Acquainted With The Night Part 13

"I think so. Definitely a lady, anyway."

The transformation of Emily was so unexpected and disconcerting that perhaps it jolted something in my nervous system that subsequently made it possible for me to a.s.sume the Gila monster in the jar of water was alive. Perhaps.

At Hunter College the other day I asked my freshman students in Expository Writing to write an impromptu essay on a contention by Erich Fromm that education gives children a fict.i.tious picture of reality. I made quite sure to put "fict.i.tious picture of reality" in quotes on the blackboard so there would be no doubt they were Erich Fromm's words and not mine. One learns caution when teaching freshmen. I suggested they support their a.s.sertions with examples from their personal experience. After a half hour of quiet writing, a boy with braces on his teeth came up to me and asked, "How is the word 'fict.i.tious' used here?"

Surely the answer "as an adjective" was not what he sought. "What do you mean, how is it used?"

"I mean, well, what does it mean?"

One also learns, teaching freshmen, not to show surprise or any emotion that might discourage progress. "It means made up, not true, like a story."

"Oh. Thank you." He smiled happily and returned to his writing. I discussed this incident with a psychotherapist friend, who said that for her the real interest of the story was not that the boy did not know what "fict.i.tious" meant, but that he did not know how outrageous his not knowing would appear.

My own education, if more thorough, was equally unbalanced. As is the custom in schools, the teachers ignored connections and stressed facts, particularly facts regarding the Boxer Rebellion, Alexander Kerensky, the nature of scalene triangles, the names of the inns frequented or referred to by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dr. Johnson, the princ.i.p.al exports of Uruguay, and the names of cabinet departments (St. Dapiacl, an acronym now an anachronism). Up until the age of twenty-five I remembered it all, then slowly, like a sandy, weather-buffeted slope of land, it began to erode, except for the Tabard and the Mermaid. The Tabard and the Mermaid, like seeds luckily blown to more fertile meadows, took root elsewhere in my brain, where I watered and nurtured them because I cared.

When Rachel first went off to be educated I used to go to pick her up every day on the Riverside Drive bus, taking along Miranda, two years younger. Once in a while our trips were graced by the glorious double-decker bus, whose erratic schedule we could never master, unfortunately. But most days, silent and absent, Miranda would gape morosely out the ordinary-bus window, with a finger in her mouth. I naturally inferred boredom and resentment. When Rachel learned to come home by herself I said to Miranda, "I bet you'll be glad not to take that bus ride every day."

"But I won't get to see the statues."

"What statues?"

She confided that she had a private story explaining the freestanding statues dispersed along the drive between 120th and 81st Streets, which she regaled herself with every day, going and coming.

The first statue, a man on a pedestal, is a king, she told me. Beneath him, a soldier with a flag is holding a woman who is on her knees. The woman is really a princess but she's in rags. She is going to be put in jail and she's crying, "Let me go, let me go!" (113th Street, erected in 1928 "by a Liberty Loving Race of Americans of Magyar Origin to Louis Kossuth the Great Champion of Liberty"; below Kossuth are a flag-bearing soldier and a longhaired old man in flowing robes; they are gripping hands).

The next statue, Miranda related, is a man who looks like Abraham Lincoln, with a pedestal next to him. He is the father of the prince, and he is going to get a drink of water (112th Street, Samuel J. Tilden, "1814-1886, Patriot Statesman Lawyer Philanthropist Governor of New York Democratic Nominee for the Presidency 1876 I Trust the People").

The third is a man on a horse. He is the prince. He has heard the news about the princess and is going through the forest to rescue her (106th Street, an equestrian labeled tersely, "Franz Sigel").

Last is a lady on a horse. She is the same princess as in the beginning and she got rescued and that is the end (Joan of Arc, 93rd Street, armed with a sword, mounted on a rearing horse, "Burned at the Stake at Rouen France May 30, 1431, Erected by The Joan of Arc Statue Committee in the City of New York, 1915").

