Ellis had gone to work that Friday morning after a slightly sticky connubial kiss, scented with shaving lotion, and the vast shady quiet day had stretched ahead of her, full of a wonderful silence after the departure of Ellis, junior, and Jean Marie. At times she thought of her children with guilt. It seemed unnatural to be so relieved that they were gone. When they were around she often had difficulty in believing that they had come from her body. Ellis, quite apparently, had possessed the dominant genes. Even at five, Ellis junior was a very sober little citizen, quite humorless—his face a diminutive caricature of his father’s. With Jean Marie it was, perhaps, too early to tell. She was three, very round, very messy, very noisy. When the children were around and most usually during the evening when Ellis sat working or reading, she often had the feeling that she was there in that small group as someone hired, a stranger, a person displaced.
She had thought with pleasure of her quiet day, and she had gone around and pulled down all the dark green roller shades and locked all the doors. The house retained the pleasant coolness of the night
During the first hour after Ellis left for work, she raced through a bare minimum of housework, working fast and with an oddly expectant feeling. When everything was done, she got out her records; the ones she never played when Ellis or the children were around. The children always made noise, and Ellis always seemed to find it necessary to listen with intense concentration and make self-conscious statements when the music was done.
She sat on the floor and picked the records she wanted, sliding them out of their envelopes, taking pleasure in the look of them, careful not to handle the microgrooves. She stacked them on the spindle and sat again on the floor in front of the big speaker. Resonances of atonal brass moved through the house, moved against her face and seemed to stir her fragile hair. She locked her slim legs in one of the basic positions of Yoga, a position she could maintain for hours. She folded her arms across her breasts, eyes shut against the surge of the music, feeling the familiar restlessness grow within her, the keen honing of a slender edge of tension, half physical, half unknown.
In sudden restlessness she stripped off the light blouse, unhooked her brassiere and shrugged out of it. She stepped out of her skirt and kicked off her sandals and lay flat on the floor in front of the speaker. The hard heavy brass of the French horns was like a fluid moving across her body. The rug had a taut whiskery feel under her shoulders and hips, under the calves of her legs.
The music stopped and another disc clacked down in place under the needle. This music had more wildness and she turned slowly over to lie with lips and breasts and pelvis flattened against the rug, arms and legs spread. With each quick breath she could smell the dust of the rug, feel the stir of her hair as her exhalations escaped along her cheeks.
Restlessness grew and she jumped up to walk slowly back and forth across the rich flood of sound, her open palms brushing the hard satin of her thighs, so completely and physically aware of herself that each flex of muscle, each oiled turn of ball joint in socket, every erectile tremor was studied and weighed and observed in a coldness of excitement. She stood in front of the music, pressing the heels of her hands hard against the fronts of her thighs, then bringing them up hard and slow across the delicate intricacies of her body to cup at last the rigid breasts, and something within her was making a thin screaming sound.
She arched her body and then reached forward suddenly and turned off the music. The silence was like a roaring. In ritual silence she walked slowly through the big house, finding every mirror, pausing to stare at herself in the mirrors, realizing suddenly that she had the hope of finding one mirror in which she could look and see, at last, another face, and it would be a pleasant madness.
There was a thing that spiraled up hard within her, endlessly demanding bestialities. It wanted hurt and tearing and ripping. It wanted to race down a long hard torrent, endlessly, and it found itself in this quiet backwater, turning slowly, apart from life.
This thing within me must be killed, or allowed to feed. It is something beyond a physical tension. Were it only that, the forlorn little ceremony of self-love would suffice. Or, in much the same manner, a rough shy meter-reader, or one of those sleek and knowing door-to-door salesmen, they would be enough if this were physical, only. But this thing within me discards those solutions as being cheap, and unclean and meaningless.
