Lion House,The

by Marjorie Lee

  "You're fond of her, aren't you?" I put in at one point.

  "Quite," he answered. "Quite, quite. But it couldn't ever have been Frannie for me." He smiled. "If she ever thought of me at all it was as a brother. God, how that kid wanted a brother! When we were little she used to keep saying it to me: You be my brother! she'd say. You be it or I won't play with you anymore! She gave her mother a time about it too, always asking her to get a baby boy. Well, her mother told her that storks brought babies and that if she'd keep putting sugar cubes out on the window ledge the stork would come and leave a little brother there some night. So every evening before she went to bed she'd put the damned sugar out; and the next morning it would be gone. I guess the wind blew it off, or maybe her mother took it—and that gave her the idea that the stork was collecting it and that any night he'd be paying off..."

  "It's amazing how you remember all that," I said. "It must have meant a lot to you."

  "Oh, I remember," he said. "You know, you get through med school on your memory! I remember going up to her house one Christmas afternoon because my nurse had a present for her nurse. Frannie'd gotten a load of new stuff. But the thing she was most excited about was this doll they'd given her. It was a boy doll. It wore a sailor suit. So we went into her room with it and the first thing she did was start taking off its clothes! Well, she got the clothes off all right, and I'll never forget her face when she looked up at me and said: He doesn't have a wee-wee tail! I don't know how she'd have recognized one if she saw it—with all the dames in that house: the mother, the nurse, the cook, the laundress—but Christ, was she disappointed! I thought she was going to cry. She didn't, though. There was one sure thing about Frannie: she never cried. She used to get Hell written all over that beautiful little face of hers, but she never cried..."

  "You tell it like a story," I said.

  "It's a story all right—but a true one." He lit a cigarette, and then lit mine. "You want to hear more?"

  "I'm fascinated."

  "Three drinks and I yack. You sure you're not bored?"

  "I've never been less bored in my life."

  "Well," he went on, "about that doll thing: I must have felt awful because a few days later we were playing in the park, and we went off behind some bushes and I showed her mine! Was she interested! But it wasn't enough just to look at it. She wanted to see it work! Hey... are you sure you want to hear all this?"

  "Go on."

  "Well, I said okay, and I worked it for her. And you know what she does? She comes right over close to me and sticks her hand out into the stream! So then when I'm finished she says: You come on home, Billy, and show it to my Mommy. Well, I guess I figured things were going just a bit too far, and I said no, I wouldn't.

  And she said: It’s all right to show my Mommy. She'll like it!"

  I laughed.

  "Don't laugh," he said, emptying his glass. "I am now drunk. But I am not too drunk. And if you ever tell Frannie I told you all this, I swear I'll have you hanged..."

  Throughout our conversation the party milled uncaringly about us. Marian and Jeff were there: Jeff off in a corner by himself watching the Scotch-lines lower in the bottles, estimating the cost, and writing the Brownes off as Suckers; Marian on the arm of a chair making a subtle play for a teacher named Melvyn Singer who responded with an embarrassed smile. His wife, several years his senior, was holding court on the floor nearby. "I want Melvyn to have other women!" she was bellowing. "I insist on it! If a man doesn't sleep with women in general, he doesn't like women in general; which simply proves that he can't possibly like his own wife!"

  "Provided his wife's a woman," ventured some brave soul in the circle around her.

  "That is not humor!" Claire Singer snorted, reminding me faintly of a small Black Angus. "That is lack of intelligence; which is not surprising at a party given by Frannie Browne!"

  There had, apparently, been a running feud between Claire and Frannie of some five years' standing. It was, perhaps, a clash of creative personalities. Claire wrote; and while she remained singularly unpublished she believed her efforts to be Sincere. Frannie, she was now roaring, was nothing but a Literary Whore, an Exploiter of Mass Mentality.

  "Have you ever read Frannie's stuff?" someone asked.

  The question caused Claire a moment's discomfort. "Get me another drink!" she shouted to Melvyn who, smiling apologetically at Marian, went off to fill her glass.

