by Avery Corman
“Hi!” Ted called out, and the child raced up and hugged him as if he had not seen him in weeks, amazed at the miracle that his own daddy had actually materialized out of the confusion.
TED HAD ALWAYS CONSIDERED Ocean Beach on Fire Island to be overpopulated and tacky. Suddenly, seen through Billy’s eyes, with ice-cream cones for sale, a drugstore with toys, and a pizza stand—“You didn’t say they had pizza!”—Ocean Beach was Cannes.
He located the house, one of many similar bungalows with screened-in porches, this with a pink sign above the door that said CHEZ GLORIA. Gloria herself came to the door, a buxom woman in her late thirties, wearing cut-off dungarees. In the vogue of T-shirts printed with clever sayings, her T-shirt proclaimed across her breasts, “Big Tits.” “You must be Ted,” she boomed in a loud voice, and Billy tried to hide in the tunnel between Ted’s legs. She introduced him to the “housemates,” who were Ellen, a free-lance editor with her eleven-year-old daughter, a psychiatrist, Bob, with his sixteen-year-old son who was with him for the summer, and a forty-six-year-old health food store owner, Martha, with her nineteen-year-old daughter. The house had a common dining room/living room and five bedrooms. The billeting provided for each parent without partner to sleep in the same room with his or her offspring.
Under the house rules, which were posted above the sink, each parent had full responsibility for his or her own child at the dinner table. Housemates took turns preparing the meals, but no one except the responsible parent was to see to a child’s fussy eating or dinnertime sulking. Parents were going back and forth running hot corns under cold water or warming up cold corns. Ellen, the editor, a six-foot-tall woman in her late thirties, watched the others to see how well her chicken was going over. The psychiatrist, a stoop-shouldered, austere man in his late forties, had little to say to the others. His son, a stoop-shouldered austere child, also in his late forties it appeared, also had little to say. The health food store lady had apparently discovered the nutritional qualities of her own wares—she was, at five-foot-one, about 190 pounds, and her blond daughter was a few inches taller and a few pounds heavier. For dessert, they ate an entire chocolate swirl cake.
After dinner, Larry came by. The two friends had not seen much of each other in recent years, and looking at Larry again in the context of Fire Island, where they had once been running mates, noticing his friend’s full head of curly hair beginning to recede and his middle beginning to bulge, Ted saw in Larry his own passage of time.
“Great party tonight. Great chicks.” That was unchanged.
“I’ve got to stay with Billy.”
“Bring Billy. We’ll get him laid.”
“Terrific, Larry.”
“Sure. This is Fire Island, old buddy.” And he left with Gloria, who had changed her “Big Tits” T-shirt, which became soiled at dinner, to a cleaner “Big Tits” T-shirt.
Ted and Billy spent enjoyable days at the beach, Ted even managed a few volleyball games while Billy built sandcastles nearby. Larry phoned from Ocean Bay Park on Sunday afternoon. He would meet Ted at six on the mainland and give him a lift home, reliable Larry.
“One little item. Don’t say anything about me to Gloria. We broke up.”
“Larry, how could you break up? You weren’t even going together.”
“We did for a week. But where are you at, buddy? Did you meet?”
“I didn’t look.”
“So do it! Go out there and touch a lady.”
Four months had passed since Joanna had left. He had not touched a lady. He had not touched another woman in the six years he had known Joanna.
“It’s been a long time,” Ted said. “I don’t even know what grips they’re using these days.”
Gloria rang a bell to assemble all units. She apologized to Ted for the military aspect of it, but she rang a bell anyway. “It helps keep the house together,” she said. So they gathered for the Sunday evening ringing of the bell, assembling of all units and the reading of the tally—total house expenditures, divided by units, less any unit disbursements. This was a part of group house living he had forgotten about—divvying up the money. The question now was, Did Ted want to sign on? His share would be $200, which Larry had told him was well under the market.
