Authors: Jane Smiley
“Yes, that’s what I understand.”
“You want me just to change the tumblers in this one, or you want something new? I got these French babies. They go more toward the middle of the door, and are kind of ugly, but they never get broken into, how about that?”
“How much is that?”
“A hundred, regularly, but I got a special deal on the last order. Eighty-nine fifty.”
“That seems like a lot.”
“Hey, you got a glass of water or something? I’m dying.”
“Sure.”
When she came back with the water, he was sitting on the couch, his feet on the window sill. “Shit,” he said, “that’s great. New York’s got the greatest water, you know. There was this guy that was selling it. Fuck, I’ve been working. Guess how long I’ve been working.”
“I couldn’t imagine.”
“I am beat. I started work yesterday about noon, and I haven’t been to bed since. This is a great gig, you know. You could do this all day and all night if you had the right substances. First
the junkies break in, then the cops come, then us. And junkies never sleep.”
“I’m sure they don’t.”
“Some guys charge extra for late night deals, but not me. I charge extra during business hours. That’s when I like to sleep.”
“One of those French locks would probably be good, but I would have to give you a check.”
“No checks. You kidding, man?”
“I don’t have that much cash.”
“Sorry, lady.”
“Well, how much would it cost to change the tumblers?”
“About twenty, but I won’t do that. This lock is about fifty years old. It’s not going to stand up to that.”
“Is there anything else?”
“I can put another lock of this type in. It won’t be all that safe, compared to other stuff I got, but you could put in a good second bolt.”
“How much would that be?”
“Fifty, sixty.”
“You really won’t take a check?” “You want to make it out to the IRS for me?”
“Why don’t you do the work, and I’ll go out and get the cash for you.”
He looked reluctant, then shrugged. “Yeah—”
“No, forget it. Thanks for coming by. I’m going to think about it some more.”
“Look, lady. I’ll take a check, all right?”
But the more willing he became, the more determined Alice became not to do it. “No. I don’t want to do this. I don’t see how I’m going to keep that person from having my key again, anyway, so it won’t do any good. It’s a waste of money. We’ll just leave it like it is, okay?”
“It’s up to you, man.”
“That’s right.” She held out her hand for his glass and he stood
up. “I’ve got ten dollars. Will you take ten dollars to put the
screws
back in?”
“Yeah, why not.”
“Will it be just like it was?”
“Hey, lady. It’s fifty years old!”
“Okay, forget it.” She handed him ten dollars, and he put back the screws. After he left she went into the kitchen and looked for something to eat. There didn’t seem to be anything.
A
ROUND
dinner time, Alice went to Susan’s, taking an Entenmann’s chocolate chip cake. She was fully determined to broach the topic of possibly changing her locks, but said, “Did you get to see Ray?” instead.
Susan shook her head. “They’re keeping him sedated today, but they thought tomorrow would be better. Honey was there when I got there, but I don’t know if he talked to Ray or not.”
“I think he thinks we got into all of this by being careless. He gave me a big lecture this morning.”
“He was polite to me.” Susan shrugged. “It’s always tempting to think that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Alice thought, Thank God for that, and said, “What do you want for dinner?”
“Cake.”
“I feel like popcorn.”
“And a six-pack of Coke.”
“Sounds delicious.” She sat down at the table. “Really, Susan, do you think Ray’s going to be all right? I never did even see this Dr. Lee, much less get to talk to him.”
“That must be the Oriental guy. I did talk to him, as a matter of fact. I told him Ray was my brother.”
“I told the hospital he had insurance up the wazoo.”
“They think there’s going to be substantial hearing loss in that ear. There was no damage to the other one, though.”
“No more perfect pitch.”
“I forgot to ask about that. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s like eyes. I don’t think you have to have two to do it together.”
“Still, his ears are his living.”
“I’m sure whoever did it was perfectly cognizant of that fact.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
“I’m having my—” But Alice couldn’t go on. She would mention it later, when she had figured out a way not to imply a lack of trust. She said, “Jim called today, too. He thinks we’re all nuts.”
“How was it otherwise?”
