“Nothing but laughs . . .”
“And Neal tying me down. Somebody who’ll put me first. I’ll be the most important thing in his life . . .”
“In the winter we got football and basketball. We’ll travel around the country with all the teams. Maybe I can make a connection, and we can do some business with the players. They can win the game, but we get ‘em to shave a few points off . . .”
“Neal will just have to get used to the idea. I can’t live on my own forever, I mean what’s he expect of me? I’m still a young woman. Flesh and blood. I’ve got feelings, and I can’t ignore them just ‘cause I’ve got a son from another marriage. He can’t expect me to lay down my life for him, can he?”
“Who’re you talking about?”
“Neal,” she said anxiously. “You’ll make an effort to get along with him.”
“I got him in my pocket awready. Just give him a few bucks, and he’s happy.”
“He ought to respect you. It’s important. He doesn’t respect anybody or anything. He’s got to learn respect.”
“He won’t butt in. Take my word for it, Rho. I’ll charm him, and we’ll be friends. He’s not a bad kid, but he better not burn any more suits. I won’t be so forgiving next time. After all, what can he do? He’s only a kid. You don’t have to account to him.”
She got very angry and heatedly agreed:
“Why should I account to him? I’m his mother. It should be the other way around. He owes me explanations. Why should I justify myself to him? Didn’t I go through hell with Jay for his sake? Living with a man I didn’t love, who mistreated me for no reason. I mean it was his fault that I started taking my pills. He brought on my condition. I was perfectly all right when I was younger.”
“If the pills help, then who am I to say no?” Sports averred, as he pressed down on the accelerator. “I don’t mind a pill myself, now and again, when I’m feeling a little tired or depressed. Peps you up and you’re winging.”
“So what if I get a little high? It’s my business, isn’t it? Who can judge me? It’s certainly healthier than drinking myself into the ground like Jay. He polishes off a bottle a day. I’d call that alcoholic, wouldn’t you, Sports?”
“High intake of booze, most definitely. Although, on occasions, I indulge myself.”
“Well, with you it’s different . . . jolly and laughs. At least you’re not a hypocrite.”
“Sure, live and let live. What I say is the other guy goes to his church, and I go to mine.”
“And with us it’s love. We accept each other as we are. Angels live in heaven.”
“Where they belong. In life, there’s good and bad.”
“Exactly. Maybe in a few days we can drive up to camp and surprise Neal. Tell him the good news and give him time to get used to the idea.”
“Fine by me. Never been to Connecticut. It’s a state without a team. Not at all athletic-minded till you hit Boston.”
Sports pulled into a service station and told the pump man to fill it up. He got some change and informed Rhoda that he had to make a telephone call to his bookmaker, so that he could have a bit of action on the baseball game. In the car, she fished in her handbag and found her bottle of pills. She chewed a Benzedrine, and when Sports hopped back into the car, she had a satisfied beam on her face.
“The color of the car suits you,” she said.
“You really think so?”
“It does. It’s a happy color.”
“That’s what I thought when I got it. A lucky color too. A man driving a car like this can’t be a loser, that’s what I said to myself.”
“I’m so happy . . . so very, very, happy.”
“We’ll follow the sun. That’s the way to live.” He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth, and she put her arms around his neck with a passion she had long ago forgotten. It had been born and died over the course of a single winter with Jay, and a woman deserved more than a single winter of passion to carry her through a lifetime. She wanted to ask Sports to stop at a motel along the Jersey Turnpike, so that they could have a quiet hour in bed, but he was determined to get to Philadelphia in case the game was a sellout.
“Well, it’s happened at last,” Terry said with a mixture of relief and despair. They had driven down to Southampton the following day. “I’m out of my cage, or are we both in a cage together? It’s hard to be sure.”
“Does it matter?” Jay was still in a state of shock. “I always seem to be in strange hotel rooms. It’s the story of my life.”
“You can back out if you like.”
