“That’s Wasp Heaven up there,” said Frances, propping her feet against the glove compartment. She had taken off her shoes because Paul didn’t want the black paint scratched, but left on her socks because bare feet made greasy toe prints.
“Blond parents, blond babies, blond dogs. Did I ever tell you my favorite thing from Vogue? ‘Why don’t you rinse your blond children’s hair in dead champagne, as the French do?’”
“Why don’t you rinse your dead children’s hair in blond champagne?” said Paul, and snorted like a hog.
Paul steered with his left thumb or his right knee. At the moment, no part of his person was in contact with the wheel, and they were passing a fuel truck.
“Barney Oldfield,” said Frances, instead of grabbing the wheel. Paul ignored her.
“Wasp Heaven is funny, coming from you,” he said.
Frances relaxed; he was driving with both thumbs now.
“I have no roots. We moved around too much.” She tilted her chin. “Girard isn’t Anglo-Saxon anyway; it’s Huguenot.”
Frances was only a closet pariah, but Paul was the real thing. Nothing attracted Frances like the scorned visionary, the proud pauper, the embattled artist. “I go down for artists,” she had been known to say, perfectly aware of the contradiction between her classic profile and her low talk. Paul had begun to write plays, or, rather, he mimeographed sheets of notation for his actors to improvise on, and kept encoded logbooks charting the development of the improvisations during rehearsals. Critics and arts-council officers came to these rehearsals, and waited in suspense for the awesome moment when work-in-progress would crystallize into work of art. Their suspense was protracted, since Paul’s current work, based on the incest taboo throughout the ages, had been in progress for almost a year. Snippy articles began appearing in drama reviews and trade newspapers. Paul answered every one in a serial statement blaming the death of the theatre on the stranglehold of the written word. Paul was a storm center, and took to carrying himself like the captain of a gale-tossed ship. With his vast brow, impressive stature, and auburn hair, anonymity ranked very low on his list of fears.
Frances was in love with anonymity. Her myopia was protection on city streets. She could not recognize acquaintances half a block away, and always supposed they did not see her either. If she passed a man she had met the night before at a party, she never tried to stop and greet him, since she assumed he would not remember her name or face. Her profession, as an editor of books, gave her a podium for her views on self-effacement. She disapproved of colleagues who used the phrase “my author.” (Sometimes she even heard them say “my book.”) These glory boys would grab a writer’s coattails and forget they were only toadies and hangers-on. At most, an editor was like a teacher whose joy should be in getting the best from the student, and who must expect no fame or credit in this life.
Frances didn’t bray these notions to the winds; she saved them for her monthly lunch with Toby Foster, who was with the Boston office of the Harwood Press. She might begin the litany: “Editors are service people. …” “Bostonians think Harvard professors are their children’s tutors,” he might answer in his patient, intimate drawl. After this promising start, they could take on lawyers and stockbrokers, who wouldn’t admit to the service rule, and accountants, whose only virtue was that they did. These shared pieties were the basis of their friendship. It mattered also that Toby’s mother knew her father; they had grown up together in Cincinnati. Alone in the East, except for Edie and well-lost Madeline, Toby knew who she was and whom she came from. Frances left lunches with Toby giddy with high-mindedness; the air was purer around their table, but thin to breathe.
At the Fosters’ house, however, the air was charged. Frances stayed there on her business trips to Boston. She and Toby administered Harwood’s annual prize for college poets. Pom took Frances right over; it was Girls Together. She had to follow Pom as she chugged around the house. “I have an energy problem,” Pom had announced, dumping cream cheese onto a plate out of a heart-shaped wicker basket. Pom was modest. Four new projects were an average for her day—making coeur à la crème; tailoring a suit for Toby; building chairs from a photograph in Good Design; inventing a new method for teaching Spanish to backward readers. These projects were ranged around the house like the Stations of the Cross. Some would be finished and some would not; the undertaking was all. Frances’s head swam and her legs felt like macaroni, symptoms she only got roaming department stores or museums.
