Glass Grapes (11 page)

Nature is on the inside, says Cézanne. Quality, light, color, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our body and because the body welcomes them.

—Merleau-Ponty

For a long time her favorite color was blue. It simply was her favorite color, and she couldn't stand orange—the color of cheap lipstick and being kissed when you didn't want to be, hard and wet. A book of lies in a grease stick. But blue was the color of skies you could lie under and watch the clouds overhead and the color of violets underfoot when you walked in the woods or by the side of the river or in bouquets handed out by the poor little match girl to some gentleman who passed by in tails wearing his heart on his sleeve on late night TV.

So she concocted a theory about why people collect things of a certain color, why they gather them up in piles, why the woman with obvious skill at needlepoint
also has a house filled with blue glass objects, so many there is no way to grasp whether or not they are beautiful individually or even as a group, since there are so many of them that it's the magnitude you note, not even the blue particularly except they are, of course, all blue. You collect things, then, she supposed, because they evoke a whole side of yourself that opens and opens inside and out, or perhaps because the sheen or the shape sets off something you can't get enough of, like that warm shoulder you are leaning against. Or it's a Cézanne. I love you, you say.

Psychological theories about sexual magnetism are all wet, she was sure of it, they don't take the color of things into account. This one razors his hair and overdyes it blond; his much older friend who longs for him does the same. It's color theory that's essential and will finally allow us to make sense of why someone sticks around. Some aesthetic faculty kicks in and one is transfixed, so the philosopher says. Things
have an internal equivalent in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their presence. Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

So there she was, marching about and theorizing randomly, in that oblivious way of youth, and liking blue and buying blue shirts, blue jeans, blue silk scarves. She was walking in the blue twilight, singing a version of
Blue Moon.
It defined and contained her and she thought that this sort of thing would go on forever, or if not forever, at least until she was much older. Then
she'd see. But then, one day she realized that blue was the color of adolescence, it was watching television all afternoon and waiting for the phone to ring or poking at your skin in a pretense of martyrdom.

And it was green in fact that took her, penetrated, amazed. She looked in a mirror, not, of course, being acutely self-conscious, that she hadn't spent hours looking at herself, her eyebrows, the slope of her brow, but that she saw, suddenly, something different: herself in some form she hadn't seen before. Her own optic system shifted and she couldn't see blue anymore and preferred green instead, a sort of muddy gray-green, the color of celadon pottery, the color of certain mosses in a tangle of dark branches, a color that drew you to it and made you want to stand next to it the way certain people make you want to match shoulders with them just to feel the warm side of a certain arm.

The certain arm turned out to belong to Marnie. She wanted to go where Marnie was and she wanted to
be
Marnie. There was no particular reason why this was the woman she wanted to be. It just was. One might explain it and one might explain it in several ways. She was blond. She had that name. And she seemed to possess a blithe insouciance, whatever that was, and to walk about like a boy, guileless and effortlessly physical as often boys can be. That's it, she thought. She wanted to lope. She wanted greenish shirts and a dog. She wanted to write about the vastness of the mountain air.

One day in the middle of summer she went to where Marnie was vacationing in the country and simply wouldn't go away. She'd invited herself against all protests and had gotten in the car and arrived. Marnie found it odd, this person who appeared out of nowhere wouldn't leave and kept staring at her as if she were being, not desired exactly, but examined so that the imitation would be as correct as possible. Marnie thought: perhaps she's attracted to me, perhaps that's it. But she seemed just to want to copy like a schoolgirl, like girls she once knew who dressed alike and had to have the same book covers or running shoes.

On that afternoon, despite the oddity of it, they went for a walk with the dog, fed the chickens, and returned to the cabin to eat the various cheeses she had brought for the occasion, a small bribe for coming uninvited Marnie supposed, and they sat around and got a little drunk, not too drunk, but drunk enough in the perfect way of certain women, and ate small amounts of goat cheese on very thin crackers. They talked about things that mattered to them both in a sort of hum, as if talk were not exchange, but a matching of tones and tonal shifts. They talked of quality, color, light, and what each had thought about the ways the light fell on the rooftops, the platters of fruit, the painting,
La Route Tournante en Sous-Bois.
They puckered their mouths over the slightly sour cheese.

