by Marjorie Lee
I laughed. Then I went over to her and lifted her face in my hands. "Happy birthday, darling," I said.
"What can I give you for yours?" she asked quickly. "When is it? August? August what?"
The phone rang. We looked at it for a second. We had all developed a certain amount of apprehension about it because of Brad. But it wasn't Brad. It was Long Distance: Frannie's mother.
"Yes... thank you," Frannie said, her voice-tone at least an octave higher. "Oh, yes... very nice. A little plant and lots of other things: caviar... and stuff from the kids; and the most wonderful shirt from—a friend of ours. Yes... yes... fine. Don't worry. ... All right... Yes ... all right. Soon... Really? Oh, that's marvelous. Yes... No... No... Now don't; just please don't... All right. Goodbye..."
She put the receiver down and stood there, seeming slightly dazed.
"What did she say?" I asked.
"Oh, she wanted to congratulate me. And she wanted to know if Marc had given me anything decent..."
"How nice," Marc said, curling his lip. "There's nothing like sincere maternal interest. What else?"
"Well, she asked if I'd stopped smoking," Frannie answered, picking up a cigarette and Stu's lighter. "And she said she has this date with this new man she met and he makes elevators and he's a millionaire. And she asked how we were and said it was a miracle we hadn't all ended up in a mental hospital yet; and was the front door knob polished, and did the children brush their teeth because if they didn't they'd all fall out... And..." Her voice began to trail away.
"Let's have it," Marc demanded. "What else?"
"Well... did I love her; you know—she always asks me that... And then she finished by telling me that I wouldn't—that I wouldn't live to be forty..."
The next evening the man called about my apartment. Somebody else was interested, and did I want it or didn't I? Yes. I wanted it.
So the day after, Frannie and I went out and bought several gallons of rubber-base paint; the kind you put on with rollers. Frannie had a lot of suggestions about color combinations, but I finally convinced her that you couldn't go Dramatic in a cubby hole, and we wound up with a safe light green, plus some gay chintz with green and yellow flowers all over it for a studio couch cover, cushions, a chair slip, and a pair of draperies. I'd have to have draperies in spite of the summer heat. There was an ugly iron fire escape outside the window that would be terribly depressing to look at; besides, the whole thing faced a courtyard with a hundred other windows staring curiously into mine.
That same night we lugged Frannie's portable sewing machine down and I sewed while she painted. That Frannie should own a sewing machine came as a real surprise. I was less amazed only when she confessed she had never learned to use it.
The painting took longer than the sewing did: we kept going back for a week of evenings and some afternoons, together—or meeting there. I had two keys and I gave her one so that she could get there ahead of me on the days I was held up at school.
Armed with gin and soda, Frannie painted with a vengeance while she painted; but she was constantly knocking off for a Rest Period. This meant she'd drop the gooky roller right down on the bare floor boards, curl up on the studio bed, and start up discussions on Stimulating Subjects.
"What do you think of homosexuality?" she began suddenly one evening when she had accidentally kicked over the last can of paint and there wasn't really much else she could do.
"What do you mean, what do I think of it?" I asked over the whir of the machine. "It's not exactly something I've given much thought to!"
"What I mean is—" She poured a second drink slowly. "What I mean is, do you accept it as—part of the universal psyche? Can you—well, place it calmly within the bracket of Man's total make-up? I mean—" There was another pause while the soda splashed in. "I mean, do you think it's—natural?"
"Sure I think it's natural," I answered. "I think it's natural for homosexuals."
"Have you ever—had a brush with it?"
I looked up. "Are you kidding?"
"No. Really. Have you ever had—well, feelings like that about another woman?"
I shut off the machine and lit a cigarette. "Frannie, my sweet," I said, "I should think after all this time, after all the dirt I've given you on my illustrious past with men, you'd be able to conclude all by your little self that my glands are in ship-shape order!"
"Screw your glands!" she exclaimed. "Who's talking about your glands? Wake up. Radclyffe Hall flunked out in the Twenties!"
