David Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair

I made the heavy raincoat with lining of various fur Mrs. Tagus's late husband and my close friend Arnold Tagus was interred in eight years ago this August.

"Lenny," Mrs. Tagus has murmured to her tea. There is no more fist in the air; she is warming her hands on the emergency cup of tea. "Lenny," she says, distracted from me by the warmth she holds in her dry hands.

Lenny is Mr. and Mrs. Tagus's son, Lenny Tagus. Also there is a younger son, Mike Tagus. Me: no children. Mrs. Labov had reproduction troubles which I loved her no less when we found out. But no children. But Labovs and all the Taguses are like this. Close. I watched the Tagus boys grow up, Lenny and Mike, prides and joys.

You know the type who comes right out with it? Mrs. Tagus is not such a type of person. Something is on her mind: she beats around it, a gesture here, a word there, a sigh maybe; she shapes it inside her like with a soft medium, for instance clay, and you have to patiently work the medium with her to get the something out in the open.

Me: I come right out with it, when there's something.

MIKEY AND LOUIS

"You want to still date her?"

"Are you fucking kidding? I want to strangle her."

"Uh-huh."

"I'd love to still date her."

"Just stay away. She seems like bad news. She seemed like she was really into it."

"She blew me off. I didn't blow her off."

"How, exactly?"

"Carlina blew me off."

"So how, Tagus?"

"She just said how she didn't want to go out no more. It didn't feel so good, either. I can maybe see why they cry, when you blow them off."

"She said that? Just like that?"

"Just like after I'd rammed about half a gram up her nose and bought her drinks all night."

"Bad news."

"I must of rammed about a gram up her nose."

"I bet you didn't have to ram anything up anything. I bet her nose didn't need much persuading."

"It started out nice. It was her and Lenny, who I want her to hit it off with, and me. Her and him do my whole gram while I'm over at the bar getting us drinks. Then he takes off to like tuck his kids into bed. He's dribbling the shit out his nose, he's bouncing off walls, and he's going to tuck in his kids. And then me and her have an argument about it. I don't even remember what about. And then later she just blows me off."

"Want a beer?"

"She just left me sitting there. I don't even know how she got back home."

"…"

"I think I feel like killing her."

"Not worth it. Have a beer."

"Two months, man. That's two months down the tube. I had her meet everybody. Mom, Labov. I told her personal shit. Shit about who I was."

"Bad news."

"You bet your sweet ass bad news, Lou."

" 'Does Lenny have to say about it? You talk this out with Lenny?"

"He'd condescend. He's a pecker in situations like this. He talks down to me. Big brother little brother. And plus he's out like all day. Bonnie says she don't even know where, office, bar, where.

She's half crying herself the whole time. Her and Len got their own problems. They're both like this about something. Shaky. Pissed off. Lenny was on the drinks and the toot like a last meal. I go to the bar to get them drinks, they just do it without me. Who's gonna figure on that?"

"Nobody, man."

"And then I bought her drinks all night."

"Open the beer."

"I think I might kill her."

"Nobody's killing anybody, Mikey."

"Try to think of somebody for me to hit, at least."

LEN

Cinnamon girl, spiced cream, honey to kiss, melt hot around the center of me.

LABOV

"Lenny is your pride and joy," I say to Mrs. Tagus. I say: "What could be with Lenny that makes for stomach trouble for a proud and joyful mother such as you Mrs. Tagus?"

"If you had gotten a letter and then a call on the telephone like I got today Mr. Labov, even your perfect stomach would make for itself a knot, a fist. And for me, with stomach trouble. ." She shakes her head in her well-made coat.

I press Mrs. Tagus to eat a saltine.

"Lenny trouble," she murmurs, beating around the something. While a saltine is being carefully chewed she murmurs also: "Bonnie."

So I can gather there are troubles between Lenny Tagus, Mrs. Tagus's son, a teacher, in college, who wrote a book about Germans before Hitler (in a print so tiny who could read it?) that got called Solid and Scholarly in a Review Mrs. Tagus has taped onto her refrigerator with the kind of invisible tape you don't get off in a hurry. There is trouble between Mrs. Tagus's Lenny and Lenny Tagus's Bonnie, his wife of eight, nine years, a sweeter and better girl than even as perfect a catch as Len could hope for, who has borne him healthy and polite children, and who makes a knish so good it is spelled s-i-n.

Mrs. Tagus is whispering unhearable things, sipping her tea which is now cooler and has stopped its steaming violently into the cold air of my apartment's kitchen.

"So how do letters and telephones and your children I love like my own make for such stomach trouble?" I say. I place four stacked crackers next to Mrs. Tagus's saucer.

"If you had gotten the call I got from Bonnie," Mrs. Tagus says. "From this girl who who would want to hurt her? Who who would want to not give her feelings weight on the scale?"

I can see the whiteness of my breath a little in the kitchen air. I find a reassurance in how I can see it. I put my hand on Mrs. Tagus's fist of a hand on my cold kitchen table. The skin of the knuckles of Mrs. Tagus is drawn tight and dry, and when she unfists the fist to let me comfort the hand I feel the skin crinkle like paper. Me: unfortunately also skin like paper. I look at our two hands. If my late Sandra were here with us this night I would say, to her only, things concerning oldness, coldness, trouble with stairs, paper-dry skin with brown sprinkles and yellowed nails, how it seems to Labov we get old like animals. We get claws, the shape of our face is the shape of our skull, our lips retreat back from big teeth like we're baring to snarl. Sharp, snarling, old: who should wonder at how nobody cares if I hurt, except another snarler?

Sandra Labov: the type everybody could say things to concerning issues like this. I miss her with everything. The loss of Sandra Labov is what makes my kitchen's clock's black hands go around, telling me when to do what.

Me and Mrs. Tagus have gotten close, like if you'll excuse me I think old people need to in this city these days. Her husband and me were like this, we were so close. For Mr. Tagus and the Taguses: tailored clothes at discounts. For me and Mrs. Labov: insurance at cost. Taguses and Labovs are close. So close I all of a sudden look at my clock and press Mrs. Tagus to tell me the cause of her stomach trouble straight out.

"Lay it on the line, Mrs. Tagus," I say.

She sighs and feels at herself in the cold. I watch her breath. She leans close and lays it on the line, whispering to me the words: "Infidelity, Mr. Labov." She looks with her cloudy eyes from op-erated-on cataracts behind her thick spectacles into my eyes and says, with a cleared throat: "Betrayal, also."

I let silence collect around this thing that's finally out in the open's hard medium and then ask Mrs. Tagus to clear me up on what's all this about betrayal.

"He's going to kill Bonnie by making her die of the pain of the shame of it. Or Mikey could justly raise hands against him, his own blood," is what Mrs. Tagus says she is having the awful stomach trouble over tonight, this some sort of triangular problem between the three children that I still don't feel like I'm cleared up on.

Mrs. Tagus fights against some tears. Her tea has gotten cold and lighter in color than tea, and I get up to my feet for the can of tea and the hot water in the copper kettle my wife Sandra and I received from Arnold and Greta Tagus on the day of our wedding when Roosevelt passed away may he rest, and Mrs. Tagus clears her throat some more and feels at her stomach through her coat I stitched together, using fine gut thread to weld the pelts.