“Why don’t you?”
“Well, I can’t just pick up and go.”
“Why not?”
“What’s my family going to do?”
“Oh, they’ll manage for a few weeks, won’t they?”
“I don’t think they will.”
“Go,” Kai said. “Have you ever gone anywhere on your own?”
Larissa was actually scared to go. She didn’t know how to say that. She was scared of malaria, of dengue fever, of the
horrid water; Che’s stories of never being able to drink the water without boiling it first filled her with dread. That’s why the children couldn’t come with her. She was scared for their safety. And for her own, though she wouldn’t confess that to Kai, who didn’t seem the type to be easily spooked, riding around on a speed-demon bike and having friends who were in prison. Besides, her best friend lived in Manila and was not afflicted, other than with childlessness, so it may have been in Larissa’s head. But then, much of life was in her head. Didn’t make it any less real.
Time to go.
Next.
Next.
Next.
Why did she sit? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she sat with him for a few fine merry moments, and then it was over. Which was a good way to describe many things you did that didn’t involve routine or work. For a few fine moments, Maggie painted, Emily played volleyball, Evelyn sipped her wine and read her books, Tara walked and complained. Jared played basketball with Asher in the front drive. Ezra read tomes on existential materialism. Larissa dreamed of the joyous moments of a spring play from high school, intoning, “
I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?
” Except all those other things didn’t involve pushing open the closed door that in red block letters said, DANGER: LIVE ELECTRIC CURRENT. ENTER AT OWN RISK.
4
Waiting for Godot
“Y
ou don’t do theater anymore?”
“What makes you say that? I do. I just…” Larissa broke off. “I do.” Just not like before. “I was director of the theater department at a private school in Hoboken for many years.”
He grunted. “Many years, you don’t say.”
Oh, why, why did she have to say
many
. Since when did hated pride come before puffed-up vanity? She’d rather be young and talentless than impress him with how many long years she’d been director of a theater department at a school where he could’ve tried out for a school play. “I once belonged to a theater troupe called The Great Swamp Revue. We were excellent.” When he chuckled, she, encouraged, asked, “Are you interested in theater?”
“Nah,” he said. “I was always more of a music guy.”
“Music, really?” Mental note to thyself: less about self and theater. Nothing more tedious than a woman basking in the deluded glory of former theater days, convinced she is the center of the universe.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“Of course I do. What do you play?”
“A little of everything. Guitar. Harmonica. Drums. In Hawaii every boy plays the ukulele, so I did too. So how come you don’t do theater anymore? No time?”
She nodded; indeed there was no time. “I barely have time to paint the sets these days.”
“You went from director to set decorator?”
“Less stress,” she said almost without a beat.
He smiled. “Kids seem like a lot of stress to me.”
This was where the whole thing became so bogus. You just knew it was bogus.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “ever been on a bike?”
“What, a bicycle?”
A bicycle built for two
. “Sure, who hasn’t? Many times. You?”
He laughed. “Are you being funny?”
She didn’t know. She didn’t know if she was being funny.
He pointed out of her Jag to his Ducati. “I brought my bike today. Want to go for a ride?”
Larissa couldn’t remember the last time she became this flustered. Not looking at him, hemming, hawing, she said, “No, thank you, but, uh, maybe another time. Seems too cold anyway. Well, it actually is cold. Windy. I don’t know how you do it, I mean, it must be even colder on the bike. And look at the breeze, it’s nippy. It’s like a squall.” Her cheeks were burning as she ruffled her napkins, stuffing them into the brown bag. “Maggie, my friend,” she said, just throwing it out there, “is taking me to lunch tomorrow.”
“The curly one from the mall?” Kai opened the car door and got out, leaning in. “You two have fun.” His face was smiling at her, his small brown eyes dancing, his kinky hair blowing about; he had a manner about him of boyish sweetness, of youthful pride, of innocent joy when he said, “There’s nothing like being on a bike, going fast. You sure you don’t want a spin?”
She shook her head mutely.
She tried to think of something that might be like being on a Ducati going fast, in spring, with the wind in her hair, but couldn’t.
On Thursday Kai wasn’t at Stop&Shop. One o’clock, 1:30. She bought paper towels and cereal, wandered the aisles, paid, sat in the car until two.
