| With Hair Like
Wine by Arthur Edelstein |
| Small events have a
way sometimes of unsealing old chambers of experience—as though
you were dropped unexpectedly into the huge, ruined house of your
youth, to go wandering through the dust, opening unremembered doors.
The letter from my cousin Avis is one of those events. It informs
me of the death of my aunt, whom I hardly remember because I have
been out of touch for many years now. But it opens a door. On the other side of that door is a sticky Brooklyn summer of my youth. Perhaps it is really several summers. Or many. But in the dust of time it seems to me that there was only one. A liquid season of release from books and classes; the hum of bicycle wheels and the metal-hard grind of skates against asphalt; a time of home-made wagons, three-cent ices, stickball, punchball, stoopball. A time of sky-blue freedom. Of heat. For me, this summer, all of the urgencies—the games, the rides, the stolen ice—are squeezed thin under the pressure of a new force which has come swelling in with the season—deep, heavy, constant, like the heat itself. Even in the endless ball games played with such sweaty vehemence on the baking, heat-warped streets, I am suddenly and acutely aware of the girls who gather on the sidewalk in chattering, giggling clusters, determinedly ignoring us, their round knees shiny in the sunlight, their noses peeling. And though I, too, staunchly ignore them, some subtle violation has touched the deep integrity of our game. I notice that Fish wallops spectacular, soaring flies this season that are easy to catch for the out, and I am contemptuous of this weakness in him. Perhaps this is due to my own creeping sense of failed loyalty, for I, too, have already taken my first guilty, hesitant steps toward those polished knees on the sidewalks—and I know that the summers will never be quite the same again. To start, there was Dina: small, blonde, bright, popular. All through the spring term I watched her over the tops of open books, across the cafeteria, up corridors, down stairways, along the homebound streets. I never so much as talked to her, but the affair surged on, washing across the pages I tried to study, into the homework I failed to finish. I had my fantasies—always spotlessly pure, where I rescued her from a ravage of dark calamities to make her love me. Until that day when I suddenly came face-to-face with her at the Flatbush Roller Palace and found myself staring into the bright blue eyes of opportunity. She came rolling toward me, a smile of recognition on her face, and suddenly, with the whirring and clicking of all those wheels roaring in my ears, I turned and fled onto Flatbush Ave. And so ended my first tentative edging toward the sidewalk. But there was another side to that street, and on that side was Ruth. Although none of us paid any attention to her during the horseplay mornings and ballgame afternoons, Ruth was our prey in the prowling, heat-drenched evenings. A kind of communal property who really belonged to no one, too much female for any one of us alone. As soon as a set of parents left us with the use of an empty apartment, we contrived, en masse, to get Ruth into it. And after some meaningless civilities, one or another of us would shove her onto a couch or a bed, throwing restraint to the summer winds, the bunch of us piling on her, squeezing, groping, prodding, while Ruth, giggling and screeching, fought a tremendous mock battle of defense. Somehow, amid all the chaos, Ruth wielded a deft and infallible censorship over our movements, confining our pleasure to those heavy, receptive breasts, fully clothbound, over which we fought like scrambling, ravenous cubs. During each of these evenings, I always felt, as I’m sure each of the others did, that it was my caress that Ruth really desired, me alone for whom she endured the bruises and humiliations. Ironically, when I was alone with Ruth, I never dared touch her, and on one occasion, when she chased me into an alley during a game of tag and threw her arms around me, whispering “You’re it, you’re it,” in my ear, I failed to do anything more than break away to chase the others, although I was rocked with desire and ached later for whatever mysterious opportunity I had left untaken in that alley. And so by the time my aunt arrived for her visit I had touched both sides of that wide summer street and it had grown far, far wider than it ever seemed before. I felt it softening and shifting beneath me in the hot summer wind, not really understanding that it was open at the ends and would, if followed, travel many a summer beyond these uncomfortable joys. She came, my aunt Lillian, in a splash of baggage and gifts from her home in Florida. And all that summer she was a constant swirl of activity, visiting friends, arranging bridge parties, mah-jongg games, shopping tours, dinners. Although it was summer, my aunt had brought her furs, and she’d also brought Avis, her daughter, who must have been about sixteen that year. They’d taken a cabana at one of the better Long Island beach clubs, and were going to spend the summer in New York, then go on for a year in