Deborah Eisenberg - The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

For Wall, of course

The other evening, I was having a drink with a friend when the sight of two women at the next table caused me to stop speaking in midsentence. Both of the women were very young, and fashionable to an almost painful degree. They were drinking beer straight from the bottle, and they radiated a self-conscious, helpless daring, as if they had been made to enter some baffling contest and all eyes were upon them.

Earth to Charlotte, my friend said. Everything all right?

Fine, I said, and it was, but for a moment that seemed endless I had been pulled down into a forgotten period of my life when I, too, had strained to adhere to the slippery requirements of distant authorities.

I had just come to New York then, after breaking up with a man named Robert. At first, everything had gone well with Robert. We lived in Buffalo, on the ground floor of a large house, and while he taught at a local university and read and worked on his dissertation in the study, I tried to make things grow in our little patch of a garden and did some part-time research for a professor of political science. At night, we cooked dinner together or with other couples from Roberts department, or once in a while went dancing or to a movie, and I thought Robert was happy.

But after a while Robert seemed to lose interest in me, and part of what I had been was torn from me as he pulled away. And the further he pulled away from me, increasingly the only thing I cared about was that he love me, and there was nothing I would not have done to be right for him. But although I tried and tried to figure out how I ought to be, my means for judging such a thing seemed to have split off with him. So while Robert seemed to grow finer and more fastidiouseasily annoyed by things I said or didI seemed to grow coarser and more unfocused, and even my athletic tallness, which Robert had admired when we met, with the dissolving of his affection came to feel like an untended sprawl, and my long blond hair, which Id been proud of at one time, seemed insipid and childishjust another manifestation of how unequal to Robert I had proved to be. And after a time I was overtaken by a paralysis that spread through every area of my life, rapidly, like an illness.

One day, Robert and I had been sitting in the living room reading when I noticed that he had put down his book and was just staring out with a little frown. What are you thinking about? I said before I could stop myself.

Nothing, he said.

Sorry, I said. Im sorry.

Then why did you ask, Charlotte?

Sorry, I said.

Then why do you always ask? Always, he said.

I didnt say anything.

You know what? he said. Youre like the Blob. You remember that movie The Blob ? Youre sentient protoplasm, but youre as undifferentiated as sentient protoplasm can get. Youre devoid of even taxonomic attributes.

Robert, I said.

Have you ever had an intention? he said. Have you ever had a desire? Have you ever even had what could be accurately described as a reaction?

My ears went strange, and I heard my voice say, You always want me to be different. You want me to be some other person, but if you dont tell me what you want, how can I know what to do?

Jesus, Robert said. He looked at me, his eyes narrowed.

The moment locked, and I felt a harsh tingling across the bridge of my nose, and I knew that if I didnt turn away fast Robert would hit me.

I went out carefully, as if trying not to startle something from a hedge, and drove to a drugstore where there was a telephone, and eventually I got a hold of my friend Fran.

Sit right there, she said. Dont move. Ill make some calls and get back to you.

So then I sat on the little wooden seat and waited. A pretty girl with dark hair came into the store, and I watched as she chose a lipstick at the counter, looking very pleased with herself. What was going to happen to me, I wondered. After a while, Fran called with the number of someone named Cinder, who lived in New York and was looking for a roommate.

Great, Cinder said when I reached her. Im desperate. The girl who was living here disappeared a few weeks ago with about half my stuff. Ex-stuff now. I had to get myself a live-in junkie, right? And of course she stuck me for all of last months rent. I know its a sign that you called today, because I was just about to advertise, which I really hate to do, because you get these guys saying their name is Shirley and can they come over and shit in your ear or rupture your asshole, kind of thing.

Well, I got your name from Franny Straub, I said. Her friend Lauren took a design class with you.

Whatever, Cinder said.

Listen, I said. I felt ill with apprehension. Could I move in tonight?

Sure, Cinder said. You wouldnt be able to bring the rent in cash, would you?

Id never been to New York before, and I remember so clearly how the subway looked to me that night. How gaudy and festive it was, like a huge Chinese dragon, clanking and huffling through its glimmering cavern. Even though it was very late, the cars were full of people. They sat there, all together, and their expressions were eased in that subterranean lull between their different points of embarkation and destination. It seemed to me that I was the only newcomer.

Cinder came down and helped me lug my suitcase upstairs. She moved with brisk precision, and her blond hair was cut like a teddy bears. Cinder, I said. Its an interesting name.

Lucinda, actually, she said. Butyou know. She opened two bottles of beer and handed one to me. So, hey, welcome to your new home, which is what my seventh-grade teacher said to our class the first day of junior high, scaring us all out of our wits. So youre just coming down from a bad thing, huh?

Yes, I said, looking around unsuccessfully for a glass. Well, not exactly. I didnt know how to put into words to this able person my failure with Robert.

Anyhow, she said, tomorrow well talk and talk and talk, but theres some stuff I have to take care of now, and, besides, you probably want to sleep. If you go out before Im up, just leave the rent on the kitchen table.

Cinder gave me a tiny room to myself, but I spent most of my time in the kitchen with her and men she was seeing and her friend Mitchell. Most of my belongings were in the kitchen, too, which had shelves and a closet and a bathtub in which things could be kept, and Cinder had told me to put anything I wanted on the walls. In a place of honor, looking down over the kitchen table, I tacked a snapshot Id taken of Robert one day in our garden. He was smilinga free, simple, lifted instant of a smile that I never saw again.

The apartment was in the East Village, and although the neighborhood had long since lost its notoriety, it glittered to me. Cinder and Mitchell seemed so comfortable there. Mitchell moved with an underwater languor that was due to a happy combination of grace and drugs, and his black hair was marvelously glossed. But even though he and Cinder were so different in appearance, they both dressed in meticulously calculated assemblages that reached from past decades far into the future. Together their individual impact was increased exponentially, like that of twins, owing to a similarity I now understand to be stylistic, in addition, of course, to whatever similarity underlies all acute and self-conscious beauty.

Next to them, I felt clumsy and hideous, but it seemed to me, I suppose, that the power of their self-assurance would protect me, that my own face and body would learn from it, and that soon things and people would alter in my path, as they did for Cinder and Mitchell. It seemed, in short, that I would become fit for Robert.