“Is she still around?” she asked.
“More or less,” Jim said.
“Oh, for god’s sake. Don’t be so wishy-washy. A person can’t be around more or less. She’s around and you might as well say so.”
“Okay,” he said angrily. “She’s around.”
He didn’t tell her that he and Clara had already taken an apartment in Altadena. They finished the conversation on a polite note.
She had scarcely hung up when Hank called. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Thinking about the quick and the dead,” she said. “How are you? Why aren’t you at work, bringing art to the masses? I suppose you heard about Sonny Shanks.”
“Sure. There are big write-ups out here.”
“I’m tired of talking about it. Are you okay?”
“I’d like to come and see you.”
She thought about it. “No,” she said. “I have to move next week. I can’t tell what Jim might do and I don’t want any complications until the dust gets settled. You’re dusty enough yourself. In fact you’re mostly dust. You’re probably even worse now that you live in a desert again.”
“They have bumper stickers out here that say, ‘Lucky Me! I Live in Lubbock.’”
“Send me one. I’ll put it in my kitchen to remind me that you exist.”
In a week she moved. The Duffins had decided to take a fancy apartment for the spring, one with a heated swimming pool. Patsy hired two gigantic good-natured movers to move her. It only took half a morning. Her possessions—they had almost crowded her out of the apartment—seemed no more substantial than a couple of suitcases in the expanse of the new house. They did not even make a good litter; some rooms remained totally bare. Emma came over and wandered about for an hour marveling at how much room there was. Patsy had ordered a couch and two tables and some rugs and several chairs, but none of them were due to arrive for a few days. The Horton boys made dozens of trips up and down stairs. Patsy’s spirits were drooping very badly. The house was cold and too bare and full of half-unpacked boxes; a new lamp she had bought needed to be screwed into a wall and there was no one to do it. She didn’t know what to do first; she started on the kitchen and then decided it would be better to do Davey’s room first. His room was the whole narrow third floor. It had lots of windows and was a lovely bright room when the sun was shining, but it was a cloudy January day and the room seemed cheerless. Davey didn’t agree. He crawled about with great enthusiasm, mumbling to himself, and every three seconds managed to work his way to the head of the stairs. They fascinated him. Patsy had neglected to get stair gates and had horrible visions of him tumbling down.
“Why did we buy it?” she said to Emma. “I’m too helpless for a house.” She felt very much like crying. Three stories was too much to be alone in with a little boy. It had been lovely to plan on fixing up the house, but to be dumped on the floor of it on a cold day was depressing. It was awful of Jim. He had wanted the house too, and should not have gone off and left her to cope with anything so major. She felt bitter at the same time that she felt lonely. He had not done his part. In the end, despite her threat, she had moved the books for him. She felt like a sucker, and an abandoned sucker at that. She had forgotten to tell the movers that the TV had to go on the second floor. With it on downstairs she could not hear Davey crying from the third floor. The TV set was too heavy for her to move upstairs. Juanita had the flu and Davey had never quite got over his cold and was a drippy mess, although a cheerful one. The large empty house made her feel lonely and exposed. In the apartment she had at least felt safe and cozy.
Fortunately Emma noticed her depression. “I think I better loan you my husband for the afternoon,” she said. “He’s handy for shoving things around.”
She was true to her word; Flap came in an hour, and all parties were delighted. Flap moved the TV upstairs, put a bed together, and spent most of the rest of the afternoon drinking beer, peering vaguely into boxes, or reading Jim’s books. He was wearing an old green army-surplus coat that made him look like a war refugee, but his presence cut the gloom and Patsy brightened up and unpacked the kitchen stuff. The sun came out just before it went down and shone through the windows, making the living room lovely. Patsy stopped and sat for thirty minutes on the arm of a chair, sipping beer and thinking about where things would go, once they came. By griping at him skillfully she managed to get Flap to screw in the lamp.
