A knock on the bedroom door brought Nancy out, surprisingly undisheveled, a quilted pink robe wrapped around her and Silver Screen folded at a closeup of Liz Taylor's bosom (the big diamond no competition at all) and a tousle-haired Burton waving irately at a photographer who'd invaded his private reserve. Nancy's lips parted in surprise, and she moved with lithe tennis grace toward the two girls.
“Why, Jane ... and Patricia Conlon, what an absolutely delightful....” She kissed Jane on the cheek. They had a long tradition of avoiding lipstick smudging. Patricia caught one as well just below the earlobe. “I never expected....”
“How're you feeling?”
“Perfectly wonderful. How'd you know I was up here? Did you call the house?”
“No, Dad sent me a telegram.”
She sat down on a chair, slowly and with inordinate delicacy, as if conscious of some inhuman fragility which she'd been warned about. She lifted an arm and waved the girls to the sofa, an elastic, uncomfortable smile on her face, which Jane knew preluded one of her white lies. Nancy in fact always called them white lies when caught out unaware. Nancy's ankle, wrapped in a heel-anchored ace bandage, was presented.
“I slipped and fell. Tendons or something....”
Conlon excused herself. The atmosphere had become tense and oppressive and she needed to get outside and clear her head.
“How are you, Jane? You don't look any different. Thinner maybe?”
“I was carrying—” She paused; her mother's face vanished before her eyes and she blinked, talking to an empty room. Nancy had slipped behind a closet door. “...some extra weight. Look, Mother, you don't have to hide.”
“You did away with it?” she said finally.
“Yes, I had an abortion. It's not such a terrible word.”
She shook her head gloomily and stood by the window staring blankly at the empty quadrangle.
“Look, Mother I was careless. This isn't a bill you have to pay. I already did.”
“Don't hurt me, Jane, please.”
“I didn't come up here to hurt you. I wanted to see you.”
She put an arm around Nancy and supported her head, letting it drop on her shoulder.
“My God, we could have been friends,” Nancy said remorsefully, as if referring to someone long dead with whom she'd failed to communicate. “I always wanted to. But I didn't know how. You were such an inconvenience. I thought if I could make you dislike me enough you wouldn't grow up to be like me.”
Jane didn't know what to answer. Suffering without cause always struck her as pointless and unspeakably self-indulgent, yet here she was confronted by the evidence of wreckage.
“I'm always, always, depressed.”
“Well, why didn't you do something with your life? I mean you didn't even try....”
“Luckmunn did this to me.”
“Why blame him? Be reasonable. He's just a little social climber. You couldn't have felt anything very deep for him.”
“How do you know?”
“I met him at the house.”
“You're wrong,” Nancy shouted. “He was very generous—with himself.”
“Why are we talking about him? He doesn't matter.”
Nancy's hands shook as she lit a cigarette. Her eyes followed the swirling smoke. She'd lost her trend of thought and all that remained intact was her capacity to brood. The sunlight froze the hard lines on her face and Jane sat motionless as the watery blue eyes drifted aimlessly around the room.
“He came to the house you know,” Nancy said.
“Who?”
“Your professor ... Alan. I liked him. We had a lot in common. Lovely, you know. He's very much in love with you. Was it his baby?”
“Yes; was.”
“He loves you, Jane. He told me. He thought I might influence you....” Her mind wandered. “Jim loved me—before you were born. Then it disappeared. I just don't know why. I've got a nerve, haven't I ... complaining. But Jane, I know something for certain. If you and Alan got married, had the baby, I would've, well, pulled myself together. I would have had a reason....”
“I didn't love him.”
“You make it sound so final. You and he.... Well, I just don't understand why you're throwing yourself away. They called from school.”
“I'm not going back.”
Nancy laughed inadvertently: a peculiar shrill sound, Jane thought, awkward, an exercise never practiced.
“Me argue with you? How can I? I'm not that crazy. You'll break me in half.”
A gong tolled, vaguely inspiring memories of fire drills, and the two rose quickly.