  "Creativeness," Claire went on, while waiting to be refueled, "can not be relegated to the Market Place. It must become an integral part of one's everyday life. What is there in this room that wasn't bought with money? The art in my house is my own! I wove my bath mat on a handloom; I dyed my bed-sheet draperies in a vat of Welch's Grape Juice on the kitchen stove; yesterday I created an abacus out of green peas on a frame of plastic straws!"

  "Aren't you confusing Art with Occupational Therapy?" Frannie put in, wandering gracefully through.

  "What gives with her?" I asked at a later juncture in the den.

  "The thing about Claire," Frannie answered, "the really big thing about Claire is her spectacular lack of talent..."

  "Why do you have her here?"

  "Floor show," she said. "Popular demand. Melvyn's Jeri's cousin, so they're here a lot—from Queens. And if Jeri doesn't bring them, they're imported by special invitation. Melvyn smiles-up the women, and you can always depend on Claire for a knock-down performance."

  "Is it worth it?"

  "It's all right," she assured me. "Claire's like poison: if you take her in small, steady doses you became immune."

  Our conversation was cut short by sudden mayhem in the living room.

  "Let go of me, you bastard!" Claire was screaming.

  "Come on, dear," Melvyn coaxed, trying to drag her up by the armpits. "It's late and you're getting tired."

  "I'm not tired!" she fumed, turning back to an elderly friend of Marc's known as Judge McClain. "I'm talking to this man! Do you know what this man does? This son of a bitch puts innocent people in jail!"

  "No, no darling," Melvyn soothed. "You never want to leave; but I know—you're getting tired now. I can see the signs, honey; you're getting tired, and it's a long, long drive..."

  "God damn your mediocre soul!"

  It took Melvyn, Marc and Bill Brecker to remove her to the car.

  "I hate men, I hate men!" she bawled all the way across the lawn. "Women, women! Only women know the meaning of Love!"

  "That too?" I asked Frannie.

  She didn't answer.

  Though the party didn't break up till after four, I broke up a while before that. I don't know what happened: it might have been the booze, or the hour, or the fact that this had been my first social bout without Brad. Try as I did to match the spirits of the people around me, I kept feeling out of things. At one point I meandered up to Frannie's room and sat there by myself, staring at the telephone. Buzzed and bleary as I was, I think I actually came close to picking it up and calling him.

  I had been back to the house the afternoon before to get the rest of my clothes. I had gone right from school, circling the place carefully to make sure he wasn't there; and being, I guess, both relieved and disappointed to find he wasn't.

  There were flowers out, blooming sturdily in spite of the weeds; but the grass was scorched in big beige patches. I knew before I entered how it would be inside.

  The kitchen positively reeked of dirty dishes and garbage; and the bedroom was even worse: unaired, the sheets lay on the floor in a dank, gray tumble; there were used socks and underwear everywhere; three large ashtrays on the bedtable were overflowing with butts, fruit pits, and the crusts of sandwiches; half under the radiator lay an open book of poems with its spine broken.

  I thought of all that over again, the night of the party, as I sat on the bed near the telephone, wanting to call him. And I remembered too that there were just about two weeks left before Frannie and Marc and the kids would pack up and fly to Bermuda, leaving me to fend for m
yself.

  The woman at the agency had called that morning to say that there was a chance for an all-round administrative post at one of the music schools: Clarke Institute. I'd also gotten a lead on a one-room apartment in the Village; had even gone to look at it. It was the size of a large closet with a beat-up shade drawn over an alcove at one end which hid the stove and refrigerator. The bathroom was out in the hall. You could manage a slow half-turn from the sink to the John; but not a fast one. I thought of the girl in the Martex Towel ad. One photo in here, I thought, and even you could take up street-walking.

  I had left with a funny weight in my chest. It was such a flea bag. But the rent was low and I could probably revive things with a few cans of paint and some fabrics. Things could work out when you wanted them to... Yet now, sitting there on the bed with the party raging below, I began feeling sorry for myself. Because no matter how I tried, it was still going to be pretty hard. I don't know. I'd gotten so used to Frannie: those nights we spent in the den after Marc had gone to sleep, drinking, soul-searching, smoking ourselves into a lavender fog; the crazy arguments; that hilarious hogwash she handed out about the Great God, Sigmund Freud; to say nothing of our brilliant rehashes of the works of Dr. Kinsey.

