Contrary Pleasure (15 page)

Alice walked back the way she had come. She crossed the pastureland. She
though of herself and how she was, and she thought of that woman and how she
was, and she thought of the two lives, lived on the two sides of that same hill
and suddenly, with little warning, she was physically sick. Something wrenched
and turned inside her, and she stood, bent forward from the waist, feet spread,
weak with the helpless spasms of nausea, choking and emptying herself on the
pasture grass. It took a long time and when it ended, she felt like a wraith.
She turned to where she had seen a brook, and found a small pool where the
water moved black and slow. She sat on her heels and dipped a Kleenex in the
cold water and bathed her face and eyes. She lay flat and drank from cupped
hands and rinsed her mouth. She stood up and used a damp Kleenex to wipe off
her spattered shoes and the bottoms of the slacks. She felt lightheaded.

By the time she clambered across the stone wall, the strength was coming
back to her. Her body, chilled by the sudden unexpected sweat, began to feel
warm again.

She walked down the rutted hill, thinking back to the Alice who had sat
on the wall in shallow discontent. The reality of what she had seen had done
something as yet undefined. It had torn something loose, released something
long suppressed.

She walked slowly for a time, trying to rationalize what had happened to
her, trying to poke and pry and finger, trying to lift the edges of things and
feel what was underneath. Then she realized it was something that should not be
dissected, dismembered, spread apart, and held down with little pins. If
something had happened, it should be accepted on the levels of instinct. Maybe
all her life she had tried too hard to understand herself, had tried to gauge
and measure and weigh each little reaction, seeking a better understanding of
self, yet seeking it so intensely that every reaction became suspect, that each
flutter of instinct was chilled by appraisal.

Accept that something has happened, and do not try to find out what it
is. Stop being so bloody sober about yourself. Maybe if you stop thinking, it
might be possible to become a woman. Something which feels rather than thinks.
Something to be joyfully bedded in spring grass, eyes tight against the bright
hot sun, rejoicing in the strength and sureness of him who takes you thus.

Something cool and hard had been ripped out of her, leaving a feeling of
softness and vulnerability. So leave it at that. She walked more quickly down
the slope, her heels hitting hard so that she felt a jounce of breast and
buttock.

There would be little harm in trying to accept it on the unthinking basis
that the woman in the field had accepted it. To let it be something that
happens. Too many years of trying to intellectualize pleasure. So that it was a
coin-glint, frozen in ice, unattainable.

There could be another way. To imagine greenness, and the movement of
grasses, and bright, hot sun and broad, brown back. To think of green things
growing. Perhaps, after fourteen years, it would not work. After cheating both
of them for so long, it might well be too late. But it was nice to think that
perhaps it had all been inadequate merely because she had been too tense with
the desire to make it adequate, too intellectually objective, standing apart
from it and watching herself rather than merely… being.

As simple, maybe, as that long-ago time of the riding lessons when she
could do nothing right. That little man with the leathery face bellowing at
her. Elbows in! Watch your hands! No, don’t saw on the reins! Now your feet are
wrong! Around and around, knowing she would never, never get it right, hating
the great meaty horse and the stink of the place and the violent little man.
And deciding one day that it would be the last time, that she would not be
bullied into coming again, and thus ceasing to care what the little man yelled.
And, on that very day, suddenly getting the posture and rhythm of it right,
very suddenly, knowing what she should do, feeling control and mastery of the
horse, flushing with pride and excitement as the little man stood grinning,
turning slowly so that he faced her as she made the circuit, yelling, “Now,
girl. Now that’s it, girl. Now you look like something, girl.”

Could the answer be that simple? Could it be that I have bitched
everything up by assigning too much significance to it, by dwelling too long on
the dark patterns of Freud, by acquiring little emotional knots and twitches
and uncertainties?

Maybe I have learned too many wrong things. Maybe it is just something
that is physical and a function and you start from there and try to do it
physically well, and accept it as a thing that you do with your body when you
are a woman.

