Honeydew: Stories (20 page)

“I’ll call her every so often,” Ben said. “I’ll come up from the Village and treat her to a concert. I’ll buy her tea afterward, like an uncle.”

“Where?” Amanda asked.

“At the Palm Court,” said the expansive Ben.

“Will you really do that for Frieda?” Amanda asked unjealously.

It was midnight. They had just made love. Mandy in a long nightshirt sat on the porch glider looking at the moonlit streetscape of three-decker houses, each with its maple tree. Ben kissed her, then stood up with his back to the scene and leaned against the railing. “I don’t know if I’ll really do anything for Frieda.” He yawned. “I can’t look past this moment.”

But that was untrue. He was looking past this moment at this moment. Gazing at the tumbled young woman before him, he could see clearly another version of that young woman, wearing a cap and blazer as befitted a college girl. The maples were yellowing. Amanda waved good-bye. He saw himself, also purposefully clad, headed back to New York and the intense, exophthalmic psychiatric social worker whom destiny no doubt had in store for him. He groaned.

“We’ll always be friends,” Amanda soulfully promised.

It became Ben’s turn to do the dinner-table lectures.

“Hawthorne had a surprisingly gloomy view of life, considering how conventionally domiciled he was. That supportive wife, those devoted children. Yet his point of view remains tragic. Especially in
The Marble Faun,
with its plot of murder and paganism, its theme of sin and suffering, does he—”

“Supportive wife?” Amanda sniffed. “Sophia Hawthorne was a milksop, if you ask me. Letting him wallow in free love at Brook Farm while she waited celibately in Salem.”

“There is no indication of sexual irregularity in the Brook Farm documents.”

“I can read between the lines.”

“Nathaniel considered himself saved by his marriage.”

“Sophia knew herself ruined.”

“They went off to Italy, didn’t they?” Frieda said. “What a pair of nitwits. Please have some more bouillabaisse.”

Ben considered arguing further but chose the bouillabaisse instead. Mandy’s sassy comments did serve to illuminate the novels, in which placid arrangements within the house were threatened by the turbulence without. Only away from the hearth could the moral order be upset. This seemed particularly true of
Fanshawe,
which was now revealed to him as a morality tale: domestic continuity triumphing over unregulated passion. Afternoons, sitting in the Cunninghams’ dining room, Ben felt the rightness of his position. In their comfortable place it was possible for him to gaze long and hard at Hawthorne’s devils. Frieda’s lemonade helped too.

The summer was drawing to a close. Late one hot August night, Ben and Amanda sat on the porch drinking wine and watching the stars over the three-deckers. Amanda was on the glider, Ben on a canvas chair.

For a while they were silent. Then: “We’ve been happy here,” Amanda began.

“Of late we have not been miserable,” Ben allowed.

“So happy,” she said again.

He refrained from further comment.

“But would you mind terribly if I left a bit earlier than we’d planned? Say, just before Labor Day weekend? Because I have an invitation.”

He examined his heart. Certainly there was a twinge. “An invitation? From that self-centered jackass you see at school, I suppose. He’s back from abroad?”

“His family has the loveliest house at the Vineyard. Would you mind, Ben?”

Well, would he? Her eyes glittered at him. Oh, the darling. “I’ll mind a little,” Ben said truthfully. “But I myself have an invitation to Fire Island,” he lied. “So go, sweetheart.”

“Come sit beside me,” came her soft voice.

He found his way to the glider. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “‘What we did had a consecration of its own,’” he whispered.

“Poor Hester.”

“We
have
been happy here,” he said.

“Like an old married couple,” she said.

“Or a brother and sister.”

“It’s the same thing. The best marriages have a strong incestuous component.”

“Is that so?” he murmured into the side of her neck.

“That’s so. The best marriages have complementarity rather than similarity. The best marriages have a sense of the past as well as a sense of the future. The best marriages—”

“The best marriages,” said Ben, suddenly enlightened, “have a maid.”

Frieda hated to cry. Instead she was baking a Queen of Sheba cake. “I thought you’d get married,” she loudly complained, “and here you are splitting. You’ve ruined my summer.”

“Shh,” Amanda said. “Ben is trying to work.”

Ben, in the living room, sent up a corroborating clatter on the keys. Then he resumed his eavesdropping.

“…madwomen in the family, and certain inherited disorders in Ben’s,” Amanda was explaining. “Gingivitis, that sort of thing. No, no, it would have been impossible. Not to mention illegal, Ben being already married to my aunt.”

