Plays Well With Others

by Allan Gurganus

  It was Marco who slid a chair under me. Robert looked my way, and it seemed almost funny but not quite, because big Robbie was like some water god, these tears like jets down either cheek, like some classical fountain that is built of composition stone to shoot musical water into your very own garden. “Wouldn’t hurt you for anything, Air,” he said. Marco had settled me between them, but I was facing down, mostly facing the green-gray marble tabletop, like someone very ashamed of something he had done.

  Marco, who knew what’d happened, now acted so upset that we were doing this to each other. And after all we had endured together and won—he rose and (darling darling shaggy boy) moved without asking, returned with my usual cafe con leche. “On Ossorio. But Ossie says you owe him for what you haven’t been spending in here lately.”

  For six weeks, it was creaky. Stiff. Like mountain climbers who’ve returned to flat land safe, but are so sore from the heights, they cannot walk to the store to get bread. They risk starving on flatland for their overexcellence at cliffs.

  And we never mentioned it—we, who’d told each other everything! Or so I’d believed.

  I remember when she’d blacked her own eye. Now I somehow wondered even about that, who? And had the others in our group always known what was happening? How could I save my friends if, so far, I still seemed to understand so little about them. About people.

  She’d once told me people are far worse than I ever guessed, plus some better, but new ways stretched in each direction. People were usually mean about something, but good because they found sometimes they truly could be; and soon the virtue felt narcotic. Its buzz lasted longer than mere wear-off bad. She told me I expected people to do right, but me? I waited in the wrong places. (How to argue with that?)

  Lately, given the publicity, those admirers first meeting her called her only “Alabama.” She hid her real first name now, or rather it hung back, in natural eclipse. I myself had always held off changing it; or else I alternated between “Angie” and that entire state for which she’d titled herself.

  Henceforth I vowed I would only call her that third-person geographic name, invented. Never again “Angie.” I couldn’t be that personal, not after It.

  A few months later Gideon took me aside and asked, in his divine accent the following phrase chic then, “Why get your bowels in any of ze uproar?” He sweetly tried to explain that I mustn’t blame them, that, champagne, cocaine, good fortune was a flammable mix and I was a prig to mind, though walking in on them like that could not have been so pleasant. Was it true I’d dented Robert’s precious boat? Hadn’t its luck been bad enough pre-me?

  How could I explain the extra sadness? About the spot. Everybody betrayed feels killed. You feel that the turncoat loved ones are now dead to you. But, loving them as I still did, how could I tell our friend here how literal all that Love-Death duet stuff might really be? So I shrugged, acting as “adult” as our pal the philosophical French-Egyptian. How could I tell him when I myself was still unable to say aloud how wronged and small and sad and underrated and left-behind it made me feel—their doing it or anything without me? Even dying, if that was ever required. And since we were mortals, certainly probably, it would be.

  At least, they could have called me in to watch.

  All I’d ever really tried was seeing them both.

  So, after It, to me, her name was only “Alabama.”

  Nothing more than what everybody else called her. Nothing older than the brand name.

  Strange, that helped. She heard and knew and sensed the difference, and uneasily accepted. It kept Angie, my old love, back safe, and for myself. It saved that time when we both sat groaning, joking, wondering about him. But Alabama would never again get to be, for me, plain Angelina Renata Byrnes, co-hick, another troublemaking player, my fellow beginner.

  And at the same second I vowed this, I learned something. I learned that, all along, my real passion had not been Robert. (That’d all been cupid arrow ricochet.) It had not ever been Miss Alabama Famous. No, I most yearned for that freckled missing person.

  It was li’l Angie that I’d really loved.

  But we stayed together; we had too many years on record not to. I had never before understood my parents’ marriage, how—having got this far in—they could neither of them just admit a mistake and bail the hell out. Happiness might demand it, but Mythology—the myth of their being a handsome couple made-for-each-other—would simply not permit that. Myth outranks any single person’s little Joy. We’re all continually upstaged by the scale of our own times and tragedies. In the end, the name of the ship that took you down is better known than your name ever will be.

