“Who says it’s for you?” she said as she went to answer it—and it always was for her. But she wondered what could be happening to him that he wouldn’t tell her—“You’re not involved in another case, are you?”
“What case? What are you talking about?”
“Anything is better than if he has to go inside again,” Betsy said to Michael. “I couldn’t stand it—and Sophie couldn’t stand it, so I’m sure she’d a thousand times rather lend him the money. He only has to ask,” she concluded, as if this were the easiest thing in the world though perfectly aware that it wasn’t. Dave’s relation to his wife was an affair of the utmost delicacy to him. He considered his love for her as the only pure and selfless part of him, which he was reluctant to tarnish with a request for money to keep him out of jail. Yet Betsy knew that, like herself, he could not help thinking of Sophie’s wealth, quietly accumulating in portfolios that had been growing in value over two generations, but at present as inaccessible, and useless, to him as any precious metal hidden in the bowels of the earth.
“You ask her,” Dave finally begged his sister. She resisted the idea, although it had already occurred to her. She dropped in on her sister-in-law every few days, giving her the latest news, mostly of a personal nature. Like Dave, Betsy was completely unconscious of the effect she had on people, simply taking it for granted that she cheered them up. She was equally unaware of any influence outside herself—of anyone else’s mood or ambience—so that whenever Michael said that he found Sophie’s apartment oppressive, she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Do you have any idea what all that furniture and stuff is worth?” she asked him. But now she too found herself oppressed; and twice she visited Sophie without being able to utter a word of what she had come to ask.
“Not yet,” she answered Dave’s anxious inquiry after each of these visits. “Give me time,” she pleaded, and he pleaded back, “I haven’t got much time.”
There was something so uncharacteristically piteous about the way he spoke that she resolved to do it at once. Perhaps it would be easier over the telephone—rapidly dialing the number with her skinny, nervous fingers, she listened to the ringing at the other end. No one answered for a long time, and she imagined it echoing through an empty apartment as through hollow space. And when Sophie at last answered, her voice seemed to come echoing from just such a hollow space, as deep and dark as the grave. “Don’t tell me you’ve been asleep—at this time of day!” cried Betsy in her cheeriest voice.
“Kill me but I can’t do it,” she confessed to Dave. He understood; after all, he felt the same himself, more strongly. He sat on Betsy’s sofa with his shoulders slumped in despair. She came close to him, took his hands and stroked them in silence. Then she remembered having seen this same gesture in the prison visiting room—a woman stroking a man’s hands, both of them silent as she and Dave were now silent. And as if he too remembered that scene, he said suddenly, “It won’t be minimum security this time. Not for a second offense.” He spoke what was, for him, dryly—that is, tonelessly; also without the tears that came to him so easily.
Betsy cried: “My God, it’s only money!” Just then Michael came in and she told him, “You ask her,” and before he could say a word—“Don’t you want to keep your uncle out of jail? You could do something for once in your life—something practical instead of just praying for people. Or whatever it is you do!” she shouted when he laughed. “All those hours sitting on the floor with your eyes turned up, what good is that supposed to do anyone?”
“No no,” he protested, “it’s only supposed to do good to me.”
“Well, I wish we could see some results then,” she pretended to grumble.
But it was because he was the way he was—uninvolved, innocent where everyone else carried a weight of past mistakes—that she felt she could send him to Sophie with their request: as a neutral messenger. Fair, spare, and clear-eyed, he looked neutral—she suppressed the word neuter, though it lurked in her mind.
Dave began to stir out of his mass of despair. He looked at his nephew with a flicker of hope; and with Dave it never took long for a flicker to become a leaping flame. “Tell her anything you want, Michael,” he said. “Every bad thing about me. I made a mistake and I’m paying for it. Tell her I’m paying for it, Michael. I don’t sleep nights and I can’t enjoy my food. I’m losing weight.” He went up to his nephew and put his arms around him: “Tell her I love her.”
