by Sally Mandel
The cab bounced painfully, and Margaret thought with resentment that Walter always chose the most beat-up-looking taxi with no springs or ball bearings or whatever it was that kept one’s bones from being crunched into dust in the backseat. Oh, but Brian hailed this one, didn’t he? She ran her hand across her forehead, trying to clear her brain of confusion. Then she scrutinized Walter’s features as the lights from Madison Avenue flashed across his grim face. She wondered if she had missed something crucial with all her self-conscious anxiety at the restaurant. It had appeared to her that Walter had found Brian Morgan quite respectable. So why was he sitting next to her now like Mount Rushmore?
She stole a quick glance at Sharlie, whose expression was as rapturous as Walter’s was dour. Margaret thought of those children’s riddle books with the pages in which something was out of place—a tractor driving across the ocean or a carousel in the middle of a busy intersection. Sharlie gazed happily out the window, Walter glowered, and Margaret, looking at them both, thought uneasily, What’s the matter with this picture?
Martha, the housekeeper, had already gone to bed, so they hung their own coats away in silence, Walter glaring and Sharlie oblivious. Margaret continued to watch them both with growing panic until finally Walter said tersely to Sharlie, “I want to speak to you.”
Sharlie blinked her eyes dazedly as if he’d just awakened her from a sound sleep. He nodded his head toward the living room, and they all filed in, Margaret trailing behind, uncertain whether her presence was required and yearning for something soothing to put out the blaze in her solar plexus.
The living room was so still that their intrusion seemed an affront to its dignified paneled sanctity, the only sounds the shifting of coals in the fireplace as the ashes settled and the tiny clicking of the clock’s gold pendulum. But Walter’s heavy tread scraping against the Oriental rug as he paced back and forth and his careless slam of the door behind them offended Margaret. He had no respect for the ghosts of all those gracious people who’d once lived in this lovely old house.
Margaret, Walter, and Sharlie, shut up in the living room with Walter about to unleash some kind of tirade—well, thought Margaret, Sartre could do no better. She gazed with longing at the door, but Sharlie’s frightened face held her there.
Suddenly Walter spun around, pointing a large square finger at his daughter. Margaret restrained the impulse to cover her ears.
“I’d just like to hear how you justify this thing.”
Sharlie stared at her father uncomprehendingly, and Margaret thought her daughter looked very young, like a little girl groping for the response to a mysterious grown-up accusation.
“The boy is apeshit about you,” Walter pronounced.
“I know,” Sharlie said softly, and Margaret saw her search her father’s face for clues.
“I want to know if you told him you can never have children.”
Sharlie dropped her eyes and murmured something.
“What?” Walter bellowed.
“Yes, I told him that,” Sharlie said, swallowing hard but meeting her father’s eyes now.
Walter raised his arms and dropped them helplessly to his sides.
“Then he’s more of a sucker than I thought.” He made his words elaborately simple, as if he were speaking to a dull child. “Brian Morgan is not your friend. He is not some person who feels sorry for you or comes to see you because you are sick and he wants to make himself feel like a nice guy. Brian Morgan is infatuated. In-fa-tu-ated. He’s got a great big hot lust for you. He wants your body. The poor sap probably wants to get married.”
Sharlie’s eyes flickered, and Walter exploded.
“He does, doesn’t he? Are you crazy, or are you just monumentally selfish?”
Sharlie’s face turned ashen, and Margaret felt her insides divide into two warring factions: concern for Sharlie versus terror of Walter. They thundered away, eroding the lining of her stomach.
“Did you ever stop to think what it would be like for a healthy fellow like that to be married to you? He’s a real man, my girl, with guts and balls and …”
At this, like the summoning of reserves, Margaret’s revulsion joined forces with her maternal instincts. She reached out a hand toward her husband, trying to restrain him.
“Walter, really, you’re being very cruel.”
He didn’t hear her, or at least gave no indication that he had. He continued his diatribe as if Margaret were a piece of glass he could look right through.
