Pages from a Cold Island (21 page)

I now asked Mary if we mightn
’
t drive around and look at some of the places Wilson had been fond of, mentioning all the food I had in the back seat of the Pinto and how I prayed it wouldn
’
t spoil. To this Mary suggested we immediately transfer the styrofoam container to her air-conditioned Impala and use her car.

I had to get out of Slim
’
s. The village fuck, who b
e
cause nobody said hello or paid her any mind must have been some other village
’
s fuck, had come into Slim
’
s and ordered a Coke. Her actions reminded me suddenly of someone else, and I found myself watching her intently out of the corner of my eye, hoping Mary wouldn
’
t notice. I hadn
’
t been fucked since the night of my farewell party on the island, nearly a month before, and that occasion had been one of the strangest encounters I
’
d ever had, as close to rape as I
’
d ever come.

We were having our rigatoni, marinara sauce and sausage feast at the big round corner table of the bar; the gang was shouting and laughing raucously; and then this woman I
’
d seen before came in, took a seat at the bar directly opposite our table, ordered an extra-dry martini, and turning her barstool halfway round to us got obliquely and mutely caught up in the spirit of the party, silently laughing on cue at the awful jokes, lifting her eyebrows in feigned but good-natured outrage at the furious obscenities, cooing with pleasurable surprise along with the others as I opened and read aloud my wacky cards and viewed my even wackier presents of farewell. She was about thirty, had short black hair, a marvelously compact little figure, and the fact that she was nicely groomed and always attired in dresses a
nd heels—unusual in Florida—sug
gested to me she might be an interior decorator or one of the many real estate saleswomen in the area.

I
’
d seen her in the Islander Room two or three times late in the evening with one or another well-dressed, wellheeled-looking guy, and as nothing ever happened there until ten (at the moment we had the room almost to our selves) when the first show began, I was surprised to see her that early and alone. So obviously did she seem to be enjoying our party from her short distance across the aisle, and so obviously did she seem to want to be a part of it, that I vigorously but with silent furtive stealth nodded my head two or three times for her to come over and take the empty chair next to mine, but to each summons she smiled jovially by way of declining, once wagging her finger fetchingly at me by way of saying I was obviously a nasty boy with nasty thoughts. Then she did something un mistakable. She asked the barmaid Diane for change for a dollar and directions to the pay phone and she did it so loudly that I had no doubt that whatever her motive—to prevent her calling another man?—she definitely wanted to be overheard.

Too excited to analyze motives, I said to myself, and I was sure I would,
“
I
’
m going to fuck her.
”
Then I excused myself to the gang, saying that if we were going to go on all through the night I
’
d have to take a shower and would return momentarily. The pay phone in the hotel was located on the wall above a one-step landing leading up the front stairs, just off the lobby. I stood in the middle of the lobby watching her for some moments. She had her back to me, she was facing the phone, and in her uplifted left hand she tentatively held a dime, as though she were having trouble recalling a number. I thought,
That phony
. Moving quickly and noiselessly across the carpeting, I stepped up onto the landing, slid my hands ar
ound her waist, clasped them to
gether at her tummy, and pulled her lovely little fanny back into my semi-erection. We hung suspended there, hotly riveted. She had the dec
ency not to feign outrage or in
dignation.

Speaking quietly over her shoulder into her ear, I said,
“
Who are you calling?
”

“
A friend.
”

“
Do you have to call him now?
”

“
Probably not.
”

Grabbing her still upraised hand with the dime in it, and squeezing with all the base fury of my excitation, I dragged her up to the landing of the second floor. There she yanked her hand free and in perfect control told me that that kind of thing was not in the least necessary. I then followed her—walking as cool as a Ziegfeld chorine up a ramp, she was—up to the third floor where I led her to my digs. Once there I was so distraught I couldn
’
t wait for her to undress. Seating her on the bed, I took hold of her shoulders and pushed her back with her head against the pillow, then dropped my
“
foul fucking Bermudas
”
to the floor, lifted up her skirt, remove
d her panties, mounted and pene
trated her wetness. Leaving her in the shower, where after wards we
’
d gone together, I was back with the gang within a half-hour; and within another half-hour she—freshly showered and ready—had been joined at the bar by one of the suave joes I
’
d seen her with before. For the rest of the evening I watched her for some sign, but she never looked in my direction and all I could think of was Robertson Davies
’
Mary Dempster in
Fifth Business
. When she
’
d been found in the gravel pit by her minister husband and half the males of her village being passively mounted by a tramp. Parson Amasa Dempster had asked his heartfelt
why
, and Mary had said,
“
He was very civil,
‘
Masa. And he wanted it so badly.
”

