The Year of Pleasures (25 page)

“I hate to say it,” I told Tom. “But you’re the better cook.”

“Not true,” he said. But he was pleased; I saw that he agreed with me.

He was clearing the dishes, preparing to serve dessert—a pie bought at a bakery, I was relieved to see. I didn’t want him to really be a better cook than I. He had made us an Indian meal, tandoori chicken, saag paneer, even homemade naan. Though the bad wolf inside me had whispered, “You could do this,
anybody
could do this if they
wanted
to,” I was impressed.

We’d eaten dinner in a dining room furnished in a way that reflected his (and I assumed his wife’s) taste for the austere. There was a fineness to the lines of the furniture, the room held a great deal of light, and it was pleasantly clean and uncluttered. But the chairs were uncomfortable, designed more to be looked at than sat in.

Nor did I respond to his artwork: a reproduction with a wide swath of mustard yellow against a green background, a print of geometric patterns of thin lines done in colored pencil. His rooms were absent of books but for the few coffee-table books in the living room, older art and photography books, and a newer one featuring the Chicago “Cows on Parade.” I’d felt my snobbish self recoil—the Chicago Cows! But that was the one I’d looked at and enjoyed. I saw that what I was really doing was making up reasons why we would never get serious. A man who kept his corn medication in plain sight in the bathroom! I’d told myself. A man who wore an apron, rather than a dishcloth rakishly tucked into the waistline of his pants!

After we finished dessert, I offered to wash the non-dishwasher items. “I’ll wash,” Tom said, “and you wipe. How’s that?”

“Well, I don’t know where things go,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be better if I washed and you wiped?”

He smiled. “You know, I just like to wash better than dry. Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” I said, but I was thinking,
Whoa. Stubborn.

After we did the dishes, we moved to the living room. “Do you like jazz?” Tom asked, and I said very much. “Coltrane?” he asked, and I said, “Well,
old
Coltrane.”

His back was to me, and I could see his exasperation mounting in the way that it stiffened. “
How
old?” he asked.

“How about a different CD?”

“Fine,” he said quickly. Oh, what was the matter with me? I was a terrible date. Ungracious and ungrateful. Tense and bitchy.

Tom picked up another CD but then put it down. He crossed the room to sit on the sofa beside me, then leaned over and kissed me, quickly. “There,” he said. “Okay?”

I took in a steadying breath, embarrassed by my immediate rapid response.

“ ‘There’ what?” I smiled falsely, and tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear.

“All made up. I think we both need to
relax.
We’re just trying to get to know each other, Betta. That’s all.”

I looked down into my lap. “I know.”

“I like you, Betta. I think you’re cute.”

Cute.
Translation: not pretty, not sexy. I imagined telling this story to my rediscovered friends, how in each telling I would make this statement and others just a little more repugnant than they had been. I looked at my watch.

“Time to go home now, huh?” Tom asked.

“I think so. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I know how hard this is. Believe me.”

I drove home full of an agitated emptiness. I would call Lorraine first. I would tell her about how he also told me he had this great idea for a children’s book, which to my mind had not been a great idea at all.

I lay in bed thinking of the boyfriends I’d had in college. I wondered what had happened to them. Stevie, the bass player in the rock band who secretly loved the Lettermen’s “The Way You Look Tonight.” Joel, the handsome blond boy who sent me my first dozen roses. They were so beautiful in their long white box wrapped with a wide red ribbon that I never took them out—I let them blacken there amid the dark green tissue. Bob, the earnest English major with the GTO and the incredible blue-green eyes. If I had found my girlfriends, surely I could find some of them. But first I’d have to really want to. And I didn’t really want to. The wife:
Who
is this?

“When you are make gravy, when is time for it the flour?” Jovani asked.

