Moving On (47 page)

Roscoe and Big Woody stopped at the door of the lounge and tried to take aim at their attacker, who got into his old station wagon and sat calmly trying to get the engine to turn over.

“I’ll shoot the son of a bitch’s tires,” Roscoe said and promptly sent three bullets into the Gulf-Air’s neon sign, which went out. The station wagon started away and Big Woody snapped a shot at it which ricocheted off the driveway. The stranger was holding a city map in front of his face as he drove away.

“Turdhound,” Roscoe said, panting.

Big Woody felt on the verge of collapse; he barely made it back to his chair.

“At least the dumb motherfucker went off the wrong way,” he said. “He’ll never find Satsuma Street now.”

The two old ladies were standing up swabbing at their soaked skirts with napkins.

“God damn you, Roscoe, why’d you shoot that sign?” Big Woody said. “You think there was a sniper up there or something?”

“The motherfucker could have had a rifle,” Roscoe said. “The less light the worse targets we make.”

“Want me to call the cops?” Nancy asked. She had emerged from the ladies’ room and was matter-of-factly cleaning up.

“No,” Big Woody said. “I got to cool down and calculate the damage. If I call them son of a bitches they’ll just beat us all up.” The old dames were hurrying off, anxious to get home before the killer returned.

“Wisht he hadn’t splattered my hat,” Peewee said, and as soon as he had choked down the last of his beer he hurried to the Alamo Courts to try and clean it.

12

“W
ELL, DID
M
ELISSA
confess anything significant?” Bill Duffin asked. His plane had been two hours late and he should have been tired from three days of boozing in Chicago, but instead he was feeling buoyant and was sitting in bed wearing the psychedelic pajamas his oldest daughter had given him for Christmas. He was drinking a stinger for a nightcap and was idly reading through a couple of book catalogues that had come in while he was gone. Lee was in bed too, reading Flannery O’Connor’s last book of stories.

“Nothing we hadn’t suspected,” she said. “She had some marijuana with her. The other girls and I all smoked some the night you left.”

“What a scene,” he said, chuckling. “Why did you wait till I left?”

“I guess she was afraid you’d take it away from her.”

“Maybe I would have. Then we could have smoked it sometime when we needed a thrill. Or I could have taken it to the MLA—it might have helped. I got trapped with the Southern crowd one evening. Tenth-hand Faulkner stories for the tenth time don’t do much for me. I did hear some good gossip about our friends in Virginia.”

“The girls and I missed you,” Lee said.

“Not a few of your old acquaintances missed you,” Bill said. “I don’t seem to be as popular up there when you stay home. All your usual beaus sent their love and sorrows.”

“I’m glad I didn’t go,” Lee said. “I can’t think of one person from our past that I ever want to see again. That’s goddamn sad, because I can’t think of one person from our present that I feel any different about.”

“It’s your New Year’s melancholy,” Bill said. “Have some of my drink. You’ve got friends galore from our past.”

“Sure. I don’t want them to know me like I am now, though.”

“That’s stupid. How was the pot?”

“It made Helen a little sick. Janie and I got pretty giggly. It didn’t seem to faze Melissa at all. I’m sure she’s a hardened pothead. It was fun, really. We all felt wicked and companionable.”

“Hum,” Bill said. “Our first born a pothead. If she stays out West it’s probably just as well she’s hardened to it. In fact it’s probably better. She’ll be that much less likely to get knocked up by some unsuitable young mystic. No LSD?”

“I didn’t probe and she didn’t say. I have a horror of being a prying mother.

“I don’t worry about Melissa,” she added. “She’s got your ability to take care of herself. Helen and Janie are something else. They’re more like me.”

Bill put down a catalogue and picked up his drink. “Speaking of probing,” he said, “I guess you’ll be glad to know that my days as a conventioneering cocksman seem to be over. I never even got laid. This profession could sure use some attractive females. I never saw so many drab bags, old and young. It made me think better of my beloved wife. At least she knows how to walk.”

Lee smiled. “Is that my New Year’s compliment?” she asked. “Maybe I’ll go next year after all.”

“This is a great story,” she said later. “The one about the girl trying to strangle the fat woman in the doctor’s office.” She stared solemnly at the ceiling.

