Accept that something has happened, and do not try to find out what it is. Stop being so bloody sober about yourself. Maybe if you stop thinking, it might be possible to become a woman. Something which feels rather than thinks. Something to be joyfully bedded in spring grass, eyes tight against the bright hot sun, rejoicing in the strength and sureness of him who takes you thus.
Something cool and hard had been ripped out of her, leaving a feeling of softness and vulnerability. So leave it at that. She walked more quickly down the slope, her heels hitting hard so that she felt a jounce of breast and buttock.
There would be little harm in trying to accept it on the unthinking basis that the woman in the field had accepted it. To let it be something that happens. Too many years of trying to intellectualize pleasure. So that it was a coin-glint, frozen in ice, unattainable.
There could be another way. To imagine greenness, and the movement of grasses, and bright, hot sun and broad, brown back. To think of green things growing. Perhaps, after fourteen years, it would not work. After cheating both of them for so long, it might well be too late. But it was nice to think that perhaps it had all been inadequate merely because she had been too tense with the desire to make it adequate, too intellectually objective, standing apart from it and watching herself rather than merely … being.
As simple, maybe, as that long-ago time of the riding lessons when she could do nothing right. That little man with the leathery face bellowing at her. Elbows in! Watch your hands! No, don’t saw on the reins! Now your feet are wrong! Around and around, knowing she would never, never get it right, hating the great meaty horse and the stink of the place and the violent little man. And deciding one day that it would be the last time, that she would not be bullied into coming again, and thus ceasing to care what the little man yelled. And, on that very day, suddenly getting the posture and rhythm of it right, very suddenly, knowing what she should do, feeling control and mastery of the horse, flushing with pride and excitement as the little man stood grinning, turning slowly so that he faced her as she made the circuit, yelling, “Now, girl. Now that’s it, girl. Now you look like something, girl.”
Could the answer be that simple? Could it be that I have bitched everything up by assigning too much significance to it, by dwelling too long on the dark patterns of Freud, by acquiring little emotional knots and twitches and uncertainties?
Maybe I have learned too many wrong things. Maybe it is just something that is physical and a function and you start from there and try to do it physically well, and accept it as a thing that you do with your body when you are a woman.
She reached the curve in the paved road and from there and for the rest of the way down the slope she could see her house.
She swung along, her stride long, the cuffs of the slacks whipping her ankles. She decided that she would take a hot bath and then dress in something frothy and silly.
And she realized that for the first time in a long, long time there was within her a quickening sense of anticipation, a feeling of being quite alive. And she resisted the habitual desire for self-analysis, the need of poking and prodding at herself to determine the cause of well-being.
This time she would accept it without question.
And she was humming softly as she went into the house, letting the screen door hiss and close softly behind her.
Chapter Six
Brock, reading in his room, had heard the sound of the jeep when Clyde Schermer picked Ellen up. After the jeep noise had faded down the hill, he found that he was reading whole paragraphs without getting any meaning from the words. It was a science-fiction novel by Simak, a writer who was usually able to capture and hold his full attention. Ever since disaster, he had found more pleasure in science fiction than in any other sort of reading. He guessed that it was because it went so far afield that there was little in it to trigger unwanted memories. There were no beer joints on the outlying planets. No deans and no small apartments.
He stubbed out his cigarette in the bedside ashtray, slapped the book shut, and laid it aside. Afternoon sun made a pattern on the throw rug near his bed. Ellen had said at lunch that she was going to the club and play tennis. He thought how it would be there, on the sleek asphalt courts. And he wondered what shape his racket was in. He got slowly off the bed and went to the closet and brought it out. He unclamped the brace and took off the plastic cover and tested the gut against the heel of his hand. It was taut, and the pong sound was satisfying. He cut the air with it a few times, forehand and backhand. If he went over to the club, maybe somebody would have some smart crack. Word would have gotten around. Brock was tossed out. Some kind of a jam. But he felt restless. He wanted to use his muscles. The room was fine, but you could stay in it only so long. He changed to tennis shoes and went out into the hallway and stood there for a few moments, then shrugged and went downstairs.
