Shirley

by Susan Scarf Merrell

  On any other night, there would have been talk of the day’s events, discussion of the death of Princess Mary, or of Martin Luther King and his march on Montgomery days before. Stanley was finally reading Bellow’s latest and Shirley had been sent a copy of William Humphrey’s The Ordways, and I suspected she was enjoying it, as she’d had it open in the kitchen while cooking. But none of that came up. The men plowed through the food on their plates without grace or hesitation, and Shirley smoked and drank, and I picked at my meal, all in silence. We were finished in less than fifteen minutes, and Stanley brought out the Scotch and poured a glass for each of us. The candles on the table flickered, and I watched the harmless flames. I thought about getting up to put on a record, one of the plaintive, scratched folk recordings we all loved, perhaps Sam Charters’s The Country Blues. But with yesterday’s events had come a sense of resistance, new for me and quite unlike the survival-focused resistance of my childhood. Thus I would not stand up and help clear the table, nor would I contribute to conversation or put on music. I hunched over my plate and sipped my Scotch and hoped that Natalie would remain asleep until I’d forced the universe to conform to my will.

  “Well, the baby seems no worse for wear,” Stanley said suddenly, his tone so blithe I had to wonder at it. This was practically the first time he’d ever mentioned Natalie, making the comment even odder. Then he asked about Shirley’s work and she said she’d had a productive week.

  “The new novel? I’m ready to take a look whenever you like,” he said.

  She wasn’t quite ready, thank you very much. Stanley poured a little more Scotch and sipped it, nodding to me. “She’s seen it.”

  Shirley shook her head no.

  I bent my head over the mound of stew. I’d looked at some of it, here and there, when I was straightening up, I admit.

  “You’ve read it?” she said. Her voice was tight. I tried to say no.

  There was the sound of something moving in the kitchen, and Shirley went to shoo whichever cat it was down from the counter. Stanley remained undaunted. He took another sip of his Scotch. I turned my glass, letting the brown liquor puddle viscously atop my ice cubes before tilting and jiggling the cubes again. Fred’s eyes were very bright; he blinked as if he were holding back tears, and this fascinated me. I’d not yet seen him cry.

  Stanley said, “We must walk down to the Rainbarrel and improve the quality of this evening.”

  Fred wiped his eyes with his napkin.

  “The quality of mercy is not strained,” Stanley began, as Shirley returned from the kitchen, carrying a jar. It was a brass jar, very simple, with a wide lip and a smoothly knobbed lid. I’d seen it before, I thought, and then I gasped.

  “Yes,” Shirley said flatly, putting the jar down on the tablecloth in front of me. Her hand was on the lid; she was about to open it.

  I swallowed a huge sip of my Scotch and began to cough.

  “It’s empty,” she said.

  “One such fascinating revelation will, perforce, beget another.” Stanley detested disagreements unless he was part of them. “Grab your coat, Fred. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t,” Fred said tensely.

  Shirley proffered the lid at me, showed me the shiny inside of the jar. “Nothing to see in here.”

  I was suddenly as frightened as I’d been the night she barred me from the premises. I had to force the words out: “How could you possibly know?”

  Stanley took his glasses off and laid them on the table, pouring himself another finger of Scotch. “Has our witch been at work again? Casting spells to soothe the hearts of troubled lovers?”

  “Shut up,” I said fiercely, surprising even myself.

  He chuckled.

  “I mean it, shut up.”

  “Tell me the dream,” she said evenly. “Just say the words out loud.”

  I can remember being too young to read but already understanding what it meant when my father clenched his fists or my mother crossed her arms over her ample bosom. I knew to look straight in my questioner’s eyes when I was covering up a sin imagined or real; I knew to lean forward to show that I was interested. Quiet people see a great deal; they aren’t listening for the pause in conversation that will allow them to cut in; and someone like me is always looking for a safer place to stand, a spot where the rising water won’t wet the only pair of shoes that fit. What I didn’t know how to do was deal with someone like her, someone who seemed to see inside me in such a way that dissembling was impossible. “This is insane,” I said. “I didn’t dream anything.”

