No2: LOVE OF AGES

PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH

REBECCA KOPELMAN

The savage, swelling heat of summer was in full bloom, and Jane Gideon was afraid she might be going insane. Her fiery days were empty, for the most part. She spent all of her time inside--to step out was an almost intimate experience, the weight of the clear sky above pressing expectantly down on her every pore like an overeager lover. No, it was far safer to stay inside, removed from the world. Better to stay in bed with the windows shut and the AC on high, to sit cross-legged with a fan rasping cool air into her face all day, keep the blinds closed till she didn’t know whether it was day or night. Yes, much better.

Jane’s father had died just before the heat wave started. She and her tall, stout sisters looked on as he drowned in his own body, then left once he was done. They didn’t talk about it after. And she was fine. Why wouldn’t she be? Death was just a part of life, after all. 

She was dealing with things pretty well, aside from the fact that she sometimes dreamed of him. Every time she closed her eyes, his pale gutted eyes bored into hers, his gaunt emaciated figure crouched in the corner of her dark room–she could never be entirely sure whether or not she was dreaming anymore, though she considered it safe to assume that her dead father hadn’t dragged his rotting self from their family plot for the sole purpose of making it harder for her to sleep through the night. Still, it disturbed her that sleep and wakefulness were no longer distinct in her mind–all consciousness had blurred into a thick, gray jelly. The unsureness was disconcerting, but not enough that she cared to venture out of her stale, unreal apartment.

Instead of leaving, Jane watched the soaps that looped on TV until the early hours of the morning. Sometimes she passively felt her own broad, flat face and imagined for a moment or two that she was as beautiful as the femme fatales and virgin-whores who occupied her screen, that she could bring handsome, pouty-lipped men to their knees with nothing more than a sweet smile. Whenever she caught herself fantasizing about all the deliciously cruel things she would do, she violently shook her head from side to side, attempting to forcibly evict the fancy. Those sorts of things were not meant for girls like her, she knew, for unpretty grown-up orphans. Was she really an orphan? Technically she was, she supposed, since both parents were dead now, though that word seemed to evoke the spunky heroes of girlish adventure novels, not glazed-over young women who forget how to speak sometimes.

For a while, this life of still solitude served Jane exceedingly well: she ordered a large pizza once every three days, bathed once a week, and slept frequently, curled up in the fetal position in the center of her bed. She had no friends, and nobody ever visited her. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she died in her apartment that summer–would anybody find out? Or would she just remain, for weeks or months on end, stinking in the heat until one of her neighbors called maintenance? She tried not to think about that sort of thing.

Jane’s nearly-comfortable stagnation, however, was soon to be interrupted.

Nearly two months into this cycle, early in the morning–or was it late at night?–she received a phone call. This alone was an exceptional event, as nobody ever called Jane. Cautiously, she picked up, and waited for whoever was on the other end to fumblingly apologize for having called the wrong number. 

Instead, she heard a hitched breath on the other end of the line.

“Jane?” the voice said, “Jane Gideon?” The voice was a man’s. He sounded handsome.

“Yes, this is she. What is it?” Immediately she wondered if she’d come off too hostile. She smiled, hoping he would be able to feel it through the phone

“You don’t know me,” the man said, “but you should. My name is Richard, and I live across the hall from you. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen you around, but I’d like to take you out for a drink sometime.”

Jane considered saying no to this strange man, this strange, potentially attractive, mysterious soap-opera man with a deep, smooth voice. She considered it, but something deep inside her, something desperately lonely and afraid and ugly, spoke into the phone.

“Richard, I would love to meet you sometime. How about tomorrow night?”

The two agreed that they would meet at seven, that he would pick her up outside of her apartment and they would go to a nearby bar for a drink. “Sounds splendid,” Jane said, in her best heroine voice, “absolutely splendid.”

After hanging up, Jane smiled. It was an alien feeling–when had she last been excited about something? She shut her eyes tightly and pictured Richard–she had never seen him before, she didn’t think, so she made him tall and strong–then pictured herself. This version of herself would be shy; she would bat her eyelashes and look to the floor, be beautiful but not even know it. Richard would know it though, and that’s what mattered. She spent an hour or so picking out an outfit–since when was all her clothing so bland? Why didn’t she have any evening gowns?

She curled her hair so that it sat in limp ringlets atop her head. She would be beautiful, she told herself, after this next step. Once she made her face up she would be irresistible to Richard and any other man. Her mascara was thick and slimy, but she smeared it along her stubby lashes anyway. Then she painted her lips red with the close sort of precision usually reserved for diffusing bombs. The dark gash of lipstick across her face looked almost like a wound, like she’d been slashed across the face by a mysterious madman. It was perfect.

Finally, as seven rolled around, there was a ring at Jane’s doorbell. Giddy, she ran to the peephole, imagining the handsome stranger who had arrived to take her out. He would just love her, she knew it. She hunched over to look out, then stopped herself, jolting violently back into a wall.

What if he was ugly? What if he was just a man, what if he didn’t love her? It couldn’t possibly be worth it, she realized. The risks outweighed the rewards–the Richard of her fantasies, the man who could make her believe in love again, he would be in great danger if she were to open the door. 

No, it would be better to continue to stay in bed with the windows shut and the AC on high, to sit cross-legged with a fan rasping cool air into her face all day, keep the blinds closed till she didn’t know whether it was day or night. Yes, much better.