The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (44 page)

“I wasn’t drunk, Mother,” Lynnie says.

“No,” her mother says. “Good. Well, I don’t want you staying late with those people again. You can leave that sort of thing to Isobel. She looked fairly steady on her feet last night going up the drive.”

Lynnie looks at her mother.

“I wonder what Isobel’s parents think,” Lynnie’s mother says.

“Isobel’s parents trust her, Mother,” Lynnie says.

“Well that’s
their
problem, isn’t it?” her mother says.

Isobel has stopped coming to the stone house, and her portrait leans against the wall, untouched since she left. But one day, at the beginning of summer, she goes along with Lynnie to see the new baby.

“He’s strange, isn’t he?” Claire says as Isobel picks him up. “They’re always so strange at the beginning—much easier to believe a stork brings them. Did a stork bring you, Willie? A stork?”

Through the window they can see Ross outside, working, and Lynnie listens to the rhythmic striking of his spade and the earth sliding off it in a little pile of sound. “We’re planting a lilac,” she hears Claire say. Claire’s voice slides, silvery, through the gold day, and Ross looks up, shading his eyes.

The sun melts into the sky. Lynnie hears Claire and Isobel talking behind the chinking of the spade, but then once, when there should be the spade, there is no sound, and Lynnie looks up to see Ross taking off his shirt. When had Claire and Isobel stopped talking?

Isobel stands up, transferring Willie to Lynnie.

“Don’t go,” Claire commands quietly.

“No…” Isobel says. Her voice is sleepy, puzzled, and she sits back down.

The room is silent again, but then the door bangs and Ross comes in, holding his crumpled shirt. “Hello, everyone,” he says, going to the sink to slap cold water against his face. “Hello, Isobel.” He tosses back dripping hair.

“Hello,” Isobel says.

Lynnie looks up at Claire, but Claire’s eyes are half closed as she gazes down at her long, graceful hands lying on the table. “Yes,” Claire says, although no one has spoken.

“Ross,” Isobel says, standing, “I brought back your book.” She hands Ross a small, faded book with gold on the edges of the pages.

He takes the book and looks at it for a moment, at the shape of it in his hand. “Ah,” he says. “Maybe I’ll find something else for you one of these days.”

“Mm,” Isobel says, pushing her hair back.

Willie makes a little smacking sound, and the others look at him.

“When’s good to drop things by?” Ross says.

“Anytime,” Isobel says. “Sometime.” She pivots childishly on one foot. “Saturdays are all right.”

Claire puts her hands against her eyes, against her forehead. “Would anybody like iced tea?” she asks.

“Not I,” Isobel says. “I have to go.”

The students have left town for the summer—even Derek. At least, Lynnie has not seen him since the night it snowed. And Mary Katherine herself is hardly in evidence. She comes over once in a while, but when she finishes her work, instead of sitting around the kitchen, she leaves.

Lynnie might be alone in the house, except for Bo and Emily. Claire is so quiet now, sealed off in a life with Willie, that sometimes Lynnie doesn’t realize that she is standing right there. And when Lynnie and the children are outside, the children seem to disappear into the net of gold light. They seem far away from her—little motes—and barely audible; the quiet from the house muffles their voices.

Ross is frequently out, doing one thing and another, and his smiles for Lynnie have become terribly kind—self-deprecating and sudden, as though she had become, overnight, fragile or precious. Now that Isobel has finally gone away, Ross and Claire seem to have gone with her; her absence is a vacuum into which they have disappeared. Day after day, nothing changes. Day after day, the sky sheds gold, and nothing changes. The house is saturated with absences.

Now Lynnie sees Isobel only as she streaks by in the little green car she has been given for her sixteenth birthday, or from the window in her room at night before she draws the curtain. One Saturday afternoon when Lynnie is outside with her brothers, Ross pulls up across the street. He waves to Lynnie as he walks up Isobel’s drive and knocks on the door. Lynnie watches as Isobel opens the door and accepts a book he holds out to her. Ross disappears inside. A few minutes later he reemerges, waves again to Lynnie, and drives off.

These days Lynnie’s mother is more irritable than usual. There have been rumors of layoffs at the plant. Once, when Lynnie is watching TV with her, they see Isobel’s father drive up across the street. “Look at that fat bastard,” Lynnie’s mother says. “Now, there’s a man who knows how to run a tight ship.”

Even years and years later, just the thought of the school building could still call up Lynnie’s dread, from that summer, of going back to school. Still, there is some relief in finally having to do it, and by the third or fourth day Lynnie finds she is comforted by the distant roaring of the corridors, and the familiar faces that at last sight were the faces of strangers.

One afternoon the first week, she sees Cissy Haddad looking in her direction, and she waves shyly. But then she realizes that Cissy is staring at something else. She turns around and there is Isobel, looking back at Cissy. Nothing reflects from Isobel’s flat green eyes.

“Isobel—” Lynnie says.

“Hello, Lynnie,” Isobel says slowly, and only then seems to see her. Lynnie turns back in confusion to Cissy, but Cissy is gone.

“Do you want a ride?” Isobel asks, looking straight ahead. “I’ve got my car.”

“How was your summer?” Isobel asks on the way home.

“All right,” Lynnie says. The sky is a deep, open blue again. Soon the leaves will change. “I was sorry you weren’t around the stone house.”

“Thank you, Lynnie,” Isobel says seriously, and Lynnie remembers the way Cissy had been staring at Isobel. “That means a lot to me.”

Lynnie’s mother looks up when Lynnie comes into the house. “Hanging around with Isobel again?” she says. “I thought she’d dropped you.”

Lynnie stands up very straight. “Isobel’s my friend,” she says.

“Isobel is not your friend,” her mother says. “I want you to understand that.”

On Saturday, Lynnie goes back to her room after breakfast, and lies down in her unmade bed. Outside it is muggy and hot. She has homework to do, and chores, but she can’t force herself to get up. The sounds of the television, and of her brothers playing outside, wash over her.

A car door slams, and Lynnie gets up to look out the window—maybe Isobel is going somewhere and will want company.

But it is not Isobel. It is Ross. Lynnie watches as Ross goes up Isobel’s front walk and knocks on the door. The sound of brass on brass echoes up to Lynnie’s room.

Isobel’s car is in the driveway, but her mother’s and father’s are gone. Lynnie watches as Isobel appears at the front door and lets Ross in, and then as dim shapes spread in Isobel’s room.

Lynnie returns to her bed and lies there. The room bears down on her, and the noise; one of her brothers is crying. She turns violently into the pillow, clenched and stiff, and for a while she tries to cry, but every effort is false, and unsatisfactory. At certain moments she can feel her heart beating rapidly.

Later, when she gets up again, Ross’s car is gone. She turns back to the roiling ocean of sheets on her own bed, and reaches out, anticipating a wave rising to her, but it is enragingly inert. She grabs the unresisting top sheet and tries to hurl it to the floor, but it folds around her before it falls, slack and disgusting. The bottom sheet comes loose more satisfyingly, tearing away from the mattress and streaming into her arms like clouds, but a tiny sound bores into the clamor in her ears, and she wheels around to see Frank standing in the doorway with his hand on the knob. He looks at her, breathing uncomfortably through his mouth, before he turns away, closing the door behind him.

That night Lynnie’s mother sits in front of the television in the dark, like a priestess. The cold, pale light flattens out her face, and craterlike shadows collect around her eyes, her mouth, in the hollows of her cheeks. “And what do you think of your employer visiting Isobel?” she says.

Across the street, Isobel’s window blazes. “He lends Isobel books,” Lynnie says.

“I see,” her mother says. “Quite the little scholar.”

The next day, Lynnie rides her bicycle to the stone house to say that she will not be working there any longer. Pedaling with all her strength, she is not even aware of reaching the edge of town, though afterward she can see every branch of the birchwoods along the old highway as it flashes by, every cinder block of the motel, even the paint peeling from its sign.

Claire stands in the doorway while Lynnie talks loudly, trying to make herself heard through the static engulfing her. She has too much homework, she tries to explain; she is sorry, but her mother needs her. Her bicycle lies where she dropped it in her frenzy to get to the door, one wheel still spinning, and while she talks she sees dim forms shifting behind Isobel’s window, a brief tumbling of entwined bodies on the damp leaves under the birches, the sad, washed light inside the old motel, where a plain chest of drawers with a mirror above it stands against the wall. In the mirror is a double bed with a blue cover on which Ross lies, staring up at the ceiling.

“Yes…” Claire is saying, and she materializes in front of Lynnie. “I understand…” From inside, behind Claire, comes the sound of Ross whistling.

