by Alison Lurie
“There, there,” he murmured.
“You know, you’ve got attractive eyebrows,” Katherine said. Placing one delicate hand on his thigh, almost in his groin, as if to steady herself, she bent over and licked his near eyebrow with her tongue. Paul’s eyes twitched. He found it very unsettling, in fact disagreeable, to have his wife suddenly start acting like a loose woman.
But there was more to it than that. He felt wrong about touching Katherine at all now, guilty, even—unfaithful. That was what Ceci had made him feel; for her, that was how it really was. While Katherine bent farther over him and started on his other eyebrow, the idea came to him that if he refused her now, he could tell Ceci that he had done so, that he had stopped making love to his wife (well, it had been, let’s see, nearly two weeks now). Then Ceci would see him again; he was sure of it.
“Hey, Katherine,” he mumbled, freeing his head. “You don’t have to make up to me like that, hon.”
“But I want to,” Katherine said. She lifted her face and looked at him, but rather at the surface of his features than into his eyes. “You’re really a very good-looking man,” she announced.
“Well, thanks,” Paul said, still more disconcerted. He was sure that Katherine had never spoken to anyone in her life in this tone. The whole situation felt profoundly false to him; his impulse was to start up and hurry away. Of course that would look awkward and terrible, and it would hurt Katherine’s feelings. It wasn’t her fault he was so preoccupied tonight that she, reversing their usual parts, took this awkward initiative, after two weeks. He should find it touching, really. Besides, there was a part of him that did not recognize tone, that only grew warm when a woman’s hand was pressed against it; and now it was very warm. What guaranteed that Ceci would see him tomorrow, anyhow? That she was not already shacked up, in some shack on Venice Beach, with somebody else? Right now, very likely, some “cat” was lying on her bed under the painted forest of flowers. Who was Ceci O’Connor that he should do for her what he had never done for anyone else, not even his wife? Katherine might be clumsy at imitating love, but she did love him, and only him.
“You’re pretty attractive yourself,” he told her, without looking to see whether this were true. Moving Katherine’s embarrassing hand off his leg, he pulled her down into a more comfortable, familiar position in his lap. But even now she would not settle down; she twisted round and rubbed her mouth across his, using her tongue as Ceci might have done, holding him like Ceci—
No: it was all wrong, disordered, Paul thought, as he half-reciprocated—as if his craving for Ceci was so great that now it had got out of his head and into Katherine, so that she was deliberately imitating, or rather was possessed by, Ceci. As if he were going crazy or something, even, because of course Katherine didn’t know Ceci, didn’t even know she existed.
With some effort, he pulled his head back. “Hey, listen,” he whispered, afraid to voice his hallucination aloud. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” she whispered back. If it were all in his mind, he thought, he must take a firm hold on himself now, behave normally. And Katherine had stopped moving about now. She seemed to melt in his arms; her eyes were almost shut.
“Do you want to go into the other room?”
“Mm, yes.”
Never in the course of their marriage, he thought, had they got into bed so quickly. (Or did it only seem so?) Katherine, who usually was so slow about taking off her clothes, methodically hanging each garment up or folding it on to a chair, lay spread out on the sheet before Paul even had his socks off. She was smiling up at him suggestively—or was it just affectionately? Was it all in his mind? What the hell was going on? Though physically excited, Paul frowned and hesitated, standing by the bed.
“Paul?” she said finally. He knelt over her, but still hesitated, stroking her arm absently. “Mm, Paul,” she added. “Maybe you’d like to try something different tonight? Would you like to do it this way?
Coming from Katherine, this suggestion, and the gesture that went with it, was as shocking as a physical blow; Paul flinched as if he had in fact been struck.
“Where did you hear about that?” he exclaimed; but simultaneously there was a flash of cognition. “I get it now,” he said, standing up. “You’ve been reading some book; some marriage manual or something like that, haven’t you?” For the first time that evening he looked directly at Katherine, but she avoided his eyes and did not answer him.
