Whitegirl

by Kate Manning

  “You never did eat,” he said.

  “I do. Now. But—I can’t.”

  “Come on then,” he said. “We’re outta here.”

  “I should get back.”

  “It’s early. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Let’s just—” He winked. “Let’s go.”

  He pulled my hand so I had to stand up. My napkin fell on the floor. He put his arm around my neck and fished around in his wallet, grinned at me like a bad boy, and threw two one-hundred-dollar bills on the table. His arm drifted down to my waist as we walked toward the door, and I did not remove it.

  “Wait,” Jack said, halfway, “I’m forgetting something.” He went back to our table, plucked the dripping bottle of champagne from its ice bucket, and carried it out of there.

  Outside, it was just dusk. There was a breeze and I shivered. As we walked toward the parking lot, Jack took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders, along with his arm. My hair blew across my eyes and I tossed my head, turned to the wind to free it. Jack pulled me to him suddenly, lifted the hair off my face, and was left holding a single strand of it in his fingers, threading out loose in the wind. He put it to his mouth and drew it across his lips. He watched me, smiling. “Remember?” he said.

  Oh Jesus. “Yeah,” I said weakly. “Oh. That’s right.” Burlington Airport.

  “That was really something, Charlotte,” he said, laughing. “Wild. I couldn’t believe you did that! Never shoulda done that. Whoo! You were something else. Wild.” He was shaking his head and seemed happy, amused at the nostalgic fact of himself out with me. “C’mon, we’ll go in my car.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He winked again, pulling me along through the parking lot. “Let’s go for a drive, a little champagne tour.”

  “Jack, I don’t know,” I said in a small, kitten-mew voice that was alarming to me: how quickly I could be what other people wanted me to be. How now I was Meek Charlotte.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” he asked.

  He stopped and faced me. I gazed over his shoulder to avoid looking at him, his klieg-light eyes searching me. In the middle distance I saw cars pulling up in front of the restaurant, a couple arriving, the doorman smoking, looking at his watch, the palm leaves streaming in the wind, Milo’s car. It looked like Milo’s, over Jack’s shoulder. His red car. It was far across the lot, but under the halogen streetlight blaze it was unmistakably his, with the U.S. Ski Team decal in the back window, and I knew he must be around somewhere. You practically invited him, after all, Charlotte, didn’t you? Wanted him here, right?

  Jack was looking at me. “Charlotte,” he said, and put one finger under my chin and lifted my face up.

  Milo, are you watching?

  Jack’s fingernail hooked gently in the soft throb of flesh under my chin and his eyes searched me out, beckoning my face close to his.

  See, Milo? Are you watching? I hope you are, because you’ll see how it feels, see I can do this, too. Here I go. Kiss Jack Sutherland, your old enemy. Watch. I’ve done this kind of thing many a time for the cameras, that’s all it is, lip to lip with the boy model in the surf, or rolling on sheets, like you, like you, Milo. So why not? why not?

  Why not. Because it was awful, kissing Jack; felt like starving but having to eat food that was off, like drinking medicine that curdles you, like being swallowed. I remembered Jack now, how he kissed, how he practically vacuums the tongue from your mouth, how he doesn’t stop, doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t check to notice mine are open. I was looking around, seeing cars like sleeping animals in rows under the lights, the blur of traffic passing, seeing Milo.

  Was that Milo? There by the restaurant.

  Lips turning like doorknobs, Jack’s hands wandering.

  Was that him? Somebody at a distance stepping out into the light, off the curb, then retreating behind the building. A man, a lean dark man in a light linen sport jacket. Him. Close your eyes, Charlotte. Close them. You think you see him everywhere, you always have, always do. You think you see Milo.

  I looked again, lips detaching, over the high shoulder of Jack Sutherland. “Hey.”

  It was. It was Milo, I had no doubt.

  “Jack.”

  He pulled away from me and opened his eyes. “God, Charlotte, you’re still so beautiful,” he said. “It kills me, how beautiful you are.”

  “Jack.”

  He saw I was terrified.

  “What is it?”

  “Milo,” I said, “I think he, he—”

  “What?”

  “He’s, I think, he—” He saw me kissing you.

  “Here?” he asked me.

  “Maybe, I don’t know,” I said. But I did know. I saw him. “I think I see his car.”

