The Best Revenge

by Sol Stein

  “I’m not taking my coat off again. Come on.”

  On the parkway I watched Ben, his gaze forward, both hands on the wheel, looking for an accident.

  There was a time when we first started going together that his left hand on the wheel was enough. His right would be on my thigh, and I would feel the vibration of the car in my pubic bone. The ultimate destination of those rides was almost always sex, after dinner, after a Westport opening, or instead of either. On a high of success Ben could be turned on by a whisper.

  I put my left hand on his thigh.

  “What are you doing, Jane?”

  “Remembering.”

  “Like what?”

  “Playing contortionist in the back seat.”

  The first hint of a smile.

  “That light’s red,” I said quickly.

  Ben braked hard. “I saw it,” he lied.

  I turned, expecting a police car behind us.

  “Want to tell me what happened today?”

  “Lots.”

  “Like?”

  “Lots of unreturned phone calls.”

  “And?”

  I was famous with Ben for my “ands.” You’d have made a terrific psychoanalyst, he once said. You say one word and expect a torrent in return.

  The flesh between Ben’s brows furrowed.

  “Are we in as much trouble as I think we are?” I asked.

  He started to say something, stopped.

  We were a submarine running silent all the way to the village of Valhalla. Seated in the restaurant, we ordered. Then Ben said, “I’ve got twenty-two percent of the units sold.”

  “That’s the same as three weeks ago.”

  “Yep.”

  I looked for the enthusiasm and energy in his eyes that always carried him from day one to opening night. What I saw were eyes looking down at food in a plate, picking it apart with knife and fork.

  “You’re not eating.”

  “I guess not.” He looked up, his eyes awash.

  “Could you—”

  “Could I what?”

  “Bring yourself to close the show.”

  “Before it opens? I’ve never learned to walk backward.”

  “Only the cast will know.”

  “The pigs will wallow in it. The whole fucking world will watch me crash.”

  Driving home, hurtling through the dark, I could hear his heart. Or was it mine?

  “Ben,” I said, “are you doing a Louie?”

  “A what?”

  “Is Revenge a way of screwing up your life Louie-style?”

  He looked at me as if I were a hated stranger.

  I said, “Please keep your eyes on the road.”

  The light ahead was yellow, then red. Ben drove right through. I glanced behind us. We had the parkway to ourselves.

  “Let’s be practical,” I said. “Stop rehearsals, pay off the set builder for work done, abort the production, cut your losses. It isn’t a matter of face. It’s common sense. Slow down.”

  He floored the accelerator.

  I said, “Can’t we talk this out?”

  “Louie was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “He said if you marry a shiksa, it’ll be like living in enemy territory the rest of your life.”

  “Stop hurting yourself, Ben.”

  “Everybody else is having a go at me, why shouldn’t I?”

  *

  My father is still living, but less and less. Judge James Charles Endicott Jackson, his “appellations” as he called his full name, that tall, lean, hollow-cheeked man who had made a religion of the law, preached from the head of our dining-room table each evening of my young life.

  On the day that I announced I would be leaving the nest in Quincy for what my father called the buzz-factory of Barnard and Columbia, he delivered a warning. “Those New York City people talk with their hands.”

  I knew what he meant.

  When they stood next to their car at the bus station, for a moment I thought my mother was going to leave the Judge’s side long enough to come forward and say a few words more than good-bye. But it was only the wind ruffling her dress, not a movement of her body that I saw. I admired her as one would a pioneer farm woman, someone who had lived a life no longer possible. What great and unacknowledged actresses the women of my mother’s background were; to avoid shattering the fragile innocence of their spouses, some of them simulated not only their orgasms but their entire lives.

  My father, who consecrated my graduation with three thousand dollars in the hope, he said, that I would use it for traveling in Europe—was it to spite him that I went to Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy, countries full of people who talked with their hands? I suppose I discovered my sexuality on that trip because some of the idiotic things men say to get you into bed sound better in a foreign language. As for love, that took a long time coming.

  *

  At home, we went to bed.

  He lay on his side, I on mine.

  It was too late at night for pinwheeling talk.

