to you?”
“No special way.” But from the manner in which he pulled deeply on his cigarette, Alice guessed that there had been something.
“They gave out so many keys to the apartment. Something was going on that we haven’t the least notion of, Ray. I’d bet on it.”
“Maybe. But he didn’t talk about me at all?”
“Well, I had to give a list of close friends. He asked me what your line of work is. That’s all.”
“What did you think about him?”
“I thought his suit was too tight across the shoulders.”
Ray didn’t chuckle.
“Ray, I was afraid to think about him. I was afraid even to look at him for too long. It would have been like looking straight at the power of the state. I babbled like an idiot, and didn’t stay on the point, and felt like I was exposing myself all the time. If he didn’t run me in for doing it, then he might just because I was a fool.”
“I didn’t know what to think, either.” Ray was trying to sound normal. Alice pursed her lips, then brushed the crumbs she had been playing with off the table into the palm of her hand. “Can we hang up now?” She knew she was being rude.
“Call me in the morning.”
“Good night, Ray.”
And then she dialed the number in California. It was only after it began to ring that she realized she still had the crumbs in her hand, and there was a minute jelly stain on the table as well.
Often Alice thought that the break-up of her marriage couldn’t have been worse if Jim had planned it to give her as much pain as possible. In the first year after the split, she had even decided, as a kind of protective mechanism, that he had planned it, that his heart was bent on vicious revenge for something she had done, or for her wholesale, and possibly demented, adoration of his aspirations. When she looked back on herself as she had been in the early years with him, she could not help seeing herself with his eyes, seeing the upturned face, the ready leap to fulfill his least wishes, or, better still, to anticipate them, the repeated surrender of her being to his. To all appearances, she had gone around like every other person, doing chores, going to work, drinking in bars, seeing movies, but in reality she had spent years with her forehead to the floor at Jim Ellis’s feet. He was a poet. Poetry was a passion that ran through his days like a steel wire. His poetry moved her, good and bad, first to last. It still moved her. Even poems that he now wrote to Mariana, when she came across them in magazines, could draw out of her her best appreciation for love itself, and she automatically responded as Mariana would, with love, pure and brave, in return. The great irony was that she would not have looked for the magazines and seen the poems had she not been a librarian, a profession she had taken up in order to support Jim while he wrote. On her own she would never have become a librarian, never in a million years.
But she did become a librarian, and he, to add to their meager income, taught a few continuing education classes at Queens College and N.Y.U. and City College. Never a real job, but enough to buy the food and pay the phone bill. It was in a night course for City College that he met Mariana. Because he was honest, he kept Alice posted on every twist in the affair: He was attracted to this girl in his class, wasn’t that funny, he would just have coffee with her, nothing special, she was a lovely girl, and wanted to meet Alice, yes, they had slept together, but it wouldn’t happen again, they couldn’t help it, it did happen again, this was something he had to work out, mostly physical, he thought, not a threat to their marriage, they were best friends, weren’t they. He did love Mariana, but it was a different kind of love, he didn’t see how he could do without either of them, did she understand how painful this was for him, wouldn’t she just meet Mariana, as his friend, sort of, to advise him as his friend, he had never felt like this before, it was sick, obsessive, maybe a trial separation, he couldn’t sta
nd doing this to her, he still loved her, but it was the love of friends, they had been so young and inexperienced when they met, this new thing with Mariana was like life and death at the same time, he knew she couldn’t ever understand that, yes, they could get back together, just to try it out, but he really didn’t think. … Three days after getting back together, after moving all his things back into their apartment, this very apartment she was sitting in now, he disappeared. No note, no phone call, no message left with their friends, no word, even, from Mariana, whom Alice had made herself call, out of worry. “Haven’t seen him in weeks,” said Mariana, while, Alice later found out, Jim was sitting right across the table. Then they went to California, and Alice got a note two months later telling her to file for divorce, or, if New York laws were too strict and she didn’t mind waiting, he would file. She could have everything, even the stereo. From the first day of the fateful class to the arrival of the note, Alice passed the interval of nearly ten months, she didn’t know how. Without Susan, she could not have. As Jim’s phone rang and rang, the receiver began to shake against her ear, and she realized that she was shivering already. Usually, she didn’t begin shivering until almost the end of a conversation with him. She was disappointed that they were not at home. In spite of everything, he was the one she wanted to talk to about this, before she had to do for Susan, perhaps, what Susan had done for her.
