Once I remembered the party at the lake, I was glad. I like it up there. I remembered Amparo Loma. Perhaps this time.
Wilma and I left very early on Friday morning. Her driving frightens me. I do not let her see that it does. She was quiet on the way up, intent on her driving. On one straight stretch she made the little car do 110. It will go faster. She laughed when we were going the fastest. I could not hear her. I saw her mouth and knew she was laughing. She has done a lot of living. She is older. She can go fast. I have a lot left to do. I thought of the car overturning, and of my skin and muscle and bone sliding and grinding over concrete. It made me feel pale. But I could not let her see it.
It made me feel pale like that time in the Home. There was a concrete fire escape. It had an iron railing. I was small. One of the big boys took me out on the top landing. He held me over the railing. I could not even scream. I saw the bricks down there. There was nobody to help me. He brought me back over the railing and dropped me. It hurt my head. I started to cry. He slapped me. Then he turned his back. He leaned on the railing. He ignored me. I wasn’t there any more.
We got to the lake at two o’clock. There was nothing there but the old station wagon José uses. She walked in and checked everything and gave orders. What to serve. Where to put people. She sent José to the village for more things. I swam and rested on the dock in the sun. I let the sun unwind my nerves. I could hear her yelling at them in the house. In Spanish. She treats them like dogs. They don’t seem to care. I guess it is because of the money.
The others came. Randy and Noel Hess. Judy Jonah. Steve Winsan. The Dockertys. Wallace Dorn last of all. They all drink too much. I have never enjoyed drinking. It dulls things. It spoils things. I make a drink last a long time. I did not pay much attention to them. I almost laughed at myself. Once upon a time I would have thought this was the greatest thing in the world. You get used to nice things quickly. I have always liked nice things. Clean smells. The feel of silk. Long showers. Now I had them, and would always have them, and I knew it was meant that way from the beginning.
I sat with them and listened to the foolish talk they made. I played a game. This was my place. I was a baron. Wilma was my aging lady. Soon I could be rid of her. And rid of her empty friends. And I could live here alone, with the brown Amparo. And beat her severely when she displeased me. When I had a party, it would not be these people. It would be people who depended on me, who needed my strength. I would tell them what to do. And when.
Usually, when we were in a group, Wilma would look at me from time to time, and there would be a quick understanding between us. But she had acted strangely on the way up. She had acted strangely ever since we had talked about Evis. I could not catch her eyes. I wondered if I had displeased her, and then I made myself stop thinking that way. It was the other way around. It was up to her to please me. We had changed status. Inevitably.
They played games. I have never cared for games. I danced with the Dockerty woman. She was a little drunk. I dance well. I knew her husband was aware of us, and I knew that the dancing excited her. It gave me pleasure to make him nervous. I knew, when we danced on the terrace, that I had only to take her wrist and lead her out into the darkness away from the floodlights. It was that easy. But I did not. It pleased me to tantalize her. She meant nothing. I knew the others were aware of our dancing. All of them watching us, pretending not to. All of them envious of me. Or of the Dockerty woman. That was pleasant too, to feel the emotion of them, of the weak ones watching the strong.
Wilma had put me in the same room as before, the one with the door that connects with hers. But when I tried it, it was locked. I raised my fist to knock, then lowered it. That would be a loss of dignity. It did not matter. Not at all. I went to bed. There was the flush of the sun on my body. It felt good. And the faint weariness of much dancing. And the smell of rich things around me.
I slept. I have never, in my whole life, dreamed. They talk about it. I don’t know what they mean. Of that one thing I am envious. It must be nice. Little stories that go on in your head when you are asleep. I make up dreams sometimes, and tell them to women. They always seem interested. They like to tell me what the made-up dreams mean. It seems to excite them to tell me what my dream lies mean.
I was up early, as I always am. I was the first. Amparo brought my breakfast. She moved quickly away when I tried to touch her. I knew what this day would be. They would be drunk. But there would be sun and some good exercise. That was enough. I could wear my trunks all day. They look at me. It is good to be looked at, when you know that all of you is brown and strong and well formed. I liked posing for the life classes. Back then, in my stupidity, I thought their drawings of me were good. I know better now.
The others got up. Steve drove a runabout, pulling me on the skis. The fool let the towline go slack. Instead of releasing the bar, I tried to hold it. When the line came tight it felt as though it would yank my arms out of the sockets. It hurled me through the air and awkwardly into the water. I was certain he had done it on purpose. I would take his throat in my hand and bang his head on the concrete pier. But by the time I swam in, the redness had faded away. Hess drove the runabout. I taught Mavis how to stand up on the skis. She is a giggler. A fool. But her co-ordination was fair, and she learned and became very proud of herself. Again I knew her husband watched us warily.
That may have been the reason he got thoroughly drunk, stumbling around while we played croquet, disappearing finally to pass out. It turned into a sleepy afternoon. People disappeared, reappeared. I tried to find a chance to talk to Wilma, but she avoided me. Mavis lay beside me in the sun on the pier, talking inanities, sweating rather unpleasantly.