  I could hear the faint whirring of the digital clock on the bookcase across the room. We need firm sounds. At home in Quincy, the grandfather clock in the hallway sounded chimes every quarter hour to remind us, if awake, that we were losing life.

  I must have dozed. The bed beside me was empty. I flicked the bed light on, afraid I’d trip in the dark.

  The stairway down was ablaze with light.

  The kitchen was dark.

  The living room was dark.

  “Ben?”

  I heard breathing.

  I turned on the overhead light.

  “For Christ’s sake, turn that thing off, it’s blinding me.”

  Ben was sitting on the blue couch, holding a tumblerful of ice and booze. I turned the rheostat so that the room was barely lit.

  “What’s that I smell?” I said.

  “I smoked a cigarette.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “Now I do. You think I have no business being in the theater anymore?”

  “That’s not what I said. I said the theater is not a business anymore.”

  Ben jiggled the ice in his glass.

  “I am not the enemy, Ben, come upstairs.”

  “What am I supposed to do at this stage of my life, package air? I’m entitled to do a play I know is good.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean without having to worry about where every nickel is coming from. Besides.”

  “Besides what?”

  “Stimson wouldn’t miss the money for a second.”

  Ben the hunter is waiting in a blind for me to let a thought fly so he can shoot it down.

  “What are your choices?” I asked. “Have you tried London? Your track record—”

  “How the fuck do I turn that into money? I’ve turned over every rock I know except…”

  “Except what?”

  “Manucci. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m in the same damn trap my father was in. Maybe I ought to take off like Gauguin.”

  I went to sit beside him. I took his hand. “I love the feel of your skin,” I said. “All of it.”

  “Seducing me won’t do either of us a bit of good.”

  Ben gave me back my hand, saying, “Nobody ever welshed on your father, did they?”

  “Ben, this isn’t finding a solution,” I said.

  “When the crash hit, every last son of a bitch who owed my father money welshed.”

  “Ben,” I said, “you love your father more than anyone I ever met. He must have done something right.”

  “The drapes were taken off the wall by the sheriff’s people.”

  “You told me.”

  “My cowboy suit was taken to satisfy a claim.”

  “You told me.”

  Ben stood up, his eyeballs red. “I was the only white kid in first grade when we moved to Harlem. It was like jumping out of a plane and finding out your father forgot to hook up your parachute.�
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  “Come up to bed, Ben. Please?”

  He was looking at the carpet.

  “I know how Louie felt,” he said, “when the ceiling crashed.”

  “Remember how long it took—?”

  “To what?”

  “To finance Truckline.”

  “I should have closed Truckline. In rehearsal.”

  I tried to touch him, but he pulled away.

  “Don’t start giving me my type of hope,” he said. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. There are two choices. Abandon the play or…”

  “What?”

  “Manucci.”

  “Ben, you’ve got a solid history to trade on.”

  “I’ve haven’t got a fucking thing to trade on. I’m finished.” He flung his arm wide, spraying drink and cubes across fifteen feet of room.

  I went to get paper towels for the carpet. When I knelt, working at the tufts, he knelt beside me. I tried not to turn, scrubbing away. But I could hear. Ben was sobbing.

  The hell with the carpet. I cradled his head. After a while I thought we’d fall asleep that way. The children would find us in the morning. “Come upstairs,” I said.

  On the bed, Ben lay on his side, I on mine, an estuary of gloom between us.

  *

  I was a very little girl when we had our chimney fire in Quincy. I dreaded another more than my father’s wrath. You could retreat from wrath, go up to your room, hide. You couldn’t hide from a chimney fire, you had to deal with it. For fires of the heart, we had New England remedies: discretion, tact, propriety, appropriateness, silence. I was schooled to bar visible emotion at any cost.

  Was that why I fled New England, my genes crying out for someone like Ben, whose people are less concerned about chimneys than storms in their brains. The thrust of their lives was to overreach themselves. My father would have said to the brothers Wright, Aren’t the feet God gave you good enough? I suppose Louie would have said, I love you. Fly! Even in death Louie talks to us more than my father who is still alive.

