Another Country Page 28

  “I know a little bit about it,” Eric said. “No sweat.” He held out his hand; Vivaldo held it for a moment. “I’ll give you a call in a couple of days, all right? Say good-bye to Ida for me.”

  “All right, Eric. Be well.”

  Eric smiled. “Stay well.”

  He turned and started walking toward Sixth Avenue, but he did not really know where he was going. He felt Vivaldo’s eyes on his back; then Vivaldo was swallowed up in the press of people behind him.

  On the corner of Sixth Avenue, he watched and waited, the lights banged on and off. A truck came by; he looked up into the face of the truck driver, and felt an awful desire to join that man and ride in that truck wherever the truck was going.

  But he crossed the street and started walking toward his apartment. It was the safest place to be, it was the only place to be. Strange people— they seemed strange to him now, but, one day, again, he might be one of them— passed him with that ineffable, sidelong, desperate look; but he kept his eyes an the pavement. Not yet, not you. Not yet. Not yet.

  3

  On the Wednesday afternoon that Ida went off to see Ellis, Cass called Vivaldo at the midtown bookshop where he worked and asked if she could buy him a drink when his day was over. The sound of her voice, swift, subdued, and unhappy, had the effect of jolting him out of his own bewilderment. He asked her to pick him up at the shop at six.

  She arrived at the exact time, wearing a green summer dress which made her look very young, carrying an absurdly large straw handbag. Her hair was pulled back and fell over her shoulders; and, for a moment, watching her push through the doors, both blurred and defined by the heavy sunlight, she looked like the Cass of his adolescence, of years ago. She had then been the most beautiful, the most golden girl on earth. And Richard had been the greatest, most beautiful man.

  She seemed terribly wound up— seemed to blaze, nearly, with some private, barely contained passion. She smiled at him, looking both young and weary; and for a moment he was faintly aware of her personal heat, her odor.

  “How are you, Vivaldo? It’s been rather a while since we’ve seen each other.”

  “I guess it has. And it’s been my fault. How are things with you?”

  She shrugged humorously, raising her hands like a child. “Oh. Up and down.” Then, after a moment, “Rather down right now.” She looked around the store. People were peering into bookshelves rather the way children peered in at the glass-enclosed fish in the aquarium. “Are you free? Can we leave now?”

  “Yes. I was just waiting for you.” He said good night to his employer and they walked into the scalding streets. They were in the Fifties, on the East Side. “Where shall we have this drink?”

  “I don’t care. Someplace with air conditioning. And without a TV set. I couldn’t care less about baseball.”

  They started walking uptown, and east, as though each wished to get as far away as possible from the world they knew and their responsibilities in it. The presence of others, walking past them, walking toward them, erupting rudely out of doorways and taxicabs, and springing up from the curbs, intruded painfully on their stillness and seemed to menace their connection. And each man or woman that passed seemed also to be carrying some intolerable burden; their private lives screamed from their hot and discontented faces.

  “On days like this,” Cass said, suddenly, “I remember what it was like— I think I remember— to be young, very young.” She looked up at him. “When everything, touching and tasting— everything— was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.”

  “That’s hindsight, Cass. I wouldn’t want to be that young again for anything on earth.”

  But he knew what she meant. Her words had taken his mind away— for a moment— from his cruel visions of Ida and Ellis. (“You told me you hadn’t seen him since that party.” “Well. I did go to see him once, just to tell him about the jam session.” “Why did you have to see him, why didn’t you just call?” “I wasn’t sure he’d remember me from just over the phone. And then I didn’t tell you because I knew how you’d behave.” “I don’t care what you say, baby, I know what he’s after, he just wants to get inside your drawers.” “Oh, Vivaldo. You think I don’t know how to handle little snots like that?” And she gave him a look, which he did not know how to answer, which almost stated Look how I handled you.)

  But now he thought of himself at fifteen or sixteen— swimming in the Coney Island surf, or in the pool in his neighborhood; playing handball in the playground, sometimes with his father; lying in the gutter after a street fight, vomiting, praying that no enemy would take this occasion to kick his brains in. He remembered the fear of those days, fear of everything, covered with a mocking, staccato style, defended with the bullets of dirty words. Everything was for the first time; at fifteen or sixteen; and what was her name? Zelda. Could that possibly be right? On the roof, in the summertime, under the dirty city stars.

  All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever: it was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it. Where was Zelda now? She might easily have been transformed into the matron with fleshy, spreading buttocks and metallically unlikely blonde hair who teetered on high heels just before them now. She, too, somewhere, some day, had looked on and touched everything for the first time and felt the summer air on her breasts like a blessing and been entered and had the blood run out, for the first time.

  And what was Cass thinking?

  “Oh, no,” she said, slowly, “I certainly don’t mean that I want to be that miserable girl again. I was just remembering how different it was then— how different from now.”

  He put one arm around her thin shoulders. “You sound sad, Cass. Tell me what’s the matter.”

  He guided her into a dark, cool cocktail lounge. The waiter led them to a small table for two, took their orders, and disappeared. Cass looked down at the tabletop and played with the salted peanuts in the red plastic dish.

