Secret Language (16 page)

“What if I call you tomorrow night?” Isadora says. “We can take turns.”

“I’m working tomorrow, but I’ll call you the minute I get back.”

“Just a sec,” Isadora says. Connie hears the rustle of paper. “Tell me your schedule.”

Connie tells her, flattered at being pinned down to paper. This is even more than she expected. She likes the idea of being tracked. When Isadora hangs up, Connie stays on the line, listening to that odd pocket of silence before the dial tone fully disconnects them.

She finds Stewart propped up on her sleep sofa, reading the paper and drinking wine, the shadow of his eyelashes skewed across his face from the light of a single lamp. She climbs onto the blankets, accepts a glass, and sits with him.

“A little sister,” she says. “I can hardly believe it.”

He puts the paper down. “You get to start all over again.”

They are silent for a while. She listens to the hum of the refrigerator,
the tick of the living room clock; she suddenly feels her apartment might give over to the most domestic impulses.

“Stewart,” Connie says. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t gay.”

“Hah! You and me both, sweetheart.”

“Do you think we’d still be friends?”

“Of course.”

“I mean do you think we’d be lovers instead?”

“Can’t you be both?”

“I never have.” She pours some more wine. “Isadora’s got tons of friends. She lives with four or five roommates and a cat. She just seems so, I don’t know, normal.”

“Because she has lots of friends?”

“Yes.”

“You have lots of friends,” Stewart says. “So do I. A lot of good it does us.”

She looks at him.

“Where are they when you really need them?” he says.

If he’s talking about her she doesn’t want to know.

“Stewart, I’m not sure I know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be Isadora’s sister.”

“But you’re already—oh, right, chairs in a room.”

“I want to, though. It feels good.”

“True confession, Connie.”

“Shoot.”

He sits up. “I’ve been having this little fantasy.”

“Go.”

“About having a kid.” His face is still.

“You’re not serious.”

“Why not? You’ve thought about it, too.”

“I think about a lot of things.”

He smiles shyly. “What I mean is, I’d want you to be the mother.” Connie sits back on her haunches, staring at him. “Of course we’d have to figure out a way to do it without actually having sex,” he says.

“Thanks a lot.”

He laughs. “Don’t take it personally.”

“I don’t. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Ridiculous, but sweet.”

He drops back against the cushions. “That’s only one of my fantasies, anyway.” He grins. “The other one involves that new guy at Air France.”

Connie laughs. “I saw him first.” She cups her glass fervently, as if the wine contained information. “You know what, Stewart? I’m glad Isadora’s so young. I swear I feel almost motherly. Big sisterly, anyway.”

Stewart nods. “I’d spend more time with my nephew if they’d let me near him.”

After the bottle is gone, she tucks him in and kisses his forehead. “Here’s to finding it, old friend,” she whispers, and goes to bed.

Near morning, the deep sound of Stewart’s breathing lazing in through her bedroom door, Connie opens her eyes in the dark. She has been dreaming of stage curtains rising and falling, too quickly to see what they hid or revealed. In the gray light appear the familiar shapes of her room: the nightstand, its brass knob, the lacy hem of Grammy Spaulding’s doily, the slim profile of the table lamp. In her half-sleep she reaches for the telephone, and by the time she has dialed the first digit of Faith’s number she recognizes where she is, that it is too late to call and too early, and that she hasn’t the smallest idea what she might have wanted to say.

The club is small and dusky; it smells of spirits, dark wood, the hot street. Armand loiters over a whiskey and water while Connie and Stewart share a bottle of wine. Connie lolls in their company, in the sight of her little sister, who is curled over a well-worn guitar, her blonde hair cloudy under the weak stage light. Her voice, its low timbre drowsing over old blues, quiets the scattered crowd. Behind her a thin black man thumps on a bass guitar.

This is the last set. Connie watches Isadora’s slender fingers, the fragile arms, the soft lines that appear between her eyebrows as she sings. She is small, but mighty somehow, transformed under the light. Billy and Delle had been able to change like that, and Connie is aware of wanting Isadora in the huge and foggy way she had once wanted them.

Armand leans over, touching Connie’s shoulder. “She reminds me of Billy, so help me,” he whispers. She nods dumbly. She claps until her palms sting, the room a gentle, wine-tipped whirl.