  The thought froze in my mind like a thief caught in a flashlight’s beam: What must it have been like to have been made love to by Louie? Was I imagining it from Zipporah’s point of view, or was that just camouflage for my own curious, suddenly windmilling mind feeling his hands on my skin, his tongue on my skin, his illicit kiss?

  *

  Sometime, in the drowning moments between sleep and waking, I felt the interruption of unexpectedness, the touch of one finger at the back of my neck descending tantalizingly down the length of my spine. The finger turned into a familiar hand. Then at the base of my neck it was lips, a flickering snake’s tongue between them, traveling the same route slowly. I tried to turn but now two hands were on my shoulders keeping me from interrupting the traveling tongue. I twisted toward him as his fingers, all erotic members now, cruised my inner thigh. His lips exploring my ear found my lips until breath demanded breaking, and he was at my left breast nipple, taut, the right crying out jealously, and then his mouth descended at last to the other eager avid lips. How restive, fretful, anxious, and zealous ardor is. I pulled Ben’s body up to split me, the rocking horse rocking as in the surge of the surf, to the apogee, cresting, splaying, sweaty, trembling, exhausted, sailing free.

  The bedside phone exploded with a shattering clang.

  “This is Sam Glenn,” the voice said. “Put Ben on.”

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning!” I said and hung up hard.

  Ben was sitting up in bed. “Who was it?”

  I put my hand on my lover’s hand. “Nothing. Wrong number. Go to sleep.” I reached to take the receiver off the hook when the phone’s ring resounded. And again. I had to lift the receiver to stop it, and heard his bellow: “Don’t you fucking hang up on me, lady. Put the bastard on the line.”

  Ben said, “It’s Sam Glenn, isn’t it?”

  I nodded and handed Ben the phone.

  13

  Ben

  I said, “It’s the middle of the night, Sam.”

  “You duck my daytime calls.”

  “What’s so urgent?” My never-changing image of Sam was from high school, the six-foot-four hulk who picked fights and used his stomach for butting.

  “You didn’t close the partnership, true or false?”

  I sat up at the edge of the bed. “You want some additional units?”

  “Are you fucking crazy? My money’s still in escrow. I want it back.”

  “The money’s spent, Sam.”

  Jane was now up on one elbow, watching me.

  “You listen to me, Ben. You can’t spend the first dollar till the last dollar comes in. You’ll go to jail for fucking around with those funds.”

  “Oh, Sam.”

  “Don’t oh-Sam me. You wouldn’t last three months in the hoose-gow.”

  “Sam, we’ve known each other a helluva long time. I’m sure if we sat down face to face and talked this over you’d understand.”

  “I doubt it. If the production has used my money, just send me a personal check plus interest from the day of investment. That comes to—”

  “I don’t have that kind of money anymore, Sam. Look, the middle of the night on the phone is no way to talk. Are you coming to New York anytime soon?”

  “I got enough keeping clear of muggers in Chicago. I don’t go to New York. I want a no-bullshit answer right now. Are you going to send me a check by Fed Ex or do I do what I have to do?”

  “If I take a plane in the morning, Sam…”

  Jane was shaking her head.

  “…we could have lunch together…”

  “I don’t eat lunch. I’ll expect you in my office by eleven o’clock. With a check.”

  He hung up.

  “Call him back,” Jane said. “Tell him you can’t go.”

  I lay back on the pillow, my hands under my head, staring at the ceiling. Chicago, once my town, was now enemy turf.

  I could hear the clock across the room. “What time is the alarm set for?”

  “Seven. Are you going to call him back?”

  “Change it to six.”

  In the fan of moonlight sneaking in between the slats of the blinds, Jane looked like a young woman. “Wasn’t there once a time,” I said to myself, “when I could talk anybody into anything?”

  *

  On the plane I got a magazine from the stewardess. Even the ads seemed unreadable to me that morning. I closed my eyes, retrieved long-stored snapshots of Chicago. My mother’s nervous warmth. Homebound by the impenetrable snow. The policemen who always seemed fake to me because of the silly black-and-white checkerboard bands around their caps. Why no snapshot of Louie? Where was he?