I was disturbed by only one omission. "Why didn't you use the Buddha at 105th Street?" (The "Buddha" is Shinran Shonin, 1173 to 1262, founder of the Jodo-Shinshu sect and presently adorning the doorway of the New York Buddhist Church.) "Oh, him. He was too big." Seeing my dismay, she added, "I did use him once. He was a magician. He was trying to stop the prince, who was going through the forest. He's wearing a frown because the prince got the princess." She hesitated. "But he's really too big for the story."

"And I thought you were bored."

"I was, sometimes."

I asked Harry at dinner, the night he returned from Washington, if he had thought of going up to Liv Ullmann to tell her he enjoyed her performance in A Doll's House.

"Oh, no. They were looking for obscurity."

"What's 'obscurity'?" asked Miranda.

He told her. "Anyway, I eschew celebrities."

We laughed.

"What is 'eschew'?" asked Rachel.

"An obscure word meaning avoid," he said.

"I don't believe you."

"It is."

"That's ridiculous." At twelve, her only pejorative adjectives are "ridiculous," "gross," "disgusting," and "weird." "I don't believe there's such a word. It sounds weird."

"Go look it up in the dictionary." Harry spelled it for her.

"All right. But don't eat my dinner. I'm coming back."

"She'll never forgive me," he said. "She's like the elephant."

"Because you still do it," said Miranda. "You ate the M &M's I got from w.i.l.l.y's party."

"They were out on the table. I a.s.sumed they were common property."

"You should ask before you a.s.sume anything," said Miranda.

Rachel was chagrined to find "eschew" in the dictionary.

"While you're there," I called in to her, "please look up the Gila monster."

"G.o.d," she moaned, very put upon. She read me what it said about the Gila monster. Of course I have forgotten most of it. I do remember that it has a "sluggish but ugly disposition," because I found the phrase, with its a.s.sonance, extremely suggestive, and I was intrigued by the choice of the connective "but." I also remember that there exists a "closely allied form" in Mexico named H. horridum. I shall doubtless remember H. horridum forever. These facts made me love it more.

After Rachel returned to the table I reached for my purse, which I had set down in the center of the kitchen floor when I returned from giving my cla.s.s the essay a.s.signment on Erich Fromm's educational theories. As I picked it up, somehow its entire contents spilled out. Harry glanced over at the array of objects scattered on the floor. "Where is your eye of newt?" he asked.

Every now and then he says something that makes me recall with jubilation why I married him.

"Eye of newt!" I laughed, crouching on the floor. "How do you know about eye of newt?" He reads mainly the New York Times and books on the structure of society and how it can be improved.

He shrugged.

"Come on, where do you know that from?" I challenged him. "Tell me where that comes from."

He paused, frowned, looked vaguely at the children for help not forthcoming. "Shakespeare?" he asked finally. "Macbeth?"

While I was putting my purse back together he said to Rachel, "By the way, how did you make out with the report on Thomas Edison?"

"Okay. Did you know that Thomas Edison was deaf?"

"Yes," said Harry, and "No," said I, simultaneously.

"Was he born deaf," I asked, "or did he get deaf?"

"He got deaf, when he was around twelve or fourteen."

"How?"

"Thomas Edison," Rachel began in warm didactic tones, "had a job on a train, selling candy and stuff like that. When the train pulled out of the station he would grab hold of an open car above the wheels and pull himself up. One day he couldn't pull himself up so he was just hanging, and he knew that he could be killed, so a man standing in the car pulled him up by his ears. And Thomas Edison heard something pop in each ear and his ears really hurt for a while after that." She paused in reflective sympathy. "They really hurt a lot, and he began to get hard of hearing. And then his parents took him to a doctor, and the doctor examined him and said he couldn't do anything and he was going to get deafer and there might come a time when he would be totally deaf. And then when he was grown up another doctor offered to improve the situation but Edison refused, because he said he liked living in his laboratory without outside noises distracting him, and he was used to it."

I said, "That is fascinating." Rachel smiled proudly, as if she had made the story up herself, which, given my ignorance, she might have done. "Could he hear anything at all?"

"Yes," she replied. "He wasn't totally deaf; part of the time he could hear if people talked loud. Later on he could read his wife's lips but it was easier for her to tap Morse code into his hand. He was married twice."

