Cloud Nine

  “And how did he smell, if I may ask?”

  “Not good, but better. Enough, anyway, that I had to ’pologize for those various things I had said.”

  “Did he ’pologize for raping you?”

  “That subject didn’t come up.”

  “...Or did he?”

  “Did he? Did he? Did he what?”

  “Rape you?”

  “I thought I told you he did.”

  “You did, and now I’m telling you, it’s not true, what you’ve said—or if it is, it’s not the whole truth, or even a fractional part of it. Sonya, on TV one night, in connection with White House stuff, I heard a guy say: ‘The truth bears its own thumbprint, right in the middle of its forehead—and so does a lie, except bigger, from having a bigger thumb.’ It’s all a lie, what you’ve said, so maybe the other was too. Maybe it wasn’t rape, maybe you weren’t held by two kind friends of his. Who were they, anyway? Do you realize you’ve never said? And why didn’t you tell your mother, until you got knocked up? Then, and then only, did you remember you were raped.

  “You know what it reminds me of? Of Lincoln’s story, of the man he was defending, as a lawyer, in Illinois, from a woman’s charge that he raped her. She took the stand and he asked her: ‘Madame, if it is true, as you say, that this defendant raped you on Tuesday afternoon, how come you didn’t tell your husband till Friday night? ‘Well I just didn’t recollect,’ she answered—and that’s how it was with you!”

  I could have said more, but didn’t, and went back to my chair, where I slumped down, with no more steam in my boiler. She came over, knelt beside me, moistened her thumb, pressed it against her brow, and said: “I was raped—now what does the print say?”

  “You were raped.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now rub again, for today.”

  She stared, then got up again, without rubbing, and went back to her place on the sofa. “Okay, it was the truth, every word, but not the whole truth, of course, so it was really a lie, with an extra big thumb. Gramie, what I left out was why. And that I’m not going to tell you. I told you before, our cloud went pop, soon as Miss Jane came back, so I know what I have to do, get out. And I’m going to. I said I wouldn’t be inny pest, and I won’t be, that I promise you. But I have something to do first, something that has to be done, and be done by me, as I was the cause of it all—and because I’m the one and the only one that can do it. So my time hasn’t quite come. But until it comes, can I ask that you give me some peace? That you quit bugging me? I’m not going to lay up with Burl—maybe he thinks I am, but Burl can make a mistake. But I am going to use him, I hope, for what I must do, what I must!

  “What I hafta!”

  She almost screamed it, being suddenly all wrought up. I went over, sat down beside her, and took her in my arms. I whispered: “Fine, anything you say. But why do you have to go?”

  “Because I love you is why.”

  Chapter 20

  I REPORTED TO MOTHER next day, driving over there as soon as I’d checked in at the office. She listened and said: “Well I wouldn’t know what to tell you—Sonya is smart, and I would swear she’s decent, so she’s not playing Burl’s game, that we can be sure of. As to what game she is playing, I don’t know how you find out, unless you hire a private detective, but not even he can tell you why, which is what you want to know.”

  We just sat for some time, and then she went on: “I can understand your upset, and I promise you, I’m on tension too. I haven’t mentioned it to you, but Pat Moran called up, offering a piece of a deal he’s putting together, a million-dollar apartment here in Riverdale—he’s picked up five lots, three of them vacant, two with small houses on them, so on land he’s okay. And as he means to build a garage behind his main building, no parking problem’s involved, and as the apartments are going to be small, not suited to families with children, there’ll be no strain on the school.

  “Or in other words, it’s a good, solid project that nobody should object to. Just the same, it calls for zoning reclassification, from Residential B to A—which is why he offered me in, as he counts on me to swing it. Well, I probably could. I’ve kept my connections up, and made a few new ones lately. But, until this thing is out of the way, I have no appetite for it. Politics is partly deals—like this one—but it’s also partly combat. If you don’t like a fight, stay out. I don’t mind one, as a rule. But, with this thing hanging fire, I’m just a bundle of jitters. I can’t forget what she said, about what’s waiting for Jane—I feel as though a time-bomb were ticking somewhere. I told Pat include me out. I had to.”

