Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (3 page)

It took twenty minutes to walk to Claudio's parking space, pay the parking lot attendant, and maneuver out of there. All the while, Mathilde had a slumbery feeling of the uncanny. Something about the situation reminded her of something else.
As they merged onto the West Side Highway, Mathilde realized. The limo—how much like a hearse it was. Was it already five years that he'd been living under the ground?

- Not living, -
Mathilde reminded herself. -
Not dying either. Everything that could have happened already happened. -
Sometimes Mathilde would even say out loud,
he's not cold. He can't feel anything.
She was always reminding herself.

You all right?

Yes, I'm okay,
said Mathilde.
Just thinking.

About what?

Um, Elvis.
She didn't want to mention her dead father, feeling like she had talked about him too many times. This tragic baggage had become part of her identity: the girl with no more father. She couldn't help being born to him. It wasn't her fault he'd died!

Most of the boys Mathilde dated before Claudio talked about how they were thinking about kissing her before actually kissing her. Claudio didn't meander. She didn't know what he was thinking as he kissed her before he even wholly stopped the car. It was an architectural and fancy kiss. And, would you believe it, he tasted sweet: sly, sexy, milkshakey.

Be careful.
Mathilde laughed as he parked the car.

You don't trust me?
asked Claudio. Those fat blue eyes.

Can I?
asked Mathilde.

Outside, a fugue of drunk twenty somethings passed by. Claudio saw one of them point at his limo and say to her friends,
fellas, my ride is here.

My mom's upstairs,
Mathilde continued. Mothers generally liked Claudio, because he was quiet and handled gently. Though in this case, he didn't know how he'd hold his own. He didn't feel like himself. Perhaps he was high off Mathilde's conditioner, which smelled like apple pie. He could've eaten her hair. Furthermore, she frenched the way she talked: kindly, kinetically.

This where you grew up?
Claudio asked, hindering in front of Mathilde's building, a high-rise on Riverside Drive. It occurred to Claudio that he hadn't really asked Mathilde about her childhood. It was all about the present. See, he didn't know about the things you were supposed to talk about during first dates.

My whole life,
said Mathilde.
That's my doorman, Isaac,
who was reading the newspaper. She wanted Isaac to look at her, grant some nod of approval or discretion. Isaac felt like a family member but one degree removed. She trusted him with secrets. He bore witness to the times she came home with rum spiced on her mouth, the boyfriends and girlfriends and joints she snuck up when her mother was out of town or sleeping.

I keep picturing you as a little girl,
said Claudio.

Don't,
urged Mathilde. She told him to circle twice around the block, her way of continuing the night. Claudio kept driving east.

Where are you going?
asked Mathilde.

We, not you,
corrected Claudio.

He drove along Central Park, then stalled. They made out in the backseat. Mathilde had never done this on a first date before. She had what she called her
jollies
but had been decent at domesticating these thrills and chills, until now.

Do you come from the inside or the outside?
he asked her. She had gorgeous everything, her slinky neck, even the pits of her knees.

Mostly inside,
she told him. The moon curled down in a cleaving gibbous. The radio played music from the 1950s.
Why must I be a teenager in love?
the radio asked Claudio and Mathilde and the stars up above. Claudio and Mathilde didn't answer, and neither could see the stars because they were in Manhattan. Claudio tried to remember what it felt like to be a teenager. But he kept mixing his own memory up with scenes from
Grease 2,
the movie that was on TV late last night, a reverent remedy to his insomnia. He didn't think he'd ever been in love. He sniffed her around the shoulders like a dog.

What are you doing?
asked Mathilde.

I'm trying to remember how you smell,
he admitted recklessly.

Who are you?

Pepé Le Pew,
he joked.
A skunk. And you're the girl who's out of my league.

No,
said Mathilde.
Who are you really?
Claudio studied her mouth. Her cheeks sucked in. Her stone-fox, infinity-shaped lips riveted him.

I'm Claudio Simone,
he told her.
Who are you?

Mathilde called her girlfriend the next day and told her that she had just met the man she was going to marry.
And that's that,
she made up her mind, studying a love bite in the mirror over her wrinkling vocal cords. A small problem—a pox. She wanted to keep it for the rest of her life.

You say that about every guy you make out with.
It was true. Boys fell for Mathilde, especially princely and brainy boys who liked music, aged eighteen to twenty-six. She had a history with them, taking them to her sorority formals and playing mind games with them and pretending their kisses between her legs didn't tickle. All of Mathilde's valves were open to love. She thought about how Claudio looked, with his arms like wooden spoons and eyes the color of the deepest sea. She said that they were going to get married.
And have lots of children.

You don't even know if he'll be a good father.

He has nice arms. Good for picking up babies,
Mathilde leaped, deal-sealing.
He makes me relaxed.
She thought about Claudio asking her if she came from the inside or the outside, how lovely it felt to answer. They had no problem talking about sex; that must've meant they could talk about probably anything. She
felt humbly protected, like a baby inside of a house belonging to someone responsible, somebody who specifically made her to take care of her.

So, this won't be a love story. Nobody is trying to tell you something about love. This will be a story about a family.

M
athilde stayed the following night on the corner of Tenth and Avenue A, in the apartment Claudio shared with his best friend, Zane. She asked Claudio the next morning,
what do you want for breakfast?

Claudio garbled
French fries,
and then he said
two front teeth.
He opened his eyes and saw Mathilde, who was waiting for him to hold her.
Man, how did I get here?

He jumped up and ran a shower.
I'm a water sign. Cancer.

