Cloud Nine (13 page)

“You think I will?
You think I will?
Out of the way, bitch, or I’m killing you! I’m driving this car right over you, I’m—”

I think he would have, but just then my hand jerked loose and I went staggering to pull her out of the way. She stepped aside and waved him on. He roared past her, like some maniac in a drag race. On one of the lawns, a colored woman was staring—on another, a gardener stood with his hose pointed at us; and in the Lieberman house across the street, I could see a face at the window. But she paid no attention. “Honey,” she asked, “are you hurt?”

“Not much. Shook up, is all.”

“He’s no one to monkey with.”

“He’s a rat, first, last, and all the time.”

“He is, but rats aren’t dumb.”

She led me inside and up to our bathroom, where she snapped on the light and looked at my hand, which was scratched from the jerk I’d given it to get clear. It bled, too. She got out the Listerine bottle, uncorked it, and bathed my hand with it. “It’ll hurt,” she said. “It’ll sting a little—”

“I can stand it—”

“But then you won’t have any infection.”

She sprayed bandage on and the bleeding stopped. Then she knelt to my leg, and for the first time I saw my knee, all bloody inside the torn slack. She stripped me down, swabbed more Listerine on, and sprayed me with bandage again. Then she led me into the bedroom, got out my pajamas and started taking my clothes off. “Hey, what are you doing?” I asked.

“You’re going to bed, Gramie.”

“What for? You think I’m sick or something?”

“You’re staying here, I’m bringing your dinner up.”

“I have a better idea.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“How about
you
peeling off? And coming to bed?”

“...Who was Gwenn Cary?”

“Well how would I know?”

“Who was she?”

“...Girl. Woman. Widow. Showed houses for me.”

“And came here to get screwed?”

“Ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies.”

“Well? Did she?”

“How do I know what she came for?”

“Did
she?”

“All right, then. She did.”

“And you screwed her?”

“Yes, but this was before I met you. It was before my speech at Northwestern, before I ever
saw
you.”

“On that bed, on our cloud?”

“But it wasn’t a cloud then.”

“But on our bed?”

“On one of these beds, I suppose.”

I picked up the phone, dialed the store where her mother worked, and asked for “Mrs. Lang, in house furnishings.” After some time she came on, and I said: “Mrs. Lang, do you remember those twin beds you sold me, for my master bedroom?” She said she did, and was startled when I asked her to send out duplicates. She kept asking if something was wrong, but I told her: “No, nothing at all, but our woman spilled furniture polish on them, and Sonya can’t get out the smell, so...”

So she took over at once, saying new mattresses would take care of that, and I had to argue endlessly that I wanted new beds, the works. At last she agreed,, and had me wait while she wrote up the slip. Then: “I’ll put an expedite on it,” and I was free to hang up. I called Goodwill Industries, and asked them to send for a couple of beds, both in good condition. They said they’d do it next day.

I got out of bed and moved to the room across the hall, turned the bed down and got in. I sang out: “If that takes care of the matter, I’m here waiting for you.” She came in, unzipping her dress. Then: “Why would she say that?”

“Why would who say what?”

“This Gwinny, whatever her name was?”

“Husband perhaps. He may have heard stuff. She got married—or at least, so she told me over the phone, I haven’t seen her since.”

“You mean, if she was seen coming here, she could tell him
that,
and more or less get away with it, that she didn’t get screwed by you?”

“Do you
have
to keep using that word?”

“It’s the one he used. Is that what you mean?”

“Something like that, could be.”

“Is that where
he
got the idea?”

“Burl? That occurred to me too. He had it before he came here, before he said it today. It’s what he told my mother, right after we got married.”

“You think he believes it?”

“I think he can’t bear the idea that you could want somebody else, and at the same time not want him. I think he’s diseased on the subject.”

“Either way, Gramie, it pees on our cloud. If it was true, it does, and if it wasn’t, it does too. But that’s Burl all over—he’s got a strictly heads-I-win-tails-you-lose mind.”

“Do you mind if we talk about something else?”

“I’m talking, he peed on our cloud.”

“Not unless you let him. I didn’t.
My
cloud is as clean as it was the day we first saw it, down at Ocean City, while we were swimming around. Remember?”

