by Marjorie Lee
I'd never been alone with him for that length of time before and I was looking forward to a nice old heart-to-heart through which, in some way, we might reach each other. But if I thought a few Scotches, caviar, and an empty house would enable me to pass through the gates of that quiet reserve, I was wrong.
"What thoughts?" I asked unwisely, when the conversation had stumbled into silence for the third time.
"No thoughts, doctor," he answered with an enigmatic smile.
"How goes it with you and Frannie?" I went on lamely.
"How goes what?"
"Oh, things."
"What things?"
"Cut it out," I said. "Life hasn't been exactly blue heaven for the past year; least of all for you, I'd suspect."
"So?"
I bashed my cigarette out in the ashtray. "You're impossible," I said, while his expression remained maddeningly unchanged. "Why do you have to be this way? Can't you ever talk to me?"
"Of course I can," he answered. "What would you like me to talk about?"
"About you and Frannie!"
"Fine. What would you like me to say about us?"
The sun was in my eyes. I got up and clattered the blind down. "Well," I began, with my back towards him, "it's been rough on all of us and I just can't help wondering what it's done to you. You're such a God damned clam, Marc, and nobody in the world seems able to pry you open!"
"I doubt that nobody can," he said, "but I fail to see why it should be you, Jo."
"You're being nasty."
"Am I? Not really, I don't think. I'm just not you or Frannie, that's all. I don't happen to belong to the Bare-the-Soul School so you figure I haven't got a soul at all. But don't worry about it, Jo; I do have one—even if I don't let it run around naked all the time."
"That isn't so. I never said you didn't have a soul. I think you have! A beautiful one. I think you're one of the most sensitive guys I've ever known!"
He stood up then, bowed a smiling but formal thank-you, and went out to the lawn. I watched him through the slats in the blind. He got down on all fours and, as he had at least a dozen times that same week, began pulling out the crab grass.
Frannie came back at around five forty-five. I was in the den still working on my applications. She entered, looking as if she'd spent the day in a pogrom, and collapsed on the couch. "Gimme a drink."
I closed the lid on the typewriter with my half-filled sheet still on the roller and made us two highballs. "How was the zoo?" I asked.
"Fabulous."
"And how were your friends, the lions?"
"I wouldn't quite call them my friends."
I handed her the drink.
"Ever been there?" she asked.
"Oh, sure. One day a teacher was sick, and I had to run a field trip for the Fives."
"Well, then you know. It's really something. You can stand back and look at all the cages at once. Only I usually narrow it down to one after a while. You have to keep at it with one in particular to get the communication going..."
"The communication?"
"Yes. The communication."
I took a deep drag on my cigarette. Then: "Did it say anything interesting?"
"No, Jo. It's not a Shaggy Lion, and you can drop dead!"
"Really, Fran; I'm serious. What happens exactly?"
"Well, I look at it. And it looks at me. It actually does. Maybe it's a kind of hypnosis or something; but anybody can walk through there and kids can whistle and make noises—but it never takes its eyes off me. It doesn't ever seem to blink, even."
"What does it say?" I asked. "Really. I don't mean Shaggy. I mean what gets communicated when you look at each other?"
"I'm not quite sure. There are so many things. It's like marriage, sort of. You don't have to say everything to someone you're married to, do you? How did Mrs. Miniver put it? Marriage is the catching of an eye across the table—or something like that? Only here it isn't across a table. It's through bars."
"So you and this lion are married?"
"Well—yes; in a way. But the really nutty thing about it, Jo, is that this lion, this particular lion I look at all by itself isn't... isn't the kind with a mane. It's a God damned female!"
The weird strain of the thing broke at that point and we both burst out laughing.
Frannie stopped first. "Those dreams I have..." she said slowly. "I never thought of it like that before... That lion I dream about doesn't have a mane either—does it?"
I remembered her telling me: sometimes lying on the couch in the den as she was now; and that last time when she was in bed with measles: This big cat, this terrible, beautiful, giant cat; the kind without a mane; just smooth and sleek and coming at me...