  “Whoa!” Jack said. “Come on.” He took my elbow and steered me fast to a dark-blue Jeep. He opened the door and pushed me down into the front seat in one fast motion. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he kept saying, as if this were some kind of movie adventure for him. He handed me the champagne bottle and got behind the wheel, but backing out, he braked and turned to me. He was so cavalier, the way he looked, with his crooked smile. “To hell with it,” he said. “It’s gonna be fine.” And with that wild impulsiveness of his he kissed me again across the front seat, and I confess I didn’t stop him again, would stop him later, not now, not while there was a chance Milo would see, look through the windshield at my arms around Jack’s neck. I want him to see, my fingers lacing his hair, pulling it loose from the band around it, gathering it up in my hands and pulling him to me, sinking down in the seat, my head against the window glass and Jack’s long straw hair thick around my face. Watch, I thought.

  “Drive,” I said giddily, after enough time. I knew, I was sure, as we pulled away, that Milo had seen, that he had watched us go, and of course would be imagining where we were headed, me and Jack. And I felt better already, driving away. We’re even now, I thought, and although we were not, exactly, it was enough for me, that Milo had seen.

  Jack drove fast. “I think you’d better take me back home,” I said.

  “Hang on,” he said, smiling. “I have something to show you.”

  When Jack finally stopped the car we were pulled up to the Beverly Hills Hotel. He got out and gave his keys to the valet but came around to hold the door for me himself. We walked up the walk and inside, his hand on the back of my neck. I turned toward the Polo Lounge, where I had been often.

  “No,” Jack said, “this way.” He steered me to the elevator.

  He’s staying here, he’s taking me up to his room.

  “Jack, I don’t think I should come to your room.”

  “Come aahhnn. I got somethin’ to show ya,” Jack said, drawling, persuading. He took my hand. “A souvenir.” For just a moment he seemed so earnest, there by the elevator, with his rock ’n’ roll hair, pulling me the way Hallie does sometimes. He was a grown man and he had had his own lonely days, I thought. His old dreams had not come true, it seemed, and he had not dreamed new ones.

  “I can’t, Jack.”

  “Come on, come on,” he said, winking, ribbing me. “You’ll laugh. Don’t worry.” He was smiling again in that cocksure way he had, as if he had never had a cloudy day in his life, as if there were no situation too dire for Jack Sutherland. He pulled me and I went.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I can only stay a minute. I—My daughter.”

  Panic bloomed briefly on Jack’s face. “Yeah, but you have to see this,” he said, and we rode up to the second floor and walked down the corridor with Jack grinning. He put his key card in the lock and the door clicked open. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, Miss Proper,” he said, “you can wait out here in the hallway.” So I did, standing out there. Jack went in and crossed to the dresser, looking for something. Inside, I could see an enormous bed turned down, with two gold-wrapped chocolates and a scripted goodnight card on the pillow. Pairs of sneakers were lined up neatly by
the closet. It was spare and temporary, I thought, maybe a little sad.

  “Here,” he said, coming back to me in the hall. He had a worn envelope in his hand. My schoolgirl writing looped across the front of it in faded ink. Jack Sutherland, Cabot College Station.

  “I saved it,” he said, handing it to me. “Of course.”

  Curious, I unfolded a blue-lined piece of notebook paper, and was shocked to see what it was, how long Jack had held on to it.

  March 22, 1975

  Dear Jack,

  Hi. It’s me, your “Kitten.” I’m so confused.

  The letter was embarrassing and it made me sorry for the mixed-up girl I was. It tried every way not to say what it was saying, which was Good-bye. It said: This isn’t good-bye, okay? It’s just to say till we meet again. The letter was afraid to speak its own mind, afraid of its own decisions. Remember that poster that hangs in my dorm, with the picture of the butterfly on it? I quoted the poster and also Ecclesiastes, the Byrds’ song: To everything there is a season … It was dopey, and mostly creepy, what I did. Jack, it’s too soon. Too much too soon. I got to the end, where a hand-drawn butterfly hovered in yellow hi-liter. The love had a heart shape in place of the O.

  Jack was watching me read it. “Come,” he said.