And then Jim’s voice greeted her intimately, in her very ear. He had to say hello three times before she could speak. He said, “I thought it was long distance. How are you?” He spoke kindly and affectionately, but not tenderly. It was apparent he did not know. “I’m not so good,” she said.
“What’s wrong, Alice? Did something happen to you? Are you sick?”
“Denny and Craig were, um, killed last night. We all thought you had better know.”
“My God! What did he do?” He turned away from the phone, putting his hand over the receiver. So she was right there. “Jim!” Alice raised her voice.
“Didn’t I always say Craig would—”
“We all always said something. But they were murdered. I found them.”
“Jesus, sweetheart.”
“That’s not important. It’s more of a shock now than it was then. I’ll tell you about it sometime. But Ray and Noah wanted to be sure that you heard it from us and not over the radio. I should have called earlier.”
“The radio’s broken and we’ve been at the beach all day.”
“Oh.”
“Hadn’t we better come there?”
“You don’t need to. It would be awfully expensive.”
“How’s Susan?”
“She’s back in the Adirondacks somewhere. I dread that she’ll find out in the car on the way home tomorrow. I don’t know what we’re going to do about it.” For the first time that evening, Alice was nearly crying, although she had vowed two years before never to cry in front of Jim Ellis if she had to slit her throat first. “We don’t know when she’s going to get back or anything.”
“I can’t understand you, honey.”
“Don’t call me those names!”
“Alice …” But he didn’t have anything to say, after all. They maintained a long transcontinental silence while Alice took deep breaths and wiped tears from her eyes. One or two times muffled muttering told her he was talking to Mariana, whom she had never seen but who was always there, it appeared, if the phone rang. Craig had once said, “Didn’t you hear about the operation, Alice? They were joined at the waist like a couple of experimental dogs. Medical history made in Orange County.” Of her friends besides Susan, Craig had been the most angry on her behalf, the most ready to belittle Jim’s claims to talent, good looks, kindness, humanity. She had liked him quite a lot for that.
Finally she said, “I am all right, Jim. It’s pretty late here, and all of this began this morning. Don’t worry about me.”
“I always do.”
She decided to get off before she got mad. “I’ll let you know what happens, all right? Or Ray will.”
“All right, honey.”
When she hung up the phone, she stuck her tongue as far out of her mouth as possible at it and said, “All right, honey!” in a strangled, sarcastic voice. Then, with a deep sigh, she got up and deposited the crumbs she had been clenching in the wastebasket. She took a small can of orange juice out of the freezer and set it on the counter by the sink. The cabinets, which she and Jim had stripped and refinished themselves, the vinyl flooring which they had laid, the flowers and vines they had stenciled around the kitchen doorway, all in a delirium of pleasure at having found such an apartment as this one, had long since lost for Alice any heartbreaking significance, although at one time a survey of the place seemed to measure out in completed tasks their three-year march toward the doom of Mariana. Nonetheless, the apartment, rent-controlled, was too good to give up for sentimental reasons. For seven rooms, five of them overlooking the street, Alice paid $375 per month, probably no more, these days, than maintenance. It was a gem of an apartment, and Alice loved it quite personally for the quite personal blessings she received from it. As she came out of the kitchen tonight, for example, her gaze automatically caressed the oak floor, laid in chevrons, forty-four feet by three feet, that washed from her toes and broke against the bedroom door. A huge apartment. Every New Yorker, Alice thought, loves to toss off the remark, “I’ve got this huge apartment.”
When she opened the door to her bedroom, fondling for a moment the molded brass doorknob, Susan sat up in her bed, saying, “Alice! You’re home.” Alice was paralyzed with astonishment, so shocked that what might have come out as an exclamation carne out as a groan. The accumulated experiences of the day seemed to drop on her at once, exploded by this insignificant surprise into pure horror, and even a kind of terror. Susan declared, “I frightened you. Are you okay? Didn’t you see my backpack in the living room? There’s dirty laundry in the laundry room, too. I was sure you’d notice my junk all over the place and be annoyed.”