He shrugged his shoulders apathetically and took a pull from the bottle of scotch he had picked up on the way up. “Don’t be a fool. It’s only that I want to know when it’s all gonna end. Living like a bum and behaving like a pig. I’m not, you know.”
“Oh, Jay darling, of course, you’re not. I am! After all, I’m the one who walked out on her husband and children. People will make excuses for a man, but I’d hate to hear what they’ll say about me. And they’ll be right. But life’s too short to waste on a guilty conscience. You do what you have to, and if it works out, then you’ve done the right thing.”
“And if it doesn’t work out?”
“Well, you’ve got the satisfaction of knowing that you made the decision, and you didn’t just drift along.”
“You’ll miss your children, the way I do Neal.”
“This will probably upset you, but the truth of the matter is that you’re more important to me than they are.”
She seemed incredibly lovely to him. He reached out, pulled her on his lap, and fondled her face. The nape of her neck was white and soft, and her skin had the texture of velvet. The swell of her breasts rested on the arm he had wrapped around her, and she turned to him with a sad distrait expression in her eyes, which made him uncomfortable and guilt-ridden, for he realized that there was something mercenary and almost depressing in achieving what he had wanted. He had wanted love, and he had got it from her, he had wanted to love her, and he did, and his disgust for himself stemmed from the consciousness of having achieved his ends.
“You’ve got a sense of responsibility,” she said.
“Is that what I’ve got?”
“Enough for the two of us. If we both had it, I’m sure it would be sudden death.”
“That’s a funny thing to say. How can I have any sense of responsibility?”
“You’re living your life, and that’s everything. You’re bothered and worried by the way you’re living your life, and you’ve got a tremendous amount of contempt for yourself because of it, but you shouldn’t have. There’s nothing to believe in, Jay, except another human being, I believe in you. I know that essentially you’re good and that I exist when I’m with you. We’re supposed to be immoral people, but we’re not. We may have done things that other people consider to be immoral, but we’ve been moral with each other.”
“You sound like you’re apologizing to someone who isn’t here.”
“I’m not,” she was insistent, “because I don’t exist with other people. A woman who looks like me, who wears my clothes, who talks like me, and uses my name - a woman who impersonates me - gives people the impression that they know me. It’s a kind of confusion which I’m responsible for.”
“Who is the other woman?”
“Nobody. She never lived, and she never died. She just wasn’t there.”
“Will Mitch give you a divorce?”
“Does it matter? If you’d like me to try, I will.”
“Wouldn’t you like to marry me?”
“I am married to you.”
It began to rain, a thin, summer drizzle, and Jay got up to close the window. He looked out of the window at the jagged-shaped harbor, and the boats moored to the pier. He liked the aspect and the sound of the wind, which was canalized by other buildings close to the hotel, forming an alleyway that led to the bay. It was late and except for a party breaking up on one of the boats, the square in front of
the harbor was deserted. For a moment, he expected a squad of Russian officers to come out of a tavern and begin to cat-whistle at the closed darkened shutters, but he smiled to himself. He knew that it was a dream, a silly old dream, which he should have forgotten. But he supposed it would come back to him from time to time, just as his fuzzy memories of Vienna sometimes did.
He turned from the window, and she was under the covers; two bare white arms were stretched out over the blue blankets.
“I’ve got a thing about water and boats,” he said. “I thought I came out to Southampton to see Eva, but she doesn’t seem very important now. I suppose I hoped I was going to explain things to her. We ought to have a boat.”
“Not an ocean liner like my father had. Something private that sleeps only two.”
“I don’t know the first thing about boats, but I like them.”
He got under the covers with her, and he lit a cigarette.
“I didn’t pull the curtains, do you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind.” She moved up closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder, “It’s a good sound, rain. The way it taps on the window. I always liked it.”
“I’ve never noticed it. But I think I like it too.”
She turned over on her side and held him. He didn’t move for a minute but continued to smoke and look at the window over her shoulder.
