Cliffie wished Mel Linnell would come in. It was not even 2 a.m., so he might. Mel lived in Lambertville. He had a powerful motorcycle. He also had pot and booze and beer and usually a girl in his one-room apartment which was over a dry cleaning shop. Sometimes there were poker games, but Cliffie stayed out of those, because he always lost. Cliffie liked Mel, because Mel let him hang around. Mel was about twenty-three. Cliffie liked to imagine himself Mel, living on nothing but luck, maybe picking up money by playing cards or selling pot or harder stuff. Mel had no regular job, anyway, and he did fine, even beautifully.
After another survey of himself in the mirror, Cliffie ordered a beer. The drink calmed him, he felt. He drank a couple of inches of the beer, then went to the john, and was back in less than a minute. Yes, and he had muscle-power too, and wasn’t bad looking if he bothered to dress up. And if he ever made love to a girl – like this girl Ginger – she wouldn’t forget it, Cliffie thought. He didn’t enjoy being a trifle overweight, but he told himself that with a slight effort, a matter of five days’ exercise, he could strip off those few extra pounds.
When did guys like George ever die? Was George going to be around another ten years? Till he himself died aged thirty? That would be funny: when he was thirty, George would be into his nineties!
The fellow on Cliffie’s right lurched backward against Cliffie’s right shoulder, and Cliffie instantly mustered strength and returned the fellow to his chums with a mighty shove which nearly knocked the girl in the middle down.
‘Hey there!’ Mickey yelled.
‘Up your ass!’ Cliffie retorted to everybody, hot in the face with rage.
‘Cliffie, you’ve – Calm down, Cliffie,’ said Mickey.
‘What the fuck did I do?’ Cliffie asked.
‘Don’t get hot under the collar. And watch your language. The man says he’s sorry,’ Mickey said with a glance and a nod at the man Cliffie had shoved.
Cliffie could see the man wasn’t about to say he was sorry. He was in his mid-twenties, taller than Cliffie, glaring at Cliffie now, and Cliffie glared back. Stepping back to relax a bit, Cliffie nearly fell, because his left foot was inside the bar rail, and he hadn’t realized it. Cliffie thought it best to depart, which he did with as much dignity as possible, even leaving part of his beer. ‘Night, Mickey,’ he said mechanically, and realized he was a little drunk as he got the door open and made his way to the pavement.
By the time he got home, he wasn’t feeling too bad. A glow was visible in the narrow upstairs hall window, meaning George was on his way to or from the john. It was 2:22 a.m., Cliffie saw by his radium dial watch. Old George had to pee at least once a night, and there were a couple of floorboards that squeaked, so often Cliffie heard him. Cliffie went on tiptoe, careful as a burglar, through the front door which he’d put on the latch and which he now latched, down the hall to his room.
In no time he was in bed, doing the usual, this time with a fantasy of making it with Ginger. Cliffie made her scream, first with shock and pain, then with delight. Afterwards, he removed his sock, dropped it on the floor between bed and bedtable. Another sock was handy, its mate. Cliffie preferred dirty socks, they were somehow more sexy. Thirsty, he went into the kitchen with the aid of his pocket flashlight, and drank two big glasses of water.
How often did his parents make love, Cliffie wondered, or had they stopped it? It was difficult to imagine, and Cliffie didn’t like to imagine it, had never wanted to imagine it. He could remember when he’d had quite a crush on his mother, maybe when he was around ten, but now if she so much as put an arm around him when somebody was taking a snapshot of them, Cliffie hated it and squirmed away as soon as possible. Brett, in Cliffie’s opinion, looked like a quietly sexy man, even yet.
Now – Cliffie’s thoughts had found a vigorous new stream – who was this new secretary of Brett’s called Carol? Carol sounded like a promising name. His father had mentioned her nearly a month ago, a blonde, Cliffie recalled his father saying, surely in her early twenties, because his father had said, ‘She’s a good worker, because she hasn’t been working long enough to get lazy.’
Cliffie went to bed again and tried to make it with the imaginary Carol, failed, and felt quite tired suddenly.
What did he have to do tomorrow, really? Nothing. That was nice. Was Melanie leaving tomorrow or the next day? Carol. Cliffie liked the name, somehow. Probably his mother hadn’t even registered the fact his father had a new secretary, instead of ugly Miss McLain, who’d retired this year, and who’d looked like a female prison warden. Often his mother seemed to be in a daydream, although Cliffie realized she ran the house quite efficiently. She worked so hard on her articles, looking up things in reference books and all that, and so little came of it. His mother was fighting a losing battle, Cliffie thought, because she was trying to fight the majority. The majority wasn’t even fighting back, it was just indifferent. Cliffie felt like smiling at that piece of wisdom, and smiling, he dozed off.