  Some days went by, and then one night I went home, to have the door opened for me by Sonya, all dressed up in the same blue dress she’d had on the first day in the parking lot, and the little black hat, a tiny shell made of straw, on the order of a skull cap. I kissed her, followed her into the living room, looked her over and asked: “Well? We going out? Or what?”

  “Why... I am. Yes.”

  “And I’m not?”

  By that time, I had sat down on one of the sofas, and she sat opposite, across the table, on the other. She didn’t answer at once, but then: “Gramie, my time has come.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I said I was going, didn’t I? Well, now I am.”

  “But nobody’s asked you to go.”

  “Listen, what’s the good of staying? We’ve been all over that, over and over and over. No marriage can stand the strain when the wife comes between the guy and his dream, the guy and his million bucks. So, I’m shoving off, like I promised.

  “But I thought it might be nice if we had a last dinner together, that we both could look back on and kind of keep in our hearts. So I got us a Beltsville turkey, and made hominy, rutabaga, and cranberry sauce to go with it—oh, and that Graves white wine that you like—it’s all timed for seven-thirty, when it’ll be getting dark and we can eat by candlelight. And talk about how nice things were when we were up on our cloud.”

  “Which is still up there, incidentally.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It is, if you’d get on it, and...”

  “Without the dream, it couldn’t be, and isn’t.”

  I went over, took her in my arms, and tried to carry her upstairs, but she wrestled me off, and I quit—but not till I noticed how soft she was, and warm, and part of me, somehow. She said, “Gramie, don’t make it harder for me than it is. I don’t want to go, God knows. I have to, that’s all. So will you listen to me? What I’ve done today? So you can take up from where I left off and get the benefit?”

  “What have you done today?”

  “I broke up that marriage, Gramie.”

  “You mean Jane’s? With Burl?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then how did you break it up?”

  “Does it matter? I did, that’s all. It’s what I’ve been hanging around for, what I had to do. Well? It’s done, and there’s no need to talk about it.”

  “There is need to talk.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re keeping stuff back, stuff I have to know about.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Sonya, what is this? What have you been up to?”

  “I will not talk about it.”

  She went out to the kitchen and came back with the cocktail tray, making the martini at the side table. She chunked the ice with her pick, rubbed the glasses with lemon peel, put an olive with a toothpick in each, measured gin and vermouth with her eye. Then she dropped the ice in and stirred, till the pitcher began to smoke up. Then she poured and put my glass in front of me. I was still on her side of the table, and she sat down beside me. “I don’t like it, but this once I’ll drink with you, because it’s our last night.”

  I raised my glass. “To us, then” I said.

  “To us on our cloud when we had one.”

  We sipped and I sat there looking at her, thinking how pretty she w
as. She asked, “Can I go on?”

  “If you insist, I can’t stop you.”

  “First, about her, Mrs. Sibert—well, I keep calling her that, but she’s really Mrs. Stuart, from being married to Burl. But, she’s kicking him out—I imagine she already has. So, soon as I blow, get over there. Drive to her house, stretch her out on the floor, and give her what she wants from you—which was her dream all along, not this crazy thing with Burl. Then you’ll get back your dream, and of course the million bucks. Be gentle with her, she’ll cooperate.”

  “What else?”

  “I’m taking the car you gave me.”

  “What else?”

  “I’m keeping the thousand dollars that you put to my account, as I’m going to need it to live on, while I’m getting started again—I can get a job as a waitress, I’m pretty sure of that—but I don’t want to feel afraid, or go home with my tail between my legs. So, I’m keeping that thousand, and some more I have too, that I imbizzled since we got married, from the household money you gave me. That’s another thing I want to thank you for, how nice you treated me, giving me more than I needed—Gramie, you’re one hell of a nice guy.”

