Lion House,The

by Marjorie Lee

  "Don't answer it," I said, when the phone rang on Sunday morning.

  "Then you," he said. "You have to."

  "Oh no, I don't. Just let it ring."

  "You can't. They know you're here. They always know when you're here, and they keep on calling."

  So I picked it up and it was Bill. He had met Jeri on the street, and she had known my address.

  No, I told him; not this afternoon. I was busy. No, not tonight either. Next week? My plans were not yet made. The weekend? No; that was almost definitely filled.

  "All right," he said, gently, but with a firm finality.

  I knew he would never call again. The chance (for what?), the out (to where?) was closed. But who cared? Who ever cares when what she has is what she wants and the future seems a million years away? The world is filled with grasshoppers. I wasn't, and am not, the only one. When I left him at the station early Monday morning the break was one of those exquisite ones: the hurt doesn't matter because there's a part of you that wants to hurt, and proves you're alive. "Soon?" I asked.

  "Yes. Very soon."

  "When?"

  "Soon."

  I went to the office then, walking to it through the hot streets; loving the heat; loving a policeman on the corner; and a newspaper vendor; and a man inside a sandwich sign advertising the opening of a new coffee shop.

  I thought of Frannie. Once I'd ask her how many men she'd really been in love with, and she'd answered, "Oh, hundreds. A guy named Rocky who used to park my car in town when I had to go in for vitamin B shots; when I told him I wasn't coming any more he said: I'll miss you. A truck driver who looked down from his truck into my convertible and said: That’s a pretty car, and it’s got a pretty owner. A man on the street who said he came from Ohio, and could I tell him where Washington Square was; I did, and he smiled, and said: You're very sweet. That diaper man who liked my Summertime record, and the laundry man who takes the sheets off the bed, and the milkman, and the grocery boy who puts the food away. Some guy who drove his car up alongside of mine on Fifth Avenue around the museum and rolled his window down and yelled: Hey, where'd you get that crazy sweater? I almost told that one I loved him, but something wouldn't let me say it, and then I lost him in the traffic and felt like crying. About thirty-four fellows who've slowed their cars down at the curb while I was walking, to give me that questioning look. And approximately eighty-one others standing in front of drugstores or pin-ball dives who whistled when I went by because I have nice legs.

  "Those are the men I've really been in love with," she said. "Not because they married me, or supported me, or gave me children, or went to bed with me, or even knew my name; but just because they were men who saw a girl and responded to her without thinking about it; responded to her because they needed and wanted to; said to her: You are a girl—and made her feel good about being one."

  When I got to the office I couldn't work, so I wrote a long letter to Frannie, telling her about Gordon, and our weekend together. As I wrote it, I relived it, all of it, exactly the way it happened, with nothing left out.

  "You sick?" asked one of the instructors, leaning over my desk, peering into my face.

  "No," I said. "I'm not sick."

  After work I went home to get dressed and then went out to meet Marc at Veronica's. He was there ahead of me, waiting at a little table in the gloom. I kissed him hello, and he kissed me back; and we ordered martinis, and shrimps that were canned, and two of the worst steaks anyone ever tasted.

  While we were eating, the piano player came out of one of the back rooms and stopped at our table. "Hi," he said. "It's been months. Where's the other pair?"

  He didn't know which pair belonged to which pair, but it didn't matter, and I said, "We're not sure where he is; and she's in Bermuda."

  "Oh, nice," he said. "Very nice. I bought a sun-lamp last week so I could get a tan. Then I went up to see my mother and she told me I looked magenta..."

  We laughed.

  "Funny?" he went on. "No. Tragic. But I guess it's better than just common old ordinary red... Well, what do you want me to play for you?"

  "Anything you want," I said. "It's Frannie who has songs she can't live without; not us."

  "Okay; let's play one for Frannie then." He stood there meditating a minute. "I remember," he said finally. "I remember what Frannie likes."

