Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (2 page)

By the time he reached the luncheonette across the street from his building, Ben had forgotten where he’d parked the car ten minutes before. The realization had come into his mind unbidden: a sudden twinge like a nudge in the ribs, and a small, mischievous voice saying, All right, wise guy, now where’d you put it? He picked up a
Post
and a pack of cigarettes, paid the old lady who never smiled, and left the luncheonette, glancing at the headline. He waited at the corner for the light to change, and while he knew exactly where the car was, he mentally retraced his route, just to fix it in his mind. Straight two blocks, a right to the light, left to the next light, and bingo. He looked at the lead story – New York was on the brink again, read a boring paragraph about budget cuts – and stopped. There were
three
lights actually: two he’d made, one he’d stopped at. The kid on the bike, Davey’s age . . . Christ, this was stupid. He
knew
where he’d parked the damn thing. He folded the paper and slipped it under his arm.

A bus lumbered by, close to the curb. He turned away from the exhaust fumes, shifted his attaché case to his left hand, and pulled his tie looser. The thought persisted – grating, trivial. He tried to dismiss it, to think about something more important – the fiscal crisis, noise, corruption in high places, traffic, pollution; the looming, ugly heap of stone across the street. What kind of place was this to raise a kid? Nassau, Suffolk – there were alternatives, weren’t there? Maybe even Rockland, or farther upstate. Marian was right: the city became less appealing every day, more abrasive. Maybe they should start thinking about it seriously. That was important, much more important than the fact that, yes, he’d lost the goddamn car.

Well, should he look for it now or wait until morning; leave the house fifteen minutes earlier and wander the streets like the absent-minded idiot he obviously was? He shifted his attaché case to his right hand. His jacket was sticking to him, a transistor was blaring nearby, and someone was going horn-happy behind a car making an illegal turn. A part of his mind was turned off, asleep, and the sounds were working on him like a piece of undigested food. Tension, it’s called. Hell, the things in his day – the frustrating, petty, stupid annoyances he could
really
get worked up over.

How long before it snaps, he wondered, before the sensible piece of his mind says, “I’ve had it, sonny, you’re on your own?” Breaks off and flies up, up, like a balloon? Going, going. . . . He drew a deep breath, tracing its flight over his building, puffed out his cheeks and made a small popping sound. The little girl he just noticed waiting next to him on the curb looked up at him.
Smile, honey
. He repeated the sound effect for her, more elaborately, and this time she brought her hand up to her mouth and giggled.

“Hi,” he said. “What’ve you got in the bag?”

“Ring-Dings,” she said after a moment, and giggled again.

“What’re Ring-Dings?”

“Cake,” she said, and Ben heard “idiot” in the subtext.

The light changed and the little girl ran across the street on long skinny legs.

On the opposite corner he stopped just briefly, drew one final blank which he decided was absurd and wasn’t going to bother him at all right now, and walked toward the building entrance. He nodded a bright “Ladies” to the cluster of old women on camp chairs beside the entrance, gossiping and watching traffic. In the vestibule, which smelled of cabbage, he met Mr. Girolamo who had had a heart attack last year and now spent most of his time waiting for the mailman. Mr. Girolamo asked whether it was hot enough for him, and Ben said, Sure was, and how was he feeling these days? Just fine. The elevator, he added, had been repaired that morning. Well, let’s see what goes next, Ben said, and Mr. Girolamo, who was sixty and looked eighty, laughed, tentatively.

Marian had changed from jeans and her faded work shirt to a light blue blouse, the color of her eyes, and a red denim skirt. She was in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling a comb through her hair. Somewhere in the D line a toilet was being flushed, and behind the flowered shower curtain was a slow, steady drip, staining the porcelain blue. The sounds had long ago become part of the ambiance; she was scarcely aware of them. The comb whispered through her hair, long, downward strokes. She stopped, leaned closer to the mirror, and turned her face to the right a bit. She brushed her temple with one finger, separating the strands. Four cylindrical lamps had been fixed over the mirror (Ben’s “Operation Sow’s Ear”); she adjusted one of them – a white, not a pink – and aimed it at the side of her head. False alarm. She readjusted the lamp. Thirty-plus, she said to the mirror; face it. She washed off her comb and wiped the pink marble counter (theirs, not the building’s), playing some quick chess with the colored bottles and tubes and the jar of “display” soap. When she heard the key in the lock, she brushed a few strands of hair from her shoulders and turned off the lights. The room smelled of lilacs.

