Shirley (21 page)

He reached across the table and put a hand on her arm, a
mirror of what she'd earlier done with him. “We'll make do,” he said. “It's fine.”

I liked the way her fury sputtered at his touch. They seemed married in a way I aspired to, their fortunes managed mutually. Fred offered Bern a helping of sweet potatoes. I passed the mashed cauliflower and explained what it was, that we made it for Stanley. “You're a good girl,” Bern said. He patted my hand.

I heard the typewriter start its arrhythmic beat. Had she gone back to work? I swallowed a bite of partly chewed ham and coughed, then told Bern how much I'd liked
The Assistant
, how much I admired his work. “You've caught the world we come from so completely, how there isn't time to protest the war or hear the Beatles, how a neighborhood feels like the universe broken out block by block. I know your characters, all of them.”

He offered to read a little bit after dinner. “You'd do that?” I couldn't believe my luck.

Ann spoke loudly, as if she wanted to be heard over the sound of Shirley's typing down the hall. “He'd do that.”

I felt a pool of sweat begin to form on the chair seat, under my legs. They were bored and we were not enough to entertain them; she did not like me. “I wonder where Barry's gotten to?” I said, but of course he was at the Malamud house, she explained, eating spaghetti with their daughter and some other friends. I passed the wine bottle and she took another glass, although he refrained.

“Those myths,” Fred said. “You use them in your stories, don't you? I'm thinking of
The Magic Barrel
.”

“My mother's stories,” Malamud said, his face brightening as he
began to talk to us about his family, about his parents' journey to this country, about the way he combined superstition and folklore with the culture he'd been raised in—the marriage broker, the princess, the poor schmuck with the good heart who needs guidance to become a wise man in the end. Ann chewed her food daintily, politely. I wondered how tired she was of hearing him repeat his epics at dinner table after dinner table; did that happen to all couples? I was confused; I admired the Malamuds and was ashamed for our hosts, and yet I could see that though she loved him, Malamud was imperfect in his wife's assessment. To my not-yet-twenty-year-old eyes, their stretch of life together was daunting in all ways: prosaic, faintly embarrassing, and astonishing.

I was overfull by the time Bern had finished picking at his plate. I cleared, and Ann helped me, and as I set the coffeepot to heating I suggested we return to the front parlor. She had Shirley's witchy ability to find her way around the kitchen, pulling out the silverware drawer on the first try and piling all the coffee cups and the sugar bowl on the precise tin tray Shirley preferred.

“Stanley, Stanela, wake up there, why don't you?” Bern said. “Company's here.” But Stanley snored blearily, stretched out full-length on the less comfortable of the two sofas, as if he'd graciously ceded the better one to those who remained awake. Shirley typed away in the library, her rhythm so steady she might easily have been practicing secretarial exercises: quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs. I sat in the chair next to where Bern was perched, on the end of the good couch. Fred took the chair opposite me. Ann, a cup of coffee in either hand, came over and perched on Bern's knee,
smiling at me as if our moment of shared labor in the kitchen had made us friends.

“Get off,” he said. “You're too heavy.” And he pushed her crudely, so that hot coffee splashed like an O'Keeffe flower across the bottom half of her pale green dress.

“For God's sake, Bern!”

Stanley sat up with interest, rubbing his eyes, as I ran into the kitchen to grab a wet dishcloth. By the time I returned, everyone was standing. No typewriter sounds from the other room, either.

Malamud's jaw was set in a mulish manner. “I'll apologize for the coffee, but honestly, Ann. You sat on me without asking.”

“Let's go home. I want to go home.”

Shirley appeared in the doorway. “But you can't. You've barely gotten here; it's far too early. We'll call some people, have a party. I'll invite Alan and his wife, and the Burkes. And Jules might be free. You can't go now.”

“I want to go,” Ann said tightly.

There was a long pause. We all watched Malamud as he considered the question of staying or leaving. Stanley's eyes were half open, his posture wobbly and his cheek indented by the seam of the throw pillow on which he'd been sleeping. Shirley leaned against the doorjamb, head tilted: no notebook needed to retain the details of this evening. Fred stood with his palms open; who was he beseeching?

I opened my mouth. “You were going to read to us,” I said.

“Oh yes, you must read to us. A veritable Pickwick Society meeting here tonight.” It was impossible to miss the harshness of
Shirley's tone. Stanley sat back down on the couch with a
thwap
, lifted his legs, and stretched them out along the cushions.

