“Really, Em! After all this hard work! Oh, well, if you’re going to do a job, you might as well do a good one. Mess me up good, darling…”
SECTION 2
In the established cycle of measured time, January came to February, February came to March, and Mr. and Mrs. Avery Lawes came to Corinth. For the purpose of presenting the new wife, there was a party in the brick house on High Street to which people came who moved in the level of society that included the Laweses, which was top level and did not include Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Page. Not that Avery would have objected to including them or have had the slightest hesitation in inviting them if he had thought for a moment that they would have wanted to come, but he knew very well that they would not. He did not know Ed Page well and had no particular feeling about her one way or another, but for Emerson he had a natural liking that was stronger than any feeling he had for any other living man.
Avery had not entertained since becoming master of the High Street house, and the party limped, and the dissecting of Lisa proceeded with quiet deadliness and complete inaccuracy, and after the guests had crawled into their Buicks and Chryslers and Lincolns and Cadillacs and driven away, Lisa went upstairs to her room, and Avery got some ice and two glasses and a bottle of Scotch and followed her. He knocked on her door, and she told him to come in, which he did. It was the same room in which his father had once told his mother that it would possibly be a good idea to kill her.
“I thought you might like a nightcap,” he said.
“I would,” she said. “I would like one very much.”
She sat erectly on the edge of the bed while he fixed the drinks. When he handed her one, she took it and held it in both hands, the hands cupped around the glass, and lifted it to her lips as if it were something very heavy. With his own in hand, he sat down carefully in a chair: and stretched his legs and thought, looking across at her, that her appearance of frailty was even more pronounced than usual and that she was surely, beneath her superficial surface rigidity, on the verge of collapse. She was still wearing the dress she had worn at the party, a white dress pinched in at her tiny waist and cut low in the bodice to reveal partially the upper slopes of her small breasts, and she looked very young, and he was very sorry for her.
“It was rather deadly, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I won’t be very good at entertaining. Will we have to do it often?”
“No. Not at all if you don’t want to.”
“I will try to do it once in a while. I don’t want to keep you from your friends.”
“Nonsense. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. The truth is, I don’t like this kind of thing myself. Are you very tired?”
She thought of the depressing party and, beyond the party, of the arid, passionless, exhausting Mexican nights that had achieved nothing, and she was certain that it would have been impossible for anyone to be more tired than she was at that moment.
“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”
“Rather. I’ll finish my drink and go away and let you rest.”
“Don’t hurry. You are welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Do you feel like talking a little?”
“If you want to talk, I’ll talk.”
“Tell me. How do you feel about it now? Now that we are settled in the house and you have met some of the people you will know?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, of course. Honestly.”
“I feel just as I have felt from the first. Just as I told you in Miami and later in Mexico City. I feel that I have done you a great harm that you did not deserve and that I have taken the first step toward ruining your life and that I had better leave before I ruin it entirely.”
“That’s really a joke, Lisa. That part about ruining my life. You have no idea how big a joke I find it. I’ve tried and tried to tell you that this thing which is impossible between us does not matter. It is simply of no importance. Without it, we can still make something for ourselves that will be solid and secure and good for both of us. Can’t you understand that?”
“It is you who don’t understand.”
“Perhaps not. If I don’t, I wish you would try to make ft me.
“I can’t. It is something I simply can’t do.”
“Do you really want to leave me? If you really want it, I won’t try to stop you, but I wish that you wouldn’t.”
“No. I remember what I promised you that particularly horrible night in Mexico City. Do you think I have forgotten? I promised that I would try for a year, and I will keep my promise. I will try sincerely.”
He stood up and finished his drink standing, pretending a certainty that he did not feel.
“Good. It will work out for us in a year. I’m sure of that. I’m very fond of you, Lisa. Really I am. I should hate to lose you.”
“I’m fond of you too. I’m rather surprised that I am, to tell you the truth, but nevertheless it is so. You are kind and patient and much too good for me.”
“You mustn’t say that. Believe me, I’m not too good for anyone.” He turned and went to the door. “Tomorrow night I’d like to take you out to dinner. To Em Page’s place. Will you go?”
“Of course.”
“I think you’ll like it there. It’s quiet and comfortable, and the food’s the best in town. I think you’ll like Em too.”
“You have mentioned this Emerson Page several times. Are you very old friends?”
“I don’t think you could quite say that. I like him, that’s all. He’s a nice, simple guy who does things.”
“I see. Well, I suppose there is a virtue in that. Doing things, I mean. Will you be home tomorrow?”
“Not until evening. Do you mind?”
“No, no. Of course not. I only wondered.”
“Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you before I leave?”
“Quite sure.”
“You look very tired. Why don’t you sleep late in the morning?”
“Perhaps I shall.”
“I believe I would, if I were you. Goodnight, now!”
“Goodnight.”
As soon as he was gone, she got up immediately and went into the bathroom and undressed and showered and put on a nightgown. Returning to the bedroom, she was aware of the presence of the piece of bottle and wondered if he had merely forgotten it or had left it deliberately. In either case she was thankful, and she poured some of the Scotch over ice and sat down again on the edge of the bed and drank the Scotch slowly.