“Well, the phone didn’t glow or vibrate. He sounded sort of dull. I even started remembering when he used to come home from class and give me the blow by blow—how Deedee in the front row objected to the use of ellipses and Mark over by the wall wanted to re-write the entire poem in seven-syllable lines. Talk about boring.” She lifted her eyes to Susan’s. “I like you better than him now, anyway, and you’re here and he’s there.”
“And?”
“And you were right, he said loving me was like throwing it into a bottomless pit.”
“I do think that you never saw the truth, that Jim was a little reserved, or even shy about expressing affection, whereas that sort of thing comes very easily to you.”
“I guess.”
“Let’s have some cake.” This is how they would go on, Alice was tempted to think, certainly for the rest of the evening and maybe for years, maintaining separate residences, perhaps, but living as close together as a pair of shoes. Soon, sometime in the next ten minutes, the night’s conversation would take root. First, two or three topics would be begun and discarded as boring or worn out. This would happen automatically, a result of the cake or the newspaper open on the floor or the view of a neighbor passing across the street. Inevitably, though, something would take root, then grow and branch and exfoliate into a whole evening’s
talk. Susan rolled over and reached under the coffeetable for the Arts and Leisure section of last Sunday’s paper. Alice smiled and wandered over to the chair across from her. Weren’t they set for life, with steady jobs, enough money, no commitments, couldn’t this last for years, in a way that marriage could never last, without effort, without swings in desire, or mistakes in translation, or the balancing of needs that marriages always demanded? People stayed home for passion and went out for companionship, when actually the reverse would work much better. Alice picked up the book review and glanced over the poetry reviews. Susan said, “There’s a free concert of medieval consort music at the Cloisters. Eight o’clock.”
“That would be nice.”
“Long ride on the bus.”
“That’s true.” As if on cue they settled themselves more deeply into their chairs.
“My favorite time to go to the Cloisters is Christmas, anyway.” And here they would be at Christmas, Alice thought, crossing her fingers, except with the windows closed and slacks and sweaters on. Between now and then, what a wealth of time! She sat forward and threw down the paper. “Don’t you think time passes differently now than it did three or four years ago?”
“How do you mean?” Susan’s eyes continued to scan the Calendar of Events.
“Well, I remember being really impressed when we moved here that four whole years had gone by since college, and five for Noah. Now I’ve lived in my apartment for the same length of time that I lived in Minneapolis, but the two experiences aren’t equal at all. This, in spite of everything, has a much smoother quality to it.”
“I know what you mean. It used to be that every season broke over you like a big wave at the beach. The passage of time itself sort of bowled you over and changed you. You’re right, it’s not like that now. I could see turning around in thirty years and wondering where it all went.”
“It feels different. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. There’s
a woman at the library who had a baby a few years ago. Sometimes she brings him in. It seems almost odd, because he’s obviously growing up, learning to walk and talk, wearing little oxfords and shorts with flies, but she seems permanent. Even her hair doesn’t grow in any visible way.”
“Maybe that’s being an adult.” Susan sat up. “Maybe that’s the only truth about being an adult, that in some basic, visceral way, time stops.”
“It’s kind of nice.”
“Do you think so?” Susan dropped the paper and picked up her cake plate. After forking off two or three bits of the frosted square, she said, “It scares me. Once you’re out past the breakers, the sea may be very flat, but there’s no bottom. Even talking about it scares me. I want those seasons and Christmases and birthdays and school years to add up the way they did when we were kids.”
“I know what you mean, but I still prefer the serenity.”
Susan sighed, picked up the paper, threw it down again. “I guess I don’t know what to think, actually, since the thing about Craig that drove me most to insane fury was the constant springing of his adolescent hopes, He always thought it was going to add up sooner or later. It makes me mad to think about it.
I
was the one who was always telling him to grow up. And telling Denny, too, I’m sorry to say.”
Alice waited expectantly, but Susan did not go on. Alice looked over her shoulder. She was reading an article about videodisc recorders as they compared to videotape recorders. Alice smiled. Susan’s television, a twelve-inch black and white with a broken aerial, was so infrequently used that they were always surprised when they turned it on and it actually worked. She picked up the magazine section, which she opened first to food, then to fashion, then to the double-crostic. Susan said, “Do you think I loved Denny?”
