The Affairs of Others: A Novel Page 6

  “I just mean she should know these things. I do. You do. Daddy does.”

  “Stop,” Leo almost whispered. “It’s not her fault.”

  “I know that.” The girl’s eyes filled. “Of course. It’s that all the details are important. It’s how we know … what matters.” The blood took over her face entirely. Her mouth went into a tight, straight line—it was not her mother’s mouth; it had none of her fullness. It was prettily formed but thin and in its austerity reminded me of many of the faces of the Connecticut town I’d grown up in. She’d have to earn personality, find some generosity, for a mouth like that, her father’s perhaps. She was the only one who’d introduced herself using her last name, his last name.

  “Danielle speaks a beautiful French. Eat something, darling. I bet you haven’t eaten today. She’s been studying a lot for her finals and it’s never easy to leave college behind.”

  Danielle bit into an almond scone. It appeared to disgust her.

  “What sort of work do you do, Leo?” I asked.

  “I frame pictures.”

  “He just started that recently. He’s very good with his hands. He even designs the frames. He works with artists, galleries.”

  “My PR agent.” He nodded at Hope.

  “He was in banking,” Danielle reported, sullen, chewing still.

  “I worked with my dad, but I quit a few months ago.”

  “He always wanted to try this, right, darling?”

  “Right.”

  “Blake—remember Blake? Who runs the gallery? From George’s party? He relies on Leo.” Hope aimed high, for buoyancy. “And my father painted, and he built his own frames. Leo comes by it naturally.”

  “That’s great.” I slid a grape in my mouth.

  “Right,” Leo said again.

  “I have champagne if anyone wants some,” Hope offered. “And shall we have some music? George has all these great compilations.” She attended to the stereo, then turned to us. “Everyone try the quiche. I put Gruyère in it. Even if that’s sacrilege, to whom? Who can tell me?”

  “Julia Child,” Danielle recited obediently, trying to recover her mood, though her voice was weary. She nodded at me. “Traditional quiche Lorraine requires no cheese.”

  “That’s right. So I’m transgressing, and I love it, love it, love it. Leo, cut everyone a piece for me, will you?” To me she said, “It’s a wonder you know the scent of gardenias so well.”

  “It was a family favorite.”

  “You’ve got to see it.” Hope retrieved the potted plant. As she did, a man’s voice sang “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” to an up tempo. She held it out in front of her. “Doesn’t it take you away, just looking at it?”

  The dark shine of its full, dark green leaves, its cream-colored blossoms wide open and pouting extravagantly did belong to another climate where growing and dying happened all at once, in a tumble, where they didn’t wait for anything or anyone, let alone for seasons to change or for mourning. Its smell came at us from everywhere, seizing on every particle of the air we took in. I breathed through my mouth and saw that already one of the flowers had begun to curl into itself, turning dingy so quickly.

  “That’s Sam Cooke singing,” said Leo, but neither that fact nor the cheer of the song’s arrangement could quite strip the blues from the song; we heard “trouble” over and over; it snapped at us, and in a room so suffocated with so insistent and yet so fragile a fragrance there was nowhere to hide.

  Danielle started weeping before Sam Cooke had finished; her posture crumbled and she said, “Oh, Mother, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Leo stood up from his hips, without leaning forward, as if he’d grown straight up from the chair, and then held himself there, frozen. I stood too. The boy hung his eyes on mine, didn’t blink. If I was invisible to the girl, I was not to him: I did not know whether I was meant to bolster him in some way, or act, if he was imploring me—do something. I watched as Hope scooped Danielle into her, and for a moment I was gone, seeing that embrace on the Promenade, Mitchell and that woman, how skin can and can’t give way, how you wish it could finally, give way. Hope spoke into her daughter’s neck and hair, “It’s okay, baby. It’s a hard time, but it’s okay. I’m here. Mumma’s here.”

  At that, I walked to the gardenia directly, picked it up with both arms. Its foliage pressed into my mouth and nose as I carried it to the door—a green so dense. I put it outside, in a far dark corner of the hall. When I came back, I reported, “It’s too strong.” I did not say this loudly or wait for a reply. I reached and squeezed the solid width of Leo’s forearm once fast so as not to know his skin or temperature too well. I placed my hand on Hope’s shoulder as George might, gently, and whispered a thank-you. Then I left Hope to her children.

