John D. MacDonald Page 11

  How must a woman be? Full of things to give, perhaps. Giving of love and work and loyalty, living in sensitivity and awareness, making a nest of love. I am that.

  So I think of this thing that has happened to me, and look back along my life and try to discover how, at thirty-five, I am empty. My father died. My mother had to work. I was too little. So I went with cousins. Five of them, racing and yelping and talking loud and fighting over food and games. There I found my strength. In waiting and planning and working. They were all so disorganized. I wanted orderliness. And I made it for myself. And I liked it when I had made it, aiming myself like a careful arrow at the things I wanted. The high grades, the poems memorized, the clothing I made, the neatness of my bed. Perhaps I was a prude. A solemn dark-headed child, full of herself. And liking the clean clear things. The scholarship attained, the degree achieved, the research job secured.

  And I met Randy, who seemed to be what I was. Determined and ambitious and quiet and orderly. Clean and precise. I was virgin. And so was he. It was not without magic. It was a spiritual love. It was full of high thoughts. But on the physical side, we differed. He seemed always to be distressed by the very mechanics of the act, shy of the indignities of it, gingerly about my very femaleness of function, appalled by fervor. And I found that, unlike my husband, I wanted abandon, a careless wildness, a lushness about it. Yet, sensing his wishes, I practiced the restraints he wanted, so that we made love to dignified formula, in precisely scheduled asceptic dignity, considering the soul and ignoring the inescapable body, making it a thing of silence and controlled breathing. Yet I knew him, and thought I loved him, and not too infrequently I was satisfied. Perhaps if there had been children… I wanted them. I went to doctors. He would never go. And so I was labeled the infertile one.

  There was not much joy in him. And little spontaneity. But in our fashion we were happy.

  And then Wilma went to him as a client.

  The change did not come quickly. It makes me think of something that happened when I was little. A boy had taken a fuse apart. There was a disk inside, of mica, I believe it was called. By being very careful we could peel off the thin sheets. Each one was transparent. But the whole disk was almost opaque.

  And that is the way it was with Randy. I did not notice the first few transparent sheets that came between us. And by the time I became aware that he was on the other side of something that misted his image, there were too many of those sheets in the way. It was too late to break through. I knew he was dropping other clients. He stopped talking about his work. He stopped asking my opinion. One day he said he was giving up the business, that he would work exclusively as her business manager. He named the salary. It was a good one, though not so much as he had made before. He gave up the office not long after that. He worked at her apartment. He no longer touched me. Ever. And the scent of her was on him. In his clothes, in his hair, on his skin. He slept like death. We lived more expansively. We dipped into savings. Until they were gone.

  I was stupid. I had no experience with that sort of thing. He would not talk to me. We had sour quarrels. I thought he had started taking drugs. Or something equally vile. Then the next time I saw them together, I knew what was between them. It was not something I had to reason out. It just came to me, out of some primal intuition. And it sickened me. Actually and physically. For days I would vomit when I thought of the two of them together. She was repulsively sweet to me. She has no morals. She has no soul. She is an animal.

  Then it began to mean something else to me. By his action he had told me that I was not enough—that my gifts were meager. I would sit and look at myself. Look until I saw a grotesque length to my upper lip, an appalling squintiness in my eyes, a scrawny raddled look to my body. And I would think he had every right to go elsewhere. Then it would change all around and I would be full of indignation. He had never permitted me to be what I could be to him.

  And then all that would go away and I would pity him. For what he was doing to himself and all his plans and all his austere dignity.

  And then there was nothing left to do but sit and watch him. There is a fascination in that. I cannot describe it. People run to fires. There are newsreels of when they knock big chimneys down, and dynamite cliffs. You watch something being broken. And you cannot take your eyes away. I knew he was seeing a doctor. He would not tell me about it. I watched him acquire his soiled look, and his new manner of nervous self-deprecation—like the manner of a dog that, locked too long in a house, has made a mess on the rug, and seeks to avoid punishment with hectic affability.

