Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

  Joscelyn’s smile wavered, and she glanced around apprehensively as if the couple might be sitting at one of the circular tables. She had never forgiven Gideon for his holier-than-thou refusal to lend Honora a few bucks in her time of need, had never quite gotten over her childhood rivalry with her overgorgeous middle sister—or her unexpected sense of loss at being cut off from her. “I drew better weather,” she said.

  Langley broke into laughter. “And a dashed sight better-looking groom. Young Malcolm could be a matinee idol.”

  Joscelyn’s smile blazed. “Oh, I don’t think he’s that spectacular,” she lied.

  * * *

  The bride and groom danced to “Call Me Irresponsible.”

  “Well, does the wedding suit you?” Joscelyn asked.

  “It’s the best day of my life,” Malcolm replied, his cheek touching hers.

  “From this day forth I walk three paces behind, kneel when I serve your dinner, speak only when spoken to, wash your back and massage your feet.”

  “That doesn’t sound like my wife,” he said, but his smile was young and yearning.

  Forgetting that they were alone on the waxed square, and that most people were watching them, she kissed his lips lightly. There was a spattering of applause.

  * * *

  Before their marriage, Joscelyn and Malcolm had cosigned the lease on a brand new apartment in the Wilshire district. They were allotted two parking spaces in the underground security garage and given a key to penetrate the six-foot iron mesh fence surrounding the swimming pool, zealous but necessary precautions. The compensation for living in this petty-crime neighborhood was that barring traffic foul-ups, they were only a ten-minute drive from work. This was a blessing for Joscelyn, who was learning her new avocation of housewifery quite literally from the ground up.

  Though Malcolm himself was not particularly neat, he was compulsive about his surroundings being in fastidious order. Joscelyn for the first time in her life had opened herself completely to another person and lived to please him—even though at times his demands seemed excessive. But if he enjoyed having their one-bedroom apartment spic and span, what did it matter that at times she felt herself perpetually stooped over to pick up strewn clothes, Coke bottles, coffee mugs, piles of newspaper, his soggy towels?

  Malcolm had an adventurous palate. He bought her heavy, color illustrated copies of Modern French Culinary Art and The Art of Italian Cooking. Having never cooked, not even as Honora’s sous-chef in that long ago San Francisco flat, Joscelyn had not envisioned the time and skilled effort involved, scraping and burning her fingers during the inevitable chopping, grating, blanching, sautéing and browning. As an engineer she planned with meticulous thoroughness, yet on her Saturday jaunt to the nearby Thriftimart she invariably missed throwing certain vital ingredients into her basket, so it was a rare evening that she did not have to stop on the way home for, say, a half pint of whipping cream or some shallots.

  Unlike her, Malcolm was gregarious, but those first few months he seldom suggested they get together with anyone. He, too, wanted to keep their new shared identity inviolably private. The only cloud was his work.

  He was in the Petrochemical Division, and his particular unit was planning a $10,000,000 offshore drilling platform that would be built above seventy feet of ocean swells. The client, Paloverde Oil, kept rejecting their construction plans. Each delay cost the Petrochemical Division’s profit center dearly, and the twenty-man team, of which Malcolm was a cog, got whiplashed. At these times, he turned moody, biting.

  To compound the problem, Joscelyn’s project with Los Angeles Gas and Electric was going unexpectedly smoothly.

  The utility company was concluding a changeover from 50 to 60 cycles and she was engineer-in-charge of industrial customers.

  To familiarize herself with problems in altering to match the new frequency, she took part in the changeover at a sheet-rolling mill. The only woman present, she helped the others inchingly remove a rusty, ancient behemoth of a 1500-hp motor. She placated the thick-accented Hungarian mill owner with promises that he would be back in business in no more than a week, she went to the rewind shop while the stator and rotor were rewound. One week to the day after the motor’s removal, at eight twenty-five P.M., the mill roared into operation again. The Hungarian hugged her, slivovitz flowed abundantly, then she sped in her Pinto through the dark night streets. She was rushing home to Malcolm and that crazy miracle where their private fantasies merged.

