Promised Land (6 page)

At the far end of the hall was a raised panel door that had been painted black. It opened and Pam Shepard came through it. There were tears running down her face. ”It’s me,“ she said. ”It’s my fault, they were just trying to protect me. If you’ve hurt her it’s my fault.“

Jane opened her eyes and stared up blankly at us. She moved her head. Rose Alexander said, ”Jane?“

I said, ”She’s going to be all right, Mrs. Shepard. You didn’t make her kick me in the groin.“

She too got down on the floor beside Jane. I got out of the way and leaned on the door jamb with my arms folded, trying to get the sick feeling to go away, and trying not to show it. People did not seem to be warming to me down here. I hoped Jane and Eddie never got together.

Jane was on her feet, Pam Shepard holding one arm and Rose Alexander the other. They went down the hall toward the black door. I followed along. Through the door was a big kitchen. A big old curvy-legged gas stove on one wall, a big oilcloth-covered table in the middle of the room, a couch with a brown corduroy spread along another wall. There was a pantry at the right rear and the walls were wainscoted narrow deal boards that reminded me of my grandmother’s house. They sat Jane down in a black leather upholstered rocker. Rose went to the pantry and returned with a wet cloth. She washed Jane’s face while Pam Shepard squeezed Jane’s hand. ”I’m all right,“ Jane said and pushed the wet cloth away. ”How the hell did you do that,“ she said to me. ”That kick was supposed to finish you right there.“

”I am a professional thug,“ I said.

”It shouldn’t matter,“ she said, frowning in puzzlement. ”A kick in the groin is a kick in the groin.“

”Ever do it for real before?“

”I’ve put in hours on the mat.“

”No, not instruction. Fighting. For real.“

”No,“ she said. ”But I wasn’t scared. I did it right.“

”Yeah, you did, but you got the wrong guy. One of the things that a kick in the groin will do is scare the kickee. Aside from the pain and all, it’s not something he’s used to and he cares about the area and he tends to double over and freeze. But I’ve been kicked before and I know that it hurts, but it’s not fatal. Not even to my sex life. And so I can force myself through the pain.“

”But…“ She shook her head.

”I know,“ I said. ”You thought you had a weapon that made you impregnable. That would keep people from shoving you around and the first time you use it you get cold-cocked. It is a ninety-five, I can bench-press three hundred pounds. I used to be a fighter. And I scuffle for a living. The karate will still work for you. But you gotta remember it’s not a sport in the street.“

”You think, goddamn you, you think it’s because you’re a man…“

”Nope. It’s because a good big person will beat a good small person every time. Most men aren’t as good as I am. A lot of them aren’t as good as you are.“

They were all looking at me and I felt isolated, unwelcome and uneasy. I wished there were another guy there. I said to Pam Shepard, ”Can we talk?“

Rose Alexander said, ”You don’t have to say a word to him, Pam.“

Jane said, ”There’s no point in it, Pam. You know how you feel.“

I looked at Pam Shepard. She had sucked in both lips so they were not visible, and her mouth was a thin line. She looked back at me and we held the pose for about thirty seconds.

”Twenty-two years,“ I said. ”And you knew him before you got married. More than twenty-two years you’ve known Harvey Shepard. Doesn’t that earn him five minutes of talk. Even if you don’t like him? Even simple duration eventually obliges you.“

She nodded her head, to herself, I think, more than to me.

”Tell him about obligation, I’ve known him since nineteen fifty,“ she said.

I shrugged. ”He’s forking out a hundred dollars a day and expenses to find you.“

”That’s his style, the big gesture. ‘See how much I love you,’ but is he looking? No, you’re looking.“

”Better than no one looking.“

”Is it?“ There was color on her cheekbones now. ”Is it really? Why isn’t it worse? Why isn’t it intrusive? Why isn’t it a big pain in the ass? Why don’t you all just leave me the goddamned hell alone?“

”I’m guessing,“ I said, ”but I think it’s because he loves you.“

”Loves me, what the hell has that got to do with anything. He probably does love me. I never doubted that he did. So what. Does that mean I have to love him? His way? By his definition?“

Rose Alexander said, ”It’s an argument men have used since the Middle Ages to keep women in subjugation.“

”Was that a master-slave relationship Jane was trying to establish with me?“ I said.

”You may joke all you wish,“ Rose said, ”but it is perfectly clear that men have used love as a way of obligating women. You even used the term yourself.“ Rose was apparently the theoretician of the group.

