Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (18 page)

His face is still bathed by the window, his brown eyes flecked with light. Leaning forward on the stool, he addresses me slowly. “I love you, Tracy. Of course I don't have a problem with who you are. These are small differences. They're not worth worrying away
a beautiful morning.” He gestures toward the street, the fenced golden-leafed park. The city that awaits our complicity.

“Okay,” says Yolanda. “First of all, calm down.” She taps a sugar packet on the surface of the diner's table, her dark red fingernails making nauseating contrast with the speckled-salmon Formica.

I glance up at the mirrored walls where Yolanda's neighborhood watches itself calorie-count. A couple of anorexic-looking preteens from the nearby Joffrey Ballet studios, hair in murderously tight buns, sip tall glasses of water and pick at salads. A flagrantly beautiful young man studies his reflection as he sips something with lemon in it.

“It was just such an awful conversation,” I say.

“So he has a couple old-fashioned ideas,” says Yolanda. Accepting her plate, she addresses the waitress. “Oh, did you see the witch they gave that walk-on part to?”

The waitress, so thin her mute, bitter smile seems to carve channels in her face, hands us napkin-wrapped silverware.

Yolanda salutes her. “Courage to us all.”

“Courage is a dime a dozen,” says the waitress in a flat voice, refilling our plastic cups of water. “So's talent.” She thunks down a metal pitcher, splashing water over the rings of condensation that already decorate the table.

I watch her stride off. “So much for friendliness.”

“No,” says Yolanda. “That's how I feel after I lose out at an audition, too. There's no justice. That's why I do yoga—it keeps me from dwelling. Yoga, and vitamins.” Yolanda pulls a plastic sack from her gym bag and offers me an assortment of pink, green, and brown-speckled pills, which I decline. Yolanda is dressed in workout clothes: a pale orange spandex leotard that leaves no curve unexploited, and perfunctory black shorts that would turn heads anywhere other than here in the Village. She wears little makeup this morning, a rarity, and her hair, pulled back, is currently dyed H.D.'s pale brown—close to Yolanda's natural shade, which she last wore in high school. The effect is to leave her face unexpectedly exposed. She looks older, and, though she'd probably disagree, more beautiful than usual. The critics, I know, would take my side on this one; one reviewer called Yolanda “a devastating and devastated beauty.” Reviews of the play itself have been mixed, with the
harshest asserting that the script was “a politicized retread and a bad case of approxa-history” (a comment Yolanda dismissed with a shrug: she didn't care
who
Freud was in real life—in this play he was a dickwad to H.D., and that was all she cared about). But the praise for Yolanda has been universal and lavish, and it seems to be drawing audiences . . . a fact that hasn't been lost on the playwright or on Bill, who have responded with varying degrees of gratification and pettiness. Yolanda herself, unaccustomed to critical attention of even modest proportions, seems irritated by too much mention of her good fortune—as though that would jinx this unprecedented career boost. She mentions the reviews only sporadically, with awe, before moving on to her latest grievance against Bill. Though even that litany has seemed perfunctory of late. She's getting her say every night onstage, and even if Freud won't really listen to her, it's clear the audience does. Today she'd much rather settle my problems than rehash Bill.

“So your guy has traditional ideas about family or religion or whatever,” continues Yolanda, dry-gulping two vitamins and dropping the rest back into her open gym bag alongside water bottles, rolled towels, exercise bands, and a pair of magenta thong underwear. “Doesn't sound like the end of the world to me.”

I sip at a mug of coffee and watch without appetite as Yolanda wolfs her cottage cheese-special plate. My stomach hasn't unclenched since I left George this morning.

Yolanda sets down her fork and pats her lips with a napkin. “This is perfect, Tracy. You're a professor. You love to tell people what's what. You can teach him your worldview as you go along.”

“But why the offer to convert, even though we've already talked about how we're both agnostic? And what is this stuff about traditional roles?”

“Ooh, sounds like an axe murderer. Okay, so the guy has an old-fashioned streak. And maybe he's got a few sexist assumptions. Does he treat you badly? That would be the only red flag for me. Tell me, Tracy, does he respect your professor-ness?”

