Women and Children First

by Francine Prose

  The first shot was of people loading the van to go to the beach, and when the camera slipped and the picture swooped down, someone watching said, “Terrific, Iris.”

  The camera was riding shotgun. Gary, the lawyer, drove. When Valerie had first come to the house, Gary was clearly interested, but seemed like someone so used to women refusing him that she never even had to say no. Now he played to the video camera, giving his impression of a tour bus guide running down the sights. Gary shouldn’t have tried, he was stiff at it, and faltered. Iris’s camera caught every wrinkle of strain. Iris was a therapist, she used video in counseling, and somehow everyone she photographed looked as if they were toughing it out at some family crisis session. When Nasir did the taping, people looked more handsome and relaxed.

  At the beach, Iris caught lots of unfortunate close-ups: squinty eyes, hairy backs, even some armskin flapping as shirts were pulled up over heads. Valerie thought: Trust Iris to show them the suddenly unmistakable signs of age. The camera made it obvious that Roy wouldn’t take off his Hawaiian shirt, the audio blurred the drone of his voice as he sat on the sand holding court like some obese Polynesian king. Keeping its distance, the camera turned on a handful of people walking gingerly into the surf. Then Gary—not on the tape but in the room—said, “Oh, here’s where I almost drowned.”

  “Here’s what?” said Valerie, kneeling down at the back of the crowd around the TV.

  “Almost drowned,” Gary said, but just then the camera was occupied with a start-up soccer practice. Nasir had introduced the game to the house; they played often. Without him, the guys kicking the nerf ball around all looked a little adrift. Then a woman’s voice—on the tape but off camera—said, “Hey, look out there!” and the lens turned toward the horizon where now in the water you could see a human form, moving oddly.

  Another off-camera voice asked who that was, and someone else said, “I think it’s Gary.” A couple of seconds went by, then somebody asked, “You think he’s in some kind of trouble?” Another pause, then somebody else said, “No.” The camera turned back to the soccer players standing there lamely, like couples between dances, watching the ocean till someone said, “Are you sure he’s all right?” Focus on Suzanne looking out at the water, then shrugging and saying, “I think he’s okay,” then going off to check something in the food hamper; the camera followed her the whole way, which took about a minute.

  “Hey,” said a voice on the audio track, “look at that!” The screen went black. Someone in the room said, “Jesus, Iris, this is where you blew it?” “Sand on the heads,” Iris said. “I had to switch it on and off a few times.”

  When the image returned, the lens was scanning the water till it found that same form moving in place and two others speeding toward it. And now the camera zoomed in on two guys grabbing Gary and dragging him in toward the shore. This took a long time, too; finally everyone was wrapping towels around a gagging, shaking Gary.

  Gary, in the room, said, “Thank God for the Coast Guard.”

  “You almost died,” said Valerie. “Gary almost died, you guys.”

  “All right, Valerie,” said Roy. “We can’t all be world-class swimmers.”

  “You sons of bitches,” Gary said. Then he laughed.

  Valerie said, “I can’t believe this.”

  Someone close beside her said, “You’d better believe it.” It was Nasir. Valerie grabbed his shoulder and pulled herself toward him and began to whisper in his ear, but it wasn’t sexual, really, it was like talking into a disembodied ear, the only one that would listen to her as she went on whispering, a hot, slightly sandy whisper. The kavakava had begun to burn her mouth. She asked what was wrong with these people, how could Gary sit there and joke with these assholes who had almost let him drown, who were too selfish and lazy to even find out if he had been drowning, and maybe for a little while, at dinner, knew they’d done something wrong, but seeing it on video had freed them, had let them pretend it was just something else on TV.

  Nasir didn’t answer. Instead he very gently placed his hand on the back of Valerie’s neck. Valerie felt slightly queasy with lust, felt literally slightly sick. The warmth of his hand drew everything to the back of her neck, but everything was confused—sex, anger, exhaustion, fear, the kavakava which suddenly tasted awful. She said, “Christ. I need air.”

