Shockproof Sydney Skate

by Marijane Meaker

  “I wasn’t putting you on about marrying you.”

  “Lend me cab fare.”

  “What’s this thing you have about the morning after?”

  “It’s a thing I have about the morning after,” she said, grabbing his wallet from his desk. “I’m taking three dollars. I’ll pay you back.”

  “You can’t go out in a satin slip with the flag over your shoulder.”

  “It’s the Fourth of July.”

  “Don’t you want some juice first?”

  “I had some juice. I was juiced last night.”

  “I’ll put some clothes on and help you get a taxi.”

  “Mind your own business, Buster. There’s only room for one in this cockpit.”

  She went across and opened the bedroom door.

  “Don’t,” Shockproof said.

  Estelle Kelly didn’t answer.

  The front door slammed.

  Shockproof was standing there holding his head when his mother’s bedroom door opened.

  Loretta Willensky came across the hall carrying a book. She was wearing a thin white mini-nightie.

  “Is she gone, Sydney?”

  “Yes,” Shockproof said, “I’m sorry,” reaching for his shirt to put around him.

  As she came into the bedroom, he fastened the shirt around his waist and backed up to the bed. He sat down. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “Things got out of hand.”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, Sydney. I didn’t sleep all night.” “Why?”

  She was carrying Listen to the Warm by Rod McKuen. There was a paperclip attaching a sheet of familiar blue stationery to the front cover, but Shockproof recognized the jacket from seeing the book at Alison’s. He saw Alison’s handwriting across the stationery.

  “I had no idea how you felt, Sydney.” Loretta sat down beside him.

  “About what, Loretta?”

  She put the book on her lap and Shockproof began to make out the writing on the stationery. It was set up like a poem. I can understand why mental patients, / Need straitjackets.

  “What a sweet thing to do,” said Loretta Willensky, “to leave a present under my pillow.”

  They need sanctuary; you be

  Mine

  I want you to press around me, hold me,

  Reassure me that I’m not splitting,

  Shattering.

  I am torn and bleeding inside,

  Jumbled and upside down.

  For a moment Shockproof couldn’t get it together. Then he remembered Albert mentioning that Alison had dropped off a gift for M.E.

  “I’m very moved, Sydney,” Loretta said. “I want to think hard about it before we discuss it.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable,” he said.

  He stared wearily at the blue stationery.

  “Please forgive me, Sydney,” said Loretta.

  Please stay close. I can’t

  Talk to anyone but you, I don’t

  Feel right when you aren’t

  Close.

  “How ironic that I’d turn the evening into a sensitivity session,” Loretta said, “when I was so insensitive myself. I didn’t even come up from the garden when I knew you were home. I thought you’d pawned me off on Albert.”

  “Well,” Shockproof said.

  “No wonder you tried to get back at me with that creature.”

  “Estelle,” he said.

  “Yes. That Estelle. Sydney, I didn’t sleep all night.”

  “I didn’t get much sleep, either.”

  “Sydney?”

  “What?”

  “Can we just lie down together and hold each other?”

  “Lie down?”

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Loretta Willensky, taking his hand, pulling him down beside her. “You’ve taken a big step, Sydney.”

  “I have?”

  “You’ve reached out. I didn’t think you were capable of it.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Sydney, remember something tomorrow: what you did today was very brave, regardless of its outcome. You committed yourself. Will you remember that?”

  “Sure. Yes. I’ll remember.”

  She put her arms around him. “Don’t try to talk now,” she said. “We’re just going to hold each other.”

  His hangover made him helpless against the suggestion. He thought of Estelle Kelly out on Third Avenue somewhere in her flag, trying to hail a taxi. Then he shut his eyes, trying not to believe he could contract acne cheek to cheek.

  “Relax,” Loretta Willensky said. “Aim for a nonverbal closeness.”

