Promised Land (17 page)

“When I was a kid, I remember being out in western Mass some and they used to advertise Utica Club with a little character made out of the U and the C. I think he was called Ukie.” I coughed again, and finished the beer. Pam Shepard was leaning her backside on one of the two counter stools in my kitchen, her legs straight out in front of her and slightly apart so that the light summer print dress she wore pulled tight over the tops of her thighs. I wondered if tumescent could be a noun. I am a tumescent? Sounded good. She sipped a little of the beer from the can.

“Like it?” I said.

She nodded.

“And the plan? How about that.”

She shook her head.

“All right, you don’t like it. But will you go along? Don’t waste yourself. Go along. I can get you out of this mess. Let me.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m not pleased with myself, but I’ll go along. For Harvey and for the children and for myself. Probably mostly for myself…”

Ah-ha, the old puckish charm. I must use this power only for good.

I said, “Whew” and popped the top off another can of Utica Club. I put the water on for the spaghetti and started to tear lettuce for the salad.

“Want another beer,” I said. I put the lettuce in some ice water to crisp.

“Not yet,” she said. She sat still and sipped on the beer and watched me. I glanced at her occasionally and smiled and tried not to look too long at her thighs.

“I can’t figure you out,” she said. I sliced a red onion paper thin with a wide-bladed butcher knife.

“You mean how someone with my looks and talent ended up in this kind of business?”

“I was thinking more about all the conflicts in your character. You reek of machismo, and yet you are a very caring person. You have all these muscles and yet you read all those books. You’re sarcastic and a wise guy and you make fun of everything; and yet you were really afraid I’d say no a little while ago and two people you don’t even like all that well would get into trouble. And now here you are cooking me my supper and you’re obviously nervous at being alone with me in your apartment.”

“Obviously?”

“Obviously.”

“And you?”

“I too. But I’m just somebody’s middle-class housewife. I would have assumed that you were used to such things. Surely I can’t be the first woman you’ve made supper for?”

“I cook for Suze a lot,” I said. I cut some native tomatoes into wedges. And started on a green pepper.

“And for no one else?”

“Lately, just for Suze.”

“So what’s different about me? Why is there this sense of strain?”

“I’m not sure. It has to do with you being desirable and me being randy. I know that much. But it also has to do with a sense that we should leave it at that.”

“Why?” She had put the beer can down and her arms were folded under her breasts.

“I’m trying to get you and Harv back together and making a move at you doesn’t seem the best way to get that done. And, I don’t think Suze would like it all that much either.”

“Why would she have to know?”

“Because if I didn’t tell her then there would be things I kept from her. She couldn’t trust me.”

“But she wouldn’t know she couldn’t trust you.”

“Yeah, but she couldn’t.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No. See the fact would be that she couldn’t trust me. That I am not trustworthy. The fact that she didn’t know it would be simply another deception.”

“So you confess every indiscretion?”

“Every one she has a right to know about.”

“Have there been many?”

“Some.”

“And Susan objects?”

“No. Not generally. But she doesn’t know them. And she knows you. I think this would hurt her. Especially now. We’re at some kind of juncture. I’m not quite sure what, but I think this would be wrong. Damnit.”

“She is, I think, a very lucky woman.”

“Would you be willing to swear to that. Just recently she called me a horse’s ass.”

“That’s possible,” Pam Shepard said.

I sliced up three small pickling cucumbers, skin and all, and added them to my salad. I took the lettuce out of the water and patted it with a towel and then wrapped it and put it in the refrigerator. I checked my sauce, it was nearly melted. I added some seedless green grapes to the salad bowl. “The thing is, all that explanation didn’t do much for the randiness. I don’t think it’s fatal, but you can’t say I’m resting comfortably.”

Pam Shepard laughed. “That’s good to know. In fact, I thought about us going to bed together and the thought was pleasant. You look like you’d hurt and somehow I know you wouldn’t.”

“Tough but oh so gentle,” I said.

“But it isn’t going to happen, and it’s probably just as well. I don’t usually feel so good about myself after I’ve made it with someone but Harvey.” She laughed again, but this time harshly. “Come to think about it, I didn’t feel all that good the last few times I made it with Harvey.”

