Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (13 page)

He nods acknowledgment, then looks back to the photo. “I like that picture because she's smiling without her hand over her mouth. She had bad teeth, and she learned that habit as a kid and couldn't shake it. I used to try to make her laugh so hard she'd forget to throw up the hand.” He smiles, but the smile isn't new—simply a part of a story he's recited dozens of times before. “She tried to teach me to be a gentleman—something I try to hold on to. An uphill battle.”

I don't speak. I don't want to say something disrespectful, or pretend to empathize with experiences I don't understand.

He looks at me. “For some reason,” he says, his stance softening a bit, “people usually ask whether she was a nervous traveler. I think it makes people feel safer to believe we can have premonitions about these things. But she wasn't.”

I take this in. After a moment I ask, “Are you?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I'm not afraid of trains.” Then, sounding for the first time as if he's saying something real instead of simply reciting: “I'm afraid of people dying.” His face turns, fleetingly, to iron. Then, a half-dozen heartbeats later, to something lighter.

The next thing I know he's stepped behind me, taken my wrist, and is hoisting me onto his back. I resist, confused, his “Relax!” only prompting my body to go rigid, until gravity and his insistence persuade me to stretch my back against his—the white ceiling rotating above me as he pivots, steps toward the sofa, and gently rolls us down. Still facing the ceiling, I somehow land safely, if out of breath, on his chest. He's laughing. I twist to look at him. His face has cleared. He chides, “For contact improv, you need
both
people cooperating.”

“I didn't know we were doing contact improv.”
“Always.” His chest against my back is a sturdy trampoline. He kneads my shoulder, as though I were the one who'd related a painful story. Slowly I relax, my shoulder blades spreading like wings. “I did improv theater for a while,” he says. “Part of my detox from fundamentalism. I wasn't very good at it. Compared to most of the troupe, I reacted like molasses. But I loved it.”

We rest on the sofa.

“Nice ceiling,” I say.

“Mmm,” he agrees. His teeth are delicate on my palm.

I roll over and we kiss. We kiss for a long time, and if kissing is a conversation this is one where we both get to talk. His mouth is soft and rich on mine, and all I can think, stupidly, is:
if chocolate syrup could kiss.

And then it's a hell of a lot more intense than chocolate syrup.

We take a break.

His apartment is quiet. A spicy smell drifts from the Cambodian restaurant on the first floor.

“What else did you do in improv?” I ask.

“Games.” I hear him smile. “Exercises. Anything we could come up with to catch each other off-guard—even a regular sit-down conversation, except that the questions, no matter how weird, had to be answered without hesitation. It's amazing what people find themselves saying when they don't have time to think.” He sits up, bringing me along, and settles me beside him, our knees touching. “Say something shocking,” he says, facing me.

I laugh. “True or false?”

“Doesn't matter.”

I hesitate.

“Don't think,” he chides.

“I'm in the federal witness protection program. My real name is Lola. This is a prosthetic chin.”

“What crime did you witness?”

“Um, there was a ‘No Dumping' sign. And somebody took a dump in front of it. Ugh. I don't think I'm going to be good at this—when I panic I just go lowbrow.” I shake my head. “Your turn. Say something shocking.”

Mischief flickers on his face. “I didn't kiss a girl until I was nineteen.”

“Really? Is that true?”

He shrugs. “It was the way I grew up.”

“Well, you've made up for it.”

He grins. “I'm glad you think so. Of course it's all about having a good partner.”

“I do my best.”

“What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done?” I pull away. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“On no.”

“Don't stall.”

“If we're going to talk embarrassing, then let's open the beers.”

He takes one of the beers in his right hand and signals for me to ply the opener, which I do, also one-handed. It takes a while, working together, to open both bottles, but we do it without spilling much. I raise mine. He raises his.

“To embarrassment,” he says.

We drink. I set my bottle down slowly on the table, and slowly dry my palm on the leg of my jeans. It occurs to me that if I kiss him again, I may not need to answer.

He watches me, his expression wry. As though reading my mind, he says, “No pressure. And no, I don't usually put women on the spot with stupid parlor games.” He sets down his beer. “Just you.”

“Because?”

He looks at me simply. “I get a feeling about you. I want to know you.”

I stare at him.

His smile is almost apologetic. “As you like,” he says. “You can answer the question or not.”

I take another draw from my beer, letting my nerves settle. His directness is disconcerting, and powerfully attractive.

It's a sensation like disrobing. “I had a crush on this guy in college,” I start. “I got up my nerve to call him. My dorm had this fancy brand-new voicemail system where you could record a message and then preview it before sending it. So—you can guess where this is going—I recorded three separate messages until I had one that felt nonchalant enough. But by accident I sent them all.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch.” I drink.

“Did he call you back?”

“Nope. And I can't even tell you how he looked at me after that, because I never dared so much as another glance at him. To this day he's probably telling stories about his sophomore-year stalker.” I set down my beer. “Your turn.”

He rubs his neck ruefully and laughs. “I was in college. I had my first real girlfriend. One Sunday we were, let's say, enjoying the afternoon, and she went into the bathroom to put in her diaphragm. But, as she later explained, it was slippery and the thing sprang open in her hand and flew out of the window and down into the quad. She was mortified. So, like the nice guy I was . . .” George sighs. “I snatched it off the ground just as a student tour group was about to trample it. And two of my classmates saw.” He shakes his head. “Maybe that wouldn't have been mortifying to someone who wasn't from my background.”

“That I doubt.”

He laughs a rich, satisfied laugh. “Something ridiculous you did as a kid.”

“Ridiculous?”

“Don't stall.”

I take a swallow of beer. “I've never told anyone this. When I was maybe six I forged a love letter to my mother. I signed my father's name.”

