“Look,” Gavin said, “I guess we both have probably had enough. You feel gypped, and so do I. Maybe what we both need is a little time alone to think things out.”
Gavin was inviting her to leave.
Coco felt the world stop, and then start to spin in the opposite direction.
“Well,” she mumbled, “that’s funny. It’s very funny that all of a sudden you want me to go away, when you’ve always begged me not to go before.” She turned around so Gavin couldn’t watch while she concentrated on making a quivering match contact with a cigarette. “I must say,” she continued weakly, gulping a throatful of smoke, “that I’m really a little curious about how come, all of a sudden, you want to have a little time alone. Something must be making you feel very independent for a change.” The smoke filtered up around Coco’s eyes. “Maybe you’ve got yourself a little girlfriend on the side.”
“Maybe I do,” Gavin said.
And at that moment Coco knew forever that there was a woman whom Gavin actually liked.
Coco stood up carefully as if she were carrying a tray that might spill, and then walked over and lay down on the bed, flat on her back. She remained perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling, well aware that her husband had not moved to make any gesture of comfort, reassurance, or denial. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, fingercombing his hair off his forehead.
“Well who is she?” Coco asked.
There was a long silence. “You don’t know her.”
A soft pulpy pink organ, frequently featured in Life-magazine color-photo spreads, shifted into a lower position in Coco’s chest. “How do you know I don’t know her?” Coco asked.
“I just know you don’t.”
“Well, really, Gavin, you don’t really think that I know only the people who you know I know, do you?”
He didn’t answer.
“I mean, really …”
There was another very long silence. Coco listened. There were no background sound effects. None of the children were crying. No crib was rocking, no bed was creaking, no air-conditioner hummed, no toilet gurgled. Everything was quiet. Everything was the same as it had been an hour ago, except that now everything was spoiled. What she had always liked most about Gavin was that he had divorced his first wife because he found Coco ultimately more desirable than all other women. That he now felt attracted to someone else made Coco feel like a devaluated dollar. Depleted. Depressed.
She felt panic begin to picket her.
“So. Are you in love with this … girl?” she asked carefully.
Gavin hunched his shoulders up and down like a teen-ager unable to recognize his own true emotions. An unseasonable frost seemed to have frozen his normal motions and movements. He seemed completely separate and detached from Coco, like a wall painter or carpenter who worked in the house, moving among its inhabitants with intimate ease, but totally ignorant of the essential drama of their lives.
Partially because Coco felt totally imperiled, and partially because she could think of absolutely nothing else to do to show Gavin how much he had hurt her, Coco gave a pitiful little moan, rolled over, and fell out of the bed. She simply went limp, internally gave herself a little push, and dropped down flat onto the floor, banging her head very noisily despite the red-carpet tiles. After listening to a shrill ringing in her ears, Coco heard Gavin jump up and begin stumbling around the bed in her direction.
“Coco. What’s the matter?” He tried to lift her up, but her head rolled backward. “What happened? What’s the matter? Are you all right? God, Coco, what happened?”
He finally lifted her in his arms in an uncinematic, disorderly way that made one of Coco’s arms trail behind the rest of her body and hit hard against the radiator as he half-rolled, half pushed her back onto the bed. Freezing in the disorganized position in which he had dropped her, Coco peeked through her lashes and saw Gavin, flushed from having elevated her off the floor, standing stiff, straight, and uncertain high above her. Then he lifted one hand and rubbed confusion across his face with distraught fingers. Instantly Coco recognized the expression that always preceded Gavin undertaking a serious action. It was clear he was trying to decide whether to phone for an ambulance, a doctor, or the police.
So that was when Coco started to scream. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and began to emit one shrill shriek after another; and the more she screamed, the better she felt.