Europe. My aunt, although she was in her forties, about the same age as my mother, did not look at all worn. She was attractive and softly tanned. She came often to our house, and the squeezed flesh of her legs when she sat with them crossed in the living room set up within me an unwelcome flicker. For some reason, Avis, who was blooming into womanhood, never became an object of desire. And then one day I was stricken with instant fear when Avis asked me if I’d like to go out with her and her Saturday-night date. She never used their names but always referred to them as her date for a particular night, as though they were marks on a calendar. She said something about a girl she knew, a girl I’d like. I tried to get out of it, had the feeling Avis was just as willing to back out, too, but then my aunt stepped in. “Kennie, it’s one Saturday night. And you’ll have a great time. Go. I want you to go!” Her breasts trembled as she wagged her finger at me and I swallowed hard. The following Saturday I found myself stalking a strange hallway, working up the courage to knock at Laura’s door while Avis and her date waited in his father’s Buick. Then I sat in her living room, talking awkwardly to her parents, while Laura, who was off in some remote corner of the apartment, finished dressing. Her father started asking me questions—what did I think of the NRA? And how about those unions, did anyone think they could really get away with all those strikes, those hoodlums? Her mother said good grief, Sam, who cares about strikes in high school? Then she called, “Laura, dear, your young gentleman is waiting and waiting out here.” And Laura shouted back, “All right, mother! I’m absolutely accelerating.” I waited some more and suffered, and when Laura finally did appear in a sleek black dress, her hair falling a rich dark red upon her shoulders, I knew I had entered a forbidden world under false pretenses. All the way down in the elevator I wore fear like a heavy woolen coat, and in the car I sat silent and uneasy while Laura and Avis talked about dance bands I had never heard of and Robert, who was eighteen and an economics student at N.Y.U., told me stories about frat parties. “Well, Ken,” Robert said, “where do we take the women tonight?” I suggested a movie and the three of them went silent. We went dancing. We sat next to a window overlooking the bay and the girls ordered frozen Daiquiris. I asked for the same, but when the waiter asked for an ID, I said coffee would be okay. Then Avis leaned over and whispered that Daiquiris were a woman’s drink, and I was twice-shoved back into the world of stamp collecting and model airplanes. When Robert and Avis got up to dance, I had a moment of panic. I didn’t know how. And there was Laura pushing back her chair, too. I dived for my shoelace, fiddling with it as long as I could, and when I straightened up, Laura was watching the clarinetist, his head rising and dipping like a prow. I would have been glad to remain silent, but I was afraid she might suddenly ask me to dance. So I groped for something to say, something to talk about. Beyond the window, there were fishing boats rolling gently in their berths. “Do you like boats?” I blurted. “Boats?” she said. “Why? Do you have a boat?” “Well, no. I was just wondering. I mean it seems to me boats are a pretty good way to go someplace…that is, if you want to go someplace. They’re not fast though.” I was wishing hard I’d found a better subject. “They’re soothing,” I said. “One thing about them, they’re soothing.” “No,” she said, “unh-uh. They are absolutely not soothing. Dad used to have one, and I couldn’t hear myself talk on that boat.” “Well, I don’t mean they’re quiet,” I said. “Smooth is what I mean more. They’re smooth.” She shook her head. “Not my father’s boat. That thing made me totally seasick.” She stuck out her tongue in mock nausea. “Well, I was thinking of sailboats,” I said, desperate to get back on shore. “Oh, sailboats.” She tipped her head to one side. “I guess they’re smooth all right. But dangerous. So easy to drown on one.” I was hating those fishing boats for what they’d done to me. “I’m an alto,” I said. She looked at me. “Another Daiquiri?” I asked. She held up her glass. “I haven’t even touched this one yet. What do you mean? You’re an alto?” I slid Robert’s scotch-and-soda over and took a swallow. It tasted awful. “My favorite drink,” I said, swirling it around in the glass. “And yours?” “You know,” she said, “you’re slightly nutty. Can we dance now?” I lurched toward an excuse—a motorcycle injury, arthritis, anything to get me off this hook I was hanging by—but all I could do finally was confess I didn’t know how. Her response surprised me. “Well,” she said, “you’re probably good at other things. Dancing’s not that important, anyway. I’m not that good myself.” I decided I loved her. “I’m not exactly adverse to dancing,” I said. “I’ve just been sort of…too occupied to learn.” “It’s averse,” she said, standing up, “C’mon, I’ll show you how.” My love turned to fear. The clarinet was squealing its dismal anguish, and out on the dance floor I could see the crush of bodies thrashing and weaving