It is the following week that Isobel leaves. Lynnie watches from her window as Isobel and her mother and father load up her father’s car and get into it. They are taking a trip, Lynnie thinks; they are just taking a trip, but still she runs down the stairs as fast as she can, and then, as the car pulls out into the street, Isobel twists around in the back seat. Her face is waxy with an unhealthy glow, and her hair ripples out around her. Lynnie raises her hand, perhaps imperceptibly, but in any case Isobel only looks.

So nothing has to be explained to Lynnie the next day or the next or the next, when Isobel does not appear at school. And she is not puzzled by the groups of girls who huddle in the corridor whispering, or by Cissy Haddad’s strange, tight greetings, or by the rumor, which begins to circulate almost immediately, of an anonymous letter to Isobel’s parents.

And when, one day soon after Isobel’s departure, Isobel’s mother passes her on the sidewalk with nothing beyond a rapid glance of distaste, Lynnie sees in an instant what Isobel’s mother must always have seen: an impassive, solid, limp-haired child, an inconveniently frequent visitor, breathing noisily, hungry for a smile—a negligible girl, utterly unlike her own daughter. And then Lynnie sees Isobel, vanishing brightly all over again as she looks back from her father’s car, pressing into Lynnie’s safekeeping everything that should have vanished along with her.

Sunday

Everything as promised: Costumes, clouds of incense—processions already begun; town tingly with anticipation. Somber, shabby brass bands. Figures of Christ, the Virgin Mother—primitive, elegant—on wooden float-type-things (
anda
, word McGee used). Men in purple satin churning around them. From wooden-shuttered hotel window can see people crossing square with armloads of palm. Truly pleased Zwicker decided to send me. (Shd. make up for Feb. issue/Twin Cities!)

Square in middle of town, town little dish set in ring of mountains, high under the sun. Air glimmery, uncertain; clouds draping mountains, colors diffusing into soft sky. Soft sun. Walls like cloud banks, pretty colors fading, wearing down to stone. Decay subtle, various. Ruins of earthquake (1770s? Check). Shattered arches, pediments, columns—huge. Grasses taking root in the tumbled stone, sprouting tiny white flowers. Churches: lush stone vines, stone fruit. In square, stone fountain with stone shells and mermaids.

Crowds lining the streets—tourists, Indians. Mostly Ladinos (McGee explained: mixed race, Span. + Indian). Indians impenetrable as they watch Jesus pass by, ribs showing through white plaster skin, trickling red plaster blood; they watch so intently, holding their babies up to look. Unnerving, the way they watch, way they walk, gliding along in those fantastical clothes of theirs. Silent emissaries from a vanished world, stranded in ours—gliding through the streets with baskets of flowers on their heads, through the square, through these new centuries of ruins. Squat on their heels at the corners selling hallucinatory textiles or tiny orchid trees, letting the happy tourists haggle. Barefoot, dirt-poor, dressed like royalty—incredible. Only thing: poor judgment to have brought Sarah?

Had awful morning in capital, waiting to hook up with McGees. Awful city. Diesel fumes up your nose. Big black puffs of dirt—soot, or something. Hang there in the air, then whisk over and deposit themselves on your face and clothes. Sarah and I sat in big hotel, shiny and gloomy, full of dark, heavy-faced men in suits and sunglasses. Many mustaches. Daughters in prom dresses, limp sons. Some Americans, too. Prob. business—don’t look like tourists. Hotel bar very dark, suit/mustache people gazing over their drinks at Vietnam movie showing on enormous screen. Movie mesmerizingly vile—machine guns, gore, etc., Vietnamese girl, U.S. soldiers in camouflage swarming all over her.

Sarah glowering at screen, running her hands impatiently through her hair, making it fluff up like little yellow chick feathers. Offered to go for walk with her. She said, “Thanks, Dennis. Out there?”

Vietnamese girl ripped down middle. Sarah (very loud):
Shit.
Men glancing at us through currents of black and greenish air. What to do? Had warned Sarah not to drink Margaritas until she got used to the altitude.

Two clean, hardy U.S. types, mid-sixties approx. abruptly confronting us. McGees, of course. “I’ll bet you’re our man,” Mrs. (Dot) said. “The Desk told us you’d be in here.”

Clearly Zwicker had not mentioned Sarah. Husband (Clifford) produced expression of aggressive blandness, Dot underwent violently shuttling succession of reactions. How well I’ve come to know the looks! Might as well be back in Cedar Rapids.

