On Keeping Women

by Hortense Calisher

  Kevin has two glassfuls, then another. “Sidecar, I think.” He squints diagnostically. “Fortified.”

  She’d forgotten he’ll drink anything.

  “You look like the Second Mrs. Tanqueray in that outfit,” he tell Violet.

  “Gimme back twenty years, and a good lottery ticket, I be the black Mrs. First.”

  They move to the regular bar, where Kevin has the bourbon-and-bitters she remembers as his drink. “What’s Violet got against you, Lex?”

  “Poor old thing. She’s been paying my youngest boy on the sly. To give Dodo her daily bath.”

  “Hah. Well, Sister’s been made guardian. For when the time comes.”

  “What time?”

  But now he’s urging her toward the house. No, I won’t go upstairs, she thinks. In the way of such parties. I won’t steal a bedroom.

  “Bathroom’s all I want, honey.”

  “You read me,” she says, happy.

  “Like the Britannica.”

  They mount the porch easily this time, passing between the deserted columns. The house, erected by a name now lost in the jangles of the 1929 Stock Exchange, is late Greek Revival, very late, and built to a scale nobly ruinous from the first. The thick columns face the river commodiously. From the many added loggias of its facade, the river is viewed ideally through flowers, all of them luckily perennial, as if the founding gardener had so foreseen. A house requiring service, but able with the weight of years to run on half servantless—the perfect house to be inhabited by cracked wealth.

  Bob, dressed again, is sitting on the floor in the smaller living-room, the wired one, drinking what he always terms “Whisky-water, Sahib” and gobbling the lumps of table sugar which he claims “keep the liver straight.” He has receivers clamped to both ears and is phoning the commodity markets round the world, according to the list of opening and closing times kept always beside him. “Nobody’s answering,” he says in his soft, wise-to-everything voice. “Nowhere on the goddam flinty planet. Commerce is stopped … Hey, not that bathroom, Kevin; one of the kids left a poddle there … Violet can’t be everywhere. Try the next one down the hall… H’are you, Lexie? Have a drink.”

  She accepts a whisky. Rendering exchange before he has to ask. “I saw Bets. Wow.”

  “Seen Arthur? Seen Violet?” He downs a lump, insatiable.

  “Yes, I saw them. They’re a gas.”

  He and she sit neighborly calm. He’s given up pressing drink or sugar on her, knowing she hasn’t much taste for either. But he breeds his own slang in her, and she loves that, feeling its do-nothing spirit fed to her, eye-dropper slow.

  The room itself is sweetish with the stink of old euphorias. What can be wrong with a man so gaspingly proud of anyone who lives with him? An entourage is work, is that it? Is pride.

  “You were great,” she says. “In the pool. Positively great.”

  “A-a, that’s the sugar. I can still hold my breath down there maybe a minute and a half. A quarter.” He’s always showily exact on anything numerical. “Having a good time, Lex?” He nods slyly toward where Kevin went.

  “Marvelous. Except—that I can’t stop thinking … about the kids.” Funny, how she can tell him, rather than a woman.

  He froggies at her. “Neither can I. Why I came in here. Arthur and I’re spelling each other. Giving the dames a night off.”

  Arthur and Violet brought him up. He is their work.

  “Somebody should give you a night off, Lex.”

  “Me?” She holds tight, not wanting to give the martyr’s shrug. She doesn’t.

  “We were supposed to have the twins sit for us. But they finked out. One time after another. Somebody must be paying them more.”

  Should she tell him? She weighs it.

  He mugs at her. “We always pay the sitters, don’t worry. Cash on demand.”

  “Bob—their mother’s been taking the money from them, that’s why. For herself.”

  “Why—that’s larceny. From her own kids? Jesus. Jesus. That calls for a drink.” And for the head-set to go on again. Any mention of money sends him to his telephones. He listens; shakes the headband off. No answers yet. “Jesus. And the twins were so good with the baby, too.”

  “The baby? … You know—I forgot there was one. A new one.”

  “Bets pops ’em like pups … We aim for ten, you know.”

  “But how could I forget? I must be spaced out.”

  “You? The least freaked-out woman on the road. Bets is afraid of your intellect. I say you’re just shy.”

  “My—what? You’re all nuts. Him too.” She gestures.