"Don't ask me," I said quickly. "They're your dreams, darling!"
I was beginning to feel like dropping the whole subject. It was riotous; but on the other hand it wasn't really funny at all. Everything Frannie took seriously had a sort of strange humor in it somewhere, but if she went on with it long enough, it got you and you ended up wondering why you were laughing. I was relieved when Marc walked in at that moment. He had crab-grassed his way around to the back of the house and hadn't heard her come home.
Her response to his entrance was the first of its kind I had witnessed. "Marc!" she cried, as if she hadn't seen him for years. "Where have you been? I've had the craziest day, and I've missed you so much! I didn't realize till just now how awfully, how absolutely awfully I've missed you!"
She laughed then, and kept herself from joyously hugging him by busying herself with the lighting of a cigarette.
"When'd you get back?" he asked, sitting down on the floor against the bookcases, leaning over to examine the grass stains on his knees.
"Couple of minutes ago. What've you been doing? Pulling out those damned weeds again?"
"So? Me for weeds; you for lions. What're we doing tonight?"
"Nothing much. Marian called yesterday. She's having people over. But I figured it would be the same old rot so I said I wasn't sure. Why? Do you want to go out?"
"I don't care," he said, "but it's Saturday and I'd like to do something."
I knew immediately what had happened: Marian had asked them over and Frannie had turned her down because of me. She hadn't wanted to let on that I was living with them because, miraculously, no one seemed to know yet; and secondly, she didn't want to go out and leave me behind for fear I'd be hurt or lonely. "Go on," I said. "You go to Marian's and I'll be the sitter. I have to work on my applications anyway."
"Oh, we have to do dinner and everything; and I'd be dead-beat by then. Still," she added, "I guess we could send the kids to The Hitching Post and just have sandwiches for ourselves. Let's, Marc. Round them up and drive them over, will you?"
"Okay," he said. "They can't be hungry anyhow after all the crap they probably ate at the zoo."
After they left Frannie and I didn't talk much. But she asked me to change seats with her so she could use the typewriter. Pulling my application out, she put a fresh sheet in, and leaned forward, head on arms, to think. Then, almost spasmodically, she sat up straight and began to pound the keys. She typed amazingly fast, with her two index fingers, journalist-style. When she was through she ripped the paper out and stuck it into the top drawer.
Marc was back within minutes, without the kids. "They'll phone when they're finished," he said.
She looked at him across the desk. It was a long look, intense with unspoken thoughts. Then: "Oh, what a day..." she said. "What a fraught, fraught day. You wouldn't think you'd get this tired, this positively blotto, just staring at some crazy old Hon. I think I'll go upstairs and rest."
"Wake you at seven?" he asked.
She stood up, pushed her hands into the side pockets of her shorts, and rocked gently on her moccasined heels. Eyes lowered to the floor, she said, quietly, cryptically, and with the trace of a slightly Satanic smile: "Come with me? For a little while...?"
Nothing had ever been so obvious. I wa
s sure Marc would back out somehow; blatancy had never been part of his personality. But he didn't. Returning her glance with a thoughtful one of his own, he joined her in a bond of understanding. Call on me, his look seemed to be saying with both tenderness and triumph. I know the way things are. Call on me to fight your lion. For now, for this one moment and in this one way, I'm the only one who can. And, with the look, he followed her upstairs.
I sat there by myself, hands against my ears, eyes closed. But the hands got tired and I had to drop them; and closing my eyes didn't help to shut out the pictures that persisted in rising up before me. I tried to think of other things. But I couldn't. I was trapped: a child at a horror film, wanting to run out, but finding itself bound to the seat, unable to leave before the final, unbearable climax.
When, blessedly, the telephone rang, I leaped to answer it. It was Stu. They were done, and would somebody come to pick them up? I would, I told him.
The drive over and back was calming; the chatter of the kids turned my mind to simpler realities. When we got home they took their own baths and then disappeared into the basement to watch TV. It was nine-thirty before they came up and straggled their way to bed.
