by T. C. Boyle
And Toby, predictably, said, “Fuck you too.”
He jumped to his feet, starbursts everywhere, then reached down a hand for Lori, to lift her out of the chair, take her someplace private, talk to her, hold her, love her, but Lori didn’t give him her hand, she just gave him a quote, another quote, instead. “‘There’s a stake in your fat black heart,’” she hissed. “‘And the villagers never liked you.’” What happened next he couldn’t have said, but it was violent and it was between him and Toby, who was small and slight and didn’t stand a chance, just like that little shit in the hall at Beacon High, and then there were arms around him, Toby fading into the depths and Dick’s voice in his ear, “It’s okay, Fitz, you’re just having a bad trip,” and Lori, glaring at him out of the two black pits of her eyes, finishing the deal.“‘Daddy,’” she said, “‘Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.’”
Looking back on it, he wasn’t sure when the third-floor experiment began, but it must have been around then, because the weather was still gloomy and everybody was bored, whether they wanted to admit it or not. If Tim’s idea of pairing people at random was meant to break down the last remaining barriers to group consciousness, it wasn’t working, certainly not in Fitz’s case, but for the most part not for the others either, because it abrogated the exercise of free will. You might want to open up to someone a given session had brought you closer to, to go deep with her (or him), but you had to wait your turn, if your turn ever came, and that was the essential flaw in the exercise. Of course, they were all free to do what they wanted by mutual consent, but this wasn’t about individuals, it was about the group, and so the third-floor experiment was initiated as a way of addressing all that.
It was Royce Eggers who first brought it up. Everyone was sitting around after dinner as usual, lingering at the table to plug into the current of conversation that was always the best thing about Millbrook—and Zihuatanejo and Newton before it—when Royce, who’d been seen conferring with Tim earlier, tapped his glass with a spoon in order to get everyone’s attention. “I have a proposal,” he announced, as the conversation subsided around him. “And it has to do with the meditation house pairings—or it’s the next logical step beyond them, by way of extending the familial experience here . . .”
As soon as he mentioned the meditation house, everyone’s ears pricked up. It happened that Royce’s wife, Susannah, was out there that week, in the company of Ken Sensabaugh, and there was all sorts of speculation as to what was going on between them, not simply with regard to sex—if there was any, and that wasn’t a given—but with the larger notions of spiritual exploration and the fusing of personalities. They hadn’t seemed especially close in the way of some of the others, men and women both, who seemed to seek each other out over meals or group activities or the bullshit sessions around the fire that went on till all hours every night of the week, and while Ken would have been ready for anything, Susannah was probably the most conventional of the women at Millbrook. She was the prototypical housewife and mother of three who as far as anybody could see would have been perfectly content in her own kitchen in her own home if she hadn’t been swept up in the revolution they were all living—and she was a bit older, too, at forty-one. She was attractive enough in her way, but she was no Fanchon. Or Joanie. Not to mention Flora Lu, who was another species altogether. Still, it wasn’t looks that mattered, Fitz reminded himself—it was purpose. And if Royce had a problem with his wife being out there in the meditation house with Ken Sensabaugh, it was everybody’s problem.
What Royce was proposing, with the backing of Tim and Dick, was to establish an improvisatory sleeping arrangement on the third floor, where most of the rooms were unoccupied simply because they were farthest from the center of things. Mattresses would be laid out and whoever chose to spend the night there was at least tacitly agreeing to sleep with whoever came along. Or not, no compulsion, of course—just openness.
Royce outlined the advantages of the arrangement in terms Tim might have employed (overturning taboos, casting off societally imposed strictures, strengthening the group bonds and driving a stake into the heart of the bourgeois games they’d been stuck playing all their lives), his voice pinched in lecture mode, his hands like white birds fluttering round his face. He’d had an awkward time of it in the meditation house during his week with Alice (she told Fanchon, who told Joanie, that she wasn’t attracted to him and no matter how much of the sacrament they ingested or how much they saw of each other, that wasn’t about to change). Instead of growing closer, they seemed to have lost any sympathy they might have built up for each other over the past two years. They barely acknowledged each other, and invariably, at meals, you’d find them sitting at opposite ends of the table.