"I never read it," I said, starting the machine again.
"Did you ever read Lady Chatterley's Lover?"
"Oh, sure. Unexpurgated. A gal at college got it from a Lit prof she was going with."
"Oh."
"What do you mean oh?"
She put her drink down and got off the couch. "I just think," she said slowly, pushing the spilled paint can into a corner with the tip of her moccasin, "that choices aren't accidental; that everything's motivated by—forces in the unconscious. And after all, it might be much more comfortable to identify with Lady Chatterley than, say, with Stephen in her 'well of loneliness.' You know what I mean?"
"Listen," I said, snapping the machine off and lowering the lid, "the girl happened to get Chatterley from this guy, so I borrowed it. I don't have anything against homosexuals. The idea doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. And I do know that it exists to one degree or another in everybody. So stop trying to tell me I'm afraid of something! I know that Pam Coulton dame up in Connecticut—the one that has the little antique shop; and sometimes I wonder what in hell she sees in that crazy Foster girl she lives with. But I like Pam, and it's her life, and it's got nothing to do with me."
"Well, sure," she said, bending down to look at the smear of paint on her shoe, examining it, touching it with her finger. "But haven't you ever been—curious?"
"Oh, I suppose so," I answered, "... if you mean curious in the sense of—well, I don't know. I met Pam in a grocery store once. Brad and I were having a picnic up there; just last Fall, as a matter of fact. We forgot the mustard, so that's why I went in there to get some. And there was Pam—buying a whole bunch of stuff: olive oil, anchovies, mushrooms, smoked oysters... and then she got this beautiful little steak: it had to be a certain cut, and a certain size, and trimmed a certain way. And all the while we were talking together I kept thinking about how she was going to eat those things with Foster: how they were going to sauté those mushrooms, and broil that pretty little steak, and set up a small table with two candles, and put the record player on; how they'd have a cigarette with coffee, and sit around awhile talking, listening to music, and then do the dishes; and then—well, what would happen after that. So—yes: I was curious. I was curious about the kind of decision that lies behind a thing like that; curious about the kind of need, and the kind of—love... And then something else happened; or at least I felt it did. Pam looked at me, sort of, and she said, 'Give me a ring, will you, Jo? I'd like to see you sometime.' And I said, 'Thanks, Pam. I will—one of these days.' I said it just the way you'd say it to anyone. Only Pam wasn't just anyone; and I knew I'd never call her, because it was—different. Yes, sure, I've been curious; the way I'd be curious about anything that was different..."
"But you've never wondered about—yourself?" She was facing the wall then, away from me, squinting, it seemed, at a glossy patch of paint that hadn't yet dried. "You've never wondered how it would be if it were—you?"
"Why should I have?" I asked. "It has nothing to do with me. What's that line in that Shaw story you like so much—The Girls in Their Summer Dresses?: I casually inspect the universe...? Well, that's how it is: there are parts of the universe which aren't part of me. I just 'casually inspect' them. They have nothing to do with me. Aren't you like that?"
"Me?" She blew gently on the wet spot and then turned around. "It's a kind of objectivity I'd give my soul for: the separation of myself from every God damned clutching atom of existence around me; to be able to stand apa
rt from things; to be an entity within myself! But I can't. Every blade of grass I walk on, every pebble, every insignificant weed leaves its imprint on my heel. There isn't anything I don't need to touch, feel, know, share, become..."
I remembered her poem: Even the brush of sparrow wings brings me pain; and, too, the night she went to bed with Marc and I stood in the hall, after it was over, and heard her: How are my breasts? How do they feel? How do I taste? How do I smell? How do I sound...?: the pleading, the questioning, the needing to know, through Marc, through God, through anyone, the things which are known, or should be known, or maybe are never known, but which are rarely ever asked and rarely ever answered. Jesus, somebody, tell me what I'm like!—as if she could be he, and in being he could have herself; and in being he and having herself could be herself and have the All.
