The Bobby-Soxer

by Hortense Calisher

Tim turns to Luray. Every Christmas Luray writes on her card to each of us—as if her need is in some baffling way connected with the winter solstice: “Regards—and just remember, I have first refusal on the big house.”

  “I don’t need the house or want it,” Tim says. “Not ever.” He hesitates, but I see he will save his own news until it is true and done. “So Nessa’s sold it.”

  Luray says: “S-s-s—?” She can’t get out the rest of it. “To who? Who could possibly—”

  “Dare?” Tim has never liked her. I can predict the woman he’s marrying. Small-boned, spirited, nice. But with a twee-twee voice, inborn or learned. I know certain actors still on the sexual fence who cleave to those, some happily.

  “Who?” Luray wears dresses studded with nailheads or sequins, and lots of gold jewelry, but her true element is brass. I wonder whether, if playing her, I could convey that, and still keep the customers’ sympathy.

  “I can offer more,” she’s saying. “Whoever it is. Whatever the price is.”

  “I think not,” my father says gently. He has always avoided her, but defended her, we never fathomed why. But now I see her stance, all pliant, swelling abdomen, as she rises toward him from her chaise. She wears false eyelashes, great curling ones that become her; she knows her element. And is pitiable in it.

  Yes, I could do it. I could play her to the nines. If the audience were to see that she wants so much more than a house.

  “Please—” she says, and I applaud. She hasn’t chosen the right target, but how many can? And that rasp of hers has modulated like a veteran’s. “Whoever it is—couldn’t we work something out? Just tell me who.”

  “The Watanabes,” my father says at last. “Knobby finds he doesn’t really like Japan.”

  Knobby Watanabe—how we have snared you.

  Yet Knobby must know that, I think. That is what his obligation would be.

  “It’s my mother’s bargain, Luray,” my father is saying. “So I’m afraid it’s a lost cause. She’s going to live with them.” He coughs, pulling in our attention eye by eye—and I am seeing where my talent comes from as well as my voice. He’s going to play it for laughs. “Paying no rent, of course.”

  He gets his laughs, from all except me.

  I am about to speak. To remind Luray of what is always more apparent from the rear, that even the most firmly lodged or recently acquired house is still mutable, to point out that Etsuko is willful, even that Watanabe is not young—when Gilbert Walsh leans forward, so much on the edge of his lush seat that he may tip it forward, if not back.

  “If it’s another house you want, Luray my old Dutch—” That’s Cobble Row talk, to call your wife that. It may have no etymology.

  “If it’s only the house you want to change,” Gilbert says, “I know where there’s one for sale. Craig Towle’s.”

  So here we are, yes. I had forgotten the robins though, always here at this hour, and how they always looked to me—the bird nearest in drawing to the hieroglyph. It’s not nearly the gloaming yet—did we have daylight saving time even back then?—but the dark is in the air. The robins stand to attention, looking just as stamped and Egyptian as they did then. They are eleven-o’clock-in-the morning birds, but they come to us twice.

  My mother leans forward. “There are those robins again. What do you suppose they find on our lawn?”

  If she still speaks of this lawn as her own, no one will dispute that just now, not even Luray—and I am no longer frightened. I am thinking that the children should not be in Maine but here with me on this porch, to listen from the rear as I did.

  My father leans over to me there behind him, and shows me his watch. The only item he had kept out of a certain collection he inherited, it shows the calendar, not because it is one of those new electronic timepieces but because it is such an ancient one. When he enters the monastery, which he had last night told me he hopes to do if they will take him, he must dispose of all such goods, and will give me it. He whispers, this conspirator it so gladdens me to have, even at such cost. “What do you know. Listen to us. And it’s not even a Monday night.”

  That name, of the native son who so aroused us and so blithely left us—are we going to pass it by?

  Mr. Evams gets to his feet. “Time for my walk.”

  I get up too. “I need a walk too, after that meal. I’ll come along.”

