Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (9 page)

He saw her that night and the next. They parted for the weekend because she had a business appointment in Boston. Finally they settled into a pattern of spending at least three nights a week together in her apartment. His mother was calm about his comings and goings and asked no questions.

As for Barbara, she didn’t tell him she was thirty, which he guessed her to be. And he didn’t tell her he was eighteen, which he was sure she didn’t think he was. He didn’t tell her he would be leaving New York in September either. He felt if he told her, she would be mad as hell.

Barbara Traynor made him feel both dumb and smart, strong and clumsy, wise and silly. The only things he told her about himself were current history, the daily ups and downs of Aubernon and Cagney. She had one piece of advice for everything that took place during the business day. “Screw it.”

He had heard cursing before, but never combined with such sophisticated wisdom. He’d never heard anyone express the idea that an account executive who insisted on delivering the sales promotion material to Mr. Aubernon himself instead of entrusting it to Luis was out to “do a number” on him. It was exciting to be molded by her and he began to have the first disloyal thoughts about Mrs. Schwartz, who lived in an unreal world. Barbara lived in the world as it really was.

Washington was filled with crooks and worse, she told him as they watched the television news. What could be worse than crooks? Crooks who were puppets of the Mafia? Everyone in Washington was a puppet of the Mafia. Maybe not Ted Kennedy or Rockefeller. They didn’t need the money, but they were dumb and depended on creeps to tell them what to think. What creeps were those? The intellectuals. Pathetic, homely scroungers, Jews who were Jew haters, who were out to screw the middle class in the name of liberalism. They hated the middle class because they were hopelessly middle-class themselves.

What’s more, the system was breaking down. People didn’t stop for red lights anymore. Car repairmen didn’t repair your car. At times, they actually broke it. Doctors didn’t cure anything, and god only knew what dentists were doing in those tiny covered up spaces.

That summer of 1969, on July 20, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. “Absolutely bloody marvelous,” said a London clerk. “It means nothing to me,” said Pablo Picasso. “I have no opinion about it and I don’t care.” That’s what Barbara said, too.

Her cynicism seemed just right for the late sixties, years in which everything had gone wrong – major assassinations, the Pueblo, the suspicion that perhaps America could be…yes! in the wrong. Then, too, the cynicism didn’t affect him. The system she found so loathsome was bending over to befriend him. The last two weeks in July and the first in August seemed like the best weeks of his life. He was relaxed, optimistic and the picture of health. At least once a week, she told him he was the best lay she’d ever had.

He was very interested, although he didn’t tell her, in how she took care of herself. Her morning routine: raisin bran, a handful of vitamins, twenty sit-ups and twenty-five hip rolls (she sat naked on the rug and waddled across the room on her hips to keep them from spreading.) The hip rolls were excruciatingly seductive and he had a feeling she was more faithful to them when he was in the audience.

With mystical attention, he watched her put on makeup.

“Didn’t your mother put on makeup?”

“No. My mother put on Mentholatum. She put it up her nose and on her throat and dabbed it on her pillow.” It was the truth. The idea of taking such care of your body was new to him and he was disappointed in himself for having been so lax. He began doing sit-ups, too. She spent ten minutes every night floss ing her teeth, up and down, up and down. Well, so did he. He let her take him to get his hair cut and shaped by a short Englishman who brushed it forward like a monk and let it curl innocently around his temples and face. As sometimes happens, the haircut took him completely out of one category – good-looking, safe, polite – and put him in another – strong-willed, uncommitted, traveling a slightly dangerous path.

When she saw him, his grandmother said, “Ay, ay, ay,” as if she was watching something of unendurable suspense.

Oddly, the more he learned from Barbara Traynor, the less he liked her. Her cynicism wore him down. How could everyone be a cheat, a liar, a no-talent coward? She sent food back in restaurants, something he never got used to. She refused wine. It seemed she was single-handedly paying back the world for thousands of years of repression. Moreover, she was a sexual bully.

