< Apart From Love: Chapter 33 >

Not The End

He's been so busy, punching away at the machine and crumpling page after page into the trash bin, that lately I can’t get a word through to him no more. Oh, he’s replacing this tape with another and like, listening to my voice all the time—but not to me.

Which makes me wish sometimes that I was some written thing, some character in his book, because I would be more real to him that way. I see myself as her, springing to life, like, right out of them letters—which are so dense, so crammed on that page, that there isn’t no space to breathe—and smoothing all them creases with a slight, crispy rustle, which for sure, would win his attention right away.

I bet he would let himself stretch the truth about me, as a way to create her, because like, the paper can take it. His handwriting would draw the longest legs and the sexiest ass and the most perfect pair of boobs you could ever dream up. What’s more, she would become a mouth, like, for things that go on in his head, things so fucking raw and intense that they frighten him.

Them words he writes, they would all come out of her lips, stained with ink here and there, to say the things that in real life Lenny wishes he could blurt out, but holds himself back, as best he can, from doing so.

But then, that Anita won’t be me.

By now I’ve learned my lesson, I learned it good: I won’t leave no more pieces of me laying around. When I’m done with the tape recorder I pop my tape out, and stash it away at once, like, behind Beethoven’s bust or under it or some other such place, and I cover it with papers and stuff.

This way Lenny don’t get it in his hands, to listen to my voice, to study the way I enunciate things, so he don’t have no excuse to ignore the real me. And what’s more, he can’t get hurt by what he don’t hear, by what wasn’t meant for his ears in the first place, so he don’t feel so jealous no more, and he don’t try to forget it, to blank out how hurt he is.

Which is good, because then there’s no need to argue between us, like, if he’s the one betraying my trust by listening to my tape—or I’m the one betraying his, by what I say.

Anyhow, this evening he’s different. I hear him pacing around the balcony, between his desk and the wall behind his chair, which is a small feat all by itself, because like, there isn’t barely room to move out there. Then, after two hours of this Lenny throws his hands in the air, and comes in to tell me he’s stuck.

Which makes me raise my eyebrows, like, “You sure don’t look stuck to me, ‘cause here you are, running around.” And what I mean by running around is clear to both of us.

What can he say to that? Nothing, that’s what.

Anyhow, I don’t want to sound bitter at him, because I care for Lenny, really, I do. So I ask, “Now, how d’you mean, stuck?”

And he says, “Oh, stop it. You are never going to understand me.”

So I say, “Just, try me, Lenny.”

And he goes, “I am stuck, stuck, stuck! Stuck in a rut! I will never succeed in getting anything done. I am wasting time here, not being able to think, because unwittingly, I am too busy complaining to myself over my wasted time.”

And before I can tell him to stop talking nonsense, or else put it in writing, he goes on to say, “Damn it. I cannot write a single line.”

“But like, why?”

“Because,” he groans, “every word gets me closer to The End.”

So I try this, I say, “Maybe there is no end, really, and all you can do is just cut off at any point, because life just goes on, like, even if you leave me right here, right in the middle of a sentence. That,” I say, “could be The End, too.”

“It is not that simple.”

“I bet it’s simpler than you think.” 

“No,” he says, “I cannot leave off just like that, in the middle, because the story needs to be completed—but then, I do not know where it goes from here, and for the life of me, I cannot find The End.”

“If you can’t add no words, don’t you think you’re already done?”

“No,” he says. “At this point, no. I cannot stop writing, and I cannot write. I am left in the middle. I feel as if I am hanging from a cliff.”

“So? Just let go.”

And he stares at me strange, “Wouldn’t you like that.”

I ain’t exactly sure I get what he means by that, but instead of explaining Lenny runs back to the balcony and leans over his desk, scribbling something real fast in the margin of a page, like he is chasing some idea with his pen.

Then he waves his hand, pretty wild, calling me to come out there and listen. And this is what he reads to me:

She knew not to expect hearing the end of the sentence, because the old man had already slammed the door behind him. She could guess where Leonard was heading, probably to that fake old blond who lived on the southern fringe of town.

The next morning she woke up to the sound, the insistent sound of knocks at the door, and a sudden fear squeezed her heart as she opened it, to find two grim-faced cops. When they hesitated to say what they came in to say, she screamed. She did not want to learn that the old man had been found lifeless, nor did she want to see the snapshots they had taken, right there at the scene, snapshots that revealed all the tedious details of how he had ended up lying there, with a half crooked smile, in the other woman’s arms. 

“Oh,” I tell Lenny. “I’m so glad to hear this.”

His eyes pop, “You are?”

“Sure!” I say. “Me, I was kinda afraid you’re writing something real, like, something about us. But now—with what you’ve come up with, right here—I can see awful clear, all of a sudden, that it ain’t nothing but fiction.”

By way of an answer Lenny crumples the page, and sinks back in his chair, muttering something about how I don’t understand him, him and his creative ideas, and what a damn fool he is, like, every time he repeats the mistake of using me for a listener.