  * * *

  She could see their reflection in the mirror over the dresser, she in her white nylon trousseau negligee, ankles and wrists bound with run-ruined pantyhose, spread-eagled on the bed while he, wearing his striped seersucker pajama bottoms, stared imperiously down at her. They were Pirate and Captive—last night they had played Master and Slave. Though her intellect told her that their games were dumb, dumb, dumb, and though she felt an idiot and not a little self-conscious, she was already moist.

  “Malcolm, darling, come down here.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Fuck me.”

  “If you beg me for it, beg me right, maybe.”

  “Please, please.”

  “Later, then, after I’m finished with that virgin on your ship.”

  She surged with ridiculous envy for the imaginary untouched damsel. “No, me, please me.” She twisted and the Beautyrest mattress springs creaked. “I’m a virgin, too.”

  “If you’re lying, bitch, if you’re lying—”

  “How will you know?”

  “I have a machine.”

  She began to giggle. “Where did you get it? From a used-pussy lot?”

  Malcolm said nothing, waiting until her giggles subsided before he strode to the closet.

  “What’re you getting?” she asked.

  He fished around behind the suitcases.

  “Malcolm, remember we agreed? No whips.” She craned her neck and saw that he was opening a box to take out a foot-long machine with a soft-looking, beige plastic ball on the tip. “God, what’s that?” she cried. “Malcolm, it’s a vibrator. Don’t you dare. Untie me! Don’t you dare—it could be dangerous.”

  But he was unplugging the lamp on her side of the bed to use the socket. He flicked back the sheer nylon, baring the brown-curled apex of her spread legs.

  “No, Malcolm, no!” Her voice rose.

  He loomed above the bed, his handsome face glowing with pleasure as she twisted and begged. Was this Malcolm or one of the shadowy terrors of her childhood? She no longer felt that tinge of foolishness at their game, now she was thoroughly frightened, and—oddly—yet wetter.

  He switched on the vibrator. The ball whirred and pulsated.

  “Malcolm, damn it, untie me! This has gone far enough!”

  With an imperious glare, he touched the machine between her legs.

  “Oh . . . ahh, Malcolm, darling, stop . . . No, don’t stop. Oh, please, please . . . Come down here.” She was writhing helplessly, deliriously, a remote corner of her mind clouded with humiliation that he should be staring down at her as she arched herself toward the vibrations, as she gasped and threw back her head, baring her teeth in ecstasy. Her orgasm shook the bed.

  Malcolm fell on top of her bound, squirming body, not untying her until afterward. They fell asleep in each other’s arms. A miracle, she thought as she dropped off. The crazy way we make love is a miracle. . . .

  28

  “The label’s dangling from your sweater,” Malcolm said.

  Joscelyn draped the offending royal blue cashmere over her arm, replying unchagrined, “What’s the dif? Tonight’s just the four of us.”

  They should already have been at Curt and Honora’s for the barbecue. Malcolm, though, had been held up while a Paloverde representative had pointed out that the construction plans didn’t properly utilize the rig’s belowdeck space, and on the way home he had been trapped in the rush hour traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, inching through the August heat wa
ve in his unairconditioned VW. Even now, after a hurried shower and wearing khaki Bermudas and white Izod shirt, he looked uncomfortably flushed.

  “Only you, me, the top man and his wife,” he said.

  “I’ll mend it later, when I have time.”

  “You’re too damn busy for everything! Except your goddamn work!”

  A muscle worked at her eye. Malcolm’s moods had shifted dangerously these past few weeks because of the Paloverde job. His flare-ups had increased her anxieties about their age difference, the four levels she was above him, the considerably larger paycheck she deposited in their joint account. She knew she should keep quiet but discretion was not in her makeup.

  “Aren’t you getting a mite overwrought about a couple of missing stitches?” she inquired.

  Malcolm was transformed into a baleful, critical searchlight, glaring around the room from the rumpled gray linen dress she’d worn to work thrown over the unmade bed to his own sweat-damp suit slung on the chair to the yellow plastic laundry basket piled with unfolded clean wash. “You don’t know the first thing about what being a wife means,” he snarled.

