“No, and you won’t find out while you’re pursuing me,” she said. “This is my fault and I feel badly about it. This kind of fluttering around doesn’t become either one of us. The longer we wallow in it the sorrier we’ll feel for ourselves and the less we’ll like one another. I hate the whole business.”
Jim released her hand. He got off the bed and began to tuck in his shirttails. “I guess it was too much to hope for,” he said.
“That’s exactly why it didn’t happen,” Eleanor said. “You were convinced in advance it was too much to hope for. Well, it wasn’t at all. You were mistaken. I’m just as vulnerable as anyone. You shouldn’t have built me up into someone unattainable. If you hadn’t we’d have attained plenty.”
“I know,” he said. “But I know better now. Why is it too late?”
“I don’t know why. How should I know why? Please go to bed.”
He kissed her before he left, and she allowed it. When he was gone she got up, undressed, and listlessly put on her dressing gown. She turned the bed down and sat on it for a time, discouraged and dispirited, jiggling a couple of sleeping pills in her palm. It was all such a mess, and it was not finished, either. She had been stupid not to tell him to leave when he had asked if she wanted him to. He would keep at her for another day and she would reach a point of not caring and let him. It would just make things worse, but it would probably happen. She was not a terribly hard person to wear down. Just having him gone was the nicest thing she could imagine, and yet she knew she was not simply going to walk downstairs and tell him she had changed her mind, he would have to leave. Instead, she would take the sleeping pills—in a minute she would.
As she was sitting on the bed she heard a car approaching the house. It came into the circular driveway, stopped, a door slammed. Curious, she walked out on the patio and looked down. The pale moonlight shone on the long white hearse. It seemed such luck, such a miracle, that she could scarcely believe it; her legs shook a little at the thought of what would have happened if he had come an hour earlier. When she went back to the bedroom, Sonny was there. The smell of the room had changed. He sat on the bed and began to pull off his boots.
“Hi,” he said. “Never got to Flagstaff. Complications come up. How you?”
“I’m glad to see you,” she said, sitting down by him. He gave her a light kiss.
“You sound as tired as I am,” he said, peeling off his shirt. “What you been doing?”
“Oh, showing Jim the ranch.”
“Oh, yeah, Jim’s here,” he said. “Forgot. Maybe he’ll ride to L.A. with me.”
He lay down and stretched out an arm, and Eleanor lay down beside him. “Don’t wake me for breakfast,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. After he was asleep she got up and put the two pills back in their bottle and closed the doors to the patio and pulled the shades so the morning sun would not wake them. Lucy would see the hearse and take care of the telephone and Jim and anyone else that needed taking care of. They could sleep.
15
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Why are you telling me this?” Patsy said, so agitated that she wanted to fling the phone down. She looked around in distraction. Davey was in his highchair making a great spectacular mess with his carrot goop. She had almost finished feeding him and was making herself a salad involving cottage cheese and black cherries when the phone rang. Jim began a confession and the evening was spoiled. She wanted to fling the phone down.
“Do you enjoy hurting me?” she asked. “Why would you tell me that, otherwise? It’s terrible of you.”
Jim was surprised. He had not expected her to be upset; he had expected her to be glad to hear what he was saying. In a way, Sonny’s arrival had been a relief to him as well as to Eleanor, though it had eliminated a tantalizing possibility. But his conscience began to hurt him and he felt an urge to call Patsy. He went into the little town near the ranch and called from a phone booth near a truck stop, so his voice was occasionally drowned out by the sound of trucks pulling away. Down the highway from him the sun was setting, but the phone booth was still hot.
“I just thought I ought to be honest,” he said. “Nothing happened. I didn’t sleep with her. I’m really sorry about it all. I guess I did have a crush on her, but it didn’t come to anything. It didn’t hurt anything.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t hurt anything?” she said. “You leave me all summer to go have a crush on another woman and then you don’t even sleep with her and you call me up when I was perfectly happy to tell me all this! It hurts everything! Now I don’t know what to do. I want to rip this phone out!”
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Why?”
“So you can’t call me and hurt me any more,” she said, beginning to cry.
