Theresa said nothing.
“Then we got married and for a while everything was fine. Not that it isn’t now, but I mean everything was very regular. Normal. We slept together and we were faithful to each other. . . . Anyhow, I don’t even know how all this—I mean, I sort of know. Not just that there was more grass around all of a sudden, people talking about it, doing it in the open instead of waiting for the last two or three couples to be left at the party. It was kind of nice, really. I felt like you were in on this really beautiful secret thing. You’d found this way to like your husband, not to be doing anything sneaky but have the extra . . . you know, the stuff that goes away when you’re married for a while. It never occurred to me that I’d . . .” She trailed off.
“What never occurred to you?” Terry asked, hearing her own voice and suddenly hating herself for it. The Grand Inquisitor. She knew that if one of her friends from school, Evelyn, say, had been in the same predicament, she’d have been much more sympathetic. It was hard with Katherine, partly because she knew Katherine would always come out of it all right.
“Never mind,” Katherine said. “It wasn’t true, anyway. I was going to say I didn’t think I’d get pregnant because I hadn’t in all this time but the truth is . . . when I thought about it at all I thought, well, maybe if I can’t get pregnant by Brooks I can by someone else.” On the last words she broke into tears again and buried her head in the blankets.
She’s a friend, Theresa. Tell yourself she’s like a friend.
She went to Katherine and put one arm around her.
“I didn’t know it would work,” Katherine sobbed, “and I’d feel this way!”
She cried now as though her heart would break. She cried for so long that when she finally stopped and sat up her face was red and swollen and ugly.
A couple of minutes later Brooks and Carter Story were at the door.
“As you can see,” Brooks said, gesturing around the apartment, “my wife has been working like a demon to get the place fixed up for us.” It was the kind of thing he’d said during the drives to Long Island but there was a cutting edge to it now.
Carter Story was handsome in an almost pretty way. Waspy. Smooth-faced. With fine straight brown hair that fell over one eye. They drank wine and Carter admired Brooks’s water pipe and said he hadn’t realized that any of the older men in the office smoked and Brooks repeated “older man” with a groan.
Katherine giggled.
Brooks said that as a matter of fact he had some rather fine stuff in the house right now and maybe he should roll some since his wife hadn’t in all likelihood even thought about dinner.
Katherine sat huddled in the chair, looking red and puffy and dejected.
“I’ll see what I can find,” Terry said.
In the kitchen she found crackers and cheese and fruit and brought them into the living room, where the others were smoking. Sitar music was playing. She arranged the food on the coffee table. Carter dragged on the joint and passed it to Theresa. Not wanting to be out of the group, she took one drag and went back to the kitchen for napkins and anything else she could find. When she returned they hadn’t touched the food yet but they were still smoking. She sat and dragged again. She felt quite nice. Contented. She hoped they would all sit around and have a nice time and the men would forget about their work.
“Mmm,” Katherine said. “This is fantastic grass.”
Brooks cut into the cheese, passed it around with the crackers.
“Mmmm,” Brooks said. “Fantastic cheese.”
“Marvelous,” Carter said. “A toast to the chef.”
They drank some more wine and smoked. Off in one side of her head she realized that she was getting stoned, but that it was all right. Carter was smiling. In the dim light his fine features might easily have been a girl’s, if he’d only had slightly more hair. Katherine’s eyes were closed. Her head rested on the part of the chair where she’d been sitting earlier.
“I have a funny feeling about that brief,” Brooks said.
Carter said he was setting his wrist alarm for four hours from now so that if they all got zonked they would wake up then and do it. Theresa giggled.
They smoked some more and ate some more.
“I want a cookie,” Katherine said. “Do we have any cookies?”
As though it were someone else’s house and that person should go look. Theresa thought that was rather dear of Katherine, to treat Theresa so much as though she lived there.
“I’ll see,” Theresa said. Happily she drifted into the kitchen, found Mallomars, Oreos and ladyfingers and brought them out in her arms . . . like a baby. She sat down again and slowly with great pleasure began arranging the cookies symmetrically on the clear glass of the coffee table. A layer of Oreos at the bottom, then ladyfingers bridging them, then Mallomars stacked delicately on the ladyfingers.
“Mmm, Mallomars,” Katherine said, dreamily taking one.
“Mallomars and ladyfingers,” Theresa said happily to her friend Katherine. “Mallomars and ladyfingers and orleos.” She giggled because she didn’t know where that had come from.
“I knew an Oreo once,” Brooks said. “In Baltimore. She was a Baltimore Oreo.”
Carter chortled. “She couldn’t sing,” he said, “but she had some whistle.”
“She had lousy teeth,” Brooks said, grinning widely; they were all grinning. “But some fillings.”
“They glowed in the dark,” Carter said solemnly.
“Mmm,” Katherine said, licking the chocolate off the top of her Mallomar. “That’s why she had to keep a lid on them.”
Brooks guffawed. “That’s good, Kitty,” he said. The bad feeling between them was gone now, things were the way they’d once been. “That’s really good.”
“Good kitty,” Theresa said. “Good little pussycat. Meow. Me . . . ow.”