We never did have dinner; and Frannie and Marc didn't make it to Marian's party. They didn't even come downstairs again.
I was terribly tired, though it couldn't have been later than ten. I had left a magazine on the table in the upstairs hall and I went to get it, thinking I'd take it to bed with me.
The table stood against a wall on the outer side of Frannie's and Marc's room. Reaching for the magazine, intending to walk on, I was stopped by a sound of talking seeping through the closed door:
How do you feel about my breasts?
(As always, the pointed question: direct, sudden, and without warning.)
No. Really, now—I want to know. How do you feel about them? Look. This way. With my arms above my head. When you look at them, what do you feel...?
(A murmured reply, too sleepy to be heard.)
Well, what happens when you touch them? No, not to me. I know what happens to me. I mean you. What happens to you? Not just emotionally. Tactilely.
(Silence.)
How do I taste? Sweet? Salty? Of course I know—from long ago... All kids try to taste themselves at one point or another, don't they? But I mean now. Would the taste of me stand as a good taste by itself, for itself, or must it be mine? I mean—the taste of someone you love? (Another silence.)
How do I smell? It can't be hard to say. I can say things. I can say anything. Why can't you? I can tell you how you smell: tonight of grass, because you were in it; a little whiskey, but faint; soap from this morning, and shaving cream; air, sun, sweat, sex... partly fresh, partly stale, partly light, partly heavy. All Male. Tell me—how do women smell? You must know that from all the girls you had before you met me. Compare: are there differences? Is everyone the same?
(No reply.)
Tell me. Oh, come on, Marc, tell me! How do I sound! What sound do I make when it happens? Is it a sound of pleasure? Is it a sound of pain? Don't go to sleep. Please don't go to sleep! Stay up a minute, won't you? Tell me, Marc! I have to know! I have to know or I'll die. Oh Jesus, somebody, TELL ME WHAT I'M LIKE!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the next few days my new and unlikely residence became known to the whole of Suburbia. After several attempts to worm it out of Frannie by telephone, Brad got in touch with the Mothers' Office Squad at Wingo and poured forth in detail the pitiful tale of his abandonment. This, added to the fact that Frannie came to school to pick me up in her convertible on a day when my battery went dead and the buses had already gone was enough to offer them one of the juiciest grapes that had ever hung from the vine: Jo has left Brad because of Frannie, and she's living at the Brownes'!
"What about Marc?" I asked her, when several hints of question had been dropped into the conversation of her friends. "I mean, the idea that it's getting around..."
"Marc's okay."
"It won't be easy to take..."
"Don't worry. Marc has something the rest of us don't seem to have: an inner core of confidence."
"Oh, sure," I said. "Marc has his love to live on! Which means by your lights, I suppose, that you can rip him to shreds and expect him to come up smiling. You figure you love him and Love is All. Well, I've been in love too, Frannie, and that isn't enough. You've got to live it a little. You can't treat people like that and then just kiss the hurt away! The poor guy needs proof of love!"
"Poor, poor poor..." She smiled cryptically. "Has anyone ever told you, Jo—you bear a striking resemblance to Delilah?''
By the end of the second week we had the eating arrangements down pat. One night we stayed home and the next we went out. On the nights' we were in I did the cooking. We usually ate too late for the kids, but Frannie took care of that at about five-thirty with easies like hot dogs, hamburgers, and chops. That left me the time and space for things like lasagna, chicken Cacciatore, divinely sauced vegetables, and various other specialties I'd picked up along my travels through Bohemia.
On the nights we went out we frequented local spots like the Black Bear Inn, the Llewellyn Tavern, and Harry's Delicatessen—saving the Juniper, in town, for special celebrations. It was Frannie who called the celebrations, and the need for them occurred with the risings and ebbings of her personal tides. It was understandable that we dine out on caviar and mammoth lobsters when, out of the blue, she sold two poems to a top woman's magazine; or on the day her agent called to say an editor was interested in a rewrite of one of her older stories. But it was less clear on occasions when she might insist on painting the town simply because: Did you know—Petey stopped wetting his bed exactly two and a half years ago tonight?; or: The laundry man's sister knows a girl who had triplets this morning!; or: Guess what! Mary McCarthy has a new book coming out this Fall!; or even because: I was depressed all day but I just this minute got over it!