Alice closed her mouth.
“I had a wonderful time. Hardly any rain, but this afternoon I was just ready to come home, so I came home. Denny must have a gig somewhere, because I called over there and there wasn’t any answer, so I stopped here and let myself in. I figured that if you hadn’t fallen in love in the last two weeks, you’d get in sometime, and here you are!” She bounced across the bed and reached for Alice’s hand. “Are you all right?”
“There were crumbs on the table.”
“I made myself some toast.”
“I saw them, but they just didn’t register. I’m all right. I missed you.”
“Was I asleep? I must have been asleep. What time is it? Jesus, it’s after twelve. I must have been asleep. The cabin was lovely. This is the perfect time. There were tons of wildflowers and deer and badgers and chipmunks, it was almost warm, no summer visitors. Is something the matter?”
Alice shook her head.
“Well, it was great!” But her enthusiasm had begun to sound a little hesitant. Alice said, “I’ll bet!” and wondered if she could avoid delivery of the news until morning. “I just lay down here so I’d be sure not to miss you, or him, either, if there was one.”
“No him. I was up at Ray’s.”
“He’s not with Denny and Craig, then?”
“No.”
“It’s been a long time since he’s had anyone over. I’m sorry I missed it. Did you go out to that Chinese place?”
“He got it in.”
“What was the best thing? You don’t have to tell me the whole menu, just the best thing.”
“Um, well, I always love the mo-shu pork.”
Susan began gathering her things off the nightstand. Alice exclaimed, “No! Stay here. I’m going to brush my teeth. We haven’t slumber partied in years, okay?”
NOW Alice ached to tell her and have it over with, but it was impossible to come out of the bathroom. When she did, the light beside the bed was on, and Susan was sitt
ing up, putting a pin in her straight, collar-length, reddish blond hair. She had Alice’s favorite face, pale, peaceful, and good, unglamorous, a face that never fell apart with animation like Alice’s own, a face that Alice was used to staring at and analyzing, wondering if Susan was pretty or beautiful, wondering if the fascination of it came from Susan or from herself. “Who do you think you’ve looked at most in your life?” Craig once asked at the dinner table. “Denny,” said Susan. “My dog,” said Noah (having only just met Rya). “My mother,” said Alice, ashamed to tell the truth. “Think of all that time at the breast, before you can remember.” Nonetheless, the truth was Susan. Alice walked around the bed, turned back the coverlet, and got in. Susan said, “I’m glad I have one day before going back to work. Do you think it’s stupid to take my vacation so early? Maybe by August I’ll be going crazy.”
“I don’t know.”
“I wish you’d tell me what’s eating you.”
“It’s hard.”
“To tell me?” She emphasized the “me” in disbelief.
“Especially you.”
Alerted, Susan looked at her suspiciously.
Alice squirmed under the comforter. “I missed you. Snuggle up.”
Susan snuggled up.
And then, when Alice had her securely in her arms, she told her. After a minute or so, Susan disengaged herself and got up, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.
If she had expected wailing, she should not have, for Susan was not that way. In fact, her silence in the bathroom rather frightened Alice, while also pinning her to the bed, where she lay hardly breathing, listening with her whole rooted body for a crack in Susan’s reserve, even the sound of the toilet flushing or water running. Susan was better at giving sympathy than receiving it. Hadn’t Denny said so himself? Taking care of Susan when she had the flu or her wisdom teeth out was like looking after a hedgehog, Denny said. “I just put the food by the bedroom door and knock,” he laughed. At once Alice could see Denny alive for the first time that day, leaning at you, teasing, intimate, his eyes bright with affection and a joke at your expense. The vivid image made her catch her breath and ache for some sound, some breakage or flow from the bathroom. But there was none, and Alice, perfectly still in her warm bed, the covers up to her ears as Susan had left them, went to sleep.
