by Jane Smiley
“No.”
“Oh, God. We were about ten, and her dog was out in her yard playing with something, and when we looked at it, it was a baby mole. It wasn’t hurt, but I guess the dog had killed its mother or something. So Daria got a box and an old doll bottle, and we took care of that baby mole for weeks. I guess she went to the library and asked the science teacher, and in the end, we managed to save the mole, and she wrote it up as a science project for school, and then, when summer came, she gave the mole to her teacher. Daria was just so serious about everything, even sex, really. And she got worse. Eventually nothing was funny for her at all. She came for a visit to Santa Cruz sophomore year, and we pulled into a convenience store on Mission Street. There was some junker on her side of the car, all decorated with stickers about Wiccans, you know, like ‘Wiccans do it in a circle.’ I saw her looking, and I saw the couple and their kids. He was wearing a suit and she was wearing a Little House on the Prairie sort of dress. The car was full of stuff—two kids in car seats, coolers, clothes, little objects glued to the dash. So, as we pulled out of the parking lot, I said, ‘I bet they live in that car,’ and she said, ‘The guy in the suit was a woman.’ I said, ‘Probably. This is Santa Cruz.’ And she said, ‘That’s too freaky for me.’ And I said, ‘They’re just lesbians, what’s the difference,’ and she said, ‘They’re homeless Wiccan lesbians living in their car with two kids. Is that a choice or a misfortune?’ After that, we sort of lost touch. She works in her father’s law firm during all her vacations now. I guess she’s already in her second year at Boalt Hall.”
“Who’s her father?”
“Robert Shengold, but he’s not an entertainment lawyer. He’s a patent attorney. They argue all the time. I would hate that.”
“I can’t believe she would get along in Berkeley if she can’t accommodate a couple of homeless lesbians.”
“I don’t know. But the butch one really was carefully turned out. She had on a striped button-down shirt and a bow tie and everything. Her hair was slicked back. Usually in Santa Cruz, lesbians make an effort to look like lesbians, not like a straight couple from the 1930s.”
Stoney said, “We’re losing momentum here.”
“Did we have momentum?”
“I had momentum.”
“Thanks to that shit you brought, I have no momentum at all. What time do you think it is?”
“It’s about two-thirty.”
“Oh, God.”
Now she rolled over on her side and pressed up against him with her face in the crook of his neck. She was relaxed and heavy, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He imagined himself at thirty-one, three years into his marriage to Nina, the subject of conversations between Isabel and Daria. Daria was short, flat-chested, and squarely built, with ungovernable curly hair that she had kept neatly trimmed. He had thought Daria was a tomboy. He had thought seducing Isabel was entirely his own bad idea and all the more exciting for that. He slipped his hand under his cock and wiggled it back and forth. He was not tired at all and had planned on making love to Isabel as a way of getting to sleep, since he knew that even if he fell asleep in her bed, he would be awake by dawn and ready to exit without anyone’s being the wiser. And if he managed to fall asleep now, he could get four hours, which would be a good night for him. But they had lost the momentum. She said something that he couldn’t hear.
He said, “What was that?”
“Did you like that movie we watched with them?”
“Did I like Sunset Boulevard?”
“Was that what it was called?”
He lifted her up and looked into her face. He said, “You’ve never seen Sunset Boulevard before? Or heard of it?”
“I never saw it. If I heard of it, maybe I just thought they were talking about Sunset Boulevard. Didn’t you think she was weird?”
“Gloria Swanson is supposed to be weird.”
Isabel sat up on her haunches and stared at him. She said, “Do you think he was actually fucking her?”
“You mean Joe? I guess so. That’s the implication. After the New Year’s Eve thing. He moves in, she buys him all those clothes. He’s her gigolo.”
“But maybe he’s only her escort and friend. Maybe he’s not actually fucking her.”
“I’m sure they want you to think he is.”
“But how does it work? He isn’t into her. She’s old. She has all these weird mannerisms. I can just imagine what she would be like in bed, like with all the lights low and the room full of candles, and she’s wearing a headdress of some sort. And a kind of filmy garment to hide her body.” She laughed. “What’s he? Like forty? How does he get it up?”
“Forty-year-olds get it up.”
“Well, yes, they do, but I saw this chart in a men’s magazine that showed that as time passes they don’t get it up as high or as easily. I think the line for the forty-year-olds was at a thirty-degree angle or something like that. The line for the sixty-year-olds wasn’t even above the horizon. It was minus thirty degrees.”
“Something to look forward to.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you stopped smoking, according to the article, because that’s the biggest single factor. Anyway, everyone was sitting around saying what a great movie that was, and how they don’t make them like that anymore, but I thought there was such a basic unanswered question that I couldn’t get into it.”
“I think he’s meant to be in his late twenties.”
“You’re kidding me. His face looked so wrecked and old.”
“Well, in real life I think William Holden was thirty or so. Gloria Swanson was just over fifty.”
“So they were implying that he could just get it up no matter what? I mean, yeah, I knew this guy in college who would get an erection on the bus, just from the vibration, but what is the implication here about this guy—”
“Joe Gillis.”
