Mendocino And Other Stories Part 2

"What?" Charlie said.

"You pa.s.sed the test, Mr. Goldman."

"I did?"

"Don't look so morose. Go, take pictures with your middle finger, be happy."

"But my arm," Charlie said. "My arm hurts."

"Take the Dolobid," she said, standing up. "You said you'd worn a cervical collar for a while-do you still have it?" He nodded. "Wear it for a month or two. Sleep in it." She smiled. "You can call me if the pain gets worse."

BACK IN HIS own neighborhood Charlie wandered toward the frame shop, his arm twinging occasionally in memory of the a.s.sault it had suffered, and he decided to ask for the afternoon off. He pa.s.sed in front of a men's clothing store, and after a moment backtracked and stood looking in its window. Men at Work, the store was called-the other kind of work. It was a store Linda liked; when they'd first arrived in San Francisco they'd gone out walking almost every evening, and she'd steered them into this shop several times: she'd held up combinations of shirts and ties for his appraisal, saying he'd look great in this blue or that brown. Charlie was a jeans man, but he hadn't minded-he'd even tried on the odd suit to please her. He understood: he liked watching her try on clothes, too. It was a way of interpolating his love for her: Linda in the silk dress, Linda in the leather jacket, Linda in the slender grey suit-he loved them all. He thought of going in and buying a tie to wear as a surprise for her the next time he saw her-not one with little white dots, but one he actually liked-but then he thought that it would be much better to ask her to come with him, to help him choose one. It was really a pretty good idea-maybe he'd even let her talk him into a suit. Was it so hard, after all, to imagine himself dressed in a suit and tie, taking the bus downtown every morning? He could see himself carrying a briefcase, could even picture himself pa.s.sing through a revolving door and standing at a bank of elevators avoiding eye contact with the other people who were standing there. He could see himself stepping into the elevator, facing the doors, could picture the elevator rising smoothly and speedily to, say, the twenty-third floor-but then what? What did people do in those towers all day long? What was in the briefcase-a tuna sandwich and an apple? Charlie couldn't get himself out of the elevator.

At the frame shop he found Kendra, the nicer of the two owners, in the back room, cutting some mats. Cutting mats-now there was work that made sense. He was almost tempted to work his shift, but not quite.

"Poor you," Kendra said when he'd explained about the EMG. "I don't trust doctors at all anymore. Do you know, my gynecologist told me I should have a hysterectomy just because I'm forty-five and I have a little trouble now and then? 'We'll just take it out,' he said. Can you believe it?"

Charlie shook his head.

"If I were you I would go next door and have a nice cup of herbal tea, and then go for a good long walk. You probably just pulled a muscle! An EKG, for goodness sakes. You can't trust them."

He thanked her and left the shop. EMG, he thought. He raised his arm quickly and the pain drilled at him: still there. It was comforting, in a way.

At home Charlie sat down next to the phone. He missed New York, missed his friends-they'd never think to mention herbal tea without irony. And as for a good long walk, if he'd been in New York he'd have been instructed to get into a cab and go straight home to bed-much sounder advice. He longed to call one of his friends in New York, but whom could he call without having to tell about Linda? Instead he called his brother's office in Boston.

"Chuck!" Richard's voice boomed through the phone. "What's the good word?"

Was there one? Richard seemed to be in one of his increasingly frequent Hail-Fellow-Well-Met moods. "Nothing," Charlie said. "I was at this doctor's-she gave me this test."

"She?"

"Yeah-red hair, green eyes, white coat."

"Uh oh," Richard said. "l.u.s.t alert."

Who was this person? This was not the kind of thing Charlie needed to hear.

"I take it," Richard said, "that Linda is still among the missing?"

"You take it right."

"She'll be back, kid. She will."

"Yeah," Charlie said. "She just needed some s.p.a.ce." She'd actually used that word, which had made the whole thing all the worse. "s.p.a.ce." It wasn't how she talked-wasn't, Charlie told himself, how they talked.

"What'd you go to a doctor for, anyway?" Richard said. Charlie could hear him moving papers around. "Your arm?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm. You know, I have a theory about your arm. Would you like to hear it?"

"Not really."

"It's nerves, your arm. Ever think of that? Nerves, pure and simple."

Charlie waited in vain for Richard's dumb pun laugh. "It might be a nerve," he said finally. "Like I was trying to tell you, I had this test."

