And the trouble is, he realized, once you get started thinking along these lines, once you start looking for indications that you are being used, you can find evidence everywhere. Paranoia. If she asks you to drive her to Petaluma to pick up a hundred pound sack of duck feed, which she obviously can't lift herself, is that a sign that you are no longer a man, a human being, but merely a machine capable of picking up a hundred pounds and thrusting it into the back of the car?
Doesn't everybody pick their friends because they're useful to them? Doesn't a man marry a woman who flatters him, does things for him such as cooking, buying him clothes? Isn't that natural? Is love natural when it binds together people who otherwise would be of no practical value to each other?
On and on he reasoned.
One Sunday afternoon he and Fay drove out to the Point, to the Mc Clures' ranch. This area might someday become a state park, this wild moor-like plateau that dropped off at the ocean's edge, one of the most desolate parts of the United States, with weather unlike that of any other part of California. For now however it belonged to the various branches of the McClure family and was used, like most of the land of the Point, for the raising of top-grade dairy herds. The McClures had already donated a stretch of coast to the state and this had been made into a public beach. But the state wanted the rest of their ranch. The McClures loved the area, loved their ranch, and the fight over the land had gone on for some time, with the issue still in doubt. Almost everyone in the area wanted to see the McClures keep their ranch.
At the moment it required a friendship with somebody in the McClure family to get permission to cross the ranch to the coast. The road through the ranch—perhaps twelve miles in length—consisted of crushed red gravel, deeply rutted from winter rains. A car that slipped into a rut or into the pasture became mired. And there were no phones by which to call the AAA.
As they drove, bouncing along, the car sliding from side to side, Nat became more and more conscious of their isolation out here. If anything happened to them they could get no help. On each side of the road semi-wild cattle roamed. He saw no telegraph poles, no wires or signs of electricity. Only the rocky, rolling grass hills. Somewhere ahead was the ocean and the end of the road. He had never been out here. Fay of course had, several times, driven out here to collect abalone. The road did not seem to bother her; at the wheel she drove confidently, chattering with him about various matters.
“The trouble with owning a VW or any sports car up here,” she told him, “is that if you hit a deer, you get flipped. You're dead. Or a cow. Some of those cows weigh as much as a VW.”
To him that seemed an exaggeration. But he said nothing. The ride made him carsick and he felt like a child again, being driven by his mother.
In some respects that epitomized his problem with her. She had an attitude toward men like that of a mother toward children; she took it for granted that men were frailer, shorter-lived, less good at solving problems than women. A myth of the times, he realized. All consumer goods are aimed at a female market … women hold the purse-strings and the manufacturers know that. On tv dramas, women are shown as the responsible ones, with men being foolish Dag-wood Bumsteads…
I went to so much trouble, he thought, to break away from my family—in particular my mother—and get off on my own, to be economically independent, to establish my own family. And now I'm mixed up with a powerful, demanding, calculating woman who wouldn't bat an eye at putting me back in that old situation again. In fact it would seem perfectly natural to her.
Whenever they went out somewhere in public together, Fay always took a long look in advance at his choice of clothes. She made it her business to see if she approved. “Don't you think you should put on a tie?” she would say. It never occurred to him to pass judgment on what she wore, to tell her for example that he thought shorts and a halter should not be worn into a supermarket, or that a suede leather coat, chartreuse slacks, dark glasses, and sandals constituted a grotesque outfit, not worthy of being worn anywhere. If she wore clothes that clashed, he simply accepted it as part of her; he took it as a postulate of her existence.
The rutted rock trails along which they drove ended at a cypress grove on the edge of the ocean cliffs. In the center of the grove he saw a small old farmhouse, well-kept, with a garden and palm tree in front of it, and side buildings that looked much older than any he had seen in California except for the Spanish adobe buildings which of course were now all historical monuments. The farmhouse and side buildings—unlike other farm buildings he had seen—were painted a dark color. The garden, too, had a brown quality, and the palm tree had the thick, hairy quality usual with trees of its kind. The buildings seemed deserted, so completely so that he wondered if anyone had been there in the last month. But everything had remained in good order. Here, so far away from cars and people, no one came to do any damage. Even marauders were absent, this far out.
“Some of these buildings are a hundred years old,” Fay told him as she drove the car from the road—it ended at a closed gate—and on to a small grassy field. At a barbed wire fence she stopped and shut off the motor. “We walk from here,” she said.
They carried the fishing equipment and their lunches from the car to the fence. Fay lifted one wire and slipped easily between it and the one below, but he found it necessary to use the gate; he did not feel as slim as she. Beyond the fence they followed a trail across a pasture and then they began to climb down a sandy slope overgrown with iceplant. Now he heard the ocean breakers. The wind became stronger. Under his feet the sand crumbled and gave; he had to lie down and take hold of the tangles of iceplant. Ahead of him, Fay skipped and tumbled, caught herself and continued on without a pause, telling him constantly how she and Charley and the girls and assorted friends of theirs had come here to this beach; how much trouble they had had getting down, what they had caught, what the dangers were, who had been scared and who not … he groped along after, thinking that women could be divided into two distinct classes; those who were good climbers and then all the others lumped together. A woman who climbed well was not like the rest of them. Probably the difference pervaded every part of their physical and mental apparatus; at this moment it seemed crucial to him, a genuine revelation.
