First You Try Everything (20 page)

They drove in silence.

“So what, you think I'm over-the-top for freaking
out?”

“No.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh.”

Another silence fell. They were almost at her
house.

“When you figure it out, please tell me,” she
said.

He took a breath. “It's like you were behind thick
glass,” he tried.

“What?”

“You were so upset, you were shaking and
everything, but it was almost like, I don't know, like you were acting.”

“Acting? What?”

“I don't know, Lauren.”

“Please talk sense!”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I felt you were
unreachable.”

“Maybe it was
you
who
was unreachable.”

“Possibly.”

He parked the car. For a brief moment he considered
telling her he'd see her tomorrow, but that would be cruel. They didn't spend
every night together, but certainly when Ramona was gone they did, and besides,
he began looking forward to her body under the quilts, the warmth of her mouth,
her touch, which could simplify anything, at least for a while. The smell of
her, always a balm. She had changed in the past few months; she was no longer a
cautious, utilitarian lover. And in the darkness, he felt she was present in
ways she would never be in the light. Maybe that was true of everyone, he
thought now.

“Sometimes I feel like I'm behind thick glass too,”
she said. They sat there in the car, staring at the windshield, and he curbed
his thought.
That's because you are. We both
are.

“Like I'm a fish in a tank, Ben, and the world is
out there, sometimes looking in, sometimes walking by.”

“Oh, Lauren, I know what you mean. But—”

“You do?”

“I do. And it's all right.”

They were out of the car, past the lavender door of
the fence, and stood on the front porch while Lauren unlocked the door. “I
really never wanted you to see that side of me that you saw tonight.”

“I'm glad I did,” he said, not because it was true,
but because he was starting to feel desperate to close the gap between them.

“I had a dream about Evvie last night,” she said.
She took off her white jacket and hung it on the wall hook. She stayed there,
her back to him.

“Was it a nightmare?” He was half joking.

“It was another visit. She came back to the house
with
The Magic Mountain
in her hand. Only she was
all dressed up like some kind of
harlequin
, and she
had really strange eyes.” She turned around.

“Oh. Sorry about that. She has no right to invade
your dreams. Especially dressed like a harlequin.”

“Yeah, well, people don't exactly need passports to
visit people's dreams.”

“She won't be visiting again like that for a long
time. I mean she won't visit your house. In real life. I can't control who shows
up as a harlequin in anyone's dream. Obviously. ”

Just days ago Evvie had come by Lauren's house to
meet her—having called Ben to say she was ready for this, and couldn't they just
have a short visit and start to be friends, the three of them? It was too
strange otherwise, she said. He'd agreed, foolishly, seduced by the goodwill and
forced cheer in her voice. And as he would have predicted, it had been a
disaster. She had dressed up the way he hadn't seen her in years—in a short
skirt, a red top with frills, and boots he used to tease her about, since they
were so sexy. She'd appeared at the door, and he'd wanted to throw a blanket
over her head. She looked good, but he couldn't bear to see all that futile
effort. Her shoulders tense, her hands cold and wet as she stepped inside and
shook first his hand—like a politician—and then Lauren's. Lauren's dog, Chuckie,
had snarled at her, and that too was terrible and a first: dogs loved Evvie and
she was proud of that.

Evvie had stayed less than five minutes, said
something bizarre to Lauren about belly dancing, then burst through the front
door and ran like someone being chased.

“Uh, was that a little peculiar?” Lauren had said,
in a defensive voice, and then he saw her eyes were wet.

“Lauren, it's OK.”

“Not really. The look on her face when she looked
at you—”

She'd gone into the other room and cried.

“W
hy
would she have to visit again?”

“I don't know. Ruth, for one. I need to stay in
touch with Ruth. I miss Ruth a lot.”

Lauren looked at him and sighed impatiently, then
walked through the hall, into the kitchen, and out back where she stood on the
white stones that would surround her herb garden next year. He followed her out.
In one night, they had gone from a measured, loving couple to this drama. He
spoke softly so as not to add to it.

“Look, I think I've shown where my allegiance lies.
I'm yours. I just thought maybe since I'd lived with Evvie for almost sixteen
years—”

“People live together for sixteen years all the
time. And then they don't. And they don't talk on the phone, or try to be
friends. They walk away from the past because they know it's like something
died, Ben, and you can't raise the dead.” She spoke looking down at the white
stones. She still wore the Irish fisherman's sweater—too big, and the sleeves
were too long. Maybe it had belonged to the dolt.

“You're right, Lauren.” The sight of her—for
whatever reason—had filled him with pity. This beautiful girl—she looked like
a
girl
right now—who'd never really known her
parents—this person who deserved to be loved without too many complications. He
had the urge to give her a warm bath.