When he was through, no one responded at first because they were all privately assessing what it would mean to them personally, vis-à-vis interrelationships—sex—and Fitz was no different. He was sitting beside Joanie, but he wasn’t looking at her—he was looking at Lori, who was giving nothing away, just doodling in her sketch pad as if all this chatter was meaningless to her.
Tim said, “We don’t need it to be anything formal—the more informal, the better, really. If people want to get together, with or without the sacrament, well, here’s the opportunity. No fuss, no hassle, the kids all tucked away and the rest of us up there peeling back the layers whenever the mood takes us.” He paused, glanced round the table. “Everybody in?”
Lori looked up from her sketch pad, then pushed back in her chair and raised her hand as if she were in one of her classrooms at Bennett, where she hadn’t set foot since October as far as anybody knew. “When do we start?”
Tim shrugged. “Whenever we want—again, the whole idea is to make it second nature.”
“How about now—is now good? Tonight, I mean?”
Another shrug. “Why not? All we have to do is drag some mattresses up there.” He paused, flashed his grin. “Lord knows there’s enough of them around here.”
Fitz could see where Royce was going with this—he was feeling low because Susannah was out in the meditation house, and this was a way of declaring himself ready and willing without having to approach any of the women and risk a rebuff—but Lori? Lori didn’t have to play any games. All she had to do was give the signal and Fitz would find a way to be with her—she knew that and that was her power over him. She didn’t need more men in her life, she needed less, or, actually just one—him. And here it was again—jealousy, sexual possessiveness—when the whole idea was to get beyond it.
Joanie turned to him and said, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You coming?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s early.”
And she, lowering her voice even as the conversation started up around the table again, “Don’t you even think about it.”
“I’m not,” he lied, and took a sip of the brandy from the cocktail glass that was as much a part of him these days as a supernumerary limb.
Joanie pinched her features so that her eyes were slits and the two grooves above the bridge of her nose went rigid in the candlelight. “I want you in bed,” she said. “With me. Me and nobody else.”
This was a theme she’d been playing over the course of the past few days. He’d come into the bedroom one afternoon and saw that she’d been crying, her eyes reddened and a scatter of balled-up tissues on the night table beside her. He was going to his desk on some internal pretext or another that had little to do with the work that had become a kind of joke and when he saw her there like that his first instinct was to turn around and walk right back out, but instead he picked up one of his notebooks and began riffling through the pages as if there were some point to the whole charade. “I don’t like this,” she said, in a voice that wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“Don’t like what?” he asked, though he already knew.
“Tim,” she said. “Millbrook. This isn’t any kind of life. It’s a delusion, Fitz—we’re all just deluding ourselves, d
on’t you get it?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. He was entrenched. And she was so very wrong: this was the only kind of life, even if he had to whore himself out to the Beacon City School District to keep living it. “I don’t know,” he said, “you seemed just fine with it till Ken and Fanchon started locking the door on you.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? It’s the truth, isn’t it? Didn’t you say you were in love with him? And her too, right? Her too?”
“I only did it because of you, because you’re obsessed with that girl, that little bitch who won’t even give you the time of day—”
“She will.”
“She won’t. You’re too old for her—and she’s got a boyfriend, what’s his name, and every other man in this house too, and you know it. She’s mentally unstable, which you, of all people, should recognize. I mean, sleeping around just for the hell of it, quoting poetry instead of making sense when you try to get anything out of her.” (This was a reference to a fraught scene in the kitchen a couple of weeks back between her and Lori in which Joanie said some harsh things and Lori just started quoting Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson until they both ran out of breath.) “Face it, Fitz: she doesn’t want you.”
