Love Invents Us Read online

  Save Love, Catch Light

  In Mars, Alabama, at seven-thirty a.m., Uncle Burf’s pale blue shirt, warm and stiff from Aunt Arlene’s iron, was already showing a long wet triangle down the back. The sleeve creases would stay sharp until lunchtime. Burf looked out from the post office window at the magnolia pyramids, three in a dark-green glossy row, each one starred with one lingering white flower right near the top. The only good things about Alabama, Burf said, were the vegetation, the fishing, and the food. Lately, Arlene packed every lunch as if he were going on a long train ride: three pieces of chicken, a peach, a slice of sweet potato pie. He’d get his own soda. Gus would eat like this too if he was still living here. Gus’s boy ate to live but nothing more.

  Arlene was in the kitchen like all three kids were still home, pulling out old cobbler recipes and stewed rhubarb and new things from magazines like spinach lasagna and barbecue turkey. And the boy sat there like who died, which was fair, Burf thought, but hard on Arlene, who was cooking up a storm, out of kindness, and hard on Burf, who was practically eating for two, to show appreciation to Arlene. And especially hard to watch the boy sickening right there at the table, knowing that he, Burf, could expect to find a letter, every single goddamn day another letter from the boy to his girl, and would have to tear it in quarters and throw it in the wastebasket during lunch break.

  He read the first one all the way through and breathed in the love, that hot, hurting feeling under your ribs, love that made him sneak out of his barracks and slide past his cracker sergeant, risking court-martial for one of Arlene’s kisses through a chain-link fence, going to sleep with a rust-flecked diamond pressed into his face. Love that made life matter, even when you were just looking back at it.

  April 2, 1970

  Dear Elizabeth Ann,

  I love you. I LOVE YOU. I’m in Mars, Alabama. I don’t know if you can get a letter to me. Maybe if they don’t know it’s from you. Can you mail it from the city? I don’t think they’ll check a letter that’s not from Great Neck.

  My aunt and uncle are nice folks, I haven’t seen them since I was little. He’s my father’s brother and there IS a physical family resemblance, which means that Nature has NOT favored him.

  Dad put me on the plane so fucking fast you wouldn’t believe it! I guess you would, you know Gus. School here lets out in early June. We’re way ahead of them and I don’t have to do any work. The team’s not bad and I’m forward. They’re all big, bigger than me, as always, but slow. These are some slow-moving country motherfuckers. Because this here is the country, girl. Which is how they all (like y’all) talk. They all think I sound funny so by the time you see me—whenever that is—I’ll probably sound like Uncle Remus.

  I want to call but they’ll see it on the phone bill and I can’t call you collect, unless we set up a time. I don’t have any money. If you write a certain time that you’ll call or I should call, like Friday afternoon, between 2 and 4, before they get home, I could be here. You have to know how much I love you. Write to me Call me.

  From your forever loving, H.

  Burf kissed the letter for Huddie a minute before he tore it up, and he tried not to read the rest of the letters all the way through. He watched for letters from the girl, although there couldn’t possibly be any; he hoped, even as he tore Huddie’s letters into sorrowful, greasy strips, that somehow she would get them and write back. No.

  Burf pictured Elizabeth Ann as a pale, pink-lidded blonde, like the little white girl who worked at the post office during holidays, until he remembered that Elizabeth was Jewish. Like Anne Frank, then, sad velvety eyes and dark hair in neat waves. When Burf’s oldest girl brought the book home, he sat down in the upstairs hallway, on his way to the bathroom, and read it through, then cried in the shower and went to work. Burf knew Gus thought the girlfriend’s being Jewish made it worse, but it didn’t seem so; life’s heartbreaks were just that, Jewish or not.

  Nadine Taylor’s parents certainly hadn’t wanted her to marry his coal-blue ugly brother. Ugly, mean, poor, no people to speak of, no manners. Nadine’s people were Maryland-based, all kinds of educated freedmen whose every historically significant letter, laundry list, and poem was nicely framed in oak and hung in every one of the Taylors’ thirteen rooms; and Indians, not just high-yellow, high-cheekboned black folks, but real Weapomec Indians from Raleigh, back when black people thought that was an improvement. There had even been a French farmer and an Irish parlormaid, laying the bones for a summer house at Highland Beach where tall, barely tan men and silky-haired, long-nosed women lounged in pristine summer whites.

