Mendocino and Other Stories Read online

He steps through the doorway, smiling shyly, and of course he didn't do anything wrong, anything at all. He's probably a perfectly nice guy. But I already know how this is going to end up: a series of small advances and retreats—his advances, my retreats—over cocktails, over dinner, over one last drink in a small, dark bar, until we are back here, at this very spot, negotiating an awkward good-night kiss. Sometimes I don't even feel like going through with the interview.

  SAM AND I are having lunch. The place is full of people, most of them eating in groups of two or three. It is very noisy. The tables are quite close together, and with the extra room Sam needs the waitresses can barely squeeze between her chair and the chair of the person behind her. It makes me very uneasy, watching the waitresses, huge trays of food over their heads, edging behind Sam.

  “Are you ladies ready?”

  Our waitress is here, order pad out, already impatient.

  “Let's see,” Sam says. “I'll have a bowl of the cream of celery soup, and a house salad, and the breast of chicken with the milanese sauce, and an order of hot French bread. And a glass of milk.”

  The waitress scribbles on her pad. “Anything else?” she says, not quite sarcastically.

  “That's it,” says Sam.

  She turns to me.

  “I'll have the same,” I say. “Except the milk.”

  Since the pregnancies, I have been giving myself small indulgences: extra time with the newspaper in the morning, full square meals at lunch, bed a little earlier than usual. Sam says that not even Josh has had such a sympathetic reaction.

  When the waitress has left, I lean toward Sam. “Have you decided about breastfeeding yet?” I ask. She wants to, but she's worried about what will happen when she comes back to work. They have those pumps now, so you can extract your milk and leave it in a bottle with the baby-sitter, but Sam thinks that would defeat at least half the purpose of breastfeeding, which is having the baby actually feed from your breast.

  She shakes her head. “I'm still not sure,” she says.

  “You will,” I say.

  She nods and looks away, and a kind of distant smile comes over her face for a moment. Then she turns back to me. “I'm not ready to throw away my huge 32-B bras yet,” she says. “I'd better breastfeed for as long as I can.”

  THE AD IS coming along. I've decided on a setting: a park. The guy is taking his adorable little girl and his golden retriever for a walk. He's throwing a stick for the dog, whose name is Sunny. The dog's name may not actually figure in the ad, but it helps me to visualize the thing. The little girl's name is Lizzie. She's about two, with big blue eyes and soft blond curls. She's wearing a dotted Swiss dress, yellow with white dots, and little white sandals.

  She is sitting on her daddy's shoulders, and suddenly she puts her hands over his eyes. Moments later the dog comes back with the stick, and the daddy can't see to take it from her mouth and throw it again. The dog is jumping around, the stick in her mouth, nuzzling the guy's leg, being cute and frisky.

  Enter the semiglamorous woman with the terrier. Sunny drops the stick and begins sniffing at the terrier. The woman is immediately drawn to Lizzie and starts talking to her. They have a cute few seconds of conversation, which the daddy enters with a mixture of friendliness and irony, because his eyes are still covered.

  Finally Lizzie takes her hands away and the grown-ups start in on the dogs.

  That's as far as I've gotten; now I just need to figure out how to bring in the product. The woman: “She's a happy-looking dog.” Lizzie: “That's 'cause her name is Sunny.” The daddy (laughing): “It's because she knows she's going home to eat soon.” The woman: “Mealtimes aren't any fun at our house, are they, Fido?” (I haven't thought of the terrier's name yet.) The daddy: “You must not be using Kanine Krunch.” Etc., etc.

  Well, it's a start.

  BABES IN ARMS just got in a new line of stuffed animals. They're just the right size: smaller, as we used to say when playing Twenty Questions, than a breadbox, but larger than a shoe. There's a wonderful, soft grey rhino; a plush brown bear with heartbreaking button eyes; an adorable, jaunty little penguin.

  “They're sure to be very popular,” says the saleswoman, chattily, arranging the animals on a shelf. She's gotten to know me a little.

  I pick up a rhino; who could resist? But the bear is great, too. And I'm not even ready to buy.

