Love Maps Read online

“Probably is,” says Clyde. “Who’s Gus?”

  “My studio mate. He’s installed a hoop on his side of the studio. It’s only a matter of time till the ball runs amok and hits a wet canvas.”

  “Philip plays basketball,” Clyde says. Philip grunts. “He’s great. I don’t know where it came from. He sucked in prep school.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” says Philip.

  “He coaches little black kids. Even they think he’s good.”

  “You’re a coach?”

  “Not really. It’s a neighborhood organization. I meet with some kids and give them pointers.”

  “He organizes matches and buys them ice cream. He’s a big brother.”

  “I call a game now and then.”

  “Let’s play,” says Clyde.

  “What?”

  “Let’s play a game.”

  “Now?”

  “Come on. I’ve never played basketball in an artist’s studio before. That’s something for the wife and kids.”

  “Kid,” says Philip. “You only have one.” He turns to Sarah. “Could we go? I want to see your paintings.”

  *

  She walks between them, her chin tucked in her neck, praying that Philip’s card isn’t still tacked to her wall. She thinks she took it down when she gave up the highways, but she’s not positive. They reach Franklin Street. But where would she have put it? She should have pretended that she’d lost her keys. She still can. They get to her block. Her door. She hasn’t said a thing. Okay. She’ll risk it. She unlocks the door. The elevator is a gaping cage with a wooden floor and metal grating. Clyde is suitably impressed. Philip nods. But he’s an architect; he’s seen stuff like this before. She shows Clyde how to man the lever, and they jolt and shudder up. At five, she aligns the floors, opens the grate, and flicks the lights.

  Clyde whistles. “Whoa!”

  She runs over to the wall by her easel. The card is still there, smudged with fingerprints. She slips it in her back pocket, her heart beating. Philip and Clyde are still by the entrance, Clyde craning his neck, Philip quietly taking the space in, hands in his pockets.

  “This place is huge,” Clyde says. “What’s the rent on a place like this?”

  “I know the owner of the building. We get a good deal.”

  Philip heads toward her worktable. “These are cool.” About twenty scale paintings lie on the table, in different stages of completion. From a distance, they look like Byzantine icons, small and wooden, painted with egg-based tempera and laid with gold leaf. At the center of each is a scale with different objects weighed upon the plates. Philip smiles at one that features a combat boot slightly outweighing a saltshaker and a tin of herring. “How do you get the gold on?”

  “It’s excruciating,” she says, explaining how careful you have to be not to crack the leaf.

  “Come on!” shouts Clyde, who has found the ball. “Let’s play!” He hurls the ball at Philip, scaring Sarah, but Philip catches it neatly. He bounces it back to the relative safety of Gus’s section and shoots. The ball transcribes a giant arc and drops through the basket. Sarah flops onto a car seat. Watching sports is not her idea of fun, but once they get away from her paintings, it’s not bad. Clyde is an excitable puppy, Philip a greyhound without the high-strung quivers. An effortless shrug, and the ball glides through the air, more often than not swishing through the net. After a while, Clyde collapses next to her. Philip, alone, picks up speed. He bounds around the room, the tail of his shirt flapping. Hardly a tin soldier, he’s fucking Nureyev. Clyde hiccups.

  “Want some water?” she asks.

  “Nah.” Clyde stretches out, throwing his head back over the seat, his Adam’s apple bobbing toward the ceiling. There’s something in the way he does this, a sloppy abandon, which suggests he’s reached a greater stage of drunkenness than she’d been aware of. “What I’d like,” he says, wagging his finger for emphasis, “is dental floss.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Please.”

  There’s an edge to his voice that motivates her to stand up and do something. She goes through her drawers and finds a roll of picture-hanging wire. The ball bounces. Philip seems to have forgotten her and Clyde, left them for a parallel world with a different rhythm and gravitational field. She stands on its periphery, holding the roll of picture-hanging wire, feeling a little dizzy and sad, not a bad sad, sad like a warm rainy day. Philip catches the ball and tucks it under his arm.

  “Bravo,” she says. He smiles. His hair is brown with sweat. “Want some water?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hands him the wire and heads for the sink.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for Clyde. He needs some dental floss. Tell him to be careful. It might rip his gums.”

  “Clyde? Oh yeah. Hey, bud.”

  She brings Philip his water. He drinks it looking at her.

  Clyde examines the picture wire with a confused air. “This looks like fishing line.”

  Philip wanders back to her worktable. Clyde loops the wire around his fingers. She concentrates on Clyde, trying to block out Philip observing her work. She doesn’t understand how Maya can enjoy having her audience right there in front of her.

  “I love these!” Philip shouts from across the studio. “But where are the ones of Conningsby’s father? Didn’t you paint some pictures of him?”

  “Go on,” says Clyde. “Show him. I can do my teeth in private.”

  She lets Philip into the storage room and takes the Alligators down from the rack.

  “There’s the castle!” Philip says, pointing at the first Alligator painting.

  “You recognize it?”

  “It’s wonderful. They all are. You should do something with them.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  He wants to see more. The circuses, early stuff from art school. “You’re going too fast,” he says.