A highly unpleasant dream awakened him, and Cliffie sat up in bed, glad to find himself back in reality. He gripped his own shoulder for solace. He had dreamed he was twelve years old, standing on the diving board at summer camp, being asked to dive for the end-of-summer test, and he refused. He had refused when he was twelve, although he had with an awful effort forced himself to dive twice before off the same board into the lake, and Cliffie admitted to himself that the board wasn’t very high. But in the dream just now, when he had stood at the end of the board with his hands together and looked down at the water, he had seen a lot of little men struggling like fighting and drowning soldiers down there, and he had said to the P.T. teacher, ‘I can’t, because there’re a lot of little men down there!’ and the other boys had laughed at him, and the teacher, furious, had been heading toward him to push him off, when Cliffie had awakened. Cliffie remembered jumping off a much higher thing – the bridge – into the Delaware, however, when he was barely eleven. And hadn’t that taken guts? How many guys who had laughed at him in the dream had the guts to do that? It had happened, it wasn’t one of his fantasies, because once in a while his parents mentioned it, told people about it. Cliffie considered it the most courageous thing he had ever done, maybe the act he was most proud of in his life, up to now. Purposeless? Sure. What had any purpose in life, anyway? Purpose? Life was a joke.
Cliffie remained on his elbow, blinking, glad to see the pale rectangle of his window. His mother was obsessed by politics, Cliffie thought. And his father had a mediocre job. Neither of them was getting anywhere important in life. Cliffie saw it suddenly very clearly. Maybe his mother was insane, in a way. It didn’t matter that she kept the furniture polished and dusted, and worked in the garden. Lots of insane people did those things. His father wore such sloppy, informal clothes, all right of course if you were a bohemian author of something, but not if you wanted to be a big-shot on a newspaper with several thousand – ten thousand? – circulation. As long as his father was playing the game at all, he ought to play it hard and well, Cliffie thought. Win! Cliffie sensed a crisis in both his parents just now, though he couldn’t say exactly what it was.
And the way his mother’s face had changed since Mildew’s death two days ago, her mouth down at the corners, so preoccupied, she didn’t even hear him till he’d spoken to her twice. Over a cat! Was that normal? Cliffie had heard enough about himself not being normal. He could throw it back at them.
10
11/Dec/65. Another Christmas rolls around, or at least this is the month for it. Nelson continues to thrive, enjoy life & is a darling. Sits on my lap when I type – quite often.
B. faring better, that is, he is happier, he says. That is better, for me.
Here Edith paused, her mind as muddled for a moment as if she were making a speech before an audience and had mislaid her notes. But she was alone, sitting in the semicircle made by the bay window, facing a framed print of a Chinese figure in pink and yellow costume, which she had always found relaxing to loo
k at. She was thinking of Brett, and trying to be realistic. He had said, or confessed, a month ago, that he thought he was in love with his secretary called Carol Junkin, but that he knew it was absurd and wanted to put an end to it. Brett called it ‘a crush’. Carol was hardly twenty-five. Edith had seen her twice when she had gone to Brett’s office to pick him up, when they had been going to a play or a concert in Philadelphia. Carol was shorter than Edith, sturdier, a Swarthmore graduate, a divorcee living alone in a Trenton apartment, family in Ardmore and quite well-to-do. She read German, Brett said, and liked Günter Grass and Böll in the original, and that was about all Edith knew about her. Edith assumed Brett had been to bed with her a few times – just when Edith couldn’t quite imagine, but there were always times, always ways. But as of today, this morning before Brett set off, he had declared that he wanted to put an end to the ‘situation’ with a girl young enough to be his daughter. This was why Edith was making an entry in her diary, which she hadn’t touched in some three months.
The hints Gert Johnson had dropped! Edith still winced. ‘Have you met Brett’s new secretary?’ Gert had asked three or four months ago.
‘Yes, briefly. Why?’
‘Norm met her, because he was seeing about an ad in the Standard. She’s rather attractive.’ And Gert had waited in her usual way for this to sink in, or for Edith to say something, but Edith hadn’t.
Edith hadn’t thought Carol a knock-out. She had rather a too pretty face, the kind Edith thought uninteresting, over-sized breasts, or maybe these had been emphasized by the sweater she had been wearing. Carol wanted to be a novelist, Brett had said. Well, well, didn’t a lot of people? That was no passport to success with Brett, but then he did like breasts. Cliffie had twigged it before her, Edith suspected. Cliffie had a curious intuition. But at least Brett had spoken to Edith frankly, which most men would not have done, Edith thought, at least so soon. Edith had thought things were all right with her and Brett in that department. They made love perhaps two or three times a month, if one had to gauge such things by frequency, and of course one had to. All the articles on marital problems mentioned how often, or how seldom. Were things necessarily any better, if people did it six times a week? Edith thought the atmosphere was also important in a marriage, and she had not noticed anything wrong between her and Brett. Edith had also read about the revolt of the middle-aged man, in fact there was a book with that title almost, so she supposed Brett at forty-eight or forty-nine was going through this, that a love affair might boost his ego for a while and – that he would get over it.
But Edith found that she couldn’t add any more on the subject of Brett in her diary. It was a relief, it amused her to make a note on Cliffie, who was now in her imagination going to Princeton.
C. writes nice letters once a week, usually asking for an extra ten, because something has turned up like a special dance for which he has to pay admission or buy new shoes for. But his grades continue good, and his Eng. prof. is esp. pleased. Engineering isn’t apple pie for C, but he is enjoying the challenge.
