5:45 to Suburbia (13 page)

“D
ID YOU
call Bruce?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “and now you better sack out.”

In the bathroom, she had vomited. Charlie had heard the repeated flushings of the toilet as she had tried to cover up the sounds of her gagging. He had smoked a cigarette and stared at the saffron-colored cotton rug in her apartment. There were four or five overflowing ashtrays scattered about on tables; empty beer cans, glasses with an inch of melted ice cubes and stale Scotch at their bottoms; a crossword puzzle book with all the puzzles worked, a plate of crackers and cheese on the floor by the hide-a-bed; and next to it, a large bottle of Bromo-Seltzer, and a spoon.

She looked pale and old standing in the doorway. Her hair was mussed, her lipstick smeared. There were wet stains on the front of her navy blue silk blouse. But she was more sober; not completely sober, but better.

Charlie thought, I can leave her now. She said,“Did yougive Bruce hellabout the dummy?”

“I didn’t talk to him directly,” Charlie said. “I put an okay on it … You better go to bed, Marge. Get some rest. It’s been a rough day.”

“Won’t you have
one
drink with me, papa-doodle?”

“I don’t want any more. I have to drive.”

“Will you sit with me while I have just one, papa-doodle?”

“All right,” Charlie said, “but you’ll have to make it a quick one.”

She went carefully into the kitchen, calling behind her, “You going to tuck me in, Charlie?”

“I can’t stay that long, Marge.”

“I’m going right to bed.”

“I have to go in about eight minutes,” he said. “Remember how you used to like to watch me undress?”

“I remember.”

“I’m going to undress for bed while I’m having my quick one,” she said, coming back with the bottle.

She set it on the coffee table before the couch and sat down next to Charlie. He could smell the odor of vomit and mouth gargle.

He said, “Marge, I’ll send some feelers out on a new job for you. I’ll ask around.”

“Sure,” she said. “You do that, papa-doodle.”

“You’ve got to pull yourself together and face this thing.”

“I’m face to face with it, papa-doodle.”
“Seriously,
Marge.”

“What am I supposed to do? Go around begging for a job?”

“No, but you should — ”

“Charlie,” she interrupted him, “why don’t you stay over?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you stay over tonight. We could go around the corner to The Gold Coin and have some dinner, and then we could come back and listen to records, maybe even read some poetry. Charlie, would you like that? It’d be like old times.”

“You know better than that,” he said.

“Don’t leave me alone, Charlie. I don’t want to be left alone tonight. I want to — recapture something. Something’s lost.”

“Marge, think about the future, not the past.”

“The past was swell, Charlie, wasn’t it? It was better than now.”

“The past always improves, Marge,” he said, reaching for another cigarette. She took it from his hand.

“I’ll do it. Remember how I used to always do this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nothing’s different, Charlie. I’m the same. Do you think I’ve changed? Tell me honestly.” She lit the cigarette and handed it back to him, the tip of it wet from her mouth.

“Yes, you’ve changed. And I’ve changed. We’re older.”

“Physically I’m the same. ‘Course,” she laughed in a silly too-cry way, “I don’t got my organs, but it don’t
show,
papa-doodle. The night nurse at the hospital said I had the body of a woman of thirty. She was bathing me and she said I had the body of a woman of thirty.”

Charlie said, “You told me.”

“Did I?”

“This afternoon.”

“You wanna watch me undress, Charlie? You always used to like to, remember.” She got up and took a swig of the drink she had poured for herself.

Charlie said, “I really have to go.”

“Just watch me undress,” she said. “The way you used to like to. Remember? I stand right in the middle of the room.” She weaved across the rug. “And take everything off.”

“Don’t, Marge,” Charlie said. “Come back and finish your drink and then I have to leave. Come on, now. Come back and we’ll have a cigarette, and then I’m going.”

“First the blouse,” she said, undoing the buttons, kicking off her heels. Then, “Oops,” she said, “I forgot. You used to like it if I kept my heels on until toward the end.” She stumbled to get into her heels, the blouse open.

When her feet were back in her shoes, she took off the blouse and stood in her bra, smiling at Charlie.

He sighed and sucked in on his cigarette. He could not look too long at her.

“Now the skirt drops,” she said, “but first I want a little more of my drink.” She walked over to the table, drank from the glass, and stood in front of Charlie.

“Want to unbutton the skirt, darling?” His fingers fumbled with the button. “All right,” she said, “now help me like you like to do.”

“Marge,” he said — but he didn’t know what more to say. His hands remained in his lap.

“Pull it down, Charlie. Don’t you want to?”

“No, Marge. I’m going.”