  She lights a cigarette and lets him flip through them at his own pace. She’s still nervous, but grateful too. He really seems to like them. He keeps returning to a painting called Map of X. It’s a strange piece. When she was editing her canvases, she had a hard time justifying why she was keeping it. But she likes it. She just does. X was a town where they had stopped on one of Maya’s first European tours. She can’t remember the name, but she remembers the place. The church was lined with cracked wooden saints and pails of yellow and white plastic roses. Maya sang up at the front, by the altar, a local musician on the organ, her voice young and raw, amplified by the ancient stones. Max had a cold. He shifted next to her, his nose yellowish and runny, his lined brown eyes blinking away a sneeze. Aside from the church, Sarah can remember a boulangerie, a pension, twisty, narrow streets with grills over the shops and rolled-up awnings. In the painting, she tried to recreate the plan of the streets by remembering the way from the church to the boulangerie to the pension. The process had fascinated her, the scenes appearing in her head, so clear, one day out of many. She had seen her foot coming down from a curb, a little white lace sock with a cuff, some kind of scuffed leather shoe. Horse crap in the street. A mud-spattered Peugeot. The scenes made her feel strangely triumphant; something she attributed to the thrill of recovered time—time not considered important, but time lived. The indestructibility of an ordinary day. She gets this feeling when she looks at the painting, but it hasn’t—until now—seemed to resonate with anyone else.

  “Why do you like it?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” says Philip. “The colors, maybe. The texture?”

  “It’s a street plan,” she explains. “Of a village in France. I don’t know the name.”

  Philip laughs and keeps looking at it. “I want to buy it,” he says.

  “You want to buy it?”

  “Yeah. How much does it cost?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I want it.”

  She can’t think of a price. It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would want to buy it, and now
she’s not sure she wants to sell it. “What about some wine?” she suggests.

  “I could have wine.” They sit on the best of Gus’s finds, a leather seat from the back of an old Mercedes, and she uncorks a bottle of Bordeaux.

  “Here’s to you, Cinderella.”

  “But I don’t have an evil stepmother. And my sister is hardly ungainly.”

  “You have a sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Older.”

  Philip smiles. “I guess it’s an awfully conventional question.” He’s not stiff so much as nervous. She’s touched.

  “Conventional, yes, but pertinent.” As a rule, she doesn’t tell men about Maya until she absolutely must. Their eagerness to meet her is too discouraging. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asks.

  “No. I wish I did.”

  She runs her fingers through his hair. It is pleasantly thick. He looks ahead, his profile handsome and difficult to read.

  “In Michigan, when you ran off like that,” he says, “I thought you were afraid I’d kiss you.”

  “I’m not afraid of a kiss.” She turns his face toward her.

  His lips are soft and salty. He’s still damp from basketball. He puts his hands on her shoulders and holds her about a foot away, regarding her. She smiles, trying to lighten him up. He touches her carefully, tracing the curve of her neck.

  “I’m not that fragile,” she says.

  “I know. You’re a tough cookie.” He unbuttons her shirt and kisses her so tenderly that she moans from surprise. He cups his hand around her breast. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers.

  “Don’t talk.” She begins unbuttoning his shirt.

  “I’m not talking.”

  She kisses the pulse of his neck. He trembles. Her hand slips between his knees and up his thighs. He twitches, not in a good way. She pulls her hand back, embarrassed. He’s shocked. Goddamn him. It’s 1982. Is she supposed to stop above the waist or something? Outside, a garbage truck rumbles down the street.

  “Wow,” he says, jumping up, “I didn’t realize what time it was.” He goes over to the window. “It’s getting light out.”

  She wants to slap him. She slaps herself instead. His mouth drops open.

  “Don’t look at me like that. There’s nothing worse than a halfway screw.” God. She’s had too much to drink. He comes back over.

  “Sarah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  She shakes her head, feeling stupid. “It’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m a jerk. I really like you. I just … I haven’t done this in so long. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He buttons his shirt lopsided.

  “How long?”

  “Years.”

  “Years? What have you been doing?”

  “Working.”

  She studies him, perplexed. He returns her gaze, his awkwardness mainly gone. He is a man she barely knows in a lopsided shirt in the early light of morning. She is relieved now that they stopped when they did.

  “Were you terribly in love?” she asks.

  “Hmm?”

  “Usually if you’re celibate for so long, it’s because you’re recovering from something major.”

  “Terribly in love doesn’t sound right. But we were together for nine years.”

  “Why did you split up?”

  Philip shrugs. “We wanted different things.”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “Married with kids.”

  “And you’re working.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “And that’s enough.”

  “I never said that. Will you see me again?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never gone out with a celibate.”

  Philip laughs. “I haven’t always been.”

  Chapter 7

  Connecticut, October 1997

  “Max!” she yelled. “Max! Where are you? I need you to set the table.”

  He clomped down the stairs. “Salima Carpenter says she’s going to be Darth Vader for Halloween, can you believe it?”

  “Sure.”

  “But Darth Vader’s a man.”

  “He’s the force of darkness. Women are old hands at that. Anyway, Salima’s not a man or woman. She’s a girl, and when you’re a girl you’re allowed to be anything.”

