“You don’t believe I could use you and dispose of the wrapper.”
“Could you?”
“Will you listen to the point I’m making? You get all mean and bewildered when people aren’t as decent as you are.”
“Alix—”
“That’s me. And I was there, remember, in Arrowhead. I saw you with Bobby Jean. You cared, Roger, cared. And don’t tell me you helped the gardener’s boy because he was black and currently relevant. Another case of caring. You waited for Vliet. I never met anyone else who puts himself out for decency and caring.”
Embarrassed, delighted, and guilty because he was so much less than she thought, he said, “Sweet, I’m hardly Jesus Christ.”
“For that you’d have to be Jewish.”
He laughed.
“I did get nasty back there,” she said. “You were making noises like you didn’t want me. Why am I so damn vulnerable with you? It scares me. I mean, do I jump from the Beverly Wilshire roof on the day you don’t want me?”
“I’ll love you until I die,” he said.
It wasn’t the remark a young man of absolute integrity makes. Roger hadn’t intended it. He had meant to say I love you, which he could with honesty. I love you is present tense. I’ll love you until I die is something else again. A promise, an obligation. Roger had dedicated himself to the admittedly archaic concept of behaving at all times with honor. The only thing that stopped him from being a prig about it, as Alix had pointed out, was his sullen bewilderment when he (or others) didn’t live up to his principles. He never made a commitment he couldn’t keep, even on a social level. A large seabird bumped into the window. They looked up. Alix saw Roger’s expression.
“I painted you into that,” she said. “Roger, tomorrow I have to explain about the transfer to Father. Come with me?”
He kissed her shoulder. “Won’t that be obvious?”
“I have this thing for both of you. I’d like my Oedipuses to meet.”
“To show which you’re sleeping with?”
“For a Phi Bete, Roger, you really aren’t very brilliant. Can’t you understand? This has nothing to do with sleeping. I am changing schools. A little fast, maybe, but a simple transfer. This semester I enter fabulous Baltimore College—wherever it is—and in the fall, Hopkins.”
“Both in Baltimore,” Roger said. “Where I am.”
“A connection Father won’t let himself make.” (Alix underestimated Philip here.)
“I guess they’ll all know,” Roger said. “Once you’re there, it can’t be a secret.” A secret, anyway, that Roger was ambivalent about: it was his basic honesty versus his desire to protect Alix from criticism. He felt even more unworthy that she was making the transfer.
“Stop brooding,” she said. “In fond parental eyes it’ll be another Andy Hardy boy-girl thing, not the CBS Love Affair of the Week.”
He gave her a long, tender kiss.
“Father has to know first. For gross reasons,” she said. “He pays the tuition.”
8
Philip lived in a new two-story apartment in a new part of the marina. They arrived the following morning around eleven.
“You’re home early,” Philip said to Alix.
“A couple of days,” Alix replied.
“Weren’t you enjoying Hawaii, hon?”
“It was fabulous. Thank you, Father.”
“Why didn’t you ring? I’d’ve picked you up.”
“My car was at the airport. Roger hitched out to meet me.”
Philip glanced over her shoulder. “So you’re the twin,” he said.
“No-no. Roger’s the twin.”
They shook hands. Roger noted that Alix’s father was tall, an inch or so taller than he, around six-three, and since it was Saturday, wore informal white ducks and a boat-neck striped shirt, a cinematic man smiling at him with gleaming teeth.
“Come on in, Roger,” he said.
Philip appeared to sense he should let Hawaii go, and in the living room (a two-story window overlooking a fortune in masts) he began a conversation about UCLA basketball and Lew Alcindor, a topic that was easy enough, yet Roger kept shifting in his chair. He tried leaning back. The seat felt uncomfortably short. He dreaded hearing Alix lie about the transfer, he ached to blurt out the truth. She carried her coffee mug to the couch near her father.
“The thing of it is,” she said, “I’m not going back to Pomona.”
Philip tilted his head as if he were afflicted with otosclerosis and in need of a hearing aid. He said, “The English Department’s good at Pomona.”
“Great. At ripping apart my favorite novels.”