“Charlie, just wait until I’m in bed, please. Don’t leave me alone until I’m in bed.”

“You’ll have to hurry,” he told her. “Take your clothes off quickly and slip into bed. Go in the bathroom and get undressed.”

“Don’t you want to watch me, Charlie?” she whined. “Am I that repulsive?”

“Marge, please. I’m in a great hurry.”

“Ping!” she said. “There goes the skirt.”

She stepped out of it, wearing now the bra and the half slip as she stood by the couch.

“Want to unhook me, Charlie?”

She turned around with her back to him, and stooped a little.

Woodenly, Charlie undid the fasteners. She turned around then, and tried to sit on Charlie’s lap.

Charlie stood up. “Marge, why are you doing this?
Don’t
do this.”

His back was to her; he heard her moving behind him, undressing more, wordlessly. He stood there hating himself, feeling he could cry for her, wanting to get out. A depressive sickness was filling him with some sudden shame over some uncertain thing he must have done or left undone.

He could hear a clock ticking; the rustle of clothing; the clink of ice cubes in a glass; but he could not speak or turn around or go or move.

How long was it before eventually she said his his name.

“What?” he murmured.

Then, from behind, he felt her arms come around his body, and knew she was naked now. She repeated his name.

She said, “Turn to me, Charlie. Don’t alienate me. Don’t everybody alienate me!”

Gently he turned around, taking her hands from him, not looking at her body, but at her eyes. They were filled with tears.

He said quietly, “All right, Marge. How about bed? I’ll get it down for you.”

“Thank you, Charlie,” she said. “You care what happens to me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Charlie Gibson said.

He walked across the room and pulled out the hide-a-bed. He heard her pour more liquor from the bottle on the table into her glass.

When the bed was down, he said, “All right, Marge. Come on now. I’ll tuck you in.”

“Charlie?”

“What?”

“Turn around and look at me, Charlie. Please look at me.”

Slowly, he turned and his eyes saw her.

Her body was very white. There were red marks where elastic had worn into the flesh, and her body sagged. And he suddenly noticed the scar of her appendix operation, which had always been there; and her body was a tired body; it was sad and spent and sixty.

“Do you know what the night nurse at the hospital said, Charlie?”

“Yes,” he said, “you told me.”

“I haven’t changed, have I?” she said.

“No,” Charlie said. He said, “Come on, Marge: Get into bed.”

“Could
you
still love me, Charlie?”

“Please, Marge,” He noticed tears beginning in her eyes. “I’m very late.”

“Could
you?”

“Marge — ”

“Charlie, answer me. Could you still love me?” ‘Yes,” Charlie made himself say. “Yes. Your body is — very nice.”

“Nice?”

“Yes.” He looked down at the rug. She was simply standing there by the coffee table, looking at him.

“Not beautiful any more? I remember how your eyes got bright when you looked at me. Now you can’t look at me, can you, papa-doodle?”

“I have to leave, Marge,” he said helplessly. “I’ll tuck you in if you’ll come to bed now, but I
have
to leave.

“Don’t leave me alone, papa-doodle. Not tonight. Stay over.”

Charlie’s fingers knotted to fists. He felt anger beginning in him, anger at all of it; and an immense and horrible pity for her, a shameful revulsion at her behavior, and a contempt for his own stumbling inadequacy.

“I’m begging you, Charlie,” she said.

He looked at her. She was naked on her knees.

After he had helped her to her feet, she clung to him, sobbing.

“Help me, Charlie. I helped you once.”

“I want to help you, but you won’t let me. I will help you.”

“Stay over,” she begged. “Don’t leave me alone tonight.”

Charlie said, “Marge, I can’t stay over.”

“Make love to me. God, Charlie, I need love. I need love.”

“No, Marge,” he said, his tone more sharp than he intended it. “No.”

Abruptly her mood changed.

She let go and walked to the coffee table. “Okay, papa-doodle,” she said, “Okay. Margie’ll just take her bottle and go where she’s wanted.” She began to walk away from the living room, into the bathroom. “To the medicine cabinet, Charlie. The chloral; the amytal; the Nembutal. Christ, have mercy on us. Freud, have mercy upon us. Life, have mercy upon us.”

Charlie heard the door slam, then the bolt slipping into the lock.

At first, he had an impulse just to walk out of the apartment.

He stood and lit a cigarette, and heard the sound of the medicine cabinet banging shut.

He walked to the door of the bathroom.

“Marge,” he said, “are you all right?”