Gavin ran out into the hallway and rushed around closing the children’s bedroom doors. Then he came back, and Coco had to scream even more loudly, because he tried to put his hand over her mouth, which pressed her head back against the pillow and muffled her cries. But when Coco bit hard into the fleshy fat part near the bottom of Gavin’s thumb, he finally jerked his hand away, and then Coco rose up out of the bed, in one sveltely fluid modern-dance motion. She began walking across the room, moaning and groaning, hugging her body with arms crossed straitjacket style—going forward in one direction until she came to the wall, and then reversing her route.
“I’m ruined,” Coco moaned. “You’ve ruined me.” It sounded both nineteenth-centuryish as well as, contemporary. It felt right to her mouth.
Gavin looked surprised. His head moved back and forth in a mock spectator-at-a-tennis-match motion as he watched her. Then suddenly he jumped off the bed and disappeared down the hall toward the bathroom. After a few minutes he returned with a bunch of dripping towels in his hands.
“You’re hysterical, Coco,” he said suddenly, soothingly, reassuringly, as he tried to wrap a towel around her head. “You’re okay, Coco, honey. You’re just a little hysterical. There’s nothing wrong. You’re okay. You’re just hysterical. Now, try to calm down a little.”
Coco watched the water dripping down onto the self-adhesive red shag carpet tiles and thought that very likely she just might really freak out from the supreme irritation of watching Gavin quietly soaking the rug and probably thinning the glue that held it down on the floor. Indeed, she was so upset now that she suddenly dropped straight backward onto the floor like the children did into a bank of snow. For a moment she thought she had actually knocked herself out from falling flat from such a height. The back of her skull banged on the floor, sounding a heavy hollow boom.
“Coco. Coco, are you all right? For God’s sake, answer me.”
It sounded as if he were crying.
“Listen. I’m sorry, Coco. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it. I love you. You know I love you. Will you forgive me? Please? Please. I’m sorry, Coco.”
And that was when Coco realized he had been sleeping with the girl.
She moved slightly, so that her hair spread out and fanned around her head before she opened her eyes. She wondered for a moment if she should pretend to be bleeding, since blood wouldn’t show on the rug anyway, but decided to go the internal injuries route.
“I’m sick, Gavin,” she said in a frail, weak voice. “I’m sick. Please help me. I can’t talk now. I’m too sick.”
So he pushed her back up on the bed again, and Coco couldn’t tell if he was crying or just panting—from running around the room so much and lifting her off the floor twice.
But now, at last, Coco felt genuinely tired, physically and emotionally exhausted. Originally all she had wanted was a little action, a little interaction, but now, as usual, Gavin had spoiled it, had misunderstood her needs, and made everything go wrong. She lay back weakly against the pillow and watched her husband moving nervously around the room, and she thought: He’s thirty-five, and the only time he cries is if I drive him crazy with my hysteria, and that’s the only way he knows I’m feeling anything and the only way he ever has any feelings of his own.
The clock on the bookshelf showed three A.M. Coco began to think about Other Men, but she had been without a lover for over two years, including her last pregnancy, and she had not been summoned across a crowded room by a handsome stranger for a long, long time. Perhaps she was too old. Perhaps sex and love and passion were a
lready finished for her. Perhaps everything was finished for her now.
“In the morning,” Coco whispered, “you’ll have to call my office. Ask for Claudia Martinez. Tell her that I’m resigning.” Coco felt pale and wan. “Tell them I just found out that I’m very sick and I have to quit working.”
“Coco. You can’t do that.” Gavin stopped pacing. “You told them you would teach two summer courses. They won’t be able to find anyone else now. It’s too late. And how will we have enough money to pay Mrs. Marshall? You just need a little vacation for a week or so, honey. When does the summer session start?”
“You call her up and tell her that,” Coco ordered. “Ask for Claudia Martinez.”
Then Coco rolled over on her side. Her stomach felt upset, the back of her head hurt, and her neck seemed to be getting stiff. Inside, she felt used, abused, wounded, and betrayed.
