Beautiful Kate (17 page)

I found her packing in our room, already dressed in her favorite traveling outfit, a Calvin Klein ranch-hand ensemble with every accoutrement except spurs.

“Don’t try to stop me,” she advised. “I’ve made up my mind.”

I made a gesture of helplessness. “So be it. But
Dandy?
Can’t you do better than that?”

“To get out of here I’d take money from the devil.”

“Obviously.”

She angrily closed and locked one bag and started on the other. “I kept begging you to go. For over a month now I’ve been begging you.”

“And I explained why we couldn’t.”

She turned on me. “Oh, that’s a lot of bullshit and you know it. You could’ve got money from somewhere. One of your wives or your rich Malibu buddies—they would’ve come through for you in a minute. But no—you’re so far into this weird game of making like a penniless fugitive that you don’t even know what’s real anymore. Why, they would’ve had you out of jail in an hour and you never would’ve served five minutes more—you know that as well as I do.”

I was almost struck dumb, as much by her uncharacteristic trenchancy as by her anger. “Do I?” I managed.

“Yes, you do. Your kind just doesn’t rot in jails. It’s like a law.”

“I see. So all this is a game, then?”

“That’s right. Some weird kind of
Roots
thing, that’s about all I can figure. You’re here because you want to be and because of what you’re writing, whatever the hell
that
is. All I know is it’s not for me—none of it.”

“So you’re running out.”

“That’s right. I’m running.”

“Back to Venice and crawl into the sewer with Dandy.”

“Sunshine and crowds, that’s all I ask.”

“Some standard.”

“Better than this iceberg.”

“And what about
us
?”

She laughed at me. “
Us
? What
us
? As if you gave a flying fuck about anyone except your dead brother and sister. And incidentally, isn’t there a word for that? For someone who likes to hump dead bodies?”

That was the one thing she should not have said, the one button she should not have pushed. Going over to the bed, I picked up her two vinyl suitcases and tossed them out into the hall, where one of them broke open, spilling its contents as it tumbled down the stairs. Toni started to yell at me but I grabbed her too—by the collar of her wrangler’s jacket—and gave her the bum’s rush out of the room. I slammed the door behind her and locked it. And then I got a bottle of Red Label out of my desk and took a thirsty pull on it. I filled a glass and took it into the bathroom, where I proceeded to work on it while I soaked in a tub of hot water.

In time I heard the jeep leave and after that I heard Jason making his way down the stairs and interminably banging around in the kitchen, hoping to rouse someone to wait on him. But I stayed right where I was, adding hot water every so often, as the tub cooled in the wintry upstairs air. I kept sipping at my tumbler of scotch, hoping to warm the spirit as well as the flesh. And I thought about Toni and what an unlikely couple we made, not really lovers so much as participants in a one-night stand that we just didn’t know how to fold. Or at least so I characterized the two of us to myself there in my cups in the tub. How in the world could we ever have had anything real together, I asked, a middle-aged pseudo-intellectual screenwriter and a high school dropout beach-girl and one-time porn bit-player? What possibly could we have had in common except sex? Which in this case just happened to be the whole ball game, though I didn’t feel like admitting it just yet, soaking myself as I was, inside and out. But of course it was the good sex that made for the good quiet meals together (in California anyway) and the good long walks on the beach in the dying light. Admittedly, we seldom got around to discussing
auteur
theory or the symbolism in Bergman, but in extreme cases one just has to make do. In the absence of chicken soup, chateaubriand will suffice.

