Contrary Pleasure (30 page)

Bobby Rawls rode the rattling coach, drinking from a bottle with a sailor
while the night hurried by outside, the signal bells of the crossings bursting
and fading into minor key, quickly lost in the rushing night. He wept inside
for Norma while he and the sailor leaned red-faced at each other and talked
boldness. And after a while the rye turned sour in him and when he threw up,
holding his foot on the water pedal of the train toilet, the train lurched and
he bumped his head and spotted his knee. He went to his berth and left the
shade up and watched the wheeling night. A train exploded by, going in the
other direction, shocking him, making his heart pound for a few moments. Its
diesel bray challenged all the still things, all the quiet things, and Robert
Rawls thought of all those who lay in each others’ arms and heard that beast
sound in the flatland night. And that way managed at last to make the tears
come. They did not sting. They were round and bland and warm, feeling like oil
on his face. The train plunged west.

There is an old airport at
Stockton, but the commercial airlines do not use it anymore. It was started
back in the days of struts and wing-walking, of lumpy grass and voices thin
across the field from the temporary stands the day of the jump from five
thousand feet. A mile up.

Later, in the late twenties, there was a time when all civic
organizations began to talk about the airport improvements. New runways were
laid out and paved. Hangars went up. The air age was here. Lindberg had flown
to Paris. So on Sunday the cars would drive out and park by the fence, and
families would watch the takeoffs and the landings. It was a magical time. A
carnival time, with men selling ice cream and whirring, little airplanes tied
to the ends of sticks.

But the hills nudged in too close, and the area was too populated and the
runways could not be extended. So now it is a place where you can keep your
aircoup
or cub in a dilapidated hangar for a small monthly
charge, where the wind rattles old signs, where students wait in
overcasual
nervousness for their next lesson. Sometimes, at
night, the hot-
rodders
get out onto the old cracked
runways and drag race until the cops come. It is a sad place now, and the
improvement bonds clutter the deposit boxes of the die-hards, the hopefuls.

The new airport is a tri-county project, far out on lonely land, actually
closer to Clayton than to Stockton. There rises the building of blond stone,
glass, and driftwood-gray trim, with
restaurantlike
operating rooms, bored chant of the tower, arrival-and-departure board,
electric baggage trucks, magazine racks, red gas trucks, NO SMOKING BEYOND THIS
POINT. It is a trackless railroad station, a wondrous and alarming thing turned
now into dullness and routine, into a sort of bored civil-service efficiency. A
man stands in the super-
conny
aisle, reading his
newspaper while waiting to file toward the wheeled stairway with his
eighty-seven fellow passengers. And in that gesture there is the end of all
high glory. Subway in the air, it is. No more dope and struts and fabric and
the exposed cylinder ends. No more the tiny figure on the high wing, and the
great crowd’s
aaaah
and the drop through
sunlight until the chute blooms. It is now a matter of credit cards and
confirmed reservations and, if you are sick, there is a special paper bag—
if
you don’t get the Dramamine in time.

Flight 707 was scheduled for arrival at 2:08. Susan felt the plane
letting down. Robbie, excitement on his face, was trying to see across her, and
he pointed out things. She felt a pang of jealousy that here she saw for the
first time an excitement in him that was not of her making. The signs about
smoking and seat belts came on and the stewardess went up and down the aisle
awakening those who slept. The earth tilted at an angle against the wing, with
a toy group of buildings and toy runways below for a time then gone, and then
they were down, Susan tensing for a jar of landing, waiting and waiting, then
finding they were turning, taxiing, she unsnapped the belt.

“Nervous, honey?”

“Sort of, I guess,” she said.

“They’re harmless. They’ll love you anyway. Hey, there they are. See?
Behind the fence there to the left of the gate. Wilma and George and Alice. I
don’t see anybody else.”

Susan had seen pictures and she at last spotted them. At last they went
down the long stairs, Robbie carrying her small travel case, hurrying, taking
her arm and hurrying her along once they were down on the concrete. Again she felt
that twinge of annoyance with him. Yet, after all, it was his family.

