Halfway House Read online

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  She buttoned her jeans, found her sweater, dropped it over her head. Although she needed to leave, she flopped down on the couch. “I don’t know. Nothing.” Reminding herself to ask about him—sometimes she forgot his life existed outside their time together—she said, “You?”

  “Movie.”

  “Which one?”

  “I have a date, actually.”

  “Oh.” She stood. She picked up a glass of water, lifted it to her mouth, then put it down. “Really? You have a date?”

  He smiled and shrugged. “You won’t talk about where this is going, so I have to assume—” He shrugged again, opening his hands wide, but the words had come out too practiced: his nonchalance, his expectation she would also be nonchalant, were an act.

  She went into the bathroom to wash her hands. Keeping her voice casual, she called, “How old is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? How do you know her?”

  “I don’t, really. She’s just someone I see at L’Isola. That café.”

  “I know it’s that café. Christ.” The mirror above the sink showed that about half her hair had escaped from its ponytail. She yanked off the elastic and, with wet hands, tried to smooth her hair. “So, what? You asked her out? She asked you out?”

  “We just got to talking.”

  “I don’t know how these things work.” She looked around for someplace to dry her hands. “This towel’s filthy.”

  “Hmmm?”

  She pulled his bath towel off the rack and carried it into the living room. “This is filthy.”

  Ben sat on the carpet, still naked. He scratched his stomach. “There’s another in the closet. Top shelf.”

  “You live like you’re still in college or something.”

  “In college I had six roommates. You’re glad you didn’t know me then.”

  She held up the towel. “This is ridiculous. Grown-ups don’t live like this.”

  “Why do you care? You don’t live here. You come over here, get your fuck-fix, and then you go home.”

  “A what? A fuck-fix? Are you twelve?”

  “Isn’t that what this is?”

  She dropped the towel on the floor. “Enjoy your date.”

  “I plan to.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  By the time Jordana got to the grocery store from Ben’s, it was four-thirty. The kids called the IGA the Igga, which she’d begun calling it too. She hurried through heavy puddles, gray sky sagging above the parking lot. God, a fuck-fix. Fuck him. It was still light out when she went through the Igga’s automatic doors, but fifteen minutes later she emerged into darkness. A thin, stinging snow had begun.

  She shoved her groceries into the back. Scooping the keys from the ashtray where she’d left them, she held them up to the weak overhead light to find the one she needed. On the second try the car shuddered and then caught and she sat for a minute, blowing on her hands and letting the engine warm. She should have asked if his frat brothers taught him that phrase. No: she’d sounded immature enough. God. Wincing, she buried her head in her hands and sat hunched, shivering, the heater blowing tepid air. She’d lived in Cort sixteen years and still didn’t adequately anticipate the cold: she had on a cotton sweater—now coffee-splotched—and a red and black Applefield High letter jacket that Angie no longer wore. The orange lights above the parking lot showed a thin glaze of new snow over black asphalt. Plowed snow, gray with exhaust fumes and gravel, was banked all around. She shifted into reverse, then stopped to pull down the knit cuffs of the jacket, balling the ends in her fingers.

  She drove like that, fisted hands balancing the steering wheel without gripping it. The wipers spanked the windshield’s bottom edge on each downstroke. Patting the seat beside her, she found a cassette tape. The tape, when she slid it in, was a scratchy recording of a quartet. Schubert. Where the cello should have entered in the fourth measure, there were only the violins and viola playing around the empty spaces. It must be one of Pieter’s rehearsal tapes, his string quartet playing without him. She knew this piece so well she could hear his part, ghostly beneath the violins and viola, rising as they fell, falling as they rose, a twisting ribbon of silence.

  At home she parked without turning off the engine and sat, blowing on her hands. When the piece ended, she realized she’d been waiting for it to end, that she’d forgotten how late she was getting home. Hurrying out to open the back door, she dragged the grocery bags across the seat toward her. She took all four, two in each arm. She slammed the car door with her foot, then stumbled a few steps back, unbalanced.

