“We’re not shouting,” Cole said, “we’re discussing. Do you mind if we have a little privacy?”
“Well, excuuuuse me.” Emma disappeared.
“That’s supposed to be repartee,” Cole said. “God, will she ever grow up?”
“She’s grown up. Let me assure you, she’s grown up.”
They were silent a moment.
“Another thing,” Cole said. “Do you have something going with Dixie Kizer?”
“Do you?”
“I’m not a married man. It’s you I’m asking about. She sort of hinted at something.”
“She’s a troubled person.”
“Is she your patient? Is that it?”
“Cole, for God’s sake.”
“Well, I’m not asking what she tells you on the couch. I’m just asking if she’s a patient.”
Philip shook his head.
“She told me plenty. Do you know about her husband? Hal? He’s a perv. I mean, an S&M perv. We’re talking heavy duty, chains and knives and shit. Don’t you think you should be doing something to get her out of that deal?”
“What makes you think I’m in charge of doing something about the Kizers? They’re nothing to me.” He began to get red. “They’re nothing to any of us.”
“You are not facing up to your responsibilities, Father. These women need help! Mother needs help, goddam it!”
“Time out. Time out. You aren’t talking, Cole, you’re just venting. Why don’t you go upstairs, take a shower, then come down and we’ll very calmly, very logically, discuss this. Okay?”
There was a knock on the door. “Tap, tap,” Maggie said, leaning into the room. “You fellas okay?”
“How are you, Mother? Are you all right?”
Maggie looked at Philip and then back to Cole. “What do you mean?”
“I mean just that. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m all right. Why should I not be all right?”
Emma came in. “You see. I told you she’d hear all the shouting. Why does everybody in this house always have to shout?”
“What’s going on?” Maggie said.
“There’s nothing going on,” Philip said. “We were trying to have a discussion and we raised our voices and now Cole is going up to shower and we’re going to talk about it later. Okay? Okay.”
“Is this about Dixie Kizer? You spent the whole afternoon with her, Cole, it was really a disgrace.”
“Cole thinks he likes older women,” Emma said. “Big deal.”
“As a matter of fact, not that matters of fact interest anybody around here, what Dixie Kizer and I were talking about was you, Mother. And what Father and I—”
Emma interrupted. “Faaather,” she said. “He calls his father Faaather.”
“What Father and I were talking about is why he’s not doing anything to help you, because quite frankly I think … well, I think he’s not being supportive enough.”
“Your father and I handle our own problems, thank you.”
“Oh yeah. Oh sure,” Emma said.
“Well, you handle them in a rather peculiar way, it seems to me. You don’t tell Father you’ve flunked your theory course, but you tell a complete stranger like Dixie Kizer. How do you explain that?”
Maggie felt her face go red. She looked at Cole and then at Philip and then back to Cole. She shook her head. Tears rushed to her eyes.
Everyone was silent.
“Well,” Maggie said, and she tried to say something else but the words would not come. She laughed, a small broken sound. She left the room slowly, as if she were sleepwalking.
They all remained silent as they listened to her passing through the kitchen, going up the stairs.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Philip said.
“I happen to value the truth,” Cole said. “It’s something I might recommend to you.”
“God, what a house!” Emma said. “I’m so fed up with living in a dysfunctional family. Why don’t you all just kill one another and be done with it. Now I’ve got to go up and see if something can be done about Mother. It’s always me, me, me!”
Emma went out and slammed the door.
“God!” Cole said. “Deliver me from shrinks!” And he went out and slammed the door as well.
Philip went to the door, opened it, and closed it again softly. He sat down at his desk to try and think.
It was after midnight. The phone had rung once and somebody picked it up before it rang a second time and then there was silence. Now, as Philip watched from his study window, he saw Cole leave by the front door and go down the walk. He crossed the street and went left and disappeared from view. A moment later Philip saw a dark MG pass in front of the house, slowly.
It couldn’t be. Cole would not be that crazy. Even Dixie would not be that crazy. But there was no limit to the irrational, Philip knew.
He took one of Maggie’s sleeping pills, but it was a long time before he fell asleep.
15
Dixie lay on the chaise longue in the sunroom, happy and, for once, satisfied. She had wanted to talk with Cole—simply talk with him, nothing else—because he was so sympathetic and young and untouched. And he was a wonderful talker. He listened. And he seemed to care. This is how Philip must have been in med school before he got so thoroughly professional, with his ultimatums: I can’t see you, this must never happen again, if you threaten suicide, I won’t come, I’ll call the police. Philip was inhuman compared to Cole.
She had intended only to talk with him, but she was very happy at the way things had turned out. She was in love.
She wasn’t deceiving herself. She knew this had to be a one-night affair. It was never meant to be an affair at all. At the garden party that afternoon she had told Cole all about … well, everything. She told him about Hal and his sex seminars, she told him how terribly alone she felt, she told him how wonderful it was to talk with him. Hal, she said, would be off to the city again tonight, he always went after a party like this. And she would give anything just to continue this talk. Cole said he would be glad to talk. And they did.