  Augustus and Burford had only their half-mad wandering mother and their Aunt Lessie, whose sense of duty made her gather up the clothes their mother had scattered in the yard, and whose will got their mother settled down in the back room, supper on the table, and their behinds off to school the next morning for the first time in a week. Their father, handsome and sharp in his gold-framed photograph, was in the merchant marine and stayed there. Educated, beaten, washed, and brought up to respect the Lord and people who paid their bills, Gus and Burf were good boys. And still they broke their aunt’s heart and worried her sick. They loved the water. White man’s sport or not, they sailed, canoed, kayaked, and even water-skied. They snuck into the country club at night to swim in the aquamarine Olympic-size pool. They borrowed skiffs and returned them in the early morning; they crewed on big sailboats for reckless white boys with more money than sense. Gus kept three signed photographs of Esther Williams under his mattress and shook over them at night for two full years. Burf dreamed of deep-sea fishing, pulling in marlin with his feet braced against a mile of Philippine mahogany.

  He fished religiously still, tying flies for his evening meditation. He showed the boy a few times, but Horace was all thumbs with the flies and bored wild, paddling his amber feet over the side like a little kid, humming radio songs.

  “We don’t catch, we don’t eat,” Burf lied. The boy could see for himself that Arlene had stuffed the freezer to the top with pies and stews and foil-wrapped batches of biscuits, just in case. “This here’s dinner.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not hungry,” the boy said, his lower lip curling out. Queen Nadine’s boy, all right, from his pink pouty lip to those long skinny feet and round froggy toes flipping through the still water.

  Burf sighed. “I know you ain’t hungry. Your Aunt Arlene knows you ain’t hungry. All Mars knows you ain’t hungry, boy. Whyn’t you get your feet out of the water and we’ll catch something and go home. We don’t need to make a good time out of this.”

  Arlene cleaned the house, getting ready for the heat and wondering about the girl. Gus was crazy to send his boy away just three months before graduation. Maybe she looked like Nadine. Gus couldn’t look on that face, even in white, with a clear conscience. Nadine Taylor had left behind a nice life for Gus. (Arlene still remembered the hand-embroidered underthings, the tennis clothes Nadine unpacked, blushing, and put in a bottom drawer.) Oh, Queen Nadine. Too good for Gus, too good to leave them all so young. And it wasn’t high hat and airs, either. It was true goodness, the goodness of her soul, and it shone right out at Arlene every day and night now, at breakfast and dinner, sitting directly across her kitchen table and sickening.

  The boy went to college in late August. Burf and Arlene watched his games on TV, and Burf thought that maybe the girl would see Horace play and write to him. Write to him, Burf thought, don’t forget. Find her, Arlene thought.

  Only Believe

  Elizabeth was back for the last three months of school, sooty eyes and lank hair, but back. She wouldn’t look at Max, lurching through the halls like a wounded man. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, crusty and egg-shaped behind his glasses, and she drew in her breath when his hands came too close. He was functionally drunk every weekend and putting vodka in his orange juice at breakfast. He got himself to work, he kissed his children without exhaling, he gave a passing grade to any student whose parents would have come
in to complain. He didn’t fall down, he didn’t break things, and he refused to drive with the boys for fear of killing them. Greta would not get in a car with him after four o’clock on Friday. The boys rode their bicycles into town, and Greta had begun to give Dan money for groceries. Max couldn’t do other than what he was doing, so he bought Dan a wire basket for his bike and all the comic books he wanted.

  “Hey there, Elizabeth, welcome back. How’ve you been? Have you finished that paper on Edith Wharton?” Manic with despair, he sounded nothing like himself; the voice he’d used with her and hundreds of students and their parents and his own children, the sound of compassionate authority, shriveled in his throat. Rachel stood guard three feet away.

  Elizabeth shook her head at Rachel, who edged a little farther down the hall and sat at the bottom of the staircase.

  “I’m okay. I lost the baby.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Was it awful?”

  He tried to steer them toward his office, but she clung to the wall like a hostage.