  Twelve

  THE FEAR AND THE TREMBLING AND THE HANGOVER HOTS

  Shockproof had showered, shaved, splashed Aramis across his neck, and dressed, but it did nothing to improve his physical and mental condition. He was suffering from hangover hots in the acute phase, along with hangover anxiety.

  Loretta Willensky was still wearing her thin white mini-nightie.

  She was sitting across from him over a breakfast of bacon and eggs which she had fixed, affecting a thoughtful expression tinged with sadness.

  “Someone once wrote,” she began, sounding like Albert with one of his borrowed authority ploys from Bartlett’s Quotations, “‘If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.’ Did you ever come across that in all your readings, Sydney?”

  “No,” he said. His knee was inching toward her knee under the kitchen table. He gulped down a glass of ice water to try and quench the hangover thirst.

  “Whoever wrote that,” she said, “understood that you’re really the more fortunate of the two of us.”

  He wanted to get past all this mishmash of analysis and revelation.

  “Whoever wrote the copy on the Bromo-Seltzer label understood me,” he chuckled.

  “Oh, Sydney, Sydney, try to communicate with me.”

  “I’m trying, Loretta, but I don’t feel very well this noon.”

  “That’s why I dislike drinkers. Why can’t you stick to shit, Sydney?”

  “That’s probably what I’ll do,” he said.

  “You don’t want to try and communicate, do you? You never have wanted to, have you, not in an open confrontation?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “No, Sydney. Right now you’re trying to play kneesy under the table, and whoever it is who asked me for sanctuary in a very dear poem, which really, really moved me, Sydney, is unwilling to plain and simple communicate with me.”

  “When I write I get carried away sometimes,” he said.

  “Don’t apologize. Don’t be defensive.”

  “Poetry is like fantasy, Loretta.”

  “Never mind that. You reached out.”

  “Poets get carried away with words.”

  “Anyone, Sydney, anyone who can show me his vulnerability has my deep affection.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean the poem means anything.”

  “But when two people need sanctuary, they can’t find it with each other.”

  “You might write the same poem to ten people,” he said. “That’s the way certain poets are.”

  “You see, I need sanctuary too, Sydney. That’s what I’m trying to communicate to you.”

  Morton Earbrow was telling Gillian his knees and elbows were wet, he’d soil her couch, as Naked Came the Stranger. Yes, by God, communicate with someone.

  “Sydney,” Loretta Willensky said, “I can’t give you sanctuary.”

  “That’s okay, Loretta.” Should he be Sir Stephen again and order O to put down the marmalade jar and lift up her mini-nightie?

  “Sydney, I think something happened between Albert and me.”

  “Can’t you remember? Did you black out or something?”

  “Sydney, please listen! I wasn’t drinking last night. I was maintaining a natural high. I don’t mean something physical.”

  “I get it.”

  “Can you understand why, Sydney?”

  “Sure. I understand.” He ran his fingers
along her arm.

  Loretta Willensky looked down at his fingers but did not move her arm.

  “Because of our backgrounds, Sydney,” she said, “you and I both need very special people.”

  “Right.”

  “People who’ll sense we’ve been traumatized.”

  “I like Albert. I think he’s fine.” Shockproof was thinking of doing something freaky with the marmalade and her breasts.

  “Sydney, I’m not sure you’re even capable of communicating.” She pulled her arm from his reach.

  “Yes I am.” He gulped down another glass of water.

  “I didn’t sleep very much and it’s hard, but I want to try and get across my true feelings about your gift.”

  “It was a very lousy poem, Loretta. I don’t want you to think that’s any sample of my poetry.”

  “Sydney, it was a very moving poem.”

  “I can certainly do better.”

  “And I’m really very fond of you, Sydney.”

  “I am of you, too, Loretta.”

  “And I enjoyed that afternoon you came to my apartment.”

  “Oh I did, too, Loretta.”

  “I did.”

  “I did, too.”

  Morton Earbrow was communicating in the cool darkness with Gillian.