  “Then what are you leaving me for?”

  “I said. It’s not a what, it’s a who. Mrs. Sibert.”

  “What else?”

  “Did you hear me? I imbizzled four hundred dollars.”

  “Sonya, I love you.”

  “Well? I love you. It’s why I’m leaving.”

  “How about one last trip on our cloud?”

  “If I took it I couldn’t go.”

  “That’s the whole idea.”

  “No, Gramie! I must go! I hafta.”

  It was getting dark, and she took the tray to the kitchen, along with both our glasses. Then she tinkled her bell and called, and I went back to the dining room. The table was beautifully set, with roses as a centerpiece, arranged flat in a glass dish, a candle on each side, and tomato salad waiting, ready to eat. When we’d finished it she took the plates and brought in the turkey, a cute little one, perfectly cooked. Then she brought the hominy and rutabaga and cranberry sauce, and I did the carving.

  She served me my giblet sauce, correcting me when I called it giblet gravy. She said: “It’s sauce, not gravy—I made it as it says in Joy of Cooking. It’s more digestible than gravy, and tastes better.” Then she poured the wine. Graves is a wine I like, a Bordeaux white, fairly dry, with a trace of sweet—but what I liked most about it was that she liked it too.

  For dessert she served ice cream bricks with brandied cherries. Then for the grand finale, she served coffee diable, lighting it, and blowing the candles out. In the blue flame she looked like a girl from some kind of dream world, and I wanted to cry. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I love you.”

  “Then, we love each other.”

  I went in the living room, where in a few minutes she joined me, carrying her handbag and little spring coat. I must have had a look on my face as she dropped them on a chair, and said, “Well? My other things, my bags and stuff, are all packed and in the car.” She sat beside me on my sofa, giving me all sorts of directions about the turkey, the hominy and how to cook it, or warm it up, or whatever I was supposed to do with it, and I guess I listened, though I haven’t the faintest idea what she said. Then she stopped and pulled my arm around her and started inhaling me. “If only you didn’t smell so nice,” she whispered. “Now kiss me. Kiss me good-bye.”

  I kissed her. I held her close, so close I meant never to let her loose. She didn’t seem to mind, but kissed back, so our lips were glued. That’s when the doorbell rang. “Oh for Christ’s sake!” I growled.

  “You better see who it is.”

  “To hell with them—let them go away.”

  “Want me to go, Gramie?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  I went to the door. Jane Sibert was there.

  Chapter 21

  IF THERE WAS ANYONE I wanted to see just then, I can’t think now who it was, but if there was one person on earth I certainly did not want to see, it had to be her. And apparently, she felt the same about me. She had on a spring coat, much like Sonya’s, and a white dress that went nice with her soft blue hair, but her eyes were hard, and looked away as soon as she saw me. She said: “Good evening, Gramie, I hope you’ve been well. I’m calling on Mrs. Kirby, if she’s at home.”

  I asked her in and said I’d see, but almost at once Sonya was there, with a bright, chirpy greeting. “Why Miss Jane,” she sang out, “what a nice co-instance. I was fixing to go see you, to drive out to your place, later on in the evening. And so you saved me the trouble. Why don’t we go in and sit down.” Sonya led the way to the living room, sat Jane down on a sofa, took the other one herself, and waited till I camped on a chair, before asking: “What brings you, Miss Jane? What can I do for you?”

  “So! It was you!”

  Jane whispered it dramatically, but Sonya drew a blank, and gave it a long stare. “Who was me?” she asked.

  “That girl who was there. Burl said it was, and...”

  “Well of course! I should have said who I was.”

  “You ladies know each other?” I enquired.

  “Know each other!” said Sonya. “I’ll say we do.”

  She started to talk, in the airiest kind of way, as though telling a funny story, which I suppose in a way it was. “Well,” she said, speaking mainly to me, but turning to Jane now and then, as though for corroboration, “I mentioned, I think, that I busted her marriage up, and so long as she’s here, there’s no harm in saying how. I did it by working on Burl, the well-known weakness he has, of chasing skirts any age, so all I had to do was shake mine at him once, and sure enough here he came running.

