RED CORVETTE

Yula doesn’t care for roses.  Sitting at the kitchen table she rubs her fingers across a few.  On the counter are more vases of them, red and yellow in the morning sunlight.  Everyone brought roses.  They spread over the kitchen, over the table, crowding it.  She is uneasy about them all.  She moves one of the vases in front of her so it is out of the sun, so it shines a little less.  Then she slides her wedding ring off and sets it on the kitchen table. 

Behind the roses Rickie, a stout boy, quiet, and apprehensive, gazes at her through the wall of flowers.  He smiles to her.  He goes back to ripping petals.  It is nice to have the reception at home.  What does Ulie call it?  Communal reinforcement?  She’s not sure if that’s something she wants, of if it’s manufactured to make her feel not so alone.  But she is not alone now.  Maybe it’s working.  Company soothes the mind.  She will ask Ulie if it really works.  But he must be winding through the foyer, passing off Michael Cunningham as an interesting field of discussion.  She can find him if she leaves her seat.  She scratches her left ear, looks to the hallway, a white stucco archway, for him, but he’s not there.  The company that is soothing her mind, who came from around Pasadena, Orange County, and San Fernando, to love her and hug her and tell her everything will be okay, are now blocking the doorway.  Some of them laugh, others converse quietly.  A sandy haired woman approaches and expresses her sorrow to Yula, which Yula accepts with a tight squeeze of the hand.  Then the woman returns to the foyer while Yula takes a drag from her cigarette and turns back to the roses.

She catches Rickie’s bright blue eyes and he clenches another smile.  “Hey Rickie,” she begins, but he ducks his eight-year-old head under the table and runs to find his mother.  She stamps out her cigarette.

“Yula,” says a tall, shadowed man.  He rests his wide, right hand on her left shoulder.  And she looks way, way up until he is an upside down head looking quizzically at her.

“Frank,” Yula says, rising, “have a drink.” 

“Yes,” says the man.  He’s a doctor.  She guides him to the marble counter and grabs a bottle of Sauvignon wine from behind the wall of flowers.  He is strong and slender and his young face is only betrayed by a patch of graying hair above his ears.  His perch chin curves in such a way that makes him look happier.  Frank is wearing his tan shirt with blue crisscrosses, one she’s seen him wear to dinner parties.  He breathes.  He looks as though he wants to speak.  But he looks away from her and breathes again. 

“Nice stain glass, isn’t it,” he says.

“It’s stuffy in here.  What?”  Yula looks to the group of people in the doorway of the kitchen as Ulie St. John appears, weaving between their casual attire.  She loses him in the crowd and another group—who had taken her previous seat at the kitchen table—catches her attention.  She watches hand movements, how they direct each other’s enthusiasm with motion, not unlike a ring leader at a circus.  Circled together, they talk about Palestine, and the continuing civil war that will never end.  The man at the leading end of the discussion, taking a strong position that the war will not end, is Hunter Wilhelm, a violinist for the Philharmonic Orchestra, second seat, second row, right in front of the cellists.  She doesn’t immediately recognize the other three.  They look like Hunter’s friends.  Second row as well.  Suddenly she is interested how each met.

Frank catches her eyes, clears his throat, and says it again, “Nice stain glass.”

“Oh. Yes,” she says, feeling a little embarrassed. “But I don’t think it agrees with the rest of the house.”

“The image, though,” Frank raises and lowers his glass cautiously. “Stallion leaping over stream.”

“Yeah?”

“Nice.” 

She mulls it over, the black stallion, the stream, the green field.  There is something simple about the mid-action crossing that makes it tranquil, almost transcendental.  It leads her eyes from jump to landing without actually showing either.  She wants to feel that sensation.  She pours herself some wine, drums her fingers on the countertop, taps her foot three times.  She thinks about lighting another cigarette, but declines.  Death better not be a stuffy kitchen with flowers.  They are too conscientious, too ambiguous, and too much of a contrast for the white walls and the vanilla crème cabinets.  They are just something to keep her mind off the present.  Death must be more like an airport terminal at night, tan wallpaper, flickering television screens, a frigid seat and a broken swamp cooler.  That’s what it is: a quiet, unoccupied place.