"And it was negative, right? Or positive, or whatever, but it didn't show anything, tell me I'm wrong. Have you never wondered why none of these tests shows anything?"

It was true: he'd had x-rays and blood tests and even a CAT scan. Would Richard have been happier if there were something terrible wrong? And there was something wrong. "I'm glad we had this chance to talk," Charlie said. "Give my love to Kathy and the kids."

"Charlie, Charlie, I'm sorry. I know it's a drag having your arm hurt, I do. But at least you have your legs, young friend!"

Charlie laughed: it was something their mother had said to Richard once.

"Charlie?" Richard said. "She will be back. You two are perfect together. You know what Kathy said a couple months ago? I shouldn't tell you this. She said she wished you and Linda were around more so the kids could see what a good marriage was all about. So there."

"Well," Charlie said. "I guess we showed her." He attempted a laugh. "Is everything OK?"

"Yeah, yeah. You know how it is. It's one day, then it's the next day. What can you do? You just go on."

This struck Charlie as immeasurably sad, and as soon as he could he made an excuse and got off the phone. You just go on and on and on.

He went into the bedroom and pulled open the bottom drawer of his dresser. There, wrapped in a dingy old plastic bag, was his cervical collar. He put it on and looked in the mirror: the man in the big white doughnut. To h.e.l.l with neckties-he was taking the idea of the turtleneck to new limits. He felt like calling Dr. Price, but what could he say? Excuse me, but are there any tests to determine whether someone's really in pain? Excuse me, but are you busy tonight? He took a Dolobid and two codeine tablets and got into bed.

PEELING SHRIMP, LINDA had said once, was like giving birth-no one ever told you how horrifying it was, you had to see for yourself. Charlie was peeling a pound of jumbo and not minding it at all: she had invited herself for dinner. As he worked he sang along to "Just Like a Woman" and allowed himself to hope that she, that tonight.... But she'd taken her diaphragm with her, he'd checked-she'd probably taken it because she'd known he would check-and while Charlie felt in his heart of hearts that a baby was just what they needed, Linda was unlikely to see it that way.

For that matter, s.e.x wasn't really the issue.

What was the issue?

By seven o'clock everything was set. The shrimp were ready for sauteing, the snow peas and carrots were ready for boiling, the shockingly expensive raspberry tart was hidden in a cabinet, and the wine, on which Charlie had spent most of an afternoon's pay, was icy cold.

By 7:30, everything looked a little wilted.

At eight Charlie put on his cervical collar and sat on the edge of the bed. He thought of Dr. Price saying, Go, take pictures with your middle finger, be happy, and he hoped that she would remember what she'd said to him and be stricken by remorse-prefer-ably tonight. And she'd call him and say, Charlie, I didn't mean it, I want to help you. When the phone rang at 8:30, though, it was Linda.

"Charlie?" she said.

He held the receiver away from his ear while she recited her apologies-something about work, something about Kiro. After a while he broke in. "Let me guess: you'll call me soon. Good-bye." He hung up, and when she didn't call back he returned to the kitchen and threw away the shrimp and the snow peas and the carrots, forced them into the disposal with a wooden spoon. He took the tart from its hiding place and carefully lifted it out of its box. Holding it with both hands, he leaned over the sink and quickly ate half of it. He was about to have another bite but instead said, "That's disgusting," and let what was left fall from his hands. He could feel the glaze on his cheeks. He started out of the kitchen but immediately turned back and shook pepper over the remains, just in case he changed his mind.

IN HIS DREAM Linda was about twenty-three, in blue jeans but neat in blue jeans-blue jeans that she'd ironed. They were new in New York, living in an apartment that was like one they'd lived in but smaller and darker and dirtier, and she was stacking things: stacks of dishes, stacks of books arranged by subject, stacks of his socks and underwear. He was lying on the naked mattress watching her, and she was babbling, threatening to alphabetize the spices while at the same time relating to him a story about her aunt Marge, the "funny" one-and they were happy, happy.

And when he woke she was there, but not in blue jeans. She was sitting upright on a chair by the door, her purse in her lap, wearing a pair of what she called "slacks" and a blouse and blazer-looking, Charlie thought, like a woman waiting to be interviewed for a job. He propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look, then sank back onto the bed. "Thanks for knocking," he said.

