The Stork Club

by Maureen Freely

  She grabbed the container, ran into the bathroom, and flushed the pills down the toilet. ‘Here,’ she said, fishing another bottle out of her bag. ‘Take these.’

  Then you came back. ‘I don’t understand,’ you said. ‘The sheets weren’t even in the dryer.’

  ‘It’s been that kind of afternoon,’ I explained.

  ‘Why?’ you asked.

  ‘Ophelia needs to hide from Kiki,’ I explained. ‘They’ve had a fight.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ you said. You seemed to buy it. And so off I went to play tennis with Trey – but not before you had made me try to reach Charlotte (I couldn’t, her machine was on) and take my pill. (‘It’s just a valium,’ Ophelia whispered to me afterwards. ‘It won’t kill you.’)

  Trey was nowhere to be seen when I got to the court. I waited five minutes and was on my way back to the apartment when he jumped out of the bushes.

  ‘Gotcha!’ he said.

  Here followed the strangest tennis match I have ever had.

  Remember first of all that Trey was wearing his camouflage suit, not to mention his knife belt, complete with knife. His only concession to convention was his footwear. He deliberately lost some sets and also made a habit of hitting balls over the fence and then delving into some new pocket and saying, ‘I fooled you, didn’t I?’ or, ‘Win at cards, lose at love.’

  At one point, when I was way ahead, he hit me over the head with his racket, only to say, in response to my yell of pain, ‘Oh, you poor little baby-pooh. Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?’

  Did he know about me and Charlotte? I asked myself. Or was he finally losing his mind? Did I dare to win the match? Or would victory put my life in danger?

  50

  Leave me floundering on the tennis court as the tranquillizer kicks in, and imagine …

  Charlotte, in her kitchen, with her autobiography students, who have reshuffled all their afternoon plans and trekked half-way across the city so that they can prove themselves flexible to the needs of a working mother.

  God! The humiliation! She ought to have just told them. What is there to be ashamed of, anyway? It’s not her fault! She’s not the infesting party! She always checks her children’s hair! She could – if she were that sort of person – tell that bitch headmistress where to look for the culprit. If she were a tattle-tale. But she is not going to get Becky into trouble. No, siree. Charlotte covers for her friends, even when they let her down. It’s her nature.

  The person she is really angry at now is herself. Why had she suggested having her students over to her house? How had she thought it would be possible to conduct a class in such chaotic circumstances?

  One of her students – Doris – has left the group and is out in the back yard smoking a cigarette. Or rather, jabbing it at her lips, pacing back and forth, exhaling through all her orifices. Now she is coming up to the window and shouting at it. What, is she angry? Charlotte doesn’t know.

  I ought never to have let them see me here, she says to herself as she surveys her other students’ faces, as she sees how hard they are trying not to look at the lunchboxes and jackets strewn all over the floor. What had they made of her? This woman who screamed at her children, and then threw them two boxes of fruit rollups, commanding them to go into the den and ‘just watch anything’. This woman who said excuse me, there is something I have to do before we sit down, and then proceeded to open the washing machine door and let water pour all over the floor and cry, ‘God damn you, Trey!’ This woman, who then called up Trey at a gym to leave him a clipped Hitlerian message – not about the washing machine, but about his ‘contractual obligation’ to buy trail mix, or else – can this woman be their serene, eternally patient and composed teacher?

  Charlotte knows they all know why she had to abandon her class for the nursery school. If they didn’t pick up the allusion from Dottie herself – ‘How old are you, honey?’ ‘I have animals in my hair’ – then all they had to do was look at the bottle of headlice shampoo standing on the stove, with the printed assurance: ‘REMOVES HEADLICE AND THEIR EGGS.’

  Charlotte’s eyes wander from the washing machine – what is in there? – to the answering machine clicking on and off – who is trying to reach her? – to the unacceptable game show the children are watching on TV. She can just see them squirming on their beanbags. They have begun to accuse each other’s heads of blocking the screen. Their squeals are muffled by the washing machine, which has gone into its spin cycle. It sounds as if there’s nothing in there but a sneaker and a double sheet.

