“You didn’t have to stand out there,” she said. “You could have come in where it’s warm.”
They looked at each other through the screen but could not see each other clearly. It was only when he turned his head and looked away from the garage that the light shone on his angular face. “I don’t call this cold,” he said. “You ought to try a wind like this out where I come from.” He got off the rail, as if to go, but paused a minute on the top step looking toward the country where he came from—the land of northers.
“Homesick?” Patsy asked. That was how he looked.
“I don’t know what for,” he said.
“I was going to ask you in for hot chocolate but I told Jim I’d send you back to the party,” she said.
She had meant to ask him which he would rather do but found she couldn’t. She stood inside the screen, silent and a little impatient. She was not sure he had even heard her, and she did not feel like repeating her remark. He kept looking out into the darkness and it annoyed her; she felt her impatience swelling, and yet when he turned suddenly to face the door she felt a tremor, almost a moment of fright. She looked at him with longing, but all she longed for was someone friendly who liked her, someone to drink hot chocolate with. He looked at her with desire—she knew it, even though she couldn’t see him clearly. If he had stepped inside she would have had to make the hot chocolate and it would have all become scary.
“I’ll run on back to the party,” he said. “Enjoyed the beer, though.” He waved and started down the steps, turning up the collar of his suede coat as he went. Instead of feeling relieved she was once again very impatient with him.
“I wish you’d get another coat,” she said, putting her head out the screen. “I’m sure you could afford a better coat than that.”
Hank turned and looked up at her, quite surprised. “What’s wrong with this one?” he asked.
“Everything,” she said hotly. She was as surprised at her remark as he was. She had not been thinking of the coat until she saw him turn up the collar. Once she had given her views on it she had nothing else to say, and he had nothing to say in retort. There was a strange silence. They looked at each other across the landing, both of them irresolute.
Hank finally grinned and lifted his hands, at a loss for a solution. “You think I should burn it?” he asked.
“Yes, please burn it,” she said, feeling ridiculous. He waved and went on and she went inside and sat on the john for a long time looking at The Greek Myths without reading a word. Once her feeling of ridiculousness diminished she felt strangely good—warmer toward the world than she had in some time. When Jim came in at three she was still awake, reading Frazer. He wasn’t too drunk but he was drunk enough to go immediately to sleep. She pulled his arm across her and held his hand against her swelling stomach, feeling quiet, protected, protective, and lucky. Somehow the few odd awkward moments with Hank made being in bed with Jim seem all the cozier. The norther grew stronger, strong enough to rattle the windows of the apartment, and the harder it blew the warmer and drowsier Patsy felt.
8
BY THE NEXT EVENING the norther had blown itself out. The temperature, which had dropped only to the low forties, returned to the seventies, and the heavy December sultriness which sometimes occurred in Houston settled in.
Hank Malory had a date with Clara Clark that evening. They had been seeing each other for six weeks. The only reason he hadn’t taken her to the Hortons’ party was because she had gone with a girl friend who had no date. Clara had initiated it all by asking him to take her surfing. She had no car. Hank had been glad to take her, though the surfing part didn’t work out very well. She had lived on the coast of California all her life and was voluably contemptuous of the gray lukewarm Gulf.
“Mini-waves,” she said, and they never went surfing again. Instead they ate—seafood, usually—saw several movies and a play or two, and finished the evening at Clara’s, in bed. Her apartment was on Bissonnet, scarcely three blocks from his. She was a very attractive twenty-four-year-old redhead and she loved two things completely: herself and California. Except for a mild regret that she was not slightly taller and slightly slimmer, Clara was as nearly satisfied with herself as any human being Hank had ever known. She was quite convinced that she could handle anything that came along—emotional, sexual, or intellectual—and she could. There was no uncertainty in Clara, not in her movements, her speech, her reports and term papers, her orders in restaurants, or her plans for the future. She always knew what she wanted, and one of the things she wanted was a degree good enough to get a teaching job at some junior college in California. She did not particularly want to get married and she could not conceive of living any place but California.
She liked Hank at once. He was attractive and friendly, and didn’t seem to be particularly hung up in any way. She would actually have preferred to sleep with Jim. He was the type of boy she was accustomed to, and he and she had more to say to each other, and she had always been attracted to blond men, for some reason; but she had also twice had things with married men and had found them very harassing. Graduate school was providing all the harassment she needed, so she kept it cool and friendly with Jim. He bought her lots of coffee and complimented her and they talked endlessly, but when it came time to get someone to sleep with she picked Hank. He didn’t have much to say, but he was silent in a relaxing way and it was a relief to go with someone who wasn’t eternally bitching about graduate school. Everyone else felt, or at least declared, that graduate school was really no place for them, that the life was unreal, the projects inane, the themes and theses worthless, the professors disagreeable, the social conventions artificial, the competitions silly. Nonetheless, most of them stayed hermetically sealed in the graduate life, wrote the papers, kowtowed to the professors, plodded through the texts, consumed lakes of coffee a cup at a time, griped, whined, exulted over triumphs so minor they would have been unnoticeable in any other context, competed with one another endlessly, and, by the time they had been at it a few months, would scarcely have known what to do in any other world. To go back into what they liked to refer to as “real life” they would have had to be reconditioned slowly, like divers coming up from the deep.
