Apart From Love (34 page)

So I came in, hips swaying, and looked down at the boy, saying, “Help me, Ben.”

Which startled him. The features of his face contorted, like he couldn’t make up his mind weather to be troubled by me surprising him, or not.
 

Either way, he sprang to his feet and with a shaky voice, said, “Sure, what—”
 

And I turned my back on him, and tugged at the zipper of my black dress, pulled it as high as it would go, so now it reached the level of my waist, and then I just stood there, waiting for him to make his move. And with trembling fingers Ben brought the two edges of fabric together—barely touching the back of my neck—and managed, somehow, to pull the thing all the way up.
 

“There,” he said, with a catch in his voice. “It is done.”
 

And then he stepped back, away from me. I reckon he was thinking about the late hour, and about his pa, who should’ve been here already, and about not being able to face him, ‘cause like, how can you try to rob the old man of his woman, and how can you win any fight—let alone dare to stay in it—while having to carry, somehow, the terrible handicap of being young.

I licked my lips, so they would be real red and shiny, and smiled at him. Inside I was praying that the light in the bulb would blaze so bright, so fiery it would burst. And them walls, pressing awful tight
 
all around us, would just melt away. And the pane of glass would sizzle, and the window frame, it would turn to ashes—poof!—like dust into thin air, so anyone out there in the street could watch us, as if there wasn’t no walls, and we didn’t have no shelter. Then there would be no secrets no more. Nothing left to hide.
 

Here, Lenny, I cried inside, take a good look! Here I am—not only for your eyes, but for all eyes to see!
 

And for the first time in our ten years together I thought, he’s old. He’s the old man passing out there, somewhere in the dark, limping stiffly on his way to some other woman, some fake blond, I bet. At the sound of my voice he would shiver, and look up. He would be unable to take his eyes off the boy. And the boy, he would just freeze there, in his seat, unable to take his eyes off me.
 

I hoped, with every bit of bitterness, that Lenny won’t miss the look, the shy look his son flashed at me, when I slid into my chair and—real slow and naughty—began crossing my legs.
 

Which at once, made Ben tense up. I met his eyes, and could feel my look shooting through him, like it was a poisoned arrow. Now my legs was crossed knee on knee, and my lips was wet and parted, ever so slightly, and I began lowering my eyelids. Slowly his face dimmed, like, it fell into a black nothing, and then, I went back to thinking about Lenny:
 

As a husband, he may lose his temper with me, from time to time—but as a writer, he totally gets what I need. He lets me talk, talk, talk for hours on end, keeping himself out of the way, like, real nice and discreet, so as not to stop me from pouring my heart out in front of his tape recorder.
 

Me, I put my faith in him, knowing that Lenny would keep his word, he won’t listen to nothing I say, ‘cause some words, they rattle in your head, and their sound, it can be jolting to anyone, I mean, anyone but you, because they’re yours. So you should hide them real good, keep them hushed up, like, under a blanket. Them words, they shouldn’t be heard by no one—especially not those you hold dear.
 

Which makes me trust the distance between us. It keeps me safe—but at the same time, it holds us apart.
 

So at this moment—when I started punishing him by raising my eyes, and giving Ben that which he craved, a cruel little smile—the best thing that could happen would be this: Lenny would come bursting in.
 

I can just see it in my head. He would be breathing hot fume straight into my eyes, making me step back and blink. His forehead would be, like, swollen with rage. And that pleat in its middle, which used to remind me of my pa, would grow deeper than ever. And the vein by the side of his neck would seem to be knotted. With an awful screech Lenny would shove the table off to the side, and flick the naked bulb hanging over its place, till it swung violently to and fro, to and fro.
 

To his son I bet he would say nothing, ‘cause if he did—if he said, like,
Stop
! Stop staring at her, she’s fucking mine!—things could soon come to blows. Instead, he would just fix his eyes on Ben, scaring him right out of the kitchen. Then, not being able to hold himself back no longer, Lenny would like, explode. He would rip my dress in two and shout at me, and I would shout back, even cry. And then, then it would be all over.
 

The air would be cleared between us, and we could start fresh, almost.

I should be so lucky—but no; sadly, that didn’t happen. Instead I raised my hand—like I was him—and pushed the table, and flicked the naked bulb. Under it—right there between the boy and me—stood Lenny’s chair. It looked so empty, so bare that it glowed, like, real bright against the shadows.
 

There was a splotch of light that danced over the seat, like a dance of triumph, almost. It darted wildly from one edge of the seat to the other, and after a while it started slowing down, swinging only a bit, then only a tiny bit, till at last it stopped right there, right in the center. At which time I felt a little something, a little pang in my heart. Perhaps, remorse.
 

All the while, Ben went on sitting there, in his chair, pretty stiff and silent. He lowered his head, like, to study his own hands, so as not to stare at me. Nothing else stirred. Me, I glanced out the window: nothing stirred out there, either. You couldn’t spot no one in the twilight—but in my head I pictured the old man turning away from me, and in that second I sensed his heart turning, turning against me.

Which is when I snapped my fingers, right there in front of my face, and told myself in a sharp voice, a voice that wasn’t even mine, Enough already! Snap out of it, girl!
 