  The porch is silent as we go.

  When we are a few paces away, I hear Tim’s voice, and then my father’s, answering him.

  “Tim must be telling his news,” I say. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. He’s going to marry.”

  Mr. Evams hesitates. “They all have their news.” He hesitates again, then we walk on. Whatever it may be, he has decided not to tell me, or not yet. I am comfortable enough with that, hedged once again in the routine where he leads us, two musicians or even two actors, attending each other’s stops and starts.

  It’s a short walk though a steep one—to the cemetery. “I drop by there most evenings,” he tells me. “She wouldn’t want me to come in rain.” He hasn’t yet dealt with the eventuality of snow.

  We pass my grandmother’s house.

  “Confirm me something,” I say. “Was Luray always—out for more than the house?” That’s a hard way of saying it. But Luray would say it herself.

  He slackens our pace, though not from need. A tireless walker, he knows the whole town’s acreage. “I know a bona-fide real estate motive when I see one. Yes—it isn’t just those turrets up there.” He raises his face as if he can see them; perhaps he does. “She’s always had the notion that the son of the house could somehow be bought with it. Of course the whole town knew.”

  I used to hate that phrase. Now the doorways we pass seem to me only easing, like muscles.

  “We used to think it was Gilbert who so wanted it.”

  “He did once too. Now I find house property doesn’t much interest him.”

  “That’s how he knew about the Towle house! You’re handling it.”

  “Towle’s lawyers wrote me, yes. Towle wants a quick sale. And a pricey one. I told them this wasn’t Hollywood but I’d give it a try.”

  “Why did you think Gilbert would want it then?”

  “He—has a secretary.”

  “Oh? And as everybody has surmised?”

  “We keep ourselves on the edge of knowing. That way, we can be tolerant.”

  I can tell he’s smiling. I don’t look up. “Cobble Row. Why does it always attract—the off-the-record in us? Or the lost.”

  “Old houses often do. Does yours—for you?”

  “It did.”

  We are going the opposite way from the Row. The cemetery is on the first of those hills I used to call the autumn ones. The depot has the best view of them, for all the trains coming in.

  “I know about my father, Edward,” I say. “In case you weren’t sure. He told me last night.”

  He checks his reply for a second, as always when I call him by name. “As he did me. And about your mother.”

  “Like—that there’s a convent nearby—near that monastery? An accessory one; where the nuns bake and sew? The monks brew only theology. … Like—that the two—forces—meet very congenially. In the most serene countryside?”

  “He said an admirer wishes to marry her. Your father won’t stand in her way. But hopes she will not.”

  What is sex but a question the body answers? In the end as in the beginning.

  “It’ll be the convent,” I say. “All her life—she’s expected to have only one affair. And—she will look just fine in a wimple.”

  That about does it. I can’t remember when I last cried for real. It’s much saltier. “No thanks. I’ve got a handkerchief somewhere.” It’s in my purse, next to a clip from a newspaper. “Let’s change the subject. For instance—I can tell you what Towle wants all that money for. For that play.”

  How he lights up at theater talk. Some must find that strange. I know he comes to hear
me in whatever I do in New York—though he never comes backstage afterward.

  “Not a new one?”

  “No. He was never able to get it produced. He’s always rewriting it; it’s always being announced. And he hasn’t done so well out there lately. Nothing since that movie The Troupe.”

  “I heard that was very visual. So I didn’t go.”

  “Very. The way a movie should be. I hated it at the time. For other reasons. I was wrong. It has—what I’ve always thought he meant his plays to have.” Though the words for what it had are not mine but Knobby’s.

  “What was that?” Evams’s voice is harsh, for him.

  It’s not an easy thing to say to a blind man. “Respect—for the moment that makes you see.”

  “Oh, I understand that,” he says. “Perfectly.”

  I know this. Why else are we walking here, so in step?

  He seems to survey me; he often does. “You still see Towle?”

