The Rest of Us: A Novel (7 page)

“I was twenty. What girl doesn’t do that at that age?”

“Plenty. There were those bossy girls that made their boyfriends buy them Monistat. Remember Gertie? Her boyfriend used to vacuum our place. She used to yell at him, ‘Mark!
Mark!’ ”

“Gertie was a hysteric. She made us take her to the emergency room for menstrual cramps.”

She waved this away. “Ever since that dinner party, the old man’s been coming up in conversation. Select cameos. As if you’re thinking about him a lot more than you’re saying. You’re not going to see him, are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, nonchalantly. “Maybe. I don’t have to make that decision yet. He’s not even in the country.”

She looked at me again, in that annoying, deliberately penetrating way. “You know that ‘separated’ is different from ‘divorced.’ ”

“I’m not looking to move in on him.”

“So you say now. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t go to that party. I hate couples who fight in public. It’s not good energy for me to be around. Already I’m aware that Adán and I used to have a hell of a lot more fun when we were dating.”

“I don’t know how you could have sustained that momentum.” The two of them had been crazy about each other and just wild in general—at a corporate party at the Gansevoort they’d been caught having sex in the rooftop pool. And then they tried it again, two weeks later. Adán made a lot of money, so their partying hit a level of extremism that I, and even Hallie, were unfamiliar with. He was from Madrid, and slightly older than us, with thick black hair and hooded eyes that when he got drunk made him look a little wicked,
like a satyr. What I found attractive about him was his vitality, not just sexual, which Hallie loved to boast about, but life vitality—the loud, warm laugh, a love of sharing, and a real interest in people and their ideas, even if, at times, his intensity had brought out the worst in Hallie, who hated to be shown up.

Hallie had moved on to a subject she liked. Adultery. She had a wealth of examples. “Did I tell you about my friend Dawn? The one whose husband was cheating on her and she got—hey, you remember her, you met her at a cocktail party at my house. Her husband’s from Guyana.”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, she gets it into her head that he could disappear. Disappear! Like a fucking elf. Because every time she thought she saw him out with another woman, she’d look again, and he’d be gone. He was probably ducking behind a car.”

My house phone rang. It was Adán. “Guapa, I am sorry to disrupt you, but my wife is missing. I have tried calling her phone three times. Before I make a missing persons poster I thought I should check at your house?”

I laughed and passed the phone to Hallie, who took it lazily, and I suspected that she knew Adán had been calling her and had chosen not to answer so that he’d have to track her down.

Even though it was freezing outside, she wore a silk dress with wide sleeves, an intoxicating pattern of black orchids that set off her white skin, the big green eyes and black hair. She resembled a burlesque dancer off-hours. Curled up on the couch, she murmured into the receiver. This was one of her mother’s gestures; Constance had had a range of movements and expressions that infused a sexy mystery into anything she did—it was part of her professional allure. In the 1960s, she had been considered a very promising film star and was often compared to Sharon Tate.

This was what I had heard, at any rate. By the time I knew her, Constance was spending the majority of her day in her bed, always made up as if going somewhere for the evening, her hair waved,
her valentine mouth painted a bright red, her deep-set eyes, which were seductively half-closed from the tranquilizers, done in neutral grays. In that light-filled bedroom, Constance reclined against her satin pillows like a gorgeous doll, indulging us with compliments and speaking offhandedly about her affairs with various directors and other screen personalities. We’d be over at her vanity, putting on her makeup and making pucker faces into one of the three mirrors that were adjustable to show every angle of the face.

“Darling, not so much on both the lips and eyes,” Constance would call over. “Choose one feature to accent—a man can be frightened by too much beauty.” Standing there, in the heavy Payless shoes my father accidentally bought a size too big, I was in awe of her. Everything about her. Her warm, sweet scent, her languid movements and throaty voice.

The year I turned eleven, I began imitating her heavy-lidded gaze and way of speaking at a three-quarter profile. Although I’d never seen Constance outside the house, not even in the yard, I imagined us out doing mother-daughter things together, like shopping for bras, and eating ice cream on those benches by the harbor, and having our nails done at the salon I always passed on my way to school. “This must be your daughter,” the manicurist would say. “I can see the resemblance.” This part of the vision felt a little far-fetched to me. I looked nothing like Constance, although she had said to me once, “I used to have lovely legs like yours when I was young.”

