My favorite story, Simon, was the one where you shot a pear off of your wife’s head. It was dead winter, as I recall, and the two of you had just returned
from Mexico. I slid by the doorman rather easily; a bundle of red tulips in my
fist, I knew they were Isabel’s favorite.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said.
“All in the name of Scrabble and brandy,” I said, and she leaned in to kiss me.
Oh Simon, how warm the southern air had made your wife’s cheeks. I followed close behind her and watched as she clipped the stems,
watched her shirt rise to show her navel as she reached for a vase.
“Let me help you.”
“Don’t be silly.”
I did not place my hands on your wife’s hips, nor did I hoist her onto the sink; instead I took a long, slow drink of
the Cabernet she poured for me. I had nearly forgotten the dark rim of her
irises.
“How are you, Charlie?” she asked.
“Brilliant.”
“Come, come,” she said and took my hand.
It was not until we entered the living area that I noticed the hole in the
wall. There it was, the size, nearly, of a basketball, perfectly centered
between Isabel’s latest paintings. I didn’t have it in me to ask what had happened, and so, I opted to watch your wife’s perfect mouth explain her work.
“This,” she said, “is a blue fish.” I nodded. “To the left of the blue fish is a red fish.”
I nodded again, Simon, my head bobbling like that of a sports team figurine.
You, my friend, were in the shower, not dead as I only briefly imagined, but
washing parts of you that I have not seen in a long time.
“Jet lag,” Isabel explained.
“Mmm.”
We stood staring, not at the hole between the paintings, but at the paintings
themselves, and though your wife smelled of jasmine and ripened fruit, I kept
my hands at my side.
“I love the blue one,” I told her. “The hook looks so real.”
And it did; it nearly made my mouth ache. I turned towards the windows; Isabel
turned to me.
“Oh Charlie,” she said. “Does it ever all seem so complicated?”
At that moment, though, nothing seemed complicated. The snow spun wild; I was a
man, and your wife, biting her pinky nail, a woman. It dashed through my head
that she wanted me, but surely, she didn’t. She was thinking, I know now, of how fifteen minutes prior to my knocking,
you had positioned her at the wall with a pear on her head and taken your
perfect aim. Did you kiss her first? Had you asked her to put her hair in those
two long braids? I imagine she was in cotton panties; what were you wearing,
Simon?
When the phone rang, Isabel brushed past me. I feigned interest in The New
Yorker for a moment and then found my opportunity to take a look through the
hole. The hard smell of metal on plaster, I saw Isabel first, cradling the
phone, whispering, smiling, chewing at the end of her braid, and, beyond her,
the hole widened, expanding through the next wall. You were shaving in what I’m sure was a fog-less mirror, and then, another hole, and a family. The
neighbors, I assume. Father was wrapping a blue and white scarf around his
neck; Mother was reminding him to pick up firewood; the son, a lanky boy of no
more than twelve, sat with hunched shoulders playing what appeared to be a
video game.
It occurred to me, Simon, that there are no chimneys in your high rise
building, but I am, as you’ve always told me, oblivious to what goes on behind closed doors, especially
where families are concerned.
What I remember most about the evening, however, is not that we would later run
down 28 flights because of a fire, nor the Scrabble game in which I beat the
pants off both you and your wife with my spectacular use of unsex, quell and
jive. What I remember is Isabel returning from her phone call. She looked like
a girl in love.
“Does what seem so complicated?” I asked her.
“Oh, Charlie. I’ll let Simon tell you.”
Every time I think of it, I get a glorious picture of you in my mind, that day,
before my arrival: the snow just beginning, the gun, hot with your hand, as
your small wife precariously placed fruit on her head.
I was thrilled, of course, when the weatherman confirmed the blizzard. You and I
would go to the store to pick up staples: bread, milk, eggs. If we were to
freeze to death, I proclaimed, we would do so feasting on french toast. Hurrah!
“Better hurry back,” the doorman said, and you tipped your hat, its ridiculous peacock feather erect
as we opened the door to the night. Snow blew every which way but down, and the
streets were slick and nearly empty.
“She’s leaving me,” you said.
Ah, Simon, this news did nothing for my belief that you were perfect. I had
imagined that even though I am one year your senior and three years Isabel’s senior, the two of you would adopt me as a son of sorts and that the snow
would never stop falling. We would be homebound, forced to order puppies over
the internet. New York’s only dogsled team would deliver them, and they would be soft and furry and
sleep in the crook of my arm.
At the very least, I imagined Isabel would leave you for me, and you would move
to a tiny stone home in New Mexico or a silver trailer in Wyoming. We’d send Christmas cards, and eventually all would be forgiven.
This is when you lay down in the street. I, your oldest friend, was plotting to
steal your wife who was, for all practical purposes, already stolen, and you
lay down in the snow and flapped your arms and legs and yelled out, “Angel!”
It made me think of our boyhood in Arkansas.
“Is there someone else?” I yelled and reached my hand towards you.
Do you remember, Simon, when I had just failed fourth grade because of my
mid-semester hernia surgery, and we were placed together in Ms. Trotter’s class? It was just after the summer that we alternated between shooting
Mountain Dew bottles off Ole Man Kellar’s fence and watching Scottie One Ball stick the aquarium pump up his ass.
I remember.
Who were we in love with then?
Or maybe it was the next summer. Maybe we didn’t like girls yet, but there was that film in health class. Ms. Trotter made the
whole speech about no laughing matter, so we thought it would be about doing
it, but it turned out to be about loneliness. Remember? The girl died face down
in the snow because nobody would walk her home from the bus stop.
But you, Simon, were out of the snow, and I was with you. We headed the final
two blocks to the grocer. You punched me in the arm, and I thought this meant
you wanted to talk.
“What’s with the holes?” I asked.
“She wants a divorce.”
“Bullshit.”
“Whatever.”
“No, not whatever,” I said. “It’s bullshit.”
“No shit,” you said, and I thought the wind would take us down. God, that was a long walk,
and then we were in the store, and you were acting like nothing had happened. “Hey, Charlie,” you said, “Catch.”
Ha ha, Simon, you were always so funny, but we were back on the street, and the
snowflakes were fat and dry. I wanted to hold them on my tongue and keep them
in my mouth.
“Seriously,” I said, “what’s with the holes in your walls?”
“Charlie, my man, I hate to say this, but I think you’re losing it.”
I wish I had been losing it, Simon. I wish it would have been me and not you.
I often go through the conversation we were meant to have. The one where you say
you preferred apples, but Isabel liked pears, how you told her you would
forgive her single infidelity if she would stand between the red fish and the
blue and keep her eyes open while you loaded the gun.
When we returned, though, Isabel was still there. She had left neither of us;
she had set up the Scrabble and warmed the brandy.
“Toddies!” she said, clapping her hands together, and we found ourselves around the table.
Isabel had changed into one of your white dress shirts, the top buttons open,
to expose her collarbone, I suppose. It reminded me of the way your mother used
to look when we’d come home from school, hair tied in a bun, eyes tired and deep like she had
seen the whole world and wanted nothing more than to offer us Cheetos.
You were always telling me that I was wrong, that your mother would be on the
next train out if it ran through town, but that was the problem with you,
Simon, always has been.
I will admit I drew a B that night, so there was some advantage to my game
because of the automatic double word score for laying down first on the pink
star, but I do think you and Isabel took it a bit harshly.
“Did Simon tell you?” Isabel asked as I arranged perfidy off of the “f” in your “after.”
“Charlie?”
“Hmm,” I responded.
“Simon told you, yes?”
“About the pears?” I asked.
“Pears?”