Before Toni, most of my women fell loosely into two categories epitomized by my two wives: either tough, smart, ballbreaking maneaters like Ellen Brubaker or soft, smothering, empathy-ridden soul-mates like Janet. Each in her own way was informed and stylish and intuitive and at times good company and fine in bed. But they also seemed to feel that the going rate for pussy was full and unencumbered title to a man’s mind, body, and soul through all eternity. Not as beautiful as Toni, not as sexy, each of them nevertheless put a far higher price upon herself. And when each in time discovered my tendency to commit occasional adultery, one would have thought they had uncovered a mass rapist-murderer under their roofs, whereas Toni tends to view the weakness as only human, possibly because she herself shares it. And in California at least she had a considerable talent for helping a man relax, letting him just kick back and grow moss on his ass for weeks on end, with interruptions for only the big-ticket items like food and drink and sex. Now and then she might toss a dish or take a poke at you, but at least you never had to worry about those little showers of poisoned verbal darts unhappy feminists are forever launching your way. And the fact that Toni has been a royal pain in the ass of late doesn’t really count, you see, because she is such a total and unreconstructable California Girl. Unable to roast in the sun, she naturally has begun to spoil.

So it was not some casual pickup who had just walked out on me, though at the moment I tried to pretend otherwise. I drained the glass and got out of the tub and toweled off. Going back to the bedroom, I wandered over to the mirror and stood there for a time—why, I don’t know—perhaps just to get off a nifty thought or two about the mulish durability of our bodies, in that they could reveal such infinitesimal differences between youth and middle age, when in fact the essential self had undergone a journey so unremittingly arduous and harrowing that one would not have been surprised to see in the mirror a wizened and crippled grotesque. Or perhaps I just wanted to look at
it
yet again, the old one, my lord and master, agent of my Thirty Years’ War, or rather my thirty years of peonage. Such a homely thing, so limp and harmless and somehow even obsequious, it seemed—how could it have reigned over my life as it has, pushing me this way and that way, demanding, possessing, ruling, this comic appendage, this
tissue
. It was an Augustinian plaint, I knew, and perhaps it merited an Augustinian solution. But of course we are not so simple anymore as to think that we could actually whip the old fellow, flagellate him into submission as it were. Polymorphous perverse creature that he is, he would only enjoy it and probably ask for more.

So I stood there as helpless as ever, not particularly impressed by my emperor but not cowed by him either. Rather, I merely accepted the reality of him—and his dominion—and the necessity of keeping him as quiet as possible. So I slipped into pajamas and a robe and settled in at the desk, confident that the feelings of Olympian eloquence induced in me by the alcohol would easily translate onto the page. But the minutes drained into hours and almost nothing came. So I drank more. I sat here at this desk over this very legal pad and the words became like dollars to a bankrupt. I was beginning to feel the loss of Toni more severely than I would have imagined I could. Suddenly I did not feel whole anymore. It was as if, in leaving, she had packed my guts in with her other belongings. I tried to think of what I was writing, but even there all I came up with was a feeling of loss, a vast blubbering alcoholic sense of deprivation and abandonment. I tried to convince myself that it was only Kate and Cliff I bled for, that all my bleary grief was due to what I was writing, a typical example of the artist so lost in his work that he finally becomes a part of it, a victim of it.

When I heard the jeep pull into the farmyard, I almost did not bother to get up and look, since the comings and goings of my little brother are not exactly of great moment in my life. But when the words are coming hard, any excuse to leave the desk will serve, and I went over to the window and looked down upon the darkened driveway—and saw not only Junior heading toward the house
but Toni too!
My heart, as they say, leaped. My guts were back in place. And, yes, even the old fellow stirred. Though I might not have known what I wanted, he did. He always does.

It was not an easy rapprochement. At first, Toni would not even talk to me and I had to make do with Junior’s explanations. It seemed that reliable old Dandy had failed to put his money where his mouth was, with the result that Toni and Junior had waited in vain at Western Union for the telegraphed funds and finally had to leave when the place closed for the day. Junior then treated Toni to dinner and cocktails at a nearby Ramada Inn, where both of them concluded that I was a boiler-plated jerk and a rip-off artist and that if she returned to the house it would be simply as a family guest and not as my personal possession, to be abused in whatever tyrannical way I chose. She would be staying in Sarah’s room from now on, I was informed, and that if I “tried any more funny stuff” with her, I would be out on my ear.