“Come on now,” he said, more gently, touching her shoulder. “It’s true, isn’t it? I know you couldn’t think of something like that yourself.”
An anxious pause; then, almost imperceptibly, Katherine nodded yes.
“I thought so. Oh, Kathy.” Paul lay down next to his wife. All his passion had drained off; he felt only affection and pity, as well as tremendous relief (after all, he was not suffering from delusions). “You don’t want to read that kind of thing,” he told her. “I mean, I’m not angry, I know you meant it well. But those books are just cheap. They’re all wrong, anyway.”
He stroked his wife’s face and hair; but she turned on her side away from him, drawing up her knees as if she could hide inside her own body.
“Besides, hon,” he went on. “I like you the way you are. I don’t want you to learn any techniques.” Since it was presented to him, he caressed his wife’s back. “That kind of thing is all wrong for you, because you’re not really like that.” Now Paul stroked his wife’s hips, pale and smooth. As he did so, desire began to rise in him slowly again; not the burning greed he had felt earlier for Ceci in Katherine’s body, but a gentler lust, mixed with compassion.
“Come on back, silly,” he said. He turned her face towards him. It was set in a sullen inward expression. He shut his eyes, and kissed the pretty prim mouth. It remained resistant, even under warm and continued pressure, and when he drew back the expression had not changed.
“Ah, Kathy. Don’t be hurt. I’m sorry. Come on. I want to make love to you.”
“Not now,” Katherine said distantly. “I don’t feel like it now.” Pulling away from his arms, she sat up. “Excuse me,” she said in the voice she might have used in a hospital corridor. “I have to go to the washroom.”
Paul blinked, left alone in the room; then he sat up on the edge of the bed, feeling depressed and baffled. Bending down with what felt like a great effort, he picked his crumpled shirt off the floor. Ah, damn them all to hell. He smiled wryly.
But then a real smile, though not much of one, appeared on his face. Everything mended itself in time; Katherine would get over this, though not at once (such an exposure could not help but be very mortifying for a girl of her delicacy and inexperience); and, above all, he had just succeeded in completely forgetting about Ceci for nearly half an hour.
20
KATHERINE GRIPPED THE STEERING-WHEEL with both hands as the car swept along Sunset Boulevard towards Hollywood, past the mansions of the stars. The road banked and curved like an amusement-park track; what must it be like in the winter!—but of course that didn’t matter: no time was winter here. Expensive, shiny cars gunned their engines behind her, and blew their horns to make her go faster; so recklessly she went faster, spinning past castles and palms, fountains, banks of roses, and gateposts with plaster lions or urns.
It was her afternoon to work for Dr. Einsam, but instead she was going to Hollywood to answer Glory Green’s fan mail. It was Iz’s idea, of course. Katherine did not know exactly what it meant, or what she thought of it. Was she being sent as a spy, or an emissary? Or was she merely bearing coals of fire, as Iz had suggested when he said: “She needs a secretary; I’ve got a secretary. So, I can help her out; it’s as simple as that.” When Katherine began to inquire further, he interrupted her, saying that she didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to: it made absolutely no difference to him. Meaning, for she knew his language by now, that it made some absolute difference to him. It would have been very uncomfortable in the office and everywhere else, if
she had refused. Besides, she was curious.
Following Iz’s directions, she turned up towards the Hollywood hills, driving more slowly. Now that she was nearly there, she felt not only curious but uneasy, even frightened. Thinking to prepare herself somehow for this job, or this meeting, she had gone to a musical film in which Glory had a part. It was the sort of movie she would never have seen, otherwise. Sitting alone in the dark theater, she saw projected before her the image of a bright, noisy, completely artificial world in which everyone was handsome and physically vital, ageless and brand new, like their clothes and furniture. At every opportunity they broke into loud song and dance. Presently Glory’s first scene came on. A group of chorus girls with identical costumes and differently colored hair (chestnut, orange, yellow, black) flashed across the screen, strenuously smiling and kicking and winking. Was that Iz’s wife? she thought, astonished, as a face five feet high, framed in pink curls, came by; she turned round to look at the rest of the audience, as if they too might be surprised. But the three hundred faces behind her, lit by the reflections of Technicolor, all wore the same expression of passive enchantment.
