Читать книгу A Song in the Daylight - Paullina Simons - Страница 24

And then one night, Jared said to Larissa after dinner, with a big smile, “Whose birthday is coming up?”

“What are you smiling about? I’m cancelling all birthdays this year.”

“Just the opposite. We need to celebrate like we’re twenty.”

“We’ll have to start early.” Larissa stabbed at her empty plate. “You’re asleep by ten. Did you always fall asleep by ten when you were twenty?”

“Actually, yes. I don’t know if you’ve noticed after knowing me for twenty years, but I’m a morning person. But seriously, you want to hear what I’m thinking of for a present for one very good wife?”

“Which part of cancelling the birthday didn’t we understand?”

The kids had just dispersed, though loudly and not far, and husband and wife had a few precious minutes to themselves.

Jared stared at her with his “are you finished” stare. She smiled. “I don’t need anything. I already have everything.”

“And Ezra told us what he thinks of that,” Jared exclaimed happily. “He would prefer we had nothing—like in college. So what do you get a woman who has everything but who’s turning a very young 4–0?”

“Diamonds?”

“Nah, you have those. I was thinking more along the lines of,” said Jared, with a dramatic tone and expression, “a new car.”

She stared at him dumbstruck. “A new what?”

“A new car! Something snazzy. A sports thing. A two-seater. Not a mom car. A Larissa car.” He beamed. “A Beamer? A Merc?”

“A Jaguar …?” she intoned dully.

“Well … I was thinking more of something sturdy and German-made.”

“Like a VW?”

“No! Sturdy but snazzy. But sure, a Jag if you want.”

“I thought the British built Jags.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Not anymore; long ago sold to a Ford division in Michigan. Pricey. But a good idea.” He nodded agreeably. “They have some fine-looking sports cars. And they keep almost half their value. There’s a new dealership that opened on Main Street in Madison. Why don’t you go there next week, see if there’s anything you like, and then I can come in, swoop in at the end, check it out with the checkbook?” Jared’s straight light hair was in a shaggy mop, he looked healthy, happy, still in a dark gray suit, pleased with himself. Leaning over, he kissed her. “But pick yourself something nice. Something babelicious.”

“Yes, except at twenty we were riding rusted bicycles, not Jags,” Larissa said, getting up from the table, the dirty plate in her hands, the silverware, the cup, the soiled napkin. “That’s the irony. When you’re young and want to ride a flash motorcycle, you can hardly afford it, and by the time you can afford it, you look ridiculous on it.”

The kids were playing pool in the den, even the six-year-old. Larissa hoped he wouldn’t stab his older brother with a pool cue.

“I’m quite happy with my Escalade, Jared,” she went on. “It’d be a waste of money. Honest. I don’t need a new car.”

“Yes, you do. And don’t be a spoilsport. What else am I going to get you?”

“A vacation? Hawaii, maybe?”

“Hmm. Hawaii’s a good idea. But you know, with the kids … we’ll need a vacation after that vacation. Besides,” he added glibly, “a vacation is over in seven days. But a Jag you have forever.”

So this became Larissa’s life internal: talking herself out of going to the Jag dealership. She didn’t want a new car. She’d be satisfied with a BMW. Except Jared told her that Doug Grant thought a Jag would be finer than any other car except maybe a Porsche.

“What, Doug is now a car expert?” She brightened. “But a Porsche might be nice.”

“Off the table. Too expensive.”

“I’m not sure about Doug’s opinion,” she said. “I’m going to ask Ezra.”

“Ezra!” Jared loosened his tie. “You’re going to ask a man who drives a twelve-year-old Subaru wagon with a hatchback that doesn’t open what kind of luxury car he thinks you should get?”

“Ezra is very smart. Do you deny that?”

“He’s an idiot about cars!” Just to prove his point, Jared got Ezra on the phone despite Larissa’s protestations that dinner was about to achieve room temperature. “Ez, it’s me. My wife wants to know what kind of sports car you think I should buy her for her birthday.”

Larissa was violently rolling her eyes while Jared was nodding into the phone. “Exactly. My point entirely. Thanks, man. See you Saturday.” He hung up. “Do you want to know what Ezra said?”

“I can’t tell you how much I don’t care.”

Jared laughed. “But you wanted to ask him! He told me. Would you like to hear?”

“Suddenly, no.”

On Friday, Larissa asked Fran’s opinion, her twentysomething friend with whom she did only one thing—sit at the nail salon. Finklestein liked the beautiful things in life, though she was a receptionist at a Midtown-based news agency and had no actual money. The girl was single, young, hip and didn’t fit in with Larissa’s other friends. Her singlehood and youth dazzled Larissa; Finklestein was what a Republican looked like to a Democrat: unfathomable. This time over a latte, flash Fran denounced Larissa’s false dilemma by administering a brutal piece of advice. Any sports car would do, Fran said dismissively. Pick the one that will please you the most.

