Catch 26

by Carol Prisant

  It was on their way home that she’d asked.

  “Why don’t we make love anymore?”

  Oh God, here she was, outright asking, just the way Peter had. She should just have reached over and rubbed him some. He used to like that.

  But now she couldn’t stop.

  “What’s the problem with us, Stanley? I’m nice-looking. People tell me that. Other men think I’m attractive.”

  The pleading in her own voice made her start to weep.

  She dashed away the tears, drew herself up on the seat beside him, and wooden and rigid, she stared through the windshield into the dark, one eyelid twitching helplessly.

  She needed to know.

  “Why don’t you sleep with me anymore?”

  Stanley’s eyes flicked her way before fixing again on the road. He’d raked his still-fair hair and pinched his nostrils between thumb and forefinger, a familiar, pre-outburst gesture.

  “What’s the point?”

  Frannie froze.

  “What do you mean?”

  His hands, the tendons taut, slid higher on the steering wheel.

  “Truth?” Stanley asked.

  She sat frozen as he fumbled at his breast pocket for his cigarettes, held the pack to his mouth, lipped one out, pushed the dashboard lighter, and stared into the oncoming lights. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

  “It isn’t ‘what’s the point’ at all. It’s that, really, I can’t help it. And I know you can’t help it, either. So I’m sorry. I am.

  “But it started after you saw that doctor in Chicago. I started not, um.… not to want you anymore. It was as if I’d, maybe unconsciously, needed a point to our lovemaking, I suppose. I know that’s not how most men feel. But I always wanted a family. Kids. You know?”

  He turned toward her in the darkened car. The onrushing streetlamps illumined a kid-like smile.

  Frannie forced her eyes back to the road. Hot with agony and stiff with rectitude, she sat there, breathing in, breathing out, until after several wretched minutes, she felt something weighty shifting in her chest. Something shocking.

  He didn’t want her.

  In her bedroom now, she looked away from all the photographs: from his remote eyes, and – she saw it now – her own, naive smile.

  She could have left him then. Should have.

  She turned the radio off and, carrying her purse to the closet, took two hundred-dollar bills from the toe of her worn navy heels.

  Stanley was nodding in his leather chair.

  Frannie cautiously turned the hockey volume down and, almost giddily, slid into the Ford and drove a little above the speed limit down to the Mississippi. Where the casino boat was docked.

  On a deserted industrial street just below the Arch, she slipped the little car into a legal spot a mere two blocks from the river. Lucky lady, she thought; lucky start to a, hopefully, lucky night. Locking up, she headed towards the river where a silvery bus was disgorging shuffling, silver-haired groups of two and three. Were they gamblers?

  Emblazoned on its side was “Senior Access,” and just beside the bus, bundles of old people sat round-shouldered in chrome wheelchairs or leaning clumsily on aluminum walkers. And it came to her then that silver was the geriatric hue.

  Frannie smiled and gave her newborn hair a tiny pat.

  The old sidewheeler had been anchored here since the thirties. From it, a covered gangplank extended to the double-glass doors of the boat which opened then into a dreary hall studded with fluorescent ads for singing groups and private parties. As Frannie neared, she could see that the slow-moving clumps of seniors were being folded into a long stream of hopeful casino-goers, while, beyond the doors, shirt-sleeved greeters, young and impossibly polite, idly checked their IDs. From the fast-moving line, she could see elevators brimming with the infirm and a staircase just beyond that hopefully led to where the action was.

  But in her good black St. John knit, Frannie felt uncomfortably out of place. She’d only been to the casino twice before, both times with visiting cousins from Elmira. That was because neither she nor Stanley were risk-takers. He was a terrible loser and she had always felt that gambling was a particularly seedy form of entertainment. The décor here, too – if you could call it décor, she thought – seemed down at heel in a sad, flashy way.

  She passed through the lobby finally: a lobby so dim that despite the deck-facing windows all around, despite the spider-like chandeliers and the late-winter moon, she could barely see the stairs. It grew darker as she descended, until what little light there was had faded entirely away. Both hands on the railing now, feeling her way, Frannie could hear the insistent ping of bells and chimes, the stutter of talk and … was that Lawrence Welk? A tinkle of glassware floated above the slot machine beeps and chimes.

