by LEE OLDS
“Really, and Sandy couldn’t do a thing about it?”
“Nothing. Not a thing,” I said. “Remember, June was the one with the brains in all this; not Sandy. And Hartwig always enjoyed a good intellectual conversation more than any other. Well, that afternoon he got it.” Hammond shook his head.
“These people,” was his only comment.
“Yes,” I said, “these people.”
And there’s more. As the priest, who held his cross before him, led the tiny procession of witnesses down to the beach past the group of bums who sat on the hillside drinking wine, and the father still held the wailing infant, guess who stood in the large window of the only bar in town with her face pressed to it like a rubber mask, watching all this. But only watching and perhaps crying a little or a lot?
“This time you can’t fool me. I … I believe I know. The … the mother of the daughter whose son’d just been christened. The real mother. The one they call the beauty out there. Her name was…?” Hammond fumbled a moment and started as if looking very seriously into himself then bright eyed he added. “Sarah, wasn’t it. Correct me if…”
“No, that was it, you’re right.”
And she, of course could only witness her real grandchild’s christening from the window of a bar. A sleazy one at that I might add. Because of circumstance really, nothing more. And though a few of the guests saw and recognized her, I’m sure none of them waved. Like Orestes hounded over the earth by the furies she was an outcast and her jailed boyfriend had been her only link to social stability. In essence June hated the very sight or mention of the ‘alcoholic wreck’ as she called her. Had done everything in her power to keep her daughter away from the woman even if it had meant avoiding her half-brother Marcus, who was yet now living with the mother. But June hadn’t had to work too hard on that issue for the daughter herself saw how far her real mother had fallen and how self-destructive she’d become. Hence she did all she could on her own to avoid her. And why not, the woman was stubborn as a mule. She wouldn’t seek help for her drinking problem. She drove anyone who suggested it away. Physically beautiful as she was there was a point, it seemed, beyond which to persist in trying to help someone like that you found a part of yourself giving way. Evidently the daughter’d reached it and pulled back.
“Does that mean she’d’ve had to start drinking to maintain the communication? That sometimes happens between persons,” said Hammond.
“Julia, no, not at all. Julia never drank. Maybe a glass of wine or two. Her spirit level was affected. That sort of dragging down.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, and that was the reason Sarah hadn’t gone uninvited to the christening.” Besides figuring June’d be there she knew her own daughter didn’t want her. Or at least hadn’t been concerned enough to ask. What none of them did know at this time, of course, was, Sarah over the loss of her boyfriend, the new slight, her drinking, etc., was definitely suicidal though I doubt if any of them did know it’d’ve made any difference. People don’t generally help others in those situations. They figure, ‘if I’m strong enough not to do something like that, why aren’t they?’ And they let the matter drop.
“True, how true,” said Hammond. “It’s almost like in the most important instances where our empathy should be exposed it’s hermetically sealed. And yet that’s the way we survive. At least the strongest of us do. It’s called Social Darwinism or something like that, isn’t it?” We had our own moment of silent prayer over another stiff drink. Some areas of the psyche are just too destructive to delve further into. If it means shutting yourself off from the truth you do that. You do it for your own survival.
After the short walk past the bakery and the grocery store with its psychedelic murals colorfully painted on the side, several art galleries, the tiny community center and the marine biology lab, the group reached the estuary, which ran like a full bodied river from the lagoon into the ocean. Here the pelicans circled and dove, seals barked and worked the shallows for their meals, their heads protruding from the murky water like rats, swimming rats. And whatever else the ocean provided it must’ve satisfied a longing for those people marveled in their hearts at just being there. You weren’t ‘in it’ like a church. It was just before you, mirror smooth, vast and infinite, full of awe, good feelings and what’s more good will, though it’s virtually as dead as we are.
Then came the reception, which was held at the contractor’s house on the mesa. It was here the baby finally stopped wailing.
“Really, about time,” said Hammond, “the little thing must’ve been virtually exhausted.
“It was,” I said, “so much so it rejected its bottle, fell asleep in its crib for it’d seen a big day. For the others (adults) theirs was just beginning.”
With its main player asleep the reception for the christening turned out to be a social gathering among the guests. The contractor’s mother and father with their little niece, many neighbors … as many as could fit into that small chapel and others who hadn’t been there arrived. The man had constructed his own two-story house on the mesa overlooking the ocean. It was all wood, stained gray and trimmed in black. His large white two-seater diesel pickup with his name embossed on its doors stood in the driveway next to their two other cars. The man was doing well, going places just like everyone who chooses to go on his own in our society and who works hard is guaranteed to make it. It’s called ‘cottage industry’. Our country’s full of these independent souls, who make as much as they can for themselves and hire the cheapest labor they can to do so. If others simply don’t possess this sort of ability and drive they’re relegated to living on a less grand scale. No success is about to share his profit with them so they might too have some of the material benefits of life. For that to occur you’d have to have government control and that, of course, is socialism. A form of government we don’t want.
“I certainly don’t,” said Hammond. “It’s the worst sort of government in the world.”