”Rosie,“ I said. ”I am not here to argue sexism with you. It exists and I’m against it. But what we’ve got here is not a theory, it’s a man and a woman who’ve known each other a long time and conspired to produce children. I want to talk with her about that.“

”You cannot,“ Rose said, ”separate the theory from its application. And“—her look was very forceful—”you cannot get the advantage of me by using the diminutive of my name. I’m quite aware of your tricks.“

”Take a walk with me,“ I said to Pam Shepard.

”Don’t do it, Pam,“ Jane said.

”You’ll not take her from this house,“ Rose said.

I ignored them and looked at Pam Shepard. ”A walk,“ I said, ”down toward the bridge. We can stand and look at the water and talk and then we’ll walk back.“

She nodded. ”Yes,“ she said, ”I’ll walk with you. Maybe you can make him understand.“

Protests, excursion and alarums followed Pam Shepard’s decision but in the end it was agreed that we would, in fact, stroll down toward the harbor and that Jane and Rose would follow along, at a discreet distance in case I tried to chloroform her and stuff her in a sack.

As we walked along Front Street the light was strong on her face and I realized she was probably around my age. There were faint lines of adulthood at her eyes and the corners of her mouth. They didn’t detract, in fact they added a little, I thought, to her appeal. She didn’t look like someone who’d need to pick up overweight shovel operators in bars. Hell, she could have her choice of sophisticated private eyes. I wondered if she’d object to the urine stain on my shoe.

We turned onto the bridge and walked far enough out on it to look at the water. The water made the city look good. Oil slick, cigarette wrappers, dead fish, gelatinous-looking pieces of water-soaked driftwood, an unraveled condom looking like an eel skin against the coffee-colored water. Had it looked like this when Melville shipped out on a whaler 130 years ago? Christ, I hope not.

”What did you say your name was?“ Pam Shepard asked.

”Spenser,“ I said. We leaned our forearms on the railing and stared out toward the transmitter tower on one of the harbor islands. The wind off the ocean was very pleasant despite the condition of the water.

”What do you want to talk about?“ Today she had on a dark blue polo shirt, white shorts and white Tretorn tennis shoes. Her legs were tan and smooth.

”Mrs. Shepard, I’ve found you and I don’t know what to do about it. You are clearly here by choice, and you don’t seem to want to go home. I hired on to find you, and if I call your husband and tell him where you are I’ll have earned my pay. But then he’ll come up here and ask you to come home, and you’ll say no, and he’ll make a fuss, and Jane will kick him in the vas deferens, and unless that permanently discourages him, and it is discouraging, you’ll have to move.“

”So don’t tell him.“

”But he’s hired me. I owe him something.“

”I can’t hire you,“ she said. ”I have no money.“

Jane and Rose stood alertly across the roadway on the other side of the bridge and watched my every move. Semper paratus.

”I don’t want you to hire me. I’m not trying to hold you up. I’m trying to get a sense of what I should do.“

”Isn’t that your problem?“ Her elbows were resting on the railing and her hands were clasped. The diamond-wedding ring combination on her left hand caught the sun and glinted.

”Yes it is,“ I said, ”but I can’t solve it until I know who and what I’m dealing with. I have a sense of your husband. I need to get a sense of you.“

”For someone like you, I’d think the sanctity of marriage would be all you’d need. A woman who runs out on her family deserves no sympathy. She’s lucky her husband will take her back.“ I noticed the knuckles of her clasped hands were whitening a little.

”Sanctity of marriage is an abstraction, Mrs. Shepard. I don’t deal in those. I deal in what it is fashionable to call people. Bodies. Your basic human being. I don’t give a goddamn about the sanctity of marriage. But I occasionally worry about whether people are happy.“

”Isn’t happiness itself an abstraction?“

”Nope. It’s a feeling. Feelings are real. They are hard to talk about so people sometimes pretend they’re abstractions, or they pretend that ideas, which are easy to talk about, are more important.“

”Is the quality of men and women an abstraction?“

”I think so.“

She looked at me a little scornfully. ”Yet the failure of that equality makes a great many people unhappy.“

”Yeah. So let’s work on the unhappiness. I don’t know what in hell quality means. I don’t know what it means in the Declaration of Independence. What’s making you unhappy with your husband?“

She sighed in a deep breath and heaved it out quickly. ”Oh, God,“ she said. ”Where to begin.“ She stared at the transmitter tower. I waited. Cars went by behind us.