His mother was in the study working on the books of one of the organizations she belonged to. He leaned against the doorframe, bouncing the racket against his bent knee. She looked up at him, half-frowning, and then smiled. “Going to the club, dear? I’ve been worried about you not getting enough exercise.”
“Thought I’d go over there if there’s any way of getting there.”
“I think Bess is home, dear. Why don’t you ask if you can use her car?”
“I should have gone with Ellen. I didn’t think quick enough.”
“She should have asked you.”
“Maybe she got tired of asking. Okay, I’ll ask Aunt Bess. See you later, girl.”
“Have fun, dear,” his mother said absently, turning back to the club books.
As he approached Quinn and Bess’s house he heard the busy humming of a sewing machine. He went to the kitchen window and called, “Yo, Aunt Bess!”
“Brock? Come on in. I’m in here.”
She was at the sewing machine, working on some yellow material, wearing the glasses that always looked incongruous on her, somehow. Brock had always liked her, had always gotten on well with her. He liked the way she looked. So big and alive.
“What do you think of this color, Brock?”
“Nice color. What’s it going to be?”
“New curtains for David’s studio. Sort of cheerful, huh?”
“Nice.”
“He’s very aware of colors, you know.”
Brock felt uncomfortable, the way he always did when the conversation was about David. It wasn’t as though David was any sort of actual blood relation. But he was in the family. And he certainly was an awful creep. A real weird item. It was tough on Bess and Quinn, the trouble they’d had with him. It made him feel guilty about how little he’d done lately.
“I’ve … I’ve been meaning to stop over and see him.”
Bess nodded. “I wish you would. He likes you, Brock. He could show you the model of the Roman galley he’s been working on. It’s really quite nice. Mr. Shelter has been working with him on history, you know. I’m sure David would like to show you.”
“I guess I’ll go take a look, then. Or is it nap time?”
“No, he sleeps right after lunch. I can go out with you.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just take a look in. Say, you using your car today? Any chance of borrowing it?”
“I won’t need it at all today, Brock. You can have it this afternoon and this evening too, if you’d like.”
“Just this afternoon will be fine. Thanks, Aunt Bess.”
“The keys are in it, dear.”
The sewing machine started again as he went out the back door. He put the racket in the car and then went over to the studio. The door was open. He looked through the screen and saw David sitting at a long table, working at something.
“Hey, Dave!”
The boy started violently and scrambled up out of the chair and peered toward the door. “Easy, guy,” Brock said with that forced joviality he used when he was around David. “It’s me. Brock. Can I see the ship? Your mother told me about it.”
“Sure. You can see it,” David said in his blurred, stumbling voice. Brock went in, smiling broadly. God, the kid was a creep. A huge guy, but frail-looking. Skin like paste and all those pimples, and the eyes all swimmy-looking behind those thick lenses. The room held the banana-oil stink of airplane cement. Brock had heard his mother and father talking about it many times. They thought David was the way he was because of what happened to his father when Bess was pregnant, getting killed that way with a knife. Apparently that Carney had been quite a guy. Funny that a strong woman like Bess and a rough guy like Carney must have been should have had David. But he was a Delevan now because Quinn had adopted him legally.
Even as a little kid, David had been odd, but it had seemed to get worse as he got older. It wasn’t that he was stupid. Mr. Shelter said that David was bright. But you would certainly never know it. Not the way he acted. Everything scared him. Nothing about him was completely right. He’d spent half his life in bed with serious illnesses, one after the other. The few times they’d tried to send him to school, the other kids had made his life a hell on earth. He quivered and shook when you tried to talk to him. God knew what would become of him. The “studio” had been built for him on the advice of the psychiatrist. Something, Brock remembered, to do with security—the emotional security of having a place of his own where he could lock the door. At times he had fainted dead away when introduced to a stranger.