  Fred put a hand on my back, pressing the cotton of my blouse against the damp of my skin so that it chilled me, but still I was grateful. I would be good to him, too, and together we would be better than our beginning. I leaned against his hand, felt the slight pressure of his fingers.

  “You might as well say it.”

  I shook my head no.

  Shirley pulled out the chair on my other side, sank heavily into it. “Sally told me,” she said. “She’s in the kitchen eating leftovers. You dreamed I died, she told me you dreamed it.”

  I clutched the edge of the table.

  “How did I die? What did I die of?”

  Stanley said, “You’ll come to haunt me, won’t you? Or we’ll go together. Do we drive up to Glastenbury Mountain and get eaten by mountain lions? Or are we executed like the Rosenbergs? What fate has pretty Mrs. Nemser willed for us?”

  “I haven’t, I haven’t!” I stood, pushing out my chair. “With all that’s happened, this isn’t funny. It’s not right. You’re unkind.”

  “I’m not the one, I haven’t dreamed a coffin for anyone,” Shirley said, pushing her glasses back up on her nose.

  “Nor have I.”

  She studied me grimly, as if I had disappointed her terribly. “Fine, then, I’ll wait for fate to come for me.”

  The phone rang, and I could hear the satisfaction in Sally’s voice, even through the closed kitchen door, as she answered. “That’s what mortals do,” Stanley said, and then he called through the swinging door: “Who is it, Sal? I hope to god it’s entertainment, or this will be the longest night since Normandy.” Whoever it was, he intended to invite them over. And he made another call after he hung up, and soon the house was warm with laughter, and Shirley was passing olives and peanuts and Fred was talking about Vietnam with an earnest-looking fellow only a few years older than he, a speechwriter named Alan that the English department was thinking about hiring. I went up to find Natalie pink-cheeked and deep in slumber, and when I returned, I sat on the sofa and was shortly joined by a frail-looking sprite of a girl with a wispy voice and an equally spare blond braid that tickled her shoulder as she nodded. Her name was Maud, she said, “named after Maud Gonne, though I’ve found no Yeats-like poet to love me, despite it.”

  I laughed, took the glass of wine she offered, and leaned back against the cushions, tucking my bare feet up beneath me. “You’re a student, of course,” I said.

  She shook her head no. “I’m from the village. Grew up here. A friend of Laurie and his wife”—the eldest son, the one who lived in Manhattan—“and I knew there was likely to be something going on here. Stopped by for some excitement.” She sighed, rolling her eyes as if to signify that nothing in Bennington could ever be exciting. “And you’re the child bride.”

  “The child bride?”

  “The little housewife who rattles no fences and folds the laundry and fills in the missing pieces.”

  “The house tells me things,” I said, my voice so thin and high it seemed to squeak like bats seeking direction inside the rafters of my skull. “I fall asleep and I dream things. The house owns us, owns all of us.” Maud studied me, amused. I could imagine she was friends with Sally. “Not like Hill House,” I said. “It isn’t evil. But it keeps an eye out. It knows everything that happens.”

  And then Shirley l
eaned over, as if she’d been standing behind me all along, and she said, “Our Rose has an imagination to rival any novelist, doesn’t she? Hello, Maud.” They exchanged hugs, Maud rising slightly and Shirley leaning down to perform the ritual as expeditiously as possible. I stood, offering her my place, and as she sat, Shirley said quietly, “Stay away from what’s mine, Rose. Do it now before you ruin everything.”

  “Novelists are liars,” I said evenly. “What I’m saying is true.”

  “I honored her. Time and time again, I honored the girl. I kept her memory alive,” Shirley said. “Only me.”

  What could I answer? I think I was a little drunk. Maud’s eyes were bright, flickering from Shirley to me with interest. I said, “You think we’re all characters, don’t you? Characters you can move and place, who only act according to your will.”

  “What I actually think is that it’s time for you to go to bed. You look tired. You’re not yourself tonight.”

