The Wonder Spot (25 page)

I ask him if he wants to come with us to the country.

He says, “Sure,” and asks where we're going, and my eyes ask him to ask me for my phone number—though I'm not sure I'd be able to give it to him in front of Dena.

. . . . .

On the West Side Highway, I say, “I liked him.” We're in traffic and barely moving; Dena maneuvers from the left lane to the middle and back, basically trading parking spaces.

She makes her thumb and index finger into a
C
for
Context.

“The guy who offered to pay our fine,” I say. “He reminded me of that skit.”

“What skit?”

When I open the glove compartment to look for a tissue, she says, “What are you doing in there?”

“Going through your private stuff.” I find my prop, a hanky that serves as the ribbon for the damsel who can't pay the rent, the mustache for the villain who says she must, and the bow tie for the hero who says he will.

My favorite line is the villain's, “Curses! Foiled again!”

“Where'd you learn that?”

I say, “My father,” so she can't make fun of me; I learned the skit at camp.

. . . . .

Once we get past the traffic for the George Washington Bridge, we speed along. The cloth ceiling of the Saab is coming down and luffs like a sail in the breeze.

I say, “Think how nice it would be to have your dad's convertible now.”

She shakes her head, but she's smiling, and I am glad just to be leaving New York, glad that it's the beginning of a weekend, glad the windows are down and the radio's on.

My joyride lasts only until the exit for Riverdale, dale of my grandmother, whom I cannot bring myself to visit.

Dena says, “I'll go with you, if you want.”

I appreciate the offer, but her mind-reading gives me a sick feeling: She expects me to do the same, and I can't.

. . . . .

On the Taconic Parkway, we begin eating the picnic Dena packed—hunks of bread and slivers of cheese, almonds and raisins, water for her and beer for me.

She holds her hand out for the water bottle, and as I pass it to her I ask who's going to be at the house this weekend.

She says, “Just Matthew.”

I want to ask about him, but she says: “Do you ever hear from Demetri?”

I tell her that he sent me a postcard with his new jokes on it.

“God,” she says.

“They were pretty funny.”

When she says, “Do you still think about him?” I wonder why she can ask me questions I can't ask her.

I say, “I feel like I broke up with him partly to please my father.”

“Or maybe it was because the guy has a packing peanut where his heart's supposed to be.” Then, in a softer voice, she says, “You don't think you made a mistake?”

“No.”

“Good,” she says. “I know it was hard.” She praises my strength.

“Bob,” I say, “I chickened out.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That's what happened.” Then I say, “How's Richard?”

“He's fine.” She takes a deep breath, and I hope that she's going to say more. “I went to a lecture he gave at Columbia last week.”

I say, “Does he have kids?” and instantly worry that I've gone too far.

“In college.” She reaches behind her and hands me a bag. “Happy birthday.”

It's a tape of one of my favorite novels,
Washington Square
. She puts it in the cassette deck and presses Play.

After a minute, she says, “I'm sorry.”

I turn to her. I think maybe she's going to talk to me about herself or about Richard or about why she can't talk to me about herself or Richard.

She says, “It's abridged,” meaning the tape.

. . . . .

We get to the house after midnight. I grab my bag out of the back and walk barefoot on moss and then pebbles across the driveway. When we pass a very old Jeep Wagoneer with wood on its sides, I tell Dena that it's my favorite car or truck or whatever of all time.

Dena says, “It's Matthew's.”

The house has low ceilings and wide-beamed floors that slant. The only light comes from candles, which make everything look soft but also haunted.

Maybe because of the candles, we whisper.

“No lights?” I say.

She says, “We're experimenting.”

“What's your hypothesis?”

She says something about lowering the electricity bill, and then she turns on a light.

The kitchen is painted a fifties' yellow or was last painted in the fifties, and there are tomato-print curtains and a cat clock—its eyes and tail go back and forth on
tick
and
tock.
The room manages to
be nostalgic without being cute, maybe because its charm borders Rattytown.

Dena calls out, “Margaret, Margaret,” and an ancient yellow Lab lumbers in. Dena pets the dog and says, “Hello, old girl,” which was what she called the female wolfhound, whose name I can't remember.

I get down on the linoleum, and Margaret is licking my face when I feel the presence of another human, standing above us.

I look up and see a tall and rangy stranger, rumpled, with blond, brillowy hair parted on the side, warm-looking pink skin, and blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles—handsome, though I get the feeling that's the last thing he wants you to notice about him, which makes him more handsome.

“Hey,” Dena says. “Sophie: Matthew.”

He says, “Hi, Sophie,” and his voice seems quiet, without actually being quiet, and for a second he and I seem to be alone in the kitchen, and then the kitchen itself fuzzes out, and he and I are alone in a moment of placelessness.

Dena breaks the spell. “Is the shower fixed?”

From the floor, nuzzling Margaret, I study Matthew while he and Dena talk house. He's reserved, I think, and opaque. There's something about him that seems inaccessible—or, at the very least, hard to know—and I don't know why: He's friendly; he's warm; he answers the questions Dena asks.

She pulls out three wineglasses, but Matthew says he has work to do yet. He puts a kettle on for tea.

I hear myself say, “I think I'll have tea, too,” even though I want wine, even though I hate tea.

