Men Giving Money Women Yelling Page 2

  It was a woman carrying a bag of groceries. “I saw a light,” she said. “I live on the block. I was making sure nobody broke in.”

  She looked all of us over. I couldn’t tell whether she was a nice person who was curious or somebody out to make trouble. Our two future residents happened to be standing on either side of me, and I had a silly impulse to spread my arms wide as if to guard them. The silent lady in the thick glasses, who stood to my left, looked a little like this woman who had just come in. They both had gray coats with gold buttons. “Is everyone from the state hospital?” said the woman. I didn’t know whether she was asking if we were all mental patients or whether everyone who was going to live in the house was from the state hospital.

  “No,” said Pamela. “A mixed group.”

  “My husband,” said the woman. “He keeps talking about who’s moving in here. He’s been talking to the neighbors. After all, there are old people on the block.”

  I got upset. It was the only time all day I was really upset.

  “Old people?” said the young man. “An old man killed someone for starting a fire—for burning leaves, which you know is against the law. But your husband doesn’t burn leaves, does he?”

  “Burton,” said Pamela firmly. Ida began to laugh, and so did the silent lady, but the woman with the groceries didn’t laugh.

  “I’d like to grow tulips,” said the quiet woman.

  “Oh, tulips, well,” said the woman with the groceries. She shook her head doubtfully, as if tulips grew only in certain rare conditions that you didn’t find much around here. And then she left, and so did Pamela Shepherd and the flock, and Ida and I went back to kissing.

  Ida said, “I should have known,” and we moved awkwardly from room to room while kissing. After a while I stopped and said, “That lady’s going to make trouble.”

  “She might,” said Ida.

  “What will we do then?”

  “We’ll decide when the time comes,” she said firmly, and I was comforted, or almost comforted. I don’t know yet what kind of trouble the lady is going to make, if any. I don’t know how her trouble could get into the happiest day, but it did. And still it was the happiest day. We kissed some more. Ida left her bag on the living-room floor and we kissed our way from room to room, looking for a place to lie down—but there were only hardwood floors. Then I heard a key in the lock and then clattering. It was John, who’d gone from the dentist to the lumberyard and come back with a load of lumber. “Get an early start tomorrow,” he greeted me when we came to the door. He looked across the living room at the turquoise bag, flopped there with its buckles open, and then he looked at Ida.

  “We have a Canto of Pound’s for you,” said Ida.

  I handed it to John and he read it. “Nothing about Jews,” he said, “one way or another.” He looked at Ida again and then he looked at me, and I could tell that he saw how happy I was, that he saw Ida just the way I did, as if he, too, had loved her for years, as if he’d turned into me for a moment, just to see how it felt. Which seemed remarkable—that someone should care to know. Ida and I didn’t say anything. We stood there like fools, our hands at our sides, like people being measured for something. We were looking at John as if he were the future, while he looked at us as if he wondered what we were working up to. We all stood there longer than you’d think, and after a while I began to enumerate tomorrow’s tasks in my mind: we’re going to build a doorway with the new lumber, and then we’ll put in a kitchen floor. Soon, when Ida and I have been lovers for a week or two, and the shape of her naked breasts is already familiar and dear to me, heat will come through the clanking metal ducts John and I have been fastening into place day after day. And if we put in the plumbing right—if nothing goes wrong—then water will flow through pipes.

  RIVER-TOSSING

  KITTY DECARLO TAUGHT Western Civilization and U.S. History at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Connecticut, and for two years she had lived with a roommate in a rented house in the neighborhood. The house had a narrow front yard where a previous occupant had planted red and yellow tulips. In the fall, a single maple turned scarlet, then abruptly bare. A few times a week, Kitty went running after work: it calmed her. One day in November she started late, and by the time she turned toward home, it was dusk. As she ran, Kitty’s eyes took in tree after tree on her route. She studied the bare branches intertwined against the gray sky.

  It grew dark. Listening to her own footfalls as she made her way up Orange Street, Kitty imagined being mugged—jumped from behind—and suffering just enough injuries to miss a couple of weeks of school and be cared for by friends bringing pans of lasagna. Kitty was conscientious; her mind moved on to the instructions she’d give the substitute teacher. Whatever she said, some of her students, for whom everything was already hard, would suffer.