“Think about his life,” he was shouting. “If you have to trap a man, find yourself some pale, sweet thing, some interior decorator or that hairdresser of your mother’s. Get yourself a nursemaid. Not a lover, for Christ’s sake.”
Walter turned abruptly toward the door, but before he got all the way across the room, he swung around again, his eyes all but invisible behind the bulging muscles of his cheeks and forehead.
“Brian Morgan may be a fool. But you,” and he shook his finger at Sharlie again. “You …”
Without finishing his sentence, he waved his hand in disgust and dismissal and slammed out of the room.
Margaret put her head in her hands and began to cry. After a few minutes she looked up and saw Sharlie sitting quietly, staring in the direction of the door. Her face was so full of hatred that Margaret spun around to see if Walter was still standing there.
Finally Sharlie looked at her mother, her cheeks matching the stony white of the marble fireplace. With a thin, ghostly smile, she said, “Well, Mother, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a person to clench his face.”
Chapter 12
Walter sat in the lounge area of the Fifth Avenue Racquet Club. Behind the plate glass of the exhibition court two men hurtled back and forth, the hard ball slamming against the walls. Walter watched them dazedly, sweat trickling down his face in rivers, soaking his shirt. He sat on the edge of the couch so as not to dampen it. He had taken Freeman easily just now, three to one, and though his opponent had struggled hard over each point, he was barely damp under the armpits. And here I am, irrigating the rug, he thought, annoyed at the insubordination of his glands.
He wondered if Brian Morgan played squash. Good athletic body. Lean, probably quick, too. How could she?
He hunched his powerful shoulders, elbows on knees, hands hanging limp, and took two deep breaths, trying to cool off. He’d hoped a hard game with Freeman would work off some of his fury, but even now at the thought of young Morgan his jaw muscles began to ache. Good thing he had to be out of town the next few weeks. He didn’t think he could bear looking at his daughter’s face.
Walter knew he set his standards very high, knew that he extended his intolerance for weakness in himself to others. Humanity never seemed to measure up, leaving him with a constant nagging sense of disappointment. Except for Sharlie. Brave, uncomplaining, stoic Sharlie. How proud he felt when the medical staff remarked on her courage. Never whining, she faced the agonies of her condition with quiet fortitude.
An occasional lapse now and then, all right. A temper tantrum, a crying jag, some self-indulgence to let off steam. But to ensnare another person in her crippled life—a young man with lousy judgment, but obvious vitality. She wasn’t deluding herself about his feelings for her, either—he was hooked. Walter saw in her face that they’d already begun discussing marriage. Marriage! Holy Christ! Hadn’t she accepted long ago the unanimous prognosis concerning her life expectancy? And hadn’t he explained to her himself that her capacity to function as a woman was negligible? Nonexistent, for all practical purposes—if you consider screwing a practical purpose—or childbearing.
He’d recently read an article about homosexuals that said you can’t always tell. Sometimes they’re married with kids, sometimes they’re even pro ballplayers. Was Brian Morgan a fag? He shook his head, sending a shower of sweat onto the floor.
As Sharlie had approached puberty, Walter w
atched her carefully, taking note of the new softness in the lines of her body, her reluctance to undress for her doctors, her eyelash-shaded glances at his own body when he walked around in his underwear. Despising his own cowardice, he put off the job of enlightening her.
Finally one evening after dinner when Margaret had gone off to the opera, he marched Sharlie into the living room and sat her down at the couch. He explained to her what he knew she was beginning to feel, and he tried to be specific, realizing that her only sources of information, other than him, were books. Margaret would never discuss such things, and unless a kid went to school where there were other kids to exchange information with, there just wasn’t any other way.
He told her about menstruation and that it might occur pretty soon, since she was twelve years old already. He asked her to tell him when it happened, and she nodded solemnly.
Then, pacing back and forth in front of the couch, he explained about sex—the part of it that went beyond reproduction. As tactfully as he could, he told her it could never be for her. That despite the warmth of her feelings, despite the yearnings of her young body, sexual expression was most definitely out.
