A Season in Purgatory

by Dominick Dunne

  “It depends on the water temperature, of course. It’s all in the breathing. The breathing will change your whole life. After about half an hour a sense of euphoria comes.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What?”

  “The feeling.”

  “Oh, hell, I can’t describe it to you, Constant. You feel like you can walk into heavy traffic and cars won’t hit you. Listen, enough of that, where’s the famous Charlotte? I want to meet her.”

  “Famous Charlotte and I are not speaking.”

  “That’s quite a morsel for an about-to-be gubernatorial candidate.”

  “We’ll work it out. We always do. I wish you could see the way she returned my clothes to me. One hundred and fifty Turnbull and Asser ties just jammed into a grocery bag, like snakes. My suits hung backwards on hangers. Morty Sills suits, can you believe it? Two thousand per. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “You thought she should have packed everything in tissue paper?” asked Harrison.

  “I’m not sure how I should react to what you just said,” said Constant.

  “You left her for another woman. Right?”

  “Only temporarily.”

  “You temporarily left her for another woman. You asked her to return your clothes. Don’t you think she might have a right to be a little angry and shove them in a bag?”

  “Are you so happily married?”

  “No, I’m not. But I went back to get my own clothes.”

  “What’s the new maid’s name, Bridey?” asked Grace.

  “Debbie, madam,” said Bridey.

  “That’s what I thought she said. No, Bridey, I don’t want a maid named Debbie. It just doesn’t sound right to me. Debbie. It’s too, well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not right for a maid’s name. Ask her to change it, will you? Mary’s fine, or Catherine, or Margaret—that sort of name.”

  “I already spoke to her about it. She says she don’t want to change it, madam,” said Bridey.

  “Well, if she ‘don’t’ want to change it, tell her she ‘don’t’ have to work here in my house, thank you very much,” said Grace.

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Didn’t we used to have a Colleen with us? Years ago? Back in Scarborough Hill?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “She couldn’t tell left from right, do you remember? I’d say, ‘Serve from the left, remove from the right,’ over and over and over again, and she never got it straight, do you remember? She said she had to write in the air first in order to tell. I wonder whatever happened to her. Let’s call Debbie Colleen, Bridey. Now, Bridey’s such a nice name. Why aren’t girls called Bridey anymore?”

  “I don’t know, madam.”

  Charlotte arrived. She drove straight to her cottage on the other side of the twelve-car garage without stopping in the main house first to say hello to Grace and Gerald, which was the habit of the house. Everyone stopped talking for a minute when they saw her green Jaguar drive by the windows, much too fast.

  “My children are outside playing on the grounds, Constant,” said Maureen indignantly. “You might try telling your wife there is a speed limit of fifteen miles per hour when driving on the estate.”

  “Oh, shove it, Maureen,” said Constant.

  “Ma, did you hear what he said?” asked Maureen.

  “The children are over by the fountain, Maureen,” said Grace. “I can see them from where I’m sitting. They’re nowhere near the driveway.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing, Ma.” Maureen got up and went to the window and looked out. “Winthrop! Choate! Where’s Nanny? I don’t want you playing in the fountain unless Nanny’s there. How many times do I have to tell you that?” She turned to Freddy Tierney and said, “I’m going to fire that nanny. Right now. Leaving those children alone like that.”

  “She had terrible morning sickness this morning,” explained Freddy after Maureen left the room.

  Kitt said, “Maybe she’ll have triplets this time, and then she’ll have more kids than you and Pa, Ma, and she’ll be champion at last.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Kitt,” said Grace. “I want all this bickering to stop before Father Bill arrives. Let me see your needlepoint, Kitt. Oh, lovely, darling. Lovely colors.”

  “The green’s pretty, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not green. It’s celadon.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to go over to the cottage and see Charlotte, Constant?” asked Gerald.

  “Sure, Pa. I just wanted to show Harrison my polo trophies in the library first.”

  “Now, Constant,” said Gerald.

  “Yes, Pa.”

