Behave

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Bertrand Russell sent John a particularly touching note. He said that John had convinced him. Russell was going to start raising his own daughter according to the Watson method.

  Chapter 27

  Billy, at the age of three, was a sweetheart, a little lamb. Willing to follow a schedule, to play alone and pick up his toys, independent in his toileting even though constipation and stomach upset plagued him from infancy and all through childhood. (His brother as an older child would suffer even worse, and I later found out that John’s first son, Little John, had tummy troubles of his own.)

  He was stoic on those mornings when he had to return to his bedroom and lie on his front, stomach pressed into the bed, or on his side, knees curled up to his chest. I took him to a doctor, who found nothing wrong and was only surprised when he asked for specifics on bowel movements that I couldn’t provide. After all, Billy used the bathroom unaccompanied. We made sure not to alter routines or give in to coddling when he was sick, because that would be the surest way to make him use illness to gain attention. And we relied on his toileting reports. He seemed a truthful child. Why get in the way of his independence?

  The doctor agreed. He was simply surprised. Not too many people were able to trust that a child could take care of himself. But of course, we were special: the family of John Watson—scientist, ad man, popular author.

  The only unexpected aspect of Billy’s behavior was his firm desire to see his father leave each day for work. Finally, John insisted upon a test.

  I was supposed to stand next to John and lightly pummel him. Billy, seeing John being injured, would come to his father’s aid, correcting the unhealthy mommy preference.

  The charade began just after a normal weekday breakfast, during a lull as John waited for his morning ride to honk at the curb. We stood in the kitchen, between the oven and the breakfast table, Jimmy strapped into his high chair, drinking juice, and Billy on the floor, lining up toy soldiers.

  “I’m angry at you, John,” I said, with a smirk on my face, feeling a little nervous about this make-believe, afraid I’d be unconvincing to man and boy both.

  John lifted his chin and frowned, bettering me with his attempt at a sober expression. “Are you, now?”

  He stepped a little closer. I saw the crack of a suppressed smile. He furrowed his eyebrows and folded his arms over his chest.

  Little Jimmy had been regarding us, all the while, with a curious, sleepy look, rosy lips parted. But Billy was in his own world, arranging the soldiers in two parallel lines, using the checked pattern of the tiled floor to keep them straight.

  John cleared his throat and nodded. I cleared mine, too, feeling positively ridiculous. John and I rarely fought. What could one sensibly fight about in front of children, without raising any sensitive matters?

  “You leave a mess wherever you go,” I said, grabbing at straws. “Water on the sink. All those—all those—socks on the floor. And sandwich crusts next to your armchair.”

  I figured that would sound right to Billy. John had chastised him just that morning for leaving a cracker, uneaten, on the breakfast table.

  John’s expression was sympathetic: That’s the best you can do?

  “And—and,” I said, raising my voice, “You never take me anywhere.”

  He lowered his own to a menacing rumble. “Don’t I?”

  That made Billy look up, at last: eyebrows raised, one lead soldier closed inside his tiny balled fist.

  “I want to see a show,” I said.

  John nodded, encouraging me to say more and to sound angrier.

  Now I was warming up: “I want to see the new Marilyn Miller musical.”

  “But you hated her in Sunny.” He said it quickly, carelessly, with a spontaneous and utterly convincing little laugh at the end.

  That laugh tripped me up. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes,” he said. “‘That overrated Ziegfield Follies girl.’”

  “What?”

  “You said she was a good dancer, but a disaster the minute she opened her mouth.” He was getting better at improvising, if that’s what this was. And he wasn’t done. “We went to that chop suey place with Stanley . . .”

  “Chop suey?”

  “. . . and you went on all night about it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I tried to remember my role. Angry. Threatening. I was supposed to be the aggressor. I pushed my balled-up fist against his chest—a little trial tap, like I was knocking at a door. “I haven’t seen the Resors since before Jimmy was born.”