“Shove it,” Frieda said.

“The place looks wonderful,” Amanda went on. “I hope the Cunninghams are grateful. We certainly are. We’ll miss you.”

“Won’t you miss each other?”

“Oh, excessively!” said Amanda, forcing Ben the didact to shout, “Exceedingly!” after which he rushed into the kitchen and with promiscuous joy embraced both girls.

B
oys are such boys,” Marcie moaned. “Adolescent, locked into latency, infantile.”

“Neonatal?” said Sallyann.

Marcie ignored her. “Oh for an experienced man. Minimum age twenty-five. Others need not apply.”

She was lying on the floor looking at the ceiling lamp. Its glow made the porch seem an amber cube, floating alone in the night. Sallyann’s mother wished that the cube would detach itself from the house; from the town of Godolphin; from the entire state of Massachusetts; from the globe. She wished that the porch and its five passengers, herself included, would sail off to Noplace, or at least Elsewhere…

“I’d like a pianist,” June was saying, her fingers trilling on her bare thighs. She herself played the cello. “The Beethoven piano and cello sonatas,” she explained, “the Dvořák…”

From the creaking old glider Helen spoke. “I want to be…taken care of,” she said. Her voice was hesitant—dependency was already going out of fashion.

“My ideal mate,” Sallyann said—she paused for effect, taking off her glasses, putting them back on—“will speak French, raise horses, solve mathematical paradoxes in his spare time, and write poems, paying strict attention to meter.”

They were inebriates, thought Sallyann’s mother. They were invaders. There were a hundred of them, a thousand…

But in fact there were only four, one her own daughter; and they were drinking unadulterated iced tea. She herself had made the tea. They were eating cookies she’d made too, though Marcie was only nibbling, having declared that shortbread was an invention of the devil and could permanently ruin her waistline. Marcie’s waistline measured eighteen inches.

Helen, narrow-shouldered and wide-hipped, ate each cookie slowly, without complaint.

June munched and munched.

Sallyann just sipped.

Her mother sighed. Of course these nubile creatures weren’t drunk—not on spirits, anyway. They’d bounced in from a summer movie that ended in a wedding, and they were intoxicated by their renewed belief in Love: ennobling love; love that hurtles toward blissful marriage; love that lasts beyond the grave. A perfect man waited somewhere for every girl, and her agreeable task was to find him.

For every girl, yes. They called themselves girls—this was the 1950s, and they were nineteen. In another few years they’d drop that sobriquet, all except Marcie. Marcie would be a sweetness. Poor Helen no doubt took refuge in nasty imaginings.

June had the face of a pixie—alert hazel eyes, a firm little chin. Her slender five-foot-nine-inch frame was mostly legs, or so her shorts would have you believe. She had performed a solo at the high school graduation two years ago, her long limbs making chaste love to the cello.

Sallyann had messy red hair, a long mouth, and a small nose. Sallyann was…promising, her mother hoped.

And Marcie of the endangered waistline? Golden skin, blue-green eyes, a banner of black hair, and a grin that suggested that you not take these features too seriously—she would age like everybody else, wouldn’t she; she would grow lined and fatigued, wouldn’t she. Yes, she would, the smile assured you—in a century or two. Marcie was the town beauty. But some boys were too awed to ask her for a date.

So she was planning to turn those jeweled eyes toward men of the world.

And Helen was hoping for a strong pair of shoulders.

And June required ten talented fingers.

And Sallyann, God help her—she wanted a Renaissance man. She was still chattering. “I wouldn’t object to a noble profile.”

“Oh!” cried Sallyann’s mother. They all gasped, no doubt fearing a heart attack. “Oh,” she repeated softly, to reassure them. “My darling fools. You dream about musical fellows, brainy guys, masterful ones, sophisticates…Let me tell you something: all cats are gray at night.”

Respectful silence. Then: “What does that mean?” June asked.

Sallyann’s mother struck her left palm with her right. “It means that, by and large, excluding criminals and the feeble-minded and the psychopathic…men are interchangeable.”

“That can’t be true,” Helen said in a tone of dismay; and “Really,” June said in a tone of curiosity; and “Mother,” Sallyann said in no particular tone; and “Lord!” Marcie shouted from the floor. She sat up. “I do beg to differ. There are amusing men, there are learned men, there are tall ones and short ones and ones who can’t stop biting the sides of their nails; and there are—”

“Listen to me,” Sallyann’s mother said.

