Any Minute I Can Split

by Judith Rossner

  “I think I’m scared of the idea of committing ourselves to this place.”

  “Selling the house doesn’t commit us to anything but getting out of Hartsdale.”

  “Well, that’s just it, maybe,” she said, feeling dishonest. “I need to feel committed to something, not just to getting out of something.”

  “I thought you were crazy about this place.”

  “I am, but . . .” But what? The tears stopped. But what? But she wasn’t so sure, now that there was this change in their relations with De Witt? Now that she would no longer have De Witt’s automatic support in her life battle with Roger? No, it was more than that. The truth was that while she’d had vague thoughts of De Witt in terms of the future, she’d never really thought of the farm as anything more than a refuge from her marriage. Just as De Witt had said—it existed for her in contrast, and she was no more ready to abandon her real life than Marie Antoinette had been about to abandon the court at Versailles for the aprons and milk buckets she was fond of playing with. The steady routine, the lack of mental stimulation, the absence of stores, neon lights and traffic, of all those city nuisances that somehow served to keep your blood pressure from getting sluggish and your brain from turning into un- crunchy Granola, if she was frightened by De Witt’s vision of movement as salvation, she was no less frightened at the thought of giving up more or less permanently those urban qualities, positive and negative, that made life seem much more interesting than it really was. In New York apocalypse seemed little more than an extension of everyday reality while up here you could picture yourself in another few years waiting for anything that would break up the monotony. “I love it here, Roger. But saying that isn’t saying that I could stand to live here forever. Stay on a farm and milk goats and grow vegetables and all that with no change.”

  “There’s no law we’d have to do that,” Roger pointed out. “Why would we be any more limited to this place than we were limited to Hartsdale?”

  “A farm is a lot more work than a house.”

  “There’s a lot more people to do it.”

  “We’d be able to go places?” Quaveringly. “Together? Maybe take a vacation and go to Europe?”

  Roger laughed. “You never wanted to go to Europe.” This was true. She was frightened of airplanes and convinced she would get seasick. “I used to talk about going back to Paris and you never wanted to get off your ass and do it.”

  “I know,” she said. “But when I think about living here, Europe seems different.”

  Roger rumpled her hair fondly. “At the rate you’re going in another five years of country you’ll be a reasonably sophisticated human being.”

  A letter from Roger’s mother.

  June 7th, 1970

  Dearest Roger:

  I have your little note of June 3rd. At least I imagine it was written on or about the 3rd. I do wish you would remember to date your notes, dear, it makes filing so much easier.

  It was pleasant to learn that you and Margaret and the twins are in good health. We look forward to a time when you will visit with us as we are naturally anxious to see our grandchildren.

  Now about the money, dear, I have something to say which I fear will come as a shock to you. I have instructed Mr. Leddington to withhold your allowance until such time as you choose to return to a decent home and a normal way of life, such as it is. I realize that this is a much more drastic step than we took when you made your disastrous first “match,” when we only refused to pay the exorbitant bills we were frequently sent. The reason for this is that I have been seeing a psychiatrist, a kind and brilliant man named Dr. Pfensig, who has convinced me that your difficulties stem from my failure to be firm with you, to use the authority which he says is available to every parent. Dr. Pfensig says that I am so in awe of your intelligence that I have refused to influence you or to inculcate you with our values as every parent should do.

  Well, dear, better late than never. I am withholding your allowance to express my disapproval of the way those people live. They are dirty, they are sex fiends and they take drugs. Please let me know when you have returned home so that I can instruct Mr. Leddington to resume your allowance.

  Your loving mother,

  Sarah Adams

  Roger’s face was a playground for astonishment, hilarity and rage. He would reread some line, like they are dirty, they are sex fiends and they take drugs, and begin to laugh and then stop abruptly and mutter furiously, “The fucking idiot, goddammit, the fucking idiot.” Or he would read I have instructed Mr. Leddington to withhold your allowance with fury but then begin to howl at her refusal to refer to his first wife by name, or at the name of the doctor, or inculcate you with our values. But then finally he could only repeat over and over in a tone of ironic awe, Well, dear, better late than never.