  John’s eyes widened, recognizing his gaffe. His mask dropped and my own stomach followed, plummeting. But he thought he could still cover up. “You’re wrong about that.”

  “I’m wrong?” I tried a harder tap, mashing my fist into the lapel of his fine jacket.

  “Hey.”

  “Chop suey?” I shouted. “You went to that play without me. You really did. You went on some kind of date.” I pounded harder. “No, you really did. I can’t believe it. John, you really did!”

  “That hurts,” he said quietly, obviously unhurt—always unhurt, regardless of what was going on around him. I held my breath and punched harder, with both fists now, encouraged by the surprised look on his face.

  “All right, Rosalie. That’s enough.”

  “And you didn’t even hide it? Out in public?”

  “Calm down.”

  “With the Resors?”

  “Just with Stanley and—he brought someone else. Not Helen.”

  “Oh. Just with Stanley and someone else. And another someone else. A double date. That’s supposed to make it better? Oh my God, John. Oh my God!”

  I had started hyperventilating, and it got worse when John grabbed me by the elbows, trying to push my forearms together, to contain the boxing motions of my fists. I broke free, swung low, and made contact below the belt, which from the sound of John’s pained breathing had a pronounced effect. But the satisfaction was short-lived. I felt a pressure against my legs, a tangle of smaller limbs between my knees and John’s. I’d forgotten about Billy. Now he was squeezed between us, launching his fists against John’s knees with all his might—not at mine, even though I had been the one punching, but at John’s. Two against one. Not the Oedipal reversal John had expected. But all of his expectations had gone out the window with his stupid little confession.

  “Stop that!” John called out, kicking out once, hard and sharp, with his dress shoe.

  And Billy did. He stopped. He fell back to the floor on his rear and scooted back, out of the dangerous tangle of adult legs.

  From outside came the honk of a car horn—John’s ride to work. He stepped toward the door, jacket askew, breathing hard. I followed. I grabbed at the sleeve of his jacket, hard enough to hear the rip of stitches. When he spun away, I lunged even harder, grabbing for him, determined not to let him leave without at least answering my question. Not after humiliating me this way.

  “Who did you take, John? You’re going to tell me. Who was it? How long has this been going on? You always promised me you’d be honest. You claimed you’d always be honest!”

  He escaped my grasp. The door slammed. Outside, the car drove away.

  In one last fit of frustration I pounded at the closed door with the side of my fist and a moment later saw Billy, no taller than my knee, strut to the door and plant a little kick of his own.

  My poor dear. My avenger.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” I said.

  All day I waited for the phone to ring, waited for the sound of a car coming home early to our address, waited for a flower deliveryman, bearing apology roses. I couldn’t even bear to take the boys to the park, thinking I’d miss something. I let the boys play on the front porch while I sat inside at the kitchen table, smoking one cigarette after another. I listened at the window, then went back to the bathroom to check my makeup, and t
hen returned to the window. In my own mind, I delivered lectures, heard terrible yet convincing arguments, made threats, accepted or refused excuses. I imagined a woman on John’s arm: probably blonde, because I was dark haired, with a girlish giggle or husky, throaty laugh. Or maybe dark haired just like me, but a younger me, the version he favored. I imagined an entire parade of young, fresh, lively women. And when the abstractions of all those dressed-up home wreckers became too hard to sustain, I thought of a single woman. Mary Ickes Watson.

  I pictured John’s first wife as she was five years ago, hearing the gossip about John and me, haunting the hotel lobby where we’d had lunch, arriving for the first time at my Eutaw Place house, already suspicious and determined to catch John and make him pay. I thought of Mary lying restless in a narrow bed in a low-rent apartment, waiting for John to come home from work, wondering, and in the next room, their daughter, Polly, doing the same, and in another room, Little John, stewing with an adolescent version of the anger that had made our own sweet Billy kick the door. I grew up a little that day. I paid a long-overdue bill.

