Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions Page 5

  .

  Brian’s apartment smelled of fresh ground coffee. Old Bum, the calico cat lay belly up on a small, worn rug, bathed in the charitable peach tones of late afternoon sun. And there was Brian himself, with his face full of hard living and willed innocence. There was even a blue bowl of apples on the kitchen table. I had entered the set of a French movie. All that was missing was the existential girlfriend; disheveled, with bangs; slightly sullen, fundamentally opaque. The eternal feminine, pure mystery and faintly perverse. In French movies you never know what she’s thinking.

  Here’s what I was thinking: my conversation is too inane for this beautiful man to be appreciating my mind; he must want me to kiss him.

  “Well?” said Brian.

  My first kiss was an offering, like the slightly stale coffee cakes my Brooklyn relatives always brought when they came to dinner. More decorum than passion.

  Not the second, though.

  .

  Back then, I worked for the New York City Department of Social Services as a welfare caseworker. My clients were mostly unwed mothers and heroin addicts. What I saw of their lives seemed dreadful and hopeless. Two days a week I made field visits. I preached the gospel of uplift through job training to teenage mothers and their mothers. “A person needs vocational training if she doesn’t want to get stuck in some dead end job,” I’d tell them, straight from the heart.

  My own job was drab and thankless, but ideal for a person having an affair with a married man.

  I shortened my field visits so Brian and I could spend more time together. Some visits I skipped altogether and made up reports, stories that I hoped would turn out to be true. “Anna Rodriquez showed me her rent receipts. Expressed interest in the WIN Program.”

  I was cheating on the City of New York.

  .

  The sex part took place in my apartment. In Brian’s apartment we listened to music and drank Turkish coffee in small cups. He loved Mozart and Ravi Shankar while my taste ran to the harsh and apocalyptic: Pre-Nashville Dylan, Velvet Underground, the Doors, stuff Brian hated. I often lingered in his apartment; it was so much nicer than mine. My bed was a mattress on the floor covered by my old dormitory bedspread, while Brian’s apartment contained real furniture. The pictures on his walls were framed. Sometimes Emily got home early, which was awkward.

  Emily was Brian’s wife.

  “If you two became acquainted,” Brian said, “We’d be able to spend more time together.”

  I promised to try, although I didn’t think Emily and I would have much in common. She was into health food.

  .

  It turned out Emily’s mother and my father had graduated Far Rockaway High the same year. That made us almost cousins. Once Emily explained how the medical establishment, a branch of the same patriarchal conspiracy that made it so hard for women to get into law school, tried to prevent us from gaining control over our bodies, I became slightly more interested in nutrition. Emily used to whip up in her blender yeast and lecithin milk shakes which tasted like medicine but were supposed to counteract vitamin B deficiency.

  Summer nights the three of us sat out on the stoop and talked politics, Brian, Emily, and I. None of us ever went north of Fourteenth street so we actually thought George McGovern could be our next President.

  Being with Brian and Emily was different from being with Brian alone. In bed with him I felt like an unskilled actress who’d landed a big part by fluke, one that didn’t suit her. I’d been accustomed to the rough equities of sex between consenting college students, which spoiled my appreciation for the old fashioned tenderness of illicit passion. There wasn’t a word for what Brian and I did in bed together that seemed right.

  “Fucking” was too harsh and didn’t take into account the love letters he left slipped under my door. “ “Making love”, which is what Brian said we were doing, was sentimental, saccharine and false. Love was a serious business. You built your house on it and raised a family. Love signed up for the long journey through the ultimate tundra. How could I be in love with Brian? I didn’t make enough money to keep him. My apartment was too small. But when the three of us were out on the stoop together, Emily was my friend, Brian was my friend’s husband, and I was my old familiar self: the sort of girl you could trust with your man.

  “My parents think it’s unnatural the way Brian and I are still so in love,” Emily said one night on the stoop. “Like, it’s immoral to be in love when you’re married.”

  Was she on to us or just testing?