  Jordana spent that evening and all Sunday staying busy. She finally finished packing up the Goodwill donations that had half blocked the hallway for six months. She dragged Pieter on a chilly hike. Angie would come home Monday afternoon. She didn’t call to say whether everything was going all right, and Jordana had to remind herself that was a good sign: high school seniors visiting their boyfriends at college didn’t call their mothers.

  Sunday night Pieter asked if she’d checked that the back door was locked and Jordana lied and said she had. They had just made love. She didn’t want to get out of bed and make her way downstairs, turning on lights as she went, and she didn’t want, either, for her husband to get out of bed and leave her. She was curled away from Pieter, soles of her feet pressed against his calves.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pieter—”

  He moved closer, arm over her rib cage so that the calloused tips of his fingers rested on the underside of her breast. Jordana pulled the sheet up over her naked shoulder. She said, “Tell me about when we met.”

  “You know about when we met.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  He sighed and pulled closer into her back. Pieter would sometimes go along with talking about the past, but he didn’t find it very interesting. “All right. My first job after Juilliard was for the New York Opera, which was a huge, huge coup. I had the last seat, but the first cellist took me under his wing. He thought I was talented. I used to go over to his apartment, and we’d play duets or chess. And his daughter was this funny little girl who used to hang around and watch us.”

  “I borrowed clothes from my friends just for those afternoons.”

  “I never won at chess. I don’t know why I kept agreeing to play.”

  “Because my father loved winning more than you cared about losing. I remember you winning sometimes. But I was so bored. If you played duets, at least there was something to listen to while I stood around in three-inch heels waiting to be noticed.”

  “Mmmm.” Pieter was falling asleep.

  “I’d bring you tea and you’d smile at me like I was eight years old.”

  “You were eight years old to me,” Pieter said.

  * * *

  Jordana, sixteen, watched her mother fumble around the kitchen, two glasses of wine already drunk and dinner not really begun. Jordana’s father insisted that when they had guests—Pieter was bringing his girlfriend to their apartment for the first time—they weren’t going to serve something cooked by the maid. Three boiled lobsters in various stages of disassembly littered the Formica countertop, which had a pattern of gold sunbursts on pale blue. The apartment had been a wedding present from Jordana’s mother’s parents, who were astonished and grateful at their daughter’s last-minute (she’d been thirty-one) rescue from spinsterhood, even if it was by a Jew. Jordana’s father had filled the rest of the rooms with velvet and leather, dark wood, heavy draperies, but no guest ever visited the kitchen, so he left its Formica and turquoise-blue carpet alone.

  A tall, heavy woman, Jordana’s mother wore a beautifully fitted green dress and pumps of buttery leather, dark hair pulled back from her face in a perfect French twist. With a fork, she clawed the meat from a lobster. She put the pieces of its shell onto a baking sheet and slid them into the oven to dry. When she turned, tiny star
s of grease speckled the front of her dress.

  “You’re going to have to change,” said Jordana.

  “Of course I’m going to change. This is a day dress. Is there really nothing else you could have done with your hair?”

  “There really isn’t,” Jordana said, in mock sorrow. From when she was eleven until earlier this year, when she’d refused to go anymore, a black hairdresser at 125th and Amsterdam had straightened Jordana’s hair. The chemicals burned her scalp and made her eyes water. A cab ticked in the street outside, her mother sitting upright in the backseat; kids would gather at the beauty shop’s window to look in at the white girl.

  Untreated, Jordana’s hair puffed like black smoke around her face. She had dressed carefully in careless-looking clothes. She would let her father greet Pieter and Em. She herself would wander out in twenty minutes or so, Ulysses in one hand, and profess surprise: I didn’t even hear you come in.

  A soft wheezing came from the oven as the pieces of shell dried. “Get those out.”

  “‘Please?’” Jordana suggested.

  “Just get them.”

  Jordana drooped over to the oven, pulled out the baking sheet, and then drooped back to her stool.

