by James Jones
“I guess you’re right at that,” Doc Bernstein said sourly. “Well, you better find her some kind of a man. Married or unmarried. I speak as your lay psychiatrist.”
“Well, I’ll try,” Cott said.
And she did try. Sidney tried too, herself. And in the end it was Sidney herself who succeeded. Two months after the conversation with Doc Bernstein (which she recounted to Sidney who took violent exception to it) Cott got herself a job in a West Point movie, a bit part as the Cadet-elected Sweetheart of Flirtation Walk. She was gone six weeks to the Coast, and it was when she came back that L. Carter Wright, book reviewer and interviewer of female movie stars, had entered the scene. Sidney had found him herself, through having lunch with him in order to get an interview for one of her clients at Celebrities, Incorporated, Advertising Agency (on 49th just off Madison). But before that had happened, and during those two months, Sidney had had two more attacks bad enough that Doc Bernstein had to be called. Both of them hit her on occasions when Cott had heavy dates.
One, the first, (or second, rather, if Eddie Maynar was counted as the first) was when Hank Jeffer, novelist and script writer, flew in drunk from the Coast after a fight with his wife and put himself up for four days at their apartment, as he always did on such occasions. It was he who had first got Sidney her job with Celebrities, Incorporated (on 49th just off Madison), one of whose clients he was; and it was he who later got Cott the bit part in the West Point movie, which he had written. Hank had taken Cott out twice to El Morroco, but the third time was too much for Sidney and she came down with an attack which was even worse than the one Eddie Maynar had caused.
The third attack had occurred six week later when Cott was preparing to go off for a week to Connecticut to the ancestral home of a young CBS account executive, the latest in her series of prospective husbands. Cott had gone ahead and gone, anyway. But she might as well not have. It was a week which turned to be one grand fiasco of misunderstandings, petty arguments, recriminations, and unhappiness; although the young man’s family was nice. It succeeded only in her being forced to mark off as a total loss one more prospect.
But it was after Cott had come back from her six weeks on the Coast, to discover the advent of L. Carter Wright upon the scene, that Sidney’s allergy appeared to have taken on its present form.
Larry Wright was, Cott thought, although Sidney violently disagreed, almost ludicrously typical of the available New York male. Tall, slender, sensitive-faced, impeccably dressed, married with three kids. Larry was miserably unhappy in both his marriage and his job because he had wanted to be a novelist, and he loved nothing better than coming over to the apartment late in the evening after getting done work and relieving himself of all of his troubles to Sidney (Cott of course always went out), before he made love to her and then drove out home to the country and his wife. Everything said, he was a nice, caught-in-a-trap, unhappy guy—who, nevertheless, did nothing about getting out of it; nothing that is, except talk to Sidney about it, and tell her he wanted to.
And sitting in the apartment any Saturday, just like the one today, Cott was convinced she could plot almost like on a graph—whether Sidney herself believed it or not, which Sidney didn’t—the exact pattern of rise and fall that Sidney’s allergy would take. And during the four months Sidney had been going with Larry Wright, that graph would not have varied a quarter of an inch.
Sunday was always the worst day. Friday night Larry Wright would be over at the apartment late after he got off work, as he was at least four nights every week, and Cott would get out and let them have the apartment. Luckily, she was still going with her CBS executive, (as Doc Bernstein advised: for God’s sake at least keep a stud around), and she could go over to his place or else take in a late movie. Then around three Larry would leave for his home in the country. And then, late Saturday morning or at noon, the sneezing would start. It would get progressively worse until six o’clock, at which time it would abate and they would have a couple of drinks and eat and go out to a movie. But on Sunday Sidney would wake up sneezing, and it would stay that way all day—and generally half the night, until she could get herself to sleep. And the pattern never varied.
Sitting across from each other in the little living room, the beds in the tiny bedroom still unmade (the sight of which made for depression), and staring at each other while both their lives revolved slowly around simultaneously in each’s head, it was all just suddenly too much. The remark, fatuous and untrue, as both knew, that Sidney had just made about how Cott could not be expected to know what she felt was still hanging over them in the air, and Cott suddenly, impulsively got up and went over to the day couch and put her arms around her friend.
“What are we going to do?” Sidney said brokenly, and sneezed. “What are we ever going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Sidney sneezed again and leaned her head against her roommate’s shoulder “Who the hell wants to be a damned account executive in an advertising agency?”
