“And in the meantime you’ll tolerate Alice, you’ll tolerate me if I try, you’ll tolerate doddering old Soft.”
Braxia seemed entertained. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly. I am fond of you already. Take your hours. I welcome you. You think I want to be here all day and all night? No! This weekend I am going to Sonoma.”
“It’s lovely.”
“Yes. Besides, I will want you around to see when I have my breakthrough. You can document my discovery.”
“Okay,” I said. “You make a discovery. I’ll document.” I’d had enough of his bombast now. I turned to leave. Let Braxia and Lack enjoy their strawberries. Somewhere outside the sun was shining, somewhere skies were clear.
Before I got to the door of the chamber, though, he called to me.
“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “When she came out of the chamber, she had her shirt on, what is the word? Inside out.” His eyes bored into mine, looking for reaction.
I refused to show one.
“Alice is your lady, eh?”
“Yes, Braxia. Alice is my lady. Or was.”
“You know what? By solving Lack I will cure your Alice for you, give you her back.”
“I hope so,” I said honestly.
23
After her second refusal by Lack, Alice fled to her parents, an hour north, for Thanksgiving. From the horn of emptiness to the horn of plenty. I came home to find her stuffing underwear into a weekend suitcase, Evan and Garth standing stiffly to one side, canes lifted. She left without once meeting my eye. The blind men and I stood listening as her car, improperly warmed up, roared out of the driveway.
“Huh,” said Garth, with deep sourness.
It rained that weekend. Evan and Garth and I went for walks in the mist. Weather seemed to lull the blind men to silence. It provided proof of an environment, so they no longer had to conjure one up by inventory. Turning their wet faces upward, losing shoes in the sucking mud of campus paths, they were finally convinced that their verbal weather was redundant, that a world loomed out around them.
I was thinking of Braxia’s assurances. If it was true that Lack would never take Alice, then my struggle with Lack wasn’t for her body, but for her mind, her soul. It was a struggle I felt I had a chance of winning. I sorted through long arguments in favor of myself, and against Lack. I measured my love for Alice against hers for Lack—which was craftier, which more tenacious? I was sure I knew the answer.
I’d woo her back.
On Thanksgiving I drove Evan and Garth to a dinner at the blind school, a large flat factory-like building in the middle of a grassy compound, surrounded by a baseball diamond, a parking lot, and a shallow blue swimming pool, drained for the winter and filling with dry leaves and the husks of summer insects. They invited me in, but I refused. I spent the afternoon driving in the hills above the city, nearly the only car, my radio tuned to live coverage of a far-off parade, athletes and politicians greeting crowds from garish floats. When it got dark I drove to my favorite diner, the Silver Lining, but the doors were closed. I peered in through the window. The vast, incomprehensible Greek family that ran the place was just sitting down to a pilgrim feast at the largest booth. The turkey was huge, golden, classic, and the side dishes were endless.
When I got back to the apartment I found—surprise!—Alice clearing out the bedroom to create a painting studio.
Alice was a terrible amateur painter. Or had been. At the start of our relationship she’d given it up. But now her dusty equipment was resurrected from the tomb of her parents’ garage. Paint-splattered easel, drop cloths, and containers of gesso and rabbit-skin glue. A thick, square mirror, edges taped. The bookshelves had been moved into the living room, to expose the north wall. A roll of fresh white duck was leaning up against the door frame, blocking the entrance. Alice was in the kitchen, rinsing old brushes at the tap.
“Alice. You’re back.”
Silence.
“You missed the rest of your shift. Soft took over. I guess you’ll have to wait until next week.”
Silence. Water running in the sink.
I took a deep breath, trying to relocate my newfound, rain-washed strength.
“Possibly there’s been a change,” I suggested. “You’re not so sure about this thing after all. You might be in over your head. Maybe you want to take a step back, get some perspective on this Lack thing.”
Stony silence.
“Alice?” I moved up closer behind her. She went on gently kneading the encrusted bristles back to life.
“Maybe you’re still in love with Lack,” I said. “But feeling like you came on too strong. You’re giving him some space, so he can mull it over.”
Silence. I felt my schemes evaporating in it.
“Probably you’re still in love with Lack,” I said. “You’re determined, nothing’s going to stop you. You’re going to try to change yourself for him. That’s why you’re painting again all of a sudden.”
She shook a handful of brushes dry, and gathered them in a coffee can.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to change my approach. I’m going to be lighthearted from here on in. We’ll develop a lighthearted, bantering dialogue. Like an old movie. Like in His Girl Friday, when Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are old flames, but she’s going to marry somebody else. He stays lighthearted. They banter. But at the same time, he’s making a very sly, very persuasive pitch for himself.”
Silence.
“Or if you don’t want to banter you could be like James Stewart in Vertigo, after he loses Kim Novak, the first time, and goes into a catatonic depression, and Barbara Bel Geddes has to try to jolly him out of it. With lighthearted banter. Because sometimes it’s just one person carrying on the lighthearted banter and the other person listening. That’s okay too.”
I followed her into the bedroom, both of us ducking under the roll of canvas.
“I get it. You’re not saying anything. Not a word. Why, I’ll bet you haven’t said a word since I came in here.”
She began unrolling the canvas.
“I notice the mirror,” I said. “I think I understand, I think I get it. You’re going to paint self-portraits again. And offer them to Lack. Get him used to you, in stages. Is that the idea? It’s very clever. If you hadn’t thought of it before now you can give me the credit.”
Silence.
“I get it. You’re making yourself more like Lack by not talking, right?”
Silence that would seem to be confirmation.
“Okay. There’s just one thing I want you to know, one thing I want to say. This is hardly lighthearted banter, I realize, but I just want to slip this in at the very start, and then I’ll run with the banter from now on. I love you, Alice. It’s important you hear that, it’s important you know.”
The silence was like a carcass in the room with us. A rotting defrosted mammoth of silence. Outside I heard a car door slam, and blind footsteps tapping their way up the porch stairs. Alice began chopping at the canvas with the scissors, her face beet red.
“I’m learning to hate the sound of my own voice,” I said.
24
“I’m here as a patient,” I said. I wanted roles to be clear.
Cynthia Jalter’s daytime offices were in a private medical building in a sunny, modern complex near downtown Beauchamp. She shared a receptionist, waiting area, and piped-in Muzak selections with a Dr. Gavin Flapcloth. The office was even more generic than the informal counseling area in her apartment. The curtains, lamp shades, tissues, and the color in the sky of the small landscape in oils above the desk were all the same color, a meek, inoffensive yellow. It probably bore the name buff or cockle. The office had no windows. It was like being submerged in a glass of lukewarm eggnog.