Shirley

by Susan Scarf Merrell

  I brought the laundry into the living room and began to pair socks while Sally and Shirley hashed over the week’s events. Sally had brought a story to share with her mother, something she’d written for school, and I was pleased when Shirley began to criticize it. “You trivialize your gift,” she told her daughter, and I had to suppress a little smile of satisfaction. If I ever wrote anything, I’d wait until it was perfect before I showed it to Shirley. I wouldn’t waste her time.

  Stanley came home next, and was pleased to hear that we’d been out, even more so because we’d been to Glastenbury Mountain. “Always the best place to ferret out the next piece of the plot,” he said approvingly.

  “We weren’t working,” Shirley said, defiant and a little excited. Challenging him to tell her no, to say that a day without writing disappointed him or even that it pleased him—daring him to tell her what to do.

  Was I the only one to breathe in sharply? Bright-eyed, observant Sally watched them both as well. Only I saw something darker there, I thought, the result of knowing Shirley best.

  “Your girls always go to the mountains, don’t they?” Stanley said finally. It took me a moment to realize it was Shirley’s characters he meant.

  “I suppose they do.” Dry Shirley, giving him nothing, and yet she was flirting.

  “What does Natalie say? Not Rosie’s baby but yours—the girl in Hangsaman?”

  “Remind me,” she said, delighted.

  “Oh, what was it?” He shook his head from side to side, amused, thoughtful. A game, of course; it was Stanley, and so he remembered precisely, he always did. “‘A tree is not a human thing, with its feet in the ground and its back hard against the sky; it cannot tolerate the small human tendernesses moving beneath . . .’”

  “I thought you would do the part before that, when they’re in the woods and she’s scared.” She had sat up, straighter, and her cheeks were flushed with pleasure.

  He nodded. “I can do that, too, Shirl.”

  She waited. I watched her watch him as he examined the voluminous storage depot that was his memory, and saw them both grin, relieved, when he nodded to himself, having accessed precisely the snippet of her prose he wanted to recall: “‘Or choose perhaps a throne higher than the moon, on a black rock, where sitting we can rule the world, where the stars are around our feet and the sun rises when we glance down and beckon’”—he cleared his throat—“‘where far below there are contests to make us laugh and above us there is nothing but our own crowns and sitting there forever we can watch and end eternity with a gesture of our finger . . .’”

  “A veritable steel trap, that brain of yours, S. Edgar.”

  They were both so pleased with themselves I was startled when Stanley went to the sideboard and poured their evening drinks. Somehow I expected to keep talking about Shirley’s novel Hangsaman a bit longer; they seemed to be having such a good time. As I continued with the laundry, I thought about the book, Shirley’s second novel. It had been written at Bennington, but Natalie was hardly the well-bred Connecticut girl I imagined Paula Welden to be. I’d forgotten her when we picked the baby’s name. No one had mentioned it, either. Maybe every girl has a little bit of Natalie in her. And a little Paula Welden, too.

  “Lost girls go to the mountains,” Shirley said lightly, sipping her drink, and we laughed together; even Sally and I momentarily joined in the sheer pleasure of knowing that in this often confounding world, there was a clear destination for the sorrowful, the angry, and the confused. Someplace far from this house, from this lovely nest of brilliant, fascinating people. Glastenbury Mountain. Now that I knew the mountain’s dark secret, I need never visit her slopes again.

  Before Fred returned from the college, I had all the laundry folded. As I hoisted the basket to the stairs, it seemed that the very walls smiled from behind the watercolor paintings by Shirley and the children’s school photographs. Thrummed in approbation, approval of my industry and dedication. I went from room to room, stowing clean laundry in the correct drawers, proud and cheerful. In our room, Natalie snored gently, one fist curled by her plump cheek. I tucked her blanket around her feet, and took the back stairs down, empty laundry basket in hand. Shirley and Sally sounded happy in the kitchen, where they were finishing up dinner preparations, stewed peaches and a lamb stew. When Sally laughed loudly, I smiled agreeably so as not to set my teeth on edge. And when Fred came home, I hugged and hugged and hugged him until he practically had to peel my arms off his shoulders. He was my family, after all, and he had promised to love me forever. We went upstairs. I told him everything, repeating everything I’d learned about Paula Welden, about the mysterious way she’d disappeared. Almost everything. I did not say anything about Shirley, about how strange her voice had been when she’d said she’d never met the girl. And I did not tell him that Paula Welden reminded me of me, of how invisible one can be and still be somewhere on this earth.