“It's just lunch,” Nancy said. “Will you stay?”
“Yes, if you want me to.”
Nancy looked at her dressing gown and frowned.
“I'd like to change ... but damn it, they won't let me. So I walk around like an invalid.”
Conlon sat on a bench near the elevator. Uncomfortable, she wanted to suggest that Jane meet her later. She watched the two talking and was struck by the almost supernatural resemblance, which went further than mere features of coloring, but encompassed the jerky hand movement, the nervous brushing through of hair, the pauses in speaking. It spooked her. Was it Nancy younger, moving inexorably on a course of predetermined tragedy, a projection of future unhappiness?
“Your foot okay?” Jane asked, noticing the absence of a limp when they walked.
“I'm a terrible actress. I got it bandaged up for you.”
“You're a fool,” Jane said forthrightly; then shocked at herself, continued, “...to try to be dishonest with me.”
“I don't know you. I never took the trouble.”
“How'd you wind up here again?”
“Four-day drunk. I passed out. The servants thought I'd left to go to town and then stayed over. I did, by the lake.”
They were at the elevator and Conlon, attuned to disaster, pleaded to be excused.
“Don't dump me,” Jane said quietly, out of Nancy's hearing.
They didn't speak until they reached the dining room, when fumes of institution cooking drove Nancy to an instant retreat.
“God, Jane, I need a drink. Help me, please.”
“Let's have lunch, Mother.” Then, catching the look of futility in Nancy's eyes she said, “We'll see what we can do.”
“I don't deserve you.”
“Who knows, maybe you do.”
* * * *
An air of bedclothes and bathrobes hung over the dining room which had a high coffered ceiling and large square posts varnished to a luminous intensity. Slippers shuffled over the carpet and about forty people, men and women with hang-dog faces and wan distant expressions, moved to the tables to celebrate their country's national holiday. The Muzak was temporarily interrupted by an ingratiating voice.
“There will be a movie after lunch in the library.”
Years of indifference didn't quite disappear after the V-8 juice cocktail, but they all seemed easy and relaxed.
“You wouldn't have any vodka in your bag to kill the taste of this?” Nancy asked.
“Mo—ther.”
“I can ask a question, can't I?”
Slices of turkey humped up over a mound of stuffing, glazed yams, and peas were served by the waitress, and the girls with their hungry highs ate ravenously.
“Real sickness here,” Conlon said as they left the dining room. “None of the men even turned to look at us.”
They settled down in a corner of the library. Two tables were occupied, one with bridge and the other Scrabble, when all at once there was a shout, and an old lady in a seersucker robe slapped another woman across the face. A pair of nurses quickly moved in to police and tried to calm the slapper.
“The longer you stay here, the better you like it,” Conlon said. “How long before we go?”
“I want to see my father ... to settle a few things.”
“You're not going to let your mother have a drink, are you?”
“I don't know. Sh
ould I?”
“This is my moment for copping out.”
“Funny thing is you think you've got a lump of wood on your hands and if you touch it you'll get splinters. Then you find out this lump of wood has a heart, feelings and it's suffering, and if you don't do something it'll die of neglect.”
“Jane, don't meddle.”
Nancy returned, her hair smartly twisted in a bun, a capacious visiting-nurse's bag dangling from her arm. Her eyes couldn't quite conceal the fact that she was ready to start screaming and only by a supreme act of will could she control herself. The lights dimmed and Doris Day dressed as a young farm girl bounced onto the screen.
“You okay?” Jane asked.
“Just squeeze my hands, will you? I'm starting to get the shakes.”
“Can't they give you a shot?” she asked in alarm.
“If I behave myself I'll get the freedom of the grounds next week. This could set me back weeks.”
Jane pressed the hot sweating hands into her own and held them tightly and Nancy hiccuped involuntarily. Doris began to sing something about Calamity Jane.
“Shots make me feel like a zombie and put me to sleep. I can't afford to keep losing days.”