Perhaps, perhaps? One who certainly didn’t want it was June, Sandy’s best friend. Though probably wealthier than Sandy in her own inherited right she worked full time as a realtor. She was busy night and day selling houses and, of course, with her social connections in the city, which naturally extended across the bay she did very well at it. She made money hand over fist and was always on the go. Though she’d been married once and divorced, she’d never had any children of her own but had adopted two.
“Two? I thought you only said one. This Julia, mother of the infant.”
“No, she had another. This turned out to be quite a disturbed child who was nonetheless talented. Her name was Jennifer she played the piano and…”
“And what?”
“She’d refused to attend the christening. It wasn’t as though she didn’t love her adopted sister. She didn’t trust how she might act before the guests. She was shy and embarrassed easily and she knew her mother’d sneaked her way in and she wanted no part of it.”
“Well,” said Hammond. “At least someone has the temerity to stand up to that tyrant of the family.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but believe me it didn’t turn out to be easy. Just as living under June, evidently, was like surviving under someone like Mussolini or Hitler. And the real reason she’d adopted children to begin with wasn’t just because she couldn’t have them but because of her own loneliness, a desperate goad when unfulfilled. As effervescent and demonstrative as she was, it seems, she couldn’t stand living alone…”
“To hear you,” said Hammond, “who could? For the way you talk, we’re the only humans in the universe, trapped on a tiny planet in relation to them all. It’s a big spread out there, diabolically lonely, and who do we really have except ourselves?”
“Well said,” I commented. “Even tyrants have their emotional disturbances. How far we tolerate them, of course, depends on how they mortally affect us. Even pity has to have its own limitations if we’re to survive.”
When Sandy and
Hartwig joined the large group of parked cars and walked upstairs to the enormous living room with its ocean view and deck where the reception was in full swing, of course, June was the first guest to acknowledge them. With her high heeled elegance and blond swagger she approached the two much like a sheep dog who divides a certain member from the pack, nipping and biting at the heels of the others until the one alone remains in its custody. This, naturally, was Hartwig.
“You’re kidding,” said Hammond. “After what they’d been through together June’d do something like that. And Sandy let it happen?”
“She did,” I said. “Like a child with no defenses. She couldn’t get a word in edgewise. It was downright pathetic and June thoroughly relished monopolizing the conversation to show how smart she was. Every time she’d launch into another of her nebulous subjects Sandy had little knowledge of she’d retreat with a frightened look on her face, engage Stich or his wife in conversation, enter the sleeping baby’s room to view it mantra like as it lay in its bassinet, or she might very likely confide in Marcus who she soon brought back with her and that way found she could be included.”
“How if she didn’t know…?”
“Marcus who truly did love her knew it for her. I told you how smart he was. He… Well on many subjects he outshone Hartwig. Especially on politics. And don’t think June didn’t pick up on this either. She’d never met Marcus before though she had seen him and she was instantly impressed mind you, instantly impressed.”
“Sure,” said Hammond, “another adoptee for her. This time a male; not another girl.” I wagged my finger at him. Not telling him at the time, of course, how nearly close to right he turned out to be.
When June grilled a person, of course, she made it sound impersonal and innocent. She’d learned that in her trade and refined it into an art. With Sandy standing right there she’d managed to inquire of Hartwig’s family ... she also knew his mother quite well … but also where Hartwig’d gone to school and what he’d done since then and where he lived.
“Boy,” said Hammond, “she must’ve really liked that.”
“No,” I replied, “all he told her was on a houseboat, not on a houseboat in a ghetto.” Some of them actually were quite respectable as I told you. June’d even sold several like that. It wasn’t until June asked what kind of car he drove, the big ‘status symbol’ of the time and still depressingly is, that Sandy brought the conversation to a more realistic level.
“He drives an old clunker,” she volunteered. “A bucket of bolts that was once called a Volkswagen.” She laughed.
“People’s car.” Hartwig defended himself.
But June as well as some of the others got a kick out of that. Marcus giggled. Stich broke out into a healthy guffaw and patted Hartwig on the back. And you know what?” I said.
“No, what?”
June was immediately interested instead of being ‘turned off’. Much like, I think, Sandy’d been when she’d first met Hartwig and driven in his car. Both women were rich dowagers, bored with the typical types they met from their own backgrounds and Hartwig’s Bohemian style appealed to them. Even society matrons like to rub their noses in the dirt once in a while, especially when it includes taboo sex though Hartwig was white. Neither one, of course, imagined he was out to get hold of a rich woman. They’d’ve perhaps both had to know his grandmother more thoroughly and how Hartwig worshipped her every design to be able to do that. They didn’t so… Both Sandy and June had met her in social circles but at the most casually. Bertha Adler was a very private woman.
To make a long story short, after that afternoon Hartwig had not only Sandy but June competing for his affection though the rivalry didn’t become manifest right away. As those affairs so often go, wakes or baptismal receptions, what starts out to be a mournful or serious affair often ends in a sort of orgy so did this one.
