Inventing the Abbotts

by Sue Miller

  She sat up silent and sullen, glaring at him while he worked the camera, and then she burst out. She accused him of relating to life exclusively through machines. She accused him of being unable to value her or appreciate her sexually without some sort of record of it. She accused him of caring more for the making of the fucking record than he did for her feelings. She told him she never wanted him to photograph her again.

  It was the best picture he had ever taken of her; the only one in which she looked completely unselfconscious.

  When David and Georgia got divorced, Georgia got custody of Jeff because her schedule was more flexible and she could be with him more. Of their possessions, she wanted only the things that would make Jeff feel at home and a few odd items she’d been especially attached to. And in every case over which there was potential disagreement, they sat down and discussed, reasonably and fairly, the relative merits of each claim.

  David, for instance, initially thought he should have the stereo system, since he had spent weeks sifting through catalogues and magazine articles to select the components, and was always the one to fix or adjust it. But Georgia, sitting with her bare feet tucked under her in her favorite chair in the living room (the only piece of furniture from the living room she wanted), pointed out that she was the one of the two who liked music, who actually listened to the stereo. What David liked about it, she argued in the persuasive voice she’d learned to use in classroom disagreements—a voice very like the patient tone David had used with her in their courtship and early marriage—were its mechanical qualities, which could be replaced by any other complex mechanical object. It seemed to her that it was she who cared for its more essential quality, its ability to reproduce music.

  While she made her argument, her hands were in constant motion; and David, lying on their expensive tweed sofa with a coffee mug resting on his chest, watched the sequence of familiar configurations, gestures she had made thousands of times before: the touch up to push her hair back, the fingers curling in onto her breast, the two-handed diamond shape in the air in front of her. They were part of her enjoyment of the process of making her argument. David watched her intently.

  When she ended, she was smiling. “Don’t you think?” she asked. She held her right hand out, palm up, fingers spread. In the long silence that followed, she could see on David’s face a mixture of affection and disgust. She felt caught in a habitual weakness and was, somehow, ashamed of herself.

  “Yes,” said David finally. “Of course you’re right.”

  A few days later, David, who had been sorting through the slides to divide them up, came in to ask her if she knew where “the nudies,” as Georgia had called them, were.

  Georgia said that of course she’d taken them.

  David said he thought she hated them.

  “I do,” Georgia said.

  “Then what do you want them for?”

  “It isn’t really wanting them. It’s more like putting them away with my things.”

  “Well, I really want them.”

  She looked up at him sharply. She was kneeling on the floor by her file drawer, organizing its contents for packing. She wore her glasses, and a faded plaid shirt. “What for?” she asked.

  “I like them. I took them.” His tone was sharp, possessive. As though he heard this himself, he stopped and started again, in a calmer, more reasonable voice. “I’d like to have them to remind me of a time when we were happier.”

  The change in tone made Georgia think David was trying to con her. “That’s a little schmaltzy, isn’t it? Don’t you mean you’d like something to jerk off to?”

  “If I wanted to jerk off, those pictures are the last ones I’d use!”

  “You’re not kidding.” She slammed the file drawer shut. “Because you’re not getting them.”

  “Now just a fucking second,” he said. “I thought the deal was that everything we owned was both of ours until we agreed on whose it was.”

  “This is different.” She rose and started to walk past him out of the room. From somewhere distantly in the apartment, Jeff’s television program droned. David grabbed her arm, and she swung to face him. “How is this different? I like those pictures; you hate them. They mean something to me; they mean nothing—”

  ‘They’re of me, you asshole.” She was almost shouting. “They’re of my body. They belong to me.”

  “I missed just a few steps in that impeccable logic.”

  They stood in silence, looking at each other, both breathing rapidly, wondering what could ever have seemed dear or worth loving in the other.

  “All right, then,” said Georgia. “Let me just say that I can imagine how you might use the slides, and I don’t want them used that way.”

  “How do you imagine I’d use them?”