Paul began to growl, a low rasp in the back of his throat. In their private language this sound was called The Natives Are Restless. He looked at Frances as if he would like to bite her.
“You don’t share the driving,” he said.
It was true. She borrowed no power from being behind the wheel. She didn’t like steering shopping carts at the market, either. She decided to placate him with a little malice.
“Pom has fits,” she said. “She just falls to the floor. Toby stands over her and won’t even pick her up.”
“She’s a hysteric,” said Paul, “and he’s a faggot.”
“She does dream in Technicolor,” agreed Frances. “She also sees animals in the back of the car.”
“Bullshit,” said Paul, but his ears were pricking up. “What kind of animals?”
“I don’t know, but she was driving to Needham, where she teaches, and she could see them in the rearview mirror. They followed her into the ladies’ room at school.”
“I hope they ate her,” said Paul. “I’d like to eat her.”
“You’re an outrage,” Frances said, laughing; she had not quite come to terms with this kind of talk.
Frances was a sponge for technical language. Osmotically she had picked up the jargons of surfers, fly-fishermen, truckers, and sound-studio engineers. Before Paul, her profanity had been grade-school level. Half the time she didn’t know what the odd words meant. She tried a few of Paul’s choice ones out on Toby, who told her never to use expressions ending in “job” or “off.” Bad language was a part of Paul’s self-made image; some of it was theatre talk, and some of it he had lifted from Ulysses. Frances copied it because it lined her up with artists and outcasts.
Then why did Paul’s lewd remarks still stir her fears? She treasured his impish nature and his choice obscenities. But language was never just fancy dress or borrowed feathers; it might reflect the inner imp, and his real desires. Perhaps he really wanted to perform vile acts with Pom. Pom was small and taut, like a well-made pony, with strong legs, and a perfect, rounded crupper. Her streaky hair looked chopped, not trimmed, and some piece of her clothing was always unpressed or unbuttoned. She arched her chest when she was talking to men, or women. She also stroked her neck and scratched her knees. Every gesture she made was jerky and urgent. Frances had swallowed an image taken from fashion journals, that sexual signals can only be transmitted by the graceful and well groomed. She did not like being wary of Pom, but now that she’d started, she remembered Pom bragging about propositions from the Wards and the De Lessières. On the other hand, Pom was known for her tabloid mind.
Paul was tailgating a Lincoln, and honking hard.
“It’s a blue-hair,” said Frances, leaning forward. “Don’t honk. You’ll scare her. She’ll slow way down.”
He forced the Lincoln over to the right and sped ahead.
“Seventy-five?” she asked. “There’s a lot of traffic.”
He flung his hands off the wheel and Frances shrieked. Then he eased down to sixty, laughing like a fiend from hell. Frances was phobic on the road, and Paul was a tease. She pushed her fists into her lap and prayed she wouldn’t comment next time. They stopped for dinner at a Hoof ’n’ Claw outside of Bridgeport. They ordered little rock lobster tails, which tasted of iodine. Paul had finished two dinners, five beers, and a cup of coffee. Frances was spooning damp frozen chives on a baked potato. She could tell his mind was wandering; he was taking his pulse.
“You inhale your food,” she said,
dipping into the sour-cream substitute.
He looked hurt. “Slow eaters are passive-aggressive.”
Without unclasping his fingers from his wrist, he pushed his back against the side partition and slung his legs up on the leather banquette. His feet stuck way out into the aisle.
“This booth is too small,” he grumbled.
Frances felt her stomach knot up and little veins began to drum in her temples. Just once it would be nice to relax and linger at the table. She liked to sip and ruminate; he liked to bolt and wolf. If she wanted to finish her meal, she would have to distract him.
“You are aware,” she said, dressing her salad, “that Pom Foster was molested by her choirmaster.”
“No,” breathed Paul. He was enraptured.
“On two separate occasions,” said Frances cagily. “She got him unfrocked.”
“Where?” asked Paul.
