Gabriel Roth - The Unknowns

When she passes the pipe back I take another little hit, mostly air, to demonstrate that I’m not just imitating Maya, and then return it. “That’s enough for me,” I say, and my sudden awareness of the complex buccal manipulations required to pronounce the words makes me realize that it is in fact too much.

Maya asks Aunt Veal about her jewelry business, and Aunt Veal says she gets all the custom she can handle from her website. She gives me a significant look, and I’m not sure if it’s because she wants me to be impressed that she has a website or because I embody the spirit of the Internet in a more general way. “I can totally help you with that if you have any problems,” I say, a remark that wasn’t quite justified by the conversation leading up to it. The others let it go. Already, I’m the stoned person everyone indulges and ignores, like a child at the grownups’ table. I wish there were some antidote to marijuana. I look at the view, almost as shrubby and desolate as the landscape around Denver. As the sun hits the far side of the canyon I’m reminded of the way it used to drop behind the Rockies, too quickly, and something bleak occurs inside me. I realize I haven’t been following the conversation for some indeterminate span and hope this hasn’t been perceived as rude. Aunt Veal is in the middle of a monologue. “He was all the way up there, you know, and it worked for a while,” she says, perhaps referring to an IT person she had hired to fix her website. I almost say I can totally help with your website but stop myself and run a quick test: Are you certain that your proposed remark will fit naturally into the conversation? If not, say nothing. “Yeah, that’s too bad,” I say instead, and they both look at me for a second and carry on talking. The air feels very still, as though we’re at the bottom of a grave. Aunt Veal says, “You guys are just starting out, you haven’t had to deal with this stuff yet,” and I wonder what stuff there can possibly be that I haven’t had to deal with already. And Maya — what hasn’t she dealt with, much too early? As she adjusts her sunglasses against the glare I see the phantom hands of her father on her shoulders, and I wonder whether my fixation on his abuse of her reflects something perverse about male sexuality in general, or about me in particular. I should start paying attention to the conversation. Aunt Veal says, “Yeah, you’re like your mother in that way,” and Maya says, “Yeah, you’ve said that before.”

“How is she like her mother?” I say, exposing my wavering attention. I have a constant fear that because I will never meet her mother I will never really understand Maya herself.

Maya and her aunt wordlessly agree to make this conversational detour. “Daphne was a pretty cool customer,” Aunt Veal says. I’ve never heard Maya’s mother’s first name and am pleased that it’s Daphne, which makes me think of mythical water nymphs and the pretty redhead from Scooby-Doo . “She didn’t let her feelings show. That’s why men fell over themselves for her.” I do recognize this in Maya, the way she squints at the world, as though saving her responses for a critique to be published later. “She was kind of a mother to me more than a sister, what with our mother being basically out to lunch all the time.” She’s using the phrase metaphorically, rather than suggesting that Maya’s grandmother had a lot of lunch engagements. “That was how I made it through high school, was thanks to your mom.”

The light is pale by now, and Maya, in a sweatshirt, rubs her arms to warm herself. Aunt Veal got Maya’s mom, and who did Maya get? No one. “I just wish she’d been around to take care of you,” I say to Maya. Something feels odd, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve referred to Maya’s traumatic history in front of a third party.

“Yeah, I wish that too,” she says. No one knows where to go from there.

Finally Aunt Veal says, “She would have done it. You should have seen her when you were born, she was so in love with you, she would have done anything to keep you safe.” After the long silence this comes out sounding sentimental. I begin to wonder about the validity of the counterfactual: Who knows if Daphne would have taken care of Maya or not? Mothers often turn a blind eye to their children’s abuse. Perhaps she would have been complicit. Perhaps she would have participated. Why am I thinking these things?

