They slept and woke, and Jack labored once more for entry. The kisses, licensed now by God and man, and even his broad lovely carpenter’s thumbs circling her naked breasts were wrong. Naked everywhere and punished into waking again and again from the deep warm nest of bedclothes and dreams. Elsewhere, in convents, novitiate cousins and schoolmates knelt at simple cots, earning their rest with a hasty “Our Father,” the minor discomfort of cold, bruised knees.
Toward morning, Nora’s foot reached out for the solace of Agnes, or Catherine, and found instead his sleeping hand, slowly found all of him, defeated and still in exhausted sleep. This time, she began the kisses, like the old ones in the doorway, and she roused his hand to put it here, and here, and here! And her legs finally fell open, two pale trembling heroes to welcome pain.
Nora reaches for the missal, but it’s not in her lap anymore. It has slipped away with the vagueness of this day and the one lost before it. What did she have for supper? The tray is gone, her company is gone. She senses Jack somewhere in the dimness, but knows better. She peers strenuously into the peephole of memory as he retreats from her and disappears.
8
IT’S MUCH TOO HOT to go anywhere. Kenny has taken the whole broiling, stationary day off, and it looms in front of him like a month of days without Daphne. Western wind, when wilt thou blow, the small rain down can rain? She’d read that to him a week ago—her favorite verse, she’d said, and her voice had been pitched even lower with emotion. What was the rest of it?
Gus and Frances and Joy halfheartedly suggest excursions as the heat rises with the sun, causing the pool and garden to shimmer like a mirage through the French doors. Inside, in the reliable chill of central air conditioning, they speak without enthusiasm or conviction of Disneyland and the Farmers Market. No one really wants to leave the artificial comfort of the house, except perhaps for a fast swim. But the children are restless a mere hour after waking, and they race around, making too much noise and leaving their milky fingerprints everywhere.
New York, which Kenny misses in occasional sharp spasms of longing, would be worse than L.A. on a day like this. They’d lived in a small East Side apartment, and there hadn’t been a swimming pool, or even a mirage of hibiscus and lavender heavy with blossoms and bees. On a day like this, only the streets would be shimmering there, and the Daily News would have a front-page shot of some joker frying an egg right on the sizzling pavement. Yet, Kenny thinks, he would have been happy to be hurrying on a heated sidewalk toward some other room, air-conditioned or not, where Daph was waiting for him. New York, with its complex yet practical network of subways and buses, was an easier place for paranoid lovers. He pictures a traffic light changing and the faceless mob crossing the street, each person free in his anonymity, in the convenient chaos of big-city life. Los Angeles is not exactly a small town, but on foot in its spare pedestrian traffic, he feels conspicuous, and, in his car, detectable by model and license plate. Is paranoia always born of earned guilt?
Kenny steps outside in his cotton robe, and is overwhelmed by the heat, as if he’s taken a blow to the head. It will be over a hundred before noon, a scorcher, a real record-breaker. He can’t quite remember how New York smelled in summer, but it was surely never like this: the sultry perfume of flowers, with the sting of chlorine like an aftertaste. In New York, he would not have been able to shuck off his robe and slice naked into cool green water for instant relief. He doesn’t do it here, either. Cautious modesty makes him look up, and Frances is standing at the French doors, sipping coffee, smiling at him and fluttering the fingers of her free hand. On each side of her, one of his children stands with a grotesquely flattened face against the breath-clouded glass. Kenny smiles back at Frances and makes a monster face at the gargoyle children, who scream soundlessly and disappear into the room behind them.
Daphne must be in Seattle, where the small rain down can rain without stop. He has called her Ventura number over and over. Thank God for push-button phones that allow for quick and quiet dialing. Thank God for Joy’s extravagance that has provided a bathroom extension with its own small and steady light. When Daphne didn’t answer, in late afternoon, and then in the evening, he imagined other places than Seattle for her to be. He thought of old boyfriends she had casually mentioned in negative ways. He thought of new men everywhere, and how their eyes, and then the rest of them, would gladly follow her—her hair moving in swaying counterpoint to her hips, everything beautifully synchronized, as if she walked to inner music. He moaned in the bathroom, and softy at dinner under the covering blare of Vivaldi’s trumpets. He saw Daphne lying in her foldout bed in Ventura, and heard her whisper, “Don’t answer it. It’s only him. Just let it ring.”