“...We don’t have but one cloud.”

“Then let’s not let him befoul it. Be-pee it.”

At that she seemed to buckle, and yet she closed her zipper. “I have to be going down, if I’m to get you your dinner.”

She went, and I lay there some time, in a puddle of pee of my own, that I hadn’t mentioned to her. Because from what she had said before, what she had said while he was here, and what she had said just now, it suddenly dawned on me that she knew this guy quite well, much better than I ever knew him, brother or not. That wasn’t saying too much, but it also had dawned on me that he knew her pretty well—why it griped me, I don’t know, but it did, that he knew and I didn’t, that she liked malts with egg, which was something he had shouted about. It meant nothing, and yet it sat sour on my stomach, or left the bed feeling damp, or bugged me, somehow. Then while I was thinking about it, the phone rang and then suddenly stopped, which meant she had taken it, probably in the kitchen. Then her voice floated up: “It’s for you.”

I trotted to the master bedroom, where the upstairs extension was, and answered. “Gramie!” came a well-remembered voice. “Your kept woman is back!”

“Well Jane!” I stammered. “Welcome! Welcome!”

“When am I going to see you?”

“Ah—soon, I hope.”

“Tonight? You taking me to dinner?”

“Well—I’m hooked for tonight, but—”

I talked and talked, trying to say something, while at the same time saying nothing, and pretty soon she cut in: “Who was that girl who answered?”

“Why—my wife. Jane, I got married.”

She didn’t say anything, even when I spoke her name a few times and asked if she was there. Then I was getting a dial tone, and realized she’d hung up. I hung up, then heard the bell go
clink,
which it did when another extension hung up—meaning it had been open, with Sonya listening in, while the call went on. I went back to the other bedroom, lay down, and tried to think. In a few minutes came the sound of our dinner bell, a tiny thing that tinkled, one of Sonya’s little gags. Then there she was at the door, bringing in my tray. She set it on a bench beside the bed, asked: “Would you like me to make the martini?”

“Please.”

She made it, raised her glass, said: “Mud in your eye,” and took the one sip she would take, to keep me company with it. I said what fine martinis she made. Then: “That was Jane Sibert. You listened in?”

“Well? I had to know if you took the call.”

“Then, you know what was said.”

“Or wasn’t said.”

“That’s right—she kind of cut it short.”

For some time nothing was said. Then I blurted: “Well?”

“Well? Pop.”

“...
Pop?
Is that what you said?”

“Like the weasel. How does a weasel go
pop?”

“In olden times, a tobacco pouch was a weasel.”

“Oh! That explains it. I’ve wondered about it.”

“Well now you know. Where does Jane come in?”

“She did it. Made our cloud go pop.”

“Stop trying to be funny.”

“I’m not. Our cloud has just gone pop, and we’re going to go
bump,
as soon as we hit the ground, which could be inny time, now.”

“Personally, I don’t borrow trouble.”

“Personally, I don’t have to.”

B
UT NOTHING HAPPENED THAT
day that sounded like
bump,
or like anything.

I ate my dinner and she took the tray. I lay there awhile, and apparently she ate in the kitchen. Then I heard the TV and went down in my robe. We both looked at the news, then at some show, and then went to bed, still in the guest bedroom. I took the bed I’d been in, she the other. I tried to entice her to my bed, but she didn’t seem to hear.

In the morning she got up first, and I peeped at her while she dressed. Then I got up and got dressed, went down and had breakfast, which she served me in the dining room. As I was finishing the doorbell rang, and when I opened it there was Mother, looking fairly frazzled.

When I asked what brought her at this ungodly hour, she said: “I wanted to catch you before you left for your office,” but instead of saying why, she got off about my hand, which by now showed scabby cuts through the bandage. I told her it got caught in the car door, “so I raked the skin off getting it loose.” She didn’t go further with it, but let me take her into the living room.

There Sonya joined us, chiming in about my hand: “It’s really a mess, but I did what I could with what we had in the medicine chest.”

That seemed to be that.

Then: “What did you do to Jane?” Mother asked me.

“I didn’t do
anything
to her.”

“She was over last night, in a perfectly terrible state.”

I told about the phone call, and she said: “She had a complete crack-up, so I had to drive her home and take a taxi back. I tried to get her to stay, but she said she had to be alone, ‘to face herself, and what’s left of her life.’”

