You Are Not A Stranger Here Read online

  "You're such a loser," Heather says. "Come on, you guys, let's go upstairs," and she leads them up the back staircase onto a landing, from where, through another open door, they can see a fully clothed boy standing in a nearly overflowing bathtub swatting at a floating house plant with a tennis racket, cheered on in his novel sport by three other boys gesticulating furiously, tubside.

  "This is all so meaningless and destructive," Heather says.

  Ted risks a sideways glance at Lauren and is rendered momentarily inoperative by the realization that she was in fact already looking at him when he glanced, this causing their eyes to meet. At lunch--what seems a thousand years ago--she grinned twice at comments he made and none of her friends laughed.

  Heather announces she is going to put an end to the bathroom vandalism and marches across the landing, calling out 215

  ahead of her, "Hey there!" leaving Ted and Lauren alone by the banister. Acid house pumps from the living room up into the brightly lit stairwell.

  Stevie has advised Ted that if he finds himself toasted and needs to simulate normal conversation, he should adopt a simple compare-and-contrast strategy: state an uncontroversial fact about yourself--who you have for history, what you did last summer, et cetera--followed by a question eliciting the same information from the other person. This is what people do in real life, Stevie always says. Just behave as if the given circumstances were real. The method seems partially effective until the music changes abruptly to Lou Reed, at which point Ted becomes convinced all remaining facts about his life are deeply controversial.

  "Sorry Stevie was such an asshole," he says.

  "Whatever. You're not joined at the hip."

  Lauren's casual eloquence stuns him. "You're right," he says, "we're not."

  Caged longing presses up through his chest and into his throat. He wants to tell her he's never had a girlfriend, never even had sex, only been kissed twice, and that this makes him feel like an ugly creature and a freak, but he concludes these thoughts are better kept to himself.

  "I love your sweater," he says.

  "Thanks."

  "And I like that thing on your neck--what is it?"

  "Jade," she says, touching it with her fingers.

  "I bet it's warm. It must get warm when it hangs on your neck."

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  "This is criminal!" Heather yells from the bathroom.

  "You'll do time for this."

  "You want to sit down?" Lauren asks.

  "Okay," he says.

  They cross the landing into what looks to be a guest room. Lauren flops down onto a large white sofa. "I bet the Davidsons are drinking pina coladas in some beach hut on Aruba."

  "Yeah," Ted agrees, "talking to friends about their good son Jack applying early admission."

  "Exactly."

  "My parents never go away," he says. "Do yours?"

  "Sometimes. They're trite. They care about silly things."

  "Harsh."

  "Yeah," she says. "It is."

  Ted perches on the edge of the couch. "You seem older."

  She turns to look at him, her eyes slightly narrowed, slightly blurred.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's like you've experienced all this before. The way you don't talk much, but like you're thinking something instead, something you're not saying. It's odd." He would like to put his hand behind her head and let it rest in his palm, perhaps taste the jade lozenge hanging round her neck. He wonders what he would know about her if they touched.

  "I'm stoned," he says, leaning back into the sofa. "If I say weird stuff, you won't be offended, will you?"

  She shakes her head. "I'm drunk."

  Ted closes his eyes. He sees Mrs. Maynard asleep in her 217

  room up on the hill. He's never mentioned to his parents or his brother that he visits her, but then they've never asked about the program he signed up for.

  "I went to this store today," he says, "with this woman I visit over in Plymouth, for the volunteer thing. I draw for her usually, but we went out today. She kind of flipped out in the store. She ripped up this poster they had, and then . . ." He sees Mrs. Maynard's face as she gazed, terrified, onto the highway ahead of them. "In the car she told me there was a woman sitting in the backseat, but that I shouldn't look because she was angry. She said she heard the woman's voice a lot but she only saw her once in a while."

  He opens his eyes and looks at Lauren. "The strange thing is," he says, "I wasn't scared. I mean, it was creepy, but I believed her."

  "You thought there was really another person in your car that you couldn't see?"

  "For her there was, yeah."