"Which wife tapped?" asked Miranda.

"The second. He taught her Morse code and asked her to marry him in Morse code and she tapped back yes."

I was growing ecstatic over this memorable information.

"Also," Rachel went on, "when he was about six or seven he went to this small school run by a man and his wife, and it was very crowded. They had kids of all different ages and didn't have time to talk to each kid alone. He came home one day after three months and said to his mother, 'My teachers say that I'm addled.' So his mother took him and went to the school and she said to the teachers, 'This boy is smarter than you are.' Which in Edison's case was true. After that he never went back to school. His mother taught him and he taught himself and he was reading college books when he was about ten or nine. But he wasn't good at math."

"What is 'addled'?" asked Miranda.

"Confused," said Rachel. "Like you don't know what is going on."

"Did you learn anything else important about Edison?" Harry asked hopefully.

"No. I don't know. I don't remember." She stood up. "I'm finished. You can have that if you want it." She pointed to the remains on her plate.

Harry looked disturbed as he slid Rachel's plate towards him.

"Miranda," I said, lest she feel overlooked, "you'll never guess what nice thing happened to me on the way home from work."

"You caught the double-decker bus," she promptly replied.

THE MAN AT THE GATE.

HE STOOD IN THE shadows, as usual, as Charlotte had come to expect. He was a part, by now, of the quiet late afternoon street that gathered her in when the working day was over. It was dusk, early spring. The air was warmish, and as Charlotte rounded the corner she could smell the honeysuckle, rising like incense. If she leaned over close, the honeysuckle was smothering, like an anesthetic. Such a powerful, rich scent-she imagined if she bent too close, its vapors might make her swoon with forgetfulness, or cause numbness or sleeping sickness, like some strange tropical herb. But this way, pa.s.sing a few feet away from the hedges that lined the front yards, she could revel briefly in the sweet-scented air. Then she drew a quick breath, for he loomed up too near. Charlotte was so preoccupied with the thought of the Harrises coming over later for coffee that she had forgotten to cross at the corner to avoid him. She hated to walk right by him, yet crossing the street abruptly might be too obvious a move. She went on, head down, legs trembling. She wanted to look up into his eyes, but she wasn't brave enough. When she reached her own gate, she turned furtively. He hadn't stirred.

Every evening the man-she always called him "the man" in her thoughts-stood at the wrought-iron gate in front of the house directly opposite hers and Fred's. She never saw him come, never saw him go. But he was always there, evenings, when she looked out the front window, or if she pa.s.sed by alone or with Fred. Mostly she pa.s.sed by alone. He was a thin man, not young, not old, and dressed in an old-fashioned way, in a light-brown hat, a tan belted raincoat, and dark pants. The top b.u.t.tons of the raincoat were usually open and she could see his white shirt, also unb.u.t.toned, with no tie. His long bony face appeared vague: lit by the street lamp it was waxen and expressionless. The jutting chin, hollow cheeks, and tan raincoat reminded her of a puny gangster she had once seen in an old movie on the Late Show. She couldn't remember the actor's name, but he too had kept his hat brim down low and his hands deep in his raincoat pockets. The man at the gate was sinister yet pitiful in just that way.

He had done nothing to frighten her except stand, evenings the year round: still, she was afraid. Coming home from work (she worked at a women's magazine, where she a.s.sembled household hints and amusing fillers for her boss's monthly column), Charlotte was careful to walk on the other side of the street. Fred once suggested ironically that she should greet him, stop to chat. But then Fred was full of outlandish ideas. From across the street she would steal looks at the man before lifting the latch of her own gate. Once inside she would peer out the window.