  I would miss her—badly. What was I going to do every night? Catch a bite alone somewhere, or break out a package of frozen fish sticks and read a lousy magazine? Two weeks to go, I thought; and Elizabeth Johnston Bradford Faces Life...

  I got up and went downstairs again. But the gaiety had now gone far beyond me.

  "...at the Atwater!" someone was squealing incredulously. "I always thought the Atwater was a place where you held a convention!"

  "Not Harriet Lyons!" somebody else howled. "Harriet Lyons wouldn't know the meaning of the word!"

  Then: "Stop worrying about Harriet," someone chuckled. "Harriet's a has-been. Frannie's stolen the stage. Where have you been? I've gotten it bona fide from three different sources."

  "You mean about Brad?"

  I walked straight into their midst, stepped over several bodies, and lowered myself to the floor beside them. The silence was deafening.

  I went to bed soon after that, not bothering to announce my departure. I was tired and disgusted, and I dropped down on the spread with all my clothes on, blacking out immediately. But I think I awakened at one point, halfway, and that Frannie was leaning over me. "Take off that junk jewelry," I think she said. "You're liable to slit your wrists." But she said it softly, with kindness, and a catch in her throat. And she must have unsnapped my bracelets for me because the next morning I found them in the white cigarette cup on my table.

  We all slept most of the next day, but late in the afternoon Frannie lit into me about Bill Brecker.

  "Why did you disappear?" she asked. "He was looking all over for you!"

  "He was looking for you," I said.

  "Me? What would he want with me? He was crazy about you, Jo. He said so. He told me he thought you were wonderful. You could have shown a little interest, for

  God sake—"

  "Oh, can it," I cut in. "I'm old enough to be his mother!"

  "Did I say you had to marry him? Couldn't you just have maybe dated him? When you go out you get around.

  You meet people. You—"

  "Not with him," I said.

  "Not with him because—"

  "Because he's so nice," she finished. "Because he's a good, sane, normal guy who gets to work every day and loves what he does and gets paid for it. Because he wouldn't make you miserable enough. That's why. Because you've got to be hurt some more. You're going to sit around waiting for Mr. Right to come along. And Mr. Right is going to be a tall, thin, beautiful fugitive from the booby hatch!"

  "Please, Frannie," I pleaded. "It's Sunday. Let's have a Day of Rest, shall we?"

  "You'll rest all right," she said. "If you don't watch out you'll Rest in Peace—“

  "Josie Bradford, R.I.P., Cornered Immortality; Made the top of Heaven's list As Miss Atlantic Masochist!"

  "Did you just make that up?" I asked.

  "Yes—just; though I'll admit the idea has occurred to me before!"

  "You know something?"

  "What?"

  "I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of these days I woke up hating you!"

  "Neither would I," she said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  That Wednesday was Frannie's birthday. She was thirty-one. But in spite of violent reactions to most of the aspects of living, getting older didn't seem to bother her.

  "I was scared of thirty," she said, "because—you know; I told you once—my mother kept warning me I'd be dead by then. But the fact is, I'm looking forward to growing up, if you know what I mean. Actually, I've always wanted to be forty. Forty is so mellow, so mature. My fantasy is that on that day I'll get up real early in the morning and everything will be different. I'll just suddenly—know who I am, or something!"

  "You don't believe half the things you say," I told her.

  "Well, of course I don't!" she said. "What am I—gullible?"

  Marc gave her an irregular-shaped package wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with a length of fishing line. I watched with a mixture of awe and incredulity as she opened it. It contained a small spiral notebook, a bunch of colored rubber bands, a box of brass-plated paper clips, a tin of Band-Aids, a jar of caviar, a tiny potted cactus plant, a card of safety pins, a packet of six pocket combs, three bottle caps, and two rolls of Kodachrome film to be shot in Bermuda.

