The Last of the Wise Lovers (16 page)

"Are you sure?" I asked again.  He
shook the two pills out of his hand and placed them side by side again.
 They were so similar to one another that it was impossible to tell them
apart.

   I remembered the window.  I got
up and closed it.  He thanked me with a nod of his head.  From where
I stood he seemed small and helpless.  His eyes were again closed.
 His chest rose and fell.

   "Can I get you anything?" I
asked.

   He indicated `no'.  "I
don't want them to know.  I need this job." He rubbed his eyes and
tried to sit up straight in his chair.

   I supported him from behind.
 His back was damp with sweat. "What...
what
exactly are you sick with?" I asked.

   He didn't answer.

   I asked again.

   He waved his hand in dismissal and
began to poke through the papers on his desk.

   Suddenly I felt a wave of affection
and gratitude toward him.  I kneeled next to him and grasped his arm.
 

I said, "I want to be your friend."

   About ten minutes have passed between
the writing of the previous line and the writing of this one... I've read the
previous line over and over... and it seems stupid and ingratiating.  But
at that moment, in K.'s little wooden box of an office, I really meant it.
 My disenchantment with Mom, my suspicions of Dad, my boredom with Debbie,
and my embarrassment over Miss Doherty - all of them contributed to making me
want this man as my friend.

   He placed his hand gently over mine
and said, "That's kind of you, but it's already too late for me to make
new friends."

   I stood up and faced him.

   He bestowed another one of his wan
smiles on me.  "That's very... in any case... that was kind of
you."

   But I still felt the need to do
something for him, to proffer something, to give.  Again I thought of Miss
Doherty.

"There's something I want to tell you,"
I said.

   He didn't seem interested.

   "Something that happened here
yesterday, in this room."

   He started alert.

   "Someone was here and...” a few
people walked down the corridor outside, talking at the tops of their voices.
 "No," I said, hitting the plywood walls.  "Not here.
We'll talk outside."

   He wiped his forehead and glanced at
his watch. "During lunch hour."

   "Where?"

   "There's a bar on the corner
of...” he furrowed his brow in concentration.  "No.  The
newsstand across the street is better."

   I left without saying goodbye; after
all, we were supposed to meet again in less than an hour.

*

   At exactly 2:00 o'clock I stood at
the newsstand, watching the entrance to the library.  The glass doors
opened but it was Miss Doherty, not K., who walked through them, laden with a
large bag and carrying a heavy coat folded under her arm.  She glanced at
her watch, descended the stairs and crossed the street, heading straight for
me.

   I stepped aside, ducking into the
entryway of the camera shop next door.  She went into the newsstand and I
started off down the street, still watching for K.  A minute later she
said from behind me, "Hi."

   I turned around.  She smiled as
if we were old buddies.

"Waiting for someone?"

   "Yeah...
I
mean, no."

   "Yes or no?"

   "Yes."

   She pouted so sweetly that if I
hadn't been tense and preoccupied I would have been quite taken with her.

"Pity.  We could have gone for a drink
together."

   Her friendliness was suspicious.
 I mumbled something noncommittal, then stared right past her, over her
shoulder.  K. was leaving the library, dressed in an old raincoat.
 He walked to the edge of the sidewalk, poised to cross the street.

   I was embarrassed and even a bit
worried.  As far as I knew, they absolutely couldn't meet.  I thought
of signaling him to wait a minute, until I could get rid of her.  But he
got a jump on me when he lifted his glasses to his forehead, to see better.  I
signaled him vaguely that it was nothing.  He responded with a very weak
shrug of his shoulders.

 "I've got to go," I said to Miss
Doherty, and I turned down the street, to throw her off.  When I turned
back around, she was already halfway toward the opposite sidewalk, and K. had
disappeared.

   I looked up and down the street, at
the library and at the entrance to the camera store.  Then I crossed the
street and went into the library. I searched the corridors, the rooms, the
bathroom and, of course, his office.  The lunch break was already over and
Ms. Yardley was breathing fire, but I continued to search for him until the end
of the day - in vain.

