(There’s a pause. In the background, Professor Polson: “Nicole?”)
Yeah.
(Another pause. A question is asked that can’t be heard on the tape.)
Okay. Sure. I knew. I mean, it wasn’t a matter of wondering if it was her. It was her. I recognized her. She’d dyed her hair, but it was Nicole. She knew it was me, too. The first time, she pretended she didn’t see me, and she turned around and started walking fast in the opposite direction. It was over by Barnes and Noble. It looked like she’d just bought a book. I totally froze. It was like, I don’t know. Not like seeing a ghost. It was like seeing… into a crack.
(Pause. Another question.)
Exactly.
(Professor Polson: “I’m sorry to ask, Lucas, but were you stoned?”)
No. I wish I had been. That would have explained it. I was taking a break because I was applying for this seasonal job with the Road Commission, after I realized it would take me at least another year to graduate, and for the application there was going to be a drug test, but I ended up not going for the test anyway. And then that afternoon, I went back and got stoned—I knew I wouldn’t pass it anyway, with all the shit I’d been smoking a couple weeks before—and then I started seeing her everywhere. She was sitting with some guy at the bar at Clancy’s. They were doing something, like, looking at the screen of a laptop, typing things in. I knew it was her again. I mean, the hair was different, but that was it. And then I saw her a couple days later, crossing the street by the Law Quad, and she saw me. She was like, I don’t know, fifty feet away, and I know she saw me because she smiled and gave me this little wave, and then, the last time, it was late, and I was coming back from Murph’s, and I’ll admit it, I was stoned, weed, and there were some other drugs involved, but I know what happened, I know—
(Clears throat. Pause.)
She was a block behind me, following me, and I kept looking behind me, and I could see that it was her.
(Professor Polson: “Wasn’t it dark?”)
Street lights. It was bright out. I knew it was her, and I was trying to hurry, and then I guess I just thought, what am I doing, and I stopped, and I turned around, right outside the door to my apartment building, and I said, I know it’s you.
She laughed, and she kept walking toward me, and I said, I’m going inside, and I kept walking, and went to my apartment and unlocked it, and went inside, but I didn’t lock the door behind me—I guess I wanted her to come in. So I just sat on the couch and never even turned the lights on because, I don’t know, it seemed worse to look at her in the light, and that’s when she came in, and she just kind of hovered in the threshold for a minute, and I could really see her in the light from the hallway, and she was smiling, and she said, “Can I come in?” and I was like, “Yeah. You can come in,” and then she shut the door behind her, and it was just like the first time, she unbuttoned her shirt, which was sort of filmy and white, and took it off, and unzipped her shorts, and then she slid down next to me on the couch and we were kissing, and I think I was even crying, and when we were done she said, Told you, didn’t I?
And then she put all her clothes on and left.
(Question. Pause.)
I don’t know. I don’t remember what I said, or if I even asked her. I—It was like we were somewhere else. I was scared. Excited, too, but really scared, and I was shaking. I remember she laughed about that. My teeth were chattering. She thought it was funny. She was like, I’m the one who’s supposed to be cold.
And now I haven’t seen her since, but it’s like I see her all the time. Every time I turn a corner, but then it turns out not to be her. I sleep with the light on, or I just don’t sleep. I…
(Here the interview ends.)
“Lucas,” Professor Polson said. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I really have to do something now. I’m going to pick up the phone now and call Mental Health Services, and make an appointment for you.”
Lucas nodded, as if he’d seen this coming.
Professor Polson was in the kitchen, on her phone, for what seemed to Perry like a long time, and finally came out with a scrap of paper and the name of a therapist and an appointment time for Lucas in the morning. Lucas looked at Perry, as if questioning whether he should take the scrap, and Perry nodded at him, feeling sad and relieved at the same time.
33
Mira put a tiny drop of dishwashing liquid into the dead center of each of the three mugs and then let the hot water pour into them, watching as they overflowed with suds.
It was 3:00 a.m.
After the boys had left, she’d walked around the apartment for half an hour—paced, really, a kind of back-and-forth followed by intervals of standing in place, wondering if she was standing in the middle of a particular room for a reason and, if so, what that reason could be. Finally, she’d noticed the three mugs—two on an end table, and one (hers) on the floor in front of the sofa, and was relieved to have a chore, a reason not to be in bed yet.
When the bubbles in the mugs stopped flowing, Mira turned the water off, tipped the cups over, poured the clear water out, and set them upside down on the dish drainer. She turned the lights off and then stood staring toward the sink for quite a while before she leaned against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor.
When was the last night she’d been at home alone?
Certainly it had been before the twins. But going back even further, it had been, she supposed, only a few times in the early days of her marriage—only in hotel rooms (conferences, job interviews). This was different. This was the place the twins were supposed to be, asleep with their blankets pulled up to their chins (they both did this, rosy fingers grasping the satin edges, lying on their backs, pink-cheeked, eyes moving around in their dreams beneath their vaguely light blue lids).
And Clark.
Mira was supposed to go into the bedroom now and find him asleep on his side, the bed torn to pieces by his shifting and rolling, shirtless. The silver St. Christopher medal she’d given him would catch the light from the hallway.
She’d brought that medal back with her from Romania when Clark was only a fantasy—after having spent only about a week in bed with him before she’d left for her fellowship year—just an intriguing and sexy guy she hoped very much she might be seeing more of. Back then, it had been a gesture that surprised her even as she made it, sliding the paper-wrapped medal into her bag. She could not have called what she had with Clark when she’d left for Eastern Europe a “relationship.” (And what were “relationships” during those graduate school years when the most important virtue was negative capability, when you knew better than to even dare ask—such anxious grasping—“Will I be seeing you again?”) She’d bought the St. Christopher at a little wooden stall outside of a church near the shore of the Black Sea, knowing as she bought it that it was for Clark. When the old man who’d sold it to her put it in the palm of her hand, he wrapped her fingers around it for her and then he kissed her fist.
If Clark were there, in bed, in their apartment, he’d grumble when she came in and lay down beside him, and Mira wouldn’t know if he was asleep and annoyed to have been awakened, or awake and simply annoyed that she had entered the room. It had been a long time (a year? two?) since he’d rolled over and put his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair.