Voice of our Shadow Page 6

  Dear Joey.

  There is a big church here in the center of town. The big attraction inside the big church is a skeleton of a woman all dolled up in a wedding gown, I think. She's behind glass and has a bouquet of dead flowers on her.

  Little hugs,

  Mr. & Mrs. Little Boy

  The postcard was interesting only because neither of them liked to talk about anything that had to do with death. Several weeks before, a man in Paul's office had keeled over dead at his desk from a cerebral hemorrhage. Apparently Paul was so shaken by it that he had to leave work for the day. He said he'd gone for a walk in the park, but his legs were shaking so much that after a few minutes he had to sit down.

  Once, when I asked him if he ever saw himself growing old and dying, he said no. Instead, he said, he envisioned an old man with gray hair and wrinkles who was called Paul Tate but wasn't him.

  "What do you mean? There'll be another you in your body?"

  "Yes, don't look at me as if I'm goony. It's like working a shift in a factory, see? I'm working one of the middle ones – the thirty-five to forty-five shift, get it? Then some other man checks into my body and takes it from there. He'll know all about being old and arthritic and that sort of thing, so it won't bother him."

  "He's got the old-age shift, huh?"

  "Exactly! He comes in for the midnight-to-seven spot. It makes good sense, Joey, so don't laugh like that. Do you realize how many different beings you are in a lifetime? How all your hopes and opinions, everything, change every six or seven years? Aren't all the cells in our bodies supposed to be different every few years? It's just the same. Listen, there was a time when all India and I wanted was a saltbox house on the coast of Maine with lots of land around us. We wanted to raise dogs, can you believe it? Now just the thought of that kind of permanence makes me start to itch. Who's to say the little guys in our bodies who wanted to live in the house haven't been replaced by a whole new bunch who like to travel around and see new things? Apply that to who we are at the different times in our lives: You've got one crew that takes you from one to seven. Then they're replaced by the group that steers you through puberty and that whole mess. Joe, are you going to tell me you're the same Joe Lennox you were when your brother died?"

  I shook my head emphatically. If he only knew . . .

  "No, no way. I hope to God I'm miles down the road from that me."

  "All right, then, it just goes along with what I'm saying. That little-Joe shift checked out a while ago, and now there's a new bunch in you running things."

  I looked to see if he was serious. He wasn't smiling, and his hands were unusually still.

  The idea intrigued me. If only the Joe-Lennox-who-killed-his-brother crew had left. I'd be clean. A whole new me who had had nothing to do with that day . . .

  "I'll tell you, all you have to do is look at my wife if you want proof of my theory. She hates to think about dying. Christ, she doesn't even like to admit she's sick. But you know what? She loves to read about diseases, especially really rare ones that kill you, like lupus or progeria. And her favorite films in all the world are horror movies. The bloodier the better. Give her a Peter Straub novel and she's in seventh heaven. Now, you cannot tell me the same crew's working inside her. Not unless they're all schizo."

  I giggled. "You mean there's different guys in there doing all different things too? Like a football team? You go out for a pass, you block . . ."

  "No doubt about it, Joe. Absolutely."

  Neither of us said anything for a while, and then I slowly nodded my head. "Maybe you're right. I think my mother was like that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She changed all the time. She was a peacock's tail of emotion."

  "And you're not like that at all?"

  "No, not a tad. I've never been very emotional or flamboyant. Neither has my father."

  He winked and smiled devilishly. "You've never done anything out of the ordinary? No disturbing the universe?"

  The moment froze like film in a broken projector. It almost started to burn from the middle outward. Paul Tate knew nothing about what had happened with Ross, but suddenly I had the feeling that he did, and it scared me.

  "Yes, well sure, sure, I've, uh, I've done some strange things, but –"

  "You're beginning to look a wee bit cornered, Joey. It sounds to me as if you've got some dark trunks stored down in your basement." He leered, delighted to know it.

  "Uh, Paul, don't get your hopes up too high on that. I ain't no Attila the Hun!"