Stich, the contractor, wasn’t the only one who imbibed too much of the delicious rum punch he kept making to fill bowl after bowl. By late afternoon he and June were shouting at one another, in friendly tones, of course, about how they were both going to make a killing on a property they were about to jointly acquire while the others tried to keep pace with them. It was like the young kid shooting hoops to mimic the pro. None could but they tried. That was until Sandy pulled Hartwig aside and said,
“I’m tired of this. Let’s go?”
“No … no, just a minute,” said Hartwig. “I’m learning. This’s interesting. Just a little longer.”
“Well,” said she. “I’m leaving. You’ll have to get back on your own.” He shrugged his shoulders, she grabbed her purse and coat, took one last look at the sleeping babe in its crib and with a hurt, angry expression walked out hoping, I suppose, Hartwig’d follow her.
“There goes my girlfriend,” said an effete Hartwig.
“Don’t worry,” said June. “I can drive you home. I know where she lives.”
“So,” said Hammond. “Did she or did Hartwig leave on his own? And if she did whose house did she take him to, Sandy’s or hers?”
Hartwig stayed. As to whose house… And Hartwig didn’t only intrigue June. She fell … well almost … in love with the boy Marcus; not in any physical sense I can assure you, though Sandy might’ve done something like that if she already hadn’t. In just that one drunken evening together with her, the boy, Hartwig and Stich, by God she was already sending him away to school. She‘d adopted his sister, now she’d turned to the brother to say nothing of how that’d rile the mother Sarah who June could self-righteously despise even more if she could get hold of him. At the end of the evening, she said,
“I … I know just the place for you,” she had a natural stutter to her voice, “back east at Dartmouth. To graduate from there is to secure your future. I’m sure with your grades you can get in.”
“Really?” Marcus glanced from her to Stich; then commented. “That’d only require about a hundred thousand dollars a year nowadays. If I had that, why waste it at school? Invested properly I might never have to do another thing.” June turned to the contractor.
“He,” she said to Stich, “just might be right if he knew where,” as though it was a clandestine secret between them. And those sorts of things are what brokers and investors like to throw around at parties as if to suggest their lives aren’t always mechanically sterile. Anyhow the night wore on, the party began breaking up. June, who gave Hartwig a ride back to the beach house, bought him a drink at the Sand Piper before delivering her piece of goods…
“Well put,” Hammond interjected, “just as I’ve always thought of him, as a piece of goods. That describes Hartwig perfectly.”
I don’t believe the two kissed as they parked though Hartwig said he‘d never had a pleasanter conversation with such an intelligent, educated woman… ”
“And not bad looking either?”
“No, very good and very rich, single and out hunting.”
Sandy, of course, had been waiting for them out on the porch in the cold fog in her robe with nothing but a glass of wine to keep her company. The porch light shrouded her figure. It had been all she could do to restrain herself from phoning moment-to-moment back to the reception to see whether Hartwig’d left. ‘No one’, she claimed, could fathom the anguish she’d undergone just to refrain herself from it. Her anxiety, her jealousy had been building up something terrible. At one moment she’d wanted to go right up to Hartwig and stab him with a knife. The next it was somewhere away to a desert isle where she could have him all to herself. When, naturally, the two showed up in June’s luxurious sedan they spied her under the porch light and she saw them. Sandy waved if you can believe it, she was so relieved. Just like it was her ninety-year-old grandmother driving her boyfriend home or like June, the old friend was so trustworthy and unattractive no one could suspect her of any sort of complicity.
“Ha, that temptress …”
“Yes,” I said, “that devil.”
Hartwig, naturally, got out of the car and
went up to her. June undoubtedly saw the two embrace as she drove away. Now do you see what a man like that can do to women? He already had one, two really if you count Gloria; now he’s got another, who’s already grabbed the bait and is on the line thrashing.
“Do you like her?” Sandy said later, meaning June.
“Yes, of course,” her lover replied, “but not like you.” And that sort of trivial reassurance gave the nod to Sandy for Hartwig’s favor. Unfortunately that seems to be the way our minds work. Always better at the expense of another’s. I’d say we’re none too worse off from this affliction as long as one doesn’t take himself too seriously. If you do you can get awfully hurt and I mean hurt.
“You can say that again,” said Hammond and we both paused for another drink.
Chapter Eight
Sandy certainly lost no time in sulking over her boyfriend’s new acquaintance with her oldest and best friend. If anything it now made her realize she had some serious competition for Hartwig’s affection and she decided to capitalize on it as rapidly as she could.
“But,” said Hammond. “What does that mean in our contemporary society anyhow? You say capitalize. Do you mean marriage perhaps? That’s the only legitimate contract out there we recognize for possessing another and believe me that’s all it is, a contract that without love means nothing. And how long does love last as our doctors point out. The physical passion perhaps for eight months or so and most couple’s’ve already shared that before they’re married. Of course there’s such a thing as sharing your life exclusively with another, which is becoming more and more old-fashioned. Then there’re children. Was Sandy perhaps dreaming of beginning another family? She wasn’t that old, remember. Thirty-two? Many women’ve started them later.”