It was on one of those End-of-the Depression nights that I suspected her of having simply compounded the blues by trying to run away from them. We were driving back from the Juniper, as we usually drove: all three in the front seat with me between Marc and Frannie. (She could never sit in the middle, she said, because she got car-sick and had to be next to an open window.) The evening had been gay enough. Frannie had had us and herself convulsed when, having waited a considerable time for Samuel, the maitre D, to take our order, she greeted his belated arrival with: Sam, You Made Us Pant Too Long!"; and again during dessert when she summed up the entire concept of psychoanalysis as: Fee and Sympathy. But she quieted soon after we'd started for home and I was aware of an uneasiness in the car: she kept straightening, taking deep breaths, squirming away from me, closer to the window. After we got to the house she went into the kitchen for ice-water. When she had it poured she put her arms and head down on one of the counters, twisting a little.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Back hurts."
"You seemed uncomfortable in the car."
"Well, it's crowded and hot and everybody sticks to everybody."
"Here," I said, walking over to her. "I helped in a hospital once. I was terrific at back rubs." I started kneading her neck, working downwards, then up again. "Better?"
"That's swell," she answered, standing up suddenly. "It's fine now."
"I don't mind," I told her. "They used to keep me at it for hours. I used to—"
"Look," she broke in, "I'm telling you: it's fine now!
"Okay. But if it isn't by tomorrow, I'll—"
She picked up the untouched glass of water and peered into it. "You're very kind," she said slowly. "Very kind..."
"Now just what does that mean?"
"What does it mean?" She put her glass down. "Well, let's see. One might assume that when one is kind one is not cruel. On the other hand—one might be kind simply to cover up the fact that one is cruel..."
"Oh, Christ," I sighed. "I'm full of a marvelous meal and it's to
o late at night for that!"
We didn't talk after we left the kitchen. Marc went to bed and Frannie, obviously still bugged from her morning depression, followed behind him.
Unsleepy myself, I decided to work on another job summary. My woman had not yet come up with anything definite so I figured I might as well try another agency. But when I looked in the desk for my resume carbons, thinking to copy parts and add a few things, there was a sheet of Frannie's typing lying on top of them. I moved it off to the side; yet, as I did, I found myself reading it. This, evidently, was the hurried piece she had written on her return from the zoo.
I don't know that she ever did anything with it; ever used it in any way. It may have been one of a stack of false beginnings which never materialized. In any case, I remember it; word for word. It went like this:
Memo—(for poem? short story? novel?):
Lions roar at feeding time. But at other times, unless agitated by extremely willful spectators (of which there are few) they sleep, pace their cages on padded feet, or lie stretched out—watching you with amber eyes. Compared with other houses in a menagerie (those with shrieking birds or jabbering monkeys, for instance) the Lion House, while holding within it the most murderous forces of hostility, is the house which appears, on the surface, to be truly at peace.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We gave a party the following Saturday night: twenty-six altogether, counting Bill Brecker for me. That part of it seemed ridiculous and I told Frannie not to bother. But she insisted. "You can't roam around all evening in single blessedness," she said.
"But I don't care," I said. "Really: I don't care."
"Well, I do," she argued, "and I'm running this thing. Besides—he's stable."
"How stable can he be?" I asked. "His marriage went on the rocks, didn't it?"
"That," she replied dogmatically, "isn't always proof of instability. Getting out of the kind of rat race he was in could prove a person's strength!"
So he came, and it was pretty awful. I don't mean he wasn't nice: he was—very; and I liked the guy. But I hardly think he felt that way about me: it's tough trying to be gallant with a female who's a good many years older, and somebody you're stuck with because your hostess preordained it. There was no doubt in my mind that he'd come simply to please Frannie. His conversation with me kept turning back to her.