“You seem to have got to know him rather well while I was drunk,” Aurora said, casting a glance over her shoulder as she turned a pancake.
“No, and I ain’t after him or nothing, leave me alone when I’m brokenhearted,” Rosie protested, deciding not to mention that she and Theo had played cards for several hours. Then she remembered that she already had mentioned it when she told Aurora that Theo had learned his card games in Yugoslavia.
“I’ll finish them pancakes, you sit down and eat,” she said, hoping to deflect any jealous thoughts Aurora might be having before they picked up momentum.
“Yes, I’m starving,” Aurora said. “We have the Petrakis brothers coming to dinner, we have to start thinking about our menu.”
“No, just Theo’s coming,” Rosie said. “He said he wasn’t bringing his brother because he doesn’t like him.”
“Well, that’s another confidence he delivered to you instead of to me,” Aurora said. “It’s my dinner party and I want them both here so I can look at them when I’m sober. For all I know, Vassily might be the cuter.”
“Vassily wanted to call the cops and have you arrested when you passed out—that’s what Theo said,” Rosie revealed. “He said Vassily wasn’t even nice to you—why should you feed him?”
“Rosie, most men aren’t nice to me, but I’ve fed millions,” Aurora pointed out.
“Yeah, but most men don’t try to have you put in jail just because you’re passed out,” Rosie countered. Vassily sounded like a bad egg to her.
“Well, I don’t know, Vassily may have had his reasons,” Aurora said.
“Reasons for having some stupid cop drag you off to jail?” Rosie said, her anti-cop bias surging to the surface. “What kinds of reasons would make him want to do that?”
“I was not too punctilious yesterday morning,” Aurora said. “I may have neglected to pay for my retsina before passing out. Perhaps he concluded that he was going to be stiffed, a not unreasonable fear, since I was barefooted and in my gown.”
“You showed up in a Cadillac, I doubt he thought you was broke,” Rosie said. “Anyway, you better call Theo and work all this out, because he don’t intend to bring nobody but himself.”
“I believe Theo became rather sweet on me before I got so drunk,” Aurora said. “I’m sure the real reason he doesn’t want to bring his brother is because he doesn’t want me to conclude that his brother is cuter.”
“Okay, you can do what you want with the Greeks, I wish Willie would come back,” Rosie said, getting up. It seemed to her that she had better launch into some housekeeping or else she was just going to spend the morning crying and being depressed.
“I wish you’d call Jerry and relieve his mind,” she said. “He sounded pretty worried.”
“What mind? I certainly won’t call him,” Aurora said. “He knows where I live. If he has any interest in working this out, let him try. And if he’s too big a coward to come and try, then the more he suffers the better.”
“Woman of steel, that’s you,” Rosie said. “I feel sorry for Jerry. He probably just got broadsided by Patsy and now he’s miserable and wishes he had you back.”
“I seriously doubt that, Rosie—they’re probably tupping right now,” Aurora said. Again for a moment she was afflicted with a tormenting vision, two bodies younger than her own joined in urgent union.
“Doing what right now?” Rosie asked.
“Tupping, you know what it means, even if you don’t read Shakespeare,” Aurora said. “I’m disgusted with you anyway, even if you are heartbroken.”
“Why?” Rosie asked.
“For feeling sorry for that son of a bitch who jilted me,” Aurora said, slapping several fresh pancakes on her plate. “You’re always feeling sorry for men who don’t deserve even a dollop of sympathy. We’re the ones who deserve the sympathy. When are you going to grasp that obvious fact?”
Rosie squatted by the sink, surveying the array of detergents she had stashed underneath it. What she really felt like was crawling under the sink herself. If she could just hide there for a few more hours, maybe Willie would decide to come home and one problem would be solved. What Aurora said was true: men did cause endless trouble and pain, women were the ones who deserved sympathy, and yet, mad as she got at men, and mean as she could be to them individually and briefly, she could never withold her sympathies from them for very long. There was just something about them that sooner or later prompted her to ease up.