“Why’d you buy something that had to be screwed into the wall?” he asked. “Women have no sense. There are perfectly good lamps that stand on the floor. I think I’ve hit a beam. I’m ruining this screw.”
Emma had insisted that Flap bring the two of them home for supper, out of the same motive that had prompted her to the loan of Flap. Patsy insisted that Flap pick out a book as a reward for his labors.
“Is it legal?” he asked.
“Who cares? I moved them, I can give you one if I want to. Pick out a book.”
“Well, maybe I will,” Flap said. “I did screw the lamp in for you.” He picked out a neat two-volume Montaigne, blue, Oxford University Press. “I’ve always supposed I would read Montaigne eventually,” he said. “If the two volumes count as one book, that is.”
“Sure,” Patsy said. “I’m full of largesse. Let’s go see what Emma’s cooked.” She was tugging Davey with difficulty into a blue sweater. He was dripping and looking at Flap.
“I’ve always supposed I would read him too,” she said as they were driving to the Hortons’.
“If the urge really hits you, you can read him at our house. Am I supposed to ask about Jim once in a while?”
“You might, for form’s sake. He’s trying to get a job with IBM.”
“That’s as likely a corporation as any,” Flap said. He was reading the translator’s introduction to the Montaigne. His interest in Jim was not overwhelming. Patsy looked a little tired, but lovely. She was wearing jeans and a brown sweater. He had wondered as he put the bed together that afternoon if he would ever, by some happy fortune, get to sleep with her a time or two. He couldn’t help feeling that he deserved that kind of bonus before he ended his days. But the gift of the book had pleased him. Emma was already budgeting them toward their summer move and would not let him buy books. He had always found the publications of the Oxford University Press extremely satisfying. Having them made him feel scholarly, and frequently he liked to read them too. It occurred to him that if he could remember to be helpful while Patsy was setting up her new house, she might give him more; but by the time he finished Emma’s supper, which was meat loaf with green peppers in it, he had forgotten that he meant to be helpful. He lay on the couch most of the evening reading the translator’s long introduction and didn’t quite get around to reading Montaigne.
Patsy spent the evening shelving the books. It was the most relaxing of the many things she might have done. The living room bookcases were built in, and the books looked nice in them. The Hortons wanted to have a semester’s-end party. They would not think of letting a semester end without as much revelry as possible, and she was debating whether she should invite Hank to come back from Lubbock for it. She had no clear feeling about it. It would be nice having him back, but once back he might stay, and she didn’t like that thought. It was sloppy, she wasn’t sure what she felt about him, and it looked too much like tit for tat—just a reaction to what Jim had done. She did not want to go titting for tatting. Not her. She wavered all evening but ended, after she had bathed in the strangely large tub in the strangely large tiled bathroom, with a firm feeling against it. She would simply quit flirting with the idea of Hank for a while. It was no time for it. If Jim never came back, or if she reached a point where she knew she would not let him, then maybe. Until then she would keep aloof, and she went aloofly to bed in the large bare master bedroom. It felt as out of proportion as the bathroom and there was no denying that aloofness was going to be lonely in such an empty, manless house. It was strange having Davey above her, instead of a
few yards away behind a partition. It meant that she had to listen for him, and she spent a wakeful, restless, scared first night in their new home, listening almost all night for sounds of distress from her son.
12
ALL THE GRADUATE STUDENTS were desperate to have a semester’s-end party. Flap had worked hard on his dissertation and had two chapters done and only three to go, and he had secured a job, a better one than he had expected, at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City. Emma was gloomy for a few days at the thought of Iowa, but then someone told her that there was a big writing center there, with hundreds of lively writers in it. The news cheered her a bit. She sat around for several days reading Letting Go and imagining herself slimmed up and having an affair with a young writer of some kind.
“If worst comes to worst I could even take classes,” she told Patsy. Patsy was making brownies. She had discovered she liked them.
“Sure,” Patsy said, full of encouragement. “Who knows, you might even be a writer. Maybe you’ll be the one to write the story of all our lives.”
