B

by Jonathan Baumbach

  B was about to say something about how he felt toward women as a group, as people you live with intimately and then no longer live with, when he noticed that the imposingly tall grayhaired woman who had introduced him was pointing at her watch.

  –Why don’t I stop here? B said, and allow whatever else I might have to say to come out in answer to your questions.

  Now his hostess was shaking her head as to suggest that he had misread her original signal. Still, there was a hand raised in the back row and B felt obliged to recognize the questioner. It was a youngish woman, someone in her forties perhaps, one of the youngest there.

  –What would be your advice to a young person considering marriage in today’s world?

  –I don’t feel I’ve earned the right to give advice, B said.

  –Would you discourage such a person? the woman asked.

  –I think people should be free to make their own mistakes, he said.

  –That’s certainly discouraging, she said, and sat down.

  For a while there were no hands raised as B let his glance move up and down the room, picking up sympathetic responses here and there, a wan smile, an encouraging nod. In the next moment, five or six hands were up vying for his attention. He pointed to a small grandmotherly white-haired woman in the third row. –Me? she asked, rising partially from her seat. He nodded yes. She looked around her, still apparently not sure that she was the one he meant.

  –I was not born in this country, she said, so excuse me if I don’t get what all the fuss is about. You say you’ve been married three times. Is that what you said—three? I think I must be missing something. Am I supposed to be impressed? I was married five times myself and that was in the old days when things were different. And if the truth be known, I didn’t see the point of it much of the time even then. I can’t say I remember enjoying my obligations all that much. My sister, Manuela, was the one who enjoyed sex. So I ask you, what’s the fuss? Tell me and I’ll know.

  –I’ve often asked myself that same question, B said.

  –So?

  –I never came up with an answer I trusted, B said....Next question.

  –Answer her, someone shouted from the audience. A few other women stamped their feet in chorus. Answer her. Answer her.

  The room began to vibrate and B, who could think of nothing to say, struggled to come up with something that would pacify the crowd. —The fuss is, B said, the fuss is that women are so damned attractive to us that we continue to pursue them even when we know that humiliation and disaster beckons. Perhaps it works the other way around as well. You tell me.

  He recognized a short-haired mousy woman with glasses in the first row, waving her hand furiously at him. –So what you’re saying is that women marry men only to destroy them in the end. Is that your point?

  –No, he said, it’s not. I have the highest respect for women’s intentions in and out of marriage. That remark drew some hisses from the crowd and as a follow-up a smattering of applause. It consoled him that there were still a few people in the audience on his side.

  It went on this way for awhile, people asking confrontational questions and B sidestepping them as best he knew how, wanting not to offend or not to offend too much. He was getting increasingly concerned about getting out of the armory after the Q and A period was finally over. He glanced at his watch and noted that more than an hour had passed since the first question had been asked.

  –I’ve enjoyed this friendly exchange of ideas with you, he said, hoping to bring the proceedings to an end with a summation. I’ve learned so much from you today. Perhaps if we had this meeting years back, I might have avoided the various mistakes I made over the years in my relationships with women.

  –Blow it out your ass, a large woman near the back yelled.

  –Where is this leading? someone else shouted out.

  –You haven’t listened to a fucking word we’ve said, from still another.

  –As I was saying, B said, I think it’s possible for men and women to live together...

  –Get him out of here, from two or three at once.

  –...happily for short periods of time.

  –We don’t want to live with you, another said, happily or unhappily. We just want you to go away. Don’t you get it?

  –I appreciate your honesty, B said, and your directness of approach. When someone says to me the kind of things you’ve been saying, I feel I’ve been taken seriously. At this point an unidentified flying object, a small plastic hairbrush perhaps, whipped by his left ear and B flinched, then raised his arms in mock surrender. A tomato followed, propelled by cheers and laughter, splattering at his feet.

  –Please, he heard his hostess, the organization’s president, call from somewhere behind him, this man is a guest in your house. An orange or tangerine scaled his shoulder in a loopy arc.

  –Is that the best you can do? he shouted at them. Momentarily, he was pelted with fruit, oranges, apples and tomatoes launched from the auditorium, the missiles inaccurately thrown for the most part, though B thought it wise to duck down behind the podium to avoid the accidental hit.

  When the flight of fruit subsided, the president of the Femmes Club came forward to make her concluding remarks. –They are an excitable crowd, she said to B, who exchanged places with her, taking the seat somewhat to the right and behind the podium she had previously occupied. He was still somewhat shaken—he had never had a crowd respond to him as violently as this one had. No one, said unreliable memory, had ever thrown fruit at him before with intent to harm.

  –We will meet again in four weeks, his hostess told the crowd, when we’ll address the topic, “Who’s on Top, What’s on Bottom?”

