Where Love Has Gone (17 page)

Like the wide yellow streak threading its way through your gut like a snake you never knew was there. Fear isn’t always a physical thing. It has many faces. One of them begins when you buy someone else’s lies. Then you find yourself tied by the yellow thread of your own acceptance.

Nora’s mother had kept her promise well. My name was mud and all the doors were closed and after a while I just stopped trying. There was always Dani during the day.

I watched her learn to walk in the park. I listened to her laugh in the zoo and out at the Cliff House, looking for the sea lions that were never there. But she liked best of all putting coins in the mechanicals at Sutro’s old Crystal Palace.

There was one she especially loved. It was a farm and a farmer milked the cow while his wife fed the chickens and the windmill turned. We played that one six times on her second birthday alone.

At night there was always bourbon to take the sour taste of disappointment away. On the weekends, when Nora was generally home, I would do down to La Jolla and fool around on the boat. That was the only thing I hadn’t lost in the bankruptcy, and the weekends there were the only time I felt halfway useful. There was always something to do—painting, calking, fixing. Sometimes the whole two days would go by and I wouldn’t even have a drink. But Monday night, at home, I’d be back on the bottle again.

They ought to give a medal to the man who invented bourbon whiskey. Scotch tastes like medicine, gin smells like perfume, and rye sours your stomach. But bourbon is the sweet cream of them all. It’s mild and smooth and soothes you all over. You never get drunk drinking bourbon whiskey. It just fills up all the holes and makes you feel big and strong again. And sleep always comes easier.

But even the bourbon couldn’t close my eyes. I still saw too damn much. Like the night I couldn’t sleep and I went downstairs at three o’clock in the morning looking for another bottle.

Nora came in the door just as I reached the foot of the stairs. She closed the door behind her and we just stood there, looking at each other, measuring each other, almost like two strangers trying to recall some vaguely remembered impression.

I knew what I looked like with my hair unkempt and my rumpled pajamas and carelessly tied bathrobe. Not very pretty. Especially with my bare feet sticking out.

As for Nora, it was almost like seeing her for the first time. There was the musky odor of sex

about her. Her face was pale, and there were the faint blue translucent circles under her violet eyes that were always there afterwards until sleep had washed them away. She didn’t have to be told that I knew.

I couldn’t stand looking at that knowledge in her eyes and I turned away. I didn’t speak.

There was a faint smile in her voice. “If you’re looking for whiskey, I told Charles to put a case of bourbon in the den.”

I didn’t answer.

“It is bourbon that you drink, isn’t it?” I looked up. “Yes.”

“That’s what I thought.” She walked by me to the staircase. When she was about halfway up she turned and looked down at me. “Don’t forget to turn out the lights before you come upstairs.”

I went into the den and got the bottle of bourbon and thought of a thousand things I should have told her but hadn’t. I could feel the yellow creeping around in my belly and I threw some bourbon on it. My daughter needed me, I told myself. She needed someone to love her and to take her out to Sutro’s to play the mechanicals, to share the sunshine and the water and all the other things her mother never thought about. I took the bottle upstairs with me and stretched out on the bed.

I’d just swallowed my third drink when I heard the lock turn in the door. I looked toward the bathroom. The door was open. I almost got to my feet, then stopped. Instead I reached for the whiskey again.

I swallowed the shot quickly and killed the light. I stretched out on the bed but I didn’t sleep. I found myself listening in the dark for a sound from her room. I didn’t have long to wait.

The light in the bathroom clicked on and poured into my room as she came through. She stood in the doorway knowing that I could see she had nothing on under the sheer negligee. She spoke softly. “Are you awake, Luke?”

I sat up in bed without answering. “I unlocked the door,” she said.

I still didn’t speak.

She walked to the foot of my bed and stood there looking at me. Abruptly she shrugged her shoulders and the negligee fell to the floor. “I remember once you didn’t want seconds.” There was a faint echo of contempt in her voice. “Still feel the same way?”

I reached for a cigarette and lit it. My hands were trembling.

The contempt grew thicker in her voice. “I thought you were a man once. But I can see now that I was wrong. I’m more of a man now than you are. You lost your balls when you took off your uniform.”

I dragged on the cigarette, letting the smoke burn its way into my lungs. I could feel the sweat running into my clenched fists. “Better go back to your room, Nora,” I said thickly.

She sat down on the side of the bed and picked the cigarette out of my hand. She put it to her lips

and took a quick puff, then gave it back to me. I could taste the faint scent of her lipstick. “Maybe it would help if I told you what I did tonight.”

“Don’t push it, Nora!” I said huskily.

She paid no attention to what I said. Instead she leaned across me, her face very close to mine. I could feel her small warm breasts press against me through my pajamas. “It was only once,” she whispered teasingly. “It was tremendous. But you know me. Only once is like Chinese food. An hour later I’m hungry again!”

The anger flooded up into me. I couldn’t take it any more. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently. A strangely excited look came into her eyes and I felt her hand, warm and urgent against me. “Make love to me!”

“Nora!” I cried and rolled over on top of her.

It was over almost before it began. I lay there feeling sick and futile and inadequate, staring as she picked up her negligee from the floor. She looked down at me, a cold triumph in her eyes.

“Sometimes I wonder whatever made me think you were man enough for me,” she said contemptuously. “Even a boy could make a better job of it than you do.”

The door slammed shut behind her and I reached for the bottle again. But this time even the bourbon couldn’t take away the sick feeling in my stomach.

I was on the boat in La Jolla when the news came over the radio that the Reds had crossed the line in Korea. I beat it down the dock to the pay telephone and called Jimmy Petersen in Washington. We had flown together in the Pacific. He had stayed in after the war and was a brigadier in the Air Force now.