Isadora lays her guitar in a case and steps down from the stage. She aims a bright smile at Connie’s table, then steps past them to greet a gathering of friends, late arrivals who have commandeered several tables in the back. Connie listens to them laugh and talk, a society all to themselves, their voices pumped with the amplitude of a shared and careless past.

“She’s great, isn’t she great?” Connie says to Stewart and Armand. “She’s the best damned singer I ever heard, I swear, she’s great.”

Stewart regards her patiently. “Gee, Connie, have another drink.”

“You don’t think she’s great?” Her question is a challenge, one she finds exhilarating; she’s defending her little sister. It’s an unnecessary bravado, a throwback to her adolescence. She is speaking loudly and knows it, hoping Isadora can hear.

“She
is
good,” Stewart says. “I’m impressed.”

Armand smiles, lifts his drink. “I’m still here, an old man out past his bedtime.” He cranes his neck. “Is she coming over?”

“Give her five minutes,” Connie says. “You have to keep the fans happy.” She speaks as if from a store of intimate knowledge—about performance politics, psychology, and Isadora.

But Isadora has happily installed herself amidst a stable of friends, a boisterous, adoring throng. They rock their heads back, wave their hands around, transforming themselves into a kinetic cloak of movement that seems almost calculated to isolate Isadora, who sits somewhere in its center.

“I’m done,” Stewart says, rising. “I’ve got to be at the airport by nine.” Armand gets up, too, rubbing his eyes, the skin over his fists loose, the knuckles swollen. He is indeed an old man.

Connie wants to stay, in the hope that she and Isadora might enjoy last call together, just the two of them, but she can see this is not going to happen. She has imagined over and over just such a scene: a late-night unburdening over a glass of wine in a restaurant, or a bar like this one, or Connie’s hotel room, or a private corner of Isadora’s apartment in Brooklyn. In this scene, Isadora’s face opens into a smile, her features obscured by smoke (the bar) or low light (the restaurant, hotel room, apartment), except for her eyes, which are trained on Connie with the clarity of an emerald while she expresses her deepest needs and dreams.

Their phone conversations have become more sporadic, even a little stilted. Connie’s made-up answers are beginning to contradict themselves. One night she told Isadora about a family outing to the zoo, and a few nights later manufactured an anecdote about Billy’s fear of large animals. Isadora even sounds bored sometimes, though it could be her late hours.

A burst of laughter detonates at the back table. “New Guard,”
Stewart mutters cheerfully. “They’re everywhere.” Connie turns around. They are one merry bunch, Isadora dead center.

Connie is beginning to suspect that her existence in the world has turned, for Isadora, into a mild, possibly unimportant disappointment. Still, she visits whenever she can, staying in a hotel uptown a couple of blocks from Armand’s apartment, commuting to and from Brooklyn by taxi to see Isadora. Isadora, who is weary of the subway, doesn’t come into Manhattan any more than she has to. On the one night she persuaded Isadora to meet for dinner in the Village, Connie waited nearly an hour at Washington Square while a heavily dressed man, with the precision of a robot, smashed an endless supply of light bulbs one by one on the sidewalk half a block away. Isadora eventually arrived, out of breath and aflutter with explanations having to do with roommates, phone calls, a neighbor’s lost keys. They went to a cafe on MacDougall Street that Isadora liked: noisy and crowded, bereft of intimate corners.

Connie follows Armand and Stewart to the door, knowing that if she stays there’s a possibility she won’t be wanted. They stop by the noisy group of tables on their way out. Isadora jumps up.

“Where are you going?” she says.

Armand chuckles. “Home. This old boy needs some sleep.” He looks at Isadora and her friends kindly, but from the other side of a chasm of age and sensibility. Connie knows just how he feels. He takes Isadora’s hand. “You were marvelous, dear.”

“You were,” Stewart adds. “Loved your stuff.”

“Did you really?” She is flushed and shameless. “You’re not just saying that?”

They repeat their compliments, while Connie waits, watching the table of friends. Finally she says, “I’m Connie.”

“Oh!” Isadora says. “Everybody, this is Stewart and Armand, and my sister, Connie. Connie, this is—” She scans the dozen or so faces. “Well, this is everybody.” More raucous laughter erupts from the friends.

