Today it discharged a friendly woman with a baby carriage, two bags and a small girl; an older woman with a wheeled suitcase whose gray unsmiling husband was tensely waiting for her on the platform, as if distressed by her arrival; a young man with a ratty duffel bag, a leather jacket, a baseball cap.
The young man strolled out clacking the pavement with the metal heels of his black riding boots, looked around, squinted, pulled down his sunglasses and whistled for the conductor to open the oversize hold compartment, from which he rolled out a motorcycle.
“Some bike you got there,” the conductor said, sliding closed the doors. “Like a stallion. But why’d you store it when you could’ve ridden it cross country?”
“Bike’d be stolen in five seconds.” The young man grinned. “And I’d be robbed and killed.” He had a crooked smile, frizzy hair, stubble.
“Robbed for what?” the conductor muttered. “After they took your bike, what would they want with you?”
“They’d have to kill me to separate me from the bike.”
“Ah.” The conductor shrugged. “But I thought you was headed to Maplewood?”
“I am. This isn’t it?”
“No. It’s Summit. D’you hear me calling it out?”
“Nah. I was sleeping. Damn.” He smiled unperturbed. “How far to Maplewood?”
“Six miles. You wanna get back on?”
The young man shook his head.
“Or two minutes on that thing if you’re going fast.” The conductor enviously tipped his cap. “All aboard!” The train slowly pulled away.
The biker was left standing on the platform, breathing in the freezing air, one hand steadying his bike, duffel between his legs. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He decided to drive around town for a few minutes, get a bite to eat, relax, and then head to Maplewood. It would’ve been better had he come in the spring, like he’d planned. Still.
Fates, all kneel before ye
.
He got his bike up to the street on an elevator. After driving around the sleepy subdued Summit and not finding any place he wanted to stop, he looked instead for a street where he could ride the bike a bit. It was real cold, too cold for him in the long term, but he was so happy to be out and about. He wanted a sandwich. On Route 124, he raced up to seventy for a few brief seconds before the light turned red, already out of Summit and in another bare-treed town. “WELCOME TO MADISON.” He saw a large supermarket, an empty parking lot. “Grand Opening,” the sign read, “Drive-through Pharmacy, Starbucks, Fresh Sushi Daily.”
That’s
the ticket, the young man thought. A box of raw tuna won’t be as good as Maui tuna, but still, a box, maybe two, five minutes in the saddle under the sun in the empty lot. He’d been on the trains too long. He needed air.
2
Che
W
e are never alone for a moment. We are deceived into loneliness, into solitude, by our pride, by our pretensions. And yet all Che wanted was a child of her own. To never be alone again. She wanted to be renewed by childbirth, and yet it looked like that was
never
going to happen. Forget the clock. The boyfriend was the problem.
On the outskirts of south Manila, through the wildly populated isthmus between two warm-water bays, on the edge of a rice field in Paranaque, near Moonwalk, in a thatched hut amid a thousand other thatched huts, at the end of a long afternoon when the palm trees were still dripping from the monsoon that had drenched the huts and the mud roads and made going out difficult, near a window and a mirror, a petite Filipino woman sat at a desk dressed in hiking boots, army fatigues, a pink scarf, red lips, tattoos, ebony hair spiked up and streaked white, cigarette dangling, ash falling, and scribbled a letter.
Larissa,
My one true friend, please come and visit your old best friend Che. I’ll teach you how to make rice pudding and
patties. I’ll give you excellent cheap wine. I’ll introduce you to Father Emilio and to Lorenzo, if we’re still together, God help me. I can’t believe last time I saw you was before you were ever pregnant. I like the last picture you sent, though I don’t think you’re right, that your boy looks like an angel. His eyes are too mischievous. He looks like he rules your house. And angels don’t look like that, like kings. I should know. Lorenzo looks like that, and he’s definitely not an angel.
What Che didn’t write to Larissa, but which was the impetus for the letter and the slight anxiety underneath the placid epistolary demeanor, was that the night before, Che thrashed herself awake from a terrible black vision in which she saw Larissa in a yellow dress, walking away, while Che was running, calling,
Larissa, Larissa…
Finally out of breath she caught up with her fair friend and grabbed her by the arm. Larissa spun around. Her face was pallid and wizened, more like the face of a flightless bird long dead. Che cried out, and then Larissa spoke, not in her voice, but a dead stranger’s voice. She said, “Che, what if everything in your life had turned to ashes?”