“Wait,” she said. “Davey’s got carrot in his ears.” She went over and swabbed him briefly and sat him on the floor. She was crying, very agitated, her chest heaving. The receiver of the wall phone dangled. She didn’t want to pick it up. Davey eyed it hopefully, but Patsy finally picked it up.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Jim said. “I couldn’t help having the crush. What you should be glad about is that it didn’t amount to anything. I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Well, thanks, only don’t do me that kind of favors,” she said. “I can’t stand self-pity and you’re dripping with it.”
“I am not,” he said. “I just called thinking you might be lonesome. I thought you might be unhappy. Is it so bad to call?”
“I don’t know. I just hate you. It’s too bad you didn’t get to screw your aging millionairess. What are you going to do now?”
“Tonight I’m going to an amateur rodeo with Sonny. Tomorrow we’re driving to L.A.”
“Sure you are,” Patsy said. “Can I depend on that, or will you figure out some way to get left behind, so you can have another try? Better try quick, before another of her low-class boy friends comes in and beats you out.”
“Shut up,” he said, stung. “She doesn’t have low-class boy friends.”
“Ha,” Patsy said. “How do you know who she screws, you’ve only been there two days. She may screw her gardeners for all you know.”
“Shut up,” he said loudly. “I don’t like you using that kind of language anyway.”
“And you especially don’t like me using it about your fading violet,” Patsy said, the venom rising in her so rapidly that she could hardly pour it out fast enough. “I can use any word I want to. How close did you get to this prize, may I ask?”
“I’d like to brain you,” he said. “I called to be nice. I never wanted this fight.”
“I never wanted your confession, either,” she said. “I was having a pleasant supper. I didn’t need to know you had gone off to try and screw an aging heiress. If that’s the kind of husband I’ve got I’d just as soon not be reminded of it.”
“I called to tell you I love you,” Jim said. “Don’t you understand anything? I do love you. That was the whole point of the call.”
“Oh, fuck your noble motives,” she said bitterly. “Fat consolation they are. Tallulah or whoever she is wouldn’t let you screw her so you love me again. That’s music to my ears.”
“I ought to come home and beat hell out of you,” he said, not very convincingly. Her anger shook him a little.
“Oh, no, I think you ought to stay there,” she said. “You might get another chance at Tallulah. Maybe you could find a cowgirl or something while she’s busy with Sonny.”
“Come on, Patsy,” he said helplessly.
Patsy was clenching and unclenching her fists, trying to calm down. Her venom surprised her too. “Don’t Patsy me,” she said, but a little wearily. “You’ve ruined things now. I don’t know what to do.”
“I haven’t done anything,” he repeated. “I was just intrigued with her. I didn’t sleep with her.”
“That just makes it worse,” she said, all spirit running out of her. She remembered what she had been doing
all afternoon.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t make it worse. I’m going to hang up. Go on to your rodeo.”
“No, don’t hang up,” he said, frightened at the thought of the uncertainty he would be in if she hung up at such a time, in such a tone.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked listlessly, no longer particularly caring whether she did or didn’t.
“Because it’s not that bad,” he said. “I know it was foolish, but I do love you.”
She was silent. He repeated it. It sounded true. “Surely it isn’t so unforgivable,” he said.
“Oh, Jim,” she said. “Why did you go away just when we had Davey and could have been happy? We didn’t have so many problems then.”
“I didn’t know going off would make problems,” he said. “I really wanted the job.”
“Couldn’t you get out of going to California? We just get farther and farther apart this way.”
Jim didn’t know what to say. With her voice in his ear he missed her and would have liked to be in Houston; but at the same time he wanted to go to California in the morning, with Sonny in the hearse.
“No, it’s too late to get out of it,” he said. “I won’t be there long, and I won’t make any more mistakes of this kind. It’ll work out. You’ll see.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, her discouragement growing heavier. “You’re just saying what any man would say. You don’t really want to come home and do anything about us, or you would. You don’t know what to do about me, or you would. You don’t even like to think about what to do about me. Go on and have your vacation. Enjoy Disneyland. Maybe you can find an aging actress to admire.”
