Shockproof Sydney Skate

by Marijane Meaker

  “I told you not to play one against the other, Sydney.”

  “I didn’t even mention you.”

  “If I know you,” M. E. Shepley Skate had said, “you pulled your usual trick of exaggerating how much I was spending on you, to make him feel guilty.”

  So much for the story behind that invoice.

  Shockproof’s conscience hurt nearly as badly as his swollen nose.

  Then Shockproof saw SHEPLEY, MARY ELLEN.

  He removed this file and opened it to the first letter.

  Dear Mary Ellen,

  Make whatever arrangement you want and the sooner the better, for my memory of all of it is unspeakable. I am not going to fight you for the boy, since how would I care for a baby? You told me not too long ago you really wanted to try, but I know better. The truth is you can’t do what you want to do, even if that is what you want to do. You’ll go back to your old ways. I told you once not too long ago, hang around with ducks and soon you waddle. You belittled the remark. Well, Mary Ellen, now you know the truth of an old saying.

  I will never return to New York. I want a decent life somewhere among regular people. Just regular people—that’s good enough for

  Harold Skate

  Stapled to the letter was a short note in M. E. Shepley Skate’s handwriting.

  Dear Hal,

  Hal? That was news to Shockproof.

  Dear Hal,

  I’m so sorry. I am.

  My arrangements will be very simple. A divorce. No strings. I want to accept full responsibility for Sydney. Naturally, anytime you want to see him—let’s never put him in the middle of any disagreements we might have.

  I’ll pay for the divorce. My lawyer will always know where Sydney and I are, if you should want to see him.

  M.E.

  The next letter from M. E. Shepley Skate was a plea on her part for Harold Skate to see his son; detailed in the letter was the locking in by Shockproof of the various delivery boys and other tradesmen who called.

  The letters which followed were mostly ones arranging for Shockproof to visit Harold Skate. Then there were letters from Harold Skate written two years ago, in which he insisted he wanted some share of the cost of Shockproof’s education. These letters were more mellow in tone, mentioning Rosemary’s miscarriages, and wistful with regard to Shockproof’s future after college. Long descriptions of the swimming pool business and the advantages it offered a young man.

  Shockproof was hung up on the phrase “my memory of it all is unspeakable.” He put the folders back in the file, wandered around the house drinking Cokes, and mulled over the injustice of his never mentioning Rosemary Skate’s miscarriage or sending some kind of card to cheer her up.

  Shockproof sat down on the couch and allowed himself the security of reliving the hours in Alison’s living room. He began handling that again, straddling her and being straddled by her, high on pot with Dr. Teregram slithering around them, chuckling to himself at the illusion he was just letting everything go up in smoke.… He was in a foursy. He was in a foursy with Raoul the other man. He was there with Raoul and Alison and M. E. Shepley Skate.

  The hell. He took a shower. He brooded over what went on in a foursy. All four did what together? Would he have had to do it with Raoul in his fantasy foursy? There were classmates of Shockproof who used to take money from this rich swish VPS sophomore from Baltimore. He’d blow them for twenty dollars apiece. They called him “Two Tens” and made jokes about never bending over for the soap in the shower room when he was in there.

  After Shockproof dressed, he wrote this note:

  Dear Dad and Rosemary,

  I came here for a while and in admiring Rosemary’s plants knocked them over by accident, but cleaned it up as best I could. Rosemary, those cacti are really neat. This is a really regular house. I thought you looked great the other night. Rosemary, and I admire you, though I have never come right out and said so. I will spend the summer in New York, since I have the job, but will give serious thought to learning the business one day. Thanks for the good time the other night.

  Very affectionately, Sydney

  Then he wadded the note up and shoved it into his pocket. There would just be a hassle over why he had come to Doylestown when they weren’t there.

  He took one last look around. He looked at his father’s bound copies of Effective Executive Sales Home Study Course, the photograph of his father frowning as he cut the ribbon outside Skate Pools, Inc., on opening day; at the photograph Cappy had taken of Shockproof up on the Cape the summer he was eight, wearing trunks, standing in the surf arms akimbo with his head thrown back laughing (M.E. had been standing behind Cappy making monster faces); and at his father’s back issues of The Rotarian, neatly assembled on the mosaic coffee table Rosemary Skate had made herself.

  He looked for some sign of this Hal who had, must have, made it with M.E., under what bizarre circumstances he could not fathom. He found only Harold Skate.

  Then he opened a can of Calo chicken parts for Daughter, dropped the empty can outside in the garbage, and took off in his Thunderbird.

  He drove back by way of New Hope.

  On the main street there, as he was waiting for a light, he saw a sign over one of the stores.

  MR. BORIS

  Hair stylist for men and women

  Shockproof looked for a parking space.

  Nine

  S. & M. YELLOW STELLA SWEET BANANA PAPER

  Mr. Jim, one of Mr. Boris’s assistants, directed Shockproof to a top-floor apartment, three buildings away from the beauty shop.

  The name under the bell was Loretta Wills.