  “All right, I get the message.” With cold, stiff fingers, she set down the sweater. “I don’t need it anyway, not in this weather.”

  They took her Pinto because of the air conditioning. Malcolm drove, turning on KRLA fullblast. To the barbaric blare of teenage rock he cut savagely around other cars. She tried not to think about that night he’d slugged her.

  It turned out they weren’t Curt and Honora’s only guests.

  The barbecue, built above the house on its own terrace with a covered patio and bar-kitchen was a sort of Petit Trianon where the Ivorys could entertain without servants. Honora wasn’t up there yet, but Curt, wielding a long-handled fork, stood presiding over the browning chicken. On a nearby chair lounged an overweight, darkly tanned man with a large nose and bushy black mustache.

  “Fuad!” Joscelyn cried happily. “I didn’t know you were in Los Angeles. When did you get in?”

  “Last night.” Rising to his feet, he held out both hands. “I flew ten thousand miles to see my adorable, faithless Joscelyn.”

  When she was a gawky, unpleasant ten-year-old new to Los Angeles, Fuad Abdulrahman (here on business connected with a highway that Curt had just built in Lalarhein) had vowed she was the exact near nubile maiden for his harem, and since then he’d kept up the innuendos in a fond, avuncular tone. Fuad favored the loudest of American sport clothes—as evidenced by his ample, radically patterned crimson and purple sport shirt, his red slacks—and Joscelyn never could reconcile this taste with Curt’s assurances that at home Fuad wore the traditional Lalarheini black robe, the bisht, and covered his head with a white gutra held in place by a coiled black agal. His deep-chested laughter and general air of affectionate optimism made it impossible for Joscelyn not to like him.

  “You old faker,” she said, hugging his robust body.

  Malcolm, who had met Fuad only once, at the wedding, held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, your highness.”

  “Among friends, it’s Fuad,” Fuad said.

  “Unless we’re doing business.” Curt grinned at his friend. “Then kneeling and ring kissing is obligatory.”

  “You got the contract, didn’t you?” Fuad retorted.

  In the early sixties oil had been discovered below the Q’ram, Lalarhein’s merciless sea of sand, and four companies, including Talbott’s, had bid on laying the pipeline and building the five pumping stations that would carry the viscous treasure two hundred and thirty miles to the Persian Gulf. Ivory had been awarded the turnkey contract—that is to say, the company would be in total charge until the installation was complete and ready to go into operation.

  “Malcolm, Joss.” Honora was coming up from the house. In her loose, flowered Pucci caftan, she seemed to float above the grass. “I was just trying to call you.”

  “Sorry, we’re late,” Joscelyn said. “The traffic’s fierce tonight.”

  “Excuses, excuses.” Malcolm grinned at the others. “My wife! Engineer or no, she’s a real gal. You should’ve seen her in front of the closet deliberating over what sweater to wear. Then, of course, she realized it’s too hot to need one.”

  Joscelyn forced herself to smile as naturally as possible.

  During dinner, the discussion centered on the pipeline.

  Joscelyn was not in the Petrochemical Division and Malcolm was. He said very little, and therefore she found herself blabbing. How did they plan to move and weld the big thirty-inch pipes, where would they house their crews? “Curt, won’t you have a big problem getting people to stay on the job?”

  “You’d be surprised at the pull of double pay and the tax break that the government gives overseas workers.”

  “In our division,” Malcolm said diffidently, “it’s not the money. The guys see the project as an important challenge.”

  “Challenge?” Fuad’s black mustache twitched. “In the Q’ram the challenge is how to take a piss—it comes out hot tea.”

  “I’d be over there like a shot if I were in the running,” said Malcolm. Only engineers and designers above a certain level had the opportunity to go to Lalarhein.

  “It really is beastly, Malcolm,” Honora said with an apologetic smile at Fuad.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Joscelyn teased. “Doesn’t everybody compare it to the French Riviera?”

  “There’s no oil in the Riviera,” Malcolm said quietly.

