by John Metcalf
She laughed.
“Boog,” she said, “will not set foot in that house. I’ve just come back from Florida visiting him. Did I mention that?”
“Boog?”
“My son. He’s working there now. In a hotel until he finds himself.”
Peter looked at the white shoes, one of them standing, one lying on its side. He’d always felt absurdly moved by women’s shoes. Such frail shells. Compared with men’s shoes, like toys. Glass slippers. He’d never been quite sure, though, what he felt, sexually, about feet.
“Boog’ll be up for the trial,” she said. “It’s physical and mental cruelty.”
“Trial?”
“Thing.”
“I thought physical was supposed to be the hardest to prove?”
“Oh, I’ve got grounds,” she said. “He’s admitted it. I’ve got grounds all right. You just don’t know.”
“I hope it just goes . . .”
“You just don’t know,” she said. “I could tell you all sorts of things.”
Peter knew she would.
He recognized and remembered the condition. He remembered the need to tell friends and acquaintances, the compulsion to inform even strangers of his anguish. He remembered the long drunken nights in patient apartments, words said, actions described, the paralysing replay of words. He said. She said. Words becoming meaningless sounds which were the echo of the pain that would not go away.
He remembered standing in Dominion, the Muzak and bright light enveloping, standing in front of the freezer section, glass, chrome, gazing with unseeing eyes at the carcasses of Butterball turkeys, tears running unheeded.
“He used to lock me in the bedroom,” she said.
“Oh, yes!” she said in answer to Peter’s raised eyebrow.
“He didn’t even like me to leave the house. Always wanted to know where I was. There’s nothing wrong with bridge, is there? Just a group of girls. It wasn’t as if it was men. Because that isn’t true. I mean, you understand these things. You’ve been married. I know he works very hard. You have to give him that. But he wouldn’t for night after night and then sometimes when he did he couldn’t, you know, couldn’t manage. And then he used to shout at me and say it was my fault and beat me up. He used to hit me with a shoe tree.”
“Good God!” said Peter.
“And if I even spoke to another man at a party he’d beat me up when we got home. That’s why Boog left. Boog hates him.”
“Boog.”
“My son. “
“Yes, I know. You said. But I mean Boog.”
“In Florida,” she said.
Peter stared down into the diminished ice cubes in his glass.
“There isn’t any harm in discotheques, is there? I’ve always been a good girl. Nineteen years. Nineteen years and I’ve always been a good girl. But that’s not what he’s saying. And after I told him I was leaving, well, he wanted to do things.”
She nodded.
“You mean. . . ?”
“You know,” she said. “After I told him, after I’d seen the lawyer, he changed, couldn’t get enough of me. Pestered me all the time wanting to do things in chairs and from behind and in the afternoon. I was a good wife to him. I bore him two children. I was always a good girl. He used to listen on the extension phone.”
Peter shook his head.
“I shouldn’t be telling you these things,” she said.
Peter nibbled around the olive.
“He stopped going to the bathroom,” she said.
“What?”
“Four or five months,” she said, “he stopped going to the bathroom. Before, I mean. Before I left. That isn’t normal, is it? You can’t tell me that’s the action of a normal person.”
“What do you mean, ‘He stopped going to the bathroom?’”
“Last Christmas,” she said, “I bought him a winemaking kit that was just part of his present—not last, Christmas before last—and there was a shiny thing in it like soda-water things, you know, the things that make soda water, the bubbles, but it was for putting corks in bottles. He had a funnel from the office in the upstairs bathroom and another in the powder room—I did mention he was a doctor, didn’t I?—the office’s in the house, you see, and he did it in bottles and then he used the thing to put corks in.”
“When I was a little boy,” said Peter, “my mother used to make jam and she stuck on little labels with the name of what it was on it. They were white with a blue border. I remember that. Sticky on the back.”
“Rows and rows and rows of bottles,” she said. “It isn’t very nice, is it? He kept them in the den.”
“Perhaps,” said Peter, “he was an oenophile.”
“You’re quite right,” she said. “It’s filthy. Nobody could call that normal.”
She sighed and patted his arm.
“But the past’s the past,” she said. “Aren’t I right?”
“Right,” said Peter.
“So let’s drink,” she said, “to the future! To our futures!”
They drank.
He followed directions to the bathroom.
The dishwasher seemed to be mounting to some sort of climax.
It was nice in the bathroom. There were big mirrors and on the floor a furry carpet. And net curtains looped back on either side of the bath. And a coloured plastic box to put a box of Kleenex in. And a cut-glass jar of bath salts with a pink ribbon round the neck. He weighed himself. Trying not to make a noise, he eased back the mirrored cabinet doors and examined the pills, salves, tubes, pots, and potions. Here there were two jars of Vaseline; all women had jars of Vaseline; it was puzzling. He could think of only two bathroom uses for the stuff—to smear on infants or to facilitate the commission of unnatural acts. Neither seemed likely here, he hoped. Vaseline, he decided, was one of the mysteries of the female life.