  He went over to the piano and sat down and began playing it in that slow, effortless way of his; and one of the boys around the bar broke away from the crowd and walked up to lean against the table beside him and sing it. He was a beautiful boy with a black sleeveless sweater over his white shirt, and a dusty-blue tie. He was the kind of boy who should have gone to Princeton, but, for reasons of his own, had come to Veronica's instead. He sang the way Frannie wanted people to sing: not with a voice, but with an understanding. He sounded like Chet Baker.

  Let me love you, came the words. Let me say that I do. If you'll lend me your ear, I'll make it clear—the way that I do...

  When he was all through, Marc said, "Jesus."

  "Ditto Jesus," I said. "But you picked the place."

  "I thought you liked it."

  Then I told him I'd heard from Frannie and asked him if he had.

  "Oh, sure. Almost every day."

  "Have you answered?"

  "I'm lousy at letters. She knows that. She's the writer in the family, not me."

  "What does she say?"

  "Mostly funny stuff. You know Frannie. Funny. A thing last week about making a macaroni-and-cheese dish for the kids, called: Arsenic and Old Arsenic; plus a philosophical comment on how it was too bad Alice B. Toklas hadn't thought to name the Gertrude Stein Cookbook: A Roast Is a Roast Is a Roast."

  We struggled with the steaks for a while. Then: "She mentioned she might call you. Did she?"

  "Yes," he said. "Several days ago. We talked for six minutes."

  "What did she say?"

  He raised an eyebrow; then he smiled. "What's new with you?"

  "When are you going back there?"

  "Another week or so. It's an important case. If it pans out the way I hope, it could mean a lot to me. We'll see. Next week, maybe. What is new with you?"

  I told him about Gordon and he seemed pleased.

  "Of course, it can't work," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "If he ever does remarry, it'll be someone young. You know: the dewy look, the fresh approach. Me—I'm just a phase; just someone to work out a few things on." It took saying it aloud to Marc to make me see how true it was.

  "I wish I knew somebody," he said. "A nice sane guy in his fifties; solid business; couple of teen-age kids, maybe; home every night at six; and not too beautiful!"

  "I'd be bored to death."

  "Yes," he said. "I'm sure you would be. Tell me: what is it with you and the misbegotten?"

  "Just because you're so well adjusted doesn't mean everybody else has to be," I told him. "The misbegotten can be lovely, sensitive people... And why don't you write to Frannie?" I added. "How well adjusted can you be? Don't you miss her?"

  And he said, "Yes. I miss her. I went to a party in Meade's Manor on Saturday night and got crocked to the ears so I wouldn't miss her so much. Then I went home, and started writing her a letter. I didn't finish it. Maybe I will, and maybe I won't. But I miss her."

  It was a great deal, coming from Marc.

  "You're really lonely, aren't you?" I said. And he nodded.

  We left right after dinner and he walked me home. When we got to the door and I had my key out I thought of asking him in for a nightcap. But something told me not to. I'd been with lonely men before, and loneliness brought up too many other things. "Goodbye," I said. "Call me if you have a minute and tell me how your case comes out."

  "Thanks," he said. "And good luck with Gordon."

  It was still early and I wasn't tired, so I wrote to Frannie. I told her some more about Gordon and ended with a report on my dinner with Marc:

  He misses you
like crazy, I said. The poor tortured guy doesn't know what to do with himself without you. Believe it or not, I got the feeling he'd have even settled for me! I wouldn't let him come in for a drink. I'm trammeled with guilt over it because he looked as if he needed one. But I figured it was safer not to. He doesn't seem to know exactly when he can fly back to you...

  There was another of hers on the following day. It was a long one, written in the form of a musical comedy outline; and weird as hell. The characters were a Blind Eye, a Deaf Ear, and a Mute Mouth. The sets were made up of staircases built over an ocean on which the cast could only walk down. The songs were parodies from Broadway shows: the finale was one from Annie Get Your Gun with a switch on the last line so that it read: I got found... but look what I lost! And the whole business as called: Best Foot Backward.

  It was all terribly clever, I was sure; but when I tried to answer I found myself incapable of calling it anything but "interesting"... Of course, the fact that I didn't always understand all of Frannie all of the time was not surprising. To understand a mere part of a girl like that seemed sufficient in itself to feed the ordinary mortal's ego. Gordon came back that evening, just as I had finished my letter. It was a mid-week visit, much sooner than I had expected; and this time he came through the door. He stayed the night and I cut work the next day to be with him.

  It wasn't until he was leaving that he told me he wasn't going to be able to see me for a while. There was a big office-supply outfit in Los Angeles and he had to go out there in person and sell them on the Potter Pen. He would live with friends in Beverly Hills and spend several nice fat deductible weeks doing the high spots. The thought of not seeing me for so long was tearing his guts to ribbons, he said; but business was business, and taking the extra time made sense because he had to travel so far to get there in the first place.

  "What would you like?" he asked, standing at the door. "What can I send you?"

  "Send me? Why should you send me anything?"

  "I have to."

  "You have to?"

  "I don't mean I have to. I mean I—want to."

  But he had put it the other way first; and the blood beat in my ears. It's strange about presents: you're supposed to love getting them—women, especially. But not, oh not, oh never, when they have to be given!

  I thought of my father.

  It had been my birthday. (How old was I then? Twelve? Thirteen? Fifteen?) The day had gone by and I hadn't seen him. And then he came home, quietly, tired, and late for dinner. Where have you been? asked my mother. Everything's cold. He didn't answer her. Here, he said, handing me a small brown package. I opened it on the table, beside his ruined supper, with my mother watching. It was Thoreau's Walden.

  I tried to read it—then, and in later years; but I never could.

  "Don't," I said to Gordon now. "There isn't anything I want or that you need to give me."

  "Oh, just a little something. Just a—"

  "Don't!" I blurted, almost crying. "Please, please don't!"

  "Silly," he said, putting his arms around me. "What a silly, silly thing you are!"

  His kiss was warm and reassuring. But when he left I felt as if I had been blasted full of holes.

  That night I wrote to Frannie again. Then on the spur of the moment, another one—to my mother. Why, I'll never know. I told her about my split with Brad, without the details, of course: just that we had reached a point of incompatibility, and that now, finally, a parting of the ways seemed my only chance for happiness. It was hard, writing to her—but I forced it on for a page and a half. I had a good job, I told her; and a nice apartment; and everything was going to be fine. I ended by saying that I was thinking of her, and sent my best to Charles, her husband.

  When, within mere days, I found her return envelope in my box, I clattered up the stairs to my armchair and a stiff drink before being able to open it.

  It contained her Heart-felt Sympathy, a subtle hint of I-told-you-so, and a check for one hundred dollars.

  I could have cried with anger, disappointment. What I had expected, I don't know. But I hadn't asked for money. She had given as she had always given before: the wrong thing, at the wrong time.

  I could send it back to her. But as I looked at it lying on the table, I was struck with an idea:

  Frannie dearest, I typed quickly.

  A windfall of windfalls! One hundred smackers from my mother! Along with it, a rather cool and soul-crushing note, but nevertheless—a real, live check! And superimposed across it in pure gold script, I swear I see the lovely word: Bermuda!

  Having charmed the seats off the higher-ups at Clarke, there's no reason to think I can't cadge a long weekend. If I left on a Thursday and came back on a Monday I could have three-plus days with you. Without Marc there you must surely have the extra space; and with Gordon gone for God knows how many weeks I'd like nothing better than a short stint of sunning, swimming, cliff-sitting, child-caring, bike-riding, and bull-throwing...

  When her answer arrived, concise, sans salutation, sans sign-off, it rocked the wind out of me:

  Blue sky, blue sea, blue funk... Your idea has Laboratory Merit, and I suggest you shove it up your test-tube. I can see you lolling there in blissful fantasy, wasting your mother's dough, lousing up your job at Clarke, and descending upon me with the naive thought that your presence will save me from suicide. My God, Jo! Remind me to write a book called: The Leisure of the Theory Classes. In a word, my dreamy dreamer: if you insist on coming you will force me to evacuate this delightful little cottage and take up residence among the reefs, in the unrewarding company of bi-valves...

