Clemmie (22 page)

“I’ll look around,” she said. “Maybe there’s a pair of swimming trunks you could wear.”

“Actually, I’d just as soon skip it. I’ll be comfortable right here. You go ahead.”

“I’ll go change,” she said. “Keep an eye on the kids. Yell if Dickie tries to go in alone.”

She came out in a tightly fitted one-piece aqua suit with V-slits laced with white at the sides of the thighs. She moved in a self-conscious way and said, laughing, “Here goes nothing.”

She ran down the slope of beach. Craig, watching her, thought the most grotesque thing a woman can do is run when you can watch her from the rear. Her body was acceptable, waist just slim enough to make a proper contrast to hips and breasts. She was chunky but not soft. Her skin had a rough, reddened texture, particularly on the tops of her thighs. He sensed that she wanted him to be pleased with her. She swam clumsily, with a great deal of splashing, but with respectable speed—a determined kind of swimming—stolid as a tug. She came back to shore and took the yelling kids in.

He sipped his beer, looking out at them but not seeing them. Clemmie had talked about having an utterly normal day. If he could imagine himself married to Betty, this was a normal day. Clemmie could not achieve this kind of normality.

Yesterday morning he had awakened in the green pool of light that came through the draperies, awakened by the sounds she made as she exercised at the bar. She was unaware of him. For a time he watched her intent face, and the sweat-darkened leotard, and then slid back into sleep. When he awakened again, he could hear her shower. When he awakened the third time, she was sitting at the foot of the couch wearing a hip-length wisp of sheer black nylon lace that fastened at her throat with a red ribbon. She ripped her coffee and said, “Hello, sleepy you.”

“Time is it?”

“Nine-thirty, darling. Sleep well?”

He said he had, and he yawned. She had a quality of briskness about her on this Saturday morning, the faintly patronizing flavor of a suburban housewife with a mental list of errands.

“Hungover, dear?”

“There is a dull thump in the attic. But bearable.”

When he came back in his striped shorts after brushing his teeth, she had put the bedding away, opened the draperies, put juice and coffee on the low table in front of the couch. He asked her just what she had meant by the curious remark about marriage as she was going to sleep. She denied making it. She accused him of making it up because he was spoiling for a fight. They both became angry. Quite unexpectedly she slapped him. Her hand was hard. Spilled coffee stung his bare foot. He managed to grab her wrists. It took an astonishing amount of strength to hold her. When she sagged, exhausted, he released her, and found out it had been a trick only when she lunged at him again. He could not catch her wrist. He grappled with her, and in the midst of the ridiculous combat it turned, quite suddenly, into something else entirely. Later, in his arms, she sulkily admitted that she had made the remark about marriage, but it didn’t mean anything. They showered together in the large stall, and had more coffee and were leaving just when a monolithic and impassive woman named Olsen arrived to clean up.

First came the haircut, and then they shopped and she insisted on buying him a shirt of Egyptian cotton styled in Italy, paying more for it than he had ever been willing to pay for a sports shirt. Then she found hand-tailored English slacks in a shade of linen he would never have bought for himself. They had coffee nearby while cuffs were being put on the slacks. Then he dressed in the new clothing and looked at himself in the mirror of the expensive shop and was pleased with the effect.

As he walked down the street with her, carrying the box with his other clothing in it, she said, “And next time you get a haircut, lover, I’m going to have a word with your barber. The way you wear it is utterly wrong for the shape of your head. I’m going to make you over, pet, and when I’m done you are going to look very casually distinguished, instead of like some kind of a clerk.”

“I’ve been doing all right.”

“Ho ho! You go around looking as if you’re bucking for the ways and means committee of the Lions Club. I want you to look as if you’re killing time while little men are servicing your private airplane. The look of success, darling, is a sort of calculated arrogance.”

Just as they were nearing the car, he saw Jeanie Tribbler walking toward them. She carried an armful of packages and she was walking slowly, looking in the shop windows. He tried to keep looking the other way, but as they neared her he could not prevent a quick and cautious glance at her and, to his consternation, found her looking directly at him. He smiled and nodded and said, “Hello, Jeanie.”