“This it?” Brock asked too loudly. “Say, this is real good, Dave. This is a good job.”
“It’s a Roman galley,” David said.
“There’s a lot of work there. I guess I wouldn’t have the patience to do all that work.”
“They rowed it with oars. There were a lot of them and they were chained to the benches and they rowed it.”
It was one of the longest sentences Brock had ever heard him say. He looked at David. The hair grew low on his forehead and was combed straight back. The glasses frames were mended with tape. Bess said that David carried on long conversations with Mr. Shelter.
Brock knew of the years of Mr. Shelter’s teaching, of his efforts to gain David’s confidence, but even so, it was hard to conceive of David carrying on any long conversation. The boy seemed eternally trapped in some rigid, frozen world of his own, tense and speechless and frightened, denying communication with those around him, imbedded in inexplicable fears, like a housefly under an upturned glass. With uncoordinated body, blurred speech, faulty vision, David was, Brock thought, like one of those aliens in the science-fiction stories, a visitor from a far galaxy who would never comprehend the works of man.
“Well, I just thought I’d stop by and say hello,” Brock said, backing gratefully toward the door. “Sure is a nice ship model.”
David swallowed audibly and moistened his lips. His face had a sudden twisted look, eerie and unpleasant. “Cuh … cuh …” he said, his mouth working oddly.
“What?” Brock asked, his hand on the screen door latch.
“Come again!” David blurted, his face turning crimson. Then he turned away from Brock so that he faced the wall.
“I’ll do that, Dave,” Brock said, and fled. He had sensed the agony behind David’s invitation. It was something Mr. Shelter had doubtless been drilling into him. A courteous invitation. One of those little phrases you say so easily. Come again. Come back and see me. And almost utterly impossible to David. Because somehow it was allied so closely with the social block.
They had looked for brain damage and found none. It was, they said, some genetic imbalance at the time of conception.
When Brock got back to the car, Bess was standing beside it. “Was he glad to see you?” she asked anxiously.
“You know, he asked me to come again.”
Her face lighted up. “He did! Oh Brock, how wonderful! You will, won’t you? He does like you.”
“I’ll try to see more of him, Aunt Bess. I … I haven’t wanted to see much of anybody lately.”
She touched his arm. “I know. Don’t let ’em get you down, Brock.”
“I’ll try not to, Aunt Bess.”
She looked up at him with a crooked grin. “You’re getting too damn big to go around calling me Aunt Bess, boy. It makes me feel ancient. How about just plain Bess from now on.”
“Bess.”
“That sounds better.”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Thanks for visiting David.”
“And thanks for the car … Bess.”
They grinned at each other in quick understanding. He got in and backed out of the drive. Her car was a small business coupé, a tan Plymouth which had been purchased used. He tested brakes and acceleration on the way down the hill into Clayton.
The Oak Dell Country Club was on the old Stockton road, six miles from Clayton. It was on a knoll, a long, characterless, red brick building which had been made attractive by the ivy, by careful plantings and landscaping. Beyond it were the tailored fairways of the eighteen-hole golf course. Down the slope to the left were the tennis courts and the big swimming pool, with a separate bathhouse and locker rooms.
Before the depression of the thirties, Oak Dell had been very exclusive and very expensive, with membership limited to one hundred men. But the dues had dropped substantially and there had been a great campaign for new members, a great many new members, just in order to keep the club from going under.
Some of those whose wealth had not been too sharply diminished by the depression started a new club, far off on a back road in the hills, but they retained their Oak Dell membership because it was a good place for kids, and the golf course was the best in the area. The food at the club was inexpensive, rather tasteless, but very abundant. The chef, a club fixture, simplified his duties by depending too much on steam tables.