She began to recite something. It was very familiar, a poem she had always liked. She recited it in a monotonous voice, like someone saying words from rote memory, statically:

“This is for those who work and those who may not,

For those who suddenly come to a locked door,

And the work falls out of their hands;

For those who step off the pavement into hell,

Having not observed the red light and the warning signals

Because they were busy or ignorant or proud — ”
“Marge!” Charlie said, “I’m going to leave.”
“This is for those who are bound in the paper chains That are stronger than links of iron; this is for those — ”
“Do you hear me, Marge?”
“Who each day heave the papier-mâché rock Up the huge and burning hill, And there is no rock and no hill, but they do not know it.”

“Marge!” Charlie shouted. “Answer me. Are you all right?”

“This is for those who wait till six for the drink, Till eleven for the tablet;

And for those who cannot wait but go to the darkness;

And for those who long for the darkness but do not go,

Who walk to the window and see the body falling, Hear the thud of air in the ears, And then turn back to the room and sit down again, None having observed the occurrence but themselves’’

“Good-by, Marge,” Charlie shouted again. “Good-by, Charlie,” she answered. “I’ve taken the pills. It won’t be long now …

Christ have mercy upon us,

Freud have mercy upon us,

Life have mercy upon us …”

A
FTER THE
phone call, Joan Gibson returned to the living room.

She said to the guests, “It was Charlie.”

Aileen Tullett said, “Is he all right?”

“Naturally, naturally … Just tied up.”

“Aw, honey, he
forgot!”

“Never mind,” Charlie Gibson’s wife said, “we may as well eat.”

Roger Tullett knocked the dottle out of his pipe and chuckled, “Another executive business crisis, I’ll bet!”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Sure … that’s why Bonnie knew all about it when I called her.”

“Well, didn’t he
say
where he was?” Aileen asked.

“He said he’d explain later … anyone for chicken tetrazzini? And birthday cake?”

Bob Carroll stood up. “Now, now, Joanie, don’t let this thing get you. Charlie probably has a perfectly logical explanation.”

Joan Gibson said, “Or a perfectly logical excuse … Well, come on, let’s start the party rolling,”

• • •

The doctor was dog-tired.

Before he had been called here, he had operated on a cancer case, found it had spread hopelessly, knew the woman would die. Young woman, in her ninth month of pregnancy.

He was out of patience with the man.

Gibson his name?

Gibson kept repeating himself: “She was reciting poetry and — ”

“These types always recite poetry,” the doctor said. “Usually dreary, setf-pitying poetry. They know them all.”

“She’ll pull through, won’t she?”

“Just needs her stomach pumped out.”

“Shouldn’t we try to revive her and walk her around the room or something?”

“She’s had too much to drink. These types always do it this way.”

“I should have told her I’d stay with her. She’s really been through the mill.”

“She didn’t take many,” the doctor said. “Her prescription wasn’t that big. It’s more liquor than anything else. These types never take enough.”

“What do you mean by that?” Gibson looked angry.

The doctor said, “Alert the elevator man that the ambulance is coming … You sure she has no one to stay here with her?”

“No, no one.”

“What about you?”

“I can’t,” Gibson said, “I — ”

“Then
she’ll
have to go to the hospital,” the doctor answered curtly. “Get the elevator man.”

After the man left the apartment, the doctor walked over to the hide-a-bed and took the woman’s pulse. He noticed the unkempt look of the apartment, the beer cans, ashtrays, liquor bottles. He thought to himself tiredly that it was one of these boringly typical suicide attempts: the aura of the orgy; the “Mr. Gibson” who obviously belonged elsewhere — with his family — the nakedness; the pulled-down hide-a-bed; the time and trouble everyone would have to go to — doctors and nurses who could be concerned with more serious matters; the stubborn selfishness of such cases — sleeping-pill swallowers who always remember to phone, before, or have someone around to rescue them, infantile people who purposely inflict injury on themselves to force others’ attentions. It was so unnecessary, he thought wearily, and so usual. Routine in this city; every night a few.

Mr. Gibson reappeared, began pacing the room.

The doctor said, “You’ll accompany her to the hospital, will you not.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.”

“How many times has she tried this before?”

“What? … Look, doctor, this isn’t just dramatics. This woman’s been through the mill. She’s not one of theseȁ”

“I know,” the doctor sighed, “she’s
different.”

• • •

“Are you scared?” the boy asked the girl, taking her arm as they went up the steps.

“A little.” Then she said, “No, Dud, I’m more than a little scared. I’m petrified!”

“I’ll be with you. I’ll be right at your side.”

“I know that. It’s just — it’s so embarrassing.”

“But it’s the only way. We agreed on that, Janie.”