  “Well, that’s why I called you— to talk to you. But it’s not so easy. I’m not sure I know what’s the matter.” The waiter returned and set their drinks down before them. “That’s not true. I guess I do know what’s the matter.”

  Then she was silent. She sipped her drink nervously and lit a cigarette.

  “I guess it’s about Richard and me,” she said at last. “I don’t know what’s going to become of us. There doesn’t seem to be anything between us any more.” She spoke in an odd, breathless way, almost like a schoolgirl, and as though she did not believe what she was saying. “Or I guess that’s not right. There’s a hell of a lot between us, there must be. But none of it seems to work. Sometimes— sometimes I think he hates me— for being married, for the children, for the work he does. And other times I know that isn’t true, that can’t be true.” She bit her lower lip and stubbed out her cigarette and tried to laugh. “Poor Vivaldo. I know you’ve got troubles of your own and don’t know what to do about the maunderings of a middle-aged, self-centered matron.”

  “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I guess you are practically decrepit.” He tried to smile; he did not know what to say. Ida and Ellis, thrust hastily to the back of his mind, were, nevertheless, dimly accomplishing their unspeakable violations of his manhood. “It really just sounds like a kind of summer storm— don’t all married people have them?”

  “I really don’t know anything about all married people. I’m not sure I know anything about marriage.” She sipped her drink again, saying, irrelevantly, “I wish I could get drunk.” Then she giggled, her proud face suddenly breaking. “I wish I could get drunk and go out and pick up a truck driver or a taxi driver or anybody who’d touch me and make me feel like a woman again.” She hid her face with one bony hand and her tears dripped through her fingers. Keeping her head down, she searched fiercely through the absurd straw handbag and finally came up with a small bit o
f Kleenex. With this, miraculously, she managed to blow her nose and dry her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve just been sitting around brooding too long.”

  “What have you been brooding about, Cass? I thought you and Richard had it made.” These words sounded, in his own ears, stiff and uncaring. But he had known Cass and Richard too long and been too young when he met them; he had never really thought of Cass and Richard as lovers. Sometimes, of course, he had watched Cass move, realizing that, small as she was, she was all woman and all there, had good legs and nice breasts and knew how to twist her small behind; and, sometimes, watching Richard’s great paw on her wrist, wondered how she bore his weight. But he had the tendency of all wildly disorganized people to suppose that the lives of others were tamer and less sensual and more cerebral than his own. And for the very first time he had the sense of Cass as a passionate woman who had merely been carrying on a legal love affair; who writhed as beautifully and shamelessly in Richard’s arms as the women Vivaldo had dreamed about for all these years. “I guess,” he added, “I must sound pretty dumb. Forgive me.”

  She smiled— smiled as though she had read his thoughts. “No, you don’t. Perhaps I also thought we had it made. But nobody ever has it made.” She lit another cigarette, straightening her shoulders, slowly circling, as she had for many weeks now, around some awful decision. “I keep telling myself it’s because of the way our lives have changed, now that Richard’s becoming so well known. But it isn’t that. It’s something that’s been there all along.” Now she was very grave and dry. She looked at Vivaldo through the smoke of her cigarette, narrowing her eyes. “You know, I used to look at you and all your horrible adventures and compare you to Richard and me and think how lucky we were. He was the first”— she faltered and looked down— “the very first man I ever had, and I was the first for him, too— really the first, the first girl, anyway, he ever loved.”

  And she looked down again, as though the burden of confession were too great. Yet they were united in the knowledge that what she had begun she must now finish.

  “And you think he doesn’t love you any more?”

  She did not answer. She covered her forehead with her ringed left hand and stared into the dish of salted peanuts as though the answer to all riddles were hidden there. The tiny arrows on her wrist watch said it was twenty-five minutes to seven. Ida would have left Ellis hours ago and would have visited her singing teacher. She would now be in the restaurant, her station set up, and her uniform on, preparing for the dinner rush. He could see her closed, haughty face as she approached a table, manipulating her pad and pencil as though it were a sword and shield. She would not have stayed long with Ellis— he was a busy man. But how long did it take for those guys to bang off a quick one, in the middle of the afternoon, in their inviolable offices? He tried to concentrate on Cass and her trouble. Perhaps he had taken her out for a drink; perhaps he had persuaded her not to go to work, and had invited her for dinner; perhaps they were together now. (Where?) Perhaps Ellis had persuaded her to meet him at midnight in a theatrical bar, the kind of place where it would do her good to be seen with him. But no, not that; it would certainly not do Ellis any good to be seen with her. Ellis was far too smart for that— just as he was far too smart to make any verbal comparisons between his power and Vivaldo’s. But he would lose no opportunity to force Ida to make these comparisons for herself.

  He was making himself sick with his fears and his fantasies. If Ida loved him, then Ellis and the whole great glittering world did not matter. If she did not love him, there was nothing he could do about it and the sooner everything came to an end between them, the better. But he knew that it was not as simple as that, that he was not being honest. She might very well love him and yet— he shuddered and threw down his drink— be groaning on some leather couch under the weight of Ellis. Her love for him would in no way blunt the force of her determination to become a singer— to pursue the career which now seemed so easily within her grasp. He could even see the truth of her loving and vehement assertion that it was he, his love, which had given her the courage to begin. This did not cheer him, the assertion containing to his ears the suggestion that his role now was finished and he was fouling up everything by failing to deliver his exit lines. He shook his head. In half an hour— no, an hour— he would call the restaurant.

