All These Condemned (15 page)

I remember one thing he said. He frowned down at his knuckles and he said, “Noel, don’t you get the feeling that everything is going to go bang? Not to everybody. Just to people like this group. My God, look at us. Could any setup be more artificial? Take a look around. Every human being should have some purpose, some good purpose. Look at this
crowd. Is there a single person here worth a damn? Outside of you?”

“Including me, Steve. No.”

“It’s got to go bang. There has to be a purpose. I don’t want to sound like a Sunday school, but it has to be a clean and honest purpose. Not a PR kick, not cheap comedy on TV, not making people smell better, not selling more gunk, not kidding the public with phony art.”

“Where do I join up?” I asked him, smiling at him.

“You and me. We’ll form an association. Onward and upward, or something.” And then he looked sad. “Maybe it’s just too damn late for us, Noel. Maybe from here on in all we ought to look for is kicks. Like in that glass you just happen to have in your hand.”

“You mean this?” I drank it quickly. I had a funny feeling of recklessness. It
was
all going to go bang, and soon. And all I was doing was waiting around for it. There should be better things than waiting. And I had the crazy thought that maybe Steve would be one of the better things. At least he was honest about himself. I felt as though I were glowing, as though I had become prettier every minute.

During the croquet game I was aware of him all the time. Aware of the way he was watching me. And I wanted to be pretty for him. More pretty than I was. There had been a lot of sun and too many drinks and I felt careless and dizzy. And very contemptuous of Randy.

After the game and after we ate, people had stopped running around in circles. Steve came to me and told me there was a place on the lake he wanted to show me. I made myself say yes before I could think about it too much. We took one of the runabouts. He had a big thermos bottle. He said
it was a picnic. He drove the boat fast, scaring me when we went around corners, laughing at me, his teeth white in his face. And then he went slow and we were near an island. He went over the side and pulled the bow up and gave me his hand and I jumped down onto the sand.

It was very quiet there. There was a grassy bank. I felt myself growing scared. I felt the drinks oozing away. He kissed me with a hard confidence that was frightening. I drank from the thermos cup to make the fright go away. He caressed me. He was confident in the way he touched me. I kept trembling. I had the odd feeling that I had seen a man doing that before, murmuring and applying firm hands to quiet a restive horse. We were very much alone there. The grass was deep and soft. Somehow, without actually meaning to, I let him take me a bit beyond the point where I could turn back without making myself look entirely ridiculous. There was just something about his confidence.

And then he took me and I knew that it was exactly what I had wanted all my life, and knew then that I loved him and would always love him, and I told him so, many, many times. And he told me that it was a good thing that had happened to us, and we would have to be careful about the plans we made. But my world had been made whole. Nothing else mattered. I felt a shyness when he looked at me. It seemed so incredible to have found him there, at this place, at this party. To have found the Steve I love hiding behind that brash city mask. When it started to get dark at last, we put our suits on and got in the boat and went back. Randy was standing on the dock when we came in. I wanted to laugh at him. I was finally free of him. I wanted to tell him what had happened to me, and exactly how it had freed me.

When the motor stopped its noise, Randy said, “Where have you been?”

I imitated Wilma. I felt reckless and brave. “Why, we seem to have been on a picnic or something dahling. Miss me?”

He walked away. Steve shushed me. I couldn’t get mad. I felt too good. I felt full of light bulbs and cymbals and fur. And I drank some more. And stayed close to Steve. Let anybody in the world see I was staying close to Steve. I wanted to have them see it imprinted on my face, in the way I walked, in the tone of my laughter. For I was not only free of Randy, I was free of other things, of dry constraints, of shy imaginings. I was free to be a woman and love the way I wanted to love, without a book of rules.

I was glad when Wilma suggested we swim without suits. That was the way I felt. The lights came on for a moment after I had taken my suit off. And I did not mind. I did not mind being seen by anyone. That, too, was an indication of my new freedom. I went into the water and waited for Steve to find me. He did. We floated. We held hands. I turned into his arms. We kissed underwater. I felt sleek and alive. I felt brazen. I laughed at nothing. At just being alive. Then I was with him again after a silly game of tag.