“What?”
“Did it seem to you that I loved Denny? Did we look like people who were in love?”
“Yes. You
were
in love.”
“I don’t know that. I can’t remember. On the one hand, I loved to sleep with him. I loved everything about it from talking to him in bed to making love and sleeping next to him. He was very good in bed, from the beginning to the end. I mean, aside from knowing what to do, he was perfectly desirous, and his desire expressed itself in an attractive, natural way. I’ve been trying to say to myself just how he was, but there aren’t any expressions that give the flavor of it. He was self-confident, and passionate, and pleased with my body. I also liked being with him, when we were alone, and sometimes when Craig was around. For a long time I thought that if we could just get this problem of his professional life solved, then everything would be fine. It was a problem, in a box, manageable. Later on, I saw it differently, but at first it was just an addendum, detachable from the general perfection. But right alongside my love for him and my sense of permanence and my complete inability to look at or desire other men was this utter conviction that it just couldn’t go on. The conviction was instinctual and irrational, so I didn’t pay much attention to it, or tried not to, but it was there from the beginning, like a Siamese twin to my love for him. I think I toyed with the idea of walking out the door every day for twelve years. We would argue about buying milk and I would say to myself, This is intolerable, it can’t be borne, I’m packing my bag, but at the same time I would be planning his favorite dinner, or buying him some little present to make up. I don’t see how I could have entertained two mutually exclusive certainties at the same time.”
“Ambivalence—”
“Do you think that’s what it was? Just a kind of inherent ambivalence, stuck to me but not to us?”
“Did you ever tell him about it?”
“I don’t think that’s something you tell men. Would you have told Jim?”
“Believe me, it would have been a relief to both of us if I’d ever had a moment of ambivalence.”
“You are terribly absolute.” She said it as if it really were terrible.
Trying not to be sensitive, Alice laughed. “I think of myself as the ultimate waffler.”
“Never! Never! You don’t know how frightening you are sometimes.”
“Then the ultimate wimp. You may be right about my absoluteness, but maybe I’m really absolutely prostrate, resolutely prostrate, militantly prostrate.”
“You’re thinking of Jim, but I don’t think you really were like that.”
Alice said, “You know, I really love you. I love our friendship. I can’t imagine what I would do without you.”
Susan smiled, but her face instantly filmed over and it seemed to Alice that her skin would be cold to the touch. After a moment, she said, “But did you think Denny and I were in love?”
“Yes, I did. I was so sure of it that I never thought about it.”
“I wish I had a videotape of everything, twelve years long, unedited, or at least a tape recording. If I could stand back and look at us together, I might know what was going on.”
“I should have been a better eyewitness.” Thinking of Henry, she added, “How do people learn to notice things?”
“Well, you did have your own life to live, you know.”
“But I feel like the view is always partially blocked, or even completely blocked, by a mirror.”
“And I feel like the view is always partially blurred by a mist of resentment.”
“It would be lovely to see clearly, wouldn’t it? To know something for sure, just once.”
“Would it?” Susan picked up the News of the Week in Review and settled back onto the sofa. Alice got up to make popcorn.
Alice had left before eleven, still unwilling to actually sleep in that apartment, and was now sitting naked and freshly bathed in her dark kitchen, drinking a glass of milk. In a detached but interested way, as if scientifically, she was considering the fact
of the murder, and Susan’s identity as the murderer. It hardly moved her at all any more. She had thought Thursday night that the surprise would never leave her, that without wishing to she would never look at Susan and not sense those two corpses in close proximity. But she had apparently overestimated her capacity for moral outrage. Homicidal drunk drivers and cheating landlords that she saw on the news outraged her more. Everything about her upbringing and education had prepared her for a grand repudiation of this wrong: Susan had taken two lives, and two lives that Alice was close to and cared about. Nonetheless, Alice knew that her adoration of her friend, and her anticipation of lasting, comfortable intimacy were greater than ever. The evening before, she could have sent Susan back to Chops and gone off with Henry, but she had not. Although monumentally confused just at the moment, she had not acted confused at all. Part of her had wanted to be polite and careful and conventional, but the rest of her had simply acted. Alice smiled.