Loose Ends

by Raskin, Barbara;

  “Honey. We want to help you.”

  “I know, Daddy. Thank you. But I don’t need anything now.” It seemed true enough for the moment. “You know, we’ve been having some rough times, and Gavin just got fed up and split, that’s all. I don’t know where he is, but I’m okay. I can take care of myself and things will just work out one way or the other. Whatever happens, it will be all right.’

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Jenny Silverman wailed. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Mother, please. It’s all right, I said. Everything is all right. Don’t worry. Listen, I’ve got to get the kids to bed. It’s eleven o’clock here. I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow I’ll sit down and write you both a long, long letter and tell you everything. Okay? Please don’t be upset or worried. I’ve got to go now.”

  Coco hung up the telephone and went upstairs to put the children to bed.

  twenty-six

  Coco was still up on the third floor when the telephone rang. She took her time answering it, because she assumed it was Jenny Silverman announcing the estimated time of her arrival at National Airport to save her daughter and grandchildren.

  “Hello,” she breathed wearily into the telephone. A faint odor of old breath (her own?) rose from the mouthpiece, and mentally Coco jotted down: Buy Mr. Clean. Deodorize all three phones—esp. kit.

  “Hello. Is this Coco … Burman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi. This is Ann Carradine.”

  “Oh.” Instantly Coco felt the same tremor she received from the voice of the assistant to the principal at Mike’s school. The inner ear wired dread to the brain which transmitted terror impulses to all her vital organs. The fragile, delicate sense of calm that had been trying to assert itself all day began to dissolve.

  “I hope it’s not too late to phone. I’ve been trying for the last few hours, but there wasn’t any answer.”

  “Oh,” Coco said blankly.

  “Well, let me explain why I’m calling. I’m doing a story on the Women’s Independence Day March for The New York Times Magazine. It’s supposed to be a complete evaluation of where the movement’s at right now. You know … where it’s coming from.”

  “Oh,” Coco said again. The tape recorder in her brain jammed on Ann Carradine … Times Magazine … Ann Carradine … Times Magazine.

  “But what I really want to do is personalize the politics of the thing a little. I … well, I thought we might get together and have a chat.”

  Coco’s lips were pasted together at the corners with a sticky mucous substance. Now that she had embraced passive resistance, her mouth had converted from the manufacture of verbal-war ammunition to a peacetime production of bad-smelling glue.

  “I see,” she said very carefully, uncertain whether the voice she heard was real or imaginary. “When?”

  “Whenever it’s best for you. I’m free now.”

  “Did you want to come over here?” Coco asked disbelievingly, feeling more persecuted than panicky. Had Ann heard? Was she coming over to gloat at a POW wife whose husband was MIA?

  “That would be great,” Ann answered quickly. “But actually I thought we might just rap alone—without Gavin, I mean. I mean, I don’t really think he’d be too interested … it’s just about lib stuff.”

  “You’re right, he wouldn’t be,” Coco said slowly, “I’m home alone with the kids, and they’re sleeping.”

  “Well, then, I could come over there. I’ve got your address, and I’m right downtown at a restaurant. Is your place far out of town?”

  “No,” Coco said, pulling the telephone along the dressing table so she could check her physical reaction in the mirror. “It’s just about ten minutes.”

  “Swell. I’ll leave right away.”

  Her hair had begun to curl—making a soft-edge frame for her face. Her eyes looked huge and had the glamorous glow produced by an emotional OD. Another test, she thought grimly, slowly replacing the receiver.

  She had thought she was just about ready to graduate, to collect all her credits, give up all the shit, and start to think about things outside her own head, and here came her past again. It was ironic. Just as Coco was ready to begin a mental-health recovery program, Ann Carradine turned up.

  No makeup, post-libby counseled from her office behind the looking-glass.

  Why not? What if Ann’s heard Gavin split? I don’t want her to think I’m a frump—that I wear denim shirts and blue jeans all the time.

  You look great. Just be cool. You might straighten up the living room a little.