  A MAN VANISHES

  TWO SETS OF FEET STEPPING with care, as if afraid to agitate too much, over my head. Slippered or socked, padded anyway. March, as it turned into April, kept its bite at night and mother and daughter folded into one another. Two days and nights like this, the two alone, from what I could tell, growing quieter and quieter, as if the absence of noise might mean the absence of pain. The gardenia remained in the hall. I waited for it to die. Perhaps they did, too.

  I reconnected my phone. I dialed in for my messages. Marina’s voice—heavy in English, revealing little, a flat hello and will you call. Thank you. Mr. Coughlan’s daughter, her voice as tight as a rusted screw. Two calls from her. The second screechy—please let me hear from you. False graciousness. The roofer wondering if I accepted his estimate: a businessman who knew to speak to me with friendly reserve, to keep his message short but lively, as if each word was a firm handshake. I look forward to hearing back.

  Finally a message from Mitchell’s wife, Angie: I could hear her face opening and closing as she asked if we could discuss the building’s recycling policy again. She believed the definitions were expanding. She hesitated. “More plastics … Containers.” She rarely hesitated.

  I tended to the building. I sorted the recycling as I always did, I tied the garbage bags, avoiding expanding definitions for now. I looked to do some weeding in the garden but was not sure which were the weeds and which weren’t.

  One afternoon, having slept well, I volunteered as I sometimes did, several times a month, at Helping Hands, sifting the donated clothes, shoes, housewares. Then I walked Cobble Hill—away from Atlantic Avenue. I bought berries, pasta, tuna fish. I picked up a bottle of whiskey. Jameson. My husband’s brand when he had a taste for whiskey. Before it got too late, I returned the calls made to me the day before, relieved to get voice mails all around. No one answered their phone anymore.

  I sat and listened for mother and daughter, for a third night of their sort of quiet. I ate tuna from the can. I let dark come in the apartment, bend its lines and cool my face.

  How long did it take me to form the sounds I began to hear above me into a scenario? First there was a table scudding across tile, tile I had installed in George’s kitchen. Then the table, George’s exquisite cherry table, finally meeting the wall, hitting it again and again, being made part of a rhythm. Hope’s utterances, high and loud enough to reach me, giving volume and consequence to the rhythm; and a man’s voice shaping and directing all the noises. What was he saying? I couldn’t say, though it was two words. One syllable each. They didn’t have to have meaning up there or down here—what they advertised was his control and the pride in it. Her voice went off at longer intervals. Then I heard what seemed like a squeal. I stood. I could remember her son’s eyes on mine, the blooming color in his lips and along the edges of his nostrils. I opened the kitchen window for air, without thinking. Doing so brought them closer, with my kitchen right below George’s. The same alert night air reaching for them, reached me now. I could hear “please” from her, then the intelligible commentary that spoke of pain and pleasure, and from him, “That’s right.” Then loud, “Say it.” Not a yell exactly but delight in volume, in his freedom with it,
with her. “Stay with me, damn it!” Hope falling wholesale into a place where words had no place. The table rocked and then seemed to lift; it barked against the surface and was held there: “Say it or we start all over again. The whole thing.”

  “Pleeeaaase.”

  The wall took blows again. And a hand clapped on skin—hers. What else could it be?

  Sex could fragment into clichés. But in the acting out of them they weren’t anymore; those familiar positions, roles, words—they became sensation, feeling. A shock of feeling: a slap given was particular to the shape of his hand, its strength, and to where on her body she took the flat of his palm, how welcome it was or wasn’t, how much it stung. I had almost forgotten this as I mapped them in my mind—her beneath him, the table digging into her stomach as she gave him the full of her backside and took his weight and its concussions. It hurt, because it always did when you wanted to be no better, no worse, than animals.

  I couldn’t leave the window when the phone rang, though I imagined yanking it from the wall. Could they hear it? And didn’t they imagine I could hear them?

