Lion House,The

by Marjorie Lee

  After the dishes I went upstairs. I could no more have faced the Finches than my own mother; nor could I bear to look at Brad.

  We had a spare bedroom on the second floor: a tiny cubicle with one small window. We used it as a storage place for clothes and valises. There was a cot in it. I went in and locked the door behind me and lay down. There was an old mustard chair cushion lying on the floor. It wasn't ours. It had been left by the last tenants; or other tenants years before them. I reached down and picked it up and covered my face with it. It was damp and dirty and it made me sick; but, unreasonably, I wanted to be sick. I pressed it down against my nose and mouth and tried to take the stench in. I gagged and a gush of something warm and stinging flooded my throat. When I caught my breath I was crying.

  Brad came up a while later and knocked a jaunty drum-beat on the door. "Hey, Jo," he called, "we're going out for dinner!" I didn't answer; and soon I heard his footsteps fading down the stairs.

  I didn't come out. I stayed there, sleeping, waking, thinking, sleeping, waking, thinking: of Brad and Frannie. I saw them in my mind, suspended above me, swinging back and forth like a double mobile. But no: it hadn't been that. I knew. It had been the other thing. Frannie and I had talked about it one afternoon—the way we talked, the way we seemed to have to talk, about everything. She'd done it a thousand times: the boy from Yale; boys after him; then Marc. She said she liked it. I didn't. It had always made me feel used; cheated; left out, somehow. "You're doing it all for them," I had said to her. "What do you get out of it?"

  That's how it had been that night when, like a fool, I sent her up to get him for anagrams. I wished it had been the other way. It might have been easier to take. I don't know why, but it might have been easier.

  Lying there alone, I saw them again. I saw the look on his face; the surprise as he awakened. I saw her head; the back of it, bending forward, and the short, blonde ends of her hair.

  And suddenly I was part of it; needed, wanted, had to have what she had given him for my own; but who was there to give it to me if not I, myself?

  It wasn't easy. It never is. Love is a two-way, four-way, ten-way thing. Love thy neighbor; love thy lover; love the world. But love thyself, and lose thy soul. Because this isn't, this of all things isn't, this for none of us has ever been all right.

  Let it happen, I prayed to nothing I believed in; let it, let it happen! And when it did I prayed again: words reaching like a child's arms into swirling darkness: let it be all right.

  The next morning I left the room to take a shower. Helene and Dick and Brad were already downstairs. I spent an hour stalling before I forced myself to join them. Helene had made a pile of scrambled eggs. She and the men were eating at the kitchen table.

  "Well, hello!" Brad said as I came in. "Welcome back."

  "Eggs," I said. "Look how fluffy."

  "Pot," said Helene, "with cream. And you whip them with a beater while they're cooking."

  "How do you feel?" Brad asked.

  I glanced up from my plate. "Fine."

  "Martinis are hell on you," he said warmly. "You ought to stick with highballs, Jo. Cocktails always throw you for a loop..."

  You bastard, I wanted to cry out. But I just kept on eating my eggs.

  After breakfast Helene and Dick went upstairs to pack.

  "Don't," I told them. "Stay till tonight. I'm okay now; really I am. Don't go."

  I was able to keep them for an extra hour or so, but finally Brad and I drove them down to the station and made our farewells.

  I didn't say a word to Brad all the way home. It was only after we'd got inside the front door that I opened my mouth. "Your turn," I said.

  He looked at me questioningly. "Your turn to pack," I said. "Start now."

  His eyes widened; then his shoulders dropped and he sighed. "Oh, Jo. Stop being silly."

  "Pack," I repeated. "I've had it."

  He stood there, searching my face for its old, reliable forgiveness. "Listen," he said, putting his hand on my arm, "come on in and sit down and let's talk it over."

  I let him lead me into the livingroom and we sat down on the couch. "Don't bother talking," I said. "Nobody lives this way forever. It has to stop sometime, and sometime is today. Get out and stay out. And this time it's for real."

