Goodbye, Columbus (10 page)

One morning near sneaking-away time I had a dream and when I awakened from it, there was just enough dawn coming into the room for me to see the color of Brenda’s hair. I touched her in her sleep, for the dream had unsettled me: it had taken place on a ship, an old sailing ship like those you see in pirate movies. With me on the ship was the little colored kid from the library—I was the captain and he my mate, and we were the only crew members. For a while it was a pleasant dream; we were anchored in the harbor of an island in the Pacific and it was very sunny. Up on the beach there were beautiful bare-skinned Negresses, and none of them moved; but suddenly
we
were moving our shin out of the harbor and, the Negresses moved slowly down to the shore and began to throw leis at us and say “Goodbye, Columbus … goodbye, Columbus … goodbye…” and though we did not want to go, the little boy and I, the boat was moving and there was nothing we could do about it, and he shouted at me that it was my fault and I shouted it was his for not having a library card, but we were wasting our breath, for we were further and further from the island, and soon the natives were nothing at all. Space was all out of proportion in the dream, and things were sized and squared in no way I’d ever seen before, and I think it was that more than anything else that steered me into consciousness. I did not want to leave Brenda’s side that morning, and for a while I played with the little point at the nape of her neck, where she’d had her hair cut. I stayed longer than I should have, and when finally I returned to my room I almost ran into Ron who was preparing for his day at Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks.

That morning was supposed to have been my last at the Patimkin house; however, when I began to throw my things into my bag late in the day, Brenda told me I could unpack—somehow she’d managed to inveigle another week out of her parents, and I would be able to stay right through till Labor Day, when Ron would be married; then, the following morning Brenda would be off to school and I would eo back to work. So we would be with each other until the summer’s last moment.

This should have made me overjoyed, but as Brenda trotted back down the stairs to accompany her family to the airport—where they were to pick up Harriet—I was not joyful but disturbed, as I had been more and more with the thought that when Brenda went back to Radcliffe, that would be the end for me. I was convinced that even Miss Winney’s stool was not high enough for me to see clear up to Boston. Nevertheless, I tossed my clothing back into the drawer and was able, finally, to tell myself that there’d been no hints of ending our affair from Brenda, and any suspicions I had, any uneasiness, was spawned in my own uncertain heart. Then I went into Ron’s room to call my aunt.

“Hello?” she said.

“Aunt Gladys,” I said, “how are you?”

“You’re sick.”

“No, I’m having a fine time. I wanted to call you, I’m going to stay another week.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I’m having a good time. Mrs. Patimkin asked me to stay until Labor Day.”

“You’ve got clean underwear?”

“I’m washing it at night. I’m okay, Aunt Gladys.”

“By hand you can’t get it clean.”

“It’s clean enough. Look, Aunt Gladys, I’m having a wonderful time.”

“
Shmutz
he lives in and I shouldn’t worry.”

“How’s Uncle Max?” I asked.

“What should he be? Uncle Max is Uncle Max. You, I don’t like the way your voice sounds.”

“Why? Do I sound like I’ve got on dirty underwear?”

“Smart guy. Someday you’ll learn.”

“What?”

“What do you mean
what?
You’ll find out. You’ll stay there too long you’ll be too good for us.”

“Never, sweetheart,” I said.

“I’ll see it I’ll believe it.”

“Is it cool in Newark, Aunt Gladys?”

“It’s snowing,” she said.

“Hasn’t it been cool all week?”

“You sit around all day it’s cool. For me it’s not February, believe me.”

“Okay, Aunt Gladys. Say hello to everybody.”

“You got a letter from your mother.”

“Good. I’ll read it when I get home.”

“You couldn’t take a ride down you’ll read it?”

“It’ll wait. I’ll drop them a note. Be a good girl,” I said.

“What about your socks?”

“I go barefoot. Goodbye, honey.” And I hung up.

Down in the kitchen Carlota was getting dinner ready. I was always amazed at how Carlota’s work never seemed to get in the way of her life. She made household chores seem like illustrative gestures of whatever it was she was singing, even, if as now, it was “I Get a Kick out of You.” She moved from the oven to the automatic dishwasher—she pushed buttons, turned dials, peeked in the glass-doored oven, and from time to time picked a big black grape out of a bunch that lay on the sink. She chewed and chewed, humming all the time, and then, with a deliberated casualness, shot the skin and the pit directly into the garbage disposal unit. I said hello to her as I went out the back door and though she did not return the greeting I felt a kinship with one who like me had been partially wooed and won on Patimkin fruit. ‘

Out on the lawn I shot baskets for a while; then I picked up an iron and drove a cotton golf ball limply up into the sunlight; then I kicked a soccer ball towards the oak tree; then I tried shooting foul shots again. Nothing diverted me—I felt open-stomached, as though I hadn’t eaten for months, and though I went back inside and came out with my own handful of grapes, the feeling continued, and I knew it had nothing to do with my caloric intake; it was only a rumor of the hollowness that would come when Brenda was away. The fact of her departure had, of course, been on my mind for a while, but overnight it had taken on a darker hue. Curiously, the darkness seemed to have something to do with Harriet, Ron’s intended, and I thought for a time that it was simply the reality of Harriet’s arrival that had dramatized the passing of time: we had been talking about it and now suddenly it was here—just as Brenda’s departure would be here before we knew it.

