You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [72]
“You want to sit down?” Lauren asks.
“Okay,” he says.
They cross the landing into what looks to be a guest room. Lauren flops down onto a large white sofa. “I bet the Davidsons are drinking piña coladas in some beach hut on Aruba.”
“Yeah,” Ted agrees, “talking to friends about their good son Jack applying early admission.”
“Exactly.”
“My parents never go away,” he says. “Do yours?”
“Sometimes. They’re trite. They care about silly things.”
“Harsh.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It is.”
Ted perches on the edge of the couch. “You seem older.”
She turns to look at him, her eyes slightly narrowed, slightly blurred.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like you’ve experienced all this before. The way you don’t talk much, but like you’re thinking something instead, something you’re not saying. It’s odd.” He would like to put his hand behind her head and let it rest in his palm, perhaps taste the jade lozenge hanging round her neck. He wonders what he would know about her if they touched.
“I’m stoned,” he says, leaning back into the sofa. “If I say weird stuff, you won’t be offended, will you?”
She shakes her head. “I’m drunk.”
Ted closes his eyes. He sees Mrs. Maynard asleep in her room up on the hill. He’s never mentioned to his parents or his brother that he visits her, but then they’ve never asked about the program he signed up for.
“I went to this store today,” he says, “with this woman I visit over in Plymouth, for the volunteer thing. I draw for her usually, but we went out today. She kind of flipped out in the store. She ripped up this poster they had, and then . . .” He sees Mrs. Maynard’s face as she gazed, terrified, onto the highway ahead of them. “In the car she told me there was a woman sitting in the backseat, but that I shouldn’t look because she was angry. She said she heard the woman’s voice a lot but she only saw her once in a while.”
He opens his eyes and looks at Lauren. “The strange thing is,” he says, “I wasn’t scared. I mean, it was creepy, but I believed her.”
“You thought there was really another person in your car that you couldn’t see?”
“For her there was, yeah.”
To this Lauren makes no reply. They sit on the couch a while, listening to Lou Reed singing from downstairs. The borderline defeat in his voice seems alien to the objects in the room: the coffee table books, the dried flowers, the waffle-patterned bed skirts, the beige clock and ruffled curtains—these things they’re supposed to want one day. The objects persist blandly in the bland intention of their owners. For Ted, they have the sadness of the things in his own house, the maple living room set his parents bought the year he was born, the dining room table they used to sit at when he was younger, reminders of old marital hope. He and Lauren are just florid detritus in a room like this, drifting past on the dead river of time that never ceases here.
“I like you,” Lauren says.
Suddenly, Ted’s heart crashes into his rib cage. He hears George Clooney yell, “Lidocaine!” sees himself sped on a gurney toward a team of doctors, bright lights, IV drips, and he knows he is very high and all of a sudden absolutely happy.
“That’s so cool,” he says to her. “I got you some lipstick.”
And then Heather is standing in front of them, rage of a prosecutor emblazoned on her face, and she says she’s leaving, there’s another party at the Putnams’, and if they want a ride they better come.
II
THE HOLIDAYS BRING Christmas lights and family visits to Plymouth Brewster, along with the news that Mrs. Johnson is retiring at the end of the year. The new man, Mr. Attwater, young and handsome in a boring sort of way, wears dark suits and shakes everyone’s hand. The older women coo, the younger women are suspicious, the men play cards. Rehearsals for Our Town keep Ted from coming the first two weeks of December, though he calls to tell Elizabeth and says he’s sorry.
The second time he phones they speak a long while. Ted sounds reluctant to hang up. Finally, Elizabeth steels her courage and asks, “Have you seen Lauren?” They have not mentioned their