His jealous derangement was ridiculous, though, and temporary. She’s in Seattle with her family, where she said she would be. He goes inside and is not instantly restored by the cold air. “Jesus,” he says, and Gus looks up from the Times to ask what’s the matter.
“I just remembered something,” Kenny says. “Something I have to do at the office.”
“Poor Kenneth,” Frances clucks. After all her years in social work, she’s promptly sympathetic.
“Can’t you get someone else to take care of it?” Gus asks. “I’ll bet you can fry an egg out there.”
Kenny hears water rushing through the pipes of the house. Joy must be taking a shower, and her absence makes his getaway easier. “No, damn it,” he says. “It will only take a couple of hours, I think. I’ll definitely be back before lunch.” He hurries to dress while the water is still running.
Earlier, he’d awakened before Joy, recalling the previous night with confusion and wonder, as if it might have been a dream. Her face was relaxed in sleep, and he clearly remembered her eyes fixed fiercely on his, the deliberate tough rhythm of her body. It wasn’t any dream, and he was grateful to be awake first, to escape into the shower, and then into the nonpartisan company of his family. He realized, as he buttered toast for Steven, as Molly’s unerring foot found the place Joy’s hand had so recently grasped, that he and Joy might never discuss what had taken place, their mutual silence creating a strange conspiracy between them.
In the car, he considers stopping at a florist’s. Despite that shyster Larkin’s assumptions, he never brings Daphne gifts, except on the formal occasions of holidays. He could buy her something rare and special, something truly exotic that had to be flown in from somewhere, on ice. It would soften the surprise of his unexpected visit. He’s prepared to spend a ridiculous amount for a small perishable offering.
But as he approaches Camarillo, he acknowledges that she might indeed not be home, and such an offering left at the door would lose its amorous message as it wilted. If she really is in Seattle for a few days, his gift would rot, and even appear sinister, like the calling card of a madman. And if it turns out that she is home alone, stubbornly shutting out the ringing of the phone, waiting for a more aggressive or original move from him, he could always stop at a florist’s later and send enough flowers to turn that dismal room into a Persian garden. His heart needs the encouragement of his brain’s dreamy logic. She won’t be there; he knows this without doubt during the last miles. He even slows the speed of the car, trying to relax the foot on the gas pedal as he eases its pressure.
Still, he finishes the trip, and knocks on the door when he gets there, softy at first, and then with the brash urgency of a vice-squad dick. He imagines footsteps, or hears them in another apartment, and he puts his hot, thudding ear against the door to listen. The rest of Daphne’s poem floods his head. Christ, if my love were in my arms and I in my bed again! He shuts his eyes to concentrate all his perception into his sense of hearing. But Daphne’s apartment is silent, and he’s a green, romantic fool.
How tired he feels now, as if he’d raced all the way to Ventura on foot. There had been a time right after he and Daphne met when Kenny fleetingly considered that he was too old for the hardships of courting. He might be used up too quickly. And oth
er aspects of his life would have to be sacrificed. The quantity and quality of time spent with male friends was already decreasing. He played a few sets of tennis, and a little poker. When he met someone for a drink, the exchange of confidences was more guarded. Was it worth it?
He discovered that he had no choice. Desire propelled him into action, overcoming logic, and his energy was renewed. And of course it was worth it; it was worth anything. Love had been the secret source of his strength then, as it seems to be the draining force now. Love giveth and love taketh away.
Kenny thinks of actually going to his office, to undo his own foolishness and his pretense as well. But what would he say there to explain his unexpected appearance? He’d told his secretary that he desperately needed a day off, that he didn’t even want telephone calls referred to the house. Daphne, at his own bidding, never called him anywhere. He was often as dictatorial as a privileged child, and she was unflaggingly agreeable, like a helplessly indulgent mother. Or had been, until now. There was that new defiant edge to her voice during their last phone call. What had changed her?