  My chest tightened and I heard my voice break. This time it's for real. What of the other times? Hadn't they too been for real?: once in Washington after a thing with a cousin of mine; and in Denver with a girl from the office; another in a small town in Florida; a fourth in Pittsburgh; a fifth in San Diego... I'd made him leave all those times; but I'd always found out where he was and within two or three days I'd phoned or gone to see him and he'd come home.

  "You're crazy," he said now, sitting beside me. "You've got it all wrong, Jo. It was nothing."

  "I know what it was."

  "You don't, Jo. Believe me. It was nothing."

  "I know what it was. You told everyone. You even sang it. La Marseillaise—remember? Subtle, aren't you?"

  "Subtle? What are you driving at?"

  "You know damned well what I'm driving at. I'm no great disciple of Freud and I'm sick to death of all that crap, but it doesn't take a scientific mind and half a life in Vienna to figure out what a man means when he describes his latest conquest with a blast of Francais!"

  "Oh, Christ—that was only a gag!"

  "Was it?"

  He lowered his eyes.

  "I know," I said. "I wasn't born yesterday. And what's more, you want me to know. Just dropping the general idea isn't enough for you. One twisted little way or another you've always got to throw in the details. Remember Ann? The one you nick-named Lassie? God, what a clever little gag that was. When I finally caught on to what Lassie meant I could have gagged my insides out."

  He gave up then. "All right," he said. "So you know. But what you don't know is Frannie. She did it. It was her idea. What the hell did I have to do with it? Christ, I've been fighting her off for months!"

  I tried to laugh but it didn't come out too well.

  "It's true, Jo!" he went on. "I swear it is! That time we went to get the soda? I had to park to save our lives. Face it: that sweet little friend of yours knows more tricks than a French whore."

  "Get out," I said.

  "Stop it, Jo," he begged. "It doesn't make sense. You're being hysterical. You know what it's like for both of us without each other. You'd call, or I'd call, and then I'd be back in a few days."

  "It's different this time," I said. "This time it's different and I want a divorce."

  "But it isn't, Jo! It's the same old nothing!"

  "It's Frannie," I said. "That's what makes it different. I can't stand having it be Frannie." I was beginning to cry.

  "Sure," he said. "You can't stand having it be Frannie. You couldn't stand having it be Ann either. She was such a nice kid, wasn't she? And then there was your dear, sweet cousin Kitty: she wasn't to blame either, I suppose."

  "No. She wasn't," I told him. "She was a child."

  "Child? She was twenty-five years old'. So now Frannie comes along and. you're white-washing her. Why, Jo? Why is it that they're always right? Why aren't you ever on my side?"

  "I'm not on anyone's side!" I shouted. "But you do it to people! You get into people and they're lost! Up till now I've put up with it. But now it's Frannie—and I can't bear to have it be Frannie!"

  "Jesus, Jo," he said slowly, "there are times when I wonder... What the hell are you—queer or something?"

  I stopped crying. I stood up and looked down at him. Then I slapped his face so hard it made my palm sting. It took him by surprise. He put his hand up against his cheek and stared at me wide-eyed, like a little boy. Within seconds his own tears brimmed over and trickled down between his fingers.

  He left. He took an overnight bag with a couple of shirts and his shaving things. It was all right: he could come for the rest of his clothes later, while I was at Wingo.

  I watched him from the front
door. He tossed the bag into the back of the car and got in and started the motor. Halfway down the driveway he stopped and leaned out of the window. Seeing me standing there, he smiled. Then he revved up the motor again and, inanely, waved goodbye.

  It was mid-afternoon; but I went up to bed. I took a drink with me, and the New Yorker. I couldn't read, though; and the taste of liquor made me ill. I fell asleep looking at his picture: the one I'd shown Frannie that stood on the bedtable; and the one beside it—the snapshot of my father: "You had to go and die of a cold," I said aloud, ridiculously.

  During the evening the phone rang. I knew it was Brad, but I answered it. "It's me," he said. "I'm at Wadsworth Hall in Trent Place. I thought you might want to know..."

  I hung up.

