American Woman (7 page)

Two years have taught him patience. That surprises her. He's generally frenetic with speech and not much of a listener, which means that once you get him talking he'll betray himself five different ways within minutes, but he's resolved to force her to speak first, and he isn't giving way. He's practically erupting with impatience, but he isn't giving way. She finishes her cigarette in what seems like one continuous inhale, flips it away, and rolls another.

Finally she says, “You alone?”

“Yes. What do you think, that I'm here with the posse? Come on, Jenny.”

He sees her start a little at the sound of her own given name. “You never know.”

“Of course I'm alone.”

“How'd you find me?”

“Why'd you make me?” He shoots another look at her as he says this, and thinks he sees her flinch. Such a delicate thing. Like the spider's work: spin one thread and give it a test. Sidle up and down its length with an eye toward the next one. “I talked to Dick and Helen, the night you took off.”

“I had to, Rob. They were getting suspicious. They didn't like having me there.”

“They didn't act like they didn't like having you.”

“Of course they didn't, to you. They're your friends. They didn't want to admit they were scared.”

“They only sounded scared after you left. They went to work in the morning and when they got back that night you were gone. No note. If you were afraid they were getting suspicious, then you did the worst possible thing.”

“I'm sorry, Rob.”

“And left me holding the bag.”

“I'm sorry, Rob.”

“
And
trying to come up with some plausible explanation for why you spooked and ran that
didn't
have to do with their darkest suspicions, which they were certainly having, but only after you left.”

“I'm sorry, Rob,” she says again, refusing to fight with him. To even really look at him.

“And you never contacted me,” he concludes. Saying this, he feels a peculiar sensation of tightness, almost itch, in his throat. From the thin air up here, probably. She says nothing to this, so that the truth of it is left to hang, even longer, between them.

“How'd you find me?” she repeats, finally.

“It wasn't hard. Your pen pal talked to me about your new job. And your go-between gave me your post office box. They both thought I'd just lost track of the info, because I'm such a busy guy. They never dreamed you'd try to shake me. Because we're all friends, remember?”

She flushes again, and he knows this time it's not because of him. Seeing her at the train station, being so beautifully, perfectly surprised by her, the old sensations, in their return, had been transfigured—for a moment, he'd hovered with her in a new medium, derived exclusively from their pairing, charged in the old way but purged of the old taint. Now the old taint is back, with its unwanted passengers. Her hand, at “your pen pal,” has literally flown toward her throat, although she's halted it short of its target and taken hold of her T-shirt. “You talked with Will?” she says, her voice just a half-tone too high.

“Sure.”

“I mean, you saw him?”

“Sure. I told you. I said he was fine.”

“I didn't realize you'd seen him.”

“He's entitled to visitors.”This sounds surly, but he can tell that the idea of his, Frazer's, recent physical proximity to her snatched-away lover is peerlessly horrible to her, though she tries not to show it.

“How is he?” she persists.

“He's fine, like I said. He's not so nuts about the food. Don't you get lots of letters from him?”

“Of course, but not directly. Dana forwards them to me, so it's slow. Maybe one every month.”

“That's it?”

She nods.

“You'd think he'd write more,” he says. Hating himself.

“It's that we both send our letters through Dana. That takes time.”

Ah, he hates himself. If you're going to be cruel, be cruel! Stick with it! But he can't. He says, “I'm just kidding around. He was itching to talk about you when I saw him. He couldn't, you know, but he sent his signal. He was itching to talk.”

“What did he say?” Then the hand flies up again, this time over her eyes, just like at the train station. “Oh, shit,” she whispers.

“Sweetheart.” He hasn't called her this in a very long time. Saying it, he feels a hole blown in his chest. He tries to take her hand from her eyes but she shrugs away from him.

“Anything?” she says, still blindfolding herself with her hand.