“About Joe? He’s made out to be humiliated by the whole situation and not into her, and yet he’s supposed to be getting it up and fucking her on a regular basis. I don’t understand it.”
“Well, it’s Hollywood. Maybe he’s thinking about her money. Or maybe he’s closing his eyes and thinking about that other girl, Betty. Or maybe you’re right and he’s just her escort. I mean, there was a lot of censorship in those days, precisely so that the audiences out in Iowa wouldn’t start thinking about those very things you’re thinking about. If the censors let the movie through, then maybe they saw it as an unsavory situation, but not a sex situation. We could ask your dad.”
“I would. But everyone just accepted it.”
“It’s a classic movie. We’ve all seen it a dozen times. It just is what it is.”
“We’re going to have to watch that sort of thing for days now.”
“Your dad likes European movies.”
“Those are worse. I mean, yes, American movies are slow because everyone says everything. You know. A guy walks into a room. He says hi. She’s sitting there. She looks up. She says hi. He says, How are you? She says—after a pause, of course—I’m okay, how are you? He says, How’ve you been? She says, How’ve you been? They aren’t questions, either, so they aren’t even that lively. But European movies, they sit there and sit there without saying anything or doing anything. If you’re lucky, at least they aren’t sitting in a car stuck in traffic.”
“That’s Weekend. That’s only one movie. And it’s French. French movies are a special taste. What would you watch?”
She flopped back on the bed. “Nothing. I would read a book. Books move a lot faster.”
“There’s a revolutionary idea.”
“Well, they do. You never have a shot in a book of two people walking down the street in real time, step step step. That drives me crazy. And then their mouths open and then words come out of one and then words come out of the other. You might as well be watching two real people walk down a real street, but why would you? And you can’t speed it up. You can cut in and out of it, or you can cut to another scene, but ot
herwise you’re just stuck, because if it moved faster they would be running and that would look weird. If I’m reading a book, it takes a few seconds for my eye to pick up the lines of dialogue that in a movie take much longer to say, and once my eye has picked it up, I can go on to the stuff I’m really interested in, which is what the characters are thinking or whatever. I think books move a lot faster even than a movie everyone thinks is fast, like The Matrix. I hated in The Matrix how you were always having to stop with the story and watch them fight. I would rather the story would go on and on, and then the fight would start, and then, right away, they would cut to the end of the fight and you would know who won, and then the story would pick up again.”
“Spoken like a girl.”
“Well, so what? I don’t like chick-flicks, either. I don’t mind documentaries. I saw this one about an art class for schizophrenics at a mental institution in New York State that I thought was wonderful. So I’m not cinematically impaired.”
“I thought you were stoned.”
“I’m not anymore. It wore off.”
“Want another hit?”
“No. I still like The Lion King. I made Leo watch it just the other day. If they ask for suggestions, that’s going to be mine. What’s going to be yours?”
“I don’t know yet. I have to think about it. I don’t want it to be anything symptomatic.” He said this seriously, thinking how much people could tell about you when you suggested a movie for everyone to watch, but she barked out a laugh, which made him smile. Then she said, “Sweetie, I don’t think anyone but me cares enough about you to want to diagnose you.”
The effect of this remark on his body was instantaneous, like an electrocution. He felt the nerves in his chest and arms light up and blood rush to his face, which, in the dark, thank God, she didn’t notice. He cleared his throat. She was moving around, making herself comfortable, totally unaware, as far as he could tell, that she had more or less done him in. Of course it was true. He knew that because nothing, no name, no face, popped into his head at the moment she said it. He cleared his throat again, and said, coolly, he thought, “But you do?”
She turned her head in the blue light and was still smiling. She said, “Well, I do, yes. You were nice to me. You are nice to me. I don’t care about diagnosing you the way I did Leo, so we could fix it because it was interfering with my plans. I don’t have any plans with you. So I care about diagnosing you for you, so that something better could happen to you.”
He said, jokingly, he hoped, “I hate that thing where you suddenly see yourself as others see you.”
“That is a bitch, honey.” She reached up and stroked his forehead, and just then, as if his electrocution had turned something on, no more voluntary than that, he felt tears run down his cheeks. She said, “You’re crying.”
“Well, I’m not actually crying. I’m just reacting.”
She said, “Stoney. Stoney Whipple. I hurt your feelings.” She sounded genuinely surprised.
“Talk about a diagnostic.”
“Oh, honey. Gosh.” She pushed the hair out of his face and continued to look at him; then she picked up a pillow and wiped his tears away with the corner of the pillowcase, first the left cheek, then the right cheek. Then she put the pillow down, got off the bed, and stepped across the floor toward the bathroom. When the bathroom door opened, a big square of yellow light yawned into the darkness of the bedroom, blacking out all the blue windows. She came out, closed the door, came back to the bed. She handed him some tissues and said, “So blow your nose.”
He blew his nose and wiped his face more thoroughly. The tears had stopped, and now he felt that washed-through feeling of involuntary relaxation that could have been pleasant if it didn’t remind you of the agony you had felt and didn’t also suggest that this could happen again. As a rule, Stoney preferred sensations to be spaced widely apart and to be mild. He liked the hours to become days and the days to become weeks and his life to seem as endless as possible.
