‘I’ll work something out,’ he said. ‘And don’t look so sad. Think of it like going into enemy country as a spy during wartime. You’ve got to be brave.’
‘And be a good actress,’ she said. She gave up. She gave in. She married Russell.
*
When she was seven months pregnant, Mamie thought she couldn’t take anything any longer. She missed Carter all the time. She had no friends except Russell, and he – she was now sure – didn’t intend, as he had first promised, to move out of his parents’ house. ‘It’s so comfortable,’ he said. ‘Plenty of room for all my specimens and for the periodicals, too. We’d need a huge place if we moved. Don’t you like it here?’
‘I’m like a guest. I never even wash a dish.’
‘You’re the first girl I ever heard of who liked washing dishes.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She asked if she could go back to town just for the weekend to see a friend. He agreed straight away. He trusted her completely. When they had signed the joint insurance papers, he’d had himself insured for so much that if he died, she’d never have to take a job again. She’d be a rich woman. It worked the other way around too, of course, but that was only sensible if he was ever going to find himself in the position of having to bring up a child on his own.
She made a reservation at the kind of hotel she’d never stayed in before. And she started to telephone Carter before she’d even unpacked. She couldn’t get through to him either at his apartment or at the office. She tried for hours, then she went out for a walk.
It was a cool day. In the park the flowers looked wrong for the time of year. Mothers and babysitters, dressed in coats and sweaters, sat on the benches while the children they were looking after played nearby. She should have been feeling good.
She thought of sitting down on a bench, but kept walking. Her fur coat was unbuttoned, the large swell of her body bulging through the opening, but she didn’t feel cold; the heat generated by the foetus added to her own warmth. If she sat down anywhere, she knew someone would come up to her and ask about the baby. Now that it was so prominent, everyone did. They were just being friendly, but she sometimes wanted to say, ‘Go take an interest in somebody else’s stomach.’
She walked down into a section of town she knew from touring days. She thought about Sal, who was in another company now. She remembered the name of the company. It would be nice to see Sal, she thought. She bought a newspaper; there, among the ads on the theatre page, she found the address: the place where Sal’s show was playing. She waved down a taxi, went to the theatre and bought a ticket for the orchestra. Now that she had money, she didn’t think twice about buying an expensive seat.
The place was nearly deserted. A few old ladies, sitting two-by-two and wearing their hats, were bunched together in the front rows. She remembered those matinée audiences: how there were always two old ladies, usually in the front row, who would talk to each other all through the show in voices just as loud as your own.
The play was terrible. It was about an American sculptor living in Italy with his wife. Once he’d been good, but now he was reaching middle age and losing his talent, and he’d fallen in love with the Italian girl who was acting as his model. In the second act he had a long soliloquy about art and Michelangelo and the reasons why he’d wanted to go to Italy and why he felt such disdain for himself in the face of all the great works around him. Several times Mamie was afraid she was going to fall asleep, but she was kept awake by the thought that she’d see Sal come on stage again. Sal was playing the maid; she didn’t have anything to say other than, ‘Si, signor,’ until the last act, where she made the most of a speech in broken English, telling the sculptor that the signora had left and there was a letter she’d wanted him to have.
Mamie went backstage afterwards. Sal came bounding out the door with her arms open.
‘I saw you,’ she yelled. ‘My God, I couldn’t believe it. I nearly dropped the coffee-pot again. Jesus, Mamie, you’re pregnant.’
‘I couldn’t get out on the mat with Mr Moto any more, that’s for sure.’
‘Mr Moto, oh, my God: that was such a long time ago. Where was it?’
‘Kansas City. It was the only sport I was ever really good at. Except dancing, of course – but that’s an art. That’s what Mrs Beebie kept saying.’
‘Hell, yes. I remember. I was always a total bust at that karate, but I had a big crush on him.’
‘Me, too. I just wish I could remember his real name. Are you doing anything before the next show?’
