The Wonders of the Invisible World (27 page)

The waitress comes back and sets their drinks in front of them, baby drink for Baby Holly. She could swear the waitress smirked.

Van raises his glass. “As another fuddy-duddy writer once said: Only Connecticut.”

“Hear, hear.” Seth holds up his glass by the stem, prissy-pinkie. He means it ironically. He’s doing all this stoned?

“To Connecticut,” she says, trying to get in the same key. Seth and his father laugh, and she takes in an icy mouthful of salt, sour lime and poison alcohol. It scares her that this taste—which should be so familiar: a frozen margarita, no more, no less—is coming at her in components she can’t recombine. She hasn’t come down at all; in fact, she feels herself going to an even higher place. If she survives this, she will never smoke weed again.

The waitress comes back to take their dinner orders, and she and Van have quite the little flirtation. He says she looks exactly like someone he knew back when he was a graduate student. Somehow he makes it clear that he and this person slept together. “Of course this was many, many years ago.”

“Not
that
many,” the waitress says.

“It was a while back,” he says. “She and I were studying oceanography with Matthew Arnold.”

The waitress cocks her head. “Okay, you’re kidding. Right?”

“Would I kid you?”

“You might.” She narrows her eyes. “You’ve got that look.” She walks away, her long Mexican skirt swishing.

“Whew,” says Seth. “The air smolders.”

Van picks up his glass. “I’ve got to get the hell out of Florida.”

While they’re undressing for bed, Holly tells Seth she can’t smoke weed anymore. “I have to tell you,” he says, “I don’t think weed per se is the problem.” He balls up his shirt and brandishes it one-handed above his head like a basketball, lightly touching his wrist with the other hand. He misses the hamper.

“It’s the problem when it gets me too high to deal with anything.”

“You get
yourself
too high to deal with anything.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t follow. “But then wouldn’t you say the solution is not to do it?” She turns her back and unhooks her bra.

“I’d say the solution is to look at what’s really going on.” He goes over, picks up the shirt and stuffs it into the hamper.

“Right. Well, what’s really going
on
is, I get too high when I smoke.”

He sighs. “Look, you know yourself best. I thought it was a fun thing for us. Sort of us against the world.”

“I know
that.
” She lets the “but” clause remain implied. Could he really have felt it was them against the world? Like, together?

He turns out the light and reaches over. No candle tonight.

“Listen,” he says after a while. “Would it break the mood too much if I, you know?”

She was beginning to like what they’d been doing. “Won’t it keep you up?” she says.

“Ah,” he says. “She begins to get the idea.” Holly sees his dark shape go over to the dresser. She hears the drawer slide open. “Shit, I need the light,” he says. “Hide your eyes.”

She closes her eyes, hard, and covers them with her fingers. Still, everything lights up red. What can it be but her own blood seen through her own eyelids?

She ought to be in bed, but instead she’s out behind the house for some reason, in the dead garden; this can’t be a dream because her bare feet are freezing. She wonders if Seth has noticed she’s not there beside him, so she wills herself up into the air as high as their bedroom window. It works. Now, let’s see if she can pass right
through
the window, as if it were a membrane. Yes! The glass stretches, gives way and reseals behind her, and she’s back under the covers with no one the wiser. Her powers are beginning to scare her, but at the same time she understands that this could be a dream after all, so she tries waking herself up. And sure enough.

She gets out of bed, creeps down to the dark kitchen and feels around by the phone for the pencil and Post-It pad. She’s got to preserve something of this; it’s like no dream she’s ever had. Primitive people thought you literally leave your body when you dream; this could be what just happened to her. She goes into the bathroom, closes the door and turns on the light. As she writes, she feels little prickly chills on her forehead.
Maybe she’s got a fever and it was just a fever dream. She could be coming down with that bird flu; it started in Hong Kong, where people got it from chickens. It’s like a pun: bird flew. And she was flying in the dream.

She takes two Advils, turns off the light and finds her way upstairs. Seth is still breathing away: sound asleep, unless he’s as good a faker as she is.