  "That's too bad. Didn't you ever read Dorian Gray? Listen to this: 'The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.' Amen, brother. I bet you Attila the Hun died a happy man."

  "Come on, Paul –"

  "Don't play footsie, Joe. You know exactly what I mean. There isn't a person on earth who isn't up to their elbows in badness. Why don't you drop the damned facade and admit it?"

  "Because I think it's better to move away from it! Get on to other things! And hope we'll be able to do better next time, if we're given a next time." I was getting too excited and had to turn my volume down.

  "Joe, you are what you've done. You are what you're doing. Okay, we're all trying to do better, but it just isn't that easy, you know. Maybe it'd be better if we just looked what we've done smack in the face and started dealing with it. Maybe instead of always looking forward to tomorrow, trying to ignore what we did yesterday or today, it'd be better if we squared off with our past actions –" He stopped in mid-sentence and looked at me queerly. His face was bloodless, but what really struck me was a kind of terrible stillness in his eyes and on his lips. It was gone in an instant, but it left his face looking drawn and blurred, as if something important had gone out of him, leaving him only half filled. Ironically, no sooner had I gone to sleep that night than I started dreaming about Ross. As far as I can remember, nothing much happened, yet something scared me awake; it was a long time before I could sleep again. In the dark I looked toward the ceiling and remembered the time he had poured syrup on me. How do you square off with your past actions when you don't know if they were right or wrong?

  "Who's that?"

  "Us, dummy! Can't you tell?"

  I sat forward and looked more carefully at the picture on the screen. The people were holding on to the edge of a swimming pool, their hair slicked back and wet from the water. They looked young and exhausted. It really didn't look like either Paul or India. India put the bowl of popcorn on my lap. It was almost empty. We'd been popping and eating it all night.

  "Are you bored, Joey? I hate looking at other people's slides. They're about as interesting as looking in someone's mouth."

  "No! I love pictures and home movies. It lets you catch up on the part of people's lives you missed."

  "Joe Lennox, career diplomat."

  Paul pressed the button, and a shot of India came on. It must have been taken shortly after the last one, because she was still in the same swimsuit and her hair was wet-flat on her head. She was smiling to beat the band, and there was no mistaking her loveliness now. She must have been five years younger, but she was the same delightful woman.

  "This next one is my father. The only person he ever liked besides my mother was Paul."

  "Aw shucks, India."

  "Shut up. That's no big compliment. He did not like me, his one and only daughter. He thought I was stuck up, which I am, but so what? Next slide, Professor."

  "That's when, India? Was I going to Morocco?"

  "I don't remember. Great shot though. I forgot all about that picture, Paul. You look good. Very Foreign Correspondent-y." She reached back and caressed his knee. I saw him touch her hand in the dark and hold it. How I envied them their love.

  The next slide came on, and I blinked in amazement. India and I were standing very close together, her arm through mine, and we were looking intently up at the Ferris wheel at the Prater.

  "Me and my spy camera!" Paul reached over and took a handful of popcorn. "I
bet neither of you knew I'd taken that one!"

  "No, no, you only showed it to me twelve times after you got it back! Next slide."

  "Could I have a print of it, Paul?"

  "Sure, Joey, no problem."

  The painful thought crossed my mind that someday, somewhere far away, the Tates would be showing these same slides to someone else and that someone would ask in an uninterested voice who the guy standing with India was. I know the Buddhists say all transient things suffer, and there were times when that didn't bother me at all. But when it came to Paul and India I wondered, truly, what I would do without them in my life. I knew it would all go on as usual, but I was reminded of people with bad hearts who are told to stop using salt in their diet. Inevitably after a while they come boasting to you that they've given it up completely and don't miss it. So what? Anyone can survive; the purpose of life, however, is not only to survive but to get a little enjoyment out of it while you're at it. I could "live" without salt too, but I wouldn't be happy. Every time I looked at a steak I'd know how much better it would taste if I could only shake a little salt on. The same held with the Tates: life would toodle on okay, but they traveled so easily and joyously through the days, you couldn't help being swept up along with them. It made everything much richer and fuller.

