Part 11 (1/2)
He told Joe and Jean he was going to rest for a while, and closed his door tightly behind him. He lay on the bed in the warm shaded room, intending to sleep, but he couldn't get her out of his mind-her eyes, her wet hair, her outrageous nothing of a bathing suit, the fair hairs on her legs, the feeling of her long fingers on his arms when he pulled her onto the boat. She was exciting him even in her absence, and he resented her for it. He preferred to choose the times he was available for arousal. Her kind of excitement was certainly not for him; it was excessive. He had ordered his whole life to avoid excess. Now this feeling came along, invading him without invitation or permission.
What was she, after all? He didn't know anything about her. He didn't even know if she had been to college, if she had an original idea in her head. Editorial a.s.sistant. Most likely a glorified secretary like the ones in his office, plodding through dull tasks all week and craving excitement on the two days of release. Or maybe she was the radical, slovenly type, angry at the world for her own shortcomings. He couldn't tell, hadn't even seen her dressed, except for the blue work s.h.i.+rt everyone wore these days. For all he knew, she went around in tattered jeans or long patched denim skirts. He probably wouldn't want to be seen in a decent restaurant with her.
He sat at the desk to try writing to Margaret. At least he knew who she was. Margaret was the personnel director of a large private hospital. She was steady, nice-looking, well-informed (she knew what a securities a.n.a.lyst was), and a hard worker. Indeed it was because she had to work overtime that she wasn't with him this weekend. Fleetingly he envisioned Margaret here, the convergence of Margaret and Deirdre at the lakesh.o.r.e, but pushed that from his mind; it was unthinkable. He and Margaret went out every Tuesday and Sat.u.r.day evening and returned to spend the night in his or her apartment, and when he left her the next day he felt refreshed and contented.
”Dear Margaret,” he wrote. He would probably see her before she got the note, but it made him feel sober and virtuous to write, and she would enjoy receiving it. ”It's a pity you couldn't be here this weekend. You poor thing, working away in the hot city.” He hastily crossed that sentence out; it was an alien voice he didn't recognize, whose equivocation disgusted him even more than its condescension. He would have to copy it all over when he was finished.
”Joe and Jean had some friends over this afternoon and we sat around drinking. Decadent! Naturally I took the Sunfish out again. Twice.”
He paused, a.s.saulted by memory and desire. It was no use. A crowd of fantasies stormed behind his tight-shut eyes-what he would do to her, what she would do to him. He would hold her up against the wall a few inches off the floor so that their eyes were level, unavoidable, and ram her ceaselessly, without mercy. He could see perfectly the startled, then melting look in her huge aqua eyes. He would catch her around the stomach from behind as she was stepping into the shower, drag her down the hall and throw her, her red hair heaving, her mouth howling shock and l.u.s.t, onto his white living room sofa. She would climb on top of him savagely and her hair would slide back and forth over his chest, and her tongue would lick his neck and lap inside his ear, tantalizing. He would lie quite still on the rug while, with burning fingertips and palms, she ma.s.saged every bit of him slowly from head to toe. Then he would roll her over and grind her into the floor as she cried out in amazement and clutched him closer. He covered his eyes with his fists to make the pictures stop, and found tears wetting his knuckles.
It was no use. He had wanted her, every d.a.m.ned inch, from the moment he saw her, but surely he would never call. He knew himself, his ways, too well to dream of changing course. There was altogether too much of her. She was too loud and took up too much s.p.a.ce and her hair was too reddish and fluffy. It didn't lie flat as it should. Girls' hair should lie flat, and if it couldn't, at least stay where it was put. Hers responded to every slight breath of wind or stirring of the air, billowed and streamed, so that around her splendid face was endless motion.
THE OPIATE OF THE PEOPLE.
DAVID, WHEN HE WAS feeling happy, used to dance for his children. The war was over, the Germans defeated. Once again he pranced across the living room raising his knees high in an absurd parody all his own, blending a horse's gallop and a Parisian cancan. Lucy, his youngest, would laugh in a high-pitched delighted giggle-David looked so funny dancing in his baggy gray trousers and long-sleeved white s.h.i.+rt with the loosened tie jerking from side to side. His business clothes. He wore them all the time, even at night after dinner. Sometimes at breakfast he wore his jacket too, as he stood tense near the kitchen sink, swallowing orange juice and toast and coffee, briefcase waiting erect at his feet.