“What is this?” she would ask, placing his hand on her lap in some public place.

“You know what it is.”

“No, I don’t. Tell me.” Her voice would get louder in warning that she was quite capable of making a scene.

“It’s your….awh, come on, Barb.”

“Say it.” And when he refused, “all right then, describe it to me.”

“Private. Unseen. Mysterious.”

“No, no, no. Hot. Wet. Squishy. Squishy right now.”

“All right. Hot. Wet. Squishy,” he would reply in a cold, dry voice. At such times he felt he had leaped ahead in life experience. He felt like a weary adult dealing with a spoiled child.

“Now,” she took a deep breath. “What goes into it?”

It was a never-ending bully game and he was changing. Taking on some of the characteristics of his haircut. Perhaps he was purifying himself for the journey to Princeton, pulling away from all the things that had looked so blessed and glamorous in June. Even Mr. Lande appeared sad in his yellowing tan. Often, he would corner Luis in the hall and study him with narrowed eyes. “You’re a good-looking boy,” he would muse, as if Luis weren’t present. “You’ll always have a place here. Always.”

Luis didn’t feel flattered by this approval. Mr. Lande didn’t know how valuable or worthless he was to the company. “I haven’t really done anything,” he would protest.

“You will, you will. You’re programmed to do okay.” He waited to hear from Luis. “I can tell you your future right now. Where are you going off to? Harvard?”

“Princeton.”

“Princeton, Harvard, it doesn’t matter.” He waited again to hear from Luis. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.”

“The things you’ve been told are important aren’t that important and the things you’d think are true aren’t always true. Take this building, for example. Now you’d think I’d be able to have my offices in any damn building I liked, right?” Luis nodded. “Not so. I hate this building. I hate the look of it. I hate the windows. They don’t open. I feel afraid when I stand at them and look down. It makes my head hurt every time I think of how much rent I pay to have my office in this ugly, useless box. The bank, on the other hand, loves this building. They have their office in one just like it, therefore, it makes me look solid. They lend me millions of dollars because they believe me to be a responsible, forward-looking person. Forward-looking, but not fruity, you understand. If your building is old, with curved lines and windows that open and have proper sills so you can look out without feeling fearful, then you’re a fruit or a potential fruit and un-bankable.” He waited a long moment as if he expected Luis to protest. “Now how does that translate into life?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He knew. “It’s all a game,” he finally said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Lande. “A very silly game. But, Luis,” Mr. Lande lowered his voice, “it’s the only game we’ve got so it’s still very important, right?”

“Right, sir.”

“Good. You come back and work here any summer you want to. There’ll always be a spot for you.”

“Thank you, sir.” He walked away feeling strange. He knew Mr. Lande meant everything he said, but he also knew that without the huge organization and wealth to back up his philosophy, Mr. Lande would sound like the village idiot. You could afford to be cynical and laugh at success only when you were very, very successful.

Around the second week in August, he realized that he might not want to be Barbara’s slave forever. Two jobs that she had worked hard on fell through and her mood turned foul. She went around the apartment slamming drawers, cursing and being impatient with her clients when they called. “How the hell should I know why they didn’t buy it? Everyone’s afraid to make a decision so they’ll go with something bland that won’t offend, what can I tell you?”

She was bossy and impatient in bed, too. He didn’t like being on call. What would happen if he said no three times in a row? On the worst of these nights, he said, “I’m going to sleep at home tonight. I think you’ll be better off alone.”

“Oh, you do, do you? What gave you that idea?”

“You’re in a bitchy mood.”

“I’m entitled. Grow up, for god sakes. Nobody can be la-di-dah all the time. Grown-ups have bitchy moods. Are you a grown-up?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked deep into his face. “How old are you, anyway?”

He considered lying but he was tired of being bullied. “Eighteen.”

“How old? Come on, come on.”

“I’m eighteen. I’m leaving to start at Princeton in two weeks.” Why did he feel the thrill of fear? What could she do to him?

