Lion House,The (11 page)

She smiled, ruefully, and shook her head. "Not yet," she answered. "Not quite yet..." Then, quickly, she got up. "I made some breakfast," she said. "You know my cooking
—but it's better than nothing..."

She was gone awhile. When she came back she was carrying a tray. Besides coffee for both of us she had I made scrambled eggs and buttered toast. There were sprigs of parsley stuck into the center of the eggs and a little moss-green bowl filled with orange marmalade. "I hate marmalade," she said, "but I love the color."

The coffee tasted like dishwater, and the eggs needed seasoning. "You're a lousy cook," I said, "but you have a way of making things look pretty..."

I was still there that afternoon when the kids came home; and there at six when Marc arrived. I don't know how or when it was decided that I would stay (I had, after all, only come to borrow some money), but it was something both Frannie and I seemed to know and accept. I couldn't borrow indefinitely; nor could I have swung a hotel bill on my salary. Besides, I wanted less than anything to be alone.

When Marc came in Frannie told him I was going to be there for a while. He stood in the den for a few minutes, not saying anything. But his withdrawnness was not new. There had always been that reserve in his manner, the restraint, the not wanting to be part of things. While Frannie might set the world on fire at any given moment,
or
plunge it into utter darkness with as little effort, Marc was the Cool, the Constant, the Collector of the Pieces.

"Where?" he asked finally. "I hardly think we're set up for long-term guests."

"Oh, not long-term," she told him. "Just till things get settled
—or blow over," she added hopefully. "We'll clean out the maid's room; hang pictures and stuff... Jo, you pick a couple of pictures you'd like."

"Spare me the Rouault, if you don't mind," Marc said. But, again, his resistance to the spirit Frannie had just shown was
—well, was Marc; and so: unhurtful.

I chose one from the breakfast room: orange free squares on a white background, painted by Blair in nursery school some years before. And Frannie gathered some white and yellow flowers from outside and put them in a vase on my bedtable.

There was a moment, after dinner, when I felt I had better go. I was in the den picking up glasses and ashtrays and I could hear them talking in the kitchen: "...left him because of
you..."
Marc was saying, "...and living here strikes me as sheer insanity!"

He knew, then. Either he had been told, or he knew instinctively.

"... nowhere else to go," Frannie insisted. "And anyway, it's just a month or so; we leave for Bermuda when school ends."

"Nowhere else to go,
hell,"
was Marc's rejoinder. "Stop kidding yourself. She wants to stay and you want her to stay and
nowhere else to go
has nothing to do with it!" But then: "All right: you play it your way. But just remember: I live here too and I'm not going to put up with any of your
—"

I coughed before I went in. The conversation stopped like a snapped-off radio. "Look," I began, "I think I ought to leave
—"

"Don't be an idiot," Frannie said.

"No, really. There's the food and everything, and
—"

"What would you like to do? Stick a quarter a day in the meter or something?"

"Be serious, Frannie. It isn't only the room and board. It's the trouble. You don't even have a steady maid."

"If I don't have a maid it's
my
problem," she said. "You know we could afford a whole retinue if we wanted it. I don't have a full-time maid because I can't stand having them around, breathing down my neck. I know; I've tried. The last one wound up thinking she was my mother!”

She was standing beside me at that point, with Marc across from us. I sensed for a second that our positions might be symbolic; that sides were being taken. Yet I didn't, and don't, believe that all of life must be broken down to fit the honey-comb of unconscious motivation; so I put the thought from my mind. "All right," I said. "But the booze is going to be on me. And the butts. And anything else I happen to notice you can use around here."

"Okay," she agreed. "But only because it will make
you
feel better."

That first night at the Brownes' was one of the hardest
—though there were to be worse ones before our month was over. Marc was tired, and, for some reason, insisted that Frannie go up with him. He said, lightly enough, that he couldn't stand female
klatches
and that we'd have lots of time for cahootzing when he wasn't around.