  On the bottommost step, Frannie paused to get her bearings. Stanley had once told her that casinos were set up with the penny slots in the corners because they were much less likely to be played out there. The better- paying slots were at the entrance, where the tempting bells and whistles of a win could be easily overheard. From where she was standing now, however, it looked as if every machine in the room – penny slots, too – was in on the action. And playing them all were very large people on too-tiny stools. Not that everyone was large. There were also scores of the slight and stringy Ozarks poor: along with, of course (and still making their slow way in) the crippled and the aged – the silver bus set. Scores of determined-looking women caught her eye, too. Probably her own age, she thought, and looking really hungry. There were young people, she saw now. Most of them wearing their ubiquitous jeans, but also couples in matching Cardinals caps.

  The elderly minded each other’s canes while they played. No jeans on any of them, Frannie noticed. On us, she amended. And everyone here was smoking. Inhaling, or thoughtfully exhaling deadly blue cigarette smoke. The burning ash fell on the swirl-patterned crimson carpet. This was all like that painting, which seemed to be stuck in her head.

  Carefully, she took the last step and was caught up in the crowd – an expectant, greedy swarm that swirled and surged around her, sloshing free scotch on the rug, signalling for more, sweeping her on. She hated this, she thought, struggling against the current. She had to get out. It was like Hell … riverboat Hell.

  But then, over there … her coppery hair and moon-white skin all alight with some innate and curious glow … over there, she saw Randi. On each side of her there were men: young, bald, suited, shirt-sleeved, paunchy, unshaven, all sorts of men, all lounging and talking and smoking. More than a few women, too, she saw now. But Randi sat completely alone in a curve of the serpentine bar. How were they not noticing her?

  Seeing Frannie, she beckoned, and Frannie fought her way toward the bar. She needed to shout to be heard.

  “Hi. Hi!”

  Safe, but dazed, she almost yelled, “I’m so glad you’re here first. I was feeling a little bit lost in all this.”

  “Well, hello, Mrs. Turner … Frannie. You don’t mind if I call you Frannie, do you? Don’t you look … nice?” Randi stroked the hem of Frannie’s black jacket. “Pretty.”

  Thrilled and shy, Frannie bobbed her thanks.

  “I guess this must seem to you like an unusual place to meet, but when I’m in St. Louis, I always feel comfortable here. Though I don’t gamble at all. Do you?”

  “No, we don’t either. My husband and I, that is.” Frannie looked around for a barstool and seeing none, leaned awkwardly against the bar. Standing next to Randi once again, she felt homely and lumpy and the drab one again, despite her hair. “But have you been waiting long? I left a little late, although I was lucky and got a good parking spot. Oh, and of course, call me Frannie.”

  “I’ve been here a while, actually. Want a drink?” Randi was toying with a half-full glass of something tomato-y.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “It’s a Virgin Mary. I drink it because the color matches my hair.” She laughed. “No. Really, becau
se I like the name. Though, to be honest, I’m not about alcohol much.”

  “I’m not either, but I’ll join you,” Frannie replied, turning towards the seamlessly materialized bartender. “I’ll have a Bloody Mary. A double, please,” she added. She was unpracticed, but excited to be on her own.

  Turning back to Randi, she noticed the adjoining stool was empty now and easing her bulky body down, Frannie surprised herself by spinning on it twice, and giggling. I’m already lightheaded, she thought, and I haven’t even touched any alcohol. Any time she was with this woman, it seemed, she got foolish and wanted to drink.

  “Hair looks good,” Randi commented, flashing dimples.

  (Dimples too. She’d missed that this morning.)

  Her companion reached over and tenderly rearranged an errant lock. Frannie smoothed it herself.

  “I just love this hair, you know. Thank you. Thank you so much.” She paused. “My husband didn’t, though.” She made a wry face.

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” Randi smiled, and took a small sip from her glass. “But I told you this morning – the hair is merely for starters. There’s so much more we can do. Because I have some amazing suggestions for you, Frannie. You really have no idea how totally you can be transformed.”

  “I can’t wait. Tell me.” She looked around her. There were only men right nearby. “Can you tell me now? Do I need a pen and paper?” She opened her purse and began to root through old tissues, hard-candy wrappers, aspirin, loose change.