  “No, I lost the baby. It died. I didn’t have to have it killed.”

  Max reached up, pulling handfuls of air.

  “You miscarried?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, so am I. I’m sure the baby’s sorry too.”

  And Max kept talking just to talk. Trying to turn what they had into a bold, star-crossed romance, love’s honorable defeat, as if the two of them had wept in each other’s lap on the floor of Mrs. Hill’s kitchen. Elizabeth said nothing. She saw his thoughts and closed her eyes. Max kissed her forehead, kissed her right through her unwashed bangs, and leaned back against the wall beside her.

  “Where’s the boy?”

  She shrugged, and he thought it would be nothing to break her jaw.

  “The boy. The boy who got you pregnant. Where is he?”

  “He’s gone. His father sent him away.”

  “Well, I’m still here, sweetheart. You call me if you need me. Just call me.”

  Elizabeth slid along the cinder-block wall, shouting, “I’m coming. Wait up,” and when she was halfway down the hall and safe by Rachel’s side, she called back to him, “Uh-uh. No thanks, Mr. Stone. Thanks anyway.”

  And he saw her speak quickly to Rachel, her arm around her friend’s waist, and they glanced back at him and broke into sharp, disbelieving laughter.

  Max had thought of affairs, normal men’s affairs, as a kind of Tabasco for the ego and libido, a little zip for the everyday burgers and scrambled eggs. His own affairs now seemed impossibly lighthearted and kind, the motels pink-and-gold operetta sets, all unhappiness and endings hidden by heavy, friendly thighs around his waist, a good-natured soft throat swallowing wine, a slightly slack belly becoming round and tight under his fingers. This, this girl, was poisoned water in a thousand-mile desert, and he must drink and know he’s dying.

  That first terrible summer without her, two years ago, he drank Scotch until the back of his head pressed so tightly on the front and his mouth was such a compost heap that he had to stop for three days, and then he switched to dry white wine, buying it by the case. He felt good whenever he saw one of the pretty labels in a restaurant or at someone else’s house, and he told people it was a great wine for the price. (Not that Max and Greta were invited much anymore. Max had always been the charmer, the half of the couple that people wanted to have over. A sad, charmless drunk and a religious agoraphobic are not much in demand at dinner parties and barbecues.) He felt, as drunks do, that if other people drank the stuff for legitimate reasons, he might, too.

  After the formal yielding to Mrs. Hill and his conscience, vanquished in that overstuffed blue parlor, he had stayed away, hoping that such visible goodness would be rewarded, that he would become who he had been. Elizabeth had stayed away for months more, finally walking into his office with a handsome Italian boy, with carefully torn T-shirt, incomprehensible speech, and long black curls. Max thought, He’s not really her boyfriend, she’s just hired him for the afternoon, to torture me for staying away from her, which I had no right to do and which I swear to God I will never do again.

  So beautiful, Max thought. Am I supposed to be ashamed for being such a dirty old man, another Humbert, disgusting in my obsession? I try to imagine the man who would not love her, the cold-hearted pervert who could look at her without passion. My deadpan baby doll, as beautiful as the day, and when I compliment her on the arrangement of red roses appliqued across the ass of her jeans, she blushes so deeply the sheer white of her T-shirt pinkens. I know she’s only fifteen, for Christ’s sake. I offend myself, never mind the world. Fifteen. I looked at her the first time and I wanted to pull her to me and make love to her with such tenderness and skill that even God would forgive me. And then I would kill myself, because I know I would never be forgiven, least of all by myself.

  Instead of saying that every time he saw her his thoughts were of gentle fucking and violent death, Max shook Tony DiMusio’s small hand and made pleasant, avuncular inquiries. Tony demonstrated interest in Max’s stick-shift Volkswagen, and they argued equably about cheap versus expensive cars (Elizabeth and Tony thought cheap was morally superior; Max had been poor and they had not) and stick-shifts versus automatics (they shared a preference for stick-shifts, even though Elizabeth and Tony didn’t drive).

