The Clairvoyants(25)

“No,” I said, though I did. I wasn’t ready to run into him in person on campus, to have him take my arm again and lead me into the Green Dragon for coffee. Talking to him had filled me with some sense of promise that I might become someone other than myself, and I wanted time to fashion this person. When I hung up the phone Del came out of the bathroom in a T-shirt, and slipped quickly under the sheets of the bed. We had a few blankets, including the afghan my grandmother had crocheted for me, and she pulled them all up. Beneath the covers I could feel her shivering. She smelled of cigarettes, and a cologne that must have been worn by the Firebird guy.

“That was him, wasn’t it?” she said. “The weirdo from the party?”

“He’s an artist,” I said, sounding like Charles Wu. “Besides, a Firebird? Really?”

I could tell Del was falling asleep. “He had on a leather jacket,” she said. “A 1950s hoodlum jacket.”

“What was his name?” I said.

“Don’t know,” Del mumbled.

“Randy,” I told her. “Geoff said his name was Randy.”

“Are you sure he didn’t say he was randy?” Del said.

“No, he said he was a good sort,” I said.

“It’s snowing,” she said, and fell quickly asleep.





10




William called every day that week. We learned how to interpret each other’s silences, which direction to take our resumed words—back to our childhoods, or simply to daily occurrences to fill the spaces in our conversations.

“I slipped off the steps of my porch today,” I said. Then I worried he would think me ungraceful or foolish.

“She fell arse over tit!” Del cried out so William could hear. She was imitating Geoff, something she’d begun doing unconsciously, without any malice.

“Oh God, Martha. Are you all right?” William asked, and I was touched by the caring in his voice and by the sound of him speaking my name.

He invited me to one of his classes, but I had a class of my own at the same time, so I left mine a little early and stood outside his door. The inside of the classroom was dark—the lights were off, and he had a slide up on a screen, an Edward Weston nude. He was talking about the work, his voice different than the one I’d become accustomed to on the phone—not its sound, but its tone, more goading. The students’ replies were soft and tentative, as if they were a little afraid of him. Did I know the man in the room at all? Before the class let out I left. I worried about his calling me that night. How would I react? But when he did call, he was the same as always, and I relaxed.

By then our talking had become spotted with whispered intimations—things taking on a double meaning, the equivalent of him pressing his thigh against mine under a dinner-party table.

“Anne is right,” he said. “You’d be a perfect subject.”

It had been a Wednesday evening, two weeks after we’d met.

“Do you even remember what I look like?” I stood in front of the mirror by the door and looked at myself talking on the phone as if I were someone I didn’t know. Had he overheard Anne mention wanting to paint me? Or had he spoken to her about me?

“You had a few buttons undone on your blouse,” he said.

“Could you see anything?”

“Do you want to know if I was looking?”

“Obviously you were looking.” I was not at all bothered by his looking.

He told me after classes that day he’d gone out for a walk, and had crossed a brook, and had found that the stones at the bottom were the same color as my eyes.

“I could be wrong,” he said. “It was such a brief meeting.”

He said we should have the predicted coffee somewhere, or lunch, if I wanted. But I was imagining something else. The old rules didn’t seem to apply to us—all that holding out interminably, waiting for something to be proven. I had no reason to dicker with my body. I’d done that enough with boys at home—pushing them away after a kiss good night, expecting more from them—a dinner date, an afternoon watching old movies, a gift or two—before I gave more. I wasn’t sure why I’d behaved the way I had, why I’d refused them all. Even poor Charles Wu. I was determined to overcome my hesitation. William was, after all, a professor who found me interesting, and I had heard yearning in his voice. I invited him to come to my apartment. There was an awful halting silence, the kind that is so long you worry the other person has been disconnected. But then his voice sounded in agreement, and I forgot completely about what his indecision might have been.

During all of this Del had refused to return to the manor. Our mother called and lectured me about keeping Del in my apartment. She bought an airline ticket for Del to go back. “We worked hard to get her in that place. Your father pulled strings,” she said. “She’s going to lose her spot. And then where will she be? A homeless person.”

Our mother, in that big empty house. I wondered if both Del and I were banned from returning home—if we could even view the old house as home anymore.

A week after the party at Anne’s, I had talked to Del about going back. It was a Saturday, and we walked through the slush from my apartment to the bakery, and we went inside for éclairs and coffee.

“Don’t you miss your boyfriend?” I asked her. We’d taken a round café table in the corner by the window, and Del flipped through the newspaper someone had left behind.