  She went out onto the lawn which sloped down to the Sound. It was a clear night and in the distance she could make out the lights of Block Island. After a while she heard people outside, near the door, getting the mountain of wood needed to make a fire in that cavernous fireplace.

  When they’d gone in, and smoke was coming from the chimney, she went to the woodpile and got the smallest pieces and began to stack them near the far end of the lawn. She made many trips, adding on branches which had fallen during a rainstorm last week and still lay around on the grass. When she had enough for a sizable bonfire, she sneaked back into the house. Everyone was watching the fireplace, or reruns of SCTV. She ducked into the kitchen and got newspapers and a bottle of brandy.

  The fire flared up so fast she jumped back. It went up in two stages, first it rose to two feet, then to about fifteen feet and stayed there, burning. Valerie stood with her back to the house, as near to the fire as she could. The fire didn’t seem hot enough; she kept hugging herself and shivering. She imagined people up at the house, looking out the windows, laughing, maybe even applauding Valerie’s latest crazy stunt. Then they would go back to the TV, or the bigger, nearer fire of their own.

  Valerie really did feel crazed as she began to pace, slinking back and forth by the fire, like something out of Cat People. She gazed into the flames, putting herself in a kind of a trance which it took her some time to snap out of when Nasir came up beside her. “Great fire,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Valerie.

  Then he said, “Give them a break, okay? They’re scared too. Are you one hundred percent certain that you would have jumped in and saved him?”

  Valerie was ninety-nine percent certain that she would at least have made sure someone did. But Nasir’s words made her stop and think about the group in the house, about the terrible power of politeness, the desire that things remain civilized and well-mannered, the awful paralysis of the grateful guest. She looked back at the house and thought: No one lives there, no one has stakes there. They’re all one another’s guests.

  It made her treasure Nasir even more, for quieting that part of her which was usually so harsh and quick to condemn. She thought: With Nasir, she would be a better person. She looked up into his face. They began to kiss, sweetly at first, then harder. After a while Nasir tipped his head back and as Valerie kissed his neck, he said, in a husky voice, “What about Suzanne?”

  “What about Suzanne?” said Valerie.

  “You two are friends, right?” he said. “Good friends. You can get her to come out here…the three of us…”

  Valerie said, “No way.”

  Nasir laughed and hugged her. “All right,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” He kissed her a couple more times. But really, it mattered a lot, it beamed like a laser straight to the part of her brain that governed desire. It cut that part right out. All Valerie could see was herself and Suzanne and Nasir, like some sleazy cameraman might see them, pale blond Suzanne, dark Valerie, Nasir darker still. It amazed her that what you’d hoped was the start of your life could turn out to be a scene in someone else’s porno movie.

  Nasir said, “Okay, later maybe,” and straightened his clothes and walked back up to the house. Valerie just stood there. After a while she caught a whiff of smoke from the fire which reminded her of autumn, and she thought how often in fall she had driven along the edge of the forest, beside all the color, and imagined it would be even brighter inside, inside the woods and that beauty. So she would park and walk into the forest, but it was worse there, the light was wrong, you couldn’t see far enough, it had been brighter from the road. Now she stared at the fire, at the changing s
hapes, and thought how the very worst moments of waiting for life to begin are better—much better—than knowing it already has.

  Creature Comforts

  RICE TAPS HIS SKINNY, suntanned chest. He says, “Would I stiff my own brother?” On his face is the fixed, slightly glassy smile of a passenger in a convertible, going fast.

  Nicky and Kate can’t look at him. They can’t even look at each other. They’ve been on the edge of a kind of hysteria since Rice’s wife Pammy said, “That’s some gigantic jade plant you’ve got there,” and they both remembered how, when their twins were born, Pammy said essentially the same thing about the babies’ ears. It’s been eight years, the twins have grown into their ears, but other things have happened. Once, in an argument about nuclear power, Pammy said she was for anything that let her keep her creature comforts. Creature comforts! Rice and Pammy live in downtown Phoenix, in what used to be a motel cabin.

