And Now You Can Go (17 page)

I write another paragraph and then slide the paper across the table to the basketball player. She looks over what I've written and nods.

I continue writing:

"
I know you said you tried to call, that the line was always busy. But do you really expect me
—
and my mother! And my sister
!—
to believe the line was busy for seven months? That's why, when you did call, I made Mom hang up on you
."

The basketball player is now standing behind me, reading the letter over my shoulder. "Um," she says. "I don't have a sister—I mean, now I do, that's the point."

"Oh, right." I say. "Sorry." I cross out the last part.

"Great," she says. "Now do you think we can ask him for money?"

Nicholas calls me to say he's ripped up the rest of my money and he's going to kill himself. I'm in the kitchen and I sit on the floor. I start to empty out the pots from the cupboard under the stove.

"I'm sorry, but you have to get some perspective," I say. "Don't you remember what happened to Sarah's brother?"

"No, what?"

It's possible Nicholas never heard. We weren't talking at the time of the funeral. I tell him that Sarah's brother was living in Long Island. His fiancee was trailing him home from a party one night and she watched another car crash right into his.

Nicholas says nothing. There's a mousetrap in the back of the cupboard and I lift it out carefully, by its edges.

"Sarah's brother had no choice." There's still silence.

"Hello," I say. "Are you there?"

"I won't do it if you say you'll get back together with me," he says.

I've stacked all the pots up on the kitchen floor and I crawl inside the cupboard, which is now bare. With my knees bent, and my feet against one end, and my head touching the other, I can fit.

"Okay," I say. "Fine."

. . .

I dial Information, and then call Nicholas's father at work. The secretary asks who I am. Nicholas once told me the secretary is one of his father's mistresses.

When I get put through I tell the father that Nicholas called. I tell him I'm afraid he's going to try to kill himself again.

The father is alarmed. "What did he say exactly?" he asks.

I'm still inside the cabinet, my toes tickling spiderwebs. I tell him that he said if I don't get back together with him, he'll try again.

The father exhales. "Listen," he says. "You're a nice girl. I'm sorry about what you've gone through with Nick. I'm sure it can't be easy. But don't flatter yourself."

"How am I flattering myself?" I want to sit up but I can't.

"Before I met you, Nick would talk about how great you were. You should have heard him. He said you could make him laugh, and you didn't care what people thought. He said you were everything wrapped in one." He pauses. "But then when I met you I told him, 'She's a nice girl, but you can do a lot better.' "

With a personal trainer, Nicholas's father runs three times around the reservoir every morning. One Thanksgiving, he told Nicholas and me it would do us good to do the same. He looked at me when he said this.

"Are you there?" he asks now.

I tell him I am and ask where he's going with all this. I remind him that I was calling because I was worried. I thought he'd want to know.

"Where I'm going with all this is that Nick is with the best doctors we can find. They say he's doing great. And frankly, I don't think he's sick enough to kill himself over you. I think

that you can't let go of him and so that's what you want to think. You read between the lines."

"I'm reading between the lines?"

"Yes," he says. He sometimes wears an ascot, and now I imagine choking him with it.

"At least I'm reading," I say, and hang up. That this is the only retort I can come up with weighs my head down with regret. I stay in the cupboard for almost an hour.

My roommate informs me she'll be away the next weekend, visiting her cousin. I say nothing. The apartment still smells like garlic, and I figure with her gone, I'll be able to turn up the heat and close the windows.

I go to the hairdresser, and bring with me a picture of the cut I want.

She looks at the picture—a copy of Botticelli's
Portrait of a Young Man
—and sighs. Her business card is sitting inside a card holder that's shaped like a shoe.

Her name is Jane Eyre.

"Is that your real name?" I ask. "Yeah," she says. "Why?"

I mention the novel.

"Oh," she says. "Yeah, someone gave it to me once, but I haven't read it. Should I?" I shrug.

I come out of the salon with short hair in front, shoulder-length hair in the back—like the young man in the painting.

At 8:30 a.m., the intercom buzzes. In my sweatshirt and pajama bottoms I walk to the intercom.

"Happy New Year," a voice booms. The ROTC boy. "It's almost February," I say.