“He read Kafka last week, so he could understand a paper of mine that he'd asked to see.”

“Okay. Listen to me. I know you're used to giving me advice, so now take some. How long have I known you?”

“Nineteen years?”

“And remember how we used to speculate about what kind of guy we wanted to meet? And remember how you were always so picky?”

“No more than you—you had eye-color specs, and a height cutoff.”

“Right. So, nobody gets exactly what they expect. George comes from a conservative background, so of course he's going to sound traditional sometimes. And most men have a few creepy ideas about women. Most women also have some creepy ideas about men. And by the way, I've been meaning to break this to you for years: most people, men
and
women, think ‘feminism' is a dirty word. Saying feminists are humorless has nothing to do with whether this guy respects women.”

“No?”

“Sometimes I can't believe they let you be a professor, Tracy, no offense. There are plenty of ways to show respect. Breaking a woman's heart isn't respectful, and so far he hasn't done that to you, has he? At least he's open about his tradition thing. Most of the guys I deal with are A-pluses at political correctness and ballroom dance. They play dads on Home Depot commercials, they're sensitive, they massage their girlfriends' bellies every month. And then if you look at the way these same guys flirt and swagger and cheat it's obvious they don't respect women. They just like being heroes—and in the circles I travel you're a hero if you're politically correct. The ones who
aren't
jerks—the truly honest-to-God sensitive arts-guys who actually
like
women—are so confused about what might possibly be left of guy-ness once you take away the swagger that they can't handle the whole scene. So they go on four magical dates with you, they inspire you to drop your defenses along with your pants, and then on the fifth date they think they might be gay.”

Yolanda has flung her arms wide. Even in this clattering diner, her emphatic delivery is turning heads. Ignoring onlookers, she fixes me with that in-your-face stare that is the sole province of stage actors and cult proselytizers—the kind of prolonged eye contact that makes adults develop facial tics and dogs attack. Grimly I nod affirmation. I've seen Yolanda through two of these tormented actors.

Slowly Yolanda lowers her arms, head bowed. After several seconds, she raises her head. “Be glad you found one who is straight and wants a woman in his life. And if he's cool with you being Professor Tracy in her full glory, marry the guy. And if he wants to be Jewish for you, that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard. Meanwhile, take my advice?”

“Yeah?”

“Don't push him.”

“I'm not going to pretend agreement if he says things that bother me.”

Yolanda leans forward, hands splayed on the tabletop. Her green eyes look tired, spidery lines radiating from their corners. “Fine, be as blunt as you like. Go on some big protest parade against traditional statements, conservatism, sexism, whatever. And you'll lose half the good ones who come down the pike. Men are like . . .” Yolanda turns her eyes to the ceiling, searching. “Coral reefs. Brush them the wrong way and that's it. Finito. You have to be delicate, otherwise you'll chase away the best ones.”

I'm not naive. Every relationship between two humans involves censorship; I have, of course, excised from this afternoon's recounting the part of the argument where George and I disagreed about precisely why we hated Yolanda's play. But there is small, ego-saving censorship, and then there's the big variety: the kind that's dishonesty. “If a guy runs away when I speak my mind, how does that make him the best? Besides, how can you say you respect men if you insist on expecting so little from them?”

Yolanda takes a long sip of ice water, then sets her glass firmly on the table. “All I'm saying, Tracy, is that you've got to live in the real world.”

It's been just over a month since I met George. The smell and feel of his skin are with me when we're apart. Sitting in this absurd overpriced diner, I imagine losing him, and it prompts a sensation I've had only once before: jumping, on a dare, from the high cliff at the quarry near my high school. The approach, the launch, then the drop: endless, wrong, dreadful. Long enough you had time for regret.

“I know you think my reaction is overblown,” I say. “It's hard to explain, Yolanda. But the conversation worried me.”
Worried
is too ordinary a word for what I felt, leaving George this morning
after a Sunday spent strolling the city and a night's uneasy sleep; packing my school papers and stepping out onto the street with coat buttoned high and my arms tight across my chest, as though to defend myself against assault. Something about George's matter-of-fact assertions—something, as I replay the conversation in my mind, about the eye-of-the-storm calm with which he said he'd failed his father—made me ask whether this might be a dangerous love.