  Once a year, around Christmas, they drive down to Tucson with gifts for the twins. Kate and Nicky had assumed this was one of those visits until Rice announced that he would be working in Tucson all January and wanted to live in the guest house in Kate and Nicky’s backyard. Now he is trying to reassure them that he can be trusted to pay his share of the electric bill.

  Rice’s question hangs in the air. Would he stiff Nicky? Probably. But that’s only one of the reasons he shouldn’t live here. Rice drinks too much, smokes too much dope; at least he’s quit stealing cars. Twelve years of marriage to Pammy have pacified him; now it’s just credit-card trouble, and, rarely, trashing his living room. Still, Rice is family, and they cannot refuse, cannot tell Nicky’s younger brother he can’t stay in the empty guest house. Also Nicky will be away that month—in L.A., where he goes periodically to work as a recording engineer. Kate would sooner have Rice here than no one. The Courtly Rapist with his knife and good manners is the current media star.

  Everyone is trying so hard that Kate actually pretends disappointment when they learn they’re not getting Pammy too. Pammy can’t leave her office job in Phoenix, so Rice will commute home on weekends. Kate even feels compelled to thank Pammy on behalf of the jade plant. Then she says, “I don’t know—it does better if you neglect it.”

  “That wouldn’t work in my house,” trills Pammy in her cartoon-mouse soprano. “I’m a kind of a witch about plants. I just look at them and they die.”

  Right at that moment the meat grinder falls down off the top shelf, narrowly missing Nicky. Nicky says, “Who did that?”

  If Kate looks at Nicky she’ll laugh. Though maybe Rice and Pammy wouldn’t notice, they hardly flinched when the meat grinder hit the floor. There is a silence as everyone stares at the meat grinder. Finally Kate says, “Gee, I forgot we had that.”

  “I mean it,” says Rice. “You think I’d beat my own brother on a bill?”

  Kate feels a bit panicky. To no one in particular she says, “Know what I just remembered? Someone once told me that in India, the worst thing you can call someone is brother-in-law. It means you did it with his sister.”

  Pammy stares fixedly at the jade plant. Only when Nicky catches her eye does Kate realize what a strange thing she’s just said. The reason she could say it at all was that no one here is likely to do anything with anybody’s sister or brother-in-law. That Rice will be here alone with Kate doesn’t register in that way. Rice isn’t exactly someone you’d change your whole life to get close to.

  Rice bursts out laughing, waving his arms; ashes fly from his cigarette. “Brother-in-law,” he says. “That clinches it.”

  Nicky shows Rice what he needs to know about the guest house. They carry out a frying pan, an electric heater, extra blankets. Then they arrange it that Rice won’t move in until late the day Nicky leaves. Nicky tells Rice that his presence would drive him over the edge when he’s getting ready to go.

  There’s a brief, uneasy silence. Then Rice says, “Hey, I can dig it,” and punches Nicky’s arm. The two couples exchange quick, stiff-armed hugs. From the cab of Rice’s truck, Pammy calls, “You take good care of these kids!”

  Nicky has been gone so much that Kate is almost used to it. Still, his leaving is hard. There is always that moment of wanting to call him back, to say: Let’s sell the house, give in and move to L.A. All day, Kate’s thoughts keep edging toward horrors she’ll have to handle alone. The only thing that helps is cleaning the house. Housework can be so narcotic. Often she is surprised at her life, amazed that the kids and cooking and working in the garden could have turned out to be enough. But when Nicky is gone, she can no longer take pleasure in things themselves. It all feels as if she is showing someone: Look what I’ve done, at the hours I’ve passed, how much less time is left until he comes home.

  Around when the children are due back from school, Kate is careful to be busy with something involving, like scrubbing the vegetable bins, so she won’t notice if their bus is a few minutes late. Ben and Rachel know Nicky will be gone, but when they walk in and see Kate, their faces fall, like adults seeing a set dinner table and realizing that they are the only guests.

  The sunset is spectacular, but it’s one of those nights when all that blaze and color seems a little much. Kate realizes she is waiting for Rice, and is so glad to hear his truck in the alley that it takes her a while to get mad when he opens the alley gate and drives onto the back lawn. As he closes the gate behind him, she glares at him through the kitchen window, but he is too far away to see. He carries a cardboard box into the guest house, then comes out for an armload of books.

