Self-Help (Vintage Contemporaries) (14 page)

“Why are the lights all in a clump in the back?” he asks, closing the front door behind him.

Say: “I know. Aren’t they great? Wait till you see me do the tinsel.” Place handfuls of silver icicles, matted together like alfalfa sprouts, at the end of all the branches.

“Very cute,” says Moss, kissing you, then letting go. Follow him into the bathroom. Ask how rehearsal went. He points to the kitty litter and sings: “ ‘This is my box. I never travel without my box.’ ”

Say: “You are not a well man, Moss.” Play with his belt loops.

12/14
. The white fur around the cat’s neck is growing and looks like a stiff Jacobean collar. “A rabato,” says Moss, who suddenly seems to know these things. “When are we going to let her go outside?”

“Someday when she’s older.” The cat has lately taken to the front window the way a hypochondriac takes to a bed. When she’s there she’s more interested in the cars, the burled fingers of the trees, the occasional squirrel, the train tracks like long fallen ladders, than she is in you. Call her: “Here pootchy-kootchy-honey.” Ply her, bribe her with food.

12/15
. There are movies in town: one about Brazil, and one about sexual abandonment in upstate New York. “What do you say, Moss. Wanna go to the movies this weekend?”

“I can’t,” says Moss. “You know how busy I am.”

12/16
. The evening news is full of death: young marines, young mothers, young children. By comparison you have already lived forever. In a kind of heaven.

12/17
. Give your cat a potato and let her dribble it about soccer-style. She’s getting more coordinated, conducts little dramas with the potato, pretends to have conquered it, strolls over it, then somersaults back after it again. She’s not bombing around, crashing into the sideboards anymore. She’s learning moves. She watches the potato by the dresser leg, stalks it, then pounces. When she gets bored she climbs up onto the sill and looks out,
tail switching. Other cats have spotted her now, have started coming around at night. Though she will want to go, do not let her out the front door.

12/18
. The phone rings. You say hello, and the caller hangs up. Two minutes later it rings again, only this time Moss answers it in the next room, speaks softly, cryptically, not the hearty phone voice of the Moss of yesteryear. When he hangs up, wander in and say, blasé as paste, “So, who was that?”

“Stop,” says Moss. “Just stop.”

Ask him what’s the big deal, it was Sonia wasn’t it.

“Stop,” says Moss. “You’re being my wife. Things are repeating themselves.”

Say that nothing repeats itself. Nothing, nothing, nothing. “Sonia, right?”

“Trudy, you’ve got to stop this. You’ve been listening to too much
Tosca
. I’m going out to get a hamburger. Do you want anything?”

Say: “I’m the only person in the whole world who knows you, Moss. And I don’t know you at all anymore.”

“That’s a different opera,” he says. “I’m going out to get a hamburger. Do you want anything?”

Do not cry. Stick to monosyllables. Say: “No. Fine. Go.”

Say: “Please don’t let the cat out.”

Say: “You should wear a hat it’s cold.”

12/19
. Actually what you’ve been listening to is Dionne Warwick’s Golden Hits—musical open heart surgery enough for you. Sometimes you pick up the cat and waltz her around, her purr staticky and intermittent as a walkie-talkie.

On “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” you put her down, do an unfortunate charleston, while she attacks your stockinged feet, thinking them large rodents.

Sometimes you knock into the Christmas tree.

Sometimes you collapse into a chair and convince yourself that things are still okay.

When Robert MacNeil talks about mounting inflation, you imagine him checking into a motel room with a life-size, blow-up doll. This is, once in a while, how you amuse yourself.

When Moss gets in at four in the morning, whisper: “There are lots of people in this world, Moss, but you can’t be in love with them all.”

“I’m not,” he says, “in love with the mall.”

12/20
. The mall stores stay open late this last week before Christmas. Moss is supposed to be there, “in the gazebo next to the Santa gazebo,” for an
Amahl and the Night Visitors
promotional. Decide to drive up there. Perhaps you can look around in the men’s shops for a sweater for Moss, perhaps even one for Bob as well. Last year was a bad Christmas: you and Moss returned each other’s gifts for cash. You want to do better this year. You want to buy: sweaters.

