Shockproof Sydney Skate

by Marijane Meaker

  She was dressed.

  She was running back and forth searching for her makeup bag. “This is gross. I can’t leave without it. I can’t buy it all out there. That’s too expensive. I know it’s here but where? I can’t lose something right in my own house.”

  The buzzer sounded again.

  “Fay? I’ll be down in a minute. I’m super-sorry!”

  Shockproof sat up and covered his overworked and swollen penis with a pillow; it was Estelle Kelly’s conditioning.

  “That’s mind-blowing!” she said to him, with a sudden smile.

  “What?”

  “You know where my makeup bag is?”

  “No.”

  “I packed it! It’s in the airline bag!” she said.

  Then she blew him a kiss. “Happy Firecrackers, Sydney! Be sure the door locks behind you.”

  Shockproof called the number of the garden apartment. Albert was home. Shockproof asked him if he had seen Loretta Willensky.

  Albert said, “Does she have very long black hair?”

  “No. She’s blond.”

  “Then I haven’t seen her,” said Albert. “Someone with long black hair was here this morning. She had a gift for your mother, so I let her into your place for a few minutes. That was okay, wasn’t it?”

  “What kind of a gift?”

  “She didn’t say. I let her in and waited for her. She called your mother ‘Shep,’ and said she wanted to leave her a small surprise. She was only inside for a few minutes.”

  “Since when does the general public have access to our house?”

  “Sydney, she was awfully sincere.”

  “Oh, right,” said Shockproof.

  Albert promised to keep an eye out for Loretta Willensky.

  Then Shockproof called Leogrande and told him he had a bad case of diarrhea. From the rumblings in his stomach, Shockproof believed he was more of a prophet than a liar. Leogrande used it to elicit a promise from him to do all the night feedings over the holiday weekend. He told Shockproof the newly arrived red-backed salamanders intended for the terrarium had fungus. Shockproof was to give them individual potassium permanganate baths.

  When Shockproof hung up, the rejection diarrhea sent him bent double into the bathroom. He was glad of the physical distress, glad he could not concentrate on what Albert had told him. He tried to think of what he was enduring in the bathroom as a total purge, cleansing him from all bodily and spiritual impurities, giving him a totally new start, as Albert claimed fasting was supposed to do.

  He closed the balcony door to keep Dr. Teregram from a draft, and noticed there were no ribbon snakes left inside the cage. The King was coiled up contentedly in a corner, a bulge in her side, asleep.

  As he passed the table, he saw ORGANIC CHEMISTRY but did not open it. He looked at it and touched the cover. He thought of an afternoon at Fire Island Pines when he had come back to the cottage early, with a great haul of clams from the bay. He had rushed into the house. The door of M. E. Shepley Skate’s and Corita Carr’s bedroom was closed; the radio was turned up very loud. It was three o’clock. He had left the clams in the bucket, in the kitchen. On the way back to the bay, walking along the boardwalk, he had suddenly begun to cry. The tears came without warning, as though something he had eaten had been swiftly rejected by his stomach, and he had puked—then felt all right again. Once he reached the bay, it was over.

  Next to ORGANIC CHEMISTRY was a piece of blue stationery with an A.A.G. monogram, and he was ready to dismiss that, too, but his eyes were too fast.

  Dear Raoul,

  Did I ever thank you for sending me Listen to the Warm? Raoul, I can’t talk to anyone but you. I don’t feel right when I go anyplace without you. Raoul, I can really understand why mental patients need straitjackets. I need sanctuary, something to press around me, reassure me that I’m not splitting, shattering. Lock me in with your arms and legs. I am torn and bleeding inside, jumbled and upside down. And when, oh when will I heal? And what scars will remain?

  The letter was unfinished.

  He tried to remember their exchange. I love you, Alison; so do I love you, Sydney.… Alison, I love you; I’m in love with you, too, Sydney.

  What?

  It was gone from his memory.

  What was there was that corny cable which was the end of The Love Machine. I need you.

  Only it was not signed “Robin.”

  It was signed “Alison.”

  It was not just one cable.