  “Only twice. Both a long time ago. He came back here for one night. The last time—the time of that lawsuit—the one that never came to trial. I—slept with him. That one night. I owed it—to both of us.” I glance at the face climbing beside me. The town would have known at once what I have just told him; the morning lanes here are so clear. The face is broader than it used to be and not so blunted or smooth—altogether more recognizable on its own. It no longer has a twin.

  “Then I had a note from him, opening night of The Troupe, saying he thought I’d want to be there. I did. But I didn’t know I was to sit next to him. Long enough to hear him comment—cool as cool—that the young crowd in his film, that girl his wife and her silly friends—would never have done for a play. ‘I couldn’t have written it in a play,’ he said. ‘Goofy was their favorite word.’

  “So I got up and left him—though I stayed to the end of his movie. And that was it. I see his son Tarquin now and then.” He nodded. Tarquin studies with him.

  “Now—I’m being approached to be in the old play.”

  “Because with you in it—he might get a production.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I know property. And will you?”

  “I told them—that I’m too old for the part.”

  He stops in his tracks. To laugh. I’ve never seen him laugh like that. “You always were. A bit too old for your position in life. But you’ve improved.”

  “Have I?” I cry—but there are no witnessing porches here, only a path. “I asked Tim last night—why are we all acquiescing so? And Edward—why am I so—glad of it?”

  “You’re in control. You’ve come into your own—authority.”

  “Does that mean—that I’m not waiting anymore?” He doesn’t answer at once. The path gets steeper; many have complained. Though he is not puffing. “No.”

  I stop on the slope. From here one can see the whole town too, but differently from the way Knobby will see it from his new tower, in leaf time or out of it. Up here one sees the town not so much entrenched as hollowed out of hills that of themselves aren’t much. “Craig Towle asked to use the town for part of that film. Not a year after that girl died. And the town let him.”

  “We did,” he said. “I’m told the shots from up here were wonderful. And of the old factory. They renovated it you know. And Mrs. Tite’s bookshop and Hawvermale’s hardware. All for four minutes of a film.”

  I’d forgotten he was on the town board, and that he serves there for love.

  “Now—he wants to use me,” I say. “Again.”

  “And night after night.” Mr. Evams says, his face averted. “But not just for himself. And do I hear—I think I do hear—that you will let him?”

  “He’s—I haven’t seen the script. But he’s given out an interview. Heard about it?”

  “In part.”

  “Which?”

  “I heard—that when he was asked about the sexual oddity in his play he said: ‘I tell them that there are no monsters. But that’s not what people need to believe.’”

  My companion doesn’t use a cane, but he has a folding yardstick he uses in the classroom, to probe a subject with. He scratches the ground with it. “And I heard—that when he was asked about his private life he said that there he was as interested as any man, and as culpable.”

  “You didn’t hear the rest?”

  “That was all that caught Gilbert’s eye.”

  Our hills are now looking at me. No hill is ever too trumpery to be a stage. Even if one hasn’t seen the script. Even if the script itself turns out to be trumpery. Across this valley, for instance, in the same stone so rough here in the path but on the heights so serene, there could be carved a sort of monument, not a face, but a body, like those grave ornaments with phallus and female lingam mixed. I had one once from Peru.

  I can’t carve, nor can I paint, but there are other ways of handling the divisions in this world. Deferential as my own way has to be, always taking direction, it is mine. I think of Craig Towle, walking his gangplank of words, dreaming that he keeps this separate from what he does when on the ground. To him, I’m only a geisha of words, speaking to please, and by rote. But the real gangplank, the riskiest—isn’t that one’s life?

  I steal a look at Edward Evams. Sometimes one steals from the blind without meaning to. They in turn have expressions the sighted must watch for.

  “Want to hear the rest of what he said?” I say.

  He has turned aside, but I gather he does.