  “We're putting them on special this week,” the saleswoman says. “Half off. It's a special promotion to introduce them. They're from Sweden.”

  Half off is a good deal. Stuffed animals, I have discovered, are not cheap. I put down the rhino and pick up a bear. I hold him to my face. He even smells good: fresh and clean and, somehow, good for you.

  “I'm going to take a bear,” I say. I'll give him to Sam; the mobile is a little too expensive, anyway.

  The saleswoman smiles and moves to the cash register. She's probably afraid I'll change my mind, I'm in here so often. She takes my credit card, runs it through the little gadget, and hands me the slip to sign. She wraps the bear in tissue paper printed with little baby bottles and rattles and diaper pins. She carefully puts it in a shopping bag and hands it to me. “Enjoy,” she says.

  IT'S 10:20 when the phone rings, jolting me out of sleep so fast that I have the receiver in my hand before I can possibly speak.

  “Virginia?” It's a hollow little sound, a vaguely familiar voice coming to me from far away.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Virginia?” It's my brother. “Did I wake you up or something?”

  “No, no,” I say. “I was reading.” I always feel guilty when the phone awakens me, as if I should apologize for being asleep when someone wants to talk.

  “So, how are you?”

  “Fine,” I say, and then it occurs to me that he simply wants to chat, that it's still my turn. “How are you?”

  “OK,” he says. “I'm at the lab.”

  “It's almost 10:30 at night, what, do you live there?” It's actually easier to picture him on a cot next to the Bunsen burners than in his own apartment. I haven't been to Charlottesville, but when I visited him in Cambridge, when he was getting the M.A. in philosophy, he lived in a three-room apartment in which there was nothing but a bed, a table, and two chairs. What bothered me most was that he didn't have a bureau. Where did he keep his socks and underwear? On hangers?

  “I've got some cells in a petri dish that need looking at every three hours,” he says. “So, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I picture the cells getting restless, saying, Look at me, look at me. It's a mystery to me, what my brother does.

  “So, how'd you like Hank?”

  This is why he called. “He seemed very nice,” I say evenly.

  “He liked you, too.”

  Not this, please. “Yeah, well,” I say.

  “He said you seemed a little depressed.”

  “Depressed?”

  “You know, a little down.”

  “Oh, no,” I say. “Not at all.”

  “He said you were kind of quiet, so I figured, something must be wrong, Virginia isn't the quiet type.”

  I wonder what type he thinks I am. What type am I? “Well,” I say, “I'm in a quiet phase, nothing to worry about, but thanks for calling.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Someone's there, right? God, I'm sorry.”

  “No,” I say. “No one's here. No one but me.”

  JENNIFER WANTS ME in her office—to talk, I know, about the ad. She's had my outline for four days now, and she hasn't said a word about it.

  “Sit down,” she says when I get there.

  I sit.

  She is wearing my favorite of all her maternity dresses. It's a soft teal-colored wool with a white lace collar and white cuffs. When she first started wearing it she was hardly showing at all, and the dress flowed in an elegant line from neck to hem. But it has accommodated her belly beautifully, filling out as she's filled out. I know it was expensive, but it does not seem to me in the least
extravagant.

  “Virginia,” she says.

  I smile at her. In three weeks, or, who knows, maybe less, she'll have a baby. I've narrowed it down to something from Tiffany. Probably a spoon. It's the kind of thing she and John would appreciate.

  “Kanine Krunch, Virginia.”

  “Yes?”

  “This,” she says, taking my outline from her desk, “won't do.”

  “It won't do,” I repeat, stupidly.

  “No.”

  I suppose I should have anticipated this. The people aren't mellow enough, the ad does not adequately capture the spirit of understated coolness required by the executives.

  “First of all,” she says, “when you have a father and a little girl meeting a glamorous young woman, you invite speculation on whether the father is going to commit adultery with the young woman. Right?”

  I feel my face color a little; I should have thought of that. But if I take the woman out, who will the father discuss the product with? “Right,” I say.

  “And,” Jennifer says, “more to the point, why a little girl?” She stands up and begins to pace, her hands on her lower back as if to give herself a push. “This is supposed to be about dog food.” She looks at me, pointedly, then returns to her desk and ruffles through my outline. “Lizzie,” she says. “What's with Lizzie, Virginia? You don't put adorable little children in dog food ads, you put adorable little dogs. OK?” She gathers the outline together and hands it to me.

  I am halfway to the door when she says, “Virginia?”

  I turn and look at her.

  “Dog food,” she says. “Think dog food.”

  THE WOMEN'S MAGAZINES are full of advice on every subject you can think of. How to get a man, How to get rid of a man, How to say no to your boss, How to put the sex back in sex, How to look great in work clothes, How to look great in no clothes, How to throw a fabulous dinner party without even trying. What I like best is the advice on how to treat yourself when you are feeling down. There are, contrary to what most people think, workable remedies. Setting aside an hour, a full hour, of time when you will not think about your children or your husband or your job. You will just sit in your favorite chair (they always assume you have such a thing) and sip a steaming cup of herbal tea.

  Or, if you prefer, what about buying a brand new bar of scented soap and having a nice, long soak in the tub? Make the water as hot as you can stand it. Light a candle and turn off that bright overhead bathroom light. Put your favorite concerto on the record player (of course you have a favorite concerto). Relax.

  This is, of course, laughable advice. If you are depressed, you're supposed to feel better after sitting there for an hour with nothing but Lemon Mist tea for company? You're supposed to feel like a new person after a long, hot bath during which you stare, through the water, at the distorted shape of your hips and thighs?

  Still, here I am, in the tub. The light is on; there is no music. My drain doesn't work right, or, rather, it works too well, and as I lie here the water level gradually lowers until bits of my body begin to appear, small and then larger islands in a porcelain sea. If I were pregnant, my stomach would appear first. Pale and huge, yes, but I would love it.

  THE TRIP TO Indiana is in less than a month, and I have begun to dread it. The client will meet us at the airport, me and two of the executives. We'll be taken to our hotel and offered half an hour to freshen up, then it will be out to dinner. We'll go to a steak house. The lights will be low and we'll be shown to a big round booth. The waitress will be there to take our drink orders before we've had a chance to think about what we want. The client will have whiskey sours. The executives will ask for Glenfiddich, settle for Dewar's. And I will be unable to think of anything suitable. Aside from wine, the only thing I really like to drink is Campari and soda, and it will be months too early for that since it's a summer drink.

  I will be seated between two of the men in the light grey suits. They'll ask me questions about life in New York, about the cost of living, the impossibility of parking your car, the poor public schools. They'll ask, challengingly, what I will do when I want to have children. Move to the suburbs? Send them to private school?

  To change the subject, I will ask about their children, and out will come wallets containing studio photographs, smiling families in front of fake fireplaces. They are of my generation, these men, only five or six years older than I am, and they will show me pictures of children in the fourth or fifth grade, of children, perhaps, in junior high. They will point to little blond heads, saying, This is Kerry, he's pitcher on his Little League team; this is Heather, isn't she pretty?

  The client is probably a good father.

  I'VE REACHED an impasse on the ad. I am keeping the guy, who, I think, will be out for a run; I am keeping the semiglamorous young woman; I am keeping their two dogs. I am trying to think dog food. But somehow it's hard to go on, without Lizzie.

  I decide that what I need is a fresh pad of paper. I head for the supply closet but stop, as usual, at Karen's desk, for a look at her knitting.

  “I just have the sleeves left,” she says, holding up the rest. “Donald's mother is going to do the crochet work around the neck.”

  “It's so pretty,” I say, fingering the soft gown.

  She puts it in her shopping bag and goes to the closet for her coat. It is only 4:30, but she's allowed to leave early these days, to ensure herself a seat on the subway. She lives way out in Brooklyn, twenty-three stops away.

  She buttons up, then comes over to the desk to get her things. Suddenly she starts laughing, her hand over her mouth.