  The next morning I got up feeling terrible. It was too early to call Wingo; but I reached one of the bus drivers at his home and asked him to tell them I was sick and couldn't come in. Then I went back to sleep and didn't budge till the phone woke me at noon. It was Frannie. "What's wrong?" she asked. "I tried to get you at school to ask you to come over this evening. They said you were sick."

  "I am."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Oh, I got the curse last night and I wish I were dead." (Along with everything else, this too had happened.)

  "That shows a problem," she said breezily. Lucy Freeman tells about it in her book about her analysis. There's no reason why women should have difficulty with a perfectly normal female function, except if they've got some unconscious problem about it; like, for instance, maybe they don't like being a woman; maybe they really want to be a man..."

  "Oh, shove it," I said. "I'm in no mood for humor."

  "What's humorous?" she asked. "It's an honest-to-God science, and you can't just walk around denying the fact that people live on hidden levels, and—"

  My head was beginning to split. I wanted to hang up and go back to sleep. But in a way I was glad to hear from her, pseudo-psychiatry and all. When you're that much alone any voice sounds good no matter what it’s saying. Besides, I knew I'd have to tell her, and the faster the better. "Listen," I cut in. "Shut up for a minute and listen. I hate to give it to you this way, without any advance notice or anything, but—" I felt for a second that I couldn't go on; but I had to. "Frannie ..." I tried again, "Brad's gone."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Stop playing, Frannie," I said, quickly now, wanting to get it over with. "I know. I know the whole damned thing; about you and Brad..."

  The phone seemed to go dead. I'd have thought we'd been disconnected, except for the hum of static in the background; and then, suddenly: the rhythm of her breathing. Knowing she was there, I waited for her to say something. Long seconds went by; and when she did speak, finally, it was only to say, "Oh, Jo..."

  CHAPTER SIX

  A couple of hours later her car drove up. I wasn't surprised. I knew she would come. "The Other Woman," I said with a bitter-edged laugh. She didn't smile; or speak. "Come on, Stanwyck, say something. You're wasting precious film."

  Dropping into a chair she pulled one knee up, bunching her coat, and began chewing on her thumbnail. I walked over to her. I thought for a second she was going to cry. But she couldn't; not with me there. She had told me once: she hadn't even cried when she was little. I wouldn't give in to my mother, she had said. I saw the ache in her eyes now; but there were no tears.

  "Here," I said. "Have a cigarette."

  She shook her head and then lowered it, chin to knees. The afternoon sun slanted through the window onto the blonde ends of her hair. Beneath them the darker roots showed through. It all looked soft and childlike. I wanted to touch it, ruffle it, do anything, anything to let her know that I was glad she had come. But I didn't: because along with that feeling there was another one—of anger and frustration; and had I touched her at all, it would have been to thrash her. "Okay," I began. "Why are you here?"

  "To talk, I guess."

  "Well: talk."

  "I don't understand it myself, Jo," she said. "It’s all mixed up. You know as well as I do: I don't go in for stuff like this. Before Marc, yes; but never since, and never at all, even before, with anyone who was married..."

  "How valiant of you. What do you want—a citation?" She leaned forward. "Honestly, Jo. You know—my mother got divorced. I was young; but I wasn't too young to watch, or feel what a smashed-up marriage meant. Did I ever tell you this? There wasn't one damned woman in my whole family who didn't eventually wind up without her man. None of them made it—not ever. Well, sometimes things like that work out in patterns and keep getting repeated forever. But other times it can work in reverse—and I always thought the chain would be broken by me: I wanted mine to stick; no fooling around, no looking for trouble. Listen, Jo, you do know, don't you, that it wasn't really—well, that it wasn't really a—"

  "You can skip the details," I told her. "I know what it was; at least the other night, and the time you went to get the soda."

  "He spilled that too?"

  "Yes. He spilled that too."

  She stuck her fists against the sides of her head. "Oh hell, Jo," she groaned. "I told you: I don't know why it happened. It doesn't add up at all. It's crazy—and it kills me—

  "I should think it damned well would," I said, "what with all those lovely theories of yours about sex versus sexuality and Love and being Whole!" And then I thought for a minute. It couldn't be; but I had to ask her anyway: "Are you in love with him?"