“Mmm,” Brooks said “Good pussy.”
“Good pussy,” Theresa repeated. “Pussyfingers and Baltimore Oreos.”
They all felt so wonderful now. It was wonderful to not only feel wonderful but to be with other people who felt wonderful. To feel wonderful all together. She smiled happily at Carter, who smiled back at her.
“I have an announcement to make,” Carter said. “I didn’t want to go home tonight. That’s why I made everything happen.”
He was beaming at them in general but it seemed to Theresa that he was particularly talking to her. He looked even more handsome now that he’d loosened up so. His features were fine and small and his hair was silky and his eyes were very very . . . whatever color they were . . . and his hands looked as though Michelangelo had taken five years to chisel them for his chapel. Now his jacket and tie were off and he faced her across the round table, grinning broadly, and one of his beautiful hands rested on the table and she wanted very badly to touch it.
“You have beautiful hands,” she said, surprising herself but not unhappily.
“Dig that, Car,” Brooks said. “It’s the first nice thing I ever heard her say to a man.”
“Here,” Carter said. “Take them. They’re yours.”
He held them across the table and she took them, examining them. Self-conscious but not embarrassed. It was funny but it was all right. At his part of the table Brooks was rolling joints and she was aware of this while being engrossed in Carter’s hands. Brooks passed her a new joint which she dragged on, then passed to one of Carter’s hands by placing it between his fingers. Carter tapped Katherine’s arm to wake her up and give it to her, Katherine dragged on it, ate another Mallomar and went back to sleep. Theresa gently blew the smoke in her lungs onto Carter’s hand, then traced it over the fine ridges formed by his veins and tendons.
“Wait a minute,” Carter said, “I’m getting jealous of my hand.” He moved around the table so that he was closer to her.
“You took the best,” Brooks began singing against the music from the player, “so why not take the rest?”
“Sssh,” Theresa said
. “The music is sooooo beautiful.” The sitar was still playing but now there was another instrument in with it. She could hear them both together and/or separately. Whichever she chose. Either way the music was quite remarkably beautiful.
“Your eyes,” Carter said, “are more beautiful than my hands.”
Theresa smiled. “If I was a fortune-teller,” she said, “I’d tell your fortune from this side. Not your palm.”
“Go ahead.”
“Hmmmm. It says you’re going to be a lawyer when you grow up.”
They all laughed as though it were the funniest thing anyone had ever said. Even Katherine smiled in her sleep. Or half-sleep, as it turned out.
“How about me, Tessie?” Katherine asked. “Will I finish school? Will I have lots of babies?”
Babies. Katherine was asking about babies. “I can’t tell about babies from hands,” she said. “I have to see your feet.”
They all laughed again.
She took some ladyfingers and Oreos and began sticking them upright in the spaces between the fingers of Carter’s right hand. Then she took them out and put Mallomars in instead, which was what she’d really wanted to do all along.
“Now let us watch the Mallomars melt between Carter’s fingers,” she said solemnly.
“He’s going to be all dirty when he goes home,” Brooks said.
“No,” Theresa said, “I will lick him clean.”
Brooks whistled.
“Like a mother cat,” Theresa said.
“Anyway,” Carter said, “I just won’t go home. Then no one will know that I’m dirty.”
Katherine seemed to have gone into a real sleep.
Carter was watching Theresa very seriously. He was really quite beautiful. She wanted to put Mallomars on his eyes and eat them off. She giggled because she had a picture of Carter with chocolate circles around his eyes where the Mallomars had been. He was lying very still on his back now with his arms on his chest. Like a dead person. Except the unpleasant feelings you would normally associate with such a thought were absent. It was a beautiful picture. There were flowers all around. At first they were mostly banks of flowers, roses and gladiolus, but then they stretched out into paths and lanes, hundreds of thousands of different flowers, like an English garden, lush but still geometrical. The flowers moved gently toward her until it was time for the next set. Then they weren’t just in the garden but everyplace. Her whole body felt strange and marvelous. She wanted to gather all the flowers into herself. If she opened her eyes they went away but they came back when she closed her eyes again. She could change them into anything she wanted—blobs of color or brightly colored chiffon veils or bouquets at a wedding. Or on a hearse. It wasn’t an ugly black hearse, though. It was white and graceful, more like a bird than a car. It stood next to a lake. The lake where the funeral was being held. The lake was very beautiful, with water like in advertising pictures for the Caribbean, crystal-clear green and blue with darkness way down. Without opening her eyes she crawled into the space between the sofa and the coffee table and curled up on her side.
“Hey,” Carter whispered into her ear, sending a thrill through her body, “you left me holding the Mallomars.”
She turned onto her back and opened her eyes. The hand holding the Mallomars was suspended over her head. She reached up and took out the first Mallomar and ate it; the others she dropped one by one on the table. From far away someplace Brooks would say, “Bang,” or “Crash,” or “Thud,” each time one landed.
“Poor hand,” Carter said when she was finished. “Look at you.”
“Poor old hand,” Theresa echoed. “I knew you when you were young and beautiful.” Tenderly she took the hand in hers and began licking the places where the palm met the fingers, then each finger, from the bottom to the tip. Only when she was finished did she let her eyes meet Carter’s. He leaned over and kissed her.
