The Wonder Spot (23 page)

“That's a nice idea.” She pauses. “But you could always pay it back, once you're working.”

I want to be closer to the fire, and I slide off my chair to the rug, where the wolfhounds once lounged. I wonder if Mrs. Blumenthal misses them.

She says, “Maybe we should talk about why you're in Surrey.”

I try to think of the dogs' names:
Masha and Ivan
?

“I don't know whether you're trying to go back to a time before your father died,” she says, “or whether you can't bring yourself to move on.”

It's both—though I realize it only now.

“You just don't have the energy it takes?” she says.

I nod.

She says, “I've felt that way.”

I'm amazed that she's speaking so honestly about her life. No one my mother's age ever does, or at least not to me.

I'm warm by the fire, but it's gotten dark outside; looking at the black windowpanes, I can feel the cold. The house seems quiet and still. I wonder if Dr. Blumenthal is home more or less now that all the girls are gone. I wonder if he is on his way home now, and if Mrs. Blumenthal herself knows. My father always called before leaving the courthouse to ask if my mother needed him to pick up anything, even though in all those years she never did.

It occurs to me that maybe Mrs. Blumenthal wasn't kidding about the champagne.

She says, “What about this boyfriend of yours in Los Angeles?”

I wonder what Dena has said. “Ex-boyfriend,” I say. “Demetri.”

“What does he do?”

I say that he writes for a sitcom now, but he's a comic. For some reason I think she may think he's a clown, so I say, “You know, he does stand-up—”

“Thanks,” she says. “I know what a comic is. Is he funny?”

I say that he is. Onstage he does shticks, like the one about his role on a soap opera: “I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.” But alone with me he could be hilarious. I consider imitating his imitation of what his pets would say if they could talk. But thinking of Demetri at his funniest makes me miss him.

I hear myself say, “I keep expecting him to call.” I haven't admitted this to anyone, and it's a relief to say it out loud. Still, I don't say the whole truth: I've been hoping he'll call and say how much he misses
me and how much he loves me and how much he still wants me to move out to Los Angeles with him. Meanwhile, he hasn't even called to say hello.

She gets up to refill our glasses. “Why don't you call him?”

“Mrs. Blumenthal.” I wait for her to say,
Stevie,
but she doesn't. “He never told me he loved me.”

“Some men don't,” she says. “Some men say it all the time and don't mean it.”

I recognize myself in the latter category, not with Demetri but with one of his predecessors. I sometimes said “I love you” to Josh because I was afraid I didn't; toward the end, I hardly said it at all, and when I did I meant,
I wish I loved you.

Now Mrs. Blumenthal says, “What a man does is more important than what he says.”

She tells me that I know what I need to know about Demetri, and I appreciate how she says it, like she doesn't have the answer herself, or any stake in what I decide.

I ask if she thinks I should go back to New York.

“I don't see any reason not to,” she says. “You could stay with Dena at first.” She considers this. “I think it would be good for her.”

I wonder what she means, but while her remark doesn't seem disloyal, my asking about it would be.

Suddenly I feel tired. I say that I think I'll stay until my mother is a little stronger.

She says, “You'll move when you're ready.”

It takes another month. I worry about telling my mother, but when I do, she looks about seventeen years younger.

. . . . .

I've known Dena since seventh grade. We were in homeroom together; I learned her name from the blue-cloth loose-leaf binder on which she'd written, “Dena Blumenthal + Bobby Orr Forrever.” This was the year the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup, and it was a mark of Dena's social preeminence that she could get away
with pledging eternal love to Mr. Orr, the star of the archrival Boston Bruins.

I myself loved Bob Dylan; I didn't care about the Flyers or ice hockey or skating. But everyone I wanted to be friends with went to the rink on Friday nights, and one Friday night I decided I'd go. I was getting a ride with some girls I didn't know too well. This seemed better than arriving alone.

My mother insisted I wear my green parka, an end-of-season sale item she'd bought without my consent the previous winter. It looked like a rolled-up sleeping bag with a belt and seemed impossible to make friends in. “You'll be as warm as toast,” she said.

In my unzipped coat, I sat waiting for my ride while my family finished dessert. After a few minutes, I took off my coat and held it with my mittens and hat on my lap.

It was almost 7:30 when my father said, “What time are they coming for you?”

“Seven,” I said.

My older brother said, “I'll take you over.”

I said, “Thanks, anyway.”

Finally, a honk came from the street.

Whenever anyone honked for my brothers or me, my mother usually made the face of a person driven insane, but tonight she just said, “Have a good time.”

My little brother, who liked to skate, called out, “Fall forward.”

At the rink, the girl whose father had driven us didn't even go in; she was meeting a boy from ninth grade in the parking lot. The other two had brought their own skates and were out on the ice before I'd even reached the clubhouse to rent mine.

The man at the window told me he was out of white in my size and gave me a pair of black skates, which reminded me of old-fashioned shoes an orphan would wear. After lacing them up, I lingered a moment on the carpeted bench; it was warmer in the clubhouse, and you could buy hot chocolate. But I walked out, my blades chop, chop, chopping on the vinyl mat.

I'd never skated before, but it didn't look hard. The boys seemed just to be running on ice; the girls seemed to be doing ballet to the scratchy waltz that played over the PA system.