“I want to read,” Bern said to Ann, but it was not as if he had decided, more as if he wished her to accede. Her face was suddenly lovely, so vulnerable and tender. She would agree to anything, if he would look at her that way. Shirley shifted, next to me, and a glance showed her sympathy writ large. Both of them strong, strong women still subservient to their men; I looked for Fred, and he'd gone over to the couch. One hand already reaching for the student papers he needed to correct. Could I ever be so focused on the job at hand that I would stop watching for others' reactions or listening for a baby's cry?

Ann buttoned her cardigan over her green jersey dress, a smile inlaid on top and bottom lips. I was upset for Ann, and for Shirley and for myself. All around us, out in the world, there were Negroes insisting on their civil rights and children insisting they would not go to war and women giving voice to their right to be counted as equals, at work and at home. Women who said,
I want this
or
I will be that.
“I want you to read,” I said evenly, to Bernard Malamud. “I think you should read to us now.”

“You should read, too,” he said to Shirley, politely. His balding pate glistened under the orange light thrown off by the wall sconces.

“Not now,” she said. “I'm in the middle of a story. I'll finish it tonight.”

The look that passed between them should have been funny.

“I like that story you wrote,” Bern said, “the one about the girl who went missing from the college.”

Stanley took his glasses off and rubbed his forehead. Shirley said, “Paula Welden? That was before our time.”

I jumped up. I said, “I'll get
The Assistant
. You can read from that.”

“No,” he said. “You have
The Magic Barrel
, don't you?”

“Of course we do,” Shirley said. She stayed by the doorjamb, and he remained right there, four feet from her. Ann hugged herself over her newly buttoned sweater. Fred held his students' papers as if there were nothing he'd rather do than correct homework, and Stanley lolled clownishly on the couch.

I found the book filed correctly under
M
, right next to Malamud's other books. The dust jacket was chilly to the touch. I returned to the front parlor, handed the book to Bern, and sat on the sofa, my skirt brushing against the soles of Stanley's shoes. Stanley did not sit up, merely tapped my skirt cheerfully with a clad toe.

Bern opened the book; all of us heard the
cree-ack
of the spine being broken for the first time. “I see you have a fresh copy.” Exuding calm, he took the pen from his pocket and turned to the title page, as if about to autograph it.

“It's fresh,” Shirley agreed, and then she burst out laughing. The giddiness of it frightening to the ear. It did not stop, the sound caught on itself and amplified, turbulent to hear and awful to watch. She leaned against the wall, the light reflected off the plaster spilling its glow over the paleness of her skin, and she laughed as if the mirth were painful, gale after gale of whooping howls that brought tears to her eyes and bent her over in the middle. “Oh, oh, oh!” she cried, and kept on laughing, shriek upon shriek, so that
Stanley stood and went to her, his drunken pleasure utterly dissipated, and Malamud stood, and Ann with him, and only Fred and I remained sitting.

“We should go,” Ann said, her fingers automatically unbuttoning and rebuttoning that sweater, while Shirley went on laughing, laughing, laughing, and Stanley had his arms around her, saying, “Shh, shhh, shhh, Cynara, shh, my Shoiley, shhh, shhh.”

It was so sudden, the way electricity goes out in a storm. You've felt the pressure dropping and seen the clouds but now the swoop of the wind and the pelting rain arrives, and you are shocked by how abruptly the world becomes dangerous and incomprehensible.

He led her up the stairs; she was sobbing now, guttural belchings between the wails. The Malamuds had found their coats, and as I showed them to the door, I struggled once again with that godforsaken doorknob and had to square my body and shove the knob against my hip. I could not let them out. I wanted to tell them that it wasn't anything they had done, that the events of the evening had nothing to do with them, or their marriage, or his writing—that the house itself was sometimes inclined to sour even the sweetest of connections. They were happy to use the kitchen door when I suggested it. Her footsteps crackled on the paving stones. They walked in unison under the library windows and I did not see a word pass between them. From the front hall, I listened to the water running for the tub upstairs, and even through Shirley's thick bedroom door, I heard the sounds of grief, the grotesquery of despair trapped joylessly in mirth.

I stood awhile in the hallway, letting the nausea settle in my stomach, listening for the moment when her sobs would peter into
calm and, I hoped, to sleep. I felt stronger than her, than other women. I thought of my missing mother, of Paula Welden, of those teachers lost in time at Versailles.
And I am of the now, and I am staying in it,
I told myself.
Life will not defeat me.