‘You’re kidding. I’ve got enough spare time to learn Outer Mongolian.’
‘Let’s go eat,’ Mamie said. ‘My treat.’
‘You bet it is, in that coat. What is it? That’s the minkiest mink I’ve ever seen.’
‘It’s a sable,’ Mamie said. She could feel herself smirking a little. And why not, she thought.
They went to a restaurant Sal picked out. ‘The sky’s the limit,’ Mamie said. ‘Anything you like, and have it twice. If you’re on a diet, this is the day to forget it.’
They went through the menu and ordered. Sal started on a bottle of wine, which Mamie refused, saying that it made her feel sick. ‘And being in very smoky places,’ she added.
‘And the ring!’ Sal exclaimed. ‘Oh, wow. Eat your heart out, Elizabeth Taylor.’
Mamie stretched her hand across the table so Sal could get a better look. ‘I thought you were great in the play,’ she said. ‘You were the only good thing. That big speech in the second act –’
‘When he gets the throb in his voice, uh-huh. He’s such a jerk. But this time it isn’t his fault. I couldn’t say those lines any better. And the empty house isn’t much help. I’m afraid this one’s just your archetypal turkey.’
Sal began to talk about herself. Mamie pumped her with questions until they’d eaten their way to the dessert. Sal said, ‘What have you got in there – triplets? And I was the one that wanted kids. So how’s old Carter?’
‘It isn’t Carter. It’s his cousin’s ex-husband. That’s how these things happen: shazam.’
‘How about that. I could use some shazam myself for a change.’
‘Things bad?’
‘I’m sort of down around low tide.’
‘If it’s money, ask.’
‘No, the money’s only the way it always is. I guess it’s just this time of year. Thinking about love. You know. Even now it’s gotten so cold out. You can’t help thinking.’
Yes, Mamie said, she knew.
Later in the evening, when Sal was making up to go on stage, she tried to get hold of Carter again. But he must have been out of town for the weekend. She had to go back without seeing him.
She thought about him all the way to the house. She wondered if he was alone, or with somebody else. There was no shortage of women in town. When she remembered how the girls used to talk backstage, how they were all dying for it, she was sure he’d be with someone, another girl: somebody better. And maybe he’d be saying he loved her, bringing her flowers, buying her presents.
He’d only ever given her one thing, at the beginning: a keychain with an enamelled butterfly at the end of it. He said he didn’t believe in presents. All the clothes he’d bought her for the visit to the Chases had been in the nature of a theatrical wardrobe; they were for business and professional purposes.
She loved the keychain, but he’d never bought her anything else. She hadn’t expected him to, yet most men would have. She didn’t think about it until one day when they were passing by a jeweller’s shop and she lingered to look in.
‘This is cheap stuff,’ he said.
‘That’s the kind I can afford.’ Her eye ran over the watches, clocks, plated cups, flashy earrings and chunky fake bracelets. Then, in one of the front corners she saw a collection of silver charms. She leaned closer.
‘Come on,’ he told her. She switched her attention away from a silver heart and was suddenly looking at a charm ma
de of the two masks of drama, comedy and tragedy.
‘Look. Look at that,’ she said. He admitted that they weren’t bad, but he wanted to move on.
She said, ‘Let’s go in. Just to see how much.’
She walked in without him and he followed. When the man behind the counter brought out the charm, she still thought it was perfect, and it wasn’t expensive. That was the point where Carter should have offered to buy it for her. He shook his head. She bought it herself.
After they were out on the street again and had walked halfway to the restaurant they were going to, she took the charm out of its box and examined it.
He snatched it from her hand, stared at it, and began to tug at the two halves.
‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘You’ll break it.’
He wrenched the two masks apart and threw one into the street.
‘What are you doing?’ she said again.
‘I don’t like the idea of you wearing that unlucky thing.’ He handed her the piece that was left: the comedy mask.