“Hi, Craig,” she said, and half hesitated, willing to stop if he showed an indication of introducing them. He continued on. The fading smile felt stiff on his lips. He had not missed the intentness with which Jeanie had looked at Clemmie. He glanced at Clemmie, trying to see her through Jeanie’s eyes. A small and arrogant looking young girl with white skirt, yellow blouse, white thong sandals, thin gold clasp on the lush black horsetail Black burnished bangs curling almost to the line of black brows. Small pointed face. Sauntering, ungirdled walk, hips swaying the white skirt. She looked up at him with mocking amusement, and did not speak until they were in the car.

“You could have been wearing a sandwich sign, of course.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let me see. White background, bold black letters. Something very simple. Like: I am sleeping with this girl. Sleeping could go in italics, I suppose.”

“She wouldn’t think that.”

“Oh, wouldn’t she now! Let me show you something, you lovable blunderer. Suppose you were alone. Suppose, thirty paces before we met that little figurine called Jeanie, one of the office girls had come out of a store and you walked along with her, all casual and innocent. What would you have done when you met Jeanie?”

He swallowed. His throat felt tight. “Stopped and chatted, I guess.”

“Go on.”

“Introduced them. Talked about the party the other night.”

“See? But instead you stride on with a horrid frozen grin on your face, your ears bright red, both hands plunged deep in the cookie jar. Darling, you have all the knack for intrigue of a sheep-chasing Airedale. Stay loose. The next time that happens, pretend I’m an acquaintance and act accordingly.”

“You, of course, have had a hell of a lot of practice.”

“Now don’t go all hairy. It comes naturally to women. Who is she? She’s a stunning little thing. All ivory and rose leaves. But she looks as cold as a witch’s aspirations.”

“Jeanie Tribbler. She and Joe are friends of mine and Maura’s. He’s at National Lighting, assistant to the sales manager.”

“And the four of you have jolly times together at the Rivergreen Country Club.”

“Cut it out, Clemmie.”

“Jeanie fixed me with a very beady and suspicious eye. She’s very fond of Maura, I suppose?”

“She is.”

“And that will give her a perfect excuse to conduct a full-scale investigation. Save Craig from himself. But just be thankful, honey, that I didn’t follow my impulses. I had an urge to hug your arm, look up at you with sticky adoration, and say something gooey and incriminating when she came within range. Let’s drop it right here. This is our normal day. I want something so standardized it will be quaint, darling.”

“No county fairs.”

“Of course not, pet. We
never
repeat. That’s one of our primary rules of procedure. Let’s do something indigenous. A segment of Americana.”

So they went to Stoddard Stadium to a baseball game, and they played a variation of her game wherein they were married and she was a nagging and neglected wife who was seldom taken anywhere by her husband. They ate peanuts and hotdogs and drank beer. The sun baked them. The game was dull and they left in the bottom half of the seventh. On the way back she saw a big new bowling arena, and they went in and bowled several games and drank more beer from chilled mugs. She was a novice and she looked very cute and very provocative, switching her hips as she tripped up to the foul line to release the ball. She soon acquired a self-appointed instructor, a swarthy man with a gold grin who told them to call him Howie. She began to act so indifferent to Craig and so flirtatious toward Howie that he made an effort to move in, buying them beer and whispering to Clemmie, making her giggle. Craig felt the familiar dull-red glow of jealousy.

When Clemmie started to get a blister on the inside of
her thumb, she became tired of bowling and tired of Howie, and cut him off very deftly by telling him that she and Craig had to get back home to their three kids. If Craig hadn’t been so annoyed with her, he would have been forced to laugh at Howie’s stunned and incredulous expression.

They stopped at a small bar and had cocktails and, because he was still quietly angry at her, and because he wanted to hurt her, he told her the Floss episode, in complete detail. He wanted to make her feel rejected and jealous. But, when he was finished, after hearing him out with no change of expression, she broke into laughter, and laughed helplessly for a long time while he sat glowering at her.

When she was under control again, she patted his hand and said, “Poor beastie. Poor ole mixed-up monster. That little adventure must have had all the charm of a soap opera.”

“Don’t you give a damn? Don’t you give a single damn?”

“Of
course
I do, baby. I treasure those little gestures of rebellion, I really do. Last Wednesday night. My, my! While I was waiting for you, you were out motelling with a mother of three. I certainly couldn’t be annoyed, could I? Just think of how I benefit from the contrast. Try it any time, laddie. I encourage comparison shopping. And isn’t it delicious irony that your limey lady will clobber you for that little clumsy adventure instead of all our giddy sins? For heaven’s sake, kindly stop looking so black and sour. Smile at me.”

“Just tell me why you have to rub yourself on a clown like that Howie? Tell me that.”

“It’s all jealous, isn’t it? Suppose you call it Clemmie’s quest for reassurance. I just love the way they get all hot-eyed and insinuating, and the way their hands shake and their mouths get dry and they keep congratulating themselves on this incredible stroke of luck. He had it all figured out how we could ditch you. Then, when he started to look smug, I let him have it. He’s still talking to himself. So that’s fine.”

“Do you hate them?”

“A girl of my base instincts couldn’t possibly hate men,
darling. Now could I? Really? Finish your drink. Clemmie wants heavy food. Bratwurst and kraut and black draught beer, and there is a fine, fine kraut place on Stafford Street, where all the waiters are sixty-six and they all have bunions, and they all despise the customers.”

So they ate the heavy food and then she wanted to go to a drive-in movie. They got back to her place at midnight and he felt as though he had never been so tired in his life, but Clemmie was avid for him and weariness was soon forgotten.

“Knock, knock,” Betty said, standing in front of him, sandy hair soaked flat to her head, water droplets on her body. “What kind of deep thoughts are those?”

The kids were digging a hole in the beach. She toweled her hair and sat beside him on the porch, with beer and cigarette, in her damp suit, and, after many hesitations, made the openings she wanted and told him the story of her life, of a college marriage to one W. Browning James, called Brownie. Two kids and a weak husband who resented the responsibilities of marriage and who, after losing too many jobs, became increasingly alcoholic until he had to be institutionalized. Betty had earned a Florida divorce and come back and gotten a job with Quality Metals.

He felt remote as he listened to her. His mind would wander and then he would hear her voice again and pick up the threads of the long story. He knew that as recently as a few months ago he would have been very interested in hearing about it, because he had wondered about her. But now it seemed like a very dull story indeed. And despite his previous curiosities, he had little interest in hearing it.

It disturbed him to be so indifferent, to have to pretend an interest he could not feel. It was as though he was losing touch with life. Clemmie had introduced him to such intensities that everything else seemed pale and colorless and rather far away.

“So I’m getting along,” she said. “There’s nothing at home. Except the kids, of course. So that’s why I put so much into the job. Too much, I guess.”

“Not too much, Betty.”

“I’ve wanted a chance to talk to you like this. Oh, not about me. Not my ancient history. But about the job and where you’re going.”

“Do you know where I’m going?”

She looked at him steadily for long seconds, and said, “Out, Craig. Out on your ass. That’s where you’re going. I use that kind of a word because I want to jolt you. I have to jolt you.”

He did not feel anger. He did not even feel very interested. There was a visceral quiver of alarm, easily stifled. “What makes you think that?”

“You’re a nice guy. There are some little people around that shop who’d jump off the roof for you. You’re too nice a guy for that outfit. It’s too hard-nose for you. You could ride along all right until Ober came in. It’s the wrong kind of company for you. You don’t get along there on merit. You get along if you carry a sharp knife and know whose back to put it into.”

“You’re being pretty dramatic, Betty.”

She touched his arm and drew her hand back quickly. “I’m not! I’m rough, Craig. I’m as rough as they are. I’ve tried to think of some way of telling you. According to the latrine-o-grams, you may last two months, and you may last six. Ober doesn’t think you have enough drive. Chernek is knifing you every chance he gets. I don’t know why. I thought he was a friend. But he is. And there’s something else. You seem to be going along with it. Like you’re giving up. You know that special report wasn’t any good.”

“He shouldn’t have asked me to make it.”

“He threw you a slider to see what you’d do with it.”