Love Always

3

As he pulled into the driveway, Hildon consulted his watch. It had been a Christmas present from Lucy: a watch that would tell him, even as he fell into the ocean, what time it was in Cairo. He sat for a few seconds before getting out of the car. Behind him a tractor rattled by on the dirt road, and he felt a tremor in his ribs as it passed. He was slightly hung-over from the party, and he needed a hit of Cindi Coeur to cheer him up. Some butterflies flickered up from the dust and beat their wings. He watched them fly away, to an area where rhododendron bushes had recently been planted.

Lucy was in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, having her daily lunch: a diet chocolate ice cream cone. What might be mistaken for sprinkles was actually a Diet Trim capsule she had broken into a bowl through which she rubbed the ice cream.

“Mon coeur,” Hildon said, kissing his fingertips and flicking them away from his lips.

The door had been open. He had told her a million times to lock it, just in case some lunatic came by, but of course she did not lock it, and today he had no intention of saying anything.

He opened the refrigerator. Perrier on the top shelf, bottles arranged neatly. He considered removing them and setting them up on the floor like bowling pins, which he could knock down with the pomegranate. There was mold inside the applesauce jar. There was chutney. A plate piled high with snow peas. As usual there was nothing to eat.

“What’s this?” Hildon said, thumbing a newspaper on the kitchen counter.

“Research,” Lucy said. “Jane called today. She’s sending Nicole for a visit.”

In preparation for this, Lucy had gone out an hour before to buy the tabloids so that she could read the Hollywood gossip. She had found a picture of Ed Harp and Nicole, both in indecent bikinis, at the beach. Nicole with Philippe (Jane had told her in a recent phone call that he was a Greek midget they were trying to pass off as a ten-year-old French boy). Nicole leaving Ma Maison, after dinner à deux with Gillie — another superstar who worked hard to make his affectations antic: he went everywhere, including Ma Maison, with his two Samoyeds. The color reproduction was bad in the photo: Nicole’s face, Day-Glo pink, seemed to be sliding off sideways into Gillie’s mottled pink and yellow jaw. It was rumored, in another paper, that Nicole had her eye on Brandt Buchanan. That picture showed Nicole riding on the shoulders of a boy who wore a shirt, the main purpose of which was to display unbuttoned buttons. Farrah was still with Ryan — no word on his son, whose teeth he had knocked out. There was a diet that guaranteed you would lose ten pounds a month, snacking on beans. Many women, all of them on TV shows that Lucy had never heard of, were said to be infanticipating. The boyfriends and husbands looked gay. Michael Jackson had added another llama to his menagerie. Alana’s life was livable without Rod. Another diet featured the eating of squash blossoms.

Lucy handed Hildon the week’s column.

Dear Cindi Coeur,

I understand that small children often exaggerate without thinking of it as a lie. My question is about my son, who has been complaining that his best friend has better lunches than he has. He says that instead of bringing tuna fish sandwiches to school, the boy has a whole tuna. I told him that this was not possible, because a real tuna fish would weigh hundreds of pounds. Nevertheless, my son refuses to eat tuna sandwiches anymore, and I feel that tuna sandwiches are better for him than the protein found in the only other sandwich he will eat — pork chop. I am also worried about his telling lies. He refuses to admit that he has made up the story about the tuna. I have questioned him in detail about how this would be possible, and he just continues the lie. He says the boy does not bring the sandwiches in a lunch box, but in a box the size of a bed. Should I discipline him, or just pack tuna sandwiches and insist that he face reality and eat them?

A Worried Mom

Dear Worried,

It seems to me that you have quite a few options. You could refuse to replace the tuna sandwiches with sandwiches made of pork chops, and substitute something such as quiche, which will get soggy and appeal to no child. You could also get a pig and put it in a cage, telling your son that this way he would have something to rival his friend’s tuna fish, and that it is his problem to get it to school. You might also consider the possibility that the other boy is being forced to eat sardine sandwiches and is trying to compensate for his own embarrassment by insisting that they are tuna fish. You may want to ask yourself what your son is missing at home that makes him have such a strong empathetic reaction with the other boy. You might also consider the possibility that one or both boys needs glasses.

The phone rang, and Lucy answered it. From her end of the conversation Hildon could tell that she was talking to the kid at the nursery — the kid he had met with her the week before who had now developed a crush on her and who had stolen what looked like quite a lot of rhododendron bushes and planted them in her backyard. Lucy always elicited strong reactions from people. They loved her or hated her — their intensity was the one constant. Hildon, of course, couldn’t understand people’s negative impressions; he and Lucy had been friends and lovers since their college days.

Hildon wandered into the living room, not wanting to hear any more of the conversation. He had never been insulted that Lucy hadn’t wanted to marry him until he met the person she did want to settle down with — Les Whitehall. Les had even more preppie refinement than Hildon, but no sense of humor about it. Hildon thought he bore as much resemblance to a real man as Play-Doh did to a rock. Instead of being a real shit kicker, he was an intellectual shit kicker: he gave lazy paraphrases of philosophers’ thoughts, pretended to think ironically of his own existence, and chose the easiest audience a coward could find — college kids.

“No!” Lucy said. “I would not think it was funny if you planted willow trees to weep in your behalf in my yard!”

“Come in here, Lucy,” Hildon said. “You’re acting like a jackass.”

“That was my father,” Lucy said into the telephone. “He’s very outspoken. He gets away with everything because he’s six five. Daddy thought the bushes were beautiful, by the way. Let me put him on to thank you.”