   On the way home I continued my
search.  I walked around and around the library, I peered into the bars on
42nd Street and I walked the length of 5th Avenue down to about 34th Street.
 There wasn't much hope, but I couldn't stand another mystery.

   I could think of a whole bunch of
scenarios that would explain his disappearance.  Most of them were
connected to those little blue pills he needed - which reminded me of the
problems at home, and especially of Mom.  My concern for her grew so great
that the matter of the money she'd received seemed insignificant by comparison.
 I called her from a pay phone.  A truck that was unloading goods at
Macy's was making a terrible racket.  When I screamed, "How are
you?" everyone on the street turned to look at me.

   "What happened?  Why are
you calling?" she asked.

   "Nothing.  Just to see how
you're doing."

   "That's very nice of you.
 I was beginning to think you didn't love me anymore, the way you used
to."

   Just not that, I thought, just don't
start with that.

"So everything's fine...” I said with a note
of finality as I glanced at my watch: almost 7:00.  If she'd been all
right up till now, then I still had time to get home and hide the bottle of
pain killers.

   "Of course everything's
fine," she said bemusedly, "except for the fact that your Aunt Ida's
had a particularly crazy day.  She stole a bottle of pills from me."

   "What pills?"

   "Vitamins."

   "How do you know it was
her?" I asked warily.

   "I saw her fiddling with the
empty bottle.  She's hidden the pills themselves and she's not willing to
tell me where."

   "I'm on my way home."

   "I won't be here.  I'm
going to the hairdresser and then to a friend's.  There'll be food in the
fridge and on the stove."

   Even though the pills were missing,
whoever had given them to her was still plotting, and I hadn't a clue who he
was.  The man she loved?  No, it wasn't possible.  Was it K.,
after all?  That, too, seemed impossible.  Dad?  I didn't even
want to think about it.  The only thing I could do was to stay with her as
much as possible, to protect her as much as I could.

"Wait for me," I said quickly.
 "We'll go together."

   She was silent.  I could imagine
the surprise that she felt, after all those times she'd wanted me to go with
her so she could show me off, and I'd refused.

Finally she said, "No, I'm afraid today it's
impossible.  I absolutely must go," her voice dripping with that
sticky, sentimental sweetness I'd come to hate more and more.

  
*

   From the corner of the street I could
already tell that something was amiss at our house.  A strange car stood
in our driveway.  On the driver's door, under the county crest, it said
"Sheriff's Office".  The garage door was open.  I ran
inside, practically toppling a fat guy who was taking samples of something
sticky off the carpet at the top of the stairs.

   "Who are you?" he asked.

   "My boy," Mom answered,
coming up behind me and wrapping my arm around her waist, "my good, big
boy."  She leaned her head on my chest in a way that embarrassed both
the guy and me.

   "What happened?" I asked.

   "The old lady," he said,
"she swallowed something."

   "She was sick," Mom said,
"she was sick and not very stable."

  
The
guy looked at us dubiously.  Then he asked, "Is there a father
here?"

   "He's away on business."

   He sealed the bag with a strip of
tape. "You can clean up now," he indicated the carpet.  I looked
at him, uncomprehending, and he explained, "It's vomit.  Just
vomit."  Then he nodded his head at Mom and said, "Put her to
bed, she's had a hard day."

   After he had gone and Mom had gotten
into bed (and insisted I sit next to her and hold her hand "like you used
to when you were a boy," but without talking, because she had a terrible
headache) I found out that just as she had been about to go out, she had found
Aunt Ida sprawled at the top of the stairs, lying in a pool of phlegm and vomit.
She had tried reviving her with water, giving her something against vomiting,
and contacting Dad through the consulate's secret number. The last effort had
borne some fruit, because the consulate receptionist had sent over an ambulance
to take Aunt Ida to the hospital - where they determined that she had suffered
severe poisoning and had contacted the police - which Mom took as a personal
insult, considering that our house was spotless, all the food was fresh, etc.,
etc.

   But I understood only too well what
had
really
happened, and it filled me with dread.  I waited until
Mom had fallen asleep, and then I went through the house locking all the doors
and windows.  I found the empty bottle in the bathroom wastebasket.
 The cover and all of the pills were gone.  I stood and looked at it
for a few minutes, contemplating the fact that, with my unquenchable need to
know, I could have killed my great aunt.  My hands shook and my head
burned.  I got undressed and began to take a shower.  The water
didn't make me feel any better.  The last pill was still in my pants
pocket.  I wondered whether I should call the hospital and suggest that
they run tests on it.  I turned off the water, intending to go to the
phone.  That's when I heard the knocking.

   It was a thin, continuous knocking,
and it was coming from the kitchen door.  I ran out, dressed only in my
underwear.  When I got there, Mom was already embracing Debbie, who had
come to sleep over (which I remembered after several uncomfortable seconds) while
her parents were away.  I was sure that Mom had also forgotten that she'd
invited her, or maybe hadn't even meant the invitation seriously (sometimes
she's so anxious to please that she volunteers for things she can't possibly
do) but both of them looked at me as if only
I
was guilty of having
forgotten, and of something else that had happened of which I was not yet
aware.  I stood facing them, practically naked and shaking with cold, a
complete outsider.  They looked so attached to one another, bound by some
female solidarity, that I just had to do something to get closer to them.
 I went up to Debbie and gently took the backpack off her shoulder.
 It was as light as only a backpack containing a toothbrush and a change
of underwear can be.  Once, the thought that she hadn't even brought a
nightgown would have filled me with desire and expectation.  This time all
I felt was alienated and uncomfortable, seeing my girlfriend and my mother
hugging like that.

   "What's going on?" I asked.

   Debbie started to whimper.  Mom
glared at me reproachfully: "Haven't you a shred of sensitivity?
 She's just now calmed down."

   Only then did I realize how much had
actually happened before I'd gotten there, and that they had already discussed
it all and closed the case.  It was so like Mom, so indicative of her
total negation of my right to know, that I couldn't give in, even at the cost
of an argument.

 "Why can't you tell me what's going
on?"

   Mom tried to say something, but
Debbie yelled, "I don't want to talk about it."

   "That's not like you," I
said angrily.

   Mom said, "All right, now stop
it," and handed Debbie a tissue.  She wiped her eyes with a vigorous
movement that was meant not only to wipe away the tears, but to erase a
terrible experience.

   I couldn't hold back.  "In
case you've forgotten, you're not her daughter, you're my girlfriend."

   "All right," she burst out,
"if you really want to know, what happened is that your father scared the
life out of me out there, in the yard."

   I think a shiver of fear ran through
me, too, then, because Mom grabbed my arm and said very convincingly,
"Now, now, that's impossible.  He's out West, on business," but
at that point it was impossible to hold Debbie back.  She said that she
had wanted to take a short cut from her street, Sycamore, to our street, Elm,
so she'd walked through the playground and crossed the neighbor's yard.
 When she'd reached our back yard she'd seen Dad sitting on the swing that
hangs between two trees and staring at the only lighted window in the house
(the bathroom, where I'd been).  She had gone up to him and said,
"Hi, Mr. Levin," and Dad had gotten up in alarm.  She had tried
to reassure him.  "It's me, Debbie," and had come closer to ask
why the house was dark and if everything was all right, but Dad had said
something like, "Stop.  Don't come any closer."

   Debbie had asked, "Has something
happened?"  In a mean, hard voice, Dad had ordered her, "Get out
of here.  Go on," and had vanished in the darkness.

   Debbie had run toward the house,
which was dark and closed.  She had banged on the back door, on the
basement window, and finally on the garage door (if you'll remember, I'd locked
them all).  Finally she had tried the door to the kitchen.  Mom had
gotten there first, then me, and, well, you know the rest.