  I nursed the baby while he put his books and papers on the desk. I changed Natalie’s diaper. He told me about the inspired discussion his class had had about the Book of Genesis and harvest rituals. Confidence made him even handsomer, and I clung to him as we made our way down the stairs as the first dinner guests arrived. I was so proud to be his wife. How could anybody be dissatisfied to have what I had?

  Thirteen

  IT WAS PART OF THE PECULIARITY of Shirley and Stanley that the visit from Fred’s parents was not a disaster. You would think that a couple that had entertained Dylan Thomas—held a raucous party in his honor that spilled out into the snowy yard and permanently offended the neighbors—would have little interest in an elderly candy store owner and his delicately tyrannical wife. But the Hymans behaved so graciously with Selma and Marvin Nemser that I believe when they climbed back up the steps of the train that Sunday morning in March, both Fred’s parents were congratulating themselves on their son’s good fortune. Mrs. Nemser even patted my cheeks after she leaned over to give her new granddaughter one last kiss.

  “I got my figure back quickly, just like you,” she said. “Twins, and I was back in my own clothes before the month was out.” We were related by blood now. She was trying to like me, to make the best of things.

  So cold it was, that day and every other until the very end of the month. It made us plan all outings as if we were off to climb Everest. Mrs. Nemser had borrowed gloves from Shirley, and I hoped no one would have to remind her to give them back. It would have been easy to assume the Hymans were rich, to think the gloves wouldn’t matter. I hated to think I might have to say something. I remember the puff of fog that wafted from Fred’s mother’s mouth, the way her teeth gleamed slightly yellow behind it. She had outlined her lips with red lipstick, the way she did for only the most elegant occasions, and in the harsh March light the flat paint drew attention to the gray hairs that sprouted along her upper lip. I would never let myself go to seed that way, I thought. I had created life and I was no longer afraid of Selma.

  “Have you seen my mother?” I asked, stepping closer in the hope that Selma would answer in a whisper.

  “No. She hasn’t come around.” She was stripping Shirley’s soft leather gloves down her fingers, regret at imminent loss already apparent, her face concentrated in longing.

  “I wrote to her. About the baby. But the letter came back, and I’m worried. I phoned Mrs. Cartwright in Wayne, the lady my sister Helen keeps house for. She said Helen left. Where could they have gone?”

  Shirley, chuckling at something Fred or Marvin had said, paid no attention to Selma’s proffering of the gloves. Instead, I ended up holding them, clutched under Natalie. “I wouldn’t know about your mother. I’m sorry, Rose.”

  “If you hear anything, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

  Selma Nemser leaned down again, kissed Natalie’s hatted head. “Of course, dear. But sometimes—” She stopped. I know she meant to say that some relatives were a blessing to lose. I cou
ld not agree. I don’t think anyone who has ever loved someone like my mother would. Because while we pretend we have choice about who we love, it isn’t actually true.

  • • •

  I EXPECTED THAT after the Nemsers left we would laugh about them, just a little. Chuckle at the undue respect they showed the gold-rimmed china, despite its chipped edges and scratched paint. Marvel at the way Mr. Nemser cleared his throat, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and fiddled with the top button on his shirt whenever he began to speak about Fred’s twin brother, Lou. As if acknowledging that Fred’s being doubled somewhere, out in the world, was an uncomfortable fact, vividly tied to a sense of guilt.

  At dinner, over Shirley’s chicken with artichoke hearts—one of her fallback entertaining dishes—Marvin had told us about Lou’s recent promotion at the Examiner. “Weekends to begin, but Lou says after six months if he don’t start splitting with the other two news editors straight down the biscuit they’ll be some surprise in store.”

