The Brutal Language of Love (12 page)

“See,” I said, as he continued to dot my face gingerly. “You still like me.”

“I never said I didn't like you,” he said.

At work a few days later I came clean with Evelyn.
About everything. “I told you not to call him,” she scolded me, but she laid off when I started crying. She did make me promise not to beg Jonathan as I had done with Doug, and I meant it when I said I wouldn't. For a second she looked as if she were going to cry, too. I thought about hugging her, but I was saving that for the day I left. Finally she looked up at the ceiling and asked God, “Where did I go wrong?” We both laughed at the idea that she could be my mother, and before things got too sentimental, she excused herself to get her heel fixed.

I went in the back room and gathered up the lingerie the three of us had picked out for me. As I put it all back on the racks, Mina said, “No! Not that one!” about a camisole she was particularly fond of. I thought about how much I liked her and Evelyn then, and how much I would miss them once I was gone.

Evelyn had still not returned when I was finished with the lingerie, so I fished Jonathan's baseball out of my purse and asked Mina if she would give it to him after I left. We were standing behind the cash register like we always did, ignoring all the customers.

“No problem,” Mina said, and I appreciated the way she quickly put the ball into her own purse.

“Do you think I'm doing the wrong thing?” I asked her a few minutes later.

She laughed and shook back her long brown hair, with all its strange layers and broken ends. “Of course not,” she said. “It has his name on it.”

Penny stood on a stepladder outside the movie
theater where she worked, changing posters in the glass cases. It was between rushes on a Monday afternoon, and Fritz was ignoring her from inside the ticket booth, hunched over an old sociology textbook. A thin blond man approached the ticket window and asked Fritz a question. Fritz pointed to Penny, then returned to his book. The man nodded and began walking her way. For a second she wondered if she had a secret admirer, or had won the Publishers Clearing House. But he was only a film student from the local university, wanting to make a documentary about projectionists.

Penny was slightly disappointed, but agreed to appear in the man's movie. He said his name was Leonard and told Penny he just wanted to ask her a few questions and film her doing her job in the projection booth. “A piece of cake,” he said. They shook hands and set a date. Penny checked to see if Fritz had witnessed any of this, but he was still reading.

Fritz was a college dropout who had worked his way up from concessionaire to head of floorstaff. Penny, who had barely managed to graduate and was subsequently rejected from business school, had worked her way up to projectionist. They had met and fallen in love at the theater, where they immediately began cultivating a torturous history filled with breakups and crying. Most of this took place between rushes, in the privacy of the projection booth. They always got back together, though, Fritz missing the sex and Penny the love. She supposed if she had friends they would tell her this wasn't really love, but she was upstairs in the dark most of the time, developing only her relationship with Fritz.

When Penny told Fritz about Leonard's documentary, he didn't bat an eyelid. For it was generally Fritz doing the breaking up and Penny the crying—followed by the pining—thereby rendering him incapable of jealousy. Oh well, Penny thought, retreating to the booth so she could unbutton her white work shirt and feel the lump in her right breast: she was facing grave illness now and that was all that mattered. Fritz was genuinely concerned for her; she didn't need jealousy to keep him.

Meanwhile, she had no health insurance. She worked as many as fifty hours a week sometimes, but her job description was officially part-time, and she was nonunion. However, for such a serious medical condition, she felt her father, a wealthy immigrant who held her in low esteem, might be willing to cover expenses. She saw this as something over which they might come together, a way to help him forget that she had not gotten into graduate school.

Penny called her father collect from her office in the projection booth, where everything was coated in a thin layer of mechanical grease. It was more embarrassing to say the word
breast
to him than to ask for money, though she managed both. His answer was no. Penny became hysterical and her father complained he could understand little of what she said when she was crying. As soon as she quieted down he said no again, this time with more sympathy in his voice. Penny touched the lump in her breast to make sure she wasn't imagining things. “But why?” she asked him.

“Try to understand,” her father said. “You're twenty-five years of age. I can't keep giving you money.”

“I know,” she said.