  Taking B aside, she suggested in a whisper that he wait for the audience to clear out before he made his exit. Then she handed him an envelope which B put in the breast pocket of his jacket. –It’s the best we can do, she said, the context for the moment difficult to pin down.

  As the audience stood up to leave, he noticed that his second wife or a woman who bore her an uncanny resemblance was among the exiting crowd. That her back was to him made it difficult for him to make a positive identification. He was about to call out to her when his hostess took his arm and led him out the back door into the Weapons Room, walls lined with carbines and M-1’s locked away in windowed cases.

  –This is our Green Room, she told him, introducing herself as Gladys Fleur.

  B found himself moved to gratitude by her unlooked for civility.

  Gladys came up with a dusty bottle of Scotch that had been on one of the counters and offered him a drink, which he refused and then accepted.

  –I think it’s a good idea to let the crowd disperse before you leave the building, she said. Not that I expect the worst to happen but there’s a saying that I tend to trust, which is “Better safe than sorry.”

  B looked at his watch. –I appreciate your concern, he said, but I’m expected somewhere.

  He took a few sips of his drink, then put the glass down and held out his hand.

  –It’s not personal, she said, ignoring his gesture. It’s just that I’m opposed to violence no matter the justice of the cause. If you’re ready to leave, I’ll show you out.

  3.

  B wondered as he followed his guide down a succession of unlit corridors how this experience, still unconcluded, might be made into a fiction. It might be an interesting irony if his antihero ended up marrying the head of the militant feminist group his well-meaning talk had clumsily offended. It might be as they walked in the darkening corridors to the back exit, they locked hands so as not to get separated. The hand-holding, not initially meant as an intimacy, might make B aware of Gladys’ attractiveness as a woman, the sweetness and warmth of her repressed nature. And she in turn might find herself drawn to B despite her predilection to perceive him as the enemy. He might offer to take her to dinner that night as she lets him out the door as a repayment for her kindness. Gladys says thank you no, it’s out of the q
uestion, she’d prefer never to see him again, but he continues to insist until he wears her down. Over dinner they discover that they have more things in common than they have any right to suppose. Gladys is also a poet or has been and paints on weekends and is an obsessive moviegoer, passionate about some of the same films as B.

  If she sees him again, she says—this, after they have spectacular sex for the first time—it will have to be done in secrecy, her friends and constituency would view a relationship between them as totally unacceptable. And so on and so until it reaches a point where the undercover aspect of the relationship as if they were a two-person terrorist cell has become more nuisance than guilty pleasure and B asks her to move in with him. She says no, not yet, soon, sometime, when I’m ready, when we’re both ready, isn’t it good enough the way it is, let’s take a trip to Europe first, to Paris or to one of the hill towns in Italy, as soon as we both can get away and see how we track together, to which B accedes though not without trepidation since he has been in this very place in several relationships before with the same manic hopefulness or less or more and he begins to feel—this after she tells him she loves him—an impingement in his chest, an abridgement in his range of motion even among the beauties of Umbria or wherever it is they’ve decided to go, an airlessness without respite even while out of doors, and he knows it’s no longer working, as she must too, but the desire to make things work won’t let them acknowledge this full-blown disaster either privately or to each other and they agree to marry on their return to the states however deplorable this marriage might seem to friends and family on both sides and to themselves, it will be a litmus test to see who remains in their good graces.

  That’s the story he imagines he will someday write about the experience at the Fort Hamilton Armory as a guest speaker before the Femmes Club, the imagining taking place as he skulks along behind his hostess to an exit that will place him outside the building far from the angry and potentially dangerous crowd. When they reach the door, she says –Let me go first to make sure it’s all clear. As she is opening the door, he squeezes her arm as a gesture of gratitude and she turns toward him, letting the door swing shut, panic in her gray eyes as she wraps her arms around him and they hug and nuzzle in a kind of hungry, somewhat desperate way, holding each other for a moment that extends itself, a moment that seems to go on so long that he begins to feel his life slipping away as he idles in her embrace. And then: she slaps his face, the blow staggering him. When he looks at her, an unblinking rage stares back. There is nothing to be said, nothing to do but leave the armory without further delay.

  When B steps outside, the streets are empty as if the world had stopped its business in his absence. An icy wind flies in his face. He puts up the collar of his coat, and hurries in what feels to him like slow-motion—the wind resisting his need to be where he’s not—toward his parked car. Then, playing back the immediate past in his head, he is overtaken by an unaccountable, almost perverse joy.

  He discovers himself smiling. He smiles.

  X. THE HISTORY OF ELEGANCE

  1.

  There is no history of elegance, says V, the woman in the green suede coat, to B who has his hand on her arm. She is responding to a sign that appears in purple lights in the window of a Madison Avenue men’s shop.

  It is not an issue that interested B before this moment, though he feels obliged to take a stand. The History of Elegance is the story of my life, he says.

