Jack Holmes and His Friend

by Edmund White

  I looked at her in partially feigned bewilderment and wondered how good I was at lying.

  “Alex!”

  She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. I scrawled a signature in the air, calling for the check.

  We walked in silence the short distance to the Pierre. Even at this early hour the streets were thronged. It was a gray, chilly day. “Not much of a homecoming for you,” I said.

  “Why do you—”

  “The weather,” I said impatiently, to push aside a more serious interpretation of my words. I thought this terrible tension in my shoulders would not go away until we talked it out.

  In the car, once we were out of Manhattan and over the Brooklyn Bridge, we began to talk. I was glad I was driving; my wife’s little Triumph was a stick shift, which gave me something to do and feel competent about. In the suburbs the leafless treetops slid past overhead like hands flayed to reveal their veins in an anatomy class. Alex kept fiddling with the heater.

  “So, what’s she like?” she asked jauntily.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Your mistress.”

  “Love the old-fashioned word,” I said, “but sorry, I don’t have a mistress.”

  “A girlfriend, then. Let me guess: mid-twenties, an office worker, pretty, a bit overweight, a touch vulgar, but that’s what makes her sexy.”

  “Stop this, Alex. Seriously. Stop it. No such woman exists.”

  “If it’s not Jack and not a vulgar younger woman, then who—”

  I looked at Alex, a second too long for her taste, and she begged me to return my eyes to the road.

  Finally she said, “Remember, my father is a lawyer, a highly successful lawyer, and I grew up in a household used to arguments and counterarguments.”

  She seemed satisfied with herself, as if I’d been about to question her father’s competence.

  “Alex,” I said, feeling her watching me, “I hate it when you get paranoid. Is this honestly how you want to pursue this?”

  She shrugged and, after a pause, said in a little voice, “No. No. I want our perfect life back. Maybe you didn’t think it was so perfect.”

  “Of course I thought—I think—it’s perfect. I love you.” I paused. “You love me.” I risked a glance. “We love each other.”

  “For pity’s sake, Will, keep looking at the road. This road is dangerous; it curves so much.”

  We sank into a silence that lasted until we pulled into our own long, long driveway, which Alex had designed to resemble a country road, with a grassy strip down the center. In this light, so weak but clear, our place seemed even more rustic, untamed. The long, dry grasses brushed against the bottom of the car. It began to rain.

  “Look, Will—pheasants!”

  And four big startled birds flapped noisily out of some high weeds a hundred yards ahead. We both gasped and looked happily at each other and simultaneously lowered our windows, as if we needed to breathe in our cold native air. That sudden gasp breaking through her mournful, prickly silence promised a reconciliation, if not today, then soon. At least it was feasible.

  When we pulled up to the house, Alex said, “Ghislaine is turning out to be anorectic. Don’t stare at her.”

  “Of course I won’t stare.”

  “No, no, I know you won’t. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but she just got back from Normandy, and her fiancé laughed at her for all the weight she’d put on in America, and now she’s taken draconian measures.”

  “It is true that sugar is added to everything Americans eat,” I said blandly, grateful for this distraction.

  “Not what we eat,” Alex said. “Maybe in our house the strawberries are sandier, but at least it’s all good honest organic produce. If Ghislaine would eat what we eat, she’d be slender but not skeletal.”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling, taking her hand in mine, “you do look after us.”

  Secretly I was relieved that Ghislaine would no longer be such a voluptuous temptation inside her loose-fitting dark dresses.

  I’d forgotten that the children would be at school. The house seemed bizarrely quiet except for the drum of rain.

  “It’s really raining now,” I said, “and I can hear that that gutter needs cleaning.”

  “Yes,” Alex said with a smile, “your city slicker days are over. By the way, I ordered lots of groceries yesterday when we came back, including some lovely trout, which I can sauté, and Ghislaine is making some purée de pommes de terre with celeriac. You know how she does that. Shall we eat in an hour? Emily is off today. I even have some nice Riesling.”

  “Oh no,” I said, “no wine. I’m off booze for a week.”

