by Marjorie Lee
"No!" he cried, suddenly distraught. "I can't! I have to see, I have to see!"
He stayed till about four a.m. Then he went back to Peggy's house. But he wasn't going to go to Philadelphia the next day after all. What's-her-name wouldn't mind: she was just a maiden-aunt surrogate, he said; just someone to weep with, and he didn't feel much like weeping now. He'd have breakfast at Peg's to make it look decent and then he'd come back to me and we could spend the whole day together.
Even though I knew I'd see him within a couple of hours it wasn't easy when he left. I couldn't sleep. So I dragged out the typewriter I'd borrowed from Clarke to type business notices in my spare time and began banging out a letter to Frannie.
Frannie darling, I wrote:
Get me off the Lovelorn List and page Polly Adler!—His name is Gordon Potter. You know Peggy Potter Fredericks—well, her brother. At the Wingo Bazaar, of all places! Knowing Peg, you can't possibly picture Gordon. Can you compare a slender Spring rain with a small round tornado?
It's now after four a.m. and God only knows I should by now have transferred to the arms of Morpheus; but I'm just too excited to do anything but remember what it was like, and what it's going to be like in a few hours when he comes back. It's never been this way—not for me, not for anyone. There is nothing the man won't do. Your beloved Edna returns to me with lines I never knew I knew: drowned in love and weedily washed ashore...What's the rest of that anyway?
As I looked at him, after—he made me think of the lean, lithe harlequins in that Picasso portfolio you once showed me...
It rambled on like that for pages and pages, growing more and more graphic as I lost the inhibitions of writing and began to feel that Frannie was with me; that I was actually talking to her.
That morning when Gordon came back we set out in my car for a drive to the shore, stopping for lunch at a tavern along the way. We drank a lot, but there was an intenseness which kept us from getting crocked.
By one the sun had vanished and the sky turned gray; and when we reached the first beaches of Long Island they were practically deserted. We parked after a while and found a sheltered, hollowed-out place among the dunes. Neither of us had thought about bathing suits, but there was an old blanket in the baggage compartment of the car and it served to cover us respectably the few times during the afternoon when people came by. We even managed to make it to the water for swimming. It was beautiful being wet with love and the sea and the warm rain that had started. I thought of Frannie: she had told me how she and Marc had made love on the empty beaches of Bermuda in other summers; and it seemed almost as if her memory, shared with me, had brought me to a kind of reliving of something which had first been hers.
Dear, dear Frannie, I thought, stretched out beside Gordon on the sand; the following letter is a thank-you note...
"You're so soft," he said suddenly, breaking into my fantasy. "You're safe. You're not a person; you're a place. I can get lost in you."
I turned on my side and reached my arms around his neck, pulling his mouth against mine. "Get lost," I said.
". . . drowned in love," I mused, after we had swam again, "and weedily washed ashore... Do you know that? What comes next?"
"I don't know."
Suddenly I did: There to be fretted by the drag and shove, at the tide's edge, I lie—these things and more...
"Are you willing," Gordon asked, facing me on the blanket, "for all this not to work out?"
I yawned.
"You think you don't care now," he went on. "But later you'll care. Women can't, without caring sooner or later; and that's when it all goes to pieces."
"In August I'll be forty-seven," I told him, hating the sound of it, but needing to get it said. "I'm not a child anymore. I'm way past Love's Young Dream, and things don't work out. Accepting it is being grown up, isn't it? Stop worrying. Stop looking for trouble." I picked up a handful of sand and let it sift down onto his arm.
"You don't know me," he said. "That's the way it always is: everybody feels so sure about everything; except—they don't know me; and then, later, they're let down."
He sat up and I sat up too and we began getting dressed.
"You know about my analysis?" he asked. "Do you know anything about it?"
"You mentioned it yesterday."
"No—I mean do you know how it works; what it means to go through it?"
"A little."
"Well, do you know why I quit?"
"Why?"
