Wayfaring Stranger

“You know how offensive that is, Jerry?”

  “You had a fling and your hubby found out about it. What did he think happens out here? This is Babylon-by-the-Sea. On a spring night you can hear the hymens snapping like crickets. Are you going to dump your career and go back home and serve your redneck friends beer while they tell nigger jokes?”

  “That word was never used in our home.”

  “I’m afraid you’re about to leave us in the lurch, love. It’s in your eyes. You want it both ways.”

  Why did Jerry always make her feel like a child? “I don’t know what you’re saying,” she lied.

  “Your lover is a handsome war hero and millionaire movie producer. Except you can’t have him and still be the virginal lass from Hushpuppyville.”

  She sat down next to him. He started to drink from his glass, but she took it from his hand and replaced it on the bar. “You drink too much,” she said.

  “I hope you don’t divorce. Because if you do, I’ll probably marry you, and you’ll make my life a bloody hell.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. What you told me on the set in Mexico? That was true?”

  “About your ability? There’s no question about it. Everybody knows it. That is, everybody except you. I’m going to speak a bit coarsely here. Every man in this town wants to go to bed with you because you’re beautiful. But that’s just part of it. They want your talent. That also goes for the ladies who are AC/DC. They’re like candle moths swimming around the light in the bottle.”

  “Where does that put you?”

  “I’ll probably be an asterisk by your name. You’re a temptation, though. I’d love to have a run at you.”

  “Why didn’t you ever try?”

  He stood up from the bar and put his arm around her shoulders. “Come over here,” he said.

  “What for?”

  He walked with her to the picture-glass window. “See all those guys lifting weights down there? They want power and success that will never be theirs. They’ll sleep with men or women to get it. Or maybe to have the crumbs from under the table. By the time they catch on that they’ve been had, it’s usually too late. When you get fucked out here, it’s for keeps. And when it’s over, you hate yourself for ever thinking you were the one in charge.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her cheeks already burning.

  “You never fucked somebody cross-eyed, all the time telling yourself you were in control? You never told yourself you had sexual power over others that they couldn’t resist? Because the day you did is the day you not only got fucked in spades but helped the other person do it.”

  She went into the bathroom and locked the door and sat on the side of the tub, her sobs muffled behind her hand, unsure for whom she was crying.

  ON THE NIGHT flight to Houston, the plane hit a violent electrical storm, one as intense and terrifying as the storm Linda Gail had witnessed off Santa Monica Beach. The windows of the plane were streaked with rain, the clouds erupting with great yellow pools of lightning, the thunder crashing so loudly that drink glasses were shattering in the stewardess’s compartment. The plane was dropping with such rapidity through the air pockets that she couldn’t hear the engines. But she kept writing on top of a book balanced on her knee, the beam of a small nightlight aimed at her sheet of stationery.

  Once again she was putting down on paper the words she needed to say to Hershel. This time she was determined to hold nothing back and accept the consequences of her behavior, whatever they were, and to let Hershel decide whether he wanted her. She didn’t mention Roy’s name. She simply stated that she had been unfaithful and the fault was hers alone. If there was any lie in her words, it lay in her statement that she loved Hershel (though she did, it was not in the way a wife or lover would).

  As the plane slammed against the updrafts, spilling luggage and hatboxes into the aisle, she wondered if she had underestimated the storm’s potential. The plane’s wing lights were blinking, the clouds streaming through the propellers like black smoke, making her wonder if her eyes were playing tricks on her or indeed the engines had caught fire. When a stewardess was knocked to her knees, none of the passengers was willing to unhook a seat belt in order to help her up. The door to the pilot’s cabin was swinging wildly on the hinges, but there seemed to be no one available to secure it. She pulled the curtain on the window and kept writing and tried to suppress the fear that caused her hand to tremble each time she reached the edge of the page.

  The great challenge was not in admitting wrongdoing; it was incurring the possible loss of her career. What if her betrayal caused Hershel to ask her to quit Warner Bros. or to leave Hollywood? As soon as she posed the question in those terms, her ego immediately flared to life, burning like an indignant white flame in her chest. You earned your career, a voice said. Why should you have to give it away? Was she supposed to be a penitent the rest of her life?

  She felt her fountain pen leaking across her hand. She had forgotten what the variations in a plane’s cabin pressure could do to the rubber bladder in a fountain pen. The ink left a dark blue stain in the shape of a monkey’s paw on her white dress.

  Down below she saw a break in the clouds and the lights of a city spread across a prairie as flat as a breadboard. The pilot came on the intercom and announced that the plane would be landing at Lubbock, and all the passengers would be placed in a hotel at the airline’s expense until the storm passed.

  Three hours later, as the dawn was breaking coldly in the east, Linda Gail called Hershel at home. There was no answer. She called three times, then at eight-thirty A.M. she called the office in Houston. The secretary said he had not come in. Nor was he at the office in Baton Rouge.

  She called Roy Wiseheart at his home. “Oh, thank heavens,” she said when he picked up.