So am I! Scorpio. But it's nothing I buy into. I only believe in science,
was Mathilde's certainty, though she did pay attention to the possibility of faith. Actually, she was a compulsive wisher. On dandelion skeletons, on pennies, in fountains or wells, on eyelashes, at 11:11 a.m. and 11:11 p.m., on birthday candles. She tried to split them up evenly into selfless and selfish wishes. She didn't even believe in them coming true and still wished.

In the shower, Mathilde left speckled love-bites on Claudio's neck and chest. He gripped her ass with both hands. A tear leaked down her cheekbone, and it tasted holy. Mathilde's clean, enchanting body.
Your body is an American wonder,
he proclaimed
. It's better than water. Better than chocolate. It's even better than hope.

Keep hope,
said Mathilde.
It's good.

I never hope,
said Claudio.
And that's why I'm still alive.

What does that mean?
Mathilde couldn't trust what Claudio said when it came to being alive. This was coming from a man who'd earlier said
I've done every drug there is
and
it's not in the cards for anyone in my family to push past fifty.

Instead of answering, Claudio walked to the kitchen and came back with a bag of chocolate chips, pouring a handful into his palm and holding his hand out to Mathilde. Mathilde asked,
can we talk about something less gloomy?,
for she was supposed to be the shadowy, sensational one. Claudio was supposed to be her balloon, pulling her out of her rumbling, showboating despair.

I guess,
said Claudio. He too had been asking himself that question for twenty-three years.
Let's talk about your legs.
He touched Mathilde's left leg. Her wet, bald left.

What about them?

About how they just won't quit.

Darling. You're making me blush.
Mathilde's counter came out artificial-sounding, her voice emboldened.

I read a sad poem about legs, once.

By who?

My sister, Jane, wrote it and gave it to me for my birthday. It didn't make a very good present, because it was so sad. But it stuck with me. I still have it.

Claudio hadn't told Mathilde much about his sister, except for,
she's in a hospital.
A disquieted Mathilde had asked him what illness she had, and he'd said,
it's not physical,
so she hadn't pried.
Show me.

Claudio turned off the faucet and dried them both off, then walked into his room. He came back in a bathrobe, holding the poem.
Okay, kid,
he said. Droplets of water clung to his neck.

Fins

He said you could do a helluva lot with them. You could stick

a cigar up there, he said. You can wear them to bed

or to the ball. He said god must've been generous

with my legs but also that they were trouble. Long, unlonely,

unsalted pretzel sticks. There for decoration.

Put anything on them and they will stand.

Cover those cornstalks with boots, somebody else said.

Cover those thighs with chaps, cover those feet

with another pair of feet.

Maybe he was a religious man or something

but he kept mentioning god like he was in the room.

He said it's like two or three of the best architects in the world

designed those legs. I didn't know if he was still talking

about god then, I felt like a fool for not knowing.

He said he would play one like a piccolo

if I'd let him. When I looked down

at my legs then they appeared blurred

and drippy. Like the left one was leaking

or something.

When Claudio finished reading, tracing the words with his fingers, neither spoke. He always thought the poem was written to keep some other words from coming out of his sister, existing in a preventative way, like the Electoral College. Finally, Mathilde cracked the silence.
I thought we were going to talk about happy things.

You're right, Legs,
said Claudio.
Can I call you Legs? So I have a better association?

Boots,
Mathilde mouthed but didn't have the muscle to tell another sad story. She thought of her brother, Sawyer. She could tell Claudio a story about him, a lesser catastrophe, one to commiserate over.

This would be the beginning of Mathilde's cheery, cheesecakey nickname and the predecessor to Mathilde's calling Claudio other body parts: throat, ear, large intestine. They laughed for almost an hour.

She gave him all the tools he needed to hurt her, and he did the same. Wasn't that the logic in love?

W
hile walking home from school, thirteen-year-old Sawyer Spicer was attacked for the way his hips stuck out like a girl's.
Let go! Leave me be!,
he choked, spitting elisions through his tears.

The pack's leader was Neil, an unjustly handsome transfer to Lycée Français de New York in Manhattan, where Sawyer and his sister, Mathilde, attended middle and high school. Neil was handsome and decisive, and had made Sawyer feel large. The night they were assigned the project together, on photosynthesis, Sawyer went home and thought about Neil coming out of the shower. Sawyer loved boys from when he was young enough to love people in general. It was just another, more specific part of himself. He liked most people, and he liked to imagine boys naked. It wasn't so different from enjoying most food but craving pad thai.

They'd finished the project in under an hour, migrating downstairs to the bodega. They were rung up by the man who had tragedy-mask wrinkles on his face and who spoke every sentence like a question, one of New York's few remaining Jewish bodega owners. Neil and Sawyer brought two pastrami sandwiches to Sawyer's apartment, where Sawyer's doorman asked them both about last night's Giants game
. - Is this a date? -
Sawyer thought, then felt his skin flush lilac. He was a dweeb!

Neil ate like a sandpiper, mashing his face down into the sandwich, consuming speedily, unbelievably. When he finished his sandwich, Neil handed Sawyer the aluminum foil wrapper the way a child would do in the company of an adult. They talked for another hour, mostly about their families and friends.

I had lots of girlfriends at my old school, but one I liked the most,
said Neil.
Susan. We got to third base.

Wow,
said Sawyer, swallowing his spit, unsure of how to feel. Not exactly disappointment, because he figured Neil had girlfriends, more like he was in debt.

Do you masturbate?
Neil asked Sawyer in the same fluttery voice he used to talk about the girlfriends.