Dana Spiotta - Lightning Field

“Mrs. Bradley? You mean Dale Bradley’s second wife? You don’t mean that Mrs. Bradley, do you?”

“She called. She had to go to the hospital. Mr. Bradley wants to talk to you. He’s in the lounge downstairs. The Room.”

Mina smiled grimly and looked at the video monitor of the lounge. Mr. Bradley.

“It’s a real tan. I mean, I got it at a tanning salon.”

“Ashlee, tell him I’m not here. Or, wait. No, here’s what you do. You go downstairs to Mr. Bradley. You tell him you screwed up and you start to cry. Maybe you even lean on him a little because you are so upset. You tell him you screwed upand you beg him not to tell me because I’ll fire you and you really, really need this job. Think, I don’t know, think of Sharon Tate in Valley of the Dolls —beautiful and helpless.”

Ashlee nodded.

“And Ashlee — use your tan. That’s very bold, a real tan. Very bold.”

“But Mina?”

“What?”

Ashlee looked very upset.

“What?”

“I don’t know who Sharon Tate is.”

Mina smiled. “That’s perfect, Ashlee. Perfect, spot-on. Now go down there.”

The phone buzzed.

“It’s me.”

“Hi.” Mina watched Ashlee on the video monitor. She looked great. Extremely tan.

“Mina.”

“I can’t come over this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I think I’m going crazy.”

“Tomorrow. Sunday.”

“Uh, Christ, I can’t. I have to meet with Lorene — not possible.”

“Are you wearing a skirt? Or are you wearing pants?”

“No.”

“Just tell me and I’ll let you go. Are you alone?”

“I’m watching Ashlee kiss a customer on the video monitor. Ashlee with two e’ s and no y, Max.”

There was a long Max silence.

“Max?”

More silence. Mina sighed. “How about tomorrow noon?”

“Yep.”

Mr. Bradley had his arm around Ashlee. His hand moved to her tiny waist. Her body was shaking with sobs. Max hung up the phone and Mina waited for the dial tone. Max wasn’t able to disconnect and she listened to the repeated clicks as he pressed the cradle button again and again to hang up. At last, she heard the dial tone.

Lorene sat at her kitchen table, still in her kimono at noon. She kept staring at the mail she had from yesterday. A white envelope with no return address and familiar handwriting was tucked among bills and magazines. It was Michael’s handwriting. Inside was a card with a picture of the Chrysler Building. It read: Left the hospital and am going to visit Mom in New York. Be there until end September. I’ll be in touch. I’m sorry it’s been so long. I hope you are all right.

She did some calculations strung together by weather systems, riots, disasters, and shoe styles. It was three years since he’d contacted her. Nothing since the one time she saw him in the hospital. The one time he had reluctantly agreed to let her visit him.

She had found him surrounded by papers — tacked to the wall, in stacks on the floor. He had been busy compiling lists, it seemed. For unknown purposes.

Lorene wore a pale peach crepe de chine day dress that had been altered with strips of peek-a-boo peach lace inserted at bias-cut angles. Underneath she wore a deep auburn silk sheath slip, and under the slip, nothing at all, save some very sheer flesh-colored stockings that stopped midthigh. The stockings were held in place by embroidered garters, tiny peachflowers on beige, the elastic kind of garter that just circled each thigh around the top band of the stocking. It was all, she realized as she entered the room, far too precious, far too much. She cringed in the doorway — a mistake. Couldn’t she have just been simple and sober for once? He sat on a single tightly and grayly made-up institutional bed, looking thin and tender in a fresh white T-shirt and drawstring pants. He had the air of incarceration. He was engrossed in the papers he held, and it took him a full minute to notice her standing in the doorway. He stared at her, took her in, and she wished with all her heart she had worn underwear.

He smiled. “Is this a dream?” he said. His voice was deeper than she remembered. This comforted her in a way.

“Hi, Michael,” she said. He sat, so thin that it seemed as he leaned forward that his arms might buckle, and then, of course, there was Michael’s face. Having not seen him for so long, she could no longer visualize his face. Her memory of it was Cubist, thought of in pieces. She remembered his nose and his dark eyes. His mouth too, but the sum was beyond her. And now here he was, the present apparition, and she looked at him quickly before she had to look away. It was always painful to look at someone she hadn’t seen in a while, the way time is inescapably written on a face. She looked again. It was Michael, yes, but, God, oh, God. He was much more angular, of course. It jarred her. Only a couple of years (actually four) had passed since she’d last seen him, yet she still remembered him as perpetually seventeen, the summer she first met him. No one was younger than Michael at seventeen, no one had more grace in his animation. His confident glide through the world writ all over his smooth cheeks and in his large eyes. He was, at twenty-six, no longer young. His hair was cropped veryshort, chopped, actually, tight against his head. His new angles made his dark eyes larger than ever, and there was tension in his mouth. His lips were thinner and straighter. He was still handsome, but in a dusty, sad, desperate way that only men can wear as handsome, so distant from “cute,” so far from the young man she remembered.

“You are still my most beautiful Lorene,” he said, slightly too loud, and he smiled again. His teeth were bigger than she remembered, but recognizable, not that far off, almost OK. She knew she should approach him, hug him or touch him. But she just stood. She took off her sunglasses.

In addition to the bed, the room had a wood chair and a desk. The chair faced the bed. There was a computer on top of the desk, and a small window above the computer. The opposite wall was stacked with books. The afternoon light from the window was the only illumination, but even in its dust-filled haziness, it was stark enough, and she found her way to the chair, sat, crossed her legs at the ankles and tucked them under the chair. He leaned in toward her from the bed, elbows on knees, and lit a cigarette. He did not stop looking at her, or smiling at her. After a minute, he stopped smiling and pushed his papers aside. He looked at the room, and back at her, and put the sheet he was writing on facedown on a stack on the floor.

“I’m so tired, Lorene. All the time.”

“Me, too,” she said, pulling her own cigarettes out of her purse. He reached for his matches and leaned forward to light her cigarette. She put her hand on his match-holding hand— it was shaking. She steadied it as she inhaled. The touch, instantly over, shocked her. She was suddenly ready to cry.

“You gave me this purse,” she said. He looked at the black leather square-framed bag she was holding.

“A vintage knockoff of the Hermès bag that was designed for Grace Kelly,” she said. He smiled, staring at it.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Yes. A knockoff.” He looked at her. “Same old Lorene. You’re sweet to carry it today.”

“I use it a lot. I love my Kelly bag,” she said. She emphasized the word love too much, she heard emotion in her own voice, and the sound of it upset her. She was starting to cry, and she had to try not to.

“I’m so glad you came. I’m sorry I couldn’t see you sooner. I’ve had a very tough—”

“I know,” she said, stopping him. “I know.” She smoked, and looked at her cigarette and felt him watching her, and felt herself falling again, miraculously, into deeply wanting him. So many times she longed to feel these long-remembered feelings, and now it was frightening, wanting him again. But she did. They sat smoking for what seemed like hours, but it wasn’t even the duration of one cigarette. He put his out and moved up from the bed. He went to the door and turned the lock.