Like Son (20 page)

My father’s blind man dark glasses.

The stupid Dean & DeLuca catalog I’d been studying— glossy pages still open to the smoked salmon items whose descriptions I could recite by heart for how they suddenly stuck in my brain—slid from my hands and landed on the floor with a slick pathetic thump.

“Mind if I wear these?” Nathalie asked.

“You already are,” I said, deeply uncomfortable but totally at a loss to articulate that discomfort, even to myself.

“So, it’s okay?” she asked.

“They’re for blind people.”

My words were coming out too simple and slow. I sounded dumb. I wasn’t angry exactly, but I felt violated on a cellular level somehow.

“Can I wear them?”

“Why do you want to?”

“Can I?”

“I guess.”

“Good.”

I was trying to figure out a way to tell her to please take off the glasses without seeming too sensitive, when, barely a beat later, out of nowhere, she said: “Frank, let’s have a baby.”

Mind you, she stood there wearing absolutely nothing other than a barrette and my father’s glasses.

“Very funny, Nat.”

She took off the glasses, left them on the kitchen counter, crossed the room, and lay on the bed next to me.

“Come on,” she asked, “don’t you want a baby?”

Sweet mercy—had Nat’s fever finally gotten the best of her? No, she was serious. My brain struggled to catch up. If there was anyone in the world I would want a baby with, it would be Nathalie, but …

“It’s not just if I
want
or don’t want a baby, Nat.”

I imagined checkbooks, science labs, fertility doctors, not to mention my father’s blind eyes trailing along for the ride. Most importantly, I wasn’t even sure I wanted kids.

“We’d figure everything out,” Nathalie said cheerily.

Did she really want me to delineate the obvious aloud? First of all, we didn’t have the money necessary to raise a kid responsibly. And even if we did, Nathalie knew that having a baby wouldn’t be just prenatal vitamins from the corner pharmacy and don’t use a condom for a few months. She knew it wasn’t as simple as my saying,
Sure, sweetums, let’s do it, we’ve got nothing to worry about and we’ll have a perfect baby so long as you don’t chug Wild Turkey or hit the Parliaments while you’re pregnant.
She knew this.

But still she said, “You don’t think we’re a good family?”

Whatever came out of my mouth next needed to be damned articulate. I didn’t respond.

“Frank,” she said, “come on … tell me.”

And so I said the only honest and kind thing I could at that moment: “I love you, Nat.”

“Never mind,” she said and play-slapped me. “I was just kidding.” Her laughter was too loud, forced.

Sick twist was that if I had agreed with her and said,
Yes, heck, why not, let’s have a baby,
she might have dropped the subject, never to pick it up again. But I couldn’t just blurt out that I wanted a baby if I wasn’t totally sure whether I did or didn’t. That’d be plain wrong.

“We’re going to the protest on Saturday, right?” Nathalie asked.

“I figured.”

This new thread wasn’t exactly a change in conversation. In our neighborhood, the upcoming protest at the U.N. had been on the tips of everyone’s tongues for weeks. You couldn’t walk through the park without getting at least four flyers about different groups organizing volunteers. NPR was constantly making announcements about whether or not the federal government was going to let the protest happen. Over two hundred thousand people were expected to show up at the U.N. to demonstrate against sending troops to Iraq. The topic was omnipresent; it pervaded even conversations that seemed to have no relation to it at all.

“The Socialist Party is meeting in front of the library on 42nd and Fifth at ten,” Nat said.

Since when were we Socialists? I mean, I know marching with the proto-Commies sounded sexy, but wouldn’t it have been more honest to march with Democrats or the Green Party or even just the Lower East Side contingent? Whatever. I figured we could be fist-pumping Socialists for a day. Why not?

“Sounds good.”

“I have a surprise,” Nathalie said excitedly, stood up, and walked to the closet.

I sat on the bed, tempted to curl up and sleep. If it weren’t for the simple fact that being near Nathalie’s bursts of energy felt like shots of adrenaline, I would have been the world’s most exhausted man. A gust of cold air blew in from the window and chilled me. I thought:
This is what it felt like—the air turning cold so quick without her by my side to warm me. This is exactly what it felt like when she bailed.

I watched as Nathalie took something from the closet and hid said wonder behind her naked back. Then, straddling me, her body so close I could smell the salty clean of her skin, she presented a gift to me.