  To this Lauren makes no reply. They sit on the couch a while, listening to Lou Reed singing from downstairs. The borderline defeat in his voice seems alien to the objects in the room: the coffee table books, the dried flowers, the wafflepatterned bed skirts, the beige clock and ruffled curtains--

  these things they're supposed to want one day. The objects persist blandly in the bland intention of their owners. For Ted, they have the sadness of the things in his own house, the maple living room set his parents bought the year he was born, the dining room table they used to sit at when he was younger, reminders of old marital hope. He and Lauren are 218

  just florid detritus in a room like this, drifting past on the dead river of time that never ceases here.

  "I like you," Lauren says.

  Suddenly, Ted's heart crashes into his rib cage. He hears George Clooney yell, "Lidocaine!" sees himself sped on a gurney toward a team of doctors, bright lights, IV drips, and he knows he is very high and all of a sudden absolutely happy.

  "That's so cool," he says to her. "I got you some lipstick."

  And then Heather is standing in front of them, rage of a prosecutor emblazoned on her face, and she says she's leaving, there's another party at the Putnams', and if they want a ride they better come.

  II

  T H E H O L I D AY S B R I N G Christmas lights and family visits to Plymouth Brewster, along with the news that Mrs. Johnson is retiring at the end of the year. The new man, Mr. Attwater, young and handsome in a boring sort of way, wears dark suits and shakes everyone's hand. The older women coo, the younger women are suspicious, the men play cards. Rehearsals for Our Town keep Ted from coming the first two weeks of December, though he calls to tell Elizabeth and says he's sorry.

  The second time he phones they speak a long while. Ted sounds reluctant to hang up. Finally, Elizabeth steels her courage and asks, "Have you seen Lauren?" They have not mentioned their trip to the mall.

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  "Yeah," he replies with the quick, breathless voice she's come to recognize as his unconscious signal of interest.

  "Yeah, she's in the play. I get to narrate what she does and stuff."

  "I'm sorry, Ted, that we didn't get her a gift."

  "Oh no, that's cool. I actually gave her the lipstick anyway. She was kinda into it." He pauses. "I've been sort of wondering, like when you were married . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "Or like before that, when you guys were dating . . . I mean at some point, you guys, like, got together so you must have let him know when it was cool to do that, right?"

  "That's right," Elizabeth says. "He would call the dorm. I would tell him if I were free on the evening he suggested. He was very reliable in that regard. He always called when he said he would. You should remember that, Ted. Politeness is a tremendous asset."

  "Yeah, right," he says. "But like after that, I mean after you decided to hang out, did you let him know when other stuff should happen, or did he kinda . . . let you know?"

  "Oh. I see. You mean about sex."

  She can almost feel his wince at the other end of the line; she restrains a giggle.

  "Yes," he whispers.

  "I'm afraid I'm not much of one to ask about these things. But you're a good person. You're kind. Be kind to her."

  "Okay."

  The next time he calls he tells her it'
s coming up for winter break at the high school, and with performances and 220

  things he and the other volunteer won't be back until January. Elizabeth hadn't been told about a break over the vacation, and she takes it hard. But Ted calls each week, once on Christmas, and with this she thinks she will get by until the day he returns.

  Judith, the nurse, has grown suspicious of her behavior over the last few weeks, hearing her talk sometimes, and Elizabeth has begun flushing her Primidone down the toilet rather than risk discovery. She's been on the drugs so long she's forgotten many ordinary satisfactions. What cold water feels like in a parched mouth. The pleasure concentration on a single thought can yield. The days bring with them the pulse, the hum, joyous sometimes, terrifying others, but alive, full and alive. And they bring Hester, never now a day without her. In the midst of it all, there is so much she wants to ask Ted that she's started making a list so she won't forget. N E W Y E A R ' S E V E begins with a clear, bright sky, flooding Elizabeth's room in light. The annual party is scheduled for after dinner. Families will drop by in the early evening and everyone will be in bed by ten. It is Mrs. Johnson's last day as director and she makes the rounds of the rooms saying goodbye. Some of these men and women she's known twenty-five years. It's just after lunch, as the sky clouds over and snow begins to fall, that she comes to Elizabeth. They start as they always do by Mrs. Johnson reporting what she's been reading--a book written by a foreigner about traveling in America, she says, full of suggestions for places to visit. She and her 221

  husband plan a trip across the country in the spring. She's never been to the South and wants to go.