  “Who’s Father Bill?” Harrison asked Kitt.

  “Ma’s latest favorite priest.”

  “I can’t help but notice that you haven’t been near me for quite some time. Don’t misunderstand me, Constant, I’m not yearning for your touch. But I like to have things laid out on the table. Are you involved with someone else? Or are we entering into a new phase of our marriage?”

  “Oh, come on, Charlotte.”

  “When I say someone else, I mean someone other than the someone elses you see daily—the quickies. Someone on a serious basis is what I’m trying to say,” said Charlotte.

  “No, no, of course not,” said Constant.

  “No, no, of course not,’ ” she repeated, imitating him. “You’d lie when the truth would sound better, Constant. It was just a show, this marriage, wasn’t it? Just one long ten-year show. I had the class, and your father had the brass. I can see just what it’s going to be like, as clear as if I were a psychic. Me in an Adolfo suit, looking lovingly up at you through speech after speech, and only you will know that I won’t be listening to a single word you’re saying.”

  “No, you’re wrong, Charlotte. It wasn’t a show.”

  “A show,” she repeated. “That’s all it ever was.”

  “No. I loved you.”

  “Oh, puhleeze.”

  “Come on, Charlotte,” he said. “Pa’s going to run out of money if you keep leaving me like this. Come on, honey. I find you very attractive when you’re angry. Your cheeks all pink like that. Your pits a little sweaty. A little musky odor coming from you. Oh, my, lookit here. Look what’s almost, but not quite, hard. Look what needs your helping hand.”

  It amazed her that she could be so physically attracted to a person she despised so much both before and after the act of love. No matter how strong was her intention each time to resist him, he had only to unbutton his shirt to reveal his chest, or unzip his fly and place his hand inside, running it along the length of his penis, for her to fall on her knees and beg him to take off everything, everything, quickly, placing her face in his most intimate parts, and beg for him to take her in any way he wanted her, it mattered not how.

  Afterwards, he said to her, “After your bath, come over to the big house. I want you to meet my friend Harrison.”

  “Oh, yes, Harrison. The old family friend. He’s the one who’s going to write the book that you are going to say you wrote, so all the voters in the state will know you’re just a regular guy. That Harrison?”

  “You can be a real bitch, Charlotte.”

  “They don’t call me rich and heartless for nothing, Constant.”

  “I’m Harrison.”

  “Oh, yes, the old school friend,” said Charlotte, when at last she met Harrison standing by the fountain. They looked at each other, each sizing the other up.

  “What happens when you meet up with all those people you write about afterwards?” she asked, not waiting for the usual preliminaries of a new acquaintanceship.

  “They’re usually in prison,” Harrison answered.

  “Mrs. Goesler isn’t. Mrs. Renthal isn’t. The girls they left behind, I mean.”

  “We don’t travel much in the same circles.”

  “No, I suppose not. I felt sorry for Ruby Renthal. Care to walk for a bit?” she asked. “You can’t swim all the time.”

/>   “Sure.”

  “I was prepared to dislike you,” she said.

  “I was prepared to dislike you, too,” Harrison replied.

  She smiled at him.

  “You’ve probably heard terrible things about me, from Kitt and Constant. And Maureen. And that ghastly Jerry. I just hate Jerry, don’t you?”

  Harrison smiled. “He was never my favorite in this family,” he said.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that you’re the only real friend my husband ever had?” asked Charlotte. “He talks about you all the time. When he heard you were coming this weekend, he was beside himself.”

  “That was years ago,” said Harrison.

  “That’s the story of his life. He’s rich, beautiful, dazzling, witty, charming. People line up to look at him. They want to be close to him. He’s wonderful on the campaign trail. New people in a new town every day. That’s when he’s at his best. He says exactly the right thing to each one. Perfect, personal, charm personified. But what I’ve found over the years is that no one stays around long. Even you. Eventually they begin to discover that the very qualities to which they were first attracted only mask his inadequacies. Everyone knows it except his father.”

