Boswell (47 page)

Mrs. Taylor turned to me happily. “Did you bring your camping equipment?” she said.

“Mrs. Taylor,” I said, “despite my hearty good looks, I have a low sperm count and am a troubled man and a lousy sport.”

“You
goyim,”
she said, crinkling her nose.

“Just warn your husband,” I said calmly, “that if he so much as shakes hands with my wife I will break his legs for him.”

Mrs. Taylor stopped smiling. I could see I had disappointed her. She was not, after all, a bad woman; perhaps she was not even as silly as she seemed to be. Maybe this was just a routine—probably it was. At any rate, as she squeezed by me I felt I ought to make it up to her in some way. I pinched her behind. She turned on me furiously.

“It’s all talk, you,” she said in a low, dark voice. “That’s all it is,” she hissed. She began to cry.

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

The people filing past stopped to look at us. Spotting his wife, Taylor moved up the aisle through the crowd. “Here, what is this?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s a mistake.”

“Marvin, be careful,” Mrs. Taylor sobbed.

“What is this?” Marvin said uncertainly.

“He’ll hurt you,” she said.

“Nobody’s going to hurt me,” Marvin said. His knees, below his Bermuda shorts, were shaking. I felt sorry for him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just told your wife a filthy story and she took it the wrong way.”

“Oh,” he said, clearly relieved. “Is that all it is?” He lowered his voice and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Honey,” he said, “you’ve got to be a sport about these things.” He winked at me.

“What’s going on?” Eddie said. He looked at Mrs. Taylor. “Hey, now,” he said, “the Holiday-of-the-Month Club is supposed to build up confidence. Otherwise what’s the good?”

“My fault,” I said.

I pushed past the people shuffling off the bus and caught up with Margaret. “Margaret, it’s a mistake,” I said. “Let’s pay the driver to take us back to the city.”

“Oh, Boswell,” Margaret said, “you’ve lost your sense of humor. My God,
I know!
You’re jealous of Marvin Taylor.”

“Nonsense,” I said, “it’s all t-a-l-k.”

The Taylors passed us. “See you later,” Marvin said significantly. He touched Margaret’s shoulder.

“I’m not a jealous man,” I said. “You have reason to know that. But I won’t raise another man’s child.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Accidents happen.”

“Do you actually think I’d sleep with Marvin Taylor?”

“Look, let’s not talk about it. You know how I feel.”

We followed Eddie to the guest lodge, and each couple was assigned a room. “Look,” Eddie said, “there’s something else. There are some cabins—not enough to go around or there wouldn’t be any problem, but I’ve got thirty keys. Who doesn’t think he’ll be wanting one?” Everybody groaned. “What a bunch,” Eddie said. “I never saw such a bunch. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.” They laughed. “No volunteers, hey? No good sports in the crowd? Well, all right, all right We’ll auction them off. Proceeds to charity.”

“Crap,” Harris whispered to me. “He’d put the money in his pocket.”

Eddie help up a key and asked for a bid. The men laughed, but no one offered him anything for it. “All right,” he said at last, “I’ll throw them up in the air and you stallions can fight for them.” He flung the keys as high as he could and they came clattering down on the wooden floor of the lodge. Everyone scrambled for the loose keys. Eddie stood on the stairs and laughed. “What . a bunch,” he said. “Oh, well.”

In our room Margaret and I were changing into our bathing suits when someone tapped on the door. “Who is it?” Margaret asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought this was Mrs. Schmidt’s room.” It was Mrs. Taylor’s voice.

“That was your friend,” Margaret said.

I looked at her helplessly. “It’s pretty shabby, isn’t it?” I said.

“What’s shabby? This? This isn’t anything.”

“Our needs,” I said.

“Fuck it,” Margaret said.

I wondered again why she had married me. I suspected that when I finally knew, the reason would be dark, damaging. I wondered if 1 could ever be insane again, if I would ever recover my mad, unconfused Boswellian purposes.

“Let’s go down,” she said sadly.

