Eye to Eye Read online

  “You’re kidding, right?” I ask Bita if she wants the last bite of tiramisu and she pats her stomach and says no way. “It took me nearly half a year to get Langsdale out of my blood, and now you want me to go back? And we’re just barely getting back in the black. Can we afford it?”

  “Emergency credit card,” Earl says. “We’ll manage.”

  “I dunno know, Earl.” I scrape my fork on my plate, playing with leftover icing. “Seriously?”

  “I ain’t been home in a long, long time, Ronnie. It’s time I go back and it’s a good time to go, since Zach’s doing his thing then.” Earl gives me one of those soft looks with those blue eyes and long, sandy eyelashes, and “no” is out of the question.

  Bita waves our waiter down for the check and I suddenly wonder if she’s game.

  “How about you? Want to go to Indiana?”

  “For what?” Bita takes one last bite of tiramisu.

  Good question. “I don’t know, it’d be fun? Plus, you’re a single woman now. You could leave L.A. for a few days. You have no one to answer to.” I’m half kidding, but I do think it would be fun to have Bita there.

  “Except myself,” Bita says. “No offense, Earl, but I didn’t fall in love with Langsdale the few times I was there.”

  “Well, you weren’t shown the right way.” Earl stretches and yawns. “I could show you all the good stuff about Indiana. And, I got a cousin.” Earl winks at Bita. “Y’all ready to go?”

  More irony: here in this restaurant is the first time I’ve felt as though my life were truly coming together, not in the way I expected, but in a way that I like very much and yet, here we are, talking about returning to Langsdale. I knew, of course, that Earl would always do so from time to time, but not me, not after F: The Academy.

  Doris says that I will be strung up and burned at the stake for the book, but I think that, if it’s basically true, the folks at Langsdale University will appreciate it.

  We shall see.

  doris

  Among the academic hair-splitting debates that drove me to near insanity while I was preparing for my Ph.D. oral exams is the difference between modernism and postmodernism. Suffice it to say that had my dissertation committee read my little explanation of modernism, I would still be underlining literary theory in the dark corners of the Langsdale University library with a dog-eared copy of “Ph.D.s for DUMMIES” close by my side. However, since I am no longer forced to be in Langsdale, I am at gleeful liberty to continue with my little definitions. For postmodernism, my favorite definition is that it’s very much like modernism, only there’s none of that sad longing for the past, for the fallen whole subject. Instead, the postmodern subject revels in her fragmentation.

  That, I have decided, will be my theme for the week: reveling in fragmentation. Atlanta Doris will allow a space for her latent Langsdale Doris, much as she loathes her memories of that particular incarnation. Yesterday, December 15, marks the first day of my return to Langsdale since leaving for Atlanta. Zach was nouveau-boyfriendly enough to meet me at the airport, easing me more gently from the fifty-degree Atlanta winter, to the twenty-degrees-with-the-sun-shining butt-cold deep freeze of Langsdale.

  Today, we’re getting ready for Ronnie and Earl’s arrival. They actually came into town three days earlier, but went to a family reunion at one of Earl’s relative’s farms just outside of Bean Blossom. I received one broken phone message from Ronnie, who said Earl’s relatives were hilarious, all wanting to know if he’d met Steven Spielberg, and why he was getting so skinny, and if the women were really as pretty as all that. Not one had heard of the movie he’d been in. They were evidently far more excited about his upcoming commercial for Dr. Scholl’s foot supports.

  “Hope things are good with Zach,” she concluded.

  And thus far, they have been. Having not seen him for the past four months, it was a little like unwrapping a Christmas present that you’d picked out in July. Sort of like what I remembered, but not quite. In this case: better. In fact, I can’t help but half wonder if Zach does better in my absence than my presence. Don’t ask what I’d been expecting with the “Langsdale Lounge”—something scary, like a converted Subway restaurant with cheap tables and some crazy eggplant-colored paint job. But no. Zach was clearly possessed of redecorating genius. The place looked like a fifties cocktail lounge worthy of Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. Red curtains along the walls, dim lighting, beautifully intimate tables, and enough seating for at least a hundred.