  “I imagine you’d show them. Isn’t that what people do with slides? I imagine you’d show them. I imagine that with some reason.”

  Georgia referred to an evening they’d spent a year or two before with David’s college roommate. They had all had too much to drink. Georgia had felt flirtatious and gay with this man who had known her before she became the overworked academic matron she felt she was now. At dinner, the subject of the slides had come up. David and Eliot, high and sexually titillated at the idea in a way that disgusted Georgia, had tried to talk her into a showing. At first they misunderstood her refusal, thinking it was part of the teasing tone she’d used earlier. She slowly withdrew into a cold rage, and had finally gone into the bedroom, telling them they could do what they fucking well pleased. Eliot had left a short while later, and in his Christmas card hadn’t mentioned the dinner.

  Now David was stung. His face turned white and his voice was low. “I didn’t show the slides to Eliot.”

  “But you would’ve if I hadn’t been there.”

  “You weren’t there. You left, if you recall.”

  “Ah, but by then you were so embarrassed that you couldn’t show them. No, I can see exactly how it’d happen if I weren’t there. You have a few of the boys over, you’re talking about women.” She was crying now, but unable to stop. “You have a few words to say about me, this broad you used to be married to, and then—hey!—you remember those slides, and pretty soon you’re getting out the old screen and projector, two of your favorite mechanical devices—”

  “Okay, Georgia.”

  “But that’s not the point, David. The main point is what a bummer it would be. The main point is how everyone would just not be turned on at all. And as soon as the lights went on, everyone would have to go. It would ruin your party, David.”

  “Okay, George.” He wasn’t looking at her face, blotchy and distorted with self-pity.

  “And I’d hate to ruin your party,” she persisted helplessly.

  He turned, and with a long motion of his arm that involved his whole body, swept her desk clear of the carefully organized stacks of paper.

  “Keep the fucking pictures!” he yelled as he walked out of the room.

  It was eight years later, when Georgia was thirty-seven, that she met Peter Anderson. By then she hardly thought about David anymore unless they were making some special arrangement having to do with Jeff. She never spoke of him. If someone asked about her ex-husband, and hardly anyone did, she was as vague as possible. She felt that in divorcing herself from him, she’d cut away all those things he’d brought into her life that she didn’t like; and all the things, about herself, developed in response to him, that had troubled her. She was happier with herself now.

  She met Peter one evening when she was out with friends, celebrating the acceptance of an article of hers for publication. Peter was a friend of theirs, and they’d waved him over from across the dining room. Georgia was a little drunk, glowing with accomplishment, and very outgoing.

  Three days later, he called. It was a cold, clear Sunday. Georgia was by herself, drinking coffee and reading the Times. She wore a heavy bathrobe and two pairs of socks, and sat in front of the opened oven door
, the paper scattered in heaps on the floor around her. All weekend she had felt immobilized by loneliness and the cold weather, and she almost ran to the phone when it rang. Although she remembered meeting him, she had trouble recalling what Peter Anderson looked like. But he even remembered that she had a child about the age of one of his. (She winced. She had dragged Jeff into this drunken flirtation?) His children were in town for the weekend, and about to go ice skating. He wondered if maybe …

  No, she said. Jeff was away, with his father. And anyway, he didn’t like—no, she didn’t like using him as a way to meet people. “It’s too much like walking dogs,” she said.

  There was a silence. “I understand,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

  The next Friday night, on her way to get Jeff from a soccer game, Georgia stopped at the liquor store and picked up a half gallon of cheap white wine. At supper, Jeff was in a cheerful, expansive mood, and she relaxed, listening to him talk about his soccer game, then about some kids who got caught having a distance contest at the urinals. He told her three new jokes he’d learned, and Georgia laughed happily at them. But as soon as he went into the living room to do his homework, she felt alone again. She sat down at the table, still covered with dirty dishes, and poured herself a glass of wine. She drank it fast, making patterns with her fingers in the crumbs left from the garlic bread. The spaghetti sauce had hardened to a deep brown on the plates. She had no special plans for the weekend except to work on the revision of her thesis and to prepare for Monday’s class. The two days stretched out long and cold and empty. Maybe she’d take Jeff ice skating Saturday. Then she remembered Peter and her rudeness to him and looked him up in the telephone directory.