“I’m not sure,” he said, and the others stared at him, as though he might be personally rejecting them. “I’d like to talk to the rest of my unit.”
Billy was outside playing hide-and-seek with a friend he had made from the next house. Ted told him they had to go home and he was about to add that they had to decide whether they wanted to spend any more time there, when Billy burst into tears. He did not want to leave his friend, his house, his island. Ted paid the $200. He was an official housemate, unit and parent without partner in Chez Gloria.
Ocean Beach was pulsing on weekends with people cruising the bars and the house parties. The people in Ted’s house tended to stay home. This made it comfortable for him. He could sit in the living room with the others and talk or read, under no pressure to confront the singles’ scene out there.
“I’m so tense during the week,” Martha said, “I look forward to just relaxing.”
But Ted felt a tension in the house, which had been growing since the first weekend he had spent there, as Martha, Ellen and Gloria would make tentative forays into the night and come back early without having met anyone. George, the psychiatrist, rarely left his chair. Billy had made the best social adjustment in the house. He had a five-year-old friend named Joey next door, and they would play on each other’s decks or ride little red motorcycles in a gang with other children up and down the walks.
Saturday night of his third weekend there, Ted was alone in the living room with George. Both had books. He felt obliged to say something to George. They seldom spoke.
“Interesting?” Ted asked, an uninteresting opening.
“Yes.”
George continued to read.
“What is it about?” Am I really asking this? He wanted to take it all back.
“Senility,” George answered, and that concluded the conversation.
A half-hour later, Ted closed a book he was reading on oceanography and said good night.
“Your wife left you?” George said suddenly, surprising him.
“Yes. A few months ago.”
“I see.”
George seemed to be considering this. Ted waited. The man was a psychiatrist!
“I think”—George spoke slowly, he chose his words carefully—“you should go out more.”
“I should go out more? George, I could have gotten that from my mother.”
HE COULD NOT PUT it off any longer. It was already the second week in August. Billy was playing at his friend’s house and had been invited for dinner. Ted had at least two hours to himself, and there was an open-house cocktail party on the next block. He poured a drink and headed for the party with his glass in his hand. As he made his way along the walk to the party, the ice tinkling in the glass, and others were walking ahead of him and behind him with their drinks in their hands, it all came rushing back at him. He would spot her across the deck, the prettiest girl at the party, and he would maneuver for position and get her name and her number, and they would see each other in the city, and they would go together, and they would be married, and … Joanna, Joanna, where are you? His eyes started to water, but he fought it off. He would not give her that.
Larry was there, his arm around another of his buxom discoveries. He waved Ted over to him, and Ted filtered his way through the crowd, checking the personnel on all sides as he went, an old reflex action.
“There you are, buddy. Ted, this is Barbara. And her friends, Rhoda and Cynthia.”
Larry’s girl was pretty, heavily made-up, on the hard side. They were all in their early thirties. Rhoda was short, pudgy and had a bad complexion. Once, Ted would have merely dismissed her, because of her looks. Now he felt compassionate, because of her looks. She was on the meat rack here, as he was. Cynthia
was a trace less plain, a frail-looking, light brunette with a slender figure.
“Ted is on the comeback trail.”
“Sort of.”
“I’ll tell you something, girls, but don’t let it get around. He was one of the best stick men in the business.”
They laughed, high-strung laughter. When Ted did not laugh, Cynthia stopped quickly.
“What do you do, Ted?” Cynthia asked.
“I sell advertising space.”
He could tell the non-recognition.
“When you see ads in a magazine, somebody sells the space for those ads to advertisers. I represent the magazines, and I call on advertising agencies and try to get them to buy space for their clients.”
“It sounds fascinating.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a legal secretary.”
“That’s nice.”