It was dark when I finally had a chance to talk to Wilma. She called me over to her. We went up and sat on the edge of the steep bank near the croquet layout. I watched them down there in the floodlights, swimming. And I heard them laugh.
And Wilma talked to me.
And talked to me.
And talked.
Nine
(NOEL HESS—BEFORE)
RANDY DID NOT LOOK directly at me when he told me we were going to Wilma’s place at Lake Vale for the week end. We do not look at each other very much any more.
I was given a present once. The woman next door brought it over. I had been sick. I was sitting up in bed. My mother was there. I took off the paper. There was a wooden box, just a bit smaller. And another. And another. My breath came faster. The last box would contain something tiny and exquisite. It had to. It had to be something very small and delicate and lovely and precious to merit all the boxes, one within the other. The final box was empty. I looked into it for a long time and felt as if somebody had been there before me and stolen whatever it was. I cried. My mother was ashamed of me. The woman smiled and said it was perfectly all right, but her eyes did not smile.
For a long time I tried to find something good enough to put in that box, the littlest one. There was nothing good enough. I stole a ring from a girl in my class. It had a red stone. I took it out of her desk. I hid it in my shoe. It hurt but I didn’t limp. I took it home and put it in the smallest box. Once it was in there I saw it clearly. One prong was broken. The silver was turning yellowish. It was not good enough. I had stolen. I had to be punished. I held a wire in the gas flame on the stove and put it against my arm. I did not cry. After the scab came off there was a thin white scar. It lasted for years. Now I cannot find it. I threw the ring into tall grass. I never liked that girl again. Once, during fire drill, I pinched her—hard. She cried and told on me. I was punished.
I am a lot of boxes. All going down, down to a tiny one. And nothing in it. Anything so intricate, so difficult to construct, the corners glued so carefully, needs something valuable inside. I am intricate. I am well made. To enclose emptiness. So it is a feeling of not being used. And of having been most carefully planned for use.
How must a woman be? Full of things to give, perhaps. Giving of love and work and loyalty, l
iving in sensitivity and awareness, making a nest of love. I am that.
So I think of this thing that has happened to me, and look back along my life and try to discover how, at thirty-five, I am empty. My father died. My mother had to work. I was too little. So I went with cousins. Five of them, racing and yelping and talking loud and fighting over food and games. There I found my strength. In waiting and planning and working. They were all so disorganized. I wanted orderliness. And I made it for myself. And I liked it when I had made it, aiming myself like a careful arrow at the things I wanted. The high grades, the poems memorized, the clothing I made, the neatness of my bed. Perhaps I was a prude. A solemn dark-headed child, full of herself. And liking the clean clear things. The scholarship attained, the degree achieved, the research job secured.
And I met Randy, who seemed to be what I was. Determined and ambitious and quiet and orderly. Clean and precise. I was virgin. And so was he. It was not without magic. It was a spiritual love. It was full of high thoughts. But on the physical side, we differed. He seemed always to be distressed by the very mechanics of the act, shy of the indignities of it, gingerly about my very femaleness of function, appalled by fervor. And I found that, unlike my husband, I wanted abandon, a careless wildness, a lushness about it. Yet, sensing his wishes, I practiced the restraints he wanted, so that we made love to dignified formula, in precisely scheduled asceptic dignity, considering the soul and ignoring the inescapable body, making it a thing of silence and controlled breathing. Yet I knew him, and thought I loved him, and not too infrequently I was satisfied. Perhaps if there had been children … I wanted them. I went to doctors. He would never go. And so I was labeled the infertile one.
There was not much joy in him. And little spontaneity. But in our fashion we were happy.
And then Wilma went to him as a client.
The change did not come quickly. It makes me think of something that happened when I was little. A boy had taken a fuse apart. There was a disk inside, of mica, I believe it was called. By being very careful we could peel off the thin sheets. Each one was transparent. But the whole disk was almost opaque.
And that is the way it was with Randy. I did not notice the first few transparent sheets that came between us. And by the time I became aware that he was on the other side of something that misted his image, there were too many of those sheets in the way. It was too late to break through. I knew he was dropping other clients. He stopped talking about his work. He stopped asking my opinion. One day he said he was giving up the business, that he would work exclusively as her business manager. He named the salary. It was a good one, though not so much as he had made before. He gave up the office not long after that. He worked at her apartment. He no longer touched me. Ever. And the scent of her was on him. In his clothes, in his hair, on his skin. He slept like death. We lived more expansively. We dipped into savings. Until they were gone.
I was stupid. I had no experience with that sort of thing. He would not talk to me. We had sour quarrels. I thought he had started taking drugs. Or something equally vile. Then the next time I saw them together, I knew what was between them. It was not something I had to reason out. It just came to me, out of some primal intuition. And it sickened me. Actually and physically. For days I would vomit when I thought of the two of them together. She was repulsively sweet to me. She has no morals. She has no soul. She is an animal.
Then it began to mean something else to me. By his action he had told me that I was not enough—that my gifts were meager. I would sit and look at myself. Look until I saw a grotesque length to my upper lip, an appalling squintiness in my eyes, a scrawny raddled look to my body. And I would think he had every right to go elsewhere. Then it would change all around and I would be full of indignation. He had never permitted me to be what I could be to him.