  “Linda Gail?” he said, his voice dropping into a whisper.

  “We had to make an emergency landing in Lubbock. Will you go to my house and check on Hershel?”

  “Me?”

  “I have no one else I can depend upon.”

  “Call Weldon.”

  “I already did. He’s no help. He’s a stick in the mud on top of it.”

  “You shouldn’t have called here.”

  “I’m worried about what Hershel might do. He has a gun.”

  “He’s a grown man. He needs to be treated like one.”

  “You were both war heroes. He’ll listen to you.”

  “Do you realize how inappropriate this is?”

  “Inappropriate? I’m talking about somebody’s life.”

  There was a silence. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Go to the house. If he’s not there, try to find out where he is. You have resources that other people don’t. Do I have to explain this to you?”

  “I’ve got to go now.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me. I’ll call back. I don’t care who’s there, either.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “I want your word.”

  “I promise.”

  “You don’t know how much this means.”

  “Are we still on?”

  “On for what?”

  “On. What do you think I mean? We also have to talk about the picture. I spoke with Jerry Fallon twenty minutes ago. He wants us back in Los Angeles in five days. So does Jack Warner.” There was another beat. “Are you there?”

  “Call me after you check on Hershel.”

  “Did you hear what I said? Jack Warner wants us both in L.A.”

  “I don’t care what he wants. Find Hershel.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Linda Gail, I can’t simply turn my feelings on and off. I feel sick when I can’t see you.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you,” she said.

  “It goes a little deeper than that.”

&nbs
p; “What? Into your glands?” she said. “Goes deeper into what? How many people have to get ruined before you understand there are other people on the planet?”

  “I don’t care about them. I care about you,” he replied.

  THE PLANE TOUCHED down in Houston at two that afternoon. Linda Gail took a cab to the house and was stunned when she stepped out on the sidewalk. Her flowerbeds had been destroyed, the roses and trumpet vine torn from the trellises, holes chopped in the side lawn, dirt piled on the St. Augustine grass like strings of anthills. A plastic bag that had contained processed cow manure was impaled to the ground by the point of a mattock, the plastic rattling in the wind.

  “You want me to carry your bags in, ma’am?” the cabbie asked.

  “What?” she said.

  “Your bags. You want them inside?”

  “Leave them on the porch,” she said.

  “What porch you mean?”

  “The front porch, the only porch. We don’t have another porch,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, laboring with her two bags to the concrete bib around the single step that led into the living room.

  She took her house key from her purse but didn’t insert it in the lock. Her Cadillac was parked in the porte cochere. A curtain rod on the front window was broken, the curtain sagging in the middle.

  “Is everything okay here, ma’am?” the cabbie said.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “You look a little bothered, ma’am. Is there somebody inside you’re worried about? I’m asking if you want a cop.”

  “No. You’re very thoughtful. I’m a little tired. Long plane trip.”

  “You’re a movie star. I saw your picture in The Houston Post.”

  “That’s nice. I appreciate it,” she said.

  “Could I have an autograph? It’s for my daughter.”

  “I’d be honored. What’s her name?” she said, taking a piece of stationery and her damaged fountain pen from her purse.

  After he was gone, she opened the door and looked at the living room. There was nothing out of place other than the curtain. She walked into the kitchen and the dining room and onto the sun porch. Everything was clean, intact, in its proper place. Then she went into the bedroom. The curtains were closed. When she clicked on the light, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The ambiance of frilly rayon and puffy quilts and pink and silver and pale blue was as she had left it. Then she saw the marriage photo of her and Hershel in front of the Assemblies of God church in Cottonport, Louisiana. She had been wearing a white suit, a corsage on her shoulder; Hershel had been wearing his uniform, his new chevrons on his sleeve, his ribbons pinned to his chest. They were smiling into the camera, their hands joined. Except Hershel was no longer in the picture. The photo had been scissored in half, and now only Linda Gail remained inside the frame, her hands cut away just behind the knuckles.

  The photos in their scrapbook, which had a velvet cover and a glossy plastic heart glued on it, had been altered in the same fashion. Each photo left Linda Gail by herself, sometimes smiling at someone who was no longer there.

  She opened the top drawer of her dresser, where she kept a piece of framed ceramic that contained her handprint and Hershel’s side by side, the only souvenir she brought back from their honeymoon in Biloxi. The ceramic had been broken neatly in half, all dust and fine particles and rough edges wiped clean. Her handprint had been refitted in the frame and Hershel’s removed.

  As she closed the drawer, she felt a level of loss and abandonment she hadn’t thought possible.

  She went back in the living room and sat down in a deep chair and called Roy Wiseheart at home. A woman answered.

  “May I speak to Roy, please?” Linda Gail said.

  “He’s next door. Who’s calling, please?”

  “This is Linda Gail, Mrs. Wiseheart. I need to talk to Roy. Can you ask him to call me at home?”

  “Regarding what, please?”

  “I understand that Mr. Warner wants both of us back in Los Angeles. I don’t know if I will be able to do that.”

  “Why don’t you contact Mr. Warner and tell him that?”