  She was utterly enthralled; especially, it seemed, with the colored rubber bands and the cactus plant. She kissed him. It was a long one. When I saw her lips push forward I turned my head away.

  Then the kids rushed in. Petey gave her one and a half clay candle holders made by hand at Wingo. The missing half had fallen off in the bus. Blair presented her with a set of potholders woven at Llewellyn in a class called Functional Arts. And Stu came up with a Zippo cigarette lighter accompanied by a card which read, in a jagged red-pencilled scrawl: Don't ask me to find matches anymore.

  That day after school I drove over to Vivien Van Gogh's in Meade's Manor. Vivien Van Gogh's is a small avant-garde clothes shop owned and operated by a girl named Miriam Cohn. It was called Vivien Van Gogh's because Miriam Cohn was in competition with a similar shop less than a block away called Margo Matisse's. (Margo Matisse's was, for some strange reason, owned and operated by a girl named Margo Matisse.)

  I went to Van Gogh's rather than Matisse's simply because I knew Miriam. She had two children at Wingo and we had met several times. She was a largish girl, a bit on the spreading side; and her foremost claim to fame in Meade's Manor was the fact that nothing bothered her. Various of her friends could always be found in the store in the afternoons, not buying anything—just getting their anxieties fixed. Miriam was, in effect, a kind of ambulatory Miltown.

  ''Oh, hi..." she said as I walked in. "Want some coffee? I've just made some for the deadheads."

  "Thanks, no," I said. "I'm in a hurry. Can I look around?"

  "Sure, sure," she answered, casting a casual glance at a group of females sitting on Eames chairs towards the back. "But don't tell me you came to purchase something!"

  One of the girls lifted her head. "If that crack was meant for me," she said, "it's absolutely unfair! I told you I'd buy something if everything in the damned place weren't Madras!"

  "Nothing fits here," a second added informatively.

  "That's a fact!" said a third. "If you want anything to fit, you have to go to Bergdorf Goodman!"

  "Drink a little hot coffee," Miriam suggested soothingly. "It's on the stove in the bathroom. I have to take care of Mrs. Bradford. And hey, lissen—there's a bag in there with a couple of salami sandwiches... What did you have in mind?" she asked, turning to me.

  "A gift," I answered. "For a friend of mine. Something sort of—classic?"

  "Classic!" sputtered the first girl. "If your friend can't use a khaki loin-cloth you're out of luck!"
/>   Nobody got up to get the coffee and sandwiches so Miriam excused herself and went for them.

  "Here," she crooned gently, coming back with a tray. "Here, here..."

  All conversation stopped. The faces of the girls seemed to soften like those of trusting children as, slowly, they put out their hands to receive the food.

  I wandered around for a while; and then I found it. I knew the moment I saw it, lying in a tangle of pullovers and Jamaica shorts, that it had been made for Frannie. It was a Haymaker shirt of pure silk in pale, pale orange, and cut like a boy's. I could see her in it with the top button open and the sleeves rolled up above her elbows. I did a quick mental estimate, including taxes, and realized that the price came to more than half a week's salary.

  It didn't make sense; but I took it.

  When Frannie opened the box that evening she was moved to speechlessness.

  "Jo," she said finally, in a voice that seemed to come from miles away. "Jo, it's so beautiful..."

  Then she carried it into the powder room and closed the door. When she came out she had it on. The collar was open and the sleeves rolled up, as I'd seen them in my mind. The looseness of the shoulders and bosom tapered down into the narrow waist of the gray linen shorts she had been wearing. And she'd put on some pale orange lipstick.

  "Take off your glasses," I said.

  She did.

  "You're a pretty girl," I said, appraising her squarely, seeing her eyes without their guardian frames.

  "Don't tell her that," Marc said. "It's a waste of time. She doesn't believe you. Tell her she's awful. Then she'll think you're being honest."

  "I'm not awful," she objected.

  "All right: you're pretty."

  "But I'm not pretty either!"

  "Christ!" Marc said. "You can't even lose an argument around here!"