Run River

by Joan Didion

  She could go to hell.

  But Jesus Christ, baby. Anybody who’d call herself Bugsy.

  Although she had torn the announcement from the paper expressly so that Everett and Lily would not see it, they would know by sundown anyway. Everyone on the river got the San Francisco papers. She had wanted them not to know because she did not want Ryder’s name taken in vain. In the strictest sense, which was the sense Martha prided herself upon, Ryder was not in the least in the wrong. Ryder was simply the way he was, and she had known all along how he was. To have persisted, knowing that, was to have taken the responsibility upon herself. I’m quite old enough and more than smart enough to know what I’m doing, she had told Everett three years ago, had told Lily before that, had told even her father although not in so many words. She had known it so thoroughly that for the past two years she had not even thought of marrying Ryder, except as a dark contract they could undertake if all else failed, an unattended ritual during which both would avert their eyes, a civil ceremony incorporating the more lurid aspects of a black mass. But despite what she knew, she had, every time he smiled and put his hand on her neck and said whose girl, smiled back. Your girl.

  To avoid Lily and Everett, she sat in her room for the rest of the afternoon, knitting and trying to call up a catalogue of Ryder’s virtues against the probability that someone would question his possession of any. Ryder loved small children, at least if they were clean and attractive. He delighted in giving people presents. He had once driven straight through from Los Angeles in order to be at the ranch in time for her birthday. Occasionally when he thought she was asleep he would kiss her ear and whisper that he loved her, although he rarely did either when he thought she was awake. (That, however, was not a widely employable defense, and neither was the fact that he had once at a party knocked out a drunk, someone they did not know, for pointing at Lily and saying There goes the easiest lay in the room, I can always spot them, something scared in their eyes. As she had explained to Ryder, she had appreciated it for Everett’s sake.) He always asked her if his tie looked all right with his jacket, expressed concern about the correct length for her skirts, and had once gotten up at four o’clock in the morning and met every plane into Sacramento until noon on the off chance that she might be flying home from Carmel that morning.

  Again in the strictest sense, she had thought of nothing which could be accurately described as a virtue, but by six o’clock she had thought of so many things that had at one time or another pleased or amused her that she put her head between her knees and, although she had regularly screamed at him to get away from her and stay away from her, cried for the loss of Ryder Channing.

  When she saw the candles lighted in the dining room, she knew that Lily had heard. Lily would have heard and lighted the candles and brought up a bottle of wine and told China Mary to find some artichokes because Martha liked them. Lily and her mother were both great little candle lighters. The river could be in flood, the barn could be on fire, an escaped convict could be holding them hostage: you’d find Lily and Edith Knight in the dining room, lighting the candles and chatting about silver patterns, asking the convict if he would mind a dry white instead of a red with the roast. It was so pronounced an act that Lily’s every gesture toward domestic gaiety or grace aroused the suspicion that disaster was at hand.

  Avoiding Lily’s eyes, she let Lily and Everett know, before the artichokes were on the table, that she had known for months. She had not only known for months, but she could not be more pleased. Really. It was exactly what Ryder needed. Of course she had met her. She had met her a year ago, and had hoped then that Ryder would marry her. Lily would have to meet her. They would ask Ryder to bring her out.

  Lily thought, although she was not certain, that she had known the girl’s older sister the year she was at Berkeley. Sally Dupree. A Kappa, lived in Piedmont off Mountain, near that circle. Would that be the family, she wondered.

  That would be the family.

  Money, then.

  Construction money, Everett believed. Wartime. It was all mixed up in his mind with Henry Kaiser.

  It had, Lily corrected him, nothing to do with Henry Kaiser. It was perhaps the same kind of thing, but not connected in any way. No ships. And although she was perfectly aware that Dupree Development Inc. had gotten big during and since the war, the Duprees had not exactly been on the street when she knew Sally in 1940.

  Ships or no, Martha supposed that Nancy Dupree had probably come out at the Fairmont in a white dress ordered from Elizabeth Arden.

  Lily was not sure. Those construction people were a little different, particularly if they lived in the East Bay. It was not as if her name were Crocker or Spreckels or something like that.

  No, Martha agreed, it was not. It certainly was not as if her name were Crocker or Spreckels or something like that. What a revelation, Lily’s sudden grasp on the San Francisco social scene. Was it possible that Lily had at hand a copy of the 1948 San Francisco Social Register?

  Never mind about that, Lily said. Just never mind. Anyway. Sally Dupree, the sister, had been much the same type as that girl of Everett’s who played tennis. Alice whatever her name was.

  Annis, Everett said. Annis McMahon.

  She had known it was something like Alice.

  Perhaps, Everett suggested, Martha would like to take a trip.

  A trip. Whenever Everett could think of nothing else to do with her, he urged her to take a trip. There was nothing like a trip.

  She could, Everett pressed, visit Sarah in Philadelphia. Sarah could take her to New York and she could buy some new clothes, see some plays.

  Philadelphia was not universally considered, or so Martha had heard, the ideal winter vacation spot. She had not heard of the smart San Francisco set—Crocker, Spreckels, names like that—wintering there in years.

  Perhaps the Islands, Lily improvised. There were all kinds of people Martha knew in Honolulu right now and she could have a marvelous time. As a matter of fact she might plan to take the Lurline over with Francie Templeton in January.

  It was all, Martha said, Del Paso Heights to her.

  It was a joke, Lily explained to Everett. It was something funny his father had once said.

  Speaking of funny things people said, Martha wanted to tell them something funny Nancy Dupree said the first night she met her. At a party in Piedmont. Nancy (who was, Lily and Everett should know, called “Bugsy,” that’s right, Bugsy Dupree) had told her that the only ships to take in the Pacific were the American President ships, because they were jammed with fascinating people—Japanese engineers, people like that.

  There you were, Lily declared. She was exactly like her sister and they were both exactly like that Alice McMahon.

  Annis. Annis McMahon.

  Well, whatever. She would have said something like that. She would have told you about the fascinating Japanese engineers you met on the American President ships.

  What was wrong with Japanese engineers, Everett wanted to know. If you were on a ship going to Japan you presumably liked Japanese people in the first place.

  Everett was, Lily said, missing the point altogether. There was nothing wrong with Japanese engineers. It was simply that a certain kind of girl would say that. Sally Dupree. That tennis player.

  Everett did not recall that Lily had even met Annis McMahon.

  Well, she had. And if she was not mistaken Martha had too. Hadn’t Martha met Annis McMahon?

  Martha did not know. Possibly she had.

  She did not raise her eyes from her own hand on the table, as if she could scarcely summon up enough interest to answer at all.

  After Lily had left the table to put Knight and Julie to bed, Martha lit a cigarette from the candles and then blew them out one by one.

  “I wish we had some brandy.”

  “We drank two bottles of wine between us.”

  “That’s not the same thing, Everett. Get with it.”

  “You drink too much.”
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br />   “Now Everett. Sometimes I drink too much. Sometimes you drink too much. But neither of us quote unquote drinks too much. Francie Templeton is practically the only person you know who categorically drinks too much.”

  “You are tight right now.”

  “All right,” Martha said without interest, scraping candle wax off the tablecloth with her fingernail.

  “I never did like Channing,” Everett said suddenly. “I never did think you should be messing around with him.”

  “Everett. Ryder Channing has been and is now my best friend.”

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Now you sing some Christmas carols with me.”

  Everett stood behind her at the piano, singing an occasional phrase of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” as she picked out the notes with her right hand.

  Still playing, she said abruptly: “Remember before Sarah got married when we used to go to Carmel at Christmas time?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember.”

  “You remember we’d go to the graveyard first and put a holly wreath on Mother’s grave, then drive on down to Carmel?”

  “I remember,” he repeated. “Why?”

  “It was nice then, that’s all.”

  Over and over Martha played the same phrase: Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Because she had not turned on the lights, the blaze from the fireplace and the colored lights on the Christmas tree flickered all around the room.

  “I always think about how nice it was at Christmas, that’s all.” She stopped playing. “I always thought it was you and me together, against Sarah and Daddy. Because they remembered Mother and you really didn’t. I always figured they thought she wouldn’t have died if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “You shouldn’t have thought that,” Everett said absently, letting his hand drop to her hair.

  “But anyway I did. And we always took that same house out on the point?”

  “It was Aunt Grace’s house.”

  “I thought it was ours. I looked for it when I was down last year but I couldn’t find it. And you always carried me upstairs to bed?”

  “I’d forgotten.”

  “But you did.” As she turned to face him his hand dropped from her hair to her shoulder. “You did.”

  “I remember now, baby.” She turned back to the keyboard and began again to pick out notes. How still we see thee lie.

  “What about it?” he said.

  “Nothing about it.” She twisted her shoulder away from his hand. “This piano needs tuning.”

  Because Everett told her that she should see some people and buy some new clothes, she did. She went to parties every night between Christmas and New Year’s, and on the first business day of 1949 she went to San Francisco and charged $758.90 to her and Lily’s account at Magnin’s. Because she could not see that dressing like what the elevator advertisements called a Marima Shop Young Fashionable had gotten her very far in the past, she went not to the sixth floor, where she and Lily normally shopped, but to the third, where nothing was on racks and all the labels were oversized, heavy enough to stand alone, and embroidered with such intrinsically expensive words as Traina-Norell for I. Magnin. “Something way out,” she told the saleswoman, and she came home that night with a red coat, a white chiffon dinner dress, two black lace slips, and a white silk dress appliquéd with silk butterflies the exact pale color of her hair. The dress with the butterflies cost $250 and was expressly to wear on the twenty-second of January at Nancy Dupree’s wedding. Although Everett thought $250 a great deal to pay for a little dress with some butterflies thrown on it, it was all, he agreed, way out, and on the day of the wedding, when she put on the dress for the first time, he assured her that she had never looked prettier. Because Lily and the children had virus and Everett did not want to leave them, Martha drove down alone to the wedding, rehearsing out loud, in the car, things she could say. Ryder’s so lucky. She looks beautiful. I’ve never been busier. By the time she reached Piedmont, however, she could remember none of them; her hands were shaking on the steering wheel and as she drove past the church she did not see how she could possibly go in. Anyway she would be late by the time she found a parking place, and anyway no one ever noticed who was at the church. She would drive around and pull herself together and by the time she got to the reception it would be all right. Although she began to feel better immediately, her hands began shaking again as she drove to the reception, and she sat in the Claremont Country Club parking lot for ten minutes, putting on lipstick and then blotting it off, trying to brush back a strand of hair which fell forward over her face, and smoking one cigarette after another. It was all right, however, once she went inside. Everyone said how marvelous she looked, and she kissed Ryder on the cheek and told him she already loved both his bride and his sister (whom she had just met and been delighted to find rather tackily dressed); she drank a great deal of champagne and danced with everyone—it was a good dress to dance in because the butterflies appeared to move—and when she left it was with a man who seemed to be about forty and who had a suite at the Claremont Hotel. She stayed there until 4 A.M., when she woke up and told him that the way he looked disgusted her, the way he talked disgusted her, and she disgusted herself, she was no better than Lily. Who was Lily, he wanted to know; she’s my sister, Martha said, and you aren’t good enough to say her name.

  I’ve never been busier, she told them at the wedding, and in fact she had not been. Although neither she nor Lily had ever joined the Junior League, Martha now became a provisional member, spent every evening and most afternoons in town, and at the end of February calculated that she had received proposals of marriage from two of the boys with whom she had grown up and had gone to bed with three, counting one who was married and not counting the man she had met at Nancy Dupree’s wedding reception whose last name she did not remember. (She believed he had something to do with shopping centers, but it was all mixed up in her mind, as in Everett’s, with Henry Kaiser.) Since everyone else was at the moment married that just about cleaned the situation up, and when she tallied up their assets and their liabilities, the balance was, as she had hoped it would be, nada.

