Looking for Mr. Goodbar

by Judith Rossner

  They left Corners and began walking downtown. He said wait a minute, he’d find a cab, but she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to walk. He gave in but she knew that he was giving in because he knew that she had already given in. She sang Beatles songs. She sang “Day Tripper” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Norwegian Wood” and then she began all over again. He put his arm around her because she was shivering in the cold.

  At her apartment she fumbled with the keys until finally he took them and opened the door. The light was on as she’d left it when she . . . a hundred years ago.

  She smiled flirtatiously. “Thank you for taking me home for my own good.”

  He closed the door, locked it and took her in his arms. He smelled of beer. He kissed her for a long time. She moved back away from him—toward the bed. He smiled but he looked like a beast of prey. She sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes and turned off the light. In the darkness she could just see him taking off his jacket, then his tie, then his shoes.

  “Well, doctor,” she said, giggling, “now what are you going to do for my own good?”

  “Only what you want, teach,” he said. “I’m only going to give you what you want for your own good.”

  He lay down on top of her. He was heavy but she didn’t mind. It didn’t matter, any more than it mattered that she didn’t like him. His body was there and felt good. They made love. He wasn’t tender but he was competent and when they were finished she fell asleep.

  When she awakened the luminous clock dial said it was ten to four in the morning. Her head was throbbing. The moment she saw him lying there she knew she had to get him out. Quickly. Before it was light. She couldn’t stand the thought of seeing him in the daylight, she hated him. She tapped his arm and he didn’t respond. She got panicky and shoved him until he woke up.

  “What the fu—”

  “You’ve got to go,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “It’s almost morning.”

  “So?”

  She searched frantically for a reason. “My boyfriend’ll be back.”

  That woke him up. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was drunk.”

  He muttered and cursed but he got up and turned on the light and got dressed. She lay huddled under the blanket, her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep until he left. Thank God. When she’d heard the outside door open and close, she got out of bed and double-locked the door. It occurred to her briefly as she did this that she was locking the barn door after the horse was stolen but she felt too rotten to be amused at her own joke. She was horribly thirsty and she took a glass of water and some aspirin. She got back into bed but she couldn’t just lie there, she was too miserable. Her thirst was unquenchable and her headache was worse. She got out of bed and took two more aspirin with another glass of water. She felt as though she’d acquiesced in her own rape, a thought which when it hit her struck her so hard that she leaped out of bed and switched on the TV set in one sweeping motion. Something was on that was so old that she didn’t know any of the actors or actresses except Claudette Colbert. She got very involved in it and finally she felt herself getting drowsy. In the moment before she fell asleep, as the screen images faded from her eyelids, his face briefly flickered in front of her; she wanted to scream but then it occurred to her that they didn’t even know each other’s names. In some way this was reassuring. A little while later she fell asleep.

  The next morning she awakened knowing, as though it were something she’d been actively thinking about and planning for a long time, that she was going to move.

  Evelyn had a beautiful little apartment in an old six-story house on Morton Street which she shared with her boyfriend, a guitarist who traveled with a group, when he was in town. She checked out apartments for Theresa, as did other people in school, particularly in the West Village, where Theresa thought she really wanted to live, but months went by and nothing turned up, and finally she settled for what was called a three-room apartment because it had an eat-in kitchen that was separate from the main room, in a newer apartment house on Sixth Avenue.

  She became quite friendly with Evelyn and saw a lot of her when Larry, Evelyn’s boyfriend, was out of town. Evelyn seldom talked about Larry and Theresa wondered if Evelyn assumed that she had some very real boyfriend who she just happened to not talk about, either. Sometimes Theresa would refer by name to someone she’d picked up and slept with as though he were a real person—“A friend of mine was just saying”—but she was afraid to use the same name too many times because then Evelyn might suggest that they all get together, she and Larry, Theresa and her friend, and then Theresa wouldn’t know what to do.

