Promised Land (12 page)

”I never liked it all that much,“ Pam said. ”When I was a kid my mother never wanted me in the kitchen. She said I’d be messy. So when I got married I couldn’t cook anything.“

Susan said, ”I couldn’t cook, really, when I got married either.“

”Harv taught me,“ Pam said. ”I think he kind of liked to cook, but…“ She shrugged. ”That was the wife’s job. So I did it. Funny how you cut yourself off from things you like because of… of nothing. Just convention, other people’s assumptions about what you ought to be and do.“

”Yet often they are our own assumptions, aren’t they,“ Susan said. ”I mean where do we get our assumptions about how things are or ought to be? How much is there really a discrete identifiable self trying to get out?“ I drank some Burgundy.

”I’m not sure I follow,“ Pam said.

”It’s the old controversy,“ Susan said. ”Nature-nurture. Are you what you are because of genetics or because of environment? Do men make history or does history make men?“

Pam Shepard smiled briefly. ”Oh yes, nature-nurture, Child Growth and Development, Ed. 103. I don’t know, but I know I got shoved into a corner I didn’t want to be in.“ She drank some of her wine, and held her glass toward the bottle. Not fully liberated. Fully liberated you pour the wine yourself. Or maybe the half-gallon bottle was too heavy. I filled her glass. She looked at the wine a minute. ”So did Harvey,“ she said.

”Get shoved in a corner?“ Susan said.

”Money?“ Susan asked.

”No, not really. Not money exactly. It was more being important, being a man that mattered, being a man that knew the score, knew what was happening. A mover and shaker. I don’t think he cared all that much about the money, except it proved that he was on top. Does that make sense?“ She looked at me.

”Yeah, like making the football team,“ I said. ”I understand that.“

”You ought to,“ Susan said.

Pam Shepard said, ”Are you like that?“

I shrugged. Susan said, ”Yes, he’s like that. In a specialized way.“

Pam Shepard said, ”I would have thought he wasn’t but I don’t know him very well.“

Susan smiled. ”Well, he isn’t exactly, but he is if that makes any sense.“

I said, ”What the hell am I, a pot roast, I sit here and you discuss me?“

Susan said, ”I think you described yourself quite well this morning.“

”Before or after you smothered me with passionate kisses?“

”Long before,“ she said.

”Oh,“ I said.

Pam Shepard said, ”Well, why aren’t you in the race? Why aren’t you grunting and sweating to make the team, be a star, whatever the hell it is that Harvey and his friends are trying to do?“

”It’s not easy to say. It’s an embarrassing question because it requires me to start talking about integrity and self-respect and stuff you recently lumped under John Wayne movies. Like honor. I try to be honorable. I know that’s embarrassing to hear. It’s embarrassing to say. But I believe most of the nonsense that Thoreau was preaching. And I have spent a long time working on getting myself to where I could do it. Where I could live life largely on my own terms.“

”Thoreau?“ Pam Shepard said. ”You really did read all those books, didn’t you.“

”And yet,“ Susan said, ”you constantly get yourself involved in other lives and in other people’s troubles. This is not Walden Pond you’ve withdrawn to.“

I shrugged again. It was hard to say it all. ”Everybody’s got to do something,“ I said.

”But isn’t what you do dangerous?“ Pam Shepard said.

”Yeah, sometimes.“

”He likes that part,“ Susan said. ”He’s very into tough. He won’t admit it, maybe not even to himself, but half of what he’s doing all the time is testing himself against other men. Proving how good he is. It’s competition, like football.“

”Is that so?“ Pam Shepard said to me.

”Maybe. It goes with the job.“

”It’s a job that lets me choose,“ I said.

”And yet it cuts you off from a lot of things,“ Susan said. ”You’ve cut yourself off from family, from home, from marriage.“

”I don’t know,“ I said. ”Maybe.“

”More than maybe,“ Susan said. ”It’s autonomy. You are the most autonomous person I’ve ever seen and you don’t let anything into that. Sometimes I think the muscle you’ve built is like a shield, like armor, and you keep yourself private and alone inside there. The integrity complete, unviolated, impervious, safe even from love.“

”We’ve gone some distance away from Harv Shepard, Suze,“ I said. I felt as if I’d been breathing shallow for a long time and needed a deep inhale.