I would have gone to do the dishes, but instead I went back to Fred and found him seated on the couch where I'd left him, the clutch of papers still in his lap. His ashen face, I won't forget his face, and I asked if he was all right, and, shaking his head no, he said, “What happened? What was all that?”

I thought of the string I'd left coiled in the jar on Shirley's desk, of the half-used matchbook in the pocket of my skirt. I put Fred's hand between my own and closed my eyes, picturing the walls of the house pulsing like a heartbeat to keep us safe.
Save her,
I implored them.
Save us. Save me.

I woke an hour later, nearly sliding off the couch in shock when Barry slammed the back door on his return and thudded up the stairs. Only Fred's sleepy clutch kept me from the floor. The lights were still on. “Let's go up.”

“The dishes,” Fred said, ever the polite houseguest.

“They'll wait,” I told him. “They'll wait, and if they don't, I'm sure there'll be more tomorrow. Let's go to bed.”

We left the lights blazing. I drew him up the stairs with both hands. Not for sex, not even for forgiveness. Just to prove to both of us that I could.

T
HE
NEXT
NIGHT
, Barry's friend Mealtime dropped by with his usual acuity, just as Shirley called the household to dinner. That's when we realized Barry wasn't home. He'd left a note on Shirley's desk saying he was joining his sisters on campus. “They did that last Sunday as well. What is it? I was in the kitchen; why didn't he come in to tell me?” she asked. Mealtime's face was a study in panic. Would he have to answer? The Hyman family was the cinema of his life, but he would die if he found himself a featured player. Not Hamlet, nor meant to be.

For a moment, I thought Stanley might add the proverbial fuel to the fire, invite Mealtime to the table to boost the numbers: the poor kid's skinny chin trembled, anticipating Stanley's imperial command, but it was Shirley who shooed the boy out of the house, telling him to return the next evening.

In all these months, we'd never been seated at that enormous table as a foursome before. We sat at Stanley's end, Shirley on his right and Fred on the left, with me next to Fred. Shirley had made creamed corn and beef stew, served over the recurring mashed cauliflower. Fred, who still ate like a teenager, heaped his plate with
food and began nervously to cut the cubes of beef into the smaller pieces his mother had always insisted were correct. I put some corn on my plate, and a heap of cauliflower. I had no taste for meat that night.

I watched Stanley's mouth as he chewed, his lips glistening with the tomato-flecked stew broth, the way he brushed his beard with the side of his right forefinger each time he placed his fork, tines down, at the edge of his plate. Fascinating to watch that mouth, the lips dark with pumped blood, the teeth imperfect in form and yet white as a dairy farmer's, the way his fat tongue emerged to swipe an errant drop of gravy: I could not look away, not even when I felt Shirley's scowl. She had piled stew on her plate but left the corn and cauliflower; it didn't matter, as she was drinking red wine and smoking a cigarette instead of eating at all.

On any other night, there would have been talk of the day's events, discussion of the death of Princess Mary, or of Martin Luther King and his march on Montgomery days before. Stanley was finally reading Bellow's latest and Shirley had been sent a copy of William Humphrey's
The Ordways
, and I suspected she was enjoying it, as she'd had it open in the kitchen while cooking. But none of that came up. The men plowed through the food on their plates without grace or hesitation, and Shirley smoked and drank, and I picked at my meal, all in silence. We were finished in less than fifteen minutes, and Stanley brought out the Scotch and poured a glass for each of us. The candles on the table flickered, and I watched the harmless flames. I thought about getting up to put on a record, one of the plaintive, scratched folk recordings we all loved, perhaps Sam Charters's
The Country Blues
. But with yesterday's
events had come a sense of resistance, new for me and quite unlike the survival-focused resistance of my childhood. Thus I would not stand up and help clear the table, nor would I contribute to conversation or put on music. I hunched over my plate and sipped my Scotch and hoped that Natalie would remain asleep until I'd forced the universe to conform to my will.

“Well, the baby seems no worse for wear,” Stanley said suddenly, his tone so blithe I had to wonder at it. This was practically the first time he'd ever mentioned Natalie, making the comment even odder. Then he asked about Shirley's work and she said she'd had a productive week.

“The new novel? I'm ready to take a look whenever you like,” he said.

She wasn't quite ready, thank you very much. Stanley poured a little more Scotch and sipped it, nodding to me. “She's seen it.”

Shirley shook her head no.

I bent my head over the mound of stew. I'd looked at some of it, here and there, when I was straightening up, I admit.

“You've read it?” she said. Her voice was tight. I tried to say no.

