In the Palomar Arms

by Hilma Wolitzer

  He tries to sort things out in his head, to recall how he was before Daphne, how he’s been ever since. A few weeks ago he and Joy had attended an open house at a new nursery school they were considering for Steven. Kenny perched on one of the tiny chairs, sipping the watered punch and eating cookies, while a teacher showed them the doll corner with its miniature facsimiles of domestic life, its jumbled box of grownup clothes. Kenny realized how far he’d come from this Lilliputian world of artless play. The sight of the tiny iron, cordless, resting on the toy ironing board, made him feel gravely aware of what he’d done with his life.

  He wandered among the teachers and other parents later, talking too much and too fast, with the desperate patter of a salesman at a closing door.

  Joy nudged him. “Hey, relax,” she said. “This isn’t Eton, you know. And we’re looking them over.”

  He held up his paper cup of punch. “The Crayola juice,” he said. “It’s gone to my head.”

  He might be a little strung out at times, but he certainly hadn’t been too good, at least not with Joy. And yet he did have an occasional urge to be more decent at home after a splendid afternoon with Daphne. Had he been, without knowing it? And was he ever conspicuously so?

  Lately, when he kisses and hugs the children, he believes that some of his old spontaneity is lost, that he isn’t simply demonstrating how much he loves them; he is also false and calculating. It’s as if he’s buying their favor, stockpiling affection against future bitterness. And Steven and Molly, who like most children know everything but cannot say so, sometimes squirm in his embrace.

  Joy rattles the ice in her paper cup of Coke, crunches a chip of it noisily between her teeth. Long ago, in New York, they’d once passed an ice cube between their mouths, back and forth, until it melted.

  He’d been so careful of his actions, working like the CIA to cover all his movements without leaving an incriminating mark. How clever he’d felt at times, how safe, stashing poor Daph in Ventura, straddling both lives like a cowboy on a fence.

  He looks at Joy’s familiar profile, once beloved, once despised, and wishes he had been less clever. If she already knew, he wouldn’t have to tell her. He doesn’t believe in her natural intuition now, any more than he believes that men fear intimacy. “Anybody want anything else?” he asks. No one does and he drives them home.

  He parks Joy’s car and takes his own Toyota to the office. He has only one appointment, and some paper work that occupies him for less than an hour. After that, he sits at his desk, leaning back with his hands locked behind his head. It’s after three; Daphne will be leaving for work soon. He thinks of calling her and continues to sit there in the same position. Then, without really focusing his eyes or his thoughts, he folds a sheet of paper into an airplane and sends it sailing across the room. It swoops nicely before crashing into the far wall and dropping to the floor. He goes over to pick it up and notices that there’s something typed on the tail. It seems he’s made the plane out of a letter his secretary had left on the desk for his signature. Miss Oberon is a very stern and efficient young woman who would not be amused by his mistake, even if he said something playful about sending the letter airmail. Oh, well, he can always retype it himself later, at home. The thought of home staggers him. He doesn’t want to go there at all, and certainly not before he has to. He shoves the plane into his pocket, looks at the clock on his desk and then at his watch for confirmation. There are a couple of hours left to kill, but he’s incapable of killing them here in the cage his office has become.

  Daphne has probably left for work by now. Kenny has never been to the Palomar Arms Senior Home. From what she’s told him, he’s sure it’s depressing. It would be pointless for him to seek her out there, or anywhere, for that matter. That’s why he didn’t call her before, hasn’t called her since his return from San Francisco. She’s waiting to be given notice of a mission accomplished, not of his chickenhearted misery in carrying it out.

  He hears Miss Oberon in the next room, typing like a woodpecker, and he senses her disapproval of his silent indolence in here. He pulls the door open and announces briskly that he’s leaving for the day. She asks if he can be reached, and he says no and goes out.

  There are any number of things he can do, he thinks, as he walks to his car, squeezing the keys in his fist until they leave their imprint on his palm. He can go to the beach, for instance, or to a movie. Neither idea has the least appeal; they were only ideas. He can just drive around for a while with no destination. From the look of the freeway, plenty of people do that. But he’s too restless to sit still while the scenery speeds past him. He needs to do something, to go someplace. All of his friends are at work. His unexpected appearance at someone else’s office at this time of day would be considered strange. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone, anyway, except maybe Gene Warner, and Kenny hasn’t seen him in four years.

