Women Drinking Benedictine (7 page)

She was not sure they were listening, but she went ahead with her plan.

“I was thinking,” Amber said slowly. “The Hôtel Negresco in Nice has a very good lunch deal. Four-course gourmet meal for two hundred francs, which is actually quite reasonable,” she paused and then added, “as long as you don't convert it into dollars.”

She bribed them slowly and carefully. “It's probably my turn to treat you both to a good meal.”

Jane looked up from the
International Herald Tribune
. “Duck is very good this time of year. Even here on the Riviera. I wonder if the Negresco has duck.”

“It says here that the dining room has a domed ceiling decorated with twenty-four-carat gold leaf and the biggest carpet ever to come out of the Savonnerie workshops,” Sally read from Jane's pocket guide to the Riviera. “The chandelier was commissioned from Baccarat by Czar Nicholas II. It doesn't sound like the kind of place that wouldn't have duck.”

Amber nodded. “Yes. We could have duck.”

“Although duck is very fatty,” Sally sniffed.

“The walk from the train station to the Matisse museum is two miles,” Jane said, jotting some numbers on her newspaper.

“We could do a quick tour of Antibes,” Sally said. “I still have to go to the post office. Twice around the old town could be part of our constitutional today.”

“That's good,” Jane said. “That'll put us way ahead. We should be all ready for a nice big lunch.”

They turned to Amber and nodded their approval.

“I'll make a reservation after breakfast,” Amber promised.

“Whoever said money could not buy happiness does not know where to shop,” Sally clapped her hands—an Attr-ACTIVE woman, even here on the Côte d'Azur.

“The only dangerous food is wedding cake,” Jane said. They had heard this one before.

A slight breeze passed over the table, and with it came a moment of silence. Amber looked at her friends and thought that only a Frenchman would say they looked like angels. They should stay in Antibes forever.

The waiter arrived with their breakfast tray. And though the French have taken to buying their pastries and baguettes frozen and in bulk, the croissants at the women's hotel were served fresh and warm. There was always plenty of butter. Plenty of jam. Plenty of preserves. Honey or clotted cream upon request.

 

C
AROL'S STUDENT HAS FEW PROBLEMS
with individual words—it is sentences that give him trouble. Donald, her fifty-four-year-old student, begins the new paragraph, reading just above a whisper, then stops before the end of the second line. The Detroit Public Library is busy with people checking out books, and Carol concentrates on the shuffling noise at the circulation desk rather than on the silence in front of her. Donald lowers his head and moves his finger across the page.

“There are fifteen words in this sentence. It's too long.” He shows Carol the book as if she won't believe his claim.

“You know the words,” Carol says again. This is their first night working together, and she tries to be patient, but Donald has been complaining about sentence length since they started. “Read it aloud. Slowly. Then you'll understand what it means.”

“Adults read to themselves,” Donald protests. “I don't want to read like a beginner.”

Carol knows that in ancient times only the most intelligent people could read without voicing the words. Julius Caesar was considered to be a genius because he read without moving his lips. Messengers would stare in awe as he read the news of the State—his mind understanding, his body not showing any struggle.

Carol keeps her thoughts to herself. She does not like teaching people to read and knows her lack of enthusiasm makes her a less-than-average teacher. She only volunteered for the program because she is attracted to her next-door neighbor, Mitch, who is also doing volunteer work. She thought these nights of charity would bring them closer together. So far this has not happened.

Donald asks if they can take a water break and Carol agrees. When they return to their table, Donald finishes the article and they discuss his understanding of the material. At nine o'clock they carry the books back to the special program desk. Carol takes out his file and records what they've read and how much progress she feels he's made. His former reading teacher has made several notes, and Carol learns that Donald is serious about learning but easily distracted. He is also unusually talkative about his personal life.

Once outside, Donald offers her a ride. It is late June and the sky is full of pastel pinks and blues. The sun, like the kids playing tag in the parking lot, is stalling nightfall.

