"I just didn't want you to reject the idea too quickly," I said.
"Ha," Jean said. "I'm an experienced woman even if I'm not exotic. I don't reject ideas too quickly. Proposals don't grow on trees, if that was a proposal. Although actually I had another one last week, from a guy I haven't even gone out with."
"You did?"
"Yeah," she said. "He's always admired me from afar. We grew up on the same block, so I guess he feels he knows me. He just called up and proposed."
She looked a little depressed, just for a moment.
"Shows you what an abstraction marriage is, to some people," she said.
"Actually, it can be kind of abstract," she added.
"Was yours and Jimmy's abstract?" I asked.
"Not at first," Jean said. "It was very tangible, at first Very much a realistic experience. Then the tangibility kind of drained out of it and it became sort of minimal. That was before he was angry. Then I decided to leave and he didn't like that. He got angry and it became sort of expressionistic. Very black blacks, and very white whites. Sort of Franz Kline. He still has the anger. He’ll never forgive me for being able to leave him. All I'll ever get from that man now is big black swipes of anger."
Then she giggled. "For a relatively dull marriage it approximated quite a few modes of modem art," she said. "I hadn't thought of it that way. It makes it seem more interesting than it actually was."
Jean looked around the restaurant, which was beautifully decorated and arranged, and still full of people who looked far dressier and more important than us.
"It's sort of magic," she said.
"What is?"
"The feeling you get, coming here," she said. "It's so elegant and the food is so good it convinces you you're living on a far higher plane than you're actually living on. But then you sink so quick, once you leave. It's why I'm not in a hurry to leave. I've been sunk for a long time. I wish I didn't have to sink again, quite so soon."
"Sink to what?"
Jean shrugged. "Oatmeal for Beverly and bacon fried absolutely crisp for Belinda," she said. "If there's one particle of unfried fat on a piece of bacon the little bitch won't eat it. I don't know how I could have had such a picky child. But that's what awaits me, at seven o'clock in the morning. Then I'll have to wash the saucepan I made the oatmeal in. Beverly only likes old-fashioned oatmeal, which is a lot of trouble. By the time all that's done there won't be a cell in my body that feels glamorous."
"It's a long time until seven a.m.," I said. "We could try and find a glamorous place and go dancing."
Jean shook her head. "Not necessary," she said. "This is all the illusion I require. Let's have one more brandy.
"Why do you think you want to marry me?" she asked, as we were driving home.
"I can't say I'd thought it through," I said. "We could go in the antique business together. Pool our talents."
"Pool your talents, you mean," she said. "I wouldn't mind being in business with you but it's certainly no reason to marry you."
"It might be an extra asset," I suggested.
"We have to get the real assets first,” Jean said, looking out the window.
"Which are they?"
She didn't answer. When we got to her house she told me to wait in the car and take Debbie home. She didn't have quite enough babysitter money so 1 loaned her a dollar. The money she fished out of her purse was all crinkled up, whereas my dollar was absolutely crisp and new. The contrast amused her.
"I'm not sure your money would want to live in the same house with my money," she said, before going in.
When I returned the front door was unlocked, so I went in. Jean was nowhere around, but while I was inspecting various small objects I sensed a presence and turned to see Belinda, standing at the bottom of the stairs.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in a distinct, unsleepy voice.
"Just looking around," I said.
"Belinda?" Jean said, from somewhere upstairs.
Belinda marched over to the stereo and turned it on, though she made no move to play a record. She seemed mesmerized by the little green light that indicated the stereo was on.
Jean came hurrying downstairs. "How come you're not asleep?" she asked Belinda.
"I woked," Belinda said. "Wanta play Pat Benatar?"
Jean swooped her up and gave her a kiss. "I want you to unwoke," she said.
I followed them up and watched Jean put an uncomplaining Belinda back in her bed. As we were going out of her room Jean took my hand and led me a few steps down the hall, into her bedroom.
"I was gonna hide all my treasures but I didn't get time," she said. "It's simpler just to turn off the light. That way you won't know you're surrounded by treasures until morning."
The only light in the bedroom came from a streetlight a block away. I felt nervous. I hadn't allowed myself to assume I would be spending the night. I could see various dark shapes in the room that could have been chests or trunks but I couldn't tell a thing about them.
"You don't have to worry so much," I said. "I'm not going to try and buy your favorite objects."
"No, but you're gonna wanta look at them —as opposed to me," she said. She had her head tilted—she was taking off her earrings. I heard her put them on top of the TV at the end of the bed. I put my hands on her shoulders and encountered one of her small hands. She had been about to take off a small gold necklace she wore. I helped her.
"Belinda spoiled my elaborate seduction," she said. "It's stupid to plan anything with kids around."
"Why did you want to plan an elaborate seduction?"
"Because I never get to. Are you nervous?"
"Yeah," I admitted.
"I figured you for a shy one," she said. "It goes with your lying."
She bent and shucked her dress off over her head. "If the light were on you could see my whole wardrobe," she said, "It's scattered around here. If you could see it you'd realize how hard I tried before I gave up and decided to look like myself."