Katherine drove more slowly still. If Glory were really like that, why had Iz married her? Maybe that was what he—what all men—wanted, or thought they wanted. If she weren’t like that, after all, why had she become a movie starlet? Katherine could imagine no profession more horrible. The idea of exposing oneself, almost naked, to all those people, prancing about in front of them to be stared at invisibly and intimately by hundreds and thousands, was revolting to her. She wondered how any normal human being could bear it, no matter for what reward.
But Glory Green was obviously not a normal human being. She had pink hair and a thirty-eight inch bust at least, and no education; she had been on the stage since she was five and had been married three times, starting at fifteen, when Katherine hadn’t even been kissed. That was what the secretaries in the Social Sciences office said. She had lived all her life in a violent, vulgar world, and even Iz hadn’t been able to change her. The girls in the office said that she had just been in a public brawl, where she screamed at policemen and reporters, and slapped a girl in the face who hadn’t even spoken to her. Katherine hadn’t seen the papers, so she didn’t know how much of this to believe. Iz had never mentioned it, and she wasn’t going to ask him. It was bad enough for him that he had to be married to, and obsessed with, a girl like that (because he was still obsessed with her, she knew).
Oh lord, here was the house already, or rather its number on a rustic mail-box, at the bottom of a steep bank topped with a redwood fence. Katherine began to wish she had not come, but she pulled her car to the side of the road and, setting her mouth, got out. She climbed some steps to a gate in the fence, and rang the bell.
There was a long wait. Katherine wondered if she should go away; she wanted to go away; but Iz had promised that she would come. Finally she could hear someone approaching. Movement was visible through the slits in the gate; then it was flung open. A figure completely enveloped in a long pink beach-robe, sunglasses, and a huge conical straw hat, stood looking at her. It was Glory, but Katherine, not unnaturally, did not recognize her.
“Does Glory Green live here?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Glory said in a hoarse whisper, looking Katherine over from head to toe. “What d’you want her for?”
Katherine reminded herself that whatever happened in Los Angeles did not count and was in fact amusing. “I’m her new secretary,” she explained. “Dr. Einsam sent me.”
“Yeah, I thought so.” Glory paused only a moment but long enough for Katherine to think: suppose this weird person is Glory. Because if it is, and she knows, or suspects, about me and Iz, what kind of noise, violence, or even crime, is going to happen? “Only there’s so many cranks wandering around this town, you never know. Hi.” Glory suddenly extended a hand and a cold, brief, dazzling smile from the shadows of her disguise.
“How do you do,” Katherine said nervously. Glory’s handshake was firm and warm, with long silver-pink fingernails.
“Come on in. I guess I should say come on out; we’re sitting on the patio.”
Partly but not completely reassured, Katherine followed Glory across a landscaped yard, through a dark interior-decorated room, and outside again. Wicker and wire furniture, beach umbrellas, bright cushions, and orange trees in tubs surrounded a swimming-pool. A beautiful girl in a bikini lay on the diving-board. It was like an advertisement for success, or pleasure, or Los Angeles—except that the pool was completely dry.
“Mona,” Glory said. The girl in the bikini lifted her head. “This is Ramona Moon.”
“Hiya.” Mona propped her face on her hands in order to observe Katherine more comfortably.
“Hi,” Katherine echoed. She was relieved to see a third person, any third person. She ran over in her mind what Iz had told her about Ramona Moon. She was Glory’s best friend, a TV actress from the Italian section of Los Angeles. Iz had described her as a simple, good-natured, practical girl, which was not what she looked like.
