Clearly, she had botched the whole business of the diaphragm. She couldn’t bring it up again; he was too intolerant. No, it wasn’t just that. He couldn’t take the barrier she set up, even though, in his way, he was full of walls himself. What had turned him on, she could see, was her being susceptible, vulnerable, unprotected. The issue is, she said to herself, are you going to go on using nothing, as he wants, or not. What would be the right thing to do?
She liked problems that could be reduced to choices because everything else was becoming a mystery. Alex was manipulative and deep. You could not know where you stood with him because you could not predict what he would do or when he would shift his stance. He didn’t care for physical force or intimidation; that had made her think he was tender. But he had won through begging her not to go what could not be extracted in other ways. Disarm and advance, she thought sourly. It worked. It was subtle, seductive, masked with embraces, an antagonism you would have to locate among jokes and caresses. One thing was for sure, she thought, it would never pay to cross him directly. Whenever she did, he would shift ground and outmaneuver her. If she insisted on using something, she would outrage him. If she went along with him, sooner or later she would get pregnant.
There seemed to be only one way to go. That was to appear to yield to him completely, to keep the surface of their time together perfect. He would hate her if she spoiled it or confronted him, she knew, shrugging uncomfortably in the dress that barely touched her sensitive skin. She wasn’t ready to give him up. But she wouldn’t let him spoil it for her either. She rummaged in her bag for her address book.
When she reached Dr. Skogee, she tried for a voice more self-assured than any she had used before.
“One of my friends,” she said, trying to sound worldly, “objects to the diaphragm. What do you think of the rhythm system?”
“I think you better find another friend,” Dr. Skogee said, amused. He called for her chart and hesitated for a minute. “You’d be better off on the pill. I’ll write you a prescription. Stop in at my office this afternoon and pick it up. If I can, I’ll come out to explain how to use it. If not, I’ll leave instructions with Mrs. Johnson.”
“Thanks,” she said gratefully. “You’ve been really wonderful.”
“Not at all,” he said politely. “Keep in touch. I’d like to talk to you sometime.”
“I’ll look forward to that.” She hung up.
But when she got to his office, he had already left for the hospital. Mrs. Johnson gave her instructions and a prescription. She filled the prescription at the same drugstore she had gone to before, and slipped the round plastic disc into a zippered compartment in her bag.
Some problems were easy to solve. Once you could reduce trouble to the issue of choices, the mystery, the insolubility of things was put into place. It hit her that Nino might have become rigid because he couldn’t deal with anything ill-defined either. He was contemptuous of what he called “confusion.” But life was lived in what he would call confusion. Anyway, what a friend Dr. Skogee had turned out to be. And she would never have gotten to him without Vicki. Gratitude poured out of her into the bright afternoon. The raw sensitivity of her skin seemed to subside in the fullness of how well it all seemed to work out. Alex would get what he wanted; she would get what she wanted. No one had to know. That meant, she suddenly realized, that she would be lying to him all the time, especially in bed. For a moment that shadowed her good feeling. You shouldn’t lie to someone you love. Especially when they’re giving you so much pleasure. But then, she thought, you shouldn’t work someone over you love, either. It was hard to tell which was more wrong, her lying or his bruising her.
Sooner or later, Gina realized, she would have to be more direct with Alex. When he put together what she did and what she seemed to be doing, it might not work out anymore. Maybe it shouldn’t. Would she have gone this far if it hadn’t been for Nino, Nino the know-it-all, setting her up for what he wanted least? It had worked out that way. There was a limit to how many moves she could make, one after the other. And anyway, the freedom she had won had to have something else in it to mean anything. There had to be some purpose that had nothing to do with anyone but her.
In a way, she thought, the pills served the purpose, but they could never be it. The purpose itself had more to do with the elation of waking up in the morning alone in her room, with the pale morning light enlivening the tiny plant that grew between the bathroom tiles, and that she watered drop by drop. It had to do with the sense of joy that she was alive, that the day had not even begun, but was all ahead to be lived fully, or to be wasted, as she wished. There was a voluptuous density in the feel of the sun on her body, in the sweet shock of diving into the gym pool at Hunter, of cutting the water, lap after lap, of simply moving, moving, moving.
So what did it matter, really, if Alex had depths she hadn’t fathomed, so long as she could cut through them for now. What counted was that it all worked out. She fingered the disc and took it out. Each pill, precisely in its pocket, no ungainly pile in a bottle, but a neat, efficient clockwork that reset biological time, that said, Take it day by day. Her mind was turning toward the one all-absorbing issue: when she would try it out. This time is wasn’t a question of his desire. It was a matter of her body chemistry. Which, she thought, losing herself in the memory of the night before, was showing odd tendencies.
She makes me feel clumsy, thought Alex, bringing the arm of his papercutter down on a sheet of stamps. She does it by never saying what she thinks. Speech pours out of her, but she never gives anything away.
He shoved in another sheet of stamps.