  “As you wish.”

  Ghislaine emerged briefly to say hello on the way to the pharmacy. She’d become dramatically thinner within two weeks. Had she swallowed a tapeworm? She was bundled up in two layers of bulky sweaters. “We have a certain pill in France, an alterna—” she began.

  “Alternative?” I asked.

  “Yes—one of those—kind of medicine in France. Homéopathique. Do you have them? Twenty little pills you put under your tongue for a grippe?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said irritably, thinking, how could they be so superstitious?

  “They’re called Oscillococcinum.”

  “No,” I said, laughing, “I’m sure we have nothing like that.”

  When Ghislaine came back from her fruitless search at the drugstore, we sat down to a salad, the fish, and the mashed potatoes. The neighbors were burning leaves, despite the damp, which had Alex in a rage because she’d given them a pamphlet and a lecture about the advantages of rot and mulch.

  After lunch I went up for a nap, but I couldn’t sleep. I thought about how safe and secure I felt here, despite the sound of an animal scrabbling on the roof and the mournful hooting of not one but two owls in the garden, if such a wasteland could be called a garden. I got up and looked out at it in all of its frowsiness, its dun and sere and wild devastation. And I thought about how hard it would be to sell this place. It would take at least a year of plowing and replanting to make it look normal—and the deaths of hundreds of woodland creatures.

  I lay down again. Now that I was home I felt vacant, as empty as I had as a child when I’d been kept home with a fever, the sheets tucked in too tight, the jello disgusting, with a browning slice of banana entombed within. I had nothing to do, and my body missed all the stimulation it had been receiving. I could feel Pia’s hand judging my balls or her tongue excavating my crack with small licks or my penis being coaxed into greater and greater greed. I felt as if my hard brown nipples, just vestigial bumps, were now pulsing with pleasure, as if they were emitting radio signals. In marriage I’d had a mouth for kissing and a penis for intercourse and ears to be whispered into, but now in concubinage my whole body had come alive and was glowing and yearning for more.

  I wished I could collapse back into marital torpor. Alex’s father might be a dynamic lawyer, but he obviously had a body that was 90 percent numb below the neck. I could tell how insensitive it was; I’d seen him at the Larchmont Yacht Club in a swimsuit. He could have lost a leg to a shark and felt nothing. Body armoring. A Charlottesville friend of mine, Edith, who was seeing a shrink, a follower of Wilhelm Reich, talked about “body armoring” all the time. The theory was that you hid your feelings and they got lodged in your muscles—which must have been why my shoulders ached. Edith had said that when her shrink manipulated her muscles, he would release the pain stored in them and she would sob. Pia never made me cry, but she did awaken me, unlock all those emotions—and now what was I supposed to do with these alerted, proliferating feelings?

  Around five Alex came in with some smoky Lapsang tea and her oldest, most transparent china. The children lurked shyly behind her, clinging to her skirts, their faces brown as tupelo honey. They were looking at me as if they weren’t quite sure what they’d find.

  “Peggy,” I called out. “Palmer. The two P’s in the pod.”

 
I extended my arms to them. Margaret ran to me, but Palmer turned away coyly in some silly game of his own, saying, “We’re not peas.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips into a smile and rubbed his face against his out-flung arms as if he were pretending—happily—to be indignant.

  “Silly Daddy,” he said, still rubbing his face, as if he’d walked into a sticky web and were trying to get it off. Then he became fascinated with a winter fly hobbling along a floorboard, and finally, magnetized against his will, he glided toward me while looking elsewhere and ended up in my arms. I thought, He’s my son. He’s my son.

  Ghislaine, heavy with sweaters, came in and said indulgently, “Les enfants! Allons-y! Vite, vite!” and then they were all gone except Alex, who sat down in a slipper chair upholstered in a dull tan and muted pink peonies. I was sitting barefoot on the edge of our bed in khakis and a faded blue shirt. Outside, the daylight was draining away, and I was filled with suburban dread. Jack had once told me that he couldn’t bear to live more than a hundred feet away from a subway hole. Neighborhood dogs were baying.