  I thought maybe we would just sit in the kitchen.

  Well, then, run along and get things ready.

  So Coco stumbled out of her bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. By the time the doorbell shattered her shroud of ghostly silence, she had sliced up her last fresh lime, poured dry-roasted peanuts into a Mexican bowl, and planted ice cubes in two color and size-coordinated glasses.

  “Hi,” she said almost before she had opened the front door.

  “Hello, Coco.” Ann Carradine smiled.

  It was not that Ann looked more Californian or beautiful than before, but that now she knew how she looked and actually meant to come-on exactly the way she did. Gracefully she slipped through the half-opened door as a reminder for Coco to stop staring and move back. But as Coco shifted to get out of the way, she caught a glimpse of an ignominious pile of something near the hall radiator. Instantly rattled, Coco tried to remember if some doodoo could have rolled out of Josh’s diaper when she put him down on the floor or whether she had forgotten to let Happy outside to take a shit. Strung out by domestic demerits, Coco felt a rise of resentment against Ann’s unshackled performability—the childless woman who never unsuspectingly wore a strain of burped-up milk down the back of her jacket, who had no pets to defecate or husbands to abandon her on the Fourth of July.

  “Would you like a drink?” Coco’s offer sounded preposterously premature since they were still jockeying through the doorway. A little more of her cool melted away.

  “Yes. That would be nice.”

  Coco moved laterally until she saw that Happy had unloaded a mountain of totally undigested Alpo meatballs on the carpet. Planting herself in front of the dark mound, she cursed her dog for not having the decency to re-eat his barf, as he usually did if no company was expected.

  “Straight ahead.” She smiled. Then she followed Ann’s long slim body through the hallway, trying desperately to spot some flaw beneath the white shantung safari suit. But Ann’s back was straight, her waist small, her jacket belt loose upon her narrow hips, and her California golden hair cut bluntly (who did it? Sassoon? Kenneth?) across her shoulders so that it swung out front with a come-fuck-me bounce.

  “Oh, what a nice kitchen,” Ann said, looking around and awarding Coco one of her dazzling California surf-white smiles. “It’s marvelous.”

  “Thank you.” Coco marched to the counter. “Would you like a gin-and-tonic?”

  “Wonderful.” Ann sat down at the table and put her white shoulder bag down on the floor.

  Sneaking a side-view look, Coco received a spear of fear through her chest. A reporter’s notebook—a classy skinny version of a stenographic pad—was jutting out of the purse. Was everything Coco said to be recorded for The New York Times? Should she perhaps say at the start that this interview was off-the-record? Dare she ask not to be quoted? Dare she request attribution be made only to a highly placed source close to the women’s-liberation administration? Was this actually an interview? But why would anyone want to interview Coco? Totally disoriented, she finished making the drinks and then sat down across the table from Ann.

  She smiled expectantly while her pre-lib fashion coordinator began to nudge her: You better buy a safari suit just like that one, although it’s probably too late to find it in white since the Fourth of July is almost over. Maybe you can get it in brown for the fall.

  “How is Gavin?” Ann asked, pushing the two lighter-strea
ked front locks of her hair behind each ear.

  “Oh, fine. He had to try a case in Atlanta tomorrow, so he flew down there tonight. We just took him to the airport. I know he’ll be sorry he missed you.”

  “I’m sorry too, but I really wanted to speak with you alone.”

  Oh, what does she want? Coco’s head hammered. She can’t still be pissed off at me for ripping off Gavin. That was thirteen years ago, and it was damn lucky for her that I did, because otherwise she’d have to hide the dog puke and I’d be wearing that white silk suit.

  “I think I mentioned over the phone that I very much want to personalize women’s lib in this article and show how the movement helped me get myself together.”

  Coco was steadily gulping her drink and envisioning Ann bumping into Gavin downtown the next morning as he exited, sexually exhausted, from some hotel on Connecticut Avenue to return to work. Oh, terrific. Wonderful. Had to happen.