  The woman laughs; B has a history of being amusing while seeming to be serious, a history of saying the most incongruous thing that comes to mind. It sounds like a very short story in your case, she says.

  B turns away, studies the passing scene, straightens his tie. He wonders at the meaning of her remark, feels himself misunderstood.

  The woman slaps her forehead. I suppose I’m always missing the point, she says.

  Is she being just a little ironic? he wonders. They walk along Madison Ave., their mutual reality glancing off the elegant displays in the windows of the boutiques they pass.

  1 never know when you’re being serious, she says. I wonder sometimes if you know.

  If I know what?

  Forget it, she says. You’re absolutely impossible.

  He would like to tell her the story of The History of Elegance, though he suspects it would only increase her misunderstanding of him.

  My feet are beginning to hurt, she says.

  I don’t know where to begin, B tells her. It’s a recurrent problem of mine, how to begin. I try to work my way into it, come to my subject from some undisclosed angle. What happens is, I never get to what I perceive as the real story. The preliminaries—the way into the story—become the story itself.

  How interesting, she says. When I was married to George— I never told anyone this before—this man I knew in a roundabout way asked me if I would go to Italy with him. Just like that. We were having lunch—he had invited me to lunch—and he said, I’m going to Italy in ten days and I’d like you to come with me.

  How long was he going for? B asks, not yet engaged by her story.

  For the rest of his life as far as he knew, she says. His firm was sending him to Rome. It wasn’t for a weekend or something like that. I never would have gone off with him for a weekend.

  I never heard this story before, he says. They pass a bookstore and out of the comer of his eye, he thinks he sees a copy of his most recent novel. Closer inspection disabuses him of the notion. It is something with a similar title and a much too similar cover design.

  I think I told you some of this, she says. No? He was a really elegant man—I mean, really elegant. His clothes fit him like a second skin. When he asked I said I couldn’t possibly. There was my daughter to consider. He said it was perfectly all right if I brought her along, then I said I needed some time to think about it. I was stalling because I didn’t know how to refuse him gracefully. There was no way I could leave my husband and child at that time. How could I?

  Do you mind if we go into the bookstore for a few minutes? he says. I want to see if they have my book on the shelf.

  They spend no more than thirty seconds in the bookstore then leave. It is how long it takes to discover that there is no copy of his book on the shelf.

  I spent the next two days thinking about his offer, she says. The more I thought about it, the more I thought Why not? What was there to stop me?

  I should have asked them if it’s on reorder, B says. I’m always embarrassed to ask about my own book.

  Do you want me to ask them whether your book is on order, she says. Really, I don’t mind.

  It doesn’t matter, he says. Did you go off with this man who wore a vest even in the bathtub?

  I never said he wore a vest in the bathtub, she says. Are you being funny, darling? I mean really he had a natural elegance, and he had very good clothes. Almost everything he wore looked as though it had been made expressly for him.

  I dislike this man already, he says.

  You would have liked him if you knew him, she says. Most men liked him. Even George liked him. Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?

  They had passed the Whitney Museum, walking north on Madison Ave. B was struck by a memory concerning the museum, or an intuition of a memory, that refused to come into focus. It had something to do with his father who did a painting the Whitney owned that was almost never on display.

  I don’t like men whose clothes fit them too well, he says. I know you didn’t go off with him. Your story has no real suspense.

  But I did, she says. Why are you so sure I didn’t go? You’re so arrogant. Three days after he asked me, I told George that I was leaving him to go to Italy. George was crushed. I felt terrible about it.

  I can understand that, he says. Would you like to take in the minimalist show at the Whitney? What do you say, babe?

  I’ve already seen it, she says. I was there last week. I don’t remember what day, Thursday or Friday.

  Where was I?

&nbs
p; Wherever you were, she says. If you really want to go, I’ll go again.

  That’s all right, he says, but they turn around and walk the block and a half back to the museum.

  Once I told my husband I was leaving, she says, I realized I had put myself in a really precarious position. He was hurt, I could tell, but he was not about to plead with me to stay. He did insist, however, that Carolyn be allowed to finish the term at her school. I insisted on taking her right away. I said the school didn’t matter. Besides, I was the one who took care of her, not George. I was the one who got her meals and bought her clothes and put her to bed at night. She was just six years old at the time. She needed her mother.

  B acknowledges her remarks with a nod. He is an indifferent listener, but he imagines someday he’ll improve his skills. They are in front of the Whitney now, seemingly undecided on what to do next. B takes the woman’s arm. We don’t have to stay very long, he says. The woman shakes her head but nevertheless follows him inside. He buys tickets for both of them, though the woman says she’d rather wait for him in the lobby.

  I want to hear the rest of your story about Italy, he says.

  The woman laughs. I don’t think you’ve been listening very hard, she says. Anyway when I look at paintings all my senses are occupied. She says this in a declamatory voice.