  To snap pictures of plantations and muse at the faded grandeur of it all, I suppose. What a blissful forgetting it must be.

  In the mornings, it is easier to reply without speaking aloud (at night it has become impossible), so Elizabeth tells Hester to be quiet, which for the moment she is. There is a sad expression on Mrs. Johnson's face and Elizabeth wonders if she actually wants to retire, or if perhaps she has been made to by others.

  "You haven't been in touch with your husband, have you?" she says. It is odd that Mrs. Johnson should ask this question. Elizabeth hasn't spoken to Will in more than twenty years. He lives in California with a wife and three children. Mrs. Johnson knows this well enough.

  "No," Elizabeth says.

  "And Ginny, she's never mentioned anything about other arrangements?"

  "Is something the matter? Do I have to leave?"

  Mrs. Johnson shakes her head. "It's just that the new director and I have been reviewing things. I'm sure he's right, there are issues of liability, legal things we have to be careful about. There was concern about your outing with Ted.

  "Elizabeth, I tried to convince him otherwise, but Mr. Attwater's decided that as long as you're here, you're not to have visits from a volunteer. God knows it's the last thing I wanted to tell you today, but I wanted it at least to be me who told you."

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  Elizabeth tilts her head to one side. "No visits?"

  Mrs. Johnson folds her hands in her lap.

  "I see," Elizabeth says. "Mr. Attwater. He's decided."

  "Yes."

  H E C A N N O T E V E N commence an attempt to concentrate on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. As he sits in the cinema with Lauren on one side and Heather and Stevie, who've started dating, on the other, the deep irrelevance of the movie strikes him like an epiphany. In a few hours he, Ted, will be naked in a bed with a girl he loves, and the whole miserable material world seems a mighty petty thing in comparison to this. It seems it might never matter again. The date has been set for a week, her Christmas present to him whispered in his ear, the whole thing so damn sophisticated he feels like one of those men in top hat and tails who dance on moonlit balconies in the black-and-white movies his parents used to watch. "Suave" is the word.

  Finally, the stupid flick ends and they follow the crowd out into the parking lot, where the snow has begun to fall heavily now and the plows have started their work for the night.

  "You guys coming to the party?" Heather asks.

  Ted squints, shrugs, looks off into the distance. "Sounds kinda cool, I'm thinking maybe not, though, you know. It's getting late."

  "Hello? It's New Year's Eve."

  Lauren, dressed in sheer black club pants and a simple 223

  black leather jacket, interrupts Ted's nonchalance by informing the others that her parents are away and she and Ted are going back to her place--no interruption of his hipness, he realizes, but a cubing of it.

  "What do you think, Heather?" Stevie asks, rolling onto the balls of his feet. "Maybe you and me could go play some cops and robbers too."

  Heather gives a mocking snort. "Please. I'll probably be bailing you out when you get arrested with your gay little drugs."

  "Have fun," Lauren says, taking Ted's hand, something she's never done in front of other people. Instantly, he has an erection. As they walk toward his car, he wonders how premature premature ejaculation is, if men come miles from their girlfriends' homes, if they'll make it to her house in time. On the highway, Lauren puts in an ambient house tape, a slow beat, the volume way down. Wet flakes zoom into the windshield out of the dark hills of the sky. The mall lots they pass are lit and empty. The stores are closed, the car dealerships vanishing beneath the snow. Tonight, Ted doesn't see this familiar landscape as a present fact, but already as a memory, a scene he will one day recall. It's strange and exciting to perceive things from such a distance. He glimpses how beautiful even this world can be if you aren't actually in it. On the passenger's side, Lauren sits quietly, her leather jacket unzipped, the orange cardigan they've joked about buttoned underneath it. Her face has an oddly purposeful expression, her eyes fixed on the dashboard. In the month 224

