And he pulled out a gun. I was barely shocked to see it because I could feel it, I’d been feeling it for years. I didn’t close my eyes. I felt I should die, anyway, it would make sense. I thought of the imminent freedom. A woman at another table screamed and Big Sky turned to look behind himself. But then something switched again in Vic’s eyes and I thought he would point it at Big Sky and in that moment I felt I didn’t care about anything, about anyone. I figured how natural it was for my life to go this way the first night I felt happiness. The screams around us were muted. Everyone was frozen, waiters with two bowls of pasta on each arm. And then Vic turned the gun on himself and it went off and his face blew through itself onto the wall behind him.
—Oh, Jesus Christ!
—That’s the reason I left New York, I said.
I wanted to tell her that it was to see her. I wanted to know what only she could tell me. The thing I didn’t expect was that telling her about me would force me to look at myself, at the way I craved the love of men who would never love me. At the way I could not abide women who needed me. At the way I destroyed some while allowing others to destroy me. I felt sick with myself and, at the same time, unburdened. I thought I’d been honest with myself. But I hadn’t. I’d been telling myself ghost stories my whole life.
Alice rose and hugged me. All afternoon we’d been performing the little acts that women must perform when they come together after high school. The extreme politeness of gesture. The focus on being both feminine and its opposite. And with this embrace it was no different. We were trying to exude kindness without being overly effusive. I wished she would never let go.
—There’s more, I said. She let go of me and sat back down. I told her about Vic’s wife, Mary, and his daughter, Eleanor, who was apparently on her way to find me. I showed her the text messages, the latest one, its crazed length, its capital letters.
—No, Joan, Alice said in a tone of what I believe was genuine anger. No, she said. This is enough of this.
I laughed, trying to make light of the absurdity.
—From beyond the grave, he finds me.
—Is this crazy girl thinking she’s going to kill you? This is insane.
—Maybe she has a point.
—Oh, no. She doesn’t. Her father is—was—a bloodsucker, and that’s that. She needs to learn from that and move along.
—I don’t know. I think maybe she’s justified. You think she wants to kill me?
—Clearly she comes from a line of sociopaths. You haven’t spoken to the mother since that text?
—No.
—Nothing will come of it. It’s so stupid. Shall I pick you up tomorrow? We can go to Cold Spring Tavern, flirt with Harley men, and get food poisoning. You need to put this ridiculousness out of your head.
I used the bathroom as she began clearing the plates. I tried to help but she refused. I hated when people didn’t refuse, when they gave you something to do. Julienne these carrots.
The bathroom was tiny and there was mold in almost every line of caulk. There was a Tasmanian Devil mud flap, the kind you see on an eighteen-wheeler, on the floor of the tub. I pressed a piece of toilet paper to my forehead and nose to blot the oil.
—Sorry for the heavy afternoon, I said before I left. She ruffled my hair. I kept my hand pressed to the same spot on my scalp the whole way home.
18
BACK IN THE CANYON I showered off the wine. A breeze blew in the scent of honeysuckle. When it wasn’t unbearably hot in Topanga, the mountain air was reviving and the color of the falling night was extravagant with tangerines and purples.
It felt wonderful, leaving her house. Every time I left a man’s house after a long afternoon, or if he had been the one to leave mine, the evening was tainted. I would wander the blocks of Manhattan, stopping in certain bars and eating raw meat—carpaccio or tartare. Martini Mondays with Big Sky were devil dark. On Martini Mondays he would come at five and leave before seven. My chest would be cool with perspiration. Glasses of pilsner in the sink. I’d leave my apartment just after he did, like it was on fire. I couldn’t bear to be in it after night fell. He would eat takeout on the Upper West Side, sating the hunger that came from beer on an empty stomach and fervent fucking on my leather couch. His wife had these incredible teeth and I would picture her jaw opening for a triangle of steaming pizza. Laughter and the baby and Coca-Cola. Meanwhile I would sit on a stool in a dim bar and make the tartare last for an hour.
In hindsight, it was obvious. Talking to Alice made me realize the thing that I would end up doing was inevitable. Every single man in my life staked the path to murder. I’m not supposed to feel this, but I do: I don’t think the act was vile. I think it was necessary. You can decide that for yourself. I will never lie to you. You are the only person to whom I will never lie.
Before going to bed, I stepped outside to get some air, to walk around the mounds of dry earth. I was happy. I should have known I didn’t deserve it.
I saw Lenny in an unlikely place, walking toward Kevin’s house, down the ravine with the bluestem scratching at his old ankles. I figured he was having an episode and I called out to him.
More rapidly than I would have thought possible, Lenny made his way up the hill.
—I’m terrifically happy to see you, Joan.
—Are you?
—I’m having the clearest of days, the clearest I’ve had in a very long time. I suppose I’m trying to coax the clarity into hanging around by offering a sacrifice unto the universe. The drugs I have to take turn the funhouse mirror of my mind’s eye into a pane of glass, and it’s sublime. But even better, even more sublime, is this: right before the dosages are due, I’m able to make out a different scene in the funhouse mirror. It’s only available to me once every several days, nothing to do with providence but, rather, something in the timing of the drug interactions, the wearing off of one joined with the peaking of another; it would take me, I venture, longer than I have left to live to figure the timing enough to replicate it. But in that sliver of time, I can see even clearer than twenty-twenty. I can see the whole past with flawless vision. Better than hindsight, because it’s as though I am reliving it. I can see things like a god. The clarity is so perfect that it transcends the pain. I imagine this is what dying is like.
—Would you like to come inside?
—I would love that, he said.
I made us tea and we sat at my kitchen table. Lenny slurped his tea and clasped his hands and breathed in deeply.
—There are things, he said, all the accumulated bits of a lifetime, they come back to you suddenly, when you have clarity, some peace because something you dread is no longer there. You know the way you listen to the cleaning ladies of a hotel, the network of them, talking loudly to one another, and to the maintenance man? They are all cousins, related, all of them roasting pigs on the weekend, buying kegs of beer with their crumpled dollar bills. They’re loud and raucous around each other, but then, when they knock on your door, they are suddenly quiet. Housekeeping, they say, in a certain tone.
I nodded hatefully. For one month I had been a housekeeper in a hotel, not a fine hotel but a decent one with both an indoor pool and an outdoor pool. I took naps or read books in the unused affair rooms. They smelled of paint and funerals. I was so young then. I didn’t mind the married men looking at me in my black uniform, the starched hem falling at my knees.