“It’s like they’re just boys,” she said. “Emma was a girl, you never had no boys, you don’t know. But I had four boys.”
“Yes, and from what I can tell, every one of your sons is more grown-up and more responsible and better to their women than any of your boyfriends have ever been to you,” Aurora pointed out. “Why does the fact that you raised responsible sons mean you have to excuse every weak male that comes your way?”
“You ask too many questions, hon,” Rosie said wearily. She went to the little closet where she kept the vacuum cleaner and began to put it together. Vacuuming might be the most soothing thing she could do just at the moment. At least it would drown out Aurora’s questions, which had a tendency to become more difficult to answer the worse they both were feeling.
“Undoubtedly I do, that’s because I need to find out what’s wrong with the world, and why,” Aurora said. “Go away, run your machine, close me out if you want to.”
She smeared her fresh pancakes liberally with butter and then doused them in an even more liberal gush of maple syrup. Her mood had been rising at the thought of her Greeks, but it suddenly turned around and began to sink at the thought of what Patsy and Jerry might be doing just then, or, if not just then, then later in the day, or, if not this day, then sometime.
The factor that was causing her spirits to take their dive was the sense that Patsy and Jerry had just knocked her out of the mainstream. Why making love occasionally meant that one was still in the mainstream, she didn’t know—it just seemed to her that it did. And in the last few years she had struggled mightily—or so it seemed to her—for just that: just to stay in the mainstream a little longer. Often she got no great pleasure out of her activities; often her partners were at best inadequate and at worst pathetic; often her self-esteem took a battering of one kind or another, as it had when she had cast aside good sense and seduced Jerry—but she could at least have the momentary sense of swimming where she ought to swim, rather than feel that she was merely creeping along like an old turtle, in the shallows, the mud, the ditch.
Now Jerry and Patsy were the swimmers: whatever they were doing, and however or whenever they did it, would likely be better than anything she was apt to be doing for some time to come, perhaps forever.
“I’ll leave you alone and let you eat,” Rosie said, carrying the vacuum cleaner to the foot of the stairs. It was hard to worry too much about Aurora when she was eating—and, with a second stack of pancakes in front of her, she definitely was eating.
“Yes, go,” Aurora said. “I’ll sit here with my pancakes and do your work for you.”
The remark puzzled Rosie. She was halfway up the stairs, vacuum cleaner at the ready, about to do her work for herself. What did Aurora mean? That she wanted to take over the vacuuming? Nobody could eat pancakes while vacuuming—but then maybe Aurora meant that she wanted to do the vacuuming after she ate the pancakes. On rare occasions she did get in the mood to do housework. Maybe this was one such rare occasion.
“No, go clean,” Aurora said, seeking her maid’s look of puzzlement. She waved her hand at Rosie vigorously.
“Okay, but what did you mean, do my work for me?” Rosie inquired.
“I meant your philosophical work,” Aurora said. “Someone has to figure out what’s wrong with men, and why. Obviously you’d rather take refuge in mindless labor than trouble yourself with these eternal questions.”
“If they’re eternal questions I guess a lot of people who are a lot smarter than me have worked on them,?
?? Rosie said. “If Shakespeare and Eric Hoffer can’t figure them out, I couldn’t have a chance in hell.”
She had seen Eric Hoffer on television several times and had been much impressed by his ability to explain why things were as they were.
“What about Sir Kenneth Clark?” Rosie asked, remembering another television star whose ability to explain things had impressed her. “He explained nearly every single thing about civilization,” Rosie reminded her boss. “Maybe you could just write him a letter and ask him why men are jerks.”
“No, thanks,” Aurora said. “Since he’s male, there’s every likelihood that he’s a jerk himself. Anyway, I’ve spent most of my life questioning men about their own failings, and what have I got to show for it?”
“You got two Greeks coming to dinner—or one Greek at least,” Rosie reminded her. “Maybe one of them won’t be a jerk.”
“It’s a faint hope, but I have to start somewhere, if I intend to start,” Aurora said. “Do you think we should invite Pascal, since we’re cooking?”
