Cheat and Charmer (50 page)

“You’ve got a neurotic, compulsive, dare I say sick, sense of responsibility toward—”

“DON’T PULL THAT FR-FR-FR-FR-FREUDIAN SHIT ON ME!” she exploded at him.

“Darling,” he said, regretfully putting away his psychoanalytic formulations, which he liked to trot out like a magician pulling a stream of fancy-colored scarves out of his hat. “It’ll never end. We’ll never be just us again. Veevi’s taking over everything in our lives. Why can’t I come home and just have dinner with you and the kreebnabbers anymore? Why does every family dinner we have turn into some kind of contest between ‘dreary’ Hollywood and ‘fun’ Paris?”

“She’s just trying to bring a little civilized conversation into the house.”

“What’s so fucking civilized about it? She laughs that velvety laugh and sticks it to you. If I say the sun is shining, she says it’s raining. If I say I like Tennessee Williams, she says, ‘Oh, but you haven’t read Ionesco.’ I like Sinatra; she says ‘Listen to Piaf.’ I make Hollywood comedies; she brings up Jean Renoir.”

“Well, what’s so wrong with that? That’s, you know, what people do when they talk about c-c-c—shit, I can’t say it, ’cause I hate the word! C-C-C-Culture!”

“I hate it, too! Well, okay, it’s fine hearing you two talk books, but Jesus H. Christ”—he brought his hand to his forehead, as if testing himself for a fever—“I hate the way she does it. Those light laughs that are, when you think about it, little sneers. Little barbs. I’m sick and tired of it. As if we have to live up to some standard of taste that never is clear in and of itself but always turns out to be
not
whatever it is we happen to like.”

“You’re exaggerating. You’re being unfair. You sound like Peter c-c-c-complaining about Lorna.”

“This isn’t about sibling rivalry between your sister and me for your attention!”

“Did I say it was?”

“Well, you implied it.”

She stuck a thermometer into his mouth, and they sat in silence as they waited for the result. She saw that he was shivering. Unbuttoning his shirt and unbuckling his belt, she helped him into his pajamas and his silk paisley bathrobe, in which he looked, she thought, like the fastidiously dressed aristocratic elephants in the
Babar
books she read to the children.

“Darling, the point is, none of us ever gets enough of you anymore,” he said, taking out the thermometer. “We miss you.”

At that, she melted. This wasn’t the sort of thing he said easily, though sickness—his own, not anyone else’s—made him tender; she had seen that before. She sat down and pulled him to her, and he buried his head between her breasts while she waited another minute. The thermometer read 100.6. “Herm the Germ is here,” she said, using the phrase she had made up for her kids whenever they got sick. “You’ve got a real bug. Better get into bed.”

He rolled under the covers, which she pulled up to his chin. His eyes glittered with fever. “I’m taking a big risk with the new project,” he said, his voice cracking. “But now, instead of having four mouths to feed, I have seven.”

“Honey,” she said. “Just give it a little more t-t-t-time. She’ll get settled in her own place. Meanwhile, we’ve got to find someone who’ll take her off our hands. Though I hate like hell to p-p-p-put it like that.”

“Not to mention that she’s costing me something like two hundred a week. What does she do all day in the office? Stay in bed and play with herself?”

“Jake.” She made a wry face.

“She should be doing two or three synopses a week, and I’m lucky if I get one twice a month.”

“Jake, isn’t it obvious that she’s had some kind of collapse? All this stuff she says, about books and things. Don’t take it so seriously, all right? She m-m-m-misses her friends. She’s trying to talk to us the way she’d be talking with them.”

“I didn’t notice any highfalutin
Partisan Review–
type talk in Paris,” he croaked. “You know what I saw in Paris? A lot of sidelong glances, a lot of close dancing and necking, not to mention two people having it royally off in the backseat of your sister’s car. A lot of Ben Knight, Mike Albrecht, Hunt Crandell, and Bill Nemeth kissing each other on the cheek and calling each other
‘mon vieux’
while engaged in literary pissing contests. I didn’t hear anything especially brilliant.”