  She wrapped around herself the secret of the way she was living, and if the wrap was necessary, and even comforting, it was also constricting, a barrier, because it placed such sharp limits on the areas of her life she could share with Evelyn or anyone.

  Actually, when she thought about it at all, she didn’t really feel that she had a life, one life, that is, belonging to a person, Theresa Dunn. There was a Miss Dunn who taught a bunch of children who adored her (“Oh, that’s Miss Dunn,” she heard one of her children say once to a parent. “She’s one of the kids. A big one.”) and there was someone named Terry who whored around in bars when she couldn’t sleep at night. But the only thing those two people had in common was the body they inhabited. If one died, the other would never miss her—although she herself, Theresa, the person who thought and felt but had no life, would miss either one.

  In the fall the teachers’ union struck against the schools on the issue of community control. The lines were clearly drawn (more so than they would be a couple of years later, when the complexities of the issue had begun to assert themselves): On the picket lines were the older teachers who’d gone into teaching for themselves, who’d struggled into the middle class and weren’t going to let any of what they had be taken from them, who might occasionally have some real feeling for education or children but couldn’t believe their own interests should follow either or be subordinate for a moment to the question of self-determination for the black and Puerto Rican communities. (Rose was the only one of this older group who wasn’t with them and took an inordinate amount of abuse from women she’d been friendly with for years.) Walking through the picket lines every day, feeling closer to each other all the time, and further from those outside, were the young teachers, white, black, one or two Puerto Ricans, who believed that equality and self-determination came before all the other issues, who had struggled into the middle class and were determined that it was not now going to limit them in their sympathies, their perceptions of justice.

  After school they would leave the building together for safety (their minds told them they were not in any real danger from the others but the venom, the invective, the threats were frightening) and often, not wanting to be alone, several of them would go to one person’s apartment, most often Rose’s, on Eighth Street. There they would talk about the children and how they were being affected by the strike, about what they would all do when it was over, and so on. They felt the strength of virtue and respected themselves and each other for what they were doing. One of the people in the group was Tom Lerner, the gentle soul who taught music and was himself a classical guitarist. Sometimes after the larger group broke up, Tom and Evelyn and Theresa would have dinner together, in the neighborhood or down in Chinatown. Once or twice they went to a movie afterward and then Tom and Theresa would drop off Evelyn at her house, then walk up to Theresa’s together. At the door to her house they would stand for a while and chat, and it was obvious that Tom wanted her to invite him up, but she never did. There didn’t seem to be any point to it. She didn’t really go for him; sooner or later it would have to end and then how would they face each other in school?

  When the strike was over the group gradually came apart as naturally as it had come together. Tom never joined her and Evelyn wh
en they went in for a Coke after school, and a while later she heard from someone that he’d moved in with a girl.

  Her father was operated on for a massive tumor in his intestine. Brigid called to tell her. Brigid was leaving the children with a neighbor and staying at the hospital most of the time with their mother. (Theresa felt a combination of jealousy and relief. Brigid, who, when they were younger, had only wanted a different family, had managed to remain closer to her own than she or even Katherine, now in India with Nick, who’d taken a sabbatical. Brigid had done the right thing, it was that simple. Brigid had gotten married, had babies, stayed in the neighborhood. Brigid had a real life.)

  Theresa didn’t ask Brigid for any of the details; she wouldn’t have even known what to ask. She never asked questions about things like that. She was never sick herself and moved away if the teachers in the lunchroom started discussing their health. She had never been to a doctor in her adult life, including a gynecologist. She used no contraceptives and didn’t consider using them; she knew, as surely as she’d ever known anything, that she would not become pregnant.

  She went up to see her father two evenings after the day of the operation, finding herself short of breath as she walked the distance from the train station at Westchester Square to the hospital. Realizing as she walked that it wasn’t the exercise that was making it hard to breathe, but the fear of entering a hospital for the first time in years and years.