“She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“She’s nineteen, Fitz.”
“I don’t care if she’s ten, she’s a whole lot more than you give her credit for.”
“And how do you know that—because you spent a week with her blasted out of your mind?”
“Because I’m a psychologist, okay? That good enough for you?”
Now, in the aftermath of Royce’s proposal she took hold of his arm, dug her nails in—Was anybody watching them? No, they were all abuzz with possibility, the conversation cycling through the third floor and back again—and repeated herself: “Don’t you even think about it.”
He wound up pouring himself another drink—she wasn’t going to tell him what to do, not now or ever. And he didn’t just dampen the bottom of the glass, he poured it full by way of demonstration. She was far from sober herself. She’d had a martini to kick things off while they were sitting around the fire earlier and she’d been drinking Mateus ever since, and of course there was a joint circulating, the eternal joint, and things were convivial in the way they always were after meals. A couple of people had got up to clear the table—Paulette and Diana Westfall—and several of the others, including Lori and Royce, went off to see about the third-floor accommodations. They would need mattresses. Bedding. And candles—candles would be as essential to the operation as bodies themselves.
Charlie, the joint in one hand, a cigarette in the other, was going on about summer and how great it was going to be, how stoked he was, and how it was never too early to start making plans—“Beyond the seminars, I mean. Are we going to do anything for May Day, the summer solstice, the Fourth . . . Or what, Flag Day?” Fitz was watching the smoke fume round Charlie’s face, a kind of rippling effect that might or might not have had anything to do with flashbacks—it was the light, the movement of the smoke, the transformative nature of the world of appearances, I see, therefore I am. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Joanie lift the wineglass to her lips, drain it and set it back down again, and he felt her eyes on him and turned to look at her. It might have been the drink—his glass was already half empty—but he saw something unconquerably sad in her eyes, his own wife unhappy, deeply unhappy, and whose fault was that? “You’ve had your drink,” she said. “I’m going up to bed.”
And what did he say? “Sure. Okay. Great. I’ll be right there.”
But as soon as she left, as soon as she’d pushed back her chair and weaved through the room and out the door without saying a word to anybody, he reached for the bottle and topped off his glass, and by the time it was empty there were only three people left at the table—Charlie, Alice and Diana—and he realized he hadn’t heard a word of the conversation because Alice was asking him something and he had to say what? twice before he could respond. The question was about Ken Kesey’s first novel: What did he think of it?
“I don’t think anything,” he said. “I haven’t read it.”
“Oh, you’ve got to read it—it’s amazing. Like nothing else you’ll read this year. Especially for a psychologist.” Alice leaned into the table, her elbows planted, her hair aflame. “Plus, rumor is he’s coming out with a new one this summer and it’s going to be huge. I mean, I’ve got a copy of Cuckoo’s Nest up in my room—actually Lori gave it to me, because, I mean, everybody was talking about it when we were up in Cambridge, but somehow I never got around to it. It’s top-notch, isn’t it, Charlie?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “yeah, absolutely. Top-notch.”
He wasn’t really thinking—he was drunk, Joanie was waiting upstairs for him and Lori had tipped his boat over and he was floundering in the darkening waters, picturing her up there with Royce, down on her knees tucking in the sheets and fluffing the pillows—but if he was, or had been, he would have wondered why Alice and Charlie were so keen on his literary education all of a sudden.
“I’m sorry,” he said, getting up from the table with an assist from both hands, “I guess I’m a little out of it tonight.”
“You know Kesey’s doing the sacrament, don’t you?” Charlie said. “He’s got a whole coterie out there in California, just like us—is that interesting or what? I mean, the word is out.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, shaking his head till his ears began to ring, and what had happened to Charlie? He’d been a Ph.D. candidate, a scholar, a seeker after wisdom, and now what was he? Kesey? Who cared? What mattered was right here before them, right in this room, right in this house. “I don’t know anything about it, but—but thanks anyway.” He made a vague gesture and started for the door.