“Of course. Um, he said, ‘I hear soldier's got a new line of work.' Grinning the way he does. When he mentions you.” She nods, eyes still concealed. He casts about wildly for a phrase or two more. “He said, ‘Keep watching over things for me.' Things means you. He doesn't know you took off without telling me. He thinks we've been in touch all this time. Because he wants me protecting you. Because he loves you. Sweetheart. Please. Uncover your face.” He should have been an actor. Or at least, the one living an alternate life. Because, now as in the past, once the terrible pain of reassuring this woman of another man's love is commenced—once his throat, with its thickened walls of flesh and its central hard knot, has miraculously formed the first words, he could go on and on. He could smile and mug and retell anecdotes of this other man's devotion as if it means nothing to him, although he does retain for himself the fraudulently casual use of endearments.
Sweetheart
. He gets a charge out of this, though he knows she dislikes it. Now he says, “I would have been fucked if he knew I'd lost track of you. Because he counts on me to make sure that you're safe. I know you think you can take care of yourself, but that's not enough for him. I vowed to him I'd take care of you.” Then she takes her hand away from her eyes and looks at him through tears, and he feels stricken mute. She puts her face on her knees, and a small bell of solitude settles around her. Frazer's left at the lip of the cliff, staring out at the void.

For a while there's nothing but drifting, disconnected sound. Birdcalls, the hollow undertone of a jet somewhere out in the atmosphere. He's afraid of hearing definitive proof she's still crying but strains his ears all the same. The brightly colored group of middle-aged couples angles across the field behind where he and Jenny are sitting, back toward the trailhead; the breeze shifts, and their gay, indistinct voices carry over a moment, then fade. Finally Jenny sighs, wipes her face with the hem of her shirt. When she turns back to him he's startled. He dreams of this distilled gaze of hers all the time but on the few occasions she's meant it for him, he has quailed before it. He's looked away, as he looks away now. “Rob,” she says. He nods, waiting. “When you see William, you don't tell him, do you? About that time we fucked up.”

About that time we fucked up
. Frazer abandons caution and looks at her. He doesn't know what he was thinking: There's nothing particular there. “You mean,” he says, elongating his words as if groping around in the black vault of memory. “You mean, the last time you saw me? When was that, anyway? I must have a newspaper clipping somewhere that could help peg the date. Maybe it was March 1972, when I saved your ass from prison. I have this vague memory of seeing you then. Is that the fucked-up time you're thinking of?”

“Rob.”

“Of course I haven't told him. I always assumed you would, as part of some holy-moly purifying ritual. ‘Forgive me my terrible sin, but I had sex with Frazer.' Isn't that your thing? Pure heart, pure life. You can't hold down a job in the capitalist system at the same time as you fight for revolution and you can't lie to your lover at the same time as making sure you're perfect soulmates who never power-trip each other! Right? Every time I go see him I think he's gonna try to punch me through the Plexiglas window but he's just all smiles and all love because you never told him. You're scared to.”

“I am not! It's just not something I would ever disclose in a letter—that's
real
cowardice. When I tell him it'll be to his face. And what about you? You haven't had Carol taken away, you could tell her to her face, but you haven't.”

“Me and Carol don't believe in monogamy, so I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Oh!” She leaps up in frustration. “Why are you here anyway, Rob? Why did you come after me?”

She's standing now, angrily planted, but he knows she'd rather stride off across the green field, down the worn trail, and get in her car and leave him. He can remember any number of their arguments in the past, arguments ostensibly about ideas but really about his persistence, her refusal, that have ended this way. With Frazer left alone, carefully avoiding all movement because to move is to reanimate a world stopped in its tracks by her violent departure and to reanimate that world is to allow the shroud of humiliation, still hanging uncertainly in the air the way silence hangs uncertainly after a door slams, to complete its descent onto him. He always needs a few moments to get ready for the shroud. He likes to wear it as lightly as possible. In the past Jenny did a lot of her storming off and leaving him in the parking lot of a pancake diner where they'd go on nights that Carol was with her women's group or her acting class and William was teaching his seminar or working the night shift, nights that were frequent, and they almost always fought, and insulted each other's characters and reviled each other's beliefs, but they kept doing it, didn't they? And didn't that mean something? Didn't it mean something bound them, somehow?

