Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

Well, she was a mess — but maybe not. The crying had left her alive, and she didn’t give a damn, she was into the future, that was where she was coming from — and she’d come home feeling younger than she’d left this morning.

"Where are you coming from?" she said. She believed he was in danger.

The man’s pleasant face stiffened, twisting tighter against pressure. "They still using that expression?"

The elevator stopped at the ninth floor but Norma went on getting closer to her own, her legs went out to the man, she moved after he moved, and she was opposite the open elevator doorway where he stood, their arms opposite, his breath strong.

"I’m still there," he said.

"Please tell me about it," she said, and the door bumped his shoulder and bounced back.

"I will," he said, and she had the impression that somewhere he had already done so.

He had stepped back and let the door close between them.

But she was rising, as if the door had never opened and closed at nine — she had to deliver a message but wouldn’t know what it was until it came out.

She was already naked for her pre-workshop bath, and didn’t have on her the weight of a bottle of wine she knew now she’d meant to give Gordon in return, yes, for going to Grace’s for the "nude" workshop.

The door to her apartment was empty, the dark green door itself, numbered and lettered and with a peephole. She pushed her key at the lock and as she found the alignment the pressure already on the lock pushed the door in because it was unlocked. Nancy had been calling, "I’m not really hungry, Daddy."

He was in front of Norma. He extended his arms toward her, and she joined him (oh, a model that was fitted to him!). She smelled wine in his cheek and knew what he was saying before he said it: "I quit today."

You can always get it back, she thought, but he didn’t quite pick that up, and she murmured into his ear, "Good, Gordon."

His eyes skipped by as they had last night when he’d looked away from the news and seemed to speak, and looked back again at the TV screen; but the message she caught now along with other messages in his bony hands holding her arms was the same she’d heard in his mind at that moment last night.

It had said, "I don’t know if I want you."

She had known what was in his mind. Did he?

She had known; but how had she known? The power he had here was only what she had given him.

She had known what was in his mind because she had helped to put it there.

"Are you going to tell me you knew it?" said Gordon.

"You did the right thing," she said. She leaned over and kissed him on a crease of cheek. "Can I have a glass of wine? I’m a bit nervous about tonight."

Now why had she given him that? Why not.

She went to the bedroom. Behind her her older daughter’s footsteps curved away and seemed to stop. In pursuit of some intention.

"Is that all?" said Gordon.

"Speak," he said. "Did you cash a check today?"

"I will," she said.

He stopped at the threshold grasping the lintel above and letting his weight

go-

She went on with what she was doing.

She was not dependent. She wouldn’t talk about it.

"Is that all?" said Gordon.

She wouldn’t talk about it; she probably couldn’t explain.

"Norma?"

He would sing out over his shoulder, Still there? She might be up in the trees, the way he tilted his head back, or in the sky, what there was of it — did this save her from having to answer? — and then again without looking he said over his shoulder, his heavy shoulder, Everything O.K.?

And he could be the one who needed help: she saw him up ahead, puffing, grabbing a sapling to get himself up, wobble, stagger, or along uneven ground appear to limp, humming, gasping through this shaded upper world of woods so she was concerned about him that this man who called over his shoulder (as if listening not speaking), Still there? could be himself the one who needed help.

Help, it occurred to her, once in the middle of mountain light. Not help from her, for she was only to ask what his symptoms were, that time, at the summit of a small mountain they had trudged and hauled themselves up and scrambled without direction except up, through an upward abyss of shade.

For they were very occasional weekend rock climbers. Scramblers. A dark pond at the top, they’d heard. Or an observation tower with initials cut into the gray wood, some still fresh, still pale or burnt-brown. A great rock, they might hear. A great view. A chalet with a player piano.

No, they were not rock climbers to speak of. Tennis players; well, doubles players, who liked to walk in the woods where you could hear yourself think and they would take a trip of a couple of hundred miles and when they got there walk, walk up a small, green mountain.

Well, Mount Everett (don’t smile), in the Berkshires near her old college. It had been old in her day — why not? — and offered a large nineteenth-century Gothic chapel. She came so near majoring in economics her parents announced it to their friends one Christmas. But she loved her history teacher and followed him from term to term taking all the courses he gave or recommended, actually had a term of Greek. The Berkshire hills was what the history teacher had called them; like a round mountain, she said, and her husband smiled short of laughter.

But the way that he led her along rock-impacted brook gullies and up through stunted firs thicketed branch upon branch that came back at her face, she felt that the snatches of lyrics he puffed out could be parts of a long song she wasn’t hearing much of, for he was sending it forward, an ongoing song, sending a message to the top to whatever waited for them, and she looked behind her and around her, and some came back to her.

Almost like, Everything okay?

And, Still there?

Through the trees off to the right, the paved road hardly existed, until a car motor crept close. And then it wasn’t toward them; her husband looked toward it, kept looking for two or three steps, you probably couldn’t see the car, it passed them at some point and it might flash sun once, twice, through the trees, as if to see these climbers; the climb was hot, so Hey why weren’t we as smart as those guys, she heard herself think (two in the front seat, whoever those people in the car were, or two in front and one or two in back, possibly one in front with two in back, but never one in front one in back)— yet she put her foot down on something soft and spongy no doubt his brain a mushy witch-blend of fir needles, stewed twigs, and the fungus of the earth, and knew that the Why-weren’t-we-as-smart-as-those-guys thought wasn’t hers because she was happy here on foot.

So it had to be his thought. Only because she knew he’d had it before. Thinking of his famous parents more than these folk passing in a car you couldn’t see, who on a warm morning made the ascent by car. He only spoke the words of a song now, he didn’t sing, for the tune had quieted down between the words "It looks like," he was saying, "it’s climb’m’ clear up to the sky. " So she knew he had put the other thoughts away and perhaps recalled his one audience behind him, and she could almost lose him, knowing he was about to throw himself down on the steep rise to sit back on his elbows facing her but probably closing his eyes to the treetops and sky as she came up to him, sweat on his brow.

But he didn’t stop and turn, much less sit, he wasn’t there, he’s passed beyond the trees, through the last thicket into clearing and as if he was so motionless that she didn’t see him.

Or it was that a clearing had come to him, all around him, the clearing, she was angry and she loved where she was, she was fifty yards at least behind him in trees and thickets, if he got too far ahead let him go past the top, down the other side, completely round the world, he’d find her in front of him. He flickered back to her, a piece of green, green flannel shirt, he was in the middle of mountain light if that wasn’t putting it too strongly. They must be getting there. She couldn’t see how far ahead he was now, she was almost to the clearing, she raked her calf sickeningly on a bramble right through her jeans, old soft jeans, much machined, soft as skin. A distinct tread and small crash of crackling came so close she thought it was herself and she looked for a red squirrel, a bird; she put her hand on a birch trunk, a dry, tough-sprung curl of bark, and didn’t see him too well through the last growth of scrub fir and a tangle she had never seen before of bright holly and low alder (with two hands she pulled a tiny pine cone off), and if he did look back to see how she was doing she couldn’t tell until she thrashed through and her hand swept out away from her a springy branch, and she saw they still had a ways to go but out in low brush and rock up to her right.