  Somehow this reminds her of Becky. Becky, who never has to try. Why is it that men only care about looks?

  She can’t allow herself to continue thinking in this vein. She has to attend to her class. To practicalities. Like supper, and headlice, and trail mix.

  How can she be sure Trey will even remember to go shopping? What if he buys things that contain preservatives? When is she going to shampoo the children’s hair, and wash their brushes and sheets and clothes and prepare for tomorrow’s 10.30 class? What if Trey has forgotten what trail mix is? What if that’s him on the phone? What if Ophelia is trying to get through to her? What if it’s important? These are the questions that whirl around in Charlotte’s head as she watches a raisin do a slow circular dance on top of her washing machine.

  She is interrupted by a sharp rap on the plate glass window. It’s Doris, saying something hostile but inaudible. How is Charlotte going to find out what went wrong? She looks around the table, hoping her other students will give her some clues. They are all smiling at her. Sadly.

  ‘I guess I should try to speak to Doris alone,’ Charlotte says.

  ‘Again?’ says one student.

  Again?

  What is happening to her? Before she can ask anyone, Doris comes inside. ‘Let me tell you what I cancelled FOR THIS,’ she yells. ‘I was supposed to visit my sister in the hospital and take her this present. I was supposed to meet my husband at the Embarcadero Centre. Instead, I come here to listen to you say nasty nothings and … well, all I can say is the hell with you.’

  ‘But Doris, maybe if you …’

  ‘There is no excuse for antisemitism,’ she says.

  Antisemitism?

  ‘Doris. Please. Sit down. Let’s talk.’ But Doris is out the door.

  Doris is half-way down the block when Charlotte sees she has forgotten her Macy’s bag.

  She throws open the door. ‘Doris! Doris!’

  Charlotte starts running after her. Until she realizes she can’t leave the children alone in the house.

  How can one person do it all? The headlice, the trail mix, the doctor, the lover, the husband, the children, the job … and now, as if that weren’t enough, there’s Becky. Her lipstick! Her carelessness. And the stud! The gradebook! And she called this liberation? When was the last time she had done something for herself?

  She goes back inside. Throws the Macy’s bag across the room. Picks up the phone. Dials Becky’s number, and tells the bitch what she thinks of her.

  51

  When Trey informed me, after calling the tennis match to an abrupt end, that he was afraid to go home because Charlotte was plotting to kill him, naturally I burst out laughing. ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said, but he insisted, so in the end I offered to go back to his house with him so that I could see what he meant.

  We found Charlotte was at the kitchen counter chopping vegetables. She swung around, knife glinting, as we walked into the room. She screeched, ‘You bastard, you miserable bastard! Where the hell have you been?’

  Trey dived under the table.

  ‘You fucking coward!’ Charlotte shrieked. ‘You get out from under there and tell me like a man!’ I had never seen her like this before. She was still brandishing her knife. ‘Do you know what I’ve been through today?’

  Here I made the mistake of trying to intervene. She turned on me, knife still brandished. ‘And you! How do you even have the nerve to set foot i
n this house?’ I backed into the corner. ‘Why did you lie to me?’ she screamed. ‘What twisted kind of pleasure did you get out of making a fool of me?’

  I asked her to put her knife down.

  ‘What knife?’ she said, surprised. ‘Oh, OK. Sure.’ She walked over to the counter and set it on the chopping board, then hung her head and burst into tears. I bounded over to comfort her.

  I don’t know how long it was before I remembered I was speaking in the presence of Trey – until I looked under the table and realized that I wasn’t.

  I didn’t see the point of looking for him. I told Charlotte he had probably run away. ‘He thinks you’re trying to kill him, and now you’ve confirmed his suspicions,’ I told her. ‘You may never see him again.’

  But she said she knew he had to be in the house because she hadn’t heard a door open.

  We found him in his study, on his exercise bicycle. As Charlotte abased herself with apologies (‘I didn’t even know I had a knife in my hand, darling!’) I convinced myself that fright had had a salutary effect on him.