She had phoned him shortly after midnight and a few moments later picked him up in her car. It was so easy.
Cole was a caring person. He said it was a crime for Hal to treat her this way. Hal was sick, he said. He said she should get out of this marriage. Simply get out. And then, after quite a long while, he had touched her hair, and massaged her neck a little, and eventually he had traced her mouth with the tip of his finger. After that she had to touch him back, his face first. It was nearly Philip’s face, but very young and clean and almost beautiful. They kissed and she was ready to move on to anything he wanted, anything at all, when suddenly he startled her by saying, “Shall we have intercourse?” “Intercourse?” she said. “Should we fuck, I mean, or do you want to just, you know, mess around?” “Intercourse, please,” she said, and Cole continued on, slow and passionate, as if there had been no interruption at all.
Cole. Cole and Dixie. If only she had met him ten years earlier. But of course that was silly because he would have been in sixth or seventh grade. And she would have been in the loony bin. Think of it.
When she was fourteen and ugly, she discovered that she could step out of the time that everybody else was in and just be very peaceful. They thought she was there with them, but she wasn’t, she was watching them from a distance, apart, above them. After a while, when she had been gone long enough, she could come back, and then she would be in the same time as the rest of them. But while she was out of time, she was safe. She did this often, secretly, at boarding school. When she went away to college, she did it less often, because for some reason she was less scared. But when she got pregnant by her psychiatrist and when, at his insistence, she had an abortion, something strange and nearly final happened to her. She stepped out of time and decided not to come back. It was the most peaceful period of her life.
She gave up eating and drinking, she gave up walking and sleeping, she ga
ve up speech. She sat by her window in a rocking chair—where, she wondered now, did the chair come from?—and she rocked and she closed her eyes and she opened them. She had stepped out of time for good. Her roommate nagged her and then pleaded with her and finally got the resident fellow to take a look, but nobody could do anything with her. Her psychiatrist came and talked to her privately but he couldn’t seem to get through. He warned her that he could have her committed. Another doctor came. And another. You’re in pain, they told her, but they were wrong. She was not in pain, she was in the absence of pain, she felt nothing. Nothing at all. After a few days they put her in a mental hospital, and fed her, and made her drink. They made her do finger-painting. They made her sit in a group of other crazies and say what it was that frightened her. Loneliness, she said, because that was what they wanted to hear and because she had decided she wanted to get out. I want to belong, she said, and they were pleased. I want to be like other people. I do. I want to be like other people. She said it so often they finally let her go. Home to Mother and Mother’s stud of the moment, the Paris one, or maybe the London one.
The next year she went back to college and studied art history—time, with a vengeance—and got a job as docent in the Gardner Museum. That was where she met Hal, whom she married, and thus became a doctor’s wife who played piano and went to museums and gave catered garden parties. Then she’d met Philip Tate. And now Cole.
Cole was another version of Philip. Younger and taller and—she couldn’t help thinking it—he was a better lover. He was bigger down there for one thing, or at least he used it better. Men thought women didn’t care about size, and mostly they didn’t, so long as the man knew how to use whatever he had. But that was gross and she was not being fair to herself. It wasn’t sex she was interested in, it was love. And she’d done it—she’d gotten him, she’d made love, real love, with him—without resorting to alcohol or seduction or anything. She’d taken Maggie’s advice and she’d done something and she’d done it sober.
Perhaps she could do anything she wanted. Leave Hal. Get a career. But what career? Well, she could begin by leaving Hal. Or at least not thinking about Hal. She concentrated, deliberately, on Cole’s long body stretched across hers, his heavy thing dragging against her flesh, moving slowly, a wonderful light and animal weight. He was only twenty-two or twenty-three. He was what she needed. She could become a normal woman with him.
Maybe Hal would die and she would not have to leave him. Maybe one of these nights in the city he would go too far, cut too deep. Sometimes they did it in the bathtub, he and Theda, in the water. She didn’t know you could do it underwater, that it was even possible. Maybe he would drown. By accident, of course, but dead anyhow, and out of her life. She thought of that awful dream where she had peeled his skin away, off his chest, from nipple to nipple and down to his crotch. She closed her eyes against the picture of it. All that blood. She tried to erase the blood but keep him dead.
Hal pulled off the freeway and lay his head on the wheel and for a short while drifted in and out of sleep. He and Theda had gone too far or not far enough, depending on how you looked at it, but it was terrific. Fabulous. The only problem was that he’d not given himself enough time to recover before getting into his car to drive home. He’d be more careful next time.
Theda had promised him this wild British thing; apparently all the Brits were doing it. Actually, about ten years ago, some Member of Parliament had snuffed himself doing it, but that was because he did it alone and he did it wrong. With her watching over him, he could get the orgasm of a lifetime and not have any risk at all.
