The Americans, Baby

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘You really liked it?’

  ‘Really like it,’ I said, ‘and I’m just a physical jerks teacher.’

  We kissed.

  ‘Let me stay the night,’ I said, trying not to pant.

  She shook her head against my arm. ‘Not tonight, Kyle,’ she said softly, ‘not yet.’

  ‘I’m as frustrated as hell.’

  She looked into my eyes. ‘I worry,’ she said. ‘I worry that people like us treat sex too carelessly – just because we’re the full anti-convention bit – we tend – I don’t know … I suppose we tend to undervalue sex.’

  Not me, I thought, I don’t undervalue it. ‘But, Christ,’ I said, ‘I know I want to go to bed with you and you want to go to bed with me.’

  I kept my erection hard against her stomach and wondered how she kept herself so carefully tied up and why she didn’t just fall down there and then.

  After a while of standing there in each other’s arms I said I had to be going – still hoping she’d relent – but not wanting to pressurise her. But she continued to resist my charm and I left.

  I got home and had a drink. I realised I had been uncomfortable about my drinking back at Angela’s – I’d felt swinish because she hadn’t been drinking – as though I was drinking twice as much. But that was unfair. She didn’t carry on about it. Not like some bloody women.

  But as I sat there having a self-complaining drink I griped to myself that what I wanted was not a drink but Angela – on her back.

  I went to have a piss and thought, ‘Hell, we both want it – why this fooling about?’

  I put on my coat and hat, went outside, got a cab and headed back to her place.

  I knocked loudly, wondering if the shock tactics would work. There was light coming from under the door. ‘Who is it?’ she called from inside.

  ‘Me, Kyle.’ She unlocked the door. She was in her nightdress.

  ‘Kyle, what is it?’ she asked, smiling but disconcerted.

  ‘I couldn’t take it,’ I replied, ‘I couldn’t sleep – I want to stay the night with you – we both want it.’

  I took her in my arms.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said, still disconcerted but friendly, shaking her head. I pushed the door closed with my foot as we kissed.

  ‘And the hell with Gandhi and the chastity bit,’ I said.

  She was amused.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said softly, leading me into the bedroom. ‘You realise you’re forcing yourself on me,’ she said, lightly.

  ‘I know.’

  We kissed.

  ‘Let’s just sleep together,’ she said, ‘no sex – for tonight.’

  I groaned, ‘But why?’ I could see her full sharp breasts, without any sag, lifting her nightdress, the fall of her nightdress giving their outline and the dark nipples showing through. Raaah! I put my hands on them.

  ‘Because I want it that way – for now,’ she said, seriously, ‘please?’

  She pressed my hands on to her breasts and I knew she was giving herself to me – little by little.

  In the morning when we awoke, we had sex. She was aroused but seemed to feel a certain shock when I entered her, and her face showed almost pain, but then she relaxed a little. But she was very serious even though she seemed to like it. She watched my face all the time. Watched my eyes.

  She was the first to talk afterwards.

  ‘You’re gentle,’ she said, ‘I like that.’

  ‘You make me gentle,’ I said, which was true.

  ‘I hate rough men – I had too many rough men,’ she said.

  I saw her in the back seat of a Pontiac convertible struggling with a college footballer.

  We talked a little and then fucked again. Then we got up. I danced a little shadow boxing, feeling pretty pleased with myself. I did my exercises while she showered, singing folk songs. I watched her fit her slightly overweight thighs into jeans and zipper herself up.

  ‘I usually do the marketing Saturdays,’ she said, as she brushed her long black hair. ‘Would you help carry?’

  I said I would. ‘I’m your slave.’

  We wandered up the aisles of the supermarket with me holding the bag open while she dropped her groceries in.

  ‘You eating lunch with me?’ she asked, nudging into me affectionately with her head.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get something special,’ she said. ‘What’s your fancy?’

  I tried to think of something. ‘Salmon and asparagus salad,’ I said, wondering if that was my fancy. Angela always had a ready list of what she liked and disliked – from the temperature of room to the amount of noise. Americans are like that.

  ‘I must say that despite my profound distaste for capitalism,’ she said, ‘I just adore supermarkets.’

  And then, as though obliged, she added, ‘but they create a false sense of abundance – our income shrinks in real terms but the supermarkets let us think we have all this abundance.’

  Back at her place we unpacked the groceries.

  ‘Oh hell,’ she cried, ‘look at this …’ she held up a jar of honey – it had leaked into the bag – about a third of it. ‘It’s everywhere,’ she said, ‘but everywhere. Trust me,’ she said, in a soft self-accusing drawl.

  ‘You didn’t do it,’ I said roughly. ‘We’ll take it back – make them pay.’

  She didn’t want to go but I insisted. We reached the supermarket as it was closing.

  I showed the cashier. She called the manager.

  ‘You must have unscrewed it,’ he said – straight out – standing among his stacks of cans and soap.

  ‘Of course we didn’t unscrew it,’ I said. ‘It was cross-threaded when you sold it to us.’

  ‘You should examine your purchases before you take them from the store,’ like a sign on the wall. ‘How do I know what you did with it?’

