Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

They can hold their baby high

show all their teeth

and know God.

Hank remembered the soft look of pride on the poet’s face when she stopped reading.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“Very much,” he said.

“But do you get it?” she asked.

“I think so,” he said and smiled. “Tell me anyway. Tell me what it means.”

“It means the poor can have it all,” she said. “And do .” Then she kissed him.

The poet had been very poor and at that time he had been poor too. They had been poor together in a tiny apartment in Chinatown and the sex was spectacular.

Now that he was married to a wealthy woman, he wondered what that made him. Not rich exactly — but certainly not poor either. It was a little like being nobody, he thought. Like a little vase all naked on a shelf.

Mentally he began a list of all the things the rich could have.

Really nice doorknobs.

Rooms they don’t even use.

Big closets with wooden hangers.

Duvets with duvet covers.

Weird lighting fixtures — modern sorts of chandeliers.

Fresh flowers.

Copper cooking pots.

Business associates.

Health care.

Rules about how to behave.

Privacy.

Things that are white but not dirty.

• • •

Hank thought of reaching for a pen but instead grabbed his phone and called Lenora.

“Hey,” she said after the third ring, her voice a tad something.

He hesitated. “Are you smoking?”

“That’s the least of my problems right now, believe me.”

He went mute. She had taken such pains to quit.

“I can’t explain it,” she said quickly. “I bought a pack when I got off the plane. It just seemed right.” She exhaled. “The blankets are so bad here. I keep adding another one. They’re not that thin but seem to be made of air.”

“I can’t believe you’re smoking.”

“I don’t want to be lectured,” she said evenly.

“Fine.” He took a gruff pause. “How’s your mother?”

“You know, the same. Sweet and demonic. Like Satan pretending to be a baby.”

Hank laughed. “I love you, you know that.”

“I do.”

“I know I’ve been saying that a lot. I hope you know I mean something a little different each time.”

“I know.”

Hank paused. “I don’t want it to become meaningless.”

“It won’t.” Lenora exhaled. “Mom gave me a picture,” she said, “of me as a baby. She wants me to give it to you.”

“That’s sweet.”

“I don’t think so,” Lenora sniffed. “She kept saying how much she loved it when I was a baby and suddenly I realized why. I thought oh, you didn’t want to meet me.”

“Can she hear you right now?”

“I don’t care. She’s hardly spoken to me. I went out for hours, she didn’t even notice.”

“Where did you go?”

“Walmart. I just walked around so long that I started thinking what a great deal.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. Arlington’s a toilet. Always has been.”

“Honey, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m not depressed. I’m actually kind of inspired. It’s not that I want to be a better person.” She paused. “I just don’t want to be like my mother.”

He laughed.

“I know she’s losing her shit — I mean I get that. But she was always a jerk so there’s nothing really to grieve .”

“What time are you bringing her to the place tomorrow?”

“It’s called Fern Valley.”

“Sounds like a cemetery.”

“Well,” she said smokily, a smile in her voice.

He pictured her staring out a window, which was exactly what she was doing.

“And now all this stuff I wasn’t allowed to touch as a kid is being thrown out,” she said. “It’s all over the lawn. People have been taking things.”

“Don’t you want any of that stuff?”

“No.”

“I miss you,” he said, then regretted it.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Do you miss me?”

“I’ve been gone for less than a day. So no.”

He was quiet a second. “Sometimes I hate your honesty.”

“I thought you missed me.”

“I do .”

“Well.” She took a long drag. “This is me.”

• • •

The next day Lenora arrived at their door with a bruisey look of exhaustion around her eyes, brown hair tucked back at the ears. She wore a long sand-colored coat and knee-high leather boots. Hank kissed her on the mouth, tasted mint and a cigarette. He looked into her tired eyes.

“Will you help me with this?” she asked.

Hank wheeled her suitcase in. He was always surprised by how sexy his wife was, long-limbed with a soft galaxy of freckles over her cheeks and nose. It was a little like seeing another woman every time she appeared — like she was continually being replaced by one of her more beautiful sisters.

He watched as she clacked to the hall mirror and shot it a quick glance, then went straight to her office.

Numbly he floated to the kitchen for more coffee and within minutes, she was shouting.

“What?” he yelled.

“Nothing,” she said when he appeared in the doorway. She had stripped down to a sleeveless gray dress and stared fixedly at her laptop, an unlit cigarette waiting between her fingers. The room was dark, save for a standing iron lamp with a slim green shade.

“What?”

“This little baby novelist got a huge review in the Times .”

Hank walked over to the laptop. “Oh him.”

“He’s a crashing bore, this guy. I met him once… years ago.”

“You have such a teeming, growing shit list.”

“That’s what a career is.” She scrolled down to the bottom of the screen. “I’m sure he adores my work.”

“Who cares.” Hank backed away from the computer. “You’ll get one. You always do.”

“But it won’t be like this. It’ll be smaller.” Lenora pulled a book of matches from her purse and lit the cigarette, savagely pulling smoke into her lungs. “The best thing I could do for my career at this point is hang myself.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.” She tugged one boot off and dropped it to the floor. “It’s a fact . I won’t be famous till I’m dead.”

“But you are famous. You’re famous now.”

“Not like I will be.” Lenora had entered an unblinking trance. “All the biographers will fight over me.”

“Come on.”

“That’s how it works. They eat corpses — all of them do.”

He stared at her. “That’s a disgusting way of putting it.”

“It’s true though.”

Hank backed out of the room, watching her as he went. Lenora was leaning forward in her cracked leather chair, shoulders gleaming in the lamplight. She stared straight ahead with a violent look of contemplation, cars going off cliffs in her eyes.

He brought his laptop to bed and Googled the poet he had dated in his twenties, Grace Lampert. In an instant he identified her on Facebook, looking rather unhealthy next to a man, presumably her husband, who also looked unwell. The image disturbed him. He clicked it shut.

Hank heard the front door slam and knew where Lenora had gone. To see the drug mule.

• • •

She returned at dusk. She walked to the bed and stared down at Hank, who lay in the same spot with his laptop balanced on his stomach, its cool blaze cast over him.

“Did you get some writing done?” she asked.

“No,” he frowned. He had done nothing but masturbate. “I drank too much coffee,” he said. That was true too. “Wound up paralyzed… grinding my teeth.”