When the glass was empty, she turned out the light and lay down on the bed in the darkness and tried to achieve complete relaxation in a way she had learned and had sometimes found effective, but now it was impossible because she kept thinking in spite of herself of the sterile Mexican nights. Parallel to revulsion and despair, which were concomitants of the nights and remembrance of the nights, was the heretical hunger grown great in abstinence, and this was the oppressive menace, the presence of passion and not the lack of it, and it was this that Avery did not understand and that she could not explain, and it was this, she thought, that would surely b; in the end, the destruction of her, who deserved it, and perhaps of him, who did not. She was exhausted, but she could not sleep, and after a while she got up and had another drink and lay back down again, and a long time after that, near daybreak, she went to sleep at last and slept heavily until noon. During the afternoon she ate nothing and drank nothing and succeeded in thinking very little, and in the evening she went with Avery to Emerson Page’s restaurant.
She liked it there, as Avery had thought she would, and she was glad she had come. From her position at a table across from Avery, she could look at an angle through an archway into the bar and see the back of a woman on a stool between the backs of two men on stools, and she could hear modulated canned m
usic, and a drink, which she had denied herself all afternoon, was now permissible. A waitress came to take their order, and she told Avery to use his own judgment about dinner but that she would like a martini first of all, and he gave the order for the dinner and the martinis, and the waitress went off to the kitchen and returned immediately and went into the bar and returned from there with the martinis. Lisa sipped hers, which was very dry and good, and saw a man come through the archway from the bar and pause and look around and see them and make his way toward them among the intervening tables. He was an inch or two under six feet, with a compact body, and he walked with a slight limp. His face was rather dark-skinned and had a quality of boyish openness about it that made him look younger than he probably was, and she was absolutely certain, though she had never seen him before or heard him described physically, that this was Emerson Page, who was a nice, simple guy who did things. However, though her conviction of recognition was immediate and correct, it had in her mind no special significance and was accompanied by no particular emotional reaction. She watched him come with indifference.
Avery stood up and extended a hand and said, “Hello, Em. Good to see you again.”
Emerson took the hand and released it. “Good to have you back, Avery. Nice winter? I guess I don’t have to ask that, though. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. And here she is, Em. My wife Lisa. Lisa, this is Emerson Page.”
Emerson looked down at Lisa and smiled and made a minimal bow from the waist and said, “How do you do,” with an appealing suggestion of shyness, and she responded and said that she felt like she already knew him because he seemed to be the only person in Corinth Avery ever mentioned.
“It that so?” he said. “I’m flattered.”
“You have a very nice place. Avery said it was nice, and it is. I like it.”
“Thank you. I hope you come often. How do you like Corinth by now? It must seem pretty small after Midland City and Miami and Mexico City and all those places.”
“I haven’t noticed. I don’t think I will mind its being small.”
He turned back to Avery. “I was at the bar when your letter came. The one saying you were married. Roscoe and I drank a toast to your happiness.”
“Did you? That was a nice gesture, Em. I appreciate it”
Emerson lifted a hand as if he were going to put it on Avery’s arm and then halted the motion before it was completed. The hand dropped to his side.
“Well, I won’t intrude any longer. Just wanted to say hello. Has your order been taken?”
“Yes. Can’t complain about the service.”
“Good. I hope you enjoy your dinner and will consider yourselves as my guests for tonight.”
“That’s extremely generous of you.”
Emerson smiled again at Lisa, the smile suggesting the same hesitancy that had interrupted and deflected his gesture toward Avery, as if he were uncertain of its reception.
“I’m pleased to have met you, Mrs. Lawes. I wish you much happiness.”
“Thank you.”
He walked away, the limp barely apparent as his weight descended on his right leg, and Avery sat down.
“Nice guy,” he said. “Deserves a lot of credit. He was a poor kid, you know. I remember him delivering papers and parcels and things like that almost as far back as I can remember. He started this place on a shoestring and has made something of it.”
“Is he married?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“I don’t remember that you did.”
“His wife’s name is Edwina. He calls her Ed. Quite a pretty woman, everyone seems to think. She’ll probably be down later. They live in an apartment upstairs, and she often comes down. Perhaps you will meet her.”
The martini in her empty stomach was having an immediate and powerful effect. Shapes and sounds were softened and subdued, had lost in minutes the effect of harsh or discordant impact on her senses, and the face of Avery, across the table, was the identification of someone she knew and rather liked and who was for the time being no particular problem. The world was reduced to the dimensions of a small restaurant in a small town, and the biggest problem in the reduced world was whether there was time before dinner for another martini, or granted the time, whether it was advisable to have it.
She thought that it would possibly be wiser to have dinner before the second martini, because the first martini was really having a remarkably potent effect, and it was not at all impossible that she might, at this rate, become quickly drunk. The thought of Mrs. Avery Lawes publicly drunk on her first night out in Corinth seemed to be a very good joke that amused her considerably, and she looked down at the olive lying naked in the thin shell of her martini glass and laughed quietly at the good joke.
