East Into Upper East (44 page)

And during their fight too they failed to notice her while they wrestled with each other and yelled so loud that they didn't hear Reba's screams below them; and it wasn't till she began to drum her fists against her father's leg that Si looked down at her and bellowed at Donna, “Are you crazy—in front of the kid!” She didn't even hear him, so he struck her and she fell down; it was then she began to tear at her clothes and flail her fists about her face. Si picked up Reba and carried her to the big double bed in the master bedroom where she came when she got scared at night. He shut and locked the door. “It's okay, Mousie,” he said, “we were dancing. It's a new step.” Still sobbing, she said, “There wasn't any music.” “This one you do without music,” Si said. He kissed her and rubbed his rough cheek against hers, which usually made her laugh and squirm. It soothed her—did she fall asleep in his arms?—and when she woke up, both her parents were on the big bed with her. They were laughing, so he must have been telling the truth and they really had been dancing. Si was lying on top of Donna: “You know what you are,” he was saying in a rich low husky voice Reba had never heard him use before. “You're the one they warned all the little Jewish boys against.” He brought down his mouth to bite into Donna's shoulder where her nightgown had slipped off. Donna carried right on laughing, so he couldn't have hurt her, and Reba went back to sleep, reassured that her parents were friends.

But after she told her mother about going away with Lisette, Reba had to deal with her on her own. She was frightened and ran off to get Donna's blood pressure pills. She knelt on the carpet where Donna was flailing about and tried to make her take them. “No, let me die,” said Donna, wrenching away from Reba. Next moment she snatched the bottle from her, and shaking the pills into her palm, made to thrust them into her mouth. Reba struck her hand aside so that they scattered. She put both her arms around her mother and held her fast while Donna struggled and cried to get at her pills. She couldn't keep it up for long though, she was physically too weak. Reba felt her slacken and soon found that she didn't have to hold her so hard. Donna's loud cries had softened into sobs; she said, “You couldn't do it to me,” and then, “You wouldn't, would you? You wouldn't leave me.”

Reba wanted to carry her into her bedroom; but Donna was too heavy for that, so she coaxed her up and gently led her there. Donna allowed herself to be undressed—to be eased out of her gorgeous silk, then out of her slip, the vast support bra to be unhooked, her panties and girdle slipped off; and Reba did it all tenderly, as much as possible averting her gaze from her mother's body, remembering how once it had been tight and strutting in the latest style swimsuit. Reba dressed her in her nightgown and tucked her between her sheets, and now Donna obediently swallowed two pills.

“You can't do this,” Reba at last admonished her. “You can't carry on that way; you'll kill yourself.”

“I'd be doing everyone a favor then. Including myself.” Donna went on, “And he's actually giving you the money to go away? He's doing that? There—see, I'm right: he wants to kill me. He'll have no rest till he's done it and I'm out of his way.”

“Si loves you,” Reba declared. She leaned forward to kiss Donna propped against her pillows.

“No,” Donna said, and she spoke in a calm, accepting voice. “It's not true and why should it be; I can't expect it. I'm not twenty-three years old no more—any more,” she corrected herself but was unsure and repeated again, “No more.”

“As if that's got anything to do with anything,” Reba said, but she knew she was not speaking the truth. She only had to think of Lisette and how different everything was when she was with her—and here Reba remembered one Sunday night a few weeks before. Lisette had already fallen asleep but Reba was still restless, excited. She went to the window and drew aside the curtain—at once the moon struck into the room, and when Reba turned around, she saw that the bed with Lisette sleeping on it was afloat and swimming in the white light. The effect was heightened by the white bedsheet with which Lisette had covered herself. It had taken Reba some time and skill, at the beginning of their friendship, to coax Lisette out of her fussy nylon nighties and persuade her to sleep naked the way Reba herself did. But even on very hot nights Lisette took care to cover herself entirely with the sheet and always woke up and struggled a bit when Reba tried surreptitiously to take it off her. This had become a game between them, and Reba wanted to play it now. She tiptoed to the bed and began ever so gently to tug at the sheet; when she had got it about halfway off, Lisette stirred and clutched at it. “Let me,” Reba
softly pleaded, and “No,” Lisette murmured, half in her sleep, and went on struggling a while longer; but she was really much too tired, and Reba too persistent, and soon Lisette's hands fell away from the sheet, allowing Reba to strip it right off her. Lisette lay exposed and flooded in moonlight, her hands up and curled on either side of her head the way infants sleep, her face sideways so that one cheek was buried in her spread-out hair; her long slender body seemed to be shining not only with the moonlight but from within its own perfect whiteness, making it translucent. Reba's breath failed her, she sank to the side of the bed and buried her face in it, and thought it's like dying and being born again, or dying and going to heaven: unearthly, divine.

“I think I'll have to have another pill,” Donna said in a small, scared voice.

Reba too was scared—she hurried to get the medication and water to take it with. She watched Donna swallow it, not taking her eyes off her face; she said, “I'm going to call Dr. Abramson.”

“No no, what can he do? Just stay with me.” She caught hold of Reba's hand: “You're not driving back tonight, are you?”

“Of course not. Who wants to drive back at midnight? I was planning to stay with you anyway; that's why I came.” When Donna guided Reba's hand to let her feel her heart, Reba pleaded again, “Let me call the doctor.”

Donna shook her head and pleaded in her turn, “Don't go.”

“I'm not. I told you: I'm not going anywhere.”

“You're all I've got.”

“Well, I'm here. I'm not leaving you.”

