Beginners Read online

  So long, Carl said. Hey, don’t let anybody ever tell you otherwise, Carl called after him. You’re a lucky boy and I mean that.

  The boy started his car and waited, watched Carl go through the house and turn off all the lights. Then the boy put the car in gear and pulled away.

  The living room light was on, but the girl was asleep on the bed and the baby was asleep beside her.

  The boy took off his boots, pants, and shirt and, in his socks and woolen underwear, sat on the couch and read the Sunday paper.

  Soon it began to turn light outside. The girl and the baby slept on. After a while the boy went to the kitchen and began to fry bacon.

  The girl came out in her robe a few minutes later and put her arms around him without saying anything.

  Hey, don’t catch your robe on fire, the boy said. She was leaning against him but touching the stove too.

  I’m sorry about earlier, she said. I don’t know what got into me, why I said those things.

  It’s all right, he said. Here, honey, let me get this bacon.

  I didn’t mean to snap like that, she said. It was awful.

  It was my fault, he said. How’s Catherine?

  She’s fine now. I don’t know what was the matter with her earlier. I changed her again after you left, and then she was fine. She was just fine then and went right off to sleep. I don’t know what it was. Don’t be mad with us though.

  The boy laughed. I’m not mad with you, don’t be silly, he said. Here, let me do something with this pan.

  You sit down, the girl said. I’ll fix the breakfast. How does a waffle sound with this bacon?

  Sounds great, he said. I’m starved.

  She took the bacon out of the pan and then made waffle batter. He sat at the table, relaxed now, and watched her move around the kitchen.

  She left to close their bedroom door, then stopped in the living room to put on a record that they both liked.

  We don’t want to wake that one up again, the girl said.

  She put a plate in front of him with bacon, a fried egg, and a waffle. She put another plate on the table for herself. It’s ready, she said.

  It looks swell, he said. He spread butter and poured syrup over the waffle, but as he started to cut into the waffle he turned the plate into his lap.

  I don’t believe it, he said, jumping up from the table.

  The girl looked at him, then at the expression on his face, and she began to laugh.

  If you could see yourself in the mirror, she said and kept laughing.

  He looked down at the syrup that covered the front of his woolen underwear, at the pieces of waffle, bacon, and egg that clung to the syrup. He began to laugh.

  I was starved, he said, shaking his head.

  You were starved, she said, still laughing.

  He peeled off the woolen underwear and threw it at the bathroom door. Then he opened his arms and she moved into them. They began to move very slowly to the recorded music, she in her robe, he in his shorts and T-shirt.

  We won’t fight anymore, will we? she said. It’s not worth it, is it?

  That’s right, he said. Look how it makes you feel after.

  We’ll not fight anymore, she said.

  When the record ended he kissed her for a long while on the lips. This was about eight o’clock in the morning, a cold Sunday in December.

  He gets up from his chair and refills their glasses.

  That’s it, he says. End of story. I admit it’s not much of one.

  I was interested, she says. It was very interesting, if you want to know. But what happened? she asks. Later, I mean.

  He shrugs and carries his drink over to the window. It’s dark now but still snowing.

  Things change, he says. Kids grow up. I don’t know what happened. But things do change and without your realizing it or wanting them to.

  Yes, that’s true, only—But she does not finish.

  She drops the subject then. In the window’s reflection he sees her study her nails. Then she raises her head, asks brightly if he is, after all, going to show her something of the city.

  Absolutely, he says. Put your boots on and let’s get under way.

  But he continues to stand at the window, remembering that gone life. After that morning there would be those hard times ahead, other women for him and another man for her, but that morning, that particular morning, they had danced. They danced, and then they held to each other as if there would always be that morning, and later they laughed about the waffle. They leaned on each other and laughed about it until tears came, while outside everything froze, for a while anyway.

  Beginners

  MY friend Herb McGinnis, a cardiologist, was talking. The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. It was Saturday afternoon. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Herb and I and his second wife, Teresa—Terri, we called her—and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque, but we were all from somewhere else. There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of love. Herb thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. When he was young he’d spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He’d left the Church at the same time, but he said he still looked back to those years in the seminary as the most important in his life.

  Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Herb loved her so much he tried to kill her. Herb laughed after she said this. He made a face. Terri looked at him. Then she said, “He beat me up one night, the last night we lived together. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles, all the while saying, ‘I love you, don’t you see? I love you, you bitch.’ He went on dragging me around the living room, my head knocking on things.” She looked around the table at us and then looked at her hands on her glass. “What do you do with love like that?” she said. She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings. She was fifteen years younger than Herb, had suffered periods of anorexia, and during the late sixties, before she’d gone to nursing school, had been a dropout, a “street person” as she put it. Herb sometimes called her, affectionately, his hippie.

  “My God, don’t be silly. That’s not love, and you know it,” Herb said. “I don’t know what you’d call it—madness is what I’d call it—but it’s sure as hell not love.”