It was a peaceful green neighborhood of three-story houses in a sleepy section of Philadelphia. The houses, old and narrow, with kindly, worn facades, were set well back from the street. Nearly all of them had wrought-iron gates and small flagstone walks dividing the meager front lawns. Charlotte and Fred rented a top floor. In the yard of the house opposite, where the man stood, grew a magnificent dogwood tree that flowered lusciously pink in late April. For two years Charlotte had watched it bloom and quickly fade; this would be the third. It lasted so short a time, she thought sadly every spring: eight, maybe ten days. It waited all year for its brief blaze of pink, and then sank back into dullness to wait again. At night the street lamp gave the dogwood a lurid plastic sheen that made it hideous. But she loved to see it in the mornings. She would linger at the window sometimes before leaving for work, to take in the sight of the glowing pink tree. It helped prepare her for the day, while Fred lay sleeping, snoring and c.u.mbersome. With his head barely showing out of the brown blanket, he was like the great leatherback turtle she had once seen washed up on the beach, staining the sand around with dark blood.

She climbed the stairs slowly. "He's still there," she told Fred.

Fred didn't answer right away. He was sitting on the couch in his T-shirt and undershorts, tinkering with an old broken alarm clock which he said could be fixed. He had taken it apart; bits of shiny metal were scattered on the coffee table. Charlotte didn't care about the clock: she didn't need an alarm clock to wake up on time, and Fred didn't have to get up at any special time, but it was his latest obsession. He looked as though he had recently gotten out of bed. Charlotte didn't know why she was so sure of this. Perhaps it was his puffy, dazed expression or the dryness around his lips.

"Of course, what did you expect? He's always there."

She sighed, and set down her bag of groceries on the coffee table. She must remember to tell him about the Harrises, but not right now. "Did you look today?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "Nothing."

Fred had been job-hunting for two years. He had quit his old job soon after he moved in with her, just three months after they met. He had been working for an airline, doing something called "dealing with the public," but he was unhappy there. His bosses were fussy and gave him a hard time. Charlotte never knew which airline, or where his office was. It had seemed quite unimportant then, in the early days. There were other things to talk about. Now she found herself wishing she had known.

The airline was only a stopgap, though. His real work, he told her, was acting. He came from Chicago, where he had performed with several small theater groups and even had bit parts in two films, but they were obscure gangster films Charlotte had never heard of. She asked him, the first week they met, why he wasn't acting any longer. He c.o.c.ked his head in that appealing way he had and smiled his rueful, paternal smile. "Ah, well." Things had gotten messed up, he explained. After his parents' death, money problems-probate court, his investments screwed up by a crooked broker, now in jail. It was all too much. He had needed a job quick, any job, when he fled East. Luckily the airline job came along, but it was not the sort of thing he wanted to stay with.

Charlotte imagined he must have been a good actor, even though he wouldn't do any of his parts for her when she begged him to-not in the mood, he said. He was big and handsome in a rugged beefy way, though just a tiny bit fat around the middle when she first knew him. That would never do for an actor, she said, and she recommended a diet. And just a tiny bit gone to seed, she thought, feeling disloyal as she admitted it. That was from hard luck, but it could be fixed. Amazing what a little confidence, a little success and good luck, would do for him, when it came. Her father had looked that way once, she remembered, when he was out of work, and then he had perked up when he found a job.

He told her he was thirty-five. He appeared older to Charlotte, but if it made him happy, poor fellow, to say thirty-five, then let him. It was hard to tell a man's age anyway. His voice sounded like an actor's voice, deep and resonant, and he spoke well, probably because of his training. It was that voice and speech that first attracted her. No one had ever spoken to her in those low, deep tones. Compared to Fred, the others she had known were boys.

And he was funny, too. He had an offhand, bizarre wit. At least he made her laugh, and G.o.d knows she had needed to laugh. She was twenty-four then and living with her widowed mother, who scarcely let a day go by without reminding her that such a big girl would have trouble finding a suitable man. Charlotte didn't mind being so tall; she accepted it as she accepted most things in life, only her mother harped on it so. She was five foot ten and solidly built, never overweight. Statuesque was what people called her when they wanted to flatter her. Well, she had found a big man, and she displayed him proudly to her mother like a trophy. Charlotte reached just to Fred's lips. Big enough? she wanted to ask her mother. And you said it couldn't be done. Only it was too bad that when Fred met her mother he had been so quiet. Not funny at all. That was the first time she experienced one of his silences, and it was chilling, but she chalked it up to nervousness. Afterwards her mother said, "A hulk, but what else? Can he talk?" That was the end of that. Charlotte moved out and took an apartment, and soon Fred joined her.