  After her second glass of wine, she called, apologized, and asked him over for sometime after ten, when Jeff would be asleep. By the time he arrived, she’d done the dishes, talked to Jeff for a while and picked up after him in the living room, even had time for a bath.

  They talked about their children, then work, and then commiserated on the difficulties of being single at their age. Sometime after one o’clock, feeling less sleepy than she usually did at ten, Georgia asked Peter if he would like to go to bed with her. He said he would. Even though she felt at ease with him, she had a moment of regret that she hadn’t taken the time to pick up a little bit in her room.

  After they made love, she went out to the living room, barefoot across the icy floor, and brought back the wine and their glasses. She turned on the space heater she kept by her bed for reading late at night, and they lay in its warmth, talking together. Very domestic, she thought. She was propped on one elbow, with her body curved toward him. Looking down at him, and then herself, she noticed the flesh of her belly sagging onto the sheet in a gentle pouch. His eyes followed hers.

  She stroked the curve of loose flesh. “Awful,” she said.

  “Hell,” he said, “I’m not casting any first stones.” He rested his hand on his balding head and smiled at her.

  “I know,” said Georgia. “But it’s hard to get used to, isn’t it?”

  “What, getting old?”

  “More just this new body that age brings you. To me, it still seems not mine. This body? Oh, I’m just wearing this for a while, while the old one …” She trailed off.

  “Is at the cleaners.”

  “Something like that. And the old one was so nice. Ah, you should have known me then.” She sipped her wine.

  “I like knowing you now. I like the way you are now.”

  “You’re kind.”

  “I’m lecherous.”

  “You’re extraordinarily kind.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I can’t help it. I just feel so apologetic for what’s here.”

  He laughed, and reached for her.

  After a while, lying with her head resting on his chest, she said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “What?”

  “Just a second.” She got up and went into the next room, her study. In the back of a file drawer, she found a small yellow cardboard box. She returned, carrying it to Peter.

  “Wanna see?” she said. “Wanna see what a gorgeous chick I used to be?”

  “What are these?”

  She lay next to him on her stomach and lifted the first slide out of the box.

  “My ex-husband took them of me when we were newlyweds. Homemade erotica, if there can be such a thing.”

  He held the slide toward the bedside lamp and squinted at a tiny body sleeping on a couch somewhere far away. Silently, she passed him the slides, one by one. He looked at each, and set it down in a small crooked pile on the white sheet. When he was done, he turned onto his back. After a moment he said, “Well, it’s true. You did used to be younger.”

  Georgia felt shamed suddenly. She put the slides carefully back in the box, and set it on the bedside table.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Almost three.”

  He sat up. “I’d better get going. I’ve got a squash game tomorrow at ten.”

  Georgia got up too, and put on her robe. She went into the living room and started to straighten up. She didn’t want to watch him get ready to go.

  She was waiting on the couch when he emerged from the bedroom, fully dressed. “You look elegant,” she forced herself to say.

  “I feel tired,” he said.

  She moved close to him at the door. He leaned over and kissed her quickly and, she thought, kindly.

  “I’ll call,” he said. “Probably around the middle of the week.”

  After he’d gone, it took Georgia a long time to find some matches. She wasn’t sure the slides would burn at all, but they did. She lit them one at a time in the bathroom sink and watched them changing into tiny hard pellets, like little droppings. Several times the flames illuminated a slide from underneath as it burned, and she could see clearly the tiny colored image of her own body years ago, languorous in the bathtub or sitting up in bed. It took almost an hour to burn them all. The smoke curled up black and chemical. It turned into delicate dark particles as it rose, and these descended slowly onto Georgia, like winter’s first tentative snow.