  He ends up at a bar in Hollywood, a place that’s cooled to an extreme and is doing a lively business for this time of day. Men and women move with absolute purpose toward one another, and gently collide. There’s lots of touching and almost-touching that looks casual, but will certainly lead to some shared beds before the afternoon’s over. All around Kenny there’s the reassuring rumble of easy, come-on conversation. Yet he feels peculiar here, in social limbo, not really married or single, not really up to the game or completely out of it. He pities the players for the loneliness that’s drawing them together, and is jealous of their potential for adventure.

  The bartender shows up and Kenny orders vodka on the rocks. At the end of the bar, the television set is on without the sound. Mary Tyler Moore is throwing her tam into the air, and for a few minutes he stares without concentration up at the screen. The jukebox provides an incongruous country-western number.

  After Kenny’s drink comes, a woman sits on the stool next to his and says, “Hello, there,” with a slight, charming stammer. He swivels to face, her, raising his glass in an automatic gesture of greeting, She’s very beautiful in a glossy and obvious way. Compared to Daphne, or even to Joy, she seems to have spent too much time and too much controlled effort on her makeup and hair. Is she a prostitute? She’d certainly taken the initiative with him, although her manner was modest, almost shy. And her clothes, a green linen sundress and low-heeled sandals, are tasteful and simple. Of course, it’s hard to tell from appearance alone what anybody does these days. A plumber Joy called recently arrived to replace a faucet wearing a dinner jacket. Joy thought he might have been doubling as a movie extra, or was on his way to a wedding. And last summer Kenny was introduced to a nun at a beach party who was wearing shorts, and a T-shirt that said Here Come De Judge.

  Other people are laughing, and the woman is looking at Kenny in a pleasant, inquisitive way. Is she waiting for him to buy her a drink? He glances at her glass and it’s full.

  “I’m Mary,” she says.

  “Kenny,” he offers, and that’s that. If she is a prostitute, he supposes she’ll let him know sooner or later. He doesn’t have to think about that right now, or about anything else.

  “Do you work around here?” she asks.

  “Not exactly,” he answers, wondering if he seems too cryptic or wary. He notices that she’s hardly dimmed the considerable wattage of her smile.

  “I do,” she says. “Next door. I’m in the newsroom.” The newsroom, not a newsroom. This place must be close to a television or radio studio. It’s probably a regular hangout for the people who work there.

  He smiles back, drinks, careful not to generate a further exchange of personal information. Some friendly anonymity is all he needs. He just wants to get a little buzz on and feel good. He swirls the remaining ice and vodka in his glass.

  “I’m an associate producer,” Mary says. “Lou Grant is my boss.”

  Kenny looks up, ready to go along with the gag, but she’s quite earnest. Her face is bright with innocence and she has too many teeth. His eyes skim the television screen and go back to her. The
re’s definitely a resemblance, he sees now, a clever mimicry of expression.

  “He’s a wonderful man,” she says.

  “You bet,” Kenny agrees, and finishes his drink quickly, turning away. Jesus. He’s shocked and shamed at mistaking a poor deluded woman for a working prostitute. “Well, Mary,” he says, sliding from the stool. “It was very nice to meet you.”

  She clears her throat. “You’re in a hurry. I didn’t think you were. I thought you might want to, you know, spend some time.”

  In Minneapolis, did she mean? With Ted and Georgette and Rhoda?

  “Fifty dollars,” she says. “A hundred for the evening, and it’s early.”

  Kenny is too stunned to answer.

  “Do you prefer Cheryl Tiegs?” she asks softly. “Brooke Shields? Blondie? Nancy Reagan?” Her inquiring voice follows him out into the white and shimmering street.