  “You know, after Gavin and I broke up, I had some pretty bad times,” Ann said in the seminar tone of voice used for recounting historical hysteria at consciousness-raising sessions. “First I went back to L.A. and then up to Boston, and then, later on, to New York, but I couldn’t ever find a decent job, and I kept thinking that I had made a terrible mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Coco queried.

  Dear Dr. Finkelstein: I am in no condition for this. I cannot handle what she is about to lay on me. I cannot survive this chic little consciousness-raising session à deux. I don’t know if you remember that Women’s Commune on my block that I once mentioned to you. Well, I was there yesterday and it felt very good being there. It felt … sort of safe. Just women, you know, young women. They liked my kids. But I don’t want to do this whole number with Ann. I don’t feel like being intense. I am tired of all the old shit. I’m tired of talking about it. I just feel like I want to … be. I will send in the last installment of my last month’s bill next week. Sincerely yours, Ms. Apprehension.

  “Well, I kept thinking I should have given the marriage more of a chance. Because … well, I don’t have to tell you, but Gavin really is a great guy, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t have split the way I did.”

  From far off on the third floor Coco heard several thumping sounds. Instantly her body tensed with the prospect of one of the kids waking up, running downstairs, marching into the kitchen, and demanding to know why they hadn’t seen Gavin since last Friday morning.

  “Oh, you know the whole bit,” Ann continued. “It all sounds like a cliché now, but back in the early sixties, I thought I was the only one going through it.” The golden-haired daughter of the West Coast began to unbutton her jacket.

  Coco stared straight ahead while she winged a prayer up through the ceiling. Oh, no, dear God, not that! Anything but that, she begged. Any minute now Ann was going to open up her jacket, expose her tits, and ask Coco to go down on her—right under the kitchen table. Of course. What else? Why else would she come here? Ann was so with it, she would came out just because gay was in. Vainly Coco tried to think of a properly worded refusal that wouldn’t make her sound anti-lesbian.

  But Ann had a plain white sleeveless blouse beneath her jacket. The only thing she exposed was the fact her breasts were still high, pointy, and big enough to make her midriff look miniature.

  Ann smiled at Coco, lit a cigarette, captured several peanuts with long graceful fingers, and lifted her glass to her lips as if performing a Japanese ritual.

  “Of course, way back then, I wanted to set the world on fire, and I was obsessed with the idea that Gavin was holding me back. I thought I’d have to go live wherever he decided to practice law and that I would never be able to do what I wanted to, although I didn’t know what that was. So when I went home for Christmas that year, I thought it through, and when I got back to Chicago I just told him that I wanted a divorce.”

  Slowly her Pacific-blue eyes began to cloud over as she watched Coco’s reactions teletype their way across her face.

  “I mean,” she corrected herself, flushing like a lie detector about to score, “we decided. I mean, we decided to stay in the same apartment together until the quarter was over, but …”

  “Do you mean that when Gavin met me that you had already decided—you had already told him you were going to leave?” Coco’s mind was self-protectively sluggish now. There was a delay between each assertion Ann made and the meaning Coco slowly dislodged from it.

  Ann paused, puzzled. “It’s all so long ago,” she said softly. “It’s like another lifetime. You know, we really should have talked before now. It’s been thirteen years. Nowadays wife number one and wife number two get together right away and talk things over to help each other.” She laughed nervously.

  “Gavin told me he left you because he wanted to marry me,” Coco said. “He always said how hard it was to tell you that he was leaving you … for another woman.”

  Ann’s face was twitching with emotion. “Well, I can’t really remember exactly how it happened. He certainly fell madly in love with you and I’m sure it wasn’t any rebound thing. Actually, both Gavin and I decided together, maybe it was at different times, but those things are always so unclear. I’m sure it was mutual. I’m sure he had tuned out long before we decided to get divorced, so it really couldn’t have been a rebound thing with you.”

