Last night I slept on the floor between Tony and Chico. Tony curled up under my neck until morning when he started nuzzling me awake to feed him. I’d been dreaming about Yvonne and I thought it was her. I had a headache. The phone was lying beside me off the hook. Sarah had stayed on with me until I fell asleep and I guess I hadn’t even woken to hang it up.
Tony pushed against me for breakfast. There was no cat food and no tuna, so I made a couple of bowls of pastina and split it between the three of us. They just sniffed and walked away.
My head still hurts. I want to call Eric but I’m afraid he’d be annoyed. I called his office three times but left no message. I’ve been sitting here listening to Tosca, eating pastina, and trying to remember what happened last night.
I’m pretty sure I left the loft first and I guess Mark decided to stay out. By the time I left I’d had three glasses of wine so I don’t remember exactly what happened in what order. What we decided. Maybe he said he wouldn’t stay there. Maybe he told me where he was going. I don’t remember.
I went to that Al-Anon meeting. That I remember. There didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go—and probably anywhere would have been more appealing. I hate going to that part of St. Mark’s Place. Any part of St. Mark’s Place. Cheap restaurants, incense, and dirty-looking, raggedy-dressed people in lots of clunky jewelry—most of them smoking. Twelve Step has taken over most of the stretch between Second and Third. Alcoholics and drug users, overeaters and undereaters, debtors, sex obsessors, and cross-addicted whiners hanging out drinking Cokes, smoking, eating Twinkies, and encouraging one another up and down the filthy stretch of street.
Anyway, I don’t think I even noticed anyone last night—what with the cold and the three glasses of wine. I took a cab there. I gave the driver a five for a three and a quarter fare and got out in front of a shop called Religious Sex.
To get into the meeting room you have to pass through a long tunnel—kind of like a fallopian tube—painted a deep shade of Pepto Bismol pink with black trim. The whole thing seems like a passage into another realm. I think it used to be a famous club for rock bands in the sixties. Someone was smoking at the back of the room. The meeting was crowded. They’d just finished reading the Twelve Steps and they were at that part where they say “We already love you even if we don’t know you,” or something like that. Something stupid. And is that ever a lie. They’re a nasty, self-absorbed bunch. They love themselves. That’s what.
Anyway I was feeling really bad. This girl in black leather pants pinned up the leg with about twenty-five safety pins said her name was Spike, and that she was obsessed with the wrong guy. That’s how she put it. She said she was afraid she was going to “pick up.” She started going on and on about how she sabotages herself. How she has these tendencies.
“I mean,” she said, using her hands a lot for emphasis, “I mean I get on a train and the sign says Boston and I am going to Pittsburgh.” She looked at us like we were supposed to get it. “I mean I know I am going to Pittsburgh and I see the sign says Boston. But I sit down. And then, when we get to Boston, I say ‘Hey, this isn’t Pittsburgh.’ I mean, the sign said Boston. You know what I mean?”
It really was the stupidest thing. I wanted to tell her she should go to hell and spare us all. Then some weasly-looking guy with a nose ring started saying that stuff about trying to buy oranges in a hardware store. I was thinking that they should read some real poems if they’re that excited about language and analogies. I almost started to laugh. I stood up.
“Yeats,” I began, “said that the intellect of man is forced to choose between the perfection of the self and the perfection of the work . . .”
“Hey,” this fat girl shouted, “you didn’t raise your hand.”
“. . . and I have to admit I am in the process of perfecting neither.” I thought that was pretty good.
“Please,” the group leader said. She was a short woman with green hair. “You have to wait to be acknowledged.”
“Hey,” I returned, “I’ve sat through about ten of these meetings and rarely said a word. Now it’s my turn.”
I wasn’t going to let a woman with green hair tell me what to do.
“She’s drunk,” someone shouted from the back of the room.
“You’re not allowed to come to a meeting drunk.”
“No crosstalk,” the leader with the green hair was saying.
“My name is Yvonne and I am not an alcoholic,” I said as though it were the wittiest thing on earth.
The first rule of humor, Mark says, is that it has to be funny. Even last night I knew I wasn’t being very funny.
“I need to talk,” I said. I was afraid I was going to cry. For some reason I thought of that woman in the tight pink dress from the first meeting I ever went to. Her whining and rubbing her hands up and down her hips and moaning about how her husband beat her. “I wish my husband would beat me,” I said, as though it logically followed.
People had stopped talking. Everyone was looking at me as though they didn’t know what to do. I had the floor.
“My husband is having an affair. Her name is Yvonne,” I said. This part is all really clear. I heard someone whisper that maybe I was crazy.