I couldn't find an entrance onto the ice and considered going back to the clubhouse for hot chocolate. Then someone brushed by me and opened a door that was part of the wall, and I followed. I slid onto the ice and kept sliding until I was in what seemed like the fast lane of a circular speedway. The boys on the hockey team were chasing each other and, despite the
NO
ROUGHHOUSING
sign, were roughhousing. I was afraid they'd knock me down.

I fell all by myself, onto my back.

The parka padded my fall but made it hard for me even to sit up. Finally, I was able to kneel and then stand. I lurched across the superhighway to the shoulder, where I stood gripping the wall. My two friends skated by and waved, and I waved back, an orphan in a sleeping bag.

A skating rink was unlike a pool, I realized; you couldn't stand still without standing out. But I couldn't make myself move. I felt sure that everyone was looking at me and then realized that no one was, and I experienced the distinct shame of each.

Dena was in the center of the rink, in a white fur hat with pom-pom ties and a short red skirt, practicing a twirling jump that might have qualified her for the Olympics. She was small and thin, with large breasts her posture didn't acknowledge—and wouldn't, even once she'd grown up. She had dark hair, blue eyes, and a long nose—both of her sisters would have theirs fixed, but not Dena—which made her more striking than pretty.

She skated backwards. She pirouetted so fast she became a blur. Then she was whipping around the rink, her arms linked to a chain of similarly skirted champions.

As she skated by, I saw her notice me. I was afraid that she'd point me out to her friends, but she broke off from her chain and skated toward me.

She said, “Hi, Sophie,” and I was surprised she knew my name.

I didn't say hers; I wasn't sure if she was making fun of me.

She said, “You want to skate?”

She took my arm, and slowly we went around the rink. She told me what she was doing, pushing off and gliding.

I kept hearing jingling, and I looked down and saw the tiny bells attached to Dena's skates.

She said, “Try not to look at your feet.”

“Okay,” I said, and nearly fell.

She said, “Just hold on to me.”

. . . . .

Most of my friends live in studios, or in larger apartments with serious flaws—a roommate in the living room or a methadone clinic across the street. Dena's apartment is perfect, a big one-bedroom with a view of Gramercy Park. She doesn't say what her rent is, but I assume she lives as frugally as she does because it is high—though I also know she enjoys frugality for frugality's sake.

Over Christmas, she took a trip to India, and now she's in love with what she calls the simple life. She gets serene talking about it; her speech slows and her eyes glisten when she describes an Indian boy who amused himself for hours with a piece of string.

I nod, but I think,
You watched somebody play with a piece of string for hours?

The first night, she shows me where she keeps the coffee beans, grinder, and what looks like a watercolor brush for getting every coffee speck into the reusable cotton sock she uses as a filter. Her cupboards are virtually bare and make me pine for the Blumenthals' larder of yesteryear.

Dena shows me the big pot of soup and bowl of salad she prepares each Sunday to last the week so she won't be tempted to eat out or order in.

The salad bowl contains nothing but brown-edged lettuce. “Yum,” I say.

Dena laughs and says, “Richard calls it
‘Salade Fatiguee.' ”

. . . . .

Richard was her professor in graduate school at MIT, and though she doesn't say she's seeing him, she's seeing him.

One night I say, “How's it going with Richard?”

She's ladling soup into bowls for our dinner, and the only sign that she's heard my question is that she pauses mid-ladle. When she hands my bowl to me, she says, “You ask a lot of questions. The whole Q-and-A thing is so . . .” She moves her hands in a gesture of,
How you say?
“American.”

I think,
We are Americans.

It reminds me of her sweet-sixteen party, when she forbade the singing of “Happy Birthday.”

Her speech becomes slow and serene. “There are a million ways to find things out.”

I think,
Name a thousand.

. . . . .

I keep telling Dena that I want to pay rent, and finally I insist. That's when she admits that her father bought the apartment for her.

I'm surprised. Her father is always trying to give her things, and she always refuses. I say, “It's still your apartment.” I tell her I'd feel more comfortable paying rent.

She says no, but she lets me buy the groceries, and I fill the refrigerator, Flossie-style.

“We don't need this much food,” Dena says. “It's wasteful.”

I tell her I don't want to emulate the diet of a boy who has only string to play with.

She says, “Are you making fun of me?”

I say, “I am.”

. . . . .

The previous summer, I watched Dena's father try to persuade her to give up her old Saab and take the new Mercedes convertible he was trading in for a newer one.

We were in the den; a baseball game was on the huge television, and Dr. Blumenthal glanced at it while he made our martinis. He'd showered and shaved and was wearing a silk robe over trousers. Mrs.
Blumenthal was still getting ready for the party they were going to; faintly I could hear the sound of a blow-dryer.

I didn't know if he was serious about the Mercedes; he seemed to be trying to bait Dena. If he was, it was working.

Her arms were crossed in front of her. I knew that her reason for turning down the Mercedes was that she didn't want to be a princess, but that's what she sounded like turning it down. She acted more like a princess around the king.

As Dena got angrier, I kept thinking that maybe I'd casually get up and go to her mother's dressing room and watch her dry her hair, which I'd wanted to do for years.

Dr. Blumenthal was enumerating the virtues of the Mercedes. He was on to safety now, and it occurred to me that maybe he wasn't baiting her after all. He seemed genuinely concerned about her welfare, and it made me miss my own father and his concern for mine.

Dr. Blumenthal described the extensive plastic surgery he'd had to perform on a patient who'd been in a horrible car accident. He was saying, “An air bag would have—” when Dena interrupted.