I sat down on the bed and began to take off my boots.
"I wondered about that," Jean said, coming to stand in front of me. She rubbed my hair a little.
"About what?"
"Whether you had to sit down to take your boots off," she said. "I've never seduced anyone in boots. It's an important question. If you could have done it standing up I would have been really impressed."
"Have you been fantasizing about me taking my boots off?"
"Ever since I met you," Jean said.
"I thought you were contemptuous of boots."
She turned the covers back and hopped up on the bed.
"So I'm a little inconsistent," she said. "Hurry up. It's cold in here."
Chapter XVI
When I woke up the next morning very bright sun was shining in the window of the bedroom and Beverly and Belinda, in their red bathrobes, were sitting on the bed. Belinda held a huge pair of scissors and was cutting little pieces out of a section of morning paper, whereas Beverly, more serious, was reading a book.
"Good morning," I said,
"Hi," Beverly said. "Would you like me to read to you?"
She wiggled a little closer.
"Don't, Beverly," Belinda said, throwing her sister a dark look. "I'm cutting!"
"So what, I can't sit still forever," Beverly said. "Besides, you aren't cutting anything out. You're just making a mess."
"Still," Belinda insisted, as Jean came through the door. She too was in a red bathrobe, and she held two mugs of coffee.
"I hope you like company in the morning," she said. "Around here you get it whether you like it or not."
"He likes it," Belinda said.
Jean set one mug on the bedside table and carefully climbed on the bed, holding the other.
I felt vaguely troubled about the night, since I found I had no memory of having made love. The bed was very comfortable, and I had been very tired. I had a vague sense that something might have happened, later in the night, but I
couldn't be sure. Perhaps I had just gone to sleep and slept all night.
Still, if I had been a big disappointment, Jean seemed to be weathering it nicely. She looked quite happy, sitting on the bed with her girls. They formed a bright ensemble in their red bathrobes. Belinda sat across my feet, so that it was not easy for me to sit up and drink my coffee. There was a nice smell in the bed, namely the smell of young females and one woman, mixing with the smell of the hot coffee.
Jean and the girls were exchanging merry, conspiratorial looks, as if they were in on some secret that I didn't know.
"What's going on?" I asked.
Then I happened to glance at the room and saw that all the furniture was covered with sheets or bedspreads. None of the primary antiques were visible at all.
I must have looked surprised, because Jean and Beverly laughed and Belinda went into a paroxysm of giggles. She giggled so hard that the others began to laugh at her.
"It certainly is cheerful around here in the morning," I said.
Belinda lay across my legs, gasping for breath and waving the scissors around.
"Be careful with those scissors, Belinda," Jean said. "Don't you think it's time you girls got cracking?"
"I do," Beverly said. She left. Belinda continued to loll across my legs.
"Get going, Belinda. Play school," Jean said.
"Sleepy," Belinda said. ''He's still in bed."
"Yeah, but he isn't being picked up in ten minutes."
"He could take us in the soft car," Belinda suggested.
"Nope, get going," Jean said in firm tones.
Belinda yawned. "Got up too early," she said
Seeing that hw words had no effect, Jean picked her up and carried her off. As she was being carried Belinda fixed me with an upside-down look.
"Come and get us in the soft car," she said.
"Don't make her any promises," Jean said.
In a few minutes I heard a honk and raised up to look out the window. The girls, dressed now, were being picked up by a woman in a station wagon. Beverly was going willingly, Belinda dawdling across the yard, urged on by Jean, who was still in her bathrobe. Belinda's movements were so slow as to be imperceptible. Finally, with several people yelling at her, she gave up and went on to the car, which immediately left.
A minute later Jean came back to the room and hopped on the bed.
"I've never known a child who could dawdle like that," she said. "She's always up to a contest of wills, whereas I’m not, always. Sometimes I win, sometimes she wins."
"It must make life interesting."
"It makes it exhausting," Jean said.
But she didn't look exhausted. She looked out the window for a moment, as if trying to remember something. She appeared to be extremely fresh and alert. I had no idea what thought or thoughts she might be busy with.
"It's very interesting, that you're never quite free of kids," she said, slipping out of her bathrobe. She got back under the covers with me. "What's gonna happen now is that Belinda's gonna fake being sick. She hates school because she can't dominate it, plus she doesn't want to miss whatever might happen with you here. I know her so well I can imagine every move she makes. Today she's gonna fake a stomachache, vaguest of all ills. Who can disprove a stomachache?"
"How long do we have before this happens?" I asked.
Jean looked at the bedside clock.
"A couple of hours, if we're lucky," she said.
I was still feeling guilty because I couldn't remember the night.
"Did anything at all happen last night?" I asked.
Jean looked amused. "Nothing appropriate to such a grand evening;" she said. "How many hours had you been awake before you hit this bed?"
I tried to count up, mentally.
"Never mind," Jean said. "It doesn't matter. I got to watch you at a time when you were totally defenseless, which was interesting."
"Did you reach any conclusions?" I asked.