  “Would you deliver the message for me, please?”

  “I certainly will. You must come see us more often. I hear so many wonderful things about you. How is your husband? I bet you two are having a jolly time with all your success. I have to admire your composure when you call here. Your gall is like none I’ve ever encountered.”

  After Linda Gail hung up, the side of her face felt as though it had been stung by a wasp.

  SHE BRUSHED HER teeth and showered and put on fresh clothes and drove to Roy Wiseheart’s house at the other end of River Oaks, where the homes were monumental and as ornate and brightly lit as antebellum riverboats, the moss-hung live oaks so stately and dark and mysterious that she wondered if any of the people living here were made up of the same blood and tissue and bone as she. In comparison, the homes of the plantation oligarchy in Louisiana seemed like worm-eaten facsimiles. She found that thought a bit consoling.

  Clara Wiseheart had said Roy was next door. But which house? The sky was almost dark, the stars sparkling in the east. The house south of the Wisehearts’ was lit only by carriage lamps. The one on the north was another matter. Through the French doors, she could see a Christmas tree that towered to the ceiling, its boughs ringing with tinsel and strings of colored lights that winked on and off. Out back, two men were playing tennis on a red clay court, whocking the ball back and forth in the cold air, their thick white sweaters buttoned to the chin, like early-twentieth-century college boys.

  She knew one of them had to be Roy. Who else would play outdoor tennis at night in winter? Who else would wear long pants on the court, as though the year were 1920? Who else would try to insulate himself from his loveless marriage by turning profligacy and self-indulgence into a religion?

  She had to admit she was drawn to his boyish immaturity, and the fact that in bed he could be sweet and caring. His reverential attitude toward her beauty and the way he touched her body and did everything she secretly wanted were confessions of his need and his adoration. These were things that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

  She could not allow herself these kinds of thoughts. She had made a resolution on the plane during the electrical storm, and she had to keep it and not think in a self-centered manner. She had called Roy profligate, but she knew that deep down inside Linda Gail Pine, there was a sybarite always thinking about one more bite of forbidden fruit.

  She parked her car by the carriage house and opened the chain-link door to the court and stepped out on its hard-packed surface. Roy turned around and grinned broadly in surprise, his face hot and sweaty under the lights. She felt her heart quickening, the way it had at high school dances years ago when a boy visiting from Baton Rouge or Vicksburg caught sight of her and was obviously smitten by her looks. Then Roy refocused his attention on the game. His opponent threw the ball in the air and served it like a white rocket across the net. Roy backhanded the ball up the line, then charged the net before his opponent could recover, slashing the weak lob diagonally across the court.

  “Got you!” Roy said. “Be back in a jiff.” He walked toward Linda Gail, blotting his forehead with his sleeve. “What are you doing here, you lovely thing?”

  “Wondering why you didn’t call me. Wondering if you saw Hershel.”

  “I thought that might be it. Let’s go in my friend’s pool house. I need a drink. How’d you know where I was?”

  “Your wife told me.”

  “You called Clara?”

  “No, I called you. She answered. She mocked me.”

  “In an earlier incarnation, she likely ran a torture chamber for the Inquisition.”

  He opened the door to the pool house and let her walk in front of him, then pulled off his
sweater and dropped it on the bar. His T-shirt was soaked, his arms shiny with sweat. The room was outfitted with a billiard table, a refrigerator, a rack of cue sticks on the wall, and a felt poker table with mahogany trim and leather pockets for chips. He sat down in a deep cloth-covered chair and crossed one leg on his knee. “Can you fix us a Scotch and soda? I’m running on the rims. You picked up some tan in Santa Monica. You look stunning.”

  “Did you see Hershel?”

  “I banged on the front and back doors and looked through the windows. No one was there. I went back later and tried again. I talked to a neighbor who said he thought Hershel was out of town.”

  “When did you do all this?”

  “This morning and at lunchtime.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  She didn’t have an answer. “Thanks for doing what you could. I don’t know where he could have gone.”

  “Maybe to visit his family. These things always pass.”

  “These things?”

  “Don’t start. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Hershel isn’t one to disappear without saying anything. Why didn’t he tell Weldon or somebody at the office?”

  “Maybe he did. Anyway, you’ve done your best. Time we talk about other things, namely ourselves. You know how I feel.”

  “Does your friend want a drink?”

  “Don’t shut me out like this, Linda Gail.”

  “I asked if your friend wanted a drink.”

  “No, he needs to sulk awhile. He does that every time I beat him. He was the clandestine Jew in our fraternity. I was the only fellow who knew he was Jewish. He’s extra-sensitive, particularly when I hammer him on the court.”

  “Why would you want to belong to a fraternity made up of people like that?”

  “All of the fraternities were like that. They still are. In Louisiana, a lot of Negroes attended your school and church?”

  “None of us had choices about where we went. You did.”

  “How about that drink?”

  She filled a tumbler with ice and three fingers of Scotch, then squirted soda into it and wrapped a paper napkin around it and handed it to him.