“My friend's here.” Carol points to the car parked in front of the library, where Mitch is waiting with his emergency lights flashing. Mitch has told her that he admires the way she cares about her students, and she wants him to see her talking with Donald.

“I look forward to seeing you again.” She dawdles for a moment to impress Mitch.

“Thank you for your help,” Donald says. “You're a very good teacher.”

Carol blushes. No one has ever praised her for her work. She's not certain she deserves it, but she's pleased by the compliment.

“Is that a new one?” Mitch asks when she gets into the car. The air conditioner is on high, and Carol shivers with goosebumps.

“New to me, but not a beginner,” Carol says. “His other teacher just quit the program, so I got him.” Her body adjusts to the cool air, and the bumps on her arm disappear. She asks Mitch how his night went.

“Dull. We went back to the house and watched videos.”

“Did he talk?”

“Three, maybe four words,” Mitch says. “I feel like quitting. If this is what it means to be a Big Brother, I don't want to do it. I'm not helping him like this.”

Mitch's little brother is fourteen years old and quiet. He prefers to watch cable TV at Mitch's house rather than play baseball or visit Boblo Island, an amusement park on the Detroit River—things Mitch had planned to do with him. One night he asked Mitch if he could mow his lawn, and Mitch told him he could do it whenever he wanted. It's the only thing he shows any interest in.

“You can't quit. We're in this together,” Carol says. If Mitch quits doing volunteer work, they won't have a reason to see each other.

Mitch nods and asks if Carol wants to eat pizza. She agrees, though she doesn't like the Italian restaurant in their neighborhood. The place is too loud, too bright, and there are always too many people. She and Mitch are not lovers, but Carol has been attracted to him ever since he bought the house next door. He is exactly the kind of person she wants to date. He is kind. He is interesting. He is good-looking. He has a job. He has all his hair and he doesn't complain about every little thing—a trait she finds difficult to deal with in both men and women, but especially annoying in men. Carol is used to men's attention, and Mitch's aloofness confuses as well as depresses her. As it stands, she has no idea whether he finds her sexually interesting, even mildly attractive.

On Thursday the secretary from the Literacy Program calls Carol at work and relays the message that Donald will not be able to make tonight's lesson. He wants to reassure Carol that he's serious about learning and that he will definitely be there next week. Carols takes the black magic marker and draws a large
X on
her desk calendar. Then she calls Mitch and pretends to be relieved that she has a week's reprieve from the volunteer job. She tells him that she'd still like to get together for dinner. Mitch asks if he and his little brother can watch TV at her house. The temperature at noon was in the upper nineties, and he knows his house will be a hotbox.

“My living room's not air-conditioned,” Carol says. “We could sit out on the back porch. There might be some sort of breeze.”

“Let's move the TV into the air conditioning,” Mitch says. “I have to get out of this heat.”

“That's fine.” Carol is delighted with Mitch's suggestion and considers it progress that he knows that her bedroom is airconditioned. She thinks again how uncomplicated it would be to start an intimate relationship with Mitch. They are already friends. They are familiar with each other's tastes in restaurants, movies, and other kinds of entertainment. They own almost identical homes. There would be none of the awkward getting to know one another that Carol finds so boring.

At six-thirty Mitch and Kevin arrive carrying stacks of styro-foam cartons full of take-out ribs. The milk shakes are dripping through the paper bag. They stain Mitch's clean T-shirt with circles of chocolate. Carol opens everything in the sink and transfers it to paper plates. She has been too hot to think about eating, and she doesn't know how they'll finish the heavy slabs of ribs, the quarts of coleslaw.

Mitch spreads a plastic tablecloth on the floor in front of the TV stand and the three of them eat picnic-style watching the news. Mitch is wearing shorts, and the hair on his legs is wet with perspiration. Carol watches him while he eats. Kevin is quiet, but seems pleased with the meal. He is engrossed in the television and seems to get more of the jokes than Carol does.