Holly’s aware of Seth getting dressed in the gray early morning; he always makes the 8:05 no matter what he was into the night before. When she wakes up for real, it’s after ten. She finds the Post-It where she left it: stuck to the back of the nightstand where Seth wouldn’t see.
Dream—I am out back (in garden) and find I can fly up and pass through bedroom window. Window is like a bubble.
The dream is pretty clearly about just slipping back into her marriage with no harm done. She props pillows behind her and tries to concentrate on
Madame Bovary
(maybe the translation’s part of the problem), but she can feel Seth’s father in the house, the way you know where the sun is on a cloudy day.

She gets up and showers. She’s not the type of person who would ever have a bathroom off the master bedroom, but here she is. South Norwalk, Connecticut. She puts on the most unalluring stuff she can find: her loosest jeans, her hooded sweatshirt with the kangaroo pocket, running shoes with no socks. Down in the kitchen she finds half a pot of still-hot coffee, and a clean mug with a note under it:
Out for my constitutional. Back soon. Van.
She takes her coffee into the dining room and looks out at the garden. Whatever she was supposed to do with that pile of dead vines and leaves, she’s never done it. She wants to put on Portishead, but it could make Seth’s father feel unwelcome when he gets back. So she goes upstairs and brings her book down.

It’s almost noon when he comes into the kitchen in sweatpants and windbreaker, carrying a
Times
and pulling a blue sweatband off his head.

“I was wondering if you’d gotten lost,” she says.

“Like an Alzheimer’s patient.”

“Exactly. Just what I was going to say,” she says. “Is it cold out?”

“My God, I can’t remember.” He drops his mouth open and claps a hand to his forehead. “Actually, it’s okay once you get moving.”

“How about some lunch?”

“I would
love
it.” He sits down at the kitchen table, wet hair pasted to his forehead.

“I could make you a ham sandwich—we have this great country ham.”

“Anything.” Which in fact means anything
else,
right? But she’s not going to stand there neurotically naming off possibilities.

“And a beer?” she says.

“That’s a thought. Yes. Yes, please.” He opens the
Times.

She gets two slices of rye out of the breadbox, the ham and a jar of mustard from the refrigerator. “Were you warm enough last night?”

“It was fine. I like a room to be a little cool for sleeping.”

“If you’re cold tonight, there’s extra blankets up in the hall closet.” She remembers the damn wheelchair. “Actually, why don’t I get a couple out for you and stick them in your room.”

“If you think of it,” he says.

She pours his beer into a pilsner glass she bought at Crate & Barrel, holding the glass straight up so there’ll be enough head to leave an inch or so in the bottle. She glances over to make sure he’s not looking, then chugs it.

When she brings the beer and the sandwich over, he puts the paper down. “This is splendid, thank you.” He lifts the
glass. “Better days. And colder nights.” He takes a taster’s sip. “Beck’s?”

“Sam Adams.”

“Aha. So tell me something. Are you two getting along?”

“That’s coming right to the point,” she says. Did something happen last night? She can’t begin to think back. “In answer to your question, yes. If we weren’t getting along, why would I be here?”

“Ah. Miss Feist.
Mizz
Feist.”

“Van, you’re not trying to pick a fight, are you?”

“No. God, no. Just trying to get up to speed. I like you, believe it or not. The last few years have raised hell with my social graces.”

“Since you bring that up,” she says, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Seth admires you so much for the care you took of her. I don’t know if he’s said that to you.”

“Yes, well. Seth’s a romantic. Small
r.
Can I tell you something? And you keep it to yourself?”

“Not tell Seth.”

He turns a palm up.

She turns a palm up, too, and sits down across the table from him.

He closes his eyes, feels around for his beer, grasps it. “I hurt her,” he says.

Holly thinks how to phrase the question, then says, “In what sense?”

Van shakes his head, eyes still closed. “You know, she was, one side of her, her whole left side, it was just dead. And this one day, she was taking a nap and I just—” Shakes his head again. “I stuck a pin into her arm. Right there.” He jabs an imaginary pin into his left arm just below the shoulder. Winces.

“Accidentally, though.”

“
Not
accidentally. Shit.” Shakes his head. “Oh, boy. Okay, it’s out now.” Holly watches him wagging his face back and forth.
She wishes he’d open his eyes. “I did it to see, you know, if she’d feel it. Because I didn’t know whether or not the nerves were still connected to the, you know, to the … Shit.” He’s still shaking his head.

“And did she feel it?”

“No. Not that I could tell. She didn’t wake up.”

“Well, then you
didn’t
hurt her.”