Che could only shake her head.
“Everything,” Larissa repeated. “Every good thing, every terrible thing, just burned to the ground?”
No, Che mouthed.
“What if there was nothing left?”
That’s impossible, Che wanted to say. There is always something left. She reached out. Always.
But Larissa, like fine wet sand, shivered and dissolved to the earth, in a small damp heap of blackened shavings.
Che screamed—in the dream, in real life. For a long time she couldn’t get back to sleep and, because of that, today was exhausted. Nothing in Larissa’s previous letter gave Che
any indication that everything was not, as always, joyous. The dream was incongruous. Che couldn’t put it out of her heart.
The door swung open, and a young swarthy Filipino man stood at the jamb, his hand on his impatient hip. He was attired like her, freaky clothes and rips and rags. He had a look on him of a thing untamed. “What are you doing?” he said. “We’re going to be late. We’re starting in a half-hour.”
“I’ll be right there,” said Che, turning her gaze away from his brooding face down to the white paper with roses on it. It was Epiphany today. So they were protesting. That’s what they were, Che and Lorenzo: professional protesters. For every major holiday and every major feast day, for every international visit and every small item of government policy, for every break in the political climate or even just the status quo, Che and Lorenzo protested. They worked for a company of subcontracted protesters. Whenever there was a demonstration that needed an increase in numbers, they were hired to paint the placards and then walk the streets and shout. “No More War! Separation of Church and State! No American bases! No Blood for Oil! Green Today and Every Day! Fur is Wrong! War is Wrong! Crossing Picket Lines is Wrong! No New Taxes!”
For this Che was paid, poorly. But then she didn’t need much. When she needed extra money, she worked for Father Emilio. The nuns grew the fruit, and she sold it at a morning street market in Paranaque, shouting. “Peaches! Ripe, Excellent! Pears! Fresh, Succulent! Tomatoes, from the Vine! Mangoes, in Season!” Che was an excellent shouter, ripe and fresh from the vine and always in season.
Amiga, thank you for the box of Nutella jars you sent me. It has nothing organic in it, right? So it’ll last me a good long time. Like Oreos. You and Nutella is what I miss the
most. Can you send me a little of yourself too, in a box? Sorry this is so short. We have a “God is Dead!” demonstration in thirty minutes. Lorenzo is waiting.
When she wrote his name,
Lorenzo
, something hot ran through her insides, from the center of her brain through her lungs and heart, through her abdomen, down to where children might come from, in other people, though
clearly
, not in her.
“Che!”
How endearing he was when he shouted for her. Not her Christian name, Claire, that would be too conventional, but Che, a non-conformist shortening of her last name, Cherengue.
“I’m coming. Just…” She pondered. “One more word. One more sentence, Lorenzo. Wait.” After all, how long have I been waiting for you? A long time, right?
Maybe one day you can come. I know it’s hard to leave the kids. You can tell them it’s for a good cause. They know how much their mommy likes hopeless causes, the more hopeless the better.
Don’t worry about me. I know you think I’m doing crazy work, but these are just rumors of danger, of violence. Like you, I’m living exactly the life I chose. (
Almost
.) A little anti-God demonstration never hurt anyone. God will forgive me, right? He knows what’s in my heart. Last week I went to a pro-war demonstration. The anti-war people set us on fire. I mean,
really
on fire. Poured gasoline onto the street and lit a match. I’m fine, not a scratch on me. Dear Jesus. It’s not the work, it’s Lorenzo that’s giving me agita. You don’t know how lucky you are, not having to think about all this B#$%&!t. This is what we used to obsess about when we were in junior high. So how is it that you’ve got a hubby and three kids
and I’m still obsessing about it? You’re living your happily ever after, but, Larissa, am I hopeless?
“Coming, Lorenzo!” Che hurried out of the bedroom. Hear those bells ringing? How could you not? They’re as loud as the bells of Notre Dame. The bells of impending non-motherhood.
3
Maggie and Ezra
“T
his longing for immortality, Maggie,” said Ezra, as the DeSwanns got ready in the morning, “don’t you think it’s a bit compulsive? Consuming? A little like mental illness? Do you think Larissa bothers with this?”
This was said in response to Maggie’s informing him that in addition to her other numberless interests, she was now enrolling in an art class.