  “Kevin knows a powerhouse when he sees one.” He hands her a refill. “We all know you’ll do something. When you find out what.”

  She shakes her head, angrily. “What time is it?”

  He shakes his head at her, mocking. “Kids getting out of the village-hall you mean, don’t you. Quarter of twelve… Oh, Jesus.” His watch is soaking wet.

  “Get it to a jeweler, quick as you can.” The whisky in her dislikes the female authoritative. It’s all I have, dear whisky. That why I don’t drink more of you?

  “Yeah, to Tiffany’s. Tonight.” He dangles the watch tenderly. “Damn. A birthday. From Bets.”

  The two-thousand-dollar one. Now she remembers it. And the new baby is a boy. “Arthur! Now I remember. You named the baby for him.” We got a card.

  “Didn’t we though. And wasn’t that a party. Bets got smashed. And my parents refused to come. Never admitted to themselves Arthur’s gay, you know. Or to us. The party was to be a confrontation. All Arthur’s boyfriends dancing the kasotz with each other. But Ma got wise. Sister put her onto it… A-a-a, so what? Poor little baby Arthur wasn’t worth that much auction-wise.”

  “Auction?”

  “Sure… Dodo? Named for dead Aunt Doris—sixty thou. Ma refused the honor, herself. Roddie—ah, Roddie was Dad. One hundred fifty-thou—and this house. And Charline—what a name for the poor kid—but with Uncle Chuck right up front, sitting on his crap-pile, what could we do? … The balance of the river-frontage. But Bets says we must never again lower our taste for anyone.” He’s watching her. “Charline—that’s Lina, catch?” He yawns. “Come on, Lex, don’t look so shocked. Where’d you think the money came from?”

  “I’m not. Just putting it together.”

  “We want a Sean. But we want to do that one for free. So a Sean comes later. Maybe last. But we’re working up. Except for the pool, little Arthur is pure sentiment.”

  “I thought the pool—”

  “Yeah, Ma and Pa guv it. But Ma made him offer only on condition we change our minds on little Arthur’s name. We agreed to it, in good faith.” Bob chuckles. “But Bets says she’d been thinking either Arthur or Violet for so many months that when she got to the font, the name just flies out of her mouth; little Arthur is even lucky he ain’t Violet.”

  When Kevin comes in they’re laughing fit to kill. Bob is pounding her back.

  “Hiccups,” she chokes out. “Give me some of your sugar.”

  “Here you are. And a thimbleful of gin’s good, I hear tell. Suck it through the cube.”

  “Not gin. Urp. Some of your whisky water—urp—Sahib.”

  “Me too.” Kevin slides to the floor, alongside them. Carefully he separates wires from pillows, tosses a coil of tension-wire-and-plugs over a shoulder, and sprawls back.

  Bob’s face is calm, unfrogged. A man’s. They are with him, three sahibs together. Idling. “What took you so long, Kev?”

  “There was a poddle in the other bathroom too. Thought I’d try upstairs. All the bathrooms. Your kids are talented.”

  “He and Bets plan to have ten of them, he says.”

  “Why not. Only five bathrooms, though. I counted.”

  Bob clears his throat. “Maybe I can push Bets to a dozen kids. It’s a living.”

  “Maybe you can.” Kevin grins into his glass. “Your sister told me about the arrangement.” He squints
through a lump of sugar. “They’ve got Bets to agree—no affairs until the childbearing’s over. So that Kellihys can be sure that any property to be left goes to Kellihys.”

  “Bets is a sport, Kev.”

  “Sure, Bob. A true sport.”

  “She’s even turning Catholic. Long as the kids are being brought up in the church, nobody asked her to. In fact the church tells Ma—why push it? Snobs. But Bets says—under that kind of contract, being Catholic helps. And after number ten, she’ll turn back. She’ll only be thirty-five.”

  Kevin’s silent. His wife has the money.

  At least a woman doesn’t need to exact that, she’s thinking. All her children will be hers.

  “Course I had to agree to same.” Bob casts up his eyes, with a pie-smile. “No go, otherwise. Says Bets.”

  “Sure, Bob. You’re a sport.”

  Both men break into laughs, and refill glasses. “How about you, Lex?”

  “Urp. No thanks.”

  “Slap your back again?”

  “Uh, uh. They’re stopping. Hiccups from laughing stop sooner. Ever notice?”

