Hank was as ruffled as she was rumpled; when she finally stopped fighting he almost wished he had let her go. The look in her eye was anything but friendly and he didn’t know what to do or say. He tried stroking her cheek and she allowed it, but then she took his hand and after holding it a minute bit his palm as hard as she could bite, annoyed with his pretense of patience. He pretended the bite didn’t hurt but she coolly inspected the teeth marks and knew it had. That pleased her, but angered him. He fell on her, trapped her head, and began to kiss her.
She was too tired to fight but she didn’t want to be kissed. “No, no,” she said. “Please, let me go. I’ll give you fifty dollars. I’ll give you a hundred dollars. I want to go.” She meant it, but somehow the idea of offering him money to let her leave struck them both as amusing. They ceased to fight in earnest and began to haggle in fun. While they were haggling Hank got his hand on her, and the negotiations became confused. “Good god,” she said, sitting up to struggle awkwardly out of her dress and underclothes, “I can’t believe it. If you’d taken either of my offers I’d have given you up forever.”
There was a long calm, afterwards, and Patsy felt very clear in it. Hank was sleepy. “It’s a good thing you’re potent,” she said. “If you ever become impotent I’m quitting you on the spot. I’m not going to be ruined for nothing. If I’m getting ruined I want lots and lots.” While he slept she showered, and she came out feeling very energetic. She decided to go empty all of Jim’s bookcases and spray them for bugs, something she had promised often but not done. She came into the bedroom, beads of water still on her body, rubbing herself with a towel. His bureau had an inadequate square mirror on it that had always annoyed her. “Do I look wasted?” she asked. “Isn’t one supposed to get wasted from a lot of sex? I can’t tell from this wretched mirror of yours.” She bent forward, still nude, and began to comb her hair, and then flashed him a quick merry smile to see if he really thought her wasted. But he was still asleep and had not even heard the question. She flung the towel down, finished combing her hair, and began the search for her panties. Somehow, nine times out of ten, they managed to get themselves flung far afield, under things or into out-of-the-way corners.
8
“OH?” PATSY SAID. “When did she arrive?” Jim was on the phone and Davey was beside her on the bed, all bathed and powdered. She had been tickling the soles of his feet when the phone rang.
“You sound like you’ve got something in your mouth,” Jim said.
“A grape. Concord grapes.” A pile of them lay on a napkin by her elbow. Davey watched the phone. It was an instrument that interested him and he would have liked to be able to reach it.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Patsy said. “When did Eleanor Guthrie arrive?”
“Oh, she’s been here a couple of weeks,” Jim said. “I forgot to mention it.
“I haven’t seen much of her,” he added, but he shouldn’t have. His voice didn’t carry the statement well.
“Then why do you sound so defensive?”
“I’m not defensive,” he said defensively.
“Have her looks faded yet?” Patsy asked. She felt a touch of anxiety and a touch of jealousy at the mention of Eleanor’s name, and when it soaked in that Eleanor had been there two weeks and Jim had not reported it, both emotions increased.
“No,” Jim said. “For god’s sakes. She looks fine.”
“You scrutinize her, I take it?”
“Look,” he said, “be nice. We got rained out and I thought I’d call. Let’s don’t fight.”
“Aren’t you ever curious about your son?” she asked. “He’s right here with me.”
“Sure I’m curious,” Jim said, but once again it didn’t sound convincing. He could barely remember Davey.
“I suppose Eleanor and her paramour are staying nearby?”
“She stays at a hotel. Sonny stays here.”
“How lovely. You and she are friends now, I suppose?”
“Well, sure,” Jim said. “Sort of. I have dinner with them once in a while. She reads a good bit and likes to have someone to talk about books with.”
“Great,” Patsy said. Suddenly she felt vicious. “I stay around here cleaning the bugshit out of your goddamn bookcases while you hold profound literary discussions with an aging heiress who’s screwing a bull rider. What a sucker I am.
