< Apart From Love: Chapter 16 >

My Own Voice

I’m here; and this is amazing. Crumpled in front of me are his first attempts at telling my story. 

Last night was real special for me. He came back from work; and after his son had gone out for a drink or something, which was right after dinner, Lenny stepped out to the balcony, and opened his notebook—the thick one, with the worn cover, which must have seen better days—and said, “Come over here, Anita. Let me read you a little something.”

I did. I plopped down and made myself comfortable on his knees.

The page rustled in his hand and he said, “This here, it is one of my early stories,” and out of his notebook he read, “Leonard was first introduced to Lana at his boss’s house...”

At once I thought, Leonard? Why would he use Leonard? The name sounded too important, to formal to my ears. Plain Lenny would have been so much better, because after all it was his voice, and the story was clearly about him. Them writers, sometimes they play these kinds of games, and use code names, I guess, to distance themselves from themselves.

Anyway, I didn’t say anything, because I was glad, so glad that this time, he let me  in, and here I was, so close to him. I’d known him, on and off, more off than on, for ten years, and in all that time I had never, ever heard him read from his notebook for me. Strange: Since the beginning he’d been vague about his writing; slippery even; and I didn’t mind. No really, I didn’t, because... Well, because I accept Lenny. He is what he is: The keeper of secrets.

As it happened, I didn’t hear his story last night either; this time, it was my fault. Right after the first few words I relaxed, and felt so at ease, and so warm inside, that I caught myself yawning.

My head lolled to one side, then another, and I think I dozed off—but anyway, Lenny didn’t mind, not at all, “Because,” he said, “it must be because you are pregnant; and the bleeding, too, must take a lot out of you.”

He let me slip off his knees, and then moved aside so I could share the seat with him. “Your eyes,” he said, “they are glazing over. Lean on me, right here. My God, Anita, you look so pale, so tired. Well, who can blame you?”

Which was kinda good, because he didn’t have a clue that it wasn’t just me being pregnant, and tired, and pale—but on top of everything else, it was his writing, and all them words, the fine words that he used, which confused me and made me drowsy.

Lenny was like, delighted by his own writing, and by me being there, silent, without butting in, because according to him Natasha, his ex-wife, had laughed at him more than once, in the early years, the years of her success, during which he was out of a job. He hadn’t forget the insult, but managed to swallow it, somehow—only to spit it out now, so many years later. She would say, like, Who does he think he is, Dostoyevsky?

Unlike her I just clung to him, and took in the moment, and tried to listen, as best I could, first hearing the sound of his voice and then, deep inside, the throbbing of my heart; and then... Then I closed my eyes.

When I woke up—it must have been long after midnight—he was still reading, jotting down notes, erasing, and from time to time, pressing this or that button on the tape recorder. And he was talking; talking to me or, perhaps, to himself. Rewind, Play; Play, Rewind.

I propped my head up on his shoulder and looked up at his mouth, and the little muscles at play all around it, which didn’t look near as tight as they’ve been, say, in the past few days. I could see that something had come over him: Something even stronger than his passion to write. A great relief; that’s what it was. A load had been taken off his heart.

I think it happened when he gave up his secret to me, the one secret he guarded most of all, which was funny, because it wasn’t even his—but Natasha’s.

Now that I knew about her illness I felt kinda dizzy in my head; like, I was playing with danger, soaring, even hovering in midair, over the high side of a teeter-totter, and spotting Natasha over there, on the opposite side. By some twist, our fate was linked. This time around, her luck was down, mine—up. I could sense the shock, the deep fall she had taken, and the hard hit against the ground.

And I figured that now, she didn’t have a way to come back. She wasn’t a threat no more.  

Lenny went on scribbling. His right arm was holding the pen, his left—hugging me. The night air was swirling around us. I watched the setting of the moon as it flowed down, so slow—so magical, even—till it fell away behind the outline of the next building. A star here, a star there gave a faint glint. Time slowed down, as if by some spell; and I couldn’t remember any moment before now, when I felt peace, complete peace between us.

And after a long while I caught the hint, the first hint of dawn, and I touched him, with nothing, nothing at all coming between us—not even that thing, whatever it was, Dostoyevsky.

*

I can’t remember how he took me to bed. By the time I got up this morning, Lenny was already gone. So now, it’s a new day. I go out to the balcony, listening for echoes from last night, echoes of our voices. I try to bring them out, like, out of memory, and search for anything, any little thing that is still here, still left from that charm, that moment of pure calm—but no: All is quiet, which can fool you. It is quiet in the most regular, humdrum way, with a distant buzz of street noises.

