CHAPTER FOUR
True
I
People hide their truest natures. I un
derstood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe. My sister-in-law was a perfect example: the sunny, near-perfect mathematician who drove through the quiet streets in her nightgown when most good people were in bed, who studied the hundred ways to die. I had already decided I wouldn’t mention the fact that I’d seen her at the book deposit. A liar like all the rest, ready to pretend I didn’t know about the crack in the reality of her life, the dark hour, the library door, the book of sorrow in her hands.
Absinthe, that’s how it began — ingested, of course. Anemia caused by refusing all food, anonymity, arsenic, asphyxiation, barbiturates (crumbled into puddings or applesauce to make for speedy digestion), bee stings (see wasps, see nests, see allergies), belladonna, black hellebore (brewed into a tea), cars (accident, asphyxiation), crucial arteries (knives, razors, ballpoint pens), death by drowning, falls from open windows (eighth floor or above), fire, gas ovens, gunshot wounds, hanging, heroin, death by ice, ivy (pulverized and made into soup or tea), jimsonweed, OxyContin, pennyroyal, plastic bag over the head (see double death, see ensuring overdose), poison hemlock, the root of pokeweed, ponds and lakes, death by provoked police incident (see car chase, public drunkenness, public nuisance), public restrooms, renting motel rooms, sedatives, standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, stimulants, death by wishes.
I had seen Nina in passing since that night at the library, once at the market, another time in the cafeteria while Renny and I ate lunch; both times she’d waved cheerfully to me. I simply waved back, then went about my business as though I hadn’t skimmed through
A Hundred Ways to Die
before returning it to the shelf, as though my sister-in-law hadn’t been standing on the library steps in her nightgown. Self-help, that’s the section where it belonged.
The truth was, I didn’t want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone’s life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you made mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where your advice, interest, love, might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop. That was what was happening with Lazarus. I had taken the one bead of doubt Renny had tossed out and strung a necklace, red pearls, invisible to my eye, but tight around my throat, pulling at me.
Who was he really? That was the question. What did it mean to have a lover who would embrace you only in the dark? Who wanted to conceal not only his deepest self but everything on the surface? Nothing good, that was certain; nothing you could trust. Something unexpected that was sure to bite you and bring you down. How easy it was to be undone by some things. By these things. Red pearls. Truth. What you don’t want to know, need to know, have to keep in the palm of your hand. Grab it, the stinging nettle, the wasp, the shard of glass. Do it. Then live with the consequences.
Whenever I asked Lazarus what it had been like to be dead, he would laugh.
I told you, we’re not talking about that.
He had his rules:
this,
but not
that
. In the dark, all night long, but never in the light. But I wouldn’t let it go. When did I ever? I whispered and prodded like a nagging wife, a child who wouldn’t give up. Stomp your feet, little girl. Hack off your hair for spite. Get what you want. Don’t give up. Needle, beg, cry.
Were there welcoming family members? A black hole? Did time stretch out into infinity, or was it a single slam,
poof,
over, like a magician passing a kerchief over a rabbit, and then gone, gone, gone?
He laughed at me. It was a hundred degrees at the time and we were in the kitchen, shades drawn. Lazarus was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt. Now I noticed: every button was buttoned.
“Why don’t you think about right here, right now?”
Lazarus put his arms around me, pulled me close into his burning chest, had his mouth to my ear. His voice itself was hot, melting me. I felt him against me, thigh to thigh, and at that moment I believed I knew him. In a way. Hot, night, fuck, kiss, skin, muscles, heat. The way his arms felt in the dark. Each rib. Ladder, cage, his, mine. The size and heat of him inside me. The words he said that weren’t words at all. The way he wanted me. Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t that be love? The very science of it was all there: heart racing, the mind willing to believe almost anything; she longs for the dark, wants him when she’s not with him, gets in the car at all hours, drives down dark roads. More symptoms? An elevated pulse rate, the center of the self moves lower, into the abdomen, sex, thighs, the unthinking, the undoing, the you not alone, the you disappeared, the no difference between inside and outside. All the signs. Proof enough of an attachment.
And yet there it was. The power of a single idea in my head. What was hidden, what was not. It was a tape inside me, one I couldn’t rewind. It was a bird’s voice, a mole’s whisper:
Find out
.
Isn’t that the center of every story? The search for the truth. The need to know. Tear off the sealskin, the donkeyskin, the feathers, the shackles. In moonlight, starlight, lanternlight, bluelight. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted: to see and hear. Take the veil from my eyes. The stones from within my ears. Turn me around twice. Tell me. No matter the consequence. No matter the price. At least until it has to be paid. At least until the price blinds you, deafens you, burns you alive.
When I next went to see Lazarus, I sneaked a look at the bookshelves in the living room while he was working in the study. Paying bills. Having the iced tea I’d made him. Busy. Trusting me. Of all people. The bookshelves were dusty. The whole room was. Bluelight, lanternlight. None of the books had been touched for some time. As a librarian I could gauge such things, what was in use, what wasted away. The layer of dust, the way the book sat on the shelf, unwanted and unused. I went from one bookcase to another. More travel. Guidebooks to France. Museums in New York. Peruvian villages. An entire shelf of Italy. All of it alphabetized, so orderly, so dusty. A museum of books.
Lazarus came into the room and caught me on my hands and knees.
“Getting ready for me?” he said.
He laughed. So did I.
I should have been embarrassed; there was so much about sex between us. I wondered how it would be if we didn’t need ice, water, all that cold. If given half the chance, we would never stop; maybe we’d grind each other into ashes, into dust, burning hot, bloodred.
“I’m looking at the books.” I turned away. I always did that when I didn’t trust something or someone.