He weighed himself again but it was difficult to see the wavering arrow. The toilet seat had a furry cover too and he suddenly wanted to know what it would feel like. He lowered his trousers and sat. It was nice.
He thought of the fallen white shoes, one standing, one lying on its side.
Sad he; sad she.
Children’s feet, though, were a different matter. Children’s feet were pink, diminutive, not deformed by shoes, veins, calluses, not hardened at the heels by yellowing skin.
Poor sad Peter Thornton he whispered to the furry floor what are you doing in this sad lady’s house?
He would have liked to have stayed in the bathroom, read, gone to sleep on the carpet. Leaning forward was making him dizzy. He consulted his watch. Sitting on the furry seat was like what sitting on a St Bernard would be like. Which would rescue him and take him home and give him aspirins and milk. He stared at the tiled wall. Home, he thought, for no good reason, is the sailor home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.
As he passed the kitchen door he saw Elspeth McLeod standing to one side of the open dishwasher throwing handfuls of green stuff into the billowing steam. The steam was making her hair wilt.
“What are you doing?” he said.
A strand of hair hung across her puzzled face.
“Parsley,” she said.
“Parsley?”
“Forgot the garnish,” she said.
She locked the dishwasher and started the cycle again.
“Did you know,” said Peter, “there’s a kind of wine called Pisse Dru?”
“You always forget something,” she said.
She linked her arm with his and they went back into the living room.
“I shouldn’t really have told you the things I told you,” she said, “but some faces you can tell about. I can see from your face that you’ve been through a lot of suffering. There are two kinds of people in this world—there are faces that have suffered and there are f
aces that haven’t suffered.”
She drew away from him and touched his brow, traced the corners of his mouth. Nodding, she snuggled closer again, drawing her legs up onto the couch. Her skirt was rucked. Peter looked at her thigh.
“Your face is nice,” she said. “Very strong but very gentle. It’s a masculine face.”
He regretted the advent of pantyhose. A nasty garment; peculiarly asexual. Before, when he was younger, there had been brownness, sheen, then, shockingly, the stark contrast of white thigh. Always an incredibly intimate whiteness.
“You’re a very cautious person, aren’t you, Peter?”
‘“Am I?” he said.
He stared at the Eskimo carving. The larger they got the less artistic they became; great nasty lumpy thing.
“You don’t have to be cautious with me,” she said.
There was a silence.
The silence extended.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve been telling you all about me. What about you?”
“There isn’t much to tell. It all happened three years or more ago.”
“But what happened?”
“She seemed to feel there was more in life or something. Or ought to be. And she met another man and . . . well, she just left.”
“Does she love him?”
“She seems to, yes.”
“And you were unhappy?”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
He lighted another cigarette.
But she had said what happened?
It was a question he couldn’t answer. Even after three long years he did not know what had happened. With the passage of time, it had all become, if anything, even more senseless. One day, it seemed to him now, he had been a father who brought home flowers and did the shopping on Saturdays, the next, the occupant of a dismantled apartment.
Of course it could not have happened in quite that way. There had been talk, a lot of talk. Words. “Growth,” “Fulfilment,” “Freedom,” “Human something-or-other.” He suspected now that, for all the mornings he had awoken crying, he was merely victim of the clichés of Cosmopolitan and Ms.
And Jeremy?
What he felt, he did not know. He did not know.
“You’re very quiet,” she said. “Did I say something?”
“No, no. Sorry. Just thinking.”
She sighed and squeezed his arm.
He stared at the Eskimo thing.
“How about another drink?” she said. “Do you think we should?”
They drank. She sighed again.
“You don’t find me unattractive, do you? I’m not unattractive, am I?”
“You’re very attractive.”
‘’I’m not ugly or anything,” she said. “I bore him two children.”
“Certainly not,” said Peter.
“I’ve got Hester,” she said. “He needn’t think he can kick me out without a penny.”
“Certainly not,” said Peter.
“There are some things,” she said, “that people shouldn’t say to other people. There are some things you just don’t say.”
“I think I’d agree with that,” said Peter.
“My lawyer says it constitutes mental cruelty.”
“What does?”
“When he’d done it—you know—when he did it, which wasn’t very often I can tell you and, it’s not as if I’m unattractive, he’d stand up on the bed and shout at me—would you believe that? And I worried he’d wake the children because it isn’t the sort of thing . . .”
“Shouting about what? What do you mean shouting?”
“Well, that’s the point. That’s mental cruelty.”
“What is?”
“Because do you know what I had to say?”
“No.”
“I had to say, ‘You are, Robert.’ Standing on the bed,” she said, “shouting.”
“You are what?”
“Not a thought for the children.”
“You are what?” said Peter.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“What did he shout when you had to say you are?”
“You mean, what did he shout?” she said.
Drawing away from him, she straightened her back, turned.
“WHO’S YOUR MASTER?”
“Shsss!”