  Alex had obviously decided we’d drawn too close to the edge of the abyss, and now she introduced a new “serious” subject, New York’s disastrous finances and the rising crime rate. She liked Mayor Beame and his fiscal know-how. I wasn’t so sure, but at least it was a good safe topic for us. When at last we were called to dinner, an early supper and one we could share with the children, I think we were both reassured, as if we’d been able to put some ordinary conversational plank beneath our feet and display our deft balancing skills.

  Apropos of nothing I thought, Jack used to be the one who was close to being a criminal with his homosexuality, but now he’s the toast of the town and I’m the one—if anyone could lift my lid and look in, they’d think I was the evildoer. I’m the adulterer.

  At the bedroom doorway I kissed Alex and said, “I missed you,” saying it experimentally to see if I could instill a feeling in myself simply by voicing it.

  Alex held my face and kissed me all over and said, “I’ve missed you, terribly,” which was more emotion than I’d bargained for. My soul flinched and ran off to hide. Idea for story: a couple play emotional hide-and-seek with each other over the years.

  During supper I was called to the phone.

  It was Pia. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “Alex came home. We’re eating now.”

  “So early?”

  “Children. It’s when children eat.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I lowered my voice. “Don’t call here.”

  “Another rule? I may not call you at all, anywhere. Let’s just stop seeing each other.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  She hung up. When I went back to the dining room, Margaret started telling me excitedly about her scuba diving classes and the beautiful fish she’d seen.

  Then Palmer chimed in. “And I—I—I saw some … bootiful … fish too, Daddy, in the boat, the bottom—” His face twisted right and left with the effort of formulating his thought for the person who hadn’t been there. He was looking at the ceiling in concentration.

  Margaret spoke up in her maddening way. “He means, Daddy, that we went out in a glass-bottom boat one day to the coral reef, where we saw some lovely tropical fish.” She sounded just as pedantic as her mother. Had Alex been so sure of herself even as a little girl?

  I stroked the back of Palmer’s neck and brushed my fingers through his long silky hair.

  “It tickles, Daddy,” he said, revealing his perfect white teeth. Usually his long upper lip covered his teeth, but now that he was laughing and pushing his head back into my hand I could see them, as distinct as notes played slowly on a piano without pedal.

  I could tell from Alex’s frozen smile that she had lots to say about the phone call, but I also knew I wouldn’t hear about it till the meal was over and we were alone. I dreaded having to invent a lie—one that would hold up. Alex didn’t let the children eat sweets; dessert was an apple each. After I bit into my apple, I saw traces of blood on the woody white flesh. I had two cold sores coming on, one on my tongue and one on the inside of my right cheek. Had Pia given me herpes? Or was I just rundown from all the late-night carousing?

  When we were alone again, Alex asked, “Who was that on the phone?”

  “It was Pia, that friend of Jack’s.”

  “Yes?”

  “She wanted us to come to lunch tomorrow, but I said I had to work. Sometimes these people …”

  “Yes?”

  “They don’t realize that some people work.”

  “I’m sure she does realize it and counts herself lucky not to be one of them.”

  “I shouldn’t have answered for both of us. Maybe you’d like to go.”

  “Do you see her often?”

  “No,” I said. I looked her right in the eye. I’m sure that at that moment I could have fooled a lie detector test—that’s how cool I felt. I was speaking the truth for a world I wanted to inhabit in the future. A lie was a misleading report about a sin in the past, but I was predicting, not retelling.

  Alex had made me cross a line. Up till now I hadn’t had to lie outright. I’d omitted a few—quite a few—details. But this time my deception was wearing a bold face.

  I took an early train to New York in the morning, and as soon as I was at my desk I phoned Jack. “You’ve got to help me,” I said.

  I explained to him about Alex’s early return, how she’d been waiting for me at the Pierre and how Pia had called me at home.

  “Alex is certain I have a mistress. Her word. At first she thought you and I were having an affair.”