The ever-practical Maggie tried to talk her out of the car entirely. She didn’t share Ezra’s risible indifference to the question. Always thrifty, Maggie thought such a purchase an unnecessary extravagance.

Larissa couldn’t talk to Bo about something so trivial as buying a car when Bo was living in a two-bedroom apartment with her unhinged mother and freelance Jonny, who’d been looking for a long-term gig for three years. Bo spent her days on the sixth floor of the Met during lunchtime, ambling through neo-Impressionist floral displays from South America and dreaming of a different life. Talking to Bo about Jaguars was as absurd as talking to Michelangelo about it, who saw a brochure his father had brought home and said, “Ooh, nice blue car without a top, Mommy, but how you gonna fit your whole family in there?”

Che didn’t come to school, one day, two. She didn’t pick up the phone either. Larissa walked to her house after school. She was on half-days; soon she would graduate, summer, then college! But Larissa’s daydreams of impending adulthood had faded recently in the face of Che’s trauma.

Che’s mother let her in, curt, impersonal. It wasn’t like her. Che’s mother loved Larissa. She’s upstairs, was all she said.

Che was on her bed, face down.

Why is your mother mad at me?

She’s not mad.

Why did she give me the evil eye? Larissa thought about it. Oh, no. Did you tell her I wanted you not to have it?

Che nodded.

Thanks a lot, girlfriend.

She asked me. What is Larissa advising you to do? So I told her.

But what’s happened? Larissa perched on the edge of the bed, touching Che’s heaving back. What else could’ve happened?

I’m not pregnant anymore, said Che in a dead voice.

Larissa’s heart jumped, flew up into the summer sky. Oh, Che! That’s the greatest thing I ever heard.

Che didn’t seem to think so.

How do you know?

I’m bleeding.

So you were never pregnant? I told you, you should’ve taken that test.

Che rose from the bed, her face red, her eyes swollen. Don’t you see? she said. I know my body. I was ten weeks late. You think that’s normal? Now I’m bleeding out like my jugular’s been cut. She put her face in her hands.

Larissa patted her friend, tried to soothe her. No, it’s good. It’s so much better this way. The impossible decision was taken out of your hands. It’s the greatest day.

Almost like God intervening, said Che.

I guess, said Larissa. You were lucky. You were given a reprieve, a second chance. Now you can live your life right, learn from this, do things differently in the future. I don’t understand why you’re so upset.

What if God, like my mom, was disappointed in me? That’s what it feels like. He said, you’re not ready to be a mother. You’re not ready for this child.

That’s absolutely true.

In my free-falling blood I feel His disappointment.

That’s silly. He helped you out. Took matters into his own hands. Oh, if only every time it were so easy! How sweet life would be.

But Che was inconsolable. I did this to myself, she said. I should have had to live with the consequences.

You narrowly escaped a harrowing future. How can you be upset?

A baby is not harrowing.

At sixteen? Come on, clean yourself up. Let’s go to town, hang out. I told some people I’d meet them at Jerry’s Ices.

Larissa lay down on the twin bed, next to Che. Come on, girlfriend, she whispered, putting her arm around Che’s sobbing body. No worries now. We’re golden. Every little thing’s gonna be all right.

Larissa wrote to Che, mentioning the Jag as a postscript omitting the real reason for her agonizing.

Che wrote back.

Larissa, why so much commotion over a small matter? I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. To bring up a car in an occasional letter? It’s a car. You didn’t finish telling me why Bo doesn’t throw Jonny out or move out herself. Since when do you care so much about what you drive? Buy or not buy. I’m forty next year too, you know. You’re worried about a car, and my mother couldn’t live long enough for me to have a baby. Soon I’m not going to live long enough for me to have a baby. I’m sending you a recent picture of Lorenzo. Tell me if you think he’s worth it. Send me a recent picture of the Jag. I’ll tell you if the car is worth it.

Larissa read newspapers, magazines, to keep ahead of the times, but being versed in current events made her more anxious, not less. The only news out there was that everything was going to hell, spinning out of control.

She wrote to Che about this. There was mental illness, homelessness, robberies, random shootings, sometimes all related, Larissa wrote. Shark attacks, poison oak epidemics, rabies. Seventy-year-old women giving birth, severed heads abandoned outside newsrooms. There were bombings and threats to peace. Is peace just an illusion? she asked Che. Will the Jaguar bring me an illusion of peace?

“That’s a philosophical question, Larissa,” replied Ezra, while she was still waiting on Che’s reply. “The question is, will the Jaguar bring you something tangible? Is it a desire for something you don’t have? If so, what is it? And after you get it, will that be it, or will there be something else you want that you don’t have? Is it the quest you’re after, not the object?”

“How about,” said Jared, “the car is gorgeous—she’ll turn all heads while driving it?”