Of course, as you have no doubt realized by now, if someone wants to be another, the other often also
wants to be her. At the museum you stand in front of the painting of
Les Baigneurs
and you shift into the pose in front of you, tilt this way or that. There is no rational explanation, and no reason why one likes green now but blue before, no reason why it is wonderful one day to drive so fast on the freeway you can only think of speeding faster and faster onto new and more precipitous bridges, crossing over the expanses of asphalt as fast as the car will go, and then you don't want that at all. Why would anyone go faster than the speed limit? Why would anyone break any rule of the road? Why would anyone wear anything other than a uniform, if not one prescribed by the nuns or military officers, then one of one's own choosing:
only
Nehru collars, perfectly out of date since they are still worn without irony by serious young men too thin for their own good,
only
bowling shirts,
only
jackets one size too large,
only
one-piece bathing suits. Why would one put one's hand on that particular object and sense a settling as if the winds had finally given up.

Once when she was a girl she wanted to be a girl named Grace because her name was Grace, and she knew it would alter her entire way of looking at the world. In the photograph she keeps with the others on her bureau, Grace stands at the side of a lake at a camp they went to one summer, her head tilted to the side, her ponytail hanging into the sunlight that fractures her ponytail, her face, and an incandescent smile.

You wish you could unlock the muscles across the top of your shoulders and you think, if only I were
someone else, they wouldn't have locked in the first place. She couldn't help it most of the time, she simply found herself, often embarrassingly, copying the gestures of another, imitating the tone of someone's voice, responding to the clerk with an accent in a similar accent, using a certain word or phrase which clearly belonged to someone else. In response to a question, her mouth formed an echo, an echo that seemed oddly beautiful as if to lose a “t” made the word smooth as rocks worn by water. She hoped no one would notice, and certainly Marnie wouldn't since it was her idea, she thought, it was she who had introduced this idea into the conversation, at least she thought it was. During the entire afternoon, they drew on one another constantly, walking slowly down the path, side by side, shoulder by shoulder. She quoted a poem as if to explain,
The mind, that ocean where each kind/ Does straight its own resemblance find;/ Yet it creates, transcending these,/ Far other worlds and other seas,/ Annihilating all that's made/To a green thought in a green shade.

Both changed clothes, then exchanged clothes, though it hardly mattered by then since they were both wearing castoffs from the trunk in the cabin someone else had left behind. It rained, their other clothes were wet, so they reasoned, and the clothes belonged to both and to no one. This is the thing about explanations, there are always some lying about.

When Marnie woke in the morning she wondered if her small gifts had been diminished or if she were
just a bit hung-over from wine in the afternoon. She, for her part, thought her hair a bit paler, though she knew this was a ridiculous notion. No one's hair turns overnight.

What does one afternoon count for after all. Yet the one afternoon left them all they could think of. She looked out at the sky and saw that in the gathering storm it had turned a color tilting towards green. It stood out from all other afternoons in its awkwardness and tears. At one point, each looked at the other, squirmed and blinked, and looked away. They stood shoulder to shoulder, one a bit higher than the other. They measured the height of the wall and then themselves as if it mattered and it made them think of something funny, though neither laughed, simply shifted their legs beneath them at the oddity, at scrutiny, at loss and gain. She knew all this, of course. Yet she knew that her manner of speaking had changed and that there was nothing she could do about it. She knew without a doubt that she had never used the word
happiness
before in her life. She'd always felt it beneath her, something for others rather more superficial and glib than she. Yet what was that odd olive green—she turned towards the window to take it in again—but happenstance expanded across the entire sky. She had been so infused with the new color, she thought, that one thing might lead to another.

It was when my parents decided they could live with the blue plastic furniture left behind in the house they bought, I knew something was wrong. You don't just go from antiques to unquestioned acceptance of the inevitable like that. I said so too. Over the years they'd picked things up here and there that belonged to them and to my childhood. On a drive into Vermont they'd snagged a leather bellows for the fireplace and bought a contraption no one could figure out what it was and lined it with copper and used it for liquor bottles so people standing around could wonder what it was or when were they ever in that neck of the woods.