There were a lot of silences in a day with her. Her silences were always what they call “pregnant,” but if you expected information, all you got—he crunched down the arm, angrily—was an abortion. I’ve done enough work for these people today, he thought irritably. Usually he worked on a ratio of one to three: one hour for them and three for himself, to preserve his sanity. To be fair, he thought, one hour of his was as good as five of anybody else’s, so they came out ahead anyway. He picked up a briefcase full of folders. There was a story he had begun for her. On the first page was a drawing with the caption “Princess Persephone.” It softened him. Maybe he was just building a case against her. He often got mad at women when he felt he had done something bad to them, whatever it was. It was, he thought, looking through the first page, a pretty fable.
“Once upon a time, many years ago, near the forests where the lions live, dwelled the strangest beast on earth. It was stronger than a lion and perfectly black. . ..” No, he thought, maybe some other day. It was to be for her birthday, but that was still a few months away. And he didn’t feel like giving her presents now.
He opened another folder. This one said “Maid Marian.” That’s it, he thought, beginning to read over what he had written:
It is impossible to believe that Fabio was born: that he and his twin sister Lulu had twisted and narrowed in the birth canal of a bumpkin Chicago woman. For if his sister had become a true daughter of the South Side, Fabio was more a princeling than an ordinary boy, and grew into a man of extraordinary beauty. His face was as elegant as any courtier’s, his eyes fine as the most skillful of falconers. But it is difficult to know what Fabio saw, for he saw so strangely. And often he spoke words that were palpable—strange shapes unfamiliar as the pollen of the rarest flowers. Yet somehow they were recognizable, as fragments of dreams are. For what man in his sleeping or waking hours has not envisaged shapes in his soul that never appear on earth? And perhaps that is what beauty is: something secretly shining.
Alex took the page out of the folder, crumpled it, and threw it in the wastebasket. He could feel the pressure of being alone with her tonight. It wasn’t what he wanted. Maybe it was time to take her to Philadelphia. A little trip, a little distance—it would be just right.
“The bus,” he told Gina that night, “leaves at eight tomorrow morning. So pack tonight. In fact, I’ll hel
p you.” His mother was so critical of how everyone looked. And it was getting cool enough to need to wear real clothes. He went to her dresser and rummaged through. He took out some blouses, selected what he wanted, and put back the rest. Then he looked in the closet for a moment. She had nice things. She had the clothes of a girl with money. You had to find out for yourself that her mother had made all of them from remnants. He picked out a burgundy mohair skirt and folded it into the bag. “You can wear this in the morning,” he said, pointing to a dress, olive green, with a narrow waist and full skirt. “All set,” he said.
“All set,” she repeated. It was all there; all she had to do was smile, and what would be the point of doing otherwise? What would be the point of preferring the blouses he had left in the drawer to the ones he had put in the bag? His eyes were soft; he seemed particularly vulnerable. Maybe he was afraid his parents wouldn’t like her. So was she—she wasn’t doing well with parents lately. But it seemed better not to say anything, and certainly not to ask whether he thought his parents would be difficult. By now she knew he hated complications; he just couldn’t deal with them. Mama used to say—the words ran through her mind—“Never tell a man your troubles, because you can be sure he doesn’t want to hear them anyway.”
Alex could walk through anybody’s mudfield and come out shining like a prince. And that was how he looked, even in the Port Authority Bus Terminal at eight the next morning, carrying her bag. Only half awake, she could see that the terminal’s bedraggled, exhausted inmates—the junkies, prostitutes, and crazies—seemed plugged into a universal hangover. Alex, in white corduroy, wide awake, chattered happily, oblivious to everything else. On the bus, he curled up, put his head on her lap, and fell asleep. She watched him for a while, stroking the soft white skin set off by his beard. Sometimes it shocked her to realize how little they really knew about each other. All my life, she thought, I’ve lived right up against other people, but I’ve never felt really close to any of them. Intimacy—in-ti-ma-cy—the word was still a mystery. It was a physical thing, she thought clumsily, the sensation of flowing into each other. That way she came to feel connected to him.
The thought of the days and evenings they had made love in his white, lit room, watching the sun make shadows on the white blinds, rushed through her. She touched his hair lightly, so as not to wake him. The trouble was, the words they spoke didn’t flow into each other in the same way. It upset him to hear what he didn’t want to hear. So she had stopped telling him. She was grateful for the Bristol. She didn’t have to live with him, and somehow, she thought, that was preserving their intimacy, the delicious, almost dangerous closeness they sometimes did achieve. Too much proximity, she thought, maybe that would just ruin the intimacy. She was feeling silly. What would she say to his parents? She would have to talk, but what was there to talk about? I’ll do my best, she thought resignedly. All you can do is your best. There it went again. She shook her head.
Why did she always have to be thinking in words Nino and Laura always used? In the relief of being away from them—were they as glad, she wondered, to be rid of her?—she hadn’t missed them at all. They had clearly decided to ignore her. She had scarcely even thought of them. It was probably wrong to have blotted them out so easily. She knew she was supposed to feel dread, guilt, or something. But she didn’t. There was too much else happening. She looked at Alex sleeping in her lap. He was so beautiful. If only he weren’t quite so—brittle.