In those days girls paid polite attention to women. Marcie wrapped her arms around her calves. Helen stopped the glider with a discreet motion of her heel. June on her chair leaned forward and rested elbows on bare knees. Sallyann took off her glasses.

“There are four of you—”

“Four darling fools,” murmured Sallyann.

“—and there are twenty nice young men buzzing around Godolphin. Some are buzzing close to some of you, I’ve noticed. Any of you can make do with any of them. Yes, you can, Marcie.” Four stubborn silences. “Here’s an idea,” she barreled on. “Choose, together, oh, twelve decent fellows. I’ll write their names on little pieces of paper and fold the papers and throw them into a hat. Each of you will pick one paper. You’ll read the name on it…”

“Out loud?” inquired the explicit June.

“No, silently. And then set your cap for whoever you draw. You’ve got charm, you’ve got determination. You’ll catch your guy.”

“And then?” Marcie demanded.

“You’ll marry him.”

“And then?”

“You’ll be very happy. Well, happy. Happy enough.”

“Happy
enough?
”

“Happy enough,” Sallyann’s mother repeated to the princess. “It’s more than most people are granted. Look,” she said, with urgent sympathy, “these will be like arranged marriages.” Four blank looks now. Oh, maybe she ought to yawn, and rub her eyes, and creep upstairs to her untenanted bed. “No backing-and-forthing,” she continued, “no dubious enthusiasms.”
Let’s talk some other time—
perhaps she ought to say that. “No broken hearts!” she said. “And the marriages will be arranged by the best matchmaker in the universe…”

“Who?” Helen asked quietly.

“…Chance.”

Silence for a while, finally broken by June. “What hat?”

Sallyann’s silly beret? Her own pillbox? “…My late husband’s fedora.”

“How many names do we get?” said Marcie, extending her graceful hand.

“One. Bigamy is illegal.”

Sallyann’s three friends assented.

“And Dad,” Sallyann drawled. “This is how you chose him?”

They had met on the fast train from Boston to New York, and for many years, on the anniversary of that encounter, they had raised a glass to the New Haven Railroad. “More or less,” said mother to daughter.

Helen picked up a pad of paper from the table next to the glider. She fished a pencil from the pocket of her skirt. She handed both to Sallyann’s mother in the gracious manner that so pleased her family. She practiced petty thievery, Sallyann’s mother suddenly knew, and told little black lies; anything to lighten the weight of being overvalued.

Sallyann resumed her glasses and drifted out of the porch and walked through the living room and into the front hall. There she opened the coat closet. Two raincoats hung like culprits—hers and her mother’s. Her father’s coats had been bundled up with the rest of his clothing and given away; but, without discussion, widow and orphan had withheld the fedora. On the high shelf—there it rode. Whenever she saw the hat—with her glasses, without them—she reconstructed his head beneath it, the big brow and big nose, the smile; and his broad male body in topcoat and muffler, the trousers sturdily below the coat; and below the trousers the shoes, oh those big shoes. As a child she’d stood on the shoes, stood on his very feet, and together they danced.

She returned to the porch. June, still in her chair, was stretching her legs forward; they seemed to have lengthened an inch since Sallyann left the room. Sallyann’s mother was still in her chair as well. Her right hand held the pad and pencil. The thin fingers of her left hand touched her own cheekbone, her ear. The wedding ring glowed. Her hair, once cinnamon like Sallyann’s, had darkened to nutmeg. She would probably marry again, Sallyann thought with mild revulsion; some women of forty-five did manage to marry. Perhaps she’d pull a husband’s name from a hat…Helen still occupied the glider, wearing her mask of serenity. Marcie under the lamp looked ready to be plucked and put into a buttonhole; or maybe devoured.

Sallyann gave her mother the upturned hat and her mother laid it on the floor between her sling-backed feet. Sallyann retreated to the doorway and lounged against its jamb.

“Helen, dear,” said Sallyann’s mother. “Name a potential husband.”

Helen said nothing. She would have liked to name Jim Fitzwilliam, who had never graduated from high school and now worked in his father’s auto-body shop. His uncle was in jail. His muscles were extraordinary.

“Biff Gray!” Marcie shouted.

What a waste, thought Sallyann. Handsome Biff Gray had recently graduated law school. He dated young women who had already finished college. The foursome on the porch were just kids to him.

“Biff Gray,” repeated Sallyann’s mother, her pencil working. She tore this first entry from the pad and folded it twice and dropped it into the hat. “Helen?” she said again.