That afternoon we swam and played basketball and threw softballs to each other. I am a good athlete, and though I had not done anything in a long time I moved with more certainty than any of the other men. I knew the women were watching me, and this was not unpleasant, but somehow I manipulated my body almost absently, with the peculiar preoccupation of someone in pain. Later we ate the sandwiches and drank the beer Eddie had brought from the town. That night, in slacks and heavy sweaters, we sat around the campfire which Eddie made and toasted marshmallows and drank bourbon. We sang “Going Home, Going Home” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” That is, the others sang and I listened; I do not know the words to songs.

We lay stretched out on blankets ripped from our cots. I gazed at the stars and into the orange fire. In the dark I could see shapes moving, people changing blankets and going around the campfire like ghosts. Gradually the voices flagged. Couples lay locked in each other’s arms.

Eddie shouted suddenly. “Come on, wake up, wake up. Let’s dance. There’s a wind-up phonograph in the theater and some records. Hey, Boswell, you’re just with your own wife, so I won’t be disturbing you. Come on, give me a hand with them.”

“That stupid bastard,” I said.

“Oh, go ahead,” Margaret said. “Help him.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“Help him with the machine,” Margaret said.

I got up reluctantly and walked over toward Eddie. He was grinning foolishly and looked rather like a very stupid devil in the glare of the fire. “No offense, right?” Eddie said.

“None taken,” I said.

“Good. Good. Here’s the key. The stuff’s on the stage.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“What, and let the fire go out? Mrs. Taylor here will go with you,” Eddie said slyly.

“Look, what’s the matter with you?” I asked him.

“Hey, hey, easy,” he said “What’s wrong? You got our literature. Didn’t you read between the lines?”

As a matter of fact I hadn’t even seen their literature. It was Margaret who had told me about the club. Mrs. Taylor moved up beside me and took my arm. “I’ve got a present for you,” she said as we moved off. She was drunk. “I mean it. Because you were so nice to Marvin before.”

“I thought I had made a mistake.”

“No,” she said. “No.” It was like a sad,
escaping sigh.

“I’ve been wondering.”

“Life,” she said with weary significance. It might have been an epigram in French.

“Oh, come on, Mrs. Taylor, let’s get the damned phonograph.”

“Don’t you want your present?”

All right, I thought, if she kisses me, she kisses me.

“Give it to me,” I said.

She put a key into my hand. “It’s Marvin’s,” she giggled. “I took it out of his pants. He was so proud of getting one.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said.

“Don’t you like a good time?”

Even the rhetoric of her sin was off-center. I thought of the men in their Bermuda shorts. For a moment I thought I was going to laugh.

“Don’t you like a good time?” she repeated.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“I do,” she said. “I do. I’m talking about a good time. I’m talking about being with people. How many years do you think we have?” she said. She didn’t sound drunk.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m no Gloria,” she said suddenly.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” I said. .

“I’m a mother. I have a kid in camp.”

I did laugh.

“Yes,” she said giggling, “I see the joke, too. All the same, what does it mean? People have to be with people.”

“Is that what screwing is all about? People being with people?”

We went into the big wooden room the kids used as a theater. “Ooh,” Mrs. Taylor said, “there are always bats in these places. I was in a camp play when I was a kid—say, that wasn’t so long ago either—and there were bats above the stage in the whatdoyoucallit, eaves. If they get in your hair it’s a real mess.”

“Well, let’s just get the machine and the records and get out.” I switched on the lights.

“You’re terribly romantic,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Terribly.”

The machine was on the stage, the records beside it. “If you take these I’ll bring the phonograph.” I handed her some old 78’s.

“Why, they’re camp songs,” Mrs. Taylor said without looking at them. “Why bother? They can grind this stuff out for themselves. He wouldn’t want these.”

“What does he want?” I asked.

“He wants people to be happy,” Mrs. Taylor said. “You don’t understand anything.”

“I certainly don’t understand this place.”

“Didn’t you read the literature?”

“That’s the second time I’ve been asked that. I’m beginning to wonder how they send it through the mails.”

“Oh, he made a joke,” Mrs. Taylor said.

“Come on,” I said. “My wife is waiting.”

She hoisted herself onto the stage. “I doubt it,” she said.

“Cut it out,” I said. “What I said about Marvin’s legs still goes.”

“I don’t like to hear talk like that,” she said seriously. She had a way of drifting in and out of drunkenness.

“Mrs. Taylor,” I said. “Mother, I think we can go back now.” When she reached down for me to help her off the stage I put the key in her hand.

