“Why not?”
“He dyes his hair. Eileen told me.”
He laughed again.
He drove me home and kissed me goodnight before I got out of the car. He kissed me very gently, as if he were my brother. I went up the side terrace steps of the Marshalls’ big Georgian brick colonial. A French door had been left unlocked. I turned to look back at Skip’s car and he flicked the headlights twice.
He didn’t call me the next day. He called me three weeks later from a telephone booth on Madison Avenue. At first I thought he was drunk, but as we talked he sounded better. Hi! He’d been working hard! He knew a great place in Chinatown! I had a date that night and couldn’t see him. When I got back to the apartment, he was sitting in the living room with Eileen. She was in her bathrobe, they’d been watching TV.
“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “Did you have a nice time? My guess is, nice but not great since lucky Mr. X. didn’t come up”.
I said, “He wasn’t invited. Who invited you?”
He was sitting in a chair with his shirt collar unbuttoned and a leg over the chair’s arm.
Eileen said, “I did.” She was slouched down on her shoulder blades watching Johnny Carson over a tumbler of Scotch which she’d planted on her breastbone. I thought that she’d better find a lover soon or she’d turn into a lush.
“We’ve been celebrating,” Skip said. “Eileen’s engaged.”
“You are?” I said.
“He’s kidding,” Eileen said. Her bathrobe was loosely tied and under the bathrobe she wore a short pink nightie which didn’t quite cover.
“Eileen,” I said. I could see a patch of dark between her legs.
“What?” she said. Her eyes had a glazed look.
“We were taking about Quentin,” Skip said.
“I sa-see now how I can’t do it,” Eileen said solemnly. She tilted her head down and tipped the tumbler up—slurp, slurp. “There are all these ca-cul-chr’l drawbacks.”
“Quentin’s a Mormon,” Skip said and yawned. He shook his head vigorously, shaking himself awake. “You want to go out?”
“I just came in.”
“You’re mad, aren’t you.”
“No. I’m tired.”
He turned his head to Eileen. “Is she mad?”
“Abou’ what?” Eileen asked.
“Listen,” Skip said. “Do you two think I could stay here overnight? I’m beat and I don’t have a sack. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Sure,” Eileen said. “Why not?” She laughed. “You want me or her?”
“Good night,” I said, and walked to the bedroom door.
Skip got up and came over to me. He took my wrist between his thumb and two fingers, as if he were taking my pulse, “Hey,” he said, “fancy that. Liz lives!”
I took my hand away.
“Liz, lovely Liz, can we have dinner tomorrow night? Maybe? Possibly? Come on. We might have a great time.”
“We might not.”
“Aw.” Comically, he fell to his knees. He clasped my legs and leaned his brow against my kneecaps. “Please, please pretty Liz.”
“Could you let go? I’m very tired.” He sank back and then gradually collapsed until he lay stretched out on the floor with his eyes closed and his hands folded prayerfully on his chest, like a corpse.
“Oh fer … Skip, get up. Skip!”
Eileen said mournfully, “Poor Skip, he’sh bombed.”
“You too,” I said.
She giggled. I went to bed. In the morning, he was gone, but he’d left behind a pot full of coffee and a vase full of red roses. He called that evening, very contrite, thoughtful, and charming, and later took me to dinner. We saw each other every day for two weeks and then he left town and I didn’t hear from him again for two months. When he showed up at Christmas-time, I was furious. This time he wasn’t apologetic or placating, he was philosophical. Very calmly and rationally, he explained to me how this was his life, this is what he needed to do. I could take it, or I could leave it. He loved me, he swore it, but he wouldn’t always be available. Why was I so clutchy? Why was I so insecure? Wouldn’t it be freer, better, more spontaneous, if we simply enjoyed our love whenever we could? And when we were apart, we would make do with other people.
“Like who?” I cried.
“Hey, babe,” he said, “it’s up to you. You’re my girl, but I’m not ready for that whole scene. Can you define marriage in two words?”
“No,” I said.
He grinned. “How’s this? Penile institution.”
4.