Rickie runs over to Yula with a yellow rose he found somewhere in the foyer.

“Thanks,” she says as he lets go, and proceeds to suck on his forefinger. “What happened Rickie?”  She reaches to pull his hand, expecting to see a small red dot where pricked his finger, but Rickie recoils and darts off into the crowd again. 

Yula could never have children.  She was barren and when the subject of adoption was raised, the war seemed to slip into the conversation, drowning it in its political purpose.

“You have a beautiful kid,” she says.  She sips her Sauvignon.  She balances the glass between her fore and middle fingers, swaying it gently. 

“Kids,” says Frank. “They need mothers.”

Yula doesn’t say anything, although she has something to say.  She can tell him how drab his exposition is, how frustrating it is to hear something so obvious that everyone in this room, even perhaps Rickie on some level, knew, and how, until very recently, she had been mourning in peace.  She can ask for a cigarette and leave Frank standing next to the wall of flowers in the kitchen.  How evil.  It feels good to be evil.  Anyway, it has been a long while since Yula has been good.  Santa hasn’t visited her in a while, or even the Easter Bunny, or any fantastical character from her childhood that symbolizes the classic household. 

If the classic household were a person, she’d be waiting right now in a quiet airport terminal, stuck in layover.

“Mm, hmm,” she says, looks through the stain. The outside is distorted and painted through it.  There are cars littered up the drive.  Excursion, F-150 truck, Civic.  She comes across something different.  “Whose red Corvette is that?”

Frank leans over the flowers and peers through the stain, holding his wine glass out to balance him.  How fragile he holds it.  She thinks him unremarkable the way he balances it.  “It’s mine,” he says.

“New?” she asks.  She watches his movements, delicate and graceful and swimming.  The way he tilts the edge of his glass to his mouth so he gets the right amount of liquid, the way his left arm folds behind him and rests on his belt line: swimmingly.  Every movement crafted with the utmost precision and care.  She finds it tiresome.  All of it.  All of him.

“Got it Tuesday.”  He sips his wine again, downs the last bit.  She pours him another glass.

“What about Julia?”

“Has the Explorer,” he says.  She can still feel the skin around his bellybutton if she stands very still and imagines.  She can smell the aftershave he wears.  Frank puts down his glass, picks a yellow rose from its vase and smells it.  He spins it in his hand and feels the fleshy petals, the silken grace of the almost dead.  He offers it to her.

“I can never be sick of flowers,” she says, taking it, placing it back.

“You,” he replies, “need your head examined.”

She smiles, but turns from his eyes.

Then he says, “I’m sorry about your husband.”

She freezes.  Smiles again, only this time the smile fades quickly.  “Well,” she says, “it wasn’t like he was getting any better.”  Yula flips her fingernail at the blue vase to hear its plink.  She is tired of flowers.  Flowers, she thinks, only signify remorse.  Yula bends over one vase of roses to look through the stain.  “It really is a nice car.  Isn’t it, Frank?”

“Three hundred fifty horsepower,” he says.

“That can leap a lot of streams.”

“Three hundred fifty streams.”

“Sounds nice,” she says, setting her glass next to a vase of red roses and one yellow.  Yula raps her fingers on the countertop, taps her foot three times. 

“Do you miss him?” he says gently.

“No. Well, yes.”  She hesitates, hopes he doesn’t notice.  “I do, but of course I have you.”  What a childish question.  What is Frank doing anyway, conducting a psychological analysis of widows? 

Yula grips the counter tight as she repeats the word in her head.  Widow.  She looks back out to the Corvette.  “I miss him.”