We get up to leave soon afterward. I try to stage a meaningful goodbye, complete with expressions of gratitude and affection, but Aunt Veal stays on the deck instead of seeing us to the door. Maya doesn’t seem discomfited by this. By the time we’re in the car it’s officially dark. On the drive down the narrow unlighted roads I grip the door handle and watch the broken yellow lines pass underneath us like a filmstrip. Maya watches the road and communicates nothing; her facial muscles shift only in response to subcutaneous reflexes. This removal of ordinary social animation is something you rarely see on people who are awake, and it seems to suggest that I do not exist. We roll over the bridge, windows up, and through the empty streets of San Francisco, stopping at red lights for ghost traffic. Did I ruin things by bringing up her childhood? Is there a way to apologize without repeating the original mistake?

At least I can reassure her of my benevolence. Back in my bed I resume the strategy of gentle and sympathetic questioning that I initiated last night. The call-and-response once again seems to lull us into a state of trust. “Is this OK?” I ask before I enter her, and she says yes , a beautiful full-voiced yes that infuses my chest with warmth.

Lying atop her, my hips pronated to generate clitoral friction, I prop my upper body on my forearms and gaze down at her. Her eyes are three-quarters shut, and she’s emitting delicate little grunts, and to all indications she’s in the early throes of sexual transport. And then, in a normal speaking voice, she says, “You can be rougher if you want.”

I am practiced at fighting down the malevolent creatures that come swimming through my gut at such moments, with their waving tendrils and spiky fronds. There’s no time for panic. But how to respond? How much aggression is called for? I could ask for more information, but evidently she’s tired of respectful communication. This is a situation that demands instinct and spontaneity and getting everything right without planning a strategy or weighing the available evidence. I clutch at a hank of her hair and pull gently, but now my balance is precarious. Plus am I acting out the incestuous rape of a ten-year-old? I can’t do this. I finish much as I had begun, but with more vigor and less eye contact, and then I say something about having to pack in the morning and we go to sleep.

The flight to Denver takes three and a half hours. I’m in a window seat, in business class, watching the flight attendants. One is a bony blonde, close to forty, with a powerful smile and an amiable demeanor that allows her to dispense with the honey s and sweetie s that most flight attendants her age begin to introduce into their repertoire to compensate for the fading of their physical allure. The other, a brunette with a soft face, watches her senior colleague and tries to mimic her charisma. I’m not sure it’s learnable but I respect the attempt, especially since she could still coast on her gorgeous pink skin and lazy Southern diphthongs. I spend the flight looking back and forth between the western United States below us and these women walking purposefully up and down the aisle. I’m trying not to think about last night.

The guy next to me is good-looking in a way that seems to project the adjective good-looking . After stowing his overhead luggage he sat down and smiled politely, to indicate that he wouldn’t try to talk to me, then turned his attention to the Sharper Image catalogue. Now, during the lull before the final beverage service, he starts chatting to the younger stewardess, complaining humorously about the ratio of cheese to crackers on the snack trays. The blonde, on her way back from the cockpit, stops to see what the hilarity is about, and soon he’s entertaining both women with elaborations on this unpromising theme. He starts doing emphatic little gestures with the cheese; he goes to slam it down on his tray table in mock frustration, but he can’t really slam it or the table would whack him in the knees, so he does this restrained little fake slam. The flight attendants laugh anyway, leaning against nearby seat backs in on-a-break postures. I pretend to read the in-flight magazine. He’s ridiculous, this guy — everyone looks ridiculous when you watch them flirting. But there’s a chance that he’s about to sleep with two stewardesses, so who’s ridiculous now? Plus you have to admire the way he’s making use of the materials at hand — he’s done a good six or seven minutes on the cheese and crackers. (It helps that the thrust of his argument is sound: you really do need another cracker.) Now the blonde asks him what he’s doing in Denver, and I can’t tell if she’s making conversation or opening the logistical negotiations that will culminate with these three in a hotel room together. If it’s the latter, would that be the zenith of his traveling career, or is this what the world is like for men with quarterback arms and geometric chins? The lives of others are a perpetual mystery.