  Coco felt her heart begin to hammer, but then suddenly some electrical switch inside of her cut off. Her interest in keeping score had disappeared. Coco had turned off—the same as when she watched Sesame Street with Nicky and felt free to think of other things—or not to think at all. Something had changed within her. The girls at the commune, the women at the march, Sylvia’s pain, Ann’s problems, Coco’s own suffering—some one thing had finally worn down the sick spirit of competitiveness within Coco. And everything seemed inverted now. Past obsessions had become passing preoccupations.

  To figure out why she had gained strength from the mistaken notion that she had stolen another woman’s husband, or why Gavin had lied about it—if he did—or whether Coco had only caught Gavin on the rebound, marrying him while he still loved Ann, or why Ann wanted to go through all of it—seemed like a complicated math problem that was not her officially assigned homework Coco did not have to cram anymore kinky equations onto her messy page of psychological equations. Mentally she crumpled up the page of her competitive calculations and tossed it out of her consciousness. She was a psychological virgin once again.

  “Look, Coco. One of the reasons I came over, well, I did hear you were active in D.C. women’s-lib things, but actually I really wanted to say …” Ann paused to seek bravery at the bottom of her glass, like Nicky searching for the face of Willie Mays beneath the milk in his plastic tumbler. “I was so terribly jealous of you for so long.… It almost wiped me out. Everytime I bumped into Suede Bellock somewhere in New York, at a party or a bar or some political wing-ding, he always laid shit on me about you and Gavin—how happy you were and how you had all these darling kids. And, of course, I was still getting fucked over by guys and working at second-rate publishing houses, and the worse things got for me, the more I wondered. Well, I wondered if I should have stayed with Gavin and had some babies and … Oh, I don’t know. That hassle in New York—all those sick guys leeching around and all the messy affairs and bad sex …”

  The enormous Pacific-blue eyes looked moist with sympathy for her own past pains.

  “Well, I guess we were suffering from cross fantasies.” Coco smiled. It was time for the women’s liberation potlatch ceremony. Coco was compelled to offer some personal intimacy to match Ann’s suffering. She rose to her feet, collected the empty glasses, and moved back to the counter again. “Because I’ve been jealous of you for years, too,” she said, without turning around. The electric coffeepot winked its bright red eye encouragingly at her. “Whenever things got too heavy here, or I got spaced out”—she shrugged to indicate the internal expenditure of domestic duty without leave—“I used to feel like I had liberated yo
u by taking Gavin away … I mean, well, he told me that … that he left you because of me. Anyway, I thought it was because of me that you were free to swing with all the groovy Beautifuls in New York and write articles and get well known.”

  Coco returned to the table, passed Ann one of the glasses, indifferent about exchanging drinks because now they were simulating sisterhood, and sat down. But what once would have seemed like a valuable exchange of confessions now felt tiresome, tedious and repetitious. Coco had retold her emotional history too many times and it didn’t lead anywhere. “Of course, Suede always told me that you were living with this writer or that sculptor or having an affair with some ex-senator and producing TV programs about women’s issues and giving commencement addresses at swish girls’ schools and writing course curricula for women’s-studies programs.” Admitting to envy was so simple now that Coco wondered if her confession sounded phony.

  Because what she was really feeling was an enormous craving to be alone so that she could listen to some vague ideas that were beginning to stir in her mind. She felt as if she were about to discover or understand something, and talking with Ann Carradine was an imposition, an interruption of her real work. Something was calling to her now. Her mind felt like the lower back right before the onset of labor, something vague and undefinable was happening which commanded all her attention.

  Ann readopted the earnest expression which indicated that the soul-searching was about to be revved up again. Coco heard her from a distance.

  “You know, it wasn’t until I joined a C.R. group about three years ago that I began to dig what was going down. Jesus.” She shook her head disbelievingly. “There were usually eight or nine of us at those meetings, and there were always at least three other women, besides myself, who had been married in college and who left their husbands when they graduated.”

  That time Ann didn’t catch her oversight. Her version of the end of her marriage was so firmly established by either truth or illusion that she was unable to alter it even to protect her successor.