“You don’t see enough of them at the library? Is that it?”
He was closer, his hands on the waistband of my jeans, fingers dipping close enough to burn my skin.
“If you’re going to be reading to me, make it a bedtime story.” He grinned, sly. I liked that grin. I liked what he meant. I suppose I flushed. My face was probably red. Rose. Blush. Not embarrassment. Ardor. All of the wanting I had, that much I couldn’t hide. We spent most of our time in the bathtub; we had sex the way fish must, in waves, in the cold, skins shivering into scales. When we were in the bed, we were on top of a blanket of crushed ice. My fingers turned blue; I didn’t care. They were numb anyway, unless I was touching him.
I waved a book in front of him. It smelled like green fields, red wine, sunlight. The subtle scent of printer’s ink. “You’re interested in Italy?”
“I’m interested in you.”
He probably thought that was the answer I wanted.
It could have been. It might have been. Except it wasn’t.
“Seriously. You’ve got so many travel books. You’re not about to disappear on me, are you? Go off to Rome or Florence? You could find yourself another woman, someone pretty.”
He took the book out of my hand. Could anyone be looking at me that way?
“You’re the one I want.”
I believed him. I should have stopped. But it had already begun, the plan I had, the need I had, the direction we were stumbling into, the middle of our story, the most dangerous part, when anything at all can happen.
Lazarus blew the dust off the book and returned it to the shelf. The books were in order, city by city, country by country. He stuck the book into the South American section. He didn’t care about order. All at once I had the sense that he’d never seen this book before. This or any other on the shelf.
“Maybe we should go somewhere.” I wanted a reaction. The way children poke at dead things with sticks. Alive or not? Vicious or tame? “I’m serious. Someplace we’ve never been before.”
He looked at me. Ten years younger. The sort of man who should have never bothered with me. Beautiful. Didn’t he know that? Hadn’t he ever looked in a mirror? Or was it me he couldn’t see? Was it situational blindness — I couldn’t see red; he couldn’t see ugliness or deceit.
But he felt something was wrong. It was in the air, like dust motes or gnats. There was a ridge between his eyes. As though he was trying to figure out why I’d be talking about going away when everything we wanted should have been right here.
“Hey, come into the kitchen,” he said. “I fixed you lunch.”
Just like that. Not interested. Next subject. The
here and now
. Lunch on the table. Like normal folks.
I followed him down the hall. I had a blank feeling, as if somebody had taken what little there was inside me and blown it away. Now I was sure — he’d never read the books on his shelf.
For lunch he’d fixed me hot tomato soup. He liked it cold himself, with ice mixed in. He poured himself a glass of fresh orange juice.
“Vitamin D,” he said.
He needed to think about such things. His complexion was pale; he was never in the sun. I thought he might be fading in front of my eyes. I thought about the field-worker who had half believed he was working for a monster. I sat at the table. We didn’t have much to say. Outside the oncoming dusk was undulating, moving between the clouds in waves of blue light. I felt heartbroken and I hadn’t even known I had a heart to break.
That’s the danger when you come to the middle of the story. You may find out more than you ever wanted to know.
We stayed in the kitchen and watched the light fading in the orchard. All that blue, all that light. If I stayed, I would rinse the dishes and he would rest his hands on the ice in the freezer, then come up behind me and touch me until I was burning. I’d let the tap water run. I’d put my cold, wet arms around him. But that’s not what happened that day. We were moving into the after; the
then
and the
now
and the
soon will be
were becoming separate realms.
This had been happiness and we didn’t know it. We walked right past. Had no idea. Step after step.
I felt a stinging somewhere, a sharpness. We were waking from the dream of the kitchen, the afternoon, the way we wanted each other. When it grew dark we usually went into the bedroom, the bath. We were happy for the night. Now I was tired. It had been a long day. And we still weren’t done. I told him I didn’t feel well. I needed my sleep. I wasn’t ready to find out anything, I suppose. Not yet. I knew the truth would turn things around.
“Sorry,” I said when he walked me out to the porch.
“Sorry for what?”
For nothing. For everything. For all I was about to do.
“For being tired.”
He grabbed me and I kissed him until my mouth was burning. No ice. Not this time. He let me go, looked at me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Lazarus said.
That’s what they all said, and then they went ahead and did anyway. When I drove home, I felt bereft.
I’d lost something; I felt it as surely as I had when I lost the color red, a color I’d never even liked, one I avoided. Now every shade was faded without it, drained, not just scarlet and crimson and vermilion but even rust seemed gray; coppers and bronzes were flat without their red tones. Without red, the dawn was milk, rubies were worthless.
I didn’t trust him. That was the loss. Dropped like a stone into a pool. Not a word he said, not a book he’d read, not a fuck or a kiss or a look. Not a bowl of soup. Nothing.
I went home and there was my cat, tail waving back and forth, crouched by the hedge. Every flower was as white as chalk. She ignored me when I walked up the path, but came running when I opened the door to the screen porch. Foul-weather friend. She was due to be fed. She knew what she wanted; I was the one who couldn’t tell if she was purring or if her stomach was merely rumbling as she rubbed against my legs.
My porch. My key. My home. My nothing.
There was the shoebox, atop the carton filled with old newspapers, grocery bags, odds and ends. I couldn’t bring myself to bury the mole, and I couldn’t toss it out with the trash. I thought about Renny. We had been working on the Doric temple, and it was nearly done. He had to finish, and he’d been calling me, trying to set up a time when we could get together. But I was busy, too preoccupied to hear about his classes or how the mole he’d saved was thriving, getting fat on cream and grubs. I did agree to work with him on the coming Sunday, but he’d have to wait till then. I had my own problems to think about.