"I did," she said eagerly, seeing that he was awake. "Several times. And I rang the doorbell. I guess you're still a heavy sleeper."

"You were expecting major changes? It's only been three weeks."

She came over and sat on the edge of the bed. "I'm really sorry," she said. "Really, really sorry." She touched the cervical collar. "Poor thing."

He ripped open the Velcro fastening and tossed the collar to the floor.

"Please," she said. "Please forgive me."

"OK," Charlie said. "I forgive you."

She bent down and kissed him quickly, awkwardly, on the jaw. "I'll make us some breakfast, OK?"

When he had dressed he found her stretched out on the living room rug, balancing in her lap an old accordion file she kept in a small wooden trunk they used as an end table. She was sipping from a cup of coffee, and it was such a familiar sight that Charlie was moderately cheered: perhaps this was simply another phase of their life together. He got coffee for himself and stretched out next to her.

"Actually, you do look awfully thin," she said. "Have you been eating?"

"Mostly sugar in various forms. It gives me a certain clearheadedness."

"And so good for you." She sipped her coffee. "Did you pour pepper on a tart?"

They laughed, and she leaned over and kissed him again, easily; then she began looking through the file.

"What are you after in there, anyway?" Charlie said.

"My old address book-Kiro wants me to get in touch with Mackenzie about something."

"Oh." Mackenzie was an old professor of hers-it seemed to Charlie that he wasn't supposed to ask about what.

"Oh, look." Linda pulled a postcard from the file. "I can't believe it-remember this?" She held the card up for him to see: it showed a row of tiny cabins and a big sign that grandly proclaimed, KENABSCONSETT INN-LODGE, CABINETTES. "Remember our cabinette?"

"You mean cabinet?" Charlie said. He remembered: a dank little bathroom, fringed chenille curtains, a bed like a topographical map. Somewhere in Maine. It had poured rain the entire time they were there, and they'd gone to the "lodge"-a little matchbox of an office with an easy chair crammed next to a fireplace-and bought fifty-two copies of this postcard so he could make them a deck of cards.

Linda turned the card over. "King of clubs," she said. "Remember?"

Charlie took the card. The king of clubs had been the best one: he'd drawn a cave man wearing an animal skin, a long-armed club over his shoulder. He hadn't known she'd saved it. He looked at her, and it seemed to him that she wasn't remembering as much as he was. It hadn't been just any weekend away but one organized around a particular date, September 25, 1981, and a particular purpose: the celebration? commemoration? of the fifth anniversary of the first time they'd slept together, their annual marker back in the days before they had a wedding anniversary to observe.

"Remember the lobster rolls?" she said.

He handed her the card and took his coffee cup into the kitchen. He saw the raspberry tart still lying in the sink, and he folded it into the drain. When he looked up Linda was standing in the doorway, watching him. "Are you OK?" she said.

"I'm great. I'd have to say I'm really just thriving."

"Charlie."

He shrugged and turned back to the sink to wash his coffee cup. There was a rule he seemed to be living by: do everything you can to make her want to stay away for good.

"Listen," she said. "Do you want to drive over to Walnut Creek with me today? I was going to go look at the site, maybe do some sketches. Kiro was there yesterday afternoon and I think he wanted me to go this weekend."

"I guess," Charlie said. Kiro, Kiro, Kiro. "What do you mean you think he wanted you to go? Did he ask you?"

"Kiro is amazing," she said, shaking her head slowly. "He doesn't have to ask for things. People just know what he needs, and they want to give it to him, whatever it is."

"Great management technique," Charlie said.

THE FOG WAS lifting in the East Bay; by the time they got to Walnut Creek the sky was clear, the air warm. In New York it would have been a treasure of a day, a tantalizing hint of spring, an occasion for buying bunches of tulips for your wife-but at least he was with his wife. "G.o.d," he said, "You forget you live in a state where it can be seventy degrees in November. It's always so damp and cold in the city."

"It's bracing," Linda said. "I like it."

She led him up a small rise, to a clearing backed by grey-brown hills. "Brilliant," she breathed. She turned to Charlie. "He thinks we should design a kind of medical village, which I think is genius now that I've seen this place, don't you? A sort of main house for the information desk and all the administrative offices, and then behind it, conforming to the line of the hills, an S of cottages attached by covered walkways. And everything connected underground, where the labs would be." She touched his arm. "What do you think?"