  “Oh, Cass,” he heard himself saying, “I wish I could do something to help.”

  She smiled and touched his hand. The tiny arrows on her wrist had not moved. “Thank you,” she said— very gravely. Then, “I don’t know if Richard loves me any more or not. He doesn’t see me any more— he doesn’t see me. He hasn’t touched me”— she raised her eyes to Vivaldo’s and two tears spilled over and rolled down her face; she made no move to check them— “he hasn’t touched me in, oh, I don’t know how long. I’ve never been very aggressive; I’ve never had to be.” She struck at her tears with the back of her hand. “I sit in that house like— like a housekeeper. I take care of the kids and make meals and scrub toilet bowls and answer the phone and he just— doesn’t see me. He’s always working. He’s always busy with deals with— with Ellis, I guess, and his agent and all those horrible people. Maybe he’s mad at me because I don’t like them very much and I can’t help it.” She caught her breath, found another wad of Kleenex, and again accomplished miracles with it. “In the beginning, I sort of teased him about them. I don’t any more, but I guess it’s too late. I know they’re busy and important but I can’t help it, I don’t think it’s serious work. Maybe Richard’s right, he says I’m a New England snob and a man-killer but God knows I don’t mean to be and— I don’t think Richard’s work is any good any more and he can’t forgive me for that. What am I to do?” And she put both hands to her forehead, looking down, and began to cry again. He looked cautiously around the dark lounge. No one was noticing them. It was suddenly a quarter to seven.

  Ineptly, he asked, “Have you and Richard talked about this at all?”

  She shook her head. “No. We’ve just had fights. We don’t seem to be able to talk to each other any more. I know that people say that there comes a time in marriage when everything goes out of it except companionship, but this can’t be what they were talking about, not this, not so soon. I won’t have it!” And now the extraordinary violence in her voice did cause a few heads to turn in their direction.

  He took both her hands, smiling. “Easy, girl, easy. Let me buy you another drink.”

  “That would be nice.” The drink before her was mainly water, but she finished it. Vivaldo signaled the waiter for another round.

  “Does Richard know where you are now?”

  “No— yes. I told him I was going to have a drink with you.”

  “What time does he expect you back?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know. I left supper in the oven. I told him if I wasn’t back in time for supper to feed the children and eat himself. He just grunted and walked into his study.” She lit a cigarette, looking both desperate and distant; and he knew that there was more in her mind than she was telling. “I guess I’ll go on back, though. Or maybe I’ll go to a movie.”

  “Would you like to have supper with me?”

  “No. I don’t feel like eating. Besides”— the waiter came with their drinks; she waited until he left— “Richard’s a little jealous of you.”

  “Of me? Why is he jealous of me?”

  “Because you may become a real writer. And now he never will be. And he knows it. And that’s the whole trouble.” She made this pronouncement with the utmost coolness and Vivaldo began to see, for the first time, how deadly it must he for Richard, now, to deal with a woman like Cass. “Goddamnit. I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t read.” And she grinned and took a swallow of her drink.

  “Yes, you would,” he said. “You can’t help it.”

  “Well. If he couldn’t read, and knew it, he could learn. I could teach him. But I don’t care if he’s a writer or not. He’s the one w
ho dreamed all that up.” She paused, bony and thoughtful. “He’s a carpenter’s son,” she said, “the fifth son of a carpenter who came from Poland. Maybe that’s why it’s so important. A hundred years ago he’d have been like his father and opened a carpenter’s shop. But now he’s got to be a writer and help Steve Ellis sell convictions and soap.” Ferociously, she ground out her cigarette. “And neither he, nor anyone else in that gang, can tell the difference between them.” She lit another cigarette at once. “Don’t misunderstand me; I’ve got nothing against Ellis, or any of those people. They’re just ordinary Americans, trying to get ahead. So is Richard, I guess.”

  “And so is Ida,” he said.

  “Ida?”

  “I think she’s been seeing him. I know she had a date to see Ellis this afternoon. He’s promised to help her— with her career.” And he smiled, bleakly.

  Suddenly, she laughed. “My God. Aren’t we a wonderful pair of slobs. Sitting here in this dark place, full of self-pity and alcohol, while our lovers are out there in the real world, seeing real people, doing real things, bringing real bacon into real homes— are they real? are they? Sometimes I wake up at night with that question in my mind and I walk around the house and go and look at the children. I don’t want them to be like that. I don’t want them to be like me, either.” She turned her face sideways, looking helplessly at the wall. With her golden hair down, and all the trouble in her face, she looked unbelievably young. “What am I to do?”

  “I always thought,” he ventured, “that it was easier for women.”

  She turned and looked at him; she did not look as young any more. “That what was easier?”

  “Knowing what to do.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Vivaldo. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Men have to think about so many things. Women only have to think about men.”

  She laughed again. “What’s so easy about that?”