And now this village fuck was doing the same thing that other had done, sipping on her Coke, turning round on her counter stool, and, trying her bes
t to focus those hide
ous eyes, listing toward the various booths with people in them, including Mary and me, as though she desperately wanted to get invited into one of them and share the Sun day morning of less lonely souls. Too, I had no doubt that Mary
’
s striking femininity
was hardly abetting my abomina
ble satyriasis—talk about prisoners of sex!—and I had to get some air in my lungs, to see the green lush of the early summer trees, to do something to help me get it together and keep my demeanor commen
surate with the solemn na
ture of my pilgrimage.

9

On May 18, 1972, Wilson wrote Mary the last letter he would send to her. It was
verification of an earlier tele
phone call from Wellfleet in which he
’
d designated his ar rival time on the 3 ist and asked Mary to pick him up at the Utica airport. In the letter was a lengthy piece on Wilson from England with an accompanying caricature depicting him with prominent double chins. Wilson was pleased with the caricature, and shortly after his arrival he borrowed it back from Mary to show to someone else, promising to return it. Mary was never to see it again.

Recently direct flights from Boston to Utica had been canceled by Allegheny Airlines and to his chagrin Wilson had had to fly to Syracuse. As it would do for twenty-two days of June, before and after both his death and Hurricane Agnes, the rain came in squalls the day of Wilson
’
s arrival and his flight was put in a holding pattern over Syracuse for some time while Mary waited uneasily below in the te
rmi
nal. At the announcement
that his plane was at last land
ing, Mary ran to the parking lot and moved her Impala close to an exit to prevent Wilson
’
s getting wet. When she returned to the disem
barking ramp she found him wait
ing nervously in his wheelchair attended by a porter. As he invariably was, he was dressed in a brown pin-stripe suit, long-sleeved white shirt and dark patterned tie. On his lap he held a very British, scruffy and torn Mackintosh, and on his head he wore his wide-brimmed and floppy felt hat that might once have been beige but was now sweat and finger-stained to a dark unwholesome color. He had two pieces of old brown leather luggage, with straps and gilt-initialed
EW
, one stuffed with clothes, the other bulging with manuscripts and books. He was ready to do
“
a piece of work.
”
He had his favorite walking stick made from the handle of one of his mother
’
s umbrellas. Whereas years ago Scott Fitzgerald had remarked another stick of Wilson
’
s as an affectation befitting a young
Vanity Fair
editor and dandy about
Manhattan
, time had done what it does—things, as Fitzgerald himself might have said, had now
“
come round
”
and after half a century Wilson had at last
“
grown up
”
to his walking stick. To Mary
’
s surprise Wilson sported a McGovern button on his lapel. For years Wilson had seemed to despair increasingly of political solutions and when Mary playfully asked him what the McGovern button was all about, Wilson said.
“
But of course we must all vote for McGovern!
”
It was, Mary said, a trumpeting command issued from Wilson
’
s Olympianly pedantic heights.

To Wilson
’
s ironically apologetic smile at the porter— it had the character of a bemused shrug at the fatuousness of women—Mary focused her Instamatic, handed it to the porter, and asked him to take a picture of Wilson and her. She then sidled gingerly up to Wilson
’
s chair and rested her hand palm-down on his shoulder while he sat, a fallen, embattled and tolerant eagle. Either because of the poor light or the porter
’
s incompetence the picture was never to reproduce, and Mary was glad for the porter the camera hadn
’
t been a Polaroid so Wilson could have immediate evidence that someone was screwing up. Had Mary ever been cognizant of Wilson
’
s much-remarked rudeness to people (and on this score sh
e insisted he was much ma
ligned) it was with porters, waitresses, sales clerks—with menials—and after she
’
d come to know him she viewed this gruff impatience as little more than a comically Dickensian eccentricity. She said he approached such people in a state of heady exasperation, as
if, before he even made his de
mands known, he was certain the fates had set these people to thwarting his simplest needs.