“Then,” I say, “find yourself someone else to listen. Me, I don’t much like the sound of it, of how you wrote it.”

“The sound?” his eyes widen once more. “Now, what is wrong with it?”

“There’s just too much of it! That’s what you get when you end things like that, with a bang. Me, I don’t even want to imagine all that slamming, and them knocks at the door and all. Here,” I say, “I want you to hear something.”

I take him by the hand, and somehow Lenny lets me, because he must be curious, I bet, so I lead him straight to the bedroom. I come to a stop right there, under the musical mobile, which I hung just last night in the window, between one blind and another.

Then, I pull the little string, so the thing starts turning around, and playing its tender notes. “There... Hear this? Now here is a sound I do like.”

He closes his eyes to listen, so I ain’t exactly sure what he sees in his head. After a while Lenny says, “You know, I like it too. Just a delicate little whisper of a lullaby. Maybe you are right, Anita. Maybe that is what I need. Maybe that is what is called for, I mean, not just to heal both of us—but also, to complete my story. Listen! Here is a note—I could just detect it, just now—a note that could mark the end.”

“But then,” I say, “it could mark a beginning, just as well.”

And for the first time this evening he looks straight into my eyes. At that moment I can tell that he sees me, like, for what I am. I mean, he sees beyond what he’s already put on paper, with them longest legs and that sexiest ass and them boobs and what not. Yes, he sees in me something more than all that, something else: a woman, expecting.

At that instant a dim pain makes itself known in me, right down my back, then it starts turning there, deep in my belly. Which is when I figure that I’ve felt it before, coming and going several times this evening—and then, ignored it. This time it’s stronger, and it lasts a while, which makes me wince. “Aw,” I say.

But anyhow, Lenny don’t even hear me, because he’s back to scratching his head, on account of being confused about his story, and about what this music could tell you, and how he could use it in his story to mark the end.

“Yes,” he whispers. “Just a sound of bells chiming. And behind that, the breath of a baby asleep in the cradle, rocked by a mother’s hand. Maybe that is what is needed.”

“Aw,” I say again.

And he says, “Such a gentle sound. No doubt, Ben would like it.”

I stare at him in surprise, because for several months Lenny’s been so angry, that he didn’t hardly mention his son’s name—nor did he allow me to mention it.

“So now,” I say, like, with caution, “you forgave him?”

“I do not know about that,” he says, sounding pretty touchy.

A minute later his voice seems to soften. “What I do know—I can feel it in my bones—is that any day now, my son will be coming here, to my door, and—”

“You have two sons, not one,” I cut in.

“He would be coming back,” says Lenny, over my words. “Looking for the one thing only I can give him: a story.”

Me, I can tell he don’t pay no attention to anything I say, so all I can do is at this point is just breathe hard for a few seconds, and then repeat, “Aw,” a third time.

Meanwhile Lenny’s busy arguing with himself. “Whenever I read what I’ve written it seems so sketchy to me, so fragmented! Just an jumble of moments, and some voices here and there, lost in the clutter. What am I missing? How come I find myself falling short of where I thought I was going? What the story needs is a meaning—or else all my work, and all my sleepless nights have come to nothing in the end.”

His eyes seem to beg me for a hint of some meaning, like I could give it to him.

What can I say to that? Nothing, and he knows it.

Now Lenny starts pacing around the bed, and he reaches the mirror, the oval mirror standing there, in the corner. Here he stops, and glances at the scribbled page over there, in his reflected hand.

From where I stand, them letters look odd, them words scrambled, them ink marks smudged—right turned left, in turned out—on that patch of white, clutched by the ghost of his hand right there, deep in the glass. Lenny leans in, so his nose nearly touches the other nose, the one in the mirror, like he’s trying to read what’s in there. And his shadow inside, he’s trying to read, just as hard, what’s out here.

A riddle, waiting to be solved.

Lenny bangs his forehead against the glass. I ain’t exactly sure if he’s meant to do that. Anyhow, you can tell he’s restless, because the paper starts rustling, and so does the white patch inside.

“There must be some significance to all this,” he says. “And it must be put in words—or else, Ben would open the door, and I would not be ready for him.”

“So?” I say. “What is it that you’re afraid of?”

“He would come in, and there would be no one to see but an old man standing there, his mouth open as if to start singing, and just cold breath coming out.”

And with that Lenny pushes the frame, so now the mirror’s tilted awful sharp, and it’s like, sticking right out of the corner, between me and him. He lifts a hand, like, to correct it, to straighten the thing, which is when we start hearing the knocks.

Them knocks, they come rapping, rapping real timid at first, there at the entrance door. Then comes the squeal, like that of a key which—having been inserted—starts turning, real slow, in the lock.

The old man turns his back to the mirror, which is still pretty crooked, and then, he takes a shaky step back, stumbling.

“My God,” he mumbles. “Not now! I am not ready for him.”