  “I—”

  He pulled me in, sat me on the bed. I owe it to him, I thought. Just a conversation. Finishing something unfinished. I was not afraid of Jack, only wrung out and sorry for all the havoc I seemed to have left in my wake wherever I went. Maybe, I thought, you could fix your old mistakes. By listening. By paying attention. I listened while Jack described receiving the letter on a spring day, coming back to school from the Albany hospital where he’d recovered from his concussion, the smell of the lilacs outside Chisholm Hall, students passing him and slapping his palm, glad to see him. He had a sense, he said, that I would be coming across the quadrangle, and he had pictured how he would pick me up and carry me to his room.

  “And then I read this,” he continued, “and it was like, God.” His lips twitched.

  Is he about to cry? I wondered, but then he winked. No, I was wrong, I thought.

  “At first I tried to find you,” he said, and explained that nobody—not my parents, the school—had any idea where I was. “Then, just when you turned up in New York, and I called, your friend Claire said you’d left again.”

  “Yeah, Jack, I—”

  “So all I had was this letter,” Jack said. “And you know, this will sound crazy, but suddenly, the whole butterfly thing you wrote made sense to me. That’s you! Flighty!” he said, tapping his temple. “Here one minute, gone the next. The more I read it, the more I saw what you meant. And you know? I agreed with you. It wasn’t the right time. We were too young.

  “In Japan, I studied t’ai chi and also kendo,” he said. “I learned patience. I learned that you wait. You wait and wait for a time that’s right, and then when it’s time? You make your move.” He smiled, then leaned in and kissed me.

  I kissed back. Not for long, but I did. It’s not like I wasn’t weak or tempted. You know, I almost shut my eyes and let him. I nearly did. Tempted to just sink under the spell of someone murmuring my name, someone longing for me. But I couldn’t. I pushed Jack away.

  “I’m married,” I said, “I’m married to Milo. We have a daughter. Her name is Hallie. We—” We have our troubles, big troubles, oh, God, get me out of here. I stood up and headed to the door.

  “Charlotte.”

  “I have to go home.” My hand was on the doorknob.

  “No, you don’t.” His eyes crinkled warmly as he stood up and came over to lean against the wall next to me. “I wish you wouldn’t. You’re beautiful as ever,” he said. “When can I see you again?”

  “Never.”

  Something compelled me to say that, finally one honest word, one truth. I had led him on. I could see that. He was deluded. Not that I was any picnic of sanity, either. I had only a few crumbs of sober judgment left, but I could see I had to tell him right there.

  “Never?” Disbelief was filling his eyes.

  “We can’t, Jack—I’m married.” As if it mattered, to be married.

  “Not for long, that’s what I hear.”

  “From who? Who tells you?”

  “Rumors, gossip, grapevine.” He shrugged. “I know.”

  “It’s not true,” I said.

  “You can’t be happy with him,” Jack said. “Let’s be honest.”

  I opened the door sadly. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Charlotte, stay!” Suddenly Jack’s face showed an instant of havoc that was familiar to me, from years ago. He stopped me, but with his hand lightly on my wrist now, smiling slowly. “Let me tell you something,” he said easily. “These things never work out. I’ve always known it. He was always evil, that guy, Robicheaux, an evil ego. And a cheater. He is bound to show you his true colors sooner or later. If he hasn’t already. It’s only a matter of time. I assumed you’d had enough by now. So, sorry if this is too fast for you, but—”

  “I have to go home to my family,” I said, and pulled the door open, walked down the hall.

  “Hey! Listen,” Jack called. He was walking right behind me, loping casually with a little chuckle in his voice. “Tell me one thing. Did he ever give you the real story? Or did he just tell you anything to get into your drawers?”

  “Stop, Jack, please,” I said.

  Jack shrugged. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Charlotte, I just want you to see how he stole you. You saw his medals. His money. Which he got by pushing me out of the way, by the way. Boom!” Jack said the last word so loudly I jumped. “Did he tell you?”

  “Jack—”

  “Blinded you, didn’t it, that medal, huh? To the fact that you should not be with him.”

  I could hear the soft machinery of the elevator starting. Hurry hurry.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” I said. “It was all a long time ago.”

  He stood shaking his head with a rueful smile, watching me. “He has been cheating on you, though, hasn’t he?” His voice was quiet and knowing.

  “What would you know?” I said. “You don’t know anything about us!”

  “Maybe I’m just guessing,” he said serenely. “But I’m right.”

