Moving On (39 page)

He told her nothing of himself, nothing of his past; he was so quiet and his temperament was so level, apparently, that it was even hard for her to tell what sort of mood he was in. It was particularly hard for her to accept such reticence, since Jim had always been the opposite. Jim had told her his entire life story fifteen minutes after he met her for the first time. They had talked about their pasts for hundreds of hours, exploring every minute wrinkle in their relatively unwrinkled childhoods. There was something in Hank’s face, in his walk, his accent, his name even, that bespoke a background very different from her own—some poverty, some vulgarity, something Pete Tatum would know about. He sometimes reminded her of Pete; like Pete, he had a kind of presence that had more to do with physical confidence than with intellect. He was fairly smart, but what she liked about him was not that he was fairly smart. She liked the way he was, and it frustrated her that he wouldn’t share more of himself with her. She felt that if he accepted her at all it was merely as the pretty wife of a friend, someone who could brighten a seat at the drugstore counter.

It was not until almost Christmas that a different quality came into their relationship. There was a Christmas party at the Hortons’. The boys had been packed off to stay at Emma’s mother’s, and all the more likable graduate students had been invited. The Hortons loved to give parties and were only inhibited by their lack of funds; in this instance the Carpenters were co-hosts. The Hortons furnished the place and the dip, and the Carpenters furnished the liquor and a goodly supply of records. Flap was drunk before the party started and made a slight fool of himself by going around with mistletoe and kissing all the women smackingly. Everyone enjoyed him; without his joviality the party might never have got moving at all. He had got drunk early to right himself with his principles, for after much brooding he had done the diplomatic thing and invited not only the Duffins but the department head as well. He hoped neither would come, but as luck would have it the department head and his wife showed up almost immediately and the Duffins a bit later in the evening.

The department head was an aging Spenserian named Timothy Ivan—a man retired from active scholarship, as he frequently said with a sigh. The graduate students jocularly referred to him as Loving Mad Tim, because he loved them all but could only very occasionally remember any of their names. The high point of his scholarly career had been a collaboration on a prose version of
The Faerie Queene
for use in high schools, and his chief pleasure in life was his collection of arrowheads. His wife was a petite Philadelphian who had stoically endured thirty years in Houston. She came in wearing her fur coat, as all had feared she would. The temperature was in the sixties but Mrs. Ivan seldom got even that good a chance to wear the coat and seldom missed one when she did. She lived for the rare years when the MLA held its convention in Philadelphia—then she could go home for Christmas. Flap shuffled a bit and kissed her on the cheek and she was pleased and said good things about him to her husband when they left thirty minutes later.

“Whew,” Flap said. “I thought they were going to stay.”

“They’re not so bad,” Patsy said. “I kind of like them.” She was sitting on the couch. Hank was there but was chatting with Emma by the dip bowl. Jim was in a very good mood. He had given a report that afternoon on
After Strange Gods
, and Duffin had praised it highly. Jim was dancing with Clara Clark, the good-looking redhead whom Flap had said wouldn’t last. She was from Santa Barbara and was very good at dancing teenage dances. Elvis Presley, one of Flap’s musical passions, was on the phonograph.

“There’s a nice limber girl for you,” Flap said, admiring Clara.

“Humph,” Patsy said. “You should see me do that, if I wasn’t pregnant.”

Not being able to dance when her husband was dancing made her feel a little out of it, but after a while Hank and Emma and Kenny came over and they all got in a hot argument over Terry Southern and she felt in it again. It was an argument over the relative merits of
Candy
and
The Magic Christian;
Flap, in his usual fashion, dominated it by being the only one who had read both books. Kenny’s beard had grown shaggier and he was staying high a lot to protect his creativity, as it were. “I don’t like Terry Southern much,” he kept saying.

“I liked his piece on the twirling convention,” Patsy said. “I don’t think he likes women, though.” She was more and more inclined to judge novelists by whether or not she felt they liked women.

Kenny didn’t answer. He was staring fixedly at Clara Clark’s pelvis, which was twisting and gyrating only a few feet away. The conversation drifted on, but Kenny kept staring at Clara’s pelvis, as if he hoped, by staring with sufficient concentration, to bring her clitoris into view.

