“That doesn’t happen.”
“No?”
“Mother Nature keeps them out of the way, Miss.”
“Boobs don’t hurt either. Well sometimes they do. Before my period they can get pretty sore.”
“Hmn,” George Mills said.
“Are you coming in or aren’t you? What did you mean you don’t know if you can swim in a pool?”
“The poor don’t know much about swimming pools. The schools didn’t have them when I was a boy.”
“Where did you swim?”
“Off piers. In ponds. In bodies of water where bait shops are found.”
“Didn’t you ever go to the beach?”
“We went there on Sundays, on Fourths of July. We sat on a blanket, we drank beer from a keg. We swam always in waters that were bad for our strokes.”
“Come in,” she said, “we don’t have to race.”
“I’ve a stroke like a nigger. I flounder, I thrash.”
“That’s mean, Mills. That’s wicked to say.”
“Black people are afraid of the water,” George Mills said. “Poor people are.”
“Wait,” she said, “I’ll come out.” She swam to the side of the pool where George Mills was sitting and placed her hands on the coping. Using only her arms, she hoisted herself out of the water easily. “Brr,” she said, “it is chilly. The air’s cooler than the water. Where’s my towel? Oh, there it is. Dry me off, Mills.”
“Here,” George said, “I’ll hand it to you.”
“You dry me,” the girl said. She laughed. “A hundred strokes.”
“I think you’d better do it yourself, Miss,” Mills said.
“I’ll let you call me Mary.”
“I don’t mind calling you Miss.” It was true. He didn’t.
“You’re just scared Uncle Harry will see.”
“See what, Miss?”
“Go in, get wet. I’ll dry you off.”
“I’m in a state of grace, Miss,” George Mills said so gently that the girl might have thought she was being scolded. But Mills felt no anger. Even the mild, queer authority of maleness he’d felt, the odd thrust of his exhibitionist swagger, had somehow resolved itself, declined, his horsepower manhood gone off. I’m her servant, thought Mills. It’s proper she should tease me. There was a compact between them, the ancient, below-stairs displacements and goings on of history’s and the world’s only two real classes. She was there for his character as, in a way, he was there for hers. And her mother didn’t want to die until this child was ready. He knew that if he didn’t do something with his loyalty he was lost. So he told her.
“Because,” he said, “women always fooled me. Because whatever I thought about women was never what I should have thought.
“I mean their natures. I had this idea about their natures, that there was such a thing as a virgin heart. To this day I’m astonished young ladies let fellows. I’m not talking the sense of the thing. I mean if it makes sense, or even if it’s right or wrong. I mean it seemed to me it couldn’t happen, not shouldn’t, couldn’t. That the body itself wouldn’t let it. That that’s what a body was, being’s buffer, a place to hide. Lord, Miss, the things I thought. That marriage wasn’t so much a way of two people finding each other as something they did to keep others from finding them, from ever having to do again with anyone else what their bodies weren’t strong enough to keep them from doing with each other. To give back sovereignty, you see, even if it was devalued now, like bad dollars or a fixed income. That courtship was impossible, that a fellow’s lies and urgencies had to get past the hymen first, that they listen in their cherry, see Miss?”
The child, wrapped in towels now from head to toe, watched from where she lay in the deck furniture. Mills had a vagrant image of her mother in her sheets in the hospital bed.
He tells about the Delgado Ballroom. He tells about bringing Louise and her friends back to his apartment.
“This is swell,” Louise says. “Isn’t this swell?”
“Have you got television?” Bernadette asks.
“What’s in the fridge?”
“I don’t know. Just some eggs. Some stuff for breakfast.”
“Who wants cocoa? Raise your hand.”
“I don’t think there’s cocoa,” George says. “There may be some chocolate syrup in the cabinet where I keep the soap powder.”
“Where’s your phone?” Charles says. “Never mind, I see it. This directory looks like it’s never been used.”
“If you had the fixings I could make chocolate chip cookies. If you had the chocolate chips.”
“There’s Saltines,” George says.
“At least there’s a radio,” Herb says. “I’ll get some music.”
“Somebody get the lights.”
“Man, are you corny!”
“Who’s horny?”
“Sometimes Ray acts very immature,” Bernadette says.
“Got a church key?”
“In the drawer with my tableware.”
“Okay, I’ve got it. Look at this, he’s got service for one.”
“Maybe he isn’t registered.”
