Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

GRACE, TOO, WAS AWAKE. The hotel room was dark and malodorous. Hal slept at her side without stirring, without snoring. He had always been a devoted sleeper. He was devoted to whatever brought him pleasure. Under no circumstances would she accompany him to Barcelona, as he had idly suggested last night. (He had also suggested that she buy the drinks at the hotel bar downstairs; she supposed she’d have to pay for the room, too.) Anyway, she had left her passport next to Gustave’s in his top drawer. She hoped he’d send it back to her in Northampton — she had not yet sold her house there, thank goodness, thank Providence, thank Whoever was in charge. She hoped he’d send all her things, without obsessive comment. She wanted no more of him. She wanted no more of Hal, either: it was enough that she had shared his toothbrush last night, and then his bed, and was now sleeping — well, failing to sleep — in one of his unlaundered shirts.

How hideous to have only yesterday’s lingerie. Unshaved underarms were one thing: grotty underpants quite another. What time did stores open on Sundays? She’d slip out and shop, get a new sweater, maybe — that would pick up her spirits. She remembered the half-finished vest for her granddaughter she’d left on the chair; she hoped Gustave would send that back, too …

“Amelie …,” muttered Hal.

“Grace,” she corrected.

If only she were back in Northampton already, where everyone was needy and she was needed. She wished she had never visited that wild-animal preserve at the Cape, had never paused to look at those foxes. She wished she had not married a man because he was learned and polite, especially since he had turned out to be pedantic and sanctimonious.

FROM TIME TO TIME that Sunday, Gustave thought of calling the lawyer who’d married them — she happened to specialize in divorce. Instead he read the papers, and watched the football game. What a sport: force directed by intelligence. He prepared for tomorrow’s class, the one in which he and the students would reproduce one of Faraday’s earliest experiments in electrification. They’d all come carrying foil-wrapped water-filled film canisters with a protruding nail. These were primitive Leyden jars in which to store electricity. The electricity would be produced by a Styrofoam dinner plate nested in an aluminum pie pan — the kids would bring these friction makers, too. He went to bed early. He could see a low autumnal moon above the mansard across the street — well, only the upper half of the sphere was visible, but he could supply the rest.

GRACE BOUGHT, among other things, a yellow sweater. She took her time getting back to the hotel. She found Hal showered and smiling. During a long walk by the river she listened to his opinions on magic realism and antonomasia — she’d forgotten what that was, she admitted. “The use of an epithet instead of a proper name,” Hal said. “ ‘The Fussbudget,’ say.” He told her of the Spanish medieval farsa, which was related to farce. And just when she thought her aching head would explode, it was time to put him into a cab to the airport. He seemed to have enough cash for the taxi. He thrust his head out of the open window as the vehicle left the curb. “My apartment is near Las Ramblas, best location in Barcelona,” he called. She waved. The cab disappeared, and her headache with it.

She went back to their room, now hers, and read the papers and enjoyed a solitary supper in front of the TV, watching a replay of that afternoon’s football game. Nice intercept! Such brave boys there on the screen. But Gustave had been brave, too, hadn’t he, scorning savoir faire as he cleansed his house of unwelcome revelers. How red his face had become when Hal theatrically held out his hand … he’d felt wronged, hadn’t he, or perhaps in the wrong; maybe he thought she’d summoned her friends, maybe he thought he’d failed her. If she ever saw him again she’d tell him about Hal’s lonely rootlessness. She’d tell him about poor Lee and Lee’s barn of unsalable paintings, if she ever saw him again … She put on her new nightgown and went to bed. She could see a curve of the dome of the Massachusetts statehouse, just enough to suggest the whole.

THE LECTURE ROOM was shaped like a triangle. The platform, holding lectern and lab bench, was at the apex, the lowest part of the room; concentric rows of slightly curved tables radiated upward toward the back. Three students sat at each table. The professor stood at the lectern when he talked, moved to his lab bench for demonstrating. He and the students employed their identical homemade equipment. As he talked and demonstrated — creating the electric charge, storing it — the students imitated. There was expectant laughter and an occasional excited remark and a general air of satisfaction. Only a few of these poets might change course and become physicists, but not one of them would hold science in contempt. “Faraday made this experiment with equally crude apparatus,” he reminded them. “And with faith that it would work. Faith — so unfashionable now — was his mainstay.”

The woman in the back row, alone at a table, without pie plate or film can, wished that she, too, had the implements, that she could obey the instructions of the measured, kindly voice; but mostly she marveled again at the story that voice was telling of the humble young Faraday setting himself upon his life’s journey. “He considered that God’s presence was revealed in nature’s design,” wound up the little man. He looked radiant.

When he at last noticed the figure in the yellow sweater, he was cast back to an afternoon in Paris when that same glowing color had been produced by sun refracted through stained glass, and the lips of his companion had parted as she listened to winds and strings send music aloft. She had thrilled, she had become elevated, she had generously carried him with her …

The lecture concluded to applause; the teenagers dispersed; the professor materialized in the chair next to the visitor’s.

They looked at each other for a while.

“I’m Grace,” she said at last.

“I’m Gustave”—and how his heart leaped. “I’d like to … get to know you.”

Another long pause while he belatedly considered the dangers in so ambitious an enterprise, for he too would have to be known, and his shabby secrets revealed, and his out-of-date convictions as well. They’d endure necessary disappointments, and they’d practice necessary forgivenesses, careful to note which subjects left the other fraught. Grace’s mind moved along the same lines. Each elected to take the risk. Gustave showed his willingness by touching the lovely face, Grace hers by disdaining eclipsis. “Me too,” was all she said.

DESMOND CHAPIN OPENED HIS DOOR to a spare, plainly dressed woman of about forty, nose tilted, reddish hair in a strict bun. “Miss …”

“Valerie Gordon,” she said.

“The new nanny.”

“Well … If we all suit each other.” She had a faint Canadian accent.

“You remind me of somebody,” Desmond said, escorting her into the living room. When Val did not respond, he plunged on anyway. “Mary Poppins?”

She shook her head. “I’m not like Mary Poppins. I’m sometimes fanciful, but I don’t work magic. I like courtesy, but I don’t care about manners.”

This was Val’s first interview in the nanny line and she considered it a rehearsal. She had no references other than clerical. After shaking hands with Deborah Chapin, she said hello to the four-year-old twin boys. They grinned and giggled.

“I have a special rapport with twins,” she dared to say to the boys. “You see, I am …”

But they were already running out to play in the fenced-in backyard.