Whistler

CHAPTER 2 #11

“Back to the Turkish restaurant and my friend Abigail Zabriskie,” Eddie said.

“I was not in good shape after that dinner. Once Skip and Polly got married and moved away, there was a period of great awkwardness between us. Clearly we needed to wrap things up, and we all felt the burden of that, even Polly, who had no idea what was going on. Skip’s answer was to be a total bear to me whenever we were together.

After that horrible dinner, your mother and I decided to take a walk through the Commons.

I wasn’t talking and she wasn’t talking and then finally she said, ‘So how is he your friend?’ and just like that, the whole story came out.

I had never told anyone the truth about Skip, not before or since, except of course for tonight.

Well, I told your mother the truth about all of it. ”

“And that’s when you started dating?” Jesus, Mom, what were you thinking?

“Sweet word, ‘dating,’ but yes, that’s when things started. For the record, I adored your mother. She was wonderful to me. And I loved you and your sister. She was offering me an off-ramp from the half-life I’d been living. I could have a wife and children and the little house—”

“—and all you had to do was give up Skip.”

“Which, on that night, did not seem like such a hardship. No one would say such a thing today, but there was a time when it did not feel like lunacy to want what the majority of the human population had. Your mother’s deal was that I had to give up Skip and give up being gay.

I know it sounds terrible now, but she didn’t know any better.

I’m the one who should have known better. ”

“Now I have to feel bad for Polly and my mother.”

“They were never in the same category. Your mother was a true friend betrayed.”

A photographer appeared at our little table then. Later it would occur to me that I should have sent her away, considering that I didn’t remember the bride and hadn’t been invited to the wedding, but in the moment I tipped my head to Eddie’s chest and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

Somewhere around midnight a new singer appeared, a girl who looked to be every minute of fourteen, and suddenly the ceiling was lit with violet light.

That she was extremely famous was clear to everyone, even those of us who had no idea who she was.

She was the last great surprise of the night, and when she took the stage, the wedding guests lost their minds, keening and whistling and stamping their feet.

We decided, through a series of hand gestures, that the time had come for our departure.

We declined the gift bags being handed out at the door.

We didn’t want to take advantage of the situation.

Once we were outside the Plaza, we briefly discussed taking off our shoes and climbing into the fountain like Scott and Zelda, and then thought better of it. This was what it meant to grow old: we were capable of thinking better of it before it happened.

“Do you remember—” I began.

“I remember everything.” Eddie’s arm was back around my shoulder.

A few small clouds sailed miles above us, passing the moon. “Do you remember the story you told me that night in the car?”

“Which one?”

“The one about the woman and her horse.”

“Oh, that one,” he said. “Of course I do.”

“Whistler,” I said, and suddenly I was afraid I’d cry again. Being drunk was a terrible burden.

“Whistler,” he said, looking up at the moon between the buildings. “That’s right.”

“I thought about that woman and her horse for a long time after you left, and I wondered if maybe you’d told me the story because you were leaving and you wanted me to know you’d come back for me, which, of course, you did.”

“Only it took me considerably longer than you thought it might.”

I smiled. Oh, this night, this arm around my shoulder. “Did you make that story up for a reason?”

Eddie stopped and lit another cigarette, and this time I almost asked if I could join him even though I don’t smoke. “I didn’t make that story up. It was a book proposal, straight off my desk.”

“Someone else made it up?”

“No, no, nonfiction. I was more open to nonfiction back then, and it was the most spectacular story. The woman’s name was Mary Carter. She lived on a ranch in Wyoming about fifty miles south of Sheridan.”

I would have sworn the story wasn’t true, even though Eddie told me at the time that it was. Nothing about it seemed true. “How do you remember this?”

“Because I tried to buy the book. I tried for years. An agent had seen a piece about the accident in the newspaper, it was practically nothing, maybe three inches of column, and she got in touch with Mary. She told Mary there was a book in there. The agent sent me the clipping and a brief outline. For all I knew, the agent had written the proposal herself because Mary Carter never seemed to have any interest in writing a book. She and I talked several times. She was a shy person, very polite. I would have flown out to Wyoming to meet her, but then my foot was in a cast and I was living on the Hotallings’ couch.

I thought it could be a great book, especially the business with the horse.

I called her again once I settled at S&S.

I even called her when I got the job at Random House.

Random House! Boy, she’s going to listen to me now.

But Mary Carter didn’t know Random House from a mimeograph machine.

She’d listen to me tell her own story back to her, explain why it was meaningful, why people would want to read it, but I could never get her on board.

The farther away she got from the accident, the less she had to say.

I think it was hard for her to tell me to leave her alone. ”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“She died,” Eddie said. “Years and years ago. She was older than I was, maybe fifteen years or so. Her daughter wrote to tell me. She said when she was going through her mother’s things, she found my letters.

She said she knew her mother cared for me, she could tell that by reading my side of the correspondence. ”

“How did she die?”

“The daughter didn’t say, but I always had the feeling that Mary wanted to get the hell out of here.”

Though it hadn’t been discussed, we were walking back to Leda’s, going north along the dark edge of Central Park. I thought about what it would be like to go into that park and lie there for three days, looking up through the trees thinking you were going to die. “How’s your ankle?”

“The ankle is a brilliant metaphor for that time in my life. My ankle was unbearably painful, and I thought it would never function the same, and then, maybe a year later, I realized I hadn’t thought about it for the entire day. My ankle and I recovered, and that was sad, too.”

“What about the horse? Did the horse die?”

“Whistler? Oh, Whistler must be dead by now. I read the proposal in 1980. Horses last, but not that long. Funny that you think about her, though. Do you want to hear something crazy?”