Her novel. It was then that she started to think about writing her novel. Finally, really doing it. It seemed the only option left. She had always viewed publication as the only path to personal salvation, an absolution for wasted time and a ticket for a New Life automatically hitched to Book Sales. It would take only one lyrical but slickly constructed novel, fiercely emblazoned with SELF, to catapult her to fame, to distribution of three-quarters of a million books. Her novel … propped open on the bedside tables of three-quarters of a million American and European men, who would wake up in the morning and jack off to Coco’s enigmatic back-cover smile. There would be guest appearances on network talk shows; a klieg-lit opening of the filmed version of her life, starring Ali MacGraw; endless opportunities for writing assignments; and endless offers of romance from incredibly attractive men.
But novels, of course, were hard to write.
Coco closed her eyes and fell asleep instantly.
three
Coco woke up at 6:30 because she thought she heard Joshua crying, and was quite honestly surprised to discover that the sobs were coming from her. Excited by the authenticity of her grief, she immediately woke Gavin to show him what he’d done. She cried bitterly for ten minutes without wiping away the tears, that dropped down on the pillow, making the linen get damp on both sides of her face, and irritating her cheeks so they began to itch. Her weeping was a symbolic trial in which Gavin was subpoenaed, prosecuted, and sentenced to total responsibility for her condition. It was so natural and convincing a performance that Gavin lay silently beside her and, without attempting any defense, accepted the verdict of his guilt. He also accepted his punishment, because he made no objections to any of Coco’s requests when she finally stopped crying and began asking him to do things for her.
First of all he had to get up and go look through the medicine chest, Coco’s jewelry box, and the bottom of her purse to find one old Librium that she remembered seeing somewhere. He finally found it in an empty bottle of Senecot anticonstipation pills. Then he went downstairs and brought up a pot of coffee with two slices of whole-wheat toast that Coco promptly pushed off the tray onto the floor because they had too much butter. Next he delivered Coco’s lavender-colored birth-control-pill dispenser from the bathroom and watched silently as she emptied all the remaining pills into the pitcher of Carnation milk on her tray. That was that (except, of course, later in the afternoon Coco took a pill from the middle of the next month’s dispenser, because the last thing she needed now was to get pregnant). But Gavin, gullible and trusting, felt his home sex life was finished and got the same expression on his face as when the telephone service was cut off because he forgot to pay the bill.
Then Coco reached over to confiscate Gavin’s pillow, tucked it behind her own (a sign of illness in the family), and leaned back weakly against the foam-rubber incline, taking tiny sips from her coffeecup and feeling the same sort of bewilderment that the children experienced when they were too sick from the measles to enjoy the comforts and privileges that accompanied the disease.
“Do you know what I’m going to do, Gavin?” Coco asked in a half-whisper as soon as the caffeine in the coffee fortified her self-control.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” He stood stubbornly near her side of the bed while his distress shifted into resistance.
“I’m going to do nothing. I’m going to do nothing at all until summer’s over, and then I’ll decide what I’m going to do. The only thing I can do now is get tested up so that I can decide what to do later.”
“Well, that’s sort of the old academic schedule,” Gavin remarked in a brisk, businesslike voice. “Finish up at the end of May, start things fresh and new in September. Actually, it’s probably best that you don’t teach summer session this year.” Covertly he was beginning to eye-search the piles of discarded clothing lying around the room to find something to wear so he could officially launch his day.
“That’s right,” Coco agreed. “I’m just going to stay in bed for three months.” She nodded her head slowly. “And you can cope.”
“Me? What do you mean? I’ve got to work.” He excavated yesterday’s socks from a small hill on the floor. “Mrs. Marshall will take care of the kids.”
Coco put the coffeecup gently back into its saucer and watched Gavin’s arm reach out to reclaim the tray as it started sliding off the bed. He glared at Coco for not trying to impede the descent of the dishes, and then placed the tray safely on top of his bureau. Angrily he walked across the room, and sat down on her dressing-table stool. He was holding his underwear, but seemed uncertain about the propriety of dressing during a disaster.