Lucy came to the doorway and smiled at Hildon. Such a tease. Putting him on the spot. He decided to turn the tables on her. He walked past her and picked up the telephone. “Shtup my daughter and your ass’ll fly farther than Johnny Unitas’ football,” he said. He slammed the phone down.

Lucy looked shocked. Then she laughed. Lucy with the long swing of auburn hair, the long, matchstick legs and arms, the perfect white teeth. His heart really was racing; he had taken such a risk. He went into the living room and sank down into the sofa. She nestled against his side, laughing hard. “It makes me wish I did have an irrational father,” she said. “That macho shit really does have its appeal. That was pretty good, Hildy.”

“That kid’s no more than nineteen,” he said, suddenly feeling as stuffy as a real father. “You ought to hang out with people your own age.”

“I don’t hang out with him — I met him when I went to buy a rosebush.”

“The flirting was pretty heavy, Lucy. Pretending that you were debating between a rosebush and a box of petunias. Lucy the dizzy dame.” Hildon crossed his eyes and tapped his knuckles on his forehead.

“Hildon — are you serious? You’re serious. You really believe what you’re saying. What bothers you — that it worked?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Hildy — are you serious? I’m taking you seriously. Please smile.”

“We were having a nice time, and suddenly you just turned your attention on that silly kid and started coming on to him like I wasn’t there.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? Since when are you so easily offended?”

“You’ve always been able to hurt me when you wanted to.”

“Hildon — you’re out of your mind. We’re having a serious discussion. Why are we doing that? Did something bad happen to you before you came over?”

“Tell the truth,” Hildon said. “Don’t be cute for a minute. All I want is for you to admit you were flirting. Yes, I’m overreacting. It’s your right to flirt. But you have to be serious for one second and admit that I’m right.”

“Is there some reason why you want to get into a fight with me?” Lucy said.

“I never won a fight with you in my life, so I’d be crazy to want that, wouldn’t I? You’re taking the easy way out by pretending that every disagreement is a fight, and therefore you don’t have to lower yourself to take part in it. Just say that you were flirting, and I’ll shut up about my personal code of ethics that says a thirty-five-year-old woman shouldn’t turn on a teenager.”

“He’s not a teenager.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“What is the subject, Hildon? That you want to make a big production out of some silly person’s crush on me?”

“You kid around with those people. You take them seriously and you’ve dismissed me.”

“We talk on the phone almost every day.”

“I edit the magazine you write for.”

“It has nothing to do with that. I could mail the pieces in.”

“Go ahead,” Hildon said. “Keep talking. Convince yourself, and then it’ll be all over.”

“Hildon,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Are you all right? Are you going to keep this up?”

“Are you?” he said. “All you have to do to stop me is admit that I was right and that you were flirting.”

“Hildon,” she said, closing her eyes, “Close your eyes and we’ll both be quiet for a minute, and when we open our eyes we’ll pretend this didn’t happen.”

“I don’t want you to pretend anymore,” he said.

Her mouth showed a flicker of annoyance; she squeezed her eyes shut. She did not open them. She had her hands on his shoulders. In a few seconds he kissed her hand. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter and did not react. He looked at the hand he had kissed. Thank God she had not married Les Whitehall. He closed his eyes and opened them again. Her eyes were squeezed shut. The lines in her forehead and fanning above her nose made him realize that someday Lucy would be old. He would be old. He would be old without ever having won a fight, but he would still have Lucy. He put his cheek on her hand and closed his eyes. He kept them closed for much longer than a minute. He felt her breath on his hair, and a slight breeze coming through the window. When he opened his eyes she was looking at him. Her face was almost expressionless — that look that had first lured him to her side when they were twenty years old. The look was a mask: because she was pretty and she had been looked at, appraised, so often, she wasn’t going to let anybody have anything easily besides their own false assumptions. She was so pretty that many people made the mistake of thinking she had to be dumb. Her immobile face reinforced that effect. It seemed almost intimate when she smiled, and a real turn-on when she laughed. She smiled at him. It was over. Another moment when he might have lost her had passed.

She got up and went into the kitchen. “Do you want a drink?” she said. He had shook her up a little. He was sorry he had done it. He looked at the rug and tried to compose his thoughts. She came to the kitchen doorway and looked at him. Now she did look upset. She walked back to the living room and sat beside him.

“Did you do that to scare me?” she said.

“I just went out of control,” he said.

She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. It was very quiet; depending on how strong the breeze was, you heard different noises: scratchy or soft, the tinkling of wind chimes. He held her earrings between two fingers: a gold sliver of moon on which a little star had landed. He studied it, dangling from her ear, rubbed it the way he would rub a shell, doubting the cool smoothness of it.

“Go make us a drink,” she said. “I’m not as dishonest as you think I am. I was flirting. I did it just to do it. I was pretty surprised when he found out where I lived and put all those bushes in the backyard.”

They hadn’t done this routine for so many years that at first Hildon didn’t realize it had begun. It was what they had done long ago: belittled themselves so much that the other would be overwhelmed with positive feelings. That was the way they had so often ended up in bed. He was standing. She put her hands behind his knees and drew her forehead to his leg. He froze for a second, then stepped toward her. She kissed his leg.

Hildon started to laugh. He needed to choke back a terrible sadness that had started to overwhelm him. He sat on the couch now, leaning the tip of one shoulder against the back, and began to raise her shirt out of her jeans. He kissed her stomach. His nose tickled her, and she drew up her legs. “I didn’t think he was nineteen,” Hildon said. “I was just being a prick.”