“Or maybe your relationship’s changed,” she went on. “Maybe it’s deepened. Maybe now that she’s aging she sees there’s more to life than bull riders. Probably she knows how to value a man with sound literary opinions. Maybe she’s cast Sonny out and made you her Pekingese, or something.”
“Oh, shut up,” he said. “You’re such a bitch.”
Patsy ate a grape and kissed Davey’s stomach. “She has a sweet disposition too, huh?” she said. “Millions, a good mind, and a sweet disposition. If her looks weren’t fading she’d be perfect, wouldn’t she?”
“You sound like you don’t think yours can compete,” Jim said.
“My looks can compete,” she said. “You’ll just have to lump my disposition, I guess. Are you in love with her?” She looked into the phone intently, as if by doing so she could see his face.
“Of course not,” he said.
“Don’t sound so positive,” she said. “You could be, you know. Vague as you are you might not have realized it yet.”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“I guess,” Patsy said, getting another grape. “I did the last time I saw you. I don’t like the thought of you and her sitting around being literary critics. Deduce what you want to from that.”
“Pleasant dinners are hard to find out here,” he said. “Why should I deny myself a normal social life?”
“Joe Percy reads books. Let him eat with her. Actually I don’t care. I’m just feeling bitchy.”
“I wish you weren’t. You sound so small when you’re this way.”
“I am small,” she said, making a face at Davey. “I’ve just noticed that literary chitchat between men and women is apt to lead to fucking.”
Jim was silent, very surprised. “Did I hear you right?” he asked. “When did you start using that word?”
“Just then, I guess. I might as well use the words everybody else uses.”
“What about Davey?” he asked and realized it was a silly question.
“We speak very frankly. Are you insinuating that I’m a bad mother? I was meaning to ask you when you had in mind picking up fatherhood again?”
“That’s one reason I called,” he said. “I was thinking you and Davey might come up this weekend. We’re almost done here. We’ll probably be going to L.A. the last of next week.”
“What? We? You too?” She was genuinely startled.
“Yes, the whole crew. I didn’t know they’d want me, but they do. It will only be for about three weeks. I’m not sure I can get through Houston on my way. That’s why I thought the two of you might come here.”
“Great,” Patsy said, angry and hurt, and surprised at herself for being so. In theory she should have been glad he was going, for his return would complicate things immensely. But instead of being glad she felt like crying.
“Is Eleanor going to L.A.?”
“I doubt it. I haven’t asked her.”
But he knew she wasn’t going, and one of the reasons he had asked Patsy up for the weekend was to clear his conscience on the score of Eleanor. There was a week’s moving break and she had asked him to stop by her ranch for a day or two. He was looking forward to it very much, but he could not decide whether to tell Patsy or not. He knew she would be jealous.
“I bet you haven’t asked her,” Patsy said. “I bet you know her schedule for the next six months. You probably even know when her periods are due.”
“Quit being so goddamn bitter and suspicious,” he said.
“Why? You never come home. You hardly ever call. Davey will be in school before you see him again. How can you stand just to wander away f
rom us like that? Now you’re getting friendly with a beautiful millionairess. Why shouldn’t I be insecure? Are we married or not?”
“You act like I’ve been gone for a decade,” he said.
“It seems like it. Davey thinks the world is composed entirely of people with breasts.”
“So come up and see me. That’s what I called to ask.”
She was balky and anything but enthusiastic, but in the end she agreed. She and Davey were to fly up on Friday and back on Sunday afternoon. As soon as they hung up she put Davey in his carriage and wheeled him down the Boulevard for a morning walk, very perturbed. Life was shifting—nothing could be kept in focus. She could not understand why the bile had flowed so when she found out that Jim liked Eleanor, or why it had bothered her that he was going to L.A. She was not lonely and would not be lonely. Certainly she had no ground for sniping at him about Eleanor. She was the adulteress, and anyway the two of them probably did only talk about books. The thought made her a little contemptuous of them both. She found that she had no desire at all to go to Amarillo. The very idea of bundling up a lot of baby paraphernalia and taking it up there was ridiculous. And what she and Jim would do with each other she could not imagine. Perhaps she would no longer be able to get in bed with him, even to sleep. Or she might discover that nothing he did, to her or anyone, mattered to her in the slightest any more. What then? She could not think of a worse place in which to have to cope with such imponderables than Amarillo, Texas.