And it also discards Ellis—poor dull Ellis with his apologetic love-making, his terrible efforts to keep from breathing too hard. Perhaps if, in the beginning, experimentation hadn’t been killed by his quaint and Victorian reserve …
It isn’t a need for love, because I am beyond love. Two loves had I. And one they shot and one they drowned in the Coral Sea. Sad and beautiful name, with its pictures of pink reefs and the drowned, drifting hair. And there wasn’t enough of me left to ever love again. I died then, and in dying, selected a winner—coldly selected a steel-trap brain, a tool-steel ambition, and a fumbling inadequacy that does nothing for me.
And I was dead and it didn’t matter. And now this thing is growing inside me. A thing that isn’t love, or the need for love. Love, perhaps, was a tree on which grew many kinds of strange fruit. The tree was burned and the fruit was smashed against the earth, and it all seemed dead. But after many seasons the seed of one of the smashed fruit has taken root. It was the most exotic fruit the tree bore, distorted in its beauty. And now it alone grows. It was the thing which would have added a wildness and a madness to love, and now it alone lives and grows, and the tree itself is dead and will never grow again.
The seed grows and it is a vine looking for something which can be clasped, tendrils moving and restless. I am afraid that it will find something, someone. And when it does, God, in His infinite mercy, help the man, and help me, because it will destroy us by feeding us too well on the magic fruit.
If there were some way I could uproot it.… Or some intense chemical spray to make the leaves curl and char and die.
It is a fruit that grows in the filth of the bottom of the soul, and, rising greenly, takes over every clean niche.
I want to kill it, and yet, in the anticipation of fulfillment, there is an evil pride—a pride in the intricate perfection of this body, in its never-measured capacity for abandon, in its muscles that pull like silk ropes, and the flawlessness, and the wildnesses, and the lostness.
And she felt, once again, the familiar desire to punish the truant body. She snatched up the heap of clothing and hurried up the stairs. She threw the clothing on the bed and hurried to the bathroom and turned the hot water on full. It roared into the old-fashioned tub, standing on its clawed feet. Steam misted the distorted mirror of the medicine cabinet, made beads of sweat on the exposed pipes under the sink. When the steaming water reached the overflow drain she turned it off. The first time she tried to force her foot under the surface, she had to snatch it out with a small whimper of pain. Then she forced herself to keep it there, putting her weight on it, standing, forcing the other foot down into the scalding water. She grasped the sides of the tub, shut her teeth tightly, and, inch by agonizing inch, lowered herself into the water, hearing the constant trickle through the overflow as the smoothness of her body displaced the water. At last she was sitting, and the water made a line of fire around her, just below her breasts. The room rocked for a moment and she was close to fainting. When she felt steady again, she straightened her legs so that her knees went under. She slowly leaned back and the line of fire crept up over the tenderness of her breasts. Laura lay there, dazed by the heat, and knew that the feeling of acute physical suspense had been driven away for a little while, driven away, perhaps, by the orgiastic aspects of self-inflicted pain. She raised one slim leg from the water. It was fire-red and steam billowed from it. There were no long quiet days any more. Only days of a crazy wanting for unknown things.
The water was nearly cool by the time she climbed, deadened and exhausted, from the tub. The towel’s harshness was increased by the pink se
nsitivity of her body. She lay diagonally across the big bed, face down, and felt sleep coming, moving toward her, black and silent.
When she heard the door bang downstairs she awoke instantly, knowing at once that it was Ellis. She rolled over, realizing that she had not changed her position during the long nap. She wondered, irritably, why he was home so early. Afternoon sun slanted against the green shades. The clock said four fifteen. She heard his slow footsteps downstairs, heard him call her. When he started up the stairs she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.
The hall floor creaked and she heard the small sharp inhalation as he saw her. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her body. Nudity distressed him in an odd way. It seemed strange that he should find it uncomfortable to look upon this body which had carried his two children, which had incubated his seed. She breathed slowly as he approached the bed, and she felt the light touch of the thin summer spread as he pulled it up to cover her.