  They didn’t talk about literature; Max assumed that Tony didn’t read. He knew Tony could make out street signs and menus without assistance, but he didn’t read. And he hated Bob Dylan (Elizabeth had made Max listen to Bringing It All Back Home eleven times just last year, and what he did not find sophomoric and obvious amused him, even as he was tempted to point out to Elizabeth all of her Wunderkinds plagiarism), because Dylan was so fuckin’ serious, man, and Tony’s life ambition was to own a cherry-red Porsche with four on the floor, man, and just groove. So Max knew just what they had in common and knew why she’d brought Tony for a visit, and he played dumb through to the end, expressing admiration for Porsches, disdain for Bob Dylan, and best wishes for their future happiness. He believed, furiously, that he had acquitted himself well, even admirably, and that Elizabeth got what she came for.

  Tony’s hand was on the doorknob and Elizabeth had dropped her flat-lipped kiss on Max’s cheek when Max surprised them all with a wild cruel lie: Greta and I are thinking about having another baby, I think we really will. Elizabeth lost her color and left, and Max had another year of no Elizabeth at all, in which to repent.

  A whole year in which to slide right out of the Little League games, clarinet lessons, food fights, animal-filled movies, and endless doctor appointments that make up family life, into a sea of terror and lust so bright it seemed like the love of penitents for the Lord. Danny played two sports every season. Benjie, who would become Ben by the end of the next year, sat in the corner of whatever room Max was in and watched him. Benjie was Max’s conscience, the repository of his own burnished childhood virtues and the one who got the five-dollar bill Max waved around for assistance before he lay down on the couch. Benjie took the five bucks, untied his father’s shoes, and put a pillow under his head. Benjie had three accidents on his bike, breaking his arm, his collarbone, and two ribs, and each time he winked up at the doctors with Max’s own look of jovial despair. Marc hid candy in his room and drew small-headed superheroes and screaming girls.

  Greta didn’t see how sick Max was and he didn’t tell her. Her phobias and her exhausting efforts to overcome them (hours sweating in the living room, just visualizing the airport; near-death experiences on line at the supermarket) distracted her from almost everything. Max believed fatherhood was his drop cloth, that his true, dissolving self was hidden from everyone but Benjie, who saw, but could not, thank God, understand. Since Greta’s official return from Benjie’s room (two minutes of Pyrrhic marital triumph: Greta admitted her presence made the boy nervous; Max’s mouth trembled with mean words and near satisfaction—then, what kind of father gives his
boys this mother? and there were no words and no satisfaction at all), they took turns clinging to the bed edges. They had not encountered each other once, not for one minute, during any one night.

  Elizabeth had stretch marks on the crests of both hips, and Max remembered her long torso, saw her ivory peach ass across the classroom ceiling. Delicate raspberry streaks forked through the creamy resilience of closely layered, glossy cells, the inimitable, intimidating bounce of sixteen-year-old skin. Nothing at all like the serious striated rips along Greta’s belly, permanent incursions of painful change, selflessness burrowing deeply into beauty and consuming it. All that was left of poor Greta were those shimmering, heroic coils, nothing like Elizabeth’s ignorant smoothness, nothing like the plain pale marks Max saw along his waist, quietly ugly creases he could barely make out above his buttocks when he stepped out of the shower. Max had a bottle of very cheap Scotch in the bathroom closet, for emergency mornings. It was Scotch because there were emergencies, and it was cheap because he liked to think that he might decline really bad Scotch, and also because, whatever he was unable to do, he was saving seriously for three college educations on a teacher’s salary. When he woke up thinking of Elizabeth, feeling her breasts beneath his fingers, cool, gorgeous piles of loose peony, he took three quick swallows before he stepped into the shower. In the steam, he avoided the sight of his own body, a series of widening, slickly unhealthy rolls, his dick invisible, properly ashamed, appropriately dwarfed by beer bloat, a Scotch pregnancy, his own fat breasts sloping softly under greying chest hair that was losing the battle, like the rest of him, Elizabeth’s breasts offered nothing, not comfort or food or rest, they were just beauty barely set without any purpose at all except their own sweet life. He’d gotten more sustenance from a hamburger, more genuine care from Greta, and more rest from a nap on the bathroom floor. There was a paper cup dispenser in the bathroom, for the kids. Drying off, Max had an emergency Dixie cup of Scotch before he brushed his teeth.