  Even so, I thought it was a bad idea for Charlotte to drive me home. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  The reason she wanted to drive me home – and I ought to have been able to see this coming, too – is that she had some questions to ask me. The barrage began as she stopped for the first set of lights. ‘I know we don’t have time to go into this in any depth,’ she said, ‘But…’

  Then she winged them at me, one after the other. Why hadn’t I told her I was in love with Becky? If I wasn’t in love with Becky, why had I told Becky such a dangerous lie? There had to be some strong feeling involved even if I chose to label it differently – so when had it begun? And why had it begun? And exactly how?

  ‘I don’t even know myself, for fuck’s sake!’ I finally shouted. This made her break down again. She sobbed all the way to Hyde Street, parked, and buried her head inside the wheel in a way that made me think she was going to strangle herself. Naturally, I put my arms around her and begged her to pull herself together.

  How could I have predicted that she would now launch into an even more excruciating programme of self-recrimination? And how do you think it made me feel to hear her blame herself for things I knew to be my fault?

  ‘You wouldn’t have done this unless there was something wrong with our relationship,’ she wailed. ‘There must be some urgent need you have that I’ve been unable to fill. What is it? I need to know!’

  ‘Don’t flagellate yourself. Please! You’re a wonderful person. Why are you so down on yourself?’

  It was out of compassion, not lust, that I put her head down on my shoulder. It was out of guilt, not desire, that I let her unzip my fly.

  Here began the longest blow-job of my life. It was, as you can imagine, the last thing I wanted or needed. I was worn out – and raw – and it had been days since I had slept.

  This was the last place I wanted to be – sitting in a car on a dark street corner, trying not to cry out in pain as this woman tried to make me happy. It will not surprise you to hear that I had a hard time getting it up, or that, when I did finally manage it, I had an even harder time keeping it up. The knowledge that I was stuck there until I came made me even more frantic every time my erection lessened.

  Charlotte’s response was to try even harder. Meanwhile, I watched the hands on the car clock go round and round and round and round, multiplying my troubles with every minute. A quarter of an hour was too long to leave Trey in charge of the children. But then it was twenty minutes, twenty-five, thirty… And oh God, now it was eight o’clock. I was supposed to be meeting Becky at this very minute. If I started now I would be late enough – but I hadn’t even come yet! How long would Becky wait?

  8.05. 8.10. 8.11. 8.12. What if Becky called home? It was all I could do to imagine enough Nubian slaves to release myself.

  But it was too late.

  By the time I got to Vesuvio’s, Becky was gone.

  52

  When I got home – it must have been about nine – you met me at the door. You looked upset. I did not dare ask who had come by or called in my absence, so I sat down and waited for you to tell me.

  ‘Jesse’s acting strange,’ you finally said. ‘He’s scared of me. Why? I put them to bed at seven-thirty, but then he kept getting up. And every time I went into the room to check him, he made me tap the radiators. Do you know anything about this? Has he told you there’s an infant alien hiding somewhere in the house?’

  ‘Oh no, not the alien again,’ I said.

  ‘Have you been criticizing me in front of him?’

  I said I hadn’t.

  ‘Then why is he afraid to go to sleep unless you’re in the house protecting him?’

  I told you I had no idea.

  ‘Well, he’s waiting for you now,’ you said. ‘You’d better go in there. But first there’s something else.’

  I sat and waited. ‘Charlotte called,’ you finally said. ‘She was looking for Trey. I told her he was out somewhere with you. She asked to speak to you. I said you hadn’t come home yet. She said that was impossible as she had just driven you home. I said I didn’t know what to make of that, as you were definitely not in the house. This was when she hung up.

  ‘Then, a few minutes later, Becky called – also asking for you. When I asked her for a message, she said to tell you that she was at the hospital helping Ophelia commit Trey and that they needed Charlotte for a signature but couldn’t find her anywhere. What is going on?’

  You may remember that I was out the door before I could answer you. It is a sign of how far gone I was that I forgot to say good-night to my boy.