  It was hundreds of cables and telegrams, thousands, all addressed to different people, all reading the same way, all signed “Alison.”

  Orchestrated by the tumultuous sound of countless pant suits’ and trousers’ zippers in descent.

  Eleven

  A SENSITIVITY SESSION

  What was Doublemint trying to say with those idiot twins and double your pleasure?” M.E.’s voice from the den. “They were trying to say it’s all right to chew gum with people. They were trying to say chew gum on a date; chew gum while you’re walking, dancing, skiing, sailing, screwing. Chew! They were trying to make chewing gum socially acceptable!… Is that you, Sydney?”

  “Yes.”

  “I brought Mr. Baird home for a conference, Sydney; the air conditioning’s on the blink at the agency. Loretta’s here.”

  “Where?”

  “She was down in the garden with Albert when I last saw her,” said M.E. “And Estelle Kelly’s been calling.… Don, what was Juicy Fruit trying to say? Stretch your coffee break: Juicy Fruit’s flavor stretches. All right? Don, tell me what in the hell we’re saying with this Chew-zee line?”

  Baird, meekly: “We’re giving gum snob appeal.”

  Shockproof proceeded down the hallway to his room, while M.E. let loose.

  He went to the window of his room and looked down into the garden. Albert was playing Vivaldi softly, stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, listening to Loretta Willensky.

  “I came away less afraid,” she was saying. “I could relate to people. I didn’t care whether I was Loretta Willensky or Loretta Wills. I knew I was me.”

  “You passed through an identity crisis,” said Albert.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ve been to several marathons myself,” said Albert. “They use many of the sensitivity techniques.”

  “Didn’t you feel that you’d grown after each one, that you could feel more?”

  “Particularly in the nonverbal exercises,” said Albert.

  “Then let’s have one tonight, Albert.”

  “Mike and his girl would be all for it.”

  “Sydney will go along, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s very malleable. And he really needs help. Sydney should be in therapy.”

  “I could get this girl from the Women’s Liberation Front, too.”

  “That makes six. That’s enough people.”

  Shockproof sat down on the bed. He took off his shoes and socks, folded his arms, and examined the hairs on his wrists. He wondered if tincture of Merthiolate would be more effective against the salamanders’ fungus than potassium permanganate. He thought of the way some salamanders lead a triple life, beginning in the water, later taking up residence on land, and finally homesick in advancing years, returning to the water where they were hatched. Alison was on her knees before him, with tears running from her eyes, but now he felt no pity for her and wanted her to blow him. He reached over on the table for the nail clipper and attacked the big toe on his right foot, remembering his own homesickness his first year away at school. It was a peculiar word, “homesick”; it could serve as its own antonym. The nail was curled over like a claw and he snapped it off, listening to the magistrate describe Camus’s hero, Meursault, The Stranger, on trial for murder, as a “taciturn, rather self-centered fellow.” The magistrate asked Meursault what he had to say to that. “Well, I rarely have anything much to say.…” (“A lot of the guys are actually homesick,” Shockproof had written M.E., “
probably because the food’s so lousy.”) Then during the trial Meursault wanted to speak out. “It’s a serious matter for a man, being accused of murder. And I’ve something really important to tell you!”

  However, on second thought, I found I had nothing to say.

  The shining surfaces of the guillotine severed Shockproof’s head from his body.

  Shockproof went across the hall to his mother’s room. He looked around for evidence of a present, looked in the waste-basket to see if there were any gift wrapping in it. He looked in the top two bureau drawers, then in the closet. The room was neat as a pin. Happy, the maid, had come to clean today instead of tomorrow. Tomorrow was the Fourth, and every Fourth, Happy went on a church picnic.

  He remembered a long time ago when he was small, an afternoon when Happy got bombed on Cappy’s twelve-year-old Scotch. “There just ain’t no Cappy Rockefeller,” Happy had guffawed, “but there happen to be a Happy Rockefeller, and I is she.” Cappy had fired her on the spot. When M.E. had come home from the office, she had said that Happy had been with her longer than any other woman, and Cappy would go before Happy would. She had gone over to Brooklyn to rehire Happy that night, while Cappy moved in with Ellie and Ann. Phone calls, arguments, tears, flowers; on and on. Sometime after Cappy moved back, he had found a new gold bracelet in his mother’s bureau drawer with a gold triangle attached. Engraved on its side was: Happy, Cappy & Shep.

