“I know what you said.”
“But-”
“Fuck what you said.”
The color drained from her lace. She looked at me, trying to see in my face some indication that I was kidding, and she didn’t see anything of the sort. Because I wasn’t. She opened her mouth to say something and had nothing to say, and just went on gaping at me.
To the four of them I said, “Glory is going to do me now. But you’ll have to help her.”
And they did.
She didn’t want to let them. They held her by the arms and positioned her over me, and one of them caught up her hair in his hand and pushed her face into position, and she said “No, no,” in a defeated little voice, and then she did what she was supposed to do.
I didn’t really feel a thing. It wasn’t for me, it was completely selfless, it was for her.
Of course it worked.
She came with a little shrill cry, shook and trembled and sighed. I think she may have lost consciousness for a moment but I can’t be sure. Then she looked up at me, her face one I had not seen before, her expression equal parts of fear and wonder and delight.
The boys did not say a word. They were lost, and were bright enough to know it. I told them to dress and wait for us in the car. They put on their clothes in silence and got out of the room.
She said, “I was afraid, Priss.”
“Of course.”
“I guess that must have been what I was afraid of.”
“I think so, yes.”
“Am I-?”
“Don’t look for labels.”
“But I screw every boy in the world and nothing happens, and now-”
“You’ll come with boys, too. It’s a matter of knowing how. Now you know how, and everything’ll work out.”
“Even if it doesn’t, at least I know something about myself.”
“Yes.”
“Will I see you again?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Probably not.”
I told her some other things, and stroked her hair, and she put her arms around me and kissed my mouth and told me she loved me, which I guess she did. And I told her I loved her, and I guess I did, too.
The boys were waiting in the car. I dropped them all at a place where they could conveniently hitch a ride. Then I drove home again. I never did stop at a supermarket, but no one seemed to notice.
That was the only time, the only straying from the straight and narrow primrose path. One might say that it was sufficient. But it was the only time.
I would have liked not to have mentioned it. Months have passed, and I have lived perfectly adequately without mentioning it, and would gladly leave it forever unmentioned. I have not seen any of them again, Glory or the four boys. I do not want to see them again. I have no idea what has become of any of them, and while I wish only the best for Glory, it would suit me perfectly well never to hear anything of or from her for the rest of my life.
So why bring this up?
Because.
Oh, shit, let us blurt this out and be done with it. Once upon a fine summer day, a very fine and very summery day, I stood mixing martinis when Rhoda appeared wearing a tentative smile upon her face.
“I have something to tell you,” she said, “and I don’t know how to begin.”
“Just plunge right in,” I said. “Here, have a drink.”
“I think I need one. Yes, indeed I do. All right, all I can do is jump right in and say it.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m pregnant.”
I looked at her. She looked at me, and away, and at me again.
“Harry’s,” she said.
“Of course.”
“There was no one else.”
“Of course not.”
“I know the two of you wanted to have children and couldn’t, and I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, and I haven’t said anything to Harry about it, and if you want I suppose I could get rid of this baby, if you hate the whole idea of it, I mean I could understand that, Priss, believe me I could-”
I poured myself another drink.
“-but I almost died last time I had an abortion, although of course I would find a better doctor this time around, but I probably never will get a chance to have a kid again, and I was always convinced I didn’t want one but now I think I would, in fact I know I would, and I don’t know what to say or what to do.”
“How long have you known?”
“A week. I’m about two months along. I had a rabbit test and killed the rabbit. There’s no question about it. All the signs, sore breasts, nausea in the mornings, the whole pregnancy trip. I’m enceinte, all right.”
“I thought you were taking pills.”
“I thought there was no need. Harry said-”
“He was convinced he was sterile in spite of the tests because he knew I got knocked up before we met.”
“I’m a damned fool.”
“It’s all right.”
“Priss? How do you feel about it?”
How did I feel about it? An inevitable question. Also an impossible question, for more reasons, Rhoda, than you knew at the time.
And for one more reason than you knew after I answered your question.
“I feel strange,” I said.
“Do you want me to have the abortion?”
“No.”
“If you wanted, I would let you and Harry adopt the child. You could bring it up as your own and I would go away. Or I would leave now and have the baby away from here, and Harry would never have to know about it. Or-”
“You couldn’t leave the baby with us.”
“Not if you don’t want it, but-”
“It’s not that.”
She looked at me. I felt lightheaded and thought I might faint at any moment.
“I couldn’t possibly take care of two of them,” I said.
She stared at me. And I at her.
“You don’t mean-”
“I do mean.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yes, literally. But I’m telling the truth.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Quite.”
“How far?”
“About the same as you.”
“God in Heaven.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Harry won’t believe this.”
“Probably not.”