But it was more than that: the union of Harriet and Ron reminded me that separation need not be a permanent state. People could marry each other, even if they were young! And yet Brenda and I had never mentioned marriage, except perhaps for that night at the pool when she’d said, “When you love me, everything will be all right.” Well, I loved her, and she me, and things didn’t seem all right at all. Or was I inventing troubles again? I supposed I should really have thought my lot improved considerably; yet, there on the lawn, the August sky seemed too beautiful and temporary to bear, and I wanted Brenda to marry me. Marriage, though, was not what I proposed to her when she drove the car up the driveway, alone, some fifteen minutes later. That proposal would have taken a kind of courage that I did not think I had. I did not feel myself prepared for any answer but “Halleluiah!” Any other kind of yes wouldn’t have satisfied me, and any kind of no even one masked behind the words “Let’s wait sweetheart,” would have been my end. So I imagine that’s why I proposed the surrogate, which turned out finally to be far more daring than I knew it to be at the time.

“Harriet’s plane is late, so I drove home,” Brenda called.

“Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re going to wait for her and have dinner at the airport. I have to tell Carlota,” and she went inside.

In a few minutes she appeared on the porch. She wore a yellow dress that cut a wide-bottomed U across her shoulders and neck, and showed where the tanned flesh began above her breasts. On the lawn she stepped out of her heels and walked barefoot over to where I was sitting under the oak tree.

“Women who wear high heels all the time get tipped ovaries,” she said.

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember. I like to think everything’s shipshape in there.”

“Brenda, I want to ask you something …”

She yanked the blanket with the big O on it over to us and sat down.

“What?” she said.

“I know this is out of the blue, though really it’s not … I want you to buy a diaphragm. To go to a doctor and get one.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, sweetie, we’re careful. Everything is okay.”

“But that’s the safest.”

“We’re safe. It’d be a waste.”

“Why take chances?”

“But we
aren’t
How many things do you need.”

“Honey, it isn’t bulk I’m interested in. It’s not even safety,” I added.

“You just want me to own one, is that it? Like a walking stick, or a pith helmet—”

“Brenda, I want you to own one for … for the sake of pleasure.”

“Pleasure? Whose? The doctor’s?”

“Mine,” I said.

She did not answer me, but rubbed her fingers along the ridge of her collarbone to wipe away the tiny globes of perspiration that had suddenly formed there.

“No, Neil, it’s silly.”

“Why?”

“Why? It just is.”

“You know why it’s silly, Brenda—because I asked you to do it?”

“That’s sillier.”

“If you asked
me
to buy a diaphragm we’d have to go straight to the Yellow Pages and find a gynecologist open on Saturday afternoon.”

“I would never ask you to do that, baby.”

“It’s the truth,” I said, though I was smiling. “It’s the truth.”

“It’s not,” she said, and got up and walked over to the basketball court, where she walked on the white lines that Mr. Patimkin had laid the day before.

“Come back here,” I said.

“Neil, it’s silly and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why are you being so selfish?”

“Selfish? You’re the one who’s being selfish. It’s your pleasure…”

“That’s right. My pleasure. Why not!”

“Don’t raise your voice. Carlota.”

“Then get the hell over here,” I said.

She walked over to me, leaving white footprints on the grass. “I didn’t think you were such a creature of the flesh,” she said.

“Didn’t you?” I said. “I’ll tell you something that you ought to know. It’s not even the pleasures of the flesh I’m talking about.”

“Then frankly, I don’t know
what
you’re talking about. Why you’re even bothering. Isn’t what we use sufficient?”

“I’m bothering just because I want you to go to a doctor and get a diaphragm. That’s all. No explanation. Just do it. Do it because I asked you to.”

“You’re not being reasonable—”

“Goddamit, Brenda!”

“Goddamit yourself!” she said and went up into the house.

I closed my eyes and leaned back and in fifteen minutes, or maybe less, I heard somebody stroking at the cotton golf ball. She had changed into shorts and a blouse and was still barefoot.

We didn’t speak with each other, but I watched her bring the club back of her ear, and then swing through, her chin tilted up with the line of flight a regular golf ball would have taken.

“That’s five hundred yards,” I said.

She didn’t answer but walked after the cotton ball and then readied for another swing.

“Brenda. Please come here.”

She walked over, dragging the club over the grass.

“What?”

“I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Nor I with you,” she said. “It was the first time.”

“Was it such an awful thing for me to ask?” She nodded.

“Bren, I know it was probably a surprise. It was for me. But we’re not children.”

“Neil, I just don’t want to. It’s not because you asked me to, either. I don’t know where you get that from. That’s not it.”

“Then why is it?”

“Oh everything. I just don’t feel
old
enough for all that equipment.”

“What does age have to do with it?”

“I don’t mean age. I just mean—well,
me.
I mean it’s so conscious a thing to do.”

“Of course it’s conscious. That’s exactly it. Don’t you see? It would change us.”

“It would change me.”

“Us. Together.”

“Neil, how do you think I’d feel lying to some doctor.”

“You can go to Margaret Sanger, in New York. They don’t ask any questions.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“No,” I said. “I just know. I read Mary McCarthy.”

“That’s exactly right. That’s just what I’d feel like, somebody out of
her.
”

“Don’t be dramatic,” I said.

“You’re the one who’s being dramatic. You think there would be something affairish about it, then. Last summer I went with this whore who I sent out to buy—”

“Oh, Brenda, you’re a selfish egotistical bitch! You’re the one who’s thinking about ‘last summer,’ about an end for us. In fact, that’s the whole thing, isn’t it—”

“That’s right, I’m a bitch. I want this to end. That’s why I ask you to stay another week, that’s why I let you sleep with me in my own house. What’s the
matter
with you! Why don’t you and my mother take turns—one day she can plague me, the next you—”