“I'm right?” She looked at him, and laughed a
little.

“Yes. What's funny?”

“I don't know. I don't feel
right
.”

“Let's go upstairs.” He wanted to wash her hair,
rinse it with cups of warm water, then fold her into a warm towel. He'd done
this with Evvie, a million years ago.

“If you want to be friends with Evvie, you should
be friends with Evvie.”

“I don't,” he said. And right now, he didn't. He
went and stood behind her, his body lined against her back.

“Why do you always smell so good?”

“Wasn't Ramona amazing?”

“Yeah.”

“I never did anything like that as a kid. Like, on
a stage. Did you?”

“Not like that. Not with a little cop shouting
Ginsberg and blowing a whistle.”

She laughed. They headed into the narrow kitchen.
Lauren first, Ben following close behind.

H
e
woke in the middle of the night. It was not a dream that woke him, but a feeling
of gratitude, happiness, peace. It was like he was floating inside of something
made of a powerful tincture of those qualities. As if he were contained by them,
soothed, and yet astonished. It was not hard to stay perfectly still. He
breathed.

This kind of wakening had happened to him only once
before, years ago, during the summer after he'd graduated from high school, one
hot night when his siblings had been away at camp, and his mother in Gettysburg
for a weekend. The house had been all his. He'd done very little—read books, had
a few friends come over to shoot baskets, called his girlfriend Etty Glazier on
the phone. Earlier that summer he had gone with her family to the beach, and
they'd seen a lifeguard resuscitate a child who'd almost drowned. The blue boy
had finally started coughing, his frantic mother kneeling beside him bursting
into tears as he opened his eyes. The almost-drowned boy had somehow imbued the
rest of their summer, his blue face a moon above them illuminating all they did.
He'd imagined the night he'd awakened that seeing the almost drowned boy had
something to do with it.

Certainly he'd long ago given up expecting this
overwhelming presence, or whatever it was, would return. And yet, here it was in
Lauren's room, surrounding him for no reason. This time the experience was more
intense. He lay there, his mouth open as if he could drink whatever it was.

What was this power that had come into the room to
hold him in place? And if it really existed as a force, why didn't it come every
night? If it did, maybe more people would believe in God; that was the only way
Ben could describe the depth of the sensation. He put his hand on Lauren's
shoulder, as if he might transmit some of it to her. She stirred a little. Then
turned to face him, her eyes opening.

“You're brave,” he whispered to her. He didn't know
where the words had come from.

“You're brave,” she echoed back, her eyes
closing.

“Something's different in the room right now,” he
whispered. “Something big.”

“I feel like you're sleeping in my heart,” Lauren
said.

“Ah,” he said. “Is that what it is.” His eyes stung
with tears. The feeling, the force, whatever it was, was leaving him. Maybe
because he didn't feel that he was sleeping in her heart. Maybe because he had
never in his life felt like he was sleeping in anyone's heart. But what did that
even mean, to sleep in someone's heart? Maybe he was desolate as the heart of
the world backed away from him. He took a strand of her hair in his fingers. “Is
that what this is,” he whispered again.

The room had contracted; it was just the room. He
felt a keen sense of loss and terrible longing, just as he had all those years
ago. Twenty-seven years ago, he realized.

The old windows framed the reddish moon, the clock
on Lauren's rolltop desk was ticking next to a framed black-and-white picture of
Lauren and Ramona, when Ramona was a cheeky infant in a hat with a chin strap.
The world was so much more mysterious than he usually gave it credit for. And he
had this lover. Breath. This life. And with any luck, time enough to deserve
it.

Evvie

D
id God not only exist but also act like a secret magician stirring things up in the invisible core at the heart of the universe? It seemed now to Evvie that this might be true. Not a God that could reliably give anyone the results they wanted when they wanted them. But a God that might point a human being in a certain direction with a long, invisible finger suddenly dusting the back of the neck, or tracing a quick path down the very center of the person's spine.

Or perhaps a God with unlikely minions who pointed people in certain directions.

Either that was true, or Evvie was going a little crazy, since suddenly almost everything seemed like a sign. Her old friend Jimmy Burkel from her dorm at college, who'd been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, had started out this way—seeing everything as signs, and in moments, Evvie had a sickening fear that she was losing her anchor. She started missing Jimmy Burkel, a brilliant, lumbering physics major. The two of them had been insomniacs together, huddled in a cavelike lounge, lovers of caramel corn, backgammon, and the Psychedelic Furs—this before he started seeing signs.

She tried tracking Jimmy down, to no avail, while developing a belatedly keen empathy for him. This led her to consult the Internet about various mental illnesses, and it seemed she had a touch of almost all of them, and for a whole day she walked around knowing she was a queasy, dubious person on a slippery slope until she recalled that this is exactly what had happened when she was a kid and read about physical diseases. This happened to a lot of people. She was not crazy; she was simply, like many, perhaps most people, highly suggestible. And who wouldn't be, she thought, given all the signs she'd been getting.