While they were all yakking, the Duffins appeared at the door, surprising everyone. They had clearly dressed down for the occasion, Bill in an old corduroy coat with leather patches at the elbow, Lee in a blue sweater and skirt; but even so they managed to look like two jet-setters arriving at a hoedown. All the men stood up, the dancing stopped temporarily, and the conversation stopped too. Flap let his mistletoe lie and did not kiss Lee Duffin.

“Well, let the merriment resume,” Bill said with a slight bow. It resumed, but with a different tone. It became a little more frenetic and took on a slightly forced quality, as if everyone in the room were performing for the tall smiling slightly sardonic man and the trim woman. In a few minutes it worked out that Jim was dancing with Mrs. Duffin and Bill Duffin was dancing with Clara Clark. Dancing with a famous professor threw Clara slightly off and made her look like she was trying too hard. Patsy began to feel depressed the minute the Duffins arrived, and watching Jim dance with Lee only made her feel the more depressed. Lee danced intently, moving around Jim with swoops and darts, like a thin desert bird of some kind. She was smiling, but it was a taut smile; she moved well, but her movements too were taut. She moved around Jim watchfully, as if he were a small snake that she might pounce on at her leisure.

Jim was obviously having a great time dancing with her and Patsy was suddenly filled with repugnance, not so much for him but for the whole gathering—the whole business. It reminded her a little of the party in Phoenix. Maybe Jim was just naturally attracted to older women. Lee fascinated him, just as Eleanor Guthrie had. So where did that leave her? She was too heavy to dance and no one was paying the slightest attention to her, not Kenny, not Hank, not even Flap. Clara and Lee were both prettier, probably, or sexier, or something. She felt very alone and wanted very much to be home by herself. Impulsively she rose and slipped past the dancers and went into the Hortons’ bedroom. The bed was piled with sweaters and purses and she sat down on the floor by a bookcase, her back against the bed. Something inside her was sinking like a stone, sinking far down. She didn’t understand anything, didn’t love anyone, wasn’t loved, really, never had been, never would be. The Hortons’ bedside books were at her elbow: a paperback of
The White Nile
, Northrop Frye’s
Fables of Identity, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
, Emma’s high school copy of
Wuthering Heights—hex
favorite book—a gray Modern Library Giant of Jane Austen’s novels, a mixture of smaller Modern Library books with their titles faded off, and several paperbacks. Patsy pulled out a red paperback of the
Kama Sutra
and leafed through it, growing even more dispirited by the thought of people doing all those abstract and acrobatic things with one another’s genitals. She was quite sure none of them would work with hers; the simplest things barely worked with hers and anyhow the whole thing was sickening, she felt like she would never want to touch a living soul again. Everything in life was disappointing and irritating and worked out to make her lonelier. She didn’t even want to cry, she just wanted to be home.

Hank Malory walked past the bedroom on his way to the john and stopped and looked in at her. She had a green ribbon in her hair and it was slightly awry. When she raised her arms to straighten it she noticed him. She felt too lonely to be embarrassed, and looked up at him solemnly.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Patsy shrugged. Her depression was too obvious to deny. “I’m just not in the mood for this party,” she said. “I guess I’ve become antisocial. I don’t know.”

“I’ll drive you home,” he said a little awkwardly. For weeks he had been wanting to be alone with her and he was made nervous by his own desire. He was afraid too much of it would get into his voice.

But Patsy jumped at the chance. “Oh, I wish you would,” she said, stuffing the
Kama Sutra
back in the bookcase. She had been dreading having to ask Jim; he was having a good time and would resent having to leave. When they went back into the living room Elvis Presley was still on and Jim was still dancing with Lee Duffin.

Well since my baby left me
I’ve found a new place to dwell . . .

Emma saw that Patsy had her sweater on and came over, looking worried. “Sick or bored?” she asked.

“Equivocal,” Patsy said. At that moment she didn’t feel close to anyone and was hoping Emma wouldn’t ask her to stay. Emma didn’t. While Hank was in the john Patsy stood in the doorway watching Jim and Lee dance. Bill Duffin came over, a drink in his hand.

“How are you?” he asked.