“This is the way it was meant to be,” she said, “Warm and safe.”
He put his cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedside table.
“We’re in a cage together,” he said. “The difference is that we’ve built it.”
“Our own cage. Warm and safe.”
The summons from Uncle Carl sounded ominous to Neal. He wondered what the old fool had heard. He was certain that he hadn’t been caught smoking in the shower house, because if he had been, Uncle Don would have dealt with him. Uncle Don had a variety of unpleasant punishments that Neal had discovered in his first week. The least injurious of them was to be docked from swimming - the sentence for boys who were heard swearing. Anyone who goldbricked during bunk cleanup had his desserts taken away for a day, and as desserts were the only reasonably edible courses in the insipid diet, the loss of them was regarded as serious. Talking after lights-out brought a more subtle and painful castigation: a boy would be told to hold out his arms and was swatted on the backside with a broom whenever he dropped them. Neal had held out for three minutes, which was a bunk record. Uncle Don had narrowed down his antagonists to Neal and Bobby Fish. Bobby presented a solid, but not impenetrable façade of tough-guy talk degenerating into total passivity when physical retaliation was threatened. So, Neal realized the combat was really between him and Uncle Don. Uncle Don’s authority depended on the boys’ acceptance of it, and he was merciless in securing this end. Neal had lost two days’ desserts, had his mouth washed with soap once, been swatted with a broom a dozen times, been docked from swimming three times, had lost his canteen (which meant no ice cream or candy), and had finally been beaten with the pride of Uncle Don’s small arsenal of corporal instruments - a fraternity paddle that had broken better and older boys than Neal.
“You’re gonna get your ass beaten every day until you start listening,” Uncle Don said, scratching his crinkly hair that made the same sound as water hitting a plastic shower curtain. Neal would smirk and nod, and Uncle Don, his pallid, freckled skin assuming a brightness that came close to fuchsia, would swat away. Artie Kahn would cry as he watched the punishment, and Neal, after four or five swipes, would say out of twisted white lips: “Shut your hole, shitbag”; and Uncle Don with the diligence of a professional martinet would bash him harder than before. It had been a full first week for Neal, and as he walked up the sloping grass bank to Uncle Carl’s headquarters, he decided to change his tactics because he knew that Uncle Don could not change his. Uncle Carl, wearing white tennis shorts, a green sun visor, and a powerful sweat smell, patted his head and said: “Everything going fine, Neal? Yes, I can tell that you’re destined to become one of the group leaders. Fine boy.” Neal wondered whom he was talking about. “Taking part in all the activities . . . yes, I can see, a natural athlete. Good coordination. Well, that’s that. Surprise for you. Your mother’s come up.”
Rhoda came out on the porch.
“I’ll leave you to have your chat. Keep fit.” He turned to Rhoda. “I play a great game of tennis for a fifty-six-year-old man. Perhaps you’d like to watch me.”
“Thanks,” said Rhoda.
Uncle Carl dashed off the porch with his racket and headed for bunk inspection. He used the racket on the boys rather than the court. But the parents were impressed. Out of the screen door a strange figure emerged, which Neal could not at once identify. He saw a man’s chest in one of those hideous print shirts of elongated insects painted a rainbow of pastels, which he associated with captive Indians on reservations after the cavalry rode off. Rhoda put her arms around Neal and hugged him. He wanted to pull away. She had on one of those sweet cheap scents that made him sick to his stomach.
“Hello,” he said.
“Say hello to Sports.”
“Hello, Sports.”
“Hello yourself. How you keeping, Neal? It’s not so bad as stir, is it?”
“No, I like it.” He had a terror-stricken moment in which it occurred to him that they might take him out of camp.
“How’re they treating you, son?”
“Swell.”
“Need any dough?” Sports inquired, fondling a bankroll.
“Don’t be ashamed to ask if you need some,” Rhoda said proudly. “You can ask Sports for anything you want now. He’s your stepfather. It’s an awful word. He’ll be your second father. Pretty lucky to have two fathers. None of the other boys do.”
