by Jane Smiley
Nancy was breathing hard. Lily leaned forward, alarmed that she hadn’t averted this argument, and put her hand on Nancy’s arm. Nancy shook it off. “Kids! Who’s talking about kids? I’m talking about taking some courses in what I like to do and what some people think I’m good at doing. The whole time I was in that play you just acted like it was a game that I was playing. I have news for you—”
“It was a community-theater production! You weren’t putting on Shakespeare or Chekhov, either. And it’s not as if Bill Henry had directed in Toronto, much less in New York.”
“He’s done lights in New York! He did lights on The Fantasticks! And on A Chorus Line!”
“Big deal.”
Nancy leaped to her feet. “I’ll tell you something, mister. You owe it to me to put me through whatever school I want to go to, no matter what happens to our relationship or our marriage. I slaved in the purchasing department of that university for three years so that you could go to business school full time. I lived with those crummy friends of yours for four years so we could save on mortgage—”
Lily said, “Nancy—”
Kevin said, “What do you mean, ‘no matter what happens to our relationship’? What do you mean by that?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean! Lily knows what I mean, too!”
Lily pressed herself deep into her chair, hoping that neither of them would address her, but Kevin turned to face her. In the darkness his deep-set eyes were nearly invisible, so that when he said, “What did she tell you?” Lily could not decide what would be the best reply to make. He stepped between her and Nancy and demanded, “What did she say?”
“I think you should ask her that.”
“She won’t tell me anything. You tell me.” He took a step toward her. “You tell me whether she still loves me. I want to know that. That’s all I want to know.” The tone of his voice in the dark was earnest and nearly calm.
“That’s between you and Nancy. Ask her. It’s not my business.”
“But you know. And I’ve asked her. She’s said yes so many times to that question that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. You tell me. Does she still love me?”
“She hasn’t told me anything.”
“But you have your own opinion, don’t you?”
“I can’t see that that’s significant in any way.”
“Tell me what it is. Does she still love me?”
He seemed, with his chest, to be bearing down on her as she sat. She had lost all sense of where Nancy was, even whether she was still outside. Wherever she was, she was not coming to Lily’s aid. Perhaps she too was waiting for Lily’s opinion. Lily said, “No.”
“No, what? Is that your opinion?”
Surely Nancy would have stepped in by now. “No, it doesn’t seem to me that she loves you anymore.” Lily broke into a sweat the moment she stopped speaking, a sweat of instant regret. Kevin stepped back and Lily saw that Nancy was behind him, still and silent on the chaise longue. “Oh, Lord,” said Lily, standing up and taking her glass into the house.
The Humboldts stayed outside for a long time. Lily washed the dishes and got ready for bed; she was sitting on the cot in the guest room winding her clock when Nancy knocked on the door and came in. “We had a long talk,” she said, “and things are all right.”
“Did you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. This may be the best thing. At least I feel that I’ve gotten some things clear. And I think we’re going to leave very early in the morning, so I wish you wouldn’t get up.”
“But I—” Lily looked at Nancy for a moment, and then said, “Okay, I won’t. Thanks for stopping.”