  Brian gave her a little hug but he looked straight at me.

  .

  The next day I received my final rejection,the one from Memphis State.

  “Aren’t there any law schools you haven’t heard from yet?” said Brian.

  We were naked under my paisley bedspread. I tried not to cry. Brian had his arm around me.

  “We’ll find you some more to apply to next year,” he said. “In the meantime there’s us.”

  A knock at my front door, and then Emily’s voice.

  “Hello? Are you home?”

  We froze like rabbits stunned by headlights, waiting for her to leave.

  “She knew you were in here with me,” I said after we heard her close the door of their apartment.

  “You’re just being paranoid,” he said.

  “What do we do if she finds out?”

  “Don’t think about it,” he said, and reached over to touch me.

  How could you not think about it?

  “I have a headache,” I said.

  .

  Later that evening I ran into Emily when I put out my garbage. She told me she’d stopped by, hoping to borrow some cigarettes.

  “I thought you were at home,” she said. “When I didn’t hear anything I got worried.”

  “I was napping,” I said. “Awful headache. I’m probably coming down with something.”

  Emily said it was nervous tension from not enough B vitamins. She said this in a nice way, of course; like I was no more depraved than anyone else.

  Lower Manhattan sucked the B vitamins out of everyone.

  The headache was with me the next day. Food tasted bad. I couldn’t get rid of the metallic taste in my mouth no matter what I drank. I came home early from work and crawled into bed. The headache followed me into my dream. I remember the dream I had that afternoon the way I remember certain movies.

  In the dream I was 40 years old, and living in a mansion by the sea. I was married to a lawyer, someone I knew from college but he didn’t look familiar. For that matter, neither did I. I was softer, more lady-like, not exactly myself. This ladylike person wore shirtwaist dresses with Peter Pan collars, and I don’t. On the other hand, she had my headache.

  .

  The most vivid part of the dream was the woman with yellow hair. Her hair was the color of whipped pineapple dessert. She wore it piled on top of her head, bangs drooping over her forehead like frizzy tendrils. She was a loose woman from a bedroom community, like the one I grew up in.

  I was her only friend, even though she made me uncomfortable.

  In the dream we were on the third floor of Bloomingdales when a teenaged boy on roller skates zoomed past us. He wore a huge Nixon for President campaign button.

  “How can you support that man?” I screamed at the roller skating boy like he was everything wrong with the universe.

  He looked at me like I was some kind of a nut and winked at my yellow-haired friend.

  “You wouldn’t get so worked up over politics if you had a more healthy outlet,” she told me. “Try shoes.”

  She used to steal shoes from the wives of her lovers. Evening sandals, alligator pumps, and once a pair of Old Maine Trotters. “I take them for my husband,” she said. “I tell him all about those other women, the wives. I betray their secrets and make up the rest, as I wear their shoes. We perform unmentionable acts...”

  Just as she was about to describe these acts, a knock at the door woke me.


  .

  The knock at the door was Emily, with one of those foul tasting milkshakes.

  “My marriage is in trouble,” she said.

  The long dreaded confrontation was here. One of the women from Group, a veteran of affairs with married professors, had briefed me on protocol. Usually the wife invited you out to lunch. First you made small talk. Then she’d say something like: “He’s had others before you. Don’t think you’ll be the last. I only wish there was more of him to go around.”

  I didn’t expect Emily to be so relaxed. I expected she’d remind me about our parents going to Far Rockaway High together and our summer nights on the stoop and my commitment to Feminism. How could I betray a sister, she would ask, and I’d feel terminal shame. It would be as humiliating as getting caught at shoplifting.

  “You seem so happy together,” I said to Emily, stalling for time.

  Emily said, “It’s those long hours of paste-ups. I work in this windowless room under florescent lights, breathing rubber cement fumes. When I come home I’m too tired to make dinner for Brian.”

  I felt like a low thing. This in addition to the feeling that my head was being gripped by giant tongs, and a horrendous desire to go to sleep instantly and not wake up for a few days.