Oh God, Harry, what can I say? I should have gone out without a word and had an abortion. I know that. But something wouldn’t let me, because I couldn’t really be absolutely sure that the cake in my oven was not baked by you. The odds are very strong the other way, certainly. All those years of fruitless effort, and then a tasteless gangbang with four faceless young men, and suddenly Guess Who’s Preggers?
Of course everybody knows couples who tried and tried and nothing happened, and then they adopted a baby and immediately the wife got pregnant. I mean, a change in the emotional climate can have that effect. And God knows that the emotional climate around here has been changing right and left.
But.
Yeah, but. I don’t know what to say. But you thought it was great, Harry, that your wife and your mistress-in-residence were both infanticipating simultaneously, and how could I tell you that, while your mistress was having your child, your beloved faithful wife was having someone else’s?
I should never have written this chapter, and now having written it I should tear it up.
But I won’t.
HARRY
Either the last chapter was a far more brilliant joke than I ever thought you capable of, Priscilla, or it was the truth.
Which?
PRISS
Both.
An unintentional joke, and a joke on all of us. Not a brilliant one, I don’t think.
Also the truth.
RHODA
Priss, honey, when you make a mistake, it’s a beaut.
Properly speaking, it’s not my turn to write a chapter. It’s
Harry’s turn, and one of these days he’s going to write one, as soon as he bestirs himself. But in the meantime I want to write a few lines if only because it seems as though this is the only way we are presently able to communicate. No one is speaking to any appreciable extent. We pass each other in the halls and nod and grunt and stare vacantly past one another, and we seem to be using the typewriter for conversational purposes, which may be better than not communicating at all, but I’m not absolutely sure of that.
Nothing to be done about it. The moving finger wrote, and having writ, etc.
I’m not entirely certain, Priss, that it was wholly wise of you to go into your mea culpa number. (If Mia Farrow married Robert Culp, it wouldn’t be my fault.) Not that I entirely blame you, either. For doing it, or for telling, or even for telling in such a novel way.
But I’m sorry, all things considered, that we had to get involved in writing this stupid book in the first place. I had the idea and sold the two of you on it, and we all found out more than we wanted to learn and disclosed more than we wanted to give out, and I’m not happy about it and neither is anybody else. I think one problem here is the universal delusion that people are better off knowing unpleasant truths, however unpleasant they may be. I think this derives from the same frame of mind which believes that medicine must taste bad to accomplish anything.
And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
Bullshit.
The truth will make you split up, that’s what the truth will do.
But when you think of it objectively (as if that were remotely possible) what is so desperate about the situation? It is not that Priss went out and did these things with these boys and this girl that is so disturbing, but that she seems to have come home with more than she set out with. Is that so terrible? We don’t really know, Harry, that the baby isn’t yours. I’m inclined to suspect that it might be. In any case, it’s Priss’, and my baby is yours, and I have a feeling I’m not helping things.
But I for one don’t think I can handle too much more of this moping, and I’m less affected by it than either of you two. Priss walks around constantly consumed by guilt and seems to have given up food entirely, which can’t be having the best possible effect on her unborn child. Harry gets up early each morning and spends twelve or fourteen hours Out Back, then comes inside and drinks himself into a stupor, finally falling asleep on the living room couch. Priss starves herself and chain-smokes and vomits a lot, gagging over the toilet far into the night, and ultimately cries herself to sleep in the bed the three of us used to share. And I am once again in the guest room, feeling like the least wanted of guests, and sleeping alone, since no one seems very much interested in me.
I mean, let’s cut the shit, huh? It’s just not that bad, nothing’s this bad. We’ve got a good thing going, team. We love each other.
Aw, gee, fellas HARRY
Hotel Royalton
44 West 44th Street
New York, New York 10036
Mrs. and Mrs. Harry Kapp
Elysium Fields, Massachusetts
Dear Girls:
Sorry to disappear like that, doing my thief in the night routine, folding my tent like an Arab (typecasting!) and stealing away. That was what? A week ago? Something like that.
I just couldn’t make it any longer, as the bishop said to the actress, and I just couldn’t take any more of it, as the actress said to the bishop. And so I had the feeling that it was incumbent upon me to remove myself from the fray before I myself became as frayed as a collar.
I called you a couple of times but managed to get the receiver back on the hook before anybody picked up the phone at your end. So in case you were worried that a telephone pervert had glommed onto our number, set your mind at ease. The only telephone pervert on the scene is your darling boy Harold.
I never did write my chapter, did I? I seem to remember that it was my turn, but somehow I wasn’t in the mood to hammer away at a typewriter. Nor, for that matter, did I have anything to say. I seemed to have run out of story, and the only thing that prevented me from typing something about all of us living happily ever after was my inability to believe that this was what would happen.