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Frannie never did get my next letter. It was returned to me weeks later. Instead she called me from Idlewild. There she was—bag, baggage, and brood; and Marc, having been paged by cable the day before, had driven over to pick her up.

  "Enough!" she said on the phone, sounding near and gay. "Isles of Love are slow death on solos!"

  I was overjoyed and forgot immediately the jolt of that last rejecting note of hers. "How long will it take you to get home?" I asked.

  "We just got through Customs and they're loading the station wagon. Something over an hour, I guess."

  "I'll be there waiting for you!"

  "But it'll be 'way after midnight!"

  "So what? I'll pack a grip and sleep over."

  "How will you time it?"

  "I'll leave here in a half hour and be there when you arrive!"

  "It may take longer. Marc hasn't eaten and we may stop for a sandwich."

  "That's okay. I'll read and have a drink."

  She asked me to hold on for a second. I did; for several. Then she came back. "Marc says the doors are locked. You can't get in."

  I sighed. "Then I'll wait in the car. What is this? Don't you want me to come?"

  "Oh, for God's sake," she said. "Of course I want you to come."

  I got there before they did. It was a warm night with a moon out and stars jamming the sky. I walked up and down the road awhile and when I was tired I got into my car again and curled up in the back seat. In spite of my excitement I willed myself to sleep to make the time go faster.

  I awakened to the sound of a brake in the driveway. As I leaped from my car door Frannie leaped from hers and we ran towards each other all the way across the lawn.

  "You look marvelous!" I gasped through the tangle of embraces. "Look at the color!" In the silver light from the sky the skin of her face and arms was almost black.

  She stretched her hands out and squinted at them fondly. "I've got it all over—from head to toe!"

  "Hey, break it up!" Marc called from the car. "Help me get some of this stuff out!"

  Blair and Petey sleep-walked into the house, and even Stu seemed to be knocked out enough not to know what was going on. Frannie and I got them to bed as fast as we could and then she, Marc, and I dragged the luggage in. After that I mixed us some drinks while Frannie changed into some shorts and the orange sh
irt I'd given her. When she came down to the den she looked at me for a minute. "Your lipstick's smeared," she said.

  I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth.

  "There on the side, and over on your cheek."

  "Hey," I laughed. "That's right—you kissed me, didn't you; without tightening up like a God damned wire!"

  "Yes..." she said slowly. "I kissed you."

  I glanced up. "Now look," I told her, "don't start getting complicated, will you? You just got here!"

  "I'm not complicated."

  "Oh, Christ," Marc said, "here we go again. I've been driving for hours. Can't you save this crap for tomorrow? I'll take the kids to the office with me and you can contemplate your navels all day. Right now—I'm for bed."

  "In a bit," Frannie said, lying down on the couch. "We've got a lot to catch up on."

  "You mean you didn't write it all?"

  "No. Not all... Anyway, Jo has to give me the latest installment on her sex life. Oh, wait—listen!" She began to laugh. "I've got a new book title: Biography of Gordon Potter—Bon Voyeur!"

  "That's not fair," I said. "Gordon's got a lot more to him than that!"

  "What—necrophilia? Beating? Corn cobs? Or that thing about waving burning newspapers over the supine torso?"

  "You dog."

  She quieted. "My morbid interest in Gordon," she countered, "has been forcibly fanned by you, sweetie. Those letters! I still have them! I'd have cremated them but I felt it wasn't even safe to leave the ashes!"

  Marc yawned.

  "All right," I announced, standing up. "We'll get some sleep and talk tomorrow."

  "Thank you," said Marc, with a stiff mock bow.

  I left the den first, shutting the door behind me. When I got upstairs I closed the door of my room. But the straight, open stairwell was a channel for sound; and I could have sworn, some ten minutes later, that I heard Frannie crying: brokenly, unceasingly—like someone who had lost her mind.