“What are you talking about, Ezra? It’s not for immortality. It’s for fun.” She snorted. “So I can teach my kids to paint.” By kids Maggie didn’t mean her own son who was fifteen and way past painting, but the pre-schoolers she taught three mornings a week at the local church day school.
Ezra shook his head. “Thank goodness you’re just trying to ruin other people’s children. Larissa doesn’t bother yearning for the impossible.”
“How do you know? I thought you said we all yearn for the impossible? Make up your mind.” She scrunched up her wet, curly hair.
Ezra continued to struggle with his bow tie. “Do what
I
do to make life more fun,” he said. “Read. Try to understand the workings of the universe.” He had just last week become the head
of the English Department at Pingry, the tony private prep school in Short Hills, after the previous department head had
finally
retired, at seventy-seven.
“You are the most miserable son of a bitch I know,” said Maggie. “Why in the world would I want to be like you?”
“I will become happy once I understand.”
“Tell me, Professor Smarty-pants—all that reading, doing you any good? Happy yet?”
“Who can tell?” said Ezra. “What is happiness anyway?”
Maggie laughed. “See, unlike you, I already believe in my own immortality. I just want to make the flesh have a little more fun. Would you prefer I paint or take a lover?”
With amusement, Ezra glanced at her. “I believe it’s a false choice, Mrs. DeSwann,” he said. “But enough. Do what you like, of course.”
He changed the subject. “Did you know,” he said, “that if there were one fewer electron in the hydrogen atom, one less negative charge, nothing we know would exist? Not us, not the universe, not the galaxies, nothing.”
“Huh,” said Maggie, straightening out the collar on his white shirt; 7:30 in the morning and he was already looking so disheveled. His brown shirts never matched his taupe jackets, and he frequently wore maroon or green pants that matched nothing. He was
so
eccentric, she couldn’t believe he was hers. Yet Larissa perversely
adored
him and thought Maggie married well, so he must be worth keeping. Or did Larissa think that Ezra had married well?
“By the way,” said Ezra, “I need to talk to Larissa about a very important matter.”
“Every quantum thing with you is an important matter.”
“Yes. But this…” He shrugged her off. “Denise’s leaving for maternity as soon as
Othello
opens. And we’ll have no one to direct our spring play. I’m hoping Larissa will be interested.”
“I dunno. Once, perhaps. I don’t know about now.”
He seemed surprised. “Well, I think she’ll be over the moon. I think this is what she’s been waiting for.”
“You think she’s been
waiting
?” Maggie chuckled.
“You’re wrong. Besides, I’ve already recommended her to the headmaster.”
“Without talking to her first?” She tapped her husband scoldingly on his head.
“Theater is her life.”
“Was.”
“You don’t know everything, Margaret. You’re totally off the mark.” But he became flummoxed, as if Larissa’s refusal was the last thing he had expected. “She’ll say yes. And she’ll be excellent.”
“Our cat compared to Denise would be excellent. What a
disaster
that has been. She should direct
The Poseidon Adventure
.” Maggie shook her head, then remembered something. “Speaking of disasters, we’re having an ice cream party today. Except three of my kids are allergic to peanut butter, and I got notes yesterday asking if the vanilla ice cream was made with peanut oil. Turn to me.” She redid his fire-red bow tie to go with his wine-colored jacket and green slacks.
“The parents are asking the wrong question,” Ezra said sonorously.
“Of course they are!” Maggie laughed, kissing him on the cheek. “If the vanilla ice cream had one less electron in it, we wouldn’t be here at all, right? The question they should be asking is not about peanut oil. It’s about the existence of anything as delectable as vanilla ice cream.”
“Ah,” said Ezra, “you’re mocking me.” His eyes twinkled at her.
“Not mocking. Teasing.” Her eyes twinkled at him.
“Confound them completely by telling them vanilla ice cream is made not with peanut oil but peanut butter.” They both laughed. “Tell them also, Margaret, that if the gods are
indifferent to us, then that leaves us also free to be indifferent to the gods. If there is no immortality, we have so much less to worry about. Paint, don’t paint. Read, don’t read. Direct spring plays. Vanilla ice cream, peanut butter. It’s all good, Curly. Do whatever you like without thought to consequence. Tell your worried mothers that. I’m going to tell Larissa that. That’s what I’m learning from Epicurus. Let’s go. We’re late.”