Sarah stared, affronted, as Dot nodded with pity at her tiny skirt, patted her arm. “
Lovely
to meet you,” Dot said.

“So,” McGee said. We all stood, looked at the screen. A bomb exploded over a small village. McGee snorted, shook his head. Said, “All set, everyone? Luggage up front?”

Filthy little eateries by the side of the road. Harsh dust, like grains of concrete, all over everything. Leaves, trees, caked with harsh, pale dirt. Buildings rotting, people streaming along—so many, so poor—bellying out into the road in the clouds of black exhaust, receding behind us, big, glossy cars shooting past them. Buses swaying on the sharp curves, top-heavy with cargo, clinging passengers.

Tried to monitor conversation in back between Sarah and Dot. Truth is, was very nervous about what Sarah might say, in her mood. Now, this is the
actual
problem about being involved with someone twenty-odd years younger. A trade-off, in my opinion. On the one hand, the intensity, the clarity (generally) of Sarah’s reactions. On the other, her impatience, stubbornness, unwillingness to see the other point of view. Fundamentally youth’s refusal to acknowledge the subtlety, complexity of a situation; at worst, adds up to a sort of insensitivity.

Still, Dot admittedly hard to take. Could hear her enumerating, at some length, flaws in local postal system. Glanced back, saw Sarah in glaze of boredom, rousing herself to nod sanctimoniously. Frowned warningly, and she shot me electrifying little smile.

McGee pleasant enough. Seemed to enjoy driving. Said he’d been delighted to meet Zwicker when he was up in the States in the fall:
delighted.
Told McGee how highly Zwicker had spoken of him; said that it was entirely due to him that Zwicker was so eager to get piece on town for supplement (true). McGee offered to help in any way he could. Asked what sort of thing I was after—hotels, restaurants, Easter celebrations? All of it, told him, though supplement particularly interested in food.

He nodded. Said, “We’ll see to it.” Said he would be more than happy to take me around to restaurants, introduce me to important local grower (could give me interesting regional recipes). Said it would mean a lot, good press coverage in the States. Said tourist revenues had fallen off catastrophically in past decade.

Stark landscape; droopy gray sky. Pines. Long, dark, sad hills. Billboards (all Span., of course) advertising herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc. Another: Cement Is Progress. Ant-like figure in valley, tiny beyond billboards, giant load of wood on his bent back. Just like ant with giant leaf, or some other impossible burden.

The sight was timeless, stonily beautiful—solitary peasant in the field. The man’s life curved out behind him in a pure, solid arc. Tried to imagine how it felt to have such a life—I mounted the arc, swooped up, then down along it.
Atomized
on contact with the man at the bottom; shards of my life flew all over the car—son, ex, house in Claremont. Dorm all those years ago in Princeton, bank where I worked for so long, new office at the supplement. Waking in my sunny Cedar Rapids bedroom, sometimes Sarah next to me. Other women I’ve been involved with, movies I’ve seen, opinions I’ve held—a burst sackful of items flying all over the car.

Glanced back at Sarah again to reincorporate myself, but her clear eyes were directed out the window, and her piratical earring gleamed—a signal! Meaning? Sarah’s earring, my son, my office—all
signals
, incoherent fragments, of which I ought to be the unifying principle; encoded dispatches from my own life! Too loud, too bright to decipher—the urgent, jagged flashing: a messenger shouting across a chasm. A knife lying on the counter. A ditch by the side of the road…

Monday

Was in strange state yesterday. Better now. Odd how that happens—everything completely inscrutable, intractable, portentous; then everything completely fine. Like having two abutting brains, one of them utter chaos; sickening sensation of slipping through some membrane. Perhaps triggered yesterday by psychobiological response to unfamiliar foods? Pollens?

In any case, over. Hotel first-rate, good night’s sleep. Dinner, just Sarah and I, at ex-convent (Santo Tomás, daily except Tues. Spectacular. Must write up, despite food). This morning breakfast in hotel courtyard—flowers, darting hummingbird; fruit, rolls, coffee. Impossible not to feel happy. Sarah clearly blissful. Stretching, reaching over to run her finger along my wrist. Waiter (Ricardo) utterly charmed by her. Had to smile at his expression when she ordered third portion of fruit and rolls.