  She had no idea where her mother’s time went. It wasn’t that it was unusual for women on the Upper East Side not to have jobs—in fact, Jordana had only in the last few years become aware that other women in New York, tens or maybe hundreds of thousands, worked all day. But besides grooming herself or being groomed, what did Jordana’s mother do? Not tennis, or meeting friends for drinks, or sitting on committees, like the mothers of Jordana’s friends. Her time just disappeared, water dribbled into sand.

  Her mother pulled the lobster tail apart with her hands. “If he hasn’t married her yet, he’s not going to marry her.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  Meat hung down from the lobster shell, a tattered skirt that Jordana’s mother tore at. Mouth twisting with distaste, she lifted the second lobster. She held it upside down and cracked a claw, letting the liquid run out into the sink. She didn’t bother to answer: They both knew who.

  Jordana hated when her mother acted like she knew anything about Pieter. “Not everyone believes marriage is the solution to everything. You can be just as committed to someone without some piece of paper.”

  “Well, aren’t we radical.” Her mother slid the mortar and pestle over to Jordana. “Grind those shells, if you want something to do.”

  Jordana picked up a piece of shell and then dropped it. “It’s hot.”

  “You’re the one who’s so smart.”

  Fingers stinging, Jordana used a dish towel to transfer the pieces of shell to the mortar. She pounded them to a fine dust. When she tried to slide the mortar back over, her mother nodded at the Joy of Cooking. “Under lobster butter.”

  The four different parts of the recipe, separated by hundreds of pages, had been bookmarked, and she flipped through: Lobster Newburg … Newburg Sauce … Lobster Butter … About Lobster:

  The uninitiated are sometimes balked by the ferocious appearance of a lobster at table. They may take comfort from the little cannibal who, threading his way through the jungle one day at his mother’s side, saw a strange object roar overhead. “Ma, what’s that?” he quavered. “Don’t worry, sonny,” said Ma. “It’s an airplane. Airplanes are pretty much like lobsters. There’s an awful lot you have to throw away, but the insides are delicious.”

  Jordana read the paragraph a second time, to make sure it really was as stupid as she thought. The doorbell rang.

  She was out of the kitchen, through the living room, in the foyer opening the door before remembering that she’d planned to be cool and aloof tonight. She hadn’t thought to rinse her hands; she reeked of lobster.

  Pieter’s eyes seemed an even starker blue than she’d remembered, his hair an even paler blond, his cheekbones higher and sharper. Seeing him, no matter how she tried to prepare herself, she always had the same physical reaction she had now: her heart seized and knocked, her stomach contracted. She had a vague impression of a tall woman beside him, but couldn’t bring herself to look directly.

  “Em, this is Jordana. She’s a pain in the neck.” He punched Jordana lightly on the shoulder. Normally, she would have poked him back; then he would have tried to tickle her, and they would have half wrestled until they heard the approaching footsteps of Jordana’s father. Pieter would have straightened, tucked in his shirttails, shook Jordana’s father’s hand, and then—when her father turned to lead the way to the library—winked at Jordana. Flirting, she’d thought. She loved those moments of feeling Pieter’s ribs beneath his soft cotton shirt.

  “Nice to meet you,” she muttered, looking at Em’s collarbone. Jordana had assumed that her own gauzy skirts and Gypsy earrings were close to how Em, a modern dancer, would dress, but Em wore a powder-blue linen shift. She had stainless-steel posture and a flat chest, even flatter than Jordana’s.

  Em said, “Pieter’s told me so much about you.”

  Startled, Jordana looked into Em’s face. Late twenties, no makeup, hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Em and Pieter had a whole life together. They discussed Jordana’s family.

  Lightly, Pieter hit Jordana’s shoulder again, asking her, “What’s the matter? Is she having a bad day? Is she asleep?”

  She turned toward him, feeling as slow and stupid as a bear teased at the zoo. He put up his fists, dancing back, feinting once toward her. “Aha!” he said. “She awakens. Go ahead, put ’em up.”

  If he did this in front of his girlfriend, it didn’t mean what Jordana had thought. Pieter bounced on his toes. Em gave her a long, considering look. Jordana’s face burned, but she forced herself to return the gaze.