“Pretty early,” I said, my back to him. I’d taken the pot roast and the vegetables from the roasting pan and put them into the oven to keep warm. Now I was stirring the drippings, getting ready to make the gravy. I was over for the night, and Jovani and I had decided to make dinner together. Matthew was going to eat with us and then go out with Melanie, apparently in yet another attempt to win her back. “She is viper,” Jovani had said, “but he love her. Me, I’m love only gravy.”

“It’s best to shake the flour up in a jar with milk or water,” I said. “Then you don’t get lumps.”

“Oh, my father make milk gravy. So good.”

“Have you guys got milk?”

Jovani opened the refrigerator. “We got beers. One.”

“Okay, we’ll use water.”

Matthew came into the kitchen, drying off his hair with a towel so thin you could see through it.

“Would you set the table?” I asked him.

He laughed. “Set the
table
? Whoa!” But he went to the cupboard and pulled down three plates, one badly chipped, which he placed with care around the lopsided table. He put forks on the right, knives and spoons on the left, then stood back with his hands on his hips to regard his work. “What else?” he asked me.

“Glasses,” I said. “And napkins.”

“Paper towels?”

“Perfect.” Some decent towels, I thought, in earth tones. Dishes. A few cloth napkins. Something to stabilize that kitchen table. Hell, another kitchen table. I’d already fixed up my room as much as I could; I was ready to move to other areas of the house. I had worried at first that I might offend, but the boys seemed to like everything I brought over. Jovani often used the cashmere throw I’d gotten for the foot of my bed. I’d been in the habit of extravagance since John died—since before then, actually. After we got his diagnosis, we came home and wept, both of us. That night, after we went to bed, I said, “Oh, John, what are we going to do?” and he said, “Well, tomorrow we’re going to go out and spend a whole lot of money.” It was not true solace, but it had its appeal. I had a gay friend with AIDS in the early eighties, when it was still a death sentence. He ran up every one of his charge cards sky-high when his time was running out. “What are they going to do?” he asked. “Send a
collection
agency after me? I hope they do. I hope they send a cute collection boy.” He was in his bathrobe, sitting on the sofa and leafing through a catalog. “Hmmm,” he said, “
that’s
nice. Oh, wait, I already ordered that. Hey, do you want anything? It’s on me.” Sure, I told him; you pick. I still had the ivory pie plate he’d selected for me, and every time I used it I thought of him sitting there, swinging his one leg crossed over the other, his watch swimming on his wrist.

While the boys and I ate dinner, the talk turned to Melanie. “You know,” I told Matthew, “what you need to do with a girl like that is get her jealous. You’re too nice to her.”

“Only one problem,” Matthew said. “Melanie’s not jealous of anyone. She knows she’s got it over every girl. Except Demi Moore. She’s jealous of her. She’s crazy jealous of her. She’s afraid of the whole gorgeous-older-woman thing.”

“Well, there you go,” I said, dragging an excellent curled-up carrot through the equally excellent gravy. “You just need a gorgeous older woman.”

“Yeah, but Melanie would have to see her with me.”

“Make double date,” said Jovani, his mouth full. “You and Melanie with beautiful old woman and her man. Say is your uncle, you have to take them. And then the woman, she is like you in front of
everyone.
Melanie suffer from this, I know.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” I said.

Jovani looked up from mopping his plate. “I am
say.
”

“Yeah, but where’s a gorgeous older woman?” Matthew asked. And then, blushing, said, “I mean, you’re gorgeous and all, Betta, but—”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “But you know what? I know somebody who is. She’s my age, but you’d never know it. And she would love nothing better than to be involved in something like this.”

“So all we need to do is find a guy for her to go out with.”

“I know somebody for that, too.”

In the morning I would call Lorraine and Tom. I could hardly wait to hatch the plot. I knew Lorraine would go for it, and I thought Tom could be persuaded to it, especially after he saw Lorraine.

Matthew looked at his watch, then stood quickly. “I’ve gotta go. I don’t want to be late.”

“Sit
down,
” Jovani and I said together, and I added, “
Be
late!” Matthew hesitated, then tore out of the room.