  They had finished eating. Bright ocher Italian plates clinked as Honora cleared them of heaped up chicken bones and carried them to the small but complete kitchen—later Millie or Paco would come and finish cleaning up.

  They relaxed over their coffee in the swift-falling Los Angeles twilight.

  “Well, Joscelyn,” asked Fuad, “how do you find marriage?”

  “It’ll pass muster,” she said.

  “Is that all?” Fuad asked.

  “Actually, it’s heaven.”

  “Heaven?” Malcolm smiled at her. “You don’t spend much time there.”

  “We’re bogged down with a changeover for a local electrical company,” Joscelyn explained to Fuad.

  “Joss’s being modest,” Curt said. “She’s way ahead of schedule.”

  Malcolm stared down at the yellow tablecloth, which the last blaze of sunlight was turning a rufous orange.

  Tomorrow being Tuesday, a workday, the Pecks left before ten. Malcolm took Sunset home, silent, handling her car with the same frenetic lack of consideration for other drivers that he had shown on the way over. Joscelyn clutched a striped paper cocktail napkin she’d taken by mistake, staring out the window as the dark shadows of Bel Air then Beverly Hills estates gave way to the brightly lit strip with its artful billboards of singers and entertainers.

  By the time they reached the underground garage she could no longer bear the silence between them. Following Malcolm up the cement steps, she said, “Fuad’s terrific, isn’t he?”

  Malcolm had reached the door to the hall. Wheeling, he said with low intensity so she could feel the force of his breath. “You make me want to puke!”

  In their apartment he snatched the bourbon from the kitchen shelf, then turned on the TV, taking a long slug from the bottle while Johnny Carson’s image came onto the screen. With friends Malcolm might have a couple of drinks, and at dinner he sometimes opened a Heineken. That was the extent of it. To see him slurp from the bottle like an AA going off the wagon made Joscelyn’s stomach tense into a hard ball. She scurried into the bedroom.

  “This isn’t a goddamn barn,” he snarled. “Can’t you ever shut a door?”

  She closed the door quietly.

  With a mixture of martyrdom and nerve-tingling dread, she made the bed, hung up their clothes, scrubbed the toilet and washbowl with Ajax, folded the wash, stacking the Jockey shorts and pajama bottoms in Malcolm’s side of the bureau. From time to time she went to listen at the closed door. There was only televi
sed laughter and Carson’s joking voice kidding her not.

  Not until she was ready for bed did she dare go into the living room. Malcolm was slumped in front of the long, walnut “entertainment center” that had been a wedding present from one of Curt’s business associates.

  “Malcolm, it’s after twelve,” she said quietly.

  He lurched to his feet, coming toward her, his mouth tensed into a distorted smile. He slammed his fist at the left side of her head. She gripped onto the doorjamb to keep herself from falling.

  “That’s just a taste of what you’ll get if you don’t lay off me!”

  Clasping the side of her head, she staggered to the bed, collapsing on the monogrammed blanket cover. He slammed the door shut.

  Her cheek and ear throbbed hotly and she could hear a resonant whine. The whine didn’t let up. Was some delicate part of her ear broken? Should she phone Kaiser Permanente, the medical group to which all Ivory employees belonged? What would she tell the doctor on call? That a Pringle label connected to a sweater by a thread had caused the blow? For by now she was convinced that she was to blame for Malcolm’s rage. If I hadn’t acted like a bitch when he was all hot and bothered from the traffic jam, none of this would have happened. I knew how badly things had been going for him at work. She turned, gingerly lowering her head to the pillow, and to her surprise, dozed off.

  She awakened, lifting her head. The whining had been replaced by hoofbeats and a weird, strangled sound that rose, diminished, then rose again.

  She jumped from the bed, conscious of the sharp pain cutting across the left side of her ear and jawbone. In the living room an old black and white Western jerked across the screen. Malcolm, his chin slumped on his chest, was wheezing those agonized hoops of sound.

  He was crying in his sleep.

  Kneeling in front of him, she touched his arm lightly. “Darling, darling, wake up.”

  His eyes opened and he stared at her, bewildered, frightened. “Joscelyn . . .?”