The Last of the Wise Lovers (7 page)

   It was a letter to someone whose name
had already been blocked out by the eyebrow pencil.  I had an
unconquerable urge to copy what remained, perhaps so that I wouldn't be tempted
in the morning to think that it had never existed.  I went to my room and
came back with a pen and paper.  After an hour of painstaking work I had
deciphered almost all the words.  I've kept the whole thing to this day.

"... even if you deny it, I feel that the lapses ...  are
longer, the hours stolen.  Your impatience immediately rubs off on me:
...  patience against your impatience.  That's why I sometimes talk
so much, laugh… things.  So there won't be silence, so there won't be
emptiness.

          And so, worn
out by the crazy telephone chase to arrange a rendezvous, confused by the
encounter itself, and full of guilt about Ronny sitting home and waiting
...  burst into tears.

          So this is your
big moment - you hold my cheeks in your warm palms, stare ...  my eyes and
touch me as ...  know: with sensitivity, with understanding, and, most of
all, with wisdom.

          But it only
helps a little, for ...  already mature enough and know the truth - that
beyond the denials, the attempts to hide it, the promises and vows, you are on
your way out.  It's not the first time, but it's the most painful one
...  you have something that's impossible to learn and impossible to ask and
impossible to understand, a kind of talent for love that makes you into such a
wise lover, that so wonderful and wise a lover will never ...  again.

          ...  from
your car, and I quickly ran home down the dark street, I knew I would have to
be strong, to prepare myself for what was to come.  "Farewell my wise
lover," I thought as I ran, "lover who will never come again, oh
last, wise lover ...”

   There was nothing more. Perhaps no
more was ever written; perhaps it was written in a different notebook.  I
thought about Dad chasing the length and breadth of America just to support us,
and about the house, which suddenly seemed neglected, and about myself, never
finding her at home.

   When the anger subsided, the sense of
revelation remained.  Suddenly I understood that Mom had been more than
those homey things, those protective, warm things I had become accustomed to
seeing in her.  She was also a person, a woman, a female like the ones I
see at the tables in the library, whose décolletage I inspect as they bend
over their books; or like the ones who look at me when I wander around after
work, on the way to the station; or like the ones who stand in the streets
around Times Square sheathed in short, short dresses; or like the ones who sit
next to me on the bus, so careful not to let their thighs touch mine; or like
Debbie, or Linda before her, or fat Lisa (the neighbors' daughter - I told you
about her once, when I discovered the pubic lice and you gave me a bottle of
copper solution); or the others whom it was easier or harder to lay, depending
on the circumstances.

   And everything all together was
awful, terrible, and at the same time curious, and filled with despair. I put
the notebook back where I'd found it and hid the page I'd copied in the gap
between the dresser and the wall, behind a piece of wallpaper that was coming
unglued. Afterwards I lay in bed, wakeful and restless.

*

The next morning I wanted to go back and reread
what I had copied, but something stopped me.  It was easier to make do
with what I remembered, which had become a little fuzzy and not so organized.
 Dad was still asleep, overcome with that fatigue that people bring with
them from long journeys.  Mom was again busy doing something in the depths
of the basement.  Aunt Ida was wandering around in circles on the lawn.
 I took some honey cake and an apple out of the kitchen and quietly tried
to make myself scarce.

   On the way I again saw the brochure
from The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body, this time in the
garbage can in the garage.  I took it out, folded it over twice, and
stuffed it in my pocket. I wondered whether Mom had shown Dad the riddle, or
had just told him about her winning the cruise.  I turned over in my head
the idea of suggesting that he buy an additional ticket and go with her.
 The possibility that the Caribbean cruise had been plotted especially to
get back at her went from being a
nocturnal
musing to a daylight threat that plagued me all the way in on the bus.

   She was already waiting for me at the
library.  No, not the monstrous Ms. Yardley, but the woman with the
patched jeans, Miss Doherty, this time wearing a flared skirt and flashing me a
smile of the whitest, prettiest, healthiest teeth I had ever seen.