“She turns all heads anyway,” said Maggie, looking admiringly at Larissa, in jeans and a red silky top, with a bit of décolletage and red lipstick.

“Hardly,” Larissa said, embellishing her embarrassment and turning to Ezra.

“I know, Larissa, that you read Ecclesiastes only because you had to, to get a pass/fail in your philosophy course in college,” said Ezra, “which is not the same thing as understanding Ecclesiastes, but nonetheless, it will do you well right about now to remember what he said.”

Larissa stared at him vacantly.

“All is vanity,” said Ezra. “To buy, not to buy. To eat, to shop, to hire women to clean your house, to not clean it. All is vexation of spirit, except union with God. All is vanity.”

“So buy the Jag then?” said Jared.

Che wrote back.

Larissa,

Here is your real answer, the one Father Emilio gave me when I asked him. You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye not be troubled. For all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.

All these are just the beginnings of sorrows. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

Lorenzo’s love is waxing cold, Larissa. And I’m still without a baby. All these years I have been living in poverty, and I don’t mean the money kind. I’m so far from what I want.

Please don’t be far from what you want.

I wish for a baby more than anything. I desperately want a little girl so I could raise her to make all the mistakes I made, only start younger.

You are a wonderful person. You don’t drive anyone crazy like Lorenzo. Get the car.

Would it be nice to have a Jag, rather than live amid unclaimed wishes yet unwished for?

But what if you knew that the car would lead you to penury and destitution, the things Che speaks of, writes about, feels, lives? What would you do then?

But you don’t know.

But what if you did?

But you don’t.

And if you did?

But … you don’t.

And … if you did?

The whole thing filled Larissa with slight shame. She even threw out the business card Kai had given her, which was the most shameful thing of all. How ridiculous that was. How ridiculous she was.

But now what?

What would she wear to a Jag dealership? She couldn’t go in sweats. But she couldn’t go too dressed up.

She couldn’t go.

The eternal moral order was the real question, the Aztec gold buried like a treasure in the hills of Mexico. Was there such a thing, and was Larissa turning her back on it?

Kai Passani. The first time she said his name out loud to herself, she turned red like she’d accidentally cursed in front of the children. Peeking into the magnifying mirror, she stared at her flushed face, her glassy eyes.

His name was Hawaiian. Kai. She looked it up. In Hawaiian, it meant the ocean. Ocean, as in bottomless?

Oh, what was wrong with her!

Passani. “From the Champagne region of France.” The urban legend goes that the monk who discovered the sparkling wine ran to his Benedictine brother with the cry, “J’ai goûté des étoiles!” I’m tasting stars.

Kai Passani.

To save herself from the Jaguar, Larissa replaced all thought of it with Gucci. Gucci, Chanel, Zanotti, Dior. She bought herself a pair of reading glasses that replaced the need for reading. All she needed was the blue Swarovsky-clad Versaces; she didn’t need to read A Life by Elia Kazan. The reading glasses just had to sit on her face, like graceful jewels. Burberry, not Brontë. Gucci not Dante. Chanel not Charlotte. Prada not Pound.

To go to the library (with her kids) she put on Libretto. The mall required a different ensemble, as did the supermarket, which is why she didn’t like to combine her outings, because she was inevitably dressed wrong for all but one of them. To the mall in summer she wore Betsey Johnson dresses and Marc Jacobs sandals. In the winter, tight Marciano jeans and low-heeled boots (the lower the heel, the more expensive the boot, as in counterattack).

Kids’ winter concerts? Fur and (very) high-heeled boots. Ball games? Caps and jeans and jerseys, so affected, so designer.

Food-shopping required only mini-skirts and cowboy boots, possibly Frye.

And she blow-dried her hair. Damn that Kai. She left it long, very straight and hippie-like, an illusion of casual chic. She haphazardly highlighted it, an illusion of being outside and sunstreaked. She wore taupe makeup, to make it seem like she wasn’t wearing any, like she had just rolled out of bed and into her car. She got dressed up for everything. Except that one day when she left the house in sweats and a cast.

The question was, and truly this was the profound question that demanded an answer: what to wear to a Jag dealership to go look at a sports car you don’t need and don’t want, just so you can be looked at by the dancing eyes of a tattered kid on a motorbike?

Ezra would say it was a false choice. It wasn’t about what to wear. “It has nothing to do with the car,” he kept repeating. “It has to do with what the car represents. The car tells you, and therefore the whole world, where you are in life. That’s what it means. It’s a long way from the fifth-floor walk-up. But a long way up or a long way down?” Ezra paused for maximum effect. “Every time you drive to the supermarket, do you want to know how far you are from Hoboken? Do you want everyone else to know too? As Walker Percy says, we live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea who he is, or where he is going. We live stifling in our souls all questions about the meaning of our own life, and life in general. So the real question is, Larissa, will this car help you discover who you are and where you’re going?”

To go or not to go.