To her surprise Emma looked strange for a moment, as if a memory had caught at her heart. They were sitting in Patsy’s kitchen, which was gradually taking form. Hank had sent her a “Lucky Me! I Live in Lubbock” sticker and she had pasted it above the cabinet. Emma looked like she might cry, but she didn’t. Patsy decided she was probably just sad at the prospect of going away. The prospect of Emma going away made her sad, in fact. Who would she have to sit in the kitchen with?
“Well, are you going to have the party or am I going to have the party?” Emma asked. That was the ostensible subject of the conversation.
“I will. It can be a housewarming too. What’s Kenny doing? I haven’t seen him in weeks?”
“Writing a thesis on the novels of Rose Macaulay,” Emma said. “He decided he wasn’t doctoral material and is taking a terminal M.A. Are you going to divorce Jim?”
“We haven’t decided anything,” she said with a light sigh. She was more interested in her brownies.
“You don’t look crushed,” Emma said.
“Why should I spend my life being crushed? Once I got sort of used to him being gone it was such a relief not having those constant arguments that I couldn’t keep feeling crushed. I don’t like having terrible fights all the time. Now I just feel sort of light. Maybe I’m just shallow. Who will we have to the party?”
They drew up a list, and on her own hook Patsy decided to invite Peewee Raskin. She had seen him two or three times at the zoo and for some reason had avoided asking him to dinner. Harmless as he was, she just didn’t want it. He was too worshipful to ask to dinner, but a party was different. She went to the zoo and asked him, and she and Davey rode all around the zoo on the zoo train. Peewee drove erratically, mostly because he kept looking back and trying to tell her things. He agreed somewhat gingerly to come to the party. He literally could not imagine what kind of people might be there.
That night at the Gulf-Air he had a long speculative conversation about intellectuals. Roscoe was as vocal as ever.
“What you oughta do is take us to that party,” he said. “We could hold our own. I’m an expert on half a dozen things myself.”
“You’re an expert on horseshit,” Skeets said. “At least you ought to be, as much of it as you put out.”
Roscoe was not offended. “You’re an expert on losing at dominoes, yourself. Why don’t you bring your egghead friends over here sometimes, Squirt? I’d like to talk to them.”
Peewee was evasive. He had no intention whatever of exposing Patsy to the vulgarities of Roscoe. The mere thought made him cringe. He agonized over the party for three days, sure that he would seem hideously out of place no matter how well he behaved. He could not decide whether to wear his hat. Patsy had told him it would be a very casual party, but that was no help. When it came time to go he put on his cleanest Levi’s and a new Western shirt he had bought especially for the occasion, and after a good deal of fidgeting took down his hat and put it on. He wore it on the bus going over, thinking that if he changed his mind he could stick it under a bush and pick it up when he left the party.
As it happened, though, he had no difficulties at the party at all. At the last minute he forgot to stick his hat under a bush and wore it in and made a great hit, hat and all. For him the party was a wild delight. The Hortons immediately took him to their hearts and plied him with questions about his trade. Various other sloppily dressed graduate students drifted over to listen and Peewee, discovering that he knew more than he thought, at least about rodeo, expanded two inches and spent the whole evening talking, jiggling slightly in time with whatever record was on, drinking an occasional beer at somebody’s insistence but mostly eating hundreds of Fritos with cheese dip, to punctuate his remarks. He had never been to a party where there were so many odd things to eat strewn about, and besides Fritos and dip stuffed himself with nuts, pretzels, and rye crackers.
Kenny Cambridge, once he arrived, took an especial liking to Peewee and they spent an hour talking about motor bikes. Finding out that Patsy’s people were interested in some of the same things he was interested in was a warming revelation to Peewee, and made him feel good about life. Once in a while he passed a conversation where everyone was talking about books he had never heard of, but he didn’t let it spook him. He hurried on to the nearest dip bowl, thinking of the triumphant report he would make at the Gulf-Air the next evening. His only disappointment was that Patsy didn’t talk to him much. She was being a hostess and dancing and occasionally running upstairs. She wore a sweater and a short red skirt and looked very lovely.
