Baltimore Read online

  Outside, I’m greeted by science-fiction fog. I am breathing loudly through my mouth.

  This fog is suffocating me. I’m old. Meanwhile, I’m hurrying off on a date with a boy. If someone happened to attack me in this fog, I wouldn’t even be able to run. I’d choose to stay there, and die.

  I listen to my steps on the damp pavement.

  I’ll never get to the cab stand. He’s probably already coming after me. But even if he is, I wouldn’t be able to see him in the fog. That’s just stupid. Of course he’s not following me. He’d never run outside in his sweat pants. He won’t even go to the corner store dressed like that. There’s no way. I’ve gone out at night like this a hundred times in the past. A thousand times. And nothing. There’s nothing different about tonight as far as he’s concerned. And intuition? What about intuition? Men have no intuition. Women do. The hell they do. They’re the last to find out their husbands are cheating on them. Such intuition doesn’t exist. It’s something we only read about in books.

  I turn to look behind me in the dark. No one’s there. No one’s there. Just a few more steps. I get into a cab.

  So, this is what it looks like. I’m on my way to meet the boy I met in the dirty chat room. And it’s quite clear we’re going to make love tonight. Why else would we be meeting in an apartment? What if my husband is in a cab behind me? What if he’s following me? Dear God, this is so absurd. He’ll leave me. There’s no doubt about that. To risk losing everything for one fuck. Don’t think about that. Think happy thoughts. Prepare yourself. Think about the eyes of that young man. Gazing at you. Over there in the darkness. The way he moaned when I moved my hand across his back….

  Suddenly I feel a mild spasm, somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I lean my head against the headrest. I realize my fingers hurt from gripping onto my purse so tightly. I ask the driver:

  “May I light a cigarette?”

  And then I gaze at the streets and buildings and traffic lights going by. The city looks absolutely eerie in the fog. I look at my watch.

  Five more minutes and I’ll be there. A kiss at the door. Or are we going to be all embarrassed again? The hell with embarrassment.

  And what if the cab driver goes back to the same cab stand and my husband, who was of course following me, approaches him and asks where he took that flustered woman? Maybe he’ll even discreetly place a bill in his hand for this information, just like in the movies. Do cab drivers have some sort of honor code that restricts them from giving out such information? Should I perhaps warn him of this possibility and remind him that he mustn’t tell? That he should be vague and say something like: “I took her downtown…”? No way. I can’t tell him that. He’ll think I’m crazy. He’ll know exactly where I’m going. I’ll look ridiculous if I tell him something like that. Besides, no one is following me. Turn around. Discreetly. See. There’s no one there. The hell there isn’t. He’s there somewhere. It’s foggy. I can’t see a thing. Finally, here’s the building. Pay the driver. Should I nevertheless warn him on the way out? Nonsense. Don’t make a fool out of yourself. Step out of the cab. Calmly. As you would normally. Look behind you. No one’s there. The street is completely empty. One, two, three… third floor. Lights. He’s waiting for me. That handsome boy is waiting just for me. Go on… smell your collar. Nice perfume. Go on. The elevator. The mirror in the elevator. Everything is fine. I have dark circles under my eyes. So what? I also had them when I was twenty. The lips are fine. The eyes are a little tired, but other than that, they’re okay. The perfume, the perfume is the most important thing. Great perfume. We’re stopping. Stop staring in the mirror and get out of the elevator! Should I knock or ring the doorbell? Knocking would be silly, sort of old-fashioned and conspiratorial. Nor will I cheerfully ring three times. I’m not cheerful. I’m terrified. One short ring. Oh, God. He’s going to open the door now. Oh, my God….

  At the last second, I remembered. I scratched at the door with my nails.

  That’s how you go to your lover….

  I smile at the thought of this.

  This is how he finds me. With this smile on my face. And my hand in the air.

