“I’m all right,” I said.
“You’re an American girl,” the Marksman said, watching me.
“What are you doing?” my mother said. We used the machine in the morning and the afternoon. We didn’t use it at night.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Nothing.”
I took the pitcher of water off the dining table and busied myself by pouring some into the saucer of the Christmas tree stand. The tree wasn’t taking water anymore. The room was sucking up the water, not the tree. But it looked all right. It was still green.
“Do you want to learn to shoot?” the Marksman asked me.
“Goodness no,” my mother said. “Isn’t there a law against that or something? She’s just a child.”
“No law,” the Marksman said. “The law allows you certain rights—you, me, her, everybody.”
I wondered if he was going to say I could be a natural, but he didn’t.
“No,” my mother said. “Absolutely not.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew I would not always be with my mother.
I went to the psychiatrist longer than my mother and I went to the Institute. We stopped going to the Institute and the Marksman stopped coming over for dinner. The last time I went to the psychiatrist there was a new girl in the waiting room. There had always been a little girl about my age and now there was this new one, an older one. We were all girls there. It was a coincidence, is my understanding, that there were no boys. The littlest one was cute. She had a pretty heart-shaped mouth and she carried a toy, a pink and purple dinosaur that she was always trying to give away. You could tell she liked it, that she’d had it probably since she was born, it was all worn smooth and gnawed in spots. Once I got there and she had another toy, a rabbit wearing an apron, and I thought that someone had actually been awful enough to take the dinosaur when she offered it. But it showed up with her again and she was back to trying to give it not just to me but to anyone who came into the waiting room. That seemed to be the little girl’s problem, or at least one of them.
The new girl told us that she was there because her hair was thinning and making her ugly. It looked all right to me, but she said that it was thinning and that she had to spend an hour each day lying upside down with her head on the floor to stimulate its growth. She said that she had to keep the hairs in the sink after she washed it and the hairs in the brush and the hairs on her pillows. She said that she’d left some uncollected hairs on a blouse that her mother had put in the laundry, and that when she found out about it she’d become so upset that she did something she couldn’t even talk about. The other girl, the one my age, said that our aim should be to get psycho-pharmacological treatment instead of psychotherapy, because otherwise it was a waste of time, but that’s what she always said.
I was the last of us to see the psychiatrist that afternoon. When my time was almost up he said, “You’re a smart girl, so tell me, what’s your preference, the manifest world or the unmanifest one?”
It was like he was asking me which flavor of ice cream I liked. I thought for a moment, then went to the dictionary he kept on a stand and looked the word up.
“The manifest one,” I said, and there was not much he could do about that.
THE OTHER WEEK
“THE FIRE DEPARTMENT charged us three hundred and seventy-five dollars to relocate that snake,” Francine said.
“Must have missed that one,” Freddie said. “Fire department was here? Big red truck and everything?”
“There was a rattlesnake on the patio and I called the fire department and they had a long … it was some sort of device on a pole, and they got the snake in a box and released it somewhere and it shouldn’t have cost anything because that’s one of the services they provide to their subscribers, which is why everyone knows to call the fire department when a snake shows up on one’s patio. But we are not one of their subscribers, Freddie. I was informed of this after the fact. We have not paid their bill and their service is not included in our property taxes, which we likewise have not paid.”
“Must’ve been taking a bathe.”
“The charge is excessive, don’t you think? They were here for five minutes.”
“Why didn’t you just smack the thing with a hoe?”
“It’s very civilized of the fire department to effect live removal. Why aren’t we one of their subscribers, Freddie? If the house started to burn down, they’d respond but it would cost us twenty-five thousand dollars an hour. That’s what they told me when I called to complain.”
“House isn’t going to burn down.”
“Freddie, why aren’t you paying our bills?”
“No money,” he said.
It was October in the desert and quite still, so still that Francine could hear their aged sheltie drinking from the bidet in the pool house. He was forbidden to do this. Francine narrowed her eyes and smiled at her husband. “What happened to our money?”
“It goes, Francine. Money goes. I haven’t worked in almost three years. Surely you’ve noticed.”
“I have, yes.”
“No money coming in, and you were sick for a year. That took its toll.”
“They never figured out what that was all about,” Francine admitted.
“No insurance. Seventeen doctors. You slept eighteen hours a day. All you ate was blueberries and wheatgrass.”
“Well, that couldn’t have cost much.”
“Like a goddamn mud hen.”
“Freddie!”
“Seventeen doctors. No insurance. Car costs alone shunting you around to doctors cost more than four thousand that year, not including regular maintenance, filters, shocks and the like. Should’ve rotated the tires but I was trying to keep costs down.”
“There was something wrong with my blood or something,” Francine protested.
“Bought you a goddamned armload of coral bracelets. Supposed to be good for melancholia. Never wore them. Never gave them a chance.”
“They pinched,” Francine said.
“Even stole aspirin for you. Stole aspirin every chance I got.”