“Hi,” Connie says. Most of them have already turned to each other. She remains, thinking of the next thing to say. She somehow expects something momentous to happen, having been introduced as Isadora’s sister.

“Well, I guess we’re off,” she says to Isadora after no one else speaks. “You were the best.”

Isadora, a hugger, hugs Connie. Connie breathes the fluffy hair, presses her hands against the delicate wings of Isadora’s shoulder blades. “I’m so proud,” she says, hoping Isadora will catch some import there, layers of meaning.

Instead, she makes a face. “It’s a dumpy club. But life gets better.” She smiles. She believes it.

The next day Connie, unannounced, drops by Isadora’s apartment, a sunny, two-story shambles in Park Slope where a bewildering number of roommates parade in and out. The rooms are large and cluttered, presided over by Isadora’s enormous tail-less cat, Bob. He sits in Isadora’s lap, his claws dug into her skinny thighs, staring at Connie with a cat’s hard judgment.

“Nice cat,” Connie says. She is perched at the edge of a plaid couch, wearing a red sun dress and heels, feeling overdressed. Isadora is the picture of comfort in a long T-shirt cinched at the hips with a scarf. She barely looks eighteen.

Isadora kisses the top of Bob’s head. “He’s my little baby. You should get one, Connie.”

“I’m always away.”

“Oh, right.” Bob shifts his weight and anchors himself to one of Isadora’s knees. The claws look painful but Isadora doesn’t seem to mind. “Do you ever get sick of traveling?”

It sounds like small talk. It is. Connie makes a noncommittal gesture.

“When I get my big break I’ll have to travel a lot,” Isadora says. “Poor Bob won’t like it one bit.” She kisses the cat’s head again, nuzzling the fur with her mouth. “What did you think of my bass player?”

“Oh. He’s good.” She can hardly remember what he looks like.

“We used to go out,” Isadora says. “We’re still friends.”

Connie laughs. As far as she can tell, Isadora has gone out with a lot of men, including at least one of her roommates. It’s a familiar business, except for the part about staying friends. She thinks of
Marcel, young and callow. “I know a guy in Paris who would adore you.”

Isadora waves her hands. “I’m off men for a while.”

“I don’t blame you,” Connie says. She sounds more cynical than she wants to.

Two of the roommates emerge from upstairs, shouldering bicycles. They wave on their way out the door but do not stop to be introduced. Connie has an unexpected urge to run after them, asking
What does she say about me? Does she say anything about me?

“Don’t you think it was sweet of Armand to come last night?” Isadora says. “He reminds me a little of my father.”

Connie looks up.

“Not Billy.” She rearranges Bob once again. “Anyway, I think Armand’s an old sweetie.”

Watching Isadora, Connie wonders if, had she lived Isadora’s life, she herself could have turned out this way: lounging in a deep chair with a big cat, friends calling at all hours, a belief that life gets better. She can’t imagine how she would function in an apartment like this one, even for one night.

One of the roommates pokes her head in. “If Timmy calls, I’m on my way.”

Isadora laughs. “Don’t blow it, Rosie.”

The roommate makes a face and disappears. It occurs to Connie that Isadora must have things to do, that sitting here is a courtesy. She gets up. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

Bob spills out of Isadora’s lap as she stands up. She calls a car service while Connie waits, studying her quick movements, the way she drums her fingers in the air, rehearsing without the guitar. “Come on, I’ll walk you down,” Isadora says, and Connie follows her into the hall and down the stairs, still watching her, the way her bracelets slide along her arm, the way her feet tap each step, barely making contact.

Isadora reaches the street long before Connie, bouncing slightly on her toes. She’s been out half the night but her skin is bright, her eyes alert.

“I was going to ask you something, Connie,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about my brilliant career.” She grins—a charming, self-deprecating
twist of her lip—then turns abruptly serious. “I need a manager. Someone who knows people in this town, someone who can get me off this
plateau
I’ve been sitting on.”

Connie considers her: the tiny smile, the self-conscious way she draws her hand through her hair. Is she asking for something? A succession of cars moves through the light at the corner but Isadora takes no notice. Connie watches, not wanting to miss her ride but also not wanting to catch it. Next door to Isadora’s building, the polished vegetables of a Korean market are piled into bins above the grimy sidewalk. Connie moves closer, lured by their simple beauty.