“In the process of departing.”

“I hope you and Jim will come to dinner sometime soon,” Bill said. “He’s turning into a fine student. Between the two of us we might make a scholar of him yet.”

“What do you mean, the two of us? I have very little to do with it.”

“Sure you do,” Bill said. “You have to become a complete bitch, like Lee. Bitches like Lee are the making of scholars like me. You’ve made a fine start—just don’t mellow.”

“Do you get a sexual thrill from being offensive to women?” Patsy asked. “I really don’t understand you.”

“I was just paying you back for saying I looked like Eddie Fisher,” Bill said and walked away.

Patsy was shaking a little with annoyance and went over and made Jim stop dancing for a moment. “I’m feeling poorly,” she said. “Hank’s going to run me home. Have a good time, okay?”

“Okay,” Jim said, a little surprised. He started to ask if she wanted him to come home with her. He would not really have minded leaving, but Patsy had turned away and Lee was waiting a little impatiently for him to resume their dance. He did, but he felt slightly out of kilter, as if he might have failed to do something he should have done.

Outside, walking down the driveway with Hank a few steps behind her, Patsy’s eyes seeped a little. Duffin’s insult had a delayed kick, and she felt frustrated. She resolved that there would be no dinners at the Duffins’, no encounters with the Duffins; Jim would not have Duffin as his major professor if any effort of hers could prevent it. Hank’s car was an old maroon Oldsmobile of about the same vintage as the Ford.

“You’re smart,” she said. “You didn’t take Duffin’s seminar, did you? I wish my husband hadn’t.

“I’ve only seen the man twice and he’s insulted me both times,” she added.

Hank nodded sympathetically but didn’t ask her about it. She thought ahead to the dark apartment and felt lonely again. She wished he were more talkative. She felt like talking to one person, not to a party of people. But he just wasn’t very talkative, and they were almost to the apartment.

“Want to drive a little?” he asked unexpectedly. “Or have some coffee or something?”

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you’d rather.”

They drove out a freeway to where it ended, on the southwestern edge of Houston, and circled underneath it and drove back in. It was a clear December night, not clear enough that stars could be seen but clear enough that the brightly lit buildings downtown were visible. Patsy wished they were going to Galveston—it would have been pleasant to walk on the beach on such a night. Instead, Hank took her to a place called Yum-Yum’s Lounge, on Richmond Avenue, a bar much favored by graduate students. It was in a small dilapidated shopping center, next to a taxidermist’s; it had deep booths and served sandwiches. Hank and Jim had been there frequently but Patsy had never been and was disconcerted at first because the jolly blond barmaid clearly regarded her as Hank’s date, or did until he introduced her as Patsy Carpenter, Jim’s wife. “Jim’s wife!” the barmaid said. “He never told me he was married. And me all set to ask him for a date.”

Seeing herself changed back into a wife in the woman’s eyes had a settling effect. The booth was cozy and all the things that had depressed her at the party were easily forgotten. She brightened, found that she was hungry, and had a Swiss cheese sandwich. “God, I was about to get morbidly depressed,” she said, eating the last bite of crust. “Why is it you never come to our house?”

“I study too hard,” Hank said.

Patsy looked at him gravely, a little annoyed. He never really spoke straight to her. He either kidded her or spoke past her in some way.

“If you’d ever really talk to me we could be friends,” she said.

“You’re too pretty to be friends with,” he said, and for once he didn’t sound like he was kidding. He even looked at her, which was disconcerting. She had a sudden sense that her hair was wrong and took the ribbon off, so that her hair hung loose at her shoulders.

“I’m not too pretty to talk to,” she said. “We could swap out. I’ll tell you about my childhood and you tell me about yours.”

Hank shook his head. “Mine’s too literary,” he said. “Some writer should have written it. What was that young guy’s name who disappeared? The Texas writer?”

“Oh, Danny Deck,” she said. “Don’t tell me he should have written it. I didn’t like his book very much. The Hortons knew him, did you know that? They were very good friends.”

Suddenly the thought that Hank might really want her struck her. What he said about her being too pretty to befriend had sounded strange, unlike anything he had ever said to her. She didn’t know what to do and began to chatter.