1. Back in July, just in time, just after Cedric moved out to live in a house of Russian professionals in Greenfield, she'd seen Tessie the landlady on the street, who just happened to have a room available right across from the room she and Ben had lived in that first summer. What were the chances?

2. Another sign: She found, after many years of having replaced it, the lost earring she had worn on her wedding day. It was there in a box where she'd looked many times before. Now she had the pair. She wore the earrings now—long, dangling white-and-blue beaded earrings.

3. An old Jew in a black coat and black hat, a man who had to be a hundred years old, on Murray Avenue, in the blue light of a crisp autumn day, had walked up and given her a book by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. His voice was full of stones and secrets. “Take this. Nachman is the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov. When he was six years old, he danced every night upon his great-grandfather's grave.” He spoke from the corner of his mouth, which was hidden by a long white beard. The book felt precious in her hands, as did the sight of the ancient man in black, walking away with his serious limp. She looked down at the book's title:
General Remedy.

4. The woman who had long had a crush on Cedric had confided in Evvie that last week she'd arranged to be locked in the Giant Eagle freezer with him for a half hour. They'd ended up clinging to each other for warmth, and now, finally, after all these years of flirting and trying to send Cedric messages, Cedric had gotten the point. The two of them had gone for an Italian dinner at the Grand Canal in Sharpsburg, after which Cedric had invited her to play video games with him. Evvie had heard this from Cedric's coworker: “I knew it would happen someday. Cedric just needed a woman to be bold.” Evvie, testing the coworker, said, “Well, she did get them locked in a freezer on purpose just so they'd have to embrace,” and the oracular Giant Eagle employee, not missing a beat, said, “Sometimes when it's love you have to say to yourself, whatever it takes.”

5. Diligence Chung walked into Evvie's room and took a seat in the corner on a straight-backed chair where she smiled demurely at Evvie from under the brim of her purple felt hat, the left half of her lit by the streetlight. As usual, she wore a floor-length skirt and a high-necked white blouse, and a large wooden cross around her neck. Evvie sat down on the edge of the bed, where Ruth was stretched out, observing this.

“Do you want to sing with me?”

“That's OK. I'll just listen.”

“I sing with Holy Spirit.”

“Great.”

Diligence began, in the highest, reediest, most painfully quavering voice Evvie had ever heard, a glass-shattering voice that was somehow also beautifully possessed of innocence. The improvisational song kept circling back to these words:

“Your dreams are God's dreams,

making no sense to this world!

Your dreams are God's dreams,

making no sense to this world!”

And one of the final, electrifying verses said,
“Woman across the hall with nice dog, never giving up on Love!”

Evvie lay in the dark in the spare room—she had given almost everything she owned away—Ruth snoring gently beside her.
Hello, God.
She had talked to God as a child, when she was very small with her sister in the twin bed across from her and the radio playing to block out the violence below them, only back then she'd believed God was all-powerful and highly judgmental, a God that could easily send you to hell to burn for eternity if you didn't shape up, say your rosary, bless yourself ten times a day, give your coins to Unicef
.

This was a different God, who had a strange sense of humor, whose ways were far more mysterious than she'd suspected, and who felt not judgment, but serious regret and pity for what had happened to creation and its creatures. As if he'd made a few dire, essential, if perhaps inevitable mistakes, and knew that now, but there was
no taking it back.
His pity only increased his love. Or hers. She or he was not in control, obviously, and yet, it occurred to Evvie over the course of the past few weeks that he or she was not quite absent, either. And according to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's little book, God loved the brokenhearted above all. This God liked you to talk to him or her as if he or she were an old friend who was dying to see you. Out of deep sorrow and pity, sometimes, this God found a way to speak up. But you had to listen as if you were always expecting to hear something. You had to listen as if everything depended on it.

E
vvie had gone back to Lauren's neighborhood, found out Lauren's last name from a leaf-raking neighbor, called her on the phone, pretended to be an old friend of Ben's named Val (Val with a midwestern accent), and suggested they all get together at night sometime soon. And Lauren said, “He works late this week and next except for Thursdays,” and Evvie said, “How late?” and Lauren said, “Until at least eight o'clock.”

“Shoot,” Evvie had said, really emphasizing the accent, both enjoying the deception and feeling sickened by it, unmoored, as if the lie somehow cast her into no-man's-land. But there she stood in no-man's-land, pinching herself hard, breathing in the air, anxious and hopeful as a newly arrived immigrant. “Are you sure about that? I mean, can't he try to get off early?”