There was the confusion of introduction, with all the right words said,
and a forthright kiss from Wilma, who seemed matronly and pleasant and proper,
and a shy, cool kiss from Alice, and a walloping, let’s-kiss-the-bride smack
from hefty, club-joining George, who punched Robbie in the arm and told him he
had gotten himself a nice dish, and then being left with the two women while
Robbie and George went off to see about the bags. Yes, it was a very nice trip.
No, not rough at all. Oh, I got this in Mexico. I’m glad you like it. I’m dying
to meet all of Robbie’s family. Yes, Washington was dreadfully hot, but we were
lucky enough to get an air-conditioned room. Coming up we changed planes in San
Antonio, and then had I think it was an hour and half to wait. Then the flight
stopped in New Orleans, then Nashville, then Washington. [Trying all this time
to find the right balance, enough warmth, enough shyness, enough
brideness
, and seeing in their faces that she was doing it
correctly, seeing the general look of relief hidden by the politeness.]

They went to the car and George put the bags in the trunk compartment and
with the three women in back and the two men in front they drove out of there,
and Susan wished that Robbie had made more of an effort to sit beside her,
because she needed to feel that he was close. He didn’t understand that these
were strangers. They were so familiar to him.

The guest annex on the
Furmon
house was new and
pleasant. It had a connecting door into the main house and also a private
entrance. There was a tiny kitchen alcove, with combination stove and
refrigerator and a sink nearby. Alice
Furmon
said,
“There’s breakfast things in the refrigerator, and more towels in this
cupboard. And, let me see, I guess that’s all you have to know. We won’t run
everybody at you at once, Susan. Suppose you relax for a while and freshen up.
The rest of the tribe will be over for drinks about five thirty, and then we’re
all going to the club for dinner. There’ll be a lot of people to meet there, so
maybe you ought to take a nap or something.”

Then after Susan had protested about everything being so nice, about being
so much trouble, she was at last able to close the door and lean her back
against it and stick her
underlip
out and blow her
hair off her forehead.

“That bad, honey?”

“Just sort of confusing. Hey, this is very nice, you know it? Private.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Delevan at home.”

“That still sounds crazy. How would you like it if all of a sudden you
had to become Mr. Walton?”

“Do you like them?” he asked, suddenly earnest.

“They’re nice, Robbie. They really are.”

“Come here.”

“Uh-uh. I’ve got to unpack so things will hang out. How will the women
dress, Robbie?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. The club isn’t what you’d call a very
formal operation. A sort of a cocktail-dress deal, I’d say.”

“Go ask Alice and borrow an iron, darling. Ask her what sort of thing
she’s wearing.” He kissed her and went off. And while he was gone she sat on
the bed and suddenly felt small, forlorn, and very much alone in a world of
strangers.

When Ben
Delevan got home at five thirty on Saturday evening he found Wilma waiting—all
dressed, ready and indignant. “The children have gone over already. What
possessed
you, Ben, to be so late?”

“Couldn’t be helped. Sorry. Something came up.”

“Something always comes up. Now hurry just as fast as you can. I’m going
on over.”

“Plane on time?”

“Right on the minute.”

“What’s she like?”

“I’d say she’s no fool, Ben. I think she knows what she’s doing every
minute. But they seem very much in love. I mean that’s something you can sense.
Now
do
hurry. I laid out everything for you.”

He showered and dressed with just enough leisureliness to retain a sense
of independence. And just enough haste to avoid too cold an eye from Wilma. He
knotted his tie carefully and patted it into position and looked at himself
with a proper measure of approval. As he walked across to George’s place he
could hear the chatter of the party. He stopped, out of sight, tasting the
wind. There was a new flavor to it, a gusty humidity. The June leaves flapped
over, exposing their pale undersides. And quick little winds flapped at his pants
cuffs.

The party had a colorful look. His own children and Wilma, and the Quinn
Delevans
, and the George
Furmons
,
and the Robbie
Delevans
. And Sandy, with a barometric
awareness of weather change, running in silent, tireless, solemn circles on the
wide, green lawn, curls bouncing, legs thin and brown and fleet.