  Shockproof could find no evidence of a present. He wandered back to his own room, peering down in the garden as he passed the window. Albert was pouring a beer for Loretta Willensky.

  The phone rang twice. On the third ring, he picked it up just as M.E. picked it up.

  LIZ LEAR:

  Shep?

  M.E.:

  Hello, love. Dinner still on?

  LIZ LEAR:

  Shep, where are you staying on the island?

  M.E.:

  In Quogue.

  LIZ LEAR:

  I call that real loyalty.

  M.E.:

  I’ve been friendly with Elliot for years, Lew. You don’t expect me to—

  LIZ LEAR:

  I don’t expect anything from my friends at this point! Fay Foote had them over for a barbecue Sunday night, now you’re off for a weekend with them.

  M.E.:

  I think we should recognize Communist China, too. It’s a fact of life now, Lew. Elliot and Gloria exist—I didn’t make it happen, or wish for it—but they’re there.

  LIZ LEAR:

  You could at least wait until the body’s cold, Shep.

  M.E.:

  It sounds pretty chilly right now.

  LIZ LEAR:

  Have you talked to Annie? Talk to Annie if you want an estimate of the damage those two have done. She won’t budge from Westport. She barely manages to feed the cat. She doesn’t go out of the house; she’s ignored all her appointments in the city. Ask Annie how she feels about recognizing Red China. And Ellie had the nerve to call her and say the cat would be happier in Quogue!

  M.E.:

  Lew, may I call you back?

  LIZ LEAR:

  Is Sydney sitting on top of you?

  M.E.:

  Business.

  LIZ LEAR:

  Hurry, Shep. I’m getting into the Martins.

  M.E.:

  Can’t you hold back until dinner?

  LIZ LEAR:

  Shep, I’m a jet crash.

  M.E.:

  Lew, I’ll call you right back.

  LIZ LEAR:

  I hope Youth Explosion isn’t joining us for dinner.

  M.E.:

  No. Alan’s already left for the weekend.

  LIZ LEAR:

  Good… She’ll be a big hit out there. Gloria takes one look at under-thirty and runs for the wrinkle cream. Under-twenty ought to psych her out altogether.… Oh Lord, Shep, don’t be too long getting here. Don’t call. Just come and help pick up the pieces.

  He waited for M.E. to hang up. Then he put the phone’s arm back in its cradle.

  He thought of Mr. Boris saying over and over, “I never felt this way about anyone before.” Was it better to feel that way a hundred times or never feel anything? Was it possible to feel without knowing you were feeling, to perceive at some later date that you had felt? Did you have to have intense feelings; would lukewarm ones carry you? He thought again of Camus: Meursault, on trial for killing a man, yet truly being prosecuted because he had not cried at his mother’s funeral. “Gentlemen of the Jury”—the Prosecutor—“I would have you note that on the next day after his mother’s funeral, that man was visiting the swimming pool, starting a liaison with a girl, and going to see a comic film. That is all I wish to say.”

  When Meursault assured his lawyer that he’d rather his mother hadn’t died, the lawyer had snapped back, “That’s not enough!”

  At VPS, Joel Schwartz had been one of the few Jews in the Episcopal school. Not a religious Jew; he called himself a delicatessen Jew. Yet he was required to attend the classes in religious instruction. Once they all had to memorize something about God. Straight-faced, Joel had quoted a verse from a poem called “Relijus”: Perhaps I ain’t relijus, But when I say a prayer, I sort er feel inside er me, That God is always there.

  After that, Shockproof and Joel were always saying, “I sort er feel hungry,” “I sort er feel horny,” “I sort er feel like getting inside er some pussy.”