“In Vermont, where she comes from,” answered Frances.
“No—where on her?”
“I didn’t ask, for Lord’s sake!”
“You never get the good stuff,” growled Paul unjustly.
“I do so. I tell you everything!”
“Skittish broads like that are all talk,” said Paul. “Put your tongue in her ear and she calls the National Guard.”
Frances looked up, startled. Paul was sounding very knowledgeable. She knew he was a great student of the unconscious, however, and dedicated to the sexual origin of all behavior. Every one of his rehearsals started with a dream clinic. She could imagine his actors sleeping at night with their faces screwed up, frowning, trying hard to make dreams for the director, the way cats catch locusts to drop at their masters’ feet.
A waitress was steering the dessert wagon down their aisle. Frances hailed her and took a piece of Nesselrode pie. Paul’s eyes were still glazed and thoughtful. She could spin enough tales to see her through pie and coffee.
Paul had forgotten to shut the windows in his loft before they left. Frances went over to check the sills for built-up soot. She picked up a dirty sock and wiped off the surfaces. Then she went into the bathroom to inspect the floor. She put back all the tiny hexagonal tiles that had come out of their slots. She moistened a paper tissue with spit and began to rub at the water marks on the mirror.
Paul appeared in the doorway. “If you’re cleaning with saliva again, I’ll kill you!”
She squealed but she kept on rubbing. Paul had various crotchets, but this one she disregarded. Once she had reached for his chocolate ice-cream cone to take a lick. He had howled with rage and pushed her away so she stumbled. That was how she had learned that he never shared milk products. She might lunge at his yogurt cup with her spoon now and then, just to tease him, but she was careful not to test him any further.
Paul’s kitchen was hidden inside a closet. He opened the icebox and took out a bottle of cola. He banged some ice off the freezer coils with a knife and filled two glasses. Frances took hers plain; he cut a section of lime for himself.
“Now,” said Paul as he handed Frances her drink. “The De Lessières are French hotshots who write children’s books. Who are the Wards?”
He was back to their conversation at the end of dinner. He had been so unresponsive that she’d thought he was blocking new scenes in his head. She should have known him better. The story was much too spicy.
“The De Lessières are rich,” said Frances, pushing the lamp table into neater alignment with the armchair. “They have one of those French houses where everything is done in the same pattern. You know, the walls match the bedspread matches the rug matches the slipcovers.”
“Move it or lose it,” said Paul. “You’re like a Shakespearean messenger.”
“I am trying to explain,” emphasized Frances, “that Pom is a disgusting snob. She also has a perfect ear. You can always tell when the De Lessières are in from Paris. Pom can’t ask if you’ve seen Claire’s Knee; she has to say ‘Have you seen Le Genou de Claire?’”
“I’m going to bite you,” warned Paul.
Frances loved to keep him in suspense. It was the only time that the balance of power shifted her way.
Then she relented. She shrugged her shoulders. “The Wards are nobody special. They were graduate students in the M.A. program with Toby.”
“Are those the only two couples, or were there more?”
She got edgy. “Why? Do you want to be put on the sign-up sheet?”
“Come on, Frances. I need to know for my art.”
She relaxed. She could handle that explanation. Paul was as inquisitive as an ape, but in a higher cause. She was curious, too, but she thought Pom’s boasts were a figment. For one thing, Frances couldn’t imagine the dialogue. How were these civilized solicitations put into language?
“O.K., let’s do it,” said Paul. He had closed his eyes. “I’m Jean-Loup, or that egghead Ward, and I’m pressing up against you in the corridor.”
“Don’t ask me,” said Frances, who was plumping up the pillows on the bed. “I mean, where was Toby? And where was Grisette, or whatever her name is?”
“You are never still,” said Paul. “Sit down or I’ll knock you down.”
Frances slid to the floor and sat cross-legged in front of his chair.
“You’re right,” she went on. “It’s not logical. Jean-Loup should say ‘Meet me for lunch,’ or ‘Here is the key to my garçonnière? Why drag in the others?”
