Til the Real Thing Comes Along (11 page)

“This is Bobby,” Molly said, and her usually sad eyes looked a little less sad today. “Bobby, this is Jackie.” The boy and
the man nodded at each other.

“Mind sitting in the back?” Molly asked Jackie.

“Not at all,” he said. Thank God, Jackie thought. If he sat in the back, neither Molly nor Bobby would know that his eyes
would be closed all the way to Venice Beach.

“What a day,” he heard Molly say.

“Beautiful,” Jackie agreed from the back seat.
I
will be fine. I’m not afraid. I’m not,
he said to himself. But he was. He didn’t open his eyes until he could tell that they were in Venice because he heard the
man in the parking lot ask Molly for two dollars, and then he heard Bobby say, “Ahhh, man, look at the sky. There must be
a million of ’em.”

I am fine. I will look now.

There
must
have been a million of them. Kites. Every shape and color. Filling the sky. Soaring, gliding, spinning. Some tied in groups
of five or six or eight that moved together like a flock of birds or airplanes in formation. And he was looking at them. Sitting
in the back seat of a convertible looking at the splashy gay spectacle of them, and he was fine.

His heart felt as light as one of the kites for the first time in years. Maybe since all of this started. Since the time he’d
had to leave the Rose Bowl because suddenly, during a football game, he’d looked around at the thousands of people in the
stands, and then up at the sky, and he’d felt small and feverish and panicky. Certain that the sides of the Bowl were about
to collapse and he would be trapped there. So he told the people he was with that he had the stomach flu, and then he ran
for the schoolbus and vomited all over one of the back seats before he drove himself home. That was the first time. There
were dozens of others. In a movie theater in Westwood. Walking on Wilshire Boulevard. At the Music Center. The Forum. Panic.
Heart pounding. Dizziness. Overwhelming nausea. Gasping. Gasping for breath. No more. Finally he promised himself never again,
and it was right after that promise that he started his whole new life style. Work and home. Home and work. Swearing he would
never go out again into an open space and be afraid.

But now, today, here he was” thanks to Molly. As if nothing had ever happened. His breathing was fine. His heartbeat was regular.
He looked at her smiling face as she opened the car door.

“Wait ’til you see what I’ve packed,” she told him as she walked to the trunk to get the picnic basket. Bobby ran onto the
beach.

“Ma,” he yelled back. “Look at that one that looks like a sailboat.”

Molly nodded and waved and let him know she’d seen it. Jackie stood slowly, got out of the car, and walked to the trunk to
help. The air. The sea air was wonderful, and he felt so good and so proud. Not that he could tell Molly why he was proud,
but it didn’t matter.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, handing him the picnic basket. “Bobby will warm up to you. I think he’s probably a little
nervous about you, because”—and then she flushed a little before she said—“because I talk about you so much.”

Molly. Molly. Molly. There was no one like her. When he looked into her eyes he saw what his future could be and it filled
him up. Made him feel lucky. He was lucky to have found this gentle, loving girl.

“Come,” she said, taking a blanket out of the trunk and hanging it over her arm. “We’ll find a spot near the water. That way
if Bobby wants to go in I can watch him.”

Jackie was fine. Fine. Fine. Happy. Joyous even. Walking along the beach with a vital, spirited, fun-loving woman who danced
a little dance step as part of her walk to show him how happy she was that they were all at the beach together.

“This good?” she asked, as she stopped walking.

He shrugged. “Sure.” They were a few yards from the shoreline. The shoreline. Imagine. He hadn’t seen the ocean, except on
television, in more years than he could remember.

Molly handed him one end of the blanket and held on to the other end. They moved apart and spread it out on the sand, put
the picnic basket on top, and sat.

“It’s hot,” Molly said. “You were smart to wear a hat.”

Bobby ran up and down the beach, his head thrown back so he could watch the splendid kites in motion. Here and there on the
beach the kite flyers sat or stood or ran, playing their bolts of string like puppeteers, as the kites rose and dipped and
soared in response.

The beach. Jackie was at the beach. Molly pulled off the sweatshirt dress she was wearing and she had a red-and-white one-piece
bathing suit on underneath. A bathing suit. He didn’t even own one.