Walking back we could hear the voices of the club members raised in some soft, sad song. Perhaps it was just our distance from them but the voices seemed thinner now. “That herd’s been cut,” I said.

“You really don’t want to sleep with me, do you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Is it me? I’m too pushy, I think.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You’re as demure as someone in a nursery rhyme.”

“This little piggy went to market,” Mrs. Taylor intoned forlornly.

We were walking back through the trees toward the distant fire. “Oh, that song is so sad,” she said. “Camp songs make me cry. They don’t make you cry, do they?”

“I’m a very callous person, Mrs. Taylor.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re not. Not deep down inside yourself.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said. I was anxious to get back and find Margaret and break Marvin’s legs.

“This will be the last time you come on one of these weekends, I guess. I’ll bet she really was some kind of princess or whatever. You both have a lot of style.”

“When you’re the King of France,” I sad, “it shows.”

“Yeah, you,” she said. She poked me playfully. “You know,” she said, “it may sound funny, but this club saved our marriage, mine and Marvin’s.”

“That does sound funny.”

“No. I really mean it. Oh, I don’t suppose we would have broken up or anything, but it… well, gave “us an interest.”

“You’ve got to have an interest.”

She went on without hearing me. The truth, finally, was what I had begun to suspect. I was far more interested in her, in her motives, in what she had to say, than she was in me. “You know what it is?” she asked. “It’s not the pleasure. What’s that, two minutes? I don’t give a damn for the pleasure. That’s just a mechanical, chemical thing that doesn’t have anything to do with us. I’ll tell you the truth, you would probably have been disappointed in me after all my talk. I’m not very good at it. And it’s not what you could call
love.
It’s just the idea that somebody wants you—all right, your body, but you are your body. Just to lay like that in somebody’s arms, knowing you’re the only thing just then that he’s thinking of. You know something? I think that if the house were to catch fire just then, or if there was a tiger, he’d save you. No matter what it meant. The same guy that might run right over you in a burning theater, he’d save you. It’s funny. Being like that with somebody softens you. Even fat old Medler. He’s who I was with last time.”

“Medler?”

“What’s wrong with him? He’s alive. I’ll say.” She laughed. “It’s just being with somebody. Loneliness is the most awful thing in the world.”

“Loneliness is nothing,” I said.

We came back to the group and I looked for Margaret. The blanket we had been sitting on was gone, and so was Marvin.

I rushed up to Eddie. “Where’s my wife?”

“Well, how should I know?” he said.

“Look,” I said, “tourmaster, pimp, where’s my wife? I’m asking for the last time.” The others had stopped singing and were listening to me.

“We don’t need members like you,” Eddie shouted. “Tough guy. I’m tearing up your membership card. Don’t worry, don’t worry, you’ll get your lousy money back. What I want to know is if you don’t like people why’d you join a club like this in the first place?”

“That’s enough. Where’s Taylor? Where’s Taylor?” I shouted.

I saw someone get off a blanket. “I’m here,” Taylor said weakly. “What do you want?” The woman he was with wasn’t Margaret

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Some guy,” Eddie said.

“Telling off a member like that, that’ll cost the company,” Harris said.

“If it was out of my own pocket,” Eddie said, “I wouldn’t care. The guy’s a jealous jerk. What’d he come here for anyway? Storm trooper!”

“Eddie’ll have a heart attack,” Al Medler said.

“Hey, Medler, your girlfriend’s waiting for you,” I said.

“Okay, all right,” Medler said, getting to his knees, “a fat man’s got to move slowly in affairs of the heart. Pass it on.”

“You’re degenerates,” I shouted.

“Let’s lift our voices in song,” I heard a woman call. It was Mrs. Taylor. “Everybody. Everybody.”

She started to sing. “‘Keep the home fires burning,’” she sang in a thin, reedy voice, and slowly the others joined her. As I walked toward the lodge they began other songs, going quickly after a few bars from one to the next. They sang of wars they had never fought, of losses they had never sustained. They were gathered on a darkling Pennsylvania plain, far behind the lines, singing, forgetting the words, appropriating the harmony for themselves, convinced of a heroic desolation, toasting their sadness in the big campfire like another marshmallow. “‘It’s a long way,’” they sang, “’to Tipperary.’” It is indeed, I thought.