  All the connections had been broken, all the bridges burned miles back in the country she had crossed to achieve this insular victory. Even Ryder was included in her pervasive contempt: he could no longer touch her. There, the battle had turned. All the others had been civilian casualties, lost somewhere beyond the front lines: Channing was her dam on the Ruhr, her Guadalcanal, her Stalingrad. Thinking herself victorious, she despised all the vulnerable: all those who liked or disliked, wanted or did not want, damaged themselves with loving and hating and migraine headaches. She imagined that she had emerged triumphant, and that the banner she planted read Noli Me Tangere.

  20

  It was a season of promise for anyone with a little land or a little money or even nothing more than an eye on the main chance; it was a season of promise for Ryder Channing, back in town with his bride after a three-week honeymoon in Acapulco; and it should be, Martha thought some nights as she was going to sleep, a season of promise for her. The mornings were more difficult: some mornings she did not want to get up at all. Some mornings she could get up only if she had already scheduled every minute of the day, which she learned immediately to do. She went everywhere, met everyone. She met builders, promoters, people looking for factory sites and talking about a deep-water channel and lobbying for federal dams; people neither Everett nor Lily would have known existed had she not told them. She went to large parties at new country clubs, went to small parties at new apartment houses, and went, almost every afternoon, to inspect subdivisions opened by one or another of the boys she knew who were going into the real-estate business. Although Lily and Everett claimed to see no distinctions among the miles of pastel stucco houses, Martha knew better. It was, she explained, a matter of detail. Some builders used panels of redwood siding; others, an imitation fieldstone veneer around each door.
In one tract (“Executive Living on Low F.H.A.”) each back yard included a small kidney-shaped swimming pool, a cabaña, and a neatly framed placard listing “Pool Rules”; most subdivisions, however, had only Community Pools, sometimes known as Swimming Clubs, and in any case surrounded by Cyclone fencing. Robles de la Sierra, a tract north of town, afforded prospective buyers “a setting with the romance of An Old Spanish Land Grant plus No Sewer Bonds, 40-Gallon Fast-Recovery Water Heaters, and Sidewalks In”; at Rancho Valley, selling points included a leaded-glass window on the exterior of each three-car attached garage, for “the same gracious finish throughout, VETS NO DOWN.” And if Lily and Everett wanted distinctions, they had only to consider Riverside City, the most distinctive feature of which was that it was “dedicated to the concept of Retirement.” Another distinctive feature of Riverside City was that it was a project initiated by Dupree Development Inc., and another was that Ryder Channing had in February been placed in nominal charge of development, but never mind that. It was a far, far grander scheme than might be indicated by the fact that Ryder was in charge of it. Although none of Riverside City’s projected 37,000 houses had yet been built, quarter-acre lots had been sold by agents all over the country, an artificial lake was under construction, and esprit among future citizens was renewed weekly by the four-page Riverside City Sun, mailed from the Dupree Building in Oakland. “QUESTION: Although we live at present in Chicago, we enjoy our subscription to the Sun because we intend to build a home on our lot in the near future. My question is, about the plastic lining now being installed in the bottom of Riverside Lake, won’t it make our lake look peculiar? ANSWER: You can relax. The lining will be covered with six inches of earth, so unless you come out to inspect it now, you’ll never even see it. QUESTION: What kind of plants grow best in Riverside City? ANSWER: We suggest you correspond with two of our pioneer citizens-to-be, the Mesdames Ada Travers and Bertha Kling, founders of the Riverside City Garden Club. They have already collected an impressive file of government pamphlets on the horticulture of the area. There are no weeds growing under these ladies.”