  I’m right here. Where are you?

  On my way to Chicago, Pop.

  If you’re going to Chicago, why don’t you see Anna?

  How do you know she’s still alive, Pop?

  I know.

  How did you get on this plane, Pop?

  He put his hand on my shoulder, gently. I opened my eyes. It was the stewardess waking me for breakfast.

  *

  In O’Hare’s bedlam my eyes scouted for a public phone not in use. It was still early for my meeting with Sam.

  I dialed information. “Addison, Anna,” I said. “I don’t know the address.”

  Maybe information wouldn’t have a number for her.

  How many Anna Addisons do you think there are in Chicago?

  You here, too, Pop?

  Where else?

  A synthesized voice announced, “The number is…”

  See. I told you.

  Comment by Anna Addison

  I have two links to the outside world: the grocery boy and the man who delivers for the cleaners. When that phone rang for the first time in two weeks, I thought it was probably a wrong number. Still, I went to answer it with all the eagerness of sixty years ago when Charles and I would phone each other at least once a day. Please don’t hang up before I get there.

  “Hello,
hello,” I said quickly.

  A man’s voice, deep as if from the bottom of some ocean, said, “May I speak to Mrs. Addison, please.” His voice seemed surrounded by a lot of Donald Ducks yammering in the background. I had to strain for every word.

  “Yes, yes, this is Anna Addison. Who’s calling?”

  “This is…Ben Riller, Louie…and Zipporah’s…son.”

  Oh, how those names jumped out at me from memory! “Bennie, where are you?”

  “At O’Hare. I’m glad information had your number.”

  “If I could afford it,” I said, “my name would be in every city directory in the whole country! What are you doing in Chicago, did somebody die?”

  Stupid thing for me to say. It must be thirty-five years since Louie died. Maybe twenty-five since Zipporah followed him. “I guess I should be the next one,” I said.

  “If I remember you correctly,” Ben said, “you’ll live forever.”

  “That kind of lie I like to hear.”

  “I’m in town,” he said, “for a meeting with one of my investors. My return flight’s not till five. Can I pay you a visit early this afternoon?”

  “Of course.” I repeated my address twice so he shouldn’t make a mistake.

  “It’s hard to know the exact time,” Ben said. “I’ll call when my meeting’s over.”

  “Don’t waste money on a call. I’ll be here.” I saw my hand on the telephone receiver, my knuckles like small doorknobs. I’ve gotten so thin since Charles died. “I’ll make us a lunch,” I said.

  “Don’t go to any trouble. I’ve got to run now.”

  When he hung up, I held the receiver to my breast like a gift I didn’t want to put down. Do I have a decent dress that fits me? What if I died in the next couple of hours, who would tell Bennie not to come?

  Comment by Louie

  That woman Anna always fussed about the way her hands looked. She used to say that she had the right hands for a woman and I had the right hands for a man, whatever that meant. Right in front of me she used to ask Zipporah things like did her bust look natural with some new brassiere she was wearing. I was tempted to say, How do I know if it looks natural if I don’t get to see what the natural looks like?

  Some of our friends in Chicago used to think it funny that Zipporah should have a best friend like Anna who wasn’t Jewish. In the old country, there was us, and the rest were enemies, but in America, people are people, give them a chance. Our friends thought she was stuffy because she called her husband Charles instead of Charlie. She wasn’t. When she talked, her soul steamed out of her eyes. She talked with her breath, like a woman on the verge. I thought of her as someone I should make love to, and I knew she knew, but we were always on good behavior, she for her Charles, and I for Zipporah. That woman, Anna Addison, taught me that whatever pulls a man and a woman together can also jump over the fence of centuries, that the days of Jews marrying only Jews would soon be over. When we met, and a kiss on the cheek in front of Charles and Zipporah was called for, Anna and I were as careful as kids in front of their parents. I never laid a hand on her except in my mind. When we left Chicago, leaving her was for me harder than leaving all those books with the stickers that said EX LIBRIS, LOUIS RILLER. Most of those books I had read. Anna I had not yet read.