How could I have doubted, yesterday, it was right to bring her? Of course it was. I think. (Joke.) Ah, so hard to sort out, me and Sarah. What can we really have with one another, ultimately? Occurs to me sometimes that, for all her wildness, restlessness, she wants something more from me than I (obviously) can give.

Have to remind myself always she’s at an odd point in life. Hard to remember the terror—a sort of swampiness, feeling of wandering around in a swamp, while some awful
fait accompli
is preparing to drop on top of you.

Looked up and saw her watching me—eyes elongated, sparkling. “You’re thinking, Dennis.”

“Not really,” I said. That look of hers! “I was wondering why you picked me up that night at the Three Chimneys, actually.”

“I did that?” Sarah said. “Whoops. Well, gosh, Dennis—I must have thought you’d be fun.”

A bit of pineapple lodged in my throat.

“Cheer up, Dennis,” Sarah said as I coughed. “A lot of men would be thrilled to be considered a sex object, you know.”

“Oh—now, actually, Sarah,” I said. “To be serious for a moment, I know the McGees aren’t the world’s most fascinating people, but it’s by their good offices, really, that we’re here.”

“Yup,” Sarah said, patting her stomach as she glanced at it fondly. “Your point?”

“Well,” I said, “the fact is, there are certain ways in which everyone is sensitive. For instance, everyone can tell when they’re being mocked.”

Sarah burped daintily and looked pleased with herself. “Almost everyone,” she said.

Sarah gone out for a walk. Can just see from window her tiny bright skirt disappearing around corner. processions continue. Men in purple satin (Jerusalemites, McGee says) carrying
andas.
Takes dozens to carry each one. Sweat streaming down their faces. Occasionally one stumbles on the cobblestones, slight panic in his eyes. Forcefully primitive representations of Adam and Eve, the world; funny little artificial flowers and flamingos, Christ with loaves, fishes. Tourists darting about with cameras.

Extraordinary activity taking place right outside window. People with immense baskets of flowers, using stencils to make a big rectangular picture with the petals, right on the street. Birds, butterflies, a basket of flowers, all made out of flower petals, appearing on the cobblestones outside. Such a poor country, such impassioned profligacy!

Town even more crowded than yesterday. Young Scandinavians, Americans, Germans, tall and vain, lounging in the square, stretching out bare, tanned legs, trading information, chatting up the Indians, selling each other drugs; Europeans on the balconies of posh vacation homes, drinking from glasses of wine or iced tea as the incense drifts up past them.

Amazing sight on the porticoes of the municipal building across from square—huge families spreading out blankets, starting up little fires in front of the Cathedral to cook corn, stockpots. Children running up and down, playing on the steps, lifting one another to drink from the disease-bearing fountain in the square. Confusing, people like these. Hard to tell who’s Indian, who’s Ladino. McGee explains many Indians want to pass (status thing, I presume—should have asked). You cut your hair, stop wearing that amazing clothing, speak Span rather than own languages (of which there turn out to be 22!!!!), and bing! Just like that, you’re Ladino.

Sarah glorious in knot of Indian children. No question they are cute—what eyes, what smiles! Those ragged, princely little outfits, runny noses…Like nesting dolls in series—each taking care of an even tinier child. They play with Sarah’s hair, combing it, fascinated, with her comb (which trust she will wash).

Tried to persuade Sarah to order chicken (always safe), though her
plato típico
turned out to be O.K., I think. Guacamole looked delicious, but warned Sarah off it when I saw little bits of uncooked green stuff—herbs? chives?—peeking out. Had drinks there later with McGees, though, in courtyard, and they said guac. sure to be safe in a place like the Flor. Watched them polish off two orders of chips slathered with it. Sarah had some, too. Can’t blame me if she gets sick! McGees have been down here so long they must have all kinds of protective antibodies.

Was glad I’d had talk with Sarah in morning about the McGees—she was charming with them over drinks. Serious, respectful, asking them how long they’ve been living down here, etc. Dot explained they still kept home in Virginia, to be near son, daughter-in-law. Had come down frequently for work during seventies and eighties, she said. Fell in love with town. Sarah managing very creditable rendition of rapt attention.

Marimba band started up jarringly. Odd sight—musicians in ceremonial (McGee said) clothing, staring straight ahead, the little mallets bouncing all over the keyboards. Played “I Love Paris.” Eerie, uninflected instrument—bit nerve-racking after a time. Band angry about something?