  I believe I could have refused to go up there with him. But it was part of the old disease. Watching disintegration. Examining decay. And so I went. On the way up we talked as strangers talk. The traffic seems light today. It must be much warmer down in the city. Yes, I could eat any time you want to stop.

  Sitting there, being carried along at fifty miles an hour in the car we did not own, with clothing not yet paid for, wearing our unloved bodies, which flexed and jiggled to the road’s irregularities, his hand on the wheel, mine demure in my lap, driving through our special and personal wasteland toward no place at all.

  Randy got increasingly nervous as we neared the place. We parked behind the house. Randy carried our luggage in. Wilma was on the terrace. Gilman Hayes was coming up from the dock. Wilma slipped easily into the part she plays with me. The affectionate older sister. A sort of we-girls thing. A sweetness that is patronizing. I have never let it bother me. I will never let it bother me.

  It is odd, looking back on it, how it was so typical of her parties that Friday, during cocktails and dinner and then afterward until I left them playing games and went off to bed. A lot of pseudo-bright conversation, some dogmatic opinions from Gilman Hayes, the usual vapid imitation of Wilma by Mavis Dockerty, gargled comments by Wallace Dorn. All typical and meaningless, and Randy in some odd way managing to become the fourth servant. He had some of the attitudes of an uncertain host, but he would have looked better if he had carried a napkin folded over his arm. I got tired of watching him and went to bed.

  It pleased me the next morning to be able to eat breakfast alone, and it did not please me at all when Steve Winsan asked if he could sit with me. But there was no point in refusing. I had him typed. The brash young old man. The city sharper. The boy with the angles, always balancing too many things at once.

  I was not listening when he started talking about improving the race or something. And then I heard him saying something that made a great deal of sense, at least for me. It shocked me in a funny way because it was so close to what I had been thinking ever since my marriage started to go bad, started to spoil. About being able to become somebody else. About changing from what you are.

  I looked right at him, and it was looking at him for the first time. His gray eyes were surprisingly good. Gray and level and honest, for once. I asked him what he wanted to become. And he told me he was tired of running, tired of impersonating himself.

  He had been honest with me and it became something very special between us. I do not know how to describe it. Perhaps this way: Suppose you are at an ancient movie, all jerky and black and white and no sound track. Then, right in the middle, it turns to good color, and there is a sound track and you become interested in the plot and you sit forward on the edge of the seat. It was like that. The week end suddenly came alive. And I couldn’t remember anyone else in my life ever looking at me in exactly that way, with that special look of understanding, of personal concern. It occurred to me that he knew what was happening to me and he had seen it all, and it troubled him. And he liked me. Maybe that was it, most of all. He liked me for myself. Because, of all of them there, I was certainly the one who could do him the least good. With me there could be no angle. Nothing to promote. Yet I was the one he had chosen to talk to about the things he was really thinking.

  After it was over I knew I wanted to talk to him some more. I wanted to hear his voice. I looked at him from a dista
nce. There was a pleasing look of reliable strength about his shoulders.

  Later we had a chance to talk on the dock, stretched out in the sun. It made me feel shy to be so near him.

  I remember one thing he said. He frowned down at his knuckles and he said, “Noel, don’t you get the feeling that everything is going to go bang? Not to everybody. Just to people like this group. My God, look at us. Could any setup be more artificial? Take a look around. Every human being should have some purpose, some good purpose. Look at this crowd. Is there a single person here worth a damn? Outside of you?”

  “Including me, Steve. No.”

  “It’s got to go bang. There has to be a purpose. I don’t want to sound like a Sunday school, but it has to be a clean and honest purpose. Not a PR kick, not cheap comedy on TV, not making people smell better, not selling more gunk, not kidding the public with phony art.”

  “Where do I join up?” I asked him, smiling at him.

  “You and me. We’ll form an association. Onward and upward, or something.” And then he looked sad. “Maybe it’s just too damn late for us, Noel. Maybe from here on in all we ought to look for is kicks. Like in that glass you just happen to have in your hand.”

  “You mean this?” I drank it quickly. I had a funny feeling of recklessness. It was all going to go bang, and soon. And all I was doing was waiting around for it. There should be better things than waiting. And I had the crazy thought that maybe Steve would be one of the better things. At least he was honest about himself. I felt as though I were glowing, as though I had become prettier every minute.

  During the croquet game I was aware of him all the time. Aware of the way he was watching me. And I wanted to be pretty for him. More pretty than I was. There had been a lot of sun and too many drinks and I felt careless and dizzy. And very contemptuous of Randy.

  After the game and after we ate, people had stopped running around in circles. Steve came to me and told me there was a place on the lake he wanted to show me. I made myself say yes before I could think about it too much. We took one of the runabouts. He had a big thermos bottle. He said it was a picnic. He drove the boat fast, scaring me when we went around corners, laughing at me, his teeth white in his face. And then he went slow and we were near an island. He went over the side and pulled the bow up and gave me his hand and I jumped down onto the sand.

  It was very quiet there. There was a grassy bank. I felt myself growing scared. I felt the drinks oozing away. He kissed me with a hard confidence that was frightening. I drank from the thermos cup to make the fright go away. He caressed me. He was confident in the way he touched me. I kept trembling. I had the odd feeling that I had seen a man doing that before, murmuring and applying firm hands to quiet a restive horse. We were very much alone there. The grass was deep and soft. Somehow, without actually meaning to, I let him take me a bit beyond the point where I could turn back without making myself look entirely ridiculous. There was just something about his confidence.

  And then he took me and I knew that it was exactly what I had wanted all my life, and knew then that I loved him and would always love him, and I told him so, many, many times. And he told me that it was a good thing that had happened to us, and we would have to be careful about the plans we made. But my world had been made whole. Nothing else mattered. I felt a shyness when he looked at me. It seemed so incredible to have found him there, at this place, at this party. To have found the Steve I love hiding behind that brash city mask. When it started to get dark at last, we put our suits on and got in the boat and went back. Randy was standing on the dock when we came in. I wanted to laugh at him. I was finally free of him. I wanted to tell him what had happened to me, and exactly how it had freed me.

  When the motor stopped its noise, Randy said, “Where have you been?”

  I imitated Wilma. I felt reckless and brave. “Why, we seem to have been on a picnic or something dahling. Miss me?”

  He walked away. Steve shushed me. I couldn’t get mad. I felt too good. I felt full of light bulbs and cymbals and fur. And I drank some more. And stayed close to Steve. Let anybody in the world see I was staying close to Steve. I wanted to have them see it imprinted on my face, in the way I walked, in the tone of my laughter. For I was not only free of Randy, I was free of other things, of dry constraints, of shy imaginings. I was free to be a woman and love the way I wanted to love, without a book of rules.

  I was glad when Wilma suggested we swim without suits. That was the way I felt. The lights came on for a moment after I had taken my suit off. And I did not mind. I did not mind being seen by anyone. That, too, was an indication of my new freedom. I went into the water and waited for Steve to find me. He did. We floated. We held hands. I turned into his arms. We kissed underwater. I felt sleek and alive. I felt brazen. I laughed at nothing. At just being alive. Then I was with him again after a silly game of tag.

  I heard Gilman calling. “Wilma! he yelled. “Hey, Wilma!”

  I was telling Steve how much I loved him. He told me to shush. It hurt my feelings. I pouted. Then I started listening too, waiting for Wilma to answer. I wondered why she didn’t.

  And all at once the water seemed to turn cold. My teeth began to chatter. I swam toward the dock.

  Chapter Ten

  (PAUL DOCKERTY—AFTERWARD)

  AFTER STEVE told me he thought Wilma had drowned, I stood there for perhaps ten seconds. Your mind works slowly after the kind of sleep I had. I had to dismiss the idea that it was a gag. Steve couldn’t act that well. “Have you phoned?” I asked him.

  “Phoned?” he said blankly.

  I remembered where I had seen a phone. I went in and it rang at least ten times before the sleepy operator answered, a trace of indignation in her voice. I spoke sharply.

