East Into Upper East

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “Yes I am, and I know I have to get you out of there. And I’m going to. I’m going to do it.” Reba sounded ready to do it right there and then, swoop up Lisette and carry her off. And it wasn’t as if Lisette didn’t want to be carried off. It was a very difficult situation for her with her mother and her mother’s boy friend, who fought together and then made up over drinking together, till they got drunk and started again. And working in the cheese store wasn’t all that wonderful either—Lisette was nervously looking at her watch to make sure she wasn’t overstaying her hour, and it made Reba say: “Don’t go back at all—just get in the car and come home with me. Why not? What is it? Don’t you like the country or what? Or is it me? You don’t like me.”

  While saying this, Reba continued to look down Lisette’s back; and getting carried away, she put out her hand to take off the rubber band tying Lisette’s pony tail. But at once Lisette shook her off and sat up straight so that her back was covered by her dress. Reba blamed herself; she knew perfectly well that any fond gesture in public made Lisette thin-lipped and prim—a poor girl, genteel and guarding her honor: and in this guise, Reba loved her more than ever, she became crazy with love for her. But she restrained herself and spoke as sensibly as possible: “We don’t have to live in the cabin; we don’t have to live in the country at all; we can go anywhere. I can borrow some money, if that’s what’s worrying you, my father’s dying to give me some and then I can take you. We can go away. Anywhere you like,” she ended up on a tempting note.

  “Where?”

  “Mexico. Brazil. Anywhere.” She saw that Lisette’s eyes were shining and her face and bare shoulders had flushed a faint pink. Keeping outwardly cool, Reba continued: “We’ll be on the beach and go up in the mountains. We could go to Nepal—China, if you like—we’d be gone for as long as we wanted. One year; two years . . .”

  She allowed her voice to trail off and drown in the sound of the waterfall. She didn’t want to get carried away and say too much. She knew how easily Lisette’s good mood might disappear, and then the light would fade from her eyes, leaving them remarkably dull. Now she was just enough roused to keep her in pleasant anticipation till Reba was ready with the next move. So Reba frowned at her watch: “Don’t you have to get back?” Lisette sighed and wished she didn’t have to. “You don’t want to be late,” Reba said and got up, so that Lisette had to too, still sighing. Reba even made her farewell rather cool as she sent Lisette back to the store and hurried off in the opposite direction. Reba’s nature was open and entirely frank—almost blunt with sincerity—but when it came to Lisette, she had learned to be manipulative, and cunning.

  Si’s favorite restaurant was very fancy, and Reba’s appearance struck a discordant note there. He wasn’t willing to change his eating place any more than she her clothes, but they put up with each other. As soon as Reba came in—five minutes early, but Si had made a point of being earlier—he leaped up to meet her and hugged and kissed her hard right there in the middle of the restaurant. Both Reba’s parents were demonstrative. The maitre d’ stood ready to draw out her chair, politely ignoring her workman’s clothes. Si had already discussed the menu with him, so that Reba could have the vegetables she was used to without having to read her way through the gourmet dishes on the menu.

  “This is such a treat for me.” Si glowed at her across the table. He came here almost every day with business associates, but with Reba it was like being on vacation in a place where he wouldn’t normally be, a hut up some green hills; and though they brought him his usual Bloody Mary, he imagined he could taste the pure spring water she had ordered. Overcome with enthusiasm for her, he said straight off, “I want to do something special for you, and you can’t refuse me, Mousie. I won’t hear of it.”

  Both he and Donna were used to their daughter tensing up whenever they offered her anything, for mostly it was what she absolutely didn’t want. What she did want was either something you couldn’t buy, or would prefer not to—like the heat-gun she had asked them for, so she could hire herself out to strip walls and furniture.

  He went on resolutely, “You have a birthday coming up, and this time I’ll make sure that you get something behind you. Some cash,” he said and paused, glancing at her nervously for her usual negative reaction. But to his surprise she was listening with attention, looking at him with her steady brown eyes. Was she really going to be twenty-five? To him she looked like a child, like the picture of her in his wallet next to his heart at this very moment, when she was eight years old, stocky and solemn; even her haircut was the same, a square fringe, with the tips of her ears showing. “Okay, do what you want, live where you want, in some hole downtown or in the woods, but—no, listen to me—you have to have money.”