  He stared at the letter. “Menopause. Or maybe she’s trying to kick Mr. Boston.”

  Roger’s mother was a secret drinker who kept bottles of Old Mr. Boston whiskey in her dresser drawers, shoe bags and so on.

  They were lying in the pasture, having spent most of the morning tilling and removing the rocks from the land for the tender crops, which were ready to go in. De Witt had brought the mail from town. Paul had mown the pasture for the first time that spring and the smell of the damp, cut grass was sweet and powerful. Rosemary sat nearby, grabbing handfuls of the grass, stuffing them into her mouth then spitting them out. Tiring of the game she would watch Rue, who was gamboling fearlessly around the soft pasture land, once in a while stopping to pick some grass and dump it on Roger or Margaret. It was a clear bright day. A perfect jewel of a day. All the more precious because it couldn’t last; tomorrow it would get warmer or moister or colder or something you didn’t want it to do.

  “On a day like this,” she said, “it seems impossible to think of ever leaving here.” Maybe it was that she’d been resigning herself to staying, anyway. There were really good things to be said for the idea. De Witt and Roger stayed up late into each night now, talking, and while she was jealous, she understood how good it was for Roger’s mind to be working on something concrete. When he really got going on some job, whether it was a film or sculpture or whatever, he became quite a different person; the dissatisfaction, the intensity, the restlessness, the ironic fantasies got channeled into what he was doing and life became easy and pleasant.

  “Don’t worry,” Roger said. “We’re not leaving.” He stared at the letter. “The fucking idiot.”

  Also, the letter from Roger’s mother had given the farm the extra appeal of being difficult or impossible to achieve. Roger had arranged for brokers in Hartsdale to show the house but that could take ages. They had no idea of what Mitchell was going to ask for the farm. He’d picked it up for a pittance, something like eight thousand dollars, seventeen years before, but it was unlikely that this would be a factor; he was a businessman, after all, and the worth of the farm and the adjoining acreage, which he also owned, had multiplied geometrically several times since.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Obviously,” Roger said, “we’re going to have to go to Philadelphia and talk to the idiot.”

  “We?” Her heart sank. In Philadelphia she always felt as though she’d been embalmed a moment before dying.

  He nodded. “All of us.”

  They looked at the twins. Rosie had fallen asleep near them; Rue had finally stopped reeling around and was pulling apart some daisies.

  Children, you are about to be manipulated for financial gain.

  She sighed. “It seems like such a . . . yicch thing to have to do.”

  “Mmm,” Roger said. “Well, they’ll never know the difference.”

  “Do we have to go right away?” she asked, her stomach already twisting with dread.

  “No,” Roger said, “we’ll wait until we talk to Mitchell. He’s coming up for the weekend of the Fourth.”

  Mitchell is coming in a few weeks. Mitchell and David’s mother. David’s mothe
r. How was she supposed to talk to David’s mother? Better not to think about it. Not to try to plan. Oh, God, David’s mother!

  HANNAH left under odd circumstances. She’d been depressed and withdrawn from the day of the incident with Roger. She’d attempted to maintain some sort of friendly contact with Margaret but the way she’d done it was by suggesting that together they’d been victimized by Roger and De Witt, a ploy which turned Margaret off because a) it was ridiculous and b) she felt that way herself. At the beginning of what was supposed to be the last week of school Hannah and Mira had a terrific row, or rather Hannah was terribly upset and railed furiously at Mira, who gritted her teeth and otherwise maintained a posture of benevolent condescension. As closely as anyone could tell—for Mira was charitably silent and Hannah immediately hitched up the trailer and took off—Hannah was upset because Lorna and Baba had been persecuting her children. Or rejecting them. Whichever was the greater. Hannah had a tendency to think that any child in an argument with her children’s united front was persecuting them both but in this case, because of Daisy and Mario’s greater age, size and sophistication, it seemed particularly ludicrous. Still, someone had seen Mario running to the trailer in tears with Daisy following languidly behind, and a moment later Hannah had burst out of the trailer, nearly crying herself, looking for Mira. Only Carol had mixed feelings about her departure; even Carol had grown weary of the heavy trip Hannah laid on her friends but she couldn’t help regretting, she said sadly, the magnificent Hannah that could have been.