“Well, siddown,” Glory invited. “Take a chair over there in the sun if you want to; I just got to stay out of it so I won’t tan.” She sat down under a large umbrella, and for further protection wrapped her robe tightly round herself. “Mona has to get brown; but I hafta stay white, so they can paint me green.”
“Oh?” Katherine did not understand, but she was too nervous of Glory’s great dark sunglass eyes, so she looked inquiringly towards Mona. “How is that?”
“It’s account of my type,” Mona explained. “I always do the passionate-Latin parts, see, so I’ve got to be very dark. What a drag, huh?”
Aware that Mona was trying to be friendly, or at least polite, Katherine tried to reciprocate. “Yes, that must be an awful bore,” she began, and paused. She had never thought of herself as having an accent—her speech was simply that of any educated New England person. But now, in contrast to Glory and (especially) Mona, she sounded prissy and affected. She made a conscious effort to moderate her tone, and went on: “But do you really have to do that? I mean, I don’t know, but couldn’t you just wear dark makeup?”
“Yeah, sure I could, for the cameras. On TV everybody’s got a ton of gunk plastered over them, anyhow. Only the trouble is, you have to look right when you go for a part. That’s when it counts.” She shook back a mass of black Latin curls.
“Sun is bad for you,” Glory announced, speaking from the shadows of the umbrella like some strange idol. “It ages your skin, and gives you freckles.”
“Maybe.” Mona frowned. “But geez, you know, being out of a job is worse for me. That really makes me sick.” She laughed; Glory joined her briefly, and so, tentatively, did Katherine. But when this laugh died away there was an awkward silence. Out of the corner of her eye Katherine saw Glory’s sunglasses apparently fixed upon her, and felt guiltily conscious.
“Well,” Glory said finally. “So how’s Iz making out these days?” For the first time she really spoke aloud, projecting her theatrical voice with force. This, as well as the question itself, made Katherine start.
“Uh, oh, he’s just fine.” Obviously this was an inadequate answer—inaccurate, too, and even insulting, since it implied that Dr. Einsam was doing just fine without Glory. “He’s as well as you could expect.”
Now she had said too much. Glory was still staring at her; she wanted her to betray Iz somehow, Katherine felt. But she must defend him, she must give nothing away, not even neutral information, because there was no neutral information. This was an impossible situation; she wished she had never come, and even blamed Iz for sending her. But since she was there, she had to make an effort. “I mean, really, how can I possibly tell you how he is now, when I don’t know what he was like before?”
“Well, okay.” Glory smiled a little, paused, and went on. “You like working there at the university? It’s a pretty easy job, huh?”
“No. I mean, I like it; but there�
�s usually plenty to do,” Katherine lied, sensing a criticism (there can’t be much work at U.C.L.A., or you wouldn’t be here now—or, I work harder than you do).
“Mm. And how’s Iz getting on with the other professors up there? Are they still speaking to him?”
“Why, yes,” Katherine said, stiffening against this continuing inquisition. “They all seem to get on very well.”
“What d’you know,” Glory remarked sceptically to Mona. “You think he’s reformed? Maybe he’s turned into a nice guy.” Mona giggled. “Or maybe they’re just finally seeing it his way. ... Of course, the fact is he’s a fantastically brilliant person,” she added, now to both of them. “He knows he’s got it all over the other professors in brains, and he doesn’t bother to keep it a secret, so naturally the rest of them are screaming jealous. I mean he may be a complete shit personally, but in his own scientific work he’s practically a genius. Isn’t that so?”
As Glory looked at Katherine now, her voice vibrated not only with theatrical tone but with genuine nervous emotion. Why, she’s more upset about him than I am, Katherine thought with surprise—much more. She’s really in a state. She tried to think of something calming to say, and to get out of the line of fire, as it were. She had never heard anyone at U.C.L.A. suggest that Dr. Einsam was a scientific genius. The idea had not occurred to her nor, as far as she knew, to Iz himself. But rather than contradict Glory and sacrifice Iz’s prestige, she chose to sacrifice her own.