And again Helen was silent. In addition to Jim Fitzwilliam she wanted to name Jorge Leibovich, an Argentinean Jew who owned a watch factory. In the summer he wore white suits and Panama hats and deep blue shirts that matched his eyes. He walked on the pads of his feet. He was at least fifty, and had four children and a wife.

“Maurice Armand,” offered Sallyann, hoping that June would draw his name. Maurice Armand was the son of émigrés and played several instruments.

Sallyann’s mother wrote, folded, tossed.

“Steve Folkster,” said June. Shy Steve Folkster, now the third name in the hat; how pleased he’d be if only he knew.

“Larry Reimer,” said Helen at last. He was her second cousin. His name went in, as did Larry Stubblefield’s, and Larry Mady’s, too. And a few more nice guys, non-Larrys.

“Anyone else?” asked Sallyann’s mother.

“I guess not,” Sallyann said. “I’ll mix them up.” She stepped forward and picked up the hat with its light burden of twice-folded papers. The brim felt warm. She moved the thing gently from side to side, hardly disturbing the prophecies within. Marcie leaped up and grabbed the hat from Sallyann and shook it vigorously. June shook it too. And Helen as well, still sitting.

“Ready?” Marcie said.

Sallyann’s mother stood. She picked up the fedora.
Go home, darlings,
she might say even now.
Widows are notorious witches.
“Sit down, girls” was what she did say, though Helen had never left the glider. Sallyann’s mother held the hat in her upturned palms and offered it to June. June’s hand dived in like a baby seal. It surfaced, a folded paper between thumb and two fingers.

Helen next.

Marcie.

Sallyann.

Then the four girls retreated to separate corners of the porch. Sallyann’s mother carried the hat out of the room. She followed her daughter’s earlier path from porch through living room to coat closet, its door now closed. She moved on to the kitchen. She placed the hat in the empty sink and lit a match and dropped it among the unclaimed bridegrooms. They burned quickly. She ran water into the hat before the little bonfire could do more than singe the silk lining.

When she returned to the porch she found Sallyann alone.

“They all thanked you, Mom.”

“Such sweethearts,” she said, her voice light, or perhaps trembling. Both went to bed.

Greedy Marcie had deftly lifted two tickets to happiness. The first bore the name of one of the Larrys, a tall, awkward boy. Sitting at her frilled dressing table, she looked up into the mirror. Larry would be dazzled if she turned her attention his way. But he would respond—there was a confidence within his clumsiness. In fact, she thought, now studying his name as if she were studying him—the thin chest, the mouth frequently marred by cold sores, the dreams, the ambition to become a doctor like his father—he had an excellent future. She considered him for several minutes. Then she looked again at the other paper. Biff Gray.

Biff. He had flirted with her at some graduation parties, and once at the beach. He had overlooked her at other times. Something more than merriment was needed to captivate him—some quality she had not yet achieved. She would make it her business to achieve it.

And so, the next time she ran into Biff, at the tennis courts, she nodded briefly and returned her full attention to the game she was playing with June. She played better than usual, and won. June, accustomed to beating Marcie, threw her racket into her bike basket and pedaled off—she said she had to babysit. Marcie bought a Coke and settled herself on one of the slatted chairs. After his game Biff sat down next to her. She gave him a smile—not her usual broad one, however. She did not show her teeth, perfect though they were; she kept her chin lowered; she concentrated on a storybook sequence of thoughts. The unusual blue-green of my eyes indicates that there is a cache of emeralds hidden somewhere in my father’s house. Some of them may have been distributed about my person. Only the brave deserve the fair. Concentrating, she said nothing, not even hi. He began to talk.

That was the way of their courtship—Biff talking, Marcie listening with her eyes. Her high spirits, her healthy optimism, her clever chatter—all were restrained in order to perfect the new talent. Once she had been a thoughtless tease. Now she was a seductress.

They were married two years later. At the end of the celebration Marcie turned her back to her bridesmaids and threw the bouquet over her buttermilk shoulder. It was a wide flattish nosegay, all yellow flowers, and it looked rather like a garden hat. Helen caught it.

Helen had drawn Steve Folkster’s name. She’d known him since third grade. He was a diligent student, a good athlete, an everyday sort of fellow. But in Sallyann’s mother’s graceful script he became someone fresh, a young man with interests to reveal—a yearning for the mountains, say, or a passion for bees.