“Me,” Ben called.

When she came into the living room, he was checking the mail and tossing it aside. She put her arms on his shoulders, said, “Hi, baby,” and kissed him. She could see the newspaper with her markings beside the phone on the desk. He hadn’t noticed.

“It is hot!” Ben said, moving away from her. He stopped in the middle of the room and sniffed. “The place smells of lemon oil.”

“I’ve been a real busy girl,” she said. “How about a beer?”

He said, “Fine,” and growled, very expertly, at the sound of the piano under his feet. When she left the room he was snapping and growling louder.

She went into the kitchen which had a small dining area in front of a window hung with bright summery curtains. The vinyl floor, a rose pebbled pattern, gleamed. Marian took two beers from the refrigerator and then reached into the old-fashioned glass-paned cabinet (she had painted the panes bright green for glasses). Any minute now he’d see the newspaper with all those suspicious-looking phone numbers and checked and crossed-out ads. Should she have made the calls or waited? Too late now. She poured the beers in front of a large pegboard hung with shining copper pots.

“I can’t take it,” Ben called suddenly from the living room. His voice rose to a parody of a yell: “I can’t take it!”

She looked toward the sound and before she could say anything, the copper pots began to tremble and ring. The whole apartment was shaking, the floor in the kitchen throbbing. There was a muffled thud, thud, thud coming from the living room, a tinkle of glass.

“My God!” she cried out, “
Ben!
”

She rushed into the living room and saw Ben bouncing up and down on the rug, right above the sound of the piano. The lamps were shaking, a porcelain figure was sliding close to the edge of an end-table. She grabbed it, looked fearfully around the room, and shouted, “You’re crazy, stop it, Ben, stop it!”

He gave one last heels-together jump and stopped as the piano began to limp under him. “Listen,” he whispered, “I think it worked.”

“You’re absolutely mad. Nuts.” She moved around the room, straightening the pictures and sconces, checking the lamps and bowls and figurines and vases that filled all the polished surfaces.

“I whupped it good,” he said. The piano had stopped.

“Very funny, very funny.” Surprisingly there was no damage. Her panicky look softened into a helpless reluctant smile. She shook her head. “Idiot.”

“Where’s that beer?” he said, dropping onto the couch.

When she came back with the beers, the piano started up again, as resonant as before. Ben threw up his hands. “It’s got to be a conspiracy. The whole bloody city is after my ass.” He patted the cushion beside him. Marian handed him his glass, took out two coasters, and settled beside him.

“
You
face her now,” she said, nodding at the floor.

“Let the old bitch worry about facing
me
.” He took a sip. “She’ll think you did it. That’s what I’ll tell her anyway.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s every man for himself, sister.”

“Hey,” she said after a pause. “I’ve got a great idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s move.”

He smiled, staring into space, and pulled her closer to him. He had unbuttoned his shirt. She played with the seam and then slipped her hand inside, rubbing his chest which was hard and damp.

“There’s no one down there, you know,” she said confidentially, “just a piano playing itself. And feet above us that run back and forth. No real people, just resident sounds.” She walked with her fingers up his chest. He settled deeper into the couch, touching the wall with the back of his head. “Unwinding?” she asked.

“Getting there.” He gave a long sigh, then lifted his feet onto the coffee table. Marian leaned forward and moved the cut-glass cigarette box.

“I ever tell you about my last breakdown?” he asked.

“No.”

“Remind me sometime.”

She nodded. “Always something new to find out, even after nine years. Is that what they mean by the adventure of marriage?”

His hand moved to her knee which he stroked lightly. He was staring, expressionless, at a small crack in the ceiling. She could see, beyond his profile, the windows of the neighboring building. A figure in striped drawers was moving in one of the apartments.

“So how’d it go today?” she asked finally. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“You shouldn’t but you did,” he said lazily. “How’s it always go? The kids were bright, responsive; on fire, all of them. Then to top it all, a faculty meeting that for sheer heart-pounding excitement . . .”

He belched and she said, “Pig.” He turned to face her, and the smile was innocent and vulnerable, and whether he was over the hill, as he claimed, or not, she still found it irresistible.

“You know something?” he said. “I don’t like what I’m doing very much.” He said it as though it had come as a revelation to him.

“You always say that this time of year.”

“And I always mean it.”

“A month to go, right? You’ll survive.”