“Who the hell wants to be a goddamned actress?” Cott said.
“Men!” Sidney said, and sneezed. “Why is it only married men that ever seem to like me?”
“Because the bastards know they haven’t got anything to lose, that’s why!”
“I’m going to have to break it off with Larry,” Sidney said.
“Yes,” Cott said. “I think you should. There’ll never be anything permanent in it for you. We both know that. But remember what Doc Bernstein said: Always keep at least one man around. Don’t break it off with Larry until you’ve found yourself another.”
“No,” Sidney said stubbornly, and sneezed again. “I’ve never been like that. I’m not going to start now. I’ll tell Larry tomorrow.”
“You have to be tougher,” Cott said gently.
“Tougher!” Sidney cried, and sneezed. “Tougher! In two months I’ll be thirty. Do you realize that? Thirty years old?
“I swear it to you,” she said. “I swear it to you on my thirtieth birthday I’m going to put my head in the oven and just turn on the gas. I mean it. I swear it.”
Her arms around her, Cott rocked her slowly back and forth. “You just have to believe,” she said. “You have to believe there’s a man somewhere. With your name on him. You have to believe it. I have to believe it.”
“I believe it,” Sidney said. “I believe.” She straightened herself and sat back up and wiped her streaming eyes and nose. “And I’m going to tell Larry tomorrow.” She sneezed again, rendingly, brokenly.
“We just have to get rid of Frederick the Cat, Cott,” she said decisively. “We just simply have to, that’s all.”
The Tennis Game
Esquire published this in January 1958. It refers directly back to the mention of the tennis game in “A Bottle of Cream,” and in fact grows directly out of it. Certain phrases, such as those mentioning the boy’s “peepee”, his “pubis bone”, the sentence “He wanted to play with himself.”, which I had to agree to cut to have the story published in a magazine, have all been put back. I think it’s an interesting study of male masochism of which there appears to be a great deal in my generation, brought on of course by mothers like the mother in the story.
LYING IRRITABLY AND SWEATING between the rows of radishes in the hot humid air under the beating sun, he peered through the screen of tall grass and weeds that formed the boundary of the garden, at the man moving slowly under the shade trees beyond. A slow, warm, secretive pleasure crept over him replacing the irritation as he carefully got the man in his sights. He would never know what hit him. Slowly he cocked the hammer of his pistol and then squeezed the trigger, and the hammer fell upon the little red paper cap igniting it with a low splatting sound.
The man, who was colored and whose name was George and whom the boy’s uncle had only recently brought up north from Florida to work for him, was too far away even to hear the sound and went on slowly pushing his lawn mower across the grass under the shade trees and the boy, whose nam
e was John Slade and who was eleven years old, watched him secretively and with that wholly contained private pleasure that nobody else in the whole world knew about from between the rows of radishes in the garden he was supposed to be weeding for his mother. No, sir, he would never have known what hit him.
“Johnnn-y-y-y!” his mother’s voice came from behind him, shrill, penetrating, nasal, demanding, insistent, rising in the air and going outward in all directions from the back porch of his house as if it were some kind of audible radio wave and himself the sole receiving set.
“I am!” he cried furiously. He holstered the gun, not really holstered, he didn’t have a holster for this one, but jammed between his belly and the belt of his overall pants that he always had to wear when he worked in the garden to keep his better clothes clean. He hated them. And he hated her. And that shrill ear-shivering, penetrating, insistent voice of hers. In his mind’s eye he could see her standing there in the shade on the back porch looking out at him through the screen and drying and drying her hands over and over on a dish towel from the kitchen. Without even bothering to look around he began pulling out weeds again from between the dirty damn radishes, the gun barrel he could feel pressed against his belly just above his peepee, his only hope, his only friend. Like Daniel Boone in the forest.
He had tried making a game of it, playing he was the army and the weeds the enemy and watching his hands which were his troops capturing more and more and more clean ground from them and killing them by the hundreds, infiltrating around the heavier pockets of resistance until they had them completely surrounded by clean captured ground and then uprooting the whole big bunch that died to the last man. But there was too much garden and too many too-big weeds, and in the hot humid summer air under the suffocating sun the game had just run down of itself. He had been at it over an hour, John had, if you counted too all the little bits of time he managed to sneak away from pulling.