Christ, how she had sat there, her eyes never leaving his face for a moment, looking at him as if his words came straight from the mouth of God. He’d felt as if he were pulling the wings off a butterfly.
When he was finished, she nodded slowly. Her hair reflected the light from the fire, and he watched it shimmer around her face.
“I didn’t think I’d be able to get married or anything,” she said thoughtfully. “But could I have a friend? A boy, I mean, if it was just like having a girl friend?”
Walter said yes, that was all right, and he saw her considering this, sorting it all through. He said he wanted her to come to him whenever she had a question or wanted to talk about it, and she had said she would. But except for telling him—reticently—just before Christmas that she had gotten her first period, she never mentioned the subject again. Sometimes he wondered if she’d understood what he’d told her, and then one night he studied her face during a romantic scene on television. The curiosity had disappeared, leaving behind a silent flash of pain and then a numb expressionlessness.
Pathetic joke of nature, he thought, that Sharlie had inherited his warm physical nature rather than Margaret’s icy constraint. While Walter rejoiced in physical experience—sex, in particular—Margaret walked around in her high-necked dresses wishing that her too, too solid flesh would melt or something.
And Sharlie got stuck with his high blood. Mother Nature appeared to possess a rather warped sense of humor.
Suddenly the air-conditioned room seemed very cold, and he shifted his shoulders under his clammy shirt.
He rose stiffly, not noticing Freeman, fresh from the showers, wave at him on his way to the elevators. His feet had fallen asleep, and he shook them as he stared at the glass-enclosed court, now unlit and empty.
Fact is, no matter how tough it may be for Sharlie, she must accept reality. You don’t take a young man’s life and nail it in a coffin. Facts were facts, and she would be the courageous girl and give up this idiocy with poor besotted Brian Morgan before she destroyed his life the way … His mind halted abruptly. He shook his head and strode quickly to the locker room, hoping to shower away his sudden sensation of being particularly unclean.
Chapter 13
Sharlie and Margaret sat in the candlelit dining room trying to fill the silence with neutral conversation. Walter had left for London late that afternoon, and despite their relief at his absence, the table seemed lifeless without him. Their forks clicked against the china and echoed in the hollow corners of the room.
Sharlie’s face glowed, pale and luminous. Her eyes glittered as if they were the only source of light in the room, the candles merely reflections of their brilliance. With Walter away, Margaret had hoped it would be easier to talk, but now it seemed as if the girl were more remote than ever. Each time Margaret had approached her daughter recently, she seemed to slip around a corner or behind a closed door, out of reach into some world her mother couldn’t share.
Margaret set her fork down emphatically. The jarring sound brought Sharlie’s eyes up, and Margaret folded her hands in her lap.
“I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you alone, dear,” she said ceremoniously.
Sharlie’s face held the resentment of someone yanked too early from a warm, happy sleep. Margaret smiled apologetically and forged ahead, the words sounding rehearsed in her ears.
“I think it’s time we talk about this young man of yours.”
Sharlie’s face said, I think not, but Margaret went on. “As your mother, I have certain responsibilities to you.”
Sharlie said quietly, “I think I’ve heard enough parental obligation from Daddy.”
“Your father and I approach the matter differently.”
“But you both end up in the same place,” Sharlie said.
Margaret felt her stomach twist, wishing she could just drop the matter and ring for Martha to clear the table. But her conscience pressed heavily and forced her to continue.
“Your father’s concern seems to be centered on your Brian. Not that he doesn’t have a valid point, dear. You have to admit that.”
Sharlie didn’t seem about to admit anything so Margaret stumbled on, feeling as though she were wading through great soggy heaps of mud, her thoughts turbid, her words sucking at her and pulling her down. Infuriating because only this morning, sitting in the kitchen over a cup of coffee, she had felt confident and clear about her anticipated conversation with Sharlie.
“I’m worried about you,” she said, remembering that this was what she had intended to say. Sharlie’s smile said, I’m all right, but Margaret shook her head.