  On the day he and Pammy came down, Rice said he was going to use his time in Tucson to do some heavy spiritual homework. Kate guesses that the books are part of this; she thinks of dreary Christian bookstores and the glossy bios of Indian gods Hare Krishnas sell at the airport.

  Rice goes out to the truck one last time. Standing by the open cab door, he kneels and holds out his arms. And Pinky, Rice and Pammy’s Siamese cat, jumps from the cab onto his shoulder. Pinky has been to Tucson before. Pammy won’t leave the cat home; she worries it’s anorexic. But why has she sent it with Rice? Pinky is old, incontinent, and noisy. Kate wants to run outside and fling Pinky back in the truck. Instead, she has one of those moments in which she’s stricken with compassion for Pammy and Rice. When Rice knocks on Kate’s door and asks if he can call Phoenix collect, she doesn’t even mention Pinky. She says sure, he can use the phone, and how’s the house? Rice says fine. Then he sniffs and says, “Mmmm…Mexican.”

  Kate thinks: Any normal person would invite Rice for dinner. But Rice is the one who’s not normal. With him, it’s only one step—one small step—from knocking politely on your door to corning in when you’re not home and emptying your refrigerator.

  Kate shrugs and with a look of slight distaste says, “Oh, it’s just something the kids will eat.”

  “That’s okay,” Rice says. “Pammy sent me down some stuff she fixed and froze to get me through the week. These really super egg rolls. She’s really into egg rolls.”

  Egg rolls? Pammy is the microwave frozen-dinner queen. For as long as Kate can remember, Rice and Pammy have been on a beef and chemical diet. Pammy once told Kate about an article she read which said mankind needed a small steady dose of preservatives to carry on evolution. Most likely the egg rolls are part of the spiritual work. Well, really: Rice and Pammy are just the type for some major religious conversion. Kate is about to ask him what’s in the egg rolls when he picks up the phone.

  Kate goes into the living room to give Rice some privacy, but for once, the TV is off, the children are in their rooms, and though she makes an effort not to, she can’t help overhearing. “How’s Daddy’s little sweetie?” Rice says. He listens and answers, “Fine, fine, me too.” Then his voice drops and gets unintelligible, musical, cooing some private code of affection. Is it English? It’s more like what Kate used to worry about—and listen for—when she’d hear stories of twins with sinister secret languages. For a moment it crosses her mind that maybe Pa
mmy really is a witch, and this is their witchy talk. Then she thinks: Get hold of yourself. Pammy is much too straight.

  When Rice hangs up, Kate stares at him. He says, “Don’t worry. I called the phone company last week. I’m getting my own line put in.”

  “Fine,” says Kate. She busies herself at the stove. After a minute she says, “Did you check that with Nicky?”

  “No,” Rice answers. “Why?”

  Kate calls, “Ben and Rachel! Dinner!”

  Rice says, “I’ll just stay and say hi to the kids. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  Tonight the kids take even longer than usual to come. Sometimes Kate keeps yelling their names, but now she just stands there looking stupidly at Rice. At last the children slouch in. “Hey,” Ben says to Rice. Rachel doesn’t acknowledge him. Rice says, “See you guys,” and leaves.

  The kids sit at the table, hungry, barely patient. Kate gets them their enchiladas. Often, at mealtimes, Kate remembers how sometimes when they were babies, she caught herself feeding one the peaches that the other had just spit out.

  “What’s he doing here?” asks Rachel.

  Ben says, “What planet are you on? That was all anyone talked about before Dad left. Dummy.”

  “Dummy?” says Rachel and twists the thin flesh on Ben’s forearm. Ben pushes her away. The silverware jumps on the table. Kate just stands there. She would do anything to keep them from harming each other, but sometimes, when they are like this, she freezes as she used to when stray dogs would get in the yard and start dogfights with Buster. She would watch until Nicky reached into the snapping, churning mess, dragging Buster out and, miraculously, not getting bitten. Kate almost misses all that; lately Buster just sleeps.