After Claude (12 page)

I leaned my tired, throbbing head on the back of the couch and waited. Unbelievable as it may seem, waiting for Claude had become the central activity in my life. I must have been suffering from a form of culture shock that afflicts all widely traveled Americans, as a result of which Claude had come to represent home. In the six months I’d been with him, my waiting had developed into a kind of mania. I would actually find myself waiting to hear his footsteps running up the stairs, and during his frequent catastrophe jaunts around the country, I would wait, in a reverie of waiting, for his return. Unless I am blind and deaf, he was always glad to find me waiting. I sensed that my healthy presence was a necessary balance to his obsessive interest in scab-encrusted junkies and crippled fruit pickers. He would fall into our bed like a wounded warrior, and thanks to my inexhaustible capacity for female sympathy, I would joyfully revive and nurse him. For a change, I was sitting alone, listening for footsteps, prepared to do my nursing bit.

It occurred to me that one: I should check out my face, because no wants to be treated by a battered nurse, and two: I should probably force myself to take some nourishment. I went to the bathroom and found a mess, which I dutifully wiped up. After that degrading job, I decided to bathe and then eat. Where was he? It was becoming dark outside. All right, so he had a guilty conscience, but at least he could call?

I reconnoitered the refrigerator while the tub was filling. There were all my elaborate preparations of the previous evening, untouched by human hands. I realized I was starving and ripped a wing off one of the barbecued chickens. I put the morsel to my lips, and at that instant a most horrible flash sizzled through my brain. What if I choked on a chicken bone? A pretty sight indeed: me, blue on the kitchen floor, a chunk of chicken sticking out of my dead mouth. No, thank you. I put water in the kettle to boil. I had never heard of anyone’s windpipe being blocked by a cup of coffee.

A bath, I decided, a soothing bubble bath. But some signal was interfering with the image of me soaking up relaxation in a warm tub. It was this rather unattractive vision of my bloated body found after a few undisturbed weeks of immersion. I managed, with trembling hands, to brush my teeth and wash my face. I detected a few red blotches on my skin, particularly on my eyelids. My knees weakened as I studied the unfamiliar symptoms of a wasting disease. What did I have? Why had I been so reckless as to ascribe my weakened condition to a mere hangover? What hangover? Now that I reflected on it, I had drunk very little. A few martinis and a few glasses of wine. Was that a reason to be covered with fish scales? Oh, God, what a terrible time to be alone.

Forget the lousy coffee. Who had the strength to cook? I took the carton of chocolate-chip ice cream and a spoon into my sick bed.

It was seven thirty and all was not well, unless you consider dizziness, listlessness, and ringing ears signs of well-being. I happen to know they are the signs of mononucleosis.

The only so-called entertainment on television was a monstrous hunk of boredom called The Explorers. If you could hop into your private jet and fly to Connecticut, Channel 3 had a comedy hour. I lay in the bed, spooning ice cream into my numb mouth and periodically checking my weak pulse, compared to which a buried fakir’s would register as overactive.

I suffered through these two dyke nitwits conquering the Salmon River rapids. Only God knows what their mothers had done to them. The enchanting musical duet that introduces All in the Family prevented me from hearing Claude’s key turn in the lock.

“Harriet?”

For a moment, not surprisingly, I thought it was my Maker, but then recognized Claude’s voice. “In here, darling.”

Claude came and stood at the bedroom door. I held out my reproachless arms. “My warrior, my wonderful, brave warrior is home. You look terrible. Take off those wet things instantly, my darling, and come to bed. Your favorite show is just going on.”

I ask you, could any woman have been more forgiving?

“Come into the other room,” he said darkly, “I want to talk to you.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” I gaily chastised him. “What’s there to talk about? Claude, I forgive you, I forgive you for everything.” I might as well have tried my Swahili on him.

“Get out of bed.”

“I don’t know if I should, it seems I have mononucleosis or even leukemia,” I hinted.

The brute actually reached down and yanked me out of the bed. If Claude had leukemia, believe me, he’d expect you to be all over him with juices and compresses, but a sick woman? We are expected to carry on with our duties until they do us a favor and pronounce us dead.

I followed him into the living room. He looked bad, but not bad enough. He spotted the telltale lamp on the floor, and he casually set it on the end table.