On the night of July 3rd, Skip called me from D.C. to say he might have to stay down all week—he had some things to attend to, people to see. He missed me. He missed not having The Fourth at Cool’s Ridge. What was everybody going to do?
“Not much,” I said. “Swim and barbecue. My mother’s coming up for the day.”
“Good idea,” Skip said mildly. He didn’t mind my mother—it was she who disliked him.
“She thought so. I wasn’t sure.” He laughed. I said, “What are you going to do?”
“Same kind of deal. Weirdly enough, we’re all going over to the Marshalls.”
“The Marshalls! Eileen’s family?”
“Yeah. It turns out Mrs. Marshall and my mother have gotten to be pretty good friends. Wait’ll you hear this one. My mother’s taken up riding.”
“Riding! You’re kidding!” I was truly incredulous. All that horseshit! I could see Amelia in custom-made riding boots tiptoeing through the dung of a stable-yard.
“No I’m not.” Now there was irritation in his voice—I’d overdone it. He didn’t think it was funny in the same way I did. Often, when Skip talked about his mother he’d smile in an amused, indulgent way, as if giving a description of a monstrous but gifted child. “They worked on a big charity event together last winter, ‘The Friends of Animals Christmas Ball.’ Mrs. Marshall and my mother were co-chairmen.”
“Chairpersons.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Actually, the friendship really makes sense.”
“From which point of view?”
“They complement each other. My mother’s a fighter …”
“… and Mrs. Marshall’s a quitter?”
“What? Well, yeah, I guess. Bluntly.”
“Well, do have a good time tomorrow. Is Eileen going to be there with Quent?”
“No. They’re up in Maine. Listen, I’ll see you on the weekend, babe.”
“Honest?”
“Honest. I love you. Have a great Fourth, honey.”
“You too … Skip.” I’d turned suddenly shy. Scowling Leonard had just walked into the kitchen. He glared at me, came to a skidding halt, turned on his heel and went back out.
At dinner an hour later, we sat around the trestle table eating pasta primavera (it was Shauna’s night to cook) and reminiscing about how we used to spend the holiday when we were kids.
“At the shore,” Shauna said. “We always went down for that week. We’d rent this house at Spring Lake. I loved the beach, but I hated the house.”
“How come?” I asked. “Wasn’t it fun being at the shore?”
“No. The house belonged to a client of my father’s and we had to keep the place really neat at all times. It was worse than home because it wasn’t our house so we had to be extra careful. But my father liked that, I think. Here he had a week off and he spent it organizing us into little dust hit squads. He called himself the CEO of the McKeown family. Luckily, there was hardly any grass. God, if there’d been grass …!”
“Did you have to do all that stuff at home?”
“You bet. Grass, shrubs. No flowers, but we had a gravel driveway and walks that had to be weeded. We all dreaded Saturday afternoons at five. Inspection! If there was one dandelion you’d be out there weeding by flashlight. That was my father’s idea of family life. He was such a good Catholic, too. Always going on retreats, always going to mass. Penance and mortification.”
“How about your mo
ther?”
“Oh she didn’t look too hard. You know. Didn’t dare. I mean, what was she going to do, leave him? A good Catholic like her? Her family would have disowned her. In those days, you lived with it. Catholics didn’t get divorced. Still don’t according to my father. He hasn’t spoken to me since I got divorced, which is fine with me. I have nothing to say to him, either.” She smiled, despondently.
“Once on The Fourth,” Sal said, “my cousin Pat and me set off some fireworks in the street.” There was a silence.
“So?” Shauna said.
“Huh?” Sal said.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Nothin’ happened,” Sal said. “That was it.”
We looked at each other. May smiled. “I loved The Fourth when I was a kid. My parents—this is before they got divorced—they had this camp up in the Adirondacks.”
“They had a whole camp?” Sal said.
“It wasn’t a camp like a children’s camp. A camp is just what you call a summer cottage in the Adirondacks. They’re always called ‘camps.’ Anyway, our place wasn’t too far from the town we lived in, so we would drive up there on the night before. Then we’d get up real early in the morning and go swimming off the dock. Later on, we’d take out the boats. We had a canoe and a rowboat with a motor.”