  “Do they?” Kevin slides over onto her pillow. “Truly?”

  “I may have made that up.”

  “Let me look down your throat.”

  As Kevin grasps her chin, she laughs. The tones of sexual interest are limited, after all. Only so many—openings.

  Bob’s saying “You may be right. Always wondered about those hiccups of Pope John’s. That terrible attack he had. Three days, or something … No, wait folks.” He holds up a finger. “Know what? It was that sour-faced one; did he come before or after? Couldn’t have been John.”

  Kevin stands up. “I will go now. When Kellihys begin to talk about Popes. They’ve met all of them. Ma and Pa especially. That’s why I don’t come to your parties anymore, Bob. Specially the christenings.”

  “Ma and Pa don’t either. They send Sis. Like royalty. A princess, doing the honors of the bazaar.”

  “I saw her.”

  “Sis can’t have kids, you know. Wants mine.”

  “Everybody likes property.” Lexie stands up, sliding on pillows. “I better go over, check on mine.”

  “It’s dark out there. I’ll go with you.”

  “Thanks, Kevin, there’s a path. No, you stay. They wouldn’t—”

  “Right.” A torsion in his face, a breadth, reminds her that he’s a parent too.

  “Poor old martini-path, hah Lexie?” Bob’s fiddling with his phones. “Bets is off the hard stuff, is it two years now? Thanks to Ray. Ray’s a sport.”

  He watches her let the name go by. “Came to our christening party, know that, Lexie? Night before he left. Got smashed. Imagine. Old Ray.”

  “Did he? Well, this is the place for it.”

  “He still with those nuns? Don’t let that last too long.”

  “He’s—traveling.”

  Both men stare, at the word coming out of a wife like that. Like a defense, a three-note song.

  “Lex. Bets and I—the whole road—we’re rooting for you two.”

  “Are they. To what end?” How grudging, she thinks at once. Yet she must part the web, mustn’t she?

  “Ha, come on. Be a sport. Listen.” Bob sets down his drink. “When Ray comes back—a doc with a practice like his is coming back, don’t you worry—my advice to you two is—have an affair.”

  “Thanks. I’ll leave that to Bets.”

  Kevin puts a warning hand on her.

  Bob peers at them. Heavy brows for that boyish face; only see that when he knits them. “Bets’ idea, baby. She said ‘All those nights ole Doc came over at the drop of a hat, Bobbie … Bobbie, love, whyn’t we lend them our room at Alfie’s?’… Betsy’s a sport.”

  No, don’t part the web where Bobbie’s concerned. His face tells them so. Dangerous “All ’ose nights when I’m getting smashed worse than Bets. Ole Doc getting us through the night. Getting Bets through the night. Never sends us a bill. Never sent us a bill for anything.” Raw breaths, like the stertor of the sedated. His mouth, suddenly gone frog. He covers it. “Amsterdam. Gotta phone Amsterdam.” He turns his back to them. Filliping the tangle of wires, his other hand scuffles out the handset, puts it on his head. He sits clenched, with the clump of wire on his belly, head bent.

  “Do I hear a baby crying up there?” Kevin’s pale.

  When Bob finally turns round his face is the frog’s they know. “A Kellihy yammers, he’s alive.”

  All three of them know Kevin lies.

  “Did you say—dark?” Bob rushes to a window. “Dammit, it is. Where’ve those goons with the lights goofed off to? Where’s Arthur? … Excuse me … gotta—.” As he runs out the door they hear him through the window. “What the hell is a party like this doing dark?”

  “Did you hear a baby?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I.”

  She crouches over the telephones. Always wanted to examine these wonderful coils looping out over the floor—a clot of countries, bourses, walking where you walk, yards of it following Bob like a talkie-walkie courier, or a nurse. Upstairs, the white phone set-ups trail like spilt milk from bedroom to bedroom, linking the babies to Bets wherever, on her bed, in her bath, on her chaise, she smoking while she talks to you, while the snub receiver whispers in her ear, or buzzes please-please at her wrist.

  The head-set clamps tight on her own hair. Another receiver bangles her wrist. Sensuously she winds the wires around neck and chest, under thigh, until she’s circled.

  “What the devil you up to?”