"Because I got too scared to find out any more. He was a good guy: in Philly; Gromberg. He was really great. Personally, I couldn't stand him. But that was just part of me, and what's wrong with me. We spent over two years at it, and I was coming along wonderfully. But that was only the beginning. In the beginning it's easier. You have a million things to say and you talk your lungs out. But then one day you get to the end of the anecdotes and you can't say anything at all. And that's where the true beginning begins: when you reach the part you didn't know was there, because whatever it is has been too awful to be aware of. So then you gird up your emotional loins and go on to find out; or you don't. I didn't. I quit..."
"So you quit. What's so bad about that? You were all right, weren't you?"
"Oh, sure—I was fine! I was so happy to get out of there I almost liked the bum that last day! I wanted to throw my arms around him! I wanted to kiss him! And then I walked out of the building and ran into a kid on a tricycle and broke my ankle! After it healed I wanted to go back to Gromberg and tell him about it...But I didn't.
"Peg thinks I ought to finish sometime," he went on in the car when we'd started for home. "She's really a bug on it. She was so mixed up she couldn't work for five years, so she went to somebody who fixed it for her, and now she must be earning thirty grand a year. Have you ever heard of Paige? A woman?"
"Yes. Frannie mentioned her once."
"Well, Peg thinks a lot of her; but they rarely take two people from the same family. Besides, I'd have to commute. And then, actually I'd hate to start again with somebody new. If I went anywhere it would be back to Gromberg—if he'd have me. The truth is: he never liked me. I mean, I know they're not supposed to act like your bosom pal, but he seemed even more unfriendly than he had to be and I always had the feeling that he didn't—like me. I think he had a thing about being Jewish and he put up this big front about not giving a damn about you just to make sure you wouldn't hate him first. You know—like Jews do?"
"I don't think Jews do much that other human beings don't do," I said.
"You know something, Jo?" He laughed. "I love you. I love you more than I love anybody. But listen now—don't ever count on it!"
I dropped him off at Peggy's. She was having a cocktail party and he felt he ought to get there in time to say hello. After that he was going back to Philadelphia.
"I'll come over on Friday," he said. "Straight to your apartment. Peg doesn't even have to know I'm in town."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The week slid past. What with my job, and the typing of vast treatises to Frannie, I was kept busy night and day. The writing was becoming a real thing with me. Before this I had often stated that I was one of those people who couldn't construct a simple declarative sentence. Now I found myself able to go on for pages, loving, even with critical eye, every purple, prurient paragraph that came out of me.
On Thursday I got an answer to my Saturday-night one (there were two before that, but not in answer).
Dear Jo, it went:
Your manuscript arrived. I know you and I aren't particularly shackled to the dictates of Society, but I seem to recall something about a pretty fat fine, or even an honest-to-God jail sentence, for using the mails as a transport for pornography. Those last three pages might well have put Spillane out of business; to say nothing of where they have put me: on my cliff, to be exact—extending several yards into a crashing sea; just me, your letter, and a flock of hovering gulls who, thanks to Heaven's protective attitude towards dumb beings, can't
read English: You're really giving, Mrs. Bradford! The trouble is: I can hardly, at the moment, think what to do with it!
Where the hell is Marc? Have you heard from him? I haven't: not one lousy word since he left. He's one of those glass-arm boys; but wouldn't you think he'd shoot the six bucks and call me?
Tonight I'm feeling insanely lonely. I can't use the phone here for overseas communication because you have to be the owner of the cottage to do that; but if he doesn't come through by tomorrow I'll bike into Hamilton and call him from the Telephone Company.
The kids have been fine, and fun; but after your letter, and the responses evoked by same, one finds it hard to consider children in the light of total Need Fillers.
Forgive the breast-beating. This is a time of great joy for you, and I'm happier than I can tell you that you're back on the market again. Gordon sounds incredible. In fact, if it weren't for the inescapably real and brilliant inclusion of physical detail, I would think him the product of some madly erotized fantasy.
As for the lines you quoted: they're from a sonnet in Fatal Interview. It goes: “Night is my sister, and how deep in love”... And it ends: Small chance, however, in a storm so black, A man will leave his friendly fire and snug For a drowned woman's sake, and bring her back To drip and scatter shells upon the rug. No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, Watches beside me in this windy place.
Just why that one, of all the other, certainly more appropriate ones, should enter your mind at a time like that, I have no idea. I imagine, though, that someone like that Helen Paige person might become self-supporting on that one issue alone.
I was sunning myself this afternoon and, for some reason, the bitch moved right in and took over. I haven't thought of her for years, barring a mention or two of her name. I heard her speak, ages ago, at one of the schools; and she struck me as the kind of dame I'd like to invite to a cocktail party (though, God knows, not to mine!)
I stopped reading at that point. Gordon had dropped Paige's name on Sunday. The subtle threads which seemed constantly to be connecting Gordon and Frannie were beginning to get me. I sat there feeling actually eerie. But then, that was the sort of psychological trap you always fell into with people like them. The Neurosis, I decided, was, in spite of the mystical auras haloed about its head by the Neurotics themselves, no less contagious than the common cold.
I picked up the letter again, finished reading it, and answered it promptly. Thanks for the Millay, I wrote; why I had thought of that one, I couldn't explain; but Paige seemed to be her dame, not mine—and would she kindly refrain from suggesting that I become her sole support!
As for Marc: I would call him, I promised, in the morning. Meanwhile, if things got too tough there were always Bermuda's American and British Military Bases which might offer a positive smorgasbord of male substitutes to tide her over.
And then I ended with a supplementary run-down on the previous Sunday at the beach with Gordon, which poured forth, to my delight, like something straight out of Hemingway.
For all the work I was able to do on Friday, Clarke might have hired an imbecile. I did call Marc, though. Due to the case he was on he would have to be in New York a while longer, so we made a dinner date for Monday night—at Veronica's.
Veronica's is a small dark hole in the Village, jammed nocturnally with a crowd of beautiful boys. Packed around the bar like silvery sardines, they sing, when the mood is high, enchantingly vulgar parodies of show tunes to the accompaniment of a really impressive male pianist.
The four of us, when there still were four of us, had stopped in for drinks several times that past year, after dinner at the Juniper. Frannie adored the joint. But Marc, not caring about that kind of music anyway, had always complained about the smoke in his eyes and dragged us home. I was surprised when he suggested it as a meeting-place; but perhaps he was making a remote-control gesture of love to Frannie in her absence.
Anyhow, we jotted it down on our memo pads for Monday night; which left me with the rest of Friday to wait to hear from Gordon. He hadn't said he'd phone, but I thought he might. I had dropped him at Peggy's rather abruptly and the plans for our forthcoming weekend had been made hurriedly.
But he didn't call all day, and by the time I got home from the office I had the agonizing premonition that he wasn't going to show up at all. The feeling became more justifiable as the hours went by. At about nine I broiled a couple of lamb chops; but I could barely nibble, so I began to drink instead.
By ten I was stewed on rye and misery. The room was stifling that night. I put the window up, but I had all my clothes off—so I had to keep the drapes closed, and they stopped the air completely. I started a letter to Frannie, but my new-found talent could not surmount the block of my despair; there were now no words with which to express my feelings, and I wound up tearing it to shreds.
I parted the drapes then, and turned the lamp off; but even the light coming from other windows across the courtyard seemed to add weight to the atmosphere. Lying on the bed, I watched the dim patterns it cast on the ceiling and thought a thousand fitful, hopeless thoughts.
When the phone rang I grabbed it. But it wasn't Gordon. It was Brad. Some friendly helper had given him my number. He was drunk as a loon, and crying. The sound of him tore into me like a saw, and I hung up.
I don't know when I first became aware of the noise outside the window. It started with a kind of scraping, like the claws of some small animal dragging along the iron slats of the fire escape. A cat, perhaps; the alleys were full of them; and this one might have climbed up in search of food.