“Ta-da,” she said, and leaned forward to loop the softest of handmade angora scarves around my neck. The smoothness of her skin rubbed against my jaw. I wanted the scarf to stretch for miles and miles so she’d never stop wrapping it around me.

“Did you make this?” I asked, both touched and confused.

“Yeah, today.”

“Since when do you knit?”

“I’ve always known how. I just had time today. So, what do you think?” she asked, and leaned back to survey her work.

I thought it was both thrilling and terrifying that even after seven-years-plus Nathalie could still so completely take me by surprise, that’s what I thought.

“Beautiful, absolutely beautiful,” I said.

And I meant it. Beautiful. Her skin flushed rosy, her limbs relaxed, her very being so present and still and close to me. That particular moment was so damned beautiful.

“It’s too long. I made it too long,” she said, and began unwinding the scarf from my neck.

“No, I love it,” I said, holding the scarf and her hands in my own. “Please, it’s perfect.”

“It’s not right,” she said, and took back the treasure she’d made for me.

After you’ve dressed, remove at least one accessory or you’re no better than common trash.

This was among the many commandments my Pilgrim mother taught me as a child. And that’s how I knew for certain my mother’s lip would have curled to watch Nathalie get dressed.

Soggy tissue in hand to catch frequent sneezes, after taking back my scarf and shoving it in a storage box of her things in the closet, Nathalie had reassembled the remainder of the closet to its pre-naked-girl-“cleaning” order. And now, slowly, deliberately, and slightly wobbly, she donned layer upon layer of silk organza, darned cashmere, and pizzazz. Busy clusters of rhinestones sparkled on her perfect little ears. Brick red lipstick transformed her face from fresh-scrubbed to fuckably dangerous. Powder turned her sniffle-red nose porcelain pale. Her hair was tucked into a tangled French twist. She grabbed a sequined gold clutch to go, but not before adding the one accessory I wished she’d leave behind. To my annoyance, once again, she wore my father’s glasses.

“Take me somewhere divine, won’t you, darling?” she said in her best patrician accent.

“You should be in bed.”

“Frank, come on, I’m stir-crazy. Please, let’s go out,” she said, and then let out an ear-piercing sneeze.

“Nat, you really should rest.”

I may have been stubborn, but I wasn’t dense. I knew what was going on. I might deny her the instant baby she was so convinced she wanted, but there was no denying how tantalizing she was even when in the throes of a flu. She was so foxy sweet that even just looking at her was enough to give a person cavities. She wanted to be arm candy that night. She wanted reassurance that all she had to do was bat her eyelashes to get me wrapped around her little finger. She knew I’d give in. To pretty much anything she wanted of me.

So, fine, if we were going on a proper date—which, clearly she wanted to—at least I could play my role well and present her with a token of my affection. I had no bouquet to offer, but I knew if Nathalie had been able to see herself in the mirror through those opaque blind man glasses, she would have wanted, in total opposition to my mother’s rules, even more bling to set off her ensemble. In search of the one object I knew would be perfection, I went to the closet and took down the briefcase Nathalie seemed to have gone through too quickly earlier that night. Tucked in the interior leather pouch, I found her treat.

“Here.” I placed the gift in her hand.

“What’s this?”

“Walking stick. Goes with the glasses.”

“Delightful,” she said and smiled.

As Nathalie fumbled with the red-tipped walking stick and snapped it open to full extension, I noticed how damn sexual the thing was when in her hands. Blushing, I helped with her coat. In the kitchen, I placed a single orange in a paper bag to bring with us. I knew exactly where to take her.

Stumbling novice, tapping her walking stick in haphazard sweeping gestures and clutching my left arm with her free hand, Nathalie took forever to traverse the handful of blocks to our destination. The entire way I was terrified we might cross paths with an actual blind person. Obviously, they wouldn’t be able to see us if we did, but man, talk about rude. It would have been a seriously shameful moment. As it was, I was embarrassed enough by the way people were staring at us, trying to figure out if Nathalie was really blind or if maybe we were doing some sort of lame performance piece. Let me tell you, I’d never been happier to arrive at the Village East Cinemas than I was that night. I paid our dues, guided Nathalie through the foyer, and led us up two flights of sticky handrail-lined stairs to the third balcony.