“Tonight? Something crazy?”

“When I got the book proposal back in 1980, it came with a picture of the horse.”

“You told me that.”

“When?”

“In the car.”

Eddie shook his head. “Oh, the past, the past. Anyway, when your mother told the people at Houghton I was quitting, she packed up my office and mailed the boxes to Polly and Skip.”

“That’s aggressive,” I said, but the other thing that should be said is Oh, my poor mother.

“The picture of the horse was in the box. And when I finally set myself up at S&S, the picture of the horse was pinned to a cork board in my office. I would have told you I did it to remind myself to be vigilant about trying to close the deal, but the truth was I found the horse comforting. After a while I got it a little frame, and in that frame it sits on my desk to this day.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Not about anything. When you come to my office, I’ll show you. The authors always go straight to Whistler. They all want to know if it’s my horse.”

When you come to my office. That was the part I got stuck on.

When we arrived at Leda and Steve’s building, we took another moment to stand beneath the dark red awning, Eddie with his hands on my shoulders.

“I still have a million and six questions,” I said. I wondered if the doorman would let me sleep on one of the couches in the lobby as I was too tired to take the elevator upstairs.

Eddie yawned. “I’ll answer anything.”

“Promise? Promise you won’t disappear again?” I wanted never to let go of him.

“I didn’t disappear. That makes it sound like I abandoned you. I was exiled.”

“You’re missing the point. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Okay then. Till death do us part,” he said. “How about that?”

“Sounds good.” Now I was yawning, too. “And you have to promise me you won’t die.”

“Oh, Duck,” he said. “I’ll die, and so will you. I promise to go first and check it all out, make sure things look good up ahead.”

I saw an empty cab going downtown and my arm shot up.

“Hey!” There were so few people on the street, so few cars, and the cab saw me and skidded to the curb up ahead and we trotted off to meet him.

“Call me tomorrow,” I said, and kissed his cheek.

Then he was in the taxi, squeezing my hand through the open window and letting it go.

I kept standing there. All the lights were green, and in a minute he was gone.

Henry said he hadn’t waited up for me, but he was up, sitting in the dark living room playing a video game with someone in Reykjavík. I sat down on the couch beside him and fell backwards.

“How did it go?” he asked, continuing to play. I guessed it wasn’t the kind of thing you could stop once you were in the middle of it.

“You were right.”

Henry’s head gave an imperceptible nod. “Okay, but did you have a good time?”

“I may have had the best time of my life.”

He looked at me then, his face awash in blue screen glow. “Are you drunk?”

“I am.” I closed my eyes.

He tapped his goodbye onto the screen. “Wait a minute.” He got up and went into the kitchen, then he came back with an unreasonably large glass of water and three aspirin.

I sat up and thanked him.

“Aspirin is old-school,” he said. “It’s the most amazing drug and nobody takes it anymore because it’s always been around.”

“And because it burns a hole through your stomach lining.”

“This is Bufferin, as in buffered. Do you think I’m not looking out for you? Never take Tylenol when you’re drunk. You’ll blow out your liver.”

“You are my North Star,” I said.

“Did it make it any better to know?” He kept his voice quiet in deference to his sleeping parents. He was such a good boy.

“It did. When Eddie told me he was gay, I didn’t say anything about David Hockney. It was out of my system.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s good. Are you going to bed?”

“I am,” I said, but did not move.

“Should I get Mom to come and help you?”

I took a deep inhale and pushed myself up, first to sitting and then to standing. I wobbled slightly, and wondered how we had walked all the way from the Plaza. “I’ve got this. I love you. Good night.”

“I love you, good night,” he said, and went back to his game.

My two nieces, Wynn and Clare, were not yet home, and so I was sleeping in Wynn’s room.

I struggled to reach the zipper on my dress, but the fabric was stiff and restrictive.

The length of the sleeve did not allow my arms to properly bend.

Leda had zipped me up. The only other time I’d worn the dress, at Jonathan’s retirement party, Jonathan had been there to both get me into it and get me out.

I didn’t have the life force to walk back to the living room and ask for more help from Henry, and I didn’t want to ask him to unzip my dress anyway.

I kicked off my shoes and crawled into Wynn’s bed.

The pattern of her quilt was called Ohio Star. She told me that once.

All that night, I dreamed of my father, the two of us out on the boat.

The engine was loud and spit out greasy black clouds of diesel exhaust, but in this dream the wind was coming straight from the east and the day was clear and fresh and Buddy was so happy, and I was so happy to be there with him as we chugged out towards the open sea.

In the morning, Leda came in quietly with a beverage tray: black coffee, orange juice, more water, and two pieces of dry wheat toast to sop it all up.

She must have been talking to Henry. The clear bottle of aspirin balanced like a sentinel between the orange juice and coffee.

“Scoot over,” she said, then saw that I had slept in my dress.

“Okay,” she said. “What a night.” She opened her daughter’s dresser and found a pair of scrub pants and a field hockey T-shirt, then she liberated me from my cocktail dress, which allowed me to fully inhale for the first time since yesterday in the early evening.

“Oh, this is so much better,” I said.

“Wait, sit next to me, you’ve still got pins in your hair. Does Jonathan usually get you ready for bed?”

“I don’t usually go to bed drunk.” I scratched fiercely at my scalp, a wonderful feeling.

She handed me the mug. “Start with this.” We crawled into bed together and pulled the covers up. “Tell me everything, and I mean everything. Don’t leave out a word.”

I leaned against her. “Okay, first, Eddie came to your apartment to pick me up.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “That’s good. Start there.”