Now Fay had come to some rocky projections. Past her he saw what appeared to be a sheer drop, and then the tops of rocks far below, and the surf. Crouching down, Fay descended step by step to a ledge, and there, among the piles of sand and rock that had slid down, she took hold of a rope attached to a metal stake driven into the rock.
“From now on,” she called back, “it's by rope.”
Good Christ, he thought.
“The girls can do it,” she called.
“I'll tell you honestly,” he said, halting with his feet planted far apart, balancing himself with care, “I'm not sure I can.”
“I'll carry everything down,” Fay said. “Throw the packs and the fishing poles down to me.”
With care, he lowered things to her. Strapping the packs to her back, she disappeared, clinging to the rope. After a time she reappeared, this time far below, standing on the beach and gazing nearly straight up at him, a small figure among the rocks. “Okay,” she shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth.
Cursing with fright, he half-slid, half-stepped down the rock projections to the rope. He found the rope badly corroded, and that did not improve his morale. But for the first time he discovered that the cliff was not sheer; it had easy footholds, and the rope was merely for safety. Even without it, in an emergency, a person could get down, foot by foot, to the beach. Fay, when he got there, had meanwhile gone off and was seeking a deep pool in which to fish; she did not even bother to watch him descend.
Later, with their poles propped up against rocks, they fished in a pool which the withdrawing tide had left. Several crabs wandered about in the water, and he saw a many-legged starfish, a type he had never before seen. Twelve legs … and bright orange.
“That's a sea-slug,�
� Fay said, pointing to a nondescript blob.
They used mussels as bait. According to Fay it was possible to catch ocean trout. But they saw no fish in their pool and neither he nor she expected much luck. In any case it was exciting, here on this deserted beach at the base of the cliff, accessible only by rope … no beer cans, no orange peels, only cockle shells and abalone shells, and the black, slippery rocks in which both cockles and abalone could be found.
He said, “Let me ask you something.”
“Okay,” she said sleepily. Leaning back against the rock she had gone almost to sleep. She had on a cotton shirt and water-stained canvas trousers and an old, torn pair of tennis shoes.
“Where is this relationship of ours going?”
“Time will tell,” Fay said.
“Where do you want it to go?”
She opened one eye and studied him. “Aren't you happy? My good god—you get fed glorious meals, you get to use my car, my credit card, I bought you a decent suit that isn't two years out of style with my money—you get to screw me. Don't you?”
That word had always bothered him, since he had first heard her use it. Now of course she would never stop; she had noticed his reaction to it.
“What more do you want?” she said.
He said, “But what do you want out of it?”
“I get a nice man,” she said. “A very pretty man. You know that. You're the prettiest man I ever saw in my entire life; as soon as I saw you that day I wanted to take you to my bed and screw you. Didn't I tell you that?”
With patience, he said, “Let's look at the possibilities. First of all, your husband will either recover or he won't. That means he'll either be coming back from the hospital or he won't. Do you realize I don't know how you feel toward him? Whether you'd prefer him to come back, and if he did come back—”
She interrupted, “You know, we could lie down on the sand and screw.”
“God damn you,” he said.
“Why?” she said. “Because I'm using the same words as you? What do you call it? You do it, whatever you call it. You do screw me; you have screwed me … five times. Listen,” she said, all at once becoming serious. “The last time when I was washing my diaphragm afterward—did I tell you?”
“No,” he said, with apprehension.
“It was eaten away. Corroded. Are you sure your sperm doesn't have some sort of sulfuric acid in it? My good god, it was totally ruined—I had to drive down to Fairfax and get another, and I had to be measured again—she told me I always should be measured when I get a new diaphragm. I didn't know that. I've replaced my diaphragm six or seven times without being measured. She told me the one I've been using is much too small. It's a good thing it did wear out.”
After a pause he tried to resume his own topic. “I want to know if you're interested in me on a permanent basis.”
“What if I said no?” she said.
“Well,” he said, “I'm just curious.”
“Does it matter? Why do you have to have these great answers? My good god.”
“Remember, I've got a wife,” he said, with growing outrage. “It's important to me to know where you and I stand.”
“You mean, ‘are my intentions honorable’?”
“Yes,” he said finally.
Fay said, “I'm in love with you. You know how you affect me; nobody ever affected me that way in my entire life. But— you mean, you're thinking about marriage, aren't you? Could you support me? I have a house budget of twelve thousand a year … did you know that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You couldn't support me and the two girls on your salary.”
He said, “Presumably there'd be some kind of settlement.”