Isabel said, “You know, I think it is really time for us to go to sleep.” She was standing beside the bed with her hands on her hips. When he nodded, she began straightening the bedcovers and the pillows around him and over him. He said, “I guess I should go back to my room.”
“I guess not. You should stay here. I’m twenty-three. Even if they find out we’ve been together, we don’t have to give them the whole history, at least right away. You’re not married anymore. I’m a consenting adult. Blah blah blah.” Her voice was soft. When she had straightened the covers and patted the pillows, she folded back the quilt, took off all her clothes, and got into bed. She said, “Go to sleep. I’m sorry I said that. It was just something to say.” She cuddled up against him, and he could feel how cool her skin was all the way down, shoulders, back, waist, arms, belly, thighs, cool and silky and warming bit by bit against him. Her hair was in his face, but then she turned her head and pushed it out of his face with her hand. She seemed to fall asleep. The blue light seemed to pervade him, and the main thing he sensed was all the windows around the bed, was it eight on a side, that would be thirty-two windows, or was it sixteen on a side, that would be sixty-four windows, except you had to subtract for the bathroom, was that half a side? So that would be four windows you would subtract, except the bathroom had windows, too, so would you subtract four or add two, or subtract four and then add six? He knew he could open his eyes and count all the windows in the room, but he could not get his eyes open actually, and then the door to the bathroom disappeared and there was a bright light and his father was standing by the bed in a brown suit with cordovan oxfords and a maroon tie, and Stoney knew that this was the outfit his father had worn to the Oscars for some reason. Maybe it was what he had been wearing for the last year, while he was away, and since he had come back through the Oscars, he hadn’t had time to go home for his tux, it was a mystery, because his father wasn’t saying anything. Stoney felt himself twist and contract a little bit, and then he woke up and turned over and Jerry was gone. He said to himself, though not out loud, Well, you are on the downward slide now, and what he meant was that sleep was like a big pool he was heading into, feet-first, and he didn’t have to worry about it and here it came, and then he woke up because Isabel was somehow under the covers and was giving him head, and he had a huge erection, which she was anchoring with her hand. He opened his eyes.
It was true that she was under the covers giving him head. Not only could he feel her lips and tongue on the end of his cock, making some kind of flower motion, but if and when he could keep his eyes open, he could see the hump of her hips and one foot, sticking out of the covers at the bottom of the bed. He groaned, which woke him up more thoroughly, and then his back arched a bit because she was doing something with her fingers on his balls that sent a charge directly into his spine. He placed both of his hands, which were on his chest, onto her head and he scratched her scalp a little bit through her hair and it was the least he could do until all of a sudden she rose out of the covers, lifting them high and throwing them off, exclaiming, “Oh, it’s so hot under there!” and she was brightly naked for a moment against the dark underside of the quilt, smiling, only the circles of her eye sockets and her areolae and the triangle of her pubic hair were dark, making a triumphant pattern against her skin, and then she swung her leg over him and sat down ever so slowly right on his cock, introducing it millimeter by millimeter into herself. She said, “I’m always amazed at how much bigger my cunt is than my mouth, when my mouth seems so big,” and he gave a loud sudden laugh and finally he was wide awake and fucking her, arching his back and looking at her face, which was, since her hands were on his shoulders, an arm’s length from his. As she gazed at him, she puckered her very fine curvaceous lips and then opened them and let her tongue float out between them, which he could not stop staring at, until he decided to stare at her breasts, which were small but round and good to look at the way they moved slightly as she leaned over him. “Oh, yes,” she said, and lifted
herself and then she put her hand between them—her fingers were still cold, which was exciting—and somehow the coolness of her fingers and also sensing that at the end of his cock inside her he was touching something, what would that be, something deep inside her, that must be her cervix, made him come, so he arched up into her and it felt like all sorts of things were happening—his come was spraying out of him in a shower that was flowing back over him and warming him and her and running out of her onto his scrotum in a honeylike way, or not that, but something. “Ah,” she said. “Hmmm.” And she slumped forward over his chest, warm and comforting. After a moment, he said, “What happened to me?”
“Well, let’s see. I was drifting off and you were pushed up against my back, and I felt you getting an erection, so I thought I would kind of slide down there and give you a happy surprise.”
“It was a very happy surprise.”
“Were you having a dream?”
“Yes. My father was standing beside the bed, but I think he was you, because he was standing where you were when you came out of the bathroom and handed me the tissues. That sounds better, anyway.”
“Well, dreams don’t mean anything.”
“They don’t?”
“Just random images firing in your brain, and you make a story out of them. That’s what they said in my psych class.”
“That’s very boring.”
“I know. We were all a little disappointed.” She sat up and looked at him seriously, as if, after all this time, she was finally saying what she had been wanting to say. “Stoney?”
“Yes?” He arranged himself a little bit in order to answer this question, whatever it was.
“Does my father have a career left?”
He knew instantly what she meant, which was a bad sign, and then he didn’t say anything even though he had intended to, which communicated to her the fact that it was a bad sign. She added, “Does he think he has a career left?”