  “Sydney?”

  “What?”

  Faster and faster they communicated, harder and harder, in dozens of places, in countless ways. Fingers and nails on skin, their great shudders of total communication. There were explosions of understandings and—

  “Sydney! What are you doing with the marmalade?”

  “Put your nipples out, Loretta, and say please. The marmalade’s for your nipples.”

  Loretta Willensky slapped her fork to the plate. “I’m in love with Albert, Sydney!”

  “Okay, but—” was lost in the scraping noise of her chair being pushed away from the table.

  “I wanted to break it gently!”

  Loretta Willensky fled from the kitchen, as he licked the marmalade off his fingers.

  At Zappy Zoo Land that afternoon, there was a postcard on Leogrande’s desk, next to a note from Leogrande.

  The postcard had been mailed from Lightning Strikes, a nightclub on Third Street in Greenwich Village.

  Working here now and need snakes if you no longer handel please advize where a place does and call anytime eves after nine untill two morn. Leave message if working will return call regards your old custemer, Lorna Dune.

  Leogrande’s note read:

  Sydney, This unannounced beforehand time off must stop, or I’ll can you. Call Miss Dune and tell her we can stock her. Dismantle the aquatic terrarium after treating the salamanders and sterilize the tank with disinfectant. You’ll have to force-feed the new python, also check for mites. All our shipments from Dutton Animal Farm have been defective lately. Hate to cut off Cal Dutton, but that’s the next step unless I go down and take a look and talk with Cal myself. Check all his shipments very carefully from now on. Leo.

  Shockproof didn’t get home until five o’clock.

  Loretta Willensky was down in the garden with Albert. They were listening to Julian Bream and George Malcolm play Bach sonatas. Shockproof did not want to watch or hear them. He shut the window of his bedroom and turned on the air conditioner. Then he dialed Estelle Kelly’s number.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  “How did you know it was me?” he said.

  “You’re the only one it could be.”

  “We could go for a walk, Stel. Estelle.”

  “No we couldn’t.”

  “I’d come up and we could walk over to Carl Schurz Park.”

  “No more shitty pity,” she said.

  “That’s not why I’m suggesting it.”

  “You’d marry the Easter Seal girl if she was old enough.”

  “It hasn’t got anything to do with pity for you. I’m just down.”

  “Well, I’m on my way up.”

  “Are you having a drink?”

  “No. Up up and away. Fly the friendly skies of United.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to Hawaii,” she said. “In one hour.”

  “Why?”

  “My place eez vit dem,” she said, trying a Maria Ouspenskaya imitation gleaned from an old TV movie, “and I vill go to dem.”

  “You hate Gracious Me!”

  “I’m declaring a moratorium,” she said. “Anyway, certain people I know aren’t sorry for me.”

  “What are you talking about, Estelle?”

  “Gracious Me and Balls Off aren’t sorry for me.”

  “I’m not sorry for you, either.”

  “Anyone in his right mind would be,” she said. “Goodbye.”

  “I’m sorry for you, but I’m just as sorry for—”

  “Mokuaweoweo,” she said.

  “Me,” he told the dial tone.

  He took off his clothes, got under the sheet, and tried to sleep. He was too restless and down to sleep, so he sat up, pulled out the Manhattan phone directory from under his bed, and looked up the number of Lightning Strikes. He left a message with the bartender that Zappy Zoo Land did not know where Miss Dune could order any snakes.

  He propped pillows behind his head and read an account by Raymond Ditmars of a twenty-foot python eating an eighty-pound pig. He read Ditmars’s description of Australian marsupials, and the Elapine snakes in Africa. He read a bent Leonard Cohen poem about blood in the sink and humping the thorny crucifix and digging for grins in the tooth pile.

  Then he read several chapters of The Inheritors. Stephen Gaunt, the whiz kid of Sinclair Broadcasting was making out with Green-eyed Girl, Blond Girl, Chinese Girl, Golden Girl, Darling Girl, Italian Girl, and Lawyer Girl.