“That was very resourceful.”
“Oh, be sarcastic, see where that gets you. There’s no point in discussing it further. We’re broke.”
The sheltie limped out into the sun, sated. He barked hoarsely, then stopped. He was becoming more and more uncertain as to his duties.
Francine went to the kitchen for a glass of water. She searched the refrigerator until she found a lemon, a small shriveled one from which she had some difficulty coaxing a bit of zestful juice. The refrigerator was full of meat. Freddie did the shopping and had overfamiliarized himself with the meat department.
“Broke,” Francine said. He couldn’t be serious. They had a house, two cars. They had a gardener. She returned to the living room and sat down opposite her husband. He was wearing a white formal shirt, stained, with the linkless cuffs rolled up, black shorts and large black sunglasses. His gaze was directed toward an empty hummingbird feeder.
“It’s bats that drain that thing at night,” Freddie said. “You don’t have hummingbirds at all, Francine. You’ve got lesser long-nosed bats. They arrive in groups of six. One feeds while the others circle in an orderly fashion awaiting their turn. I enjoyed watching them of an evening. Can’t even afford sugar water for the poor bastards anymore.”
“What do you propose to do about our finances, Freddie?”
“Ride it out. Let the days roll on. You had your year of sleeping eighteen hours a day.”
“But that was a long time ago!” Once she had been the type of person who didn’t take much between drinks, as they say, but the marathon sleeping—it actually had been closer to twenty hours a day, Freddie always was a poor judge of time—had knocked the commitment to the sauce right out of her.
“Seventeen doctors. No insurance. Never found out what it was.”
“I pictured myself then very much like a particular doll I had as a little girl,” Francine mused. “Sh
e was a doll with a soft cloth body and a hard plastic head. She had blue eyes and painted curls, not real curls. The best part was that she had eyelids with black lashes of probably horsehair, and when you laid the doll on its back those hard little eyelids would roll down and dolly would be asleep. Have I ever told you that’s how I pictured myself?”
“Many, many times,” Freddie said.
Dusk arrived. A dead-bolt gold. Francine maintained an offended silence as vermilion clouds streamed westward and vanished, never again to be seen by human eyes. Freddie made drinks for them both. Then he made dinner, which they took separately. A bit less meat humming in the refrigerator now. Francine retired to the bedroom and turned on the television. The sheltie staggered in and circled his little rug for long minutes before collapsing on it with a burp. He smelled a little, poor dear.
Freddie in seersucker pajamas lay down beside her in the bed. He settled himself, then placed his hand in the vicinity of her thigh. A light blanket and a sheet separated his hand from the thigh itself. He raised his hand and slipped it beneath the blanket. But there was still the sheet. He worked his hand under the fabric until he finally got to her skin, which he patted.
They were watching a film which was vicious and self-satisfied, tedious and predictable, when in a scene that did not serve particularly to further the plot a dead actor was introduced to digitally interact with a living one.
The dead actor was acting away. “Look at that!” Francine said.
The scene didn’t last long, it was just some cleverness. The dead actor seemed awkward but professional. Still this wasn’t the scene he had contracted for. Watching, Francine knew a lot more than he did about his situation, but under the circumstances he was connecting pretty well with others.
“What are you getting so upset about?” Freddie said.
“Space and time,” she said. “Those used to be the requirements. Space and time or you couldn’t get into the nightclub. Our senses establish the conditions for the world we see. Kant said our senses were like the nightclub doorkeeper who only let people in who were sensibly dressed, and the criteria for being properly dressed or respectably dressed, whatever, was that things had to be covered up in space and time.”
“Who said this?”
“Kant.”
Freddie removed his hand from her thigh. “Something’s been lost in your translation of that one, Francine. Why does one want to get into the nightclub anyway? Or that nightclub rather than another one?”
“We’re the nightclub!” she said. “We’re each our own nightclub! And the nightclub might want other patrons. Other patrons might be absolutely necessary for the nightclub to succeed!”
“I think it’s a little late for us to be discussing Kant with such earnestness,” Freddie said.
“You mean a little this night late or a little life late?”
He nodded, meaning both.
She snatched the blanket off the bed and walked through the darkened house to the patio. It was long past the hour when people in the neighborhood used the outside. It was a big concern among Francine’s acquaintances, who were always vowing to utilize the outside more, but after a certain hour they stopped worrying about it. To many of Francine’s acquaintances, the outside was the only flagellator their consciences would ever know.
She wrapped herself in the blanket and lay on the chaise longue. She was very uncomfortable. When she lay on it in the daytime she was not at all uncomfortable. Finally she managed to wander into sleep, a condition for which she was losing her knack. When she woke it was glaring day and the gardener’s face was hanging over hers. His name was Dennis, Dennis the gardener who had been in their employ for years. She had never been stared at so thoroughly. She frowned and he drew back and stood behind her. He placed his fingers lightly on her forehead and ran them down her neck, then dragged them up again and rubbed her temples. The day was all around her. The refulgent day, she thought. His hand floated to just above her collarbone and she felt an excruciating pain as his thumb dug into the tendon there and scoured it. She screamed and struggled upright.