  Loretta Willensky answered the door wearing blue shorts and what looked like one of Mr. Boris’s shirts. It was a wide-striped pink and white one, several sizes larger than Loretta. Her hair was long and blond. She was almost pretty, but she wore no makeup and her chin and forehead were broken out. She did not seem surprised to see Shockproof at all, and he remembered that about her: she was a very unstirred person. There was the story that once late at night years past on Fire Island Pines, when Loretta had been hurrying down to the bay to call her father to the telephone, she had slipped off the boardwalk and fallen into “the Chapel.” This was a wooded spot for gang bangs, and Loretta had landed in the center of six naked men. Her only comment was said to have been, “Would any of you know Boris Willensky’s whereabouts?”

  “Sydney Skate. How are you? Come on in.”

  “I’m fine. You changed your name.”

  “I didn’t change it. I shortened it,” she said.

  “What’s this?” said Shockproof. “What are you set up for, a séance?”

  There was a large circle of folding chairs in her living room.

  “I’m having a sensitivity session here tonight.”

  “Is that something like group therapy?”

  “Something like it. It’s more free. Could you stay for it?”

  “No. I have to be back.”

  “Your mother didn’t tell me you’d come down for the weekend, too.”

  “I didn’t come down with my mother. I came down last night.”

  “Your mother looks marvelous, Sydney. Some kind of a May-December thing, hmmm?”

  “What?”

  “There’s quite a difference in their ages.”

  “——” What kind of a noise had he made? Something in between a word and a moan.

  “If it’s going to bother you, I’ll get off the subject.”

  “Bother me?” Joel Schwartz had answered.

  “It’s best to just come to grips with it,” Loretta said. “Once I came to grips with it, I lost a lot of my unconscious hostility.”

  Then she went into the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She said, “Jim came back from Philadelphia with some good shit last night. Shall we have a joint?”

  “I never heard it called shit,” he said.

  “That’s what Jim calls it,” she said. She brought out the aluminum foil bag and
the Yellow Stella Sweet Banana paper. “You’re right, Sydney,” she said, “I did change my name.”

  “You shortened it,” he said.

  “I changed it. I’m going to work on why I won’t admit I changed it in my sensitivity session tonight.”

  “Where did you see my mother?” he said.

  “Dad had a brunch Sunday at his place. She came with Liz Lear and Alison and Victor and Paul.”

  “The whole funny farm.”

  “I remember that summer at Fire Island Pines it bothered you to talk about it. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’d just as soon talk about it. What is there to talk about?”

  “That summer I wanted to talk about it in the worse way. I’d just figured it all out, but you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shockproof said. “I was a big letdown in every department that summer.”

  “The sex wasn’t your fault,” she said, lighting up. “I was very repressed. This is real strong gage. It may be hash.”

  “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing that summer,” Shockproof said, as she passed him the joint. “You were my first woman.”

  “I was repressing my own sexuality because of guilt over thinking of sex so much. You know how Dad always talks sexy.”

  Shockproof sucked up some drags and handed back the joint.

  “What were they like together?” he said.

  “Who?”

  “My mother and Alison.”

  “Liz and your mother were competing over who’d light her cigarette sort of thing. She was like some sorority girl being rushed by the two of them.”

  “Was she staying with my mother and Liz?”

  “I gather she surprised your mother by just showing up. She came in her own car.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “She doesn’t live with you, does she?”

  “I don’t know,” Shockproof said. “I haven’t been home in fourteen hours.”

  “Dad says your mother’s finally turned down chicken lane.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That means she’s beginning to dig young girls.”

  “Yeah,” Shockproof said. “Right.”

  They passed the joint back and forth.

  “Dad says you start off as chicken, and then you end up looking for chicken.”

  “I don’t know,” Shockproof said, “but this is good chicken shit.” He had a real high appreciation of his own joke. Laughed a long time.

  “It’s good stuff,” she said.

  “I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  “Don’t worry. I have all this food bought for my sensitivity session.”

  Then she said, “Sydney, do you know your mother doesn’t know you know about her?”

  “I know she doesn’t know I know.” Shockproof felt silly. The pot was there now and he was getting into a light, fuzzy high.

  “She says a part of you might know. I heard her tell Dad that.”

  “That sounds like Mike,” Shockproof said. “He rents our garden apartment. He’s always telling girls a part of him really feels himself getting in very deep.”

  “Oh, I wonder what part that would be now,” Loretta said.

  “Were they hand-holding?”

  “No. Long looks across the crowded room.”

  “Some en-chanted even-ning,” Shockproof sang.

  “You will see some chick-ken,” sang Loretta.

  They both sang, “You will see some chick-ken across the crowded room,” and began to laugh.

  “Were you ever in a foursy?” Shockproof asked.

  “No. Were you?”

  “Once when I was out in the Hamptons. They have all these swimming pools and everyone goes in nude,” Shockproof said. “This one time it turned into a foursy. It was a lot cleaner than what goes on in the bushes at most suburban parties.”

  “Foursies and threesies are Dad’s style. Not mine.”

  “You’ve grown up, Loretta.”

  “So have you.”

  “What kind of a life do you have down here with all your writers and actors?” Shockproof giggled and handed her the end of the joint.