He could leave a note now, more durable than flowers. He could write the last line of that poem she loves, its meaning more ardent and accurate than anything he could invent. But she might come home with someone else, and a joint reading of that line is unthinkable. Maybe the exterminator would show up first and have a good laugh before he fogged the roaches. Kenny has a better idea, anyway. He’ll go to the public library in Sherman Oaks and find out the poet’s name. Then he can look in a bookstore for a handsome volume of the guy’s work, and bring it to his reunion with Daphne. The only poetry books she owns are used, marked-up paperbacks, bought for a course she took at U.C.L.A. Having a plan cheers Kenny considerably, and he whistles a little on the way to his car.
He feels like a jerk standing at the reference desk saying, “Western wind, when wilt thou blow, the small rain down can rain?” to the matronly librarian sitting there. And he’ll be damned if he’ll give her the next line.
She stares up at him and then she rises from her chair, drawing her breath in sharply, and says, “Christ, if my love were in my arms and I in my bed again!” with resonance and feeling.
“That’s it,” Kenny whispers. It’s as if they’ve just sung a stirring operatic duet, and he looks around to see if they’ve been observed and overheard. But no one seems to have noticed. “I just wondered who wrote it.”
“Anonymous,” she says.
“What?” he asks, although he has heard her perfectly well.
“Anonymous,” she repeats. “Sixteenth century.”
Kenny is stunned. The words of the poem are so immediate, so suffused with yearning that he can’t believe the poet is unknown. And the sixteenth century! Why, it might have been written the day before. His shock and disappointment must be visible, because the librarian goes to the reference stacks and returns with a weighty volume. “Here,” she says. “See for yourself. They’re all anonymous.” She pushes the open book into his hands and he looks down. Daphne’s poem is there, among scores of others. He reads haphazardly to himself, a line or two from a few of them. Frankie and Johnnie were lovers, my gawd, how they could love … I sing of a maiden that is makeless … In Dublin’s fair city, where girls are so pretty … Now I lay me down to sleep … When Molly smiles beneath her cow, I feel my heart—I can’t tell how … He lowers the book to the desk and says, “Thank you,” before lurching out into the incredible heat of the parking lot.
Anonymous, he thinks, driving the few blocks to his house. Anonymous and dead. He is aware of everything he does: his hands turning the steering wheel; his foot moving from the accelerator to the brake. He opens the car door, shuts it. The careless series of acts that is everyone’s life. Tonight he’ll try to find the Seattle number. He feels capable of almost anything.
The children storm him as he goes indoors, but their impact is softened by his troubled distraction. He takes only slight notice of their clammy little bodies, the rising odors of chlorine and sunlight. They dance around him as he takes off his clothes and gets into his bathing trunks.
“Daddy’s penis,” Steven instructs Molly, with reverent envy.
She smiles, all-knowing. “Mine!” she screams; and the three of them run through the house toward the pool.
9
THE RAIN IS SOFT this evening, after yesterday’s deluge. It’s almost a soundless mist, yet Daphne is especially sensitive to the dry warm enclosure of the house. The family is eating dessert, her mother’s special bread pudding with hot caramel sauce, and watching the news on television. About five minutes of it can reasonably be called news—Mideast tensions, Polish economic problems, royal wedding plans, the spraying of California’s fruit flies—but the program has been extended to a full hour. Most of it is a kind of filler entertainment: interviews with an actress and a political criminal who’ve written books about themselves; a review, with film clips, of a car-chase movie that’s declared “a gas-guzzling gambit”; endless lists of sports scores; and an attenuated look at the weather, using maps and satellite photos, and offering predictions for the entire nation. It will be very hot again in Southern California the next day, when Kenny and his whole family might be fried alive staring into the La Brea tar pits.
“Some news,” Daphne’s father remarks. He shuts off the television and clears his throat.
He’s been clearing his throat all evening, she realizes, and wonders if there’s something physically wrong with him. “Do you have a cold, Daddy?” she asks, and he says, brusquely, “No, I never get colds.”