Barbara had invited Larry back for dinner, and now Cynthia extended a dinner invitation to Ted. He went back to the house and asked Martha if she would mind putting Billy to bed. It was fine with Martha, he checked it out with Billy, and Ted went on to the dinner party. The women had another housemate, who had invited a man in his thirties to also join them for dinner. Barbara’s mother was out for the weekend and was trying to be younger than her daughter. She had invited two hulking men in tank-top shirts whom she had picked up at the dock, where they had a powerboat. The boatsmen brought their own beer in a Styrofoam case.
“I don’t think this party is going to make the women’s page of the Times,” Ted whispered to Larry.
“Wait until you see what we’re eating. Charcoal-broiled eggs.”
Barbara appeared, surprisingly, with steaks for everyone, to loud cheering. The boatsmen took over the cooking. Ted and Larry made a salad. Beer and liquor flowed. One of the boatsmen turned out to be a football fan, and there was sports talk over dinner. Barbara’s mother had made a pecan pie, which brought another cheer from the crowd. They all talked about food and about how wonderful they all were, and how they should all get one big house together. Cynthia was the quietest one there, as though in fear that if she said too much, she would offend the person she was with and he would disappear. She asked Ted more about his job, he asked about hers. Someone put the phonograph on with the volume up and Ted was at the kind of noisy party he had been hearing from his room when he was trying to fall asleep. He danced with Cynthia and she pressed her thinness against him, creating his first naturally inspired erection in months.
As the party became noisier, he took Cynthia by the hand and they strolled down the walk to the ocean. They stood there for a while and then he kissed her. She opened her mouth and they leaned against each other and he had his tongue in her mouth, and then he started running his hands all over her, inside her clothing, inside her. He led her off the walk and pulled her down on the dunes, out of view, kissing and fondling, as she said, “Oh, Ted,” and for an instant he could not respond, since he did not know what the hell her name was, and he went down on her in the dunes, thinking you could get arrested for anything else, and while he was there, he remembered it was Cynthia, and managed an “Oh, Cynthia.” A police car patrolling the beach lit the area with its headlights, and in the darkness it was as if floodlights had been turned on them, and they scrambled to their feet, making clothing adjustments. They went back along the dark walk, stopping every few yards to kiss. The party at her house was in full blast, the lights were still on in his house, and not knowing where to go or what else to do, they continued along the walk kissing, Ted feeling sad for her, how desperate she was to be loved a little bit, to be taken away from the deck, away from the party, even by someone who could not hold on to her name. They leaned against a fence in the dark, and he put his fingers in her again—tacky Ocean Beach—he felt as tacky as the town.
The lights had gone out in his house, and he took her by the arm.
“I’ve got a room.”
“What about your little boy?”
“He won’t wake up.”
He sneaked her into the house, into his room, into the bed next to Billy, with the child snoring away, and trying to keep the sheet over them, so if Billy would wake up he would see a sheet and not a person—hopefully he would not think it was a ghost—and moving gingerly so the squeaking bed would not squeak too loudly, he kissed her a few times more, for show, and then entered her. He came in a rush, almost as soon as he was in her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been a long time for me.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
And there they were, pushed together in a narrow bed, hiding under a sheet next to a snoring child. Ted waited and then started to try again, the bed squeaked, Billy was moving in his sleep, and she had had enough of island romance for one night. “You stay,” she said and straightened her clothes, which were never fully off. He pulled on his clothes, which were never fully off either, and because You Take A Lady Home, he walked her back in silence. The party at her house was still going on. He kissed her. She kissed him back perfunctorily and went inside. Within five minutes he was back in bed next to Billy.
They passed on the walk the next day, said hello and lowered their eyes, not a meaningful relationship there, scarcely a one-night stand. Cynthia, whose name he was forgetting even when he was with her, represented more than he wished for, however. He had been with his first woman since Joanna. He could accomplish this with more grace next time, more affection, do it better—but it would be with someone else, not with Joanna, never again with Joanna. He had been holding himself off from accepting this, and now he had crossed over. His wife had left him, and if your wife leaves you, somewhere along the line you have to begin to deal with other women. He was right back in the singles’ scene.