I stayed downstairs for a while, drinking to keep from thinking. But I thought anyway. And mixed with the dread of the failure and loneliness I might eventually have to face there was a kind of elation. Because now, at long last, I was about to scrap the past and start over. I'd go back to school the next day and continue till the end of the term. In my free time I'd find an apartment for when Frannie and Marc and the kids went to Bermuda; and I'd haunt the agencies in town for a summer job with decent pay. I'd had a variety of experiences: Wingo, secretary, training squad in a department store, even a slight tussle with hospital work in the old days. There was no doubt that I could land something.

I poured another drink, and for twenty minutes or so I was absolutely happy.

When I got upstairs the kids were asleep and I went into their rooms to look at them. They were so beautiful, all three of them, each in his own way: Stuart
—the biggest, already broken from the confines of the family to a point of relying on a place within himself; yet, in sleep the traces of small-boy vulnerability on his face; a look of needs as yet unfilled; because Stu had been the first to come and his row had been hardest. Petey—flung carelessly on the bed beside Stu's, with the half-smile of less complicated dreams. And in another room, papered with rosebuds and billowing with organdy—Blair. I stayed with her longer than with the others, taking in her delicate, up-turned nose, her hair streaked blonde like Frannie's, but straighter and softer in its sleep-loosened pony
tail. And looking at her, I thought:
she might have been
mine.

When I left her there was silence behind Frannie's and Marc's door, and no light showing through at the threshold.

I went to my own small room down the hall and hung my unpacked things away.
It won't be bad,
I told myself.
It's nice here.
I emptied a fresh pack of cigarettes into the white cup Frannie had given me and set it on the table beside the snapshot of my father. She'd forgotten an ashtray, but I didn't want to go downstairs again so I used the soap dish from the john.

I lay in bed awhile, smoking and staring at the ceiling. But repeatedly my glance swept sideways to the snapshot. Like a child alone with an image or a picture in a story book, I spoke to it inside myself:
I'm here,
I said.
No, not with Brad; just me. It had to be this way. I think you must have known it years ago: perhaps, the week before I married him... Did you hear about Mother? She wasn't alone for long. No one we ever knew: a banker from Detroit. Yes. I had a letter, ages ago. I can't remember if I answered. If I did it was probably about the weather or a dress I'd bought. It was always like that. We were never able to say anything that mattered. I don't think she ever got used to having me: such a brash child for such a quiet little woman to have borne...

His thin, leaning height touched me; and the sad, gray depths of his eyes. I had always loved his face. Its fragile unsmilingness had not seemed sad to me in those days; only filled with understanding. Whatever there had been in it of its own weak end I had overlooked, putting there instead the thing I wanted most for him to give me.

Lying there then, I remembered things about him, times I'd had with him that I hadn't thought of for years: a beach scene when I was twelve. He'd carried me to the water on his shoulders.
Don't,
my mother cautioned.
She's too heavy; you'll hurt yourself.
(She sat on a blanket on the sand, in the shade of a yellow and green umbrella, with a robe across her lap to protect her from the wind.)
Don't,
she said again. But he walked off with me, bending slightly under my weight, not listening. Just before we reached the water, he fell. I landed on a shell and cut my cheek. It grew together, but the scar stayed.

And then there was the time, much later, during my first vacation from college. I'd been out on a date, dancing, and drinking something home-distilled. After that we'd driven off somewhere and parked the car. I didn't get home till three. I took my shoes off to creep upstairs, but when I passed the diningroom he heard me. He was in there, reading. He looked up. He didn't ask me to stop or stay; but I had to. I walked in to him, carrying my shoes like a fool, and stood there. There wasn't any need to explain. He knew those things about me without having to be told; and he accepted them. Still:
I'm sorry,
I said inanely.
I
hope you didn't worry...

And then my mother came down, stern and tight-lipped. She looked at me; then at him.

It got late,
I told her.
I didn't know how late it was getting.

You smell like a gin mill,
she said.

I swallowed and put my hand over my mouth.

Your clothes look as if you'd slept in them.

Trembling, I smoothed the creases down against my leg.