“Can I get you something, Mrs. Siddley?” Conlon asked.
“The guard at the gate—I gave him a hundred dollars the last time I was here—and he got me something to drink.”
“Concentrate on the film,” Jane insisted. “It'll take you out of yourself.”
“Doris Day? I hate the woman. What's she got to be so happy about?”
“Listen, Jane, you've got to do something.”
“What?”
“Turn her on, for God's sake.”
The idea instantly sprang to life. Jane opened her bag, didn't bother to snap the ends of the joints, but bit them off, and handed one to Conlon who lit up.
“This is better than gin, Mrs. Siddley. Take a puff.”
“Do I inhale or what?” Nancy asked, her attention suddenly captured.
“Inhale and hold it down in your lungs for as long as you can.”
“Swallow it,” Conlon instructed, “and when you exhale let it out of your nose.”
“It isn't mentholated, is it? I can't abide menthol, makes me sick to my stomach.”
“No, it's not mentholated.”
Nancy puffed furiously, a spearlike red glow appearing after a moment, and she quietened.
“It'll keep her busy, I hope.” Jane said. “It's a bomber.”
“To think it's come to this,” Nancy said, gasping, disappointment in the air she breathed, “taking dope with my daughter....”
“And her friend,” Conlon added. “By the way, that's Panama Red, Mrs. Siddley, not dope.”
Nancy relaxed, became noticeably docile, even hummed along with Doris who was serenading some Western gunfighter who refrained from killing three men at the bar who'd challenged his right to ask a question.
“Jane, my throat's getting very dry,” Nancy said, the permanent child cajoling her parents.
“Do they have a Coke machine outside?”
“No, that's not what I meant.”
“Doesn't this have any affect on you, Mrs. Siddley?”
“Well, yes, I do feel nice but I'd prefer a drink. Jane, I'm begging you. If you ever had any feeling for me...”
Stoned to a degree of numbness, Jane found her resistance giving way. What was she trying to prove anyway? Moral superiority in a family whose only claim to relationship was a common surname? She'd played the parent to both Nancy and Jim for too long and she was tired of the role. It didn't fit, never would. And yet hope, like a shopkeeper's failing business, died slowly. She'd never been able to refuse her mother's plea and, unbeknownst to everyone, during her adolescence had been Nancy's booze connection. Land mines of gin had been planted all around the estate, and no one had ever suspected that Jane with her mother's connivance stashed bottles in bushes, under beds, in the dog kennel, in the pool filter house and pick-me-ups in perfume bottles and cold cream jars. She'd do anything to relieve suffering she neither understood nor sympathized with. It dawned on her, sitting in the dark—Doris gaily riding away with her good friend Sam Bass—that she'd come to see Nancy, not because she feared her father's displeasure, nor out of any desire to comfort her mother, but simply because she needed a drink and Jane could provide it. Conditioned reflexes cease at death or in Chinese prisons and Jane had experienced neither.
All she ever wanted from me, she thought, as a reluctant tear secreted in the pocket of her eye, was a drink. In her desire to come to a sad conclusion, one that she could brood about, nurse in her psyche, she had been confronted by established fact. She'd been denied the very basis of sentimentality and the only thing she could do was swallow it.
“Conlon, do me a favor and get the thermos out of the car,” Jane said.
“You really want me to?”
“Please.”
“Jane,” Nancy said excitedly, “you've saved me.”
“Have I? Your salvation is a helluva thing to live with.”
“Jane, I've always hated myself.”
“The trouble is you've waited too long to admit it.”
Jane was immediately sorry that she'd bothered to sharpen her knives; ridiculous, for she was dealing with a stiff. Nothing she could say, and, even more irritating, nothing she could do, could have the least effect on Nancy. Impossible to humiliate the fallen. Conlon got up to leave and said:
“You were going to get her drunk all along, weren't you?”
“I suppose so. Christ, I love this bitch and I can't help it.”
* * * *
“It would be wonderful if we could spend some time together. Jane? Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard.”