  She floored him by saying, “Yes, I need some money.”

  “Good,” he said. He hid his amazement, helping himself to the dish held out to him by the waiter. He ordered wine for himself and more mountain water for her. At last he asked, “Any idea how much?”

  “Quite a lot,” she replied calmly, and continued: “I want to go on a trip; sort of take time off and find out about other places and I guess about myself too. I’ll pay you back, of course.”

  “Mousie, Mousie, you’re talking to your father.”

  “Well okay, but I feel I ought to. In theory anyhow, though I don’t suppose I’ll ever earn enough in actual fact, not with the sort of jobs I do.”

  He was silent. In college, Reba had taken subjects like sociology and economics. Her aim had been to devote herself to the underprivileged by joining some international relief agency, and though Donna hadn’t thought too much of any of that, Si had backed their daughter entirely. But then Reba had gone through a crisis and dropped out of school, deciding that, before engaging in good works, she had to become better inside.

  It occurred to Si that maybe she considered herself ready now, so he said hopefully, “If you should ever want to go back, to Yale or some place else, I’d be happy to—”

  “Why should I? I don’t believe in any of that—degrees and stuff—it’s a waste of time. You didn’t need it. No, of course not; you did fine without.”

  “I guess.” Si smiled, but regretfully: he truly missed an education, and for all his success and wealth, when he was in the company of an educated person, he felt inferior. “Well, okay then,” he sighed, giving up on Reba’s education as well as his own, “but where were you thinking of going? And for how long?”

  “A year; maybe two.” She saw the shock on his face and defended herself: “I told you I need time out to think, sort of rethink myself if you see what I mean, and also,” she said out of her deeply truthful nature, “I want to be with my friend.”

  “Have you told your mother?”

  “No; that’s next. I can’t make plans, can I, before I know if you’re going to give me the money.”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t?” he said—with good reason, for he had never refused her anything; though of course she hadn’t asked for anything, except the heat-gun.

  “Mother doesn’t like Lisette. She’s just awful to her. She goes out of her way—” Reba had blazed up and now checked herself: she hadn’t come here to complain about her mother.

  “She’s not well,” Si made excuses for Donna, “she’s not herself: you know that.” His eyes were lowered guiltily.

  Reba nodded, recognizing the situation and not wanting to embarrass him further. But she did want to go on talking about Lisette: “You have to be careful around her because she’s very sensitive. Shy and sensitive. She’s extremely intelligent, extremely, but she hasn’t been to school all that much, there’s her mother and all kinds of problems you don’t want to hear about. But you’d like her; you really would.”

  “I’d like to meet her,” said Si with his eyes still lowered.

  “Of course she’s just this kid—only nineteen years old, but sometimes I feel she’s older than I am. Older and wiser. She’s had to be, you see, because of the sit
uation with her mother, but in other ways she’s quite naive and impressionable and I feel I want to—not exactly educate, who am I to educate anyone, but—well anyway, do something for her . . .” Reba stopped in frustration, unable to find words for this longing.

  But Si said, “You work it out how much you’ll need and let me know.”

  “Yes okay, I will. As it is now,” she started again, swept away by gratitude to him as well as by her own strong feelings, “I never get to see her enough, she has this stupid job five days a week, of course we talk on the phone all the time but it’s not the same. You want to actually be with the person you feel close to, the whole time really . . . Are you sure all that’s good for you, Daddy?” she asked, for he had allowed both his plate and his glass to be refilled and was eating and drinking voraciously. His mouth was full, his cheeks bulging, but as soon as he could he said, “Yes yes, I can handle it, I can eat all I want and more, nothing wrong with my digestion.” And he laughed, gloating over his unimpaired vitality.

  “You don’t need all that meat, you know. No you do not. Lisette used to eat horrible things at home, liver and stomach and all that stuff, but since she’s been with me she’s become completely vegetarian. She’s still thin, of course, delicate,” said Reba and paused and delicately smiled, “but her health is one hundred per cent improved—like she used to get these colds? She was sniffling all the time, and it went up in her sinuses and was really miserable, but now she hasn’t had a cold in six months, and all because of not eating meat.”

  “I believe you,” he said, “but I still need something more than squash and nuts.”

  “I bet I’m stronger than you are—I bet you: want to try?”

  They challenged each other across the table, then they pushed their dishes aside—waiters hurried over to help them, Si winked at them: “Ignore us, we’re crazy”—she rolled up her sleeve and planted her elbow on the table and was ready. He first had to be helped out of his jacket and to undo one jeweled cuff-link; the arm that emerged was sturdy and tanned, matted in manly hair which was still mostly black. They interlocked their hands and strained against each other. Smiling waiters watched, people turned around from other tables, acquaintances of Si’s called out to him in mocking encouragement: but father and daughter were intent only on each other. Their similar brown eyes—hers pristine and clear, his slightly bloodshot—met in a stare, their lips twitched in amusement though at the same time their faces grew red with effort. Beads of sweat appeared on Si’s brow, but he didn’t let up, wouldn’t, not for anything; their hands swayed a little but the elbows supporting them stood firm. But then it seemed to Reba—she wasn’t sure if this was a physical sensation or came to her in some other way—that if she were now to exert one more ounce of her unexhausted strength, he would have to yield. She felt as if he were ever so slightly tottering, no more than a tremor but one that she could, if she wished, follow up on, seizing the advantage and forcing his hand down on to the table, victorious. She didn’t; instead she laughed, let go, said, “Pretty good.” Then he laughed too, slightly shaky with relief, and said, “Not bad for an old Dad,” and was applauded from neighboring tables. The waiters beamed and pushed up the dessert trolley, and Si, wiping his handkerchief all over his face, rewarded himself with the biggest piece of chocolate cheesecake there was, and even—why not—let them pour cream all over it.

  Informed of Reba’s travel plans, Donna had a hysterical fit. She screamed, tore at her clothes—a sumptuous dove-grey two-piece she had just come home in from the theater—snatched off her string of pearls and flung it across the room. Reba retrieved it. She was familiar with these fits and considered them part of her mother’s nature. Reba had been five years old when she had first witnessed such an outburst. She had been playing on the rug where she had set out her menagerie of farm animals, and she didn’t even bother to glance up at her parents who were arguing above her head. She was used to their screaming at each other, they did it every day. But that time, just as Reba was trying to fix a cow’s broken leg, there was suddenly a different sound, and when Reba looked up, she saw that her mother had laid back her head to emit this fearsome animal cry. And it was like an animal that she leaped forward and fastened her nails into Si’s throat while he tried to wrestle her off: and Reba jumped up and yelled and danced around them. It had been like a parody of what they often did in that very room on that very parquet floor—danced to the record-player, Donna swaying and humming in Si’s encircling arm, following his skilled lead, for he was a terrific dancer, incredibly light on his feet for a man that heavy; and Reba, with her bear in her arms, danced alongside and around them, though they were too engrossed in each other to notice her except for a perfunctory “Bless her.”

  And during their fight too they failed to notice her while they wrestled with each other and yelled so loud that they didn’t hear Reba’s screams below them; and it wasn’t till she began to drum her fists against her father’s leg that Si looked down at her and bellowed at Donna, “Are you crazy—in front of the kid!” She didn’t even hear him, so he struck her and she fell down; it was then she began to tear at her clothes and flail her fists about her face. Si picked up Reba and carried her to the big double bed in the master bedroom where she came when she got scared at night. He shut and locked the door. “It’s okay, Mousie,” he said, “we were dancing. It’s a new step.” Still sobbing, she said, “There wasn’t any music.” “This one you do without music,” Si said. He kissed her and rubbed his rough cheek against hers, which usually made her laugh and squirm. It soothed her—did she fall asleep in his arms?—and when she woke up, both her parents were on the big bed with her. They were laughing, so he must have been telling the truth and they really had been dancing. Si was lying on top of Donna: “You know what you are,” he was saying in a rich low husky voice Reba had never heard him use before. “You’re the one they warned all the little Jewish boys against.” He brought down his mouth to bite into Donna’s shoulder where her nightgown had slipped off. Donna carried right on laughing, so he couldn’t have hurt her, and Reba went back to sleep, reassured that her parents were friends.