She made him lie down on the floor—it had to be a flat, hard surface, she said—and she attached this wire to him. It was just picture frame wire, but it was coated with some plastic thing so it wouldn’t cut, and she wound it around his big toe first of all, and then around his dick and his balls, once around each, and then brought it up to his neck. But the big thing was that she put a plastic bag, very loose, over his head but under the wire, so that all he had to do was bear down on his toe, flex his foot like he was stepping on the gas, and automatically he’d tighten the wire around his whatsis and also around his neck, cutting off just enough oxygen so that the brain would do a loop-dee-loop and his dick would go absolutely wild. And you had complete control over it. All you had to do was bring your toe back to normal, as if you were taking your foot off the gas, and you got some oxygen and you caught your breath and you made sure you were okay. Once you were ready for more, you only had to put the old foot on the gas and you were all set to roar again. It was the infinite orgasm. And here was the best part. You took a little wedge of orange and you squirted a tiny bit of amyl nitrate on it and you put it in your mouth and left it there. You couldn’t help biting down on it as that wire tightened. And then, ecstasy.
Don’t worry, Theda said, it’s all under control. She’d watch over him. She’d make sure the plastic never got too tight around his face. She’d see to it that he didn’t come to death, ha ha ha.
Theda was right. It was the best he’d ever had, an orgasm that started up and up, and then paused right near the top while you got your breath again, and then started up from there, going higher and higher, until near the end Theda herself couldn’t stand just watching it and she unhooked the equipment and climbed on top of him and finished him off.
It was great, it was the greatest, but it had messed up his breathing. No heart problem. No lung problem. He wasn’t worried about that. He just had trouble keeping awake. So he pulled off onto a side street and dozed. After a while he slept, and then he woke up and drove home, within the speed limit, very careful and precise.
* * *
Dixie had given up picturing Hal dead. She was remembering Cole, sweet Cole, and their one-night stand. But this could not be the end. She wouldn’t let it be the end. She would take Maggie’s advice and do something.
The back door rattled and the kitchen lights went on. Hal was home. She could hear him at the refrigerator pouring something into a glass and then she heard a cabinet bang shut. The kitchen lights went out and he was suddenly by her side.
“Well?” she said, disgust in her voice.
Hal was silent, but when he spoke his voice was raspy and he seemed out of breath.
“You should be in bed,” he said.
“I haven’t had a drop to drink,” she said.
“Come on, mousie.” He gave her his hand and helped her up from the chaise longue. “Come on.” And with his arm around her, they went upstairs to bed.
16
“Can we have a talk? I think we should have a talk?”
“Let’s do it. Let’s talk.”
They had just finished watching the six o’clock news and, since they would only be having cereal for dinner, there was no need to worry about the meal getting cold.
“I’m sorry. I know you hate these things, Calvin, but I feel you have to talk with me, you have to be open. All right?”
“Good God.”
“Do you think we have a good marriage, Calvin? Not comparatively, but for real.”
“Yes I do. Don’t you?”
“You don’t have yearnings?”
“Beech. Everybody has yearnings.”
“Well, I mean yearnings for something different. Or better.”
“No.”
“Well, for someone different or better.”
“Sweetheart, what’s the matter, what’s happened?”
Beecher’s eyes filled with tears, she blew her nose, she swallowed hard. “It’s just that … I’m fat … and you’re still attractive, and I wonder …”
“Come here,” he said.
“No. No, I don’t want any of that now. It’s too easy and it’s too … well … easy. And I have to get to the bottom of me.”
“What do you want to know? What do you want me to say?”
“About the fat, first of all.”
“Oh God,” he said, miserable. “You’re overweight, Beecher, t
hat’s true. But it doesn’t bother me, I sort of like it, and it’s never bothered you until now, so I don’t think your weight is the issue here. Do you?”
“See, you’re so smart, Calvin, you’re so insightful. That’s why I love you, that’s one of the reasons. But you’ve aged so well, men do that, and women just get older and saggier and, well, not very interesting. And it affects the marriage.”
“I think we have a very good marriage,” Calvin said. “We’re not the perfect marriage—who is?—but we love each other and we respect each other and we enjoy being together. At sixty-eight, that’s pretty good.”
“I’m only sixty-seven.”
“At sixty-seven and sixty-eight, that’s pretty good.”
They didn’t speak for a while.
“Oat Squares?” Calvin said. “Is it time?”
They continued to sit in silence and then Beecher blurted out, “You don’t think I’m just comic relief?”
He got up from the couch then and knelt down by her chair and put his arms around her. He kissed her on the lips.
“I think you’re comic, in the sense of funny. I think you’re witty. I think you’re utterly without malice or meanness or spite.”
He paused to see how she was responding, but her eyes were closed and she seemed to be concentrating hard. He went on.
“And you’re a relief to come home to every night. You’re a relief from the pettiness and meanness and selfishness and … and the ambition and arrogance and …” He put his hand on her cheek. “What brings all this on, anyhow?”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m a preposterous old woman, gadding about and having lunch and talking too much and invading people’s privacy and it occurred to me at the Kizers’ garden party that when people seem to like me, it’s only because I’m comic relief.”
“Give us a kiss,” he said.
“Calvin, don’t be absurd. We’re old people. And this is serious.”
“Everybody is comic relief to somebody,” he said. “They all star in their own lives, everybody does, and the rest of us provide comic relief.”
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