The mall parking lot, even at 7 p.m., is, as Moss would say, packed as a bag, though you do manage to find a space.

Inside the mall entranceway it smells of stale popcorn, dry heat, and three-day-old hobo urine. A drunk, slumped by the door, smiles and toasts you with nothing.

Say: “Cheers.”

To make your journey down to the gazebos at the other end of the mall, first duck into all the single-item shops along the way. Compare prices with the prices at Owonta Flair: things are a little cheaper here. Buy stuff, mostly for Moss and the cat.

In the pet food store the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, “Merry Christmas.”

Say: “You, too.”

In the men’s sweater shop the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, “Merry Christmas.”

Say: “You, too.”

In the belt shop the cashier hands you your bagged purchase, smiles, and says, “Come again.”

Say: “You, too.” Grow warm. Narrow your eyes to seeds.

In the gazebo next to the Santa gazebo there is only an older man in gray coveralls stacking some folding chairs.

Say: “Excuse me, wasn’t
Amahl and the Night Visitors
supposed to be here?”

The man stops for a moment. “There’s visitors,” he says, pointing out and around, past the gazebo to all the shoppers. Shoppers in parkas. Shoppers moving slow as winter. Shoppers who haven’t seen a crosswalk or a window in hours.

“I mean the opera promotional.”

“The singers?” He looks at his watch. “They packed it in a while ago.”

Say thank you, and wander over to Cinema 1-2-3 to read the movie posters. It’s when you turn to go that you see Moss and Bob coming out together from the bar by the theater. They look tired.

Adjust your packages. Walk over. Say: “Hi. I guess I missed the promo, so I was thinking of going to a movie.”

“We ended it early,” says Moss. “Sonia wasn’t feeling well. Bob and I just went into Sammy’s for a drink.”

Look and see the sign that, of course, reads S
AMMY’S
.

Bob smiles and says, “Hello, Trudy.” Because Bob says
hello
and never
hi
, he always manages to sound a little like Mister Rogers.

You can see some of Moss’s makeup and glue lines. His fake beard is sticking out from his coat pocket. Smile. Say: “Well, Moss. Here all along I thought it was Sonia, and it’s really Bob.” Chuck him under the chin. Keep your smile steady. You are the only one smiling. Not even Bob. You have clearly said the wrong thing.

“Fuck off, Trudy,” Moss says finally, palming his hair back off his forehead.

Bob squirms in his coat. “I believe I forgot something,” he says. “I’ll see you both later.” And he touches Moss’s arm, turns, disappears back inside Sammy’s.

“Jesus Christ, Trudy.” Moss’s voice suddenly booms through the mall. You can see a few stores closing up, men coming out to lower the metal night gates. Santa Claus has gotten down from the gazebo and is eating an egg roll.

Moss turns from you, charges toward the exit, an angry giant with a beard sticking out of his coat pocket. Run after him and grab his sleeve, make him stop. Say: “I’m sorry, Moss. What am I doing? Tell me. What am I doing wrong?” You look up at his face, with the orange and brown lines and the glue patches, and realize: He doesn’t understand you’ve planned your lives together. That you have even planned your deaths together, not really deaths at all but more like a
pas de deux
. Like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in
An American in Paris
, only older.

“You just won’t let people be,” says Moss, each consonant spit like a fish bone.

Say: “People be? I don’t understand. Moss, what is happening to us?” You want to help him, rescue him, build houses and magnificent lawns around him.

“To
us
?”

Moss’s voice is loud. He puts on his gloves. He tells you you are a child. He needs to get away. For him you have managed to reduce love, like weather, to a map and a girl, and he needs to get away from you, live someplace else for a while, and think.

The bag with the cat food slips and falls. “The opera’s in three days, Moss. Where are you going to go?”

“Right now,” he says, “I’m going to get a hamburger.” And he storms toward the mall doors, pushes against all of them until he finds the one that’s open.

