The Wonder Spot (13 page)

When I got there, I couldn't find my keys. I buzzed the intercom
and waited; I buzzed again. When I stood back and looked up, I saw a light on in Naomi's bedroom—or rather, candles lit, and I remembered that it was the Sabbath.

I called from one of the pissoir phones. The answering machine picked up, and Leah's recorded “shalom” calmed me down. After the beep, I said, “It's Sophie,” and, “I'm locked out.”

I waited, and the voice-activated machine hung up on me.

I was pretty sure the library closed at ten o'clock on Friday nights. It was 10:10 now. I figured that Robert would come home soon. I sat on the stoop and waited.

But then a terrible thought occurred to me: What if Robert was upstairs? I couldn't picture him refusing to let me in, no matter what Naomi said. But she ruled the kitchen, and the front door was just down the hall.

Finally, a delivery man was buzzed into the building, and I followed him inside. Upstairs I knocked on the door, and a few minutes later Naomi answered in her bathrobe. She said, “I was asleep,” which came out as a statement of fact, but if it listed anywhere it was closer to reprimand than apology.

I got into bed and lay there, listening for Robert. A few minutes later he unlocked the front door. He went down the hallway to Naomi's room without turning on a single light.

. . . . .

When I woke up, Robert and Naomi had already gone, probably to her synagogue.

There were two messages from Josh on the answering machine. The first—“It's Josh . . . I have Sophie's keys”—was so cold and matter-of-fact it made me feel we'd already broken up. The second—“Please call me”—was so sad and intimate he might have been whispering in my ear.

He was sorry; I was sorry; we were sorry. We spent all Saturday making up in his apartment.

. . . . .

On Sunday, Robert said, “I'm sorry about Friday night.”

I said, “It's not your fault.”

Without mentioning Naomi, he defended her: He explained what couldn't be done on the Sabbath and why.

I waited until he'd finished. Then I said, “Are you Orthodox now, Robert?”

He shook his head but told me he liked observing the Sabbath—“It's nice and quiet”—and reminded me that he'd always liked going to synagogue. “What's not to like?” he said. “It's a roomful of Jews.”

Later, Naomi knocked on my door, and when I turned around, I realized that she was standing just as I had when I'd gone to her room to apologize.

She said, “Sorry about the buzzer.”

. . . . .

She went off to the library, and Robert and I had dinner with his roommates. Leah was leaving for Tel Aviv in just a few weeks, and Seth said that they had to start looking for another roommate now. “What about you, Soph?” Seth said. “Don't you need an apartment?”

Leah's eyes widened, and I realized that Naomi had talked to her about me.

Robert had stopped eating. He was looking down at his plate, and when he looked up at me, his face was helpless. On it, I could see that a yes to me would mean a no to Naomi. I didn't want him to feel that it was Girlfriend vs. Sister, but I knew he would no matter what.

I made my face say,
It's okay.

I told the table that I needed to find a job before I rented an apartment.

. . . . .

I could see that Robert was relieved when I told him that I was going to stay with Jack for a while.

It was awkward when I moved out. I stood with Naomi and Robert by the door for a few minutes, saying good-bye. Josh had carried my stuff downstairs, where Jack was waiting for me in his convertible. I had all my clothes on hangers draped over my arm when Robert tried to hug me.

“Well,” I said, and then, accidentally: “Thank you for opening your home to me.”

J
ACK CALLED
N
AOMI
“Gnomie” and “The Gnomester,” and he laughed at my cockroach joke. When I repeated Robert's “We opened our home” remark, Jack shook his head and said, “Robby, Robby, Robby.”

It was my first night in Jack's apartment, and we had just finished a great dinner that his girlfriend, Cynthia, had cooked. She'd put tulips on the table, and the kitchen was dark except for candles. It was a nice atmosphere, and I was glad to be there, but I also felt bad about the way the conversation was going.

Jack said, “There's a word for what our little brother has become.”

I said, “I don't know about that.”

He said, “Oh, I think you do.”

He was talking to me, but he was also teasing Cynthia, who was from Alabama and probably didn't cotton to words like
pussy-whipped.

“Jack,” I said, “I think he's going to marry her,” and I realized it was true. Now that I thought about it, they acted like they were already married.

I wondered how Jack would feel about his little brother getting married before him. Maybe Cynthia wondered, too; she was looking at him.

He was quiet, and I could tell he was picturing the talk he might have with Robert; he even moved his lips a little. Whatever he imagined, I was pretty sure Robert wouldn't listen. Jack knew how to make women fall in love with him, but that didn't exactly qualify him as a guidance counselor.

When Jack came out of his reverie, he asked how my job hunt was going and whether I'd met any of the editors whose numbers he'd given me. He didn't mention their names in front of Cynthia, and it occurred to me that they were all women he'd gone out with.

I said that I was waiting until I could type forty-five words per minute.

Cynthia gave me a big, encouraging smile:
You'll get there, Sugar Bear.

She was tall with very long arms and a big, red-lipsticked mouth. She was a clothing designer and had one of those personalities that drapes itself all over you at first. She'd hugged me when we'd met, for example, and talk-talk-talked all through dinner, not that I minded. She had a pretty voice and in it you could hear the song of the South at the end of a sentence.

We stayed up a long time talking, and I did the dishes. Afterward, when I went out to the living room, Cynthia was tucking sheets and a blanket into the futon sofa I'd sleep on.

Jack opened his bedroom door just enough for his head, so I knew he was in his underwear or nothing; he said, “Good night, Tinkerbell.”