  “This is the Ferris place. Wilma Ferris. Know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Ferris has drowned. We’re looking for her. Get hold of whoever can get over here with the necessary equipment. Can you do that?”

  After a pause she answered in a voice that had forgotten sleep and annoyance. “The troopers, the sheriff. Right away, sir.”

  I was still in swimming trunks. I went down to the dock. They were milling around, staring at the cold unfriendly water.

  “Where was she last seen?” I demanded. They talked and argued and interrupted each other and the net result was that no one knew. I got Steve and Gilman Hayes into a runabout. I went along. Randy Hess handled the boat. He had got a big flashlight from the house. I pushed off and let the boat drift out a way. We took turns diving from the bow, following the flashlight beam down. It was damn deep. Only once was I able to touch rock at the bottom. Hayes claimed to be able to get to the bottom each time. He probably could, with that chest on him. I knew it was a wild chance that we’d find her, but a chance worth taking, even at astronomical odds. Each minute that ticked away lessened her chance of survival, even if we found her. And there was another thing. For my own sake, I had to do all I possibly could. Because I knew that I could not be genuinely sorry she was dead. Any slackening of effort would give me almost the feeling of being an accomplice.

  Each time I came up, gasping for air, clinging to the boat, I could hear the ridiculous sounds Mavis was making. They weren’t genuine sounds. There was a bit too much heartbreak. I felt a disgust for her that seemed to me to be unnatural.

  Steve clung to the runabout beside me and said, his teeth chattering, “What’s the point, Paul? Hell. Needles in haystacks. My God, there’s a lot of lake here.”

  I heard the distant sirens then.

  “A few more times, Steve. Come on.”

  “Then you’ll be looking for me, too.”

  But we kept on. And then we went in, and I knew that no matter what anybody did now, it was too late. Too late for Wilma. The urgency was gone. Now it was the routine of recovering a body. Nothing more. I talked to the troopers and to a man named Fish and heard the boats, far across the lake, converging on the Ferris place. I’d droppe
d my robe on the shore end of the dock. I put it on, found the nearly empty cigarette pack in the pocket. The terry cloth of the robe dried my body and I began to feel warmer. I wanted to talk to somebody and it certainly wasn’t Mavis. I glanced up toward the stone steps and saw Judy Jonah sitting up there, looking small, huddled, a bit forlorn. My cheeks got a little hot as I remembered leaning heavily on her, drunk, maudlin, silly. Yet of all the people there, she seemed to be the only one who—to use an old tired phrase—was my kind of people. And that in itself made no sense. A famous comedienne, and a business type. And I had seen the look on Fish’s face when he’d found Wilma’s swimsuit in the pocket of her robe. Fish and I had been equally appalled. So here was Judy Jonah, who doubtless had been a part of the so gay, so mad swimming party, and maybe I had better plan on relaxing with types like Fish, who shared my Victorian hangover.

  I asked her if she’d stick around for a minute while I got a towel and some cigarettes. She said she would. I couldn’t read anything in her voice.

  I made it fast, and went back. I asked about the swimming party. And I found out that she and Randy and Wallace Dorn had kept themselves clothed. I don’t know why it mattered. But it made me feel good. And I didn’t give a damn about Mavis. So it could be Macy’s window as far as I was concerned. And so Mavis had managed to kill something that had been a long time adying. Killed it dead.

  And there’s nothing so damn lonesome. How do you say it? There has to be somebody who cares how you get along. Just somebody. Somebody really involved with you. Somehow it’s all a big kindergarten and you trot home with a gold star pasted on your forehead, to be admired. Or go home with a bruise, demanding intricate bandages. The world is a great cold place. Men die in strange cities. Obits are on back pages. The ball of mud keeps spinning, and the parades line up on all the holidays. You have to have somebody. Maybe it’s really dead and gone when you at last realize that she doesn’t give a damn, that she would make traditional bleating sounds for you, but with that same trace of scorn in her voice that I could hear, sitting there with Judy, sitting on the step below her. It made me feel cold and lonesome.