  “Brian would rather have Campbell’s soup straight from the can for dinner just so long as he knows I heated it up specially for him,” she said. “Men are funny that way.”

  Was there anything I could do to make this magic moment move a little faster?

  “It destroys brain cells, sniffing glue in windowless space,” she said.

  I wished she’d just get it over with.

  “I can’t take it anymore. You think you could maybe get us both on welfare?”

  There was a god after all. He had an exacting sense of humor.

  When I woke up next it was dark out, and Brian sat next to me. The touch of his hand on my forehead was so cool.

  “This has to stop,” I said.

  “You’re not well,” he said.

  “Too much guilt and not enough B’s.” The room swam when I tried to sit up. “What day is this?”

  “It’s still Tuesday. It’s nine o’clock and you’re running a fever, old girl. You need to be on antibiotics.”

  “Oh God, I’ve missed Group!”

  .

  It was the flu, I explained a week later. Group wouldn’t buy it. They let Bonnie, the newcomer, lead the charge.

  “You’ve been doing a number on us for months now,” she said. “We’re not going to let you get away with it any more.”

  Nine hostile pairs of eyes turned on me the way I’d always dreaded.

  “ Because we care,” said Eva, who couldn’t eat in public.

  I cowered in my corner of sofa.

  “You’re so cut off, you’re like a thing, you know?” said Lucy who only ate foods that were white and didn’t make noises when chewed.

  “You can run but you can’t hide,” said Harvey the seminary drop out, like he was reading my mind.

  There would be no way out, just an infinite variety of shoddy accommodations to municipal reality.

  Bonnie attacked with renewed vigor. “If I woke up one morning and found out I was you I’d just kill myself.”

  “She’s not even here,” said Eddie, who still lived with his parents in Borough Park.

  “I hate this,” I said. “I really hate this.”

  “It sounds like someone is talking,” Harvey said, “But she’s not being honest with the Group so we can’t hear her.”

  “I hate you!” I said to Harvey, who looked gratified.

  “ I HATE ALL OF YOU!” I screamed,” EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!” Then I burst into tears.

  Eva handed me the Kleenex box and Harvey wrapped me in the Group blanket. Everyone took turns hugging me and sharing their feelings. For no good reason I felt better. The headache was gone.

  .

  Emily’s skin cleared up and her hair got shiny once she and Brian got on welfare. They took yoga classes together. Sometimes I saw them on the street holding hands like teenagers. When they went out of town on weekends Emily left me the key to their apartment so I could feed the cat. In June, Western New England Law School told me I was accepted off the waiting list, which seemed like a mistake. Group said go any way and don’t ask questions.

  That was more than twenty years ago.

  .

  Going blonde was my hairdresser’s idea. My hair turns pale yellow in summer, and I wear it piled on top of my head. The bangs droop over my forehead like frizzy tendrils.

  I have lots of shoes.

  Animal Behavior

  Cats never apologize and never explain.

  Dogs let it all hang out on Oprah.

  Dogs are hot, but cats are cool.

  Dogs get in your face; they leave nothing to the imagination.

  John Travolta, Demi Moore, and Bill Clinton are dogs.

  Lawrence of Arabia was a cat.

  Cats do not play well with others.

  Favorite teachers are dogs.

  Teachers you get crushes on are cats.

  Opera singers are dogs.

  Ballet dancers are cats.

  People who need people are dogs.

  Louis Armstrong and Dizzie Gillespie were dogs.

  Any jazz musician who doesn’t shoot heroin is a dog.

  Cats have the killer instinct.

  If you put your cat on a vegetarian diet she will go blind.

  Dogs let others do the killing and hang around for the leftovers.

  Dogs are natural born shoppers.

  Dogs are shameless, but easily guilt-tripped.

  Cats are guilt-free but sometimes you can embarrass them.

  .

  Dogs are resilient, courageous, and sentimental.

  They buy vacuum cleaners for their wives, and neckties for their boyfriends.