As I learned all this, Toni stood across the kitchen table glaring at me in sullen triumph, obviously quite pleased that she did not have to explain Dandy’s failure to me or in fact even speak to me. You may remember that I was not totally sober at this time, which meant that I had resources of wit and daring not always available to me. So I just stood there smiling and nodding until Junior—the great beer drinker—made his inevitable pilgrimage to the bathroom. Then I vaulted over the kitchen table and, literally sweeping Toni off her feet, carried her upstairs with all the panache of a Rhett Butler. Our back staircase, however, is not quite as grand as the one at Tara and Toni’s head kept hanging against the wall on the way up. Screaming, she pounded me on the neck and shoulder, but I still managed to get her into our room and to lock the door behind us. I sat down on the bed with her on my lap and pinned her arms. I kissed her on the neck and ears and spoke softly to her, all the while trying not to let her bite me.

“Baby, I missed you so. I really did. And I love you. I really do. I didn’t know how much until you left me. Please stay, okay? I do love you, baby. I really do.”

By then Junior was pounding on the door and yelling a lot of nonsense about calling the police and having me committed. But Toni gave him the score.

“It’s all right, Junior. I’m okay. I’ve decided to stay.”

And that was that. I loosened my grip and she turned on my lap, smiling through her tears.

“Did you mean all that?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

We lay back on the bed and kissed and made up. We gradually got out of our clothes and we made long and passionate love. In time we went into the bathroom and bathed together, and then I went downstairs and got a tray of food for us. We ate and drank and afterwards we made love again. And finally, in each other’s arms, we fell asleep.

Later, at close to three in the morning, I woke and put on pajamas and a robe and came here to my desk to work. I was feeling pretty good by then, sated and rested and ready. And I wondered as I sat here, gathering myself, how many men before me had recited those same hackneyed promises of love and devotion that I just had, and for the same inglorious reason—to assure himself such necessities as sex and comfort and human companionship so he could then get on with what was important in his life. Somehow I did not feel at all alone. I figured there had never been a dearth of bastards.

8

Elsewhere in the world I believe it is Christmas week, that best of times for children and drunks and retailers. I am afraid, though, that the blessed season is going to pass almost unnoticed here at 101 Woodglen Road. No one has bothered to put up stockings or a tree; outside the snow is gone except for a grimy patch here and there; and we are all quite adept now at leaping upon the television or radio to change stations the moment a Christmas show or carol comes on, threatening to corrupt the almost religious mood of hopelessness that permeates the house. My reconciliation with Toni is fading with the snow and she has once again taken to flouncing about the house in her kimono, kicking furniture and breaking heirlooms. Yesterday in a fit of unspecified pique she took one of my mother’s old Wedgwood plates and sent it sailing like a Frisbee the length of the living room and on into the library, where it smashed against the wall above my head. I pointed out to her that she had just destroyed a couple of hundred dollars, but she was not impressed.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” she said, eyeing the rest of my mother’s china cabinet.

She has left the cooking and housekeeping (what little gets done) to me and Junior, who lately has seemed almost as reluctant as Jason to leave the security of these four walls. Occasionally I will hear my little brother on the phone with someone, trying to score pot or coke, and other times just making gossip, bemoaning his outcast state with a fellow gay. The great rapport that once seemed to be building between him and Toni is now a shambles, I gather, possibly because she found him insufficiently swishy for a male friend in a nonsexual relationship. (Sounds like an Emmy-award category, doesn’t it?)

Whatever, I go my own way, and increasingly that way leads me into the leathery ambience of Jason’s library. Wonder of wonders, I am now even able to write there (witness these very words), which means that I can insulate myself from Toni’s restless petulance for hours on end—except of course for those times when the door opens suddenly and I find myself dodging Wedgwood Frisbees. For the most part, though, I am quite alone, just me and my legal pads and my ghosts. And when the words are coming like kidney stones, I am able to get up from the desk and wander over to the bay window, there to look out upon the dazzling squalor of Woodglen Estates. “My town,” I say to myself, like the comedian Jackie Gleason standing on his Fifth Avenue terrace. Or I can lie down on the sofa and put my hands behind my head, as though to support the great weight of cerebration going on inside it.