  I was, suddenly, exhausted, my brain so thick with sleep that my mouth opened without my stopping it. I said, “You didn’t write those stories to remember her. You wrote all those stories so there’d be more of them, more stories for people to wonder about, more gossip to cover your tracks.”

  Maud sipped her wine. Shirley’s glasses glinted opaquely. The orange light spun from the fireplace cast shadows on all of us. “You look tired,” she said again, and then she leaned closer and confided to me alone. “It won’t be fire,” she said. “Not for you.”

  My wineglass trembled in my hand, and I thought it best to leave it on the table. I don’t think I said good-bye to Maud, but stood with all the dignity I could muster. In my wake, I heard women giggling. It was gloomy in the hall, and I wasn’t sure where Jannie or Barry had gone, but I moved carefully, fancying they might have set a trap for me. I stumbled as I entered the library, where Stanley and Fred and the man named Alan were companionably engaged in denigrating Bellow. It was smoky and the lights were low, and there were cats draped sleepily on the back of each chair. Fred stood immediately, so that the tabby who’d been guarding him jumped to the floor with a baleful glare.

  “Have you met Rose?” Stanley asked, reaching automatically for a fresh glass to offer me a drink. Alan stood, extending a hand, and as I took it I heard Fred breathing behind me, and I don’t know what came over me. Alan was a handsome man, and I smiled at him, noting the smooth, tanned planes of his cheeks. I felt Fred’s lanky presence. The music on the phonograph was jazz, someone I didn’t know, and the urge to act came from outside me. I walked past the new man, and over to the table where Stanley had his hand on the glass ready to lift it toward me, but I got to him first. I put my mouth to his, I took his hands and placed them on me, on my breasts, and Fred said, “Rose!”

  “Rosie!” Fred pulled at my arm, but I held Stanley tight. He held on to my breasts even after Fred had dragged me from his mouth, and then he laughed out loud, he said, “Mrs. Nemser, I think we’ve crossed an unexpected Rubicon.”

  I was breathing hard, of course. I said, “You wanted me to, you said you did. You asked me first and now it’s yes, I say yes to you. I’ll sleep with you, I’ll fuck you, I’ll do it.”

  Fred held my arms as if I would throw myself on Stanley, sink down on him on the floor right there, and I might have, I was angry enough, I might have done it.

  “Go upstairs,” Stanley said evenly. “Go now, before she tears you to pieces right in front of Alan and whoever else we’re entertaining. Go upstairs, Rose.” And he turned, and picked up his glass, and said to Alan, “Have you actually tried Herzog? If Bellow gets any more self-referential, he’ll start writing with his asshole.”

  Fred walked behind me, all the way up the back stairs, as if he thought I might throw myself down them. In the room I collapsed onto the bed. Now I was crying with my whole body—sobbing, really—and I woke the baby and she began to wail. Fred waited with me until the crying was over, and the baby slept, and he left a hand on my back and sat. So quiet that despite what had happened, I almost fell asleep.

  Eventually, he spoke. “We’ll go,” Fred said. “We’ll go anywhere you like.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Those long-fingered beautiful hands, the lanky limbs, the bright inquisitive eyes, they waited for me. And I said, “Why me, Fred? Of all the girls you could have had, why me?” He reddened. “Why me?”

  He cleared his throat. “I love you,” he said carefully. “And I love the way you look and how you think and who you are. And I don’t care who you become, I’ll love that, too.” I rolled my eyes. “And you’re alone, you see? You’re mine. And I’m yours. We don’t have to share.”

  And so I stood and wrapped the baby in her blankets. On the dresser, I left no note, only the half-used pack of matches I’d found in the buffalo plaid coat when I borrowed it to walk up to the Bennington campus. I wouldn’t need them, after all. And for the second time in as many weeks, we borrowed Shirley Jackson’s car without asking and took off for Williamstown. On the way out, we used the front door. It opened for me, easily, and I knew what that meant. There was cigarette smoke everywhere, and a fire in the fireplace, and the sound of high-pitched laughter and Stanley had put Coltrane on the stereo. At the door, I turned around, shrugging Natalie higher against my shoulder. I could swear the house was laughing, as if we’d performed all winter for its entertainment, and nothing more.

