Made anxious by suburban Connecticut dusk the day after the wake, she had prepared an excess of stew, something with the potential to feed many more people than their family of two. When he had stopped slurping, she raised the question.
“Paul? Where is it you think you’d most like to live now?”
“Dad and I visited some places—”
“Could you imagine yourself living there, though?”
“They were real clean, with chefs. I could imagine so much, Claude. I could imagine it is an okay place to be. I could also imagine walking for a long time until you found exactly the place you wanted. There are so many homes, I think, and you could spend the wrong kind of life following them.”
Various aging aunts who phoned had clucked their tongues and expressed concern, emphasizing repeatedly that no one could judge her for placing Paulie under the care he needed. But she had helped her brother pack his things — the long-beloved crescent moon lamp, with a cherubic face and a half-smile; the quilt their mother had embroidered over the course of a year, with a panel for the forest, the ocean, the desert, and the town — and she urged him to imagine the fun they might have in New York.
“We’ll have picnics on Sundays when the weather’s nice, and clap at the men who play mariachi on the subway, and go to museums of sound and art and transportation and history and police and science. You’ll have your very own apartment, right near mine, and we’ll paint it whatever colors you like.” Her breathing had become uneven, as though her safety was the one being discussed offhandedly in a nearly vacant house.
“Okay, Claude,” Paulie had said. “Okay, Claude!” He had pulled her to where he sat on the bare mattress and taken her hand, formed a brief O of suction on each of her fingertips as he kissed them. Claudia had brought his head to her shoulder as though he weren’t thirty years old and three inches taller, and closed her eyes so as not to look out the window at the yard, now empty of the peeling red picnic table that had stood there for thirty years, Seymour’s much beloved barbecue, the hammock where their mother had read her mystery novels and spread coconut-scented tanning oil on her thick calves. The tree Claudia had climbed to peer down at her family remained, but appeared to understand its obsolescence, and drooped.
~ ~ ~
THE DEGREE TO WHICH the space expressed Adeleine, the fact that she had found and touched and arranged all these things — this alone made Thomas happy to be there each night. The supply of treasures seemed endless, as did the gentle exuberance with which she presented them, though he noted the bowed shelves, the lack of counter space, and wondered about the difference between pleasure and need.
Adeleine smoked out the window with a frequency that worried him. She cycled between a standing ashtray with a marble top and another, disc-shaped but thick, which spun to receive butts in a hidden underbelly. She had a record player and a whole wall of albums and invited him to run his fingers over them and choose. With her projector they watched movies on the one bare patch of wall — a tipsy Clark Gable stroked his mustache and charmed his way out of corners, Harpo Marx absconded with someone’s hat again — and as the hours passed in the monochromatic and jerking light, he felt peaceful, saturated. He caught her laughing and turned to see her mouth open. Adeleine had a past, but it was distinctly absent from the display.
On a night when she seemed particularly pliable and garrulous, giggling at and mouthing punch lines like a sugar-addled child, he resolved to chip away at her mystery. When the film ended, he crossed his legs Indian-style, willing confidence.
“You know, I was wondering. How did your parents give you your name?”
“With a great deal of hope and fear, I guess.” She grinned. “Like anyone faced with accounting for the life they’ve unexpectedly created.”
“I guess I meant—”
“Was it a family name? Did it appear to my mother in a dream? Did an old woman place her hand on the bump that was me and divine it?”
“I wasn’t betting on those situations, exactly, but—”
“My father drank a lot — drinks a lot. It was a good choice for slurring. Can’t really fuck it up. All soft consonants. I’m sleepy. Are you?”
She exaggerated a yawn, patting her fingertips on the oval of her mouth, and walked him to the door, where she gave his arm an avuncular squeeze before locking herself in.
~ ~ ~
THOUGH EDWARD HAD TAKEN to dressing like someone who spent recreational hours outside a small-town 7-Eleven, he showered and shaved and dressed up for therapy: cardigans buttoned up his chest and crisp collared shirts of muted blues and pinks, corduroys ironed and creased. During the sessions he was painfully conscious of his facial expressions, eager to convey an intelligent thoughtfulness, a willing openness, a sense of humor despite it all. He found Mariana’s frequent nods erotic, the cross of her ankles too much to glance at for long.
He tried to find the brand of tissues she kept in her office — they were the softest he’d ever touched, slightly scented with aloe and something else probably only people like Mariana knew the name of — and even the health food stores, the places where imported peaches sold for two dollars each, didn’t carry it.
Mariana identified Edward’s late mother’s behavior during his childhood as wildly inappropriate, and urged him to understand that cultivating forgiveness and assigning accountability were not mutually exclusive. It was no wonder, Mariana said, that being kept inside and overly protected from all hypotheticals for much of his childhood had led to a great deal of wildness and experimentation later on. Mariana’s speech was peppered with words like choice and self and journey, and much of the time she spent talking, Edward spent trying not to think of how he might arrange her naked form, how all the firm parts of her might move together.
He wanted to kiss her until she no longer resembled the upright and incisive figure in the chair, to erase the wall behind her and the three framed degrees from liberal arts schools that sounded like poisonous plants, to upset the precise arrangement of pins at the nape of her neck. Afterward, he would tell her, “That was a thoroughly positive and expansive experience,” and take her out for cheeseburgers, in jest spurning the sparkling probiotic drinks he’d seen in her mini-fridge.
He wanted to feel that the distance between men like him and women like her was not so great, that he hadn’t been doomed from birth to struggle, to run from one dysfunctional corner to the next while another stratum of people functioned gracefully and fell asleep easily.
Sometimes when these visions floated across his brain, the thought of her sock on his floor or locket on his nightstand, his face betrayed him, and Mariana would pause and say, “Well, Edward, you’re smiling broadly now — can you tell me what that’s about?” He would reply, “Oh, sure. I think I just made a breakthrough. Several, in fact.” So far, therapy had cost him $42,563. His money was disappearing, running from him like some feral animal.
~ ~ ~
YOU’RE AN EMPTY BAG of a person and I know you have it!”
Edith, at the door of Edward’s apartment, dressed in a polka dot dress with misaligned shoulder pads and a bowler hat that obscured her forehead entirely, lurched forward, gesturing menacingly with a ballpoint pen. “Let me in!”