She's wearing a pair of old, faded, paint-covered jeans that Frazer hasn't been looking at closely, but now that she's standing, hands on hips, poised to depart, and he's leaning back on his elbows and pretending to gaze unconcerned into the distance while actually looking at her, he can see that these jeans, so splattered with recent activity, are a pair she's had for years and years, a pair that used to be nice, and that he remembers because they have seams on their fronts. Pointless, decorative seams, stitched with gold thread to form a thin ridge of denim running like a highway stripe down the centers of her thighs, over her kneecaps, and the rest of the way to her ankles. These were Jenny's signature jeans. He remembers one night years ago, when they all still lived in California, and when none of them were in prison, and when they were feeling that unalloyed excitement about being together, about being a group of friends that felt more like a family, like the sort of dream-family nobody had and that doesn't exist. Carol had been trying for weeks to talk them into playing a game from her acting class and everyone had been pretending to think it was stupid, but this night they were all high and goofy, and William said, Let's play Carol's game. And perhaps because they all secretly wanted to, or perhaps because it was William suggesting it, on this night they agreed. Scattered through the house to find scarves and stockings for blindfolds, then reconvened in the living room, laughing nervously, sucking last hits off joints or last slugs from bottles for more kick, or more courage. Carol explained that the point of the game was to pretend as if one was a newborn baby, or an alien. Without knowledge of anything, not furniture or carpet or LPs or human beings or beer bottles. The game only involved turning off all the lights, and blindfolding themselves, and crawling around on the floor trying to imagine they didn't know what things were, but somehow they all sensed, as the lights went out and the eruptions of
Ouch!
and
Shh!
and
Fuck you, man!
finally faded away into eerie, shuffling, shifting, sighing hush, that the game wasn't going to be about amnesia. Hands found shoulders, faces, tried to identify with the minimum of touch. Recoiled or lingered, were received with breathless stillness or flinched from. Frazer, inching out of the living room onto the smooth, cool wood floor of the corridor, came against a person sitting perfectly still, and was so startled he gasped—then extended one finger very slowly before him until he found a bent knee, felt the ridge of denim running over it. Jenny.

His hand meant to fly away, but it didn't. Tentatively, questioningly, he followed the ridge with his finger. Surprised by how much care was needed, in his blindness, to keep it squarely beneath the pad of his fingertip. He could hear her breath then, as careful and slow as his touch. Down the incline of her thigh and over rumpled territory to her waist. She didn't move, and so he extended the line, upward, over the warm curve of her breast, the shock of her nipple. Hard. He almost came, closed his hand around her, but that wasn't the game that he'd started, and though this threshold would become one of the premier erotic episodes of his generally eventful and unrestrained sex life, it lasted only for a sliver of a second before he forced himself onward, his line up her body uninterrupted as it left her breast, skimmed over her collarbone, traced her neck to the down-dusted earlobe and then moved away, through her hair, to the void. From the living room he heard a crash, and then a peal of laughter: Carol's. He swiveled in panic, thinking the lights might come on, and crawled hurriedly back to the living room like a dumb frightened animal.

There are the famous jeans now, wash-worn almost white and caked with dots and streaks of different kinds of paint. Their tantalizing ridges obscured. Take your cue from the pants, Rob, he thinks. The past is obscured. Now, the future. The middle-aged couples are gone. They're completely alone.

“Sit down,” he says. “I'd rather say this without yelling.”

All the while he's been looking for her he's also been rehearsing, not with unease but with fidgety eagerness, even euphoria, the speech he'd deliver. But now the moment has come and the speech is gone, in a tumble of parallels and hypotheticals and other half-baked attempts at suspense.
Say a person like you
, people
like you. Principled people, pursued by the state they oppose! Time running out . . . needing refuge, as you did—and do
—