”Not as far as it looks,“ Susan said. ”One reason you’re not into the corner that Pam’s husband is in is because he took the chance. He married. He had kids. He took the risk of love and relationship and the risk of compromise that goes with it.“

”But I don’t think Harvey was working for us, Susan,“ Pam Shepard said.

”It’s probably not that easy,“ I said. ”It’s probably not something you can cut up like that. Working for us, working for him.“

”Well,“ Pam Shepard said. ”There’s certainly a difference.“

”Sometimes I think there’s never a difference and things never divide into column A and column B,“ I said. ”Perhaps he had to be a certain kind of man for you, because he felt that was what you deserved. Perhaps to him it meant manhood, and perhaps he wanted to be a man for you.“

Pam said, ”Machismo again.“

”Yeah, but machismo isn’t another word for rape and murder. Machismo is really about honorable behavior.“

”Then why does it lead so often to violence?“

”I don’t know that it does, but if it does it might be because that’s one of the places that you can be honorable.“

”That’s nonsense,“ Pam Shepard said.

”You can’t be honorable when it’s easy,“ I said. ”Only when it’s hard.“

”When the going gets tough, the tough get going?“ The scorn in Pam Shepard’s voice had more body than the wine. ”You sound like Nixon.“

I did my David Frye impression. ”I am not a crook,“ I said and looked shifty.

”Oh, hell, I don’t know,“ she said. ”I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore. I just know it hasn’t worked. None of it, not Harv, not the kids, not me, not the house and the business and the club and growing older, nothing.“

”Yeah,“ I said, ”but we’re working on it, my love.“

She nodded her head and began to cry.

I couldn’t think of much to do about Pam Shepard crying so I cleared the table and hoped that Susan would come up with something. She didn’t. And when we left, Pam Shepard was still snuffling and teary. It was nearly eleven and we were overfed and sleepy. Susan invited me up to Smithfield to spend the night and I accepted, quite graciously, I thought, considering the aggravation she’d been giving me.

”You haven’t been slipping off to encounter groups under an assumed name, have you?“ I said.

She shook her head. ”I don’t quite know why I’m so bitchy lately,“ she said.

”It’s not bitchy, exactly. It’s pushy. I feel from you a kind of steady pressure. An obligation to explain myself.“

”And you don’t like a pushy broad, right?“

”Don’t start up again, and don’t be so goddamned sensitive. You know I don’t mean the cliche. If you think I worry about role reversal and who keeps in whose place, you’ve spent a lot of time paying no attention to me.“

”True,“ she said. ”I’m getting a little hyped about the whole subject.“

”What whole subject? That’s one of my problems. I think I know the rules of the game all right, but I don’t know what the game is.“

”Man-woman relationships, I guess.“

”All of them or me and you.“

”Both.“

”Terrific, Suze, now we’ve, got it narrowed down.“

”Don’t make fun. I think being middle-aged and female and single one must think about feminism, if you wish, women’s rights and women vis-a-vis men. And of course that includes you and me. We care about each other, we see each other, we go on, but it doesn’t develop. It seems directionless.“

”You mean marriage?“

”I don’t know. I don’t think I mean just that. My God, am I still that conventional? I just know there’s a feeling of incompleteness in us. Or, I suppose I can only speak for me, in me, and in the way I perceive our relationship.“

”It ain’t just wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.“

”No, I know that. That’s not a relationship. I know I’m more than good tail. I know I matter to you. But…“

I paid my fifteen cents on the Mystic River Bridge and headed down its north slope, past the construction barricades that I think were installed when the bridge was built.

”I don’t know what’s wrong with me,“ she said.

”Maybe it’s wrong with me,“ I said.

There weren’t many cars on the Northeast Expressway at this time of night. There was a light fog and the headlights made a scalloped apron of light in front of us as we drove.

”Maybe,“ she said. Far right across the salt marshes the lights of the G.E. River Works gleamed. Commerce never rests.

”Explaining myself is not one of the things I do really well, like drinking beer, or taking a nap. Explaining myself is clumsy stuff. You really ought to watch what I do, and, pretty much, I think, you’ll know what I am. Actually I always thought you knew what I am.“

”I think I do. Much of it is very good, a lot of it is the best I’ve ever seen.“

”Ah-ha,“ I said.

”I don’t mean that,“ Susan said. The mercury arc lights at the newly renovated Saugus Circle made the wispy fog bluish and the Blue Star Bar look stark and unreal across Route 1.