Movie theater third balconies were some of my favorite places in the world. True nosebleed seating, they’d originally been designated for colored folk and the poor. As far as I was concerned, there was absolutely no better place to watch the speckled black-and-white films of yesteryear. And from the third balcony of this Yiddish vaudeville theater turned revival movie palace, one could also mourn bygone eras’ neo-rococo gilded ornamentation as it stumbled up the walls and onto the ceiling. Having existed for over three-quarters of a century just north of St. Mark’s Church—but jammed between a storefront car service office and a unisex hair salon that no historic society or tourist association would ever recommend visiting—the theater was permanently streaked and stained by particles of soot. The third balcony was an antiquated and empty place, and, as usual, so was the rest of the damp, ammonia-soaked theater. My blind mouse Nathalie and I were entirely alone.

“Frank, I can’t see anything in here,” Nathalie whispered once I’d helped her to the seat beside me. She adjusted the oversized dark glasses, which kept sliding down her nose.

“Maybe you should take off the glasses,” I said.

I really wished she would. Trust me, I know, taking her to a movie theater was more than a little passive-aggressive. But, whatever, I wanted her to put the glasses away. I wanted them back in my dad’s briefcase. And I most certainly didn’t want her wearing them. Seeing her with the glasses creeped me out. So why’d I give her the walking stick then? Fuck, do I have to be able to explain every little thing I did? Does it all have to make sense? Sorry, but all I knew was: 1) Seeing my father’s glasses really upset me, and 2) I wasn’t sure how to tell Nathalie that I didn’t like her playing blind without it seeming like I was making a big deal out of nothing.

Glasses still on, Nathalie pushed herself up out of her rusted-springs sunken chair. Closed walking stick tucked under her left arm, she groped the backs of chairs with her clumsy blind hands and jammed her knee against the railing at the row’s end. Cane snapped open and pointed into the aisle, she tapped the theater’s matted carpet and walked in a slow straight line until she found solid resistance. The right side of her body flush against the wall, she slowly descended one stair at a time out of my sight and into the lobby.

When Nathalie returned, several long deafeningly quiet minutes later, the tart stench of melted artificial butter preceded her. She sat down, and I closed my eyes and listened to the muffled and wet sound of paper tearing between her teeth. I heard her spit out the paper and I strained my ears to catch soft sandy rainfall as she poured small packets of salt onto her popcorn. I opened my eyes when she pressed a few kernels to my lips. Being with Nathalie made my mouth dry, and like so much of the time when I was with her, concerns of unfulfilled thirst plagued me.

I leaned forward and reached into the soft and wrinkled bag I’d packed for us. Cool and dense comfort, I took out the orange. I balanced the fruit on my lap, peeled it, sectioned it, and cleansed each sticky wedge of its foamy white veins. Not hungry, I only sucked one wedge for its juice and then chewed particles of bumpy thick peel until a bitter chalkiness coated my tongue.

“Frank?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I have some orange?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Nathalie reached a searching hand to my lap, took the fruit one section at a time, and ate.

“Nat, I think we should talk,” I said. “I mean, do you really you want a baby?”

She rattled a paper cup filled with just a splash of soda and mostly ice cubes. I knew her ice routine from glasses of water in bed, at restaurants, in the park, wherever we went. The girl didn’t sip daintily. Nathalie avoided the liquid soda in her cup, seeking out solids, stopping only once her Kali tongue found and retrieved the perfect ice cube to warm in her mouth. She’d told me once that she loved the feel of an already slightly melted-down cold square diminishing under the roof of her mouth, the crackling of its surface an audible popping sound. She was such a delicate girl in some ways, such a brute in others.

“Nat?”

She crunched on her ice, reveling in its decimation.

Torn and stained once-crimson curtains abruptly parted in front of the screen below. The movie began. There was no orchestra.

“Nat, come on …”

“I don’t want to talk during the movie, Frank.”

She rattled another piece of ice into her mouth.

For the next one hundred forty-nine minutes, we sat in silence.

Trying to read between the lines without enough background information is fool’s business. I would be a rich man if that business paid well. All through the movie I’d attempted to decipher what the hell was really going on with Nathalie. It wasn’t until we got home that she finally gave me a decoder ring to begin unscrambling the mess. She explained: