by Jane Rule
“More coffee,” I said, “before I’m completely demoralized.”
“You don’t get demoralized,” Esther said sadly.
“No,” you agreed, as sadly, “Kate’s permanently moralized. You know, I haven’t been this drunk since that party after my show. About the last thing I remember was saying to Kate, ‘Everybody’s kissed me but you,’ and do you know what she said?”
Sandy laughed and said, “ ‘Then I think it’s time to go home.’ ”
“You didn’t!” Esther said.
“I’m afraid I did.”
“What did happen after that?” you asked.
“I kissed you,” I said.
“And I took you home.”
“Sandy took you home?”
“Apparently.”
“And Monk put you to bed.”
“Well, probably you deserve three,” Esther decided, “but I do think it’s sad that you don’t remember any of them.” She leaned over quickly and kissed you on the mouth. “Will you remember that?”
“Coffee!” Sandy ordered. “I am not running a bawdy house.”
Esther moved at once, if a little unsteadily.
“And then, again, I think it’s time to go home,” I said.
“I think I’ll stay here,” you said, sleepily.
“Why don’t you stay?” Sandy said, turning to me. “This turns into a double bed.”
“Kate only allows me to sleep with men,” you said, and then you were dozing.
I lit a cigarette for myself while Sandy watched me.
“Is that true?”
“It’s crudely put,” I answered. “She’s been living with one Christopher Marlowe Smith for about six months now. He’s gone east for his vacation to visit his wife.”
“I don’t understand it,” Sandy said.
“It’s simple enough really”
“But what are you doing here with her now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Creative morality.”
“You’re the most indecent prude I’ve ever known, and I’ve known plenty,” Sandy said, my head held between her hands. “You really are.”
“It’s a rare talent.”
“I’ll go see about that coffee.”
I moved over to you, put my hand on your forehead, and spoke to you. You turned your face into my shoulder.
“E., come on. You have to wake up.”
“I can’t bear to,” you said.
“Why?”
“I can’t bear to.”
“Yes, you can. There’ll be coffee in a minute.”
“I’ll wash my face.”
You had left the room by the time Sandy and Esther came into it with fresh coffee. It was only eleven o’clock, but it seemed to me nearly dawn.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “E. just doesn’t drink well.”
“Is she all right?” Esther asked.
“Oh yes.”
“Shall I go see?” she asked Sandy.
“No,” Sandy said.
You apologized for yourself a moment later, seeming nearly sober and terribly white. You didn’t want coffee. You didn’t want me to stay for it. It was an awkward leave-taking, during which I began to wonder what had actually happened to make us all so very uneasy. As soon as we got into the car, you began to cry. You cried all the way back to the motel.
“I’m terribly sorry, E.,” I said, once we were in our room. “I should have known better.”
“How can you speak to me at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Humiliating you like that. Why did I do it?”
“We all had too much to drink, that’s all.”
“You’re not indecent. You’re the finest person I know.”
“E., it was really rather fun. You mostly enjoyed it, and so did I.”
“Did you? Did you think Esther was… attractive?”
“Yes. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. I don’t know. I didn’t want to be out of it. I felt so terribly out of it. You don’t ever feel that way, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“You are wildly attractive to women. It made me so confused. It was like a nightmare. I thought you’d do something. I was so frightened you’d do something, and I’d have to just stand there and watch.”
“And so you thought you’d better do something and have me just stand there and watch?”
“Was I awful?”
“You were lovely. How in hell did we get into this?”
The phone rang. I reached for it, thinking of Mother. It was Sandy.
“You got back all right then,” she said. “I wanted to apologize…”
“Oh, Sandy, will somebody please laugh? What’s the matter with all of us?”
“Drink,” Sandy said. “Was it funny?”
“Yes, it was funny, and it was very nice, and E. and I have both decided that your Esther is wildly attractive, and E. wishes she were queer and I’m glad I am. Now let’s all go to sleep.”
“All right, but how about a milder sort of drinking after the concert Wednesday night?”
“We’d love it.”
I hung up then. I was shaking.
“Is that true?” you asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even care. Sort it out for yourself.”
As I went into the bathroom to undress, I thought I heard you say, “I’ve had five orgasms with Chris,” but as a glass smashed into the sink, it might have been, “I’d never get beyond a kiss.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m all right. Just clumsy.”
The next day we found another motel, and we found two selling galleries. We even chatted about the night before as if it had been what it really was, a rather drunken, ordinary social occasion.
“I’m glad we’re going to see them again,” you said.
On Wednesday evening, while you finished dressing for the concert, I telephoned home. I think the housekeeper answered. I don’t quite remember the order of things. I only know that by the time I hung up, you were asking when Mother had died.
“Nearly two days ago. You’ll have to drive me to the airport.”
Somewhere in the years in between I’ve lost the flair for stoic heroism. In those days out of a composite of Ingrid Bergman films and that one scene in the Duchess of Malfi—“I am the Duchess of Malfi still”—I played everything with marvelous understatement. At least it seemed so to me. From the outside, I may have more resembled one of Francis Bacon’s silent screamers. Melodrama doesn’t have to be noisy. All of which means simply that I still can’t speak with any emotional candor about that trip home. If this were really for you, I should try. It was the last of our abortive holidays. But I didn’t think of you walking into the concert late and alone, meeting Sandy and Esther afterwards, nor did I think of your driving the car back alone the next day. Great presence of mind requires some absence of mind. You were always so easy to sacrifice.
Doris met me in a chauffeur-driven car, lent to her by one of Mother’s friends.
“I’ve had so many tranquilizers I didn’t dare drive.”
She did seem not so much calm as becalmed. And there were traces of a recent storm, fragments of sentences and unrelated laughter. Mostly, however, she reported the facts as we rode in hearselike quiet and importance down the highway toward home.
“The morning after you telephoned, while she was watching television. The housekeeper was with her. She simply said, ‘Oh,’ as if she were mildly surprised, and that was all.”
“Where is she now?”
“I had the body cremated that evening. She wouldn’t have wanted that sort of funeral. There’s going to be a memorial service tomorrow.”
I didn’t really take any of it in until I was in the front hall. Then I couldn’t think what to do. I simply stood, bewildered.
“Take your suitcase up,” Doris suggested gently. “I’ll get us both a drink.”
I passed Mother’s door, which was shut, and
went on to my own room, which was offensively ordinary. I put my suitcase down, went into the bathroom, washed and combed my hair. Then I went back down the hall to Mother’s room, which had not been without a night light for eighteen months. The darkness startled me less than the glare of light when I turned on the overhead switch. Even the bed was gone. I was looking at the empty blue of the Chinese rug. I started over to Mother’s chair and heard, “Pull the door to. The heat register blisters the paint.” I turned and closed the door behind me, seeing, as I did, the large portrait of me at about seven, which hung over the dresser, on which were the young faces of Frank and Doris. The top drawer was still open a couple of inches as it always was for Mother to use as a grip for pulling herself up. A terrible drawer since my childhood for finding things: matching gloves, hairnets, compacts, an old bit of jerky wrapped in tissue paper. The better drawer was underneath it, where rings were kept in old coin purses, necklaces wrapped in lace, stray beads in pill boxes, earrings in jars. I reluctantly turned around to face the empty room again. No message here. No last instructions. No blessing. The accidents of birth and death. “Oh,” I said aloud, just trying it. Then I turned away, closing the door quietly behind me.
At the edge of the living room I stopped. The furniture had been completely rearranged. Doris sat on the couch now facing the fireplace in which a fire blazed. She turned and saw me.
“Come have your drink, Kate. Don’t worry. I had the chimney cleaned out this morning. I was determined that you weren’t going to come home again to a tomb of a house. Doesn’t it make a difference?”
I cried then briefly in speechless anger while Doris said, “I know. I know. It’s such an awful relief after all these months. But you don’t have to do any more. It’s over.”
I saw in the flames her hair catch and wither. I saw her flesh respond, then fall away. A log broke and sagged into soft ashes. I closed my eyes and felt a child’s shaking sigh through my body, which Doris held and went on speaking to.
Both Frank and young Frank arrived the following morning on the same plane from New York. There were other relatives. We had forgotten to pick up the ashes, which had to be signed for and redirected to the storage area. I went with Frank to the funeral parlor just across the street from the primary school I had attended. We used to play tag and ghost in the parking lot. Frank took the small, heavy brass box that held both Mother’s ashes and those of the required coffin. As an afterthought, the funeral parlor director handed me a pill-sized envelope.
“Her wedding ring.”
Frank carried the box, wrapped in brown paper, tied with string, the release papers (and perhaps the bill?) tucked under the string, like the purchase it was. I was not confused. She was not in the box. She was not in the house. She was in my mind, a heavy thought, a terrible joke, an old tenderness, and I did not have to share any of those things with anyone. I felt nothing but curious at witnessing the placing of the box in the slot next to the one that held my father’s ashes. I was glad Doris had wanted no ceremony, had not wanted even to be there for the absurd fact. Frank and I didn’t have to talk about it. When we got back into the car, he sat for a moment. Then he took my hand.
“Is there anything you’d like to do before we go back?”
“We’re due back for lunch in half an hour,” I said.
“There’s time for a chocolate milkshake,” he said.
“How very like you you are,” I said, smiling. “Let’s.”
And I watched the relief on his tired, aging face. When we did get back, ten minutes late, Doris asked at once whatever had kept us so long.
“We had a milkshake,” I said.
“Oh, Frank, really!”
“I’ve ruined the child’s appetite,” he admitted, “and my own.”
It somehow got us through the rest of the day, which had a formal Episcopalian sanity about it. Young Frank left that night. I had hardly spoken to him, paired as we were, he with his mother, I with Frank. Frank stayed on another day to meet with lawyers. There was nothing either surprising or complicated about the will. The estate was divided equally between Doris and me. The only problem was the house.
“We’ll have to sell it,” Doris said. “It would be ridiculous for either one of us to keep it.”
Because we were both there to agree, we did not have to wait for the settlement of the estate to sell it. It was put on the market at once and sold almost at once, furnished. I did take my desk, some antique tables, and Mother’s living-room chair, but I was too uncertain of my own future to put very much in storage. Doris didn’t want anything. The shipping problems were simply too great. Anyway, she shared few of Mother’s tastes.
“I’ve lived without my childhood for all these years. There’s no reason to go back to it now.”
We divided the jewelry among us. Young Frank was sent Mother’s only fine painting to balance rings and bracelets sent to Ann.
The house was ready to be left in a little over three weeks.
“I don’t much like your living in a hotel,” Doris said, “but I do see with only a couple of months—”
“It makes sense.”
“And you’ll come to London for at least part of the summer?”
“I’ll see, Doris. Probably. I’ll let you know.”
“Kate, I never have really thanked you because I don’t know how. I couldn’t have done what you did for Mother.”
“I wanted to do it.”
“Have you forgiven me?”
“For what?”
“Not wanting to. And not really wanting you to, either. I simply let it happen.”
“It was a different sort of thing for me.”
It was the third time since Mother’s death that we had tried to say something to each other, but neither of us could finally risk it. There was too much that might have destroyed the agreement between us. Doris would have had to tell me how she really felt about my replacing her all those years ago. I would have had to tell her something of my guilt and envy. We were burdened enough—and perhaps kind enough—not to ask anything new or more of each other.
I did see you during those weeks, not when you returned the car because I was out with Frank and Doris, meeting lawyers. We had a brief cup of coffee the day before Christopher Marlowe Smith came back. I did all the dull talking. I had dinner with you and him one evening when Doris was out seeing friends, but you and I were both audience that night. Once Doris had gone and I had moved into the hotel just across the block from you, I saw you almost daily, but I was preoccupied with finishing my thesis, with writing applications for jobs with Washington agencies. I didn’t ask much about your living or your plans, and you offered nothing.
It was the first week in June, after my thesis had been submitted, that I did think to ask when Christopher Marlowe Smith would be leaving.
“The end of this month.”
“What are you going to do then?”
“I’ll keep the apartment to work in,” you said and then hesitated.
“What’s that paper napkin going to be?” I asked.
“I’m moving downstairs when Chris goes. I’m moving in with Charlie.”
“With Charlie?”
“I had a long talk with Charlie the night I got back from Los Angeles. I told him a lot of things about you and Sandy and Esther and Chris… really about me. He said I was trying to figure out too much on too little evidence. How did I know Chris wasn’t just lousy in bed? Well, I found out. He is, and I’m not… at least not with the right person.”
“Have you been sleeping with Charlie all along?”
“No, just the time Chris was away.”
“Does Chris know?”
“Sort of. But we made a perfectly straight agreement. I mean, there’s nothing complicated. He’ll go back to his wife the end of the month, and I’ll move in with Charlie.”
“What about Charlie’s wife—wives?”
“Well, he’s through with marriage, that’s obvious.”
“But wh
at about you, little dog? Didn’t I hear you say that you were going to get married before you were thirty?”
“Yes, and I will, but, since I’m not going to be a virgin, I might as well have some experience that’s worth something, and this is worth something. I’ll never have to be uncertain about how much of a woman I am.”
“Graduate school,” I said.
“And I’ve started to work again, really work. I hadn’t done anything all year until after Easter. I’m back to sound with Charlie.”
Christopher Marlowe Smith had been a possible sort of trial for me. Charlie was a different matter. He really was bright. He shone like Lucifer, and, if I had not disproved the existence of evil, I would have feared for him. I could not afford to be afraid for you. In the heterosexual code I had recommended to you, you were, if not saved, on your way to it. At least, at the time, that’s how it seemed to you. I had to accept it.
Christopher Marlowe Smith was not so persuaded. In fact, he behaved very badly, according to the terms of the agreement. He offered and then threatened to divorce his wife. He cried. He suggested killing Charlie or at least turning him over to the police for failure to support his children, for drug addiction, and finally even for theft. You were simply bewildered. You tried to remind him that the terms of the relationship were his idea. He roared with protesting pain.
“Hasn’t she got any feelings? Don’t I mean anything to her? I taught her everything she knows. I made a woman of her. She can’t just throw me out. Katie, she can’t.”
But you did. I drove the still incredulous Christopher Marlowe Smith to the airport. I don’t think he believed he was leaving until he was actually boarding the plane. He turned at the top of the ramp, raised a sad hand, and was gone. On the quiet drive home, I realized that I shared some of his bewilderment. After ten months you were so simply untouched by him, not cold really. What, then? Rational maybe, but that was too calculating a word. You were innocent of him, having done him no wrong.