  I turn, and there is Samantha, walking toward us in that funny pregnant goose step of hers. She is bundled up in her wool cape, ready for the walk home, and when she sees us, sees Karen in her big blue coat, she, too, starts to laugh.

  “What's so funny?” I say.

  “The two of us,” says Sam. “We're so … pregnant.”

  Karen giggles.

  “When I see other pregnant women on the street,” Sam says, “we always exchange this little smile, like we have a secret the whole world can't guess.”

  “You do that, too?” Karen asks, laughing.

  “Of course,” Sam says. She smiles at me, the trace of an apology in her expression, then turns back to Karen. “I'm leaving too,” she says. “I'll walk you to the subway.”

  We say good-bye, and they head for the elevators. I watch them for a moment. They are so entirely unalike—Sam is tall and auburn-haired, with an elegant, angular face, while Karen is hardly more than a child herself: short and small-boned, her blond hair pulled away from her face and held by bright pink plastic barrettes. Yet what I see first and most clearly is the fact that they are both huge—huge with child, as they say. Grand with child.

  The red “down” arrow appears over the door to one of the elevators. They turn and wave to me, then they are gone.

  THE WOMAN AHEAD of me in the movie line is pregnant. Six months, I would guess. She keeps turning around and scanning the sidewalk behind me. She is waiting for someone and she seems impatient. Every few minutes she glances at her watch. I wonder why she's so anxious; the movie doesn't start for nearly twenty minutes.

  I look away and catch sight of a billboard bearing a Fitch Brown Llewellen ad. It's for a fragrance. A woman with carefully disheveled hair stands on the beach at sunset. One strap of her sequined gown has fallen from her shoulder; her high-heeled sandals dangle carelessly from her hand. She looks into the distance. The copy line reads, “You can't forget his touch.…”

  I look back at the woman and find that she is looking at me. I start to smile at her; I can already feel the small, intimate smile we will exchange. But she looks away, and again ranges her vision over the sidewalk behind me. She is about to turn around when her expression changes to pleasure.

  A man comes up from behind me and bends to kiss her. “Sorry,” he says. He is tall and has curly brown hair and little wire-rim glasses. He is wearing faded Levi's
that fit him wonderfully, a brown suede baseball jacket, and a blue and white striped dress shirt. From the shirt I deduce that he has a real job somewhere, but he's not so stuffy that he would wear his suit to the movies. When they're at home together, he's probably very sensitive to whether she feels like talking or whether she'd rather be left alone. He's sure enough of her, of them, that he's perfectly content to spend entire evenings in silence. But he's wonderful to talk to, when they do talk: he really knows her, and their conversations have a rich subtext of shared knowledge and experience. When he kisses her, it means something.

  It's somehow worse actually to see men like this, to know they exist. It's as if he has been sent to remind me that the only men I might consider marrying are those who are already husbands.

  He puts his hand on her rounded belly. “How's the baby?” he says.

  JENNIFER APPROVED MY new outline, her last act before starting her leave. She has been gone for a week now, and so far she has called in every day. I fill her in as quickly as possible, assuming she'll want to get back to hanging curtains in the nursery or whatever, but she lingers on the phone, asking about this meeting or that report. When I mention Sam—she's due “any day now”—Jennifer sounds impatient. I think she resents Sam for working all the way through her ninth month. It is somewhat surprising that Jennifer started her leave so early. Sam thinks she was afraid her water would break at work, which would not look businesslike at all.

  It is seven o'clock at night, and the office is empty except for me and Max, my art director. He is working up storyboards, I am scripting. We sent out for Chinese.

  To my surprise, my original tag line made the final cut. The last image will be the guy in his running clothes throwing the stick for Sunny, then turning to wave at the semiglamorous woman as he heads out of the park. He stumbles, rights himself, looks sheepishly back at her, and she stands there, an amused smile on her face, and waves. Voice-over, tag line: Kanine Krunch—food for the dogs that people like you love.

  I dip my chopsticks into a carton of Hot and Spicy Shrimp, pull out a water chestnut, and put it into my mouth. The phone buzzes and I pick it up, thinking it must be Max, who is sitting across the hall eating Beef with Broccoli.