At night, the child and the adult try to puzzle out the same thing: In order to comply, does one also need to smile? If someone is gone, are you the same person? Will people still call? Wasn’t there an understanding that you belonged to each other? In the future, just once, could you have a guarantee? What will there be to say if the person returns sadder, or perhaps seeming younger or older, surprised by something, changed? What if, when you next see your lover, he has a scar on his cheek, or she has cut her beautiful curls?
He opens his eyes wide when fairy tales unfold and when myths are made to seem real, but the child’s surprise is no less intense than ours. Why did Orion die, and what was it like for Diana to be tricked? Was Diana’s brother sorry that he told her Orion’s head, above the waves, was a ball floating? Or was he happy his prank turned out just as he wanted? What a perfect myth for the late twentieth century — the story of a man who dupes a woman, and a woman with the power to turn her mistake to splendor, while poor Orion, become a swashbuckler of the sky, finds that death means only that by the simple process of transformation he has lost his life and become, instead, a work of art. An unhappy bedtime story, though one likely to be remembered by the storyteller staring out the window, observing the stars’ configuration in the sky.
Nighttime. How pleasant to think of the child, at least for a while, questioning nothing and dreaming the unimaginable. He is snug in his bed, still as a mummy. The monsters are at bay; the bull does not snort; his beloved and tattered blue blanket is clutched in his fist. The blanket is as necessary to sleep as the puffed parachute to the skydiver’s safe fall.
The way we think of the child at night — our image of him as calm and sweetly sleeping — is a necessary delusion. It’s romantic and also a little sad, like a love letter carried by hand, or being in love with a person who lives in another city. We are all vulnerable to darkness and to silence. Yet something has to be imagined. Something has to be said. In the dark room, every night, our last whispered words are always — and only—“Good night.”
FIFTEEN
Wayne and Kate tumbled on the beach. Not sex, tumbling. Wayne on his knees, holding her thighs so she couldn’t get away as Kate tried to jerk sideways, out of his grip, the sea breeze blowing her hair forward and obscuring her view every time she looked down.
In spite of the laughter and the insincere curses, it wasn’t really a game. Wayne felt that he was holding on for dear life, like a drowning person who doesn’t know his own exhaustion until he grabs hold of the rope. This wasn’t water, but sand. He wasn’t sinking, but buoyant. This wasn’t his wife, it was a thirty-two-year-old divorcée from New Jersey offering him a tumble he was eager to take. He had met her earlier that evening, when he was delivering groceries. They had flirted then, and after work he had returned for her. Now he held on to her legs because he wanted to show her how strong he was.
He held on because that allowed him more time to fantasize, and what he imagined was getting more interesting by the minute.
She lay on her stomach in the sand, head resting on her arm, and he was on top of her, his penis erect in his pants. He knew instantly this was the person he had wanted all his life to meet. She was the person fate had sent: a cocky woman with every assurance of how attractive she was, giggling mischievously at what she had caused to happen so quickly.
Instead of going to the Azure, where they would be seen, he took her into the Hyatt, where a mirrored ball that rotated on the ceiling sent flashes of light around the room and four musicians played songs from the sixties. He moved his chair in close to the table and put his hand between her legs, under her skirt. Her skin was still sandy, even after they had brushed each other off back on the beach. Wide-eyed, she ordered a gin and tonic, staying as still as possible so that the waitress wouldn’t notice Wayne’s probing fingers. A bowl of peanuts was lowered to the table. She took his free hand in hers without objecting to the location of his other hand. He was exactly—except for the scar above his eyebrow and the long, straight nose—exactly like the car mechanic she had flirted with all year back in New Jersey, who never did call, except to say that her car was ready to be picked up. Now a man who could be the mechanic’s twin was going to save her from a depressing, claustrophobic week with her mother, whose diabetes was under control, after all, and whose opinions could seem all the more ironic as they came up against Kate’s mental images of this night. She could think of them playing in the sand while her mother talked about savings bonds. She could remember the bits of revolving light mottling his face as her mother talked about Oliver North’s bravery. When her mother urged her to eat cereal in the morning, she could — hopefully — think of Wayne coming in side her. She bumped an inch closer on the blue vinyl banquette. He took his hand out of the bowl of peanuts and held out his fingers so she could lick off the salt. Before he went back to the apartment complex to leave his car and go off on what she called “an adventure” in hers, Wayne had found a cash machine back at the shopping center and had withdrawn one hundred dollars, which was burning a hole in his pocket. In fact, he felt sweaty, his fingertips tingling, his lips dry, his forehead so moist he suspected he might actually have a fever.
“Don’t tell me your last name,” she said, kissing his thumb.
“Don’t tell me yours,” he said.
The waitress put a gin and tonic in front of Kate and a Molson and a beer glass in front of Wayne. She picked up the half-empty bowl of peanuts and lowered another one to the tabletop. She had on a pink skirt and a paler pink blouse with black polka dots and a lace collar. She was long-legged and wore black fishnet stockings. Quite different from the service Wayne got at the Azure.
“Are you married?” she said.
He hadn’t been expecting that question. He missed a beat, then shrugged, able neither to lie nor to tell the truth. He poured the beer, letting a big head rise. He looked up and saw that she understood he was married.
“You weren’t wanting to get married to me, were you?” he said.
A couple passing their table looked down at them as he spoke. The woman looked over her shoulder after she passed by.
She took a sip of her drink, then put the glass back on the table and fished out the little piece of lime. Instead of squeezing, she licked it, then turned it cut side down, rubbed it around the rim, and dropped it back into the glass. She took another sip, looking at him as she drank.
“So what’s your story?” he said.
“Were we telling stories?” she said.
“What are we doing?”
“What do you think we’re doing?”
“Having a drink,” he said. He was trying not to let on that she was unnerving him. What sort of game was she playing? There was an edge of mockery in her voice. He asked, “What do you think we’re doing?”
“We’re flirting,” she said.
He cocked his head to look at her sideways.
She had lovely eyes, with eyebrows lightly penciled into dark arcs. Her lipstick had disappeared. Her lips were pale. He leaned forward, and she also leaned forward and surprised him by kissing him lightly on the lips.
“How come we’re flirting?” he said.
“Truth? We’re flirting because we happened to meet and we were attracted to each other, but I’m also flirting because you remind me of someone.”