Where were you? What were you doing?

I couldn't answer. I looked at my father.

She folded her arms across the breast of an old silk wrapper. Then:
It's all right with your father, Elizabeth,
she said, ice-edged.
Anything you do is all right with your father!

Speak!
I cried out to him inwardly, silently.
Say something! She's right, she's right! Shout at me, blame me, beat me
—and I will love you even more!

But he didn't move, or utter a sound. He just turned the page and went on reading.

I'm sorry,
I said to the picture, reaching out and turning it away.

There was a knock on my door.

"Yes?"

"Me: Frannie. Can I come in?"

She was wearing white pajamas, striped red and navy. "I thought you were asleep," I said.

"No. Can't. How are you?"

"Fine."

"Are you all right?"

"Fine."

She took a cigarette out of the white cup and lighted it. "Oh, you brought that along..."

I sat up. "Listen, Frannie," I said, "I've been thinking. Maybe I shouldn't be here. I mean
—well, after all, it's a little crazy. And Marc doesn't seem to be going for it whole-heartedly." I laughed. "He knows the ropes, you see—being a lawyer. How will it hold up in court that I'm living in the home of the co-respondent?"

"Court? You're not
—?"

"Eventually, I guess. But not till I get settled. Maybe next Fall. And anyway, it won't be that kind: no scenes, no fuss, no names."

She bit her lip. "It
is
crazy, isn't it?" she said. Then she pulled herself up and looked straight at me. "Why aren't you angry at me, Jo?" she asked.

"I was, this morning. And in the past, from time to time, I've been a little miffed, to say the least."

"No. Not like that. Not in the past, and not just a little. Why aren't you angry
now?
Why aren't you tearing the house apart? Why don't you want to kill me?"

"I don't know," I said. "Why do you want to be killed?"

She didn't answer.
Poor kid,
I thought.
Poor tortured kid.
I put my hand out. "Come here, jerk," I said.

She came over slowly and I drew her down. "Go back to bed," I told her, kissing her on the forehead. She pulled away. "And for Christ's sake," I added, letting her go, "don't start
analyzing
everything! We've got enough to handle without any half-baked psychiatry!"

"But Jo," she said, "you've
got
to be angry! It just isn't normal! It isn't right
—"

I laughed.

"Go on, laugh," she said. "Laugh
—and then maybe you won't have to be honest about how angry you are!"

"Okay," I said. "So I'm angry. If it'll make you happy, I'll absolutely
roar! I'll eat you alive!
All right? Now go to bed and forget it, will you?"

I felt pretty good after she left; but I couldn't sleep, and I suppose lying there thinking is what did it. A kind of hopelessness set in which had been only superficially disguised by my attempt to cheer up Frannie. It got worse as the hours went by and I started crying again. Once I began, it exploded, the way it had in Frannie's room that morning; and I had to bury my face in the pillow to keep from waking the world.

The next morning I was downstairs by seven and made breakfast for Marc and the kids. Everybody was ecstatic about the French toast with syrup and the bacon. "We're really living!" Stu said; and Marc had two cups of coffee. Frannie floated around vaguely for a while and finally went upstairs again.

We all left the house at the same time, and I pulled off my chores at Wingo as if nothing had happened.

After school I drove to the city and tried two employment agencies. The woman at the second one seemed to think my chances were good. She did have a suggestion, though, after reading the resume I wrote out for her: "You don't have to say forty-six," she told me. "Make it forty. It's safer." I resented having to, but I wrote it all over again so there wouldn't be any trace of an erasure.

On my way back that evening I stopped at an H & H and ate a chicken pot pie. I didn't feel like dessert, but I ordered half a dozen cup cakes and wrapped them up in napkins for the kids.

"Where were you?" Frannie wanted to know when I walked in. "We've been waiting and the damned steak's overdone."

"I should have called you. I grabbed a bite en route. Here, divide them," I said, handing the cup cakes to Petey.

"Not before dinner!" Frannie shouted; but it was too late: tremendous bites were missing before she could get across the room.