“Not this time, baby. I’m cracking.” He sat up, and looking at her sideways, announced: “I lost the car.”

“How’d you manage that?”

He told her. She laughed and he failed to see what she found so funny. “It’s a sign, you know.” He made the sound of something large collapsing – he was great with sound effects.

“You mean – ?” She pointed to the side of her head and twirled her forefinger. His mood seemed to have changed suddenly, and instead of a reply in kind – like a vigorous nod of his head – he reached for a cigarette quietly. “About time you caught up with the rest of us,” she said, but Ben only half heard her, distracted by something – the piano, the children playing under the windows. Or the beer. Beer worked on him,
quicker than wine; he seldom drank anything stronger. “Hey!” she said, nudging him, and whatever part of him had left the room came back. He said, “Hi.”

“I’ve got the answer to all our problems,” she announced brightly. “
Flight
.” She sprang up on the word, saying as she crossed the room, “Now don’t yell. Just listen.”

She looked back; he was lighting his cigarette. She lifted the paper and a green beanbag ashtray from the desk, and carried them back to the couch. When he saw the newspaper, he let his chin drop to his chest wearily; he exhaled a balloon of smoke and Marian could see stars, spirals and exclamation points in the motes. “Shut up,” she said.

She placed the ashtray in front of him even though there was another one, delicately frilled Belleek, on the endtable beside him. Ben waited for her to settle on the floor in front of him.

“Her position became suppliant,” he said, stentorian.

“Listen.” She poked him, cleared her throat and read: “ ‘Unique summer home. Restful, secluded. Perfect for large family. Pool, private beach, dock – ’ ”

He laughed.

“
Listen
.” She read on: “ ‘Long season.
Very reasonable
for the right people.’ ” The italics were hers.

“Racist pigs,” he said.

“That’s not what they mean.” She held the paper out to him, like a particularly ripe tomato. “Two and a half hours from the city. What could be more perfect?”

“What city?” he asked. “Warsaw?”

“New York, dummy.”

“And very reasonable, hunh?”

“That’s what it says.”

Ben put his cigarette down, brushed the paper aside, and grabbed both her hands, pressing them into an even more suppliant position. “Honey,” he said, “that desk was reasonable, remember?” He nodded at the antique desk where his papers were, and some of his books; the kitchen table was where he actually worked.

“What has that got to do with it?”

“A lesson in semantics, the decline and fall of meaning.”

“Oh, stop; we’re not in your crummy classroom.”

“Lucky us.” He went on, careful to keep it light and without any note of reproach: “The breakfront was reasonable, or so they told me, and the fancy chairs – ”

“
Bergères
.”

“ – the endtables, the lamps, the chotzkies, and Christ knows what you’ve got stashed away in the closets. ‘Reasonable,’ or some parody of the word, has left us with roughly two thousand in the bank, after nine years.”

“That’s probably two thousand more than a lot of people have,” she said. “Why are you foaming at the mouth, for God’s sake?”

“Because a house with a beach and a pool and a dock is not going to be reasonable, nohow. Now that’s what we call nipping it in the bud.”

“Ben J. Negative. All the time negative.”

“We can’t swing a summer place.” He brought her hands up and down, keeping time with the words. The newspaper fell between them, scrawled with telephone numbers and doodles. “What’s wrong with two weeks upstate, three weeks if you want?”

She said, “
Yech!
” and pulled her hands away. For a long between-rounds moment they looked at each other, Marian with an exaggerated pout that would make him feel hopelessly cruel and unreasonable.

“Benjie,” she whimpered, moving closer to him. “Why be such a shit?” She crept between his legs and pressed her face against his chest. Her hair brushed his arms.

He let her maneuver herself into position. Then, “I get it,”
he said.

“Get what?” He could feel the words against his chest.

“Your tit ’n’ ass getup. You’re trying to seduce me into it.”

“Would I do anything so cheap and transparent?” She hugged him tighter. “We could at least look, couldn’t we? Just to prove how right you are, and smart, and level-headed.” She looked up at his chin; her expression, if he could see it, was one of helpless guilt. “I did, after all . . . call them.”

“You called them,” he repeated calmly.

“These sweet little gingerbread people who’re so reasonable. They’re expecting us.”

“When?”

“Saturday?” she asked. His silence encouraged her. “Just think, Benjie – a lovely ride over the grasslands, a picnic lunch with all your favorite yummies. Don’t make me a liar. Say yes.”

“No.”