When he stopped dancing he would smooth down his wavy dark hair modestly and catch his breath. ”You like that, eh?”
Lucy was six. She wanted her father never out of her sight. She felt complete only when he was present.
”Yes. But why can't we have a Christmas tree?”
Lucy was eleven. They had a large family with many cousins, nearly all older than she was, and always getting married. At the big weddings the band music was loud and ceaseless. After the fruit cup and the first toast to the newlyweds, at some point during the soup, the popular dance tunes would give way to a rapping syncopated rhythm with the pungency of garlic and the ringing tone of a shout or a slap. The grownups leaped away from their bowls to form circle within circle, holding hands. Anna, Lucy's mother, was a leader. She was heavy, but moved nimbly. Her head would bounce up and down to the music as she pulled a line of dancers under a bridge of arms.
”You can do it too, Lucy,” she called out. ”Come on.”
And the circle opened, hands parted to let her in.
David did not dance these dances. She saw him at the edge of the circle, his tie neatly knotted, observing keenly, lighting an olive-colored cigar.
He waltzed. He waltzed with her mother, the two of them floating with stiff, poignant grace. His face, sharp-boned, alert, was tilted up proudly, his hand spread out flat against Anna's broad back.
”But why,” Lucy asked, ”can't we have a Christmas tree?”
”Don't you know yet?” He was annoyed with her. ”It's not our holiday.”
”I know, but it doesn't really mean anything,” she protested, leaning forward against the front seat of the car, flushed with the champagne they had let her taste. ”It's only a symbol.”
She could see the edge of his smile and knew he was smiling because she had used the word ”symbol.” She felt clever to have charmed away his annoyance.
In the morning she accosted Anna.
”Why is he so against it?”
Anna did not turn to face her. She was putting on mascara in front of the mirror, and the tiny brush she held near her eyes looked like a flag. ”Because they made him wear a yellow arm band when he went to school.”
”But ...” Lucy said. These bizarre facts tossed out at chance intervals made her feel another world, a shadow world, existed at the rim of their own. ”But that was in another country.”
”It makes no difference. The tree is the same.”
She grasped that David was keeping something back from her, something that touched herself as well as him.
”What was it like when you were growing up?”
”We were poor,” he said. ”We worked, we studied. We lived where your grandmother used to live. It was very crowded.”
”No, I mean before that. Before you came here.” She whispered the last words shyly, for fear of somehow embarra.s.sing him.
”I don't remember.”
”You must remember something. You were the same age as I am now, and I'd remember this even if I moved away.”
He tightened his lips and turned to the bridge game in his New York Times, sharpened pencil poised.
Sat.u.r.days, driving into the city to visit aunts and uncles, they sped through shabby neighborhoods with once-fine brownstones, down streets where men in long black coats and fur hats and unruly beards shambled in the path of oncoming cars. They had hanging curls in front of their ears, delicate straggly locks that gave Lucy a feeling of weak revulsion.
”It's Sat.u.r.day,” said David, ”so they think they own the streets. No one should drive.” He had to brake to avoid a group of teen-aged boys with unnaturally soft, waxy skin. Rolling down the window, he shouted, ”Why don't you stay on the sidewalk where you belong?” Then, ”Someone's got to teach them a little English,” he muttered at the steering wheel.
”You sound like some ignorant peasant.” Anna's eyes followed the group of boys sorrowfully. ”Why can't you live and let live? And drive like a normal person?”
”Filthy refs,” muttered David.
”What are refs?” asked Lucy from the back of the car.
”Refugees,” said Anna.
With an inner leap of glee, she thought she spotted an inconsistency in David's thought, usually so logical. ”Well, weren't you one too?”
”That's different.”
”How?”
”They have no business looking like that. They give the rest of us a bad name. Lenin was right. Religion is the opiate of the people.”
”Who was that again?” Lucy asked.
”Lenin. Vladimir Lenin.”
”Oh, what kinds of things are you teaching her!” Anna exclaimed. ”Leave her be.”
He p.r.o.nounced Vladimir with the accent on the second syllable. Lucy made a mental note of that.
”What was it really like back there?”
”I don't remember.”