“No, I mean especially worried. It’s just not healthy for you to fall in love.”
Sharlie burst out laughing, and Margaret sat bewildered and injured, waiting for her daughter’s strange hilarity to dissipate. In a moment Sharlie was gazing at Margaret with open curiosity.
“What makes you think I’m falling in love?”
Margaret shook her head, puzzled.
“I mean how can you tell? Do I have symptoms or something?”
Margaret’s memory flashed to Monday afternoon when she had come upon Sharlie standing by the mirror in the foyer. She was wearing her pale-pink sweater and gray slacks and was regarding herself with such intensity that Margaret’s approach went unobserved. Sharlie had stared at the reflection of her own dark eyes, and at the same time her hands, beginning at her rib cage, moved down over the curves of her waist and hips, unselfconsciously and with undeniable pleasure. Margaret turned away quickly, but Sharlie’s eyes caught her mother’s movement in the mirror, and she spun around, face flaming. They stood looking at one another, embarrassed, until finally Sharlie moved her shoulders in a tiny shrug and smiled. It was a smug gesture, and Margaret responded to it with unspoken rage. She smiled back at her daughter with thin lips and said quietly, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall.” Before Sharlie turned to walk down the hallway, Margaret had detected a look of triumph in the flushed face.
Now Sharlie’s voice, insistent, brought Margaret back to the dining room again.
“Really, Mother, I want to know. What does somebody in love look like?”
Margaret said primly, “All right, maybe love isn’t the proper word for it. Let’s just say ‘attraction.’”
Sharlie said, “You’re talking about sex.”
Her last words were spoken just as Martha entered the room to clear the table, and Margaret shot her daughter a look that said, For heaven’s sake, not in front of the servants. Martha grinned at Sharlie, obviously longing to stay, removing each plate slowly and methodically and then lingering by the sideboard. Margaret said icily, “The veal was delicious, Martha. I hope you’ll make it again when Mr. Converse is home.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Marth
a replied, then abandoned her delaying tactics as Margaret continued to stare at her in cold silence. She picked up the loaded tray, gave Sharlie a wink behind Margaret’s back, and went out of the room.
“Maybe that’s what love is, do you think? Physical attraction?”
“Oh, no,” Margaret said emphatically. “Why, if that’s all it was, your father and I …”
She stopped abruptly, twisting her napkin in her lap. She looked so stricken and confused that Sharlie reached across the table to touch Margaret’s arm.
“Mother,” Sharlie said softly, “I’m going to give him up. It just seems so important to know what it is I’m losing.”
Margaret and Sharlie looked at each other, both close to tears.
“Don’t worry,” Sharlie went on. “I’ll work it out.”
Margaret nodded. “Of course you will, dear.”
Sharlie stood up and leaned over the table to blow out the candles.
“Come on. Daddy’s away. Let’s go sit by the fire and play Scrabble and listen to Don Giovanni. Loud.”
Margaret got up, head high, and started out of the dining room. Sharlie followed, marveling again at how pleasing it was to watch her mother’s motion.
Chapter 14
The next morning Sharlie stayed in bed late, staring at the ceiling and concluding that it was all over with Brian. Well, she thought, tracing a hairline crack in the plaster with her eyes, that’s the first time I’ve gotten so far as to admit it to myself. Progress of a sort.
Dinner at Pietro’s had whipped her feelings into a turmoil. She had expected Walter to reject Brian, instantly and violently, perhaps dragging his daughter out of the restaurant by the hair to lock her away in some remote seaside tower. But Walter had eaten his dinner, drunk his wine, and even uttered a few civil words. She looked back on it now and traced the progression of her feelings from terror to surprise to relief, and finally, to hope. Seductive, treacherous hope that so quickly burst into flame, a blazing retribution upon her head. It was as if Young Love, her gentle apparition at the restaurant table, had been suddenly set afire with a foul cigar, to disappear into tiny flakes of ashes around her icy feet.