“Alix, are you saying you’re dropping out?”
“No-no. I wouldn’t do that. There’s this other school I found.”
“Oh?”
“Baltimore College,” she said.
“Baltimore,” Philip echoed. His deep tan was fading to putty color.
Roger gazed out the window. A red-and-white sail moved along the finger of water. From this comfortless chair he couldn’t see the boat, and the sail might have been a stage prop pulled by ropes.
“Well,” Philip said, “there’s plenty of time to think about it.”
“There isn’t. I’m transferring this semester.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not if I start now.”
“Your dorm fees and tuition are paid.”
“They’ll refund the dorm.”
“I’m, afraid, they, won’t,” Philip said. His separation of words was faintly sarcastic.
“They will,” Alix said. “I’m pretty sure, Father.”
“No. It’s in the contract.”
“Maybe if I apply for the refund before—”
Philip rose. “We can discuss it tomorrow.”
“Daddy—”
“Alix, later.”
Roger stood, his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides.
“But we must talk if I’m going to enroll now.”
“You aren’t, hon. So there’s no rush, no rush at all.” And he extended his hand to Roger, saying it had been a pleasure. Roger, flushing, took the outstretched hand.
As Alix kissed her father good-bye, she was smiling. So was Mr. Schorer. Affectionate. Serene. Roger wondered if talent for concealment were an hereditary trait, like the excessive beauty, like sickle cell.
Earlier they had decided to go from her father’s to his home so he could, if possible, check in with Vliet. They headed for Glendale.
“Look,” Roger spoke first, fifteen minutes later—they were on the San Diego Freeway, carving into the Valley. “I shouldn’t have been there.”
She raised her dark glasses, looking at him.
“The association with Baltimore was pretty strong,” he said.
She kept watching him.
“You’re the one who said to keep the sex under the blankets,” he muttered.
She replied, pleasantly, “Say you weren’t there. He would’ve assumed I’m under them with Vliet.”
This was his father’s Saturday off. The house smelled of bacon, and his parents were eating late-lunch sandwiches in the breakfast nook. Roger introduced Alix to Sheridan.
Em, after her initial greeting, did not offer bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, or even coffee. She didn’t look up.
She couldn’t look at Alix. Vliet had come home from Arrowhead to announce he was dropping medicine. Then (after a certain amount of what Sheridan called interference from Gene) Vliet had made it public. The entire Family now knew that Vliet was not finishing Johns Hopkins but going to work in Van Vliet’s, a training program, Gene called it, but Vliet would be less than a checking clerk! And who was to blame for all this? Em and Sheridan together had ferreted out the few known facts, discussing the matter exhaustively: they had come up with an answer. Alix. Alix was to blame. And after this discovery, Em knew she hated the girl now standing in the doorway, hated her for so many different reasons that she, Em, couldn’t begin to
sort them out. Alix obviously had slept with both her sons—and who knew how many others? Alix was a tramp. Alix had caused a split between the twins. Alix was too beautiful. Alix wore her pants too tight and her skirts too fashionably short. Alix’s mother, although a former friend, was an adultress, a divorcée, and married to a man Em couldn’t abide. Alix was a Jew—this normally wouldn’t have bothered Em, Sheridan yes, but not Em. Alix had caused Vliet to drop out of Johns Hopkins. Alix had stopped Vliet from finishing what he had started. Alix had made Vliet unhappy and Roger happy. In Em’s distraught mind it wasn’t clear which of these last two was worse. In either case Alix was a tramp. Roger was a serious boy, and maybe, over Em’s dead body, would end up trapped into marriage with Alix. Alix Alix Alix. Em’s mind was a weighted mass of loathing that never could hurdle her high standard of fairness. She couldn’t stand being under the same roof as the girl.
“Roger,” Sheridan said, “why not take Alix into the living room?”
Alix flipped through a Reader’s Digest. Roger stared at the sports section. He read the same paragraph ten times and couldn’t remember a word. The back door opened and closed and he saw his father sit in the redwood chair that faced the garden. After a few minutes Em came into the entry. Her lipstick was too bright. Both Roger and Alix stood.