‘But it looks silly now. They’re meant to go together. It’s one of the things you’ve got to have in pairs. Like men and women.’
‘Sometimes I think we’d be better off with only one of those, too.’
‘What am I going to do with just one?’
‘I don’t know. Wear it as an earring. You could start a fashion. One earring.’
‘That’s already a fashion.’
‘OK, start another one. The hell with it.’
She stepped off the kerb and searched up and down, trying to find the other mask again, but he took her by the hand and yanked her along with him, away from the place where she’d heard it land.
‘You don’t buy me anything,’ she said, ‘and when I get something for myself, you tear it to pieces.’
‘I’ll buy you something else.’
‘But why did you do it?’
‘What do you want a bad-luck thing like that for?’ He dragged her into a large, expensive store, looked around aggressively and grabbed a silk scarf that was draped over the handle of a crocodile bag. It was part of the display.
‘You like that?’ he asked.
‘Well, of course,’ she said. It was one of the biggest silk scarves she’d ever seen and covered with prints of flowers in all different colours. ‘But it’s too expensive.’
A salesgirl was at his elbow straight away. She’d left her counter as soon as she’d seen them touching the scarf. He asked the price and Mamie was right – it cost more than a good dress would be. He bought it for her.
It became her favourite piece of clothing. She wore it around her neck or shoulders, or tied around her head, or at her waist. Russell liked it, too; it always paid, he said, to buy the best. And Mamie thought: Everything always pays, if you’ve got the money for it.
*
She still hadn’t seen him by the summer. And then the baby was born.
She was entirely absorbed in her child, as if hypnotized. At times she was also unhappier than she had been since she’d left West Virginia. It was like the year when her mother and father had died. She would cry for long periods. She didn’t want to go out of the house. It wasn’t that she was afraid, just that she didn’t want to leave the baby. Russell was understanding, and Katherine suddenly seemed sympathetic – still cold and reserved, but she didn’t lecture about her own experience as a mother or attempt to criticize: she tried to be encouraging and to talk about practical, ordinary things.
At night Mamie had anxious dreams. She kept remembering her mother, who had never talked about anything that had to do with the process of reproduction, and hadn’t even told her daughter the facts of life; Mamie had had to get the information from school and gossiping with friends. But now she wondered about her mother: Did she feel like this? Did she walk up and down with me to stop me crying; did she sing me to sleep?
Russell spoke to her about taking a winter vacation in the sun somewhere. The grandparents started a savings account for baby Waverley, whom they called Bobby. And, for the baby’s sake, the grown Waverley, her father-in-law, gave Mamie some stocks and shares, including shares in the bank. She had a private income now, as well as her bank account.
Sometimes Russell would ask her to lend him money until a cheque came through. She had plenty; she didn’t mind. But one day Randall told her that somebody ought to have a word with Ross about his gambling.
‘It’s just a little roulette, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘It’s always a lot, and he keeps thinking he’s got this system. He’s been like that ever since school. I think he should see a doctor about it. It’s like throwing it away. Julie –’
‘Yes?’
‘Julie tried to stop him, but she couldn’t, either. Maybe you can. Now that he’s a father – well, he should show some responsibility.’
She asked Russell later, ‘Do you gamble a lot?’
‘Just for fun.’
‘Randall told me I was supposed to get you to stop.’
‘He’s probably right. But it’s the excitement. You can get hooked on it.’
‘It doesn’t matter, as long as you break even. You wouldn’t keep playing if you lost all the time, would you?’
He said, ‘One loss never counts when you know you can win it back a hundred times over on the next round.’
‘You lose a lot?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got plenty to pay with.’
‘Some of those casinos are run by pretty tough people, you know. I’ve heard they can actually hire men to take out a contract on customers that don’t pay up.’
‘But I always do pay up,’ he told her. He sounded completely relaxed about the subject. She shrugged and said that everything was all right, then.