The stinger had one swallow to go. Bill set it on the bedside table and turned to Lee, an open book catalogue in one hand. “I wonder if I should collect Robert Coates?” As he read the catalogue he put his other hand under the covers and under Lee’s gown and began to stroke her. She had been lying with her ankles crossed. She looked at him to see what was what. His eyes were going down the page of the catalogue but his hand continued to move lightly over her abdomen. She was not sure what to do. Sometimes she thought he was a sadist, but it was just as possible that he was only a normal absentminded man who even after twenty-one years didn’t really realize what her feelings were. She had grown afraid to respond to tentative, ambiguous caresses for fear that just as she became really aroused he would turn out to have merely been idling. Often that happened and he would stop touching her and yawn or read or go to the john. If she became insistent at such a time he was apt to be spiteful, and so insulting that she would not recover from the hurt for days. She opened her legs but lifted the book from her chest and pretended to read. Bill went on reading the catalogue. He was down to F. “I didn’t know Forster was published in America as early as 1913,” he said, quietly surprised. “Live and learn.”

“We’ve only got forty dollars in the bank, if that’s a consideration,” Lee said. His caressing had become very direct and she shut her eyes and ceased pretending to read.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I’m lecturing at La Jolla in February. If I like it we may just go there next year.”

Lee gripped the covers of her book. Her husband glanced at her with amusement, shifted onto his elbow a bit more comfortably, and went deeper with his caress. He still held the book catalogue. Lee half opened her eyes and saw that he was as cool as if he were reading Tennyson; she put an arm across her face. For a second she wanted to rip the catalogue out of his hand and scream at him, but she was already past the point of doing that. The scream would come days later, probably in the kitchen, when he pushed the wrong button verbally. She kept her arm over her eyes. Bill was down to James Purdy when she came. He had never liked Purdy, but he sometimes liked to own the scarcest book by a given author, and if he had had a hand free, and a pencil, he would have put a check by “63
Dream Palace
, wrappers, mint, $17.50.” Lee sighed very heavily, her arm still over her face. Then she turned a little and hid her face against his shoulder. “Don’t quit now,” he said. “I was ever an indefatigable fingerfucker.”

She made no comment. After a while she drew herself away from his hand and went to the bathroom. When she came back Bill had finished the stinger and the catalogue and was lying on his back.

“Turn out the light,” he said. “These pajamas are so bright they distract me.”

“They’re really breakfast pajamas,” she said. She marked her place in Flannery O’Connor and turned off the bed light.

“See anyone while I was gone?”

“Virtually no one. I ran into Patsy Carpenter today and brought her home for tea. It didn’t work out too well.”

“Why not?”

“We got emotional.”

“By god. What about?”

“I told her to be wary of your attentions.”

“You bitch,” he said. “Do I do things like that to you?”

“Chase the one from California if you have to chase someone,” Lee said. She felt very tired and low.

“No, I’d rather play tennis,” Bill said. “Keep my legs in shape. If I decide to sin I’d rather have a Puritan like Patsy. Give me guilt and fear and remorse and darkness and shame. Takes it out of the category of exercise.”

“I guess that’s what’s wrong with us,” Lee said. “No darkness and no shame.”

“Of course not,” Bill said. “We’re mature adults, capable of rational mature acts like fingerfucking. I’ll save Californians for when we get to California.”

“I’m warning you,” Lee said. “Not Patsy.”

“Well, it’s in the hands of fortune,” Bill said. “Ordinarily I’d pursue her but I must be getting less compulsive as I grow older.”

“No. You’re working. When you finish the Pound book your compulsion will rear its head again.”

Bill chuckled. “I always wanted to live with a cynical woman.” He reached over, patted her on the shoulder, and attempted to stroke her cheek. Lee turned her head away.

“Go wash your hands,” she said.