  25

  JOE DOESN’T EXPECT A VISITOR this evening and then at 7:30, when visiting hours are almost over, his grandson Kevin appears at the door. “Poppy?” he says, hesitating before entering, as if he doesn’t recognize Joe, or as if Joe might not recognize him. The boy has surely grown since Joe last saw him, almost a year ago. Do boys still grow at that age? He is the youngest of Sandra and Bud’s children, but is already an adult. Twenty? Twenty-one? The child Joe loved best because his parents loved him least. They would be indignant at his assessment. If anything, they’d say they loved Kevin more than the others, gave him more of their time and energy and money. He was the child that surprised them in their thirties, after their ideal family of one girl and one boy was already established. There was never any question of abortion, which Sandra claims is proof that Kevin was a wanted child.

  No one can deny that he was a difficult one. Getting stuck midway in the birth canal (turning to look behind him, like Lot’s wife), and requiring Sandra to undergo a Caesarian section after hours of labor. And then the months of colic and fretting. The other two thrived, while Kevin developed allergies to dust, grass, wheat, eggs, milk, and animals. He had frequent nightmares and wet his bed. His hair grew in willful spikes, and his teeth in a fearful overbite. In school he earned the nickname of Chink and then Metal Mouth, and suffered as well from dyslexia.

  His sister and brother went to college and now they’re married and have children of their own. A few months ago, after dropping out of a remote forestry school in Oregon, Kevin had joined the army. He’s stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he’s studying heavy-armament repair.

  He’s wearing his uniform now, and appears to have outgrown it during his trip west. The untamable hair has been shaved, and his skull looks stretched, the way it did right after he was born.

  Am I dying, Joe thinks. But no, the others, who are loving and conventional children, would also have come. They don’t even live that far away. Kevin is simply here, and Joe will not question his own good fortune. “My grandson,” he tells Brady, and feels the old riotous pride. He remembers the musky sweetness of Deborah’s hands across his eyes; Daniel’s serious and handsome face.

  Brady has no children or grandchildren, and his interest in Kevin is friendly and peripheral. He lowers the volume on the television set out of courtesy to them, but Kevin wheels his grandfather to the lounge near the elevators, where a few other patients sit in a frieze of apathy.

  The boy volunteers that his parents sent him money for this journey home. They wanted to see him before they leave on their long trip. He has just come from their house, and will be going back to the base tomorrow. “So, how are you doing?” he asks. He’s lit a cigarette and inhales so deeply with each drag it’s a wonder he doesn’t hyperventilate.

  “All right,” Joe tells him. “You?”

  Kevin laughs, chokes, and mashes the cigarette out, making the standing ashtray wobble and clatter.

  “Friends?” Joe asks, wanting lies. Kevin has always been a loner, and what could a peacetime army be but mostly a collection of loners? Men who avoid civilian danger by waiting around for a real war. Joe has a vision of the barracks at Fort Sill, in which there is no camaraderie, no conversation. A radio plays some alien, whining music. Each man is on his bed cleaning a gun or a shoe.

  “Oh, yeah, plenty of guys,” Kevin says, after he’s stopped coughing.

  “Girl?” Joe persists.

  “Girls, Poppy,” Kevin boasts, downing Joe’s last hope.

  He knows that there are worse things than this boy’s troubled life, but now he cannot call them to mind. Someone else’s grandson who comes here in the toga and paint of a religious cult seems contented, at least, even serene. Any delusion would be better than none at all, wouldn’t it?

  Kevin does quick takes around the room, at the people sitting there, revealing with only a few flickers of his eyelids his fear of what he sees.

  Joe’s instinct, as always, is to be protective. At horror movies, when Kevin was a child, Joe would force the boy’s head against his own chest during the scariest parts, warning him not to look. Now he watches those restless eyes and tries to trap them with his gaze. They are like small feral animals he cannot grasp or stay. He remembers how they’d once widened and focused at the stories of the drugstore holdups. But so did Daniel’s, and even Deborah’s. Joe refrains from saying many things. Don’t look. Don’t smoke. Be careful. Keep in touch. Don’t shoot.

  As if Kevin can discern these thoughts, he taps Joe lightly on the arm, and smiles. Those costly straightened teeth don’t belong in his face.