Across the back-yard fence and screen of cover the colored man George under the shade trees had stopped pushing his mower when he heard John’s mother’s voice and looked up and grinned, his teeth flashing white in his dark face even at that distance. Now he called sympathetically, “Hot work, ain’t it Mister Johnny, on a day like this.”
John preferred not to answer and, pretending he had not heard, ignored him and went on pulling weeds lethargically. He would never tell him how he had got him dead to rights so he never knew what hit him. He would never tell it to anybody. Nobody in the world. And it would be one more thing he would have that his mother wouldn’t know about, or his father, or any of the other grownups in the world. Or kids either, for that matter. The very thought of it, of having that to add to all the others, the secret, made the pit of his stomach whirl round and round inside him with excitement and he stopped pulling and lay down full length between the rows on the captured clean dirt and wallowed himself on it, all that dirty dirt, rubbing his hands in it above his head and grinding the gun barrel in his pants hurtfully, against his pubis bone, filled with a consuming luxurious hatred for himself, and for her, and for the colored man George, and for his father, and everybody else in the whole world. He’d show them. Let them all see him, wallowing here in the dirt. And just wait till she saw how dirty he got, too, boy, would she be mad, he thought with pleasure. Weeding her old damned vegetable garden.
“Johnnn-y-y-y!” his mother’s voice came.
“I am!” he cried immediately.
“But what are you doing! Rolling around like that!”
“Working!” he cried with wild outrage, but frightened now, and guilty. “Pullin’ weeds! I got to get hold of them, don’t I?” Cautiously and slyly he raised himself partially onto his hands and knees and went back to pulling, pretending he had not stopped. After a moment she went back in. God, would she never leave him alone? Ever? Would he never be free of that shrill, insistent, constantly checking voice? Would it follow him around the world forever?
Right in front of him, but a couple of steps off to the left beyond the radish rows, and growing in and around and over the back-yard fence, was the big snowball bush his grandfather had planted long ago before he himself was even born, when grandfather lived in the house his uncle lived in now, the big house. The bush had grown until its branches had fallen back over and made a hidden cave inside it. He often hid in there when nobody knew it, or when he was playing Tarzan or just plain jungle explorers. It was even more secret and he liked it even better than his tree house he had built in the old hollow tree out behind the garage. He had sneaked out his father’s pliers and cut away a large section of the wire fence beneath the bush so that he had a secret tunnel between his yard and his uncle’s yard that nobody else knew about and could go from one yard to the other without being seen. And now for a moment, crouched on his hands and knees between the radishes, his heart still beating in his ears from her almost catching him, he debated making a run for there when she wasn’t looking. The tickle of secrecy was still with him but now it was an angry tickle. He could sit in there where he could see out but nobody could see in and take down his pants and rub handfuls of the fresh dirt all over his peepee with his grubby hands. The thought of doing that excited him because he would be getting even with her. And she would never catch him provided he could get to the house and in the bathroom and wash himself first. And he thought he could. Because she’d never think to make him take his pants down. But he wisely decided against trying to make the run for it. She would surely be looking out again in a minute and see him gone, and anyway if he didn’t get the weeding done he would be out here all day and not get to play at all. She would see to that. And after this, there was still the front half of the yard to mow. And of course he would have to go to the store for her too, for something she’d forgotten.
Furiously, in a violent if momentary burst of vigorous energy, he attacked the weeds because it was the only way out of this that he could find. And he had been wanting to play his tennis game today, ever since early morning.
Johnny Slade wasn’t any damned fool. And he knew enough to know that he didn’t have to weed the garden, or mow the yard. They didn’t even have to have a damned old vegetable garden. His mother said it was to save money, and then would put a sad look on her face, but he knew better. He had watched his father shopping at the A&P store, and he knew the money they saved by putting out a garden was not enough even to count. He knew there was a Depression on, and had been for five years ever since the President had closed the banks when he was little; but he also knew the money his father made in his dentist’s office downtown was enough that they could afford to hire a man to mow the yard, and weed the damned garden if they had to have one, just like his uncle who was a lawyer had hired the colored man George in Florida. But they were just too cheap to do it. That was the truth. That, and because his mother wanted something to hold over his father when he got drunk. And because, as she said when she got mad, her son was going to learn to work because it built character and was good for his soul—and he was going to learn it if it killed the both of them. But the real truth was she couldn’t stand to see him outdoors playing and having fun while she herself had to clean house and cook. She just couldn’t stand it, he could tell by the look on her face, and so the whole thing was no more than one damned big lie. One of those grownup lies, that grownups told each other and pretended to believe, and that children because they were little had to accept and pretend to believe too, because they could not argue back.
