Everything Happened to Susan

by Malzberg, Barry

  “Please mother,” Frank says. “Please, no more.”

  “It’s all your own fault. If you were a little more secretive about your life then I wouldn’t have all these things on my mind and you’d be able to carry on in your own way. But you never could keep your mouth shut, Frank; it’s your basic failing. A failing that runs in the family.”

  “Come on, Susan,” Frank says and takes her arm gently, begins to tug her from the room. Susan yields, it seems easier that way. The old lady’s glasses glitter in some aspect of light as they mount the stairs. “Are you sure you don’t know a Bacchanalian cry, dear?” she asks.

  “Evoe,” Frank says. He leads her out of sight of his mother and into his bedroom. It is the first good look she has ever gotten of Frank’s bedroom, an expressionless place with a few pictures of a recent moon-landing taped on the walls, showing astronauts in space suits leaning over the ground. He puts her in the chair facing him on the bed and sits, clasps his hands, looks down at the floor. “I guess that wasn’t a very good idea,” he says. “Giving her the opportunity to get at you. I didn’t think you’d be in so soon. I wasn’t even sure you’d be back at all, to tell you the truth. I’m very glad you’re back.”

  “I just came to pick up my things,” Susan says. “Listen, seriously, I want to find a hotel. It isn’t fair of me to stay here and I just don’t want to. I’ll pick up what I’ve got and go somewhere.”

  “I find it impossible to believe that I’m making pornographic films. It’s just an incredible situation, something that I can’t adjust to. Here I go to the studio, a man of my background, and make a dirty picture and then I come home at night and back into this. You couldn’t possibly appreciate the ironies. There just seems nothing I can do to break this pattern. She was with me all through graduate school, you know. We lived together out there and when I dropped out we used her savings to come to New York and take this place. It isn’t even rent-controlled. I told you a lie. We pay four hundred dollars a month for it only because she had some savings. We’ve always lived together. I had this dream that finally I’d be able to do something so outrageous that it would be inconceivable for me to live with her any more and dirty movies seemed to be the thing, but do you know something? It’s the same thing. I don’t mean to burden you with my troubles, of course. You have problems of your own. Did you work things out there?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Did you get rid of your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “Well,” Frank says, “they’re efficient. I’ll give them that; they do the necessary and they do it very well. They can discriminate between what is important and what is not which is something that intellectual types such as myself have always found difficult. I wouldn’t worry about him; I’m sure that they just gave him the message and sent him on his way.”

  “I’m not worried about him at all. I’m not even thinking about him.”

  “Well, that’s best,” Frank says. He grips the arms of the chair, shifts slightly; there is an extended pause. “You wouldn’t like to, uh — ”

  “No,” Susan says. “I’m sorry but it’s just impossible. I can’t do anything now at all.”

  “I’m not forcing you. It’s not my way to force people. I just can’t. I was just asking — ”

  “No,” Susan says. “All I want to do is to get my things and go to a hotel.”

  “It’s not as if it would be anything much for you,” Frank mumbles. “I mean — ”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, with the filming and all.”

  “That’s different.”

  “All right,” Frank says with a sigh. He shrugs, groans, picks up small bits of litter from the floor. “I understand that. It isn’t the best approach possible. There’s something in the way I approach girls that always puts them off; it’s almost as though I’m driven toward denial and — ”

  “Frank,” Susan says, feeling her voice go slightly out of control, “Frank, I just can’t discuss this kind of thing anymore. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to hear any more of your analyses. All I want to do is to get out of here,” and with an act of her will she stands, a feeling of disconnection overtaking her as she does so. She feels the room revolving slowly at a great distance. Only a little while longer and she will be able to sleep. “Now, if you’ll help me get my things together and call a cab, that would be all I need. Or you don’t even have to help me with the things. I can do it myself.” She takes one stride, moving toward her room, feels herself lose her balance, tumble gracelessly backward, grasps a chair, and falls into it heavily. “I’m tired,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m really tired. I thought that everything was all right, but it isn’t.”

  “Stay here tonight, Susan. It will be just like last night. I won’t do a thing. Tomorrow you can leave.”

  “You’ll just start again. I tell you, I can’t listen any more. All that people do is talk to me and talk to me and make me do things. This has got to stop.” Susan finds herself thinking that this may well be true; nevertheless, she sounds like one of the characters in a scene she has been playing, perhaps Mrs. Millard Fillmore. Maybe Mrs. Millard Fillmore had this problem; this is why she and her husband are both two of history’s most obscure characters. “I just can’t,” she says, and tries to stand again, does somewhat better this time, moves toward a door. “I should go. I mean, it’s nothing personal; I’m sure I like you but — ”

  “I won’t lay a hand on you,” Frank says intensely. “I won’t say a thing. I just want you to stay; it would be a great thing for me if you would stay. Just to have a girl like you in my house. You don’t know how I felt last night, just knowing that you were here; that if I wanted, I could open your door down the hall and look in, could see — ”

  “Oh God,” Susan says. She leaves Frank’s room, walks to her own, notices that it is just as she left it this morning and thinks, I’ve got to get out of here. But she sits on the bed for just one instant trying to decide the most efficient means for exit. This is either her usual mistake or the best thing that has happened to her today because the bed absorbs her, envelops her, and she sinks upon it with a sigh, feeling the sheets close over her comfortably. Susan leans back with a gasp; sleep overtakes her completely. It has been a long day. All of her days since she began to work for Phil have been long; very possibly it is for the best that she use the time allotted her now for rest. Beyond rationalization, beyond the ordering of a vigorous program of activities which will show her to her best advantage, Susan dreams.