It’s late in the morning, which you can tell, because the dew on the railing has dried up by now. His desk is bare, not even a pen left here, on the glass surface. And on the floor, a film of dust has already covered our footprints; so it’s hard to believe that last night really happened, that it wasn’t just another dream.

His notebook is nowhere in sight, as are his typewriter and his tape recorder—but then, under his desk, right there in the trashcan, I can see a bunch of papers peeking out over the edge; and I take them out, and smooth the edges, and try to flatten the creases, and blot out the ink stains, which are here to stay.  

According to him, only one of his stories was published, ages ago; the rest of them weren’t, on account of the fact that Lenny doesn’t send them to no magazine editors, because, he says, he isn’t quite finished improving a phrase here and there; and besides, most of them are just too private. So the more he tells you, the more he seems to leave something out.

Here, the first page is kinda messy. I glance at it. It’s his story, the one he managed to publish; the one he read for me last night. I can barely recall what it tells you. I think it’s about a girl, a girl with blond steaks in her hair. To win her over, a man can be seduced to do just about anything, and like, give up the one thing he values the most, which is more than his freedom, because in this case he ends up shaving his mustache. Now as far as Lenny goes, I’m too easy, which means, this girl isn’t me. And for sure, she isn’t Natasha.

Not long ago Lenny told me, “My writing is not the place where the fiction is,” which I found strange, because if not in his stories—then, where else could his fiction be? Is he writing the truth—and living a falsehood? If this is so, then the girl from his story must be real. More real than me, anyway.

Whoever she is, she must be someone he’d known way back in the past. I don’t think he’s seeing her now; I really don’t.

Then again, I may be totally wrong: Perhaps the only place where she exists is on paper, which explains why he didn’t give her a strong, clear voice. To me, she seems a bit sketchy. In six pages of dense scribbles, the only line he let her say is like, “What is it with you tonight?”  

With him, every little thing is huge—or else he’ll make it so. And every gesture—even as trivial as a wink—can be a trigger, like, for a whole big drama, which may be the case here, in this story. I’ll read it later. I have time; at least I think I do.  

Here’s another crumpled page, which is nearly empty, except for a single sentence, parts of which are crossed out. Between the scratches, it reads: “He’s gone, but still, I’m thinking about him; about how he has touched on that time, the lost time nearly five years ago, when I went out the door, swearing I wouldn’t come back to him, not ever. What he hasn’t said—and what left such a bitter taste in my mouth—is how he told me, back then, You are a nice kid. Go, go back to where you came from. Go back to your mama.”

These are my words—not his. I’m so surprised to find them here, suddenly on paper. I think he must have rewinded the tape recorder and found what I said last night, when I couldn’t fall asleep again, because of the nightmare. I guess he has listened. Yes. He has. Not sure how I feel about that. Part of me is glad; the other, not so much. I take the page with me, because like, even if it’s in his hand—or maybe because of it—this a part of me, of who I am.

And I go inside, into the living room, and I sit there, on the bench, and lay my head on the surface, which covers the keyboard of the piano, which is kinda cool to the touch; and then I dream.

I dream about Lenny: How he’ll come home this evening, and ask me to tell him something again, something about myself, and about things I remember, things I’m painting in my head. After a while he’ll go away, leaving me alone with the tape recorder. Once my story is done, he’ll come back to take some notes, and edit them over and again, scratching and erasing all night long, and like, going into the trouble of finding a way—just the right way—to carry my voice in letters, and in marks.

I bet it won’t easy for him to fix the way I talk—and at the same time, remain true to how I tell it, and to the feel, the real feel of how it happened. I can just see Lenny in my head: He’ll torture himself trying, somehow, to do it; so that tomorrow morning, at exactly the same time, when I’ll be sitting here again, on this very bench, I’ll be startled to find—out there on his desk—a gift. A little something from him to me:

A little piece of paper, scribbled side to side, top to bottom, with dense writing, and barely a space between the words. Seems as if he has sucked up all them spaces, because—even when he gives—Lenny doesn’t really want you to get it; or else, he wants you to work hard at getting it; and even then, he wants you to figure out only small parts, some here, some there. Any which way, it wouldn’t help him. I’m gonna get it, because the spaces, and the lack of them, may be his—but the words are mine.

I’ll snatch the paper, and find myself blown away, because right there—in his hand, black on white—I’ll read the scrawl, the words of my voice, my own voice: “I’m here; and this is amazing.”

And then, “Crumpled in front of me are his first attempts at telling my story.”