  In the dark—and in reality, not her fantasy—a passing car made a swift U-turn, but then recrossed the street and angled toward the sidewalk near her, facing the wrong way. A man got out, leaving the door open, and stepped quickly toward Kitty, and what came to her was advice she’d once read in a newspaper article on crime prevention. She was passing a house with a light in a downstairs window, and Kitty ran straight up the porch steps, punched the three doorbells she saw there, and shouted, “Mom, I’m home!” in a phony voice that sounded to her own ears—even then, when she was still frightened—like something out of bad children’s television. The man got into the car and drove away, while the door in front of Kitty opened. There stood a young man with reddish, fluffy hair and a reddish-brown tweed sports coat. His hands were large, sticking out of the jacket sleeves as if he were outgrowing it as he stood there. He looked sleepy, and Kitty blurted out, “Did I wake you up?”—although he’d opened the door so quickly, she could have awakened him only if he had been leaning on it, asleep standing up.

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  Kitty told him why she had rung his doorbell.

  “Do you want to call the police?” said the man.

  She was sweaty and beginning to feel chilled. She could see into the man’s living room: bookshelves and more bookshelves, lamplit. “No, thanks,” she said. “Maybe he just wanted to ask directions.”

  “I guess you’ll never know.”

  “He was driving strangely,” Kitty said.

  “Maybe you’d better come in,” said the man. “He could be waiting for you.”

  “I suppose so,” Kitty said, and followed him inside.

  The man said his name was Martin Corman. Kitty was shaky, and Martin brought her a glass of water, motioning her to sit. Library books and papers were lined up on his couch, and when Kitty sat down she started a small landslide. Martin knelt to pick up his books, and Kitty noticed one title: Technology and American Economic Growth. She drank the water. Her heart was beating hard.

  “Are you all right?” said Martin.

  “Yes,” Kitty said. “I’ll go in a minute. I have piles of quizzes to correct at home.” She felt foolish for saying that.

  “Are you a teacher?” said Martin, and within moments they learned that they knew someone in common. Martin was a graduate student at Yale, a social historian finishing his dissertation and working as a teaching assistant in a big course taught by a visiting professor from Georgetown, where Kitty had gone to school—taught by Henry Gradstein, of all people, her undergraduate adviser and graduate thesis director, and—for a few giddy, tempestuous weeks, toward the end of her time at the university—her lover.

  “We’re both just talking ourselves into this,” Henry had said to her, five years ago, the last time they’d slept together.

  “I’m not,” said Kitty, before she thought.

  “Of course you are.”

  Now, to Martin, she said, “He was my thesis adviser.”

  “Did you know he was here this year?”

  Kitty hadn’t known.

  “Gradstein’s a great teacher,” Martin said.

  “The best,” said Kitty. “May I
use your phone after all? I think I want my roommate to come for me with the car.”

  KITTY’S ROOMMATE, IDA, showed up in five minutes. “Did he have a weapon?” she said, as Kitty got into the car, shoving out of the way the big, floppy turquoise bag that accompanied Ida everywhere, even on five-minute errands.

  “I hardly saw him,” Kitty said. “I was stupid to panic. For all I know, it was one of my own students.”

  “Checking on an assignment, I suppose.”

  “I ran up on a stranger’s porch and shouted, ‘Mom.’ I don’t even call my actual mother ‘Mom.’”

  Ida glanced at Kitty. “He wanted to steal your money,” she said. “Or rape you.” Ida was fat and dramatic, with blond hair that fell to her waist. She taught English at Wilbur Cross.

  “Not every man who stops a woman wants to rob her or rape her,” said Kitty.

  “Of course not,” said Ida. “But still.”

  “The man who let me in knows Henry Gradstein,” Kitty said. Ida had reached their street and was parking the car. Kitty had told Ida about Henry long ago. “He’s at Yale this year.”

  “You mean he’s in New Haven and he didn’t get in touch?” said Ida.

  “I suppose he’s busy.”

  “He was always thoughtless, from what you said.”

  “He’s complicated,” Kitty said.