  “Want to hear a joke, Poppy?” Kevin asks.

  “Sure,” Joe says.

  “Okay. How come there are no ice cubes in Poland?”

  Ethnic jokes have always made Joe uncomfortable, but he says, “I’ll bite.”

  “Because the lady with the recipe died!”

  Joe suppresses a groan. Just as he’d suspected, the joke is childishly corny, yet mean at its core. What if the boy tells it some night at the wrong bar? I can’t protect him forever, Joe decides, and manages to crank out his strange new whinny. Kevin looks at him doubtfully for a moment and then joins in. He whoops and cackles the way he did when he was little. What a pair they make with their barnyard noises! Everyone stares at them, and Joe feels embarrassed and quickly enervated. Still, their laughter provides a grace note for the visit. It extends the fantasy that everything’s all right.

  When they go back to the room, Joe makes Kevin wait while he struggles among the things in his night-stand drawer. The money is in the back, where it’s least likely to be stolen. Sandra gives him an allowance, only what he might need for the week. The bills won’t separate the way they should, the way they used to. When he made change at the store, he’d snap each one between two fingers, and then hold it up to the light to be sure. Old money is easier. These dollar bills are like leaves of crisp lettuce, the pages of a new book, like freshly minted counterfeit money. His hands fly and fishtail and he has to give Kevin all of it.

  “No, no,” the boy says.

  “Yes!” Joe insists, and Brady shuts off the TV and says, “Hey, listen to your grandpa, sonny.”

  Kevin finally stuffs the money into his pocket. It is stupid to quarrel over what neither of them needs. Then he bends, blocking the light for an instant, and kisses Joe almost on the mouth.

  26

  KENNY IS A LITTLE LATE. The children have been fed and bathed when he gets home, and are waiting for him to put them to bed. Joy doesn’t ask where he’s been, and Kenny doesn’t tell her. It would be difficult to explain why he went to a bar, and then to a bowling alley, during a workday. He’s not much of a drinker and he’s never liked to bowl.

  Molly and Steven go to bed with uncharacteristic surrender. First, Kenny takes the paper airplane from his pocket and lets them take turns launching it from the high perch of his shoulders. Molly murmurs sleepily about the big airplane in the sky as Kenny tucks her in, and he guesses that she will dream of flying.

  The table is set for dinner, two places once more. He’s hungr
y, in spite of everything, and has the idea that they should both be fortified with food before they talk. Now, putting out the platter of chicken, watching Joy toss the salad, he says nothing. They’re back to their old silence, and he doesn’t mind. It’s much less tiring than keeping up that flow of jabber to fool and satisfy someone else. If he had not met Daphne, if neither he nor Joy had ever fallen in love again, would they have stayed like this? It’s a sorry compromise that Kenny knows people make, out of habit and convention.

  When they’ve finished eating, he helps with the dishes, as he’s always done. As always, she rises from the table first, and carries the large empty platter to the kitchen. He follows, and waits only until she’s set the platter on the counter. After all his procrastination, he wants to get it over with quickly. “Joy,” he says.

  She sits down immediately, and her attention is absolute. He’s caught her with the sound of her own name. When did he use it last?

  “Is it serious?” she asks. She might be consulting a doctor for a diagnosis, after a long secret illness.

  “Yes, very,” he says. “I’ve been seeing someone.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m afraid that I love her.”

  She taps her fingers on the tabletop. “So.”

  “And we’ve been so terrible together, you and I.” He says this pleadingly instead of as the fact it is.

  Joy looks past him to the window, as if her thoughts are elsewhere, as if she can’t concentrate. Will she demand another opinion?

  “Didn’t you guess?”

  “I suppose.” She doesn’t sound sure of herself. He remembers again her bravado when discussing Gene and Marilyn Warner. Transparent. Boring. Because it wasn’t happening to her then, to them.

  He wishes she would speak again now, but she doesn’t. So he continues. “I think I should leave. That I should move out.” He wants to shake her, tell her to wake up. His news isn’t having enough impact, and he wonders if she believes him. “Would you please say something?” he asks.