Hank and Clara both participated in the syndromes of apprentice scholarship, both did fairly well, neither felt particularly bored or particularly griped by the requirements, and neither was nostalgic for any other existence—though Clara did miss California very much. Hank didn’t even have that problem. In comparison to Vietnam, graduate school was an idyll.
On the Saturday evening after the Horton party they saw The Pumpkin Eater and were both a little depressed by it. Hank was slightly uncomfortable all evening, wondering if Clara was going to mention his having left the party with Patsy. They were not going steady, officially, but he knew she must have noticed it. Also, Patsy kept occupying his thoughts, and it was strange to sit holding hands with one girl while thinking of another. Clara said nothing about Patsy. After the movie, at her apartment, he sat on her bed watching her strip, wondering what he ought to do. He had a sense, very new to him, that somehow he was not being fair to Clara. She was quite lovely, with rather small breasts but fine legs, and she stripped and hung her clothes in the closet as quickly and methodically as if she were about to put on a bathing suit and go surfing.
“Pooped?” she asked. “You don’t look too spry.”
“Just watching you,” he said, taking off his socks.
She had recovered from her own mild depression and talked brightly while he undressed. Movies seldom moved her—very little did move her, though she was not unfeeling. It was as if her needs were purely metabolic; she was too nearly complete, too fully possessed, to need very much emotionally. Food, sleep, a job, sex, pleasant company: those were her needs. She was not dramatic, not neurotic; ultimately, she was athletic. They had made love often and Hank knew what she liked. Part of what she liked was to be on top, the first time. She liked to do a lot of
moving herself. That he didn’t mind. He had never known a girl who really liked to be on top and the novelty was enjoyable, though since he was accustomed to being the surfer and not the wave he found it took a little catching on to. But Clara always worked things out to her satisfaction. Then she usually liked to be on the bottom, where she worked things out to her satisfaction a time or two more. Once favorable conditions were provided, she was a natural three-orgasm girl. She saw no reason to try for four—that would have been hubris, or childish, or too tiring—but neither did she feel inclined to stop at two when a third could be had. She was very quick, which was fortunate, since Hank was not normally multiple. He was often amazed at Clara’s proficiency and wondered from time to time if it was simply a unique gift of nature or if perhaps it was something bred into young Californians. Clara seemed to assume the latter.
While they were resting she looked at him with a small good-natured frown. She was perceptive and had no trouble reading the handwriting on the wall. He had his eye on Patsy Carpenter and she saw no point in beating around the bush about it.
“Something tells me you’re not too rabid about being my boy friend any more,” she said. “Am I right?”
Her remark left him at a loss. He was no good at lying, and besides he had not really given the matter very much thought. He felt on the hook and Clara knew it and quickly took him off. She was not a mean girl.
“I just asked,” she said. “Don’t look so pained. It’s no tragedy—don’t look so blue.”
“I’m not blue,” he said. “I’m puzzled.”
“I don’t know why you should be,” Clara said. “It’s no big mystery. You just want to fall in love, and it isn’t happening with us. I saw you looking at Jim’s wife. I’m sure she’d be great-looking if she wasn’t pregnant, why shouldn’t you fall in love with her? I’m just not much on love, really. Maybe I grew up too fast. I was heartbroken twice before I was sixteen, I mean I was heartbroken. I don’t see how I could ever be that way again. It just means you get put down sooner or later. It seems kinda childish to me, but there’s no point in knocking it. Too many people go for it.”
“I’ve never been in love,” Hank said truthfully. “I don’t know if I’ll go for it or not.”
Clara sat up and straightened out her hair. “It leads to marriage, I’ve noticed,” she said. After sex she seemed to become older; it was then that she talked with the greatest precision and clarity. She was sexually greedy without being particularly tender, but release brought out what gentleness there was in her, and her intelligence, normally rather programmatic, became more whimsical.
“Or else there’s already a marriage and it leads to problems,” she said. “I used to screw married guys—twice I got into that. They were from the Midwest, both of them. I pass on the Midwest. Both of them wanted to leave their wives and marry me. Why should they want to leave their wives just because they liked to screw me? Their wives were nice girls—I knew them both. I tried to persuade the guys to regard me as a little vacation, but they couldn’t see it that way. It had to be the big show or nothing.”
“Maybe I’ve got Midwestern blood in me,” Hank said.
“You’re not rabidly Midwestern,” Clara said. She grinned at him critically. “You should have been a cowboy,” she said. “You’re great when you don’t have to make conversation.”