  In the midst of it, the phone rang.

  “How are you, love?” Mother Girl said.

  “I’ll live.”

  “It doesn’t sound worth the effort. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing is.”

  “Something is. How was your party? Are you taking good care of Loretta?”

  “Albert’s taking good care of Loretta.”

  “Well, you asked for that, Sydney. Why did you invite Estelle down the same weekend you asked Loretta in?”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” he said. “How are things in Quogue?”

  “I’m not in Quogue, love. That’s what I called to tell you. Liz and I drove up to Westport late last night. Annie isn’t feeling well.”

  “What about Quogue?”

  “I just told you. I’m not in Quogue. I’m not going to Quogue.”

  “Aren’t they expecting you in Quogue?”

  “They were, but I had to call them and tell them Annie’s ill.”

  “Are you going to spend the whole weekend in Westport?”

  “I’ll drive back Sunday afternoon.”

  “And not go to Quogue at all?”

  “I’ll be here in Westport if you want me. Now what’s with you? Is Loretta angry with you?”

  “No.”

  “Estelle?”

  “No.”

  “Then stop sulking around, Sydney. I can tell by your voice you’re sulking.”

  “Was,” he said.

  As soon as he finished the conversation with his mother, he put on white bell-bottoms and white shoes and a gray T-shirt. He took his gray blazer from the closet, and stuffed twenty dollars into his wallet. Then he wrote Loretta Willensky a note explaining he was suddenly called away.

  By eight-thirty he was on Montauk Highway, en route to Quogue and Bryn Mawr Girl.

  “Where?” she said.

  “Right here. Quogue,” he said. “In a gas station.”

  “Oh, Sydney, really?”

  “Really.”

  “Sydney, everything is super-awful.”

  “Nothing is super-awful, Alison.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What’s so super-awful?”

  “Annie was g
oing to kill herself over Ellie, Sydney!”

  “So that’s why my mother went to Westport.”

  “Shep had to rush up there. There’ve been all these phone calls back and forth. This has really been gross.”

  “Annie didn’t kill herself, did she?”

  “She would have, Sydney.”

  “I said she didn’t, did she?”

  “She was super-close to doing it, Sydney.”

  “She didn’t do it, Alison.”

  “She didn’t do it, but Shep went up there, and now here I am with people I hardly know and—”

  “Alison?”

  “What?”

  “Calm down.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Sydney.”

  “Just calm down.”

  “You don’t know what we’ve all been through, what I’ve been through. Sydney?”

  “What?”

  “It’s good to hear your voice, Sydney.”

  “It’s good to hear yours.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve been through, Sydney. This has been really gross. I’ve never been through anything like this, and I even forgot my pot. I left it behind in the refrigerator. Oh God. Sydney?”

  “What?”

  “Oh God. I just thought of something on top of ever thing else.”

  “What?”

  “Did you leave a note for the maid to defrost?”

  “No.”

  “No? That’s not a modern refrigerator, Sydney. If the refrigerator isn’t defrosted, it breaks, and now I’m going have a repair bill to pay.”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “Then why couldn’t you have remembered to leave a note? I had to pay her a dollar seventy-five to work on the Fourth, too.”

  “I don’t mean about the refrigerator,” he said. “I mean you’re right about the straitjacket, about needing something to hold you together.”

  “Did I say that? Sydney, I was stoned when I said that.”

  “What about when you wrote it to Raoul? What about when you made it into a little poem for my mother?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Alison.”

  “Sydney Skate, you’re super-snoopy. I mean that. You are gross. Does Shep know you saw that?”

  “Shep hasn’t seen that. Somebody else slept in Shep’s bed last night, Alison. Shep stayed at Liz’s and Loretta Willensky slept in her bed. And Loretta Willensky decided I wrote that poem to her.”

  “Did she keep the book, too?”