“Now,” he began, “you have one day, twenty-four hours, to get out of here. I won’t be staying here tonight, I have an assignment. Here’s a hundred dollars.” He threw a roll of bills on the coffee table. “You can check into the Chelsea Hotel, you can try the Albert, or you can drop dead. I don’t care. But when I get back here tomorrow night. you’ll be gone or very very sorry.”

My vocal chords froze. My forgiveness speech wilted on my tongue. All the time he and Baba had been working on that announcement, I had been racking my mind for ways to forgive him.

“Claude!” I cried.

His hand shot up like a traffic cop’s. “I don’t want to hear one word out of you. It’s taking all my self-control not to choke you.”

“Choke me? I’ve done nothing but lie here all day worrying about you, and you’ll be happy to hear that I’ve decided never to throw that cheap tart’s name up to you. What name? Who would even believe that Baba was the name of a person?”

“Shut up,” he yelled at me, and took a bottle of Scotch off a shelf and poured himself a drink. He tried it cautiously, like a swimmer sticking a toe into the icy ocean, and then swallowed the whole thing with one brave tilt of his head.

“I’m in a hurry,” he said, as the drink shuddered into his belly.

“What’s the rush? Where are you going? Can’t we at least talk?”

“No.” He left me and went to the bathroom. I ran after him. He began throwing his perfumes and deodorants into a leather kit.

I grabbed his arm to stop him. “What are you doing? Claude, don’t you understand? You don’t even need to apologize. I forgive you. All is forgiven.”

“You didn’t by any miracle get my shirts out?”

My mouth opened to emit a horrified bubble.

“I didn’t think you would,” he said bitterly.

It was all too much and much too fast. “I like that. That’s the thanks I get for spending all of yesterday cooking and cleaning and scrubbing. What am I, your hired hand? It so happens I’m only human. I can do only so much.”

“Your bondage is ending, Harriet. You no longer have to waste your remarkable intellectual gifts as my servant.”

“Who’s complaining? You’re misinterpreting me. I love being your valet. What else would a normal woman want out of life? Okay, if you’re going through a difficult period, we’ll have it your way. I’ll do the housekeeping, and you can work out your sexual kinks with Baba. What else are the Babas of this world created for? Have me as a confidante, a friend, a mother, if you must. But, Claude, don’t end our relationship over one infidelity that as far as I’m concerned was so normal, so masculine of you, that if anything, my respect for you has increased. Hate yourself all you want, but believe me, I love you for your weaknesses.”

“Housekeeping.” He laughed his rotten laugh, zipping up his bag. “You’ve done nothing for six months but lie around the house like an irritable invalid, complaining, bitching if I ask you to open a can of soup. Six months of your devotion has driven me mad.”

“But that’s all over.” I followed him to the livingroom door. “Listen to me. There’s an explanation. I didn’t have it myself until this afternoon. That’s what I’ve been dying to tell you. It develops that I’ve been ill. Very ill. It’s a relapse of mononucleosis. Now that we know, with proper treatment and bed rest, which is all it takes, you’ll have all my energy and abilities at your beck and call. I already feel stronger from just one day in bed.”

“Call the Chelsea as soon as I leave. They have lots of check-outs on Sunday.”

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” I shouted into his stubborn, suicidal face. “I can’t let you do this to yourself, you, with your morbid sense of duty. Don’t leave me for Baba, I beg of you. She’ll ruin your life.”

“Let me ruin my life my way,” the maniac insisted. “And Baba has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with my decision.”

“Well, where the hell are you running with your perfumes? Does she have a roommate you prefer? I know how stewardesses live, in gang-bangs.”

He opened the door. “I’ll be in Baltimore till tomorrow afternoon. They’re rioting and looting there now.”

“How wonderful for you.”

“That’s your deadline, Harriet.”

The door slammed behind him, and I stood alone, stunned, hoping that for once I was having a bad dream that would end with Claude pawing me. I staggered back to the bed. Archie Bunker was doing his million-dollar takeoff on my father, which added to the unreality of Claude’s explosive entrance and exit. Something informed me it had all been intolerably real. I turned down the sound and buried my hot head in the pillows. My teeth were clenched, my throat ached, and then I cried.

I cried and cried. I cried about Claude. I cried about MacDonald. I cried about Paris. I cried about the American Hospital. I cried about the goons who had forced me on the plane and had sent me back to this concentration camp. I cried until I became afraid that I would never stop finding things to cry about, and then it stopped.

I didn’t feel refreshed by what’s generally called a good cry. On the contrary, I felt increasingly hopeless. In spite of my waves of despair, I stayed up writing lists and making plans, until there was daylight in the window.