Coco peeked into the back of the coffee spoon that had slid off the tray onto the blanket and saw that her mascara had smeared into sad, dark circles beneath both eyes. Turning her handicap into an advantage, she looked mournfully at Gavin, who always asked if she was tired when her mascara ran, and sank deeper into the pillows. She sighed heavily, and then adopted a calm, practical voice.
“Gavin. I think I’d like to see my calendar notebook.”
He lifted her purse from the dressing table and deposited it in his vacant space on the bed. Coco reached over and extracted a purple Flair pen and the pocket-sized red leather notebook.
“I’m going to make a list,” she said courageously, in a weak voice, settling back against the double pillow again.
“Of what?” Gavin asked nervously.
“Of what has to be done.”
“Oh, God.” Gavin got off the stool, pulled on his shorts, and then returned to the bed, where he lay down flat, minus his pillow, and waited.
Coco used her hunched knees as a desk, uncapped the nubby-pointed marker, and opened her carefully organized notebook to Thursday, June 1, 1972.
“It’s just too bad today’s not Monday,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s the first. It’s better if the first of a month is a Monday. It’s more efficient, and I think they should always have it that way.”
Gavin groaned. “I really don’t understand you, Coco. I never did.”
She began her list, and read each entry aloud as she progressed omitting only #3.
CALL MY OFFICE AND RESIGN—GAVIN
CALL G’S OFFICE, SAY THERE’S ILLNESS IN THE FAMILY. WON’T BE IN TODAY—GAVIN
CALL DR. F. BETWEEN 9:50–9:59 TO START TREATMENT IMMEDIATELY
GET BOOKS FROM PUBLIC LIBRARY—GAVIN
“What books?” Gavin asked.
“I’ll have to make you a separate list.”
BRING UP CHAISE LOUNGE TO SECOND FLOOR BACK PORCH—GAVIN
“What for, Coco? Nobody ever uses that porch.”
“Well, that’s where I’m going to be in bed,” she said, studying the list, “on the porch.”
“But there’s no bed out there.”
“That’s why you have to bring the chaise up from the patio.”
“Jesus. You’re acting like a baby, Coco. What kind of a shit performance is this? What the hell are you carrying on about? First you tell me you want
a divorce, and then you go nuts because you think I’ve been cheating on you.”
Coco threw Gavin a sidelong glance that resurrected the true psychological enormity of his crime, and he returned his gaze to the ceiling.
CALL WOODWARD & LATHROP, DOWNTOWN BRANCH, TO DELIVER A NEW STROLLER
“Please pass me the Kleenex, Gavin.”
INQUIRE ABOUT SUNDIAL SUMMER DAY CAMP FOR CHILDREN OVER FIVE
“How much does that cost?” Gavin inquired tonelessly.
“That’s why we have to inquire.” Coco sucked on the top of her pen.
CALL CHICAGO BEFORE 6:00 P.M.
“Jesus. What are you going to do that for?”
“Because we’re going to need some extra money, Gavin. And my mother won’t believe it’s important unless I call before the night rates start.” Coco looked at the growing List. “You know something? I think I have a very ugly handwriting.” She tilted her notebook to the left and tried a backward slanting style that looked like Good Private School Printing Script.
But all at once the particular and peculiar pleasure she got from making lists evaporated as a searing memory of the past night returned to assault her.
“Maybe that’s why you did it,” she said irritably. “Maybe you got tired of my handwriting. Maybe my handwriting was not fancy enough for you anymore. Maybe you found yourself a little Cliffie who makes round fat letters.”
“You’re talking crazy, Coco. Why are you acting like such a nut?”
“You know, my mother always said that I shouldn’t marry you because you’d been divorced. Is it raining out?”
“No.”
“You know something, Gavin, what’s really freaking me out about all this shit is why you’re doing this to me now. In 1972. You had a whole twelve years before to cheat around. You had all of the sixties. That’s when people had affairs … in the sixties. Not now. Not after women’s lib. You’re probably the only schmuck husband in America who had an affair this year.”
Loose Ends Page 3
