Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (19 page)

That first and only night
they were there, Ralph sat, fully clothed, at a poolside table
holding a glass of whiskey and ice. On the table was one of those
motel-room buckets filled with mostly melted ice, a half-fifth of
Four Roses (his daddy's favorite brand), and a small red transistor
radio which Ralph had tuned to a Dodgers' game (his daddy's team).
Alice Ann floated on her back in the center of the large end of the
pool. She seemed to be star¬ing up through the thick palm fronds
into the darkening sky, and Ralph reflected on her thought. Several
blocks west the sun was setting over the Pacific, and the darkening
sky above the palms was the deepest purple. Ralph could smell the
ocean, and in a warm, easterly breeze he felt from the Santa Ynez
Mountains he thought he could smell blooming pittosporum, maybe
jasmine. At a time like this, what would be on Alice Ann’s mind?
Ralph had to imagine the worst. Ralph had to be on his guard at
every moment.

They were alone at the pool
now. Earlier a couple of boys had spent a noisy half hour shooting
forefingers at one another and grabbing shot guts as they took
turns tumbling face first into the pool to float like little dead
men. They had given Ralph a migraine, but now he missed the little
shits. The pool’s calm water looked like rose wine to Ralph. In the
aquarium-quality light Alice Ann’s tanned flesh shone greenish,
vegetal. In that light the pieces of her dark red bikini could have
been blood leak¬ing from wounds. Ralph shuddered. This scene became
fixed before Ralph as though it was a moment carved from a bad
dream.

It was a lovely evening,
though, and Ralph had sat beside a pool in Santa Barbara,
California, on the eve of his second bank¬ruptcy hearing in seven
years, and told himself again and again that things could be worse,
for he and Alice Ann had been smarter about a bad situation this
time around the bend. For one thing, they had homesteaded their
house, which was simply legalese meaning they had filed the right
papers so they wouldn’t find themselves and their children out on
the street. I am an American homesteader, Ralph kept repeating to
himself. They had initiated the bankruptcy proceedings in Santa
Barbara, three hun¬dred miles south of their actual home in Menlo
Park, a smart move to avoid local embarrassment and creditors. By
hook and by crook, it looked as though Alice Ann would be able to
hold on to her darling red Cadillac convertible, signing its title
over to her sister for safekeeping. The convertible was parked in
its appointed place in front of the motel. They had driven down
that day in the thing. The drive had been leisurely. They had
stopped at a seaside park just south of Big Sur for a picnic Alice
Ann had packed of her famous fried chicken, some German potato
salad, assorted cheese, and a good jug of Chablis. At one point
Ralph had said to Alice Ann, Alice Ann, this is all just a crazy
dream we’ll wake up from.

Right then at poolside what
worried Ralph the most was Alice Ann’s calmness of late. There had
been no recent snarls, no shouting, screaming, laying of blame, not
one drop of recently shed blood. Ralph took a long drink. He
watched his wife float¬ing peacefully in Cupid spit in a pool
shaped like a giant human organ. From the surrounding darkness
under the palms fantails of terrible eyes fastened on Ralph’s every
move. Alice Ann was saving it up. Ralph was nobody’s fool. It was
not fair. Any moment plaster birds of prey would pounce shrieking
across the crazy light for Ralph. Ralph exhaled, closed his eyes,
and rubbed them until they hurt.

We have our health, Alice
Ann suddenly said.

Ralph jerked and opened his
eyes.

Our what? Ralph
said.

Health, Alice Ann said. —Our
health.

Health? Ralph
said.

Alice Ann kicked and
backstroked toward the pool’s smaller end. Slivers of blue and
green light twitched across the water’s surface like a dance of
severed nerves. Ralph drank down his whiskey. He put fresh ice in
his glass and covered it once more with whiskey. He leaned toward
the radio as though he hoped to catch the game’s score.

We have our health at least,
Alice Ann said.