”He love you?“

She looked at me with more than scorn. I thought for a minute she was going to spit. ”Yes,“ she said. ”He loves me. It’s as if that were the only basis for a relationship. ‘I love you. I love you. Do you love me? Love. Love.’ Shit!“

”It’s better than I hate you. Do you hate me?“ I said.

”Oh, don’t be so goddamned superficial,“ she said. ”A relationship can’t function on one emotion. Love or hate. He’s like a…“ She fumbled for an appropriate comparison. ”He’s like when one of the kids eats cotton candy at a carnival on a hot day and it gets all over her and then all over you and you’re sticky and sweaty and the day’s been a long one, and horrible, and the kids are whiny. If you don’t get away by yourself and take a shower you’ll just start screaming. You have any children, Mr. Spenser?“

”No.“

”Then maybe you don’t know. Are you married?“

”No.“

”Then certainly you don’t know.“

I was silent.

”Every time I walk by him he wants to hug me. Or he gives me a pat on the ass. Every minute of every day that I am with him I feel the pressure of his love and him wanting a response until I want to kick him.“

”Old Jane would probably help you,“ I said.

”She was protecting me,“ Pam Shepard said.

”I know,“ I said. ”Do you love him?“

”Harvey? Not, probably, by his terms. But in mine. Or at least I did. Until he wore me down. At first it was one of his appeals that he loved me so totally. I liked that. I liked the certainty. But the pressure of that…“ She shook her head.

I nodded at her encouragingly. Me and Carl Rogers.

”In bed,“ she said. ”If I didn’t have multiple orgasms I felt I was letting him down.“

”Have many,“ I said.

”No.“

”And you’re worried about being frigid.“

She nodded.

”I don’t know what that means either,“ I said.

”It’s a term men invented,“ she said. ”The sexual model, like everything else, has always been male.“

”Don’t start quoting Rose at me,“ I said. ”That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t do a hell of a lot for our problem at the moment.“

”You have a problem,“ Pam Shepard said. ”I do not.“

”Yes you do,“ I said. ”I’ve been talking with Eddie Taylor.“

She looked blank.

”Eddie Taylor,“ I said, ”big blond kid, runs a power shovel. Fat around the middle, and a loud mouth.“

She nodded and continued to as I described him, the lines at the corners of her mouth deepening. ”And why is he a problem?“

”He isn’t. But unless he made it all up, and he’s not bright enough to make it up, you’re not as comfortably in charge of your own destiny as you seem to be.“

”I’ll bet he couldn’t wait to tell you every detail. Probably embellished a great deal.“

”No. As a matter of fact he was quite reluctant. I had to strike him in the solar plexus.“

She made a slight smiling motion with her mouth for a moment. ”I must say you don’t talk the way I’d have expected.“

”I read a lot,“ I said.

”So what is my problem?“

”I don’t read that much,“ I said. ”I assume you are insecure about your sexuality and ambivalent about it. But that doesn’t mean anything that either one of us can bite into.“

”Well, don’t we have all the psychological jargon down pat. If my husband slept around would you assume he was insecure and ambivalent?“

”I might,“ I said. ”Especially if he had a paroxysm the morning after and was last seen crying on the bed.“

Her face got a little pink for a moment. ”He was revolting. You’ve seen him. How I could have, with a pig like that. A drunken, foul, sweaty animal. To let him use me like that.“ She shivered. Across the street Jane and Rose stood poised, eyes fixed upon us, ready to spring. I felt like a cobra at a mongoose festival. ”He didn’t give a damn about me. Didn’t care about how I felt. About what I wanted. About sharing pleasure. He just wanted to rut like a hog and when it was over roll off and go to sleep.“

”He didn’t strike me too much as the Continental type,“ I said.

”It’s not funny.“

”No, it isn’t no more than everything else. Laughing is better than crying though. When you can.“

”Well, isn’t that just so folksy and down home,“ she said. ”What the hell do you know about laughing and crying?“

”I observe it a lot,“ I said. ”But what I know isn’t an issue. If Eddie Taylor was so revolting, why did you pick him up?“

”Because I goddamned well felt like it. Because I felt like going out and getting laid without complications. Just a simple straightforward screw without a lot of lovey-dovey—did-you-like-that-do-you-love-me crap.“