When Sophie had disposed of all her business—with her lawyer, stockbroker, and accountant—and was satisfied that she was leaving everything in the best possible order, she felt she could give in more to her illness. She knew that, on the days when Dave or Betsy telephoned, they did not feel it necessary to visit her; so on those days she went back to bed and lay there, sinking into the sickness and the drugs prescribed for it. Strange bruises had appeared on her body; they looked like blows inflicted on her, though not from outside by any physical violence. She was careful to dress in such a way that they should be invisible, unknown to everyone except herself and the doctor who had explained their cause. Although it took her longer and longer every day, she continued to struggle into her full regimen of clothing and underclothing; and then, after Dave and Betsy had telephoned and she knew neither of them was coming, she struggled out of them again.
Michael arrived unexpectedly. Her maid opened the door, and with her finger on her lips, motioned him toward Sophie’s bedroom. This lay at the end of a whole series of rooms, each one shrouded and unused. Her bedroom alone appeared—not alive but at least serving a purpose, if only as a shelter or retreat. The curtains were drawn here too, but they were of some gold-textured material that allowed a faint light to filter through. Sophie lay white, old, and alone in the marital double bed. She was asleep, her head to one side, her mouth open and emitting heavy, labored breathing sounds. But something inside her was alerted to his presence: she opened her eyes and at once jerked herself up and into activity—twitching at her bed-jacket, fumbling at her hair, all the tiny motions with which she had, since her girlhood, kept herself scrupulously tidy.
“I thought you were Dave,” she admitted at once. “He called—I said are you coming, but he said not today. He didn’t come yesterday either, or the day before. He must be busy.” She smiled: “He’ll never stop.”
“No, he’ll never stop,” echoed Michael but not smiling, so that she asked at once, “There’s no trouble, is there?”
“There is trouble,” Michael said. “And it might get very bad for him—”
“Like before?”
“Worse than before.” She drew in her breath, and he plunged on: “He needs money; a lot of money.”
“But it’s all there,” she said—in plaintive impatience, as though arguing with someone unreasonable. “I spoke to Mr. G. only the other day—Mr. G. is the accountant. It’s what Dave calls him: G. For Good. Because what he dispenses is good. It’s our joke. Has he sent you to ask me?” she said. “Well, you can tell him it’s all right. I’ve done everything with Mr. R.B. The lawyer: Mr. Rotten Bad. Another joke.”
Michael said, “He needs it now.”
“Now?”
“In the next few weeks. As soon as possible.”
After a short silence, she became querulous: “I don’t know why he doesn’t come to see me. He hasn’t been since Tuesday. Tell him to come tomorrow. Tell him I’m not well.” And before Michael could ask anything, she went on rapidly: “Why go into all that—just tell him I need to see him. Surely it’s not so hard to understand,” she said, turning herself into a cross old woman, “that I want to see my own husband sometimes.”
“How do you know?” Betsy challenged Michael’s report. “You wouldn’t know. You’re not a doctor or anything.” However, after only a few moments, she said: “If she knows something, wouldn’t she tell us? Dave would move heaven and earth, take her to every specialist in the world—my God, nowadays there are treatments for everything . . . At least we could try.�
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Michael said, “But if she doesn’t want to try?”
“Everybody wants to live.” She blew out a volley of smoke from her cigarette. “Dave’s my own brother and I’m not defending him, but there’s one thing you can’t take away from him: whatever he’s done, he’s always had feeling for her. Michael, I wish your goddamn father had ever in his life had one-tenth that much feeling for me. Maybe I know better than anyone what it’s like to be married to a bastard—two bastards!—but I’ve still plenty, I’ve everything to live for, and if I thought anything was wrong with me—”
“There isn’t, is there?”
“I said if if if!” She laughed at the expression on his face. “Come here,” but it was she who went to him and took his face between her hands.