"I need your help," he says. I buzz him in.

I open the door and he comes in and sits on the couch. He's never been inside my apartment before.

"Cool pipes," he says.

"Shhh," I say. "My roommate's sleeping."

He pretends to zip his mouth shut and toss the key.

"What's up?" I say. I'm not wearing a bra, so I cross my arms over my chest. "Dude," he says, staring at my hair. "You're sporting a Kentucky waterfall." "What?"

"A mullet, you've got a mullet."

"I do not," I say, and sigh. "What do you want?"

"I have to use your printer," he says. "I have an interview today with a guy at Goldman Sachs and I have to print out my resume. I'm quitting ROTC."

He hasn't written his resume yet, so we work on it for an hour. I help him with the font and the spacing. I search his face, trying to detect any scars from the tacks.

"Spot the phony job," he says, pleased with himself.

I study the resume. "Working at a funeral parlor," I say.

He makes a game-show-buzzer noise. "No, dog walking. I thought I'd put that in, in case the guy interviewing me is, like, a dog lover."

He turns up the collar on his peacoat and I see him to the door. He asks about my roommate.

"Not your type," I say.

"I dig a chick who likes pipes. Maybe next weekend …" I tell him she'll be away.

"I'll protect you," he says.

"Great," I say, pushing him out. "Bring some tacks." "Dude, I just realized something." He's holding his resume and cover letter in his gloved hand. "What?"

He nods toward my chest. "You're nipping out." I close the door and lock it and chain it and bolt it.

The girl who works on the Lifestyle condoms account calls to ask if I want to go to the Cloisters.

"That sounds great," I say.

I meet her by the stairs to the subway station. "Oh, El," she says and shakes her head. "What?"

"You're a nice-looking girl, why do you do this to yourself?" "What?"

"Your hair?" she says.

I touch the top of my head. "And your clothes."

I look down at my thrift-store parka and army pants.

"Show off your body a little," she says. "You'll feel better about yourself if you just put a little effort into looking nice."

"I don't want to go to the Cloisters," I tell her. "I changed my mind." "El, I'm just trying to snap you out of this funk you're in."

I snap with my right hand. Then with my left. I get a rhythm going. She laughs for a second. And then stops. "What are you doing?"

I keep snapping. Left. Right. Left left right right right left. "El," she says. "Calm down."

Her hands try to slap mine, but I dodge them. I'm too fast, too smooth, a snapping machine. I lift my fingers to her ears and snap. I try to snap her eardrums. She turns away. I follow her down the street for half a block, snapping, until she starts to run.

The phone rings and it's Nick, wanting to talk about things we've already talked about: eggs, Portugal, money, who it is I could love more than him.

I conclude that in the past, because of his condition, I've made the mistake of treating him like a child. "You should know," I say, "that I'm not doing well."

"If you don't come over tomorrow," he says, "I'm going to shoot myself. I'm serious."

I see the campus security chief walking past Riverside Church with a red-eyed female student. I wave hello to him and he stops to ask how I'm doing.

"Fine," I say. The girl's hair is hanging in Js over her face.

I walk away, but stop at the next lamppost that has a poster taped to it. I'm thinking I'll be able to read about whatever happened to her. Or maybe I'll even see the signs I've heard rumors about—the ones about the man in the park with "I'm sorry" written on them. I brace myself for either possibility, for both. I walk up to the pole, with my eyes on the pavement. I count to four and look up at the lamppost. But it's just a notice about a lost dog.

Nicholas's father calls to tell me that Nicholas tried to kill himself. The maid found him with a gun in his mouth.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I say.

I remember when Nicholas taught me how to shoot a gun. I remember how he used to hold my hand—he didn't intertwine his fingers with mine, but cupped my palm in his. I remember how I saw him sitting on a bench outside my college dorm, waiting for me. He was reading a book while ripping leaves off a bush, crumbling them, and tossing them on the ground. I stared at him from a distance for five full minutes and thought,
This is my boyfriend, this is the person I am closest to
. Then I kept walking. I walked so far that at dusk I had to hitch a ride back to campus.