“I just heard the news,” I said when he came on the wire. “Can you use a good man on the line?” “Sure, but we’re using jets now. You’ll have to go through retraining and I’m not sure that I can

get your rating back.”

“To hell with the rating, Peter. When do I go?”

He laughed. “Check in with Kill Killian at the Presidio tomorrow morning. I’ll have something worked out for you by then.”

“I’ll be there with bells on, Peter. Thanks.”

“You may not thank me when you find yourself a captain again.”

“General,” I said sincerely, “I’d thank you if you took me back as a private!”

I went back to the boat where Dani was sleeping in her portable travel bed. She was almost three years old then and she opened her eyes when I picked her up, bed and all. “Where we goin’, Daddy?” she asked sleepily.

“We have to go home, sweetie. Daddy has something to do.”

“Alri’,” she whispered and closed her eyes again.

I strapped the bed onto the seat of the car beside me and threw our bags in the back. I looked at my watch. It was almost eight o’clock. If the traffic was light I could be in San Francisco by four o’clock in the morning.

Dani made the whole trip without opening her eyes. There was no traffic. The lights were still on in Nora’s studio when I carried Dani upstairs at three thirty and put her in her crib.

I went through into my room and then remembered the lights. I would only have to tell her in the morning, I thought. I might as well do it now, since she was still awake. I went down the stairs and into her studio.

The lights were on but the studio was empty. “Nora,” I called.

I heard a noise from the small room next to the studio. I walked over and opened the door. I started to say her name again and then my voice went.

They were still on the bed, frozen grotesquely in their embrace. Nora was the first to recover. “Get out!” she screamed.

My head felt as if it were nine miles above the clouds. This was the classic denouement and I was torn between anger at having to face the truth so unexpectedly and a wild desire to laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. Anger won out.

I crossed to the bed and pulled the man from her by the scruff of his neck. I spun him around and caught him on the side of the jaw. He fell backward through the open door, crashing into a statue. Both went to the floor with a clatter that would wake the dead.

I started after him again but something held my arm. I looked at him. Fear and guilt had combined to render him helpless. He was nothing but a boy. I let my arm drop to my side.

Charles came into the studio, still tying his robe around him. I could see the cook and the downstairs maid staring into the doorway behind him.

I went back into the small room and picked up the boy’s things and threw them out into the studio. “Charles,” I said, “get that cruddy little bastard out of here!”

I closed the door behind me and turned to Nora. Her face was pale with anger and hatred. “You better get something on too. You look like a two-bit whore dressed in nothing but that sheet.”

“Why did you have to wake the servants? How will I ever face them?”

I stared at her. She wasn’t worried about the fact I had caught her in bed with someone else. The only thing that bothered her was how it might affect the servants. I shook my head. I guessed I would never stop learning. Suddenly I seemed to know all the answers.

“I don’t think you have to worry, Nora,” I said, almost gently. “You weren’t really fooling anybody. Except me.”

“You never believed me! You heard the stories about me and I know you believed them!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Nora,” I said. “I never heard any of the stories, I still haven’t.

Don’t you know that the husband is generally the last one to find out?”

“What did you expect me to do? You never even came near me after Dani was born!” I shook my head. “It won’t work, Nora. Not anymore.”

She began to cry.

“I’m beyond that, Nora. Tears won’t work either.”

They stopped as quickly as they had begun. “Please, Luke,” she said, getting off the bed and coming toward me. “It won’t happen again.”

I laughed. “You’re right about that. Not to me it won’t. I’m leaving!”

“No, Luke, no!” She flung her arms about me, clinging to me. “I’ll make it all up to you. I promise!”

“You couldn’t live long enough!”

I pushed her away from me. Her eyes were wide and frightened. “What are you going to do?”

Suddenly all the hurt and the pain came up inside me at one time. “Something I should have done a long time ago.”

The back of my hand flashed across the side of her face and she spun halfway across the room, falling over the bed to the floor. I was out of there before she could pick herself up.

I went through the studio and down the corridor. I could see the servants’ faces staring at me. Charles was just coming back from the front door as I reached the staircase. The poor old man couldn’t look me in the face.

The studio door opened and Nora came into the hallway, completely naked. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed. “I’ll tell the whole world what you are. You’re not even a man. You’re a homosexual, a pervert, a queer!”

I looked at Charles. “You’d better take care of her. Call a doctor if you think you need one.” He nodded silently. She was still screaming when I reached the top of the stairs.

Mrs. Holman was at her door, her eyes wide. “Is Dani all right?” I asked.

She nodded, her face still pale.

I walked into the child’s room. She was still sleeping like the baby she was. I bent down and kissed her cheek. Thank God for the sleep of the innocent.

My luck was about the same in Korea as it had been during the war. I checked out fine in the jets and flew about nine missions, getting two MIGs before they got me. It wasn’t a big enough war for me to make general staff after I got out of the hospital, so they gave me a medical discharge and shipped me home.

I arrived in San Francisco to a tumultuous welcome. The only one waiting at the airport for me was a process server.

“Colonel Carey?” “Yes.”

“Sorry,” he said, thrusting a piece of paper into my hand, then scurrying off like a rat with a terrier after him.

I opened the paper and read it. It was dated that day—July 20, 1951. Nora Hayden Carey
vs
. Luke Carey. An action for divorce brought by the plaintiff, Mrs. Carey. The grounds were mental cruelty, desertion and nonsupport.

“Welcome home,” I said to myself, shoving the paper into my pocket. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned homecoming.

PARTTHREE

LUKE’S STORY

The Weekend