The Uses of Enchantment (38 page)

Here’s your vodka, said the man. He held his glass in one hand, the vodka bottle wedged under his arm.

He sat in an easy chair opposite her. The coffee table, a glossy blank slab between them, supported no books or magazines. No photos lined the fireplace mantel. The framed paintings on the walls—reproductions—were of gray harbors and gray piers and distantly gray lobster boats, not depressing exactly, more meditative and sober, portraits of bland stolidness.

He placed the vodka bottle on the coffee table.

Can I offer you something to eat? the man said. Nuts?

She shook her head.

The only thing worse than the smell of other people’s fish is the smell of other people’s burned fish, he said apologetically.

It’s not the fish, she said. To be honest I don’t have much of an appetite.

Me neither, he concurred.

Amazingly, she thought, he had barely aged. Yes, his skin had turned more sheeny and hidelike and it was stretched tighter over his face as though he had shrunk it one day at the beach. She was relieved to note that his lips had not retracted into his mouth, lending him the inwardly seething puppet look so many men his age suffered from. They remained on the exterior of his face, more darkly red, concentrated in color and thickness like a dried cranberry.

He still had very nice lips.

How about a fire, the man said, slapping his thighs. I’ve gotten better at building fires since you last saw me.

He stood beside the fireplace, its marble mantel so highly shined it could have been made of molded plastic, and flicked a light switch on the wall. She heard a
click
and a
whump!
Blue flames jagged upward through a symmetric crisscross of fake logs.

He smiled at her proudly, but she could tell he feared that he appeared silly, or incomplete, or somehow lacking to her.

That’s better, he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the heat headed his way. Who knew it would snow in early November?

It’s been a week of unexpected occurrences, she said, training her gaze toward the fire and holding it there. She wanted to give him the chance to examine her privately, to assess how she’d changed—hair more coarse and gravity-bound and less an iridescent nimbus, cheeks less voluptuous, nose longer and more prominent, total face effect verging, in her opinion, on that of a fancy spook-eyed hound—so he could gauge whether the girl he’d known before had hearkened her at all.

So, he said, thrusting his glass over the coffee table toward her. Cheers.

Cheers, she said.

If she were narrating this, she thought, she would say an uncomfortable silence descended. She would say the problem with fake fires is that they don’t crackle and snap, they don’t make noises to relieve an awkward silence nor do anything unexpected that justifies a pretend diversion. All she could hear was the steady, numbing rush of gas into the perforated metal floor of the hearth. What had run through her mother’s mind when she’d met the man? Had she thought:
This man maybe had sex with my daughter.
Had she thought:
This stranger is a memory touchstone that reminds me of no one so much as her
.

She pushed her mother away and she easily evaporated. Her mother did not belong here.

She tipped back her glass, finished the vodka in one swallow.

Are you married? she said, holding out her glass for a refill.

The man raised an eyebrow.

Is that too personal a question to ask? she said.

It’s nice to be asked a personal question, the man said as he filled her glass. Rather than told the personal answer.

I’ve lost my touch, she said. Unlike you—she gestured toward the fireplace—I haven’t been improving my skill set.

I doubt you’ve lost your touch, the man said. Too quickly, she thought. Almost eagerly. She allowed herself to plainly stare at him. What was the point in coyness? She was too old. He was too old.

Be that person
, she could see him pleading.
Be that person so that I can be that person.
If she was disappointed in her ability to be transformed by him, he was equally fearful of his inability to be transformed by her.

She could not be that person.

Are you married? she repeated.

No, the man said.

You never remarried?

No, he said. Does that upset you?

Why would it upset me, she said.

He shrugged. Because it’s upsetting, he said.

Better than remarrying five times unsuccessfully, she said. Better than remarrying your ex-wife.

The man chased a small object—lint or a bug—around the inside of his vodka glass. He wiped his finger on his pants.

Maybe I did remarry my ex-wife but I’m too embarrassed to tell you, the man said.

You shouldn’t care what I think, she said.

Does that seem plausible to you? he persisted. That I remarried my ex-wife and lived miserably ever after?

She could not be that person.

Endings never were my forte, she said, more sharply than she intended.

The man appeared pained by her remark. But he pushed this reaction away.

But you’re here, he said, as though her being here represented an ending of some kind, and in his view a successful one.

I’m here, she agreed.

Good, he said. I mean it. I’m glad.

You were expecting me, she said. That’s what you said when you answered the door.

I’ve been expecting you every day for the past fourteen years, he said. Weren’t you expecting me?

No, she said.

He appeared puzzled.

But
you
found
me
, he said, somewhat defensively.

Roz Biedelman gave me your address, she said.

She realized how this sounded.

But I came here because I wanted to, she added.

Ah, he said.

I don’t suppose you want to explain, she said.

How Roz got my address? he said.

She nodded.

How do you think she got it? he said.

She stifled another barbed retort by returning her gaze to the whooshing gas jets and the five blue flames. The fake fire was so absurdly fake; whoever had designed it had
tried
to make it look fake, as though the whole enjoyment behind a fake fire was the fake part, not the fire part.

She was sick to death of fakeness.

You know what they say, he said, prodding her. Hesitation is the modesty of cowards.

You know what they also say, she said. Sarcasm is the lame humor of assholes.

He smiled, evidently pleased.

See? he said. Found your touch and it’s only been two minutes.

I have no idea how Roz got your address, she said stonily.

No? he said.

No, she said.

Pah, he said. You’re no fun.

He polished off his vodka, hiding his face in his glass to mask his displeasure. He set the empty glass dramatically onto the coffee table. His face aged ten years with no forced smile to scaffold it. She could sense that he was no longer scared of her, and that this was what scared him. In desperation, he was goading her to toy with him again, even if, deep down, he knew the effect was pointless. His life, she assumed, was defined by a soul-deadening certainty. Today the paper will come. Today I will have lunch alone, today I will want to eat spaghetti for dinner but will wisely opt for a salmon fillet that will stink up my house because nobody unexpected ever appears.

