Open House Read Online Free PDF Page B

you there? It’s me.”
    I pick up the phone. “Oh, God, Rita. I thought you were Martha Stewart.”
    “What?”
    “Never mind. How are you? You got my letter?”
    “
Yes,
I got your
letter
. Why didn’t you call me?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t feel like talking about it.”
    “Do you now?”
    I say nothing.
    “Well, I
never
liked him. You know that. And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better.”
    “Oh, don’t worry, no chance of that.”
    “I mean, remember when you got engaged, and you showed me the ring? I thought you were crazy. I didn’t like that ring. It was tasteless. Almost two carats, when we were eating dinner from cans!”
    True. We did eat dinner from cans, Rita and I. We were in our first apartment, still students. We ate Hormel Chili, Franco-American Spaghetti, Dinty Moore stew—usually unheated. If we were stoned, we made do with chocolate chips.
    Then one evening when I was riding the bus home from class, I met David. He asked me for a drink, told me in the smoky bar that his car was in the shop, that’s why he was on the bus; normally he never rode the bus. He looked exactly like Paul Newman with brown eyes, that’s what I told everyone; and everyone who met him agreed, with a kind of reluctant awe—after all, what was Newman without his eyes?
    David came from a family of extraordinary wealth, but he claimed not to be affected by it; said he preferred, actually, living well below his means. With certain exceptions. His car, for instance, an antique Morgan that he loved so much for its voluptuous lines he forgave it every inconvenience. His clothes, too, that David said were no big deal, but whose labels and fabrics suggested otherwise. After making love with him the first time, I walked around the apartment for the rest of the night wearing only his pale yellow V neck, so as to fully appreciate the feel of fine cashmere. “Keep it,” he’d said, yawning, when he left that night, and went home wearing a jacket over his T-shirt. Later, Rita had borrowed the sweater and spilled red wine on it, which only prompted David to buy two more—one for each of us.
    “You were jealous,” I tell Rita.
    “I was not! I felt sorry for you, that you . . . I don’t know, you stopped having fun. You started being serious all the time, trying really hard to be whatever he wanted you to be, whatever the hell that was. I honestly felt sorry for you. Everybody did! You just . . .
lost
yourself.”
    I am too busy to respond to such an accusation. I am concentrating on drawing a square on my knee with my finger. The sides are not coming out even, I can tell, even though the square is invisible. I can’t draw, either.
    “You don’t believe me?”
    “Oh God, Rita, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
    I do remember, though. I felt, marrying David, like a child handed a gift that was too big. I was convinced that I loved him, but it was a nervous love, even at the start; and there was a certain holding back on his part that seemed mean-spirited. But I was sure I could change that. His family was cold; it wasn’t his fault; what he wanted more than anything was to open himself up. I would be his wife and help him. Over the years, I looked for ways into him, for an essential kind of access; and I failed at finding it again and again.
    “So what are your plans?” Rita asks.
    I look out the kitchen window. Puffy clouds like the kind Travis used to draw, a deep blue sky. It’s beautiful outside. The earth turns. Yesterday, I made a list that said:
Clear yard of debris. Get gas.
Return calls
. I might as well have added:
Eat. Breathe
.
    “I don’t really have any plans,” I say. “Plans are too hard. All I’ve done so far is to spend a whole bunch of money.”
    “Well, good. That’s a start. What’d you buy, underwear? That’s what my friend Eileen did. The day her husband left—for a fucking dental hygienist who’d given
both
of them these weird
gum
massages—she went to