As soon as she was through with her special exercises and the check-ups, and felt that she was back to normal again, she asked to go into town to show the baby to Sal. She did mean to see Sal at some point, but the real reason for the trip would be to meet Carter.
*
She didn’t take the fur coat or the diamond. This time she wore corduroy pants and a parka. She carried a duffelbag for her clothes and a neck-sling for Bobby.
She took him to the theatre first, to show Sal. Sal was speechless for a moment. And then she changed expression in a way Mamie had never seen outside the movies: she looked transfigured. She wanted to hold the baby. She called the other girls over. Three of them, including Sal, cried when Mamie got ready to go. They didn’t want him to leave.
She went to a big department store she knew, had a snack in the restaurant and then moved to the ladies’ room, and on to the large entrance hall next to it, where there were chairs and couches. She sat down and changed Bobby and breast-fed him. She kept looking at her watch, but it didn’t matter. Carter could wait.
She walked. And she didn’t begin to hurry when she saw that she was getting near the park.
Carter was sitting on one of the benches. He was smoking a cigarette. He looked as if he’d been waiting a long while. He was thinner than the last time she’d seen him. He stood up as she approached. ‘Did you have to bring the kid?’ he said.
‘I wanted to show him off to my friends. They loved him. And besides, I still need to feed him.’ She sat down on the bench. ‘You don’t have to look if you don’t want to. You might turn to stone or something.’
He sat down again and took a quick look at the baby, asleep after its meal. He grunted. He said, ‘You didn’t find out about the money.’
‘How can I ask? I don’t want to get him mad at me. You don’t know what he’s like. He’s got this way of … He doesn’t like to be criticized and if you say anything, you can feel his trust in you sort of seeping away. And then you’re the one that feels bad.’
‘I can picture it. He’s got a lot of spoiled little rich-girl tricks. Raymond’s a bonehead and Randall’s a pompous idiot, but Ross is the pick of the bunch.’
‘I put my foot in it already, when I ask
ed about the gambling.’
‘What?’
‘Randall said I should try and stop him.’
‘He’s gambling my money away?’
‘He gambles a lot. But he’s got plenty, you know that. The whole family’s loaded. What are you worried about?’
‘What was the other thing? The other thing you wanted to talk about?’
‘About what you’d do if anything happened to me.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you.’
‘What I mean is, there wouldn’t be any way you could prove you were Bobby’s father. He’d be brought up by the Chases. You knew that before, but now he’s actually here. Look.’ She touched the baby’s cheek. It sighed, yawned, opened its eyes, moved its arms and trampled in the air with its feet. She held out a finger. Bobby grabbed it. She made kissing noises at him.
‘He’s kind of cute,’ Carter said grudgingly.
‘Hold your finger out.’
The baby clasped his finger in its hand and chortled.
‘It’s the way they learn,’ she said. ‘They’re exercising all the time – with their voices, too. One of those books said that babies make noises even when they’re in an empty room, to judge the distances – like echo-sounding. Isn’t that smart? I’ve read so many books. I never knew how interesting … I mean, we all started like this. We were all this size.’
Carter touched the baby’s face, its arms, its legs.
‘You hold him,’ Mamie said.
‘No.’
‘Yes. I’m getting tired. They weigh a lot and I don’t think these sling things are the best way to lug them around.’ She handed Bobby over, first showing how to protect his head. Carter held the baby in his arms and looked down. He looked for a long time and turned his head away. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered, ‘what a mess.’
She felt secure at last. It was a mess, all right, but now he had to get them out of it. She was sure that somehow he was going to succeed in fixing everything up, and even work it so they’d keep the money, too. ‘I’ll miss him when we go sailing,’ she said. ‘Or skiing. They haven’t made up their minds yet. I wanted to take him with us, but they all say it’s better not to. And then they can get him on to the bottle while I’m drying out.’
Mrs Caliban and other stories Page 40