More? he said, pouring himself a hefty, practiced slug. Or I could fix you a cocktail I learned from my ex-ex-brother-in-law. He calls it the meerkat fizz. Brings warmth to the belly.

More vodka is fine, she said, suspecting he had become a high-functioning alcoholic. It would explain the drab order of his house, the late and ultimately expendable dinner.

It’s not like you’re driving tonight, the man pointed out, as though she needed further convincing. It’s not like you’re going anywhere.

Prophetic words, she said.

Aren’t you gloomy, he said. And if you weren’t expecting me to answer my door, whom were you expecting?

Dr. Hammer, she said, seeing no reason not to tell him the truth.

I believe he lives in Colorado Springs.

I have no idea where he lives, she said. Obviously.

He’s in Colorado Springs, he said. He works as a physical therapist.

You’ve been keeping better tabs than me, she said.

Does that seem crazy to you? he said, somewhat hopefully.

More pathetic than crazy, she said.

The man smiled.

The insult posing as for-your-own-good honesty, the man said. You must have really missed me all these years.

She didn’t reply.

I’m just trying to get you to talk, he said.

Why don’t you talk for a change, she said. Why don’t you tell me about Roz.

You’re wondering how I know Roz, he said.

She nodded.

I don’t, he said.

She gazed at him ruefully.

I know Roz through my ex-wife, he said. My ex-wife joined ZAIRE.

RWANDA, she corrected. You beat your ex-wife?

Wishful thinking on her part. She just wanted to belong to a group.

Seems everyone’s joined that group at one time or another, she said.

Cult is more like it. That Roz is some kind of brainwasher.

She had the strange urge to come to Roz’s defense. But she remained quiet.

My ex-wife started to leave messages on my machine, he said. Accusations like “Your ego-driven love style has scarred my wellspring of self-regard.” But occasionally she was more circumspect. “I forgot to tell you about the time we played boccie with a dwarf. I forgot to tell you what a bastard you were in Milan.”

And you told your ex-wife about me, she said, hastening him toward a logical connection that mattered to her.

I did, he said. And she told Roz.

When was this? she asked.

Just after the trial, he said. I figured what was done was done.

You figured your life had become unrelentingly dull and you needed some attention
, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

I needed to talk to someone, he offered lamely.

I’ve found something that might be of interest to you.

Her heart prickled. He was an idiot, she thought. She wanted to say to him:
You are an idiot.
But she wanted to grind his face into his idiocy by spelling it out.

And what better person to tell your story to than your ex-wife, she said, your ex-wife who was involved with a therapist who knew me and my family—is that what you were so innocently thinking when you “needed someone to talk to”?

The man sipped his vodka meditatively.

You’re extremely cynical about people’s motivations, he said. You know that, don’t you?

Actually, she said, refilling her own glass this time, I cling to an extremely simplistic and infantile way of viewing the world. I’m a grudge holder. This is because I haven’t properly separated from my mother. Or so I’ve recently been told.

She realized, afterward, that she sounded more bitter than she’d intended. More self-pitying. But maybe she was bitter and self-pitying, and if she was, what was the harm in behaving that way? He was a stranger. She didn’t need to keep up appearances for his sake.

I’m sorry about your mother, he said. Her death must have come as quite a shock.

Her mother.
And there she was again, her mother, a genie summoned from the fake hearth, a propane sprite available at the flick of a light switch.
Her mother.
Again she tried to conjure the evening when her mother had rung the man’s bell.
That
must have come as quite a shock, she wanted to respond. And then what? Probably the man was impressed by how much her mother looked like her and yet how much not like her. As though she and her mother had once been identical twins, but she had been raised in a vatful of warm milk and her mother on an uninhabited coastal rock among puffins. Since her mother wasn’t one for stalling, she would have asked the man, point-blank, if he knew her daughter. I am dying, she would have told him, but not out of any need for pity am I telling you this. I want you to feel badly if you lie to me.

She searched the man’s face for confirmation of these unspoken suspicions, but the man’s face belied nothing. He was an empty person, he’d always been empty and that was why she’d chosen him. He was easy to fool. He wouldn’t be able to see that she was as empty as he was.

She was overcome by the most unexpected urge to kiss the man.

Before I forget, the man said, I have something for you.

He disappeared into the foyer. He returned, holding something behind his back.

I didn’t get a chance to wrap it, he said. Close your eyes.

Annoyed, she obeyed. He stood at a distance from her, she could tell without seeing, reaching only as close as he needed to in order to place the unwrapped object in her hands.

Open them, he said.

She stared at the familiar cover.

Miriam: The Disappearance of a New England Girl
, by Dr. E. Karl Hammer.

Very funny, she said.

It’s a great read, he said. Though I admit also a bit of a letdown. I didn’t recognize myself in K.

You’ll just have to fake-abduct a more reliable narrator, she said. The night is still young.

It’s a great read, the man repeated.

I wouldn’t know
, she was about to say,
I’ve never read it.
But the book had fallen open to the endpapers.

For “Miriam,”
she read.

Her vision reeled and she realized that she was suddenly, irreparably drunk. She slid out of her chair and extended her body along the warmed hearthstones. A fake log glowed next to her head.

I have beds, the man said.

No no, she said, I just need to lie down.

You’re welcome to sleep here if you want, the man said.

I just have a headache, she said. Where did you get this book?

Can I offer you some peas? he said, ignoring her question.

I’m not hungry, she said. But the book—

—for your head. Nothing like a bag of frozen peas to help a headache.