“What’d you have to eat on The Fourth?” Sal asked.
“Eat …” May said, vaguely, “let’s see. We always had … well, picnic-type food. Potato salad and macaroni salad, hot dogs and hamburgers we’d cook on the barbecue. We had this big stone barbecue in back of the house.”
“Camp,” Sal corrected, deadpan.
May gave Sal a look. “Yeah,” she said. “One year my mother and I made a sheet cake and we decorated the whole thing with red, white and blue icing to look like the flag. I was just a little kid and I got upset when my father started to cut the cake. I cried and cried!”
“We had spaghetti,” Sal said. Everybody groaned. “No kidding, we really did, we always had spaghetti on The Fourth.”
“We had clams on The Fourth,” Wayne said, “and lobster.”
Sal whistled. “Where’d you catch the lobster, the Hudson River? It was probably full of crap, right? PCB’s.”
“You’re thinking of bass,” Wayne said. “Anyway, this was at our summer place, up at Cape Ann. Before my folks got divorced.”
“Where’s Cape Ann?” Sal asked.
“Massachusetts,” Wayne said. “North of Boston.”
“Huh,” Sal said. “A bunch of rich guys. Everybody had a nice place to go. Hey, Liz, where’s Skip?”
I said, “He’s still in Washington.”
“Oh yeah?” Sal said. “What’re you two, divorced awready?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Not quite.”
“They don’t have to spend every second together, do they?” May said. “Okay, group, let’s check out the food supplies for tomorrow. Who’s bringing guests and how many and who’s not going to be here?”
“Skip’s not going to be here,” Sal said, looking at me and wriggling his thick black eyebrows up and down. His curly blue-black hair was parted in the center and flowed down to his shoulders, where it mixed and mingled with his wiry black beard. In all of that hairy face, his dark blue eyes, glinting behind small wire-framed lenses, were a surprise, just as his intelligence, hidden behind the stunted scrub of a Jersey accent, was another surprise.
“Hey Wayne,” May said. “Listen to this song, it’s great.” She stood up and went into the parlor where Wayne’s portable was crackling and humming, and the Beatles were lightly singing, “What would you do if I sang out of key?” and then we heard a scream, a high, wild, piercing scream.
Sal jumped up.
Wayne said, “Sit down, Sal. He’s not going to hurt her.”
Who? I thought. I, too, had jumped up at the sound. Sal went through the summer parlor and flung open the door to the hall.
“Len?” Sal called up the stairs. It was like antiphonal music, Alice’s voice was very high, warbling up and down like an air raid siren, and Leonard’s voice was a shouting boom. It reminded me of thunder or surf, surf in Maine or in Nova Scotia where they have those thirty-foot tides. The voices were scary, horrifying.
“Get away,” she screamed. “You jerk, you asshole! Get away!”
“Will you listen a minute?” came his voice, and then another crash.
“My God,” May said miserably. She had cupped both hands over her ears.
“We gotta stop this,” Sal said from the doorway.
“Don’t go up,” Wayne said. “Leave them alone.”
“Hey,” Sal said, “they’re wreckin’ the place.”
There was another crash, and then a door slammed and it was quiet. Quite clearly now, the Beatles sang, “I just want someone to love. I just want someone to love.”
Someone was coming down the stairs. “Talk, everybody,” May said in a low voice. Alice appeared in the doorway. Her face was brilliantly red, her blue eyes flashed. She had on white jeans and a black sweatshirt and she carried a black nylon duffle.
“Hi, gang,” she said. “Enjoying the fireworks? Listen, I’m going home for a couple of days, so I won’t be here for whatever, tomorrow.”
Shauna went over to her and put a hand on her arm. “You okay?” she asked softly.
Alice laughed.
Shauna said, “Al, you want me to come with you?”
Alice drew back. “No, I’m all right. I want to go by myself. I need a breather. I’ll be back by the weekend, probably.” She hoisted the duffle onto her shoulder. “Oh.” She turned and looked at us. “I’m taking the Volkswagen, so maybe you can all share rides with …” She wouldn’t name him, she just tilted her chin up in the direction of the third floor.