“That shouldn’t hurt,” he said mildly. “It’s because you’re so tense.”
She hurried into the house and quickly dressed. There was no coffee. She required coffee, and there was none. The house was silent. Both Freddie and the sheltie were gone. He sometimes took the dog for a walk, which Francine had thought was kind before she learned that their destination was usually a small park on a dry riverbed frequented by emaciated and tactically brilliant coyotes. There had been several instances when a coyote had materialized and carried off some pet absorbed in peeing, frolicking or quarreling with its own kind and thus inattentive to personal safety. Francine had accused Freddie of being irresponsible, but he insisted that attacks were rare. More important was the possibility of attack, which gave distinction to an otherwise vapid suburban experience and provided a coherence and camaraderie among a group of people who socially, politically and economically had little in common. They were a fine bunch of people, Freddie assured her, and they shared a considerable pool of knowledge regarding various canine personality problems—fear biting, abandonment issues and hallucinations among them—as well as such physical disorders as mange, anal impaction, seizures and incontinence, to name only a few.
Francine searched hopelessly for coffee. Outside, Dennis had scooped up a large snake between the tines of a rake and was dropping it over the wall that separated their lot from the Benchleys’. It looked quite like the snake the fire department had recently removed. Dennis was being helpful but she would have to dismiss him. He would simply have to retreat to his life’s ambition, which he had once told her was to run a security cactus ranch. There he would cultivate hybrids specific to sites, creating fast-growing, murderously flowering walls with giant devil’s-claw spines that could scoop an intruder’s throat out in a heartbeat.
She went outside. “Dennis,” she began.
He turned toward her, not a young man. He had deep lines in his narrow face, running from his eyes to the corners of his mouth. They were not unattractive. If a woman dared to have lines like that she would naturally be considered freakish.
“Rattlesnakes don’t have anyplace to go anymore,” Dennis said.
The snake, deposited in a flower bed maintained by the Benchleys at a cost of great aggravation, set off in the direction of a large rock Francine knew to be fraudulent. It weighed little more than an egg carton and concealed a spare house key for the maid.
“Dennis, I’m afraid we must terminate your services. We haven’t the money to pay you.”
Dennis shrugged. “Nobody’s paid me for coming on a year.”
“Freddie hasn’t been paying you?”
“Told me six months ago you didn’t have any money. I come here because you remind me of Darla. When I first saw you I said to myself, Why, she’s the spit and image of Darla, taking the years into account.”
“‘Spitting image,’” Francine said. “What on earth does that mean?”
“I’ll talk any way you want to talk. You want me to talk less formal? I’m just so happy we’re talking at last, like the more than friends we were meant to be.”
“This is of no interest to me, but who is Darla?”
“Darla was my nanny when I was eight years old. She was ten years older than me.”
Francine was shocked. A nanny! Though she did not want to believe herself a snob.
“Darla liked snakes.”
“I don’t like—”
“She had lots of stories about snakes. She told me, for instance, that the Mayans practiced frontal deplanation in newborn children so their heads would look like a rattlesnake’s head. They bound up the newborn’s soft little skull with weights. They believed snakes were sacred and that people with rattlesnake skulls would be more intelligent and creative. This had a positive, motivating psychological force on them. They became freer, more aware, bright and unusual. And I remember saying to Darla when she told me t
his that I wish someone had had the imagination and foresight to do that to me when I was first born because I wouldn’t mind having a deeply ridged, crenellated head. And Darla said it was too bad but knowing my parents, which of course she did very well, it would never have happened were they given the opportunity for a thousand years, they still wouldn’t have done it. They were very conservative. Not like Darla. Darla could leap up as high as her own shoulders from a standing position. Darla rocked! We lived in St. Louis, and once a year Darla and I would come out here to the desert, each spring for three years, and spend a week at a dude ranch and shoot bottles and ride mules and sleep in bunk beds. The corral is where Galore is now.”
“Is that a new town?”
“Barbeques Galore is there.”
“Oh,” Francine said. She found this quite funny but decided to say in her most gracious manner, “Change can be quite overwhelming at times.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Dennis said. “And then we’d come back to St. Louis and Darla would go off on another week of vacation but without me, and as you might imagine I resented that other week very much because I loved Darla. And then Darla had to have an operation.”
“Wait,” Francine said. “An operation?”
Dennis nodded. “She had to go under the anesthesia. And when a person goes under the anesthesia they’re never the same when they come back up. You’ve got another person you’re dealing with then. It makes just the smallest difference, but it’s permanent. The change only happens once. That is, you might have to go under the anesthesia again for one reason or another and there’d be no change. Change don’t build on that first change.”
Honored Guest (Vintage Contemporaries) Page 9