  After what had happened in my life, I was torn between being highly suspicious of love and longing for it at the same time. In the short time I had known them, the Tates had unknowingly stormed the walls of my heart and made me run the red flag of love up as high as it would go. When I asked myself if I loved them singly or only as Paul and India/India and Paul, I didn't know. I didn't care, because it wasn't important. I loved them, and that was enough for me.

  4

  One day out of the blue Paul called and said he was going on a business trip to Hungary and Poland for two weeks. He hated the whole idea but it was necessary, so that was that.

  "Joey, the point is that I try to avoid these damned trips because sometimes India gets nervous and down when I'm gone for more than a few days at a shot. You know what I mean? It doesn't always happen, but once in a while she gets, well, skittery . . ." His voice trailed back down into the phone, and there was no sound for several seconds.

  "Paul, it's no problem. We'll hang around a lot together. Don't even think about it. What did you think I was going to do, abandon her?"

  He sighed, and his voice leaped back up to full strength again – tough and sturdy. "Joey, that's great. You're the kid. I don't even know why I was worried in the first place. I knew you'd take care of her for me."

  "Hey, vuoi un pugno?"

  "What?"

  "That's Italian for 'Do you want a punch in the nose?' What kind of friend did you think I was?"

  "I know, I know, I'm a dope. But take really good care of her, Joey. She's my jewel."

  When I hung up, I kept my hand on the back of the receiver. He was off that afternoon, and suddenly I had me a dinner date. I wondered what I should wear. My brand spanking new, hideously expensive Gianni Versace pants. Only the best for India Tate.

  The thought crossed my mind while I was dressing that wherever we went for the next two weeks people would think we were a couple. India and Joe. She wore a wedding ring, and if someone saw it they would naturally assume I had given it to her. India and Joseph Lennox. I smiled and looked at myself in the mirror. I began to warble an old James Taylor tune.

  India wore cavalry tweed slacks the color of golden fall leaves and a maroon turtleneck sweater. She held my arm wherever we went, and was funny and elegant and better than ever. From the beginning she almost never mentioned Paul, and after a while neither did I.

  We ended the first night in a snack bar near Grinzing, where a bunch of punky motorcyle riders kept shooting us murderous looks because we were laughing and having a great time. We made no attempt to conceal our delight. One boy with a shaved head and a dark safety pin through his earlobe looked at me with a thousand pounds of either disgust or envy – I couldn't decipher which. How could anyone as square as me be having so much fun? It was wrong, unfair. After a while the gang strutted out. On the way, the girls all combed their hair and the boys slid gigantic fish-tank helmets over their heads with careful, loving slowness.

  Later we stood on a street corner across from the cafй and waited in the fall cold for a tram to take us back downtown. I was freezing in no time at all. Bad circulation. Seeing me shake, India rubbed my arms through my coat. It was a familiar, intimate gesture, and I wondered if she would have done it if Paul had been there. What a ridiculous, small thing to think. It was insulting both to India and to Paul. I was ashamed.

  Luckily she started singing, and after a while I got over my guilt and cautiously joined her. We sang "Love Is a Simple Thing" and "Summertime" and "Penny Candy." Feeling pretty sure of myself, I piped up with "Under the Boardwalk," but she said she didn't know that one. Didn't know "Under the Boardwalk"? She looked at me, smiled, and shrugged. I told her it was one of the all-time greats, but she only shrugged again and tried to blow a smoke ring with her warm breath. I told her she had to have it in her repertoire, and that tomorrow night I would cook us dinner and play all my old Drifters records for her. She said that sounded good. In my enthusiasm I didn't realize what I'd done. I had invited her to my apartment alone. Alone. As soon as it hit me, the night suddenly seemed ten degrees colder. When she looked down the track for the tram, I let my teeth chatter. Alone. I stuck my hands deep into my pockets and felt as stretched as a rubber band wrapped around a thousand fat playing cards.