  MITCHELL and Becky were coming Friday morning. Roger spent a couple of days checking out real estate in the area so they’d have some basis for negotiating with Mitchell. There was a strange tense feeling in the house. Mira was going around cleaning and double cleaning after everyone else. Starr was saying they didn’t have to put on any goddamn show for anyone; what she was doing instead was making it a point not to do her regular chores, which refusal De Witt accepted with a smile on the grounds of temporary insanity, which Mitchell’s visits often brought on. Paul and Jordan, it turned out, both entertained an inordinate hatred for Mitchell, and they disappeared without saying when they’d be back. Friday morning passed into afternoon and the visitors hadn’t come.

  Margaret was upstairs when the wine-red Aston-Martin, the only one she’d ever seen outside of a James Bond movie, pulled into the yard. Nobody had told her in advance about the car although there’d been some veiled jokes, and now the effect of the thing, flipping into the farm like a clerical error from another time dimension, was mind-blowing. Everything around it looked ten times as dilapidated as it had before as the car slid into the space between their shabby pickup truck and the weathered old barn, like some radiant, placid, space-age animal waiting to be milked. A large man and a small girl got out. Or was it a woman? It was hard to tell from the bedroom window; the shape was womanly but the ambiance was very young. It couldn’t be David’s mother. It couldn’t be. Carol and De Witt came across the yard and hugged the visitors. Margaret sat down numbly on the bed. She’d been feeling nervous and defensive about meeting David’s mother but the doll-like figure in the courtyard wasn’t the person she’d felt defensive toward. Now she didn’t know how she felt except that her heart was beating rather rapidly and she felt a strong reluctance to go downstairs. The twins were both napping. Margaret stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes but she was fully awake and the tension of trying to force her lids to stay shut began to hurt her eyes. She got up, combed her hair and wove it into one long neat braid, then went downstairs.

  They were all in the common room, chatting pleasantly. De Witt got up and came over to her, put his arm around her.

  “This is Margaret,” he said. “Who I’ve been telling you about.” His manner was just stiff enough to tell her that even he was not entirely at ease. “I was talking about David,” he said to her. “Telling Becky how you took care of him while he was here.”

  She nodded but she couldn’t talk. She felt as though she’d eaten a can of anchovies. She smiled feebly. Becky Kastle sat near Mira, drinking iced tea and eating strawberries and yoghurt. She was very pretty. She looked about twenty-five years old.

  “We eat so much better here than we do in the city,” Becky said. It was one of the standard turista lines; they’d all gotten accustomed to the implied condescension in it; the marvel was that the Kastles, with their close ties to the farm, should still seem such tourists on it.

  “Mmmmm,” Mitchell said, buttering a piece of bread. “We should send Pierre up here for some lessons.”

  Mitchell was a pleasantly surrealistic-looking man, about six feet tall, built or evolved in the form of a Kokeshi doll, with half a head of silky black hair and the face of a cherub salesman who was his own best customer.

  Becky giggled. “Pierre’s our chef. It’s against his religion to cook anything with less than half a pound of butter.”

  “How my wife keeps her figure is another story,” Mitchell said.

  His manner was jovial but his eyes were strangely evasive—as though he had to keep moving them away from you because it would be inconvenient for you to perceive his intelligence.

  “Can I talk to you about David?” Becky asked Margaret.

  No.

  She nodded.

  “How long was he actually here?”

  Margaret tried to answer but nothing came out.

  “Quite a while, actually,” De Witt said, rescuing her. “And he did very well, too. Participated in the group work, and so on. About half, a year, I’d say. I’m not sure he could have done it without Margaret’s support.”