They looked toward him as he approached, smiling, and he made a smiling
half salute and went directly to the pale-haired bride, who looked up at him
out of gray eyes, pupils made tiny by the terrace sunlight, late out of the
west, and started to raise her hand toward his and then, as though on impulse,
stood up and shook his hand.

“Nice to have you aboard,” he said, wishing he could think of something
better.

“Nice to be aboard, captain,” she said, and something quick danced for a
moment in her eyes, giving him the impression that she and he were for some
inexplicable reason close, even in that first moment of meeting. Yet he had met
many who had this knack and used it all the time with everyone and it meant
nothing. So in caution he smiled and turned to Robbie and congratulated him and
gratefully accepted bourbon from George, who knew enough to have something
other than cocktails at a cocktail party. And, from the side, he watched Susan
with the others and felt pleased out of all proportion when he saw that what he
had seen in her was not something turned on for the others too, but had been a
quick and valid affinity between them. He knew he would like this girl. He knew
her strength would be welcome.

Reassured, he turned his attention toward Quinn. He felt guilty and
uneasy at not having talked to Quinn since the Thursday scene. And though Brock
had warned him about the loss of the mustache, he was still shocked at the way
the change enfeebled Quinn’s face. At the way it changed an ersatz strength to
a look of uncertainty. What had been bored appraisal was now shown to be a
compressed shyness. He went over and sat next to Quinn and said in a low voice,
“Sick yesterday?”

Bess, overhearing, said rather sharply, “He was out of sorts yesterday,
Ben. This morning, too. I didn’t think he ought to come tonight, but he keeps
saying he’s fine. He doesn’t look fine. Would you say he looks fine?”

Bess’s habit of talking about Quinn in his presence as though he were a
child or deaf always made Ben uneasy. “You’ll be okay by Monday, Quinn boy.
Hope you will. Things piling up a little. Got some stuff I want you to handle.”
Saying it, Ben knew it was a feeble and awkward attempt to make amends for the
things he had said on Thursday.

Quinn turned his head slowly and looked directly at Ben for the first
time. He frowned as though puzzled. “Monday? I’ll be fine on Monday. I’m fine
now.”

“He keeps saying that, but he doesn’t look it,” Bess said. “The cat’s got
his tongue. He just sits like that. And he gets so cross with me.”

Ben gave up. He looked over at Susan and saw that his own children were
monopolizing her. Brock, sitting on one heel, talking with low-voiced
enthusiasm; Ellen just sitting and looking at Susan with warm love and
admiration in her eyes. If the kids were any indication, Susan was in.

George took his empty glass and said, “You need more,
bub
.
Back in a flash.”

Ben watched George go over to the table where the bottles were. Alice was
there, putting hot things on a plate of hors d’oeuvres, and Ben nearly gasped
aloud when he saw George give her a quick caress that was furtive and direct
and anything but subtle. He half expected Alice to bash him with the plate of
hors d’oeuvres, and when she didn’t, he thought that what he had seen had been
imagined. Then he saw Alice’s face and throat darken and saw her touch her
cheek against George’s shoulder for the barest fraction of a second.

Ben felt as though he had been peering under a drawn curtain. He marveled
that he had been so wrong about them for so long. That he had so definitely
decided that Alice, cool and withdrawn in all things, would insist on restraint
and circumspection in all matters of love. Yet here was a sudden and unexpected
key to a relationship that was apparently a good deal more earthy than anything
he could have guessed. And was, amazingly, reciprocal rather than being merely
endured by Alice. And was, even more astonishingly, progressing briskly after
many years of marriage. He had to turn his head to keep from staring at Alice.
He felt guilty, and at the same time he felt as though he had been cheated in
some obscure way. He resented being proved wrong about people he thought he had
known so well. And he began to look around at his other relatives with dim
suspicion.

As the shadows began to grow longer it slowly became apparent to all of
them that Quinn Delevan might very possibly ruin the evening. When the drinks
had not come fast enough, he had gone and made his own. And now he had taken up
his station near the bottles, looking through everyone. Drinking with
metronomic efficiency. Conversation began to get too loud and too brittle, and
everyone laughed too often, laughed in uncomfortable awareness of Quinn and not
knowing how to stop him. Not with the bride present.