  "What now?" I asked, a
little impolitely.  

  She bent toward me from within a cloud of
the fresh scent of morning and said in this special voice, as if we were
already good friends, "Listen, there's a book I must, simply
must
get hold of, and they want me to fill out forms and wait three days until
somebody finds it and gives permission for it to be brought up from the
basement, and meantime I'll be wasting several days sitting and waiting when I
could be photocopying what I need and going home...”

   "Where is your home?"

   "Hackensack," she said,
throwing me a straight glance behind which there was a trace of hesitation.

   That was a surprise.  For one,
that kind of address didn't fit with the job she'd found for herself.  And
besides, there must have been at least five libraries between here and where
she lived, no less good or accessible.

   But I agreed to help, anyway.
 It turned out she hadn't filled out the forms.  We stood there for
fifteen minutes and answered a questionnaire about the purpose of the request,
and the identity and education of the person making the request.  She said
she had a masters' degree in chemistry from Stanford, but that since it was
tough to find work in her field, she was working for a company that assisted
institutions and scientists who needed academic material but didn't have time
to comb the libraries.

   It's amazing how complicated things
become simple when somebody personally takes care of them.  I went to Ms.
Yardley, who signed in the space that said "Recommendation of Catalog
Librarian" without looking, so as not to miss a word of the new
Publisher's Weekly that had arrived not fifteen minutes before.  Then I
went to the Security Department, where they checked the list of nutcases and
didn't find any Dohertys, just one Duarte who in 1982 had eaten half a pound of
leaflets off a shelf of brochures and had been immediately hospitalized.
 I photocopied the signed form on the second floor and went off to see Mr.
K.

   He sat alone, his collar open and his
tie loosened.  He was reading something, his brow furrowed.  Behind
his thick, round glasses were dark islands of fatigue.  I thrust out my
hand to knock on the open door, then stopped.  Suddenly I realized that
what looked like a careless pose was really the posture of pain, that the furrowed
brow expressed concern.  I felt out of place and, as usual, like I was
beginning to stick too much.  I tiptoed quietly away.

   Miss Doherty was waiting in the
Catalog Room.  I gave her the form.  She thanked me so sweetly that I
felt badly for not having completed the task.

 "There's still one signature
missing," I was forced to explain.  "Mr. K.'s.  He sits
upstairs, on the third floor.  Wait a few minutes before you go up
there...”

  
Worry
seemed to cloud her face for an instant - or perhaps it was my imagination.
 She said hesitantly, "... and I can go up to him, just like
that?"

   "Yes," I said, and I guess
I got a little carried away, "he'll be glad to help...”

   "You know him well...”

   "Sure."

   She stared at me, biting her lower
lip.  Suddenly she said, "Maybe it's not worth bothering him,"
as she folded the form.  "After all, I've still got a bunch of books
from the previous list...”  When she was a few paces away from my counter,
she turned and said, "Thanks anyway," then vanished into the Reading
Room.

   There was something strange about
this - or maybe not. I couldn't decide.  In any case, a few minutes later
I found an excuse to follow her.  The excuse was to wade through a pile of
old cards from pre-computer days.  They were crammed into long wooden
drawers; I had to read each card and make sure the information on it had been
entered into the computer before the card was destroyed.  "What's
this spirit of volunteerism?" asked Ms. Yardley suspiciously.
"There's no work in here," I explained, "and it's a shame for me
to sit here and be bored when I could be making progress checking the
cards."

   She looked over the Catalog Room,
which really was empty just then, and released me with a nod of her head.

   I pulled out two of the most crowded
drawers and set them on a distant table from where I could see Miss Doherty.
 I took out a fistful of cards and laid them out in front of me, spread
out the computer list, and sat down to watch her.