This isn’t so, but she knows better than to dispute him on a truth he refuses to acknowledge. Working for twenty-nine years in the claims department of an insurance company has made him unnaturally stubborn and defensive. “It’s just that you keep doing that, clearing your throat,” she says.
He does it again, theatrically this time, like a man choking on a fishbone. “It’s the residue,” he answers, and Daphne says, “What?”
Margaret sighs, sucking on her spoon the way she’s done since she was a baby. “He means the volcanic ash,” she explains.
“But there hasn’t been an eruption for months, and I thought it bypassed Seattle,” Daphne says, “and settled miles east of here. I read something about it in the L.A. Times a few weeks ago.”
“Tell that to the Marines,” her father advises, and clears his throat again.
“Daddy,” Daphne begins, but her mother interrupts: “This pudding is delicious, even if I do have to say so myself.”
Daphne and Margaret glance at one another and smile. How many times have they heard that same phrase from her? It’s one in a series of stock inanities she’s used for years to quell dangerous conversations. Daphne is moved and irritated at once.
“You don’t have to say so yourself, Mom,” Margaret says. “Look at my nice clean dish.” She holds it up for inspection.
“Piggo,” Daphne says lovingly. “Little Meglet.”
Not insulted at all, Margaret scrapes what’s left at the bottom of Daphne’s dish, too. She has always eaten this greedily, and is still boyishly slender, yet oddly sexy. In just a few months she’s changed radically, Daphne thinks, and then isn’t sure. She knows that she needs the romance of sameness here—it’s one of the reasons she’s come home—and there are all the old obliging family tics and rituals, the lukewarm arguments that go back forever in memory. Everyone takes a familiar role. But Margaret is so womanly now, so self-assured and sensual. Daphne guesses that her little sister is not a virgin anymore, and has a little moment of surprise and sorrow. Who, she wonders. How?
“My zucchini and cukes just laid down and died this year,” her father announces.
Margaret imitates the eerie music of science-fiction movies. “Ooo-eee! Ooo-eee!” She wriggles her fingers right in front of his face.
“That’s enough out of you,” he says, but without any bite to his rebuke. He has always let her get away with things.
&nbs
p; “Daddo blames everything on poor old Mount St. H.,” Margaret tells Daphne. “Car trouble, the stock market, his athlete’s foot.”
“People turned gray overnight,” he says.
“Not to mention gay,” Margaret whispers to Daphne, and they lean together, snickering.
“Oh, Hal,” Mrs. Moss says. “That was way over in Idaho, wasn’t it? And they didn’t actually turn gray, did they? Wasn’t it really the ash?”
“I know what I know,” he answers, and immediately Daphne sees the two teams that comprise her family, maybe every family. She and her mother are the same, or at least a great deal alike. There is a gentle conciliation in them, a desire for peace that makes them allow stronger, more assertive people to be in control. Her father and Margaret, on the other hand, are like difficult twins, opinionated and tireless in their wrongheaded crusades.
Daphne thinks about the other reason for her homecoming, the wish to resolve her affair with Kenny. She has been here for two days now, and will be going back to Ventura early the next morning. Still, she has not confided in anyone, has not even begun the process of resolution. There had been an opportunity the night before at dinner. Margaret had suddenly asked, “You still seeing that same guy?”
Daphne, unsettled by the question, answered, “Sort of,” remembering that it had also been Kenny’s evasive answer when she’d asked if he was married.
“What does that mean?” her father demanded.
“It means I see him off and on,” Daphne said. She gulped some water, heard it gurgling down.
“Oh,” her mother sighed. “Well, who wants some more stroganoff?”
“So don’t start registering her silver pattern at Friedlander’s,” Margaret advised.
“Nobody’s getting married,” Daphne said.
“Lady Di is,” her sister said, and Daphne saw, not without relief, that her opportunity had passed.
But who will she turn to when she’s ready, when her quick convalescence is over? She imagines telling her father everything, and how hard it would be to present a fair picture, to convince him of Kenny’s virtues, and the inevitability of her surrender. It would be like trying to collect on an insurance policy after setting fire to her own house. Has she set fire to her own house?
In the Palomar Arms Page 7