  they've been going out, there's been a fair amount of silence between them, which Lauren doesn't seem to mind, though it makes Ted anxious. They've talked about her family some. At first he thought she loathed her parents in the way some of his other wealthy friends do, with a kind of casual cynicism, as if their mothers and fathers were minor officials in the national corruption--illegitimate people living illegitimate lives. He's always thought with bitterness it was a luxury to view your parents this way--as people strong enough to withstand your derision. But the more time he spends with Lauren, the more he thinks she understands this, that she could hurt her parents. Her determination, her careful plan for their getting together, it's about something different, about being in control. Her house is a six-month-old mock chateau with a threecar garage, a fountain, and a turret. Inside, it's wired like a spaceship: thermostats, alarms, humidifiers, key pads to control it all. Most of the time half the shit is broken, the living room tropical, the doorbell not even working. Her father spends evenings yelling at contractors. His work has something to do with money. They're down at their condo in Florida this weekend with Lauren's brother.

  "Want a glass of wine?" she asks when they get into the kitchen.

  "Yeah," he says, "that would be cool."

  The high-ceilinged room is an odd combination of expensive chrome appliances and peeling wood furniture that looks like it was bought at a yard sale.

  As Lauren hands Ted his glass, she leans forward to kiss 225

  him gently on the lips, a touch he receives, as always, weak kneed and nervous. He puts his free arm around her. He tries not to think about this evening in his own house, his brother out with friends, his father reading the paper in the living room, alone, his mother upstairs in bed, alone, their empty kitchen smelling slightly of the cleaning spray his father will have used on the counters after making dinner and washing the dishes.

  "What's up with the table?" he says.

  "Having decrepit old shit you pay through the nose for is the latest thing. They can't get enough of it. Perverse, isn't it?"

  Ted supposes that it is. She leans her head into the hollow of his shoulder and puts her hand in his back pocket, palming the cheek of hi
s ass. He thinks they better hurry. Be kind to her, Mrs. Maynard said. He imagines he's the only kid at his school who gets his romantic advice from a schizophrenic. Taking his hand, Lauren leads him through rooms of fine rugs and distressed furniture, chandeliers and gilt-framed paintings, up a staircase wide enough to sleep on. T I R E S O F PA S S I N G cars send arcs of snow into the air, dotting the skirt of her coat. She pauses now and then to wipe the fur clean with her gloved hands. Several inches have already accumulated on the road's shoulder, but she manages all right in her boots, huffing a bit as she goes, unused to the exertion of a walk longer than the circumference of the grounds. In the hubbub of the New Year's party, no one noticed her leaving. Headlights flash up into her eyes, pass, and vanish. Wind 226

  drives snow down out of the sky. She reaches an intersection and sees it's the old Plymouth Road, gas stations on three corners now. She turns north, ears full of the storm and Hester's voice.

  You should have heard the animals dying that winter in the cold, how the horse groaned in the frost, sheep starving in their pens, snow past the windows. And you know my eldest died of her cough in my arms when the ground was covered and too hard to bury her, so she lay under a sheet in the woodshed, where for a month I saw her every time I went to gather fuel for our fire. And we weren't the worst off, sick at least with diseases we knew.

  "I don't care," Elizabeth says, though it isn't true and she can't help seeing Hester in the woodshed. Her responses go unheeded now in any case. She starts up a rise she can remember being driven along by her grandfather in his Packard.

  Eighty years the owners of a sawmill and merchants through the Revolution, and of course, you know the cellar was fitted with a second cellar covered with a boulder lowered from an oak beam by rope, where our family hid during raids by the British, relying on the appointed neighbor--

  should he survive--to come and lift the stone when the soldiers had quit their burning. And merchants still in the early days of the Republic, selectmen at town hall, teachers, a judge, a colonel, a daughter ended in the river, never mentioned, a graveyard full of us. On the sidewalk, she shakes her head back and forth, back and forth. "I know this. What does it matter?"