But then it stopped, and for a few minutes there was complete silence.
When it began again it was louder: the kind of dull, thudding thump an arm or leg might make against a wall or railing. I felt a real twist of panic then. I got up from the bed and stood beside it, staring at the window.
"What is it?" I whispered, strangling with fear. "Who's there?"
When his leg came over the sill I screamed.
In seconds he was in the room and running for the lamp switch. "Shut up!" he hissed.
The sudden light blinded me. Then I saw him, and sat down on the bed and began to cry.
"Stop," he said softly. "Stop, stop, will you? I didn't mean to scare you, Jo; I swear I didn't!" He came over and sat down next to me and held my head against his chest. His arms were somehow reassuring, and I did stop, soon.
"I almost died," I said. "You can kill a person with fright; do you know that, Gordon?"
"I didn't mean to, Jo. Honestly, I didn't mean to."
I got up and put a bathrobe on and sat down again, away from him, in the chair.
"I'm sorry, Jo," he was saying. "I didn't think it would come out this way..."
"How long were you out there?" I asked.
"A while. A while I guess."
"Why? What were you doing?"
"Nothing. Please don't be sore." The expression in his eyes melted me and I went over to him and sat on the floor with my arms around his knees.
"What is it, Gordon?" I asked. "What's wrong?"
He slid down beside me and smiled. "I told you," he said, suddenly at ease, like a child who knows that whatever he has done will be forgiven. "There are things about me that are—unresolved. Anyway, it isn't serious."
"Have you done it before?"
"Oh, a few times. Not often."
"To be funny, or scare someone, or what?"
"Well, tonight I thought it was going to be funny. But I guess, basically, voyeurs aren't funny."
"Is that what you are?"
He laughed; and the elfin quality I had first seen in him at Wingo seemed to come over him again. "In the book," he said, "I think it says that you aren't a thing till you go and act it out, or become overt about it. Well, I've acted it out—on occasion; so I guess I rate the title."
I wanted to ask him when he had done it before; where; and with whom. Had they been strangers? Had he simply run into stray opportunities here
and there—as anyone might? Or had he gone in search of them? There's a little of everything in all of us, isn't there? Scratch a human, and what do you find? The little girl, the little boy, the little thief, the little liar, the little murderer... What was I, standing in the hall that night, listening to the secret voice of Frannie? What was I, going through the desk, reading the words that were hers? What had I been as a child, sitting at the top of the stairs, watching the grownups in the livingroom, or crouching at my parents' bedroom door to hear my mother say stop, and to know my father's eternally-accepting and never-fighting silence?
I wanted to talk to Gordon about it; but I didn't. He was here now, with me. We had a whole weekend ahead, to be together; and I didn't ask him how he felt, or what he thought, or which part, or how much, of anything he was. I didn't ask him because I was tired of finding out things—things which, once found out, I couldn't really understand—but to which I ended up in some strange, compelling way, tied hand and heart myself. There was that pull in people like Gordon, and Frannie, and so many others I had somehow put myself among: an attractiveness, a charm, a sensitive thinking thing which conjured up, by its own power, a beautiful but insidious embrace from which there was no escape. While exposing their innermost beings, in a gesture of warmth and faith, they forced you, ultimately, to face the inner being of yourself. You didn't want to. You didn't want to at all. But when the time came for you to pick up your marbles and go home, it was too late: you already loved them.
"Come on," I said. "I don't care what you're called, or why. I don't care what's resolved, or what, in a world itself made up of dangling ends, can't ever be answered. You got here. I might have died if you hadn't. Try the transom next time; or the key hole; or the drain in the sink. Just appear. I don't care how!"
We spent two days and three nights locked up together beyond the reach of reality. We were never apart for a minute. We called a drugstore when we were hungry and had food sent in; on Saturday night we washed our clothes in the shower and hung them on the fire escape to dry; when it rained we shut the window and lived without air; when the bed was hot and tumbled we made love on the floor. The thing was: we didn't need anyone or anything but ourselves.