I heard Gilman calling. “Wilma!” he yelled. “Hey, Wilma!”

I was telling Steve how much I loved him. He told me to shush. It hurt my feelings. I pouted. Then I started listening too, waiting for Wilma to answer. I wondered why she didn’t.

And all at once the water seemed to turn cold. My teeth began to chatter. I swam toward the dock.

AFTER STEVE TOLD ME
he thought Wilma had drowned, I stood there for perhaps ten seconds. Your mind works slowly after the kind of sleep I had. I had to dismiss the idea that it was a gag. Steve couldn’t act that well.

“Have you phoned?” I asked him.

“Phoned?” he said blankly.

I remembered where I had seen a phone. I went in and it rang at least ten times before the sleepy operator answered, a trace of indignation in her voice. I spoke sharply.

“This is the Ferris place. Wilma Ferris. Know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Ferris has drowned. We’re looking for her. Get hold of whoever can get over here with the necessary equipment. Can you do that?”

After a pause she answered in a voice that had forgotten
sleep and annoyance. “The troopers, the sheriff. Right away, sir.”

I was still in swimming trunks. I went down to the dock. They were milling around, staring at the cold unfriendly water.

“Where was she last seen?” I demanded. They talked and argued and interrupted each other and the net result was that no one knew. I got Steve and Gilman Hayes into a runabout. I went along. Randy Hess handled the boat. He had got a big flashlight from the house. I pushed off and let the boat drift out a way. We took turns diving from the bow, following the flashlight beam down. It was damn deep. Only once was I able to touch rock at the bottom. Hayes claimed to be able to get to the bottom each time. He probably could, with that chest on him. I knew it was a wild chance that we’d find her, but a chance worth taking, even at astronomical odds. Each minute that ticked away lessened her chance of survival, even if we found her. And there was another thing. For my own sake, I had to do all I possibly could. Because I knew that I could not be genuinely sorry she was dead. Any slackening of effort would give me almost the feeling of being an accomplice.

Each time I came up, gasping for air, clinging to the boat, I could hear the ridiculous sounds Mavis was making. They weren’t genuine sounds. There was a bit
too
much heartbreak. I felt a digust for her that seemed to me to be unnatural.

Steve clung to the runabout beside me and said, his teeth chattering, “What’s the point, Paul? Hell. Needles in haystacks. My God, there’s a lot of lake here.”

I heard the distant sirens then.

“A few more times, Steve. Come on.”

“Then you’ll be looking for me, too.”

But we kept on. And then we went in, and I knew that no matter what anybody did now, it was too late. Too late for Wilma. The urgency was gone. Now it was the routine of recovering a body. Nothing more. I talked to the troopers and to a man named Fish and heard the boats, far across the lake, converging on the Ferris place. I’d dropped my robe on the shore end of the dock. I put it on, found the nearly empty cigarette pack in the pocket. The terry cloth of the robe dried my body and I began to feel warmer. I wanted to talk to somebody and it certainly wasn’t Mavis. I glanced up toward the stone steps and saw Judy Jonah sitting up there, looking small, huddled, a bit forlorn. My cheeks got a little hot as I remembered leaning heavily on her, drunk, maudlin, silly. Yet of all the people there, she seemed to be the only one who—to use an old tired phrase—was my kind of people. And that in itself made no sense. A famous comedienne, and a business type. And I had seen the look on Fish’s face when he’d found Wilma’s swimsuit in the pocket of her robe. Fish and I had been equally appalled. So here was Judy Jonah, who doubtless had been a part of the so gay, so mad swimming party, and maybe I had better plan on relaxing with types like Fish, who shared my Victorian hangover.

I asked her if she’d stick around for a minute while I got a towel and some cigarettes. She said she would. I couldn’t read anything in her voice.

I made it fast, and went back. I asked about the swimming party. And I found out that she and Randy and Wallace Dorn had kept themselves clothed. I don’t know why it mattered. But it made me feel good. And I didn’t give a
damn about Mavis. So it could be Macy’s window as far as I was concerned. And so Mavis had managed to kill something that had been a long time adying. Killed it dead.