“Mrs. Stu,” asked Sonya, “what’s it going to mean? That she’ll cut Gramie out of her will?”

“I’m afraid so. She’s the best friend I have on this earth, but she’s rocked to the heels, and I can’t quite picture her leaving things as they are.”

“You mean on account of me?”

“You said it, Sonya. But since you ask me, yes.”

“I can’t quite picture it either.”

“I can’t quite picture her starving for love.”

I got it off pretty sour, as it seemed to me that Sonya, last night, and now Mother today, had jumped to hasty conclusions, by taking stuff for granted that might or might not happen. “Cracked up or down or sidewise, she still has to eat, and she
won’t
eat without cashing my check. Likewise, until now, she’s been the best friend
I
have on earth—just the same she’s going to get hungry. So I’m going to hold everything, wait with my fingers crossed, till my check goes out next week, and see what she does with it. If she cashes it as I expect, then we take it from there, and I rather imagine she’ll find there’s quite a lot left of her life—once she quits being silly. If not, then we can talk things over.”

Neither of them seemed to hear me. Sonya asked: “Mrs. Stu, would you like some coffee?”

“Sonya, I’d love it.”

So Sonya made her coffee the way she likes it, with milk—
café au lait,
from freeze-dry coffee, with sugar lumps, in a glass, with a silver coaster she’d bought. Mother stirred it, touched her tongue to the clots of coffee, and asked: “Sonya, was that your arrangement of ‘Chopsticks’ you played at the school that day?”

Sonya stared, then went over, knelt, put her head on Mother’s shoulder, and whispered: “Oh, Mrs. Stu, just to think you
noticed,
that you remember it now, what I played!”

“I loved it,” said Mother. “Play it.”

So she went to the piano, while Mother moved to the bench beside her, still holding the coffee, and played some crazy arrangement of “Chopsticks.” “I just boogie-woogied the left hand,” she explained. “But of course, as boogie-woogie’s four-four and Chopsticks is six eights, there was kind of an accent problem, till I fudged them together a bit.”

“It’s most effective,” said Mother.

“Will you kindly tell me,” I asked, “what ‘Chopsticks’
or
boogie-woogie has to do with the price of fish, or Jane Sibert, or her farm, or
anything
we’ve been talking about?”

“It has plenty to do with it!”
screamed Sonya, jumping up. “It means it’s not my fault! It means she’s not blaming me.”

“Well I’m certainly
not
blaming you,” said Mother.

“Thanks, Mrs. Stu. Thanks, thanks.”

She plumped down on the bench again and started to cry. “Mrs. Stu,” she blubbered, “would you do something for me? I know I have to go, I said I would, I promised, that I wouldn’t be inny pest, and I won’t be. I offered to go before, right here in this very room, the morning we got married, but he said do as he said, or he’d give me a boot in the tail; when he boots me in the tail is when I love him so. So I did. But now everything’s changed.

“Mrs. Stu, would you kid her along a little? Tell her hold everything, that things are going to get better, so wait for the silver lining, so I have a few days to think. To face what’s left of
my
life. To figure out what I’m going to do?”

“Put it that way, Sonya, I have to.”

“I do put it that way.”

“Then I’ll do what I can.”

At last this queer conversation ended, and Mother left. I left, and carried on business as usual, I don’t recall the details. When I got back that night, Goodwill had come for the beds, and Sonya seemed feverishly pleased they were gone, giving the subject no peace.

Late that night Mother called, and when she made sure Sonya was there, on the kitchen extension I mean, she gave her first report: “She was over tonight, and I started in on Sonya’s campaign, to kid her along, as she said, and try to persuade her to wait, to keep a stiff upper lip, to look on the bright side, ‘until things have a chance to change.’ She seemed to feel better, sensing something, under sly hints, and was able to drive home herself.”

Sonya seemed pleased, when she joined me in the living room, and I can’t quite say that I was, but of course I was playing a different ballgame, one that wouldn’t start until my check went out, the first of the following week. If it got cashed, it seemed to me the kidding along would stop, and we could make a fresh start, so life would go on from there. If not, I doubted if kidding along would help, or that anything would.