She reached the curve in the paved road and from there and for the rest of
the way down the slope she could see her house.

She swung along, her stride long, the cuffs of the slacks whipping her
ankles. She decided that she would take a hot bath and then dress in something
frothy and silly.

And she realized that for the first time in a long, long time there was
within her a quickening sense of anticipation, a feeling of being quite alive.
And she resisted the habitual desire for self-analysis, the need of poking and
prodding at herself to determine the cause of well-being.

This time she would accept it without question.

And she was humming softly as she went into the house, letting the screen
door hiss and close softly behind her.

Brock, reading in his room, had heard
the sound of the jeep when Clyde
Schermer
picked
Ellen up. After the jeep noise had faded down the hill, he found that he was
reading whole paragraphs without getting any meaning from the words. It was a
science-fiction novel by
Simak
, a writer who was
usually able to capture and hold his full attention. Ever since disaster, he
had found more pleasure in science fiction than in any other sort of reading.
He guessed that it was because it went so far afield that there was little in
it to trigger unwanted memories. There were no beer joints on the outlying
planets. No deans and no small apartments.

He stubbed out his cigarette in the bedside ashtray, slapped the book
shut, and laid it aside. Afternoon sun made a pattern on the throw rug near his
bed. Ellen had said at lunch that she was going to the club and play tennis. He
thought how it would be there, on the sleek asphalt courts. And he wondered
what shape his racket was in. He got slowly off the bed and went to the closet
and brought it out. He
undamped
the brace and took
off the plastic cover and tested the gut against the heel of his hand. It was
taut, and the
pong
sound was satisfying. He cut the air with it a few
times, forehand and backhand. If he went over to the club, maybe somebody would
have some smart crack. Word would have gotten around. Brock was tossed out.
Some kind of a jam. But he felt restless. He wanted to use his muscles. The
room was fine, but you could stay in it only so long. He changed to tennis
shoes and went out into the hallway and stood there for a few moments, then
shrugged and went downstairs.

His mother was in the study working on the books of one of the
organizations she belonged to. He leaned against the doorframe, bouncing the
racket against his bent knee. She looked up at him, half-frowning, and then
smiled. “Going to the club, dear? I’ve been worried about you not getting
enough exercise.”

“Thought I’d go over there if there’s any way of getting there.”

“I think Bess is home, dear. Why don’t you ask if you can use her car?”

“I should have gone with Ellen. I didn’t think quick enough.”

“She should have asked you.”

“Maybe she got tired of asking. Okay, I’ll ask Aunt Bess. See you later,
girl.”

“Have fun, dear,” his mother said absently, turning back to the club
books.

As he approached Quinn and Bess’s house he heard the busy humming of a
sewing machine. He went to the kitchen window and called, “
Yo
,
Aunt Bess!”

“Brock? Come on in. I’m in here.”

She was at the sewing machine, working on some yellow material, wearing
the glasses that always looked incongruous on her, somehow. Brock had always
liked her, had always gotten on well with her. He liked the way she looked. So
big and alive.

“What do you think of this color, Brock?”

“Nice color. What’s it going to be?”

“New curtains for David’s studio. Sort of cheerful, huh?”

“Nice.”

“He’s very aware of colors, you know.”

Brock felt uncomfortable, the way he always did when the conversation was
about David. It wasn’t as though David was any sort of actual blood relation.
But he was in the family. And he certainly was an awful creep. A real weird
item. It was tough on Bess and Quinn, the trouble they’d had with him. It made
him feel guilty about how little he’d done lately.

“I’ve… I’ve been meaning to stop over and see him.”

Bess nodded. “I wish you would. He likes you, Brock. He could show you
the model of the Roman galley he’s been working on. It’s really quite nice. Mr.
Shelter has been working with him on history, you know. I’m sure David would
like to show you.”

“I guess I’ll go take a look, then. Or is it nap time?”