  In the lobby, her mother’s sisters cried, while upstairs her father’s mother sat at the foot of her father’s bed, anxious but dry-eyed. Brigid was gone; she would have been there all day and gone home to take care of the children so Patrick could come. Patrick smiled his usual shy, nervous smile. Her mother. Then, as she came further into the room . . .

  They hadn’t prepared her. Or maybe she hadn’t known what to ask. At first she couldn’t even see the person lying under the white hospital blankets, she could only see the tubes and the equipment. Tubes stuck into his nostrils, taped onto him. Tube taped to his arm. On one side of the bed a bottle of liquid suspended high up, feeding the tube to his arm. On the other side of the bed a piece of machinery that looked more like part of the space program than anything to do with medicine. And then there he was. Small under the blankets, and terribly pale.

  “Daddy.”

  She was embarrassed. Her throat ached. She never called him Daddy. She called him Dad or avoided calling him anything. She wanted to kiss him but she didn’t know whether it would be all right with all the tubes there. She put her hand on his foot. He smiled at her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, and then thought that of all the dumb questions she might have asked that was surely the worst.

  “Fine, except they’ve got me all rigged up here with these silly tubes. I feel like a TV set.”

  He sounded like himself, thank God. Just a little weaker.

  There was a change of people around them. Patrick and her mother left, some of the others came in. She just stood there with her hand on his foot, watching him. Not talking. She wanted desperately to do something—to bring him something he needed, to make him laugh the way Katherine would if she were there. He asked her if things had calmed down again now that the strike was over; she said they had. He had been on the other side, she knew, but he had never tried to persuade her.

  She went every night for the week that he was in the hospital and was there when her uncle Sal drove him home on the following Saturday.

  “What a shame,” her father said to her, smiling, in a moment when he was settled in his room and no one else was there with them, “I had to get sick for my daughter Theresa to get so friendly.”

  She stared at him. “I always thought,” she said, “you didn’t care that much. I always knew Katherine was your favorite.”

  He looked at her as though he didn’t know whether to be more grieved or puzzled. She ran out of the room and wasn’t alone with him again for the rest of the visit.

  The next day, when she walked into the lunchroom, Rose looked at her and said, “Theresa! What’s wrong?” and Terry burst into tears. Mortified, she went into the teachers’ bathroom but Rose followed her in.

  “I feel so ridiculous,” Terry moaned through her tears.

  “Because you’re a human?” Rose asked.

  That made her cry more.

  “Come,” Rose said when she’d finished, “let’s go into my room.”

  Terry shook her head. “Not necessary.”

  “Nonsense,” Rose said. “From the look on your face when I saw you I wanted to take you home right then and there.” She led Theresa into her room, the kindergarten, locking the door behind them and pulling the shade across the window. They both sat at one of the small tables. Terry smiled.

  “It feels funny, sitting here,” she said. She never sat in those chairs except to work with a child.

  Rose nodded. “I had a long discussion with them last week about growing up. What it means, and so on. I sat down in one of the chairs, you know, as if I was a kid. Working at the table. Some of them thought it was hysterically funny, they couldn’t stop laughing. But a few were really upset by it.”

  Theresa smiled. “Probably the ones from strict Catholic families.”

  “So,” Rose said after a moment. “Tell me.”

  “Oh, there’s no point,” she said. “It’s a bunch of things.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  She nodded, wondering why she was lying. “But not just that. My father’s been ill.”

  “Serious?”

  “I don’t think so. He had a tumor in his intestine but it was removed.”

  “It wasn’t malignant.”

  “Malignant?” She knew that meant cancer. Nobody had said anything about cancer. She shook her head.

  “But it’s hard anyway,” Rose said. “Right on top of the thing with your boyfriend.”

  Theresa nodded.

  “What you probably need is just to get back out into the world. Into circulation.”

  Theresa nodded. Rose gave her a tissue and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  “There’s someone I’ve been thinking for a long time I’d like you to meet,” Rose said.

  Theresa stared at her incredulously.

  “I’m not kidding,” Rose said. “The only reason I haven’t said something before is . . . it’s usually very hard to approach you, Theresa. I know it’s just that you’re shy, not unfriendly, but . . . anyway . . .”