   She worked steadily, but it seemed
her thoughts wandered elsewhere: her lips tautened and slackened in
concentration.  Her hair was disheveled.  Her face was alive, glowing
with some energy that made it so pretty I couldn't take my eyes off it.
 The whole time her hands were busy as if they were independent, detached
from her head: they opened books, located articles according to the list in
front of her, marked them off for photocopying with strips of colored paper
that she stuck between the pages.  After she had accumulated eight or ten
books, she got up and carried them to the photocopy machine, which was being
used by a boy in a school blazer.  She put the books down on a nearby
table and approached the photocopier.  The boy became aware of her
presence and smiled apologetically.  She smiled back and waved her hand at
him in a gesture that said, `Don't hurry.'  The boy smiled at her again
and walked around to the other side of the machine to collect the pages he had
copied.  For a moment he stood between us, completely blocking my view.  When
he moved - she was no longer there.

   I got up so noisily that one of the
librarians tapped on her counter in protest.  I went to the photocopy
machine and investigated it from all sides.  The boy was still there,
collating his pages.  

 "Whose books are these?" I asked,
pointing to the pile that Miss Doherty had left behind.  He looked at me
blankly.

 "Some lady," he said, nodding his
head in the direction of the door that led to the stacks.

   I went inside.  I passed by the
familiar signs: "Stacks - Section A" and "Authorized Personnel
Only".  Around a bend in the corridor, by the time clock and the
employees' cards, I saw her.

   I dropped back into the niche where
the fire extinguisher was kept - probably the same one from which Ms. Yardley
had laid an ambush for me the day she'd dragged me out of there to see Mr. K.
Then I carefully peeked out.  She was standing with her back to me,
holding something square in her hand - a piece of cardboard, or maybe an
envelope.  It was hard to see in the dim light that filtered in behind us.
 I contained my curiosity and waited quietly for her to turn around.

   She didn't turn around.
 Instead, she did the last thing I expected her to do: she bent over,
grabbed the hem of her skirt, and pulled it up to her waist.  She was the
most sensuous woman I had ever seen.  Her body still had the firmness of a
pretty college coed, together with the ripe and elegant femininity of a fair
lady from Hackensack.  Her legs were long, slender, and tanned; and her
buttocks, barely swathed in a pair of flimsy, transparent panties, were like
the marble buttocks of a statue at the Metropolitan.  Faint with
excitement, I watched as she inserted the square, stiff object into the front
of her panties, let her skirt fall, smoothed it down, and walked back toward
the door.  When she passed me I froze, not breathing.  After she'd
gone, I waited a while - then went back out.

   She was already on the way to her
table.  I watched her gather all her books, surrender them to the reserve
shelf, turn toward the door, and wait patiently for the guard to search her bag
for stolen books.  For a moment I toyed with the idea of going over to him
and whispering, "The underwear, check the underwear," but that was
only momentary mischief.  Whatever she had hidden it wasn't a book, and
anyway, the library managed just fine without my help.  I went back to the
cards, but I couldn't concentrate.  The vision of her flashed before my
eyes again and again.  I asked myself what had excited me so.  The transparent
panties?  The tanned legs, which ended in marble whiteness?  Or maybe
it was just the mystery of the stacks, with their musty smell and the blend of
darkness and light.

   I went on to think about what she had
stolen.  A page she'd torn out?  But what would have been simpler
than to fold it and stick it in her wallet?  The binding of a book?
 No, the librarians at the Reserve Desk would have noticed if they had
gotten a book back with no binding.  A card?  What kind of card could
be too dangerous for a guard to see when he was checking her bag at the exit?

   I remembered the way she had refused
to go and see Mr. K. Somehow, that was even more suspicious, since whatever she
had hidden in her underwear was likely to be
her
private secret (of
course, I thought of Mom's notebook) while the reason she had taken off when
I'd suggested she go up to his room to get his signature might have something
to do with the library, or with Mr. K. himself.  I wondered whether I
should go tell him, and what the chances were that he'd pass it off, the way
Mom had.  
Then I asked myself how it
was that for seventeen-and-a-half years I had thought that all the biggest
secrets in the world had centered around me, when in one week I had found
myself caught up in so many other people’s secrets.