  “I’m not with a gay crowd unless I go over to Dad’s. I have my own crowd.”

  Shockproof ran his fingers down the buttons of her shirt. “You look like a goddess,” he said. He was remembering The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, when Stanley said that and smoked and made love with Andrea; then Andrea asked Stanley to look at her cunt while she masturbated, and say what he saw. Stanley tried to call it a vagina.

  —My cunt, she corrected him. Tell me what you see.

  —Your cunt, said Stanley, I see your cunt.

  “You’re very sweet, Sydney.”

  “Take off your shirt.”

  “You take it off.”

  “You take it off,” Sydney said. “You have to want to take it off.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You have to ask my permission to take it off,” Shockproof said.

  “Oh I do, do I?”

  “Yes. You have to say please may you take it off.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Please may I take off my shirt, Sydney, and show you my breasts,” he said.

  “A formal request. Oui?”

  “It’s not a joke, Loretta.”

  “You don’t see me laughing.”

  “I don’t hear you asking my permission, either.”

  “All right. May I take off my shirt and show you my breasts, Sydney?”

  “Where’s the ‘please’?”

  “Please.”

  “You may.”

  “Sydney, let’s not make out in here. Can’t we go in the other room?”

  “We’ll see whether or not we’re going to make out at all,” Sir Stephen told O.

  “What do you mean?”

  “First show me your breasts,” Sir Stephen told O. “If they please me, then I might consider the rest.”

  O’s face flushed.

  It worked.

  Shockproof was amazed. He thought it only worked in The Story of O. Loretta Willensky was a first-class O. The only flawed part was her back, which was spotted with pimples. Shockproof felt slightly asinine asking her to turn around slowly for inspection. With a back like that? The masterful Sir Stephen tolerating such a mess?

  But he managed to say, “Very well. Ask permission now to show me the rest of yourself, Loretta. Name each part and remember to say please.”

  Afterward, he ate his way through most of the dips she had prepared for the sensitivity session. Loretta kept coming up to him and sticking her tongue in his ear, and wiggling his sore penis, and he wished she would put on her clothes, for even in some Greasy Louie’s he had trouble maintaining an appetite if the waiter had so much as a wart on the inside of his index finger.

  His nose hurt less now, and he no longer felt the other bruises from his bout with Captain Kelly.

  “You know, Sydney, it figures,” Loretta said.

  “What figures?”

  “Why you’re so S. You have a lot of sadistic feelings toward women.”

  “That was a game we played. That was a joke,” he said.

  “Oh, nobody ever jokes, Sydney. You’re S, and I’m M. I need strength because my father’s so weak. And you’re S to get even with all the women who took your mother away.”

  “Nobody took my mother away.”

  “You still can’t admit that, can you?”

  “Who took her away?”

  “Come on, Sydney; women are your rivals.”

  “Why do you have to analyze getting laid, Loretta?”

  “I analyze everything.… Have you ever been in love?”

  “I might have been.”

  “I bet you haven’t. I bet you’re like me.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “It doesn’t seem real to me. I think I feel some emotion, but then I hear this little voice, Loretta
Willensky’s saying, ‘Come on, Loretta. What kind of phony-baloney is this?’”

  “Why is that?” he said.

  “Why is that? Sydney, how many affairs of your mother’s have you gone through?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Could you count them all?”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I’d need a computer to do the arithmetic on Dad’s affairs. Do you know how many times I’ve heard him say, ‘This is the first time I ever felt this way about anyone’?”

  “Does he talk about it with you?”

  “Now he does. Before he used to say it to his friends, and I’d overhear it.”

  “How come he started discussing it with you?”

  “When I was away at school last year I wrote him. I told him I knew all about it, and I loved him just the same. Maybe even more—because after my mother skipped out, he could have put me up for adoption, or shipped me off to my grandparents. He made a lot of sacrifices to keep me with him.… I told him I thought we’d feel closer if we discussed it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Do we! I’ve sort of assumed the parental role now and Dad’s the adolescent. He tells me all his problems—how he’s afraid he’s going to lose Jim because he’s getting older; the types he’s attracted to; what he thinks of the fellows I date— everything. We really know each other now.”

  “What if he went after one of the fellows you date?”

  “Oh, I’d give him a good race, Sydney.”

  Shockproof pulled his goggles down over his eyes and waited for the starting gun. He gave Loretta a farewell salute, and a two-fingered kiss, holding his fingers up in the peace sign. He was indebted to Loretta Willensky. He had looked her up while he was floundering, imagining she would be, too; they could flounder away a few hours together.

  He had never expected to find a combination O, Mary Worth, and That Cosmopolitan Girl. (Last night I found Daddy making out with my date over at his pad. What Daddy does with boys is Daddy’s business, but stay out of my territory, Pop! What’s my territory? Any man I sleep with twice, or achieve a simultaneous orgasm with first time out, plus all the territory my favorite magazine covers. I guess you could say I’m That Cosmopolitan Girl!)

  When Shockproof reached Princeton, he found a parking place, changed five dollars into coins, and stepped inside a phone booth.