  Cora had asked for the week off, to visit her mother, and the work of watching Billy and Jimmy nearly undid me. It was an Indian summer day, the humid heat rising as the morning wore on, my belted navy-blue dress too hot so I changed to a pale yellow, sleeveless cotton one—worn and not much thicker than a slip. A frumpy housedress, fitting for the day’s sour mood. I phoned Viola, a teenage girl who lived down the block, to come watch the boys for the afternoon, and when she came, I closed myself inside the bedroom-that-doubled-as-den, hotter even than the kitchen, and tried to write, filling an entire waste can with balled-up typewriter paper—my first unsuccessful attempt, years ahead of this one, to put my thoughts in order, to try to understand how we’d made this mess. But I wasn’t ready then. Jealousy pinned me like a bright, dumb beetle to the present moment, fixated not on the truth but only on my desire to make John pay for his two-timing ways.

  Viola gave the boys their lunch and reported to me that Billy’s appetite had been off, but that wasn’t unusual for Billy. I heated my own bowl of soup and ended up washing it down the sink. When Viola left, it took all my energy just to say goodbye, to smile vaguely, to pretend that everything was fine.

  “You’re all right, Mrs. Watson?”

  “It’s just the heat, I think. For Billy, too. Thank you, Viola. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  I jumped at the sound of the knock ten minutes later. But it wasn’t John, it wasn’t a telegram or flowers. Only the delivery boy who came once a month in a produce truck with his cartons marked fresh fruit, fooling no one.

  I pointed to the pantry. “There.”

  He loped outside again, leaving the door ajar, and came inside with a second carton that he stacked atop the first. Inside there would be bourbon, gin, a few bottles of sherry and wine. Mostly bourbon.

  “Goodness, do we go through that much? I guess we do. Thank you . . .”

  “Leo,” he said.

  “Well, thank you, Leo.”

  Usually the delivery boy came with a stout man, his older brother, but this time, he was alone and chatty.

  “That’s only half of it,” he said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping his brow. “The other half I deliver to your husband’s office.”

  That I had not known. Though it made sense. All those men with their private liquor cabinets in their private offices, and maybe Stanley stocked some of it, but he couldn’t keep up with my own husband’s pouring schedule.

  “I only mention it,” he said, “because I need to settle the bill. If you don’t mind. We can’t carry people any more, is all. Month by month on delivery day, now. Usually, I collect from your husband, but he wasn’t in.”

  “Oh, certainly,” I said, wondering if we had enough cash in the house, if I’d have to telephone John at work and make him deal directly with the boy. Man, rather. He was probably nineteen or twenty, wide shouldered, with sun-darkened skin, and a loosened dark lock of hair springing forth from his widow’s peak. Trace of an accent. Italian.

  Meanwhile, the house was quiet. Viola had given Billy and Jimmy cool baths and put them down for late naps, just prior to leaving.

  “You have something on your shirt, there,” I said, seeing a bright yellow stain underneath his chest pocket.

  He looked down, sheepish. “Mustard. I ate my sandwich in the truck. Usually my brother drives and that’s when I eat my lunch.”

  “You’re probably thirsty, then . . . Leo. If you just ate your lunch.”

  Viola had left a pitcher of lemonade on the counter. I poured Leo a glass and excused myself. There wasn’t enough cash in the desk drawer to pay the bill, so I telephoned JWT from the next room. But John wasn’t in his office.

  “I don’t know when my husband will be home,” I said, coming out of the den. “Sometimes he doesn’t get here until very late.” The thought itself, and the question of where John was choosing to be in the middle of a workday, should have made me seethe, but I was too distracted to be angry. Too nervous, and wishing—strange day, strange wish—that I hadn’t put on such an ugly dress.

  Leo had seated himself at our kitchen table. He had sponged away the mustard, and now his shirt was damp in places, unbuttoned, with a white undershirt showing. Making himself a little too comfortable, I thought. But then again, it was hot in the house. And was I giving the wrong impression? The lemonade, the mention of an absent husband, the absence of children, my own thin dress, unbuttoned at the collar, loose at the waist but a little tight around the hips. Too wide for the flapper look, but John always assured me that real men liked a little more curve, top and bottom. Not every man liked the boyish look of the flapper.