  Randi put out a hand to stop her.

  “No, I don’t think you do.”

  She tilted her beautiful head and studied Frannie’s face. Her hair swung to one side – a curtain of glorious flame. Randi wet her glossy lips.

  Candy apple lipstick, Frannie noted with surprise. Randi was wearing lipstick this evening, in a color that matched her slim red skirt and carmine heels: four full inches yet again. Nothing she’d have ever had the nerve to wear.

  Randi was inspecting her. Top to bottom, it felt like. Her neck, her breasts, her varicosed calves. Was she looking for something in particular?

  Perhaps Frannie had misunderstood this date? Her breath caught in her throat. Maybe Randi wanted to … what was the expression? Hit on her? She took an uncomfortably large swallow of her just-arrived drink, coughed hard, and was just starting to calculate the distance to the stairs when she pulled herself up short. Oh, stupid. Stupid. If this, this … real, live Venus (“Primavera” spun past her mind’s eye and danced away) … if she actually preferred women, what in God’s name would a Randi want with her? What was she thinking?

  Frannie composed herself and faced her friend. (Yes, indeed. Her new friend.) “I’m dying to hear your suggestions.”

  If her companion had sensed her confusion, she was ignoring it.

  “You know, I don’t mean to embarrass you, Frannie,” she began pleasantly enough, “but I want to reassure you about something. Which is … well, what we talked about this morning really wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before. Hairdressers are like psychiatrists, you know. Only our clients, I like to think, are a whole lot less guarded.”

  She grinned at her quip and laid a ringless hand on Frannie’s knee.

  But why all this touching? She edged her leg away. The place where she’d touched her felt warm.

  “But what did I say? I hardly remember. That I wanted to be young again? Have a decent body again? I mean, sure.” She heard herself laugh – unconvincingly – and hurried on. “Well, what woman my age wouldn’t? Lord, as long as we’re at it, I guess there isn’t anyone who would mind being beautiful, either, if they had a choice.”

  Randi seemed not to be paying attention again. Actually, she was eyeing the bar girl ferrying drinks and cigarettes. Frannie smoothed her jacket lapels nervously. She hadn’t misread this, after all.

  Still, she was grateful not to be looked at. It allowed her to go on.

  “But okay, if I had it to do over again, what I’d really like would be to find – what are they calling it now? – my soul mate.” But now, feeling shy, she spun on her stool until she was facing the indifferent room. She wasn’t even sure Randi could hear her, but didn’t care. “You know. That man I’ve always known was out there somewhere for me, even though I’m married, even though I’m sixty-six years old. I mean, you never know, right? Maybe he’s still out there. Waiting for me right now. Still.”

  ‘Though you know what else?” she went on, a little elated by her admission and swiveling happily back now to fully face this splendid, useful, new friend, this successful franchise-owner, who was finally paying attention, who was leaning in closer, smiling expectantly, “I think women like me blame themselves when they discover they haven’t married Mr. Right. I think they think they’ve done something wrong. But well, really, I’d like to know. Are there actually soul mates? I’d like to know that, wouldn’t you? Is there one perfect man for each of us, do you think? I don’t. Probably.” Frannie peered into her perplexingly empty glass. “And hey,” she chuckled, feeling clever suddenly, “I’m not even sure that men have souls!”

  Randi didn’t smile.

  Oops, Frannie thought. Not clever. Her own out-loud musings thrilled her nonetheless. Surprised her, actually.

  “Except that after all these years,” she went on, “I know I’d make a better choice. So let’s not call him a soul mate. Okay? Let’s just say he’s the perfect man for the woman I’ve always been inside. That’s the man I’d like to meet. Wouldn’t you?”

  She glanced at the ringless hands.

  Randi barely blinked, her lashes dusted rosy cheeks. She didn’t move and didn’t reply.

  Pleased with herself, with her summation, plus the buzz of that tall, spicy drink, she made up her mind that she just wouldn’t care. This was bar talk, anyway. And it had been so long since she’d sat at a bar.

  “And I suppose it’ll sound naïve to you,” she was swiveling right and left on the seat now, “but in my heart, I believe he’s out there still. I married so young. I was barely twenty, and my husband was the first man I’d even considered marrying. So you might say I never ‘shopped’.”