“No, they don’t,” Neal agreed.
“It’s wonderful, Neal. Sports and I got married in Baltimore yesterday morning, and we decided that it would be best to tell you the good news before anybody else heard.”
“Why Baltimore?”
“It was easier there,” Sports explained, without explaining a thing, Neal thought.
“Are you happy?” Rhoda asked.
“If you are.”
“Well, I’m thrilled. It’s wonderful. I’m a new person, Neal. We’ll be a family now, not like when Jay was with us. We’ll go everywhere together.”
“You’re not upset you missed the wedding, Neal, are yuh?”
“No, why should I be? I’m glad I did.”
“See, Rhoda. I told yuh.”
“Sports, you’re such a smart man. He’s a very good judge of people, isn’t he, Neal?”
The bunks had grouped around the flagpole where they assembled every morning after cleanup to be told of the day’s activities. Neal decided that peace with Uncle Don was mandatory if he were to survive the summer. His mother’s lips were moving; the slimy, greasy, scarlet lipstick made her mouth seem unreal.
“Mom, I’ve got to get back to my bunk. I’ll miss the activities if I don’t.”
“You haven’t wished us good luck.”
“Good luck,” he stammered, then added, “to both of you.”
“Well, shake Sports’ hand and say: ‘Welcome to the family, Dad.’”
Neal peered at him. Sports’ mouth curved upwards, and his nose twitched apprehensively as he waited for Neal to react.
Neal took his hand lamely and said: “Welcome to the family.” Then he faltered. “I don’t think it would be right to call you ‘Dad,’ do you?”
“Naw, never mind, Neal.”
Rhoda restrained herself from shouting at Neal. She forced a smile to her mouth and tried to kiss Neal, but he moved out of the way with agility.
“We’re off on our honeymoon, Neal.”
“Write me all about it. Have a good time. I’ve got to get to my bunk, or they’ll think something funny happened to me.”
He didn’t look back as he walked off the porch, but he could hear their voices in the background, and he k
new they were waving, but he couldn’t look back, not then, or ever again.
Terry opened the door to let the room-service waiter in with the breakfast tray. She called out to Jay who was shaving in the bathroom. He came out wiping the lather off his ear; in his vest, he looked slim and muscular.
“You don’t look a day over thirty,” she said.
“I’ve got a special tonic.”
“Have you?”
“Women.”
“Woman, my dear, woman. From now on, you’re doing a single.”
“Well, yes. Yes, I think I am.”
“I own the means of production and distribution.”
“Sounds like a good business.”
“It’s terrific. A monopoly.”
He had a clear head even though he had had a great deal to drink. The shave and shower had refreshed him, but mostly he thought it was Terry who had made waking up such a pleasurable experience. She possessed an ineffable charm and style. What the style was comprised of he could not venture to guess, because the woman was the style, and she was incomparably more than the poised manner, the graceful movements, the brittle wit might indicate. There existed between them a sensuous intimacy, which bordered on delirium. He had to touch her, and she had to touch him, and the discovery of this need tore through the layers of resistance that Jay had grown when he had found out that sleeping with a woman had virtually no effect on him. Familiarity did not breed contempt, only boredom.
“I guess I better get the dirty work over with,” he said.
“Yes, it’s a good day for laundry.”
“You make a joke out of everything.”
“You don’t expect me to become despondent, do you?” She brushed her hair in bed and began to trill like a soprano practicing her exercises. “Ah, Jay, it’s that middle-European sadness of yours, that quite touching love of melodrama. Why get all worked up? I’m going shopping for a bathing suit. I think we ought to go swimming, then drive over to Gil Clark’s for lobsters, a cup of clam chowder. Oysters, large ones? We’ll get plane tickets tomorrow and fly to the South of France. My father used to take me to a lovely little hotel in Antibes.”
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