“Roger,” Em said, looking only at him. “Vliet brought down Alix’s suitcase.” Her voice was icy. “It’s in the front closet. You better put it in her car for her.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Reed,” Alix said.
“Where’s Vliet?” Roger asked.
“Aunt Caroline’s,” Em replied with more frost.
“Alix was in Hawaii,” he said. The truth being in part a lie, stumbled out.
Em’s fingers plucked at her skirt seam. “Roger, your father wants to talk to you.”
“Now?”
“I’m sure Alix will excuse you for a moment,” Em said and hurried back to the kitchen.
Roger went out to the patio. Midafternoon sun hit full, a hazy, reddish light. He sat on the edge of the barbecue bench, looking at his distorted reflections in his father’s dark glasses.
“Your mother.” Sheridan said without preamble, “doesn’t want Alix here.”
“Sir?”
“I think you heard me.”
“It’s more a matter of understanding.”
Sheridan’s jaw tightened. The resemblance between father and son increased. “You know your mother, Roger. Her line of reasoning should be apparent.”
“Mother likes Alix. Vliet’s had her over several times.”
“She’s what we used to call a real tomato.”
Roger stood.
“All right,” Sheridan said. “You’re too old for me to tell you what to do.”
“But why doesn’t Mother want Alix here?”
“Roger, you’ve never been stupid. Don’t start now.”
“Dad?”
“You want it spelled out? On the simplest level, then. Your mother believes that for the past six days and nights you’ve been with Vliet’s girl.” His tone questioned.
The muscles below Roger’s eyes grew taut.
“Well, if you boys want to share, that’s your business. But your mother is old-fashioned.” Sheridan paused. “Around the house I’m old-fashioned, too. Take her anyplace you want. Just not here. Not with us.”
Hypocrite, Roger thought.
“Your mother’s upset. I’ve never seen her so upset. And I don’t need to remind you how you go to college.”
The trusts. “No, you don’t,” Roger said, adding, “sir.”
“Roger.” Sheridan took off his dark glasses. “This hasn’t been much fun for me, telling you. I—well, I feel close to you, son. I’m proud of you. You understand?”
“I understand,” Roger said. His mouth tasted like salt.
As he opened the mothball-hung front closet, he found himself remembering a dim time when he’d had an attack of enuresis and his mother had rubbed his nose in the sheet: for the same crime she hadn’t punished Vliet. Another time his father had taken off his belt to punish him for borrowing Vliet’s bike without permission. A rush of other memories, all on a single theme. They always loved him, never me. I’m jealous, Roger thought. Stupidly, childishly jealous. At the same time, he felt unlovable, unworthy. He lifted Alix’s suitcase.
They drove a few blocks in silence.
“Roger.” Alix tilted her head at him. “What’s the medical term for being hooked? I mean, I don’t think I can go another minute without a McDonald’s burger. That wondrous machine-shred lettuce, the limp pickle, the sesame-seed bun.”
Without replying, he headed for the nearest McDonald’s.
She doodled with her malt straw on the cement table, not eating, talking lightly of the demographic impossibility of the billions of hamburgers that a sign proclaimed the franchise had sold. Roger hadn’t bought himself anything. He felt as if he were choking. He kept seeing his mother’s face. Under the powder it had been slack-muscled, as if a malignant melanoma were eating her. He, Roger, had caused the melanoma by taking Vliet’s girl. At the hospital he’d seen people dying of cancer. Oh hell, he thought, crushing a napkin to wipe Alix’s doodling, probably she just missed her prelunch pick-me-up.
“She drinks,” he said.
“Who?”
“Mother.”
“We each have our little crutch. Mine happens to be these hamburgers. Roger, get me another?”
“You barely started that one.”
“It’s cold,” she said, pushing it away.
“They were so damn negative.”
“They wanted to finish lunch, that’s all.”
“How was Mother with you before?”
“I never interrupted her lunch,” Alix said lightly. “And I’m dying for a hot burger.”
“I want to know.”
“She’s always a nice lady. Stop making something, Roger. I really would love another. Humor me?”