Even in sleep Alex looked wry. He had an air of amusement much of the time, as though the actions of others entertained him without involving him. Was Victor—his father—like that too? He had to be different. Victor had arrived. He was a real success. His five-volume history of the Puritan settlements and the Indian wars was a classic. She had read part of it for an American history course and could see why it had won prizes. His books on the American Revolution and the Constitution were supposed to be even better. You couldn’t do work like that without a commitment that lasted for years. In addition to being a scholar, he had served in France and the Netherlands for the State Department and the United States Information Service. He had made it on talent and drive, a fitting achievement for a Puritan scholar who believed in the work ethic. The religion of effort and rectitude. Alex was not a believer.
They must make an odd pair, Victor and Alex, Gina thought. Alex had no tolerance for anything that didn’t amuse him. He had no regard for disciplined effort. It was part of his charm, but it was also very annoying. Last week she was studying for a French exam and he wanted to go out. He grabbed the book and made jokes about how ridiculously useless everything in it was. He was probably right. He had grown up speaking French during the years his father had worked in Paris. But what did that matter if you knew no French at all and studying was a way to begin. When she pointed that out, he had dismissed her with “Well, you’ll get an A anyway!” That wasn’t the point either. She liked the confidence that came from being certain of what you knew, even if it meant going over things more than was strictly necessary. Alex had his own sense of priorities, but he liked throwing hers out of kilter. He was shrewd about it, too. He did it through ridicule, making fun of the books she was reading. Through. . . . The chain of thought was beginning to bring her down. It was full of rancor. You’re beginning to dislike him, she thought, gazing at him. Still, she was curious about his parents. Maybe they held a clue to what he was.
By the time they reached the house, her mouth was filled with speeches of thanks for the invitation. But no one was there. The idea that parents could invite you for the weekend—their own son!—and be too busy to be home when he arrived was so alien, she took it personally. It must be a message to her.
A note on the foyer table said they were out for the day; lunch was in the refrigerator, and they would be back at five.
“How disappointing,” she said.
“Not at all,” he answered. “We’ll have time to get settled.” They walked through the house. It was large, rambling, a huge colonial filled with little extra rooms and balconies.
“It’s really lovely,” Gina said admiringly. “Your mother has wonderful things.” There were sheer fishnet curtains, blues and mauves, thrown together casually with a startling effect.
“Yes,” Alex said. “She does. She came from a very wealthy family. She and my father have never had much money, but she’s always known how to make wherever we were look like this,” he said, waving his arm.
“Where is she from?” Gina asked.
“She’s from Boston originally.”
“And your father?” she asked, forgetting he had already told her.
“Ohio.”
“How did they meet?”
Alex shrugged. She trailed him through the house.
“This will be your room.”
“We’ll have separate rooms here?” she asked. She had expected that.
“Yes, I think it’s best.”
“Well,” she said, stretching out on the bed, “it’s good to lie down. I wasn’t ready to get up before seven.” She patted a place on the bed next to her.
“No,” he said.
“No one will be here before five,” she said.
“I just don’t want to. Let’s go out for a walk.”
“We just came in.”
“We’ll go to the museum.”
“Is it nearby?” she asked.
“No, of course not. We can take a bus.”
“We just got off a bus,” Gina objected.
“Why are you being so difficult?” he snapped.
“I’m not. I just want to rest for a minute. I’d like to see the museum. Just give me a minute. Could I make some tea?” she asked.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “You’d better unpack your things or they’ll be wrinkled.”
He seemed so tense she thought he was just upset about how she would look to his parents. She hung everything up, disappointed by his grimness.
In front of the Matisses she grew more relaxed
, letting the colors wash through her. Alex became more tense as the afternoon wore on, scarcely speaking to her. By the time they got back it was six, and the house was filled with people. A handsome woman in her middle-fifties came to the door when they entered. Her heavy blond hair was streaked with gray and rolled smoothly back from her face into a neat twist.
“Here you are at last,” she said lightly. “We wondered what had happened to you. Why didn’t you leave a note?” she demanded of Alex, ignoring Gina.
“We’ve been at the museum,” Alex answered, motioning to Gina. “This is my mother, Catherine.”
“I’m happy to meet you,” Gina said awkwardly.
“Of course,” Catherine said, still ignoring Gina. “We invited a few friends we thought you’d like to see. Maxine and Jordan and some new people. Come in,” she said, finally gesturing to Gina too.
“Excuse me,” Gina said. “I’d like to wash and change, if it’s all right.”
“There’s a small bathroom off your bedroom, to the right,” Catherine said. “No one will bother you there.”
“Thank you,” Gina said.
She slipped away to her room and laid out the mohair skirt and a print blouse and went in to wash her arms and face. There was talc and scented soap in the bath. More than the comforts of home. It would have been great to run a hot bubble bath, but there wasn’t time. If she did, Alex would think she was trying to avoid the whole thing. And he would be right. So she put on stockings and shoes with high heels, the skirt and blouse, and brushed her hair. A blusher and some lipstick. That’s it, she thought. That’s the way I look.
The Right Thing to Do Page 13