  CHAPTER XLIII

  There are not so many dreams as last night and they are not so hideous. In the worst one her father comes to her after the Academy Award ceremony and says that he appreciates the step forward she has made in her career but now it is time to get serious and think about what she is going to do with her life. “I mean, you’re going to have to get married and have a family anyway so you should do it soon so you’ll be vigorous in your sunset years,” he says to her with an admonitory shake of his forefinger. “This is all well and good and you’ve certainly had interesting experiences but now it’s time to be mature and live sensibly.” She turns to him to tell him for the first time what she really thinks of him, holding her Academy Award tightly in her hands. She is ready to demolish him but before she can three celebrities and two major political figures standing near them fall upon her father in the way the technicians had fallen upon Timothy and take him, protesting, into a wing. “You have to live your own life; you must realize that it is a one-way ticket; you must take your life seriously!” her father shouts but Susan is already at the Awards party and cannot listen to him; she is surrounded by hundreds of people who look at her with admiration and come over one by one to fondle her Oscar. They tell her that she has reached the top of her profession. Susan wants to remain level-headed. The Academy Award, after all, has been won in the past by some of the worst actresses in history, but she finds it difficult to ma
intain her sense of balance. Completely distracted, Susan smiles and talks, gives quick interviews to the press and then suddenly Phil is there wearing a tuxedo and looking at her with a proprietary air. “Come here,” he says to her and she tries to indicate with motions that she cannot. She is too busy with the press, but Phil says, “Get over here and stop that nonsense,” and she cannot deny him any longer. She goes over to him and he seizes her by an arm, drags her out of the room and into a long, long hallway which looks very much like the one outside his office. “I’ll hold that for you,” he says, taking the award from her hand and putting it on the floor behind his back. Then, with enormous facility, he lifts her long skirt, pulls down her pants and tearing open his zipper inserts himself into her, beginning to fuck desperately. Susan protests, says that people will come, tries to back away from him but finds herself against a hard, blank wall on which hang the pictures of dead, great movie stars. She tries to move aside under his battering but is paralyzed and Phil finally says, “Just remember who you are; just remember what you are, just remember how you got here.” He forces his will upon her, has a fierce orgasm spilling upwards and outwards like a flower and filling her chest with a peculiar warmth while he collapses underneath her, falling to the floor and out of sight. His face, turning in upon itself, folds like paper and Susan finds that her picture is being taken by photographers from Life Magazine, the New York Times, Newsweek, Variety, Women’s Wear Daily, and Sports Illustrated, all of whom are using flashbulbs. It is a very embarrassing situation and she does not quite know what to do. Finally she settles for a smile, pulling her hair from her eyes. She realizes that Phil is directing the photographers from the floor, explaining to them about angles of light and her most favorable profile. Despite her justifiable resentment, she feels somewhat grateful for what he is doing. At least she is being kept now before the public.

  Much later she dreams that Frank has slipped beside her in bed and is trying to enter her. He acts with a desperate stealth mixed with desire because he is afraid at any instant she will awaken and bring upon him a disastrous failure … and so his gasps are broken by urgent, piteous little moans and muttered urgings to himself to be quiet … Susan finds the whole thing rather funny, not that she would want to laugh and hurt his feelings. At length she feels him inside her, wedged tightly, and he begins to work in a simple rocking gesture aided by his fingernails on her back. He attempts to bite her neck. It is inconceivable, she dreams, that he thinks he could carry on in this fashion and not awaken her, nevertheless she lies quietly, letting him work upon her. She has some curiosity about Frank. Also she knows that he can see that she would let almost anyone have her sexually if he only took the trouble to force the issue. As always she minimizes the role of sex. That has never mattered to her. She finds it ridiculous that men should find this act, this series of motions culminating in a sneeze of such unusual value that they will concentrate their lives upon getting it, warp themselves in strange and complex ways in the getting or the failing … and Frank comes into her slowly with an gasp of pain or maybe simple pleasure. She holds him, rubs a breast against his mouth, whispers to him to be quiet. Throughout he has not touched her breasts; now he buries himself in her bosom and begins to moan. She is now fully awake and knows she has not been dreaming.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  Perhaps, Susan finds herself thinking, perhaps it would have been for the best if she had submitted herself to the examination and become an investigator for the Department of Welfare. She would then have been spared mornings like this; whatever else she would have had to go through in the Welfare Department, she would not have had to spend an entire day doing for business what she had been doing the previous night to support her emotional life. On the other hand, she would have most likely only met someone like Timothy.