She yawned and sat up suddenly. “Oh, hello. I took a nap.”
He made a half motion as though to bend and kiss her dutifully, but instead he turned to the bureau and began to empty his pockets. “I thought you might get chilled.”
“Or maybe you were just covering up an unpleasant spectacle.”
He turned and gave her a quick sharp look. “Please, Laura. Just please don’t start anything. It’s too hot.”
“Did you have a lovely, lovely day at the office? Aren’t you home early?”
“The air conditioning broke down. Mr. Forman shooed us out. I spoke to Fletch Wyant before I left. I wanted to make sure it was all set for tonight.
“Oh, merciful God!”
“It’s something we have to do,” he explained patiently. “They expect it. After all, they were nice enough to …”
“To stick us with an initiation fee and dues for the rest of our life.”
“I wish you wouldn’t take that attitude. You know we can afford the club. It will do a lot of good. It will give us a good place to entertain. And another thing, Laura. Please be good tonight. Just tonight. Make them think you’re glad they put us up.”
She swung her legs out of the bed and sat, scratching her arm, acidly amused to see how quickly he averted his eyes from her.
“It will be quite a trick making Jane Wyant glad, Ellis dear. She treats me as if I were a loaded pistol.”
“There are plenty of good reasons for getting along with them. I don’t think I have to explain all that.”
“Please do, dear.”
“Fletch is a very straightforward sort of man. He does his job and I guess he does it pretty well. But he misses here and there. He makes it look too easy, I think. And there are things he overlooks. If I stay on the right side of him I can make suggestions. Good ones. He’ll take them, and give me credit for them, because he’s that kind of a man. It will help both of us.”
“Until you get a good chance to insert your boy scout knife, dear?”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say!” he said with outraged indignation.
Laura yawned luxuriantly. “Oh, go take a bath or something. I could draw diagrams, dear. You know that. I could chalk a little X on his back, but you don’t need that much help. Don’t kid me. Just pay attention, so it won’t backfire like at Tuplan and Hauser.”
“If I’m like that, why do you stay with me?”
“Because I’m too lazy to get out, dear.”
“Or you have no place to go.”
“Don’t ask me to prove anything to you, Ellis,” she said in an entirely different voice.
She watched carefully as he tried to bluff his way out of it, and then broke around the eyes and the mouth, and said, “Laura, darling, we shouldn’t try to hurt each other this way. God, I’d be lost without you. Don’t ever leave me, dearest.”
“Stop bleating, for God’s sake!”
He pulled himself together quickly, gave her a cold stare and walked into the bathroom carrying his clean clothing. He always changed in there and he always locked the door. He never went swimming, never wore shorts around the yard. His modesty was pristine and unimpaired.
As Laura dressed she thought of Fletcher Wyant. She had an indistinct memory of him. Just another big man with a strong blunt face. One of those ex-athlete types, probably a whizz at a dirty story with a good snapper at the end. A smoking room card. A big clean American boy, walking like a man. A pushover, on business trips, for any twenty-year-old chippy with a lusty walk. A big, dull, simple, decent man, and no match for the subtle ripostes of Ellis Corban.
Ellis, she knew, was motivated by incredible ambition. It was the only forceful thing about him. She had learned enough of his history to understand it. He had been a weak, sickly, painfully shy child. Always on the outskirts of the games fields, always watching, never a part of life. He had found his outlet in school, in standing at the head of his class, in polishing and burnishing his quick, elusive mind. Laura remembered the odd story that Ellis’ mother had told with such unwholesome pride.
In high school there had been a boy who consistently topped Ellis in the class marks. Ellis lost weight worrying about it, struggling to beat the other boy. It appeared that the other boy would become valedictorian of the graduating class in the senior year. A week before final examinations, Ellis astounded the other boy by asking to study French with him in preparation for the exams. During the French examination one of the proctors picked up a folded sheet of paper from the floor. It contained a list of French verbs, the most difficult irregular verbs and their declensions. It was in the other boy’s handwriting. He could not deny that, but he did deny loudly that he had brought it into the examination room. They compromised by giving him the minimum passing grade, because of his previous record.