”I know pretty well what you are,“ she said. ‘It’s what we are that is bothersome. What the hell are we, Spenser?”

I swung off Route 1 at the Walnut Street exit and headed in toward Smithfield. “We’re together,” I said. “Why have we got to catalogue. Are we a couple? A pair? I don’t know. You pick one.”

“Are we lovers?”

On the right Hawkes Pond gleamed through a very thin fringe of trees. It was a long narrow pond and across it the land rose up in a wooded hill crowned with power lines. In the moonlight, with a wispy fog, it looked pretty good.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. We’re lovers.”

“For how long?” Susan said.

“For as long as we live,” I said. “Or until you can’t bear me anymore. Whichever comes first.”

We were in Smithfield now, past the country club on the left, past the low reedy meadow that was a bird sanctuary, and the place where they used to have a cider mill, to Summer Street, almost to Smithfield Center. Almost to Susan’s house.

“For as long as we live will come first,” Susan said.

I drove past Smithfield Center with its old meeting house on the triangular common. A banner stretched across the street announced some kind of barbecue, I couldn’t catch what in the dark. I put my hand and Susan took and we held hands to her house.

Everything was wet and glistening in the dark, picking up glints from the streetlights. It wasn’t quite raining, but the fog was very damp and the dew was falling. Susan’s house was a small cape, weathered shingles, flagstone walk, lots of shrubs. The front door was a Colonial red with small bull’s-eye glass windows in the top. Susan unlocked it and went in. I followed her and shut the door. In the dark silent living room, I put my hands on Susan’s shoulders and turned her slowly toward me, and put my arms around her. She put her face against my chest and we stood that way, wordless and still for a long time.

“For as long as we live,” I said.

“Maybe longer,” Susan said. There was an old steeple clock with brass works on the mantel in the living room and while I couldn’t see in the dark, I could hear it ticking loudly as we stood there pressed against each other. I thought about how nice Susan smelled, and about how strong her body felt, and about how difficult it is to say what you feel. And I said, “Come on, honey, let’s go to bed.” She didn’t move, just pressed harder against me and I reached down with my left hand and scooped up her legs and carried her to the bedroom. I’d been there before and had no trouble in the dark.

In the morning, still damp from the shower, we headed back for the Cape, stopped on the way for steak and eggs in a diner and got to the hotel room I still owned about noon. The fog had lifted and the sun was as clean and bright as we were, though less splendidly dressed. In my mailbox was a note to call Harv Shepard.

I called him from my room while Susan changed into her bathing suit.

“Spenser,” I said, “what do you want?”

“You gotta help me.”

“That’s what I was telling you just a little while back,” I said.

“I gotta see you, it’s, it’s outta control. I can’t handle it. I need help. That, that goddamned nigger shoved one of my kids. I need help.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come over.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want you here. I’ll come there. You in the hotel?”

“Yep.” I gave him my room number. “I’ll wait for you.”

Susan was wiggling her way into a one-piece bathing suit.

“Anything?” she said.

“Yeah, Shepard’s coming apart. I guess Hawk made a move at one of the kids and Shepard’s in a panic. He’s coming over.”

“Hawk scares me,” Susan said. She slipped her arms through the shoulder straps.

“He scares me too, my love.”

“He’s…” She shrugged. “Don’t go against him.”

“Better me than Shepard,” I said.

“Why better you than Shepard?”

“Because I got a chance and Shepard has none.”

“Why not the police?”

“We’ll have to ask Shepard that. Police are okay by me. I got no special interest in playing Russian roulette with Hawk. Shepard called him a nigger.”

Susan shrugged. “What’s that got to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I wish he hadn’t done that. It’s insulting.”

“My God, Spenser, Hawk has threatened this man’s life, beaten him up, abused his children, and you’re worried about a racial slur?”

“Hawk’s kind of different,” I said.

She shook her head. “So the hell are you,” she said. “I’m off to the pool to work on my tan. When you get through you can join me there. Unless you decide to elope with Hawk.”

“Miscegenation,” I said. “Frightful.”

She left. About two minutes later Shepard arrived. He was moving better now. Some of the stiffness had gone from his walk, but confidence had not replaced it. He had on a western-cut, black-checked leisure suit and a white shirt with black stitching, the collar out over the lapels of the suit. There was a high shine on his black-tassled loafers and his face was gray with fear.