  Mother had sent me photostats of two letters Colonel Hartley wrote his wife after the Battle of Shiloh. (My aunt, recently remodeling the family farmhouse, found them tucked under dining room wainscotting.) I read the things hoping to understand my great-grandad’s character. But all he really ever mentioned were the awful conditions, his boys losing their teeth from simple malnutrition, his outrage over all of this, his feeble attempts to make things locally easier. That seemed the single thing he thought about. Rare mention of a Yankee. Only the salutation and endings of his bulletins threw her scraps, a sentence or two of something a little personal, stray emotions for his worried hungry wife left home, fending with six kids. It was always only The Front, only Care and The Cause.

  “They cannot do this to us, Julia. This loss of life shall not be permitted to continue. What must our boy recruits think of such a God? He is surely setting, Julia, such a poor example for our young. Pray without ceasing for my charges and your too obdnt. husband, … Increase.”

  Results

  told Robert he would have to go and have The Test, and when he asked me why, I gently turned over his wrist and pointed to spot. It had now become two. They were black.

  The look that then passed between us, the questions filed like knives in it, would take the rest of this lights-out fairy-tale story to unpack and catalogue, longer. “Who knew what when?” The Watergate hearings tried to answer. An impeachment followed. But the rushing questions still abound.

  So, how did I become Emissary of Testing? And for them, not me? Hurt feelings? If it’d been a three-way on his kitchen floor, who knows how long we might all have drifted, unchecked. A busy bee erotically, I was not likely to accuse. My first simple impulse was to just save them both. If that casts me in the role of school monitor, well, they’d always considered me somewhat fusty, slow, and square.

  I knocked on Angie’s door. I had not, as usual, phoned first. She bobbed out, but wearing a swipe of red paint across half her face; and I could see she didn’t much like being interrupted. “Call me Mr. Butt-insky, witch at the wedding. But it’s this—we have got to get you tested, honey.”

  “‘We?’”

  “Yeah, I think ‘we.’ To be so short, it’s a right crowded word, ain’t it? I saw a thing. Before you two were together, that one single solitary time, ever ever, right? … sorry, I saw a mark on our dear one. I’m not saying just because you … I don’t know, if things’re not done the usual way with guys and gals, if that’s better or worse or counts more … Nobody knows much of anything anyhow but … I will only ask this once. Did you ever wonder about it, your health, while you were with him? They say these days you should be careful … It was in the Voice. Warnings you’ve probably started seeing stapled to phone poles, Bama. It’s just, I love you both. Shouldn’t we go find out? If only so we can all relax, at least about this part? I am not being spiteful. This is the reverse of Bitch, girlfriend. These days, most of what I want to do is run from you two. But I’m right here. —Your Hartley here’ll do the legwork. Now you go right on back to making art, my wizardgirl. —Test or no test? Just give me a nod.”

  She backed up. She backed into her studio. Disoriented, looking for some surface to sit upon, she moved in reverse and fell back, settled, butt-first, on her palette. Surprising me as usual, Alabama laughed at this. She stared over on
e shoulder and down at her own still-perfect backside. “You know? Using a mirror, with linseed oil, I could daub color right off. Most palettes have the thumb hole, right, hon?” I told her I’d find out where and make the appointment and, if she let me, I’d come with her.

  “But what are you saying about him, Hartley? Have you talked to him about this?”

  I shook my head yes. “Only just now. He’d worked so long, he’s been having such a good time (or that’s what it looks like from out here) … I thought it could wait. If I’d known, you … I didn’t know. Maybe it was selfish of me not to corner him earlier. If only for some stranger’s sake.”

  Then we stared at each other. We’d once watched a TV wildlife show. It ended with two big animals battering heads. They lock horns in the wilderness. They die out there—with only each other’s eyes as their own fond, sickening, final sight.

  Promises, Promises

  e had just some scribbled Chelsea address; I told the cabbie to slow down please; it must be around here; I saw a grove of sycamores and started laughing. “No,” she got it. “The seminal VD clinic. Where history was made. They’ve got more serious things to deal with now, huh? But, hey, they cured us before, right, son? Must’ve been a grammar school at one time, don’t you figure? I can hear the ole halls echoing now, ‘Row row row yer boat, life is but a dream … I mean, discharge.’”

  “A dream of a discharge.”