  “I have the clip in my bag. I’ll read it.” I have carried it around with me for a week. I could cite it by heart, but it would be underhand not to do as I say. Besides—he would know. “It’s headed: Towle Discusses Revival of Play Never Produced.’” My fingernail travels down the clip. “Here. He says—‘I wrote a play about the haunted provincialism in American life. And about the habit of grandeur that has been lost. But they wanted the little sociologies of the day—and little wisecracks about them. Little daily hauntings—but without legend. I was brought up on legend.’”

  I waited.

  When he does turn around he is staring straight at me. “So that’s why he’s selling his house. Grandeur, indeed. The town did him in; it’s daily too. I always thought it would. And you can shut your purse.”

  But walking on, I can’t help looking back.

  “What do you keep looking at?”

  He seldom asks that of a student. It’s an honor. “At a ghost town.”

  He takes my hand. “That’s already here. Up top.”

  Shortly we are there. It’s a fine plateau, but the parking is bad. As many local people have complained. And for strangers, collecting epitaphs is not the pastime it was. So we are alone.

  “You ever been here?”

  “There’s one grave I used to visit.”

  I’m not sure he’s heard me.

  “Our plot is right along here,” he says, and when we get to it lets go my hand.

  “I don’t hold with the afterlife,” he says after a bit. “I come for the continuity.”

  Mrs. Evams’s grave has only a plain marker on it.

  “She doesn’t need more,” he says, as if I have commented. “She knew I would come. But her dog—I had to put him down.”

  Many of the nearby graves have paper flowers on them, rustling like talk.

  “She loved color,” he says. “She used to say that holding onto me she could feel I had once been sighted.”

  “I remember.” The white cameo they made between them, on that chaise.

  “Ah yes—the sweater you knitted her. She was the sighted one—inside,” he says, bending to the grave but not touching. “When she was dying she said: ‘My heart is beating—blue, white, blue, white.’”

  They are dunning him to put up a stone, he says; perhaps he’ll have that inscribed on it. “Because it doesn’t matter. And that’s why I can’t decide.” He straightens up. “We can go now.”

  I ask why some of the newer graves around us are marked simply L’Envoi, underneath wh
ich is the name and the date, but no text—and he says the current stonemason is a French-Canadian, and many families leave it to him.

  The way out is by another gate, cannily leading one from the newer plots to the old. It is polite to falter, to halt at least now and then.

  The Towle plot, one of the oldest, is in bad disrepair.

  “He had it done up when he first came back here,” Edward Evams says. “But not since he left. I suppose Hollywood is legendary enough.”

  I stamp my foot, luckily not on anyone. The old ground may be disheveled but it is crammed. “Some differences one copes with as one can. He did what he did. So did we. But on there being divisions in what one or another part of this country can give us—I don’t hold with that. I’ve toured too much.”

  “You tour a lot, don’t you?” he says. “For someone who can choose.”

  Sometimes running away, yes—if that’s what he’s hinting. Sometimes not.

  There are plots here that have blank headstones waiting. If Craig Towle’s were already here I would address it. “I never did agree with him—about the legends. I never did—about ours. But I didn’t know how to say it.”

  I still don’t—except that the legend never stops, or waits to huddle in one place in a country. Greyhound bus stations, cinder tracks. Or first-class lounges with the Chivas Regal being drunk like a prescription for the afterlife. Dried snot on the marijuana pipe tossed into the cowpool built with government subsidy on a Vermont commune. Or Daniel Webster on some lost village green, ten feet high among the trailer trucks and to most nameless—and still talking in stone.

  It never stops. It’s we who tour.

  “There’s one grave I want to see,” I said.

  He has been round them all. When we get to it, he says: “Yes—that one.”

  It’s the largest up here, a full crypt with a door, inscribed above: See the immortal faces go down, through that portal.

  My grandfather put up that inscription, taken from some Latin that we have never found. The door is opened only for the dead, but the names of those who have entered are on the outside, each in his or her space. I walk around the crypt to its far side; he follows. Our plot is as well kept as ever.