“WHO’S YOUR MASTER?”
“Shsss! They’ll hear next door.’’
“Was I speaking loudly?”
“Just a bit.’’
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s just . . .”
“If I was speaking loudly,” she said, “I’m sorry.’’
“That’s terrible.”
“I apologize,” she said.
She peered into the empty cigarette packet and then dropped it on the glass table. She groped for the white handbag and rummaged again.
“Oh!” she said. “Look what I’ve found! I knew they were somewhere.”
She opened a fat paper wallet of colour snaps.
“These were all taken in Florida,” she said. “Did I mention that?”
Leaning heavily against him, giving his thigh a quick squeeze, she started to pass him the photographs one by one. Dutifully, one after another, he stared at beaches, palm trees, hotel façades, swimming pools, swim-suited groups, reclining people in reclining chairs.
That’s me.
And with dismissive gestures, You don’t know these other people.
That’s the ocean.
He stared at two lounging young men who were grinning at him. They held tall drinks. They were tanned and muscled. One wore red trunks, the other white. There was a palm tree. The pool was blue. To the side of the picture stood a waiter in a white jacket.
“There’s not an ounce of fat on their bodies,” she said.
She tapped the photo with a be-ringed finger.
“They’re famous,” she said. “There’s one—here it is—of me with them in a group. Here. You don’t know these other people.”
He stared at the captured smiles.
“They’re very famous junior league hockey players,” she said.
* * *
Sitting in the Happy Wanderer finishing his dinner and gazing at the travel posters of ruined castles, bare-knee bands, and Rhinemaids with steins, Peter realized that he had arrived at a decision.
Three weeks or more had passed since Elspeth McLeod. He had not been out much—a movie with Alan and Nancy North, a farewell evening with one of the young assistants who was going to London for a course at the V & A, bridge with Hugh and Noreen. He had allowed the coming March sale to take up most of his time; afternoons and evenings spent examining the furniture and bric-à-brac of lives, suggesting reserve prices, met always with incredulity that cherished objects would fetch but a fraction of what had been paid for them, bread-and-butter work usually left to the younger men.
Peter realized that the decision that had been growing in him during these days and weeks was probably an inevitable one. It was, he told himself, a decision towards which the course of his life had inevitably and inexorably brought him. He examined the decision, tried out forms of words in his head, declarations. Declarations which began: The die is cast . . . From now on . . . From this time forth . . .
His quest, he had decided, was ludicrous. What had he to do with Stella Bluth, Elspeth McLeod, and stretching fore and after, all that sad sisterhood? His life was in need of rationalization and restructuring. All, he told himself, was not lost. He was not exactly young—middle age approached—but neither was he old; not handsome but not unattractive. He had friends, a comfortable income, wide interests. He would embrace the single life, honourably discharge his duties as a parent so far as that was possible, live to himself.
As a sign of this
decision, he would make his apartment habitable, invest in it time and care. He would, after two years of camping in it, move into his apartment. With growing excitement, he saw that he would paint, polish, scour, and burnish, re-arrange the lighting, buy new furniture. He would cook. He would buy supplies, utensils, Copco enamel pots.
He finished his coffee.
His waitress was the large woman. He watched her making out the bill. He was pleased he’d got her and not the small, Heidi-like one. He pocketed his cigarettes and matches. The large woman’s handsome face had reminded him of some other face and the likeness had troubled him for months until he’d recognized it as the impassive gaze of the woman in Giorgione’s Tempesta. The resemblance was striking. She frowned as she figured the tax from the table on the back of her pad. He imagined her as in the painting, naked, babe at breast. He left a large tip. Past the smelly, damp overcoats and striding towards his local A & P, he saw himself the painting’s other character, that enigmatic youth against the violent sky.
In the foyer of the apartment building he checked his mailbox; it contained yet another letter from the Victorian Order of Nurses addressed to Mary Chan.
In his living room, he took his purchases from the shopping bag and stood them one by one on the coffee table. Cling-Fast Dust Remover, Mr. Clean, J-Cloths, lemon-scented liquid furniture polish, Ajax, Windex.
He wondered where to start. He moved a sticky brandy snifter and picked up a sweater. He opened the closet to throw the sweater in and saw the carton, still secured by glossy tape, the barrel. He hesitated and then, with sudden resolution, reached in to grasp its far corners. To unpack the carton was a kind of declaration, he decided, a laying of ghosts, a line ruled beneath the column. He wrestled the box out into the living room and then sat on the couch to look at it. Someone had scrawled on the side “Bedroom.”
He remembered the two moving men, white patches on the walls, echoes, the rooms becoming hollow. At nine in the morning they had been drinking beer. One, he remembered, called the other “Kangaroo.”
He hunted for a clean knife in the kitchen and slit the glossy tape. Inside the carton:
three blankets
newspaper-wrapped things
a wooden train (Jeremy’s)
bundles of catalogues from Sotheby’s and Parke Bernet (his)