“Hey you guys, be still a minute.…Is this Mr. Stuart Melbart of 2706 North Grand Boulevard?…It is? Congratulations, Mr. Melbart, this is Hy Nichols of KSD radio. If you can answer the following question you and Mrs. Melbart will be the lucky winners of an all-expense-paid vacation in Hot Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, as KSD’s guests at the luxurious Park Palace Hotel. Are you ready for your question?…Good. All right, sir, name two members in President Eisenhower’s cabinet.…Sherman Adams is correct. You’re halfway there.…I can’t hear you. John Foster who? Speak up, please.…Yes, yes, John Foster. We have to have that last name, sir. Can you speak up?…No sir, I can’t.…Yes sir, I can now. Go ahead, sir, take one more try.…John, yes.…Foster, yes.…What’s that?…It must be a bad connection, yes.”
“Charles, that’s cruel. The poor guy must be fit to bust.”
“Did you hear him? Did you hear him shouting? What a goon!”
“Beer, everybody. Have a beer, George?”
“That sounds funny. Can’t you get a different station?”
“This is the only one that works. George must be some Browns fan. They left town two years ago.”
“Haven’t you even got a phonograph?”
“No.”
“How big are your breasts?…I said how big are your breasts?…No, ma’am, I’m not being fresh. Isn’t this the take-out chicken place?”
“I’m expecting a call,” George says.
“Bern?”
“What?”
“Want to take a shower?”
“Oh, Ray. You’re the limit.”
“What the hell, Bern. We’re married.”
“I don’t have clean towels.”
“Why don’t you sit by me?”
“There, that’s better. Isn’t that better?”
“Hey, I can’t see to dial.”
“Why don’t you sit by me?”
“Where are they going? That’s my bedroom. Why’d they close the door?”
“George, they’re engaged.”
“Dibs on the couch.”
“Shove over you guys.”
“Okay. Quit your pushing.”
“All the good spots are taken,” Louise says.
“Did they just go into my bathroom together?”
“Maybe Bernadette had to go.”
“They’re running the shower.”
“I know, you don’t have clean towels. Maybe they could…” Louise giggles.
“What did you say?”
“Shh. Ruth and Charles.”
“We heard you, Lulu.”
“Well, mind your business then. You weren’t supposed to hear me. I was talking to George.”
“Don’t, Charles, you could hurt the baby!”
“Do you like that?” she whispers. “Does that feel good?”
“Yes,” George Mills says.
“Ch
arlie, it could.”
“Hmnn. Hmmnn.”
“You’re shy, aren’t you? You don’t open your mouth when you kiss. Didn’t you ever french a girl, George?”
“I french.”
“Kch, kch. Take it easy, you want to cut off my air?”
Ruth, beside him on the sofa, touches his arm.
“What?”
“Shh. Listen.”
Louise giggles. “Ruth, that’s mean. They’re in love.”
“He’s not going to sit next to me in those sticky pants.”
“They’ve only been in there two minutes,” Charles says. “Boy, was he hot to trot!”
“He couldn’t help it,” Ruth says. “She’s been teasing him all evening.”
“Well he’s calmed down now all right, all right.”
“I swear,” Louise says, “wham bam. You men have no staying power.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we have a contest?”
“A control contest,” Charles says.
“Everybody?” Louise asks.
“Sure. Tell those guys in there. Herb’s already out of it. Herb’s already lost.”
“Hey, you can’t go in there.”
“Bet?”
Charles gets up and walks to the bathroom door. He opens it. “We’re having a control contest. Herb’s out of it. On your mark, get set, go.” He leans his mouth against the bedroom door. “We’re having a control contest.”
“I thought Herb’s out of it. That he already lost.”
“Is Ellen Rose out of it?”
“Oh sure,” Ruth says. “With her fella already come? That’ll be the day, won’t it, Louise?”
“You should have seen it, George. She’s all lathered up. What a pair of tits on that Bernadette.”
“Charlie!”
“Well it’s true.”
“Nicer than mine?”
“No, not nicer than yours. Not nicer than yours at all. Just bigger,” Charles tells his wife.
“Only because she’s four months’ pregnant. It’s all milk.”
“You’re pregnant too. She doesn’t even show yet.”
“She shows in her titties.”
“Are we really having a control contest?” Ray shouts from the bathroom.
“Is it all right, George?”
“Why not? There’s no TV, I’m out of cocoa, I haven’t got a phonograph, and only one station on the radio works.”