  “He’d leave?” Fred asked.

  “Never.” Selma’s certainty would have ended all discussion under normal circumstances, but Shirley put her fork down and took a sip of wine.

  “Why not?” she asked. “Move for the opportunity? Try another city? He’s a boy who likes to stay close to home?”

  Selma nodded proudly.

  “Does he look like our Fred?”

  “Identical,” their mother said.

  “No,” I said.

  At either end of the table, Stanley and Shirley raised their wineglasses in unison, drank deeply, and picked up their forks. Jannie, the elder daughter, the only one of the kids home that evening, studied us with a grave consideration that bordered on sympathy. She was the one at school at Bennington. I never could decide if she, with her placid authority, was the bigger threat to my relationship with Shirley or if Sally—bracingly intelligent and wickedly fun—was Shirley’s favorite. Barry was a most adorable pet but far too young to be real competition: it was the girls who most concerned me, although I never let them see it. Even now, as Jannie watched me, I let my eyes brush over her as if she weren’t present.

  “Which is it?” Stanley asked, calmly. Fred’s loafer touched my calf, ever so lightly, and I could not tell whether it was reproach or encouragement. I focused on the pale, lemony swirls of chicken broth that coated my plate, even after I had reduced the breast and vegetables to a pile of frail bones.

  Every so often, a swish of cold air drifted over my legs and feet, as if the ghosts of cats long dead sought table scraps. I shivered, my thoughts on Natalie, who was soundly asleep upstairs under a heap of blankets.

  “They’re identical,” said Marvin, and Selma nodded.

  “We were,” Fred said. “As kids, nobody could tell us apart, but now it’s easier.”

  “Not with that beard of yours, just the way your brother wears his. Such handsome faces you both have, I don’t understand why you want to cover them up.”

  “Fred’s taller,” I said.

  “Less than an inch.” Selma shrugged dismissively.

  Shirley dotted her lips with one of the napkins I’d ironed, offered to pass the chicken again, then signaled to Jannie that it was time to clear. When I stood, Shirley told me to stay where I was. I sat. I would have liked Fred’s mother to know I pulled my weight in the household, that I was no freeloader. But I sat all the same.

  “Is he married?” Shirley asked. “Does he have a girl?”

  Selma sat up taller. “He’s young yet. There’s no hurry. Not everyone’s in such a rush.”

  Shirley’s glance was delighted. Sympathetic, amused, delighted.

  “Help me in the kitchen,” she said, and I pushed back my chair willingly. It turned out what she wanted was just that, kitchen help, and she set me to whisking cream for the pie while she pulled down dessert plates and glasses for port. She hummed cheerfully, keeping time to the Glenn Miller record Stanley had put on. I whipped and whipped, until my right arm grew sore. The cold of the bowl cut through the wool of my sweater. At the same time, I felt warm, a trickle of sweat chilling the skin at my neck.

  Down the hall, Selma began to giggle, the sound strangled, high and overripe, pleasure on the edge. I heard something knock into a wall, Stanley’s laugh, an alarmed, amused warning from Fred. They were dancing.

  “Shirl! Come quick! Let Freddy give you a turn!”

  Stanley was most definitely drunk.

  “Someone’s at the door,” I said. I felt the pounding move the floor and walls, rather than heard it, the music was so loud. At first I’d thought it was the reverberation of drums and cymbals on Stanley’s record.

  Shirley put down the pie knife. “Stan! Someone! Get the door!”

  “I have arrived, in all my glory!” It was Kenneth Burke, Stanley’s mentor, a much older visiting professor in the English department. With him came a blast of freezing air, the stamping of frozen feet, and a call for Scotch. Shirley drew down a stack of glasses, turned to me with sparkling eyes.

  “Let’s see how Burke does with Selma,” she whispered.

  “I’ll finish in here.”