The food makes Carol listless. The night is duller than she had imagined. She tries to stay awake but nods off during one of the situation comedies. She jerks up when she hears Kevin's laugh. Mitch is in the kitchen trying to stuff all the paper trash into the small trash can. She opens a garbage bag for him and he fills it.

“It'd be easier to adopt a child overseas,” Mitch jokes. “Think how simple it would be to mail in seventy-two cents a day.”

“That's not the point.” It occurs to her that maybe the only reason he is sticking out the volunteer job is that he wants to see her. This thought pleases her.

He smiles. “Watching three hours of TV a night is?” He pushes the hair off her face and tucks it behind her ear. He is always doing things like this—touching her in small ways that make Carol feel he'd be a caring lover. They are alone. It is just the moment that he should kiss her. She waits, but he goes to the sink and washes the barbecue sauce off his hands.

As soon as Kevin and Mitch leave, Carol goes to bed. She thinks of Mitch's hand on her face and knows that they are getting closer. The next morning she's awake by five-thirty, feeling refreshed and ready for the day to begin. She showers, dresses for work, and then sits on the front porch with her coffee and last night's newspaper. The air is gray, and waking noises strike like echoes as they move across the silent city.

Mitch's side door slams shut, and Carol watches a woman walk down the drive. The woman smiles and says good morning, but Carol is too surprised to react. Instead she looks down at the newspaper in her lap and tries to understand the bold print of the headlines. Carol hears the sound of an engine, then the hum of tires, as a red Toyota disappears around the corner.

She knows it's not fair. It's not fair that Mitch slept with a woman after spending the evening with her. He has never mentioned that he was seeing anyone, and Carol suspects he kept it from her deliberately. She feels betrayed by his touch in the kitchen—betrayed that he would go on to touch someone else more intimately.

Though it is only six-fifteen, Carol decides to leave for the hospital where she works. She doesn't care how early she arrives. Her coffee cup is half full when she throws it at Mitch's bedroom window. She wants him to know that she's seen his woman. The leftover liquid swirls around the cup, but the shot is just short of the window. There is no sound when it lands in the tangled, overgrown bushes.

The temperature crawls past one hundred degrees and stays there as the week begins, then drags on, with the sun piercing steadily. The city traps the heat and holds it in the miles of cement. The windless nights do nothing to cool the air.

Carol keeps an eye out for the woman and her red Toyota, but sees neither. One night, stepping out of the shower, she hears Mitch's laugh, then the steady stream of his voice through the open windows. She flicks off the light and stands in the darkness, straining to make sense of his words. She is wet, and when the warm night air circles through the bathroom, she shivers. She sees the trail of phone cord as he paces in front of the stove. It is a relief to find him alone. She dries herself with the damp bath towel in the dark, still listening, trying to figure out who he's talking to.

On Thursday she crosses the front lawn to Mitch's house half an hour before they normally leave for their volunteer jobs. She makes a reference to the heat, saying that she is anxious to be in the air-conditioned library. Mitch is surly, short-tempered. He tells her that he is too hot and too tired to spend another dull evening with Kevin. Carol suggests they go to a movie theater, and Mitch says it's either that or the mall. She wants to bring up the woman but doesn't know how to do it without appearing jealous. Instead, she tells him not to despair. “The heat can't get any worse,” she promises.

Donald is standing by the water fountain, and when Carol walks into the library, he gives up his place in line.

“I was thinking about your name,” he says.

Carol did not expect him to be there so soon. She is slightly annoyed to see him already.

“Your name is like who you are,” Donald continues. “Care. Caring. Carol.”

“Oh, really?” Carol plans her dinner with Mitch. Since it is her night to pay, she thinks she will suggest a restaurant where they can order a nice bottle of wine. A place where they can be alone.

“It came to me this weekend when I was practicing reading,” Donald shows her a piece of paper with her name written across the top. The
О
and the
L
are crossed out and an
E
has been inserted. “You work just like your name. You care about people.”

Carol is uncomfortable with this praise. She is just about to change the subject when Donald does.