Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

I got the toy she liked best from the windowsill. The red floppy dog. They always forgot it. I put it in a corner of the crib. Then I unscrewed the end of the heart tube from the aqua clothespin and I slipped it under the blanket so the blood would pool quiet and invisible like a monthly until there would be no more left.

WHEN OLD VICTOR CULLEN, housebound, his sight dimming fast, filed a report from his bed with the invented dateline of Ataraku, Japan, his editor at World Enough , elderly himself but with mental and physical gears fully engaged, didn’t know what to do. So he did what he’d always done: edited the piece (never much work except for those damned ellipses), corrected the galleys, checked the blues. With the help of the art director — also Victor Cullen’s friend and colleague — he fooled around with photographs of Matsushima and Tsuwano and Aomori and came up with convincing composites. An impoverished young artist who happened to be Japanese was let in on the mischief. She did a fine wash drawing of an imaginary Shinto temple. The editor sent the proofs up to Godolphin, the town Victor and Nora Cullen had moved to twenty years ago, no, twenty-one; leaving New York, no, forsaking New York. Godolphin was just outside of Boston. Their daughter practiced medicine there.

Nora telephoned right away.

“Greg,” she said softly. “This Ataraku … it doesn’t—”

“I know,” he said, cutting her short; her voice still had the power to liquefy him. “It’s okay. Victor’s fans adore whatever he writes.”

That much was true — the magazine’s readers never tired of praising the keen eye and ear, the turns of phrase, the research. Every Victor Cullen contribution to World Enough inspired enthusiastic letters to the editor — letters in longhand, letters pecked on derelict typewriters, letters composed on word processors, and nowadays e-mail. “Ataraku: An Edgy Serenity” reaped the usual harvest.

It had been a prank, Greg figured: the prank of a furious old monarch, assisted by loyal retainers. King Victor. Maybe he’ll rest now.

Almost immediately came Stwyth, Wales, whose entire population was named Pugh.

After Stwyth came Mossfontein, South Africa: such extravagant gardens.

Greg, in his third-floor office, edited Stwyth and Mossfontein and gave them pride of place in consecutive issues. The publishers on the twentieth floor published them. Did anyone in that suite even read the rag? World Enough made money; that was all the conglomerate wanted to know. World Enough had always made money despite its refusal to take ads from hotels, airlines, cruise ships, and package tours. Instead, whisky distillers, cigar makers, purveyors of tweeds and cashmeres willingly bought space; also antique booksellers and rug dealers and, increasingly, retirement communities and facilities for assisted living.

Victor next filed a story from Akmed, a Nile village, though the envelope bore the familiar Godolphin postmark. Young Katsuko, the artist, drew the ruins outside Akmed with the precision of Piranesi. The art director, back in the office after hip surgery, spread out on Greg’s desk photographs of Egyptians from bygone issues. “They’re not all Egyptians,” he admitted. “Some are Jordanians. This one’s an Afghan.” Such wisdom in those seamed faces, Greg thought — they’d glow on the page. The art director cleared his throat. “Are we paying Victor the usual?”

“No. More.”

“Good. I don’t like to think of Nora scrimping,” he said, not meeting Greg’s eyes. “The daughter’s divorced now, can’t help much.”

“THE EXUBERANT CASTLE OF LUBASZ,” Victor’s latest smoothly began, “is our temporary abode; it lies twenty kilometers from Budapest. In our bedroom an extraordinary armoire …”

Greg and the art director studied the new piece. They arranged and shot interiors to fit Victor’s prose. Greg’s own armoire carved with bearded cherubim was pressed into service. Victor had reported that the genitalia of the cherubim were as long as their beards. One would think he’d actually seen this unrestrained bit of furniture. But Victor had never laid eyes on the thing, had he; Greg found it on Third Avenue after the Cullens left town.

Nora must have described the armoire. Greg squinted at the galleys and then through them; he saw Victor propped in a bed trying to imagine the work of a Hungarian craftsmen. “Well, Greg has this sort of closet under the skylight,” Nora might have indiscreetly remarked. She was eighty now; slippage was to be expected.

“Does he really,” Victor would have drawled. Then, snapping, “And how do you happen to know that?”

TWO DECADES AGO, on a September morning — Greg still recalled the stinging clarity of that fall day — she had trundled by early-morning train from Boston to Manhattan. Her handbag was stuffed with designs for fabric. The appointment with the vice president of the fabric company lasted an hour; then, flushed with success, she hurried down Madison and arrived at the restaurant further flushed, eyes shining. “They bought three, Greg. And they want some more silly beasts for children’s curtains — kangaroos, wombats. This commission comes in so handy. How are you?”

They were both nearing sixty then. For so long he had played the role of neighbor and friend, guest at the feasts, editor of the articles. And on the rare occasions that Victor traveled alone on assignment, Greg escorted Nora to this concert and that party, expecting nothing more than to kiss the silken cheekbone and then return to his cramped apartment and its priceless view of the sky. But now they lived in different cities: a different convention obtained.

“How am I, Nora? I am dying for love of you.”

“A knightly compliment,” she said, and picked up the menu. “What on earth is Arctic char?”

“Not a compliment. I mean it.”

Her startled gaze rose from the menu but paused before meeting his. She stared at his necktie, or at the tip of his goatee, maybe he should shave it off …

“Look at me, Nora.”

She still didn’t meet his eyes. But alarm was slowly fading from her face, and a soft acceptance replaced it. And his heart leaped like one of her kangaroos.

“Look at me,” he pleaded.

“I don’t dare.”

Those three words were the closest to an admission of love he would ever hear. They were enough. During the next five years, until the onset of Victor’s illness, she arrived once a season, like a quarterly dividend. They spent the afternoon in his not-quite-wide-enough bed. The sky told them when it was time to leave for her train — a merciless five o’clock sky, royal in December, slate in March, turquoise in June, cornflower in September.

THE ARMOIRE WITH THE BEARDED CHERUBIM that had kept them company in Greg’s skylighted room was not in fact Hungarian. It was Albanian. As he edited “The Castle of Lubasz” Greg worried about this discrepancy, as if someone might peek through the small lie and discern the larger one. But suppose some indulgent readers did spot the falsehood? They’d only smile, and continue to buy enough whisky, cashmere throws, first editions, signed etchings, and retirement condominiums to keep advertisers happy; they’d continue to write appreciative letters to the editor. They weren’t going anywhere, were they? — for if they did shiver with wander-lust, any other travel magazine, full of Galápagos tips and Parisian hideaways and Middle East excavations, would serve them better. The World Enough demographic ideal was content to sit in a leather chair islanded on a Persian rug, and smoke a cigar and read.

Greg stopped worrying.

The final envelope, rather flat, was on his desk the day the Cul-lens’ daughter called from Godolphin. “They’re gone,” she said, and halted. “Both,” she said.