Sprawled on the chaise lounge talking lucidly, Nancy might have commanded respect, if it had been anyone but Nancy. Conned by experts, her virginity fleeced by a fag, her existence a trunkload full of canceled checks, Jane had taken the crazy rollercoaster ride from innocence to disgust, never lingering along the way; and now with Sonny Jackson illuminating her star, she was too full to be anything but happy.
“Jane, I'm serious.”
“I know you are.”
“What do you think?”
She lit a cigarette, switched the TV to another channel, observed Conlon beginning to doze, and thought of herself as miraculously lucky: the real core of herself muscular, growing stronger by the minute, not merely because her mother provided such a sharp contrast (did she?) but simply as a result of never blaming anyone for her own failures.
“I could take a room in town till you were ready to go home.” Nancy's eyes shone fiercely with expectation. “Then when we got back home, we could play tennis, have lunches together in the city. Go shopping, catch matinees, serve on charity committees, get back into the cotillion swing, visit museums, art galleries, go to Lincoln Center, back a few plays for kicks—” Nancy came toward her, dropped on her knee, and held her hand—"put in a few afternoons at an orphanage, sell tickets to bazaars, wear funny hats, and flirt outrageously in restaurants.”
“Oh, Janey, you're absolutely fantastic. What a life! I couldn't have thought of anything better or more truly fun.”
She pulled Jane to her feet and danced crazily around the room with her. Conlon blinked at the scene and wondered if she were on a trip.
“Only thing wrong with that—”
“What, tell me, what could be wrong?”
“I'm simply not that kind of person,” Jane said. “And you're you, Mother!”
The smile drifted from Nancy's face and she dropped Jane's hand.
“Why is it that no one's ever quite as cruel as your own child?”
“I don't know the answer to that. Maybe if you ever found out something about yourself, you'd be able to tell me.”
The conflict of the thermos was speedily resolved when the sound of a heavy car crunching the hard pebbles of the driveway brought Jane to the window. It
was dark and she couldn't see the man whom the chauffeur held the door for, but there was no doubt in her mind that James Harmon Siddley had come to call.
“You've got another visitor.”
“Oh, Christ, who wants to see him?” Nancy said, rushing into the bathroom embracing the thermos; the old team together again, brought out of yet another phony retirement.
He drifted into the room, deeply tanned and beautifully tweeded against the railing, cold winds that had begun early in the evening. Jane studied him. There seemed no estrangement between him and Nancy as be stooped to kiss her.
“I've let you down again,” she said, but his attention moved to Jane and he put his arms around her, then nodded to Conlon.
“How are you feeling, Jane?” Nancy, a lost cause in a war that ended without treaty or declaration, shrank back into her seat, for he had that skill of ignoring people without appearing to, a talent for giving pain which had a peculiar innocence about it. Motiveless. Jane had never before been able to see it so clearly, define it. He piled his coat, muffler, and hat on the sofa, asked a vague question about Nancy's treatment, and icily ran his eyes over Conlon. She glared back at him, refusing now to leave. He hadn't asked, simply tacitly insisted, and her contempt for these rich, cruel, thoughtless people increased. No faint air of superiority emanated from them, they drowned you with it.
“I'm okay,” Jane replied. “Our little girl isn't, though, is she?”
Nancy came to life, the center of attention again. Jane knew her child. Jim sat with his back to Conlon and she got up to leave, denied the satisfaction of being asked. God, their incredible arrogance.
“You've been drinking,” Jim said. Nancy made an attempt to protest but gave up. “You don't think you can fool me after twenty years.”
So calm and reasonable, Jane thought. Where had it gone wrong? How could they hate each other—Jim told her he loved Nancy—so bloodlessly?
“You fuck around and I drink,” Nancy said angrily.
“I didn't begin....” He stopped, half-smiled to Jane, not with embarrassment but a kind of superiority which masked his weakness. “Jane's heard all this old claptrap before, so why don't you drop it.”
Making Love Page 19