“Yes, we agreed on that.”

“Okay,” he said. “We might as well go on in and get it over with.”

He had gone into the bar while he was taking his walk, shortly after he’d finished his rewrite. Mitzie had been dozing on the bed in the hotel room, and he hadn’t bothered to awaken her. He’d folded his manuscript and put it in the inside pocket of his overcoat. Then he’d left the hotel and headed uptown, crossing over to Broadway.

He had ordered two drinks and he was on his third, standing there with the manuscript in his hand, half reading it, half watching what was going on around him. It made him sick and at the same time it fascinated him, and repulsed him — the way a snake would — this bar. He’d been in a dozen or more just like it since he’d come to New York, and each time he left one he swore it was the last one. And every time he came back, whenever he could, at the slightest opportunity.

In St. Louis he would never think of frequenting such a bar, even though he knew where every one of them was. Knew, and often walked by them, peered in, and went on. Sometimes he told himself the reason he had the list of these bars in his wallet was that one day he was going to do an exposé of them. It was a good idea; it would sell papers. They deserved it, anyway. God damn them, he would tell himself, and his fists would clench in the pockets of his trench coat, and he would think as he always did of his Mikie, his son — this was before Mike was killed — and he would think, What if some goddam faggot ever got his filthy hands on my boy, what if
that
happened? Why, God, he’d kill him, lousy faggot; kill him if anyone ever got his hands on Mike.

Then he’d remember Otto Avery and always he would weep inside himself, and wonder at the irony of it — at Avery taking the boy
he
was and molesting it, and at Avery giving back the boy Mikie was.

It never occurred to Basescu that Mike could be taken.

When it happened, it seemed again somehow to be reaching out to destroy again. And he blamed Avery.

It was Avery’s fault; not any Kismet, nor war, but Avery’s — He blamed for it, and people like him.

For his own part in what had happened between himself and Avery those years and years past, Basescu had litde memory. He would not picture it in his mind; he would only picture Avery and think of himself, God, I was such a kid. Such a kid — and Avery ruined me.

It was incongruous that he thought with satisfaction that he had shouldered a responsibility Avery had shunned, that he had married Mitzie, and raised Mike. Yet he never thought of Mike as belonging to Avery. Mike was simply what Avery had robbed him of — a boy — a healthy young boy. His — Basescu’s — boy.

That night as Basescu stood in the bar watching and listening to the swish voices around him, he felt a victory — not a victory over these she-males, but rather a victory with them over Avery. He imagined his story screaming Avery’s guilt at the public from the pages of the exposé magazine; and somehow those sweet-smiling, vulnerable, and fading faces around him seemed his accomplices, for some Avery had victimized too, Basescu felt, and his revenge was theirs as well.

He ordered another drink, and as he was raising it to his lips in an unspoken toast to his unwitting colleagues, someone spoke to him.

Basescu turned.

The man was tall, muscular and handsome, around thirty-five, well-spoken. Basescu said, “What did you say?”

“Just hello,” the man said. “How do you do.”

The man said, “Busy in here tonight.”

“I wouldn’t know. I just stopped in here for a drink. I’ve never been here before.”

“Nor I,” the man said.

Basescu was uneasy. He felt somehow that he should explain to the man that it was only an accident that he was drinking in this bar.

“I’m quite surprised at this place,” Basescu said. The man chuckled. “Oh, well — ”

“I didn’t know the kind of place it was” “Poor guys,” the man said. He shrugged, smiling. Basescu liked him. He made Basescu feel more assured.

Basescu said, “Yes, they’re not responsible. Someone did it to them, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“It’s’ a pity.”

“They seem happy.”

“Yes, don’t they. Yes, they do seem happy.”

“Sure, they’re having a good time.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Only deadheads like us can’t enjoy ourselves.” Basescu laughed enthusiastically. He felt somehow oddly relieved.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“You going to have another here?” the man asked. “Or do you want to go along?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Basescu said. He thought of the money he had left in his wallet. Not enough for a lot of drinking, that was sure, but he was going to allow himself to have one more when the man said, “How about a walk?”

“All right. Good!”

It was strange that Basescu did not give it a second thought. He had a wild feeling of undeniable ease with this man, a sudden wild feeling of absolute familiarity with him, as though he had known him before. He gathered up his change and repeated, “All right. Good!”

The man followed behind him.

Basescu heard someone on the way out say to him, “Hey, Mary, it’s the first of the month.”

He flushed, hating the way he had been addressed; not understanding it, but embarrassed by it.

He said to the man outside, “They just call out whatever they feel like to strangers.”

The man smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Where to?”