  She giggled, and Randi came to life, offering a high-pitched, rock- concert whoooo.

  Unaccountably, Frannie felt elated, too. And a little scared. One drink?

  Encouraged however, she burbled on.

  “Maybe that was my problem, do you think? I ‘bought’ the first boy I thought I loved? And all right, I’ll admit I’m sorry about that sometimes now. I am. But more than all that, Randi,” – the alcohol appeared to be mixing with the unfamiliar warmth of being … understood – “more than some made-in-heaven match, I’ve missed having had a child. I told you that this morning, I know.”

  And right then, right out of the blue, Frannie decided that she simply loved this perfect person sitting here, this beauty queen, who seemed to be listening so non-judgmentally, so compassionately. Was this what therapists did?

  Leaning in, so that she almost touched the gingery hair, she dropped her confession into the well of noise.

  “I couldn’t, you know. I wasn’t able to. And my husband. Stanley? He never forgave me.’

  She sat up straight on the bar stool.

  “So that’s it. That’s my story. I’m just going to get older and die without, you know, without ever having been loved.”

  It had come out of her so off-handedly.

  But then, without the slightest warning, this hollow ball of pain blew open in her chest and seemed to be swelling and swelling into a great balloon that was growing so large that it finally burst. And when it did, it scalded her eyes and her heart, so that in the blurry reflection behind the bar, Frannie could see the thing she dreaded most: a crying, self-pitying, useless, housewife.

  Was she drunk?

  But wait, wait, said some inner voice: a voice with a drink in its hand.

  Wait!

  A housewife with gorgeous hair!

  Oh yes, she was drunk.r />
  “You know, you’ve pretty much told me all that,” Randi said gently, sliding the tip of one pointy red shoe under the barstool’s bottom rung and, as Frannie had, swiveling back and forth, back and forth. “And you know, because we’re friends – and I’d like you to think of me as a friend –”

  “Oh I do. I do!” Frannie dabbed away her tears.

  “– I just have to ask. And I don’t want to offend you, because I am your friend, even though we only met today,” Randi said, “but listen. Why didn’t you just divorce your husband years ago, when you were younger and could look for someone else?”

  In for a penny, Frannie thought.

  She gulped her new drink (when had that arrived?), which made her cough once more. By the time the coughing ceased, she had just about gathered her thoughts.

  ”You know, it’s not that I didn’t think about it, Randi. Often, over the years. But I didn’t divorce Stanley for a lot of reasons, some of them kind of embarrassing, I suppose. And it’s going to sound funny, I know, but well … okay.

  “I felt sorry for him, first of all. I mean, we’re not close anymore, and he hasn’t always been kind to me, or considerate. Or a friend, even. But I’ve always imagined he needed me in some way. And then, even more, I guess, well, I guess – to tell you the truth – I didn’t want to lose the security. That’s the embarrassing part. Because after all, I was married to a successful professional man, so I’d never had to work. Never even considered working, in fact, even after working became okay and some of my friends were doing it. Even though nowadays, to tell you the truth, I think I would have liked using my education. Loved doing that, probably. But I was planning to be the Donna Reed lady. The pretty home. The adorable kids? You know.

  “But then later, when it became obvious I wasn’t Donna,” Frannie inhaled, but it hurt, so she took another swallow. “Well, it was already too late to do anything. I had no way to support myself. No talent. No money put away. If I’d worked, of course, I might have had a little now. Although,” she went on, musing, “I wouldn’t have made a good librarian, or a secretary or a nurse. And, of course, there’s not a whole lot you can do with art history. Also, I’m not actually very pretty.” Her hand moved to her neck. “I just couldn’t know if I’d make it out there, to tell you the truth. Unless I met someone new. Two of my girlfriends tried that,” Frannie frowned, “and they were so much prettier than I was. All confident and sure, they left their husbands in their thirties. And they’re still alone today. Would you believe it? Though, you know what?” She straightened and added indignantly, “lots of my friends are alone because their husbands left them. For younger women, of course.” She searched Randi’s face for confirmation. Randi nodded knowingly while she hiked up a bra strap. “So sometimes,” she continued, the anger melting away, “sometimes I think I’ve been more or less lucky. Less, probably …” she finished weakly.