“Jesus. Are you telling the truth?” She stared at him dumb-founded. Then she began to laugh. “Oh, my god. Wait till they get a load of you at Princeton.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” She flounced around the room coquettishly. “It’s just that…you know…they say ‘fatha’ and ‘motha.’ You’re not your typical Princetonian.” She cocked her head as if trying to picture it all. “Make believe you’re Brazilian, they’ll have more respect for you, believe me.” She was perfectly serious, her old pragmatic self. “You won’t go through the minority thing. You can be a rich Brazilian playboy, son of a cattle magnate or is that Venezuela where they raise the cattle?”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence.” He was glad she was being so bitchy. It made leaving that much easier and he really felt like getting out of that decorated, scented room.

A week passed during which he put Barbara Traynor out of his mind, although from time to time he felt a twinge of uneasiness. She wasn’t the type to let someone else call the shots. Would she let him go, just like that? A few days before he was to leave for orientation, he met her, at her insistence, at a bleak luncheonette on the corner of 60th and Second Avenue. She was waiting in a booth and looked both tired and pale. He immediately felt sorry for her. Her looks depended heavily on her tan and her energy, both of which had left her. The first sentence out of her mouth didn’t cheer him either. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

“Pregnant?” It took him a moment to adjust. He looked around the room, which was square, to an old man eating a meat loaf dinner across the aisle from them. “You said you had a loop, remember? The Lippes Loop.” He was sure she’d say, ‘Oh, yes,’ and he’d be relieved. She said nothing. They had joked about it, both proudly reciting Browning’s poem about Fra Lippo Lippi. Now she was telling him there was no loop. All that lovemaking, two or three times a night. With no loop? She was a rotten liar.

“It fell out.”

“Fell out? How could it fall out?”

“A certain percentage fall out, mine fell out.” She said all this with a cold deliberateness that made his stomach hurt. The old man eating his dinner had false teeth and they didn’t fit well. He had to keep retrieving the un-chewable bits from his mouth. Luis found it hard to look away from him. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Oh, god. I’m the only woman dumb enough to get pregnant by a minor. Oh, god,” she began to cry with frustration. “…a teenage father. I had a baby by a baby. My adopted son is the father of my child.” She didn’t mean to be funny. She was looking past him as if searching for a more mature, understanding audience. “I had a teenage lover.”

“Don’t worry,” he said impulsively. “Do you want an abortion?” He took one of her hands and held it. “I’ll help you.”

“Help me? How can you help me? There are twenty clinics waiting to vacuum-clean my womb. They’re over-staffed! They’re practically religious about it. One of the men I represent did a magazine picture story about it. What Happens When You Go to an Abortion Clinic – A Step-by-Step Guide. I don’t need your help to get an abortion.” She looked at him contemptuously, as if he had said he would help her to menstruate. Or chew. Or breathe.

“Then what’s the problem?” No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his sentences from sounding harsh. He didn’t mean them to be harsh. He just couldn’t get to the heart of what she wanted from him.

“The problem is I’m thirty-two years old and…well…I’m not one hundred percent sure I want to give it up.” There it was, the bombshell, and it had its full impact on him. He had just decided to forget about Barbara Traynor and her cynicism and prepare himself for the year ahead. He had sighed with relief to be back in apartment 11F, asexual but comforting. Now she was telling him that she wanted to bind him to her forever. A baby. His baby. Out in the world forever. “No, no, no.” He could have sworn he didn’t say it aloud.

“Look you,” she hissed, “this is just a courtesy, my telling you. You have nothing to say about it. Not one fucking thing.”

“Oh, yes, I do. It involves me. And…I’m responsible, too. I don’t even believe in abortion, “ he said in the direction of the old man across the aisle. The old man gave him a quizzical look. Barbara picked up her pocketbook and the check and walked out of the booth. He was about to detain her but then realized he had run out of things to say. He couldn’t imagine what he had seen in her. Her features looked so coarse. Was it the pregnancy that suddenly made her look so horsy?