  “So he kept asking me up for a date in that office he has, and I kept putting him off. So then I said I would, but the thing of it was I didn’t trust him, any more than I’d trust any man: that he would be on time, and not give me some kind of a stand-up, so I’d have to wait in the hall. I said give me a key, so I can go in at once, soon as I come to the door, and wait inside; then he’d have a date. So he did.

  “So soon as I checked that it really was the right key, and not some kind of a cross he’d handed me, I had a duplicate made, and mailed one to her, in Hyattsville. Care General Delivery there, so it couldn’t be intercepted by Burl out at the house. So soon as she picked it up, after I rang her about it, I lined the stakeout up. I told her come in on us three-fifteen today, and had everything ready, what she was going to find. Well say,” she said to Miss Jane, “you were long enough coming—it was three-thirty and then some before I heard the click of your key turning the lock.”

  “Anyway, I came,” said Miss Jane, very grim.

  “Okay. So what are you doing here?”

  Sonya wasn’t quite so airy now, but Miss Jane snapped back at her: “I told you already—I had to make sure who you were, that Burl was telling the truth!”

  “But that’s not all, is it?”

  “...I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kirby?”

  “Now that I’ve busted your marriage up—at lease as I hope I have—you think you’ll do the same for me. Well I have news for you: My marriage is already busted. I was on my way out, the moment you rang the bell. So you have a clear track with Gramie, and I heartily wish you well. So now...”

  She picked up her coat and bag, but Jane, who’d been deflated a bit, tried to blow herself up again. “I caught her!” she screamed. “In the act!”

  “Now, Miss Jane, not that. Not quite.”

  “In the act! He had exposed himself!”

  She repeated it, and I cut in, to Sonya, “Just a minute, please. What does that mean, ‘He had exposed himself?”

  “Means he had his thing hanging out—I guess that’s what it means. Yeah, it’s how he makes his pass—we’re supposed to fall in a faint, all us girls are, from the joy of looking at it. Well? It’s how he got her”—jerking her thumb at Miss Jane—“that fi
rst night at your mother’s when they ran into each other there, and she ’sisted on riding him home. But then when they got there, to the Stuart Building, he wouldn’t get out of the car, said she was all wrought up and he was going to see her home.

  “So he did, and when she brought him inside—lo and behold—he unzipped, took it out, and asked if she wanted to play with it. So she said no, but let on she’d like to fondle it. Well that hit Burl funny, for some reason, and I guess it does me, a little bit. Anyway, when she’d fondled on it awhile, she thought of a place to put it, and did, right there on the parlor floor, in under the whispering cattails. Where the cattails come in, I wouldn’t personally know, but that’s how Burl told it to me, and I aim to be truthful, always.”

  Jane, having blown herself up for a moment, made a weak shrivel. When Sonya started her airy recital, she covered her face with her hands, and then, as it went on, pulled her knees up under her chin, and toppled over sidewise, against the end of the sofa, so she was just a small pile of clothing, a tiny, collapsed old woman, shaking and shivering and shuddering.

  Sonya went over to her, and wound up: “Miss Jane, we don’t happen to have a hole that you can crawl into, but you can make out, I reckon, with a pillow over your head.” So she put a sofa pillow on Jane’s head, and turned away, as though from a deed well done.

  “What are you putting on your head?” I snarled, sounding thick and mean and ugly.

  “Well I’m wearing a hat,” she snapped.

  “You damned cheap twerp, how can you stand there, and talk about ‘his thing,’ as though it meant nothing at all?”

  “Well it didn’t—except to make me sick, for reasons I already said. But listen, I knew about it! It’s not like I had to be scared, or...”

  “Will you shut up about it?”

  “Then okay, we say no more.”

  “Because I just don’t care to think what he may have been doing with it to have it hanging out in such fashion.”