  Five minutes later when the phone rang again, Shockproof was still sitting listlessly on his bed. He let the phone ring.… A gift, Albert had said. What kind of a gift? How expensive? Alison was always complaining about her poverty, yet she had bought M.E. a gift.… Them that gives, gets. He had never given Alison anything but dead mice and ribbon snakes. Anything he could give her would be chintzy by comparison to the gifts M.E. could buy her. He never saved a cent he earned. It all went on gas and oil, rental library fees, paperback novels, and books about animals.… Should he invent a new summer luxury and wheedle extra funds from Harold Skate?

  “SYDNEY!”

  “What?”

  “Phone!” M.E. was shouting. “Telephone!” He picked up the receiver.

  “Where does an old whore go to get laid when she’s randy?”

  “Hello, Estelle.”

  “I also called you up to tell you about my stepmother. I love her a lot!” she said. “She actually wears dress shields. Can you believe it?”

  “How are you?” he said.

  “Do you want a trick tonight?”

  “How can you get out?”

  “The lovebirds are off in Hawaii.”

  “Ha wa yah from Ha-wa-ii,” Shockproof said.

  “I could smash all her things. I could vomit in her undergarments.”

  “Where’d he meet her?”

  “She looks like the bathroom monitor of a brothel.”

  “If it wasn’t for her, he’d have killed me, Estelle.”

  “Sydney, I had to tell him where I got my stash. He held me down on the floor until I told him. Oh well, it was nice being under him for a while.”

  “He beat up on me, Estelle. He almost broke my nose. Don’t I deserve any sympathy?”

  “Yes, but I deserve more. She looks like a breast-pin saleswoman from Woolworth’s.”

  “I’m sorry, Estelle.”

  “Sorry’s not a cure for the hots.”

  “I think there’s going to be a party here tonight.”

  “Is your mater having a bash?”

  “Not my mater. Me, sort of.”

  “Are you having an orgy?”

  “Group sex.”

  “How veddy veddy amusing. Am I invited?”

  “Sure, Estelle.”

  “I’ll bring my sleeping bag.”

  “There’s this Loretta Willensky.”

  “There’s what?”

  “Nothing. Why don’t you just come?”

  “I’m already breathing hard.”

  “Just come whenever you feel like it.”

  �
�Oh! Oh! Oh! I’m sorry, Sydney—I couldn’t wait for you.”

  There was a click and Shockproof hung up.

  M. E. Shepley Skate was standing in the doorway. “Sydney, Mr. Baird is going to give me a ride uptown. I’ll be at Liz’s, love. I’ll stay over. Loretta can have my room. I’ll call you before I leave for the island.”

  “What are you pushing Loretta at me for?”

  “Sydney, I wouldn’t push that poor child anywhere near you. Why are you letting Albert entertain her?”

  “I’m very malleable.”

  “Her father had me to brunch a few weekends ago. Try to return the hospitality. You did invite her for the weekend.”

  “I heard Alison Gray was at that lunch.”

  “Yes. Victor asked her.”

  She was smiling at Shockproof without batting an eye, a sudden bright smile with her eyes fixed right on his. He remembered all the times in the past he had seen that particular expression on her face: times she would say, “Miriam’s going to stay overnight, Sydney”; “Sydney, Laurie’s going with us for the weekend”; “I’m going to spend the night at Mitzi’s, Sydney, and Liz will sit with you.” There was the Christmas Eve when Cappy had moved out for good—that same smile on M.E.’s face, the same straight look into his eyes: “Love, help Cappy into a taxi with her bags,” and when he had returned from doing it, the sound of muffled sobs from the bathroom, but M.E. had emerged dry-eyed and high-spirited: “I feel like having a hot buttered rum or two or twelve,” saying nothing more about it.

  There were occasions when the look drove Shockproof to overreact, to play some bent form of Let’s Pretend with M.E., to say and do things to help M.E. believe that he believed, like some child going along with the Santa Claus routine, all the while knowing the cost of everything that was hidden up in the attic. At other times, he felt as he did at that moment, angry at the sham and the necessity for it, yet knowing no other way for them to proceed without it.

  He watched his mother light a Gauloise with the thin gold Cartier lighter she had received last Valentine’s Day from the woman who raised Yorkies, and liked to call him Sidsky, and M.E. Shepsky.