  When they were seated for dinner, Jordana’s father announced, “I discovered the most remarkable recording of Bedrich Smetana.” He leapt up from the table and disappeared from the room. A minute later he reappeared, sliding a record from its sleeve. He opened the sideboard to reach the hi-fi—every room of the apartment had at least one. Holding up his hand for silence, he closed his eyes. Two soft pops as the needle skated toward the music. Jordana’s mother stopped in the act of serving cream of asparagus soup, ladle dripping.

  Jordana’s father was a small man with a crest of white hair that rose over his forehead. He wore a gray suit and red cravat. As the first notes sounded, he brought his fist down softly, face squeezed into a grimace. No one moved. The music rose around them, orchestra bearing down on the rippling melody carried by the string section.

  Jordana’s father opened his eyes. Bounding back to the table, flicking a napkin onto his lap, he smiled at Pieter. “Isn’t that fantastic?”

  Jordana’s mother resumed serving soup. Em said, “I’ve never even heard of—is it Smetina?”

  Jordana’s father gave her a quick, pained smile, lips closed, chin turning briefly toward her but not his eyes. To Pieter, he said, “Stone deaf when he wrote this. He’s the only one of the Romantics without sentimentality. Later, of course, he went mad.”

  Jordana’s mother sighed, put the tureen down on the sideboard, and dropped into her chair at the foot of the table. The soup was matted with fibers of asparagus stalk; Jordana gulped wine to wash it down.

  “I think each course should have its own music to go with it, don’t you?” Jordana’s father said to Pieter. “Tonight we’ll have Smetana as an appetizer, Berg as a main course, and for dessert—?”

  “Bach?” Pieter guessed.

  Jordana’s father twinkled at him. “A man after my own heart,” he announced to the table.

  “That’s interesting,” said Em. “Like having different wine—”

  “Of course,” Jordana’s father said, still to Pieter, “there’s also Purcell to consider. Or one could even dash to the other end of the spectrum—”

  “Someone like Schoenberg.”

  “Exactly!” Her father beamed. “Something angular, to offset the sweetness. But the
n naturally we can’t have Berg as our main course. … Mussorgsky? Too rough?”

  It had been Jordana’s father who’d insisted Pieter bring Em. She had two small spots of color high on her cheeks. Jordana, though happy at Em’s discomfort, was taken aback by Pieter’s apparent unawareness. Before dinner, she’d wanted to change into tidier clothes but had known that would make her more ridiculous in front of Em. Now she was glad that she had instead crayoned even more kohl around her eyes, come to the table barefoot, silver bracelets jingling. Fuck them both.

  “Mendelssohn was a sentimentalist,” Pieter was saying.

  “What do you mean, he’s sentimental?” Jordana broke in. “Who are you to say that?”

  Pieter turned his gaze to her. To fit his long legs under the table, his chair was pushed back perhaps a foot. He shrugged, almost lazily. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “He’s a great composer. You’re just in an orchestra.”

  Her father looked between them, eyes sparkling with amusement, one finger folded over his lips. He leaned forward, chest almost touching his crossed legs, waiting to see if they’d go on. When Pieter didn’t respond, her father seemed disappointed, but he just straightened up and said lightly, “So, no Mendelssohn. And of course the equation falls apart somewhat if the food can’t support the music.” He held up his left hand as, with his right, he lifted his spoon and tasted the soup. He coughed and pushed away the bowl. “Uhhhh. Please don’t be polite. You needn’t eat it.”

  “It’s good,” Jordana said.

  Em and Pieter glanced at each other and said together, “It’s very good.”

  “No, no, no,” said Jordana’s father, holding up his hands. “Please. Perhaps the next course will be edible.” He turned to his wife. “What is the next course, my love?”

  As an adult, Jordana would understand this scene far better than she’d understood it at the time. She would realize that her father had been confusingly, painfully infatuated with each of the young men he “took under his wing” from the orchestra. His manic cheer as he presented Pieter with esoteric recordings and glasses of single-malt Scotch was cover for his agitation. She came to understand, at least partially, her father’s cruelty to her mother, a woman with money—money that, now Jordana’s, helped pay for Angie’s treatment—but without charm.