The father asks if I could please, please come over and see his son. I take the subway and the crosstown bus.

I expect Nicholas to be in a hospital bed, but he's up and making a sandwich in the kitchen. When I come in, his friend James hugs me and leaves.

"Nicholas," I say. He's even thinner than usual, almost skeletal.

"You're here," he says. He has no bandages, nothing. I don't know why this surprises me. "This isn't about me," I say. "This has nothing to do with me."

I try to bring up movies we've seen. There was a period when we'd only rent silent films. "Remember the guy in
Foolish Wives
?" I ask, aware that I'm talking to him the way I would to an ailing grandparent.

He wants to reminisce about the time we swam nude in the ocean, out to the sand dune, where we could stand and kiss.

"Yeah, the water was so warm," I say, and try to change the subject to something innocent, something in the past: the time we saw Aretha Franklin walking down the street.

I look at his eyes, at that pale-skinned, hairless body I used to rub my hands all over, everywhere, without thought—the way you touch a baby. Is his skin warm and sick or cold and close to death? I resist touching his forearm to find out.

When Nicholas falls asleep—his doctor has prescribed sedatives—the father, who's not wearing an ascot, pulls me into the living room to talk. On the fireplace are several photos of him posing with his arm around Reagan, his arm around Bush; there's one of him in a golf cart with Gerald Ford. Another picture shows him shaking hands with Alexander Haig, on a small stage festooned with white flowers.

Nicholas's father thanks me for coming. He is so sad and needy I can't believe he's the same man who told me I was flattering myself. He gives me thirty dollars for the taxi home. I go downstairs and the doorman calls me a cab. He opens the door for me. When I'm out of sight, I get out, pay the driver, and take the bus and subway back home. I try to congratulate myself on having made twenty-five bucks.

You can divide the world into two types of people, I decide, as I stand on the train, holding on to a steel pole. Those who would take their lives if they thought things were bad enough, and those who, even if they were on the brink, like the man from the park, would see their error and turn back, sprinting fast and humming with relief.

Nicholas just sat there slumped, while I stand, ready to fight, to punch, to knock down and defeat. My desire for life is so strong, it's Cassius Clay. I get off the train a few stops early because I can't stand still. I have to move. I walk and walk, my hands in fists, swinging energetically at my sides, my legs machines. Inside my two layers of socks, my feet begin to sweat.

I find myself in Riverside Park, near 108th Street. I've walked twenty-six blocks. It's my first time back. I run down the hill and cross the promenade to the spot where it happened. With gloved fingers, I brush snow off the bench. Carved into the wood are statements of

who's been there, claims of love. I sit down. No,
not right. Start from the beginning
. I get up and turn the pockets of my new parka inside out. The lining is solid green. I retrace our footsteps—from where he first stopped me, to the bench. I sit down again. I strain my ears for the sound of a leaf blower. I inhale, trying to smell leather, trying to smell the garlic odor of the gun. I take a stick from the ground and hold it to the same place above my ear. I recite "In a Station of the Metro." I laugh: I feel nothing.

Danny stops me on the way into the building. "I have something for you," he says.

Another baseball card
, I think.

"Frank saw it and tore it down for you." Frank is another one of the doormen.

Danny hands me a piece of paper rolled up like a scroll. I have to hold the bottom with my left hand and the top with my right to keep it from recurling.

It's the police poster with the man's face on it. But on this one someone's written "
I'm sorry"
in blue ink. In cursive, right at the top. And there's something else: the height's been changed—"5" 10"" has been crossed out; "5'9"" has been scribbled in its place. The shape of the glasses in the sketch has been traced over and changed to look more round-framed than I remember.

I feel weak. The straps of my backpack suddenly seem to cut into my shoulders. "Thanks," I say.

Danny calls the elevator for me and I'm inside for a few minutes when the doors open and Danny's standing there. The elevator's still in the lobby. "You forgot to press a floor, Ms. Ellis," he says.

When I get upstairs I don't know what to do with the poster. It's not even a poster: it's a letter-sized piece of paper; it just seems bigger. I take it into the kitchen and look at it while I make chicken soup and then coffee. I take it with me to the dining room table and look at it as I eat.