He cleared his throat but still his voice came out husky: “Try that smoke-enders program again. You have to quit.”
“I will. Don’t worry. I intend to live forever.” She stubbed out her cigarette, but then she said, “If there’s really something wrong with her, we’ll have to tell Dave,” and with this worry at once lit a new one.
Dave reacted with complete disbelief. He even began to quarrel with Betsy: “How would Michael know? He has no experience of that kind of thing. He’s just a boy.”
“He’s thirty-four years old,” said Betsy, narrowing her eyes at her brother in a dangerous way.
“But he’s never done anything except study and so on.”
“So by you that’s nothing? Tell me what’s something then—how many blondes do you have to fuck before you’ve done something?”
“Betsy, Betsy, is this a time to get in a fight?”
She realized it was not but continued sullen: “If you don’t believe Michael, you’d better go talk to her yourself. Anyway, she wants to see you today. Because Michael told her. About the hole you’ve gotten yourself in again.”
He sat holding his big head between his hands. He was bowed with shame. Although she was angry, disgusted with him, Betsy also felt sorry for him. “Well, you’d better go. Michael’s done some of the dirty work for you, but the rest you’ll have to do yourself.”
“I love Michael,” he murmured out of his deep self-abasement. “Michael is wonderful.”
“Yes, and I thank God every day that he hasn’t taken after you.”
“Me too,” Dave said. “I thank God too.” He got up and, as though leaving on some great enterprise, lumbered toward Betsy to embrace her. But she pushed him away—“Go on, she’s waiting for you”—and stood by the window with her arms folded and her back to him before he had even left the room.
But when he had gone, she became melancholy. This was uncharacteristic of her and also at variance with the bright rooms in which she lived. Even now the sun was streaming in through her windows, spilling its light over all her shiny objects and her richly blooming carpet. But it failed to light up Betsy’s heart, which was at that moment full of the dusky gloom pervading the place where her sister-in-law lived. And her thoughts strayed toward that other apartment where, any moment now, Dave would be entering: Sophie would give a start as he drew apart the curtains and the light came in and lit up both the room and her face. Betsy covered her own face, as if the light from that other place were blinding her.
Next moment she shattered her mood by calling out to Michael in a loud voice: “Are you home or not!” She knew he was but guessed he might be in his meditation, where she was not allowed to disturb him any more than if he were a lawyer working on a big case. She lit another cigarette and sat down by her telephone. The first two numbers she dialed were answered one by a maid and the other by a machine, but at a third try she reached a friend who shrieked with joy at hearing Betsy’s voice. They talked of matters of common interest for a while till the friend strayed to the subject of her latest relationship, with a man in his sixties, three times divorced, children and grandchildren all over the place. Betsy listened in fascination—the conversation became completely one-sided and lasted half an hour—but when she put down the receiver, other feelings overcame her. At first she voiced them as disgust—“At her age and with a hysterectomy”—but then again that unfamiliar melancholy seeped into her, and she sat quiet for a long time, just thinking and smoking.
Today Dave did not open Sophie’s curtains, nor did he rush in. It was her maid’s day off, and letting himself in with his key, he tiptoed through the silent apartment as far as the living room, which was empty. “In here!” came Sophie’s voice: for however drugged she was, and however quiet he tried to be, any sound from him at once detonated a response in her.
“Why are you in bed?” He spoke to her from the doorway—too timid to approach. There was something remote about her lying motionless amid the white sheets of their double bed.
“Oh, I’m being lazy—just for today,” she smiled. She patted the side of her bed but had to do it again before he ventured to perch there, and then gingerly, on one big buttock. They were silent, taking each other in, shy like a couple just getting to know each other.
“Michael was here,” she said at last.
“I know. He told me.”
“What did he tell you?”
He answered with a question of his own: “You’re sure you’re doing okay, Sophie? You’re not hiding anything from me?”