“Was that recently?”

She looked away from me. “Two years ago.”

“That embarrass you?”

She looked back. “Yes,” she said. “Very much. Don’t you think it should?”

“Yeah, maybe. On the other hand you’re not a sex vendomatic. He drops in two quarters and you come across. I guess you didn’t want to sleep with him.”

“I couldn’t stand it.”

“And you both figured you were frigid. So you hustled out evenings to prove you weren’t.”

“I guess so. Not very pretty, is it?”

“Nope. Unhappiness never is. How about Harv, what was he doing to dissipate tension?”

“Dissipate tension. My God, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk the way you do. I don’t know what he was doing. Masturbation perhaps. I don’t think he was with other women.”

“Why not?”

“Loyalty, masochism, maybe love, who knows.”

“Maybe a way to grind the guilt in deeper too.”

“Maybe, maybe all that.”

“It’s almost always all that. It seems the longer I’m in business, the more it’s always everything working at the same time.” I took two cans of Utica Club from the refrigerator and popped the tops and handed one to her.

“The thing is,” she said, “I never found out.”

“If you were frigid?”

“Yes. I’d get drunk and I’d thrash around and bite and moan and do anything anyone wanted done, but part of it all was faking and the next day I was always disgusted. I think one reason I wanted to ball you was so I could ask you afterwards if you thought I was frigid.” Her voice had a harsh sound to it, and when she said “ball you” it sounded wrong in her mouth. I knew the harsh sound. Disgust, I’d heard it before.

“For one thing, you’re asking the wrong question. Frigid isn’t a very useful word. You pointed that out to me a while ago. It doesn’t have a meaning. It simply means you don’t want to do something that someone else wants you to do. If you don’t enjoy screwing old Harv then why not say that. Why generalize. Say I don’t enjoy screwing Harvey, or, even better, I didn’t enjoy it last evening. Why turn it into an immutable law.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I think everything is that simple. But you’re probably right. Sex is as natural as breathing except it takes a partner and what one can do with ease, two mangle.”

“Does Susan… I’m sorry, I have no right to ask that.”

“Does Susan like to have sexual intercourse? Sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn’t. Occasionally, just occasionally now, that’s true of me. The occasions are more frequent than they were when I was nineteen.”

She smiled.

I took the lettuce out of the refrigerator, unwrapped it and tossed it in the bowl with the rest of the vegetables. My sauce was starting to bubble gently and I took enough spaghetti for two and tossed it into my boiling pot. “Plenty of water,” I said, “makes it less sticky, and it comes right back to a boil so it starts cooking right away. See that. I am a spaghetti superstar.”

“Why do you want Harvey and me back together? I’m not sure that’s your business. Or is it just American and apple pie. Marriages are made in heaven, they should never break up?”

“I just don’t think you’ve given it a real shot.”

“A real shot. Twenty-two years? That’s not a real shot?”

“That’s a long shot, but not a real one. You’ve been trying to be what you aren’t until you can’t swallow it anymore and now you think you’re frigid. He’s been panting after greatness all his life and he can’t catch it because he thinks it’s success.”

“If I’m not what I’ve been trying to be, what am I?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you could find out if you no longer decided that what you ought to be was what your husband expected you to be.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“You too, huh? Well, look, if he’s disappointed in you it doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It could mean he’s wrong.”

She shook her head. “Of course, I mean that’s no news flash. That’s every woman’s problem. I know that.”

“Don’t generalize on me. I don’t know if it’s every woman’s problem, or if it’s only a woman’s problem. What I do know is that it might be one of your problems. If so, it can be solved. It’s one thing to know something. It’s another to feel it, to act as if it were so, in short, to believe it.”

“And how does one learn to believe something?”

“One talks for a while with a good psychotherapist.”

“Oh God, a shrink?”

“There’s good ones and bad ones. Like private eyes. I can put you in touch with some good ones.”

“Former clients?”

“No, Suze knows a lot about that stuff. She’s a guidance person and takes it seriously.”

“Is that the answer, a damned shrink? Everything that happens some psychiatrist is in on it. Every time some kid gets an F the shrink’s got to have his two cents’ worth.”

“You ever try it?”

“No.”