“No, he really can't. Same thing happened last month. He has to prepare documents and work on the computer. It's a real drag, but he might get a promotion soon. Maybe the week after next?”

“Maybe. Wow, that sounds lonely for Ben. Do the other employees have to stick around too?”

“Oh, maybe one other guy. But sometimes it's just Ben.”

She'd told this to Bruno on the phone, and a few hours later, the two of them called her back, sharing one phone. They'd explained that she would go visit Ben, tell him she missed him, tell him she was concerned he was working too much.

“OK.”

“So the two of you are in there, having your small talk. We let this go on for about ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes,” Bruno said loudly.

“Should I tell her about Darlene and Eddie M?” Rocky said.

“Eddie Murdoch?” Evvie said. She was leaning out the window into the cold night to conduct this conversation, with her heart pounding against the close, black sky. “I knew an Eddie and Darlene,” she said. “Eddie Murdoch and Darlene Katz?”

“No, no. Not a local tale. We've been in other states. We wouldn't use the real names if it was local. We're discreet above all things.”

“Right.”

“So we gave Eddie and Darlene their ten minutes—this was in Darlene's apartment, where Eddie had stopped by presumably just to check on her. Eddie had hired us. And by the time six or seven minutes had passed, we saw we'd become unnecessary.”

“Why was that?” Evvie really hoped they weren't going to tell her one of them had dropped dead. Down in the dark street, a man in a raincoat walked by.

“Because they got indecent for each other. Seven minutes in heaven. Darlene jumping on Eddie, Eddie melting right on into it, and the two of us at the window, feeling bad for watching, but what else could we do? We had to see it through.”

Evvie looked straight at the big, bright moon. “Please. Don't tell me you watched Eddie and Darlene have sex, because if you did—”

“No, no, no!” Rocky said. “They disappeared! They pulled each other up the steps, and that was that.”

“Did Eddie get his money back?”

“We tried to give half of it back,” said Rocky. “But he wouldn't take it. He was too happy.”

“He called us his lucky charms,” Bruno added.

“Wow.”

“So, babe, you get those ten minutes. Because we never know. We'd like things to happen nice and easy for you.”

“Right. And if they do, you can keep most or all of the money.”

“That's sweet.”

T
onight Evvie lay down with Ruth, but clearly sleep was not coming. She walked up to Forbes, entered Hemingway's bar, drank down a beer, then another, then excused herself and went into the ladies' room, where she applied lipstick and held her own gaze in the mirror, as close to being blank in the mind as she'd ever mustered, despite her love of the song that was playing—“Poor Side of Town” by Johnny Rivers, with its rhyme of “miss me” and “kiss me.” She resisted the memory this song always gave rise to—it had been playing on the loudspeaker in 1967 when Donnie the neighbor had handed her a dollar bill at Immaculate Conception's parish bazaar.
Here, kid, go get some fries!
This surprising kindness had rendered her speechless, so she'd waited up for him, kneeling at her bedroom window that night, thinking she'd casually call out, “Thanks for the fries, Donnie! They were delicious!” but then fell asleep on the floor before he'd returned.

Yes, the memory was there, circling her mind like a halo, so weightless it couldn't penetrate fully tonight. It couldn't send her backward. She was rooted in the present. These moments of her life that would never come again. Washing her hands beside her at the sink in the bar's bathroom was an old and vivid woman in a violet shawl and thick glasses. Evvie gave all her attention to her. “It's getting awful cold out there, isn't it?” Whose voice was coming out of her now? She sounded
just
like Dorothy in Kansas!

“It is. But I don't mind.”

“Me either, I don't mind a bit!” Had she always had this capacity to sound like Dorothy and just never known it?

The woman laughed, looking at herself, and Evvie joined in. Evvie was not sure what they were laughing about. All she knew was that soon she'd have hours and hours, locked in a room with Ben. The happiness of anticipation was worth the price of admission. Then later, after it was all over, she'd reveal her Dorothy voice.
There's no place like home.

She had one more beer and made small talk at the bar, the kind that Dorothy might make, with wide eyes. Then a call came, and she saw it was from them and she rushed outside.

Rocky spoke clearly, with the quickened ease of someone who knew his speech by heart, the tone of voice level and reassuring now, like a pilot on a plane. “We'll be wearing masks tomorrow, of course, and you can have a say about what kind of masks you want us to wear. And even what kind of voices you want us to talk in. Remember, this will be like going to a great show, and you should enjoy it. So. Animal masks? Prince Charming? Politicians? We could be Reagan and Bush.”

“Not animals. Otherwise I think I'd rather be surprised.”

“Good, good,” Rocky said. “I love a woman who likes to be surprised. A woman who respects the show.”

Evvie fell silent. She looked at the bright, blue-white moon, smiling.

Is this me? Am I still myself?