What was she promising? Reba didn't let herself think about it. She gave her mother her usual sleeping pill and sat on the bed watching her grow drowsy. Donna was still holding her hand, and whenever Reba shifted even slightly, her mother tightened her grip. But it wasn't enough, and after a while Donna whispered, “Get in with me.”

Reba hesitated—it was many years since she had slept with Donna, though as a child it had been a great treat to get into this same big bed and lie between both parents.

“Get in with me,” Donna said again. “It's been so long.”

Reba stepped out of her jeans; she would wait till Donna was asleep and then go to her own bed. But when she slipped under the
covers with her, Donna made her put her arms around her and hold her close. Even so, hour after hour, Donna kept murmuring, “Hold me.” Each time Reba answered, “I
am
holding you.” She became impatient, as well as hot and uncomfortable, but whenever she stirred Donna said at once, “Don't leave me,” so all night, over and over, Reba had to promise not to leave her.

On Sunday Reba helped Lisette draft a notice to quit her job. Lisette formed her letters very carefully, like a child who has only recently learned them; also like a child she stuck out the tip of her tongue while concentrating on her task. Sometimes she asked Reba how to spell a word—and whereas she used to be defensive about her own ignorance, now she easily conceded that Reba knew better than she. Nor did she mind it when Reba leaned over her to correct some error; she even looked up to smile at her own stupidity, so that Reba couldn't help kissing her uptilted face. Today Lisette was entirely open to Reba, physically and in every other way. Later they got out a map and sat close together with their heads bent over it. Lisette hadn't even heard of some of the countries they were traveling to, or had thought they were somewhere completely different.

That same morning Donna had got up telling herself she needed a day in the country. She always fulfilled her own wishes, so it wasn't long before she had hired a limousine and chauffeur from her usual car service, stopping off at Colette's to buy a whole lot of cakes and pastries. On arrival, the limousine had to be parked some distance from Reba's cabin and the rest of the way taken on foot through the wood. Donna walked to the cabin in the floating floral dress and the big white hat she had put on for the country; the chauffeur came behind her, carrying the many boxes she had bought. She called out, “Yoo-hoo!” to announce herself, but already there was a stir in the wood, with a squirrel crackling over twigs to escape up a tree, and the birds changing their tune, so that they seemed to be not singing but shouting in warning.

The girls leaped up from where they sat poring over their map—suddenly the tiny cabin was very full, with Donna in her pearls and shimmering silk directing the uniformed chauffeur where to place the piles of pastry boxes; there didn't seem to be enough surfaces in
that bare little space to accommodate them. The girls watched in silence, and only Donna's voice rang out as she first ordered the chauffeur around, then argued with him about what time to pick her up again. His departure left an awkward silence—Donna had not yet explained why she had come nor had Reba said she was glad to see her. Donna made herself bustle around a while longer, opening all the boxes to let the girls see what she had brought.

“Why so much?” Reba said at last, in a hard ungrateful voice. “Who's going to eat so much?”

“It'll be gone in no time,” Donna urged. “From Colette's, I went specially. You'll love it.”

“Lisette doesn't eat anything with sugar.”

“She doesn't?” Now Donna's voice had become hard. “Is she diabetic?” She stared at Lisette, making her shrink against the wall. “I'd have said anemic,” Donna concluded; she licked her finger where a bit of mocha cream had come off the top of a cake.

“Sugar doesn't do anything for you except clog up your veins,” Reba said hotly. “I've stopped eating it too.”

“Then why don't you just throw it all in the garbage,” Donna said. “I'll do it right now: where's your trash can?” She seized a box and stood ready to throw it. Reba took it from her. “I wish I hadn't sent the car away,” Donna said, “but I can take the next train back if you'll drop me at the station.”

She spoke with dignity; she was still standing—no one had asked her to sit down—considerably taller in her high-heeled alligator sandals than the two barefooted girls. Then her eyes fell on the map spread open on the table; before she could ask anything, Reba said, “Lisette and I were planning the route we're going to take.”

“Take where?” Donna's dignity left her. “You're not going anywhere. You said you weren't. You promised!” Her voice had risen; it rang shrilly around the cabin; Lisette shrank further against the wall.

Reba stepped up close to Lisette. “Go outside,” she told her. “Go swimming: I'll come in a minute.” The light that had been in Lisette's face while studying the map had faded completely. She looked dull and pale. “Don't worry,” Reba said. She put her hand on the nape of Lisette's neck; the skin felt damp with fear. “We're going no matter what,” Reba promised. She drew Lisette forward so that she could seal that promise with a kiss, right on the lips and right in front of Donna.

When Lisette had gone, Donna sat down at last. She had to, because her legs were shaking. She said, “Let me go home.”

Reba was brisk with her: “You're here now so you might as well stay. You can watch us swim, if you like.”

Donna said, in a whisper, “You promised.”

“What did I promise?”

“You said, ‘I won't leave you.' You said it all night. You did! You promised!” Far from a whisper, her voice had become a shriek.

Reba grabbed her mother's arm, and held her: “Listen,” she said. “This is the way it is: I'm going away with Lisette. You can shout and scream all you want but you can't change that.”

Donna didn't shout and scream. Reba was still holding her arm, but now it looked as if she were supporting her. She even said, when the silence became prolonged, “Are you all right?”

Donna nodded in reply. It wasn't that she couldn't but that she didn't want to speak. There was nothing to say: she saw it was hopeless; she had been through this before, with Si.

She told Reba: “Go and swim. Do what you want.” When she saw Reba hesitate—as Si had hesitated—she added, “I'm okay. Go on. I'll join you.”

“It's just at the end of the wood, you can't miss it.” Reba waited no longer. She was gone in an instant—running to Lisette.