  She’d given me a glorious display of her maternal self on Sunday. It seemed to matter I saw it, her fine management of the afternoon, her children: “Mumma’s here.” That thin scarf around her neck tied so jauntily. And now the colors of Les’s voice, dark blues and browns, all hewn marble, and its pace, never hasty. Was it him making me party to this? Or was I simply beside the point? Here, in my own home. They did not know that sound carried so, that the floor that was my ceiling was old and every day more permeable? I shut the window as the telephone stopped ringing, poured myself a tall whiskey in semi-dark that wore too dark suddenly, and turned on all my lights. I left the kitchen but so did they. As I dialed my voice mail to find out who called, thudding followed me. If someone were with me, my husband, we might have laughed at something showier than that gardenia’s scent. We might have been able to package all this into commonplace. I would not have worried for her neck or where else he might leave his mark. But alone the noise was everywhere. It was the liveliest thing in my apartment. I had no place to put it. Uh-uh-uh. That’s what I thought I heard bearing down as Mr. Coughlan’s daughter told my voice mail, “He’s not answering his phone or the bell. I was there. I tried your bell too. You didn’t answer. Have you seen him?” Something fell overhead. A lamp? George’s elegant lamp? “Can you tell me if you’ve seen him lately. Please. I’m so worried.”

  I did not know I was running until I stumbled and felt my heart in my legs and feet too acutely. I gripped his key in my hand like a dagger, as if it had remedy in it already. But when I got to his door, all of me froze. I almost turned around. I studied his door. The imperfections of the paint. I did not paint this door, not this one, others, but I had chosen the color. I touched it. The comfort of wood, the waxiness of high gloss. I knocked carefully. He could be home, just returned, or sleeping, or merely wanting privacy. No one answered the phone anymore. I knocked again. Please, I said to myself while hearing not Jeanie Coughlan, but Hope saying it at the same time, drawing it out as she had, threading it into an evening that was not intended to be my evening. I got angry then, insensibly. I stabbed at the lock, finally working the key in, but of course it was already unlocked. The key was useless. How many times had I spoken to him about this? I was a landlord, not a nurse or a mother-confessor. I was not his daughter.

  “Mr. Coughlan?” It took work to hold my voice as low and impersonal as that. “It’s Celia, your landlady. Are you here? I’ve had an inquiry from—”

  Darkness as in a cave, silence as absolute, and me diminishing with knowing I had to break it. There was no one here, no one who could or would respond. My hand searched and found the switch for the overhead light. Objects jumped to—his chair, standing lamp, radio, the yellowing charts on the wall, the blue enameled kitchen table to one side, where he took the meals he didn’t take in his chair. An arrangement which in its extreme simplicity didn’t mean things didn’t matter, but that it was just these few that did or should, that chair, that old lamp, that radio, and the path from them to the window. How many times had he walked it to see water? In this bedroom, the double bed on a metal frame had no headboard and no occupant; the sheet and a rough blue blanket had been assembled and pulled smooth. In the bathroom, the single towel was dry. The surfaces had been wiped down lately, if not scrubbed. Two cans of soup were left in his cabinet. In the fridge, the cheese was mostly gone; the bread, of which four slices remained, had begun to mold. Perhaps his eyes couldn’t decipher it, flecks as yet. None of this spoke of a hearty appetite, but it did not necessarily speak of illness or precipitous departure either. In the past weeks, Hope’s presence had distracted me: I had bought the soup for him, one or two cans at a time so as not to be overly conspicuous; when I could, I’d replace the cheese he’d once picked up, once chosen himself; I’d done so at least a half-dozen times. I always opened it, cut off the hard end. I stuck ten- and twenty-dollar bills in his wallet, once or twice a month—he never remarked the money or the food, or if he did, saw fit not to comment.

  It was nearly 10:30. I fell into his chair, a recliner that was mostly wide planes of worn wood save for leather-upholstered padding on its seat and back that had begun to lump and sag to fit the shape of the missing man; the chair’s seams were full of crumbs, its smell musty, old, but not unpleasant. I let my lungs fill with it, and with the stillness that had shocked me when I entered his apartment.

  I hadn’t noticed till it stopped, but I had been shaking a moment ago, and now I was here, alone, far from everyone else. I was grateful to Mr. Coughlan, yes, wherever he was. I’d simply wait for him here. I’d explain the intrusion with worry, his daughter’s. By midnight he’d be home surely. Even an old man wasn’t immune to the spring air on his skin, under it. He’d be home by midnight surely.

  * * *

  I woke to bare bulbs shining on me—the overhead light I had switched on. Mr. Coughlan had removed the cover, perhaps to change one or both of the bulbs. How bright it was, how sharp, and then came low and high whines, scraping—the rearranging of things, heavy pieces. It sounded like furniture. The Braunsteins underfoot at their own adventures. It was just after midnight. Late for redecorating. I stood and surveyed the place before leaving. The only window he’d left open was the one with the view. On a calm night you could hear the ferries sounding. I heard the roll of wheels outside on the street, a cart or skateboard, the chirping signal of a car locking, and finally with the Braunsteins agitating again, I knew some defeat. I would have to call his daughter first thing. She’d want to call the police and she’d be right to. I in turn would have to talk to my tenants about rules and order, about quiet and prudence.

