by Jane Smiley
“I never fucking imagined—”
His wife, Jolene, came up with an apologetic smile, and said, “Sorry, Joe. Say, honey—” and led him away.
As he went, he shouted over his shoulder, “I’m going to show you around myself later! Don’t forget!”
I waved him off in a friendly way. Susan said, “I guess he’s kind of excited, huh?”
“I guess.” I kissed her on the hair. She was so unfrumpy.
I began to feel warm and damp in my clothes, and Susan reached up and pulled the sticks out of her hair. It fell down over her coat in a shining stream. A couple came out of a sliding glass door into the pool area, wearing suits and carrying towels, and I steered her in that direction.
I never thought you should have your own swimming pool—too much work after the novelty wore off—but it was tremendous fun to run out of Mack’s office, throw down our towels, and jump into the water with the other swimmers. It was not lost on me that Susan was the youngest woman there and was unconsciously and naturally beautiful in her bikini, whereas the other women were a little defiant in their rather more sedate swimwear. Here, as in every other facet of her personality, was just that touch of the exotic that thrilled me—her bikini was an old one but that meant she had bought it in Europe, and it was cut just a little more stylishly than everyone else’s Cole of California bathing suits. I leapt into the pool with a shout, cannonballing off the low dive, and as soon as I came up out of the water and looked around, Betty was on me, smiling, kissing my cheek, and holding my shoulder. She said, “You seem very excited, Joey.”
“I am. Look at this place.”
“So deluxe. I love it. I’ve been diving for an hour. I can’t get enough. The pool is so warm.”
“Did you see Susan?”
“She looks lovely, dear. Are you progressing?”
“Well, yes.”
She kissed me again on the cheek and patted me on the head before swimming off. When she got out of the pool, it was obvious that she was sixty, but she was laughing and she carried herself with such athletic grace that I couldn’t help watching her climb the ladder and dive again, a perfect jackknife that bent the board nearly in two and made a big booming sound in the space of the pool room. Then I watched Susan dive off the low board, a nice swan dive, neat and clean. I treaded water, and she swam over to me underwater, grabbed my leg, and came up and kissed me smack on the lips.
The party went on like this, people in and out of the water, drinking beers and eating hors d’oeuvres and talking talking talking about money.
The guests were divided about equally between developers and bankers, and everyone was turned on by the grandeur of the setting. Once it was fully dark, Mack turned down the lights and his wife and the caterer lit candles on the food tables, so that we swam by dim and flickering light, which seemed sybaritic. Or you could walk to the expanse of window glass and wipe away the steam, and see the light and glow of Portsmouth spread before you, a wide lake of yellow against the dark backdrop of the hills beyond, and then, above that natural darkness, the constellations spread out and returning light back to you. It was intimidating and delightful to see all that and to be inside this warmth with all this money talk. Mack had this place, but we had the farm, and once the potential of the farm was realized, we would all have something like this, not like this exactly but something equally wonderful, to be created later. Dripping, holding canapés and glasses of wine, I listened in on conversations between virtually naked men I usually didn’t ever see in anything but suits and work clothes. And every naked man was excited.
I heard Crosbie say, “We are so close! This outfit from Texas sends more money out every night, looking for a few extra basis points, than most S and Ls send out in a year. They’ve got the whole place computerized, up and running, and they can really handle it. You know, that’s our next project, get a computer expert in, or ten of them, whatever it takes, make everything so much more efficient. No more paper, nothing but big numbers!” He guffawed in delight.
I heard Marcus say, “He tells me that Golf Digest contacted him about a piece on up-and-coming designers and he’s getting three pages, and he’s going to put our spread first—”
I heard Gordon say, “Yes, Gottfried Nuelle is doing the clubhouse. Have you seen this kid he has doing the detail work? No one else like him around here that I’ve ever seen. They offered him I don’t know what kind of money to come up to New York and do some repairs at the Morgan Library, but he said he didn’t like cities—”
I heard Bart say, “The whole business is changing so fast my head is spinning. But with these new investment advisors we’ve got, we’re right on top of it. Those kids, they’re maybe twenty-eight and they look twenty-two, but that’s the wave of the future. You ask me where the money’s coming from, and frankly I don’t know, but hey! Who’s asking?” And he grinned right at me.