Frank says, “He was a good friend.”

Yula doesn’t answer, she begins to sway in place. 

Everyone who dies is a good friend.  Everyone.  Even husbands.  Husbands who die are good people.  She feels the marbled countertop, the strength of it, imagines her husband’s bones as marble, smooth and glistening, the muscles of his legs and arms thinning and withered and pale, as if his entire body had been in a cast for years, sunless, motionless.  He was more spirit than body in the end.  She imagines where her husband is now, though she knows she can never understand.  She imagines him sitting, cross legged, arm over some uncomfortable seat, watching the other souls coming and going in silence.  He’d be listening to the flights over the intercom, waiting for his flight’s boarding call.  Yula moves over to the kitchen table, picks up the ring and slips it into the back pocket of her jeans.  She walks back to Frank, finishes her glass of wine, and pours another.  Frank exhales a deep resonant breath.  He takes another drink, and she thinks of his lips and their crisp, weathered look.  Their calm, demure movements: open and closed.  Pressed.  Their lilac softness, their exquisite taste.  A quiet, unoccupied place.

“He was a drunk and a womanizer,” she says.  “But a good husband and a terrible lover.”

“Did he have any last words?” says Frank.

Yula pauses.  “No, he didn’t. Should he?”  She sips her wine.

“No. Well…No. I was just curious.” 

Yula stops drinking.  “He said very little toward the end.  It was painful. It was painful to see him.  He was sick for so long.  He was untouchable for so long.  It wasn’t hard to tell one morning that he had passed some time during the night.”

“During the night,” repeats Frank.  “Good way to go.”

She doesn’t say anything, she replenishes Frank’s glass.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Yula sips her wine, propping the glass with her arms in a complicated manner, then sets down her glass.  She looks to see if Frank is eyeing her.  He’s not. 

“Do you think she knows about us?” asks Yula.

“Who?  Julia?  I don’t know.  Perhaps.” 

He turns away from her, towards the crowd.  Yula turns as well.  Julia must be in the foyer somewhere.  Stumbling, Ulie emerges from the doorway pulling a man Yula doesn’t know, or met but forgot his name.  One thing was for sure, he didn’t seem gay.  A little drunk, but not gay.

Yula picks her glass up again, says, “I haven’t seen her yet.  She’s avoiding me.” 

“Ulie’s asking to get knocked out, isn’t he?” says Frank, tasting his wine.  A server with hors d'oeuvres on a golden platter walks to the group at the table where Hunter, now standing, uses his arm movements more dramatically, takes an cracker with brie, eats it, then sits down again.  The man with the black bowtie across from him is shaking his head in disbelief, and the man to his side, undecided, furrows his brow, nods, shakes his head, nods again.  The server then offers to Frank and Yula.

“Thank you,” he says, taking a cracker.  He washes it down with a tongue-full of wine.  Yula declines.  The server disappears behind the group cluttering the kitchen door. 

“Your wife is avoiding me,” she says.

“Julia’s not.  I mean, I’m sure she’s not,” he says.  “Well, perhaps.  Though it doesn’t matter.”  Yula realizes Frank seems very confident of his situation with Julia and his son, but then he’s always felt confident.  Doctors have to feel confident.

“In a manner of speaking,” says Yula.  She hears Frank’s breathing and as he clears his throat, his gentle sipping of his wine, every nuance of his bones and muscles.  “It matters to me.”

“Why would it matter?” asks Frank, lifting his eyebrows. “It’s been a year since. My family is together and happy. I’ve moved on.”

Yula looks at him and flinches.  Immediately she is repulsed by him.  “You’re a bastard,” she says.

“A terrible bastard,” he replies.

“Without a heart.”

“Removed it years ago,” says Frank.  They laugh.  She realizes that they haven’t laughed together in a long time.  She’s not sure how long, but long enough to forget.  They stare at each other once again.