When they got back to the apartment, both of them hot and a little prickly and irritable, she found another imponderable sitting on her steps. It was Flap Horton. His bicycle was propped nearby. He was sweating, one lens of his cheap sunglasses was cracked, and he took them off and squinted at her as she wheeled Davey up the driveway.
“Hi,” she said. “To what do we owe this pleasure? You look hot.”
“I’m exactly as I appear,” Flap said. He stood up and lifted Davey out of the carriage for her, which was a help. Davey was getting heavy. Flap, the seasoned father, treated Davey with authority, and Davey responded to it and behaved. Flap’s mustache interested him.
“I’ll lug your infant up for you,” Flap said. “I came by to borrow a couple of books. Someone seems to have absconded with most of the seventeenth-century scholarship.”
“Sure,” Patsy said. “Have a beer and cool off. How’s Emma?”
“In the doldrums,” he said. “Tommy’s got an ear infection from too much snorkeling. Teddy’s got a pseudo ear infection, in imitation. I’ve got prelim-itis and Emma sits around and cries most of the time. We’re our usual happy selves.”
“That’s awful,” Patsy said. “I think I’ll give you a lecture, but maybe you should have a beer first.”
“I better have two beers,” Flap said, grinning. “Lectures are largely wasted on me when I’m sober. Where do you want Davey?”
“In his bed. Why don’t you change him while you’re at it? He’s a sop. It’s not often I get a man over here who knows how to work a safety pin. You want a sandwich while I’m at it? It’s the least I can do if I’m going to blast you.”
“Sure,” Flap said. “Any largesse will be appreciated.
“Got any goose liver?” he asked. “I’m the only one in my family who likes it, which means I never get to eat it.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. She stood in front of the air conditioner for a minute, lifting her hair to cool the back of her neck. Flap put Davey on the bed and began to mumble to him in a fatherly way while he removed his diaper, and she kicked off her shoes and went to the kitchen. She made a fine sandwich and put some pickles on a plate and opened the beers and brought them in on a little tray. Davey, snugly diapered, was kicking on the baby bed, and Flap was reading one of Jim’s books.
“Odd-looking cheese,” he said when he saw the sandwich. “Looks great. Will Jim care if I borrow this? He’s sure neat about his books.”
“It’s sickening,” she said. “Don’t judge that cheese until you’ve tasted it. I mean his neatness is sickening. Borrow what you want. I don’t care. He’s going to L.A. and won’t be back for another month. By the time he gets back he may have forgotten he’s a book collector. I suppose Bill Duffin, the great scholar, will remind him of it.”
“Don’t mention that name,” Flap said. “It gives me a hunted feeling.”
“Me too. Except I guess he’s quit hunting me now. Why is he hunting you?”
“I don’t think he wants me to pass my prelims. Emma says I’m paranoid, but Emma doesn’t know him.”
“You are paranoid,” Patsy said. “Quit worrying. Graduate school isn’t the whole world.”
She was swinging her legs a little as the rocker rocked, and Flap looked at them and grinned his old rakish grin. Patsy noted it and frowned at him, but in a friendly way. It was hard to be angry with Flap when his eyes lit up.
“I’m glad to see you’ve recovered your interest in life,” she said. “Still, you might as well quit letching.”
“That’s my only interest in life,” he said.
“Then letch Emma,” she said. “Why aren’t you good to her any more, by the way? That’s what I was meaning to blast you about. I used to think you were the best husband around because you kept Emma so happy. Why aren’t you doing it any more?”
“I guess I just forget to,” Flap said simply. “Could I have another beer?”