  “Say what you want to, but I know he loved me,” Terri said. “I know he did. It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same. People are different, Herb. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way, maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Herb. Don’t deny me that.”

  Herb let out breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura and me. “He threatened to kill me too.” He finished his drink and reached for the gin bottle. “Terri’s a romantic. Terri’s of the ‘Kick-me-so-I’ll-know-you-love-me’ school. Terri, hon, don’t look that way.” He reached across the table and touched her cheek with his fingers. He grinned at her.

  “Now he wants to make up,” Terri said. “After he tries to dump on me.” She wasn’t smiling.

  “Make up what?” Herb said. “What is there to make up? I know what I know, and that’s all.”

  “What would you call it then?” Terri said. “How’d we get started on this subject anyway?” She raised her glass and drank. “Herb always has love on his mind,” she said. “Don’t you, honey?” She smiled now, and I thought that was the last of it.

  “I just wouldn’t call Carl’s behavior love, that’s all I’m saying, honey,” Herb said. “What about you guys?” he said to Laura and me. “Does that sound like love to you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m the wrong person to ask. I didn’t even know the man. I’ve only heard his name mentioned in passing. Carl. I wouldn’t know. You’d have to know all the particulars. Not in my book it isn’t, but who’s to say?
There’re lots of different ways of behaving and showing affection. That way doesn’t happen to be mine. But what you’re saying, Herb, is that love is an absolute?”

  “The kind of love I’m talking about is,” Herb said. “The kind of love I’m talking about, you don’t try to kill people.”

  Laura, my sweet, big Laura, said evenly, “I don’t know anything about Carl, or anything about the situation. Who can judge anyone else’s situation? But, Terri, I didn’t know about the violence.”

  I touched the back of Laura’s hand. She gave me a quick smile, then turned her gaze back to Terri. I picked up Laura’s hand. The hand was warm to the touch, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. I encircled the broad wrist with my fingers, like a bracelet, and held her.

  “When I left he drank rat poison,” Terri said. She clasped her arms with her hands. “They took him to the hospital in Santa Fe where we lived then and they saved his life, and his gums separated. I mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that his teeth stood out like fangs. My God,” she said. She waited a minute, then let go of her arms and picked up her glass.

  “What people won’t do!” Laura said. “I’m sorry for him and I don’t even think I like him. Where is he now?”

  “He’s out of the action,” Herb said. “He’s dead.” He handed me the saucer of limes. I took a section of lime, squeezed it over my drink, and stirred the ice cubes with my finger.

  “It gets worse,” Terri said. “He shot himself in the mouth, but he bungled that too. Poor Carl,” she said. She shook her head.

  “Poor Carl nothing,” Herb said. “He was dangerous.” Herb was forty-five years old. He was tall and rangy with wavy, graying hair. His face and arms were brown from the tennis he played. When he was sober, his gestures, all his movements, were precise and careful.

  “He did love me though, Herb, grant me that,” Terri said. “That’s all I’m asking. He didn’t love me the way you love me, I’m not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me that, can’t you? That’s not much to ask.”

  “What do you mean, ‘He bungled it’?” I asked. Laura leaned forward with her glass. She put her elbows on the table and held her glass in both hands. She glanced from Herb to Terri and waited with a look of bewilderment on her open face, as if amazed that such things happened to people you knew. Herb finished his drink. “How’d he bungle it when he killed himself?” I said again.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” Herb said. “He took this twenty-two pistol he’d bought to threaten Terri and me with—oh, I’m serious, he wanted to use it. You should have seen the way we lived in those days. Like fugitives. I even bought a gun myself, and I thought I was a nonviolent sort. But I bought a gun for self-defense and carried it in the glove compartment. Sometimes I’d have to leave the apartment in the middle of the night, you know, to go to the hospital. Terri and I weren’t married then and my first wife had the house and kids, the dog, everything, and Terri and I were living in this apartment. Sometimes, as I say, I’d get a call in the middle of the night and have to go in to the hospital at two or three in the morning. It’d be dark out there in the parking lot and I’d break into a sweat before I could even get to my car. I never knew if he was going to come up out of the shrubbery or from behind a car and start shooting. I mean, he was crazy. He was capable of wiring a bomb to my car, anything. He used to call my answering service at all hours and say he needed to talk to the doctor, and when I’d return the call he’d say, ‘Son of a bitch, your days are numbered.’ Little things like that. It was scary, I’m telling you.”

  “I still feel sorry for him,” Terri said. She sipped her drink and gazed at Herb. Herb stared back.

  “It sounds like a nightmare,” Laura said. “But what exactly happened after he shot himself?” Laura is a legal secretary. We’d met in a professional capacity, lots of other people around, but we’d talked and I’d asked her to have dinner with me. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. She’s thirty-five, three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another’s company. She’s easy to be with. “What happened?” Laura asked again.