  ‘You better take our word for it,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t threaten me.’ He moved his shoulders back. If he wasn’t careful he’d have his teeth out the back of his head.

  ‘I’m not threatening anyone,’ I said. ‘I want the honey replaced and the bag cleaned.’

  Angela was standing almost behind me. I was rapidly losing my satyagraha.

  ‘You have to accept responsibility for not examining your purchases,’ he repeated.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Angela defeatedly, touching my arm.

  ‘We’re not going till the honey’s replaced,’ I said to both of them.

  ‘All right, the honey I’ll replace,’ he said, and went to the honey stacks.

  I smiled at Angela, who stood, pale and worried. ‘The honey he’ll replace,’ I grinned.

  She just looked pale.

  He came back. ‘What about the bag?’ I said. ‘You’d better pay for the cleaning of the bag.’

  ‘I can’t accept responsibility,’ he said.

  I saw myself pulling the honey-coated bag over his big European head. But I knew then he wouldn’t go any further.

  ‘Out,’ he shouted, ‘get out – don’t come back here no more.’

  ‘We won’t,’ I said.

  Angela and I walked silently home through the midday sun.

  ‘That was horrible,’ Angela said, ‘horrible.’

  When we were back she sat down on the floor looking stunned and pained.

  ‘I’ll try to clean this honey out,’ I said, getting up and going to the kitchen, feeling I should leave her alone.

  I heard Angela put on a record. Joan Baez.

  I tried to wipe the honey out with hot water and a cloth.

  ‘He was an arrogant bastard,’ I called out to her over the voice of Joan Baez, but Angela remained silent.

  ‘Don’t let it all upset you.’

  She came from the living room into the kitchen. ‘It was you, Kyle, who upset me,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Me!’ I was incredulous.

  ‘Yes – your tone – it was so … aggressive … murderous.’

  I wa
s almost outraged. I banged the spoon down.

  ‘I thought I was all self-control,’ I said, ‘very restrained.’

  ‘You were aggressive and hostile,’ she said.

  ‘I reasoned with him.’

  ‘You tried to stand over him.’

  ‘He deserved to be thumped,’ I said.

  ‘There you go,’ she said, turning away tiredly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘please let’s drop it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘that’s just my way of doing things – I thought I was all control.’

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘let’s forget it.’

  I was hot with the injustice of it. ‘I’m surprised you feel that way,’ I said, ‘bloody surprised.’

  Joan Baez seemed to have become even more high pitched and full of damn sorrow: she was giving me a pain in the arse.

  ‘Do we need her?’ I said, tossing my head towards the record player.

  ‘See, you’re angry again,’ she said, low and sad.

  Holding her in my arms – my honey sticky hands held away from her, I said, ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Please, Kyle,’ she said, ‘no more.’

  For the first time in my life I really needed a drink.

  I went back to jabbing and scraping at the honey in the bag. She went into the living room with Joan.

  I remembered the brandy and got it from the cupboard and had a quick slug from the bottle. I thought, ‘This is weak,’ and called out to her, ‘Angela, want a drink?’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ she said.

  After about ten more scrapes at the bag I washed my hands and gave it away. I went into the living room and said, ‘I think I’ll go home for a while – change my shirt.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, and then, after a pause, ‘I’m sorry I criticised you – I’m hypersensitive about this sort of thing – takes me back to the States where everyone tries to stand over each other.’

  She was warmly forgiving, but of course I didn’t feel I’d done anything to be forgiven for. I took it as a gesture and we kissed and I said, ‘I’ll just have to learn a little more satyagraha from you.’

  She smiled and we held one another.

  I went straight to the nearest pub, remembering that after all I’d missed out on the salmon and asparagus salad.

  After a drink, I said aloud, ‘Hell, I was all damn satyagraha – too damn satyagraha.’

  Saturday afternoon horse races galloped over me from the radio. I drank there for a while. I bought a pound of prawns from an Italian who came around the pub with a wicker basket of fish and bottled oysters.

  Another drink and I’d be the man to fuck her out of whatever it was bugging her. I had a drink and went back.

  She opened the door. ‘Kyle!’ Her eyes searched my face – which was probably twisted with passion.

  ‘Come in, Kyle – I was lying down.’ She closed the door. ‘You didn’t change your shirt.’

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ I said. ‘I didn’t go home.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t start reprimanding me.’

  ‘Kyle, I wasn’t,’ she said, taking my hand, ‘just a simple observation.’

  I flopped into the chair. The big lover flops.

  ‘I wish you’d backed me up this morning,’ I said, getting it out straight away.

  ‘Kyle,’ she cried, ‘don’t bring that up again – nothing more.’

  I thought, Oh my God, something else’s happened. It had that sound about it.

  ‘It was bugging me,’ I said.

  She turned away and leaned on the wall, looking down at the books.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded, sensing that she was going to hang something else around my bleeding neck.

  ‘I’ve been sick,’ she said. ‘This morning made me sick.’

  ‘You mean threw up?’

  ‘Yes – I mean sick – physically sick.’

  I was astonished. The mind boggles.

  ‘I was ill,’ she said, with a high pitched edge to her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘if it was my fault.’