“You need a job which provides insurance.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Somehow you must move into the business world, which is burgeoning. A secretarial position in which you could rise through the ranks would be ideal.”

“I can't type.”

“You could pursue a typing course. I would be willing to pay for that.”

“Could I take the money for the typing course and put it towards my biopsy?”

“The money is applicable only to typing.”

Penny started to cry again. “Why?”

“I told you, Penelope. I can't understand you when you weep.”

She calmed herself down. “I feel depressed.”

He said, “I already paid for therapy.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes we just have to pull ourselves up and forget how we feel.”

“I know I would feel less depressed if you would help me with my biopsy,” Penny said, trying out the straightforward language the therapist had taught her.

“In fact you wouldn't,” her father said. “And if you stop to think about it, a typing course does help with your biopsy because it will lead you to a job offering health benefits.”

“But I can't wait that long. The surgeon says I need a biopsy now.”

“Have you gotten a second opinion?”

“I can't afford one.”

“I would be willing to pay for that.”

Penny was losing control of herself again. “I can't leave my job,” she cried. “I love Fritz.”

“Once again,” her father said, irritated, “I can no longer comprehend you.”

“Fritz!” she said loudly. “I like working with him.”

“But it doesn't matter where you work! If Fritz loves you now, he can only love you more once you make self-improvements.”

“It does matter,” she insisted.

“Fritz,” her father mumbled. “This is an unsuitable character. Which traits does he possess after which you might model yourself?”

“He's worried about me,” Penny said.

“I'm worried about you,” her father countered.

This made her feel better for a moment—younger—so she said, “Please help me this one last time, Daddy.”

She hadn't called him that for many years and it silenced him momentarily. “Well,” her father said at last, “I have decided I will help you. Okay. What you will do is the following.”

He explained that she should contact every free clinic and welfare office in the city, looking for financial assistance. Even if the answer was no, she should be sure to obtain documentation of at least having tried, for he could not write any checks without such proof of her efforts. “So you see, you can depend upon me this one last time,” he concluded.

“Thank you,” Penny said.

“But really, Penelope, you're much too old for this.”

“Yes,” she said, drying her face.

“A job in the business world would require a neat haircut and a navy blue business suit, both of which I would be willing to subsidize,” he added.

“I'll think about it after the biopsy,” she said, “if I don't have cancer.”

“If you do have it you'll definitely need health insurance,” he noted.

“I agree,” she said.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

“I will purchase a bus ticket for you to come and see me as soon as you specify a date.”

“Okay,” she said, and they hung up.

He lived only a couple of hours away, and liked to tell her when she visited that she should think of his home as a spa, a place where she could just relax and forget all her troubles. If she had packed a modest ensemble, he might schedule an evening out with friends from work or his church. These were invariably kind people who had a clear affinity for Penny's father, and so she studied them closely, anxious to learn how she—his own daughter—had managed to misplace her affections.

Fritz came to see her between the five and seven o'clock rushes, and listened as Penny described the conversation with her father. She cried again when she was finished, and Fritz held her close, his black polyester work vest scratchy against her face. “Don't worry about money anymore,” he said, moving his hand lightly across her shoulder blades, then down over her bottom. He brought it back up again, around front, and began unbuttoning her work shirt. “I'll check your lump,” he murmured, squeezing her breast in gentle, concentric circles. His chest was broad from lifting fifty-pound bags of unpopped corn, his erection persistent against her stomach.

The day of the interview was at hand. Leonard
arrived with a scraggly classmate, Max, who would run the video camera. They set up their equipment in Penny's office, while she made her way down the length of the projection booth—really the entire second floor of the theater—threading all the two o'clock shows. It was an old fourplex that screened art movies, and sometimes the governor, who was cultured, showed up on weekends.

For the interview they seated Penny on a stool at her work table, where she built all the films that came into the theater. They shone lamps on her and clipped a microphone to her favorite orange T-shirt. Leonard turned her face gently to show her how to catch the light, and she felt conscious of any makeup that might have rubbed off on his hands, though he didn't seem pressed to wash them later.