“I own half the house,” she said. “Community property. My equity is worth about fifteen thousand. And I've got property that Charley gave me as a gift … stock in the Ford motor company. I get in about one hundred a month from that. And I've got one hundred and fifty more coming in from an apartment building in Tampa, Florida. So I get in two-fifty a month, and that's all I have, except that I'd get the Buick; it's mine.”
“Would you consider splitting up from Charley?” he said. “If he recovers?”
“Well,” she said, “the girls like you. They're afraid of Charley because they've seen him hit me. You'd never hit me. Would you? I really can't stand that; I almost left him a couple of times. I god damn near drove over and got Sheriff Chisholm and had a felony wife-beating warrant sworn out … maybe I should have.” She paused, deep in thought. “I really should get the house. It's actually mine. He should give me that.”
“It's a nice house,” he said. He thought to himself what it would be like. They would live partly—perhaps mostly— on Fay's money, and in Fay's house. The children would be Fay's. The car, too. Of course, he would eat well … assuming that the settlement with Charley went in her favor. But suppose Charley hired lawyers and got after her with a charge of adultery? Suppose they got after her with an unfit mother charge. Possibly she would wind up with no settlement at all, no alimony, no child-support.
“You wouldn't have to support the kids,” she said. “I know he'd always see to their welfare.”
He nodded.
“How would you feel about using my money?” she said.
“How would you feel?” he said.
“It wouldn't bother me. Money is money, nothing more. It would be money I got from him.”
He said, “Suppose something went wrong and you didn't get it. You wound up with no money, with only my means of support.”
“You could stop your studying,” she said. “Go to work fulltime. Couldn't you earn enough in the real estate game to support us? I know a man, a San Francisco man, who earns about fourteen thousand a year in real estate. Men make fortunes in real estate.” She went on, then, to tell him of all the deals, all the quick riches and comfortable livings that she had heard among realtors and land speculators. Her apartment building in Tampa, for instance. It had cost them almost nothing. Charley was very good at picking up property cheap … their ten acres here in Marin County hadn't set them back much, and at one time they had options on all sorts of acreage around Marin County, including some very choice land.
“I think,” he said, “I'd be a lot better off ultimately if I went on and got my degree.”
“Oh balls,” she said. “My god, I've got a BA and I couldn't earn a nickel with it; I tried. I wasn't qualified for any high-paying jobs, any professional jobs, and when I applied for the usual stuff they give to business school graduates—typing and shorthand stuff, office stuff—they were suspicious of me because I had a degree. They told me I ‘wouldn't be happy.’ That was before I was married, of course. I'd rather be dead than work in an office, now that I've had a chance to live a really happy life. I love it up here in the country; this is such a beautiful area. I wouldn't go back to the city for anything in the world. It would kill me.”
He thought, The message is clear. She wouldn't make any attempt to put me through school. She wouldn't permit any drop in her standard of living. She wouldn't even be willing to leave Marin County or her house; she would want—expect—to go on exactly as she is, but with me instead of Charley as her husband.
In fact, she would get everything she's gotten from Charley, but without Charley. He's the only part she doesn't care for. She'd like to have me in his place. But everything else the same.
We wouldn't have a combined life, a mutual life. I'd simply be fitted into a slot from which Charley got jerked out. I'd enter her life and occupy a certain area.
But, he thought, would it be so terrible a life?
The house was far more of a house than any he could hope to buy or build or rent or own by himself, with his limited wage-earning capacity. And she was certainly an exceptional person. She made a superb companion to a man; she swore, she climbed, she played games—she was willing to try anything. She had a real sense of adventure, of exploration.
One day they had gone
together up to the oyster beds to buy a quart of fresh oysters. When she had seen the oyster boat, and the rakes, she had immediately wanted to go out and be with the men gathering the oysters; she asked what time the boat left—it was a barge, carrying two or three men, plus their equipment—and if she could go along. All of them, the Mexican oyster-opener, the tough-looking owner, and himself—they had all been impressed by this slim woman who had no compunction, no anxiety.
So much fun to be with, he thought. She finds so much in each situation. As they drove along she spotted so many things that he missed … she lived so much more fully. Of course, she lived only in the present. And she had no ability to reflect. Or, for that matter, to read thoroughly or to contemplate. She had a limited span of attention, like a child. But, unlike a child—very unlike a child—she had the ability to pursue a goal over a long period of time … and once again he found himself wondering, how long a period? Years? All her life? Does she ever give up, when she wants something?
He had the intuition that she never did give up, that when she appeared to yield, she was only biding her time.
And we're all things that she wants or doesn't want, he thought. I happen to be a thing she wants; she wants me as her husband.
Aren't I lucky? Isn't it possible that a man could have a fuller, happier life being used by an exciting woman like this, rather than living out his own drab, limited life? Isn't this the trend in our society, the new role for men to play? Is it necessary that I pursue the goals I set for myself, by myself? Can't I accede and permit another person, a more vital, active person to set goals for me?
What's so wrong with that?
Confessions of a Crap Artist Page 12