Charlie shrugged. "Kiro knows best."

Linda took a sketch pad from her shoulder bag, and he crossed the clearing and began to climb the hill behind it, through low scrub and rocks. When he got to the top he was winded and sweating lightly; his elbow ached. He sat on a boulder and looked down at the clearing. Linda looked tiny and serious-she looked as if she had nothing to do with him. Look up, he commanded her. But she was absorbed in her sketching.

Charlie lowered himself from the boulder onto the ground and lay back. The thing was, he didn't know how to think of their marriage as troubled; it had always seemed to him that they got along very well-no fights. He wondered if he could possibly unravel their lives back to the beginning of the trouble, and as he was wondering this another date from their shared past came to him: Halloween, 1983.

They were living uptown then, on 113th Street, in one of the nicest apartments they ever had; Linda was getting her master's in architecture at Columbia. Charlie worked at a camera store on 96th Street, and on his way home each evening he'd go up to Avery Hall to see if she was ready for a dinner break.

Remembering a jack-o'-lantern they'd carved one Halloween in college, Charlie picked up a pumpkin on his way to look for her that afternoon. She wasn't in any of her usual places, though, and none of her friends had seen her all day. He walked back down Broadway under a heavy grey sky and decided that he wouldn't start to worry until he got home and she wasn't there. But she was: the apartment had an unusually large kitchen with a view south, and Linda was standing at the sink washing dishes. She barely looked at him when he said h.e.l.lo. He put the pumpkin on a chair and took off his coat, and when he turned around he realized why it all seemed so strange. The table and the counters were covered with dishes; every dish they owned seemed to be out. He couldn't tell whether she had already washed them or was about to. "What are you doing?" he said.

She turned from the sink, her hands gloved with suds, and began to sob. "You don't care if things are clean," she cried. "It's totally up to me. Do you realize we've never washed our wedding china?" She waved at a stack of the formal, flowery plates; he didn't point out that they'd also never used them. "I don't mind," she said. "I like things to be clean. But you just ought to realize..." Her voice trailed off and she turned back to the sink, plunged her hands into the water, and began to sob harder.

And here was his mistake. He'd said, "Realize what?" He'd stood behind her without touching her and said, "Realize what?" And that evening he asked her again and again, until she finally told him to stop asking, she was fine. That was where they'd taken their wrong turn: into a place where you couldn't tell the difference between polite and happy, to this point, this dry hillside, this separation. When it was so simple, what he should have done: taken her in his arms and said, Darling, darling, please don't, please forgive me for whatever it is I've done to upset you, please, you're my beautiful girl-my dahling, lovely gehl, like a character in an old movie-and they'd be wonderful now; they'd be fine.

HE FOUND HER back at the car, looking over her exquisite sketches-he loved her sketches, had always loved them. "You're very good at what you do," he said.

Once she would have said, happily, "Really?" Now she laughed a little dismissively and said, "So are you"-and he wondered what it was she thought he was good at.

"Charlie?" she said. "It's getting a little crowded at Cynthia's."

Cautiously, hopefully, he nodded.

"She hasn't said so, but I think she'd like her privacy back."

"It's a small apartment."

"Here's the thing-Kiro's offered me his carriage house for a few months." She looked at him, then quickly looked away.

"Kiro?" Charlie said. "This is all about Kiro? Jesus, Linda-too bad I'm not some fastidious little j.a.panese architect, is that it? He probably doesn't even have any hair on his chest." He slammed his fist against the car. "I can't believe you."

Charlie had met Kiro once; he remembered him as a small man in a double-breasted suit-a tiny man, really, who smoked tiny black cigarettes and drank a vile drink called a negroni: gin and sweet vermouth and Campari or something. Kiro's philosophy of life was probably cryptic and pretentious, his carriage house full of smooth black stones and thousand-dollar orchids, no furniture. She could sleep on the stones and eat the orchids, and then they'd see.

"Charlie, listen," Linda said. "This isn't about s.e.x, I promise. Kiro is just my friend, my very-my very kind friend. He's not the issue."

"What's the issue, Linda?"

"I just"-she hesitated-"need some s.p.a.ce right now."

That word again. He turned away from her, and because there was nothing else to do he got in the car. He watched her standing there, pretending to be looking at her sketches, her beautiful sketches. His wife.

She gathered her things together and got in next to him.