“Can I get you to say something so I can check my levels?” Max said, sitting on the floor behind his camera tripod and a sound mixer.

Penny read from a poster on the wall above him:
“Stanno Tutti Bene.”

“That's an Italian film, right?” he asked.

Penny nodded. “Yes.”

“Any good?”

“I didn't see it,” she said.

He turned a few knobs and said, “Ever get tired of reading subtitles?”

“Not really,” she said. Then she added, “It's a lot better than dubbing.”

“Perfect,” Max said, turning one last knob, and Penny understood he didn't care whether she was tired of subtitles or not.

Leonard took a standing position beside the tripod and they began. He had promised to ask Penny questions, but instead just said, “Tell me what it's like to be a projectionist,” and, “Talk about whatever you want.” Penny felt disappointed by his lack of guidance but obliged him by rambling—admitting, for instance, that she never watched movies from the booth because the sound was terrible. She went on to describe the perks of her job—naps and free movies—as well as the dangers, such as changing the volatile projector bulbs. For this, regulations specified she wear a welding mask and leather gloves, and at Leonard's request, Penny modeled these items before the camera.

When at last she had run out of work-related conversation, Penny told Leonard about her breast. She had a choice between a biopsy for eight hundred dollars or a lumpectomy for two thousand, both of which were considered minor procedures. Her surgeon was pushing the lumpectomy, but that was him, he had told her—he liked to cut things out. He was a vegetarian who worked in a wood-frame house, and Penny appreciated the way he gazed at the ceiling while examining her. If she qualified for assistance she would undoubtedly have to see someone else, which concerned her, since she didn't want anyone looking her in the eye over this.

Still, she had gone to the welfare office with her two most recent check stubs, dressed purposely in clothes that were too small for her and in need of repair. If she didn't look poor enough, she worried, the caseworkers might suspect her of having a rich parent and cart her away for fraud. In the crowded waiting room, she watched a little girl wearing sandals and only one sock braid her father's ponytail. Penny's own father's hair was coarse and made little ripping sounds when he ran a comb through it.

Later, in a fluorescent cubicle, a kind man with a foggy right eye regretted to inform Penny that she earned too much to qualify for benefits. He said she could cut her hours and come back again with two new pay stubs, but she explained this wouldn't be possible since she might have cancer, and time was of the essence. The man nodded gravely, and instead of rushing her out, observed a moment of silence for her difficulties. This had moved Penny deeply at the time, and again now, as she recounted the meeting for Leonard. She took a second to gather herself before concluding, “He would've helped me if he could.”

“Did you, um, look elsewhere?” Leonard asked, posing his first real question of the day.

A few places, she told him. But then she got depressed and didn't follow through. In the end she chose the biopsy because it was cheaper, and called the hospital billing department to set up a long-term payment plan.

The graduate students looked at her. After a moment, Leonard cleared his throat and asked, “Would you prefer the lumpectomy?”

Penny started to cry. “Yes,” she said. “I would. I want it out. Even if it's benign I want it out.”

She had not known this about herself, and having just revealed it to strangers made her cry all the more. Max quickly readjusted his sound levels and gave Leonard a firm thumbs-up. Penny felt very lonely and unhappy sitting there while the two of them taped her, yet she couldn't bring herself to ask them to stop. Leonard looked too thrilled, like he was going to get an A on his project with all this crying, and for some reason Penny wanted him to get an A.

Later, she followed the students downstairs and into the lobby, with its teal rug and red velvet cordons. “This is Max and Leonard,” she called to Fritz, who stood beside the popcorn machine looking smart in his black bow tie.

“Good interview?” he asked, and they all three nodded.

In the parking lot, Penny watched as they loaded the equipment into the trunk of Leonard's hatchback. Max shook her hand and said, “I know you'll be fine,” which made Penny think he had been listening after all. He waited in the passenger seat while Leonard hesitated, playing with his keys. “I just want you to know,” Leonard said finally. “Well, I'll drop the tape off when it's done.”