"It's because you write," I told her now, protecting my thoughts in a shell of synthetic simplicity. "When people are creative they have to live on the inner side of things; they have to feel a lot."
"Everything?" she asked, watching the ash form on her cigarette. "Everything? How weeds feel when I walk on them? How Foster feels when Coulton comes home with the groceries...?"
In spite of other such sojourns into the realms of psycho-philosophy we did a wonderful job. On the sixth night we finished, cleaned up, and got everything on and hung. It wasn't going to be bad at all: with a new bamboo shade to cover the stove area and books and things to warm it up a little it might just possibly be perfect—if you liked solitude; and maybe I would. Or at least I felt maybe I would at that moment, standing there, surveying the fruits of a week's labor; like it enough, I thought, to let the damned phone ring its bell off when Brad found out where I was and began hounding me.
He'd been hounding terribly in the past ten days. He'd called Frannie a dozen times, at all hours, hoping I'd answer. But I never did; and she'd finally reached the point where she could be self-analytical enough to convince herself that he wasn't her father and that she could hang up on anyone she wanted to.
He'd even gone so far as to come to the house. But God watches over children, drunks, and alienated wives, and we happened to follow our Juniper dinner that night with a movie in town—so we weren't home. But we knew he'd been there because he left a note with the sitter: I waited for hours, it read; Darling, darling, when are you coming back? H.B.
I laughed and tore it up; but when we all went to bed I felt sick: sick and lonely and starved enough to die; and I lay there till morning, swearing at the beautiful, rotten memory of him for making things so much harder.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Shortly before D-Day (D for departure and depression) the agency woman called to say she thought I had the music school job. She had talked with the head man, a man named Desmond, and he wanted to see me.
The office squad at Wingo knocked off before the actual semester ended, so I was free, and would be from there on in. Much to the wailings of the Board, I had turned in my permanent resignation.
The music-school man, called Dez by his associates, struck me on first meeting as the world's Father. He was in his late sixties, big, white-haired, and shoulder-patting. The job was vague, he confessed, and it would be up to the person who took over to delineate its boundaries. While it all seemed a bit too undefined for comfort's sake, he patted away my trepidation with a large, warm hand and assured me that I would do excellently.
The salary would start at seventy a week, and I accepted willingly. I would begin on July fifth, with the opening of the summer school. And when I confided my immediate financial drought he offered a week's salary in advance.
That last day at Frannie's was a nightmare. Never having engineered a six-week vacation for two adults and three children I had to admire Frannie's serenity in the face of such confusion. Of course, there were assists which could not have been counted on by anyone but Frannie. For instance: the drugstore man made three separate trips in his own car to deliver items which she had failed to pick up during the week and had only remembered from time to time on the last day. And the laundry man had eased things up by promising to stop by after they'd left with a key she'd given him—to strip the beds and turn the mattresses back for airing.
My own departure problems were far less complicated. I had my three valises packed and waiting at the door by five p.m.
We weren't going to have that final dinner together. The Weinricks had asked Frannie and Marc over for a farewell buffet to save them the trouble of a messy kitchen. I thought they'd refuse because they had to feed the kids anyway; but they didn't.
"We'll be back early," she told me. "We have to leave here at seven in the morning and I'm not going to hang around there till all hours. Why don't you stay till we come home tonight?"
"No," I said. "I'll wait till you leave for the Weinricks', but you've got a sitter for tonight, and there's no point in—dragging it out."
The whole time they were upstairs dressing to go out I lay on the couch in the den, handing myself sermons: pull yourself together; you've got a cute apartment and a decent job; and then, there's no telling whom you'll meet or what will happen in six weeks...
Added to these emotional placebos was the thought of the letters we'd exchange: I'd always detested writing—but it would be different writing to Frannie, getting long, funny, complicated answers from her. I could probably be long and funny myself with her there at the other end, inspiring me...