“I don’t care,” Basescu said.

“I’d sort of like to sit down. How about you?”

“Well,” Basescu said, remembering the unkempt look of the lobby of his hotel, “I don’t know — We could get coffee, I suppose.”

“That’s not very comfortable.”

“All right,” Basescu said. “My hotel is nearby. We could go there. It’s not much, but — ”

The man smiled again. “All right,” he said, “but I want to lock my car. Come on.”

Basescu followed the man. As he did, he wondered what on earth he was doing, going along with a stranger he had never met before in his life. And yet, what was there so familiar about this man? Why was he, Basescu, who rarely made friends — indeed,
never
did — so completely at ease with this one?

He thought of being mugged, but it was preposterous. They were right out on Broadway, in plain sight.

As they came to the curb, the man turned to Basescu.

He said, “Sorry, I have to give you bracelets now.”

“What?” Basescu smiled, not understanding the joke.

“Put your arms up,” he said.

Then Basescu saw two things — handcuffs and a police officer’s badge.

“W-why?” Basescu stammered.

The man said, “Come and hear a fairy tale, for one thing.”

The phrase came slowly to Basescu’s mind. It was the lead on his story about Otto. No, it was the title. The man must have looked down on the bar and seen the title page of Basescu’s manuscript.

It read: COME AND HEAR A FAIRY TALE.

Basescu said, “Wait a minute — you’re making a mistake — ” He began to feel his pockets for his manuscript.

“Don’t any of you guys ever get pinched without that old refrain?” The man snapped the handcuffs around Basescu’s wrists. “Come on. My partner’s parked, waiting.”

“I can explain this,” Basescu protested. ‘Where’s my manuscript?”

“I got the piece of paper, buddy.”

“There were ten pieces of paper!”

“I got the one
we
want, mister … Got to hand it to you, a very unique approach.”

Basescu tried to say more, but the man pushed him into the back seat of the police car.

He found two other men there beside him, a lisping older one who was comforting a slim, blond boy who was crying.

The officer in the front seat moved over for the man who got behind the wheel.

As the motor started, the older man said, “Listen, you shouldn’t arrest her. She’s very respectable. She’s a male nurse!”

“Sure, she is, Mabel,” the man said. “And we’re all on our way to Niagara Falls. This is your honeymoon.”

Basescu’s cheeks burned.

He said, “Won’t you listen to me! Won’t you give me a chance to explain! I just wandered into that bar! I didn’t even know — ”

“Come and hear my fairy tale,” the man said, swinging the car out into traffic.

“Listen to me, please!” Basescu said.

The older man said, “They never listen at the first of the month, Mary. Their quotas, you know, Mary. No one to arrest but the girls.”

The blond boy began to sob audibly.

“It’s all right, honey,” the older man said. “They’ll let you off. It’s your first offense.”

“Sure,” the man said as they headed downtown, “and besides, she’s very respectable. She’s a male nurse.”

Then, when the policeman laughed, Basescu heard the sound of other laughter from years and years past, and unconsciously, trancelike, his clenched fist unrolled, and he held his palm open for the money he would not receive this time.

• • •

Wally Keene liked the feeling of success, and though in his own mind he was — as he thought of it — ”on the middle rung working up,” he was acquainted with the feeling, adjusted, he believed, to its inevitability — for he had, not always, but certainly more often than not, gotten what he set out to get.

As a boy, he had vied with his brothers — three of them — for his father’s favor. He had vied and been rewarded, and he could still remember how, as a not completely innocent four-year-old, he had won the highest praise from adults gathered in the family’s parlor, their charmed and captivated laughter at his remark: “Sometimes I wish the Keenes had only
one
boy, and that he was I.” He could remember the almost worshipful sparkle to his father’s eye amidst the laughter, as son and father regarded one another then. And it seemed the elder Keene in that moment promised Wally that so it would be, if not in reality, in his heart; and so it was.

Yet the boy had worked for that reward. He had, with the instinctive determination which he seemed to possess even then, found ways to woo his father away from the other three, memorized the cunningness that pleased his father, and sought to imitate it and dress it anew before presenting it. He knew somehow, with the deceivingly sly ingenuousness of a child, that a big word won approval, that demonstrativeness won approval (so that he alone among the four boys was called the affectionate one, the way he ran always to his father and kissed and hugged the man, waiting for the, “There now, that’s daddy’s boy,” while he thought, My brothers aren’t — I am) and knew, too, how to provoke his mother so terribly that in a fit of temper she would reprimand him severely, and he would have a wound to show his father, who was adamantly opposed to physical punishment for the children.