After retirement, they decided to move to Florida for some reason I could never fathom. What are you thinking, I said, aghast at the whole idea. Why are you going, I'd say, and why Florida of all places. I tried to say it was hard to make friends at their age and how they should stay close by just in case and how finding doctors
in new places wasn't easy, but they didn't seem to hear. It was like talking to the wall. They began making arrangements, not impetuously—they never did anything like that—but arrangements nevertheless, as if in slow motion. I'd stop by after work but they never seemed to need anything. A box tied and sealed stood by the front door. After a while there was another. The house grew emptier and my voice echoed. I thought things had been sent ahead but when I arrived later to help there was almost nothing to unpack and the house still clung to stray remnants from the former occupants.

Everything was ugly: the light blue wake of a shag rug, the plastic chairs, the cartoon pelican that smirked from its frame in the bathroom, the dusty wreath made of pale pink shells. And these few awful things were overwhelming because, as I said, when we came to unpack it turned out they'd brought almost nothing of their own. They said for me not to come but I was duty bound it seemed to me and how could I let them to do it alone and so I flew down the first chance I could get. But there was almost nothing to do. I remembered a house I grew up in, heavy, dark furniture filling every room, and at Christmas endless balls and lights for the Christmas tree, but this time they decided to “travel light” they said and had sold off what they'd collected and left behind not only holidays but almost everything I remembered. Even the dresser that had been a dentist's cabinet was still in Connecticut and I had to give up what I thought would be my lifelong curiosity
about how many times a sock had to be folded before it would fit in the narrow drawer.

They brought one photo of each relative and gave away all the rest. I had the awful thought of myself lying around in a dusty junk store box for years, and then found by a stranger who wanted to see what we looked like back then in those funny clothes. And they picked out the worst of the lot. His sister wore the dotted dress no one had ever liked. The one of me is especially bad. I am twelve, need braces, and have a raw nose from a bad cold. I haven't yet grown into my size. At forty, I'm still a big girl but all the flesh comes to sit better as the years pass and I know how to dress and well, I still look good for my age. The salesgirls all say I can wear the sorts of dresses I've always worn.

I thought they'd get more stuff fairly soon, things to match the casual retirement I imagined for them, but they didn't. All they did was rip out the lawn, circle the house in gravel and get two stray lawn chairs to face the ocean. They sat there as if waiting for something.

They were oddly uncommunicative, not that they ever were very good at talking, but now they had given up even the small talk of the breakfast table. It was as if they were communicating by the mere passing of salt and pepper, by some sort of sign that passed between them. The doling out of the newspaper went on as usual but it was as if they had mastered something or refined it so that I found myself chattering on about, well, at that time, it was the local elections to my school board, but
it was as if I were speaking to the air. He would nod or say yes, but it was as if the idea of whole sentences had dropped out of their universe. I'd always had to do most of the work, bringing anecdotes from the office to cheer them up, telling jokes I'd got off e-mail. I like stories now and again and finding out about the news. Maybe I am a bit used to talking down, working at the middle school and all, but I've got an eye and usually can bring anyone out. But this was downright peculiar.

When she alters my skirts, Marie says she likes my way of telling things the best of all her customers. I notice things, where the best sales are, who recently painted his house, the name on the mailbox next door, who's put in the best new rose. But I can't even get them to visit in the neighborhood, despite the news I bring back from my walks, and it's not too bad, really, little houses in a row and the water there to look at. It's a good site, I tell them, a good investment, values can only go up and you meet such nice people. I talked to the neighbor on the beach who has found two quarters already with his metal detector. I would have preferred the bayside myself, the water is warmer and there is nothing like a warm swim, I say, buoyed up and surrounded by salt water and the blue of the sky. I told them I would also have liked it better nearer the shops and I keep trying to get her out of the house to go shopping. It will do you good, I say, and besides it looks as if you left most of your clothes behind. Where is the red sweater I got you for the retirement party, I ask, a bit of a gathering
I organized in spite of their protests. Well, it just isn't right to ignore such important occasions. Though they said they didn't want a fuss, I just knew they'd want to see old friends, have the usual toasts and best wishes and cut the cake:
Happy Golden Years
it said in red and gold frosting.

