June 27, 2005

Stealing

The following story was published in the Harrington Lesbian Literary Journal* Vol. 6 no. 4

My daughter and I moved to Short Hills in September, when everything in the world was folding into autumn and the long, sun-rich days of summer were beginning to withdraw into smaller, more manageable slices of time and space. The quiet, mundane evenings were cooler and a pretentious, more dignified mood was filtering down and melting into everyone. I had taken a new job in New York City and as I walked down Church Street towards my office it seemed to me that everyone in the world was happy or happily married, single or very content, maybe even brain-dead.

I enrolled Liz in school, applied for a library card, and went to the local DMV to get a new driver’s license. It was the first one with my picture on it and it felt strange to see the new address and a strange image of me smiling crookedly from underneath the laminate. My hair was short and still bleached from the summer sun, but my face was pale and the softness around my mouth made me feel vaguely uncomfortable and annoyed. My eyes were ciphers without depth or light and I could not read my own face; I couldn’t tell if I were real, contrived, or imagined.

The town we now lived in was occupied by substantial stone homes on sophisticated, landscaped lots, with three, sometimes four-car garages but no visible inhabitants. Every now and then one would see a backboard in a driveway, balanced on top of a shiny black pole with a brand-new net hanging like a wet rag from its gauche orange hoop.

We had moved here because my private life had imploded and collapsed around my ears and I needed to repair it. This secure, suburban town was one of those repairs. A new job with more money and the requisite increase in stress was another. One could say I had a lot to learn.

When evening was draped over this perfectly groomed town, the world around us seemed empty or abandoned; as if Liz and I the only ones left on the block. Even after I found a nanny for her, hours would pass when I didn’t talk to another adult, and I still felt dislocated and isolated. Liz was as sad as I was; she missed her friends, her old school, and she missed Jackie far more than I did. Sometimes, if we happened to watch TV, she would sit close to me and slip her hand into mine, as if to comfort me, and my heart would tear a little more. To cover myself, I would make a joke, or tickle her, or give her a great bear hug and ask if she wanted to go for ice cream at Emack & Bolio's.

One night after I had tucked her into bed, I stood in the backyard of my enormous house and watched the leaves tremble on their high, unreachable branches; quaking on their stems because they knew summer was over. They were slowly curling up and drying out, their green fading into pale yellow, or spotted with red-brown stains. But the leaves were honorable, circumspect ghosts floating in the sprawling canopies of their treetops, not yet ready to cut loose and die. They would wait their turn.

In September, the air ruffled everyone. With benign ambivalence, schoolchildren were ready to escape their tedious tennis lessons and irritable au pairs for the pleasure of classmates and sharing summer escapades. Vigorous, testosterone-rich husbands strained at the bit, ready to make markets and charge the boardrooms; they were already factoring in the size of their biannual bonuses. And wives were grateful for predictable schedules and the secure cliques of Junior League meetings and aerobic classes. They were anticipating appointments with the decorator because the house had to be redone for Joey's Bar Mitzvah, Caroline's graduation, or the socially prominent Christmas party they had to host.

Every morning I took the 6:40 into Hoboken and then caught the ferry, which scooted across the Hudson and then docked calmly at the World Financial Center. Every evening I took the ferry back to Hoboken to catch one of the express trains that were the daily bones of people like me. I liked to stand on the upper deck of the ferry with the other 50 or so lone souls and watch the majestic mammoths of lower Manhattan drawn together into smaller and smaller melancholy freeze frames. The sight of those towers smothered in gold-red sunset always bolstered my droopy ego. How lucky I was to see this; how lucky I was to have this job; how lucky I was to be free of Jackie. But then, I’d shut my mind off and blend into the crowd pouring down the gangplank, an impenetrable phalanx flowing down to the trains. In the evenings, we were a morose, serious crowd of moneymakers and moneylenders with some middle-management minions who dreamed of being otherwise thrown in.

It was the beginning of October when I first saw her. I was buying my monthly train pass, and when I turned away from the window she was the next in line. We wore different shades of the same Brooks Brothers cut, the same classic style of black pump, and similar Burberry raincoats. We both wore gold pinkie rings; and we both blinked at each other. It was one of those times when the mind clicked so perfectly that every detail was recorded and filed. Our eyes locked for a millisecond after that recognition. I smiled; she didn't. Embarrassed, I walked away.

I saw her every morning after that. She would stand in the same spot, roughly five yards from the station door, the only woman in a small knot of men who were dressed in the uniforms of Wall Street. Sometimes, two or more of them would have a low, private conversation over cups of burnt coffee (I knew it was burnt because I once bought a cup). Huddled like agent provocateurs, their murmurings were swept up into the steam billowing from the Styrofoam cups. Once, I saw her talking to one of them and I felt curious and irritated. I was jealous; I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to know what they were talking about; I wanted her to talk to me.