  “He should have called you,” said Ida.

  KITTY HELD AN essay contest in her history classes, offering the winners a trip to the movies at her own expense. Her students had complained that they’d been writing essays about Christopher Columbus and Martin Luther King for contests since they learned to spell, and surely there must be someone else to write about. Kitty had made some suggestions, and in the end fifteen essays were submitted and she selected three winners, one on W.E.B. Du Bois, one on Gandhi, and one on Simone Weil. The York Square Cinema was showing Au Revoir, Les Enfants, about the Second World War, and one night Kitty drove around town picking up her three winners, Josh, Tyrone, and Lakeesha. She stood behind them in the line at the movies, shooing them along when it moved—they were so busy talking they didn’t notice—and guiding them back when they strayed. They were all taller and wider than she was, and they talked with such animation, Kitty couldn’t keep up. “No, no,” Josh was saying. “Not just one of them—all of them!”

  “All of them,” Tyrone chimed in, nodding rapidly. “All of them, man.”

  “All of what?” said Kitty gamely, but they didn’t hear her.

  Just then she realized that the older man in a bomber jacket standing alone in front of them was Henry Gradstein. “Henry,” she said, and then, louder, “Henry!”

  “Who’s Henry, Ms. DeCarlo?” said Lakeesha, in a voice loud enough that finally Henry turned around, looking perplexedly into all four of their faces.

  “Henry,” said Kitty. “Kitty DeCarlo.”

  “Katherine!” He’d always called her Katherine. Henry’s hair was grayer than Kitty remembered, and under the lights of the theater lobby his face seemed slightly unfamiliar. He stepped forward, grasped her shoulders, and kissed her cheek. Henry, too, was smaller than any of Kitty’s students, and in contrast to their smoothness and youth and air of being about to slide off or up or out, he seemed a little battered yet firmly planted on the floor, his feet in neat brown shoes held somewhat apart as if to steady him. “I’m at Yale this year,” he said with some excitement.

  “I know.” She was terribly glad to see him.

  He beamed at her. “I have five TAs who follow me into the lecture hall, one step behind me.”

  “I met one of them,” said Kitty, and then stopped to introduce her students. Henry shook their hands and repeated their names. “She’s a good teacher, yes? I taught her everything she knows. If she gets anything wrong, you call me.” He stabbed his chest with his finger. Lakeesha giggled.

  “You met one of them?” he said then, turning to Kitty once more. “Which one? I don’t have them all straight.”

  “Martin Corman.”

  “Oh, I know which one he is. The sleepy one.”

  “I thought he looked sleepy, too!” Kitty said.

  “Where did you meet him?”

  She had to tell the story. “I was running one night,” she said, “and suddenly a man got out of a car and came toward me, and I panicked.”

  “My TA?”

  “No—just a man. I ran up on the nearest porch, and the person who opened the door was Martin.” She was not required, she decided, to put in “Mom, I’m home.”

  Her students listened attentively. “This guy have a gun?” said Tyrone.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know if anything was really going to happen.”

  “Any man messes with me, I don’t wait around to find out,” said Lakeesha.

  “A black guy?” said Henry, and Kitty thought she saw Lakeesha’s face grow tense. She and Tyrone were black; Josh was white.

  “It was dark,” she said. “I couldn’t see him.”

  “My cousin,” Lakeesha was saying in a low voice. “He got shot. He was killed.” Kitty drew in her breath. It was time to go into the movie.

  “Wait—give me your phone number,” Henry said.

  After Kitty and the students sat down, she thought of popcorn and soda, and sent Tyrone out with money. She had lost Henry in the dark. The film began. It was harrowing, and somehow it kept reminding Kitty of Lakeesha’s dead cousin; Kitty had to work hard so her students would not see her cry.

  MARTIN CORMAN CALLED Kitty some weeks later. “I live on Orange Street,” he said.

  “I remember you.”

  “Henry wants to know the name of your dentist,” he said.

  “My dentist? Why didn’t he call me himself?”

  “Do you mind?” said Martin. “He seems to think we’re friends.”

  Kitty didn’t mind recommending her dentist.

  “We could be friends,” said Martin.