Stare and mumble at the theater candy concession. “Good and Plenty. There’s no Good and Plenty.” Your bangs droop into your vision. You keep hearing “Jingle Bells,” over and over.

In the downtown theaters of your childhood, everything was made of carved wood, and in the ladies’ rooms there were framed photographs of Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner. The theaters had names: The Rialto, The Paramount. There were ushers and Good and Plenty. Ushers with flashlights and bow ties. That’s the difference now. No ushers. Now you have to do everything by yourself.

“Trudy,” says a voice behind you. “Would you like to be accompanied to the movies?” The passive voice. It’s Bob’s. Turn to look at him, but as with the Good and Plenty, you don’t really see, everything around you vague and blurry as glop in your eye.

Say: “Sure. Why not.”

In Cinema 3, sit in seats close to the aisle. Listen to the Muzak. The air smells like airplane air.

“It’s a strange thing about Moss,” Bob is saying, looking straight ahead. “He’s so busy with the opera, it pushes him up against certain things. He ends up feeling restless and smothered. But, Trudy, Moss is a good man. He really is.”

Don’t say anything, and then say, finally, “Moss who?”

Stare at the curtain with the rose-tinted lights on it. Try to concentrate on more important matters, things like acid rain.

Bob taps his fingers on the metal arm of the seat. Say: “Look, Bob. I’m no idiot. I was born in New York City. I lived there until I was four. Come on. Tell me: Who’s Moss sleeping with?”

“As far as I know,” says Bob, sure and serious as a tested hypothesis, “Moss isn’t sleeping with anyone.”

Continue staring at the rose lights. Then say in a loud contralto: “He’s sleeping with
me
, Bob. That’s who he’s sleeping with.”

When the lights dim and the curtains part, there arrive little cigarette lighters on the screen telling you not to smoke. Then there are coming attractions. Bob leans toward you, says, “These previews are horrible.”

Say: “Yeah. Nothing Coming Soon.”

There are so many previews you forget what movie you’ve come to see. When the feature presentation comes on, it takes you by surprise. The images melt together like a headache. The movie seems to be about a woman whose lover, losing interest in her, has begun to do inexplicable things like yell about the cat, and throw scenes in shopping malls.

“What is this movie about?”

“Brazil,” whispers Bob.

The audience has begun to laugh at something someone is doing; you are tense with comic exile. Whisper: “Bob, I’m gonna go. Wanna go?”

“Yes, in fact, I do,” says Bob.

It’s ten-thirty and cold. The mall stores are finally closed. In the parking lot, cars are leaving. Say to Bob: “God, look how many people shop here.” The whole world suddenly seems to you like a downtown dying slow.

Spot your car and begin to head toward it. Bob catches your sleeve. “My car’s the other way. Listen. Trudy. About Moss: No matter what’s going on with him, no matter what he decides he has to do, the man loves you. I know he does.”

Gently pull your sleeve away. Take a step sideways toward your car. Headlights, everywhere headlights and tires crunching. Say: “Bob, you’re a sweet person. But you’re sentimental as all get-out.” Turn on the nail of your boot and walk.

At home the cat refuses to dance to Dionne Warwick with you. She sits on the sill of the window, rumbling in her throat, her tail a pendulum of fluff. Outside, undoubtedly, there are suitors, begging her not to be so cold-hearted. “Ya got friends
out there?” When you turn off the stereo, she jumps down from the sill and snakes lovingly about your ankles. Say something you never thought you’d say. Say: “Wanna go out?” She looks at you, all hope and supplication, and follows you to the door, carefully watching your hand as it moves for the knob: she wants you to let her go, to let her go and be. Begin slowly, turn, pull. The suction of door and frame gives way, and the cold night insinuates itself like a kind of future. She doesn’t leave immediately. But her whole body is electrified, surveying the yard for eyes and rustles, and just to the left of the streetlight she suddenly spots them—four, five, phosphorescent glints—and, without a nudge, without ever looking back, she scurries out, off the porch, down after, into some sweet unknown, some somehow known unknown, some yet very old religion.