And then all that would go away and I would pity him. For what he was doing to himself and all his plans and all his austere dignity.
And then there was nothing left to do but sit and watch him. There is a fascination in that. I cannot describe it. People run to fires. There are newsreels of when they knock big chimneys down, and dynamite cliffs. You watch something being broken. And you cannot take your eyes away. I knew he was seeing a doctor. He would not tell me about it. I watched him acquire his soiled look, and his new manner of nervous self-deprecation—like the manner of a dog that, locked too long in a house, has made a mess on the rug, and seeks to avoid punishment with hectic affability.
I believe I could have refused to go up there with him. But it was part of the old disease. Watching disintegration. Examining decay. And so I went. On the way up we talked as strangers talk. The traffic seems light today. It must be much warmer down in the city. Yes, I could eat any time you want to stop.
Sitting there, being carried along at fifty miles an hour in the car we did not own, with clothing not yet paid for, wearing our unloved bodies, which flexed and jiggled to the road’s irregularities, his hand on the wheel, mine demure in my lap, driving through our special and personal wasteland toward no place at all.
Randy got increasingly nervous as we neared the place. We parked behind the house. Randy carried our luggage in. Wilma was on the terrace. Gilman Hayes was coming up from the dock. Wilma slipped easily into the part she plays with me. The affectionate older sister. A sort of we-girls thing. A sweetness that is patronizing. I have never let it bother me. I will never let it bother me.
It is odd, looking back on it, how it was so typical of her parties that Friday, during cocktails and dinner and then afterward until I left them playing games and went off to bed. A lot of pseudo-bright conversation, some dogmatic opinions from Gilman Hayes, the usual vapid imitation of Wilma by Mavis Dockerty, gargled comments by Wallace Dorn. All typical and meaningless, and Randy in some odd way managing to become the fourth servant. He had some of the attitudes of an uncertain host, but he would have looked better if he had carried a napkin folded over his arm. I got tired of watching him and went to bed.
It pleased me the next morning to be able to eat breakfast alone, and it did not please me at all when Steve Winsan asked if he could sit with me. But there was no point in refusing. I had him typed. The brash young old man. The city sharper. The boy with the angles, always balancing too many things at once.
I was not listening when he started talking about improving the race or something. And then I heard him saying something that made a great deal of sense, at least for me. It shocked me in a funny way because it was so close to what I had been thinking ever since my marriage started to go bad, started to spoil. About being able to become somebody else. About changing from what you are.
I looked right at him, and it was looking at him for the first time. His gray eyes were surprisingly good. Gray and level and honest, for once. I asked him what he wanted to become. And he told me he was tired of running, tired of impersonating himself.
He had been honest with me and it became something very special between us. I do not know how to describe it. Perhaps this way: Suppose you are at an ancient movie, all jerky and black and white and no sound track. Then, right in the middle, it turns to good color, and there is a sound track and you become interested in the plot and you sit forward on the edge of the seat. It was like that. The week end suddenly came alive. And I couldn’t remember anyone else in my life ever looking at me in exactly that way, with that special look of understanding, of personal concern. It occurred to me that he knew what was happening to me and he had seen it all, and it troubled him. And he liked me. Maybe that was it, most of all. He liked me for myself. Because, of all of them there, I was certainly the one who could do him the least good. With me there could be no angle. Nothing to promote. Yet I was the one he had chosen to talk to about the things he was really thinking.
After it was over I knew I wanted to talk to him some more. I wanted to hear his voice. I looked at him from a distance. There was a pleasing look of reliable strength about his shoulders.
Later we had a chan
ce to talk on the dock, stretched out in the sun. It made me feel shy to be so near him.
I remember one thing he said. He frowned down at his knuckles and he said, “Noel, don’t you get the feeling that everything is going to go bang? Not to everybody. Just to people like this group. My God, look at us. Could any setup be more artificial? Take a look around. Every human being should have some purpose, some good purpose. Look at this crowd. Is there a single person here worth a damn? Outside of you?”
“Including me, Steve. No.”
“It’s got to go bang. There has to be a purpose. I don’t want to sound like a Sunday school, but it has to be a clean and honest purpose. Not a PR kick, not cheap comedy on TV, not making people smell better, not selling more gunk, not kidding the public with phony art.”
“Where do I join up?” I asked him, smiling at him.
“You and me. We’ll form an association. Onward and upward, or something.” And then he looked sad. “Maybe it’s just too damn late for us, Noel. Maybe from here on in all we ought to look for is kicks. Like in that glass you just happen to have in your hand.”
“You mean this?” I drank it quickly. I had a funny feeling of recklessness. It was all going to go bang, and soon. And all I was doing was waiting around for it. There should be better things than waiting. And I had the crazy thought that maybe Steve would be one of the better things. At least he was honest about himself. I felt as though I were glowing, as though I had become prettier every minute.
During the croquet game I was aware of him all the time. Aware of the way he was watching me. And I wanted to be pretty for him. More pretty than I was. There had been a lot of sun and too many drinks and I felt careless and dizzy. And very contemptuous of Randy.
All These Condemned Page 11