Gazing past Yolanda's shoulder, I locate myself amid the array of the diner's clientele reflected in the wall mirrors. Ballerinas and black-clad students; the pierced, the hair-gelled, the suburban high schoolers playing hooky. The crowd simmers in bright reflection, eating, gossiping. And there I am, drab and professional opposite Yolanda's ponytail and upright posture. In my slacks and navy blouse, satchel of papers by my feet, I'm the out-of-place detail Magritte might have added to spice this tableau . . . yet, all the same, just another figure in the crowd. Talking about love.

And weighing, now, another question: Is every love, every real one, dangerous?

“So this is the guy's first flaw.” Yolanda zips her gym bag. It's time for her yoga class. Reaching across the table, she grabs my forearm. “It's taken a whole month to find one. You're going to balk over some minor thing? The guy is calm. He's polite. He's thoughtful. He's in
love
with you, Tracy. And you with him. This is just panic.” Yolanda's grip is so tight it hurts. Abruptly, she lets go. “And you two are the only thing giving me a fucking ray of hope for God's sake, so don't screw this up. Okay, talk values and religion and all that crap with him. Speak your mind, Tracy, fine, just don't ask him to call it feminism. Call it ‘Bootyism.' Call it the ‘International Movement to Be Nice to Your Favorite Pair of Tits.' Every time he makes a feminism-friendly comment, just give him a blow job and watch how fast he changes his tune, only do not screw this up over some professorial debate about gender roles or whether a religious conversion is
necessary.
Don't you dare. I'll never speak to you again.”

With this last, all the force of four years' romantic exile weights her voice and I have not an iota of doubt that she means it.

Propelled by the weight of a black canvas backpack, Elizabeth practically hurtles into my office. She wears the pack over both shoulders, the thick straps crowding her breasts. There are small greenish scoops under her eyes. Her mannish button-down shirt is rumpled and bears a coffee stain over the left pocket: tattoo of the academic heart.

She's right on time for our eleven o'clock appointment, and after greeting me she digs in her backpack for the paper we're to discuss—a reconsideration of the contemporary critical literature on Hawthorne's
Blithedale Romance.
Twisting in her seat, she works at the task, her back as slim as a child's. It takes a full minute's wrestling for Elizabeth to extract the paper from her bag. I watch her unwrap it from around the spine of what could be a hardback Manhattan phone book: more sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century prosody, I'd bet.

I lay her paper on my desk and scan the opening lines. I haven't had coffee this morning, and the prodigious headache that bloomed during my morning lecture leaves little room for patience. Let Elizabeth run herself into the ground if she can't stand up to a bully—Jeff is right. There's no need to babysit a graduate student. Furthermore, Yolanda's advice the other morning in the diner only confirmed what she and Hannah have been telling me for years: I overreact, take things too seriously, prophesy trouble where it doesn't exist. In the days since my argument with George, the hesitancy between us has receded, leaving only a faint residue, the high-water mark from a nearly forgotten flood. Tonight George and I are going dancing. I've got more important things to concentrate on than a grad student's inability to defend herself.

Before I've read two sentences of Elizabeth's paper I'm distracted by the lettering, obviously not the product of a computer printer. Though I know my reaction is unreasonable, the idiosyncrasy seems an affront: a call for the very attention I've just decided to withhold.

“Where in the world did you dig up a manual typewriter?”

“Eileen had it in storage. I asked for it. That's all I did.”

I glance up. “I didn't say you stole it.”

“Okay, okay,” she murmurs.

Here and there a line runs off the paper, words sailing into the
void. I drag my eyes down the page as though reading against a current. “I see the margin bell wasn't working.” I've never been this sharp with Elizabeth.

“I got tired,” she says absently. “I typed it this morning at home. I was in the library all night.” A nostalgic smile spreads across her face.