She had great plans for him when he quit the airline. He would go back to the theater. He might not be a star, but he would work steadily, and cultivated people would recognize his name. She would help him. Charlotte was energetic; her healthy exuberant face shone with life and motion. Before her father died, when she was twenty-one, she had had many friends and was full of ideas for adventure. She was never lonesome, never neglected. She had been on the point of moving into her own apartment with two friends, but she took pity on her mother, left alone, and remained. She became quieter, would spend long hours at home doing nothing. Like a young child, she longed for a sister or brother to keep her company. At last she met Fred and summoned the energy to leave her mother. It was a relief to talk again, to live with someone she could talk to. Soon she felt like her old self. She was lively, her spirits expanded, she made plans for trips they would take and pleasures they would share, and Fred listened good-humoredly, not saying much, but that was his way. She bought theater newspapers and magazines for him, and on the bus going to work she would read them and underline anything that looked promising. For a few months he took her advice and went to auditions. He would tell her about them in the evenings, how he had done his prepared bit, a monologue from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, how the director had looked him over in an appraising, offensive way, how silly the other auditioners had been. Fred made those stories very amusing. Sometimes his sarcasm bothered Charlotte, though. The others couldn't all have been that bad, she thought. But then she knew nothing about the theater, really. It was a terribly cutthroat and compet.i.tive field, and it was no wonder Fred sounded bitter.

He was down on his luck, that was for sure. As he described it, there always seemed to be something against him. One day he had almost gotten a part, but the man who auditioned next turned out to be the son of a long-lost friend of the director. Another time they had needed an Italian accent, and Fred's wasn't good enough. Some actors have a ready flair for accents, but he wasn't one of them. With a little time to prepare, of course, he could have done it well enough, but according to Fred they didn't judge by innate talent, only by superficial things. He started going to auditions at night. Sometimes when he came home he smelled as if he had been drinking, or he looked rumpled. Charlotte always waited up for him with coffee. Often she would be waiting in Fred's bathrobe; it made her feel less lonely. He would say he had gone out for a drink with some other actors; once he said he had been in a fight, "Why don't you bring your friends home? You can all have a drink here, and I can meet them." But he never did. The phone never rang for him. All she knew of these friends were their names: Phil, Jeff, Mike. They could be anybody.

About a year and a half ago was when they had first noticed the man. "There's a man standing across the street," Charlotte said from the chair near the window.

"So?" He was watching Kojak and didn't like being interrupted. He kept the TV on all the time. This bothered her at the beginning, but gradually she got used to having lively voices in the background. She even got to like it herself. Fred didn't always watch it, he simply liked to have it on. Sometimes after a detective story he would grunt and say he could have done the main part better.

"I mean, he's just standing there against the gate, staring straight ahead. He's been standing there for fifteen minutes."

"And have you been watching him all that time?"

She fell silent. It made her feel so foolish. But after a week or so Fred caught a little of her interest. When dinner was over they would check to see if he was still at the gate. Once Charlotte determined to wait up and see how long the man stood there. But she fell asleep in her chair at twelve-thirty; when she woke at a quarter after two he was gone. The weather grew cold; it was dreary November, and still he came.

One evening Fred went out to the corner store to bring back a pint of strawberry ice cream, and when he returned he told her, "I spoke to your friend out there."

"No! What did you say?"

"Nothing much. 'How's it going, pal?'"

"Oh, no! I don't believe you."

"Suit yourself," he teased. "I told him to look up at our window if he wanted to see a s.e.xy item."

"You didn't." But she drew the curtains anyway.

To pa.s.s the time they sometimes sat on the couch and made up stories about who the man might be and why he stood there. Charlotte's were not pure fantasy; they were what she half believed.

"He's planning to rob our apartment and he's developing a very careful log of our comings and goings. Except you're at home so much that he's been frustrated so far."

"I see. And what valuable article in this apartment does he want?"

"I don't know. The TV. Me." She laughed awkwardly.