Cynthia gave me a little squeeze. “I'm glad you're here,” she said, which made me love her.

. . . . .

I'd never heard anyone having sex before, and it took a few minutes for me to realize that's what it was. Faintly, I heard Cynthia whimpering. Jack sounded the way he had lifting weights in our basement, sort of a growl that got louder and in the past had ended with the crash of barbells. Then they were both laughing, and I kind of laughed, too.

Josh and I were silent when we had sex, and I thought the next time I would make some noise.

I didn't, though. The next night at dinner, Josh told me that he needed to spend more time writing poetry.

We were at Szechwan West—Szech West, we called it—around the corner from his apartment; we'd just ordered.

Before meeting me, he explained, he'd spent every night writing in the library; now, he said, he was just going to his day job and seeing me at night. He said, “My poetry is really suffering.”

I smiled when I said, “I don't want your poetry to suffer.”

I tried to keep the conversation on poetry, instead of asking, say, whether he'd fallen out of love with me. But “What are your poems
like?” dead-ended into him saying that he'd show them to me; “Who are your favorite poets?” resulted in a list.

When he asked who mine were, I sighed, as though musing among many, and tried to think of one. Finally, I recited my favorite poem:

Shake and shake

the ketchup bottle

none'll come and

then a lot'll.

Our dishes arrived, and he warned me about the hot peppers in mine. He said, “I ate one of those once, and it made me want to blow my head off.”

At his apartment, in his bedroom, it was harder to pretend that everything was okay. I told him I was going to smoke a cigarette, which meant going outside the apartment. One of his roommates smoked, but just in her bedroom; Josh complained about the fumes that came out when she opened her door.

I felt better as soon as I was out in the stairwell. I sat on the dusty black steps and lit a cigarette. I sat there and tried to get my personality back.

Back inside, I opened the door to Josh's bedroom. He'd already turned out the light. I inched forward in the dark. My knee found the bed, and I got in. I lay very still. Then Josh put his arms around me, and it was safe to love him again.

. . . . .

Every time I called home, my mother told me she'd received another overdue notice for
20th-Century Typewriting
.

Its main author was D. D. Lessenberry, and those Ds might have stood for Deadly, Dull, Dread, or Doom. All day, D. D. bored me with exercises and drills called “Know Your Typewriter” and “Reach Stroke Review,” for which I typed such paragraphs as

Do you think you can learn to type well? It is up to you, you know. You build the right kind of skill through the way you work
and the way you think; so think right and type right and you will have this prize of fine skill.

Around 6:30, Cynthia came through the door, with groceries for dinner and clothes in dry cleaner's plastic; she had her own apartment and supposedly wasn't living with Jack. She carried her groceries in a string bag that bulged with big and little brown bags. Instead of shopping at the supermarket around the corner on Bleecker Street, she went to the fish store or the butcher, to the cheese shop and bakery and the farmers' market. She said this was how people shopped in Paris, where she'd lived after art school.

She'd ask how my day was, and I'd say, “Okay,” or, “All right.” I wanted to say more, but a day of typing did not produce fascinating anecdotes. What could I say?
Well, Cynthia, I'm finally settling into the home keys.

When Jack came through the door, I turned off the typewriter and carried it from the kitchen into the living room; I stowed it under the coffee table.

He'd say, “What's the score?” meaning how many words per minute, and I'd tell him the miserable number. Sometimes he called me Katie, which I didn't get; Katie, one of my best friends from college, had been a diligent student, but did he know that? When I finally asked him, he explained that Katie was short for Katharine Gibbs, the secretarial school.

Cynthia called Jack “Big Old Bear,” which she pronounced
bar
and said in the voice of a little girl with a cold. It was apt: Jack was big and meaty and covered with fur everywhere but his head. She said it with great affection, and usually he'd take her in his big beary arms and maybe kiss her.

The living room was small, just the futon sofa and a few chairs that you were supposed to look at rather than sit in. But the kitchen was big and airy and looked out on leafy trees turning yellow and red, and that's where we all hung out.

While Cynthia cooked, Jack read the newspaper, and I'd read a
section, too, even though I was dying to talk and be talked to. I'd make myself be quiet, though, and that felt nice after a while.

Sitting down for dinner, I could feel that we were a small, happy family.

After I'd done the dishes, I'd meet a friend for a drink or go up to Josh's. If I didn't have plans, I'd take a walk around the neighborhood to give Cynthia and Jack privacy. I'd walk up Christopher Street, which was still the center of gay life then. When I saw men kiss I didn't believe it at first.

. . . . .

Finally, I reached twenty-five words per minute, where I peaked and plateaued.

I told Jack this when he came through the door. “I'll be an old lady and typing twenty-five,” I said, and I made my voice creaky and said, “Still twenty-five.”

He laughed, but the next night when he came home, and I said my creaky, “Still twenty-five,” he said, “Fabulous,” a word I'd never heard him use, and he said it like he was imitating someone.

As usual, I carried my typewriter into the living room and returned to the kitchen.

He was reading the paper. Cynthia bent down and kissed his head. I saw him flinch.

. . . . .

Jack was talented at every art form. On the living-room wall, he'd painted a mural of the street outside—the trees and sidewalk, a boy on a skateboard, and a woman carrying a string bag full of groceries; it took me a week before I realized she was Cynthia. In his bedroom were dozens of framed black-and-white photographs he'd taken of his bed, rumpled and made.

Jack had gone to graduate school for architecture at Yale and to Harvard for art history, a year apiece; he'd written for a famous magazine and rocked in a band. Now he wanted to direct movies—or, as he called them, pictures.