  I immediately regretted saying that, only because people can never skip over any reference to themselves. It seemed urgent to me that Jack should understand the lies I’d told Alex and that he’d substantiate them, but he couldn’t get past the flattering notion that Alex had believed he and I were lovers.

  At last his curiosity was appeased, and I was able to run him through every part of his drill.

  He said, “You’re putting me in an awkward position.”

  “How so?”

  “Basically you’re telling me to choose you over her. If I lie to her, I’ll never feel comfortable with her again.”

  I thought about it. My girl, Helen, was waving at me from the doorway—something was urgent—but I pointed at my watch and held up five fingers, pleading for that many minutes more. She cringed and covered her head with her arms—the roof was crashing in on us—but she walked away.

  “Okay,” I said, “then I’m asking you to choose me over her. I’m the one you love—surely that counts for something.”

  He was silent—with indignation, I was sure.

  Then I said, “My marriage is at stake. Alex is so romantic and idealistic. If she learns about Pia, she’ll walk out on me and take the children with her.”

  He said, “Does that mean you’re willing to give Pia up?”

  “No,” I blurted out. Then I said, “Should I? Do you think I should?”

  “Let me put it this way. What’s keeping your marriage together? Why do you stay with Alex?”

  “I’m a Catholic,” I said. “Catholics don’t get divorced.”

  His voice softened with weariness. “I thought you were going to tell me you still love Alex.”

  “She’s very dear to me.”

  “That’s what people say about an annoying aunt. A woman’s white lie. So I’m supposed to lie a black lie because you have religious scruples about divorce and because I was once in love with you, feelings that you abhorred at the time and that I’ve worked long and hard to bury?”

  “Bury alive,” I said.

  Helen came in and put a note in front of me: “Mr. Norris is on hold and is furious. He’s threatening to ditch the account.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, look, Jack: my biggest account is about to bust a gut. Just do it,
Jack. Choose me.”

  As I hung up, I wondered what Helen was making of my end of the conversation.

  She filled me in quickly and I picked up. “Herb!” I said. “Forgive me. A little family crisis. No, no, it’s all fine now. So you hated the pictures?”

  I smiled at Helen, and she shook her hand in an it’s-too-hot-to-handle gesture and shrugged and walked away.

  “Hated, I see, is an understatement. Well, Herb, we can send out a new, more traditional photographer today. Or better yet, let me bring him over now. He’s a great guy. Rick, Rick’s his name. We’ll have a drink, and you can explain to him what you want. Yeah, we can be there by five. Sure, Herb, sure. He can go up to Rochester tomorrow. We can have the whole thing in the can by Monday. No extra charge—are you kidding, fella? Old friends like us? I want to get this thing right, just as much as you do—more! More than you! Okay, then, let’s say five. Don’t worry about that. We can wait for you in the boardroom just as long as it takes for you to get free. And Rick will bring his portfolio—no, no, I agree. That other guy, Salvatore, he’s a little far out, as they say. Yeah. Italian. You’ll like Rick—a good Ohio guy. But talented! You’ll see. The Norman Rockwell of photography.”

  An hour later, after I’d reached Rick and promised to double his usual fee, Jack called back. “Did you put out the fire?” he asked.

  “Yeah, and you?” I asked.

  “I talked to Alex. I told her we were with some college friends of mine last night getting pleasantly stewed and arguing about Gerry Ford. She wanted details, so I said we were with Bob and Becky Rogers—write this down—he’s in roofing, a contractor, and she’s a hands-on mom, they live on Third and Seventieth, all the kids at Chapin.”

  “You’re a prince. They sound so boring I’m sure Alex won’t remember a thing about them. Even I’ve already forgotten—hey! Did you make all that up?”

  “Yep. But I do know a Bob Rogers at that address if she tries to check him out in the phone book. Alex asked me about Pia, and I said you’d not seen her since that time I’d brought her out to Larchmont, but that she’d called you because she was giving a big lunch for some Italian aristocrats, and two guests had dropped out, and I’d suggested you and Alex.”