“How come?”

“I thought it would change something. Isn't that ridiculous?” I smile at him.

“What did you want to change?”

“The silence.”

He waits.

“They're just—” I make a futile gesture. “For my parents, conversation is not a set of exotic pigments. Conversation is house paint. Apply enough to cover the subject. Store the rest in the basement.” I stop.

He puts a hand on my knee.

“I mean, I do appreciate them.”

“What are they like?”

“They're good people. Hardworking, responsible, all that. My father has always had this quiet confidence in me. Unspoken but powerful. When I came to him with a problem, we'd talk it through
until I was satisfied. He took me seriously. And my mother left me alone where other mothers nagged. But it's hard to be close to them. My parents, like a lot of people, successfully raised their child to be an adult they can't understand, in a city they find alarming, in a profession they find impenetrable. They weren't thrilled, I think, at my choice to move across the country for college, and then—as though I hadn't already positioned myself sufficiently out of their orbit—pursue a career as impractical as literature. Still, they accepted it. But it's really labor sometimes, keeping a connection going.”

“I'm guessing they don't sing to your fax machine?”

“In fact, my parents are the only people who have ever, in all the time I've had that idiotic setup, managed to get shrilled at by my fax. And it's happened to them more than once. I mean, it baffles me that an engineer and a schoolteacher can't occasionally toss a syllable to the line to keep the fax at bay. Still, when I race back to that screaming fax machine I feel frankly shitty. Like it's my fault for trying to stretch their horizons when I should just accept the two of them as they are.” I stare at George's window, where the light is fading. “Lately,” I say, “when I need to leave the phone for a moment, I just say I'll call them back.”

“So that's how you got into literature?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, is that what first made you go for books?”

I hesitate, then nod. “When I read novels as a kid, I got to see who people really were.”

Outside the window, a streetlamp turns on.

Most of the men I've been with would long since have forged ahead to the next act. A conversation that continued into the dark would have signaled détente, the evaporation of sexual tension. But the air between George and me vibrates with attentiveness—the magnified silence of something delayed. The evening has expanded. There is no time, no lecture looming tomorrow, no hurry between us. Only the hushed dignity of moving toward something large.

“What did your letter say? When you were six?”

I gesture faintly. “You know—all the flowery things I could think of. With a lot of misspellings, I'm sure.”

“What did they say about it?”

“They didn't. I think they were embarrassed. Nobody ever said a word to me.”

“Nothing?”

I open my mouth to speak, but my voice catches. Surprised, I shake my head. “Something ridiculous from childhood,” I say to him.

He wraps an arm around me. With my fingertips I caress: his temple, the freshly shaved plane of his cheek, the surprisingly soft skin at his collarbone.

“I'd have to ask Paula,” he says. “My sister. She remembers all that stuff.” He's quiet for a moment. “Okay—I lied to this really strict teacher of mine because I'd lost a schoolbook. I said it had been stolen. Then I had to lie to my mother. Of course my mother found out, I forget how. But she also knew the teacher was a true son of a bitch—not that she'd ever have used, or tolerated, that expression. So despite her high principles she didn't tell on me. She didn't even tell my father. She made me earn back the price of the book by doing extra housework, and we gave the money to charity. She was like that—she sort of knew how to bend. With everything. The church, and my father, and other things in her life that weren't easy. Plenty of times I wished I could make her compromises.” He falls silent. “Funny thing is, I sometimes think she was proud of me for questioning things. For taking on impossible battles. Even when it came to religion. The one time I told her I had doubts about my faith, she didn't so much as rebuke me. She just said I shouldn't worry, it would come to me later.” George lingers momentarily over this surprise, still fresh after more than two decades. “She was a teacher before she met my father. And I always had the impression she might not have been as religious back then. She never said she regretted giving up that other life, but I always thought there was that understanding between us.” His face is bright with compassion, and innocence.

“Happiest decision you ever made,” he says after a minute.

“Moving to New York.”

“Me too. Why for you?”

“Friction. Someone's always telling you exactly what they think. If you want human interaction, all you need to do is walk a few blocks. You?”

He smiles, and shrugs. “I love this city.” He rises. When he returns from his refrigerator he's carrying another set of beers. “Next question's yours,” he says, opening them.

I start my new beer. It takes me a while to think of a question. When I do I set down my bottle and face him squarely. “What's the worst thing you ever did?”

He hesitates.

“I will if you will,” I say.

He leans back and shuts his eyes. “The light answer or the serious answer?”

“I'll take one of each.”

He smiles gently, eyes still closed. “I used to smoke pot before I went out to proselytize.”

“You proselytized?”

He opens his eyes. “I know how foreign that must seem. Just remember, I'm thirty-seven—I left home a very long time ago. I've had more years outside the fundamentalist world than in it. So we're talking ancient history. But after my mother died, my father took things up a notch. Several notches, actually.”

“How many?”

“What do you know about fundamentalism?”

“Jesse Helms?” I offer. “That Dobson guy?”

“That's like saying you know the taste of wheat flour from eating Twinkies.”

“Then please don't ever ask me what I know about Canada.”

“At least you're honest.”

The heat switches on with a blast of stale air. After a minute it subsides with a groan. “For someone like my father,” he says, “fundamentalism is like a very, very strict love.
A perfect love thatcasts out fear
—that's Saint John. You're either in or out. You're either faithful, or else you have the wrong kind of heart.

“I was always on the edge of falling—at least that's how I felt as a kid. I don't remember ever
not
having doubts, though there must have been a time. But I used to fight them. It's a nauseating sensation, fishing inside yourself all the time for a feeling that's not there. And even as a kid I knew you can't force faith—no more than you can force yourself to fall in love.”