  A little later. We’re already drinking our third shot of vodka. Things are beginning to look much better. The boy is simply sitting at the kitchen table, across from me, gazing at me with his hand under his chin. Once in a while, he raises an eyebrow and softly says:

  “What…?”

  As if he managed to hear a part of what I was thinking about, but not too clearly.

  I reply:

  “Nothing….”

  Or I don’t say anything at all. I just look at him.

  I’m thinking it’s a shame I can’t go anywhere outside this apartment with him. It would be nice to show him off to my girlfriends. What a perverse thought: I’d like it if my husband could see him! Sitting here, like this, and gazing at me with that almost lovesick look on his face. How great would it be if he could see this! You idiot. You stupid, stupid, stupid idiot. You’re not doing all this out of vanity, are you? This boy is much too beautiful to be used only to feed your vanity. The vodka is excellent. What does that perpetual reply of mine mean anyway? I don’t drink. Grow up! Adults sometimes drink when they’re having a good time. Or when they’re sad. Or tense. You have the right to do the same. Why not?

  “You look sleepy,” says the boy.

  “I’m just a little tipsy.”

  “That’s not bad,” he smiles.

  “No. Not at all.”

  He’s sitting very close to me now, hugging my legs with his knees. I occasionally run my hand across his face. Nice drunken fatigue. Blissful indifference.

  Fingers, fingers, fingers….

  The boy softly trembles under my fingers. Surrendering completely.

  All right then, I think to myself, let me show you what I’ve learned in the meantime, while you were still learning to read and write….

  “You’ve wiped me out,” says the boy after a considerable amount of time, very softly, while putting his head down on the pillow.

  His muscles were still trembling a little, as if stricken with fever.

  I start laughing:

  “I thought you were going to wipe me out!”

  “And I will, as soon as I recover.”

  Later, in the cab, the boy whispers to me:

  “Will you be online tonight?”

  “Why? So that I could tell you how it was?”

  “Of course,” he says and gives me a little kiss on the neck.

  His hand is still somewhere between my knees. The cab is racing. Empty streets. An even denser fog than before. The boy is then silent for a while, his gaze turned away from me.

  So, it’s started. I already need him to look at me, and he’s turning away.

  “You’re lucky,” I whisper. “No one is going to ask you anything when you get home. You don’t have to face anyone right away, the second you enter the door.”

  As soon as I said this, I realized how stupid it was. He doesn’t know what I’m talking about. He’s only twenty-five years old; he’s never been married and knows nothing about it. He doesn’t care that I have to go back home now and ring the doorbell. What if my husband really did follow me?

  “You can do it,” says the boy.

  Suddenly I feel this anger building up inside of me.

  Easy, easy. He’s just a kid. He’s trying to say something to make you feel better. He doesn’t know that what he said sounds inappropriate.

  As I walk from the cab to my building, I feel a surge of completely irrational fear. I’m almost racing, barely able to catch my breath in the fog. I feel like I’m going to suffocate before I even reach the apartment.

  I stop before entering the building. I’m trying to calm my breathing. Then, I think about crossing myself.

  Why in the world would God help people like me?

  Nevertheless, I quickly make the sign of the cross and press the elevator button.

  In the elevator, I look at m
yself in the mirror again.

  Where is the woman who was racing off on a date a little while ago? This one looks tired and shaken up. Anyone could tell a mile away what you were doing all evening. You reek of alcohol. Wait… in the pocket, look in the pocket… here it is… a mint. Put your lipstick on. That’s right. But not too much. If you put too much on, it’ll look too obvious.

  I undo my scarf and examine my neck and shoulders in the mirror.

  Thank God, there are no visible marks. But my skin is slightly red and inflamed. Damn it, it’s not as if he’s going to examine me through a magnifying glass. Calm down. Go straight for the bathroom as soon as you go in. Make a fuss about something. Dear God, it’s almost midnight. So what? You’ve come home later than that numerous times. Yes, but with a clear conscience. My panties are completely wet. What if he hugs me at the door? Of course he won’t. He’s stopped doing that long ago….