13

F
OR THE FIRST TWO WEEKS
of the New Year Patsy kept a guilty secret hidden in her closet. After the walk with Hank, she did not see him for several days. Either he avoided the drugstore or they simply missed each other. It preyed on Patsy’s mind. One moment she felt he must think her disgustingly brazen, the next she felt he must think her disgustingly shy, or frivolous, or shallow, or immoral, or whatever bad thing she herself felt herself to be at the time. Then she had a dream in which she decorated his drab apartment with posters and prints and curtains, and she awoke from the dream feeling extraordinarily cheerful. It occurred to her that there was really no reason why she couldn’t brighten up his apartment a bit, as she had in her dream, so she drove Jim to school, took the Ford, and went out to a quaintsy-posh shopping center called Westbury Square. Usually when she went to Westbury she took Emma, but for once she felt like going alone. Driving out, she envisioned everything she would buy, and once she got there was rather disappointed not to find everything she had envisioned. She ended up buying two posters, one a London Transport poster and one a bright poster of a droll blue cow. She also bought a lovely red bottle—it was just what she saw the apartment as needing. As she was about to pay for it she suddenly felt very guilty about Jim and bought him a beautiful leather-covered journal with a little steel clasp and a key. He loved the idea of notebooks and journals and would be delighted. It was a very well made journal and cost twelve-fifty, much more than the posters and the bottle. She felt it squared matters, and she rushed right home, meaning to take Hank’s posters and his bottle right over to him.

It was not one of his class days, and she assumed she would catch him home. She freshened herself a bit, put on bright headband and a short jacket, put the posters and the bottle in a bag, and started out for Hank’s as briskly as her stomach would allow.

It was a bright lovely day, and she felt happy with herself. He would undoubtedly like what she had bought. It was not until she passed the drugstore that she began to feel a little nervous. It was really a rather odd thing for a pregnant woman to do, and as she approached Albans Road her nervousness increased and she walked more slowly. Then, just as she was about to turn the corner she saw Kenny Cambridge coming up the street. She was suddenly breathless with shock and turned quickly to the right rather than the left. If she had met him he would undoubtedly have known where she was going. Kenny was a little conceited, but not conceited enough to think she was going to
his
apartment with a shopping bag full of presents. It was annoying, and also scary. Kenny turned toward the drugstore rather than toward school, which meant that he might return to his apartment any time and catch her leaving Hank’s. It was a dreadful let-down.

She walked moodily to the park and sat on a bench, depressed. The whole social fabric, for a time invisible, had suddenly sprung into view, set up as if by demonic will and design to prevent her from doing the one small innocent thing she wanted to do, which was to give Hank Malory some posters and make his apartment nicer. She bit her nail and looked with vexation at a dirty-faced child in the sandbox. His birdy mother stood nearby, clearly hoping for conversation, but Patsy was in no mood to make any. She was irritated with the world and also with herself. If she had any gumption at all she would march right over to Albans Road and knock on the door and go in and tack the posters where she thought they ought to go, and accept a word of gratitude and walk out. If she met Kenny or Lee Duffin or Emma or Flap or Jim she should have the courage of her innocence and say, “All right, so there, so what?” He needed some posters and a bottle.

But she knew she wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. She was not sure, once she thought about it, that she would have had the nerve to knock on the door and give him the posters even if she hadn’t met Kenny. She had a slightly comic vision of herself knocking, saying, “Here’s some posters,” and fleeing at once. It was absurd. She hated the birdy mother and the dirty little boy; she hated Hank Malory for being too dumb or too tasteless to fix up his own apartment; most of all, she hated herself for being so cowardly and stupid and extravagant and contradictory.

Eventually she went home and hid the posters and the bottle in a closet, far back behind some blankets. They stayed there for two weeks, a constant source of annoyance and trepidation. She became passive and could not bring herself to attempt to deliver them again. She had daydreams of Hank dropping in someday when she was alone, so she could surprise him with them. They met again at the drugstore and the mere fact of having the presents made her feel awkward. She talked fast and furiously. Several times she got scared that Jim might find them, and on one occasion she almost panicked and put them on her kitchen walls. But she didn’t want them on her walls—her walls were fine. So far as she could see they were likely to rot in the closet. She could not imagine putting them in a shopping bag and walking over to Albans Road again, and in time could not remember why she had been so bold as to buy them in the first place. They were a conundrum, always there. She bitterly regretted not having taken Emma on the shopping trip; she could then have innocently suggested getting Hank some posters to cheer him up. Emma would have thought it a great idea. They could have taken them by together, and that would have been that. Still, it wouldn’t have been quite the same; she didn’t want Emma in on it particularly. She wanted to take the posters in and put them up herself.