I pushed the hangers aside thinking something must be on the shelves behind, but they were as empty as the kitchen drawers. I hunted for things I had handled forever, it seems, through my childhood, but they had gone to charity, she said over her shoulder. That's how she talked to me as if she could only project at an angle while moving into the next room as if she had something to do, but when she got there she wasn't doing anything. I'd come in after her and find her standing as if she were listening to something. Got a seashell in your ear, I'd say, but she didn't seem to hear or find it funny.

And she bought odd food, none of my favorites. I found a fish store in town and talked to the manager about how we liked halibut and he said we were on his ready list. But she went to the supermarket and bought a freezer full of Lean Cuisine and said she couldn't be bothered. When you opened a drawer there was one thing in it, a fork or a bottle cap or a plastic bag, folded as if it had been washed and ironed.

She bought a bottle of soy sauce and stuck it at the top of a cupboard I couldn't reach and no one likes Chinese food anyhow. I've never been fond of foreign cooking, could never take to it really. It seems such a lot
of trouble and you're always hungry right after anyhow or have a headache and besides I like hearty things—
you are a hearty girl,
she used to say to me—and Thanksgiving dinners especially. I loved coming home for dinner and even when mom asked if I didn't sometimes want to visit friends or take a bit of my vacation in my free time from teaching, I preferred really to come home for mashed potatoes and where the heart is.

He was reading. It was a magazine I'd seen him with before, and it didn't look as if he were really reading, but using it as a kind of prop. You know:
someone who is reading needs a magazine.
I tried to start up with him, but I just couldn't get a response. Some people, and he is like that, just won't answer when they're sitting in a certain chair with a certain look no matter how one tries. I'm one for getting a giggle out of people and I've collected my share of witty remarks over the years, but nothing worked. I've always been one to try. Try, try again is my motto. That's why I was so good a swimmer as a girl and was on the swim team in high school, the photo of it on my bedroom wall, a blue frame, you know, for water.

I started out trying to explain new recipes to mom, especially the new ones I'd just put in her file folder, but she just wouldn't go over them. She was getting ready to do it she said, but then I just found her standing as if she couldn't remember what to do next and not getting ready for anything. Everything stayed the same after those first few days. The stuff the Baxters had left just
stayed; the boxes would have stayed in the hall if I hadn't flattened them and bundled them for the collection.

The calendar stayed turned to July though it was August, and when I moved to change it, he just stared hard at me as if he knew something I didn't. My hand lifted towards the page, but I couldn't do it, as if I'd forgotten what I was about to do, well not exactly forgotten, but I didn't tear the month from the wall. At home I rule off each day with a sharp pencil. I was willing, of course, to do anything they asked, but it was as if they had arrived at a place with rules already set and didn't want to upset the given order of things, were studiously following a prescribed routine. The chairs were too far apart for conversation, but they didn't want them moved. They could have been upside down for all they seemed to care.

Maybe, I thought, they've just been alone too long, maybe they're just getting old. They weren't depressed exactly though I do like a perky person to be around and I tried to bring some life into the house. I tried to get mom to join me in decorating the wastebaskets with pictures I cut from
National Geographic.
She didn't say no, she just didn't sit down at the card table with me. Something momentous seemed about to be revealed. Nonsense, I said to myself, thinking these sorts of thoughts is what makes people act the way
they
were acting. I decided on a brisk walk to the pier where I talked to people who naturally brightened at my company. I learned all of their names before they had to rush off to collect shells,
they said, or would gladly have stayed. I have that way about me, I can bring out most anybody. You can find a common topic with anyone if you try and here there's always the weather or the birds. Everyone wants to see the roseate spoonbill at the bird sanctuary, and you can always talk about that. I myself like to watch them feeding in the mud at low tide even though it means getting up ever so early.

When I came back they were sitting in the gravel in the two chairs looking at the sunset. It was a pretty one, but I just couldn't bring myself to interrupt whatever it was they were doing, though of course as far as I could tell they weren't and wouldn't ever be doing anything. I went inside for a cool drink which I always have after a walk—to rehydrate after even mild exercise is important for one's health I always say—and I saw the calendar again. When I went to tear off the month, though, I saw his face again as it was before, frozen and silent in front of me, and I felt suddenly too big for some reason and in the way, though there was nothing to be in the way of so far as I could tell. I don't know, I just never got around to fixing the calendar then or later. It stayed with the red number marking the Fourth as if it were always going to be July.