Jean rolled on top of me, looking me in the eye from very close range. She ran a finger across my lips. Her eyes were green flecked with brown. She didn't weigh much and she seemed to be in an awfully good humor. Looking at her alert face an inch away I felt myself sliding quickly down into love. The feeling was exactly analogous to one of the first feelings I could remember, that of sliding down the big slide on the school playground in Solino, Texas, when I was a young boy. It was a very slick slide. Once you climbed to the top all you had to do was lift your hands and whoosh, you were gone so rapidly that it created a funny sensation in the stomach and the groin. Looking into Jean's eyes, I felt the same sensation. I had lifted my hands—now I was gone.
“I love you," I said.
"Ha," she said. "You better do something about it before Belinda persuades them she's got cancer."
"You could take the phone off the hook," I suggested.
"No, because you never know," she said. "She might really get sick. A swing might hit her in the head and give her a concussion. A lot of things can happen to tiny kids. It worries me to have it off the hook."
"Forget it," I said.
Fortunately the morning passed without the phone having rung a single time. We talked several times about getting up but we didn't get up. Finally we both noticed that we were so hungry we felt hollow, so Jean went downstairs and made two enormous tuna fish sandwiches, and brought them back to the bedroom. We wolfed them down, and drank some milk.
"It's amazing how good tuna fish can taste when you're really hungry," Jean said. "It's almost better than sex."
"Last night you said it would probably be nice if we got married," I reminded her.
She shrugged. "That was last night," she said. "What makes you think it would work? It practically never does."
"I think I'm ready for it," I said. "I don't think I was before."
"Bullshit," she said. "How can you ever know if you're ready for a marriage when you're not in it? All you do is fantasize about the nice parts. Then you actually get in it and lose track of the nice parts. Or else what was once nice stops seeming nice."
"I think you're being deliberately pessimistic," I said.
Jean rubbed my hair again, as if I were a dog.
"Well, you're sweet but it's no deal," she said, grinning. "I think I'd rather hold you in reserve, for the occasional orgy."
"Why?"
"I don't want to get bored with you," she said. "Nor do I want you to get bored with me. I'd rather marry someone I was already a little bored with. Then there'd be no decline."
"You wouldn't really marry someone you were bored with, though," I said. "That would be insanity."
"That would be practicality," she said. "But you're right. I’m not capable of it. Still, it doesn't affect my position vis-a-vis you."
I was beginning to feel a little sad, suddenly. Jean seemed awfully clearheaded. I knew it was simplistic to think that love always followed sex, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking that way. We had had a fairly passionate morning, but the passion hadn't wrought any great changes, as it was supposed to. It had made us fonder and closer, but apparently it had not been all-consuming. Jean was cheerful, but she was far from consumed. I was getting depressed at the thought that I might not get to live with her.
I guess my worry showed. Jean set her plate on the TV and came back into my arms. I couldn't think of what to say next. We held hands for a while.
"I like the thought of you being out there, you know," she said. "Off in odd states, where I've never been, finding things at flea markets. I think that's your life. I know it's charming to wake up in this lovely bedroom, with my delightful daughters piled on top of you. No doubt the three of us could keep you amused by one means or another for quite a while. But I just don't think it's your life. You're just getting scared of being lonely or something, so you think you want it to be."
"But my life is such a peculiar life," I said. "All I do is buy things. I spend all my time at flea markets or in junk shops or at auctions. Don't you thi
nk I'm capable of a more normal existence?"
"I think you're just getting lonely," she said. "You're leading a more interesting life than you think. You just don't realize it's interesting."
She gave me a quick kiss.
"I think you're romanticizing all this middle-class domesticity we've got around here," she said.
"But I don't even know if I still like scouting," I said. "The part that's beginning to depress me is seeing all the hope people invest in those objects."
Jean grew a little somber. "That's true," she said. "It's mainly all those women, hoping it'll be better if they can just find the right thing to buy. I used to do that myself."
"Such as the day I took the icon away from you?" I asked. "You must have been pinning a lot of hopes on that icon."
Jean nodded. "I did," she said. "I thought about it for a whole week. It took my mind off everything else. But it's good that you got it. The thrill would only have lasted a day or so and then I would have felt guilty about spending the money. My life wouldn't really have become any different."
"Although"—she paused—"this bedroom would be different. I was gonna put it on that wall, over my dower chest."
She jumped out of bed and whipped a sheet off the dower chest. It was indeed a wonderful chest. German rococo, decorated with nymphs and cherubs and still with its original paint, which was cracking, but cracking nicely.
Jean jumped back in bed. "Isn't it great?" she said. "God I love that chest."
She had a fine eye. The chest and the icon were nothing alike, but on her wall they would combine beautifully.
"I'm giving you the icon now," I said. "It belongs on that wall."
She looked me over for a moment. "Okay," she said.
Then she grinned. "I knew right away I'd get it from you," she said.
She looked out the window.
"Being a scout was sort of my dream once, before I got these girls," she said. "But I would never have been as good at it as you are. I'm too half-assed, plus I don't have any money and I'm not brave enough to drive all over America by myself. Besides, I was just basically lookin' to have myself a couple of girls."