And I kept diving in and swimming around and kissing Susan and admiring her.
At eight or so, Jolene came to the doorway of the pool area and called out, “Dinner in twenty minutes!” and it seemed impossible that there could be more of everything that was so luxuriant already.
In groups of twos and threes, people got out of the pool, took their towels, and went into Mack’s office to change. He had set up a clothing rack in there where we had hung our clothes, so well-dressed folks emerged rather quickly, their hair still damp but nicely put together again, smiling the way kids do when they’ve been in the water and forgotten all about whatever was bothering them before submersion. Susan and I had been last in, so we waited until everyone else was dressed and heading for the dining room before leaving the pool.
Mack’s office was large, with sliding doors on two sides—one set opened into the pool area and the other set to the outdoor patio. There was a French door into the kitchen and another door, too, probably into a corridor or the foyer. I could hear guests on the other side of the French door, but its blinds were closed for privacy, as were the drapes between the office and the pool area. The slider to the outside was uncovered, but there was nothing out there but space and stars. The furnishings were spare, either for the party or because they hadn’t completely moved in—only a bare desk, a big leather chair on casters, and the clothing rack. I said, “I guess we should hurry if we want to get some food,” but Susan pulled off her bikini and dropped it to the floor, sat down in the leather chair, smiled at me, and turned it away from the desk. Then she lay back in it and lifted her hair out from behind herself, so that it draped over her shoulder and covered her right breast. Her nipples were erect and her skin was flushed. I walked around the desk and took hold of the brown arms of the chair and begin kissing her. She turned her face up to meet mine. As we kissed the chair reclined suddenly, so that I stumbled and found myself nearly on top of her, so the obvious thing seemed to be that we would make love, and I was certainly ready. I yanked off my trunks. She laughed. On the first thrust, the chair rolled backward and hit the wall with a thud. We laughed, but it wasn’t easy to get leverage on her, and the chair kept rolling around. I would pull it toward me, thrust into her, the chair would rebound, and the next thing we knew, we were running into something and laughing. I was drunk enough so that I thought this was a very intriguing way to be making love, and anyway, we had waited long enough, and it did seem imperative, no matter what the deal with the chair was, to keep at it. Finally, we were laughing so hard that I pulled out of her, picked her up out of the chair, and laid her out on the carpet. I went down on top of her, then into her, and she lifted her legs and folded them around my waist. She was little and athletic and there was a startling wildness about her, quite in contrast to how I had come to think of her. I kept having to tell myself that she was thirty and had been married. It was like making love to a very wild and willful and you might say naughty kid. When we were done, I fell back on the carpet, but she jumped up laughing, grabbed her towel off the floor, and ran out of the slider toward the pool. By the time I was on my
feet, I heard the splash she made as she jumped into the pool. I wrapped my towel around my waist.
The pool area was empty, and the door to the rest of the house was half closed. Susan was jumping up and down in the middle of the pool, going under and then leaping out with her arms in the air, then going under again. She was shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” each time she emerged. I laughed, threw down my towel, and jumped in after her. Just then, the door to the rest of the house opened and Mack peered in. He said, “You guys all right?” just as Susan emerged naked from the water up to at least her waist. I called out, “We’re fine! We’ll be there in a moment!” The door closed. She jumped out again. She looked beautiful—firm-breasted, her hair flowing in a watery stream down her back, her fingers spread and her arms wide, as kidlike as when we had been making love, and in fact, I felt a little old and a little on the spot, as if she were my responsibility and I didn’t quite know how to manage her.