If he had been seduced into believing that all he had to do was show up at a party and end up in bed with someone, he would learn otherwise at the next weekend’s cocktail party where no one was enthralled with him, and the weekend after that, and the Labor Day weekend when everybody scrambled around to make connections, and he stood out in the walk at twilight with a drink in his hand watching people on their way to house parties, stopping the most elegant-looking person he had seen in weeks, a pretty girl in a white dress. He complimented her on how pretty she was and she smiled and did not seem at all uninterested, but she was on her way to this party and he could not go. He watched her leave, not to meet up with her again because he had a four-year-old boy in the house who had just thrown up on the living room floor and was resting in his room, and his daddy could not leave him to chase phantom ladies in white. Watching people on their way to the summer’s last parties, he envied them for how simple it was to be on their own, with only themselves to worry about, while he could not even stroll down the walk.
“How are you doing, pussycat?”
“I’m sick, Daddy.”
“I know. I think you ate too much popcorn at Joey’s house.”
“I ate too much popcorn at Joey’s house.”
“Try to sleep now, honey. Tomorrow is our last day here. We’ll have a good time. We’ll build the biggest sand-castle of the summer.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“Well, it’s going to be the fall. The fall is terrific in New York. So go to sleep now.”
“Sit here, Daddy, until I fall asleep.”
“Okay, pussycat.”
“I ate too much popcorn at Joey’s house.”
ON THE LAST DAY at Chez Gloria, Ellen, the editor, who had not really met one person all summer, could not get out of her chair. George, the psychiatrist, Johnny-on-the-spot with his analysis, said Ellen was a highly suggestible person and was negatively influenced by the event of the July Fourth weekend when her former housemate also could not get out of her chair. It became part of the Fire Island folklore, going into the aural history of the island, a record, like most doubles by a shortstop in a single season—most nervous breakdowns in a group house in a single season.
It was
a grubby game Ted was going to be making his comeback in, and it may have been over in Fire Island, but he knew by now that it was going to be a very long season.
NINE
THE DIVORCE TOOK SEVEN minutes. The judge held the hearing in his chambers. John Shaunessy, the lawyer and football buff, sent his team up the middle, a few affidavits, the wife was not contesting, a doctor’s letter saying the husband had been tense, Ted answered a printed series of questions, he said the experience had been upsetting, and the judge did not appear to be involved. They rolled over the opposition, who did not put a team on the field. Judgment granted on the divorce and custody on the grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment rendering cohabitation unsafe or improper.” Ten days later the actual papers signed by the judge came by mail, and Ted Kramer and Joanna Kramer were legally divorced.
Ted felt a gesture was in order. He took Billy out to Burger King. The celebration was restrained, since all Billy was celebrating was a large order for French fries. The boy had a fragile enough hold on what marriage was and where babies came from, so Ted had elected not to complicate his life by discussing pending judicial proceedings. Now he wanted him to know.
“Billy, there’s something called divorce. It’s when two people who were married get un-married.”
“I know. Seth got divorced.”
“Seth’s parents got divorced. Like your mommy and daddy. Your mommy and daddy are divorced now, Billy.”
“Didn’t Mommy say she’d send me presents?”
I don’t speak for the lady, Billy.
“Maybe she will.”
“Can I have some more French fries?”
“No, wise guy, you had enough.”
Ted looked at him as if he were admiring a painting, Billy in his Burger King crown.
This was pleasant enough, but eating junk food with his son did not seem appropriate to the event, which had a $2000 price tag on it. He thought he owed himself more. At the restaurant he called a teenager in his building who had offered her baby-sitting services and he arranged for her to sit that evening. There was not a woman in his life to celebrate this with him. In the two months since Fire Island he had let his social life, if it could have been called that, go untended. Larry would have been too manic. He did not want to go by himself to a bar and tell a stranger his life’s story. He called dentist Charlie.