“What would I hide from you?” She smiled again—he knew her teeth were not her own but had never seen her without them. His eyes shifted to her bedside table. There was only one bottle of pills on it today. “Yes, I know you told me not to take anything,” she intercepted him, “but I haven’t gotten around to throwing them out.”
“Why don’t you tell what’s-her-name to do it? Your girl—that’s what she’s here for.” He took the bottle and held it up, trying to read the label. “I haven’t got my specs,” he said, replacing it. They were in his top pocket—she could see them—but what was the use of putting them on, for even if he could read the label, he didn’t know one medicine from another.
She said, “Michael told me about you.”
“Forget it. It’s not important. What’s important is your health.”
She lifted her hand where it lay on the sheet and touched the lapel of his suit. He looked down at her hand: it was the broad, heavy hand of her German ancestry but now reduced to its bony frame, big bumpy knuckles pushing through the paper-like skin.
She whispered, “Why don’t you open the curtains so we can see each other?”
“No. It’s nice this way.”
The light filtering through the golden bedroom curtains veiled the two of them in a pale haze that made them look spectral. She kept on whispering, and this seemed right because what they had to say to each other was outside of ordinary speech.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“As long as I’m here, nothing will happen to you.”
“But what if something happens to you—like before?”
He seized her hand, still on his lapel. Although he meant his grasp to be firm, strong, and reassuring, his hand was trembling more than hers. They held on to each other.
“I won’t let it happen,” she whispered.
He repeated: “Forget it. It’s not important. Only your health.”
“I told you a lie—those pills? The doctor prescribed them. He says I have to take them.”
“And then you’ll be okay?”
“Oh yes. But you know how bad I am with taking pills. Throwing up and so on.”
“How many do you have to take?”
“All of them in the bottle.”
“All at once? The doctor said? Dr. Blum?”
She nodded. “But he said Dave has to help you.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“I want to sit up.”
She tried to do so by herself, but he wouldn’t let her. He put his arms around her and lifted her and then kept holding her. Frail in his arms, she seemed to be made of some other, ethereal substance; her fine white nightdress enhanced this imp
ression. Her mouth was very near his ear and her words came wafting into him on her breath: “Mr. G. knows what to do, and Mr. R.B.”
“I don’t need to hear this,” he whispered back. “You’re not to think of any business till you’re absolutely one hundred per cent again—understand?”
She nodded, shutting her eyes. Joy and suffering lay so close together, they were really one and the same.
“Should I get some water? Or what do you want to take them with?”
“I’ll try with fruit juice. That—what’s it called? Apricot nectar. Or is it Ambrosia? It’s in the ice-box. But just one more minute. Hold me for one more minute.”
“As long as you want. Forever, if you want.” Tears had already gathered in his eyes, ready to flow and ease him.
BOBBY
After her last man friend, when the situation with Bobby became very difficult, Claire preferred to have only women friends. And as the years passed, and Bobby grew into his full and frightening manhood, his mother only felt comfortable with her oldest friend, Madeleine, and spent most of her time with her. That suited Madeleine better than anything. When they were at school together, Madeleine had had a crush on Claire that never entirely wore off, though their lives had diverged completely and there were years when they had lost touch. But now that the main activity of those years had ended and they were back, at least geographically, where they had started, the old relationship could be resumed.
It wasn’t as though either of them had changed all that much. They found that underneath everything—that is, underneath their transformed physical appearance—they retained the character of the schoolgirls they had been. They had a lot of fun together even now. Madeleine, who had lived abroad for many years, bought an apartment in New York in the same building and on the same floor as Claire’s. At weekends they drove to the place in the country that Madeleine had inherited from her parents. It was a two-story house, built in the twenties, and they could have comfortably lived there all the time. Madeleine wanted to, but Claire said she would miss the plays and concerts in the city. But it wasn’t that at all—they could have easily driven in for the day; it was Bobby. It was always Bobby.
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