  He opens the door for me.

  How did he look at me?

  “Oh, what a horrible night,” I say in a rush, looking away, throwing my purse on the chair. “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Yeah, I made French toast,” he says, like a proud child.

  There you go, stupid, you’ve ruined your fun for nothing. The man was making French toast while you were going crazy with fear.

  “It’s awful outside?” he asks.

  “Terrible. Can’t see six inches ahead through the fog.”

  “How did you get back?”

  “I took a cab, of course. I’m off to take a shower, I feel the soot of the city on my skin.”

  “Do you want me to make you a sandwich? Are you hungry?”

  “That’ll be great!” I shout from the bathroom, now feeling at ease, knowing I’d been saved this time and that everything went well. “And put on some tea, will you?”

  “Okay, hon!” my husband shouts back from the kitchen. “We’ll get you warmed up in no time.”

  Some things can never be forgotten. Certain scents. The morning you woke up feeling the perfection of life in your still very young body. My right profile in the bathroom mirror of our family home. When I stood up in the tub and leaned just a tiny bit forward, I was able to see my right profile and my wet hair clinging to my head, as well as a part of my right breast which, back then, stood firmly in an enviable position. I liked the shape of my nose. I felt like it embodied a kind of softness, which, no doubt, people find attractive.

  I remember the small box of glue my grandfather used. A plastic box with a small round section for the plastic spatula. We don’t use things like that today. Now we have tubes, scotch tape, staplers. No one uses ordinary glue anymore to attach two pieces of paper. It takes too much time. I remember the smell of the glue and the firmness of the plastic spatula and the little lumps the glue made on the paper, which we then needed to spread around using the spatula. Back then, it seemed like we had our whole lives ahead of us. And everything was in a kind of a calm state of joyous anticipation. Now I know: that was it. That was the moment of beauty. Nothing this beautiful ever happened again.

  My grandmother used to dry her own mint and basil on top of armoires. She would place newspapers on top of all the armoires, as well as the guest-room beds, and there she would spread the fragrant herbs. I remember the pleasant chill of those rooms and how the half-dried mint crackled between our fingers and crumbled on the newspapers when we touched it. I remember how opening doors made the newspapers rustle, and disturbed the dry herbs. We walked slowly through these rooms so as not to disturb the drying process. We spoke in hushed voices so that our breaths wouldn’t lift up the newspapers. To keep everything from flying to the floor, we would close the door before opening a window. We all waited until my grandmother slowly and very carefully gathered the herbs from the newspapers and stored them in linen bags, specially sewed for this purpose. Later, we would drink mint tea, which smelled better than anything ever before, and cured us of all ailments.

  In another room, my aunt sometimes dried walnuts. While still green, she would place the walnuts on the floor and wait for the hull to dry and fall off.

  Many years later, when we sold our house, this was the last thing I saw before leaving those rooms forever: a few green walnuts drying on the wood floor. No one wanted to take them. They were left there, a few walnuts in an empty room. This is also something I will never forget. Though I would prefer to forget because of the pain I feel every time I remember. Nice memories are better. And I always think: What did the people who came to live there do with the few walnuts they got with the house? Did they throw them away? Did they put them somewhere and wait for them to dry, and then eat them while thinking about us? It’s much more likely they simply swept them up with an ordinary broom and threw them away.

  I remember the big cold pantry that led to the attic. Shelves. And hundreds of jars with labels on them. I remember my aunt’s handwriting - the sharp, slanted, almost masculine numbers she wrote on the labels, to mark the year, and then glued onto the jars. Such things don’t exist today, or maybe I don’t know they exist, those small jar labels with zigzag edges, similar to stamps. On the walls, pots and pans of various sizes used to hang from cords.