A dozen years before he had twice come into Kramer
’
s Pharmacy and without identifying himself had demanded the New York newspapers he believed held in reserve for him. When Mary explained she held no newspapers for him, he had literally shuddered and left the store in a grandiose huff, the magisterial frustration of the prince fully aware that lackeys were conspiring to put him off his day. On the third occasion Mary saw him coming and in literal fear fled to the prescription section at the back of the store and asked Kramer to wait on him. Afterwards Kramer explained to Mary who he was (it meant nothing to Mary), that Wilson was only in the area at certain times of the year and that as he was a
“
big man
”
they best make sure he got his newspapers.

Shortly thereafter Mary and Wilson became friendly.

She read his impressive biographical data in Who
’
s Who, and he said he wanted her to do some part-time typing for him. Only recently he had learned that two of his plays had been translated into Hungarian, and he
’
d set himself the task of learning the language to check the translations. When he learned Mary knew Hungarian he was more insistent than ever.

Some days later Mary went to the stone house to discuss the job further, and when she knocked on the door a voice from on high demanded
Who-is-it?
in a tone that suggested Is-it-anyone-who-should-be-presuming-on-me? When Mary was at last told to enter, she did so and to her horror the first things she saw were white hairless bare legs descending the staircase. To her immense relief a bathrobe at last came into view, followed by the rest of Wilson, unshaven and holding in his hand a tumbler full of Scotch. It was ten-thirty in the morning and Mary
’
s worst expectations were being borne out (what Mary didn
’
t learn until later was that Wilson had worked all the preceding day and all night, which he often did in those days, and was only then un winding and preparing himself for bed). When Wilson asked her if she had a typewriter, Mary said she did but wasn
’
t all that sure she wanted to work for such a dangerous character.

“
Dangerous?
”
Wilson said, whereupon Mary asked him what he had to say about his four marriages that were known to the gossips of Boonville. Wilson had this to say:
“
I don
’
t recommend it.
”
And Mary went to work for him.

By no means did Mary wish to suggest that Wilson was beyond inflicting hurt, but when he did so she came finally to understand it as Wilson
’
s way of saying. But you are not living up to my expectations—you are not at all being the brilliant and stalwart person I know you to be. A few years before, in what one suspects was a Pygmalio
n gesture, Wil
son had persuaded Mary to take night courses in English and literature courses at Utica College, and to her immense pride she had with some finagling persuaded Wilson to come and talk with her classmates in a journalism course. At that time Wilson was already
“
the dean of American critics,
”
“
the grand old man of American Letters
”
—substi
tute whatever
cliché
one wishes—and I doubt he
’
d conde
scended to have
“
a dialogue
”
with students for two decades or better. Mary, her classmates and her teacher Dick Costa were in a state of grand agitation at his arrival. Wilson
’
s ground rules were simple. The student could ask anything he chose, and by the same token Wilson could if he elected choose not to answer. For most of the evening things could not have gone more swimmingly. Wilson was charming, witty, brilliant and direct and he smilingly and tolerantly fended all questions, dumb and otherwise.

Because Mary saw Wilson practically every day, she felt it would be selfish and an act of extreme discourtesy to her classmates to take any of Wilson
’
s time with her own queries, and she did not do so until late in the session when the questions from the floor appeared to be lagging. Now Mary could not even recall what question she
’
d put. What she did remember—what she would always remember—was that the words were no s
ooner out of her mouth than Wil
son
’
s eagle eyes beneath
his massive hawklike brows nar
rowed furiously, and that his forehead bobbed angrily in and out at her, the predator signaling imminent attack.