“Good lord, no, you know how jealous he is,” Rosie said. “He’d probably be twice as jealous of somebody who was a Greek, much less two somebodies, if the mean one comes.”
“Nonetheless, I think I may invite Pascal anyway, over your protests,” Aurora said, as Rosie, seeing that her boss seemed to be in an improving humor, lugged the vacuum cleaner on up the stairs.
9
“Greeks?” Pascal said, horrified. “You want me to share you with Greeks? Where did you pick up these Greeks?”
“At a bar on the Ship Channel,” Aurora said calmly. “Where would you expect me to pick up Greeks in this town?”
In the mood to torment someone, she had telephoned Pascal to inform him that he was being invited to dinner to meet her new friends. She was seated in her window nook, looking in the mirror. It seemed to her that, despite all her efforts to be gallant and press ahead with life, her eyes lacked luster. Indeed, everything about her appearance lacked luster, and trying to provoke Pascal was not really much fun. He was so predictable and she was so obviously depressed that the effort seemed hollow.
Several times she had been on the point of calling Jerry Bruckner. Once or twice she had even picked up the phone, only to put it down gain. Once she had even started for her car meaning to drive over and catch him in the ten minutes he allowed himself between patients, but before she even got into her car, she did an about-face and retreated to her bedroom. Sooner or later she supposed she would have to talk to Jerry, or even see him, but she wasn’t ready for it and had no way of predicting when she would be ready.
“All over the place you pick up everyone you see that’s wearing pants,” Pascal said.
“The pants these two had on were nothing much, I can assure you,” Aurora said. “Still, having nothing better to do, I picked them up.”
“You’re a horrible woman!” Pascal burst out, his temper getting the better of him. “Anybody you pick up, you treat him better than me.”
“That’s not true, and it was ungrammatically put, besides,” Aurora countered. “How do you hold down a job in a respectable consulate if you can only manage to speak broken English of that sort?”
“I can speak English better than you can speak French, any day of your life,” Pascal said.
“I do not attempt French now, although I did once,” Aurora said. “You attempt English and the results speak for themselves. This is a stupid squabble. I asked you to dinner. Are you accepting or are you declining?”
Pascal was silent for a moment, trying to master his anger.
“Take your time, there’s no pressure,” Aurora said. “It’s just an invitation. You’re quite free to accept or refuse. But if you happen to be refusing, I must say you’re doing it with singular lack of grace.”
Rosie wandered in. She had taken up smoking again and was smoking. Aurora waved her out, but she only stepped back a foot or two so as to be technically in the hall.
“Willie has left Rosie and it’s had a bad effect on her,” Aurora said. “She’s smoking again.”
Pascal received this news in silence. He was filled with bitterness at the thought of how badly Aurora was treating him. The only thing that kept him from telling her off in no uncertain terms was the knowledge that it would only lead her to redouble her efforts and treat him even worse.
“Greeks have filthy habits,” he pointed out finally. “They make love to goats.”
“Many do, I’m sure, but these two Greeks of mine are not goatherds,” Aurora informed him. “They are retired from the shipping business and have established a delightful bar.”
“Delightful to you, maybe,” Pascal said. “Anywhere there’s men in pants, you are delighted.”
“Accept or refuse, eight o’clock, informal?” Aurora said.
“Accept,” Pascal said, feeling miserable.
“The fat’s in the fire now,” Rosie said, when she saw Aurora hang up.
“What else do I have to do other than fling the fat in the fire?” Aurora inquired. “Anyway, what do you care? It’s not your fire.”
“It sort of is, I live here,” Rosie reminded her.
The phone rang, and it was Melanie, wildly excited.
“I got it—I got the part! I’m going to be in a TV series,” Melanie said. “I was too scared it wouldn’t happen to call you sooner.
“I mean, I’m in a pilot,” she added hastily. “But it will be a series if it’s good, and people like it.”
“Melly, this is little short of miraculous,” Aurora said. “I’m very proud of you and so will Rosie be, once she’s heard this news.”