He asked, “Do you live far from here?”
She smiled. “Not very far.”
He said, “I’ll walk you home and I’ll wash my hands.”
Slowly she got to her feet. Katherine was asleep but Brooks was just off someplace with his eyes wide open. He ignored them. Carter got his jacket and they left.
“Hey,” Carter said when they got to the bottom of the stairs, “where’s your coat?”
“I didn’t wear one,” she said.
“You don’t get cold,” he said. “Are you a mermaid?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m going to swim home. Gurgle gurgle.” She led him to her door, which she hadn’t even locked.
“I don’t believe it,” Carter said. “It’s too beautiful.”
“Welcome,” she said, “to my watery cave.” She lit a candle because she was afraid the overhead light would ruin their mood.
“I don’t believe the length of time this stuff is lasting,” Carter said.
She yawned and sat down on the bed. “The sink’s in there.”
“They’re not all that dirty,” he said. “You did a pretty good job.” He took off his shoes. “How’d you find this place?” he asked.
“They found me,” she said.
“Oh,” Carter said, “you knew them before.”
“In my other life,” she said. “They knew me in my other life.”
Carter stretched out on the bed and signaled to her to stretch out beside him.
“Tell me about your other life.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“If I told you it wouldn’t be my other life, it would be my this life.”
“Oh, wow.”
Her mouth and lips were very dry; she ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, licked her lips. Carter leaned forward and licked her lips. They kissed. They moved back so that they were against the pillows, in each other’s arms. They started to make love, stopped to get undressed, made love with exquisite pleasure. She came, understood that was what had happened to her but not what was important about it. He came and rested in her. She saw the dictionary page with orgasm on it in illustrated script. She smiled. They came apart. She got cold and went under the covers. He got under the covers and they made love again and she came again. She drifted into a perfectly peaceful sleep from which she awakened, confused because she didn’t know why she was up. Then she became aware of a tiny insistent buzzing noise close by. Over on the desk the candle was burning very low. Carter stirred in his sleep, lifted his arm. It was his wristwatch. She stared at it. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Go back to sleep, love.”
Obediently she closed her eyes. When she opened them again it was morning.
She never saw him again.
“How’s Carter?” she asked Brooks a few days later in what she hoped was a casual way.
Brooks rumpled her hair. “Don’t invest anything in that one, love,” he said. Love. Everyone called you “love.” “He’s a straight, married, settled—”
“I know that,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see him again.”
“Listen to me, Theresa,” Brooks said. “Forget it. Not forget it exactly, but you have to say to yourself, I had a nice night, that night, I got stoned and I spent some time with this nice guy, wish I could remember his name, this suburban Wasp, a nice guy but just passing through. Both of us. We were just passing through.”
“You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying,” she said. “I don’t care if he’s married, if he stays married, I just—”
“No, sweetheart,” Brooks said. “You don’t understand what I’m saying. Forget it.”
A few nights later Katherine came down to say she was having an abortion.
“Oh, no,” Theresa said.
“It doesn’t help much when you make such a big deal out of it,” Katherine said.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t even know the worst of it,” Katherine said forlornly. She was looking ghastly, Theresa realized for the first time. Haggard and pale. Dressed all in black. “I’m in my fou
rth month. It’s much more complicated to do it now than earlier.”
“How does Brooks feel?” Theresa asked, unable to cope with this frightening news.
“He doesn’t mind one way or the other. He says it’s okay with him whatever I decide.”
Poor Brooks. She ached for him in this situation, thought it nearly saintly of him to be willing for Katherine to have the baby even if it might not be his. Then she was confused by her own sympathies. In the abstract it was very clear that the man was at least equally responsible, that no man had the right to make a woman have an abortion, that both Brooks and Katherine had been leading the kind of life that . . . yet her sympathies . . . sometimes she felt certain that Katherine had led Brooks into it all. That he would have been quite contented to just lead a normal married life if Katherine had. That . . . anyway, when she thought about Brooks and Katherine, she felt mixed sympathies at best for Katherine, but nothing but love and affection for Brooks.
Katherine went to Puerto Rico for Thanksgiving week. Brooks and Theresa went up to see her parents for Thanksgiving. The explanation was that Katherine was down with what might be flu. It was very pleasant, actually, although a shadow would cross her mind every time she thought of Katherine in Puerto Rico. Brigid and Patrick were there with baby John and Kimberley, who was now fourteen months old and walking. The conversation was mostly by the men and mostly about football until Patrick announced, with a combination of embarrassment and pride, that Brigid was pregnant again. Brigid was flushed with pride, as though in the latter half of the twentieth century she had not only the right but some particularly good reason to be a Catholic baby-making machine. Theresa thought of Katherine in Puerto Rico and for the first time her heart really went out to her sister.
But Katherine looked beautiful when she finally came back the following Sunday. She had a deep tan and she’d gained a little weight and looked not at all the way one would expect someone to look who’d been raised a strict Catholic and just had her second abortion.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar Page 10