  What Ernest Says

  This is what Ernest whispers to her. “You ever had a man to go down on you? How you like me to be going down on you? How you like that? You like Ernest to eat you out?

  “You ever suck black cock? How you like suckin me off?”

  When Miss Foote calls on her, she is sometimes so confused that she just stares back. Her mouth hangs open, and she doesn’t answer. The children laugh. They are glad to see her make a mistake. She is too smart, too big for her britches. Miss Foote calls her up after class. Why is she having so much trouble right now? Miss Foote used to be able to count on her. “You were someone I could rely on, Barbara, when I wanted an example for the other children.”

  Miss Foote’s breath smells overripe, sweet, as though she had had cheese with her lunch several hours ago.

  She doesn’t look at Miss Foote. Just at her desk, the neat heaps of papers graded and stacked up. Barbara always gets S, superior, on her homework.

  She tells Miss Foote she is sorry. She says no, she doesn’t know what is wrong. Just sometimes now she has trouble concentrating in class. Move me, she wants to say, but she knows she mustn’t ask to be moved away from the black kids. Her parents would be ashamed, so ashamed.

  At recess the black kids gather under the viaduct. The white kids stay closer to the school. The white kids don’t like the black kids. They say bad things about them. They call them nigger, jigaboo. Barbara’s parents have told her they don’t really feel these things, that they have learned them from their parents and don’t know any better. Barbara’s parents have told her the black kids are just as smart, just as good and nice as the white kids; they just need time and encouragement from the teachers to catch up. They say it is a shame that Miss Foote has all the black kids sitting together in the back of the room. They are glad Barbara is sitting next to them. They ask he
r if there is any one black child she talks to or has gotten to know.

  Ernest, she tells them.

  “Oh,” her mother says brightly. “A boy. How interesting.”

  When Ernest leans forward, his breath is warm and sticky on Barbara’s neck. She can feel her hairs stiffen in response, and a queer vibration passes down her spine, as though a part of that knotted bone had become, momentarily, gelatinous.

  “I see you on Fifty-fifth this weekend, girl, and I call to you. You din answer me. You din hear me?”

  She cannot even shake her head no. She wasn’t on Fifty-fifth this weekend. She stayed home, except for Sunday, when she went to church, the church her parents belong to, where she is in a confirmation class. Though this church is in a neighborhood where many blacks live, very few of them come to the church. In Barbara’s confirmation class, there are only white kids, three white girls, and Dr. Wilson, who has a tired face and a kind, hoarse voice. She stayed home all weekend except for church, and her mother said, “Isn’t there somebody from school, some nice girl you’d like to have over?”

  “The wind be blowin your skirt on Fifty-fifth, and I think I seen your pussy, girl. Is that right? Did you show me your pussy on Fifty-fifth? This was Saturday, I believe.” His tone is so friendly, so conversational, that Barbara sometimes believes she makes up the words, the dirty words, in her own head. But how can she? She didn’t know those words before he said them. She didn’t know cock, pussy, suck, eat. Still she isn’t sure what they mean, or if he really said them. Did he say them? Maybe he was saying something else. His accent, their accents are so thick sometimes she isn’t sure what he says, what any of them say. When they talk together, she can understand almost nothing, but the girls’ bright screams of laughter tell her it is all right, what they say to each other. Then it occurs to her, perhaps they are all laughing at her?

  In class, Miss Foote asks a question. She calls on Sterling Cross. Barbara looks over at him, next to her. His face is blank. It is as though Miss Foote hadn’t called on him. He blinks. The white kids have turned around to look at him. They wait. He scratches his head. His pale brown fingers make a soft noise Barbara can hear. Miss Foote calls on Ernest. Barbara’s chair is attached to Ernest’s desk. She feels it move slightly, but that is all. She knows how his face looks. Impassive, black; no one could expect an answer from it. The radiator hisses. To Barbara it seems that minutes have passed. Slowly she raises her hand. Miss Foote won’t look at her. She is waiting for one of the black kids to answer. Barbara waves her hand.