  CHAPTER XLV

  Frank’s mother is waiting for them in the living room, still doing a crossword puzzle, but otherwise vastly changed from last night. Her entire mood is ebullient as Susan, and Frank, laden with suitcases come into the room. Susan will take them to work and look for a hotel in the evening. “Oh I just feel wonderful this morning,” she says, “I have this feeling going all through my body that everything’s going to work out. Don’t you think so, children?”

  “We have to go to work, mother,” Frank says, dropping the suitcases and, as his mother sees them, her mood seems to shift. She says, “Is the young lady leaving? And just when I was feeling so happy.”

  “I have to find a place of my own,” Susan says. “This was only temporary.”

  “But I thought that you and Frank were working things out so beautifully. I just have the feeling all through my body that things are all working out for the best. You’re not really going to leave, are you?”

  “Please, mother,” Frank says. He does not seem to be in a very good mood himself; he seems to have accepted Susan’s decision to leave very well, very matter of factly. Suddenly a look of rage crosses his face; then his expression settles down to a restrained and civilized revulsion. “Please don’t talk any more. I can’t stand to listen to it.”

  “Because I thought that everything was going to be fine between you children. I thought that Frank was finally at the end of his quest. There is an end to every journey and I felt that my son had reached his.”

  “That’s not necessary, mother.”

  “Oh, nothing’s necessary! Nothing’s necessary if you want to look at it that way; you can just lie in bed and waste yourself. But I have hopes for you, Frank. Tell me that you’re not leaving, dear. He needs someone to love and relate to, that’s all. If he can find that, he’d be as normal a man as any you see on the street. He almost had a doctor of letters, you know. He can go back and finish it any time and have a fine career. And you don’t have to see me at all; it’ll be as though I weren’t even living here.”

  “I can’t discuss that now,” Susan says. She brushes her damp hair from her forehead, blinks, and tries to look alert. In fact the apartment appears fuzzy to her: fuzzy light is coming through the windows, indistinct figures are moving on the walls, blurred outlines of people in the room are talking to one another. She knows that she could use a real rest, some change of circumstance that would bring her back to herself. Instantaneously she makes a decision: when the film is finished, hopefully today, she will ask Phil for a loan and she will go away for a week. Phil is understanding; he only wants the best for her. Surely now that she has committed herself to him, he will be reasonable. Two hundred dollars will be more than sufficient to take her where she wants to go. Well, three hundred dollars. No more than two weeks and she will come back refreshed, ready to do everything she can in the film business.

  “It’s too late, mother,” Frank is saying, meanwhile. He seems to be gripped in an intense dialogue, the sense of which has somehow missed her while she was thinking of other things. “It’s too late for any of that shit.”

  “Watch your language. I don’t care what you think of me and what relations have come to, I’m still your mother.”

  “I said, stop it! It’s too late! I’m thirty-four years old and an actor in pornographic films, mother. I’ve never held a full-time, responsible paying position in my life and I’ve never finished a single thing I’ve started except this relationship with you which is finished. Finished, do you hear me! There is no time for your optimism, no time for your platitudes. It is far too late for any of this and it is time you accepted that fact. You can’t keep on making these demands of me.”

  “Well, it’s just because I think so much of you and want only the best,” the old lady says complacently, marking something in the crossword puzzle. “If I didn’t care for you so much, Frank, I wouldn’t have stayed with you all these years. I would have gotten rid of you in pregnancy if I didn’t have plans for you. You can’t shock me, don’t you understand that by now? I dealt with you when you were a wee tot.”

  “Do you think,” Susan says, “do you think that we could get going? I think it’s a
little late and anyway; I do want to get down there early.”

  “Yes,” Frank says. “I’m sorry. All right. I just can’t deal with this woman any more. She is not reasonable. I can’t make her see things.”

  “Frank gets caught up, dear,” his mother says. “He’s really very involved with me and he gets distracted; it doesn’t mean that he’s ignoring you or anything like that. It’s just that he’s known me so much longer and I annoy him a great deal. Are you sure you won’t be staying? I do think that things could work out wonderfully for the two of you if you only gave them a chance. You wouldn’t even have to get married for a while; you could just kind of live in sin and have a relationship, as you people put it. Later on if it’s serious you could …”

  “It can’t be,” Susan says. “I mean, I don’t have a thing against Frank but it just couldn’t work out. For his sake, it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Yes, that’s what they all say. They always leave him for his sake, not theirs. Frank brings out all the unselfishness in young ladies, don’t you Frank?”

  Frank, however, is already out the door, struggling with suitcases, mumbling and cursing to himself. Susan picks up the two that are left on the floor and follows him. At the door she wants to say good-bye to the old lady but she cannot hold her baggage and turn around. Also Frank seems to be having a great deal of difficulty on the steps and his curses fill the hallway. She settles for a quick nod which she hopes will be interpreted from the rear as being a friendly, if a definite parting and negotiates her way down, to find Frank on the sidewalk sweating in the spring cold and wiping his forehead with a palm. “I can’t stand it,” he says. “I just can’t stand it any more.”