and dipping. I knew they were all slyly watching me. “C’mon,” Laura said, pulling at my hand, “you’ve got to learn some time.” And then I was out there, standing at the edge of that thresh with Laura facing me and the clarinet tearing into my heart. She took my hand and put it on her hip, and I had to send my gaze over her shoulder and dig it into the far wall to keep from staggering. I never looked at her during that whole enormous time, although her face was only inches from mine. She was holding my other hand and explaining that all I had to do was a box step, and I was saying what’s a box step, wait a minute, how do you do a box step, my hand molded to the curve of her hip, and then it started to move, that hip, and I stopped hearing the clarinet and knew only the rolling shocks that came through my hand, surging and bursting through me. And then we were back at the table and I was still nothing much more than that hand on her hip. “You know something?" Laura said, “you act like you’ve never been out with a girl in your entire life.” But by then, I was mute, and all I could do was stare at the table, and when Avis and Robert came back and sat down, Laura asked Robert to dance, and the evening dragged on and on and on. On the ride home, I feigned interest in the night passing by outside my window, and when I felt the car turn into Avenue M, I only wanted Laura to say, Don’t bother. I can run up by myself. But she didn’t. The elevator ride was interminable, and we did it in silence until we bumped to a stop and the inner door glided away. I held the outer door for her and she said, “Thank you.” In front of 5-D she said, “Good night.” Somehow, “Thanks for a wonderful evening,” came out of my throat, and I escaped back to the elevator, the lobby, the sidewalk. For weeks after, I suffered that evening over and over again in a kind of extended penance. I moped, fiddled with my airplane models, wouldn’t go out to pay ball. Laura became an absent force in my life, became my conscience, and I performed all my actions as though she were watching. And that hip, that hip kept doing its work. My aunt began to badger me. “Call and ask Laura out again, Kenneth. Go ahead. Just pick up the phone.” And when I didn’t, she kept at me. “Her parents are my dearest friends. What will they think if my nephew doesn’t call their daughter for another date?” Until finally it seemed easier to make the call, to get it over with and be free of them both once and for all. “Sorry,” Laura said, “I’m busy Saturday night.” She was busy the next Saturday, too. And the Saturday after that. In fact, she had no idea when she’d be free, she was so busy. I wasn’t surprised. Her response had been in my script all along, and, relieved, I said thank you, have a nice summer. “Well, wait,” she said. “How about some afternoon this week?” Thursday…no, Thursday she was busy. Friday. Yes, Friday. Friday. Oh god. When I got to apartment 5D, she was waiting for me in blue slacks that hugged her hips. Her father asked me what I thought of the Socialist Labor Party and I told him how to make a light bulb. He looked at me, nodded, and excused himself. I’d decided to take her to the airfield since airplanes were the only thing I knew much about. Out on the sidewalk I led her to my borrowed car. “You can drive?” she said. “Of course I can drive. How do you think I got here?” “Do you have a license?” “Of course,” I lied, opening the door for her. At the air field, we walked along the wire fence and I told her what makes a plane lift and how pilots learn to fly, until everything I knew was exhausted and a pulverizing silence developed. We watched another take-off, and then the prop wash from a near-by plane thankfully made any talk impossible. “You don’t feel all this wind when you’re behind the stick,” I yelled. “My hair’s ruined,” she yelled back. When we were driving back along Flatbush Ave, she sat against the door running a comb through her hair. It was the color of wine, that hair. “I wonder if people on the ground really look like ants from an airplane,” she said. “Pretty much,” I answered. “You’ve actually been up?” I nodded. She moved a little closer. “Really?” “Just a couple of times. It’s what I’m gong to be. A pilot. Fly the big planes.” I could feel her looking at me. Something was happening. I just didn’t know what. She slid a little closer and the day flared brighter. I banked the car and peeled off into Avenue U, coming down on three points at the next red light, taking off again when it went green. She touched my hair, just above my ear. A jolt of pure electricity. “Hey,” I said, “can’t you see I’m driving?” “Oh, was that you?” She took her hand away. “No. That was the chauffeur.” She giggled and gave my hair a tug. “Not even going to buy me a soda? Just rush me right back home?” “It’s almost three o’clock,” I said. “Is that an answer?” “I just want to make sure you don’t turn into a pumpkin.” She giggled again. I pulled into a drive-in. We didn’t get sodas. We ordered hambugers. And after I dropped her off, I flew all the way home upside down and at high altitude. The rest of the summer soared. It glowed and brightened