one) in the front yard. I was thinking about her and about the feeling that she gave me.
Two weeks later, after Jenny and I had done some gardening together at one of those communal gardens where you have your own section, collecting a few late-ripening tomatoes in brown paper bags we brought along, we went calmly up to her apartment. We took the tomatoes into her kitchen. I took two of them out and found a small plate and a knife, but my hand was shaking too hard for me to slice them. I put the knife down on the table and looked straight at her.
Then she took my hand and led me to the bedroom. She told me to forget about the tomatoes for a while. In the bedroom we lay down together and we shed our calm exteriors completely and I saw her and when she asked me what I wanted, I said: I want you.
Afterward she sang to me. What she sang was “Hail to the Victors.” She meant it as a joke and as an anthem. I learned how to do that from her. Her cat, Ralph, watched us from the dresser. I was miserable with happiness. Our souls had merged. I lay there and stared up at the string of red pepper lights attached with tiny hooks up near the molding, the ones I had bought for her, and I exchanged jealous glances with Ralph the cat who in agitation had knocked over a hairbrush, and I felt the cool autumn breeze blowing across my body and Jenny’s where our two souls were lodged, and I heard the Good Humor truck go by on the street, little glockenspiel notes.
Then we both went back into the kitchen and, naked, finished slicing and eating the tomatoes. They were delicious, and she had made me ravenous.
My idea was that I could save my marriage. In some respect I suppose I loved him still. Bradley took me to the Humane Society on a Sunday and we walked among the dogs as he held me, and I guess I named them individually even though I don’t remember doing so. I don’t see what importance it would have if I did do that, or if I remembered it.
We made love several times that day and each time I came—and I did, believe me—I thought of Jenny. I thought of the flower-garden smell of her soul and how I could just reach in and find her heart any time I wanted it and of how that would be the end of my loneliness here on earth. When he was on top of me, I would hold out my hands above him in the air and imagine that I was grasping her, her invisible spirit, in the air, terrible hypocrite that I am. No, actually, that I was. I stopped being a hypocrite. It wasn’t the right time to let him know that my soul had flown out of my body and taken up householding in Jenny’s. I sang “Hail to the Victors” to him because I missed her so much. I felt strong with her and weak with him. Empty and absent.
He said that he loved me but I don’t actually think that he did. Or maybe his love just didn’t manage to get into working order with me. By that time I had seen love in its final form. I knew what it looked like. It had freckles on its hands, the southern hemisphere on the left and the northern hemisphere on the right. And it wasn’t him. Or him with me. Or any combination of the two of us. She was flying my flag by that time.
He said he loved me and I stayed quiet and still. He had married me. You have to remember that. He had ringed me.
Several weeks later I told him. I told him about my beloved. His face fell in all its possible directions, my little husband Toadie, but then he composed himself and called me the only word he could think of, a lesbian. A goddamn lesbian. Well, when something hurts you, you can always find some dumb label for your accusation. Not just dumb but dumb. I picked up one of our vinyl kitchen chairs and threw it at him. It missed, by the way.
Anyway, what I’ve just told you was what prompted the chair incident. I had grown big, and he was trying to belittle me.
YOU THINK THAT what I’ve just told you is an anecdote. But really it isn’t. It’s my whole life. It’s the only story I have.
“I FOUND KATHRYN,” I say. “You know, she wasn’t at all hard to track down. She’s listed in the phone directory. She told me all about it. She told me about Jenny and how she left you and how she threw a chair at you. I’m sorry about that chair, I guess, but it’s still a good story.”
“Wonderful,” Bradley says. “That’s just great.” He scratches his hair. “But you should realize our marriage was a long time ago, all that stuff, her leaving me and all.” He hops up and down twice, an odd gesture. “You didn’t have to look her up, you know. You could have taken my word for it. Kind of a small-minded trick, if you ask me, finding people to bear witness to my past.” He grins at me. “Isn’t this an excellent fire?”
Bradley had called and arranged to meet me at a benefit for the Ann Arbor fire department. They’d be burning an abandoned house—two stories, an attic, and an attached garage, he said—out in the township. The firefighters would be showing the locals how they do what they do, and there’d be a suggested donation of four dollars to help the Firemen’s fund. Now we’re standing off to the side, in a ditchlike dogleg of the dirt road bordered by poplars and junipers, watching this old firetrap farmhouse burn, as the accelerants planted in the basement explode and speed the flames along. From this distance, the fire has a festive quality. Just ahead and to my left, one fire truck, a tanker of some sort, is spewing water entertainingly through a second-floor window, while the children in the crowd cheer and run around in circles. A Dalmatian sits on another truck, looking rather smug. On the right of us, the firefighters themselves, in their yellow coveralls, are watching with academic interest as the house burns.
“It’s a great fire,” I say to Bradley, feeling the heat on my face. “But as for looking up Kathryn, well, this whole thing was your idea,” I tell him. “Having everybody give me stories. Besides, the two of us, Kathryn and I, talked in your coffee shop, the one you own. It wasn’t secret or anything.”
“Kathryn. She’s still with Jenny?”
I nod. “She says men are really hard to love. Hard for her to love. We’re not very lovable, she says. Do I look lovable to you?”
“I’m not answering that. You’re going to have trouble with continuity, Charlie. By the way, you know what you should do? You should talk to my employees in Jitters. They’re just kids. There’s a cross section for you. Start with this girl Chloé. She pronounces it Chloé, not Clow-ee but Clow-ay—I don’t have any idea where she gets that from. Quite a girl. Excuse me. ‘Woman,’ I suppose I should have said. She’s got a boyfriend named Oscar. Chloé and Oscar. They’re sweet kids, but I don’t think they represent anything. You won’t get them to stand as symbols of today’s youth, too bad for you.”
I give him a look. He ignores me and keeps on talking. “They met at that fast-food place, Dr. Enchilada’s. She quit that job. She said she went home smelling of guacamole and that the karma was bad. The karma was bad! Really, you should talk to her. Incidentally, while we’re on the subject, you should stop talking to me. This is getting much too personal. But as long as you’re collecting stories, did I ever explain to you how I got the dog back?”
“No.”
“You’re going to think this is funny. I know you. It’ll make you chuckle. But it wasn’t funny at all. It’s a comic story, just not comic to me.”
MY SISTER AGATHA lives north of here, in Five Oaks. You’ve been there, I believe. She’s married to a guy named Harold, who happens to be a barber. A really incompetent barber, by the way, just as a barber, though he’s a nice guy in other respects, nice enough, anyhow, for what his daily life requires. “Nice” isn’t much of a virtue, though; kindness and mildness aren’t on