  The elevator arrived and I got on it without speaking. Jack gallantly held the doors apart, as if doing me a favor. They bucked against his arm. “You know, Halsey” he said with a big grin, “you’re gonna change your mind about seeing me again. I know you are. Because I’m right about you two, that it’s not working out. Easy to predict as sunrise, sunset. Trust me. See how long before he cats out on you again, if he hasn’t already.”

  His words crawled on my skin. “Just shut up!” I said.

  “You’ll be sorry, Charlotte,” he said, shaking his head, still smiling.

  “I am sorry,” I said, close to tears.

  We heard a door opening abruptly down the hall and a man with a briefcase hurried toward us, glancing at his watch. Hold that, he said. Jack stared hard at me, glanced at the man, who now got in the elevator car and stood nervously to one side, waiting for Jack to let go of the doors.

  “I am not giving up,” Jack said, cheerful as a game-show host. He winked at the briefcase man and said, “Never give up on a good woman, right, pal?” The man nodded uneasily.

  “You want something, you gotta go for it. Right?”

  “Right,” I said. “I really should leave.”

  Jack waved. “Good night, Kitten,” he said, and blew me a kiss, as the elevator coughed and closed, shutting him out. It carried me down, and through the doors I heard him whistling.

  36.

  Igot a taxi to pick up my car at the restaurant and drove home. It was I around nine by then, I think. No Milo. Marcy did not know where he was. “Maybe he called you,” she said helpfully. “The phone is ringing a lot just now.” I said good night to her and as I went upstairs to check Hallie, the phone rang.

  “Hell
o, Charlotte? It’s me. It’s Jack.”

  I hung up and the phone rang again. “Charlotte? It’s me. It’s Jack.”

  “Don’t call here,” I said. “Don’t call me.” I hung up.

  But the ringing did not stop.

  It was all a mess. Where Milo was, when he would be back, how much he had seen, how it would start, how he would explain himself, and I would, where it would go: I didn’t know. Nothing—no scene I could try out ended up in happily ever after. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little game hope, because Milo saw. This thought gave me a certain kind of strength and made me curiously hopeful for a while. I couldn’t help believing he would be home for supper, that we would have it out, the whole truth of his philandering and his betrayal, and then somehow it would go away, the way Milo said it would. Which is what I wanted. I’m telling you I still did, still doggedly expected normal life, waiting for some phoenix of happiness to rise up, our family on the fire-forged back of it, the flames below. Even now I think of it. If it were possible. Even now.

  I went in the kitchen to make dinner, to keep drinking, to listen to the phone ring. Jack saying Hello? Hello? Pick up! into the machine, drowning him out with Linda Ronstadt and Kate Bush and Tracy Chapman. All that sad music of women blaring out in the heart of the Malibu Colony. The words to those songs are the last ones I might ever sing, I’m goin’ back some day, come what may, to Blue Bayou, cutting the chicken into cubes, threading it on skewers, expecting Milo any minute, pouring chardonnay into the marinade, into my glass, into the salad dressing, down my throat.

  He didn’t come and he didn’t come. The clock hands advanced. The phone stopped ringing. It was past eleven. I turned the TV on and off. I erased all Jack’s messages. I turned out the lights and lit candles everywhere. The coals in the backyard grill blazed and banked and then went out. The candles burned down and dripped on the table, making little wax rivers that I gathered up and shaped into cubes, balls, birds, burning my fingers. I called various numbers, Claire and Bobbie, but hung up when someone answered. I thought of Jack. That’s how cracked I was. Of calling him back, inviting him over. Milo wasn’t coming. He had seen me kissing another. Well, it served him right. Now he had a movie in his head, of me and Jack, the way I did, of him and her. Which is what I wanted, but—he wouldn’t come back now. Milo was a proud man, and it was a low sordid thing I had done. Like he had done. He wouldn’t come back. I hadn’t thought of that, only of getting even. He and Darryl were off somewhere. He was with some woman and her soft Swiss name, her rugged mountains. He wasn’t coming home for dinner. It was over. Finished. He’s not about you anymore. No more Milo. He was gone. What would I say to Hallie? How would I explain? Hallie, sweetie, Daddy and I … we… I was deeply sad. Weeping. Okay, desperate, trembling by the time I found the bottle and opened the childproof cap and selected a handful of pills, two Valiums and some Percodans Milo had left over from surgery. Not too many. Just enough for pretend euphoria to kick in. Maybe if Milo came home after all, I thought, I would vomit on him again.