Confessions Of A Falling Woman And Other Stories (7 page)

She nodded. "I know. Nevertheless."

Every day of their marriage, patients had turned their lives over to Neil. He had split them open at the sternum, taken hold of their beating hearts, and they had adored him for it. She had envied them their faith, the look she had seen in their eyes when they introduced themselves later in a restaurant or a store. "Your husband is an amazing man," they'd say. "But I guess you know that."

Tears sprang up in her eyes and she pressed them back with her fingers, shaking her head at her foolishness.

"When we split up, I realized I'd been bracing for it for years," she said. "When Jody and Hal separated. And then Kris Little, the Dali guy that used to work at the gallery. He dragged himself around like a dog that's been hit and left in the road. And I was thinking, when the time comes… I don't know what I was thinking, not that it wouldn't happen to us but that I was going to manage it better." She closed her eyes and exhaled jaggedly. "I mean, I loved you, but I just held a little in reserve, you know?"

He reached over and tentatively rested a hand on her back. He stroked her hair, smoothed the back of her neck. "I loved you, too." His voice was soft and hoarse.

The moment was suddenly taut. His hand slowed, feathering across her skin, leaving trails of heat. Elaine felt herself suspended from a great height and she willed herself to fall.

And then they were kissing. Their mouths and their hands remembered. He squeezed her hand and pulled her to her feet. She followed him through a dark, high-ceilinged living room and up an open staircase with cable railings like a ship's, and she had the sensation of being at sea, the taste of salt, a swaying unsteadiness in the rolling dark.

A phone was ringing in the dark and then the voice of her husband was speaking to someone, something about a car. For a long, reeling moment, she panicked, seeing the crumpled bodies of her children smashed against a windshield. Neil's voice was measured, no hint of alarm.

"Is it the kids?" she breathed.

"What?" He had hung up the phone. "Oh, yeah, probably a bunch of kids out for a joyride." He switched on a reading lamp and swung out of bed. "They didn't get far. The cops found it in the high school parking lot. The front left fender is banged up pretty good."

His car. The world righted itself again, and she found herself in an unfamiliar bed. The sheets smelled of bleach. Neil was pulling on shorts and jeans and socks.

"I'm just going to walk over and get it," he said.

"Now?" It was late, still dark outside.

"I don't want it towed unless it's necessary, and I hate to leave it sitting there. Go back to sleep." He leaned over and brushed his lips across her eyelids and her mouth. She felt her nipples harden against the starchy sheets and wondered idly if she should be feeling something else. And then he was gone. She heard a door somewhere in the house bump shut.

It was quiet, just the electric hum of a suburban night, but she couldn't sleep. She saw that her clothes were strewn across the flat expanse of carpet in a trail leading to the bed. The bedroom had the same elegant blankness as a hotel suite, right down to the big television screen recessed into the far wall. Below and on either side of the TV, barely visible seams outlined what must be drawers and closet doors. She got out of bed, lurching just a little as she stood. She was pleasantly woozy with sleep or wine. There were no latches or door handles, so she began bumping the wall in different spots with the palm of her hand. She listened. Nothing. And again, nothing. It was like being a safe cracker – she could be in one of those sixties caper movies. She wasn't aware of looking for anything in particular. A cabinet door clicked open. Inside were shelves with stereo equipment, drawers of CDs and videotapes. In the dim light, she made out titles of exercise videos and several recent movies. She recognized Neil's hand in the selection of music, mostly CDs he had taken with him when he moved out. He had stopped paying attention to music after college, and so his tastes were frozen back in the Monterey and Motown period. When he'd hum tunes around the house or sing in the shower, it was always thirty-year-old songs and he'd make up his own words. She wondered if Nicole had even known he was changing the lyrics or if she thought there really were Dylan songs called "Mr. Tangerine Man" and "Knockers on Heaven's Door," if she thought the Beatles sang "When I'm Six-Foot-Four." She wondered if he'd put on Al Green when they made love.

Another click and a closet presented itself. She walked inside and found a light switch. The closet was organized into a neat geometry of hanging rods and shelves and drawers, like a Mondrian painting if the artist had worked in shirts and shoes instead of oils. She pulled out drawers containing balls of socks and stacks of T-shirts, familiar laundry interspersed with newer items she didn't recognize. She ran her hand down the row of suits, fingering the shoulders of the jackets.

At the end of the row, in the corner, she found women's clothing, what Nicole had left behind. A backless sundress. A pair of crushed velvet stretch pants. A silky short kimono, black with a purple bleach stain on the sleeve. A couple pairs of jeans, a striped boatneck sweater. A pink T-shirt that said brat in glitter across the front.

She stared at the clothing, breathed in the weight of its physical presence. Her mother was wrong about its being just stuff. Years from now, she thought, this is what will tell them how we lived.

She held up the T-shirt and then pulled it over her head, tugging the fabric down over her chest. She squeezed into the velvet stretch pants, wriggling them up over her hips. Then she pulled the kimono off its hanger and put it on. When she turned around and found the mirror on the back of the closet door, she stared for a long time at her image. The woman reflected back was bedraggled, her hair wild with tangles, mascara smeared under her keening eyes. But it was something about the ill-fitting clothes, the garish pink over her loose breasts and the long sweep of the kimono sleeve when she brushed the hair out of her eyes. They transformed her into someone else. Not Nicole. It took a moment before the name fell into place.

She looked like Janis Joplin, better than that, Janis if she'd fallen in love and gotten married and had children, if she'd survived long enough to know that nothing ended the way it does in songs. Come, go, a marriage didn't dissolve completely: they were still each other's history, as permanent as ink stains.