What’s the matter with you, anyway? So, your man hasn’t come home? Too bad, really! Who knows where the hell he is. Who cares with whom he’s sleeping tonight. Jealousy is a tough thing, Anita. It’s taken a bite out of you. It hurts. Yes, I can see the pain. So now, he hasn’t come home—and the thing you worry about is
what
, exactly? Crossing your legs? Really? You out of your mind?
 

I slapped my own cheek thinking, I so wish ma was here.

As Told by Anita

I
t’s awful nippy here, inside and out, even though this is only mid-fall. Shut tight in front of me is the glass door, which I can’t hardly open, on account of being tired, and a bit wobbly on my feet. Even so I can hear a sound, a muffled sound from the other side, out there on the balcony. From this angle I can spot him, kinda: at least his outline, bent over the desk, and the slant of the shoulders.
 

And I can’t barely see a face, but somehow I can tell it’s a familiar voice out there, saying, like,
Here is one thing I hope she knows: she deserves better
.
 

Which makes me shiver, even in my coat. The man, he’s tapping his fingers tensely on the edge of the record player, pressing one key, then another, which brings up the voice saying, louder now,
She deserves better
, and again,
deserves better
, then,
better
.
 

That voice, it’s Ben’s voice—but them fingers, they’re the old man’s fingers. The instant he hits
Pause
is when my doubts go away, and like, I know who it is.
 

So I don’t even need him to turn around, and I don’t even want to ask him, like, Where was you, ‘cause I don’t want to hear no lies, and no long stories either, and above all, I tell him in my heart, I don’t want to admit how lonely I am here, in this place, which isn’t my home, Lenny, without you.

Still absorbed in his work with his back to me, he tries to slide open a drawer, a drawer which I haven’t noticed in his desk before—not even the other day, when I went through the jumble of his papers, looking for clues, any clues of where Lenny had gone, or with whom he might be staying, or how he expected me to pay all them bills, because, like ma used to say, money don’t come cheap.
 

I hope he finds things in place now, still in the right state of disorder. I hope I didn’t mess up no pages of his writing—or else, his stories will make even less sense than they already do.
 

The drawer is damn clunky. It rattles a bit under his hand, like, the slides under it must have gotten rusty. Then it comes to a full stop, hanging in midair. He leans in to put his hand right there, inside the mouth of it, and his fingers are swallowed up by a deep shadow, which kinda scares me, like I’ve seen all this before, in a dream or a movie or something.
 

So in distress I gulp for air, just about to cry out to him, Stop! Pull out, Lenny! Your hand—no, don’t talk, don’t even breathe a word—it’s about to be bitten off, like, if you don’t hold your tongue, right now, hold it from telling me a lie.
 

Which is the moment he freezes, like he’s just caught a sound, the light sound of my footfall. There’s a chill in the air, which I can see right here, in front of my nose, ‘cause like, the vapor of my breath starts rising, curling in the air and clouding the partition between us.
 

Lenny turns over his shoulder, and even before he can sense who’s standing here, watching him, you can tell he’s jolted, real shaken even, on account of not expecting no one here, at this time. He screws up his eyes, so I bet he’s looking for his own self, mirrored back to him—only to catch sight of me.
 

In a flash he spots my outline, like, through them spots on the murky glass.
 

Lenny gets up from the chair, awful stiff, and in one limp he comes to a stand right there, opposite me. My God, he looks strange today, and not only because he looks kinda naked, I mean, without them glasses. His gray hair isn’t even combed, like he’s awakened right this minute, after a fierce fight with a pillow or something—or else, he hasn’t slept a wink last night, just like me.
 

Only in his case it happened who knows where.

Me, I look straight at him. His eyes, they have something wild in them: tender one second, mad the next, with wrinkled skin under them, sagging like squashed, hollow bags. He leans into the glass, laying his hands left and right of me, but I can’t be sure what’s in his head, like, if he wishes to plead with me, knowing I’m soon gonna forgive him—or else, he wishes to wring the life out of my throat.
 

But he don’t try to do neither one nor the other. Instead he says, “Anita,” kinda gruff, “where is my son? You must know where he is, don’t you?”
 

And me, I shrug, ‘cause like, what am I, his keeper?
 

So again Lenny comes, “Look, I’ve checked his bed. I know he did not sleep in it.”

And I say, “So? Neither did you!”

His eyes flutter for a second, like he tries to ignore what I’ve just said, and how bitter it must feel to be dumped, even if it’s only for a night.

So I say, “Ben isn’t a baby, anyhow. And he didn’t sleep in
my
bed, if that’s what you’re saying—even if you ain’t saying it, exactly.”

And he says, “Listen, dear—”

And I say, “Stop calling me that! This word, it sure as hell don’t have no meaning to you.”

He steps back, all the way back to his desk, as if slapped all of a sudden by a gust of cold wind. So at once—in spite of my anger—my heart goes out to him.
 

“I am dead serious,” he says. “For the life of me I cannot find certain papers. The boy cannot have them, Anita. Not yet. Not while I am still alive. Where is he?”
 

And I say, “Last thing I know, me and him, we was like, playing the piano.”

“From what I am told,” says Lenny, “the two of you were banging like a pair of lunatics.”