“Think I’ll go into the water,” she said, and gave him a little wave. She was beautiful and he loved her, not just for being
beautiful but for picking him up in a convertible and bringing him to the kite festival. He watched her as she stood. When
Bobby saw that his mother was in her suit, he ran up to the blanket, stripped off his own shoes and socks and shirt, and grabbed
her hand, and the two of them ran playfully into the surf.

I am fine. I am fine. I’m at the beach and I’m fine,
Jackie thought.

Molly splashed Bobby with a big two-handed splash and he shrieked and spun and leaped on her and they both fell, laughing,
into an oncoming wave.

Jackie took a deep breath, leaned back on his elbows, and rested the back of his head against the side of the picnic basket.
Molly and Bobby were moving deep into the water now, hand in hand, and suddenly Bobby looked up at the sky. Something he saw,
one of the kites, must have excited him, because he pointed and made an excited sound that Jackie could hear from the sand.
Then Molly looked up in the direction where Bobby was pointing and made the same excited sound.

Jackie checked his own breathing. Looking up was not the easiest thing for him to do. Other swimmers had stopped in the water
and were staring at the same spot in the sky as Molly and Bobby. It must be something special.
I am fine.
He could handle it. After all, he had braved a convertible, and now this wide-open expanse of beach.

His eyes still on the people in the water, Jackie took off the blue Dodgers hat. That was a good start. The sun was hot on
his scalp but he liked the feeling. He leaned his head back again on the basket, and he knew, now that all he had to do was
tilt his head upward and to the right and he would be able to see what it was the others were watching. He took another long
look out into the ocean. Bobby was clinging
to his mother’s arm. The place where the two of them stood must have been a sand bar, because even though they were far out,
the water was only up to Molly’s thighs. Molly’s thighs. They were reason enough for Jackie to brave anything.

Slowly he moved his head back. Some of his bushy hair got caught in the fibers of the basket but he didn’t notice, because
he, Jackie Schwartz, was looking at the sky for the first time in years. And not an ordinary sky. A sky that was dotted with…
my God. No wonder the others were agog.

Filling the sky was a kite the size of twenty of the others combined. It was gleaming. Shining so brightly that at certain
moments it was nearly impossible to look at it. Yellow and flaming orange like the sun. That’s what it was. The sun. The kite
of the sun. Bobbing. Dancing. Rising higher than all the others, then suddenly dipping toward the beach as if it could fall,
then suddenly rushing skyward again and floating.

Jackie wondered who the owner of such a kite could be, and he moved his eyes to the beach and looked around. There were many
more people on the beach now than when he and Molly and Bobby had arrived. All of them watching the sun kite. All of them
looking up at the sky. But he didn’t, couldn’t find the kite flyer among them.

The sun kite was up very high now. It was at its highest point so far, and Jackie was leaning back against the basket, squinting
against the brightness of the day to try to locate the string, when the sun kite began to move toward the earth. Slowly at
first, then faster, as if the kite flyer had lost control. Too fast. Toward Jackie, he was sure. Moving in his direction.
And the sky behind it was spinning, too, and he knew that the sun kite, which looked so large so high up in the Sky, must
be overwhelming up close… and, my God, he was sweating and his heart was pounding, and the kite and the sky and all the other
kites were going to dose in and… Molly! Any minute he would be sick, panicky and vomiting, and Molly would see him and so
would her son and they would hate him.

There was nowhere to go. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t he said, “I’ll meet you there,” to
Molly. He could have driven his school bus and met Molly and Bobby at the beach. Then he would have had an enclosed place
to hide. But now, nothing, nowhere. The men’s room. That little cinder-block building at the corner. No. God. He pictured
himself in there gagging and sick like some wino. The sun kite. It was coming. He had to look away. Somehow he took his eyes
from the sky and covered his face with his hands.

He was soaked with sweat. Eyes still dosed, he felt around on the blanket for the Dodger hat and put it on. Then, opening
his eyes but steadfastly staring only at the sand, he moved up the beach, through the crowd of people, toward the men’s room.