  It was not a conversation that Harrison wished to pursue. He shifted the subject. “What’s it like being in the family?”

  “Strange. Difficult. I was an only child. I’m from one of those old Baltimore families that had run out of steam, not to mention money. I never knew from one year to the next if Daddy was going to be able to scrape up the money to send me back to Foxcroft. The year I came out, there was no money for a dance, so I came out at a tea. If I hadn’t been pretty and popular, it would have been a joke. Then I met Constant. I had a Catholic grandmother, so I qualified. He was the best-looking thing I ever saw, and so rich. Daddy was ecstatic, of course, even though he couldn’t stand Gerald. Micks. He called them all micks. I said, ‘If you know what’s good for you, Daddy, you’ll lose that word from your vocabulary forever.’

  “But with the Bradleys, you marry into the whole family, this big vast army of people, with no privacy. Every weekend together. Twenty or more people sitting down to every meal. Those spoiled brats of Maureen’s, screaming all through dinner. And now with Grace getting so social, she has the worst kind of hangers-on coming to lunch every day. Of course, I never thought Grace was as blind to what goes on in this family as everyone thinks. I actually kind of like old Gerald, in his rough-and-tough way, but every time he snaps his fingers, all his children jump, and they’re now all in their thirties and forties. I see you’re maintaining a diplomatic silence.”

  “I hadn’t seen any of them for years until yesterday,” said Harrison.

  “I’ve never really been a member of the family. I was married to Constant for two years before I even heard there was a sister called Agnes in a madhouse somewhere, or that Des was once married to a maid.”

  “They tend to hush up those things.”

  “What is there about you, Harrison? I feel like I’ve been to confession.”

  Harrison laughed.

  “Actually, I quite like being a Catholic. I adore confession. Oh, wait until you see us go to Mass on Sunday. They line up to look at us. I like that, too. And I can do a better job than Nancy Reagan of looking up at Constant whenever he makes a speech, no matter how many times I’ve heard it before. Of course, I’m not listening, but no one knows that. I bet she wasn’t, either.”

  Harrison laughed. “I don’t think you’re as bad as you make yourself out to be.”

  “You’re not really going to write this asinine book for Constant, are you?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “We’ve got things to talk about, Harrison,” said Constant. “Mass is at eight-thirty and ten in the village. Bridey and the maids go to the eight-thirty usually, and we all go to the ten. Then the family breakfast. After that we can spend the day together. Walk on the beach, talk, figure it out about the book. It would be great working together.”

  “You go. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “No church?”

  “No church,” replied Harrison. “I have ceased to be a practicing Catholic.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I could no longer receive Communion.”

  “Why can’t you receive Communion?”

  “Because I witnessed a murder and did nothing about it. It’s not the sort of thing you can tell in confession and expect to get absolution from the priest. Apparently you don’t have the same qualms,” said Harrison.

  “Jesuschrist, Harrison.” Constant looked toward the closed door, as if Harrison had uttered words of unspeakable vulgarity in front of his mother. Any reference to that long-ago night in Scarborough Hill was brushed aside as if it had not been heard. It was a thing never discussed. “My father felt—” Constant stopped before he completed his sentence, and turned away.

  “Oh, of course. I understand. Your father felt it wouldn’t look right for a son in politics not to attend Mass and receive Communion. Did your Cardinal Sullivan give you some special dispensation, or do you just confess the fuck and booze sins and overlook the murder sin?”

  “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden, Harrison?”

  “It’s not all of a sudden.”

  “I’ve had enough of this. I have no memory of what you are talking about.”

  “Yes, you do, Constant. It’s like a big black cloud hovering over the two of us. The unmentioned subject. The thing we pretend never happened. The thing we blocked from our minds that we carry with us year after year. Dare I even say the words? Winifred Utley.”

  Constant, breathing heavily, stared at Harrison and shook his head and waved his hands in front of him, as if he were warding off a curse.