“Please don’t start that again.”
“A young actress then,” Patsy said. “I don’t care. Listen, I’ve got to get Davey. I’m going to hang up.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t sound that way. I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe it won’t seem so drastic then.”
“Don’t count on it not seeming drastic. Go on to your rodeo and stay away from that woman.”
Daved had scooted into the hall and was staring at a small gray cat that had appeared at the top of the landing. “Goodness, see the kitty,” she said, sniffing. She opened the door with her foot and the little cat walked in, past a startled Davey. It rubbed itself against her ankle. She picked it up and they stared eye to eye for a moment. Then she took it to the kitchen and gave it some milk. “I oughtn’t to feed you,” she said. The cat ignored her. She let it drink and took Davey to the bed. He was not happy about leaving the cat but she put him on his back and tickled him until he forgot it; he grinned and kicked happily. While he was playing with a toy giraffe Patsy began to cry again. The cat came in and jumped up on the bed. It licked its paws and watched her cry. Davey mouthed the giraffe and watched the cat, who ignored him.
Patsy did not cry hard or long—she felt too listless and unenergetic. Her throat and chest felt stuffed, as if she were an unemptied vacuum cleaner. Such a mess and such a cheap mess, common and hopeless and yet puzzling. She could remember vaguely that she had been unhappy at times, a year before, two years before, but in retrospect it seemed such a mild, guiltless, unessential unhappiness that it scarcely deserved the name. It was the kind of unhappiness two aspirin should have cured. Then her dissatisfactions had been normal and natural ones, at least, and not so confusing.
That kind of unhappiness was all past, all past for good, she felt, looking at the young child and the young cat. The cat reached out a paw and tapped one of her hands. She scratched it between the ears and it closed its eyes. Davey was delighted and made sounds. The kitten stretched out on its side on the blue spread, yawned, got ready to go to sleep. Davey would have liked to touch it but didn’t quite dare. Once when he advanced a hand the cat raised its head and looked at him sternly. “Un-uh,” Patsy said. “Let the kitty-cat sleep.”
Evening was closing down. The room was almost dark. Patsy picked up the phone and called Juanita, asked her to get a taxi and please come, she needed to go out. There was to be a graduate students’ party that evening to celebrate the decline of summer and the impending resumption of graduate miseries. She had not meant to go, mostly because she didn’t want to see Hank publicly. She was afraid something might show. She had gone to Amarillo with some slight hope that she and Jim might bind themselves together again, in a way that would exclude Hank, but it hadn’t happened. Her marriage was simply out of control. Jim was spinning off into some new orbit, far from her, and there was no way she could check him. She had come back to Houston with the sense that it was simply all beyond her, finally. She couldn’t reach Jim, and he couldn’t reach her. But Hank could reach her, in at least one way. He wanted her more than ever and the night of her return she was very vulnerable to being wanted. His desire carried her with it; when he touched her she felt all the things she had always hoped to feel. Most of the four days she had been back had been spent in his bed. Life became so physical that she had no time to think, no way to think; the bed was their country and thought only a kind of evening shadow that sometimes stretched across them when they were tired, their skins still smelling of the sun.
But Jim’s phone call made the new country seem unreal. She was back with herself, her marriage, her guilt and loneliness, her child and a cat. Where had she been? What had she been doing? Details of the day’s passion rose to mind, sickening her. Poor Jim had done nothing. He loved her. Why had she berated him so? She was the one who was guilty. She knew she didn’t want to sit there all evening thinking about it, the cat asleep, Davey soon to be asleep. Better to go to the party. Better, perhaps, to see Hank in public while the country seemed so flat and barren to her. Perhaps she would give him up, make Jim come home, try again. Anyway the Hortons would be there. She could get drunk and not have to think about it all night. She had not been drunk in a long time. She put on a green summer dress and was ready to go when Juanita arrived. Even in her gloom it was nice to think how surprised everyone would be to see her, especially Hank. She herself did not ever expect to be pleasantly surprised again. Jim’s little confession might have been her last surprise.