The odor in the men’s room made him reel, but it was better than being outside. No one else was there, so he pressed his forehead
against the cinder block. Just to cool himself. His breathing was beginning to slow down. Thank God. Becoming more regular.
I’m fine,
he told himself.
I’m inside now and I’m fine.
But he wasn’t fine. He was afraid. So afraid that he knew he couldn’t go back to the beach and let Molly and Bobby see him
this way.

After another few minutes in the men’s room, he was feeling well enough to walk slowly outside. He looked around so he could
decide what to do. Then, his. shoulders hunched protectively, his hat pulled as far down on his head as it would go and his
eyes fixed on the sidewalk, he began to walk as quickly as he could toward the bus stop.

That night, after his headache subsided, he sat in a hot bath. From the tub he could hear the phone ringing.

“Molly,” he said aloud, but he didn’t get out to answer it.

Early Monday he called in sick to work. After that he put the phone down, went back to sleep, and slept all morning. At twelve-thirty
in the afternoon the ringing of the phone woke him. It was lunchtime at the office. It would be Molly.

“H’lo?”

“Jackie? Thank God,” she said. “Are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”

“I’m okay,” he said.
I am fine.
What could he tell her? “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I had to leave the beach because I didn’t feel well.”

“Is there anything I can do? I mean, can I bring you anything?” she asked, and he heard in her voice that she was really concerned.
“Shall I come over?”

“No.”

There was silence. The truth is your best friend. His mother had told him that many times when he was a boy. His best friend.
The truth. He would tell the truth.

“I’m… you see, Molly… I don’t… I mean… I should have told you. There’s something wrong with me—has been for years. I mean…
I can’t… go outside.”

Now there was an even longer silence as Molly thought about what he’d just told her. Finally she spoke.

“You mean you’re agoraphobic?” she asked. When he didn’t answer she went on. “I’ve read articles about that.” Still Jackie
said nothing. “They have therapy for it now,” she said. “And it works. Behavior modification clinics. Have you thought of—”

“No. No therapy. I’ll be all right. No. Thanks for calling,” he said, and hung up the phone.

He didn’t go to the office for the rest of that week. Just stayed in bed. When the cleaning lady came, she cleaned around
him. The only phone call he made was to a gardening service to ask if they would come and mow his lawn on a regular basis.

On the following Monday, when he did go to work, he heard from his partner that for one reason or another, Molly had been
fired from the company.

“She left those for you,” Martin said.

On Jackie’s desk, in a manila envelope, Molly had left copies of several magazine articles about the treatment of agoraphobics.
He glanced at them, then threw them into the wastebasket.

At about four o’clock that day the door to the office Martin and Jackie shared opened. Standing in the doorway was a girl
named Shelly. She was a new girl in the department. She had some papers for Martin. Although she completed her transaction
with Martin,
it was easy to see by the way she smiled at Jackie that he was the one who interested her.

After she left, Jackie said to Martin: “I’m in love with that girl. Who is she?”

That night Jackie called Shelly. When he asked her to come over for “dinner and dancing” she said she was on her way.

C
ompared to the mean black IBM she used at the office, the little blue Smith-Corona portable R.J. used at home looked like
a toy. It was sitting on top of the folding card table she had treated herself to, fifteen years ago, with her last remaining
books of Blue Chip stamps. The dining room chair she’d pulled up to use as a desk chair made it look as if some child were
“playing office,” but this setup was going to have to serve her for a while. At least, she thought, she didn’t have to worry
about maintaining her wardrobe. She could wear her old faithful yellow terry-cloth bathrobe every day. The one she’d worn
so endlessly, practically to tatters, that Arthur had fondly named it The Yellow Robe Of Texas.

Six magazines. While R.J. was running from job interview to job interview, her agent had sent “Chicken in a Pot” to six magazines,
but there hadn’t been so much as a nibble. Her first short story. And she was nearly out of money. Maybe it was time, she
thought in the middle of the night, every night, for her to take a job. Any job. A reader. A secretary. She had applied for
work as a staff writer on various shows. One was about a lady cop. Cops. She’d had enough of cops to last her a lifetime.
There had been dozens of them around after Arthur’s death. Plaindothed, deadpan, probing again and again. Cops.