  “I’m working on the liquor license,” he explains, unveiling the space to me for the first time. “Then I’ll really be raking in the dough.”

  Looking around the space, I felt so proud of him that I could barely find words. It’s a funny moment when the person you’ve been with reaches their potential, even if it conflicts with your vision of what the two of you might have been together. Zach the decade-plus student, Zach the knitter, Zach the career jumper, Zach the occasional dater of lesbians and adolescents, Zach the caring and engaged teacher, Zach of the unwashed hair and three-day shadow—all of these had been manifest intermittently throughout our time together, but never Zach the kick-ass businessman. I wanted him to know how much I admired what he’d done—even if I’d spent a solid four months pissed off about it. I wanted, also, to pull him behind one of those velvet curtains and have a cinematic fade-to-black scene of our own. Our time apart had made him a slight stranger again, and there was something vaguely erotic about the feeling.

  And because I am such a champion at expressing my rich and complex inner life, I said, “A Jim Carrey retrospective plus a liquor license in Langsdale, you won’t even have to bother buying lottery tickets.”

  Zach laughed. He looked older to me, but older in a good way. Like his latent Tommy Lee Jones craggy-faced sexiness was starting to bloom. He was wearing the moss colored J. Crew sweater that I’d bought him last Christmas because it fulfilled all my latent lumberjack fantasies, and in loose-fitting Levi’s with hiking boots, it was total hippie porn. I took his hand in mine and pulled him closer.

  “Did I tell you how good you look?” he asked. “It’s true. It’s like you’ve really come into your own in Atlanta.”

  I put my arms underneath his sweater, beneath his T-shirt, and rubbed the warmth of his chest, the tangle of hair beneath.

  “God,” I said, “You sound like my freaking father or something.”

  Clever man he is, he had unhooked my bra without my even noticing.

  “Don’t get oedipal on me now, baby,” he whispered.

  As he kissed me I knew that what was going to happen next, had it been projected on the screen, would have made the “Langsdale Lounge” a theater of an entirely different kind.

  For the next two days Ronnie, Earl and I helped Zach with last-minute preparations. We made sure that the tablecloths were clean and matched, that he’d hired enough help, that the copy of Baby Jane had arrived and was put in a safe yet easily remembered place. It was funny to see Zach so nervous, and it brought out the best in him. I even had a moment where, after he’d set out breakfast and headed for the library (“I know you won’t be mad about this, Doris, but I have to stay on the dissertation or it just gets away from me.”), when I wondered if he hadn’t become out of my league in my absence. I ignored the fruit and yogurt that he’d left and met Ronnie for an artery-clogging fat-fest at Ralph’s Country Boy.

  They say you can’t go home again, but whoever “they” are, “they” clearly weren’t from Langsdale, Indiana. The conversation in the next booth is so stereotypically Langsdale that it almost feels like a setup. Two men in plaid shirts and John Deere hats discussing at length the nuances of which guns were best for hunting, and which for home protection.

  Ronnie looks at me. “Can you believe we both lived here? And had the nerve to think we were normal?”

  Ronnie was bundled up in about fifty layers of clothing, including a pair of fingerless gloves that she refused to take off, even indoors. She reminded me of t
he little match girl.

  “I dare say we might have stood out. This is a crazy question, but do you think that Zach is now too good for me?”

  Ronnie gazes at the ceiling with her “why, God, why?” expression. “I know we’re back in Langsdale for sure because you’re acting crazy again.”

  “It’s not crazy,” I say. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe it seemed like I was doing well out of the gate, getting a job and getting out of here, but now look at where you and Zach and Earl are. You’ve got a veritable cottage industry tutoring in Los Angeles, Earl is poised to be the next Hollywood hottie, and Zach is this born-again entrepreneur. Only I am plodding along the charted course, reliving my exact life in Langsdale, but with no friends and a slightly bigger salary.” I push a particularly greasy link of sausage to the side of my plate. “And better food.”

  Ronnie blows across the top of her coffee.