  “Ever the optimist, Hartley mine. You’re incurable, know that?”

  “Nice work if you can get it. I do feel a bit rustier at it lately. But I’m fighting that.”

  “Like your ancestor Colonel Increase?”

  “You scare me sometimes. We’re all going to be all right, I just know it.”

  “How do you put up with us, Hartley? You think you understand Humanity. You might. Unfortunately, it’s people that are the bitch. Certain ladies in Savannah still believe that folks from nice families are literally made of different flesh and bones. You think our circle is.”

  “‘No shit?’—attributed to Alabama Byrnes, circa 1981.”

  “You ever going to say my name again?”

  “That is your name. We get to pick, remember? I chose not to be called ‘Dick,’ like Dad. But you went to a globe for yours. Look, the meter’s running, let’s get out and go on in. I’m here, I love you. One thing at a time, okay?”

  This was our last cab stop in a day of calculated pleasures. The joys were all intended to be lucky. We’d seen our Vermeers at the Met; we had different favorites but understood each other’s reasoning and today the arguing came gentle and felt as close-in as those interiors with their sleepy perfect afternoon women. We taxied to the Morgan Library and studied nine of their best Rembrandt drawings. “How could he do so much in such a fraction of a second with single reed-pen? I wouldn’t even ask that my work be better,” she said, “Just faster.”

  “You were always pretty fast.”

  “Up yours with a Quickie,” and we laughed our sore, sweet hardened laughs and got in a final cab to head toward finding out.

  Robert was out of town again on another glamour junket with the Hip Quartet and he said he would “take care of things, make my own appointment, in my own time.” Prima donna. Did he now believe his own publicity? There are only two kinds of people in the world: positive and negative. Whatever. That was up to him. For my meddling and much else, as for helping him, it seemed too late. I told myself I’d learned everything I could from Robert. I told myself the rest’d just be disappointment.

  She would have her blood test today. Then there’d be an eternity. The two-week wait. I was glad to find they had at least dispensed with those huge blocks of client-number lumber! I said I’d lurk out here in the lobby. A black woman all in white walked over and smiled at us, asked Alabama, “You’re ‘fifty-four’?”

  “Hasn’t she aged gracefully?” I said. No one laughed. “Sorry. Nerves.”

  “And would your husband like to come in, too?”

  “Yes, Hub prob would.” Bam winked. So I settled in for the speech I’d learned through my phone research. My palms were soaked, I kept blotting them on chinos. I continually grinned, feeling sick, as if I had forgotten something. “Have you been … ?” the woman asked me a second time.

  “Been … ?”

  “Tested.”

  “No, but I didn’t … Probably should know, shouldn’t I? Funny I didn’t make an appointment for myself. But … we’ve …” I pointed to Ms. Byrnes. “I mean, not lately …”

  “Typical male pig thing, hun?” Alabama confided to our counselor. “Double standard or what? Drags me in here. Takes no responsibility for himself.”

  “Sir? Mutuality really is the beginning of …” but Angie interrupted, “Yeah, Hubby Sir, thanks a lot for joining your little wife in this. Two’s company. I mean you are not exactly keeping it in your pants now, are you Mr. Slut at the St. Mark’s Baths? And he only likes the very very young boys, that’s what’s really been hardest.”

  Our watchful interviewer, concerned, sensing either turmoil or a possible joke, whipped out a second form.

  “Do I understand that you two have an … open relationship?”

  “WIDE,” my wife amended. And somehow we both cracked up. She was still the funniest person alive. What I can’t convey, her timing.

  To spare our interviewer’s feelings, I said I’d get my test now too, if they could fit me in. But might we learn our results the same day? I was told yes, but not in the same room. Patient confidentiality. They were using blind numbers to assure anonymity. Protecting the Positive against Insurance discrimination, job bias.

  Alabama said she had a superstitious feeling they should do my blood-work first. “No sweat,” I said. “Whatever magic …” I got done fast and while they finished hers, I wandered the place. Today, everything seemed an omen. I was scouting, for nothing I could name. Some story to tell her later? Some sign I would know only when I found it.

  I guess, being back here, I wanted to meet somebody exactly as lively as she had been then, somebody still very young. I’d bring that kid to Bama this time, and not, dog dutiful, trot my find clear back to Robert.