Ah, ye of little faith Use this as a chapter, if you wish. It’s being handwritten, because there’s no typewriter in this fairly sybaritic version of a monastic cell (catch all this goyische symbolism, do you believe it?) but I’m sure one of you clever ladies can type it up neatly enough. I’ve got a full supply of pens and the desk here is overflowing with this tacky but serviceable stationery, so let’s have at it, huh?
I got to the city around ten-thirty in the morning after I don’t know how many days of moping and drinking. I thought about getting out for a couple of days before I left, and decided finally that the only way to get everything together was to separate myself from you two for a while. So I came here, leaving the Chevy at the station. I had a suitcase filled with a few changes of socks and underwear, an extra suit, a couple of shirts, and the few things I need in order to get any work done.
I remember standing in Grand Central looking down at the suitcase and wondering where to go next. My mind was not at its absolute all-time sharpest, still aslosh with too much stale booze.
I went to a telephone and called Marcia Goldsmith.
“It’s Harry,” I said.
“Hello, Harry.”
“I’m in town. Can I come over?”
“It’s not Wednesday, is it?”
“No, but-”
“Because I set my calendar by you. You’re my one constant in a changing world. If I can’t count on you to appear on Wednesday and only on Wednesday, my Gawd, baby, what can I count on?”
“All you can count on are your fingers,” I sang, “unhappy Little Girl Blue.”
“They don’t write songs like that anymore.”
“They don’t.”
“I mean I dig the new music, but can you see them ten years from now cuddling on couches and getting misty-eyed listening to Blood, Sweat and Tears?”
“Never happen.”
“You know it. ‘All you can count on are the raindrops, falling on you, old girl you’re through-’”
“Okay to come up?”
“What day is it?”
“I think it’s Monday.”
“The first Monday of the month?”
“I don’t-no, as a matter of fact it’s the second Monday of this particular month. Why?”
“You may come up, baby.”
I carried my suitcase outside and got a cab up to her place. When she opened the door I said, “Why?”
“I give up. Why what?”
“Suppose it was the first Monday of the month.”
“Then you couldn’t come up.”
“Why not?”
“Because on the first Monday of every month I have to ball my landlord.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Well, I don’t mean there’s a clause in the lease or anything, but we have this understanding.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Not true.”
“A once-a-month arrangement. What do you get for it?”
“Fucked, usually. Sometimes eaten first. Also very respectful glances from the super. Presents at Christmas time and my birthday.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“April.”
“You’re really telling me the truth?”
“Sure.” She stepped back and looked at me. “Baby, it’s a great apartment at a bearable rental and to keep it I’d fuck King Kong in Macy’s window, and anyway just because he’s a landlord doesn’t make him a drag. You have to be careful with labels. Suppose he called, and I told him no, it’s Wednesday, every Wednesday I have to ball my collaborator. My cartoonist, I have to throw it to him on Wednesdays. What’s the matter, baby?”
“Nothing. Just seeing new sides to your lifestyle, that’s all. First Monday of every month? No more and no less?”
“
Right. I like schedules.”
“You have many arrangements like this?”
“Every Rosh Hashanah,” she said, “I blow the chauffeur.”
I think, somewhere in the back of my mind, had been an idea of settling in with Marcia for a time. I had never precisely fitted lyrics to this particular tune, but I suspect I would have had to have had it in mind (have had to have had?) in order to schlep my suitcase over there.
I believe it was you, Priss, who said something about resenting the idea that people have lives of their own when away from one. I didn’t resent this of Marcia, I didn’t even in my mind have that type of claim on her, or want to, but the revelation that her life did hold other interests besides my Wednesday visits shook off any thought I may have had of locating there.
We smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of coffee and threw a lot of brittle humor back and forth before we finally wound up in the feathers, and the preliminaries for a change turned out to be way out in front of the main event. I just couldn’t get with it. We wrestled around for quite a while to no particular purpose, until finally she looked up at me and tried to touch her eyebrows to her hairline.
“All in all,” she said, “I have the feeling that I do not have one hundred percent of your attention.”
“All in all,” I said, sounding like W.C. Fields, “I would rather be in Philadelphia.”
“Who’s in Philadelphia?”
The hippest of ladies have their insecurities.
“Nobody’s in Philadelphia,” I said. “That’s what he had on his tombstone. That was his whatchamacallit, his epitaph.”
“Then that’s the right place for it. A man has an epitaph, his tombstone is where you should put it. Who?”
“Huh?”
“The corpse in Philly. Who are we talking about?”
I did the imitation again.
“Who’s it supposed to be?”
“Oh, shit.”
“I’m supposed to recognize it?”
I wanted to die. “W.C. Fields.”
“Doesn’t sound at all like him.”
“Goddam aggressive castrating bitch.”
She cupped me in a gentle hand, gazed ruefully down. “Don’t blame it on me, baby,” she said. “Either you’ve only got it on Wednesdays, or else somebody did the job on you before you got anywhere near here.”
Threesome Page 12