  Why was I so scared to have her over alone? Nothing happened the next night. We ate spaghetti carbonara and drank Chianti and listened to the Joseph Lennox Golden Oldies Hit Parade of records. Everything was very honorable and aboveboard, and I ended up feeling a bit blue afterward. Since my relationship with the two of them had deepened, my initial desire for India had dwindled, but after she left my apartment that night, I looked at my hands and knew that I would have made love to her in a second if the right situation had come up. I felt like a shit and an A-prime betrayer for thinking that, but, Christ, who says no to an India Tate? Eunuchs, madmen, or saints. None of the above being me.

  I didn't see her the next day, although we talked for a long time over the phone. She was going to the opera with some friends and kept telling me how much she liked Mahler's The Three Pintos. I wanted to tell her before we hung up how disappointed I was that I wouldn't be seeing her that day, but I didn't.

  Something very strange and almost more intimate than sex happened the next day. How it happened is so utterly ludicrous I'm embarrassed to explain. India later said it was a great scene out of a bad movie, but I still felt it was the worst kind of corn.

  It was Saturday night; she was cooking dinner for us at their apartment. While she moved around her kitchen cutting and chopping and stirring, I started singing. She joined in, and we went through "Camelot." "Yesterday," and "Guess Who I Saw Today, My Dear?" So far, so good. She was still cutting and chopping; I had my arms behind my head, looking at the ceiling and feeling warm and content. When we finished "He Loves and She Loves," I waited a few seconds to see if she was going to volunteer one. When she didn't, I sang the first few bars of "Once Upon a Time." Why that song I still don't know, because it usually surfaces only when I'm depressed or sad. She had a nice high voice that reminded me of light blue. She could also move it around mine and do some lovely harmonizing. It made me feel about a hundred times more musical than I was, so long as I stayed on my notes.

  We got three quarters of the way through the song, but then the end loomed up. If you don't know the tune, I should tell you that the end is very sad; I always stop singing before I get there. This time I'd arrived, but because she was there with me, I decided to mumble my way through to the finish. It did no good, because she dropped off too, and we were stuck out there in space with nowhere to go. All of a sudden I felt sad and full of tired echoes, and my eyes filled with tears. I knew I would start c
rying if I didn't think of something fast. Here I was in my friends' warm kitchen, the man of her house for a few hours. Something I had wanted for years but had never been able to find. There had been women before – deer and mice and lions. There had been moments when I was sure – but they weren't. Or they'd been convinced, but I wasn't . . . and it was never simple or good. What it boiled down to was being alone – particularly alone – in Vienna in the middle of my twenties and, worst of all, growing used to it.

  My eyes were stuck on the ceiling while the black silence honked its horn, but I knew I would have to look at her soon. Steeling myself, I blinked three or four times against the tears and slowly brought my scared eyes down. She was leaning against a counter and had both hands in her pants pockets. She'd held nothing back, and although she was crying, she looked at me with a grave, loving stare.

  She walked over and sat down on my knee. Putting her long arms around my neck, she hugged me tightly. When I returned the embrace – tentatively and light with fear – she spoke into my neck.

  "Sometimes in the middle of everything I get so sad."

  I nodded and began rocking us back and forth in the chair. A father and his scared child.

  "Oh, Joe, I just get so spooked."

  "Of what? You want to talk?"

  "Of nothing. Everything. Getting old, knowing nothing. Never being on the cover of Time magazine."

  I laughed and squeezed her harder. I knew exactly what she meant.

  "The beans are burning."

  "I know. I don't care. Keep hugging me. It's better than beans."

  "You wanna go out for hamburgers?"

  She pulled back and smiled at me. Her face was all tears. She sniffled and rubbed her nose. "Can we?"

  "Yes, honey, and you can have a milkshake too, if you want."

  "Joey, you're breaking my heart. You're a good fellow."