Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

“Maxima Gluck is dead,” said Mrs. Hasken.

“The old schoolteacher? Too bad.”

“Also Mr. Sargent.” Mrs. Hasken fastened her gaze on an inch of wicker. Cousin Phoebe massaged a veiny calf. Aunt Laurette calculated the price of the scenery.

Phoebe said, “We are thinking of adopting a twelve-year-old boy.”

“Any particular one?”

“No. We might settle for a second TV.”

“Your mother has taken up weaving,” Laurette said.

Mrs. Hasken said, “We are otherwise unchanged.”

“Since yesterday,” Laurette said.

The porch glider hadn’t much in the way of springs, and her partner the duffel bag was dead to the world, but Nancy tried to pump anyway. Glider scraped floorboard, halted. “I’ll unpack,” Nancy murmured, and fled.

Upstairs in her room, clothes flew around; finally a framed Carl emerged from a sweater. His face was as thin as hers. He was bespectacled also, and they had the same julienne hair. At college other students had often mistaken them for relatives — brothers, Nancy supposed. She left him on the desk and walked out onto a small wooden balcony. There she adopted a rentier’s stance — arms spread, hands on the rail. She would track down an interesting job, she vowed. She would study Hesse and Mann. She would refuse to make a nightly fourth at bridge, and to pay calls on local drips. This austerity would clear her decks for action. Still she wondered: did the present deliver up the future, or must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist? Presently she heard her mother calling her for dinner. She ran inside and pulled off her clothes and put on a long black skirt and a blouse with conical sleeves, wearing which she felt like a schoolmaster, in drag. Piously she ate her meal. The evening passed.

Thus Nancy’s first day home. The next few were inconclusive, but by the end of the second week she had wedded herself to the porch glider. In its embrace she was studying Laurette’s collection of detective novels. She slept late each morning, and whenever she awoke found breakfast waiting, prepared by a joyous Inez. Inez had a lover, Nancy’s mother reported from the far side of the table. Nancy inspected the ads. In town, Laurette, who managed a dress shop, was pushing her summer merchandise. Cousin Phoebe, under a tree, worked on her memoirs.

Dinners began with cocktails on the porch, ended with beer in the living room.

“Are you planning to get a job?” Mrs. Hasken occasionally inquired.

“Yes.”

“Of course she is,” Phoebe said.

“Soon,” Laurette promised. “Let’s go to the movies.”

Every third evening the Jeep bounced into town. Laurette at its wheel. On the way home it was Nancy who drove, slowly probing a leafy darkness. In the front seat she and Laurette were as silent as lovers. The other two drowsed in back.

She felt pampered: an adored young nephew. She observed no routine except to turn up three afternoons a week for her tennis lesson. On the court she was all energy …

“No slashing!” Leo shouted. “The racket is not a saber.”

A July Monday, a turquoise sky. Nancy, at net, frowned. Leo lobbed a high one. Nancy held her racket stiff above her head, like a protest sign. The ball struck its face and ran down its neck. Leo joined her at net. During the winter a mild paunch had developed above his belt. His right knee bore a familiar scar.

“Not bad. Work on the angle,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “See you Wednesday.”

That night at dinner, Phoebe said, “I hear he’s loose.”

“What do you mean, loose?” Laurette snapped. “ Débauché or incontinent?”

“Unbuttoned,” Phoebe answered. “Last year he kept to himself. This year he’s been seen with every bit of fluff in town. Are you aware that he used to teach Art History? And then loafed in Europe for several years? And is at last attending medical school? He’s thirty.”

“Thirty-one,” Nancy said. “He’s relaxed, is all.”

“His eyes are like lozenges,” panted Laurette.

Nancy began to arrive early for her lessons. Her costume didn’t change, though — baggy seersucker shorts and a T-shirt. Brown hook-on lenses covered her everyday specs. She carried the news-paper. It became their custom to take a break halfway through the session, sitting side by side on a whitened bench. Leo, who’d grown fond of certain localities during his six months abroad, talked about his favorites. At a certain London hotel, where the tapestries are faded and the linen a wreck, you can feel heir to all that is gentle. Courtyards in Delphi are chalk by day, flame and cinnamon in the twilight. One hesitates to visit the Palais-Royal, yet behind that cold colonnade can be found an ice-cream parlor and a Romanian upholsterer.

“You love to travel,” Nancy accused.

“Sure.”

“People should stay put.”

“Should they? You, too, might like to explore new places.”

“Maybe the Dolomites,” she mumbled.

Leo wore a battered felt hat, the hat of a peddler’s pony. His amber eye reminded her of decongestant. She yearned to paint his throat.

“Let’s go to the movies!” Laurette kept suggesting.

“Let’s!” Nancy swooned the moment she sat down, watched the flick laxly, was always convinced that from this syncope she would emerge altered. Next to movies she liked best to be reading on the porch. By August she had abandoned detective fiction in favor of the fat, lazy novel.

Sometimes she biked into town and moped at the library. Long windows opened onto sprinkled grass. One day at about five thirty she looked up from her book and saw Leo on the far side of the lawn. Beside him stood a young woman lavishly dressed. In the street was his Renault. Leo examined a parking meter, his thumb over the coin slot, his chin on his chest — the meter had contracted something serious. His companion sucked in her stomach. Presently they walked on. Nancy left the library and pedaled toward home. As usual, she paused at a large rock just off the road, near the country club. This boulder overlooked Leo’s home for the season, a one-room cabin that Nancy had mentally furnished with cot, braided rug, and, on a hook, the nag’s hat … She stood watch for a while, then mounted her bike and churned home.

I miss you , wrote Cynthia. What are your plans now?

Nancy lay on the glider like a corpse. A straw hat, a boater, rested on her brow. Sir Charles Grandison guarded her crotch. Flies buzzed on the ceiling. It was eleven o’clock on a Monday, the first morning of Laurette’s vacation. Laurette stalked onto the porch, wearing a housecoat and a headdress of rollers.

“Nan, I’m going to New York in a couple of weeks. Come along. We’ll stay in a nice hotel.”

“Okay.”

Laurette sat down near the rail and presented her face to the sun. “We’ll have a ball,” she declared. “We’ll get you an autumn outfit — a velvet pantsuit, maybe. Wherever did you pick up that hat?”

“In a charity ward. Will you badger the salespeople?”

“Yep.” Laurette closed her eyes. “Though comedy is my true thing. My ex-husband chose me because I was droll.”

Nancy remembered him, a chemist with an off-center mouth. He had married again, fathered four sons. “Why did you give him the gate?” she asked.

“Thought I could do better.” The woman raised her head and blinked. Sunlight illumined her orange hair. “Do I really—”

“Like sisters,” Nancy assured her.

When Laurette had gone, Nancy peeked again at her other letter. I love you , it still said. I consider that it’s time we … She stared at the flies for some minutes, during which Mrs. Hasken drifted onto the porch and sat down.

“Would you like the glider, Mother?”