Appraised Valuation

"Let's fly to Bermuda," Bill said. "Ellie, darling, let's go back, dance naked in the rain, drink Pina-Colada from a shoe, find our past."

Bill! And me wearing a sweater with a jungle cat in the center.

He pulled me to him. I started to yield, then pulled back. I rummaged in my pocket for a mint, slipped it into my mouth, and fumbled around in my handbag, thinking I'd possibly locate a gold earring with a deep blue sapphire set in the center.

"Take it easy," Bill said.

"Where the hell is my earring?"

He smiled that way. I killed my impulse to say damn you and your ambiguous smile. What good would such language do?

We met quite by accident in a garden outside of an old hotel. I had stopped for a cold drink. I had just messed up a carefully planned job interview, where several things went wrong. I was nervous from not sleeping. The air in the office hung in a cold state of air-conditioning, and I had felt a sneeze coming on. My handbag flipped open. Face powder, lipstick, car keys, credit cards, photos, and a bottle of perfume flew out, under my chair, under his desk on the plush rug. I scrambled around on the floor picking up the mess. In a nutshell: a faulty clasp on my handbag, and an end instead of beginning.

Now, outside the hotel, the ground was smooth underfoot, the air fresh and sweet. I came here hoping to run into some young student or salesman to chat with. I never looked my age. I pulled out my mirror for reassurance.

He pecked at my ear. Wouldn't you know? "Bill?" I said, but who else?

Bill went into the hotel, brought out cold bottles of strawberry fruit-punch. He looked older and so did I, I suppose. Still we were the same age and went back to high school and meeting under stars sprinkled like silver confetti in black nights. After a while the moonlight disappeared and so did Bill.

Bill married a lady with brains. And a lot of money. He gave his side of the story: it seemed the rich lady took her brains and her money and left. But Bill didn't need her, he said.

So everybody I knew was successful. One would expect the same from me.

"I keep busy," I said.

"I thought of you often," Bill said, "lost track of you through the years, wondered how you're making out."

"I'm solvent."

"That sweater is fascinating." Bill was the State Budget Director now, also lots of private real estate dealings, he went on. Just one lucky break after another, the governor knew his father. . .

At the same time people are robbing at gunpoint, shooting even children on playgrounds.

"You said you live near?" Bill said.

I won't invite him to my home. I'm here; he's there. I own a three-story brown townhouse. The weeds took over on my patio. Both sides of the street are lined with brownstones past their prime, littered and noisy. The neighbors cook cabbage and onions and don't speak English. A narrow dark street at night with shifting shadows. A sick-sweet odor lives in my parlor. I leave food on a plate in the kitchen for my roommate Gretchen, a gray mouse who doesn't have the sense to leave me.

"You've gone through my mind a lot," Bill said, "I've thought of you more than you know."

I wear my sweater with the tiger on the front for the animals slaughtered, for elephants killed for their ivory, for fish caught in oil-slicked water.

"If you could, what would you give me, Ellie?" He looked away. "The past?" He motioned to the trunks of the trees, the distant purple of the Adirondack mountains.

"Oh come now."

"A likely question, eh?" he said.

"No good looking back. Memories are whispers in dark valleys," I said.

"Why do you avoid me? What I have asked is so little. We go back a ways. We need to reminisce, remember other times. What is there about me that makes you not give?"

"If we had a magic carpet to transport us back where we started, to see things as they really were. . ."

"So why are you telling me this?" he said. "Did I ask for a lecture from you, the girl fumbling in her handbag?" He looked at me evenly. "The girl with one earring?"

Fuck this cracked mirror. Oh, yes, I think. Want to see what happens to people like me, Bill? Makes you feel better to see the little folks who don't make it? Take it back to the office and talk about it over cocktails? Is that it?

Conventional knowledge now is in unanimous agreement that everything we become starts in the home. This power is a new divine rebirth. The home is the nurturing ground of the seed, and from this the plant will grow.

We walked to the brownstone instead of taking his car. Bill held his hand on the crook of my elbow. The neighbors were cooking something that smelled like old fish. They jabbered and chewed at each other. The sidewalks needed repair, one broken section after another. Yellow garbage bags lined the street.

"O.K. So now you've got what you want. Isn't this what you wanted to see? Isn't it?"

"This," he said. "What's the real estate value?"

"I don't know. My aunt willed it to me." I climbed the stairs. He was still adding up figures.

"What's the appraised valuation?" he said.

My top stair needed repair. I stopped at the door with the frosted glass and looked back. He was talking about something, not looking up, copying in a book. I closed the door.