“I’ve never known anyone who talked,” he said. “I’m just now learning. Don’t rush me so.”
But Clara was looking serious again. “You know, I think Dr. Duffin’s getting a thing for me, maybe. He’s taken me to coffee twice. What do you think I should do?”
“Run.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, not sure.
“It’s probably good advice,” Clara said. “I trust your instincts, and I can tell you aren’t jealous. If I thought you were jealous I wouldn’t pay any attention to your advice.”
There was a keen look of concentration on her face as she considered William Duffin. Hank had seen the same look on her face the day before when she was trying to decide whether to do her Chaucer paper on the “Knight’s Tale” or the “Prioress’s Tale.” She reached out and held his genitals, still thinking. “You know me,” she said. “So far as I’m concerned the horn is always greener on the other guy. He looks fine to me. But he’s not just a guy, exactly. It’s the repercussions you have to consider. If it didn’t work out he might put the screws on me, you know, and he’s in a position where he can put screws on people. What if he turned out to like to do that sort of thing? I basically don’t understand men of an older generation.”
“That’s a small problem,” Hank said. “I don’t understand women of any generation. Think of all the trouble that’s apt to get me into.”
Clara shook her head. “You don’t particularly need a woman you understand,” she said. “I don’t think you want one. That’s our only problem. You’re the romantic type and I’m not. You probably really crave guilt and mystery and all that sort of stuff. I’m too simple for you, I guess. You’re not a type who just goes in for fucking. You do sort of want the big show. Well, maybe you’ll get it with what’s-her-name.” And she smiled coyly. “I can never remember the names of wives of husbands I want to sleep with,” she said.
“Jim seems very intellectual right now,” she added, frowning. There were an awfully lot of nice men in the world. The complex of possibility was sometimes almost scary.
“You could get Flap,” Hank said. “Since we’re speculating.”
“Naw, he digs his wife,” Clara said. “Maybe I’ll get Dr. Duffin, if I have the nerve.”
She stepped in and took a quick shower while he was dressing. Hank sat in a chair and opened a book called Paradise Lost As Myth, which he was supposed to read as soon as she got through with it. Clara came out and stood by her dresser, sprinkling baby powder into her pubic hair. She took off her shower cap and held it over his head, so that a few drops of water dripped on him. Her hair was long, almost to her shoulder blades. “Bring me that Skeat tomorrow,” she said. “I need to get started on my Chaucer paper before I go home for Christmas.”
“Okay,” Hank said. “Can I borrow this book overnight?”
“Sure. Hungry?”
“No.”
“I am,” she said, going to the kitchenette, her panties in her hand. “Don’t forget the Skeat—I really need it.”
“I won’t,” Hank said. He went in and gave her a light kiss and went to the door. She looked at him blithely and stepped into her panties gracefully, all balance, a surfer who had left her native surf. She was unscrewing the top of a peanut butter jar when he went out. A moment later, as she spread the peanut butter on a piece of bread, a frown crossed her face and she felt a touch of depression. Hank was nice. He didn’t strike her as being the brightest boy she had ever known, but he was certainly a fine lay. She was not sure where she was going to find his equal. In California it would have been no problem, but then she wasn’t in California. It depressed her for half an hour, but the sandwich and a Sprite helped her to shrug it off. Someone would turn up. Someone always had.
9
“QUIT BITCHING about it,” Jim said grimly. “It’s over and it wasn’t so bad. There are two things I really hate to do. I hate to drive on bad roads in holiday traffic and I hate to listen to you bitch while I’m driving on bad roads in holiday traffic. Please shut up so I can have a happy New Year.”
They had been to Dallas for Christmas and were returning to Houston. As far ahead as they could see, the narrow two-lane highway was clogged with slow-moving cars and trucks. The day was gray and chilly and the heater on the Ford was broken. It had been so warm in Houston that Jim had neglected to get it fixed. Patsy was swathed almost to the neck in a twenty-year-old fur coat that her mother had passed down to her a few years before. It had been the first real present her father had bought her mother when it had become apparent that he was getting rich. That had been in the forties, and the coat was fairly shabby. Patsy
called it her Creature. When she sank down into it, as she had, it was hard to tell where the coat stopped and she began.
“You’re very gruff,” she said. “I get to bitch if I want to. I certainly get to bitch about my own Christmas if I want to. My bitching about Christmas is a ritual, and if you expect to live with me successfully you had better get used to it.”
“You better outgrow it by next year,” Jim said. “I want our children to have merry Christmases.”
“Children!” Patsy said vehemently. “That’s a laugh. Where would we get children? I refuse to adopt one and it may be years before you get time to father another on me, even if you have the inclination. I’m not complaining, though. I recognize the claims of scholarship. Don’t worry about me—write some more papers. Pretty soon I’ll learn to efface myself completely.” And she sank an inch lower into her coat.