  I recalled my body’s warning of a sure thing on first seeing her—that burning in the nose, jets of scalding salt behind the lids of either eye. Patrolling this clinic, poking through open doors, hands in pockets, feeling on the verge of a hymn or a scream, I made certain vows. If she was okay and if I was okay, I’d … what? Become a better person finally? Leave Manhattan? Discover a good non-Southern subject at last? Forgive, what? And would I, no matter her status, now sign on for whatever portion of a husband she required? Which part of one? There is so little concrete that The Law lets guys like me offer others legally.

  Her fantasy had been of Robert’s perfect head seen before her best huge early painting. By now, MOMA owned two of her charcoal drawings and they were negotiating to buy, over time, one of her big recent oils. Alabam was not lobby-ready. She had told me, she would have to get clear up past her retrospective there, clean into her mid to late forties, even before she got her shot at the lobby.

  This clinic had been gutted and revamped since we last needed it (for kid stuff caught from playing around). All the old warrens of classroom-waiting-areas were gone now. Everything looked both sleeker and sadder. I missed our youth’s poster funkiness; industrial carpeting now outranked and smothered scuffed linoleum once as marbleized as bowling balls.

  I tried to get my bearings and peeked through the door of what looked like a nursery. Low chairs enameled primary colors, a few battered toys, one easel featuring a daubed ideal house, smoke howling out one chimney, and over it, in child’s script: “Everbody Should Get to Be Heathy.”

  In one corner stood a brown cardboard fort. On the far white wall, a fire extinguisher painted pink, a concession to the nursery atmosphere?

  I walked in and, feeling worked up yet listless, seeking security, settled in one child’s chair that looked sturdy enough to
hold me. I still wore my overcoat. The sun came out. Yellow lit the wall behind my head. I felt like sleeping, I felt like crying. I felt almost old. My cheek touched chilly white enamel and it was from this low angle that I noticed a blurred image peeking through hard enamel above. Around the fire extinguisher, faintest golden lines. I laughed aloud, I almost thought I heard a child humming.

  I rose and backed away and saw it, still fighting to emerge around the glass case. Here it was, now in Santa’s junior elf room. Finding it made me feel far taller, somehow buoyant, giddy. If ever there were a good sign …

  I moved forward and pressed both hands to cold paint. I saw how her yellow had bled through coat after coat of institutional enamel. You could still make out legs’ rounded forms. Where her pay phone had once been clamped, they’d placed this glass-fronted fire-douser.

  Thighs still formed a strange consoling tent. Though this was a kids’ room, adults had penned up little comments. I was reading when I heard my name behind me.

  I turned, said, “Look, you little totem-maker. One of your familiars has outlived us here, you little totem-maker. Is this happy news or what?”

  She came forward, still poking a gauze pad into the crook of her right arm. I settled mine around her so we could study it side by side. She said, “Somehow I thought this room was at the other end.”

  “But isn’t this great?”

  “Great? They painted me out, asswipe.”

  “Yeah, but it still shows. You thought maybe they’d frame it? It’s still here, isn’t it? We’ve changed, it hasn’t, and God knows a lot has happened since.” Sun now flooded the wall and little checkmarks from the pin she wore made nervous feathery curves, moving only with her rise and fall of breath. The building seemed far quieter than in the old itchy drippy VD days of our curable glory.

  “See what the critics are saying?” I pointed to wiseguys’ jottings. This being a nursery had not restrained them—comments rested above the five-foot level. One ballpoint arrow pointed to the genderless juncture of massed emerging legs: “Will she or won’t she?” Someone else’s red ink had made a dotted pleading little line where one small vagina opened to this huge being. “Best offer I’ve had all day,” she did her Donald Duck voice. The third mark was the work of some kid who’d probably stood on one of these midget chairs. He (or she, but probably he) had added a black blimp shape that swerved off to the right, intending to show an erection, seeming based on one he’d glimpsed. I felt myself, below the belt, quicken to brief life. “Nothing like good reviews.” She half-smiled, fingers tracing the words, her lines. We heard a sound and started. The small head of one dark living child poked out the crenellated window of the cardboard fort.