  She looked up, startled. "God, no."

  My heart sank. Confusedly, incongruously, I had wanted her to say yes. Had she felt deeply for him there'd have been an excuse: something I could understand; forgive. And I wanted to forgive her; I wanted to, desperately. I had lost Brad; not yesterday, but years ago: a hundred times, over and over again. Was I now to lose Frannie too?

  "In love with Brad?" she was saying. The idea seemed actually to amuse her. "Really, Jo—how could I be?"

  Once more I felt the stab of resentment: if she rejected him, she rejected me. "Well, if it isn't that, what is it?"

  "It's that he's so—" She tried to laugh, and then closed her eyes tightly against the embarrassment of what she felt to be ridiculous. "It's because he's so—beautiful." The hurt began to dissolve inside of me. It would be all right now. Her admission of his beauty as the cause of her vulnerability was, however shallow to the rest of the world, a peculiar backing for my own enslavement. If Frannie with all her stress on depth, with all her crackpot, hell-bound standards of intellectuality, could accept a man whose total vice of failure was mitigated solely by the virtue of his face, then I too might be redeemed.

  It was like the books she had given me to read and the records she had made me listen to. Let anyone question or disagree: when Frannie laid the seal of her approval on a thing it was, for me, elevated to a level of importance and well worth my own embrace.

  It was not merely forgiveness that I felt for her now; it was a sense of the sharing of frailty; but a frailty which, because she too had fallen prey, was sensitive and moving.

  The Other Woman, I thought; and smiled. Because, of all the Other Women in history, from the classics all the way to Hollywood, she was, without guile and glamour, by far the most endearing. And I, the Wronged Wife, seated before her confession, had, oddly, not the slightest wish for bare-clawed retribution. I wanted, almost, to laugh out loud: not derisively, but with love.

  "You're a little girl," I said softly. "You're a little girl with a crush..."

  "Am I...?" She lifted her foot to the chair and began pulling at the rip in her moccasin. For a minute there was no sound but the slap of the leather against her toes. "Where is he...?" she asked finally.

  "Some dive in Trent Place."

  "Call him."

  "Like hell I will."

  "You've got to, Jo."

  "I haven't got to at all."

  "Please."

  "Please, nothing! I don't ever want to see him again. Nor do I feel like ever s
eeing you again either."

  "You can't mean that," she said, stricken.

  "Oh yes I can and do." But could I? It was a game I was playing now; and I knew it: a game of hurt-for-hurt's sake. But suddenly she seemed to know it too, and a sixth sense gave her back the advantage. "Can the Drama, Jo," she said. "It's all happened before, hasn't it? I'm merely Number Twenty-Five, remember? Why should it matter so much this time?"

  "I don't know, I said, wavering. "I just don't know. But maybe it's because this time—it's you."

  "It isn't me anymore," she insisted. "And it won't be, ever again. It's over. Believe me."

  "If its over," I said, "why do you care if he comes back or not?"

  "For you," she answered. "I care that you have him. In some funny way I kind of need for you to have him. And then—for Marc. He doesn't know yet. But if you and Brad split up the whole thing will get around. Even now I think Jeri's caught on. She says when Brad's around I have that Look on my face. You know how it is with this gang: eventually everybody always knows..."

  "I'll have to think it over," I said.

  She got up then, to go. I walked her out to the driveway. The first snow was on the ground. The slush came up over the sides of her moccasins onto her bare feet. "You'll catch a cold," I told her. "Why can't you dress like a human being?"

  She ignored me. "Call him, will you?" she pleaded. "Call him as soon as I've gone...?"

  The sun fell on her hair the way it had before. I put my hand out and touched it. She stepped away from me, flushing. "Will you call him?" she asked quickly.

  "I don't know. If I do, I'll let you know. But anyway, I'm glad you came." I moved towards her to kiss her goodbye; and, as she had on the night of anagrams, she stiffened and pecked me back like a bird. "You sure kiss funny," I commented. "You certainly kiss funnier than anyone I've ever known!"

  She stepped away again and looked me in the eye. "That's the second time you've done that," she said.