“But you told me you had such a good time.”

“I did, darling. It was interesting and new. I wish to hell you’d been there.” His eyes opened wide, and he reached for her hand and squeezed it.

His, she noticed, was hot and dry. “Oh boy, you really lay it on when
you’re sick,” she said, and kissed him on the mouth. “Honey, I’m going to get you some tea.”

“And crackers? I want crackers.”

“Graham or saltines?”

“Both—I want both. And I want you to bring them to me and stay with me all evening.”

“Veevi will have to eat with the kids in the kitchen if I do that. Can’t I bring her up here with us?”

“Oh shit,” he moaned, turning on his side. “Can’t it be just us?”

“Jake, come on.”

“Do what you want,” he said, sounding sleepy. “That’s what always happens anyway.”

They actually had a pleasant and early evening together. Veevi and Dinah brought pot roast and mashed potatoes on trays, and Veevi volunteered to go downstairs again to get Jake some ginger ale. They watched Milton Berle, whom Jake had written for years ago, and Steve Allen, taking time out to put their kids to bed. When they came back and found Jake snoring, they kept the television on and watched until Veevi finally said she was going to bed.

When Dinah turned out the light and got into bed beside Jake, he squeezed her tightly, kissing her cheeks and her neck. Then he stuck his leg between hers and began to move up against her, and she lay back in his arms, surprised and happy that he wanted, fever and all, to make love.

K
nowing there was to be a party that night, Lorna wandered into her mother’s dressing room after supper. For Lorna, watching her mother bathe and dress for a party was a sacred ritual. She liked to examine her mother’s body, which she adored, and was always transfixed as Dinah scrubbed her long tanned legs and arms and sloshed the washcloth along her neck and shoulders. Every detail seemed necessary, from the silly pink shower cap fitted like a swollen bubble over her mother’s newly done hair to her mother’s reciting the same old saying she had heard a thousand times: “Wash up as far as possible, then down as far as possible, and then”—as Dinah rose to her knees and washed between her legs—“wash possible.” Dinah had learned the saying from her own mother and had passed it along to Lorna. Then there was the exciting talk about the people who were coming over—the stars, the stunning actresses. Lorna wanted to hear everything her mother would tell her about these endlessly fascinating creatures. All the while, Dinah smoothed cream on her legs and daubed perfume on her neck and wrists, dressed, applied makeup and jewelry, and magically transformed herself into what Lorna thought was the incarnation of absolute loveliness.

This evening, however, a soft February twilight, Lorna was startled to discover not just one but two naked women bustling in and out of the many-mirrored dressing room and the adjacent bathroom, with its dark pink tiles: her mother, of course, but also her aunt Veevi, who followed Dinah to the dressing table.

“Well, he called back and said he was c-c-c-coming,” Dinah said. “So I guess his desire to see you has won out over his political conscience. A
m-m-m-mighty battle, no doubt. Oh, by the way, I picked up your Amelia Gray sheath and it’s hanging in my closet.”

Lorna, who hadn’t the faintest idea what Dinah was talking about, observed that Veevi was much whiter and somewhat shorter than Dinah but had the same high round breasts, though, like everything on Veevi, they sagged more than her mother’s.

Lorna was aware that Veevi knew she was there, but her aunt said nothing, not even greeting her with her eyes. She hates me and I hate her, Lorna said to herself. She thought crossly that Veevi had her own bathroom; why didn’t she use it? Then she remembered that Veevi’s bathroom was really her father’s, and that he was taking a shower in there and getting ready himself.

“Mom—?” Lorna began, as she heard the double roar of the bathtub filling and the shower gushing.

“Hi, darling!” Dinah turned and smiled at her.