  It took me a good fifteen minutes to find a taxi. I didn’t get to the hospital until after ten. Walking into the foyer, I caught a glimpse of Becky with her kids and Charlotte’s kids and also, I think, Seb. Before I could get to them, they had disappeared into a lift.

  I raced up the stairs, and down corridors, finally winging around a corner to come face to face with Kiki.

  ‘I suppose you’re here about Trey,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. What happened?’

  Well, it’s actually sort of sinister. Trey called up Filly and told her he had lost his mind and asked to be committed. This is not the usual way people ask for help. When she got him here, he changed his mind and said he had made it up to get out of the clutches of these people who were after him – I mean, super nuts. When he asked to be released again, the people here said – wait a minute! Not so fast! And so …’

  Here Kiki broke down. ‘Oh God oh God oh God, I never thought it would hurt like this.’ He made an effort to collect himself. ‘I’m sorry. To drag you into someone else’s business. But Filly just told me a few hours ago that she’s leaving me. She’s found someone else!’ He let the tears roll down his cheeks. ‘I didn’t know I cared that much. But now when I think … about all the things we did together … our child … our work …’

  We were joined here by an ashen Charlotte.

  ‘I’ve committed Trey for the night,’ she said, as expressionlessly as if she had said she had bought an extra jar of mayonnaise. ‘So I hope that’s all right. Thank you for everything you’ve done, Kiki.’

  ‘That’s my job. Don’t thank me.’

  ‘I guess I’ll go home.’

  ‘Becky’s keeping the kids overnight,’ Kiki told her. ‘The only person you have to worry about tonight is yourself.’

  She offered me a lift. On our way out the hospital gates, she informed me that she had had a good cry on Ophelia’s shoulder after committing Trey.

  ‘I told her everything,’ Charlotte continued. ‘I hope you don’t mind. But I had to talk to someone.’

  It took a long time before I dared to ask, ‘So what did Ophelia make of it all?’

  Charlotte said, ‘Nothing.’

  Leave us sitting in silence at a four-way stop sign, and imagine …

  Ophelia in the hospital cafeteria. She
is drawing on a prescription pad – black-edged shapes which she then covers with a spider’s web, which she makes into an even more intricate spider’s web, which she then fills in inch by inky inch. At the next table is Kiki with their son. Kiki’s swollen face has the fresh, cool look of skin splashed in ice water. He is explaining to Seb what manufacturing methods are used in the production of carbonated drinks.

  Reviewing her own condition, Ophelia notes that she doesn’t feel all that bad, considering that she has just discovered that the man she was willing to change her life for does not really exist. It doesn’t matter that she has disgraced herself, because no one can tell.

  She still knows how to fool people.

  She jabs the prescription pad with her pen and punctures it. And that makes her feel good, because she never wanted to spend her life stuck in a hospital. She never wanted a child. She never wanted to be a doctor, ever. She did it for him.

  53

  It was approaching eleven when Charlotte dropped me off in front of 2238 for the second time that evening. I waited, just as I had done the first time, until her car disappeared over the crest of the hill. Then I raced down to the corner of Hyde and Union, hailed another cab, and directed it to Becky and Mitchell’s.

  I could see lights burning in the kitchen as I walked up the front steps. The front door was open. As I swung it shut I heard Mitchell’s voice rising out of the darkness. ‘Don’t let it… don’t let it… fuck, oh well, you did.’

  I could only just make out his silhouette. He was sitting with his back against the inner door. Apparently Becky had bolted the inner front door. ‘To make a long story short, we’re locked in.

  ‘We’re in the middle of a fight,’ he explained. ‘Don’t bother to ask me what it’s about either because I’ve lost track. But listen, what do you think of this part?’ he said. He lit a match. I had a glimpse of his face as he leaned forward to light a joint. He inhaled. As he exhaled and handed the joint to me, he said, ‘So anyway, listen to this. How long have we lived in this neighbourhood? How many words have I exchanged with the people next door? Well, here’s what just went down.’