Jovani and I looked at each other, and Jovani shrugged. “Hopeless.” He took a last bite of pot roast. “This I am found delicious. Next time, I make you dinner from Brazil. You won’t believe.”

“That would be great.”

He stretched his arms high over his head. “You want watch TV by me?”

“Yes.” I liked the way he talked back to the screen, the way he stared wide-eyed and serious-faced at the commercials, then asked, “Is for true?”

“How’s the job search going?” I asked after we were settled in the living room, I under my throw on the sofa, he sprawled out in the chair.

“Still nothing. Only temporary. I am so sick of everyone they don’t know how I am talented. Even I can sing, did you know?”

“No.”

He made some effort at opera, which was terrible.

“Huh,” I said.

“I know, not so perfect yet. But believe me, I have other things to make me talent. I can paint.”

“Yes, you did a great job on my bedroom.”

“No, no, paint like artist. You wait.” He went upstairs and came down with a sketchbook. Inside were watercolors: buildings around here and in Chicago, still lifes, a pen-and-ink portrait of a child sitting on a bench. They were exquisite. I looked up at him, the surprise showing on my face.

“I know,” he said. “You are amaze.”

“I am! Why don’t you pursue this, Jovani? These are very good!”

“First, artist must have job.”

“Well, I hope you’ll try hard to do something with this.”

He took the sketchbook back from me and tapped his temple. He had ideas, I supposed he was saying. We turned together to watch an old rerun of
Friends.
Jovani pointed to the screen. “This is us, Betta.”

“Close enough,” I said.

Long after I’d fallen asleep, I heard the bedroom door open. Then the light turned on, and Melanie stood before me. “Get out of my bed!” She was wearing a tiny white T-shirt and matching underpants, and I noted beneath my anger that her body was extraordinary. Poor Matthew.

“What are you doing?” I looked at the clock. Three-thirty. “This is not your bed; it’s mine. Turn out the light.”

“It’s my bed! It’s got your shit on it, but it’s my bed. I brought it with me when I moved in!”

“Well, you . . . can just . . . I’m the one paying rent now. If you want to take your bed, you can do so, but not tonight. Now get out.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she started laughing loudly. “Oh. My. God. Are you kidding? Fuck you!” She came over and lay down beside me, pulling the covers over her head.

I yanked the covers down. “Listen. You’re going to have to leave. This is my room, and I—”

“Mattie!” she yelled.

“Shhhh!” I said. “Don’t you wake him up!”

“Maaaattie!!”

“Stop that! It’s not necessary.”

She sat up, wide-eyed, and spoke between clenched teeth. “Give me those blankets. I’m freezing.”

I pulled them farther away from her. “Go home and get warm, then.”

Matthew came into the room, tousle-headed, blinking in the light. He was wearing a T-shirt and blue-and-white-striped underwear, thick white socks. “What’s up?” he said sleepily. “Hey, Betta.”

“Am I not renting this room?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Would you mind asking your uninvited guest to leave?”

“Uninvited?” Melanie shrieked. “Uninvited?! I’m not uninvited! I can come here whenever I want!”

“Melanie,” Matthew said.

“Don’t even start! Why don’t you tell Grandma here about what we did tonight, so she gets it! Or maybe you want me to. Well, first, he fucked me and then I fucked him and then he fucked me. That’s how
uninvited
I am!”

I looked at Matthew and he looked at the floor.

“And then I came in to my bed, emphasis on
my,
to sleep.”

Matthew continued to stare at the floor. I got out of bed to stand before him, and he looked up at me. “You want me to . . . want me to make her leave?” he asked quietly.

“Like
that
would happen!” Melanie lay back down, pulling the covers emphatically over her. “Get out, both of you.”

I could feel myself very close to going over to the bed and dragging Melanie out by her hair. Instead I said, “I’ll go home. For tonight. But in the morning, we’re going to talk about this, Matthew.”