Edith was thinking of physics and math as she wrote that, as these had not been Cliffie’s best subjects in high school. In her imagination, Cliffie was specializing in hydraulic engineering, loved the work, and was determined to stick with it. Irrigation, dams, desert pumps, water tables, all that Edith imagined in Cliffie’s head as he studied in his dorm room at Princeton. Girls would write him notes, fraternities – Well, Cliffie would already have joined one by now, been invited. Edith imagined his having started in September this year, but so brilliant that he was going to finish in three years, maybe even two. Edith had been imagining a girl in Cliffie’s life, two or three girls, but one who might be more important than the others, and Edith had given her a name – Deborah, Debbie. She’d be pretty, intelligent, going to Princeton also (they admitted a few girls now), though only seventeen, and so popular that Cliffie wasn’t sure he was number one in her books. But all would work out in the end, and the girl was and would be a constant inspiration to Cliffie. He had become a new boy since he had met her. But Edith decided not to begin writing about Debbie today. Debbie had come into her mind only a couple of months ago. Edith’s final note was on George. Solid and real he was, and always there, for all his frailty more solid than Brett lately.
G. getting so deaf we really have to yell. He can creep to the bathroom but with much pain, he says, but he hasn’t yet asked for a bedpan & I can’t bring myself to propose one. Statements arrive for him from some investment company in upstate New York & I can’t bring myself to look at them, though they lie around in his room. Not sure I could fathom them anyway. This company sends dividends to his N.Y. bank, and G. regularly signs us a check for $150 a month. Only a couple of times did B. have to remind him, which B. hates to do. C. is rude to G. and makes facetious remarks in G.’s presence which of course G. can’t hear. C. sometimes drifts up when I clean G.’s room, as if fascinated by the moribund.
Edith closed her pen, put the diary away and stood up. She faced a fact as solid as George now, that Brett was bringing Carol for a drink tonight, or rather that Carol was coming in her car at the same time as Brett.
‘I want you to meet her again,’ Brett had said in his earnest way, ‘and see that she’s a decent, serious girl at least.’
Edith certainly hadn’t wanted to make better acquaintance with Carol after what Brett had told her, but Edith had thought it might help Brett, ease his conscience somehow. His conscience clearly was bothering him. Edith looked at Nelson, coiled on the flat cushion on the bay window seat. He gazed at her with drowsy blue eyes. He was a lilac point Siamese. Melanie had sent him by special messenger last July, after writing Edith a note to tell her that a kitten was arriving. This was less than a month after Mildew’s death. Last month Nelson had had his castration, which Edith had detested having to have done, but knew was necessary at six months, if she wanted to keep him home and free of battle scars.
Edith glanced into George’s room before she went downstairs. Its door was ajar as usual, and lately she didn’t bother knocking or calling to him, because he wouldn’t have heard her. George was sleeping on his side, facing her, one arm bent under him with its bluish white hand outstretched, fingers curled, as if beseeching something. Good Christ, it was like slow death, Edith thought. She had been going to ask if George wanted his tea now, but why bother, if he was asleep? It was ten past 5 already.
Brett would be home by a quarter to 6, probably, with Carol in tow, and since there was a bit of time, Edith decided to make a brief effort with Cliffie’s room. Cliffie was out. If she tidied his room slightly, having respect still for the careless way Cliffie preferred to live, he never noticed, never thanked her for vacuuming. Margaret, the black cleaning woman who came one afternoon a week for four hours, didn’t or wouldn’t tackle Cliffie’s room, not that she and Margaret had ever had words about it. Edith could understand: there were so many clothes, shoes and magazines on the floor, it was twenty minutes’ work trying to put them away somewhere so one could start cleaning.
Edith experienced the usual mild shock on entering the room, seeing the four drawers in the chest half pulled out, sweater sleeves dangling, one drawer even down on the floor – because it looked like the classic picture of a room just after a burglary. Mechanically, Edith began folding sweaters, closing drawers, then she made the bed. Beside the bed, one damp sock. Did Cliffie have sweaty feet? Nerves? Was that why he washed his own socks so often? He’d squirm if she asked, Edith thought, so maybe it was better not to ask. She put away slightly muddy tennis shoes, gathered from among the shoes on the floor of his closet five or six more socks, obviously dirty, some even stiff. Ten or twelve comic books had slid onto the floor in front of his bookcase, ancient and creased. The top two shelves of the bookcase were reasonably neat, because he never touched them: a complete encyclopaedia for children, bound in red imitation leather, several children’s books like Winnie-the-Pooh and Treasure Island (a nostalgic faded blue b
inding that had, and Edith recalled that it had been hers as a child), next to this A Manual for Sexual Pleasure, and several books by Ian Fleming. Cliffie had a desk of sorts, which was a rectangular wooden table with a big front drawer in it. He even had a typewriter, a Hermes Baby, on the table, its gray plastic cover dusty and now dented, as if something heavy had dropped on it. Edith remembered herself and Brett buying the typewriter one Christmas six or seven years ago, choosing it carefully, because they had hardly been able to afford it at the time. Had Cliffie broken the typewriter? Edith couldn’t remember when he had last used it.