Just then, the door opened and Mack came in again. He was dressed in khaki slacks and a sport jacket. He was very drunk by this time, and he walked right over to the middle of the pool and squatted down, staring at Susan. He said, “You need anything? Is there anything I can get you?”
Susan stopped jumping and began to tread water rather modestly. She said, “No, thanks. We really should get dressed. I’m sorry.”
And then the door opened again, and one of the other builders, Sam Reading, wandered in, too. He said, “Everything okay in here?” He went up behind Mack. Mack stood up. They stood there.
Within five minutes, they were joined by five other guys, very casually, who were all concerned that Susan might need help of some sort. They milled around for at least another five minutes, until Betty swept in, laughing, and shooed them out, caroling, “Give the poor girl a chance to get out of the pool, you-all; good Lord, this prime rib is gettting cold! Joey! Dinner!”
When Susan and I got back to Mack’s office and began changing again, we started to laugh and could hardly stop.
CHAPTER
26
BUT OVER BREAKFAST the following Monday morning, Marcus was not laughing at all.
I said, “The whole party was a little wild. I mean, there was food in the pool.”
“You offended the wives.”
“I did?”
“We could hear you two in the office. Crosbie’s wife was standing right next to me. She said, ‘I think that sort of behavior is just awful.’ The chair was banging against the wall.”
“Once or twice, maybe.”
“Enough for people to know what you were doing and start talking more loudly.”
I scratched my ear for a second and then ate some more of my hash browns, but I really didn’t know what to say, since I had been very much enjoying doing what everyone knew I was doing. “All the men—well, some of the men—came out into the pool area. That was—”
“Very awkward. And don’t you think that offended their wives even more? I mean, don’t you?”
“I suppose.”
“Thank God for Betty. I mean, she got the whole party started again, and she was laughing and making light of it, but the whole stark deal of a bunch of forty- and fifty-year-old men filing out to have a look at someone the age of their daughters—”
“She’s thirty. Almost thirty-one.”
“—the age of their daughters, I’m telling you, was not to the taste of any of those wives, and will certainly lead to guilt on the part of the men and a rather disapproving attitude toward you, who’s the one they may end up working with.”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“I think you should write some notes of apology.”
“Oh, Marcus! Who do you think you are? I’ve been around here forever. I knew everyone at that party.”
“Who do you think you are? This is not 1969 anymore, and we’re not in our twenties. Don’t you understand that?”
I scraped my fork around my plate. Even though I didn’t like being talked to like a child, I saw his point. And then for some reason, maybe just to hear him go on about this sort of thing, maybe because it was still bothering me, I said, “A couple of weeks ago, she gave me some—uh, coke.”
Marcus looked at me, a forkful of hash browns right in front of his mouth, for a long second, then he opened his mouth and put them in it. He chewed. He said coolly, “Ever try that before?”
“No.”
“What did you think?”
“It was okay.”
“What did you really think?”
“It was fine.”
“I’m not kidding. I want to know what you really thought.”
“Well, I guess my feelings were complicated. It wasn’t like anything else I’ve ever tried.”
“It wouldn’t be.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Yes.” That would be why he was calmer about this than about the other.
“What did you think?”
“Well, my thinking changed over time, and I’ll tell you how. There are only a couple kinds of luxuries. Some kinds have a chance to profit you in the end—fine art, say, or racehorses. Others profit you right now, because they get you in contact with people you want to know, like golf, or even boats, but boats are so time-consuming that the people you meet who also have boats usually aren’t in the market for anything. Some kinds of luxuries just make your wife feel better, like fancy clothes, but that’s okay. That’s what you owe her. I guess I would put charity, which I consider a luxury, in that category. But myself, I don’t see how that particular luxury you are talking about has any profit potential at all.”
“Well, I wasn’t—”
“I have to say I have second thoughts about Susan. This is a perfect example of what I was talking about.”
“When was that?”
