The Believers (16 page)

You eat tuna and Cap'n Crunch.

You got a face like Alice in the Brady Bunch.

Susan was always trying, in her earnest way, to lend Lenny's halfhearted pursuits a serious, progressive inflection. If Lenny got a job in a restaurant, he was "getting into food"--which was great, because it was such a special thing to nourish people. If Lenny took a free trip to Morocco with one of his rich, druggy friends, he was "exploring Arab culture"--which was fantastic, because it was so important for young people to fight American parochialism and bigotry. Audrey treasured these misreadings as proof of Susan's inanity.

"So what else you been up to?" Susan asked now. "What's going on in the world?"

"Well, a bunch of things have happened with Joel," Lenny said. "But Audrey should really tell you about all that." (Out of respect for Susan's feelings, he did not refer to Joel and Audrey as Mom and Dad in her presence.)

Susan turned to Audrey. "Audrey, how's it going?"

Audrey looked at her sourly. She never felt quite respected by Susan. There was a labored politeness in the way that Susan spoke to her--an awkward condescension--that seemed to imply some difficulty in relating to a woman of Audrey's thoroughgoing conventionality.
You are a very straight housewife,
her tone said,
and I am a fearless renegade, but I am doing my best to find a connection here
. It drove Audrey nuts. "The cheek of that woman!" she had often complained to Joel. "She fucked up a bank robbery, she made a couple of dud bombs, and she didn't use deodorant for ten years. For this she thinks she can lord it over me like she's fucking Aleksandra Kollontay?"

"Joel's not doing badly," she said now. "He's had a couple of infections, but he's come through them very well--"

"Yeah, Joel's a tough old fucker," Susan remarked.

Audrey flared her nostrils, like a rocking horse. Speaking irreverently of Joel was a right she reserved for herself and very few others--certainly not for Susan. Besides which, she had not yet finished her account of Joel's medical status.

"And how about
you
, Audrey?" Susan asked. "You keeping strong?"

"Yup." Audrey thrust her hands in her pockets as a preventive measure against Susan trying to hold one of them. "We're all doing fine, aren't we, Len?"

Susan smiled at Lenny. "Is that right? You doing okay?"

Lenny nodded.

There was a brief pause. Susan looked around the canteen. "I got a letter from Cheryl this week," she said. Cheryl was a young Puerto Rican inmate with whom Susan had become romantically involved some years earlier. She had been released now and was back living with her boyfriend, but she and Susan continued to correspond. Susan wrote her a lot of love poems, some of which she had been known to read aloud to Lenny.

"She's training to be an AIDS counselor," Susan went on. "I'm so proud of her."

Audrey shut her eyes. The woman was shameless, she thought. Having dealt with Joel in three sentences, she was now going to revert to discussing herself and her sordid lesbian romance. Joel used to say it was unfair to criticize long-term inmates for being self-absorbed. It was inevitable, he claimed, that the outside world should become abstract and somewhat unreal to them. But Audrey disagreed: Susan had always been a narcissist in altruist's clothing.

Toward the end of the visit, Susan asked Lenny to get a soda for her from one of the machines. Once he had left the table, she turned to Audrey.

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine," Audrey said.

"He's not doing drugs again, right?"

Audrey bristled. "No. Why would you say that?"

"I don't know. He's kind of vague today. He doesn't look good..."

"He didn't shave, that's all. He's fine."

"Are you sure?"

Audrey folded her arms and smiled tightly. "I think I would know, Susan."

Lenny was morose on the drive home. Audrey tried to cheer him up, but her chatter seemed only to agitate him. After a while, she accepted defeat and drove in silence. Halfway back to the city, Lenny said he needed to pee, so they pulled over at a rest stop. It was a place they had often visited on their trips back and forth to Bedford: a tatty strip mall with a newspaper shop, a McDonald's, and a cinnamon roll franchise called Snack Attack. While Lenny was in the bathroom, Audrey stood in the parking lot and smoked a cigarette. The day had grown warm, and the air smelled of burger and car exhaust. She watched as a group of obese senior citizens in "One Nation Under God" T-shirts descended from a bus and came barreling across the macadam toward her. Joel had always hated places like this: malls, big-box stores, leisure parks--anywhere he was forced to confront his suburban countrymen en masse--but Audrey rather relished her encounters with lumpen America. Even after all these years in her adoptive country, she was still enough of a foreigner to be gratified by real-life sightings of underdressed Americans grazing on trans fats while they shopped.