“Isn’t she Yvonne?” someone else asked.
I started telling them about Norma and Adalgisa, giving them the whole synopsis, explaining about Pollione and Mark. Then this big beefy guy came up behind me and took my arm.
“Come on, honey,” he said, “let’s get you some air.”
“Keep coming back,” I yelled into the room on the way out.
Then I remember sitting on top of a school desk, in that pink-and-black fallopian tube, talking to him, telling him about me and Yvonne, never bothering to explain about the names. He kept nodding—I don’t know if he was even listening. He gave me a cigarette. I let him light it for me and took a drag. It tasted awful. People were walking in and out. A young kid strummed a guitar, a burning cigarette wedged under the top strings.
“Professor Spera?” A bald young woman hesitated before us at the desk. I couldn’t connect who she was. Then I remembered. Most people don’t know too many bald women.
I jumped down. An ash from the cigarette dropped onto Yvonne’s green scarf.
I could see her in the back of the classroom. She always sits in the back. I tried to think of her name.
“Stacey,” she said.
“Stacey,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else. The wine was wearing off and I was beginning to realize what I’d just done in there.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Jesus,” I said. It never occurred to me I might actually know someone in one of those rooms. I wanted to mention that stuff about anonymity, but I don’t know her that well. And I didn’t want her to think I was scared.
“You were pretty funny,” she said.
“Jesus,” I said again, “I’ve been having an awful day.”
“Yeah,” she said, “me too.”
Then we were both quiet. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I had the feeling she was laughing at me. I hoped to God I hadn’t given her a C.
“I liked your paper,” I said after a while. I couldn’t remember what she wrote but I needed to say something.
She smiled.
Maybe I gave her an A. I hope it was an A.
“Stacey . . .”
A few kids walked in with a blaring radio. The beefy guy told them to turn it down.
“You don’t have to worry,” Stacey said. “I wasn’t sure it was you until you said that thing about Yeats.”
“Oh, God,” I said. I tried to picture her with hair just to center myself.
“It’s funny,” she said. “My mom does stuff like that all the time.”
Her mom. Now I have to worry about her trying to get back at me for something her mother did when she was eight. I think maybe I gave her a B. Certainly not less than a B minus. I should call NYU and find out.
I started to put on Yvonne’s leather coat. With that coat I almost fit in. All I needed were a tattoo and a nose ring. Maybe a swastika.
“Need me to help you find a cab?”
“No,” I said, “it’s okay. I need to walk.”
She kept stalling. Like she was trying to keep me there. The way they say you’re supposed to keep an obscene phone caller on the line long enough to trace the call.
“I kind of thought you’ve been having a rough time,” she said. “You’ve seemed really, well, different toward the end of the semester. Great class, though.”
So they’d noticed.
“I kind of like it,” she said, “when a teacher seems vulnerable, too.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was feeling pretty vulnerable.
When I recounted the conversation to Sarah she seemed to think there was nothing ominous about it, but I don’t know. Sarah didn’t see what she looked like.
I waited in front of Religious Sex and tried to figure out where to go. I kept thinking people were going to stop me. Ask what I was doing there. I bought a pair of dark glasses at an outdoor kiosk, and, on impulse, a packet of tattoos.
I put on the glasses. Funny how one person seeing you, recognizing you, makes you feel so exposed. I’ve been thinking how I have to be really careful from now on. When you’re not careful you start making stupid mistakes. Like Raskolnikov. I haven’t been careful enough at Yvonne’s. I have to start trusting people less. I thought of calling Brian—he was only a few blocks away—but I thought he might not be alone. And I wanted to be strong and composed the next time I saw him.
I walked crosstown to the West Village where it was cleaner, more civilized. I picked up a take-out cappuccino and walked around drinking it through the sip lid. I went into the Gap. A schmaltzy version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was playing and I walked right out. I was tired but I kept walking deeper into the West Village, past Waverly and Bank to Jane Street, Mark’s old apartment. I stood outside the building thinking about the way we used to make love in there, the way I learned how to make love in there. I walked into the vestibule and looked at the names on the mailboxes. The names were different but it still smelled the same—like Sunday dinners at my grandparents’ house. After a while I felt so bad I bought another bottle of wine and hopped a cab to the loft. Mark hadn’t even left a note. I dialed Yvonne’s three times and got no answer. It was only 9:00.
Somewhere into the bottle of wine I called Sarah. She told me to breathe and let go, kept saying things like “God is the breath inside the breath.” But that just made me feel worse. It depressed me to think of God just being a breath. What kind of help is that? A breath. I told her I thought she must be hyperventilating.
She offered to come over, but we decided to go to sleep on the phone. For company.