This was not the question I’d hoped to hear. I tried to mask my disappointment with a thoughtful lift of my eyebrows, as though seriously considering her question about the boys. “I think a lot of them just had bad luck to begin with. Rotten luck, most of all,” I replied.
“I think you’re right.” She put down her mug, dropped her cigarette butt into it. She crossed her arms and looked me bluntly in the eyes. “But tell me, Miss Eileen, have you ever wanted to be truly bad, do something you knew was wrong?”
“Not really,” I lied. I don’t know why I denied this. I sensed Rebecca could see through my dishonesty, so I tensed and hid behind the mug, gulping the last of my wine. I wanted to be understood and respected, you might say, yet I still felt that I might be punished if I expressed my real feelings. I had no idea how trivial my shameful thoughts and feelings really were. “May I use your bathroom, please?” I asked.
Rebecca pointed toward the ceiling. “There’s one upstairs.”
I took my purse with me as I plodded up the dirty, carpeted steps, holding the iron rail for balance. I was soothed by the weight of the gun on my shoulder. I just wanted to hold it in my hands for a moment, to get my bearings. As I climbed, I lamented my cowardice. How could I ever be happy, I asked myself, if I didn’t allow Rebecca to know me deep down inside? It was silly of me, of course, to take this all so seriously. Still, I kicked myself for being so uptight. Rebecca had invited me into her home, allowed me to see her in her natural state, however slovenly and nervous. That was friendship. I didn’t want to disappoint her. But if I had to reveal my true self that evening, if we were to bond in any deep way, I would need more alcohol, I thought.
The bathroom door at the top of the stairs was wide open. It smelled bad inside. It was a pink tiled bathroom, old metal fixtures rusted orange at the seams, a plastic shower curtain rumpled and browned with mold. The knob on the door rattled and wouldn’t stay closed, the bath faucet dripped, and the tub itself was ringed green and stank of mildew. The sink, too, was greenish, and on the ledge sat a red, chewed-up toothbrush, a tube of discount toothpaste rolled up tight and crusted. A tube of lipstick was perched under the greasy mirror. I opened it — bright pink, nearly finished. Flesh-colored stockings hung from the shower curtain rod. A bar of soap bore tiny curled hairs dried to its chalky surface. These must be Rebecca’s pubic hairs, I thought to myself. I took it and rubbed it on my face, splashed away the suds, and felt a little better. I dried my hands on a rag, then took the gun out. The smooth feel of the wood and metal soothed me. I pointed it at my reflection in the mirror. I held it against my face, cool and hard. I could smell my father on the gun, not the acrid madness of gin he exuded then, but the warm, homey smoke of whiskey from when I was a child and didn’t know better than to look up to him. I put it back in my purse and fixed my hair in the mirror.
Before I went back down to the kitchen, I quietly stepped around the banister and peered into the lit-up rooms upstairs. One was a bedroom: green and pink floral bedspread, a cheap desk lamp on a drab dresser, ugly gold earrings on a pale blue saucer, an empty can of beer. A mirror hung on the closet door. I wanted to see Rebecca’s wardrobe inside, but didn’t dare snoop that far. If in fact she was a slob and her elegance and refinement were a sham, maybe there was hope for me after all. Maybe I could be a sham, and appear elegant and refined, too. The next bedroom meant little to me at the time: a small wooden desk, a twin bed stripped to the mattress, a fan on the bedside table next to a small stuffed bear, a map of America on the wall. None of it made much sense, but I reasoned that Rebecca must have rented the house furnished and never cleaned. I looked in the mirror. A drawn and haggard face looked back at me. I looked like an old lady, a corpse, a zombie. I looked slightly less deadly when I tried to smile. It seemed preposterous that this beautiful woman wanted me around. As I walked back down the stairs, I put on a mask like Leonard Polk’s — contented, confident, perfectly at ease.
When I sat back down at the kitchen table, Rebecca was busy looking through the cabinets again. “Aha!” she exclaimed, turning around with a corkscrew. “Too late, I’m sorry. Please, have more wine.” She poured out the last of it. “Thank you for bringing it,” she said again.
“I guess it’s a kind of housewarming party, too, isn’t it? Since you’ve just moved here?” I tried to sound chipper.
“I love that. A housewarming, yes. Thank you,” Rebecca answered. “That’s very appropriate. The house needs some warming. Drafty old place.” She pulled up the collar of her robe and opened her mouth as though to say more, but stopped herself, folded her arms across her chest.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I got to town just a few weeks ago,” she replied, adjusting her robe. “I must say I was expecting the cold, but nothing like this. This is pretty brutal cold you have here. Worse than Cambridge. But the snow is pretty. Don’t you think?”
The conversation went on like that, perfunctorily. The magic was gone. It was as if we’d broken the ice but the frigid waters had made us slow and phony with hypothermia. I’d missed my chance, I reckoned, to be her real friend. Rebecca had opened the door to me and I’d shut it in her face. I was boring. I had nothing to contribute. I tried, pathetically now, to make up for my flatness with self-pity. “I don’t get out much,” I told her. “There isn’t much to do here in winter. Or in any season.”
“Do you ice-skate?” Rebecca asked with false enthusiasm, I sensed.
I shook my head no, smiled, then corrected myself. “But I’d go if you wanted to.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Rebecca. It was terribly uncomfortable. The chair was so stiff, the house was so cold. Still, I sipped my wine, nodding and grinning as best I could. I knew what I was hiding — my disappointment, my foiled fantasies, my longing. What Rebecca was hiding, and why, was utterly mysterious to me. She talked at length about how sunburnt she’d gotten over the summer, how her hands cramped while driving, her favorite painters — all abstract expressionists, as I recall. We agreed to take a trip to Boston together in the spring, to the art museums, but she seemed to have retreated to some far-off place in her mind, leaving just the surface of herself to be with me. Perhaps all I deserved was to look at her from afar, I thought. Who was I to think that a woman like Rebecca — beautiful, independent, professional — could ever really care to get to know me? And what did I have to say for myself, anyway? I was a nobody, a nerd. I should be grateful she’s doing all the talking. “Do you swim? Do you ski? Where did you buy that fur hat?” I got the feeling she was just humoring me, pitying me, even making fun of me and my dull life, trying to put me at ease with her asinine questions.
Finally I said, “I should be going.” There would be other nights, I told myself. Real friendship isn’t forged in one evening, anyway. And better to leave on a note of dullness than of discord. I got up out of my chair and began to pull my gloves back on. That was when Rebecca got up from the stool she was sitting on.