She finished her cigarette and went into the mall to buy some coffee. When Lenny finally reappeared, they sat and drank their lattes outside on a bench overlooking the McDonald's mini-playground.

"Look at him," Lenny said, pointing at a boy who was sitting at the top of the slide. "He just bit the girl in front of him, little bastard!" He laughed with admiring incredulity.

"You've brightened up a bit," Audrey remarked. She glanced covetously at the cinnamon roll that she had bought for him. It lay, coiled and gleaming, in its little styrofoam case, like the spiral flourish at the bottom of the Perry Street stair banister. "You not eating that?" she asked.

"I'm not hungry."

"Go on, eat it."

"You eat it. I don't want it."

"Go on, Len. You've had nothing since that hot dog."

"
Jesus,
Mom--"

"All right, all right." Audrey picked up the roll and put it in the trash.

She gazed at him. "Len..."

"Yeah?"

"You'd tell me if you were using again, wouldn't you?"

Lenny sat back on the bench and raised his eyes skyward. "Come
on
."

"Don't be like that," Audrey protested. "I'm just asking. You would tell me, wouldn't you?"

"
Yes
. But I'm not."

"Honestly?"

"For real. A bit of spliff now and then, and that's it, I swear."

Audrey smiled. "That's what I thought. It was Susan who wanted to know. She said you were behaving funny. I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Well," he said with a sigh, "I'm glad
you
trust me, anyway."

Audrey dropped Lenny off at Tanya's apartment in the East Village before going back to Perry Street. The traffic was terrible getting over to the West Side, and she arrived home to find Daniel waiting for her on the front stoop. He was wearing skinny green pants the same lurid shade as Babar's suit, and he had some sort of gel in his hair that made it stand up in stiff little peaks like a frozen sea.

"Do they make you dress like that at your new firm?" Audrey asked, as she opened the front door. "Or is this a look you came up with by yourself?"

Daniel smiled tolerantly. "I was about to leave. I thought you weren't coming."

"I'm ten minutes late, Daniel. Don't get your knickers in a twist." She led the way into the kitchen.

"Now look," Daniel said, as they sat down. "I'm not going to beat around the bush. I know that Berenice Mason came to see you a few weeks ago--"

"Oh,
her
." Audrey gave a little hoot of laughter. "She's started stalking
you
now, has she? Has she told you all about her romance of the century with Joel?"

Daniel was silent.

"Oh,
Daniel
. What is it? You think Joel fucked her, do you?"

He lowered his eyes. "More than that, I'm afraid. She and Joel have a child together."

Audrey lit a cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke in the direction of the ceiling. "Yeah, she gave me that one too. The woman is barking."

"Audrey, this isn't a joke. I've spoken with Joel's assistant. She's known about this woman for some time, apparently."

Something swayed and lurched in Audrey's gut. "Kate?" she said. "She's just a little girl. She'd believe anything."

"The woman has evidence, Audrey."

"Like what?"

"She has an Acknowledgment of Paternity form with Joel's signature on it."

"Well, anyone can fake one of those--"

"It's not fake. I've seen it. And there's other stuff too--"

"Oh,
please
," Audrey said. But even as she spoke, she could feel her disbelief lifting like a mist. She turned and looked out of the kitchen window. In a bathroom on the third floor of the house opposite, a naked man was stepping carefully out of the shower. "How old?" she asked.

"Sorry?"

"How old is this child supposed to be?"

"Oh, four, I think. Yes, four."

"And what's the other stuff?"

"What?"

"You said there was other stuff. Other proof."

"She has records of monthly payments that Joel made into her account--"

"Payments?"

"You know, for child support."

"Oh." Audrey squeezed the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb.

"She also has a lot of correspondence," Daniel said. "Poems, cards..."

"Poems!" Audrey spat. "See, now I
know
she's full of shit. Joel never wrote a poem in his life."

"I don't know what to tell you, Audrey."

"Why is she coming out with this now? What does she want?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I think she wants to, you know, get things out in the open. And she's mentioned that she'd like the child to have a relationship with his half-brother and sisters--"

"Pfah!"

"She needs money as well. Joel's payments have stopped since he's been in the hospital."

"Wait. She thinks she can come up with some cockamamie story about shtupping my husband and I'm going to pay her
pocket money
? Doesn't she have a job?"

"She's an artist."

"
Ohhh.
An artist!"

"Well, a photographer."

"Super."

"I think you have to take this seriously, Audrey. It's not something you'd want to end up in court."

"Is she threatening that?"

"No, no, she's not threatening anything. But it's the logical next step for her. She does have a legal right to support for the child."

"What does she say Joel was paying her?"

"Uh, it varied, I think. But for the last two years, about twelve hundred a month."

Audrey squinted. Her math had never been very good. "What's that a year?"

"Fourteen thousand four hundred."

"Fourteen thousand?" Audrey was torn between rage at the significance of the sum and embarrassment at its inadequacy. She turned back to the window. The man across the way had wrapped a towel around his waist and was examining his face in the mirror above his sink. For years to come, she thought, her memory of this conversation would be bound to an image of pink flesh and white terrycloth glimpsed through a fogged-up window.

"If you give me the go-ahead," Daniel said, "I'd be happy to try to work out a deal with her."

Audrey shook her head. "No, thanks."

"Audrey--"

"If there are any deals to be made, I'll make them, Daniel."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

She glanced at him. "I think you can go now."

"I'm sorry, Audrey. I know this must be--"

She turned away. "Good-bye, Daniel."

For a long time after he had gone, Audrey remained at the table, absently tracing one of the jagged channels that Lenny had carved in its wooden surface with a pen. A part of her seemed to be hovering overhead, disinterestedly observing her reactions.
You're a bit dizzy. Are you going to cry? Doesn't this feel unreal?
She remembered now the amazement--the affront--she had felt years ago, when as a little girl out shopping with her mother, she had come upon her second-grade teacher, Miss Vale, buying apples with her fiance. Up until then, Audrey had tended, like most small children, to regard the world as a frozen parade of people and scenes that only came truly alive in her presence. It had never occurred to her that Miss Vale might have an independent civilian existence outside the classroom, complete with male companions and fruit preferences. The assault to her illusion of omniscience had been devastating. Reality, she had suddenly understood, was not a series of discrete tableaux staged solely for her benefit, but vast and chaotic and unmasterable. Even people she saw every day--even her
family
--contained worlds that she would never fully fathom.

But she had forgotten that childhood lesson, it seemed. For forty years now, she had been confusing proximity with intimacy--believing that she had plumbed her husband's mysteries--when all the while, she had been making love to his shadow. God knows, it wasn't the infidelity that shocked her: she had always prided herself on her realism about that part of married life. The first time she had caught Joel cheating on her, they had been married less than four months. For a week, she had rent her garments and torn at her hair. And then, with solemn, nineteen-year-old munificence, having extracted all the appropriate promises about its never happening again, she had forgiven him. Six months later, a friend of Audrey's had spotted Joel in Washington Square, holding hands with a girl from Students for a Democratic Society. And not long after that, Audrey had found a love note in his pants pocket--a patchouli-scented scrawl from a teenage folksinger called Spanish Wells. So it had gone on.

There had been phases in their marriage when Joel had been faithful--at least she thought there had been--but these had never lasted very long. "It's the great female mistake to take sex personally," Joel had once told her. "Fucking is just a reflex, you know. Like scratching an itch." Slowly, painfully, over the years, she had come to accept this rationale. It wasn't that she had ever stopped minding about the affairs. She had always minded. But with considerable psychic effort, she had learned to put her unhappiness in perspective. What did it matter if a few little tarts got to boast about sleeping with Joel Litvinoff? Infidelity was short; married life was long. She was going to remain Joel's wife and the mother of his children, long after all the tawdry, loveless fucking had been forgotten. From time to time, when a dalliance had seemed in danger of developing into something more serious, she had been forced to take discreet action--to call up the woman in question and warn her to stay away. (Joel, she sensed, was often grateful for these interventions.) Mostly, though, she had sat back and waited for the affairs to wither of their own accord.