Friday he wasn’t there either. Larissa didn’t know what to make of it.
One thing for sure, whatever she couldn’t make of it, she spent all weekend not making anything of it. Every conscious minute, she spent getting her mind away from it.
The school report cards arrived in the mail. They weren’t good. Emily’s was okay, but Asher was doing dismally in English, and Michelangelo couldn’t spell. Larissa pretended to deal with it, and on Saturday night she and Jared went over to Maggie and Ezra’s for dinner and games, and the only person who noticed that things were not all square with her was Ezra, who said, to no one in particular, “Boy, is Lar ever in her own world. What are you thinking, Lar? Illuminate us.”
“I’m fine, Ezra. What do you mean?”
“Are you thinking of accepting the job? Because Leroy wants to stage
Waiting for Godot
for the spring play. I’m going to shoot myself.”
“
Waiting for Godot
, good play. Good choice,” Larissa said.
“A nihilist two-person play? For spring!” shouted an aggrieved Ezra.
She came out of it a little. “Uh, no, it’s terrible. Impossible. Put your foot down, tell him he can’t.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why would you say it’s a good idea?”
“How was your doctor’s appointment?” asked Maggie. “I forgot to ask on Wednesday.”
“What doctor’s appointment?”
“Yeah, what doctor’s appointment?” asked Jared. He was shuffling cards, trying to teach them how to play blackjack since they were planning a trip to Atlantic City for Memorial Day weekend. But it wasn’t taking. They were readers, not mathematicians.
“She went to the doctor on Tuesday,” Maggie said.
“She did?” Jared glanced at Larissa. “You did?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just the dermatologist.”
“Ooooh!” said Maggie. “Dermatologist. Lar is getting Botox! No wonder she looks to be in the first flush of youth.”
“Do I?” Larissa asked quietly.
“No wonder you kept asking me how young you looked. Now I know your secret. How much does he charge?”
“No Botox, Mags, sorry,” Larissa said, “just a routine checkup of moles and things.”
They discussed this for an inordinately long time. Moles and cancers, what they were supposed to look like, what they morphed into, the signs of danger, where the moles appeared, the suddenness and yet the inevitability of bad news coming upon you (that was Ezra—of course!) and then what you did with that bad news. Now no one wanted to play cards anymore. Everybody knew someone who had melanoma on their back, basal cell on their face, squamous cell on their arms.
The irony of this conversation did not go unremarked upon by Jared, who in the car on the way home said, “Larissa, you didn’t think that was odd, talking about moles at such excruciating length?”
“No, why? Did you?”
He coughed. “You and I both know you haven’t got a single blemish on that body of yours, not a single mark of any kind, not even a childhood scar!” Jared chuckled. “Waxing all poetic about non-existent moles. You’re hilarious. So why’d you blow Maggie off?”
She chuckled too, sheepishly. He leaned over and kissed her at the red light. “You’re so funny. Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to hang out all the time? Tell her you’re reading. It wouldn’t even be a lie. You
are
actually reading nowadays.”
“Yes.” Larissa’s gaze focused on the road.
Saturday passed and Sunday too, and then Monday came, and she drove her Jag to Stop&Shop.
Kai wasn’t there. Not there on Monday, his day off from work, when he always showed up and they did their weekly shopping together.
Larissa didn’t know what to think. She hung around thirty minutes on Monday, ten on Tuesday, and then Wednesday morning came and she looked at herself in the hall mirror, at her straight highlighted hair, her sensible brown eyes, her long arms, slender fingers, her body, trim from walking, from downward-dog yoga poses, everything still slim, still in proportion. She thought about a manicure with Fran, maybe a mommy-and-daughter day in the city with Emily, just the girls. She thought about organizing a fundraiser for the spring play, she thought ahead to planning the Hawaii trip in August and whether they should take an extra day for Memorial Day Atlantic City weekend.
Larissa thought of writing to Che, telling her she’d been eating kinilaw for two months, and she ruminated on packing up all her winter sweaters and taking out her summer shirts. But what she really contemplated was never ever ever going to Stop&Shop again, and the knot inside her for a brief moment was untied and loose of anxiety, like dangling threads. Clear of everything.