The first morning there was a real chill in the air, the stationhouse crowd was animated and talkative. I was standing off to one side so I could see the train come down the tracks. The elegant rails curved away from me and a sharp light flickered on the low edges of them. Then the beam bloomed high in the morning mist. It took a few moments before the sound reached me, and I braced myself for the first tendrils of its rough noise to roll onto the platform and lumber down to where I stood. Then the massive black engine ground to a halt and its vaporous exhaust swarmed onto the platform.

A small knot of people stood near her usual spot. They were highlighted by the old street lamp’s anemic light. I could see her profile and the way her breath perished in the vapors of the locomotive. She seemed indifferent to everything around her, and when the train screeched to a halt, I watched as she picked up her briefcase and took her place in line. I wondered if I looked as mean as she did. And before I stepped up to board the train, I glanced to my left, down the line of cars. I could have sworn she had just turned her head.

One of the perks of my job was the Cardio Club, a fitness factory in lower Manhattan, where I worked. I would go to the Cardio Club instead of taking lunch; it was safer than interactive office politics and besides, it looked good to colleagues. I usually went at noon to sweat, strain, and otherwise torment my body. Cardio was always filled with the ravenous energy of money, the smell of the hot muscles, and the sweat of well-nourished human machines.

It was a little past two o'clock when I went there on a cloudy Thursday afternoon in November. This was unusual for me, but I had been in a long, tense meeting with the usual crowd of cowboys and our senior vice president, who thrived on verbal homicide and who was my immediate superior. A colleague could not weasel out of a bad decision, and my boss was having a field day with the unfortunate bonehead. Eventually, he satisfied her; or she satisfied herself that he had suffered enough and we wrapped it up. Anyway, when I walked onto the exercise floor, there she was, running hard and fast on a treadmill, a yellow Walkman strapped to her waist. Her tee-shirt was stained with an elongated oval of sweat.

She was staring straight ahead and frowning. I was mesmerized; I wanted to run like that and, damn, didn’t she look powerful! I felt the miserable hook of envy slide into my skin and hold fast to my bone. I felt its cruel cut in the same instant I realized how insignificant and anonymous I was. Then and there, I imagined, in my regressive fear of never being loved again, that if I could be impervious and powerful, no one could hurt me again. I suddenly felt determined and full of hope. I'd forget the past year, I had my child and my job, and I was desperate to be powerful.

So I started to go to the Cardio Club every day at two o'clock. I increased my weights and levels on all the machines. I extended my workout from forty minutes to an hour. I bought a black Walkman and started to use the treadmill. Sometimes she was there—sometimes she wasn't. But she never acknowledged me and I pretended to ignore her. Her aloof ferocity comforted me and I accepted it as a tacit, grudging sign of approval.

One afternoon, I came out of the shower and there, on the bench in front of her locker, was the yellow Walkman. I stared at it and felt my face flush. I took a slow, furtive look around the locker room, and I picked it up and slipped it into my gym bag. When I left the club, I felt as if I were walking out of a vault with a sack of unmarked twenties. And as the elevator climbed to my company's floor, I realized I was sweating. When I got to my office, I didn’t put the gym bag next to the credenza like I normally did; I put it under my desk. And when I got home, I put the yellow Walkman in the bottom drawer of my night-stand.

I didn't go to the club for almost a week after that Thursday but when I did, she was there, beating time on the treadmill with a brand new Walkman strapped to her waist. It was a newer, more expensive model. It was black. Feeling brazen, I took the treadmill next to her and ran, staring straight ahead, feeling wicked and smug. As usual, she didn’t acknowledge me, but she accelerated her pace and I matched her stride. My legs burned but I kept up with her. I almost laughed aloud at how slick I thought I was.

But one Friday evening, not long after my imaginary race with her, I was on the train in my usual seat, waiting for the 5:48 to escape Hoboken. The car was only half-full and quiet; someone popped a beer and sighed deeply; I heard the rustle of newspapers; two men were bragging to each other. I was looking out of the window, thinking about nothing in particular. Then I heard her say, “Excuse me.”

I looked around as she sat down in the seat next to mine. I watched her as she opened up a stock offering and began to read. I turned back to the window. For the entire forty-five-minute ride, she didn't say a word. She barely moved a muscle. She just read that stock offering. And I felt my nerves vibrate and my heart pound. My mouth was dry. My hands were clammy. I tried to read the paper, but could only stare at the print and turn the pages at what I thought were appropriate intervals. I didn’t dare look at her. I certainly didn’t have the nerve to say anything. Eventually, I gave up on the paper and turned my face to the window. But even that was useless; it had gotten dark out, and I could not avoid my reflection in the huge, empty windows. I looked frightened, and my eyes were small, and dark, and empty. She never said a word. She didn't even glance at me; not once.

When the train pulled into our station, she got up and stuffed the stock offering into her briefcase. Then she looked at me for a second or two, with cold, inscrutable eyes, nodded, like a general to a corporal, and turned away. I listened to her strong, confident footfalls move down the aisle. When it was quiet, I stood up, and walked to the exit.

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