  But after she told her mother about going away with Lisette, Reba had to deal with her on her own. She was frightened and ran off to get Donna’s blood pressure pills. She knelt on the carpet where Donna was flailing about and tried to make her take them. “No, let me die,” said Donna, wrenching away from Reba. Next moment she snatched the bottle from her, and shaking the pills into her palm, made to thrust them into her mouth. Reba struck her hand aside so that they scattered. She put both her arms around her mother and held her fast while Donna struggled and cried to get at her pills. She couldn’t keep it up for long though, she was physically too weak. Reba felt her slacken and soon found that she didn’t have to hold her so hard. Donna’s loud cries had softened into sobs; she said, “You couldn’t do it to me,” and then, “You wouldn’t, would you? You wouldn’t leave me.”

  Reba wanted to carry her into her bedroom; but Donna was too heavy for that, so she coaxed her up and gently led her there. Donna allowed herself to be undressed—to be eased out of her gorgeous silk, then out of her slip, the vast support bra to be unhooked, her panties and girdle slipped off; and Reba did it all tenderly, as much as possible averting her gaze from her mother’s body, remembering how once it had been tight and strutting in the latest style swimsuit. Reba dressed her in her nightgown and tucked her between her sheets, and now Donna obediently swallowed two pills.

  “You can’t do this,” Reba at last admonished her. “You can’t carry on that way; you’ll kill yourself.”

  “I’d be doing everyone a favor then. Including myself.” Donna went on, “And he’s actually giving you the money to go away? He’s doing that? There—see, I’m right: he wants to kill me. He’ll have no rest till he’s done it and I’m out of his way.”

  “Si loves you,” Reba declared. She leaned forward to kiss Donna propped against her pillows.

  “No
,” Donna said, and she spoke in a calm, accepting voice. “It’s not true and why should it be; I can’t expect it. I’m not twenty-three years old no more—any more,” she corrected herself but was unsure and repeated again, “No more.”

  “As if that’s got anything to do with anything,” Reba said, but she knew she was not speaking the truth. She only had to think of Lisette and how different everything was when she was with her—and here Reba remembered one Sunday night a few weeks before. Lisette had already fallen asleep but Reba was still restless, excited. She went to the window and drew aside the curtain—at once the moon struck into the room, and when Reba turned around, she saw that the bed with Lisette sleeping on it was afloat and swimming in the white light. The effect was heightened by the white bedsheet with which Lisette had covered herself. It had taken Reba some time and skill, at the beginning of their friendship, to coax Lisette out of her fussy nylon nighties and persuade her to sleep naked the way Reba herself did. But even on very hot nights Lisette took care to cover herself entirely with the sheet and always woke up and struggled a bit when Reba tried surreptitiously to take it off her. This had become a game between them, and Reba wanted to play it now. She tiptoed to the bed and began ever so gently to tug at the sheet; when she had got it about halfway off, Lisette stirred and clutched at it. “Let me,” Reba softly pleaded, and “No,” Lisette murmured, half in her sleep, and went on struggling a while longer; but she was really much too tired, and Reba too persistent, and soon Lisette’s hands fell away from the sheet, allowing Reba to strip it right off her. Lisette lay exposed and flooded in moonlight, her hands up and curled on either side of her head the way infants sleep, her face sideways so that one cheek was buried in her spread-out hair; her long slender body seemed to be shining not only with the moonlight but from within its own perfect whiteness, making it translucent. Reba’s breath failed her, she sank to the side of the bed and buried her face in it, and thought it’s like dying and being born again, or dying and going to heaven: unearthly, divine.