“Sure,” Charles shouts back, laughing. “Come, I say come, as you are.” He turns to George. “Count ten to yourself and start moaning.”
“Charlie, that’s cheating.”
“No it’s not, it’s a joke. We’ll make monkeys out of them.” He moans, he purls. “Everybody,” he hisses.
“The water’s running. They can’t even hear us.”
“No fair you guys,” Charles calls. “Either turn off the shower or open the door. Hey,” he calls. “you guys in this or not?——Okay,” he whispers, “go.” In seconds he begins to moan again. He growls, he coos. He’s the very troubadour of sexual melody.
“How come you never sound this way in real life?” Ruth Oliver asks.
“Come on, come on,” Charles tells his wife. “Oh. Oh yeah,” he says less quietly. “I lose,” he cries. “I lose.”
“I guess we ought to humor him,” Ruth says. “Mnn,” she purrs, “mnn.”
Mary looked at him wide-eyed. “Is this true? Did this happen?”
“I’m in a state of grace,” George Mills said. “I don’t have to lie.”
Now Louise is chirping. Grace notes, diapasons, the aroused tropes of all dilate rapture.
“Louise?” the child said.
“All of them,” George Mills said. “Doting love solos, Miss. Arias of concupiscence. Choirs of asyncopatic, amatory, affricative, low-woodwind drone.”
“What a racket!” Mary said.
“Yelps, cries, askew pitch. All the strobic gutturals of heat.”
It’s quiet for a moment. Then, “This one’s finished,” Bernadette calls from the bathroom.
“Oh God,” Ellen Rose shrieks in George Mills’s bed, “me, me tooooo!”
“Go for it,” Charles urges.
And, in the dark, George Mills can just make out his leer, his wife Ruth’s. Louise is actually touching him now. His flies are in her fist. George’s left hand is under her dress, his fingers snagged in her garter belt, his palm hefting flesh, the hard little button at the top of the strap. “Don’t, you’ll tear it,” she says in his ear wetly. He introduces his fingers beneath the tough edges of her girdle. Where they are baffled by other textures. Elastic, the metal of fasteners, silk, hair, damp, curled as pica c’s. She squirms from his hand.
“Easy,” she says, “take it easy. Don’t hurt me.”
“It’s all this stuff,” he says, and tries to raise her dress, to pull it out from under her behind.
“No,” she says, “don’t,” and moves away from him. This is when he tries to pull her down, when his head falls into Ruth Oliver’s lap, thighs closed prim as pie. He feels a man’s hand at his ear. It’s Charles’. Mr. and Mrs. Oliver are holding hands across his face.
“Aw, he’s suffering,” Louise’s friend Ruth says. “Put him out of his misery, Lu.” And when Ruth’s friend Louise moves her body against him. When his nerves shiver, spasm, when he whimpers his release. Not trumpets, not brazen blares. No boomy bray of barking majesty, but whimper, whine, fret. An orgasm like a small complaint.
The door to Mills’s bathroom opens and Ray and Bernadette come into the living room. They are dressed. When Ray turns the light on in the hall George Mills can see that their hair isn’t even wet.
“Maybe we ought to go,” Charles says.
“What about the lovebirds?” Ray asks, indicating the closed door to Mills’s bedroom.
“Knock on it. Tell them maybe we ought to go.”
“Hey, break it up you guys,” Ray says into the woodwork. “Give it a rest.”
“How about that?” Herb says as he leads Ellen Rose into the living room. “It’s not even midnight. Want to play some strip poker? Where’s your cards, George?”
“Weren’t you mad?” Mary asked.
“What for? To be proved right? She was a virgin. She was only protecting herself. She was a virgin. She wasn’t in nature yet. None of them were.”
“Two of those girls were married. They were pregnant.”
“Yes,” George Mills said, “they were protecting the unborn. It was hygiene is all. Marriage like a sleepover, like a pajama party. If it helped the husbands for the wives to talk dirty, if it helped to be together, to make crank calls, if it helped to excite each other until they didn’t need excitement or protection either anymore, what harm did it do?”
“Ellen Rose wasn’t married. Ellen Rose was whoosis’s, Herb’s, fiancee.”
“His pants were stained.”
“What?”
“Herb. His pants were stained too.”
“You tell me the darndest things.”
“Intimacy.”
“Pardon?”