In the late ’thirties, with the idea of providing additional revenue, five guest cottages had been erected off to the right of the club beyond the caddy house, so close to the fairway of the first hole that heavy wire mesh was needed to protect those vulnerable windows from the effects of a screaming slice. The guest cottages had proven popular with those members whose houses were so small as to make house guests more of an irritation than a pleasure, and who did not wish to put them up at a hotel in the city. “We’ll put you up at the club.” It had a nice sound, and the guest cottages were pleasant, though rather meagerly furnished and equipped. That did not matter, as the people in the cottages could eat all their meals except breakfast at the club, and walk down the road a quarter of a mile for a bean-wagon breakfast if they so desired.
When Brock turned in between the squat brick pillars of the entrance, he looked first at the big parking lot and saw about thirty cars parked there on this Thursday afternoon. He knew that most of those would be the cars of golfers and thus both pool and courts might be fairly empty. This pleased him. He parked and walked around the clubhouse and down the slope toward the tennis courts. There were four asphalt courts, looking blue against the surrounding grass, freshly and crisply lined. Two of the courts were in use, two games of singles, and one figure sat on the grass watching the action on the near court.
He walked down the slope with an exaggerated nonchalance, feeling conspicuous. It seemed these days that he had to imitate the person he used to be, and that he had forgotten exactly how to do it. He saw that Clyde Schermer was playing Ellen on the near court. Bob Rawls was on the next court over, playing against a girl Brock did not know. And the girl sitting on the grass watching was, of course, Norma Franchard. For the past six years, starting right after the last year of junior high, whenever you saw Bob, you looked around for Norma and there she was. Now they were both in Cornell, both in the first year, the same class as Clyde Schermer.
Ellen, gathering herself to serve, turned and waved her racket at Brock, smiling as though she were glad to see him. Norma, hugging bare knees, turned and grinned up at him. “The little lost one! My favorite hermit. Why haven’t you been up and about, Brockie?”
She was a small,
dark girl with black, shining eyes, and she had a deep tan for so early in the summer. Brock eased himself down onto the grass beside her. “I’ve been studying up on women, kid.”
“For them or against them?”
“The jury is still out.”
Clyde finished a sweaty point, gathered up the balls, and wound up for his big serve. “Set point, darn it,” Ellen called. She braced herself. The big serve hit hard and fair and she couldn’t get her racket in front of it. It hit her knee and went almost straight up into the air. She rubbed her knee and glared at Clyde. “That does it, oaf.”
“You’re the one told me not to play pat ball with you,” he said, grinning.
They came over and sprawled on the grass, breathing hard. Ellen lay spread-eagled, her eyes closed against the sky glare. Clyde braced himself on one heavy elbow, close to her, looking across her at Brock. “Where you been hiding, boy?”
Brock wondered how much Ellen had told him. Or if she had told him anything. Ellen had always been vibrantly loyal. “Resting up, I guess. Reading and so on.”
“Reading,” Clyde said. He made a sound of disgust. “I’ve cracked enough books this year to last me forever.”
“They make you muscle boys read down there in Ithaca?” Brock asked.
“Short words,” Clyde said. He picked up a handful of the thick grass and sprinkled it on Ellen’s bare midriff.
“Cut it out,” she said, and brushed it off, not opening her eyes. He sprinkled more on. Ellen opened one ominous eye, then brought her leg up fast, stamped a tennis shoe against Clyde’s thick shoulder and shoved hard, rolling him back and away from her. She sighed and closed her eyes again. Brock, looking at her, thought how nicely and sweetly she was built, those tenderly rounded brown legs, the young breasts snug in the halter. When he looked at her and thought of her as a woman, it made him feel strange. He didn’t want anyone looking at her like that. Clyde or anyone. It was a funny queasy feeling to think of Clyde looking at her and wanting her. To stop thinking about them that way, he turned and watched Bob Rawls playing the strange girl.
Contrary Pleasure Page 12