Alice Ann draped her arms
over the poolside near her glass. She rested her long chin on the
backs of her hands and looked up at Ralph’s face. Her eyes looked
like black pools. Ralph could see the backs of her long legs
floating out behind her in the pale red water. Behind her knees had
been a favorite place for Ralph.

And our children have their
health, Alice Ann said. —That’s the main thing. My sister always
says that when you have your health you have everything.

Health, Ralph said. —What
are you talking about, Alice Ann? What in God’s name does your
sister know about health? That woman has been having the same
pitiful heart attack for as long as I’ve known her. And what about
her brain tumors, Alice Ann? A dozen of those babies over the
years? Fifteen maybe? Don’t ask me how many.

You’re the one with all the
little symptoms, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —All those little fainty
vapors. The seven warning signs like clockwork.

A minute ago you said I had
my health, Ralph said. —Which is it?

It’s your diet, Ralph, Alice
Ann said. —You have a rotten diet. Your stomach is a graveyard,
Ralph. It is a cemetery for the dead flesh of fellow
creatures.

I know the state of my
health, all right, Ralph said. —I have no illusions. I know I’m a
shell of the man I once was. I’m not even the man I was six months
ago, and I know it. Or yesterday, for that matter. I don’t kid
myself. But it doesn’t have a thing to do with eating meat, I’ll
tell you that.

Oh, come on, honey, Alice
Ann said, perk up. You are in the prime of your life.

That is probably the crudest
thing you could say to me right now, Ralph said. He drank down his
whiskey and poured another. He lit a cigarette and watched its
smoke rise in the eerie pool lights.

This time tomorrow it will
all be over, Alice Ann said. She pulled herself out of the water
and sat at poolside, her back to Ralph. She hugged her legs to her
chest and rested her chin on her knees. Her long hair was darkened
with water and hung down her slender back in a rope. Ralph followed
the soft slope of spine down her brown back to the deep dimples
above her hips. Those dimples had been a favorite place. Ralph had
licked champagne from those sweet pools.

Why don’t you come over and
sit beside me, Alice Ann said.

I’m listening to a game,
Ralph said. —I’m smoking.

Let me have a puff, Alice
Ann said, and wiggled a hand behind her.

You’re all wet, Ralph said.
—I’ll light you one of your own.

No. Forget it. Later maybe.
Are you getting hungry yet?

I don’t know, Ralph said. —I
hadn’t thought about it, I guess. I guess my graveyard is still
pretty full of that fellow crea¬ture you fried up.

Ralph, Alice Ann said, how
many times do I have to explain to you that chicken is not red
meat. Chicken is fowl, and fowl, like fish, is better for your
blood than red meat.

You mean, in the great
scheme of things, chickens are less our fellow creatures than our
bovine brothers?

Red meat, Ralph, is simply
not good for your blood, that’s all, Alice Ann said. —I simply
wanted to fix you something nice you liked, Ralph. That’s all. I
knew you wouldn’t be satisfied with a nice salad. All I needed
today was to have you carrying on about bean sprouts, choking and
gagging around the way you do. I wanted us to have a pleasant
picnic together, like old times. I didn’t want us to drive down
here today grim as death.

It was great fried chicken,
Ralph said. —I mean it. It was a nice picnic, too. I don’t remember
a cross word, do you? I don’t, anyway.

Remember the time we went
skinny-dipping in that motel pool? Alice Ann said, and laughed.
—Drunk as sailors. At three o’clock in the a.m. Those were the good
old days, when we just flipped off the world.

That was all your idea,
Ralph said. —You put me up to it.

Well, whose idea was it to
make love in the water? Remember? We were all naked and slippery.
You kept diving after me under¬water. Muff dives, you called them.
It’s dark and dangerous work, you kept saying, but somebody has to
do it.

We woke up the manager,
that’s something I remember. We were lucky he didn’t call the
cops.

Ralph, tell me how it’s
going to be after tomorrow, Alice Ann said. She finished her drink
and handed Ralph her glass. —Light me a cigarette now, too, pretty
please.

