Making Love (5 page)

“I suppose not,” Alan agreed. “Drink?”
 

“You wouldn't have any Grand Marnier?”
 

“I do,” he said, leading her to a shelf of miniatures.
 

“I don't want to drink it if it's part of a collection.”
 

“Don't be silly.” He poured himself a vodka and tonic and she got two-and-a-half ounces of Grand Marnier. They clicked glasses; he asked if she wanted to hear Bartok or Led Zeppelin. She went through his record slat in the bookcase and expressed both surprise and pleasure at such discoveries as Cream, Canned Heat, and Blood, Sweat and Tears. Obviously a man of catholic tastes.
 

“We've broken all the rules,” she said.
 

“Not yet ... and not all of them.”
 

“I'd just be suspended but they'd put you on the rack.”
 

She was in danger of getting what she wanted, and it made her indescribably sad. The passage of time between her silent observations of her parents' lives, and now her own, seemed monstrously short. Ten years went by in an instant, but the past had never been safe territory for her.
 

“You know, I was in such a hurry to grow up that in a way I'm sorry.”
 

“It's a little late to get theoretical. Age is a condition and there's nothing more to be said about it.”
 

“I wouldn't want to go back. I don't mean that. It's just that I seem to have spent my life escaping from one thing to another. When is it going to end?”
 

He hopped on the sofa. He hoped that this wasn't an attempt to give him a first date refusal. It was getting late. The 3 a.m. deadline loomed on the horizon, and he decided to find out where he stood.
 

“I better drop you at the dorm, or else you'll have trouble.”
 

“Have patience, Alan. I took an overnight for the pop concert.” She showed him the $7.50 ticket initialed by the head of the dorm. “I thought we might be out late.” She smiled at him a bit wantonly, but in spite of the assurance that she had offered herself on a plate—made up her mind beforehand—he knew that girls sometimes talked themselves out of it. This was a time for action and conciseness.
 

He made a move to slip his hand along her thigh.
 

“Hey, don't you trust me? I said later.”
 

He sipped his drink, now a bit calmer, but nevertheless unrelieved, and Jane had no illusions about him. When he was ready, he'd drop his load anywhere, into anything. She happened to be handy. The commerce of biology was a shady deal like everything else. She'd drift into an affair with Alan Sawyer, and like all the others it would mean nothing. A hedge against the weather or something like that.
 

“Oh, well, why wait?” she said, thinking that her own hypocrisy was always so inexpensive, it was other people's that really stung.
 

He kissed her and she returned it. Much cheaper than conversation. Birch logs were tossed casually on the burning embers and flamed shortly. He lifted up her cashmere turtleneck and was greeted by skin of Alpine whiteness, removed a perfumed ball of cotton which was lodged between her breasts and began a systematic reconnaissance mission between her thighs. She was breathing heavily, thinking of nothing.
 

“Wouldn't we be more comfortable ...?” He broke off and led her to Carnevelli's lair, the first customer under the new management.
 

“It's like a brothel,” she exclaimed.
 

“Mr. Carnevelli's interior decoration.”
 

“No wonder he got canned. Sex maniac,” she pronounced, not unkindly.
 

“I could cover the mirrors with a sheet.”
 

“Why bother? I've got no hangups. I like you, Alan,” she said, then wondered why she'd lied, since he didn't appear to need romance to go with the situation.
 

“You're a wonderful girl, Jane. I've got a sense about people,” he said vaguely.
 

“Really? Tell me.”
 

“It's nothing complicated. Just if they're good with each other.”
 

“I'm a pretty terrific judge too. Unblemished record. I've never been right once. I'm my own Nixon.”
 

“This time it's going to be different”
 

“How did I know you were going to say that? The only time that line works is in a song.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and he played valet to her in the removal of her boots. “Work for it.”
 

“What's depressed you?”
 

She bunched her hair in a rubber band. It always fell into her mouth.
 

“Nothing. My head gets filled with silly questions. Like why are we really doing this?” He continued to undress her. “Don't you stop for lunch?”
 

Her leather miniskirt, held together by an enormous copper buckle, yielded quietly, and now in skin-toned panty hose and white lace bra she stretched out on the bed. He unzipped his fly and dropped his trousers.
 

“I guess there's no stopping you,” she said. “I may as well give in gracefully. My mother gave me that useful bit of advice.”
 

A couple of emyl nitrates were introduced before long by Alan. He was troubled by his inability to determine whether they were fresh or stale. Jane broke one open.
 

“What do you think?”
 

“Let's stick to airplane glue.”
 

“Jane, cut it out.”
 

She gave ground and he slipped inside of her.
 

“I've got to talk,” she protested. “If this isn't funny, I'll start to cry. Don't you see, it doesn't mean anything to you.”
 

He plunged deeper, his breathing a series of hiccups.
 

“I've found a home,” he said.
 

“For the night, anyway, you bastard.”
 

She pushed him away, slipped over on her side and tried not to cry. He didn't deserve the satisfaction. No one ever would, she thought, and that was the trouble.
 

 

* * * *

 

“You still haven't told me why you've come down,” Conlon asked, “or would you prefer not to? I can keep my mouth shut, if it's something very personal.”
 

“I have to see my parents, nothing complicated.”
 

