Aftermath of Dreaming(26)

“When was this?”

“When she called or when he left?”

“Both.”

“He left when I was fourteen. Momma heard that news a couple of years later, then got divorce papers in the mail.”

“And…”

Another tremendous pause that had enough time in it for me to jump out of my skin, but at least I knew it wasn’t the phone line.

“And what was he like before?”

“He was…” I had been gulping for air, so I tried to breathe through my nose for a second to slow the intake. “He was…what the Gulf took her cue from every night to bring the tide in, is what he was. He was my daddy.”

And again there was quiet on the line and I felt as if Andrew’s light, which had been surrounding me, had receded a bit, leaving me in a hollow of nonbrightness.

“He must be a very sad man to have left a daughter like you.”

“Oh.”

“You never thought of that?”

“No.”

“Of course he is.”

“Oh.” And Andrew’s light came racing back to envelop me.

“And Momma doesn’t talk? Why not?”

“I guess so she won’t scream. No, I don’t know. She was normal enough before, but when Daddy left, she took to her room and really kind of rarely comes out, and of course, how much is there to say if you’re looking at the same walls all day?”

I waited to see how Andrew would respond, but there was more of that silence, so I continued. “Though I guess she could find something, but she doesn’t, it’s like she just crumpled up, and pale as hell, as you can imagine, like a Kleenex, all soft and white and unwilling to stand unless she’s propped up.”

“Hmmm,” Andrew said. That was followed by another long pause, which didn’t bother me as much because it had felt good to get all that out. Suzanne had stopped trying to get Momma to talk once she took off for USC a few months after Daddy left. She’d just send a letter home from California to Momma every month, the stamp and postmark from a world where truant parents could be dealt with by mail, and every time I’d try to talk to Suzanne about it on the phone, she’d say, “I can neither save nor fix Mother,” and change the subject.

“And you express yourself nonverbally like she’s doing, but creatively—which is healthy and has a point. I can’t wait to see your work.”

It was like he had taken hold of my hands from deep inside where the muscles and sinew meet the bone to become the part of me that gets things done and greets life and feeds myself and puts clothes on; as if he had taken my hands so they could do all of that while he never let them go.

And we talked about Suzanne, and Ruth, and Carrie, and widow-man, and two more hours went by.

“When are you going to get here?” Andrew suddenly said. We had been residing together on a plane that hovered above our phones, wrapped in voice-filled, time-jumbled prose, so it was a jolt to think of seeing him live and real.

“I can come over now.”

“I’ll call you right back.” He sounded suddenly in a rush. “I have to meet with some people for a little bit, but…” Then his voice dropped down to a place inside of me that no one’s voice had ever been, as if he had built a door without my knowing it and now had the key to get in. “You’d better be there when I call because I want to see you tonight, is that clear?”

“Okay.” The word must have fluttered through the line to him, it was so inseparable from my grin, and I gave my number to him.

“Good. I’ll call you back.”

“Okay, bye.”

I hung up the phone and kept my hand on it for a while, my skin that touched it connecting me still to him where his voice had just been. I was going to see him tonight, oh, my God. I wanted to jump up, run through the hall, bang on Carrie’s door, and tell her about the call, but she was still gone.

I felt deliriously separate from my surroundings and ensconced in the bubble of Andrew’s attention, like I could glide forth without touching earth. I stood up and looked in the mirror I had propped on the two-legged side of a three-legged table that I had found on the street. I had pushed it up to the wall under the window, hoping that would support it, and if I didn’t put too much weight on that corner, it did okay. I turned my face this way and that in the mirror, trying to imagine what Andrew saw in me, trying to see myself as if I were him, but I couldn’t.

And what should I wear? I turned to study my clothes hanging against the wall on a rod that had been attached with a shelf built on top. I literally was living in a closet.

As I flipped through the clothes, increasingly disliking each one, I remembered how Lily Creed had looked at Andrew’s table. She was perfection. Her dress was like the Venus de Milo’s shell—supporting her form and heralding her beauty while adding the loveliest touch so that your eyes were continually drawn to her bare arms and neck and face. I had nothing remotely like that.

The bubble I was in, the image of my perfect night with Andrew, was about to burst, teetering as it was on a rocky precipice. I stared at my clothes, willing them to transform into something fabulous. They stubbornly would not metamorphose. I considered going down Columbus Avenue about twenty-five blocks to the fabulous part and splurging on a new outfit, maybe even going to Charivari, practicality be damned, but I was trying to save up money for art supplies and to rent some space in a loft, and Andrew had wanted to meet me when I was wearing a polyester lime-green uniform, for God’s sake, so I decided not to worry about it. I put on an outfit I hadn’t conjured up before: black leggings, black corset-style tank top, and a black open-weave pullover, then began the wait.