“No, he sleeps right after lunch. I can go out with you.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll just take a look in. Say, you using your car today?
Any chance of borrowing it?”

“I won’t need it at all today, Brock. You can have it this afternoon and
this evening too,
if
you’d like.”

“Just this afternoon will be fine. Thanks, Aunt Bess.”

“The keys are in it, dear.”

The sewing machine started again as he went out the back door. He put the
racket in the car and then went over to the studio. The door was open. He
looked through the screen and saw David sitting at a long table, working at
something.

“Hey, Dave!”

The boy started violently and scrambled up out of the chair and peered
toward the door. “Easy, guy,” Brock said with that forced joviality he used
when he was around David. “It’s me. Brock. Can I see the ship? Your mother told
me about it.”

“Sure. You can see it,” David said in his blurred, stumbling voice. Brock
went in, smiling broadly. God, the kid was a creep. A huge guy, but
frail-looking. Skin like paste and all those pimples, and the eyes all
swimmy-looking behind those thick lenses. The room held the banana-oil stink of
airplane cement. Brock had heard his mother and father talking about it many
times. They thought David was the way he was because of what happened to his
father when Bess was pregnant, getting killed that way with a knife. Apparently
that Carney had been quite a guy. Funny that a strong woman like Bess and a
rough guy like Carney must have been should have had David. But he was a
Delevan now because Quinn had adopted him legally.

Even as a little kid, David had been odd, but it had seemed to get worse
as he got older. It wasn’t that he was stupid. Mr. Shelter said that David was
bright. But you would certainly never know it. Not the way he acted. Everything
scared him. Nothing about him was completely right. He’d spent half his life in
bed with serious illnesses, one after the other. The few times they’d tried to
send him to school, the other kids had made his life a hell on earth. He
quivered and shook when you tried to talk to him. God knew what would become of
him. The “studio” had been built for him on the advice of the psychiatrist.
Something, Brock remembered, to do with security—the emotional security of
having a place of his own where he could lock the door. At times he had fainted
dead away when introduced to a stranger.

“This it?” Brock asked too loudly. “Say, this is real good, Dave. This is
a good job.”

“It’s a Roman galley,” David said.

“There’s a lot of work there. I guess I wouldn’t have the patience to do
all that work.”

“They rowed it with oars. There were a lot of them and they were chained
to the benches and they rowed it.”

It was one of the longest sentences Brock had ever heard him say. He
looked at David. The hair grew low on his forehead and was combed straight
back. The glasses frames were mended with tape. Bess said that David carried on
long conversations with Mr. Shelter.

Brock knew of the years of Mr. Shelter’s teaching, of his efforts to gain
David’s confidence, but even so, it was hard to conceive of David carrying on
any long conversation. The boy seemed eternally trapped in some rigid, frozen
world of his own, tense and speechless and frightened, denying communication
with those around him, imbedded in inexplicable fears, like a housefly under an
upturned glass. With uncoordinated body, blurred speech, faulty vision, David
was, Brock thought, like one of those aliens in the science-fiction stories, a
visitor from a far galaxy who would never comprehend the works of man.

“Well, I just thought I’d stop by and say hello,” Brock said, backing
gratefully toward the door. “Sure is a nice ship model.”

David swallowed audibly and moistened his lips. His face had a sudden
twisted look, eerie and unpleasant. “
Cuh
…
cuh
…” he said, his mouth working oddly.

“What?” Brock asked, his hand on the screen door latch.

“Come again!” David blurted, his face turning crimson. Then he turned
away from Brock so that he faced the wall.

“I’ll do that, Dave,” Brock said, and fled. He had sensed the agony
behind David’s invitation. It was something Mr. Shelter had doubtless been
drilling into him. A courteous invitation. One of those little phrases you say
so easily. Come again. Come back and see me. And almost utterly impossible to
David. Because somehow it was allied so closely with the social block.