And there’s nothing so damn lonesome. How do you say it? There has to be somebody who cares how you get along. Just somebody. Somebody really involved with you. Somehow it’s all a big kindergarten and you trot home with a gold star pasted on your forehead, to be admired. Or go home with a bruise, demanding intricate bandages. The world is a great cold place. Men die in strange cities. Obits are on back pages. The ball of mud keeps spinning, and the parades line up on all the holidays. You have to have somebody. Maybe it’s really dead and gone when you at last realize that she
doesn’t
give a damn, that she would make traditional bleating sounds for you, but with that same trace of corn in her voice that I could hear, sitting there with Judy, sitting on the step below her. It made me feel cold and lonesome.

I had the ridiculous thought that Judy had warm arms and I wanted them around me, and wanted her telling me that I was safe and important. Yet, of course, I couldn’t get to her. Not while she kept on being Judy Jonah—because that was as though she were a juggler. She kept busy keeping the parabola of shining things spinning around her, and if you tried to reach they would all fall and break and the act would be spoiled. But it seemed like an act that went on out of forlorn habit.

She said she was cold and wanted to go get dressed. The wind was getting a bit stronger.

I went back to our room. Ferris products on the dressing table. Smell of Blue Neon heavy in the room. My bed rumpled
from alcoholic sleep. I stood there in the room and I felt something happen to me. You go along on momentum. You have been set in a track and wound up with the key in the back and you run along. A good key and a good spring and you run for all your life. But the spring slips, or maybe there weren’t enough turns on the key. And suddenly you find that you have run down and stopped. That was it. I stopped right there. Maybe it’s a point of decision. Or of evaluation. I don’t know. But I was motionless in my track, nothing turning any more, nothing pushing at me. And a damn funny thing happened. I felt free. By God, I could wind up my own spring and turn the wheels and find a new track. I was glad everything had stopped. No more of this whipping myself along in order to achieve ends and desires that had become meaningless. No more running like Sammy. Health and reasonable intelligence and good digestion. I could chop wood, sell cars, plant corn. Any damn thing. Liquidate myself along in order to achieve ends and desires that had pleased, and I wanted it to start with walking along a country road into places I’d never seen before.

I stood in this bedroom I’d shared with a stranger and I wanted to laugh. I dressed and combed my hair and went out and around the house and out toward the back. I didn’t want to see anybody. I wanted to be where it was dark and give myself a careful going over and try to find out just what had happened to me. I walked around for a time. My shoes crunched the gravel. It was cold and I went back for a warmer jacket. Mavis was on the bed bleating and snuffling. I could have been a hundred miles away.

I went back outside, and from the shadows near the house Judy spoke to me, startling the hell out of me. She said
something that made no sense about running in midair, and then she began to make the darnedest noise I’d ever heard a woman make. A sort of keening sound, through clenched teeth, a sort of spasm that bent her over at the middle, and it took me a few seconds to realize she was trying to keep herself from crying. I steered her to our car and got her inside and got my arms around her and her face against my chest and told her to let it go.

She let it go. All the misery in the world. Crying like a child. Over a thousand parties she hadn’t been asked to. Over a hundred broken dolls. Over a dozen lost loves. She wasn’t Judy Jonah any more—face on the glowing tube, backed up by brass and strings, prying yaks out of the studio audience. A girl in my arms, crying. A hell of a thing, actually. It made me think of those guys, those unknowns—doctors and agents and writers—who marry the big-name screen stars. Do they have this? Holding warm the helpless tears? It’s such a big glamour kick, so much beating of drums, that you forget they’re women. Women in the tears sense. Women with sniffles and headaches and lotions and fears. Women who burn fingers, break straps, curse runs in new hose, snore when they sleep on their backs, watch their weight, cat-talk their sisters, sweat in the heat, chatter in the cold, blow noses, covet dresses, get the blues. They must. They are human and they are female. And being human, they share that sense of being dreadfully alone.

I held Judy until it was all gone and she fought her way up out of it, subduing the snifflings, blowing her nose lustily, moving away from me, getting her chin up, and, I suspected, beginning to resent me for being there and seeing it happen.