  Leo pulled a flask out of his trouser pocket, poured a slug into his lemonade, and noticed me staring. “You don’t mind?”

  How could I mind? I wasn’t Carrie Nation, as he could see from those heavy cartons of clinking bottles.

  He asked, “You want any?”

  “No,” I said, sounding schoolgirlish. “No, thank you.”

  To make it clear I was only waiting for him to finish his lemonade, I went to the sink and started washing the few dishes Viola had left behind. I’d thought it the perfect subterfuge, until I realized how I had positioned myself: directly near him, with a front-row view of my backside.

  I could picture him sitting behind me: leaning back into the kitchen chair, knees slightly apart, hair around the edges of his face damp with sweat, undershirt tight across his chest. And he could see me: wide hips, feeling his gaze like a warm shaft of sunlight, trying to stand still and not sway even once as I washed the same glass three times and listened to him raise and set down his glass, raise and set down his glass, the ice cubes tinkling. The longer it lasted, with no one saying anything, with him still sitting there even though I could hear his glass was empty, with me keeping the tap running even when I was down to the last triple-washed spoon, the shallower my own breath became and the more obvious our motives seemed. Maybe he was used to this. Maybe other women invited him into their quiet houses all the time. Maybe women invited him and his brother, both. What was supposed to happen next? What was I expecting to happen? Could I do the sort of thing John did? Could I follow it through?

  “I suppose I should be leaving,” he said, and paused for another awkward moment. “It’s a long drive back.”

  There was a way to do this thing, to have it both ways as married men always seemed to have it in the end—but this wasn’t it. I didn’t want to get away with anything. I wanted John to care and to come back to me, to want only me.

  The delivery man was at my elbow, setting the empty glass on the counter.

  “You’re very pretty,” he said, and the compliment made hot tears spring to my eyes, so that I had to twist away and hide my face over my shoulder. “Thanks anyway. For the lemonade.”

  He was a
lmost to the door when I said, “Wait.”

  That was all it took. Nothing clever or seductive, barely any conversation at all. In two minutes we were on the couch, and a moment later, on the living room floor. No time even to pull the drapes. Ten minutes later, he was touching the red rug burn on his knees and pulling up his trousers, while I was tugging my dress down, and trying to decide if I needed to offer him lemonade again. But he understood, as I did, that a quick exit was best for everyone involved. I saw him through the door, bolted it, then went back and poured a strong one, followed by a second and a third, glad that Leo had delivered so many bottles that John would never notice my attempts to equal him in matters of indulgence.

  Chapter 28

  John didn’t say anything when he came home late. He left an hour early the next morning—cab at the door, no waiting for a shared ride—with no explanation. But on the breakfast table were two tickets to the comedy musical, No, No, Nanette. I looked for a note, even just his name and a line of X’s and O’s, or a hastily scribbled “Sorry,” but he was playing this one close to his vest, maybe because he didn’t think he’d truly done anything wrong and didn’t want to encourage my hysterics.

  The tickets provided a fragile moment of relief, the beginnings of hope and gratitude, but then I felt angry again, and the memories of my own adventure with the deliveryman only made me feel more housebound, more pathetic and alone.

  I steeled myself. John would be gone until dinner. That gave me all day to find someone else who wanted the second ticket. I wasn’t thinking of other men, honestly. What I wanted most was a night out with a friend—and to make a point, of course.

  I left the boys in the house, and I put on a good dress and walked down to the corner, to Janine’s house. Four-year-old Tommy answered the door, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Mommy’s sick.”

  “Well, can you tell her to stop by my house when she feels better?”

  “Grandma’s coming to pick me up.”

  “Well that sounds fun. Make sure to give my message to your mommy, before you go. Can you remember that?”