and changed and collapsed down to one single purpose. Laura. We went everywhere together. She taught me to dance. My aunt suddenly looked a lot more like my mother. My self-confidence soared so high I asked Avis one day if she and Robert would like to go on a double date with us. We went to the beach. From the boardwalk we could see only a sparse scattering of blankets and an occasional striped umbrella. The summer was winding down and the sand looked lonely and clean. Avis and Laura stripped to their bathing suits and I took off my clothes and piled them in a heap with Laura’s. “I like the way you look in trunks, Ken,” she said. “I’m too skinny,” I said. But all of a sudden I wasn’t so sure of that anymore. Avis and Robert ran into the water, and Laura and I lay down on our stomachs next to each other, the blanket itchy beneath us. I brushed my lips against hers, and she said, “Ugh, kiss me again. I love to suffer.” I kissed her again. “Do you think Avis and Robert are like us?” she said. And I said no, I didn’t think so. Not like us. “That’s too bad,” she said. “For them, I mean.” And then she said, “I think I love you. Why do you think I love you?” I shrugged. “Ask me,” she said. “Okay. Why do you think you love me?” She smiled. “Because you’re fat and ugly and you have an astigmatism.” “I don’t have an astigmatism,” I said. She giggled. “Why do you love me?” “Because you’re bald and have big ears.” “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Because you’re stunning-gorgeous-pretty-beautiful-sweet.” “Okay,” she said. Then she got up onto her hands and knees. “I’m going into the water, but I don’t want you to come.” “Why? I asked “Because I want to see what it’s like to come back and find you waiting for me.” As soon as she left, I rolled onto my stomach and closed my eyes, wondering how it had happened. How the whole world had gone from awful to wonderful, wrong to right. Then Robert was throwing himself down on his towel to my left, sending a spray of cool drops across my chest. “If you want, you can use some of my oil,” he said. I wanted to tell him to get lost, that he was going to spoil Laura’s return, my whole afternoon. “Did you see Laura in the water?” I asked, keeping my eyes shut. “Avoided us like we were sharks,” he said. Bright smears of sunlight swam behind my lids. “Nice build,” he said. “Laura, I mean.” I grunted, concentrating on a black spot hanging among the blobs of light. “Make sure you get some of it,” he said. “Summer’s almost over.” “Do my best,” I said. “And any leftovers, remember your pal Robert.” A swell of anger opened my eyes into the flash of the sun. Robert was pouring lemonade into a cup. “Want some?” I shook my head no. “Yes,” he said, “a promising girl. Just a distribution problem. From each according to her capacity; to each according to his needs.” He laughed. “Knock it off,” I said. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know it was like that.” “You’re a dumb bastard,” I said on a sudden impulse. “Hey,” he said. “Wait a min-ute.” And then a sheet of anger crossed his face. “You’re the dumb bastard. And you don’t even know it.” “Look,” I said. “Let’s forget it, okay?” But I could see it was too late. “Poor little Kennie,” he said. “Just how far do you think you’d have gotten without the conferences? Don’t know about the conferences, do you. Maybe you should go ask your aunt.” I looked at him. “Good old Aunt Lillian had to coax, really coax a certain girl to keep going out with her nephew. Could that be you, Kennie-boy. Did it work, Kennie-boy? How’s your self-confidence now, Kennie-boy?” I stood up, not looking at him, looking instead into the aching glare off that wide slab of ocean, surges of heat swarming my mind, absorbing like smoke the image of Laura as it clouded off into unreality. The world pressed up against me with all its hot and gritty weight on the soles of my feet and I could feel in my ears the jolt of voices along the beach. Laura splashed out of the sea into my vision, droplets of water sparkling along her skin. She stopped at the edge and shook her hair. Then she saw me and waved. I couldn’t tell when it had begun, if it had begun, if there had been any beginning at all. And without that, there was a great distance between us, between me and the bright flesh of a girl standing at the fringe of the ocean, her erect body moving toward me and away with the pendulum waves. I turned, and fighting a huge force of gravity with each step, walked away from the beach, the hot sands gripping my feet. When I came out from under the boardwalk and onto the street, the sun struck my distant body with a wave of fire. I didn’t cry, but somewhere inside I wept in a dry, silent knot while the world outside blazed and throbbed. I shoved on aimlessly. I never looked back. For what was left of the summer, I kept away from the house when my aunt visited. I refused Laura’s calls. And then they stopped coming. Avis and my aunt went on to Europe, and finally the heat of the summer slid away into the earth, sucking the cool brown leaves of autumn down from the trees in its wake.
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