  It was a Saturday in January and it had snowed—the first significant snowfall of the season. “Do you want to go for a walk and see the snow?” he said. Kitty and Martin walked to Edgerton Park, almost a mile away, and then tramped around its great curved paths. Children were sledding on the hill, while parents watched and scooped them out of snowbanks. The sun was out and the snow was dazzling. It was warm, and Kitty untied her muffler and pulled off her gloves. They talked about Martin’s dissertation. “I read census reports and tax reports,” he said. “Not very interesting.” Kitty protested that she loved reading old documents. Her master’s thesis had been on American schooling in the mid-nineteenth century, and she had read ancient rollbooks and budgets, fascinated even when they told her nothing.

  “I know what you mean,” said Martin, who was working on the demographics of the early American shoe industry. “But it’s not like Henry’s work.” She understood. Henry had begun his career studying early factory life, but his most recent book had been on race relations in the automotive industry after the Second World War, and he’d been turning up as an expert, quoted here and there, on race relations anywhere, anytime.

  “I’m having a similar experience, in a small way,” said Martin, when Kitty told him about seeing Henry’s name recently. “My landlady thinks I know everything. She’s talked me into speaking to her senior citizens’ group—I’m afraid they’ll be expecting something more up-to-date than they get.” Martin now taught a section of Henry’s course on labor history—a different course; it was already the spring term.

  Kitty didn’t let herself talk about Henry anymore. “Do you like teaching?” she asked.

  “I’m not good at it,” said Martin. “But I like the students. I think I like them more than if I knew the same people for a different reason. I go in there and look at them—I don’t know—my little chickens.” He blushed.

  Kitty laughed. “I have chickens, too,” she said.

  They went back to Kitty and Ida’s house. Ida wasn’t home. Kitty made coffee because Martin looked sleepy now.
It was getting dark. Carrying the coffeepot, Kitty glanced out the kitchen window. The snow was dusky and purple in the twilight, and she stared, then slipped the look of the purple snow into a sort of mental pocket.

  Martin looked a little silly. He was wearing the same tweed sports coat he’d worn the day they’d met, but his feet were bare, with his stretched-out fuzzy tan socks steaming on a radiator behind him. His feet were big and pale like his hands. His wavy hair was mussed. What had Kitty expected—that he would lead her to Henry, tell her secrets about Henry, or tell her Henry spoke only of her? He put lots of milk and sugar into his coffee. Suddenly Kitty thought she might like Martin to be her lover.

  IT TOOK THREE more walks, followed by three more visits, before he was. On the intervening occasions Ida was home, and they all drank coffee and talked. Once they had beer. Ida owned a collection of jazz records, and the day they drank the beer, Ida played a Miles Davis album for Martin, who stretched out, listening, sprawled over a chair in their living room, his hands and feet in four separate parts of the room. Kitty had to step over Martin’s right leg to hand a bottle to Ida. He’d been talking about a troubled student, and now Ida was talking and Martin was listening to her as well as to the music. He listened like someone with room inside for what he heard.

  Martin and Kitty became lovers not on a Saturday but on a Thursday, the day of Martin’s talk to his landlady’s senior citizens’ group. He’d asked Kitty to come along for courage. As a public speaker, Martin was not quite lively, but he wasn’t boring. People lingered to comment, and a woman borrowed a book from which he’d quoted, about blacks in New England in the nineteenth century.

  Kitty had left two messages on Henry’s answering machine in the last weeks, but she hadn’t heard from him. He didn’t come to Martin’s talk; she’d let herself imagine he might. She was angry with herself for thinking about him and she wanted to be left alone with her dissatisfaction, but there was Martin; they had come together. At her house it was not quite dark, and the early evening had a touch of warmth to it. Spring was coming, but Kitty resisted it. She almost didn’t ask Martin in; then she did. Her house was cold and dark. Martin followed her as she turned on lights and nudged the thermostat up a degree or two. In the kitchen she found a note from Ida, who had gone to dinner with friends. After Kitty read it, Martin suddenly began to kiss her, giving comforting kisses, as if to console her for the dark house and Ida’s absence, or even for Henry’s shortcomings or her own.