“You can’t mean that, but I’ll write.” She closed the door and Lily put her feet under the sheet. There were no sounds, and after a while she fell asleep. She awoke to a rhythmic knocking. She thought at first of the door, but remembered that Nancy had closed it firmly. Then she realized that the blows were against the wall beside her head. She tried to visualize the other room. It would be the bed, and they would be making love. She picked up her clock and turned it to catch light from the street. It was just after midnight. She had been asleep, although deeply, for only an hour. The knocking stopped and started again, and it was irregular enough to render sleep unlikely for the time being. She smoothed her sheet and blanket and slid farther into the bed. Even after her eyes had adjusted, the room was dark; the streetlight was ten yards down, and there was no moon. Nancy and Kevin’s rhythmic banging was actually rather comforting, she thought. She lay quietly for a moment, and then sat up and turned on the light. She felt for her book under the bed. The banging stopped and did not start again, and Lily reached for the light switch, but as her hand touched it, Nancy cried out. She took her hand back and opened her book, and Nancy cried out again. Lily thought of the upstairs neighbor, whom she hadn’t heard all evening, and hoped he wasn’t in yet. The bed in the next room gave one hard bang against the wall, and Nancy cried out again. Lily grew annoyed at her lack of consideration. She put her feet on the floor. Once she had done that, she was afraid to do anything else. It was suddenly obvious to her that the cries had been cries of fear rather than of passion, and Lily was afraid to go out, afraid of what she might see in the next room. She thought of Kevin’s big chest and of Nancy’s carelessness about Kevin’s feelings. She opened the door. Lights were on everywhere, shocking her, and the noise of some kind of tussle came from their bedroom. Lily crept around the door and peeked in. Kevin had his back to her and was poised with one knee on the bed. All the bedcovers were torn off the bed, and Nancy, who had just broken free, was backed against the window. She looked at Lily for a long second and then turned her head so that Lily could see that her hair had been jaggedly cut off. One side was almost to her shoulder, but the other side stopped at her ear lobe. The skein of hair lay on the mattress. Lily recognized it now. Seeing Nancy’s gaze travel past him, Kevin set down a pair of scissors, Lily’s very own shears, that had been sitting on the shelf above the sewing machine. Lily said, “My God! What have you been doing?”
Looking for the first time at the hair on the bed, Nancy began to cry. Kevin bent down and retrieved his gym shorts from under the bed and stepped into them. He said to Lily rather than Nancy, “I’m going outside. I guess my shoes are in the living room.”
Nancy sat on the bed beside the hair, looking at it. It was reddish and glossy, with the life of a healthy wild animal, an otter or a mink. Lily wished Nancy would say that she had been thinking of having it cut anyway. She thought of saying herself that Nancy could always grow it back, but that, too, was unlikely. Hair like that probably wouldn’t grow again on a thirty-year-old head. Lily picked up the shears and put them back on the shelf above her sewing table and said, “You were making love?”
The door slammed. Nancy said, “Yes, actually. I wanted to. We decided to split up.” She looked at Lily. “And then when I got in bed I felt happy and free, and I just thought it would be nice.”
“And Kevin?”
“He seemed fine! Relieved, even. We were lying there and he was holding me.”
“I can’t believe you—”
At once Nancy glared at her. “You can’t? Why are you so judgmental? This whole day has been one long trial, with you the judge and me the defendant! What do you know, anyway? You’ve never even lived with anyone! You had this sterile thing with Kenneth Diamond that was more about reading poems than screwing and then you tell my husband that I’m not in love with him anymore! Of course he was enraged. You did it! You hate tension, you hate conflict, so you cut it off, ended it. We could have gone on for years like this, and it wouldn’t have been that bad!”
“I didn’t say I knew anything. I never said I knew anything.”
Nancy put her face in her hands and then looked up and said in a low voice, “What do I look like?”
“Terrible right now—it’s very uneven. A good hairdresser can shape it, though. There’s a lot of hair left.”
Nancy reached for her robe and put it on; she picked up the hair, held it for a moment, and then, with her usual practicality, still attractive, always attractive, dropped it into the wastebasket. She glanced around the room and said, “Well, let’s clean up before he gets back, okay? And can you take me to the airport tomorrow?”
Lily nodded. They began to pick things up and put them gingerly away. When they had finished the bedroom, they turned out the light in there and began on the living room. It was difficult, Lily thought, to call it quits and go to bed. Kevin did not return. After a long silence Nancy said, “I don’t suppose any of us are going to be friends after this.” Lily shrugged, but really she didn’t suppose so either. Nancy reached up and felt the ends of her hair, and said, “Ten years ago he wouldn’t have done this to me.”
Had it really been ten years that they’d all known one another? Lily looked around her apartment, virginal again, and she was frightened by it. She felt a sudden longing for Kevin so strong that it approached desire, not for Kevin as he was but for Kevin as he seemed—self-confident, muscular, smart. Her throat closed over, as if she were about to cry. Across the room Nancy picked up one of her hairbrushes with a sigh—and she was, after all, uninjured. Lily said, “Ten years ago he might have killed you.”