There was the sound of something moving in the kitchen, and Shirley went to shoo whichever cat it was down from the counter. Stanley remained undaunted. He took another sip of his Scotch. I turned my glass, letting the brown liquor puddle viscously atop my ice cubes before tilting and jiggling the cubes again. Fred's eyes were very bright; he blinked as if he were holding back tears, and this fascinated me. I'd not yet seen him cry.

Stanley said, “We must walk down to the Rainbarrel and improve the quality of this evening.”

Fred wiped his eyes with his napkin.

“The quality of mercy is not strained,”
Stanley began, as Shirley returned from the kitchen, carrying a jar. It was a brass jar, very simple, with a wide lip and a smoothly knobbed lid. I'd seen it before, I thought, and then I gasped.

“Yes,” Shirley said flatly, putting the jar down on the tablecloth in front of me. Her hand was on the lid; she was about to open it.

I swallowed a huge sip of my Scotch and began to cough.

“It's empty,” she said.

“One such fascinating revelation will, perforce, beget another.” Stanley detested disagreements unless he was part of them. “Grab your coat, Fred. Let's go.”

“I can't,” Fred said tensely.

Shirley proffered the lid at me, showed me the shiny inside of the jar. “Nothing to see in here.”

I was suddenly as frightened as I'd been the night she barred me from the premises. I had to force the words out: “How could you possibly know?”

Stanley took his glasses off and laid them on the table, pouring himself another finger of Scotch. “Has our witch been at work again? Casting spells to soothe the hearts of troubled lovers?”

“Shut up,” I said fiercely, surprising even myself.

He chuckled.

“I mean it, shut up.”

“Tell me the dream,” she said evenly. “Just say the words out loud.”

I can remember being too young to read but already understanding what it meant when my father clenched his fists or my
mother crossed her arms over her ample bosom. I knew to look straight in my questioner's eyes when I was covering up a sin imagined or real; I knew to lean forward to show that I was interested. Quiet people see a great deal; they aren't listening for the pause in conversation that will allow them to cut in; and someone like me is always looking for a safer place to stand, a spot where the rising water won't wet the only pair of shoes that fit. What I didn't know how to do was deal with someone like her, someone who seemed to see inside me in such a way that dissembling was impossible. “This is insane,” I said. “I didn't dream anything.”

Fred put a hand on my back, pressing the cotton of my blouse against the damp of my skin so that it chilled me, but still I was grateful. I would be good to him, too, and together we would be better than our beginning. I leaned against his hand, felt the slight pressure of his fingers.

“You might as well say it.”

I shook my head no.

Shirley pulled out the chair on my other side, sank heavily into it. “Sally told me,” she said. “She's in the kitchen eating leftovers. You dreamed I died, she told me you dreamed it.”

I clutched the edge of the table.

“How did I die? What did I die of?”

Stanley said, “You'll come to haunt me, won't you? Or we'll go together. Do we drive up to Glastenbury Mountain and get eaten by mountain lions? Or are we executed like the Rosenbergs? What fate has pretty Mrs. Nemser willed for us?”

“I haven't, I haven't!” I stood, pushing out my chair. “With all that's happened, this isn't funny. It's not right. You're unkind.”

“I'm not the one, I haven't dreamed a coffin for anyone,” Shirley said, pushing her glasses back up on her nose.

“Nor have I.”

She studied me grimly, as if I had disappointed her terribly. “Fine, then, I'll wait for fate to come for me.”

The phone rang, and I could hear the satisfaction in Sally's voice, even through the closed kitchen door, as she answered. “That's what mortals do,” Stanley said, and then he called through the swinging door: “Who is it, Sal? I hope to god it's entertainment, or this will be the longest night since Normandy.” Whoever it was, he intended to invite them over. And he made another call after he hung up, and soon the house was warm with laughter, and Shirley was passing olives and peanuts and Fred was talking about Vietnam with an earnest-looking fellow only a few years older than he, a speechwriter named Alan that the English department was thinking about hiring. I went up to find Natalie pink-cheeked and deep in slumber, and when I returned, I sat on the sofa and was shortly joined by a frail-looking sprite of a girl with a wispy voice and an equally spare blond braid that tickled her shoulder as she nodded. Her name was Maud, she said, “named after Maud Gonne, though I've found no Yeats-like poet to love me, despite it.”

I laughed, took the glass of wine she offered, and leaned back against the cushions, tucking my bare feet up beneath me. “You're a student, of course,” I said.