Ellis became valedictorian. The other boy did not attend graduation. And Ellis’ mother told the story with a certain unholy glee. Her Ellis was shrewd, all right.
In the business world Ellis had found out, Laura knew, that you don’t get marks. You get position and salary. And if there is a man in the job just over yours who shows no intention of stepping aside, you find some way to move him aside—delicately, subtly, effectively. Yet it had backfired rather badly at Tuplan and Hauser. The wrong man had protected himself by saving a tape recording of a singularly crucial conversation with Ellis. There was no basis on which to fire Ellis. But it had been made quite clear to him that he might be happier in some other firm.
Laura took the new yellow dress out of the closet and laid it carefully on the rumpled bed. She thought of her own childhood and how different it was from what Ellis had experienced. While he had been brought up in the prim, unchanging, middle-class environment of Fall River, Massachusetts, taking his bride back at last to show her off in the same high-shouldered stuccoed house in which he had been born, she had spent her own childhood in a dozen states of the west and southwest.
Her father, John Raymond, had been a failure of almost classic dimensions. A failure, perhaps, at everything but life itself. Her mother had died when Laura was three and her brother, Joshua, was two. John Raymond had never married again. He had taken the two kids with him on his restless, unending search. He had been a big laughing man with a raw edge to his tongue and an unhappy knack of saying exactly what he thought. Salesman, trucker, hotel clerk, carnival pitchman, restaurant keeper, builder, bulldozer operator. Nevada and Utah, Arizona and San Berdoo, Texas and New Orleans.
Somehow, he had always managed to provide food, and a bed of sorts. When the car broke down and they slept out it became an adventure, and desert sunrises had been golden indeed. They went to over twenty different schools. And life was going to be like that forever. And one evening in July—they had been living in a trailer in a park in San Antonio, and John Raymond and Josh were working on the same road job—and John Raymond came home in time to stop the silent, animal, terrifying struggle. She could remember that the most horrifying part of the struggle was within herself, fear and disgust fighting against the dea
th wish to give in, the wish to surrender to the hard hands, to languid mysteries. And John Raymond had broken the man’s face and comforted her, and sent her east to school in September.
He couldn’t send much, and she had to work for the rest of it. But it was the end of a known world. School meant Tom, and he was killed in North Africa when something went strangely wrong with tank tactics. And later Josh died in Italy. And John Raymond got into a political argument with an Oklahoma Indian and died three days later of the stab wounds. And Andy, who was becoming what Tom had been to her, Andy who comforted her, drowned in the Coral Sea and all of life stopped, the way a clock will stop just before striking the hour. There was numbness, and an automatic cunning. The cunning brought Ellis, who married his deadened bride and took her back to Fall River, to the old house smelling of sachet and furniture polish. It brought her Ellis, and brought her two children, and brought her here at last to another old house in a strange city, to a time in her life when, after the deadness and the not-caring, life was coming back in a new and painful form, making her want something wild and discordant and sweetly rotten-ripe—before it was much too late.
She put the yellow dress on and settled it properly on her shoulders and the slimness of her hips. She looked in a mirror and was glad she had bought the dress. She did her hair and her nails and her lips, and then Ellis came out of the bathroom, scrubbed and brisk and confident and ready to go. In the car on the way to the club he had tried, again, to get her promise to behave during the evening. She had said, “Yes, dear,” tonelessly, over and over, until he gave up in silent disgust.
She wanted holiday. Ballrooms and wine and a molten moonlight. She wanted around her the witty and incredibly beautiful people of festive cinema. And so she sat with her small hands folded passive in her lap while Ellis drove her toward a tribal conclave, toward thick sweaty bodies and suburban humor.
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