Rickie’s minuscule footsteps run quickly through the foyer to the kitchen.  “Daddy, daddy,” says the boy, approaching.  “Daddy, daddy.” 

“What’s up, kiddo?” says Frank, folding his legs to lower himself to his son’s height.  The man and the boy are on equal terms.  The child tightens his shoulders against his neck as if to hide.  Rickie glances to Yula, then back to Frank.  Rickie looks embarrassed to have interrupted.  Still, he opens his mouth to speak.

“Ice cream, daddy.  I want to get some ice cream.”  The boy looks to his father with such urgency that Frank smiles.  He rubs the child’s head with his unoccupied hand.

“Did you ask your mother?” says Frank.

Rickie kicks with his foot, and lowers his head to the blue and white kitchen tiles. 

“I didn’t,” says the child.

“Well, go ahead.  Ask her.”  Rickie darts between the kitchen doorway.  Frank rises to meet Yula’s eyes.

“Are you still leaving?” he says.

“Yes.  My flight leaves at six.”  Yula rubs her back pocket, touching the tiny bulge of her wedding ring, feeling its circular shape.  The object of commitment.  A commitment broken before it ended.  What if she did not leave?  Would Frank and she get together again?  Would life for Frank and Julia and Rickie continue as it has been for years in the spatial bond of nuclear family?  How then, she thinks, do I continue?

“Do you mind if I ask where?”

“Nowhere,” she says. “Nowhere important.”

“You can tell me.  Where are you going?”  Frank moves closer to Yula.  He’s trying to frighten her.  She doesn’t budge; she doesn’t want to seem afraid.  She doesn’t want him to know she’s afraid.  She can smell his aftershave now.  He takes another step toward her. 

“Boston,” she says, turning from him.

“Boston?”

“I have family—And… Yes, family.”

“That’s a ways,” says Frank.  “Half the country.  How long since you’ve been?”

“Don’t remember,” Yula replies. “Years though.”  She sips her wine, then adds, “I really do need my head examined.”

“How long will you be gone?” he asks.

“A week.  A month.  I don’t know.”  They stare at each other’s wine glasses and watch the liquid fill its space.  It’s a mutual acceptance of denouement.  Eyes moving from glass to face they do nothing but accept it.  Yula leans against the kitchen counter.  She holds her glass to her belly and looks down to it.  “I’m starting over.”  Suddenly it’s as if a secret question had simultaneously been asked and answered.  Will she come back?  She doesn’t know, and neither, she thinks, should he.

“You could always come with me,” she says playfully.  For a moment she is hopeful.  She imagines that things could be how she wants.

“Maybe,” he begins, “we should go over there before Ulie gets killed.”  Frank’s head is turned toward the poet.  Ulie’s arms are now in full flap, and he is talking fast because the other man looks irritated.  How much flapping would it take for him to fly away?  Frank gently sips the rest of his Sauvignon.  Takes a step toward Ulie, but Yula, very quickly, touches him at the elbow.

“Yes, I think I would have,” she says letting go, “liked to ride in your new car.”  She taps the shaft of her glass with her finger, she looks to him, and he to her.  Yula holds herself not too rigidly, balancing her right elbow off her left hand that rests against her tiny belly.  Her hair pours and breaks off her shoulders like water.  The green top she is wearing clings around her sides, making her more defined.  Yula looks out the stain glass again. 

“Yes, I would have.”

She feels as if motionless—mid air from some sort of leap, waiting to come down.  She is ready.  Leaving will be the fall; the last trot over this obstacle.  She will leave.  She will leave and everyone will forget her.  Yula the plain, boring housewife.  The forty two-year-old who throws decent parties and watches soaps.  Who listens to Neil Diamond and Boston.  Who forgets her mother’s birthday each year.  Yula who outlived her forty nine-year-old husband dead six days ago from stomach cancer.  She will leave and the pain will go away.  She has placed the house on the market.  She has packed enough clothes. 