“You think you should drive?” May asked.
“I’m fine,” Alice said. “The drive will be good for me.”
I thought how she looked like someone about to burst into flame and at the same time she was intensely beautiful. After she’d gone out the front door, Wayne said, “Well, she looked all right.”
“You didn’t look under the sweatshirt,” Sal said.
“Leonard wouldn’t hurt her,” May said, as if to reassure herself.
I thought, Yeah? I was thinking about how complicated it was, that you could love someone and at the same time want to kill them.
“Wayne,” May said, “maybe you ought to go up and talk to him.”
“Not me,” Wayne said. “You want to talk to him, you go.”
“Well, I’m outta here,” Sal said. “You could go nuts sittin’ around like this. I’m going down to Sonny’s for a beer. Anybody wanna come?”
“Sure,” Shauna said. “I’ll come. That’s me, folks. Always ready to party. Anyway, I’m out of cigarettes. Anybody want anything?”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Well, darn,” Wayne said, after they’d left. He stuck his middle finger in his ear and waggled it, as if his ear were stopped up.
May was lying down on the wicker sofa with a hand clamped over her eyes. “It doesn’t look good,” she said.
After a while Leonard came downstairs. I was sitting at the table reading when I heard the radio go bee-ow-zzz-ow, the way it does if someone twists the dial very rapidly. Then I heard the music—it wasn’t rock, it was Mozart, “A Little Night Music.” That struck me as funny, the courtier-like elegance of the music, its sprightliness, as a punctuation to domestic mayhem. Wayne looked up from his book and said, “Leonard, you lucky bastard, you’re the only one that can get Philadelphia on that piece of junk.”
Leonard didn’t answer. He was sitting in the summer parlor with his back to me—I could see his shoulders, and his long neck coming out of a white tee shirt, and how, at the back of his head, there was a cowlick. He was sitting with his hand up to his face, and Wayne was peering at him over the book. Then Wayne got up. He went over to Leonard, reached down and pull
ed Leonard’s hand away from his face.
“Oh no,” Wayne said, shocked.
“What?” May said. She twisted her head to look, and then jumped up to stand next to Wayne. “My God,” she said. She put her hand up to her own face.
I, too, got up to look at Leonard. He was sitting in the wicker chair silently crying. His hand held a blood-soaked washcloth. The whole right side of his face, from his eye to his jaw, was opened up and bleeding. The long cut seemed to be pulsing slightly, like the gaping mouth of a dying fish.
Wayne bent over and gently palpated the edges of the gash. “Liz,” he said calmly, “call the hospital emergency room, will you?”
“No,” Leonard said.
“Yes,” Wayne said. “Come on, scarface, you’re ugly enough as it is.”
Leonard stood up, a slow and cumbersome process. He looked numb and confused. His white tee shirt was covered with spills of blood. When he saw me he lowered his eyes, or tried to. His left eye was swollen nearly shut.
“My God,” I said.
He snarled in my direction. “Go ride a horse.”
“Come on, Leonard,” Wayne said firmly. He had stuck his pipe into the corner of his mouth and was sucking on it although it was empty of tobacco. Wayne had on his floppy knee-length white shorts and a long navy tee shirt, but he emanated professional calm. Minute by minute, I was liking Wayne a whole lot better.
I got on the telephone and dialed the Stanton hospital, and Wayne and May, on either side of Leonard, guided him out of the house and into a car. I didn’t go along. I’m not appalled by blood, but it somehow would have been presumptuous, especially after he’d bared his teeth at me. I knew that he was upset, not at me, of course, but at Alice, and I knew I was being ridiculous, but I felt hurt by his words. I didn’t deserve them. I am not just your stock horsey person. Why was it he relegated me to that particularly banal category? On the other hand, why did I care what he thought of me, anyhow? I lay down on the wicker sofa, and picked up the book Wayne had put down. Slow reader. Still hadn’t finished To the Lighthouse. But what did it matter? He had totally mastered the interpretation, we had discussed it before dinner. The lighthouse was obviously phallic, thus all the fuss about going to it meant that everybody in the book craved sex, but nobody got it. At least not when they wanted it.
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