Jeffrey,
Believe Me
My fondness for you I set aside. That you have always attracted me I set aside. That I had gone seven weeks (since Harley, you will remember) without, even that I set aside. I swear to you, Jeffrey, my motives were altruistic to the last degree. Humanity was what I was thinking of. Humanity and, specifically, the gene pool.
I might, as you would perhaps suggest, have consulted you. Needless to say, I thought of it. But where? Over café mocha after dinner, inserted somehow into both our speculative glances at the waiter, do I lean across the table dripping necklaces into the dessert and say, “Let’s make a baby, Jeffrey”? Do I risk having to retreat into my chair and endure rejection while tonguing mousse au chocolat off my gold chains? My mother once dipped her left breast into a wedding cake, and my father licked the half-moon of crème au beurre from her peach satin, but that is precisely the point, Jeffrey. We aren’t on such familiar terms. I will clue you in, J., with no condescension but only respect for your separate but equal experience: one whispers “So-and-so, let’s make a baby!” only in the most passionate or most boring of circumstances. One always means it, but never does it.
And, truthfully, by the time I was ready to consult you, I had made up my mind. You are a thoughtful man, even cautious. “But let’s talk about it,” you would have said. “Let’s wait a bit.” Perhaps then, “I think we’d better not.” Mine is the necessary affectionate nature, and I have plenty of money. The internal logic, the organic growth of my plan could possibly have been distorted. I wanted it to be perfect. Persons are not created lightly. Who can tell the lifelong effect of a cacophonous conception?
I eventually decided against alcohol and in favor of marijuana. The point was not to incapacitate you, but confuse you. I admit I was foraging about among a pastiche of high school and college experiences reconsidered. You were right to sense something odd in my insistence that dinner could not be put off an evening, though I know you work on Tuesdays. But when one has to deal with thirty hours, calculated rhythmically and astrologically, one is not interfered with by the trivialities of custom. You arrived punctually, considerate as always, three-piece-suited as always, bringing, as always, a bottle of St.-Emilion, though I hadn’t told you about the roast chicken. You were right to mistrust my mood. The tentatively seductive me you had not before seen, silk skirt and no underpants (mindful that we had once agreed on the aesthetic virtues of my buttocks), the knees never crossed, slipping unconsciously apart, the shirt unbuttoned between the breasts. All for my benefit, not yours. Indeed, you only subliminally noticed (we were discussing your mother, I believe, and you asked twice if somebody else was coming). How haltingly the conversation moved. I told you I was tired, unable to talk fluently, and you believed me. Actually, now that I had decided, had gone so far as to lay my snare in the brownies, I could not withhold my glance. I will never forget the pepper-and-salt trousers you wore, the way the material fanned away from each inseam and stretched smoothly around each thigh. Cuffs. Those pants had cuffs and you wore black socks with russet clocks and tan shoes.
Set aside your modesty and think carefully what sort of man you are. Review your life. Look in the mirror if need be. To begin with, forty long (a graceful size) and thick curly hair (indeed, ringlets). Look into your eyes, Jeffrey. In all honesty, how much bluer could they be? And how much thinner and more arched your nose? And disfigurement. Where are the large pores? Is there the thread of a varicose vein? I know you have never worn glasses, had a pimple, used an Ace bandage. Even the soles of your feet are warm, not shockingly cold (take it from me), in the middle of the night.
I wanted to hear about your new pipe, that calabash you got in the city. But though you carefully explained, I still don’t know what meerschaum is. I just know how you take out your pipe and put it back in, how the tip of your tongue flicks out to lick the mouthpiece, how you bite down on it and draw back your lips to keep talking, how unconscious and competent you are in lighting the match and watching the bowl and sucking in the air. And you take it out and put it back in, out of your mouth and in. Why had we never talked about cherries and briers and clays and corncobs before?