I should have been Constance’s daughter. We got along much better than she and Hallie did. Hallie was rude and gave one-word answers and said her mother’s room smelled like a nursing home, while I could sit on the edge of the bed for hours listening to Constance, watching her dab her lips carefully with a napkin, then tip her plate to let the cat lick quiche crumbs from it. When Constance said, “Terry, tell me
all
about your week,” I gave the most minute details, anything I thought she would find diverting or amusing. Mr. Feinberg and his car breaking down so we all had to push it. How some kids had been busted for drinking beers and smoking cigarettes behind
the town gazebo. Hallie glared at me—she had been behind the gazebo that day. After several of Hallie’s interruptions: “this is so boring,” “this is stupid,” Constance said to her, “Darling, fetch my purse and take out a ten and run down to Mr. Stevens’s. I need a new pair of eyelashes. Ask him to get them for you, he’ll know which ones. You can spend the change on whatever you like.” After she was gone, Constance and I exchanged glances. Both of us relieved.

It was shortly after the eyelashes errand that Hallie decided she no longer wanted me to come over. “We all feel you’ve been hanging around too much. Like a stray.” She and I could still hang out, she said, just not at her house. Which suited her, since her favorite activity at this time was either stealing or standing by the road, flashing her new boobs at cars. I knew within a week she’d be over it, but still it stung that when I rang for her, she had her visiting cousin come down and guard the door to prevent me from entering, while she cheerily called out Constance’s window, “Just a moment. My mom and I are talking.”

I wanted to cry out to Constance to let me in, tell her how horrible Hallie was, but of course I didn’t. I just waited on the porch, dreaming of my own mother. She was fiercely protective, to the point of holding grudges. If Hallie tried to come to my house, weeping out her apologies, my mother would slam the door in her face. Would she though? Or would she be charmed by Hallie, let her in, maybe even take her side against me?

It was frustrating how little I knew about her. There was a photograph that had been on the mantel ever since I could remember, and in it she was standing next to a horse, and so I had always thought of her as a great horsewoman, although my father said that was just for the photo—she’d never ridden one. Throughout the course of my childhood, I had asked my father what she was like, particularly when he pointed out a resemblance between us, but his descriptive skills weren’t very good, and he would often fall back on “she was a great woman. One of the best. And that’s not just me being biased. Everyone who met her thought so.” Then he’d tell me about the Christmas ornaments, and how hers would sell out first.

•  •  •

Hallie didn’t like to talk about Constance, but when she got off the phone, I hazarded a comparison. “The way you move is like her.”

“I’ve been thinking about her lately,” she said carefully. “I just hope she never knew my dad cheated on her. It really fucked me up. I still can’t get over that he did that.”

I had never really taken the infidelity seriously. I had the impression it only happened once, if at all, and not until Constance was starting to lose it, which was what Hallie should have been afraid of emulating—the painkiller addiction. When I was growing up, I saw Hallie’s dad as way below Constance’s level. He looked like a short and rather fat bird with an overbite I was certain he must be ashamed of, and he had some nondescript office job in New York City. Constance belonged with a movie star husband. I pictured her kissing Robert Redford in the theater—their faces blown up to gigantic proportions on the screen in front of them. Yet, amazingly enough, it had been this ordinary businessman whose life had wandered into the crosshairs of Constance’s and all her private demons. He’d put up with it, and so if years after his wife’s death he wanted to move to New Mexico and take up watercolor painting and open a Navajo jewelry store with a loud, brassy woman who fussed over him and called him her “bubbalou,” who the hell could blame him?

But this wasn’t a subject I was allowed to have an opinion on, and so I said, “It’s strange, isn’t it, that a lot of men can’t stand to be alone? They go from relationship to relationship.” Except for my father, who’d been a widower for life and had a perverse pride about it, the way some military people claimed “Vet.” “Why is this bothering you now?”

“I don’t know. These things just rise to the surface sometimes.” She bit her thumb. “Adán’s not happy in Jersey. He always wanted a house and now he says it’s so quiet, it feels like when he was a little boy and he was punished by having to go sit somewhere by himself.
He’s been talking about Spain incessantly. I think he wants to bring over some relatives.”

“What would you do? You hate strangers poking around.”