  “Thank you, Margaret,” Becky said with apparent sincerity. “He needs someone to take care of him, whether he knows it or not.”

  He knows it all right. She wanted to cry. She’d thought about David rather less than she’d expected to in the weeks since his departure but when she did think about him it was like rubbing an open wound. Sometimes the wound was that he’d quickly found someone else and sometimes it was guilt that he was terribly alone, but it hurt either way.

  Roger came in and De Witt introduced him to the Kastles. He was civil. Not at all flirtatious with Becky. A sure barometer of his interest in the farm, for he never failed to flirt with any good-looking woman unless his mind was fully engaged in some project. They talked for a while in a roundabout way.

  “Mitchell is finding the farm rather more of a burden than he can manage easily, with the new tax structures,” De Witt said to Roger.

  “That’s his subtle way of saying I’m broke,” Mitchell announced jovially.

  Flash to the Aston-Martin in the yard. Once upon a time in Hartsdale she’d known a lot of people who could have a chef and a couple of cars and complain about being broke. They’d never made her terribly angry because she was rich herself but she was sure that without money she would have been infuriated.

  “So how much do you want?” Roger asked laconically.

  Mitchell laughed. “You’re taking my breath away.” To De Witt he said, “I didn’t really want to do it this way, De Witt, but it’s getting to be too much for me. I’ve really seriously thought about coming up here permanently but even if I could swing it, this life isn’t for Becky.”

  “Of course,” De Witt said sympathetically. “I understand perfectly.”

  “You do? Jesus, I’m glad of that. I’ve been worried, one thing I didn’t want was to—”

  “So how much?” Roger repeated.

  Mitchell whistled.

  Silence.

  “With or without the land?” he finally said.

  “Both,” Roger replied.

  “I really didn’t want to do it this way,” Mitchell said to De Witt. “So cut and dried. I’m not forgetting the work you’ve put in here, or the rest of it. I don’t want to screw you, De Witt . . . I’d give it to you for much less than I’d put it on the market for.”

  “How much is that?” Roger asked.

  “Look here,” Mitchell said irritably,
“I have nothing against you but this is between De Witt and me.”

  De Witt smiled. “It’s okay, Mitchell,” he said. “I appreciate what you’re doing but I don’t have any money.”

  “I’m not asking that much.”

  “I mean I have none.”

  “None?” He seemed unbelieving.

  “None.” De Witt was still smiling. “That is to say, about four hundred dollars.”

  “What are you living on?” Incredulous.

  “You, primarily.”

  “But I just pay for the farm.”

  “What other expenses do I have?”

  “Jesus, I dunno!” Mitchell was flabbergasted. “Food, clothes, entertainment, medical expenses, taxes . . . EXPENSES!”

  “Well,” De Witt said patiently, “as far as food goes, the farm provides most of it. Whatever little else we need we manage to get with the money other people bring in . . . unemployment checks, craft sales, etc . . . clothing . . . we had it when we came, there’s hardly anything else we need.” She’d seen him in two different pairs of pants since she came, a pair of jeans and a pair of corduroys. In the freezing weather long underwear peeked out from the bottoms when he took off his boots. “As far as entertainment goes, I guess you could say we provide our own. Our lives are our entertainment.” He made it sound desirable yet it seemed to Margaret that this was the essence of her complaint about the farm, that their life style was both the subject and object of their lives, that Starr couldn’t go out and fuck a fifteen-year-old boy without delivering a speech about the search for new life styles; that they didn’t just eat and farm organically but worried over it so much of the time. Like the radicals of the thirties who had to think just the right thoughts for fear of being consigned to the dustbin of history, they were conscious of their haloes growing shinier with each whole-wheat loaf baked, every tidbit of garbage plowed back into the earth, each Kleenex not used. “We don’t seem to have much in the way of medical expenses, maybe just because there aren’t many doctors close by.” Most sicknesses just went away with time and Vitamin C; had there been a time when everyone lived like that? “And then of course,” De Witt said, “I naturally don’t pay taxes.”