  Max folded the napkins into triangles and carefully placed a fork upon each.

  She slid the eggs onto the plates, decorating them with the parsley she’d bought for the fish.

  “I like eggs better anyway,” Max said.

  “Thanks, duck.” She chucked his chin. The kitchen still smelled of smoke, in spite of the open window. She sat across from Max, but couldn’t manage a bite. She poured another glass of wine.

  “So what do you want to be for Halloween?”

  His eyes twinkled. “What do you think?”

  “A samurai?”

  “No.”

  “A fireman?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “A potato!” He tilted his chair back and laughed.

  “A potato?”

  He slipped off the chair and ran around the kitchen, snickering and dancing.

  “Eat your food, darling.”

  She couldn’t have any more wine. She had those papers to grade. But how in the world could she grade papers? Max ruminated over his last bites, propping a lovely cheek up with his hand. She heaved such a big sigh that he looked up.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m just thinking. I’ll clear the table. You finish your homework.”

  “I did finish my homework. You can check it if you want.” He scraped his plate over the trash can, scattering rice on the linoleum. The train rumbled by. The cutlery jangled. It was impossible to believe that Philip could be on those very same tracks only hours from now. The 9:07. It got in around 10:23. She’d drop Max off at his school. Call in sick to hers. Which meant that she didn’t have to finish those Gilgameshes after all. Better to use that time to clean the house. She pictured the cab pulling up, its green door opening, but she couldn’t picture Philip. Only what he would see: a rundown house with a chain-link fence, a scooter in the driveway, a Batman welcome mat. Too much at once. It would be better to head him off at the train station, prepare him somehow, or if not prepare him—for how could you do that?—then at least confess.

  “Can I put the soap in the dishwasher?” Max asked.

  “Sure, honey. Thanks.”

  She swept up the rice, breathing easier now that she had a plan. Meeting Philip at the station felt much better than him just knocking at the front door. She’d bring the Gilgameshes with her in case he was late or didn’t show. Still, she needed to clean the house. She sent Max up to brush his teeth and started on the windowsills, which were caked with train grit. The phone rang. She jumped. It wasn’t Philip but Carlos, fellow adjunct and occasional lover. She considered telling him about Philip’s letter, but the likelihood was that she’d spend tomorrow hungover, grading papers in the Buick, growing increasingly glummer as train after train rolled in empty. He asked her if she wanted to go to a barbecue on Sunday.

  “Let me see if I can find something for Max.”

  “Bring him along. There will be other kids there.”

  She sighed in exasperation. Carlos knew that Max did not meet any of her boyfriends, no matter how unboyfriendish. A mechanical grinding interrupted them.

  “What now?” The dishwasher lurched from its place under the counter and began to travel across the kitchen floor, vibrating spasmodically and spewing soapy water. “Holy shit. I can’t fucking believe this.”

  “Sarah? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just these appliances, they are going mad.”

  She jabbed at the buttons, trying to turn it off. The machine snarled, a grating metallic sound from deep in its interior. She kicked it. It coughed and shuddered. She tried to push it back into its hole, but the floor was too wet to get any tracti
on. The mop. She needed the mop. She had put it down in the basement because it was so gross. She’d been meaning to buy a new one, but she hadn’t gotten around to it. She sat on the top basement step, taking off her socks, which were wet and clammy from the dishwater, but she couldn’t go down there in bare feet. Too much grit on the floor. She went upstairs to look for a pair of slippers.

  “Have you brushed your teeth yet, Max?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stood on his mattress, tying a white nylon string to a nail. There were strings everywhere—twine, nylon, and yarn, dangling from bedposts, shelves, doorknobs, hangers. He hopped down and tied the opposite end of the string to a string from the other side of the room, connecting the two.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making a suspension bridge.”

  She plopped down on his bed, her wet socks still balled up in her hand. “The dishwasher’s gone berserk. It’s a disaster down there.”

  “When are you going to give me the stamps?”

  “What?”

  “The stamps on the letter. From the Congo.”

  She should not have told Max about Philip. That was her biggest mistake. Your father’s a hero. He killed a criminal and now he builds bridges and refugee camps. That’s all. Nothing about who the criminal was, or why Philip had killed him. Just the hero bit. No one expected heroes to hang out in Connecticut. Heroes wander. Women wait. But not for seven years. Why should she care if the house was clean? She had nothing to apologize for.

  “When are you giving me the stamps?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He sighed and returned to his construction. The water from the socks had started to soak into her pants. She had to go down and get that mop.

  “Can you help me with this plank?”

  “Sure.” Sarah held a piece of wood while he tied string underneath it.

  “Do you think Dad would like it?”

  “Your bridge? Yes, he’d love it.”

  “Did he ever build a suspension bridge?”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’re the first person I know to have attempted such a thing.” He knew Philip’s name. Even if he didn’t come tomorrow, even if she didn’t give him the letter, he’d figure it out eventually. He’d be bragging to one of his friends about his heroic, unreachable father, and they’d say, actually, they’ve taken that rule off the books. You can correspond with wandering heroes. You can send them pictures. You can Ask Jeeves what they’re up to.