“Intimacy. Because that’s the real eye-opener. The knockabout slapstick of the heart. Open secret, public knowledge. Those thighs on the sofa, those folks in the bed. Intimacy. Even friendship. Even association. Jesus, Miss, I’d thought my ass was a secret, my pecker hush-hush.”
“I’m going to tell my mother how you talk.”
“Your mother is dying. She’s gorging herself on all the shrimp she can eat.”
“Don’t you say that.”
“You can’t evangelize grace. You can only talk about it. Ballpark figures.”
“You’re crazy. You’re a crazy man.”
“Because I was right. In a way I was right. You can’t seduce virgins. Louise and I were practically engaged from the moment she found out I didn’t have cocoa.”
“You shut up,” Mary said. “Take it back about my mother.”
“Your mother is dying,” Mills
said calmly.
“Stop that,” Mary said. “I’m just a little girl.”
“Then behave like one. Practice the piano, be nice to your sister, bring up your math.”
“Leave me alone,” Mary cried. “Mind your business. Leave me alone.” She was crying uncontrollably now, her sobs like hiccups, her nose and chin smeared with thin icicles of snot.
“Wipe your eyes,” George Mills said. “Blow your nose. Use your beach towel.”
8
Later George Mills would tell Messenger that he had known, that he’d been certain, that either his experience in Cassadaga as a child or the state of grace, which he’d be the first to admit he’d had no hand in, which he’d caught like a cold, or maybe something in each of us but compounded in Mills, who had a thousand years of history at his command, or anyway disposal, a millennium of what Messenger would call racial memory, hunch all the while increasingly fine-tuned in his stock until by the time it came down to George it was no longer hunch or even conviction so much as pure biological adaptation, real as the equipment of birds or bears.
“You’re a fucking mutation? That it, Mills?” Messenger would ask. “The new man?”
“No no,” Mills would say, “your people are the new men. With your kids and clans, your distaff and branches, all your in-laws and country cousins and poor relations. In me boiled down, don’t you know? What do you call it? Distilled. Spit and polished back to immaculate, what do you call it, mass.”
“Who do you like in the fifth race, George?” Messenger would ask. “What’s to become of us?”
“No no,” Mills would say, realizing it had been a mistake to tell.
But he had known. Even as he sped the kid back to the hospital, risking the ticket in the foreign country, the cops’ dangerous Mexican banditry, telling her not to waste time dressing but to bring her clothes with her as they rushed to the deathbed in their bikinis. Even, really, as he’d known that the child could shower, take her time, all the time in the world, eat a leisurely lunch, that that might even be preferable in fact, keeping the kid out of the way while her uncle made all the complicated arrangements with the hospital and government officials. (Which was why, in a way, he’d been glad to see him that morning, felt relieved to have at least that bothersome responsibility taken away from him. If her brother hadn’t come, Father Merchant would have been all over him. And George would have listened, capitulating with genuine relief, grateful for the old tout’s tips and counsel. [He was no hand at red tape. Forms and documents scared him.] If Merchant had proposed, as ultimately he actually would to Harry, that the hospital be permitted to perform an autopsy on Mrs. Glazer’s body, Mills would almost certainly have agreed. She would have been returned to St. Louis without organs, all the metastasized Mexican cancer of her body cut away, scraped from her, koshered as a chicken in her casket—which Father Merchant would have picked out—like a Spanish treasure chest. The corpse would wait, the gruesome negotiations between Mary’s uncle and the staff taking up the better part of the afternoon, going on, quite literally, over Mrs. Glazer’s dead body, Father Merchant the go-between and arbiter to the peso’s very fraction of the exact amount of the pourboire, the tip——what went to the nurses to wash the body before it could be released to the undertakers, what to the doctor to make the appropriate—and true—remarks on the death certificate in order to forestall the routine investigation demanded by the municipal statutes in the instance of the death of a foreign national, what went by way of pure courtesy and ritual obligation to the company priest who was required by law to administer last rites, whether requested or not, to everyone who happened to die in the hospital, whether Catholic or not, what went to charity, what to the hospital bursar before the deceased could be discharged, what to the death teamsters who would cart the body away, what to the mortician’s assistants who would treat it either gently and respectfully or, as Father Merchant would warn, with secret, invisible desecrations if the family did not take care of them. Officiating impediment too, guiding them through all the intricate bureaucracy of death, advising them which licenses were essential and, of these, which had to be notarized—Merchant was a notary—which merely witnessed.)
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