He opens his eyes and looks at her. “That’s what you think?”

Holly shakes her head. “You were under so much stress. I can’t even imagine—”

“No. Please don’t bother. I didn’t tell you this in order for you to come up with some little insight to get me off the hook.” He looks down at her breasts; good she wore her sweatshirt. “By which I don’t mean you’re not smart.” He’s still looking.

“But Van, that doesn’t negate all the, the whole—like taking care of her, taking her places, being with her …”

“Okay, you’ve said your piece. I’ve said my piece. Now what shall we talk about?”

“We could talk about where you’re looking,” she says. He goes red, looks down at his sandwich. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I guess I was getting back at you for brushing me off.”

“Well, what the hell. You don’t like me much anyhow.”

“That’s not so.”

He holds up a hand to forestall further untruth. “No need. I apologize. This is one hell of a way to pay you back for the nice lunch.”

“Which you haven’t touched.”

“Which I haven’t touched.” He finishes his beer and looks around the room. “What is
wrong
with me?”

“Do you want to talk?”

Shakes his head. “I am talking. This is what happens when I talk. I do apologize.”

“It’s all right. Would you like another beer?”

“Which I guess isn’t the same as being sorry.”

“It’s all
right,
” she says. “I just wish I could help.”

“Not a thing you can do. I will take another one, thanks. Probably a bad idea, but what isn’t. And then I’ll get out of your hair. Go up and do some reading. I don’t mean to sound—whatever the word is. Byronic.”

Holly doesn’t quite catch this. “Ironic?”

“Huh,” he says. “Isn’t it.”

Holly sticks a load of clothes in the washer, then goes back to
Madame Bovary.
But lying on the sofa, under warm yellow lamplight, she can’t keep her eyes open; behind her red eyelids there’s an alternate story going, and she follows that for a while. She comes awake to a wet tickling on the sole of her foot. She jerks the foot away: Van’s standing at the end of the sofa with something in his hand. With the brush from a jar of rubber cement.

“Are you insane?” she says. “What are you
doing
?”

“I couldn’t resist. It’s just a teensy little—here.” He whisks a Kleenex from the box on the end table; as if in a magic trick, the same Kleenex now seems to be sticking up out of the box.

She grabs her foot with both hands and twists it around to look: an inch-long streak of cloudy goo across her instep. “Aren’t you a little old to be acting like a first grader?”

“A
little
old? That’s charitable. Here you go.” He holds out the Kleenex; she ignores it and rubs at the goo with her fingertip. “I don’t know why I did that. Maybe it
is
Alzheimer’s. I actually came down to ask if I could borrow your car to run a quick errand.”

“I have to go to Westport later,” she says. “I’d be glad to pick something up for you.” Has he been drinking in his room?

“Ah. I believe I’m hearing a no. After that little performance, I can’t blame you for thinking—whatever you must think. I
am
sorry. It was …” He shakes his head.
Could
he have Alzheimer’s?

“That’s not—Van, it’s perfectly fine if you want to take the car. I just thought I’d save you the trouble.”

“This is getting baroque,” he says.

“Really, it’s fine. Take the car, by all means.”

“I’m annoying you.”

“You’re not,” she says. “I just—you know, you’re welcome to take the
car,
okay? Do you know your way around?”

“What a question. Huh. You remember those old postcards?
Ve get too soon oldt und too late schmardt?
The dirty old man with the beard and the cane, all bent over, and this gal with a tight dress is walking—”

“I don’t, actually.”

“I’m dating myself,” he says. “Just in case anybody should look at me and miss the point.”

She sighs. “Van, you’re not that old.”

“Ah,” he says. “Now, there’s a woman who knows her lines.”

Holly watches from the living room window as he backs out of the driveway, then goes into the laundry room to put the clothes in the dryer. She takes out the lamb chops. In
The Way to Cook
she finds a marinade with olive oil, dijon mustard, garlic and rosemary; she puts the chops in to soak. She straightens up the kitchen, sponges off the countertops, gets down dinner plates, salad plates and wineglasses—which is a little crazed with so many hours to go, but anything to put off
Madame Bovary.
She turns the radio on, listens for a few seconds, then realizes it’s “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” which they seem to play about forty times a week. She turns it off and goes back to the sofa. Charles’s first wife spits blood and dies as the buzzer goes off on the dryer.