“Harv?”

“No. He wanted me to, see if they could find out why I was frigid. But he didn’t want to go too. Said there was nothing wrong with him. Didn’t want some goddamned headshrinker prying around in his business trying to convince him he was sick.”

“Doesn’t have to be a psychiatrist, you know. Could be a good social worker. You ought to talk with Suze about it. But Harv’s got the wrong language again, just like frigid. Doesn’t help to talk about ’wrong‘ with a big W. You got a problem. They can help. Sometimes.”

“What about all these people they commit to asylums for no reason and how in murder cases they can’t agree on anything. One side gets a shrink to say he’s crazy and the other side gets one to say he’s sane.”

“Okay, psychiatry boasts as many turkeys as any other business, maybe more. But the kinds of things you’re talking about aren’t relevant. Those things come from asking psychiatrists to do what they aren’t equipped to do. Good ones know that, I think. Good ones know that what they can do is help people work out problems. I don’t think they are very good at curing schizophrenia or deciding whether someone is legally sane. That’s bullshit. But they might be quite useful in helping you get over defining yourself in your husband’s terms, or helping your husband get over defining himself in Cotton Mather’s terms.”

“Cotton Mather?”

“Yeah, you know, the old Puritan ethic.”

“Oh, that Cotton Mather. You do read the books, don’t you?”

“I got a lotta time,” I said. The timer buzzed and I twirled out a strand of spaghetti and tried it. “Al dente,” I said. “His brother Sam used to play for the Red Sox.” The spaghetti was done, I turned it into a colander, emptied the pan, shook the colander to drain the spaghetti, turned it back into the pan, added a little butter and some Parmesean cheese and tossed it.

“You made that up.”

“What?”

“About Al Dente’s brother.”

“Nope, truth. Sam Dente used to play with the Sox about thirty years ago. Infielder. Left-handed batter.” The spaghetti sauce was bubbling. I poured it into a big gravy boat and put two big heaps of spaghetti on two plates. I poured the salad dressing over the salad, tossed it and set everything on the kitchen counter. “Silverware in the drawer there,” I said. I got some Gallo Burgundy in a half-gallon bottle and two wine glasses out of the cupboard.

We sat at the counter and ate and drank. “Did you make the spaghetti sauce?” she said.

“Yeah. A secret recipe I got off the back of the tomato paste can.”

“And the salad dressing? Is there honey in it?”

“Yep. Got that from my mother.”

She shook her head. “Fighter, lover, gourmet cook? Amazing.”

“Nope. I’ll take the fighter, lover, but the gourmet cook is a sexist remark.”

“Why?”

“If you’d cooked this no one would say you were a gourmet cook. It’s because I’m a man. A man who cooks and is interested in it is called a gourmet. A woman is called a housewife. Now eat the goddamned spaghetti.” I said. She did. Me too.

I slept on the couch. A triumph once more of virtue over tumescence. I was up and showered and away before Pam Shepard woke up. At 10:00 A.M. I was having coffee with King Powers’ man Macey in the Holiday Inn in Hyannis.

“Care for some fruit?” Macey said.

“No thanks. The coffee will do. When can you deliver the guns?”

“Tomorrow maybe, day after for sure.”

“What you got?”

“M2 carbines, in perfect condition, one hundred rounds apiece.”

“How many?”

“Four hundred and fifty.”

“Jesus Christ, that’s more than two bills apiece.”

Macey shrugged. “Ammo’s included, don’t forget.”

“Christ, you can pick ’em up in the gun shop for less than half that.”

“Four hundred and fifty of them? M2s?”

“There’s that,” I said. “But a hundred grand for four hundred and fifty pieces. I don’t think my people will like that.”

“You came to us, Spence. You asked us. Remember.”

I loved being called Spence. “And remember there’s thirty thousand out for your share.”

“Which you’re keeping.”

“Hey, Spence, it’s owed us. We wouldn’t be long in business if we didn’t demand financial responsibility from our clients. We didn’t go to Harvey either. He came to us. Just like you. You don’t like the deal, you’re free to make another one someplace else. Just see to it that Harvey comes up with the thirty thousand dollars he owes us. Which, incidentally, will increase as of Monday.”