  “Don’t you think your exaggerating just a little? And aren’t you happy for Zach?”

  “No to your first question and yes to the second. I’m happy for all of you. I just feel like everyone has made some quantum leap forward, and I’m just coasting along my once-chosen path. Did I tell you that I haven’t even written a poem since I’ve been in Atlanta? Four months and no poem.”

  I hate that Langsdale is doing what it always did to me, bringing out my anxieties and turning me into a quivering mass of insecurity and self-doubt. Ronnie is wisely choosing not to humor this line of thinking at all. Instead, she flagged the waitress for extra biscuits.

  “Because, what,” she asks, and not too friendly, might I add. “Wonder Woman would have written a poem? You remember how hard it was to get that job? And you just moved, you’re still settling in.”

  I eat the final bite of my poached eggs. “I think, I can’t say for sure, but I think that black Doris would have written at least a sonnet or two.”

  “I can tell you one thing—black Doris definitely wouldn’t be bitching that her man got a job. Black Doris would have a lot more street sense than her crazy cracker cousin, white Doris.”

  “White Doris can be a little annoying. I think she’s sorry.”

  “I think she better eat that last bit of bacon, or black Ronnie might have to take charge of the situation.”

  I push my plate in her direction, and Ronnie snags the last bit of meat.

  “Sooooo,” I say. “You’ve been quiet, but wasn’t the cover of your book supposed to be FedExed this morning? If you’ve had it in your bag the entire time, I will literally kill you for letting me rant like a maniac.”

  Ronnie crosses her hands together and raises an eyebrow.

  “Beeeatch,” I say. “You do have it.”

  She reaches into her bag and passes a glossy mock-up of the cover across the table. There’s a picture of what looks like a college campus in the background with a large brick wall in the foreground, and the words “F: THE ACADEMY” written on it in spray-paint lettering. To one side, a woman’s outline is silhouetted, and beneath the silhouette, in funky but similar lettering is “a novel by Veronica Williams.”

  “I love it! They did a great job.”

  “It’s a bit literal, but I don’t hate it.”

  I gesture at the cover.

  “Please. This is fabulous. Men and women alike would pick this up. And it looks fun and smart at the same time. What more could you possibly ask for?”

  Ronnie looks at the cover again, and I can see that she’s proud, that even she can’t quite believe that the novel will be coming out, in hardback, in bookstores across America.

  “You know it looks good. Don’t even lie.”

  She nods her head slowly. “I guess.”

  “But enjoy your breakfast because you will never eat lunch in this town again.”

  The men at the table next to us stand up and toss one rumpled dollar on the table before leaving. They’re hungry jack types, Earl in fifteen years if he hadn’t been cleaned up in L.A.

  “Doris,” she says. Her eyes follow the men out. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Probably because I was such a colossal snob about the town at breakfast, the rest of my afternoon in Langsdale is nothing but Mayberry moments. The campus is blanketed in a thin film of snow, everyone drives politely and with respect for the traffic laws, and the Langsdale students, dressed exclusively in non-designer wear, driving strictly functional cars, are a true relief from the Paige Prentisses of my new world. I half expect to see Jimmy Stewart running down the streets yelling “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.”

  That evening the Langsdale Lounge is scheduled to open, so in true Doris fashion I have brought a vintage black cocktail dress for the occasion. It’s a piece that I inherited from a favorite great-aunt, worthy of Donna Reed’s finest look-I-fixed-dinnerfor-the-boss-so-that-my-husband-gets-his-promotion episode. The top is fitted with three-quarter-length sleeves and quarter-size fabric buttons running down the front until they meet the skirt part of the dress, which flares out from the waist in a halo of loose fabric. I pair it with pearls and some lovely black pumps that I found at Steve Madden, nouveau vintage for the nouveau vintage theater.

  One thing to which I became accustomed during my time with Zach was dressing for an occasion only to have him by my side in a rumpled Oxford and jeans. Tonight, though, he’s surprised me again. He comes out wearing a shirt, tie, and deliberately mussed blazer that definitely did not come from the local Old Navy. He has a Chet Baker–West Coast Jazz feel, with pressed pants and dress loafers, hair combed back and face clean shaven.