Lorna went up to her mother and possessively grabbed the flesh of Dinah’s stomach in a roll and kneaded it between her fingers. “Ooooh, squishy Mommy tummy,” she said, using an intimate and familiar phrase.

Dinah gently pulled her hand away and got up, and Lorna followed her into the bathroom, where she sat down cross-legged in her usual position on the shaggy bath mat. Dinah turned off the faucets and dipped her toe in to test the water. “P-P-P-Perfect,” she said. Reaching out to steady herself against the wall, she stepped into the tub and lowered herself by her haunches down into the hot water. The bathroom smelled deliciously of fragrant steam, perfumed soap, and freshly laundered towels.

“Dear,” said a voice.

Both Lorna and Dinah turned to see Veevi standing by the shower, holding the steamy door open.

“Why don’t you go downstairs, dear, and let Mommy and me have the bathroom to ourselves?”

Lorna, who did not at first realize that Veevi was speaking to her, blushed and looked up questioningly at Dinah. There was a pause, during which Dinah averted her eyes from both her sister and her daughter. Dinah finally looked at Lorna. “Better go downstairs, honey,” she said. “Just this once.”

Lorna hung her head. She looked up again at her mother, eyes imploring.

“Oh, don’t be tedious, dear,” Veevi said. “Just go.”

Dinah motioned with her head and eyes: yes, you’d better go. Lorna saw that her mother wasn’t going to tell her to stay. Furious at Veevi, and stunned by her mother’s failure once again to stand up for her, she got up from the bath mat and fled, her cheeks flaming. She left the bathroom door open just as Veevi went into the shower, so that Dinah, to avoid a draft, had to get up and, with goose pimples and dripping skin, step out of the bathtub to close it.

S
o that’s the famous Genevieve Albrecht, thought Nelly Steiner, noting the entrance into the Laskers’ den of a well-proportioned woman close to forty, with a lovely, intelligent face. She was wearing, Nelly noted, an elegant black crepe sheath, with a piece of transparent short-sleeved black chiffon that covered her from the neck to the curved edge of her small high bosom. She wore simple pearl earrings and no other jewelry. Nelly recognized in the total picture something understated, chic, and French. She noticed, too, that Veevi, except for a clear red lipstick and mascara, wore no makeup. What struck her foremost about Veevi, who, she knew, had once been an actress, was her disciplined and elected resistance to any form of willed display. A queen had certain responsibilities to fulfill, but that didn’t mean that she had chosen her lot in life.

Well, on second thought, Nelly reflected, perhaps she did take some pleasure in it. After all, Dinah’s sister had delayed her entrance just long enough to guarantee the attention of a small audience, all of whose members would know something about her. Everyone looked up; the room, without becoming dramatically quiet, seemed to take a large collective breath and hold it for the moment. At last Nelly understood why it was that Dinah, whose face she loved, had so little confidence in her own looks. Anyone could see that at one time Veevi had completely obliterated Dinah and any other woman in her sphere. Even now, through her majestic presence, she erased the little English actress who was sitting with Wynn Tooling, next to Groucho Marx, and who, Nelly recalled from the trades, was in the States to make a new picture. Suddenly there wasn’t a woman in the Laskers’ den whose beauty, of whatever degree, wasn’t extinguished by Veevi’s.

Watching Dinah take her sister by the elbow and firmly lead her around, Nelly saw Dinah’s welcoming smile and lambent vitality fade into inconsequence as Veevi locked eyes with every person, male or female, to whom Dinah introduced her. A conqueror, a predator, Nelly remarked to herself, suddenly prey to an unexpected sadness. She observed how one man, whom she didn’t know, after embracing Veevi and kissing her on the cheek, stayed close to her and drew her over to the place he had occupied on the sofa. He watched with intense satisfaction as other men got up from their Windsor chairs and clustered around her, drinks in hand, to pay their respects. If I had had a sister like that, Nelly said to herself, I would have moved to the South Pole.