Silent, he went to the order window. He handed her the hamburger.
“We need to talk,” he said, sitting opposite her.
“I have been. Incessantly.” She unwrapped the greaseproof paper and smiled. “Nice and warm. Thank you.”
He knew she had far more problems dealing with rejection than he did. But for once couldn’t she at least help him try to cope with these infantile regressions? Deal with his jealousies of, and fears that he was forever separated from, his brother? Did she have to smile a smile that was impenetrable as bulletproof glass? He needed to get through to her, he needed to in the worst way. She smiled again, nibbling. “Delicious,” she said, and began to talk about the franchising of hamburgers. Roger considered what pain he would need to inflict to force her to emerge from this smiling banter. What cruelty? What would wound her most? He despised what was going on in his brain, yet he clutched the idea with bulldog tenacity. He knew—Hadn’t she herself exposed her weakest point to him? He watched his mind fight the ultimate misogyny.
She deposited the hamburger, gnawed slightly, in the waste-basket. “Doctor, you just saved a life. Thank you.”
“Anything’s better than this,” he mumbled.
He sped along Los Feliz Boulevard until he spotted a motel: $5.50 WITH TV AND COFFEE. He swerved, tires skidding. She waited in the car while he paid.
“Jar their teeth, why don’t you?” she said. “Bring up the suitcase.”
“Humor me. Shut up, why don’t you?” He spoke viciously, but his mind was numb.
Without a word she climbed cement steps.
No attorney could ask for a more clear-cut case of rape.
Streetlights came on as they pulled into the circular drive. She was staring ahead with that slightly glazed smile. Her expression hadn’t changed since they left the motel. He was getting more and more terrified, Each time he’d started an apology he’d been halted by that smile. “Alix,” he said, this time intent on carrying through. But Sam burst out of the house. He wore faded blue sleepers that
were twisted, fastened on the wrong snaps.
“Alix!” he yelled.
“Fat Sam!” she yelled back, jumping out of the car to lift her little brother. Beverly appeared. And Alix, still holding Sam, retold the Hawaii fiction, and Beverly murmured how kind it was of Roger to meet Alix, very kind. He wondered how emotional he’d come across in last week’s phone call.
“Stay for dinner,” Beverly invited.
Roger looked at Alix. She was busy refastening snaps on a wiggling small boy.
“There’s plenty,” Beverly said. “We’ll have a welcome-home party.”
“For me? How lovely.” Alix kissed her mother.
“Thank you, Mrs. Grossblatt,” Roger said, and lugged in suitcases, one from Arrowhead, the blue one with the Pan Am sticker. “Where do these go?”
“The service porch.” Alix nodded to the left, not looking at him. She hadn’t looked at him since they’d left the motel. “Fat Sam,” she said, “gotcha a nothing.” In Laguna she’d browsed for hours for the right book, a Dr. Seuss. She and Sam disappeared.
Beverly and Roger were alone, drinking Scotch, when Dan’s key unlocked the front door. Beverly explained that Roger had met Alix at the airport, and Dan gave Roger a glance, inquiring, “A few days early, isn’t she?” and went into another part of the house. Roger heard Alix’s faraway laughter before a door shut. Beverly said did Roger mind, but she had to finish up in the kitchen. Roger was left alone with his acute anxieties. Dan returned, switching on Walter Cronkite. The “Seven O’Clock News” seemed to last forever.
Alix emerged. “Dinner,” she announced.
“Roger,” Dan asked as he sat at the head of the table, “why were you the one to meet Alix? Why did you drive her down from Arrowhead?”
“He was available,” Alix replied.
Dan examined her. A stocky, graying man, his face heavily lined with concern.
A Mexican maid brought food to the table. Alix, Roger could tell, had made the salad. Cold and crisp, raw mushrooms, red pepper, and thin-sliced apple with romaine, light oil-and-vinegar dressing. The rest of the meal was imperfect, and he attributed it, correctly, to Beverly.
“Dan,” Alix said, “aren’t you going to ask me how was Hawaii?”
Dan forked a slab of overdone rib roast. “How was it?”
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