Elaine was singing, impersonating Joplin 's guttural rasp. It was exhilarating to bring this howl up from her gut. She let her hair fall back into her face and wailed out lyrics she remembered from when she and Neil were young, when giving away your heart had seemed like a simple thing to do. She sang another line, then changed the words. Just bake it! Bake another little pizza, you tart, now, baby. Elaine took a sweeping bow. Thank you. Thank you.

After a blizzard in New Haven, three slushy weeks in Pittsburgh, and more of the same in Cleveland, the sudden flush of heat in Sarasota is unreal. So far as I can tell, though, this is the only draw here, the tropical sun. Other points of interest: Sarasota is the winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus. Period. The streets are empty except for a few old folks riding golf carts and oversized tricycles. Pelicans waddle across the docks and flop into the cobalt water. Clown Paradise. Even the theater we're playing is painted a ridiculous purple.

I waste the afternoon alone by the motel pool, reading a romance novel. It's hard to believe someone actually gets paid to write this shit. I could do better. Take my own life for instance: make an adjustment here and there (edit out Pittsburgh, lose Akron) and presto, every hausfrau's fantasy.

I'm waiting for Pavel, taking a flier that he might show up for a swim, but the place feels abandoned, deservedly so. The bottom of the pool is mottled with dead leaves, and rickety aluminum chairs creak in the breeze. Another Holiday Inn hell, courtesy of the tour managers back in New York. But when I close my eyes, the heat on my skin feels the same as Tahiti, like Fiji or Bali or Bora-Bora.

I haven't been to any of those places, but I expect they never live up to the fantasy. After my old college roommate caught her husband bonking one of his clients, they went on a second honeymoon to St. Bart's. A fresh start and all that. A postcard turned up in my mail showing an incredible beach fringed with palms trees and lapped by an improbably sapphire sea. On the back was a phony-looking postmark and my friend's cryptic comments on the rain. They were divorced four months later.

When I wake, my knees are shrimp-colored. Before I go to the theater I rub myself with ice cubes. By curtain call, my skin is aflame.

The others have scouted out a joint that serves cheap margaritas and plates of alligator fingers. Pavel will be there. I gingerly slip off my third-act costume; the brocade scratches like sandpaper. I peel away my eyelashes, smear off my face with cold cream, pull pins out of my hair. In the glare of the caged bulbs ringing the mirror, I look like Bozo's girlfriend: red and puffy, with clownish white triangles over my eyes, my crotch, and each tit. Never in my life have I managed a tan, only freckles and burns. I carefully reline my eyes and mouth and thank the gods that cocktail lounges are dark.

When I packed my trunk in New York, the only heat was spitting out of a radiator, but even so, how much foresight would it have taken to tuck in something slinky and cool? I change into black leggings and a "Virginia Is For Lovers" T-shirt, and stand back from the mirror. The reflection is not what one would hope for – I look like a tourist signed up for the wrong package. I add a red chiffon scarf, knotting it around my hips to draw attention to one of my better features. Not subtle, but if you want to catch a fish, use the shiny lure.

I am determined not to go to bed alone tonight. Not that finding someone to fuck is a challenge; on the road, it's much easier than getting room service or extra towels, but, when possible, I prefer the semblance of romance. Romance requires more patience, laying the groundwork. I've been working on this one for weeks, creating opportunities to be swept away. I can't speak for the reality, but I like the illusion of falling in love.

Romance is always a gamble and, frankly, the odds are against you. But if you gamble long enough, you develop certain strategies: bluffing, waiting out the bad deals, trusting your intuition when it comes, whatever you think will shorten those odds. I picked out Pavel back in Cleveland. His name gave him a decided advantage over the rest of the males in the company. Pavel Milov. It's a Czech name, docked of all the extra ^'s and
z9s
when he became an actor, but still exotic, a quality I prize highly. Sounds like a freedom fighter or an expatriate poet. Scratch the surface and they're all the same, but you learn not to scratch.

As it happens, the surface of Pavel is gorgeous. Not tall, but very sculpted, with a languid smile and eyes the green of beach glass. Maybe gorgeous is too much; he is definitely short and his nose is a tad beakish. He is also married, but I can overlook that. In fact, sometimes that can work in your favor. If you lose, they go back to their wives and you can tell yourself truthfully it was no reflection on you.

The door behind me screeches and thuds shut. It's Pavel. I don't believe in luck; I believe that people get what they deserve. I say "pretty night" like an invitation, and smile. I'm not going anywhere, got no plans. I brush an imaginary hair away from my cheek. His eyes dart back and forth, then he grabs my elbow and yanks me down a step, out of the light.

He says, "Let's go for a walk." I'll admit this is easier than I'd expected.

We slip around the back side of the theater and walk past the loading dock, toward the sound of the ocean. At the far corner of the building, he slows his pace and then stops.

"Come here," he says. He pulls me through a thicket of bushes and presses my back against the concrete wall. I feel his hands push up under my T-shirt and knead my sunburned flesh. I whimper, but it sounds convincingly like passion.

I'm not about to get laid in the bushes, so I loosen his grip on my tits and pull away ever so slightly, catching my breath. "I like the way you walk."

"Okay, we'll walk. It's a good mile back to the motel. I've got a pint of scotch in my room."

"Don't you think they'll miss us?" Like I care.

"I told them I had to get back and call home."

The dead palm fronds that litter the sidewalk rustle like paper in the warm breeze. Between blinding sweeps of headlights, the sky is black overhead and dusty with stars. I'm feeling helium-light, my feet almost skipping. I kick at an empty beer can, sending it clattering on ahead. I want to throw out my arms and twirl, to make the stars spin.