When she came down to the den, ready to go, she was wearing a bright blue linen sheath and a string of pearls; and because I was lying stretched out she seemed unusually tall. Marc stood behind her in the doorway.
"'Bye, Jo," he said, smiling. "Come on, Fran—tear yourself away." He turned to go out to the car. "I may have to fly back on business for a couple of days," he added over his shoulder. "If I do I'll give you a ring for dinner—if you aren't dated."
"You look funny," Frannie said when he'd gone.
"Do I? I was just thinking about letters. You will write, won't you?"
"Of course. The minute I get there."
"I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too."
"Okay," I said. "Go already, will you?" It was even worse than I'd thought it would be. There was a fist full of tears in my throat getting set to open up.
The car honked impatiently from the road.
"I'll be fine," I told her. "Just get the hell out of here."
She began to leave. Then, suddenly, she threw herself on me and dug her arms into the cushion behind my head. "Oh, don't, Jo," she begged, tasting, I knew, the tears on my face. "Please don't, Jo! Please, please don't..." And then, on the wetness, I felt her lips travel lightly, quickly, down the length of my scar.
"Get out of here!" I said harshly.
As she went through the door it all broke loose. It was insane, it was childish, it was shameful; but I couldn't help it. I don't know what it was: but seeing the back of her dress, watching her walk out, knowing that from now on I was going to be alone—those, and a thousand other things that might have been inside of me that I couldn't even know or feel, must have been what did it; and I began to sob.
You don't remember the exact words that come with sobbing; not really. But I know they were senseless and without meaning. And later, when the car had driven off, I felt so damned guilty. Because I should have been strong enough to wait till she had gone. I should have saved her the awfulness of having to hear me.
I hung around till the kids came up from TV and saw to it that they bathed and got to bed; and then the sitter arrived—one of the neighbors' boys from down the block. But still I didn't want to go. A drink, I thought; and then I'd better check the place for things I may have forgotten.
I found a few, too: there was a lipstick I'd left in the powder room, and a slip still hanging in my closet. And then I remembered my resume carbons. I figured it would be wise to keep them in case I had to go job-hunting again.
They weren't in the top drawer of the desk so I delved into
the others: I went through all of them till I got to the bottom one which was divided by wooden slats to form a file. I recalled, then, having slipped them in there for safe-keeping. But when I drew them out the paper clip caught on to some other pages, and those came out too. They were headed: Notes for Novel—Episode: night of party—here.
It was the party Brad and I almost didn't get to; her own; the one she'd left with Jeff Deitz to come and pick us up: the night I'd driven back with Jeff and she with Brad—not getting there till midnight.
Once I started reading I couldn't stop. And when I finished I typed a copy of it to take with me. I don't know that it was just or right; the idea of ethics never entered my mind. I simply knew that I would have to read it again; and that in some indirect way it was, in actuality, partially mine.
It offered, among other things, the answer to the question I'd asked her the morning I burst in, fresh from leaving home; the question first put into my mind so casually, yet so viciously, by Brad. She'd pleaded with me then to believe her—about the baby; not to make me tell her how she knew, how she could be so sure, that it hadn't been his. Oddly, I had never brought it up again. I had taken her word, not asking for more, not wanting more—because, God only knew, I had had enough.
But there it was; and I have it with me now, stuck into the pack of letters she sent me from Bermuda, which, for some reason, I have not yet been able to discard:
* * *
Notes for Novel—Episode: night of party—here.
. . . So we walked out to the car, Jo with Jeff, Brad with me—holding my arm so I wouldn't trip on my heels in the rough-dirt driveway. Make sure you just cart her, Jo kidded. And I told her she ought to have her paranoids removed...
We got in then, Brad and I, and bumped out to the main road and just drove awhile, not saying anything.
I was so sure of myself, so sure I'd be strong and firm and sensible—all those honorable, high-flown things people flatter themselves into believing they are, promising themselves they will be, and then ruin deliberately, on the lowest levels.