  “I should never have come here,” said Harrison. “My life was going along fine, in its own sick, neurotic way which I have grown to find normal. I had put all this in the back of my brain somewhere. Then your big-deal father began to interfere. ‘Write a book for my son. It’ll be good for him.’ Puffing away on his big fucking cigar. I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to spend the weekend here. But as always, with you people, I revert back to the awestruck scholarship boy and end up doing what you want to do, not what I want to do. You and I should never see each other again, Constant. Never.”

  “You are becoming hysterical,” said Constant.

  “Yes, I am, aren’t I? And I am not ashamed of my hysteria. I don’t seem to possess your composure. Where does this reserve of yours come from? I am eaten inside by what I know, and I am not responsible, while you, who are responsible, act as if what happened is some inconvenience in your life, like being kicked out of school for reading a dirty magazine. Ever since I saw you again, that night is all I can think of.”

  “After all, it wasn’t deliberate,” said Constant.

  “Oh? What was it then?”

  “You are tiresome, Harry. It’s over, forgotten. Why do you linger with it?”

  Constant rose and walked slowly toward Harrison. He reached out to him and pulled him to his feet and shook him, all the time breathing heavily and staring into his eyes. Then he kissed Harrison fully on the lips and put his arms around him, enveloping him into his own body.

  Harrison, impassive, neither resisted nor acquiesced. “No, Constant, that’s not going to do it,” he said.

  “I’ve got a hard-on,” said Constant.

  “I don’t,” said Harrison.

  “Do you want to see it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There was a time.”

  “Yeah, there was a time, but that was long ago, and we were very young.”

  “I remember when we used to jerk off at school looking at Playboy, you always used to look at me, not the beaver shots,” said Constant.

  Harrison remained impassive. “Over. Out,” he said, pulling back from Constant. “You’ve always talked a great deal about erections. Have you noticed
that about yourself? I wonder if, perhaps, you have trouble getting one, or maintaining one. I wonder if that is not the cause of the rage that made you do what you did. What did you do that night? Stand there in the path and wait for her to go from the Wadsworth house to the Utley house?”

  Constant, enraged, roughly pushed Harrison away from him. “We’ve done a lot for you in this family,” he said. The tone of his voice was unpleasant.

  “Listen, you son of a bitch, you haven’t done as much for me as I’ve done for you,” said Harrison, matching Constant’s tone. “You killed a woman, and I kept my mouth shut for you. I hate you for having involved me in that terrible act. What the hell more do you want out of me?”

  Constant, momentarily frightened, looked at him. “You could have said no that night, you know,” he said. “I didn’t force you to lift her up. You came along willingly enough.”

  “Next thing you’ll have it worked out that it was I who raised the baseball bat and crushed in her head. Get real, Constant. The schoolboy crush is over. I know who you are. I know all about you. No more games between us. Tell me about Maud somebody or other.”

  “Maud?”

  “Yes, Maud. The one in the hotel room in Chicago, who cracked her head on a bedside table, who had seventeen stitches. Surely, you must remember Maud.”

  “Maud Firth, you mean.”

  “Yes, Maud Firth.”

  He dismissed Maud with a gesture. “She was drunk. She fell. That was all. However did you hear about Maud Firth?”

  “She was a cousin, or some relation, of Fruity Suarez. Fruity told me.”

  “Who’s Fruity Suarez?”

  “The one you pissed on at Milford.”

  “Oh, her. Fruity. Didn’t she get kicked out for kissing somebody’s dick? Or trying to? How is old Fruity? Still pursuing bachelors, I assume. Is this who we’re listening to these days? Is this our source of information? Fruity-fucking-Suarez?”

  “That’s nice talk. She. Her. That’ll go over big with the gay vote when you run for governor,” said Harrison.

  “How is Fruity involved?”

  “He called me out of the blue at two in the morning a few years ago. Woke up my wife. Maud went to him after you left her there in the hotel room. She was afraid to go to her parents. Your version of the events of that night differs somewhat from Fruity’s.”