Solo Faces Read Free

The bed was very wide, her marriage bed. The sheets had scalloped edges. It was the first time since her divorce, she confided.
    “My God,” she moaned, “can you believe that?” And a while later, “Was that story you told me true?”
    “Sure it was.”
    “About the marines?”
    “What marines?”
    In the morning she followed him to work.
    Women look like one thing when you don’t know them and another when you do. It was not that he didn’t like her. He would watch as she sat, dressing for the evening, before a folding mirror. In the circle of light her mysterious reflection did not even acknowledge him but watched self-absorbed as she applied the black around her eyes. Her necklaces hung from a deer antler. There were pictures cut from magazines tacked to the wall.
    “Who is this?” he said.
    “Hm?”
    “Is this your father?”
    A brief glance.
    “That’s D. H. Lawrence,” she murmured.
    A young man with a mustache and fine brown hair.
    “You know who that looks like?” he said, amazed. He could hardly believe it. He turned toward her to let her guess, herself. “Louise …” he said, “look.”
    She was staring at her reflection.
    “Can you believe these thin lips?” she wailed.
    Yes, then he liked her. She was sardonic, pale. She wanted to be happy but could not be, it deprived her of her persona, of what would remain when he, like the rest of them, was gone. Something was always withheld, guarded, mocked. She was impatient with her son, who bore it stoically. His name was Lane, he was twelve. His room was down the hall.
    “Poor Lane,” she would often say, “he’s not going to amount to much.”
    He was failing at school. The teachers liked him, he had lots of friends, but he was slow, vague, as if living in a dream.
    There were nights they returned from somewhere in the city, weary from dancing, and weaved down the hallway past his door. She was making an attempt to be quiet, talking in whispers.
    Her shoe dropped with the sharpness of a shot onto the floor.
    “Oh, Christ,” she said.
    She was too tired to make love. It had been left on the dance floor. Or else she did, halfheartedly, and like two bodies from an undiscovered crime they lay, half-covered in the early light, in absolute silence except for the first, scattered sound of birds.
    On Sundays they drove to the sea. In the whiteness of spring the sky was a gentle blue, a blue that has not yet felt the furnace. Small houses, lumberyards, flyblown markets. The final desolation of the coast. The streets of Los Angeles were behind them, the silver automobiles, men in expensive suits.
    Seen picking their way down the slope from the highway to the beach, half-naked, towels in their hands, they seemed to be a family. As they drew closer it was even more interesting. She already had a stiffness and hesitation that are part of middle age. Her attention was entirely on her feet. Only the humorous, graceful movements of her hands and the kerchief around her head made her seem youthful. The man was following her, tall and resigned. He hadn’t learned that something always comes to save you.
    She was a woman who would one day turn to drink or probably cocaine. She was high-strung, uncertain. She often talked about how she looked or what she would wear. Brushing the sand from her face, she wondered, “What would you think of—white? Pure white, the way they dress at Theodore’s?”
    “For what?”
    “White pants with nothing underneath, white T-shirts.” She was imagining herself at parties. “Just the red of lipstick and some blue around the eyes. Everything else is white. Some guy comes up to me, some smart guy, and says, ‘You know, I like the color of your nipples. You here with anyone?’ I just look at him very calmly and say, ‘Get lost.’ ”
    She invented these fantasies and acted them out. One minute she would accept kisses, the next her mind would be elsewhere. She was never really sure of him. She never dared commit herself