She shook her head no. “I'm from the village. Grew up here. A friend of Laurie and his wife”—the eldest son, the one who lived in Manhattan—“and I knew there was likely to be something going on here. Stopped by for some excitement.” She sighed, rolling her
eyes as if to signify that nothing in Bennington could ever be exciting. “And you're the child bride.”

“The child bride?”

“The little housewife who rattles no fences and folds the laundry and fills in the missing pieces.”

“The house tells me things,” I said, my voice so thin and high it seemed to squeak like bats seeking direction inside the rafters of my skull. “I fall asleep and I dream things. The house owns us, owns all of us.” Maud studied me, amused. I could imagine she was friends with Sally. “Not like Hill House,” I said. “It isn't evil. But it keeps an eye out. It knows everything that happens.”

And then Shirley leaned over, as if she'd been standing behind me all along, and she said, “Our Rose has an imagination to rival any novelist, doesn't she? Hello, Maud.” They exchanged hugs, Maud rising slightly and Shirley leaning down to perform the ritual as expeditiously as possible. I stood, offering her my place, and as she sat, Shirley said quietly, “Stay away from what's mine, Rose. Do it now before you ruin everything.”

“Novelists are liars,” I said evenly. “What I'm saying is true.”

“I honored her. Time and time again, I honored the girl. I kept her memory alive,” Shirley said. “Only me.”

What could I answer? I think I was a little drunk. Maud's eyes were bright, flickering from Shirley to me with interest. I said, “You think we're all characters, don't you? Characters you can move and place, who only act according to your will.”

“What I actually think is that it's time for you to go to bed. You look tired. You're not yourself tonight.”

I was, suddenly, exhausted, my brain so thick with sleep that my
mouth opened without my stopping it. I said, “You didn't write those stories to remember her. You wrote all those stories so there'd be more of them, more stories for people to wonder about, more gossip to cover your tracks.”

Maud sipped her wine. Shirley's glasses glinted opaquely. The orange light spun from the fireplace cast shadows on all of us. “You look tired,” she said again, and then she leaned closer and confided to me alone. “It won't be fire,” she said. “Not for you.”

My wineglass trembled in my hand, and I thought it best to leave it on the table. I don't think I said good-bye to Maud, but stood with all the dignity I could muster. In my wake, I heard women giggling. It was gloomy in the hall, and I wasn't sure where Jannie or Barry had gone, but I moved carefully, fancying they might have set a trap for me. I stumbled as I entered the library, where Stanley and Fred and the man named Alan were companionably engaged in denigrating Bellow. It was smoky and the lights were low, and there were cats draped sleepily on the back of each chair. Fred stood immediately, so that the tabby who'd been guarding him jumped to the floor with a baleful glare.

“Have you met Rose?” Stanley asked, reaching automatically for a fresh glass to offer me a drink. Alan stood, extending a hand, and as I took it I heard Fred breathing behind me, and I don't know what came over me. Alan was a handsome man, and I smiled at him, noting the smooth, tanned planes of his cheeks. I felt Fred's lanky presence. The music on the phonograph was jazz, someone I didn't know, and the urge to act came from outside me. I walked past the new man, and over to the table where Stanley had his hand on the glass ready to lift it toward me, but I got to him first. I put
my mouth to his, I took his hands and placed them on me, on my breasts, and Fred said, “Rose!”

“Rosie!” Fred pulled at my arm, but I held Stanley tight. He held on to my breasts even after Fred had dragged me from his mouth, and then he laughed out loud, he said, “Mrs. Nemser, I think we've crossed an unexpected Rubicon.”

I was breathing hard, of course. I said, “You wanted me to, you said you did. You asked me first and now it's yes, I say yes to you. I'll sleep with you, I'll fuck you, I'll do it.”

Fred held my arms as if I would throw myself on Stanley, sink down on him on the floor right there, and I might have, I was angry enough, I might have done it.

“Go upstairs,” Stanley said evenly. “Go now, before she tears you to pieces right in front of Alan and whoever else we're entertaining. Go upstairs, Rose.” And he turned, and picked up his glass, and said to Alan, “Have you actually tried
Herzog
? If Bellow gets any more self-referential, he'll start writing with his asshole.”

Fred walked behind me, all the way up the back stairs, as if he thought I might throw myself down them. In the room I collapsed onto the bed. Now I was crying with my whole body—sobbing, really—and I woke the baby and she began to wail. Fred waited with me until the crying was over, and the baby slept, and he left a hand on my back and sat. So quiet that despite what had happened, I almost fell asleep.