  ‘You’re not to blame for all the smouldering violence in the world.’

  All the smouldering violence – the way she said it made me feel damn responsible.

  Then I noticed something new about the room – a photograph on the wall. Or at least I hadn’t noticed it there before. It was large – a blow-up about three feet by three feet – of a child on a swing. I stared at it and then called out, ‘Who’s the photograph?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  I stared at it again.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Seven.’

  I felt she should say more about it than that. I mean, what was it doing up on the wall all of a sudden?

  ‘It was a history,’ she said. ‘I put it up after you left this morning – I’d been meaning to since I moved in.’

  I looked at her for the history. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘It was in the Family of Man collection.’

  I said ‘What?’

  She went to the bookshelf and pulled out a book.

  ‘See if you can find me,’ she said, handing me the book.

  I flicked through the photographs. ‘A camera testament, a drama of the grand canyon of humanity, an epic woven of fun, mystery and holiness – here is the family of man.’

  I went through the photographs – it didn’t seem nasty enough to be about the people I knew.

  ‘You show me,’ I said, handing back the book.

  She found the page.

  It looked a little like her. Of course, it was a much smaller photograph.

  ‘Hell,’ I said, wondering what to say, ‘you’re a celebrity.’

  ‘Hardly,’ she laughed.

  She went back to the kitchen for the coffee.

  I stared at the blow-up and then back to the book. Jesus.

  ‘Thankfully, I’m not recognisable,’ she said, pouring the coffee; then, looking at me, said, ‘You look a little dazed,’ and laughed.

  ‘I am,’ I said, reading in the book. ‘“Every man beareth the whole stamp of the human condition – Montaigne.”’

  ‘Yes, well, yes,’ I said, putting down the book. I couldn’t take my eyes off the blow-up on the wall.

  Her being in the Family of Man ruined it. We went to bed that afternoon but I was too careful about the way I fucked. As though she was fragile. And that was the last time. Perhaps I’d only wanted a few fucks. But she was a good girl, a really good girl. We still see each other and she convinced me to go to my first peace march. I carried a banner reading ‘For Humanity’s sake’ which was a little embarrassing. I’m not really a big social protester. I think basically I’m a bit on the vulgar side.

  The Story of Nature

  Although she wanted to become a historian – or, as she sometimes told herself, a serious thinker – she led an impulsive sort of life and was glad that she could. She was glad that there was still some of the child in her, that she hadn’t frozen into a stiff Apollonian. That would come, she guessed. Her impulse to act would be slowed down and increasingly restrained by questions of whether it would be wise; had she considered alternatives abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz; was she succumbing to the seduction of mood; didn’t she have responsibilities. All these sorts of questions. Or perhaps people never became coldly rational but simply replaced impulse and spontaneity with habit, patterns of living, and styles of life. But rational questions raised their frowning heads at her even now. She could act on impulse, but sometimes, say in the morning while showering, or riding the bus to university, she would find herself face-to-face with one of the frowning questions. They frowned like her father. Even thinking like this now after having made an impulsive decision was a sign that the frowning person in her was working against the giggling person – against her decision to live with Hugo. But she had expected it to come. Perhaps all this meant was that she was becoming an intellectual – becoming awa
re of herself. She would not let it bother her.

  ‘And how old are you?’ Hugo had asked, his Nebraskan accent a melody.

  ‘Sweet twenty.’

  ‘Do you think age difference is important? – I’m exactly sour thirty. Do you think that will bother us? Do you think love is embarrassed by age difference?’

  Before she could answer he went on, ‘I do not. Love is a rapport fed by an exchange between two people. From you – the insights of youth – from me, the experience (be what it may) of the twenties – love is a caring, and what does age have to do with that? And love is having children and we have bodies that will do that. Where, then, may I ask, is the problem?’

  Answering his own question with overwhelming definiteness, he said, ‘There is no problem.’

  The Nebraskan accent was a Hamelin piper. And his words too. But that was not the important thing about him and that was not the thing which had made her do it. She felt that Hugo seriously wanted a ‘cohabiting relationship’ – strongly and without nonsense. And she wanted it. She felt that she had made adequate allowances for her infatuation with him and that the decision was basically rational. But the decision to live with him had been impulsive. The analysis came afterwards and was a summary.

  When he had turned to her during the film and said, ‘For Godsake, Cindy – let’s live together,’ she had replied, without thought or resistance, ‘Yes.’

  ‘We do not know much about each other,’ she had said, meaning it not as a hesitation, but as a way of saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that not knowing each other doesn’t matter – we have rapport.’ She told herself that knowing people wasn’t a test in which a certain number of correct answers had to be given.

  She hesitated before the word, she feared it had an avalanche of implication, ‘… love … I guess, is rapport,’ she said to him.

  He said that they would have a lifetime to find out about each other. ‘Even then we will not know everything.’

  She was determined to be certain about this. Certainty was lacking in everything else. But she accepted this; uncertainty, she supposed, was a natural state for any one who thought. But in a human relationship one could find certainty.

  ‘Are we having only potatoes?’ she asked. He was cooking the meals until she had become ‘acclimatised’ (as Hugo put it) to him and his house.