  Dogs hang their children’s artwork in their cubicles.

  Cats despise cubicles.

  If they bother with gifts it’s always what you wanted but never thought to ask.

  Cats are the ones who break up first.

  Cats can handle high fashion but dogs look better in the classics.

  That means no spandex, and no see-through.

  It’s more fun to design for cats, but the money lies in making products for dogs.

  No one wants a cat for a lawyer.

  Dogs have sexual energy, which is not the same thing as sex appeal.

  “I just made love to a million people,” Janis Joplin said after one of her concerts, “but I’m going home alone.”

  Only dogs can sing the blues.

  Vikings

  From the inside my breasts looked like cloudy weather against a black sky. Unusually dense, the surgeon said. Dense clouds, no rain. And in the northeast corner of my left breast, a spot of emerging order that looked like the dim beginnings of a snowflake. I remembered the description in Time Magazine of how breast cancer grows, how it re-routs the capillaries. Those little driveways become all roads that lead to Rome.

  “It could be a radial scar”, says the surgeon. (They tend to be upbeat, can-do types, not introspective melancholics with bad attitudes.)

  I hate suspense.

  “What about Cancer Stage One?”

  “Let’s hope not,” he says, “but it’s not a cyst like the last time. “

  .

  I spend the evening before the biopsy in Friendship Animal Hospital with my cat. The waiting room is full of vacationers boarding their pets over Memorial Day Weekend, and those of us with sick animals. I was supposed to be on the other side. I was supposed to go to the mountains and ride horses with Max and his daughter. Instead I wait on a bench between the old man with the sick Persian cat and the young woman waiting for her Rottweiler to come out of major surgery. With sharps barks, the Rottweiler, still groggy from painkillers, dashes out from one of the recovery room, drawn, no doubt, by the sound of his owner’s voice, and collapses in a heap
on the waiting room floor.

  No matter how dire your situation you can always find someone worse off, but it seems indecent to take comfort from it.

  I resent the vacationers, so thoughtlessly healthy. I was supposed to be one of them. Siamese cats like Spike are traditionally long lived and healthy, like most of my relatives. Neither of us are supposed to be here. We were here a few weeks ago, the last time Spike turned listless. The initial diagnosis was Hairball from Hell, which has turned into chronic constipation.

  “Not uncommon in an older cat”, the vet had said.

  What do you mean older cat?

  Spike is only ten, I’m just 51.

  .

  This is so unfair. After years of combat dating I met Max, and my life turned from an Anita Brookner novel into a situation comedy. Single Woman with allergic reaction towards family life falls in love with guy from the suburbs who’s the custodial parent. I like his kids and they don’t hate me. There’s even a cute dog. All my life I’ve been a conspicuous failure at conventional femininity, but now I seem to be overcompensating.

  Max takes off from work so he can take me to the hospital for the biopsy. The surgeon tells Max he is almost certain that my lump is benign but we’ll still have to hear from pathology. The rest of the day is heaven. I’m on painkillers and my boyfriend is serving me dinner in bed, telling me there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve never had anyone take care of me before, not in my adult life.

  The surgeon calls the following afternoon with the lab results.

  Turns out I’m right about the cancer.

  Such a sentimental disease. Those wretched pink ribbons, those Runs for the Cure. Maybe breast cancer doesn’t really exist and is really a Stepford Wife conspiracy to demoralize middle aged women .

  “Come in tomorrow, and we’ll talk about your options,” the surgeon says as though there were interesting choices ahead for me. Interesting for him, perhaps but there are only two of them. Mastectomy or lumpectomy.

  I wanted to leave a mark on the world and visit Paris with a lover.

  .

  “Contrary to your belief, most women don’t die of this,” the surgeon tells me, with a touch of asperity, but he didn’t go to Mary Jo’s funeral. Mary Jo, whose tiny lump was discovered early, as was the one on her other breast, and so on. She was so optimistic, had such a positive attitude.