“What’s the matter?” Avery said.
“Nothing. Nothing whatever is the matter. I was only wondering if it would be advisable to have another martini while we are waiting for dinner.”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe we should wait until afterward.”
“All right.”
“I don’t want to be arbitrary about it, however. If you really want the martini, I’ll get it.”
“No. You are probably perfectly right. It would be better to wait.”
“You know how it is sometimes on an empty stomach.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Are you sure it’s all right? I don’t want to be arbitrary.”
“You said once that you didn’t, and I believe that you don’t. I am convinced that you are right in saying that we should wait until after dinner. Is that satisfactory? If it is, we can quit discussing it.”
“Are you annoyed?”
“No.”
“You sound as if you are.”
“I am not annoyed. I just don’t want to spend the rest of the night discussing whether we should have another martini or not.”
He looked at her for a moment and then got up and walked into the bar and returned a few minutes later with a fresh martini. He placed it in front of her and sat down without saying anything, and she picked it up and drank some of it and wondered why she had been so nasty with him when she was actually feeling quite affectionate and not inclined to be nasty at all. Granted that it was irritating to want a martini and have it denied you, it was nevertheless nothing to warrant a quarrel, especially when the martini was not exactly being denied you, but was only being postponed for a while. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re quite welcome.”
“Have I made you angry?”
“No. Of course not.”
“If I have, I’m sorry.”
“Really I’m not angry. If you want a martini, it’s your right to have one.”
“I’m a nasty bitch.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I am, though, just the same. You have been much too kind to me, and I repay you by being the nastiest kind of bitch.”
“Look, Lisa. Please don’t talk like that. Here. Let me have a sip of the martini, will you? I should have got another for myself.”
She handed the glass across to him, and he took it and drank a little of the martini, and she was truly sorry for the way she had behaved. She was about to say so for the second time, but the waitress came at that moment with the dinner and prevented her. The second martini was verifying what the first had indicated, that it was essential to get some food into her stomach if she was to continue drinking, but the food was revolting and absolutely inedible, not because it was bad or badly prepared, but simply because it was food, and she ate some salad and a bite or two of meat and could force herself to eat no more.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Avery said.
“I don’t seem to be. I thought I was, but the sight of the food has taken away my appeti
te.”
“It’s very good.”
“I don’t doubt it. It’s not that. It’s nothing to do with the way the food is prepared or anything.”
“You ought to eat more, Lisa. You eat so little.”
“It’s a bad habit of mine. I eat too little and drink too much.”
“I don’t mean to lecture you. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I understand. You only mean to be kind. You are thinking of my welfare.”
“Will you have a dessert?”
“I couldn’t. Really I couldn’t.”
“Some coffee, at least?”
“Well, all right. A cup of coffee.”
After a while the waitress came back and took the order for coffee, and a boy with a cart came and cleared the table. Avery sat erect and stared across the room, his attention caught by someone behind Lisa. She was still feeling remorse for her behavior regarding the second martini, and she had a strong compulsion to be especially friendly with him in order to make up for it.
“Do you see someone you know?” she said.
“Yes. That elderly couple over there. You can’t see them from your position, of course. Their name is Chalmers. As a matter of fact, they’re very old friends of the family. They used to come to the house quite frequently years ago, but recently they scarcely get out at all. I suppose I had better go speak to them. They’ve certainly seen me and will be expecting it. Would you like to come?”
“Is it necessary?”
“I think it would be nice if you would, but it isn’t necessary, of course.”
“If it isn’t necessary, I won’t go.”
“All right. I’ll make some kind of explanation. Do you object to my leaving you for a few minutes?”
“Not at all.”
“Excuse me, then.”
“Certainly.”
He got up and walked past her and out of her range of vision, and she thought with a renewal of remorse that her compulsion toward friendliness and compatibility had not been very strong if it could not compel, so slight a concession as the exchange for his sake of a few inanities with an elderly couple. The coffee was brought and left, and she sat looking into hers but not drinking it. Minutes passed and the coffee cooled and Avery did not return. He was being delayed, it seemed, for quite a time by the elderly couple named Chalmers who were old friends of his family and who were probably garrulous and tenacious and given to exercising the prerogatives of old family friends, among which is the earned prerogative to be a bore. She was really becoming impossibly irritable, she thought, which was not good and could be corrected by a third martini, and she wished that Avery would come back and arrange it. Looking up through the archway into the bar, she saw that Emerson Page, the nice guy who did things, was sitting at the bar doing something, and what he was doing was having a drink for himself. She saw also that the stool on his right was empty, and it occurred to her that she had a perfect right to go in and occupy the stool and arrange for herself what Avery would not come and arrange. It would be quite easy to arrange in such a place of vantage, because everything was available, including a bald bartender who could be seen functioning. Getting up, she went in and occupied the stool.
Desperate Asylum Page 13