Six hours later everyone was drunk or, at the very least, tipsy and danced-out and sweaty and feeling happy and doomed. All the windows in Kenny’s hot bare-floored second-story apartment had been flung as high as they would go, giving the neighbors an unwelcome earful of rock music. Only the host and his girl—a stocky junior from Harlingen—were left on their feet. Everyone else was sitting on the floor, drinking and watching them dance. Patsy sat between Hank and Emma, and they were all slightly high. She had not really paid Hank much attention and was sure that no one had noticed anything. There was so little to notice that it almost upset her, for it seemed to her that he was much less interesting and much less forceful in a group than he was alone. In a group Hank faded out of sight; Flap had more to say, and even Kenny Cambridge was livelier.
But Patsy was not really bothered; like everyone else she was mostly interested in watching Lee Duffin. Bill was out of town and she had come to the party with her acknowledged boy friend; there had been gossip about them all spring but actually seeing them together was something else. He was a slim young graduate student named Peter, a nice boy with a neat soft blond beard. He danced awkwardly and clearly felt awkward; coming had apparently been Lee’s idea. Lee looked splendid, Patsy thought. She wore a white summer dress and was neither nervous nor abashed. She took good care of Peter, danced with him, kept him drinking until he relaxed, and treated him very tenderly. “He’s so slight,” Patsy said to Emma. It was strangely cheering to have another adulteress in the room.
“I like him, though,” Emma said. “I admit it seems a little too Henry James. But they look nice together. I kind of envy her. Nobody’s ever going to make me into a Madame de Vionnet. Peter’s certainly nicer than her husband.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Patsy said, drinking some more vod
ka punch. It had a nice limey taste. Lee looked pensively into her glass and then smiled at Peter. It occurred to Patsy that she was playing the role with Peter that Eleanor Guthrie had played with her husband; she might be playing it with him at that moment, at some distant rodeo, while Sonny rode a bull. The world seemed very confusing. It bothered her that Hank was not impressive in a crowd. He never had anything to say. He was good-looking in his way, but she didn’t care about that. She wanted him not to be so dull. Then he slyly hooked one of his fingers through one of hers and she forgot that she was worried. Lightness filled her head and she felt happy. The touch reminded her of other touches. Kenny was fondling his sloppy girl friend, who seemed neither pleased nor annoyed. They suddenly sat down in the middle of the dance floor. “Hey, your beard needs trimming,” the girl said.
“Let’s talk about literature,” Kenny said, ignoring her.
Flap was lying full length on the floor, his arms over his eyes. He had drunk twice as much as anyone else—everyone observed it—yet he held it well. Patsy had danced with him for an hour while he was getting drunk. “Bringing It All Back Home” was on the phonograph.
“I hate literature,” Flap said. “Don’t we all?”
“Not me,” Emma said “I hate mornings. I also hate cereal. It’s so goddamn unpleasant to look at, once it soaks up. Some cereals particularly.”
“Don’t hate literature,” Kenny said gloomily. He had been smoking pot, as had his stocky girl. “Hate the English department if you want to. Fuck the English department, in fact.”
“Fuck Post cereals,” Emma said. “I don’t like them.”
Patsy drank more punch. She felt lighter still, and happier. Hank was stroking the inside of her hand with one finger. Lee Duffin looked quiet and thoughtful. Peter lay stretched out on the floor with his head in her lap. Lee stroked his forehead. Patsy suddenly found herself liking Lee enormously, for her poise, for her courage, for her kindness to Peter. She found herself liking everyone enormously: Emma, who went on morning after morning feeding her boys cereal; Flap, who went on day after day studying for prelims, and who drank well at parties; Kenny, for having the party; even the stocky girl friend, for being so tolerant of Kenny. She had not been to a party in a long time and had forgotten the feelings that swept over her; she had a strong sense of being involved along with everyone else in the ruin of something. What was being ruined scarcely mattered: a civilization, a generation, or only the summer, or only an evening, or perhaps only themselves. What seemed important was that they were all in it together. No one seemed unhappy, and yet no one was likely to be spared. She drank some more and peeled her wet blouse loose from her chest. “The humidity is getting worse,” she said.
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