Finally my boss leaned over, laying her hand over mine, looking at me shrewdly. “Okay, I can see you’re not into this. The reason I called was I thought maybe you’d be interested in coming aboard as full-time staff. But only if you’re completely okay.”
“I’m a little distracted,” I said. “I’m sorry. How about part-time? Is that out of the question?”
“I’ll be straight with you, Sally,” my boss said. “You’re the most talented designer I’ve ever worked with. You’re my first choice.”
“Thanks.”
“Part-time is a possibility. When do you think you can start?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe in a couple of weeks.”
“Okay,” she said. “You call me when you’re ready.”
This was a second chance, but I couldn’t bear to think about it. It was too soon for me to be in the outside world. I couldn’t wait to return to the safety of my apartment.
In Valerie’s office there was a framed poster from an exhibition at the Met, an Indian tapestry of elephants crossing a river. It was all I’d been able to focus on, those last afternoons when I was trying desperately to keep a grip on my mind. The elephants were flat and brilliant, with intricate blue and gold trappings. I remember thinking that they resembled tropical fish and that if I were half as good an artist as that ancient court weaver I wouldn’t be in this fix.
“Welcome back,” Valeric said in her husky voice. There had been a time when I hadn’t liked the way she looked, when her lankiness seemed gawky, when I believed her to be cold and harsh. Now I thought of her as a warrior, someone who’d fight to the death to protect another soul. A fresh legal pad was balanced on her knee. “How’ve you been sleeping?”
“Not so well.”
“Oh? How is that?”
In Florida I’d slept long and drugged, at my aunt and uncle’s, in the condo with Mel. Now that I was back in my life I’d awaken in the night with a start, heart pounding, tensed as if ready to spring out of bed. Three A.M. on the dot, it got so I didn’t even have to look. I’d get out of bed and turn on the lights and it was a shock to see all the details of my apartment, not at all like I’d been imagining them in my uneasy doze. Sometimes a siren would be shrieking or a drunk yelling in the street below, adding to the surreal effect. The only thing that helped was food. Take-out leftovers or I’d make popcorn and bring it into bed with me, greasing up the sheets with butter. Then I’d smoke, even if I had managed not to all day—sometimes it was the only way to get through the night.
Mornings were another kind of torture. Walking around my apartment I got light-headed—or maybe it was more like light-bodied. I simply felt way too much: the blood pulsing through the veins in my wrists—Lillith said that it would be easy for me, had showed me the precise vertical cut to use if I really wanted out—the air tickling the hairs in my nostrils, the smooth warm dusty floorboards against the soles of my feet. It was like I had no skin.
I told Valeric about the conversation with my boss. She nodded. “Sounds promising.”
“But I’m too fucked up, I can’t go back.”
“How about part-time? Didn’t you just tell me she’d agreed you’d both think about that?”
“Maybe. If I can concentrate.”
“What’s that on your arm?”
“I had a relapse.”
“You could have picked up the phone.”
“I know. I didn’t think.”
“What happened in Florida?”
“I had a fling with Mel.”
Nothing surprised her. She nodded again and began writing.
The day before, I’d called Waterbury information and was lucky enough to get it right on the second La Monte. “Mel’s busy,” a woman, his mother, I thought, told me. In the background I could hear laughter. “It’s prom night,” the woman explained.
“Who is it, Mom?” I heard Mel ask. The woman put her hand over the mouthpiece and there was a garbled dialogue.
“He’ll call you,” the woman said when she got back on.
“Tell him it’s Sally.”
“Oh, yes, he’s mentioned you. Good-bye now,” she said before I could give her the number.
“I thought about him in bed, you know,” I told Valeric. “I thought about my father, while Mel was making love to me.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Sick.”
“So that’s why you cut yourself. You never told me—did this ever happen with Carey?”
“I think I was just numb with Carey. And he didn’t know about Monkey King. He didn’t even know where the scars came from. I told him I’d had an accident on a picket fence.”
“Why do you think it was different with Mel?”
“I guess being sick made me weaker.”
“Is that what you would call it? Being weaker?”
I looked at my arm, the right one, without the scars, at the curve of the forearm bone, the pronounced knob on the outside of the wrist like my mother’s. My hands, of course, were my father’s. I imagined the way his long fingers had held the chalk as he stroked characters on the blackboard for his first-year class. Though my mother was known for being strict, Daddy was willing to be led off on a tangent. What are the characters for planet? for comet? his students would ask. He’d put down the chalk and tell them the legend of the herdsman and the weaving maid, two stars doomed to be separated by the Milky Way because they had loved each other too much and forgotten the rest of the world. My father would have turned it into a moral tale. The weaving maid had deserted her father for another man and he had punished her by forever denying her what she desired most.
After my session with Valeric I caught the bus to Woodside Avenue. When I walked in, using my key, I could smell pot roast in the oven. Ma was at the counter chopping carrots. “Lally’s coming to dinner,” she announced.
“Fine,” I said.
My sister was lying on the living room floor watching TV. “Hi,” she said, not looking up.
“I tried to call you,” I said. The sling was off, but she had an Ace bandage on her right forearm. It reminded me of the time I’d gone down to see her in Charlottesville.
“It doesn’t matter. The emergency’s over.”
“What emergency?”
“I thought I needed a place to stay. Dennis was going to kick me out.”
Dennis was the producer, the one she’d gone to France with. I said: “No wonder, if you spent all that time up in Vermont with some other guy.”
“Bill’s just a friend,” Marty said. “But you know men. Anyway, it’s all right now.”
“If it’s all right, then why are you here?”
“I’m still healing, stupid,” she said.
I went back into the kitchen, where Ma was making the salad. “Sal-lee, please get the dressing from the fridge.”
“I’ll make it from scratch,” I said. She watched suspiciously as I peeled a clove of garlic and chopped it, mixed oil and vinegar. When her back was turned I added mustard, ginger, sherry, soy sauce, and the scrapings of an old jar of honey I found in the cupboard. Then I ground some black pepper in.
“Don’t forget salt,” Ma said.
“Okay,” I said, ignoring her.
“I talk to Aunty Winnie today, she’s so excited.”
“Well, Xiao Lu’s her only child, it must be a big deal.”
“I tell her, lucky he’s a boy, she doesn’t have to pay.”