“I’m trying to talk him out of it, but I know it would make him happy, so I feel guilty about it. It kind of sucks. I like having the house to ourselves. But if I say no, he’ll hold it against me.”

How difficult marriage seemed with those sorts of emotional contracts and obligations. I thought of Rhinehart. How free we were. We could just get to know each other again, if we chose.

M
arty was standing in the doorway of the weedy back lot we shared with the hair salon next door, smoking, since I told him it was bad for business to do it inside, even in his office, even when we had no customers. He bent down and stuck his finger in the spider plant to see if it needed more water, and then pointed to the shared wall, hoping to coax me into conversation. “Shani asked about you. She’s been braiding this woman’s hair for two hours and she’s not even a quarter of the way done.” He shook his head, women’s hair being a perpetual mystery to him. “She wants you to come over and keep her company.”

“I’ll go over there later. I need to talk to her about redoing her head shots, anyway.” Shani had been acting in theater for years. Her last play at Cherry Lane, in which she played a blind woman, had been widely reviewed, and it was leading to more auditions. “She didn’t want me to show you her current set, since she knows what you’ll say about the lighting.”

As a photographer, Marty favored realism—there were no country accessories, fake flowers, or Communion altars in the studio. He was a perfectionist about technique, and we took honest portraits. I handled most of the in-house photography, and he did the events. He had a genial, middle-aged-bachelor love for bar mitzvahs, anniversary parties—anything requiring his blue suit and tie and that came with a complimentary plate of food. I used to go with him, but Marty behaved like an invited guest, often sitting down at the grandparents’
table and striking up conversation peppered with examples of his life philosophy: “Some people are real bastards but most of us try and do good.” People often mistook me for his date, or his wife, or his wife–business partner. With the studio, it was too much work for both of us anyway, so I now had him hire out.

“Don’t charge Shani for anything, not even the processing,” Marty said. “I’ll handle it.”

“She’s already forced me into a barter, you know. A full makeover. Since you’re paying, maybe you can get one, too.”

I reviewed the day’s list. There were two family portraits and a third-grader’s retake of his school pictures scheduled. I disliked photographing children. “You have to relax, Terry,” Marty said. “Kids pick up on your attitude. You should be telling them nothing bad’s gonna happen instead of getting all hunched up like that.”

Secretly I believed I worked best on days when I was in an awful mood. My theory was that a low-grade bad humor made me more intimidating, and even though the child sometimes had a worried look that showed up on film, a wary one-eyed squint, tantrums were rare. I dreaded tantrums. Seeing the kid’s face crumple, reddening above his knotted tie, I immediately started pleading, “don’t cry,” before the crying began, which would cause him to break down completely, kicking his heels against the stumpy white stool. “Why don’t you use the lollys?” Marty said, referring to the bowl of cheap, cellophane-wrapped lollipops he kept beneath the counter. But I felt I should be able to handle the situation without resorting to bribery. Such was the case today. The eight-year-old, a little man, came in wearing a bow tie and a cape, which Marty was able to persuade him to remove. His teenage baby-sitter stood near the entrance, staring into her phone while we worked. The boy had several stock expressions, two of which were smiles that were effective, and we were done pretty quickly. He thanked me, shaking my hand in a way that reminded me of the kind that contains a few bills. I was irrationally pleased. Marty was teasing me, saying he was going to start signing contracts with local elementary schools.

It was an abruptly sunny afternoon, and in my heightened mood I wanted to be outside shooting, and I asked Marty for the rest of the day off. I’d been going out in the mornings before work doing some street photography, whatever compelled me that day. The results were mixed, but I had promised myself not to be too critical. Then, two days ago, I’d had a breakthrough, when I realized I should be shooting in color, similar to Helen Levitt’s saturated portraits of the late ’70s and ’80s, where every day seemed like midsummer in that dirty city with its park bench graffiti and garish plastic signs and souped-up red Novas parked along the curb, while a man, dressed in tight yellow shorts and a sweatband, stood sweltering by a phone booth, waiting for his turn. New York, cast in these tones, had always been an exciting place to me, and even though it was the dead of winter, I could feel the bumping, kinetic, sexualized energy of mid-July. In my own work, I was most interested in capturing the relationships between people, the often split-second eye contact that held implicit agreements, impressions, fears, or desires.