If I told you what I went through the next day to change a stinking lock, you’d think I was talking about the lock that locks Fort Knox, not the lock in a rundown tenement.

I woke up later than scheduled, because I was so afraid of oversleeping, I couldn’t fall asleep. All I have to do is imagine something and it happens. I lit a cigarette and turned on the TV, collecting the lists strewn all over the bed. There, on the tube, was a panel of blacks, demanding back payment for three hundred years of tap dancing. Lots of luck. Then I knew with a horrified seizure of total recall that today was Sunday. Even though I had suffered through a ghastly Saturday, I had overlooked the coming of Sunday. All of my carefully laid plans, my shopping list made with visions of the A&P at my disposal, were shot. I felt my clarity mounting into hysteria. Could I find a locksmith on Sunday? I sprinted out of the bed and dived into the Yellow Pages.

I almost wept with relief when I saw that they were available for night time and Sunday emergencies. I carried the telephone to the couch, lit a cigarette, and started dialing numbers. There wasn’t even a heart-warming answering service to appeal to. It was all recordings and beeps and listening units and machines waiting to record my name and number. There were no more people out there, just machines.

I ripped off my tie-dyed skirt and Mexican blouse, filled the tub, and plunged in. The water was chilling but reviving. I realized the place was hot again. The rain hadn’t broken the heat wave.

I was out of the tub when the first machine called back. I had my story ready. To wit: I was this extraordinarily proper married woman who had been mugged and purse-snatched by a gang of rapists the previous evening. My devoted husband, currently in Baltimore, had insisted that I put in a new lock with all possible speed.

“I have one emergency before you,” the indifferent male on the other end informed me. “I can be at your place in one hour.”

“One hour,” I shrieked.

“It’s the best I can do. Don’t worry, lady, street muggers aren’t house thieves. They’re two different breeds.”

“But my mugger may know a house thief,” I persisted.

“If you’re so frightened, wait in a neighbor’s apartment for an hour.”

“All right, an hour, but please, no later, it’s urgent.”

What I didn’t know was that he intended to keep me on the phone for an hour. What kind of lock did I want? Did I have a wooden or a metal door? Did I need a police lock or a pick-resistant cylinder?

I felt nervous tears filling my eyes. “Please, I don’t have a Ph.D. in locks. Bring me a lock that will lock with a key and keep the muggers out.”

He still hadn’t tortured me sufficiently. He launched into the economics of the affair. It was twenty dollars for emergency service, plus the price of new equipment. I had to expect it to cost fifty dollars.

“I have the money, just get here.” Fifty dollars for a piece of tin and half an hour’s work? Small wonder the intellectual community in America was shrinking.

It was already one thirty when I got into a pair of relatively fresh white jeans and a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt. I peeled fifty dollars off the roll Claude had thrown on the coffee table and ran, with the rest of the money clutched in my hand, to the delicatessen on Bleecker Street.

Halfway there, I discovered I’d forgotten my shopping list. There wasn’t time to go back for it. Karl Marx himself had never prayed harder for a miserable riot to develop into a revolution.

The streets were disgusting; the heat, cooking stew in the curbs again, and the usual lynch mob looking for a cause. Then the delicatessen! Every hoarder in New York was jammed into the place, as if starting tomorrow an embargo were going to descend on the city. My siege, as I figured it, would last two weeks, by which time Claude would be thoroughly disenchanted with Baba.

I grabbed a wire basket and started filling it with necessities. Two large jars of Nescafé. Two large jars of Cremora. Four vitamin C-packed quarts of orange juice. Two loaves of Levy’s rye bread. One pound of butter. Two dozen eggs. Fourteen cans of tuna fish and, to keep my spirits from sagging, a half-dozen flat tins of imported antipasto packed in virgin olive oil, which were conveniently displayed beside the tuna fish or I might never have thought of them. That basket was filled. I scooped up another. Dinner time. Seven frozen TV turkey dinners, seven frozen deep-fried shrimp dinners, a jar of tartar sauce, a large Hellmann’s mayonnaise, four packages of Hydrox cookies, and just in case the blockade extended beyond my calculations, I asked the counterman for one pound of freshly prepared lobster salad and a half pound of Nova Scotia, which required six bagels and a quick dash to the other side of the store for a large cream cheese. Then I waited on a line that crept along, silently and passively, as though the bums were getting fed free. Tears of exasperation stung my eyes. It was finally my turn.