  And then, there’s my first typewriter, which had its own cleaning kit under the lid. Cleaning the typewriter was a process filled with various pleasures. I would remove the black build-up from the small holes of every letter, and then clean the needle. Slowly, letter by letter. First the capital letters, then the small letters, and finally the numbers and punctuation. Then, it was time for the brush. It would remove everything the needle left behind. And then, the final moment of pleasure: putting in a sheet of paper and trying it out. The typed letters were clear, clean, and legible.

  If you wanted to destroy me today, all you would have to do is place one of these items in front of me: a small box of glue, a typewriter cleaning kit, a drying walnut, jar labels…. If you really wanted to finish me off, this would be enough.

  I was still angry with her when I went in for my session the following week. On the drive there, I practiced what I was going to say to her: the words I was going to use, and the tone. I tried to anticipate her reaction.

  I brought up those three things.

  The smile on my face when I talk about difficult matters.

  The way I open up to others. And her question as to whether I opened up to her in my own natural pace.

  And finally, the part about expecting a happy ending. I told her no one in his right mind expects to end up in an oncologist’s office or some ditch somewhere. We all somehow hope we’ll find peace and as much contentment as could be expected in our old age. But, we all also know that a fairy tale ending is just an illusion and nothing more.

  “It’s not fair,” I said, “for you to label me as someone who naïvely expects a happy ending based only on the ending of a fairy tale I told you.”

  However, she turned most of her attention to the other part. The part about opening up.

  “Why did that comment upset you so much? I just asked you a question, a simple question: ‘Did you open up to me at your usual pace?’”

  Why can’t she understand? This is not a natural situation and the natural pace cannot be applied here!

  “Don’t you understand,” I asked, “how much this question can shake a person’s will? You may very likely discourage a person from ever coming back to therapy after a question like that! Therapy is, presumably, just that - a process through which a person is supposed to open up. You have witnessed the amount of humiliation I had to go through in order to completely expose my thoughts and feelings. And then, after all that, you tell me I opened up too much. And, what’s worse, that I might be doing the same thing in my everyday life!”

  “I wasn’t judging you. I asked you so many different questions, why is this one such a problem?”

  “Because it’s vital. You can’t all of a sudden say I turned out to be naïve because I trusted you. Not after this long process of establishing
trust!”

  I also wanted to remind her of the soft voice she used to relax my body, the way she made me draw stupid things from my childhood and then cry over them, as she assured me there was no reason to feel shame and that it was all perfectly normal. I wanted to tell her about how she tried to convince me to believe the pillow was, in fact, the baby from my dream and how I had to play the roles of the membrane and the big elephant and the small elephant, and that it was all her idea, not mine! And now, all of sudden, it turns out I opened up too much!

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But that’s what it sounded like.”

  “All right. I realize I hurt your feelings with my question. What I wanted to say was: Did you open up because you were following your nature or because you thought it was something you should do? I don’t want you to open up only because you think you should, if it’s something you don’t usually do.”

  What is she trying to say? That I’m really an obedient child, a goody-goody who’d been told: “Now you’re in therapy and here you have to expose your feelings to the bone, no matter how much it hurts?” Could it be that all that crying earlier brought her to this conclusion?

  “Okay,” I said, “but then you should have said so, instead of creating a misunderstanding.”

  “What does that critic of yours say to all this, the one from our last session? What does he say about the way you’ve opened up?”

  “He doesn’t say anything.”

  “And about me?”

  “Well… he says that you’re improvising. I disrupted your plan for today’s session by talking about this, and now we’re out of time, so you’re trying to come up with a way we can spend the remaining twenty minutes or so.”

  She laughed:

  “That’s partly true. But it’s also important that we discuss the feelings you came in with today. How do you usually express anger?”

  Ha! Ask my husband, he’ll tell you. He can also show you the scar on his forehead, if you’re that curious.

  “With explosive, short-lived outbursts. I get over it very quickly, unless it’s something really big. But the fact that I don’t know how to forgive someone who really hurt me is a much bigger problem. I realized some time ago that forgiveness is one big deception of Christianity. At least in my case.”