  “If you’ve owned this getup the whole time I’ve known you and you’ve only seen fit to wear it now, I am seriously going to murder you.”

  Zach narrows his eyes and gives me his most wicked half smile. “I take it you approve.”

  I smooth the lapels of his jacket into place. “I more than approve.”

  He kisses me softly and says. “So you think it’s going to be okay tonight?”

  “I know it will, Zach. You did the best job ever. I’m so proud of you I don’t even know what to do with myself.”

  He moves his attention to my neck, running his tongue around the edge of my pearls.

  “I can think of a thing or two.”

  “Threat or promise?”

  “A little of both. So you like the way the theater looks?”

  “I love it.”

  “And you like the movie I picked out for tonight.”

  “I love it.”

  “And the music we’re going to play before the movie starts?”

  “Love it.”

  “Even if we can’t yet serve alcohol?”

  “That’s why God invented flasks.”

  “And the light fixtures. They’re authentic from the 1940s.”

  “Love them.”

  He puts his arms on my shoulders and looks me directly in the eyes.

  “And me?”

  It’s so sweet and un-Zach-like, that even I am able to quell my inner intimacy-phobe.

  “I love you, too. Most of all.”

  He gropes a little farther down my leg.

  “More than that flask you’re hiding underneath the dress?”

  “Let’s not get crazy.”

  Earl and Ronnie meet us at the packed theater. They’re not quite as overdressed as Zach and myself, but they look very hip and very L.A. Ronnie has on an orange flowing tunic top with embroidery and an open V, with flared black pants and platform boots. She’d probably be freezing her ass off were it not for her appropriation of Earl’s black leather biker jacket, which she has draped over her shoulders, warding off the cold. Earl is wearing a fitted black T-shirt, dressy jeans and cowboy boots. Very too cool for school.

  “Look at you two,” Ronnie exclaims. “Very Lucy and Ricky. You gonna put on a show, Doris?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say. “I’m going to be a good Lucy and watch my Ricky do his thing. But doesn’t he look good? Who knew?”

  “Who knew,” Earl says, gesturing
at Zach with arms open and palms forward like, “How’d we get with these two kooky broads?”

  “That your Scorsese accent?” Zach asks. “Pretty good.”

  “Not the acting classes,” Ronnie pleads. “Please, please not tonight.”

  Earl pulls her close and whispers something I can’t quite make out in a Brandoesque mutter.

  As the theater darkens, we all move to a table toward the center of the room with a Reserved plaque on top and an opened bottle of champagne hidden discreetly beneath. Zach welcomes the audience and concludes his short speech with, “Langsdale can be any place, really. I’d like to think that we can make this as culturally viable and enjoyable a venture as any this town has seen. We’ve got some great flicks lined up, and if you haven’t seen tonight’s you’re in for a treat. And I’d especially like to thank Doris, and Ronnie and Earl for coming here, since it doesn’t really mean much without people you love.”

  God, but Zach was getting corny in my absence! Corny, but sweet.

  “So enjoy!” And on cue, the theater went dark, the curtains opened, and the fateful car crash that begins the film started to unfold. Zach sat down beside me, touching my knee. “How’d that sound?” he asks.

  “Really, really good,” I tell him. “And very sweet.”

  “Shh,” Ronnie says. “You two have any home training?”

  “It’s him. He’s a terrible influence.”

  I’ve seen What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? enough times that I could easily have my own Rocky Horror-esque banter with the screen, so instead of watching the film I look around the theater. The house is full, and most of the locals have dressed nicely for the evening. A few undergraduates in black pants and white shirts serve light appetizers, and the mood is good, the vibe optimistic. People are even laughing at the correct parts, acknowledging the campy romp that the film is. There’s no way to tell whether or not this place will have legs, just as I can’t tell now whether or not Ronnie and Earl will still be laughing together in three years or whether Zach and I will figure things out by summer.