  She invited Theresa to come to dinner that Friday night. Theresa said she couldn’t, she had to go up to the Bronx to see her father, which wasn’t particularly true. The idea of being fixed up was humiliating to her. The idea that everyone knew she couldn’t find someone on her own. She refused two more times until finally one day Rose asked her to come to dinner without mentioning James Morrisey, as his name was, and she accepted.

  He was there anyway, though, and she sat stiff and tongue-tied on the sofa, able only to nod when Morris offered her a whiskey sour, his specialty.

  Rose and Morris had no children, but the poodles jumped all over Terry as soon as Morris opened the door. And then she saw him. James Morrisey. Every Irish mother’s favorite son. Pink, smooth-faced, well behaved. Hairless. Neat as a pin.

  He was shy and his shyness was excruciating to Theresa, who remained stiff with discomfort until well into her second drink.

  He was a young lawyer in Morris’s office. From the coincidence of their names had sprung the office line. There go Morris and Morrisey, which Morris obviously relished. There were a lot of Jewish bits from Morris. Rose brought out chopped liver and Morris said this was Exercise I in teaching the goyim how to live. Theresa smiled and Morris said, “Aha, she’s not as innocent as she looks!” Morrisey looked as though he was choking but said it was delicious.

  Rose took Theresa into the kitchen on some pretext of needing help and then whispered nice things about James to her. He was a wonderful boy. His father had died when he was in his teens but he’d managed
to get a full scholarship to Fordham University and worked full time while he went to college, then law school. Two years through law school he’d found the burden more than he could stand and he’d given up school and sold law books for a couple of years. Then in the course of his selling he’d met Morris, who had talked with him, lunched with him, persuaded him to finish school and take the Bar exam. After which Morris had convinced his partners that they needed a little ethnic balance in the firm. James still lived with his mother in the Bronx. It was almost embarrassing to think about.

  Theresa loosened up after a couple of whiskey sours; they all did. Still she barely looked at him. Her eyes would flicker past him when they were laughing at one of Morris’s jokes, and she would be aware that he, James, was watching her, and her eyes would bounce away.

  James Morrisey obviously liked her, which was funny because he didn’t appeal to her at all. At eleven thirty she yawned and said she’d better be getting home and James immediately asked if he could take her. She shrugged and said okay. They thanked Rose and Morris, who beamed at them as though they were going for blood tests.

  Eighth Street was jammed with people.

  “In my neighborhood,” James said, “there’s nothing open at this hour but the bar.”

  “I couldn’t stand it,” she said. “Living out there in the boondocks.”

  “Did you grow up around here?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Way out in the Bronx. Way past Parkchester, even.” Parkchester was where he lived with his mother.

  “What made you move here?” he asked.

  “It just seemed like . . . My first apartment was in a house my sister and her husband owned. In the East Village. Then when I wanted to move, this seemed like a good place.”

  James was taking it all in like a tourist. The Saturday nighters from New Jersey; the strung-out kids; the panhandlers. Old winos and young dopers. Two boys with their hair down to their backsides and dark glasses asked if he could spare the fifty-cent toll for the George Washington Bridge; James was about to give it to them because he was amused by the line. She said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” One of them said, “Motherfucker cunt.” James changed his mind. He asked if she wouldn’t rather take a cab home and she said no, she preferred to walk. As a matter of fact she’d just as leave roam around for a while (partly because she didn’t want to ask him in when she got to her house). That was fine with him. They zigzagged around the Village, James stopping to look in all the windows, most particularly the head shops. She felt impatient when he stopped but she knew this was totally unfair and didn’t say anything. He was interested in all of it. Being with him she lost that pleasant feeling it had taken her so long to acquire, of being a native. Of belonging there. On Sixth Avenue they passed a girl wearing jeans and a beautiful diaphanous Indian shirt so sheer that in the light of the street lamp her nipples were clearly visible.