Patsy went and got it for him. “Well, try to remember to,” she said kindly, for he looked a little sunken. He glanced over his shoulder at the scholarly volumes on Jim’s shelves as if they were the Eumenides.
“It’s making me sick,” he said. “What if I fail those damn exams? I don’t even dare mention the possibility around Emma. She either becomes hysterically angry or hysterically hysterical. I’d probably have to kill myself if I failed them.”
“Nonsense,” Patsy said. “You know worlds of stuff. Why should you fail?”
“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I should pass. It’s the element of whim that scares me. Besides, I have theories and opinions. What if I put in the wrong ones?”
“Don’t. All you have to do is be precise.”
Flap looked at her caustically, as if he had never received less helpful advice in his life. “Thanks,” he said. “You’re as helpful as Emma. All she says is ‘You’re gonna pass.’”
“You worry too much. Drink more and eat more. Look at girls’ legs if it really helps. I would hate to think a set of exams could daunt you.”
“I ain’t daunted, just skeered,” he said, standing up. “How many books can I get away with borrowing? For some reason Jim’s books look more readable than library books.”
“Not to me. Take as many as you want. He can only kill me.” Flap carefully picked out four books and put them in his blue book-bag.
“I thought bookbags were supposed to be green.”
“Only if you’re from Harvard. Thanks for the meal. You sure have pretty legs. I wish you’d decide to have a fling with me.”
“Get on with your studies. I’m your wife’s best friend.”
“So what? She makes friends easily.”
“Is Tommy really sick?”
“He had two bad nights. It’s hard for a kid to sleep with his ear hurting.”
“We’ll bring him a little present.”
Flap stepped out into the white noon and put on his cracked sunglasses. He slung the bookbag over his shoulder. “Bring Teddy a little something too, if you do,” he said. “He’s feeling underloved just now.”
She went back and got Davey and sat with him on the couch. She liked the way the books tilted over where Flap had removed volumes. It was tempting to rearrange the books completely. She decided to do it but then sat and kissed Davey on the top of his head and wondered. Flap, for all his faults, was a comfortable man, and it seemed to her that when all was said and done, her sloppy friend Emma had made an excellent choice, and probably had more basic good sense than she herself would ever
have.
9
FLAP HAD SCARCELY LEFT when Juanita arrived, and none too soon to suit Patsy. The thought of the weekend ahead made her restless; she slipped her shoes on and was at the door, ready to go to Hank’s when the phone rang. It was her mother, calling from Dallas, and the moment she spoke Patsy knew something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
There was a silence on the wire.
“Is it Daddy? Is anybody dead?”
“No, no,” her mother said, almost wistfully, as if simple death would have been preferable. “It’s something that . . . upset me. I was wanting to come down and see you today. You and Davey. I could stay at a hotel.”
“You can stay right here,” Patsy said. “Don’t be silly. What is it? Please don’t cry.” For she could hear the beginning of her mother’s tears on the phone, and her mothers tears, once started, were apt to flow for days.
“I’d rather not talk over the phone,” her mother said. “All these extensions—anyone could pick one up. I’m so distressed about Miri—it’s her.”
Silence again. “Well, what has she done?” Patsy asked. “Has she been arrested or anything?”
“No. Has she written you?”
“We never write. What’s she done?”
“I don’t know,” Jeanette said. “I’m just so frightened, though. I’m afraid she may be involved with a colored man.”
“Oh, goddamn,” Patsy said, both relieved and annoyed. “You didn’t have to scare me so. I thought somebody was dead.”
“I know, but I was too upset. I called and one answered the phone.”
“For god’s sakes,” Patsy said. “Isn’t that jumping to conclusions? Maybe she’s hired a butler or something. What did he say?”
“I hung up.”
Patsy was twisting with impatience. She wanted to be at Hank’s. “Listen,” she said. “Get a plane and come on. I’ll call Miri. It probably isn’t half as disastrous as you think.”