Dena tells him about getting towed.

I tell him how furious everyone at the tow pound was and that I think the clerk has the hardest job in New York, worse even than sanitation or advertising.

Matthew smiles at me, which makes me want to talk more. I think of telling him about the man who offered to pay our fines and then
acting out my damsel-villain-hero skit, but I can't do it again in front of Dena, no matter who taught it to me.

He asks how I take my tea.

I say, “Milk and sugar,” hoping they'll cut the tea taste.

To Dena, he says, “How'd the meeting go?”

She didn't tell me about any meeting, and it occurs to me, as it has many times before, that Dena is more forthcoming with her other friends.

“It was stressful,” she says. “But I liked the guy you told me I'd like.”

“Anders,” he says.

“He was nice.”

Dena works in the urban-planning office at Roosevelt Island, but beyond her taking the tram to work, I have no idea what she does. I feel that I should know, too, because she's been doing it for a long time.

I say, “What was your meeting about?”

“It was with some people from Swatch,” she says. “I want them to do a tram watch.”

I nod as though I understand what a watch has to do with urban planning.

She goes back to telling Matthew how stressed out everyone in her office has been since hearing the rumor about layoffs.

Matthew says, “The worst part about stress is that it makes us all so shallow.”

Once he's gone upstairs, I say to Dena, “He's smart.”

She says, “Since when do you drink tea?”

“I have for a while.” I add another spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down and drink as much of it as I can.

While she gets towels and sheets from the linen closet, I try to decide which of my many questions to ask about Matthew. I decide on,
Does he have a girlfriend?
and say, “Bob?”

When she looks at me, her face is pinched, and I say, “What were the names of your Russian wolfhounds?”

“Ivor and Magda.”

“That's right.”

As I get undressed, I worry that my description of the tow pound annoyed Dena; she paid a lot of money and I turned it into a joke. I tell myself that I'll find a way to pay her back. But maybe she's annoyed that I asked about Richard's children; maybe it reminded her of how I spoke the night I'd found out he was married, and I can't undo that.

Lying in the dark, though, I forget about Dena. I'm thinking about Matthew, and the thought of him makes me both excited and calm.

I realize that he reminds me of my father, though I'm not sure why. He seems smart; he seems strong; he seems self-contained. My father could seem inaccessible, too—with everyone but my mother. There was something just between the two of them. And that's what I want with Matthew.

. . . . .

In the morning, Matthew's in the kitchen, washing dishes.

He says, “Good morning,” and I love his quiet-sounding voice and his loose-fitting jeans and his bare feet.

I say, “Morning.”

Dena's at the grocery store, he says. Do I want pancakes with fresh-picked blueberries? He holds up a bowl of blueberried batter.

I say, “Maybe when I wake up.”

He pours me a cup of coffee from an old-fashioned percolator. He's awkward as he says, “You work in advertising?”

“Sort of,” I say. “I'm between careers.” Then I remember that I have an assignment due on Monday, and I tell him I'll pay him a dollar if he'll help me with it. “We have to name a club for people who stay in Comfort Inns a lot.”

He says, “What do you have so far?”

I say, “The Comfort Inn Club,” and ask him what he does.

“I'm an architect,” he says, and I think,
Of course you are. Like Henry Fonda in
12 Angry Men,
you are a man who fights for justice and
builds tall buildings. You are a man who will change the skyline of my life.

I ask what he's working on now.

He says, “A kitchen.”

I get up to refill my coffee cup and stand beside Matthew at the counter. I look out the window at the backyard and the hills in the distance.

He asks if I want to see the vegetable garden, and I say that I do.

Outside, he points out Boston and red lettuces, tomatoes, carrots, basil, mint, and cilantro. He picks two sprigs of rosemary, and we're chewing on them when we walk into the house.

Dena's putting away groceries, and after Matthew goes upstairs, she says, “What were you guys doing out there?”

It reminds me of the time she came home late from the rink, and I waited for her in her sister's room. Ellen was getting ready to go out, and she let me look through her closet with her. “Wear this,” I said, about a beautiful navy blue sweater with tiny red flowers embroidered at the neck.

“It's too small for me,” Ellen said. “You want it?”

That was when Dena came home; she appeared in the doorway.

I mouthed,
Thank you,
to Ellen about the sweater I folded over my arm and followed Dena to her room. She shut her door and said, “What were you doing in Ellen's room?”

The true answer was,
Having the time of my life.
But I said, “I thought it was Tracy's.”

. . . . .

Dena wants to give me a tour of the nearest town. In her car, I taste the rosemary in my mouth, and I think of Matthew tasting it in his.

She points out the farmers' market, the eclectic bookstore, the restaurant she likes, and the thrift shop where she bought the long madras shorts she's wearing. We pass an antique store that she says is great and cheap, and I ask if she wants to take a look inside.

She says, “It's too nice out to shop,” which sounds like a reprimand, one suburban girl scolding another for being suburban.

. . . . .

Dena and I are packing a picnic when Matthew appears and asks if we're going to the lake.

Apparently we are.

“Would you mind bringing Margaret?” he asks. “You can take my car.”

I say, “Sure,” at the same time Dena does, and it occurrs to me that it is not for me to say.

“If I get enough work done,” he says, “I'll ride the bike over.”