She would go back to King’s. Sure it was crowded and the aisles were narrow, and the parking lot was tiny, but her leg wasn’t broken anymore, and to celebrate, she got on the treadmill for thirty minutes and watched a talk show and then
showered, and cleaned her bedroom, and got dressed, and made coffee and sat in the kitchen for five minutes, ten minutes, planning dinner and vacation, with
Love’s Labors Lost
opened to the page that said,
The blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity’s revolt to wantonness
. And in her head, brutal words swirled about like blood-on-snow candy canes. What are you doing here? What do you want? Is it music? We can play music. But you want more. You want something and someone new. You want ecstasy.
She bolted from the island, got into her car and drove to Stop&Shop.
He wasn’t there.
This time Larissa waited an hour, as if saying goodbye. She sat in the parking lot, overlooking the graveyard, eating sushi and listening to Chet Baker singing “These Foolish Things” that made his heart a dancer, and wondered about spring, and whether she needed new shoes, new sandals, perhaps. A girl always needed new sandals for spring. At two she drove to pick up Michelangelo, and sat quietly in the parking lot at her son’s school. So close to the end, to the beginning. So close to the middle, which implied just as much ahead as there had been behind. And yet close to absolutely nothing.
5
The Navigation System
O
n Thursday Larissa called the Jag dealership to schedule an appointment for service. “Have you had the car for three months, Mrs. Stark?” Brian, the service manager, intoned into the receiver. He had a seedy voice.
“Um, no,” she stammered. “But I think the oil might be low.”
“Has the oil light gone on?”
“No, but the car’s making a funny noise at higher speeds, like a rattling noise.”
“What kind of speeds?”
“I don’t know. Seventy?”
“Hmm. Okay. Bring it in tomorrow, we’ll check it out.”
When Larissa hung up she wondered if there was a way they could tell that she’d never taken the car on the highway, had never gone above fifty in it; that it was smooth as silk—all the way to fifty. How high was self-immolation-by-lying-to-service-station-flacks on the list of venial things human beings were taught not to do?
On Friday she brought the Jag into the shop. She looked for Kai’s amber bike, but couldn’t catch a pumpkin glimpse of it. Brian, a tall, scrawny man with thin greasy hair, shook his
head. “We’re busy before the weekend,” he said. “You really had to bring it in early. I told you to bring it in by eight, and here it is, nearly ten. Can you leave it till Monday?”
Not to have her car for the weekend? But then she’d have to explain to Jared that there was something wrong with it, and Jared knew about cars, he might get upset, go in, or call. Might demand another car. Perhaps cancel the deal. So much scrutiny. Too much.
“No,” she said. “I can’t leave it, we’re going away. Please, can you try for today?”
“Miss, I don’t know.” She loved it when they called her
miss
—her, a wife, a mother.
She tried cajoling, using the voice she used on her children. “Come on. Maybe it’s nothing. Just a simple oil change.”
Brian looked into the monitor. “Car brand new, factory-delivered four weeks ago. I don’t think it’s the oil. Who sold you this car? Kai?”
That’s all she needed, an in. “Yes. Is he here? Maybe he can help?”
“Nah, he’s not. Besides he’s not a mechanic.”
“Yes, but I have a technical question for him. I lost the card with the keyless entry code.”
“I can get you that. I’ll have to call the factory.”
“And,” Larissa continued, “I wanted to see if he could order me a navigation system.”
“A nav? Really? Well, I can do that for you. He’s not here anyway.”
“Will he be back on Monday?”
“Dunno.” Brian wasn’t looking at her as he typed up her order on the computer. “He had a funeral or something. Had to fly back to Hawaii, I think. We don’t know if he’ll be back. He just left abruptly.”
A funeral!
“Don’t worry. I’ll help you.” Brian grinned. “I do this stuff.
Kai just sells the vehicle. All the after-sale service, I do. Sign right here. I’ll call you in the afternoon. Do you need a ride?”
“I kind of do, yeah.”
“Hmm. Lemme see.” Brian paged Gary, the other salesman, who gave Larissa a ride home. On the way they barely talked. Except for the words she couldn’t help.