Our aperitif conversation augured well, I thought. After pipes, you will remember, we moved on to the marriage of Eileen and Dave, her third, his second. I, the experienced one, derogated the institution and marveled at their attachment to it. You replied, “And if you can’t create your own life-style in the twentieth century, what consolation is there?” I chattered about angst and apocalypse in the usual fashion. How were you to know my visions of blue bootees with pompoms, velvety baby necks, and minuscule toes? Nothing, you seemed to have said—and, more important, no one—is illegitimate at the latter end of human history.
Dinner was intended to relax you. I don’t like beef consommé, but I know you do, and you always want roast capon for the wine; Caesar salad and fresh croutons, your favorite, and infant peas sautéed with baby onions aux fines herbes, mine; the usual bread; a fresh tangerine ice (home- and hand-made, J., beaten every quarter hour all afternoon). The brownies perhaps were a bit obvious, great slabs of chocolate lathered with icing, walnut pieces scattered through like confetti, not a seed, not a stem, the dope ground into marijuana flour and disguised by a double dose of double Dutch. And then you said, “I can’t.”
“Maybe over coffee,” gnashing my teeth at my own vanity, my anxiety to impress you with my cooking, as if I had wanted marriage rather than motherhood. In my lap I held my hands because they wanted to touch you. You drank coffee. Did you notice the Jersey cream? I said, “Want a brownie?” I could tell by your smile that you wanted to please me. “In a while. Have a cup of coffee with me. I’ll get it.” And there was your round little butt passing sideways between my chair and the coffee table, nearly brushing my face. You would put a dollop of Kahlua in it, I seemed jumpy. Oh that I had bitten your left bun right then. “Thank you.” Do you remember how demurely I said thank you, smoothing the silk in my lap?
But Jeffrey, as adults we pretend that handsome is as handsome does. Really, you have done handsomely. Music, for example, is only your hobby, and yet you play three instruments. Everyone agrees you are a masterful raconteur, and yet a temperate man (that last, indeed, was the greatest obstacle to my plot). You have a graceful and generous mind. What was the last spiteful comment you made? There are none within my memory. Your minor virtues are countless: you leave proper tips, you hang up your clothes, you are not too proud to take buses. This is just living, you would say, and yet all those thank-you notes add up. Not wishing to embarrass you, I will drop the subject, adding only that we both know what a remarkable child you were and that you have been steadily successful.
When the coffee cup was heavy in my hands, you sat down on the table and looked at me. “I’m concerned for you,” you said. I was flattered. When you leaned forward, you smelled like tobacco, wool, and skin. The bowls of your cobalt irises float well above the lower lids, and there is white in them like skeletons. I had never noticed that before. The pupils dilated. You do like me. It was time to take your face between my palms and gain your favors with one passionate, authoritative, skilled, yet vulnerable kiss. I said, “Harley is threatening to cut his throat again.” I hadn’t heard from Harley, but it’s a threat he offers preferred women every few months.
“When did he call?”
“My mother is dying.”
“Of what?”
“The police beat up my grandfather for passing out deaf-and-dumb cards.”
“Both your grandfathers are dead.”
“My sister anticipated a walk light, and a taxi ran over her feet.”
“What did you do today?”
“I washed DDT off infant peas and baby onions. What do you think of babies, Jeffrey?”
“They’re very flavorful.” This game we play when I want to inform you tactfully that I am strong enough for the urban nightmare. Your concern must have been assuaged; you removed to a chair beyond the table. We talked about the granular universe, as I remember.
“Please have a brownie?” My offer perhaps seemed tiresome. For me, I knew you would. I did, too. They tasted indescribably musty. I wanted to say, “It’s only the marijuana.” You were too polite to mention it. You must have felt hungry, because you had another. Then another. I wanted to ask, “And why do you prefer men, Jeffrey?” but I merely said, “You smell good,” and got up to clear the table. We had cleaned the chicken of every morsel of flesh. When I came back, you were asleep. Post nitrates, post Hitler, post strontium-90, I got a hand mirror out of my purse and held it before your nostrils. A healthy fog. Still, I was disappointed. You would indeed be staying the night, but in a near coma.