“’Night, Fitz,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” he said, and then he was out the door and passing by the group gathered round the fireplace, thinking only to climb the stairs and fall into bed beside Joanie, maybe read a bit—yeah, read a bit—but when he reached the second floor he kept on climbing.
There was a big open room at the top of the stairs, then a hallway with bedrooms branching off it—and the towers at the far ends. When he got to the top, his legs gone heavy on him all of a sudden and his lungs like liquid fire (he had to cut back on his smoking, absolutely, and drinking, drinking too), he saw that someone had turned on the lamp in the far corner of the room, which smelled of cats, and something else beyond that, something feral, something you couldn’t keep a flea collar on. Had the monkey been up here? And if so, what about Flora Lu? Maynard was off on tour, and just because she’d rejected the meditation house experiment didn’t necessarily mean . . . but no, he was only deluding himself. There was nobody here, at least not in this room, which served as the third-floor sitting room and an informal dormitory for the weekenders who’d given in to the demands of gravity after one party or another. In any case, it was nothing special. A few odds and ends of furniture stood forlornly against the walls—a mismatched pair of easy chairs and a couch from the thrift store he himself had helped haul up the stairs in the enthusiasm of those first few weeks—and there were half a dozen sleeping bags scattered about, none of which seemed to be occupied.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Lori left the table, but it must have been an hour or more anyway, plenty enough time for her to get settled, if that was what she was going to do. And the others too, whoever they might be. He was curious, that was all. This was the new experiment, the new freedom, and he told himself he just wanted to see who was taking advantage of it—disinterestedly, in his role as a psychologist who might just write some of this up someday, but as an interested party too because this was his house, his community, his stew of limbs and bodies and minds. Would Ken be here? Hollingshead? Paulette? Fanchon? And what about Tim? Would he be in one of the back bedrooms, inaugurating the festivities? Peggy was in New York, and whenever she was away T
im let his libido guide him—on any given day he might show up with somebody he’d met at a party or one of his lectures or a socialite from Peggy’s set, and how Peggy felt about it was anybody’s guess. Certainly Royce would be here—he was the one who’d brought it up, he was the one with the need. But then he had a need himself too, didn’t he?
He started down the hallway and saw that some of the doors stood open, like in a brothel, not that he’d had any direct experience of brothels, just that he’d read novels and seen movies and that was the way it was, the doors open so the customers could browse and the girls inside (they were always girls and they were always gorgeous with their sprayed-up hair and cover-girl faces and great bleeding eyes) could lure them in. The first room stood empty or at least that was how it appeared, and no, he didn’t want to turn the light on because if anyone was in there he’d feel like a voyeur—but then they were all brothers and sisters, weren’t they? He thought of Dick then, Dick and his friend Martin. But where was Dick? He’d seen him by the fire, hadn’t he? Or no, maybe he hadn’t—everything was a bit out of focus because he’d had too much drink. Which was all because of Joanie. And Lori. And where was she?
There was somebody in the room across the hall, a candle flickering, shadows there, and when he paused in the doorway, a woman’s voice called out to him—“Fitz? Is that you?”—and it took him a moment to realize it was Paulette and that she was alone and lying there on a mattress, advertising her availability, and in the next moment he was thinking of Rick and where he might be, which, inevitably, made him think of Lori.
“I was just—” he said, and broke off. “Where is everybody?”
Paulette—she was a brunette, with a mass of kinky hair and a dark trace of it under her arms too—was someone he hadn’t really thought of in this particular connection. She’d raise her arms on the beach in Zihuatanejo or when she was wearing a halter top in summer and he’d catch a glimpse of the private hair there and it stirred him, absolutely, he had to admit, but she wasn’t really his type. She was Rick’s wife, that was all. But then, if you followed the logic, she was everybody’s wife. She said, “I just thought I’d try this . . . tonight. Seemed like a good idea, what do you think?”