  Herb waited a minute and turned the glass in his hand. Then he said, “He shot himself in the mouth in his room. Someone heard the shot and told the manager. They came in with a passkey, saw what had happened, and called an ambulance. I happened to be there when they brought him in to the emergency room. I was there on another case. He was still alive, but beyond anything anyone could do for him. Still, he lived for three days. I’m serious though, his head swelled up to twice the size of a normal head. I’d never seen anything like it, and I hope I never do again. Terri wanted to go in and sit with him when she found out about it. We had a fight over it. I didn’t think she’d want to see him like that. I didn’t think she should see him, and I still don’t.”

  “Who won the fight?” Laura said.

  “I was in the room with him when he died,” Terri said. “He never regained consciousness, and there was no hope for him, but I sat with him. He didn’t have anyone else.”

  “He was dangerous,” Herb said. “If you call that love, you can have it.”

  “It was love,” Terri said. “Sure it was abnormal in most people’s eyes, but he was willing to die for it. He did die for it.”

  “I sure as hell wouldn’t call it love,” Herb said. “You don’t know what he died for. I’ve seen a lot of suicides, and I couldn’t say anyone close to them ever knew for sure. And when they claimed to be the cause, well I don’t know.” He put his hands behind his neck and leaned on the back legs of his chair. “I’m not interested in that kind of love. If that’s love, you can have it.”

  After a minute, Terri said, “We were afraid. Herb even made a will out and wrote to his brother in California who used to be a Green Beret. He told him who to look for if something happened to him mysteriously. Or not so mysteriously!” She shook her head and laughed at it now. She drank from her glass. She went on. “But we did live a little like fugitives. We were afraid of him, no question. I even called the police at one point, but they were no help. They said they couldn’t do anything to him, they couldn’t arrest him or do anything unless he actually did something to Herb. Isn’t that a laugh?” Terri said. She poured the last of the gin into her glass and wagged the bottle. Herb got up from the table and went to the cupboard. He took down another bottle of gin.

  “Well, Nick and I are in love,” Laura said. “Aren’t we, Nick?” She bumped my knee with her knee. “You’re supposed to say something now,” she said and turned a large smile on me. “We get along really well, I think. We like doing things together, and neither of us has beaten up on the other yet, thank God. Knock on wood. I’d say we’re pretty happy. I guess we should count our blessings.”

  For answer, I took her hand and raised it to my lips with a flourish. I made a production out of kissing her hand. Everyone was amused. “We’re lucky,” I said.

  “You guys,” Terri said. “Stop that now. You’re making me sick! You’re still on a honeymoon, that’s why you can act like this. You’re still gaga over each other yet. Just wait. How long have you been together now? How long has it been? A year? Longer than a year.”

  “Going on a year and a half,” Laura said, still flushed and smiling.

  “You’re still on the honeymoon,” Terri said again. “Wait a while.” She held her drink and gazed at Laura. “I’m only kidding,” she said.

  Herb had opened the gin and gone around the table with the bottle. “Terri, Jesus, you shouldn’t talk like that, even if you’re not serious, even if you are kidding. It’s bad luck. Here, you guys. Let’s have a toast. I want to propose a toast. A toast to love. True love,” Herb said. We touched glasses.

  “To love,” we said.

  Outside, in the backyard, one of the dogs began to bark. The leaves of the aspen tree that leaned past the window flickered in the breeze. The afternoon sunlight was like a presence in the room. There was suddenly a feeling of e
ase and generosity around the table, of friendship and comfort. We could have been anywhere. We raised our glasses again and grinned at each other like children who had agreed on something for once.

  “I’ll tell you what real love is,” Herb said finally, breaking the spell. “I mean I’ll give you a good example of it, and then you can draw your own conclusions.” He poured a little more gin into his glass. He added an ice cube and a piece of lime. We waited and sipped our drinks. Laura and I touched knees again. I put a hand on her warm thigh and left it there.

  “What do any of us really know about love?” Herb said. “I kind of mean what I’m saying too, if you’ll pardon me for saying it. But it seems to me we’re just rank beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. We love each other and we love hard, all of us. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Sexual love, that attraction to the other person, the partner, as well as just the plain everyday kind of love, love of the other person’s being, the loving to be with the other, the little things that make up everyday love. Carnal love then and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I guess before you can say anything, I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Carl.” He thought about it a minute and then went on. “But at one time I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself, and we had the kids together. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you figure that? What happened to that love? Did that love just get erased from the big board, as if it was never up there, as if it never happened? What happened to it is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Carl. Okay, we’re back to Carl. He loved Terri so much he tries to kill her and winds up killing himself.” He stopped talking and shook his head. “You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other, it shows all over you, you simply glow with it, but you’ve loved other people too before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing, too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other partner, would mourn for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough and all this, all of this love—Jesus, how can you figure it?—it would just be memory. Maybe not even memory. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But am I wrong? Am I way off base? I know that’s what would happen with us, with Terri and me, as much as we may love each other. With any one of us for that matter. I’ll stick my neck out that much. We’ve all proved it anyhow. I just don’t understand. Set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I don’t know anything, and I’m the first to admit it.”