  She was already gone, eager to see what chemical reaction this combination might create. I finished whipping the cream, put the bowl and plates on a tray, and took a deep breath, wishing I could stay in the kitchen by myself all night. If Natalie woke, reprieve would come; I let my mind drift up the stairs, willing her to do so, but as usual, she did what she wanted. In this case, it was to sleep through it all.

  Burke and Selma were dancing. I could see a certain beauty in her. I had never seen her happier, her marcelled gray bob tilted so that the ends brushed against the pale blue of her new sweater. Her mouth was wide, her chest high, her matronly belly pulled in and shoulders back. Despite her sensible shoes, she moved like a lithe, much younger woman. Normally, she watched with such stern judgmental coldness that the prettiness of her bones was virtually invisible. Burke seemed to like her.

  Marvin and Stanley leaned against the bookcases, gazing at the dancers like doting parents, watching how Burke dipped her just a little too far. He was shorter than she, and Selma was not a tall woman—no more than five feet, four inches, either of them. Compact and vibrant, Burke radiated openness. Where Stanley charmed by looking closely at you, so that you felt seen, kind Burke took in the entire universe at a glance. I have never known a man more appreciative, more understanding, more certain of the goodness of others. And yet his wit was astounding. Selma’s color was high. “Oh my! Oh my!” she said as I entered the room. “Time for a younger woman to dance!”

  “No,” Shirley said blithely. She and Fred, drinks in hand, had taken up observational positions on the couch. “Look at you, Selma! You’re grooving!”

  “Dance with me,” Marvin asked her.

  Shirley joined him with alacrity. Neither Marvin nor Shirley moved with the grace of Selma and Burke, but they stepped and dipped and turned. I offered Stanley a Scotch. He took it. As he sipped, he called across the room to Fred, loudly. “You know what I think? You know what I think? I think Salinger’s a phony and a fake.”

  Burke twirled Selma. The edge of the rug had lifted slightly. I wanted to warn him to watch where he stepped. Shirley and Marvin landed by the liquor cart and poured themselves fresh drinks.

  “Why’d you bring up Salinger?” I asked.

  Shirley said, “Burke’s a better dancer.”

  Stanley ignored both of us.

  “Salinger’s a fake,” Stanley said again, even louder this time.

  Burke winked at me.

  “He’s a phony, Burke, for all he says he hates phonies, that’s what he is. Shallow. Wouldn’t know the Tao from a towel rack, if he walked right past both of them.”

  Shirley hoisted her glass of port, entering the fray. “Stan’s right,” she proclaimed. “Hiding up there in New Hampshire as if he needs
solitude. He’s afraid of being seen. He’s afraid, that’s all.”

  Burke led Selma easily, without watching her movements. He was a dapper man, even when drunk. Never a hair out of place or his shirt collar imperfectly pressed. He always looked as if he were amused, and tonight was no exception. He held on to Selma’s hand and waist though he’d stopped dancing. “Salinger’s hardly a fearful man, Stan, simply a private one.”

  “He’s a know-nothing, Kenneth, it’s undeniable. Yes, he’s the fashion, the spurious fashion. Salinger’s Big Religious Package, that’s what I call it. A jumble of religions.”

  “That’s right,” Shirley said, emphatically. “The Upanishads, the Sutras, Meister Eckhart—”

  Stanley took over. “Buddhism, Jesus, the Old Testament, Lao Tse, Sri Ramakrishna, Chuang-Tzu, Suzuki, Epictetus. I could go on for ten minutes, listing all the goulash he’s put together. It makes no sense, not for Zooey, not for anyone. A lot of mumbo jumbo, and it’s supposed to add up to what?”

  “I like Salinger,” Fred said quietly.

  “Shhh,” Selma said. Marvin was plopped in Stanley’s armchair, thumbing through one of Shirley’s mystery stories, drink in hand. Strands of his comb-over had flipped backward, a slick gray waterfall.

  Burke dropped Selma’s hands, walked over to the tray, and poured himself a Scotch.

  “They’re all sacred symbols. Related by intent.”

  Stanley’s face had grown very red; he was angrier than made sense. “Decorative symbols. Related by their inorganic connection to the story.”