Thinking about it, and the whole entire huge conspiracy of it all, in which a kid as long as he was little had no chance at all, depressed him so his violent burst of energy dwindled away inside of him leaving him feeling only weary, and defeated, completely beaten, and lethargic. He had, in his burst of activity, cleared two feet of ground. There was at least twenty more to go. How would he ever get it done in time to play the tennis game? Or anything at all, for that matter.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to finish it, although it was after lunc
h before he was finally allowed to quit. His mother called him in and made him wash for lunch (exclaiming over how dirty he always managed to get, to which he of course said nothing) and fed him and then sent him back out to work on it another hour. But then she let him quit and made him take a bath because this afternoon she was having her Wisdom Club bridge ladies that she had to entertain once every two months, and she didn’t want him coming in the house all messy and dirty while they were there. So he was free to play, reprieved, and the rest of the garden as well as the yard to mow was put back until tomorrow. Happy just simply to be free, and willing to let tomorrow take care of itself and not even think about it, he ran outside through the kitchen and the back door after he had dressed and across the driveway to the playhouse his father had bought for him and his baby sister a year ago, wanting only to get away and out of sight before she changed her mind maybe, as she often did.
Listening to the Wisdom Club bridge ladies as they began to arrive, and feeling like a rich man, he sat in the little chair on the porch of the playhouse and went over in his mind the various games he could play. The tickle of secretive pleasure had come back into his stomach again. He knew of course what he was going to play. The tennis game. But he enjoyed going over his possibilities and pretending he was making his choice. For instance, there was the tree house and Tarzan, for which he would have to take off his shirt and put on his hunting knife, and he could carry her there, Jane, and make her play with his peepee. Or he could get out his sun helmet and play jungle explorers and how they found the lost tribe of naked white women Amazons who captured them and tortured them. He could, if he wanted to, go on with the lead-soldier battle he had in progress in the playhouse. He sat on the porch of the playhouse luxuriously, and thoughtfully studied all of these.
The playhouse where he sat was a regular little house with a regular roof that sloped two ways like a real house and a front door and back door and windows that opened; it was very realistic, and the floor of the single room interior was the scene of the lead-soldier battle. It had been going on almost three weeks now. First he had fixed up the floor with pillows for mountains and piles of Big Little Books for hills and long strips of blue paper for the river, and then later two lines of Big Little Books for the trenches in front of the big plaster fort. From one end of the room the bad side was advancing upon and trying to capture the good side who were gradually being forced back to take refuge in their fort. At present, the good side had had to abandon two whole lines of trenches. Trenches which the bad side, naturally, had taken over to use against them. With it arranged this way, and the attack moving from one end of the room toward the other, he could shoot for both sides through the open windows at either end of the playhouse. Only just yesterday he had killed a colonel of the good side who was leading a counterattack against the steadily encroaching trenches in an attempt to break through and split the line. The BB had struck the colonel’s horse, breaking off both of its front legs, and that particular soldier was ruined forever, which made John feel curiously and pleasantly sad, and the colonel’s force had been driven back in confusion, losing two more killed before they could get back to their own lines. The counterattack had failed. It was a bad blow for the good side. The colonel had been one of their best field commanders and they had counted a great deal on that attack and now things didn’t look good for them at all. Steadily they were being forced further and further back, ringed in into a smaller and smaller maneuvering space. It gave John a strange delicious feeling of tragic fatalisticness, to see them fighting so hard and bravely and being gradually beaten back. On the other hand, as the bad side steadily advanced into the good side’s territory, they came more and more into dead range of the BB gun in the window, and consequently were now losing a great many more men than they had before. It even appeared at times that they might not have sufficient forces to capture the fort once they got there. Also, John had contemplated putting a relieving force of reinforcements in the field behind the bad side to aid the beleaguered garrison. He had the men. And if he did that, it would turn into a real blood bath, a regular rout, for the bad side. And in fact John was not sure yet just which side was going to win. Sometimes he could hardly wait to find out.