Yula moves up to Frank.  She presses her lips to his cheek and kisses him.

A scream and everyone’s eyes turn to a lost corner near the kitchen doorway.  Ulie St. John is on the floor, propped up with one hand on the blue and white tiling, his other protecting his face.  The tall man stands over Ulie, fists clenched and shaking.  He looks around at the staring guests.  The man’s mouth is tight and small, his eyes furrowed in anger.  Somehow, the quiet discussion of the house seizes instantly, like the last breath of a dying man, and silence overtakes them all.  It is amazing, thinks Yula, how silence sounds like death and the realization of life together.

On the floor, Ulie pushes himself away from the angry man.  He holds his nose where it is likely broken, and already Yula can see the object purpling and a thin rose of blood above his mouth.

Some friends of his come rushing out of the foyer behind him, Phillip DeMurre, William Lawrence, and Sophie March.  Phillip is wrapped in a white shirt, blue tie.  William is wearing the same, but more indistinctly.  Sophie’s gray skirt is tacky and revealing.  All three are overdressed.  The three friends stand at attention, as if backup singers for Ulie’s song of love.  But the song is silenced now, and the angry man sees his error.  He storms out of the house, blows through the crowd of like a humanoid typhoon.  Then the commotion begins again, now louder than before.  And Ulie St. John is the center of attention.  He is helped up and comforted as he begins to cry.

Phillip says, “Calm down, Ulie.”

William says, “You’re too good for him.”

Sophie says, “Wow, look at that shiner.”

The crowd, in turn, says their peace with Ulie.  As if all of them, the victims of bullies or violence, could detonate their pent up frustration out on the nameless man who punched the gay poet. 

“Pipe down, Ulie,” shouts Hunter from the table.  “This isn’t your day.”  No one contests the request.  Even Ulie, tears streaming down his face, sobbing, tries doing it quieter.  Hunter returns to his conversation.  Years later, Ulie will remind everyone at one of Phillip’s bar get-togethers, and Phillip will say that Ulie is the bravest man he knows.  When Ulie doesn’t get a free drink from the prospect of past assault, he’ll drive back to his penthouse apartment, stand with the mirror combing his black, finger-long hair, and ponder jumping from his thirty first floor window.  Ulie St. John will then fall into his bed depressed but not defeated, masturbate to one of his guy-friends, and fall asleep to Roxeanne by Sting. 

“Isn’t that just like him,” says Frank.

“Everyone needs attention, I guess.”

“No, I mean his sex drive.  The man’s a menace.”  They laugh again, and Yula holds a smile long after the laughter subsides.  Each sees the other as a familiarity, a comfort but an obstacle.  Yula accepts this.  Everything is how it is, how it needs to be.  In the foyer, someone raises a glass and proposes a toast to the deceased.  No one startles much.  Everyone is sick of death by now.  They’d rather go home and watch television, talk to their mothers, and eat ice-cream with their sons.  But those around raise their glasses and smile anyways.  They drink. 

“What’s going on in the foyer?” says Frank, peering over people.

She finishes another glass of wine and sets it on the counter.  “I don’t know and I don’t care.” 

He sets his empty glass down next to hers and the wall of flowers.  He runs his hand over the tips of the roses next to him, then over the next batch closer to Yula.  He touches her hand on the counter.  She doesn’t pull away.  She thinks of Ulie’s poem of a man calming his horse, of his wife watching.  How firmly the man holds the steed, but the horse rears in a rage and the man is tugged underneath and trampled.  The wife wants to help but her movements are delayed.  And he calls to her, half-dead, tells her to shoot him, he’s dying.  So she goes into the house and grabs the rifle and aims it.  And Ulie leaves the poem there for a moment, paused with the woman’s thoughts, questioning what she should do, what she needs to do, before she puts him down and goes inside for dinner, then picks up a shovel and finishes the job.