What it’s going to be like?
Ralph said. —What is that, Alice Ann, one of your trick
questions?

It will be another fresh
start, that’s what, Alice Ann said. —That’s the way we can look at
this ordeal. What frightens me the most is that someday we’ll run
out of fresh starts. Let’s really do things differently this time
around, Ralph. Let’s pretend we really are new, different
people.

What about the past, Alice
Ann? Ralph said. —We just can’t forget our sordid past, with all
its trials and tribulations.

What’s important is what we
do now, from here on out. We’ll live in the present and future.
We’ll set goals. Common goals.

What kind of goals? Ralph
said. —I’ll admit it, Alice Ann, talk like that gets me edgy. You
talk about goals, and things like preachers and fund-raising and
football pop into my mind. It’s crazy, I know, but there it
is.

I mean little things, Alice
Ann said. —Just doing little things in our life differently. At
first. To get started on a new road. Things like watching our
health more. Getting some exercise. Really. Things like that. We
could start taking walks. Long, brisk strolls after dinner
together. Maybe start hiking in the woods on weekends. Who knows.
Maybe later really getting back to nature. Backpacking into the
high country eventually.

You must be going crazy,
Alice Ann, Ralph said.

We could both quit smoking,
Alice Ann said. —Now, that’s something we really could do. We’ll
set a date and then just do it together, cold turkey. We’ll
encourage each other, Ralph. Give each other moral support. We’ll
be the two Mouseketeers of moral support, Ralph.

What about those two
criminal children at home? Ralph said.

We’ll cut back on the booze,
too, Alice Ann said. —Think of the money we could save. We’ll open
a savings account. We’ll take the kids on family
vacations.

Sure, Ralph said, maybe take
those criminal children back¬packing into the high country with
us.

I mean all of this, Ralph,
Alice Ann said. —I do. We’ll take family vacations. We’ll go to
places like, I don’t know, the Grand Canyon maybe. Carlsbad
Caverns, wherever they are. Places like that. Disneyland. We’ll
take the kids to Disneyland.

Alice Ann, honey, the boy is
fifteen years old, Ralph said. —And he’s a hood. Your daughter is
sixteen, Alice Ann, and she’s a hood-ette. The only way we could
get those kids to go to Disneyland is high as kites on
acid.

I want to take my children
to Disneyland, Alice Ann said. —I’ve never even been to Disneyland
myself. I’ve lived in this state all these years and not once has
anybody ever taken me to Disneyland, Ralph. I want to take our kids
to Disneyland, Ralph, and I want us to get a bumper sticker to
prove it. We have to make a commitment to each other right now,
Ralph, a vow. To take our children to Dis-neyland as soon as we get
back on our feet.

Don't tell me you’re drunk
already, Ralph said. —Alice Ann, it’s not even seven
yet.

Before it’s too late for us,
Ralph. And we lose them for good. Are you willing to make this vow
with me, Ralph? Here and now. I mean it, Ralph. Right this minute.
If you still love me at all, you will. If you don’t love me anymore
at all, then you just don’t. But if you love me, you’ll make this
vow.

Yes, Jesus Christ, yes,
Ralph said. —Right. Wow. Disneyland. You got it. It’s done. The
check’s in the mail. Disneyland is in the mail.

Take me seriously, Ralph,
Alice Ann said.

I am, Ralph said. —I
do.

2

Alice Ann stood up then at
poolside and dove into the water. She swam underwater slowly to the
pool’s shallow end, where she surfaced in the spray from the Cupid
fountain. She stood up and turned slowly, letting the spray fall
over her body. She tilted her head back and let the spray splash
over her face. She opened her mouth and let it fill with spray.
Ralph followed the arc of water from the Cupid’s pursed mouth to
his wife’s mouth. Alice Ann cupped her hands beneath her breasts.
Water ran in thin streams from the corners of her mouth. Ralph
turned off the radio. He heard sudden laughter from somewhere
behind him and he jerked around in his chair.