Peewee didn’t suspect it, but Patsy was the one person at the party who wasn’t having a good time. As the evening was beginning she fell into a strange depression that she tried every possible way to lift herself out of, with no success. Something was wrong, not with the evening, not with the people, but with her. It was something irrational, for the house was a great house for a party and everyone was in a party mood. Things were clicking; there was no stiffness, not even initially. A tall graduate student from Chicago insisted on smoking pot and she grew mildly irritated with him for passing it around so freely, but he was not the source of her depression. What sort of hostess would protest against marijuana? She had invited the Duffins, to let them see what she had done with the house. Lee was complimentary, and Patsy danced a lot with Bill. For a while she enjoyed it; it covered the depression. Then she went upstairs to check on Davey. She had asked Juanita to sleep in for the evening, for she knew with the party going on she would never hear him if he cried. Juanita was watching television. Davey was sleeping soundly. Patsy poised restlessly on the second floor, feeling oddly irritable. She wanted the phone to ring. Even more, she wanted Hank to show up at the party. She hadn’t asked him, but she had mentioned the party in their last conversation and she thought how nice it would be if he surprised her. She was not in the mood to resent a surprise. What she was beginning to resent was the lack of one.
When she went back down into the noise she took the depression with her. It was no good not having a man—for some reason it struck her then. She was without one. Emma had one, Lee had one, all the girls at the party had one. Most of them were men she herself would not want, but still she felt unattended and strange. She missed Jim, as much or more as she missed Hank. He was good at attending her at parties, and she enjoyed dancing with him. When she came downstairs Kenny Cambridge wanted to dance with her. His beard was longer and reddish brown. His pudgy girl friend had left him and he had not managed to replace her. Patsy turned him on, and he looked merrier when turned on.
“Quit leering,” she told him.
“It wasn’t a leer. It was a look of frank concupiscence.”
“Oh, screw,” Patsy said. “I think I’ll get a drink.”
She got a drink and complimented Bill Duffin on his daughters and got another drink and accidentally got drunk. In thirty minutes she was drunk enough to have a sense that she was ree
ling in some way, not physically, but some way. She went through moods rapidly. When she began to get high she rose above the depression and had a half-hour of great well-being. Her party was going fine. Everyone was splendid. She felt bound to everyone there. Parties were the answer to loneliness and mortality. The people were fine, and they were her people.
But that mood dropped away. She found herself sitting halfway up the stairs, at a point where the stairs made a turn, and Bill Duffin was with her. She was complimenting him on his daughters again, and though she had a vague sense that she might be repeating herself she didn’t stop. Bill didn’t care. He reached up from time to time to pat her shoulder or try to hug her. He had drunk a good bit too and was speculating quietly about the affair they hadn’t had. Patsy didn’t care; she was even vaguely interested, though she wanted to cry. Hank or Jim should have come. Jim was probably at a party himself, with Clara Clark. Bill kept putting his arm around her; he tried to pull her against him.
“I’m just being fatherly,” he claimed. “You look forlorn.”
“Screw you,” she said. “I’m not forlorn. And you’re not fatherly. You’re fondling me, and you’re still scheming. Forget it, buddy. It’s too late. I never liked you anyway. I just had my eye on your house.”
She giggled at her own meanness. Bill put his hand on her knee and confessed that he had a stomachache.
“Your ulcer, probably,” she said. “The price of fame.”
“What’s the word from Jim and Clara?” he asked.
“So they’re Jim and Clara now,” she said angrily, jumping up. “How would I know what the word is? I don’t even want to.”
Bill was unimpressed with her annoyance. She was standing two stairs above him and he could almost see up her skirt. Her legs were lovely and it angered him that she had never let him near her.
“Well, the man who lives with Clara won’t get much time for scholarly pursuits,” he said, looking into his glass. “Not as I remember her.”
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