  “Traveling. Hello—Amsterdam?” She dials, reading from Bob’s list. “If no answer, Switzerland’s available. Or Hong Kong … The Dutch speak English, don’t they?”

  “If they answer, what’ll you say?”

  “I’ll ask.” Whether the world’s steadfast. Whether it’s at six or nine o’clock. “Ought to be able to ask a bank anything.” From so far away. “Kevin—.” Suddenly she’s frantic to uncoil herself, to stand aside from these rubberized lassoos which one has to cast like an angler. Holding bonestill meanwhile. Or folded in the lotus position, around a drink. Or stirring soup. “These phones are dead!” She throws them from her like the coils of a snake.

  He helps her to her feet, his fingers spanning her waist, her breasts. Reminding her of her own warmth, and his. “Maybe he didn’t pay the bill.” Turning her away from those wilted wires. The kiss jolts. But she’s still watching them.

  “Maybe.” Or maybe the phones—Bob’s office, poor Bob’s den where the kids can find him busy, nested behind the cataract of other people’s business—were never alive.

  Kevin’s quiet, holding her in his arms.

  The wind, dark as velvet through the open window, isn’t telling her anything she doesn’t already know. When the wind blows from front to back of her own house, built in three parts and three generations, there’s a creak of riggings. This bland beauty here, columned up all at once from a last killing in the market, makes no sound. Married early to an old banker, this house isn’t sympathetic to people yet, or may never be. Like those young wives one wonders about—sweet and compliant to the old man, capable to the world, and to themselves graciously false—maybe it still lies marble-faced under the old man’s weight.

  She raises her head from Kevin’s shoulder. Oh I know about houses. It’s said that women do. What we conceal even from ourselves is that a house isn’t permanent. A house is a boat. Living on the river only makes it easier to see. But even the tight old inland farms breasting the wind’s mountains, or those hunched, slumside barriers that rim the city with proofs like collapsed foreskins—they’re all windjammers to the sky. Monsooned or becalmed. With sails high and handsome, or softly pouching, or slack.

  She stares into his keen-eyed face. What my own tribe knows, mutely trancing its trained little hearts, is the fragility of the world. What could we not teach you? Yet we’ve the innocence that belongs to all the governed. We tend to believe in th
e permanence—no, the power—of acts. We have the faith of all the acted upon. Yet if that faith goes—as somewhere in these last weeks she knows hers has—what then?

  Her head sinks to its own breast.

  Outside, the party grumbles its way toward parable. In that process coiling continuous around the planet. Along wires electric or dead. The whole noble, fretful stream of human gossip that goes scalding along the glory-road, parroting the normal or murdering by proxy, or only sweet-talking with youth-sugar which’ll drown in the morning—or seeing-dog blind. Tomorrow the whistlers will be blowing bits of the parable through the porous walls, asking for further news of it. Listen! They say last night the parable was here. At the Kellihys’!

  Listen to the story, rubber-dead or alive. That’s what is left.

  At the grocery this morning, Mrs. Capostrelli, the owner’s wife, bluntnailed sacklifter smeared with the world’s eats, knotted whelper of eight and Friday evening bowling-alley cat, says shyly “Me and my women’s group; we’re going to Italy.” Voyaging to witness the canonization of Mother Seton—who lived when, and dies for some now, and draws Mrs. Cap inch by spiritual inch across the sea.

  But, I must do more than listen, than observe. It’s drawing me out of myself—what a feeling. Behind our houses, our acts, what’s this ethical shimmering? It is the story of what we do.

  Kevin’s been watching. Suddenly she catches wind of herself, nostrils wide, eyes sleeked back, slumped in front of him, listening, one-hand hara-kiri on her belly.

  As she comes out of it, he smiles. Snaps his fingers under her nose, presses the joint of his thumb against it. “You’re right. Everything at the Kellihys’ turns to farce. Let’s swim.”

  Now that he’s leading her into the dark charivari outside she rejoices—as if the scene exists for her alone to trail her small revelations through. This is what people must mean when they say they accept the world.

  Strange adolescence that I had, this must be what it was urging me toward. Between the body-sweat of acts, and the first tin-flute moral ideas, when I thought I must choose between life-by-drowning and life-under-the-whip—that there was no need to choose.

  And no possibility. Any adulthood teaches that. Maybe a locked one like mine teaches it best.