“
Mary! … You must never …
never
ask me a question like that again!
”

Afterwards Dick Costa had a party at his house for Wilson and his students, but Mary had been so humiliated she abandoned Wilson and drove straight home, weeping. Wilson had to stay the night at Utica
’
s Fort Schuyler Club and the next day get to Talcottville the best way he could. When some days later Wilson telephoned Mary he finessed the entire episode by ignoring it and instead inquired if the reason for her absence from his presence was illness. But he did apologize in the best way he knew how. Ordinarily it was his wont to summon by saying,
“
Come at four—I have some typing for you.
”
On this day he asked if Mary might not do him the kindness of coming.

At her Impala at the Syracuse airport Mary became aware for the first time what a stroke of obstinate courage or of foolhardiness Wilson
’
s trip had been. Scorning both her and the porter
’
s help, Wilson rose from the wheelchair with the aid of his walking stick and with terribly protracted painfulness compounded by excessively labored breathing made his way into the front seat of the car. Mary recalled there was something indec
ent about his lingering perform
ance. His movements owned the kind of duality that out of propriety forced one to look away at the same time they held one in thrall. When I asked Mary why Wilson
’
s wife Elena had permitted him to make such a trip, Mary laughed and said that though she didn
’
t know Mrs. Wilson well, she
’
d never seen anyone prevent Wilson
’
s doing what he wanted to do.

“
He was—
”

“
Spoiled?
”
I volunteered.

“
Spoiled!
”
Mary cried.

Immediately after his death, obituaries and eulogies remarked Wilson
’
s
“
stuttering
”
and
“
funny way of talk
ing
”
but Mary chafed at these characterizations as wrongheaded. She never heard Wilson stutter in his life and his funny way of talking was
simply that his voice had some
what
“
a cooing pitch
”
a
nd he seldom spoke save in gram
matical sentences, structured paragraphs, and occasionally and off the top of his head in entire essays. If while having dinner Mary should ask him what constituted a good as opposed to a poor wine, there was apt to be an egregiously sustained pause before Wilson delivered,
in toto
, a history of vintage wine regions, the proper methods for tending the grape, and the mean temperatures and moisture amounts necessary to producing an exemplary bottle of wine. To be Wilson
’
s friend one had of necessity to be his pupil.

Whenever Mary picked him up at the airport it was Wilson
’
s custom to take her to dinner; and even after his near failure to negotiate th
e front seat of the Impala, Wil
son insisted on abiding by custom and stopping at one of his favorite restaurants, The Savoy in Rome. Among upstate Italians The Savoy has the reputation of making the best sauce between the St. Lawrence and New York City, and though Wilson abhorred poorly lighted dining rooms, which The Savoy
’
s is, he liked what he called the
“
garlic toast,
”
the marinara sauce, and the owner Pat Destito who in variably greeted Wilson with
“
Dr. Livingstone, I presume.
”

Even at The Savoy, Wilson did not entirely relax. He could not of course abide the jukebox, and whenever some one got caught up in the restaurant
’
s Italian atmosphere and played
“
Marie
”
Wilson literally cringed. For the life of him he could not fathom how the American Italian could turn the Italian
Oi
into the
Whay
of
Whhaaaaay Marie
, and though Mary couldn
’
t remember all the details she remem bered Wilson
’
s once talking at interminable and pedantic length about the colloquial and exclamatory
Oi
being common to Venetian gondoliers—or something to that effect—Wilson
’
s
“
setting the record straight.
”
With what seemed to Mary a pathetic reluctance, Wilson on this night set his pride to rest and sought her help in getting himself seated at their table, then apologized for being too weak to talk. No longer were there two preprandial daiquiris, with Wilson then switching to double Johnnie Walker Red Scotches, followed by a bottle or two of Piesporter with the meal. As Mary had been expected to do for a number of years, she no longer had t
o caution Wilson about his alco
holic intake—to
“
ration
”
; he had tacitly taken this upon himself. They had a single daiquiri, Mary had scallops, and Wilson his
“
garlic toast
”
and scrambled eggs and marinara sauce.