“About caution. You aren’t in love with her, are you?” He leveled a suspicious look at me.
“I like her.”
“These are red flags.”
“Oh, lighten up.”
“I’m not kidding. I mean, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if I am your partner and I see something going on that’s a threat to the partnership or a threat to you, then I have to speak up, right?”
“Of course.”
“You’re not the Lone Ranger anymore, with the faithful Bobby at your side. You’re part of a team.”
“I don’t think these two little things have such far-reaching implications.”
“Well, be careful and pay attention.”
I thought of Jane’s outburst and, a little ticked off at his self-righteous tone, I asserted, “I don’t know that your recent behavior has worked entirely to the benefit of the partnership.”
He knew exactly what I was talking about. He said, “Whatever Jane has been telling you, she is wrong and she knows it. If she were a guy, I would give her the poke in the nose that she deserves. You know, I haven’t told you this because I thought I could keep her under control, but Jane is a pathological liar. Always has been. I mean, I don’t blame her. My older brother John is the reason. He was always getting her in trouble and leaving her to pick up the pieces, and kids who have fathers like ours have to lie to survive, but I said to her when she first got here that I was on to her and that part of going to work with this deal was playing it straight. I only believe what Jane tells me if I have independent supporting evidence. It’s so much a habit with me that I don’t even think about it, but if she’s coming to you with lies about me, I think my loyalty to her on this score is misplaced, and I am giving you fair warning.”
“You and Jane seem pretty close. I mean, apart from the odd argument or two.”
“We are close.” He leaned across the table. He said, “Your parents are so upright and sincere that you think moral failings in a person are a reason not to love them or commit yourself to them. You think character matters. Well, in the larger scheme of things, of course it does. But what I found out growing up is that it doesn’t matter what shits your parents are, you l
ove them anyway. That’s your burden. Brothers, sisters. They drink and they steal from one another and they embarrass you and they lie and they commit every single one of the seven deadly sins, and you still love them. Ask me why, I don’t know. So I don’t even think about what it means if Jane lies through her teeth. She lies because she lies and I’m close to her because she’s Jane. That’s the way it is, but I’m not stupid. I still think it’s my responsibility to make sure that her lies don’t hurt me or the partnership and that my own kids know that lying isn’t right or acceptable.” He scraped up the last bits of food on his plate and ate them.
And then it was Thanksgiving again. By the time I got to Gordon’s, I was in a very good mood. For one thing, it was a beautiful day. Bright blue and cool, every winding country road bordered with crisp leaves. The road, the tree trunks, the barns, the fences were wet and vivid, and so was the grass, which was that last rich green of the year. Bushes by the side of the road were hung with brilliant red berries. I was pretty much alone in the landscape, but expected, welcomed, a guy with places to go and people to see.
My parents were especially jovial, I think for the sake of the two elderly sisters they had invited to share our meal. One was a widow and one was a spinster. My mother whispered to me when we were dishing up food in the kitchen that the younger one had decided to go to a nursing home, and both of them were worried about it. “You know,” she said, “Selma doesn’t drive, so they just won’t see each other unless someone takes her over there. It’s a shame. I only pray to the Lord she can stay home through Christmas. At least they can have that.” She shook her head sadly.
But in the dining room and the living room, she was very lively and bright, and she had done an especially good job with the dinner. The turkey was moist and the gravy was dark and savory and the mashed potatoes were delicious, and the two women ate heartily, even though they had been talking about not having much of an appetite and nothing agreeing with them lately. After we ate, I did the dishes while my mother sat down at the piano and played hymns and my father sang. The ladies sang along, quavery but happy, and the house was warm and bright and I could hear them from the kitchen without having to join in. My parents harmonized very prettily, and the songs they sang, I suppose to keep everyone’s minds off the future, were happy and hopeful. As I was leaving to go to Susan’s, their minister was pulling up to the curb, and I waved at him, knowing they would all feel especially blessed that he had stopped by for coffee.