She trusted Conlon—they were friends—but the prospect of bearing witness against her mother, and in a sense herself, for she had watched without intruding, made her a party to Nancy's guilt. And in any case, her animosity toward her mother had a way of becoming diffused, spraying like buckshot, hitting nothing. She had never been short of confidantes, but she had not discovered a graceful method of spilling her guts, so she retained the secrets that troubled her until they mysteriously dissolved within her. Even as a child she had found that
telling
, although filled with the promises of relief, had nothing whatever to do with solving the practical difficulties they concealed. She avoided controversy and never admitted to confusion, virtues of a kind, but perhaps best suited to a religious life. Unshockable, she could never fall very far.
 

For years she had been the unpaid, unwilling referee in the endless, humiliating sexual warfare her parents engaged in. The emissary had developed a remarkable degree of detachment, thrust, as she was, into the role of settler of arguments, a skill she despised more in herself than others. It made the possibility of an emotional reaction virtually impossible; a child judge unable to take sides. She was forced to conclude that the failures of an older generation, her parents', were inexcusable. The latent threat of a divorce always brought Jim and Nancy together. Jane couldn't imagine why. For weeks they'd become sickeningly affectionate, pay each other hollow compliments which Jane would believe—until the cycle repeated itself, and out of the blue she'd be present at an evening of silent, staring anger. Effects with invisible causes.
 

Nancy liked to drink, always had, seldom without destructive results. The nondrinking periods were frightening to Jane, for then Nancy became absent-minded, with a disturbing habit of wandering for hours around the estate, hiding herself, as if filled with an unutterable grief which only death might relieve. In the end, Jim also preferred her drunk. He moaned about it to Jane, but it was better than the silent specter condition. In a way, Nancy herself enjoyed the day periods, for they enabled her to affect a martyrdom that nothing in her experience entitled her to, and in a sense was overpoweringly tragic; suffering without a reason cast the onus on the observer. Jane would have to imagine the reason.
 

In one of Nancy's infrequent lucid weeks, Jane spent hours after school searching for her. The hundred acres, some of it cultivated as a wild English garden, the rest undisturbed woodland, was a perfect sanctuary. She found her mother at last in the apple orchard, sitting behind a tree with an unopened book. Nancy always took a book, always the same one, on her prowls, just in case she wanted to read. She never did, merely stared listlessly at the sky. Jane had been warned not to go looking for her, as a search always carried the accusation of spying. The two looked at each other without speaking for some minutes, then Nancy turned her head, feigned interest in the book.
 

“You're so quiet when you creep around,” she said finally, for Jane refused to give ground. “If you've come for help with your homework ... well, you know, I'm no damn good.”
 

Hardly an invitation to remain, but Jane sat down.
 

“What time is it?”
 

“After five.”
 

“Shouldn't you be having your dinner or something?”
 

“I'm not hungry.”
 

“That makes two of us.” Mealtimes for Nancy had about them the unpredictability of English weather. “You can stay with me if you promise not to talk.”
 

Unable to concentrate on the book she never read, Nancy grew restless and got to her feet, leaving Jane sitting. They were some distance from the house and she started to walk back, the girl trailing at a safe distance.
 

“You can walk with me.” Nancy relented and the two continued side by side. “You know what I've been thinking all afternoon ...?”
 

“No, Mother.”
 

“Well, why haven't I got any friends?”
 

“I can't answer that,” Jane replied, truthfully, since she hardly knew where to begin.
 

“I always thought my home would resound with people's voices—laughter. It's just so empty. Sometimes when the servants laugh I get scared. I don't understand it. I had friends, but I can't any more.”
 

“Why not?”
 

“Why?” She seized Jane's arm and squeezed it hard. “Your father always sleeps with them. If he wants girlfriends he can find them himself. I don't have to be his madam. My friends....”
 

They came to a clearing, the house in sight on top of the hill.
 

“I'm thirty-six and I ask myself
where's it all gone?
I remember when I was twelve. When you're twenty, I'll be forty-four. Well, I'm not going to lie down and die just to suit that son of a bitch.”
 

Drops of blood dribbled down Jane's leg, and Nancy, horrified by what she imagined to be a bullet wound, thought she'd be sick.
 

“Christ, you're bleeding.”
 

“It started at school. That's what I came to ask you ... I don't know what to do.”
 

“Get you home and into a bath. This is awful.”
 

She pulled Jane along, but Jane fell back.
 

“I can't run.”
 

“Didn't you ever discuss this with the other girls?”
 

“Yes, of course I did. But it never happened to me before,” she protested. It seemed to her insane that she'd been forced to defend herself.
 

They walked quickly up to the house, Jane to the bathroom and Nancy to the bar. Eventually a servant appeared with cotton and a message from Nancy; she was feeling too ill to be of any help.
 

 

* * * *

 

“Why didn't you get permission to go home?” Conlon was asking. “Jane?”
 

“I just couldn't be bothered. “What's it matter?”
 

“I think you're hoping you'll be thrown out.”
 

Maybe that was true. The tedious procedure of quitting Saranac, or taking a leave of absence in midsemester, involved too many explanations which would not withstand logical probing.
 

“Okay, I'm being unreasonable,” Jane said. “So what? Does everyone have to have a cause? I'm my own cause.”
 

“Is it Alan?” Conlon asked. In love, she now assumed all decisions sprang from affairs of the heart.
 

“No, not Alan. But that's over.”
 

“Jane, I don't understand. I saw the two of you last night, and he didn't act like he was exactly broken up. Just the opposite.”
 

“I haven't broken off with him. I haven't anything with him, except gone to bed. That came first and last with him.”
 

“Well, if you didn't like it, you could have stopped.”