  Turning off his lights, locking two and so all of his locks, I took a right in the short hall outside and tried the door to the storage room beside his apartment; it was the reason his place was smaller than the other units, that and the lower ceilings. Inside, things from a former life. Books, tapes, CDs, old movies: His Girl Friday, Wings of Desire, Notorious. Things I could not give away, that I didn’t want to risk to dampness in the basement, but that, looked at too often, might become as common to the eyes, and heart, as wallpaper. Then I called for the elevator. If ever I needed to be carried it was now. It woke from its waiting and climbed to me with a whirring that soothed me until I remembered Mr. Coughlan relied on the elevator when he was tired. I hadn’t checked it or even cleaned it in days. It was a graceful antique, a workhorse. On its ceiling was a ring of old lights fit for a carnival, a merry-go-round. It had two doors. You could not see whether it was empty or not until you pulled open the first door with its gold-plated handle and small window, then the next, a slider that retreated automatically when the first door opened, and was fitted with the same window. My hands began trembling again. The hinges creaked, the aging sliding door serpentined slightly in its narrow tracks. No one there or not quite, for when I stepped inside, taking a full breath of what I thought would
be relief, I took in an odor—ammonia first, the first note of what I recognized to be urine. It was so powerful, having been trapped, left to fester, that I stepped out and leaned back on the first thing I could. Mr. Coughlan’s door, where his absence was now as alive, as unsettling, as the smell of piss in my elevator.

  * * *

  I used bleach. I did not care if it was remarked by the environmentally sensitive in the building. The discovery required something that matched, even overwhelmed it in its noxiousness. As I mopped out the elevator there was a suspension of noise, of everything, as if the building, out of respect, contained all its annoyances, all the nerves that were my tenants and their guests or the one guest. I thought of waking them, every single one—the vision of it gave life to my body—asking them without prefacing apologies when they’d seen Mr. Coughlan last. I wanted to draw them out of their dramas as surely as they’d wanted that of me on occasion, but I wouldn’t. I would call his daughter directly, perhaps I would call the police myself—what was the etiquette? I did not know, but I knew the body’s defections had to be addressed with efficiency and already I was behind. I still remembered my father cleaning up my vomit when I was a child, in the sore-making hours of the night or early morning; I remembered my mother’s cool, thin hands on my hot face, steadying me through what she assured me was temporary. I held on to that sort of sweetness back when I contended with my husband’s accidents, one after another. For him the messes his illness made were indignities and so it was up to me to wipe them away as quickly as they happened, as if they never had, this vigilance the only answer to the body’s failures.

  Back in my apartment, I peeled off my clothes and left them in a pile on the floor. I found Coughlan’s daughter’s number, dialed, but it was nearing 2 A.M. and I let it ring once before hanging up. I would try her and the police when it got light. I sat in my own favorite chair from which I watched the movies I liked, sometimes the news, listened to the radio, but it soon became Mr. Coughlan’s chair and my body his, that heavy, that unknowable to me. I got up and paced until I couldn’t and found myself in front of my medicine cabinet again. I had more than sleeping pills stored away on the shelves and under my sink, even in my fridge. There was morphine, in liquid, tablet, capsule, and sublingual forms: MSIR, MS Contin, Avinza, Oramorph, Roxanol. A whole language of opiates. Not to mention the liquid Ativan, tablets of Percocet, Xanax, Klonopin, Seconal. Most of the bottles bore my husband’s name, a few my own. His doctor had been as forthcoming with his prescription pad as state and federal guidelines would allow. I’d intended to throw the stuff away many times but didn’t. It wasn’t just because of a pamphlet of Angie Braunstein’s found under my door months and months ago, that had warned about the effect of discarded pharmaceuticals on the water supply; it spoke of fish with confused sexual physiognomy, of extra gills, depressed immune and nervous systems; fish drunk on Prozac, Ambien. The drugs had sustained my husband and me—the names and dates on the labels were there for me to see every time I reached for dental floss. Small markers. Memorials. Not a matter of choice for him then and often magical in their impact. Still potent for all these reasons even though the majority of the expiration dates had long since passed.