  Twenty-five

  FRED WAS NOT OUT OF WORK for long. Stanley, more gracious than I could ever dream of being, placed some phone calls on Fred’s behalf, and we found ourselves in Syracuse early in the summer. We rented an apartment near the campus, a dingy one-bedroom in the basement of a small house. I was tired; it was hot; Fred’s mood from day to day impossible to predict.

  He had taken a step backward, working as a teaching assistant for an elderly professor named Lord. He made additional money supervising an undergraduate literary magazine. Mostly, Fred focused on finishing the last section of his dissertation, determined to be back on tenure track before the year was out.

  I was polite to him, and he to me, and I took it as both job and duty to be assiduous in my wifely attentions. There were good days, such as the hot August afternoon when we borrowed another married grad student’s car and drove to the lake in Skaneateles, and I dipped Natalie in the shallow water and then lowered myself into the lake and felt myself weightless and cool, paddling about while Fred and Natalie watched me from the flat sandy shore. We stopped for ice cream at a little roadside shack, and while we sat on a picnic bench, under the trees, Fred fashioned a doll for Natalie out of an oak leaf and two toothpicks and a paper napkin. She glared at it with intensity, as if willing it to come to life. Fred’s eyes met mine.

  “Another witch,” he said lightly. “I can see her mind casting spells, even if she doesn’t have the words yet.”

  “Spells and haunted houses. I’ve had enough of all that to last a lifetime.” I gave her a little taste of chocolate ice cream, but Natalie only licked the cold sweet politely, her attention focused on Fred’s oak leaf doll.

  “It seems like none of it ever happened. None of it was real,” he said.

  His tone was wistful. I missed them, too. Already the winter had taken on a rosy tone; even the worst parts had acquired the sweet deckle edges of memory. There were long, long stretches when it was as if someone else’s husband had cheated, someone I knew well and liked, who wasn’t me. For his part, Fred never seemed to wonder at what I’d done, with Stanley, or why I’d done it. If asked, I swear I would have blamed that monstrous house. It had poisoned me, I thought, as much as slow-dosed arsenic would—I’d not grown immune, but slowly sicker. Now we were alone—for the first time, really—healthier, recovering.

  We grinned at one another. It was all good, dragonflies darting near the spilled puddles of congealing ice cream, cars snaking past us on the dusty road—other families out seeking novelty and relief in the summer hea
t—and I said, “I never asked you, did I? How many times you slept with that girl. And how many others.” I kept my voice light and conversational, not wanting to upset the baby.

  He put the doll down on the silvery cedar. “You haven’t asked, not once.”

  “I’m asking now.”

  “We’re fine now, it’s behind us.”

  “That’s why I want to know.”

  How mature we sounded, how calm. Without the doll to study, Natalie’s eyes closed. Breath slow, she slipped into her afternoon nap against my belly. Not for the first time, I imagined we were breathing in unison.

  Fred crumpled his napkin, put a hand on either thigh, and shook his head. “I’d rather not, not here, Rosie. I’d rather talk about this another time, at home.”

  Near us, a young couple leaned against one another on one side of their picnic table, his tawny curls intermingling with hers as they shared a single cone. They were probably no younger than I was, but I felt ancient in comparison, watching their hands, petting and exploring, the way her hips shifted when he ran his fingers along her neck. Sensing my interest, he turned, his mouth brushing the top of her head. He winked. Affectionate, that wink, as if its maker knew the universe loved him. He lowered his cheek back against the girl’s, forgot me.

  “I’d like to finish it,” I said. “Have it done. Not think about any of it, ever again.”

  Fred silent, a forefinger tracing little circles into the grimy table. “I figured, I guess I thought that you were over . . . I don’t know.”

  “When did it start? How many of them, Fred? And was it the whole time we were there, one student after another, or only her?” I did not mean to get louder; Natalie made a mewling sound in her sleep, tucked her chin against my breast.