Rosie raced to the phone and heard it. They both heard it for almost an hour—all about Melanie getting called back for a second tryout, and then a third; about her eventual triumph and Bruce’s intense jealousy; about his breakup with Katie and his attempts to return to Melanie, her rejection, his despair, and her new boyfriend Lee, a young assistant director who knew many wonderful cheap places to take Melanie to dine. The last item in the report was that Melanie had lost sixteen pounds, mainly from being too nervous to eat.
“I mean, once I knew there was some kind of chance I might get the part, the thought of not getting it was the worst,” Melanie said. “It was so nerve-racking it just sort of melted me.”
During the call both Aurora and Rosie grew cheerful almost to the point of bubbliness, but neither the bubbliness nor the cheer lasted much more than half an hour once Melanie hung up. They chattered on for fifteen minutes about how wonderful it was that Melanie had finally had a triumph—and then both sank swiftly back into depression.
“The downside is she won’t never be coming home to cheer us up,” Rosie pointed out. “Lord knows we need it, too.”
“Oh, well,” Aurora said. “You’re only young once.”
Rosie gave her an odd look. “That ain’t what you used to say,” she reminded Aurora. “You used to say you were young as long as you could manage it.”
“Yes, that was a correct statement, too,” Aurora said. “I was managing it fine right up until Jerry slept with Patsy. That took the wind out of my sails. In fact, it took the sails right off the ship.”
“You still don’t really know he done it,” Rosie said. “All this suffering could be for nothing.”
“If he hasn’t done it, then where is he?” Aurora wanted to know. “What’s to stop him from driving over here to affirm his innocence?”
“Aurora, he don’t even know he’s being accused,” Rosie said, wondering why she was bothering to argue so hard for Jerry Bruckner, a man she scarcely knew. For all she knew, he was guilty as hell—one indicator pointing in that direction was that Patsy no longer came into the house for a chat when she came to pick Rosie up for exercise class. She now showed up at the last possible moment, got Rosie at the curb, drove like a bat to Bellaire, and said little—all signs of guilt, in Rosie’s view. Once or twice she had been tempted to ask Patsy about it point-blank, but so far she h
adn’t.
“He knows he’s accused of something” Aurora pointed out. “I was seeing him every morning and now I’m not. A moron would know that suggests that all is not well.”
“I don’t know why I’m carrying on about this,” Rosie said. “Whether he did or whether he didn’t ain’t gonna bring Willie back.”
“Rosie, Willie’s only been gone a few hours,” Aurora said. “He may have just gone on a bender.”
“Naw, he don’t drink, except wine coolers,” Rosie said. “If it’s a bender it’s a dope bender.”
“Do you really want him back, or are you just annoyed that he managed to wrench himself from your embraces?” Aurora asked.
“What embraces?” Rosie said.
“Well, I suppose I just assumed there were embraces,” Aurora said.
Rosie looked very downcast. “Once, since he got back from Alabama,” she said. “I don’t call that a sex life. I don’t call it nothing.”
“No wonder you don’t want him back,” Aurora said.
“I don’t, particularly,” Rosie admitted. “But I’d still like to know if he’s alive or dead.”
“This news about Melly is very good news,” Aurora said. “If we weren’t such selfish old hags we’d be happy as larks just knowing she’s had this success.”
“I’m happy as a lark for her,” Rosie said. “I just ain’t happy as a lark for me.”
“It’s an upswing, though,” Aurora said. “I can remember whole years when there was not the slightest hint of an upswing. Now if Teddy could stop shaking, and if Tommy could get paroled, we’d be almost out of the woods.
“Also, it would help if we could both find beautiful, distinguished, desirable men to fall in love with,” she added. “It would sure be a big improvement on what we’ve had.”
“I like Theo but I wouldn’t call him beautiful,” Rosie allowed. “What’s the mean brother look like?”
“Identical,” Aurora said. “Identical to Theo, that is. While I was in the process of getting drunk I thought they might be twins.”