“‘Why’ is easy.” Paul became very grave. “The dramatic moment lies in ‘how.’”
“Nothing is wrong between sixteen people who love each other?” Frances killed herself laughing. She fell over on her side and shook with laughter.
Paul refused to take part. He nudged her flank end with the toe of his shoe. Then he nudged harder.
“Pay attention,” he ordered. “I want this solved.”
She just lay there, giggling and snorting. “I don’t want to anymore. I’m sick of the Fosters. I’d rather do the rape in Scene Four.”
Frances had made a most unwise decision. She was used to being a laboratory animal, but the last time they had explored the rape it had ended badly. As part of the incest spectrum in his play, Paul needed to include the drunken father and the pubescent daughter. One out of every twenty girls, he had read, is forced by a close male relative. It was a brand-new scene, and Paul had not thought it out fully. This was the only acting school Frances would ever attend, so she was eager to get high marks.
Paul had put her down on the couch. “You’re asleep, he wakes you up. You think he’s come to kiss you goodnight, you see he’s drunk. You get scared, and you resist. The thing to remember is, don’t let him,” Paul had instructed. “Do anything—use your nails, teeth, fists, anything, but don’t let him.”
“He’s my father,” objected Frances, sitting back up. “I’d be in shock. How could I fight?”
Paul put his palm flat on her chest and pushed her down again. He set a pillow under her head and covered her with a jacket.
“Let’s do it my way now,” he said. “We’ll try it your way some other time.”
He closed the shutters and turned off the lamp. Then he went into the bathroom and stationed himself behind the door.
Father/Paul had advanced or sneaked to the edge of the bed/couch. Daughter/Frances gave a yelp when she felt his breath on her cheek. She remembered her cue, and raised her arms for the good-night kiss. Father/Paul pulled her into his arms and reached back for her skirt. He pulled up her skirt. He started kneading her rump. She was pinned in so tight that her arms stuck out like two sticks. She could bend them partway, at the elbow, but not enough to land a solid blow. Her face was smashed into his chest. One of his buttons bit into her forehead, right on her chicken-pox scar. Father’s/Paul’s hands stopped working for the space of a second. She heard a sharp report, like cloth ripping, and flew right out of character. She began to protest, and found she could not move her mouth. She could not form words; she could only raise a loud angry buzz. Father/
Paul, still deep in his role, was kneading and laughing. She lost her head. He was going too far. She could not breathe; she was choking, or thought she was. In panic she pitched herself backward, and broke his grasp. She lay gasping and sobbing wildly, flailing her feet. He moved over, crossed his legs, and sat there watching her. She did not like the look of his eyes; there seemed to be a film over them. Then he blinked twice, uncrossed his legs, and stretched his back.
“Calm down,” he said, yawning. “It wasn’t a failure. I can use parts of it.”
Frances gulped. Her mouth hung open in surprise. Paul had thought that she was asking him a question.
“Yeah,” he answered. “That’s one way to play it, where he doesn’t finish. You did good,” he added, and reached over to pat her hand.
He had not noticed that her collapse was real, or had just ignored it. Either way, he had not treated her like an amateur. In retrospect, Frances felt she could be proud of herself. Her memory was short, but the memory was heady. By now she saw these improvisations as tests of courage.
She got up and stood in front of his chair, a recruit at attention.
“Can we start now, please?” she asked. “I need time later to finish indexing the self-hypnosis book.”
“You always want your own way.” He shook his fist at her. “I’m still on the Fosters. I don’t like breaking set that fast.”
He was arguing for form’s sake, and Frances knew it. Already he was capitulating; he was reaching into his back pocket for a miniature memo pad. He began flipping through the pages. He jotted down ideas on tiny memo pads in a code of glyphs. He had been refining this picture-writing since he had learned to write. The key to the code was deposited in his bank box. He wanted his biographers to have access to his notebooks, but not other playwrights, who were larcenists of ideas. For this reason he also kept his back pocket buttoned.
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