Everything Happened to Susan (11 page)

Later, Phil has no time for the hotel room. He says that he has an important appointment, people to see, certain contacts who will drop in shortly; they will have to use his office even at the risk of offending his sense of delicacy. She submits willingly, easily, finding a familiarity in his grasp, an accessibility in his need. At last she is comfortable under him and willing to be led where he will take her, but he goes almost nowhere at all. His orgasm is only a small quiver inside her, a bare pathetic act, springing away. He wipes himself in a kneeling position, his eyes on the wall. She almost asks him about Timothy but decides that she is not really interested in his whereabouts. Phil volunteers nothing.

On the way from the building she intercepts the director who is also on the steps heading out. She says hello and for an instant he does not seem to know her; then recognition works slowly across his face and he licks his lips, touches his eyes, asks her what she is doing in the building so late after the shooting. She shrugs and he says that he understands; furthermore he apologizes for shouting at her this afternoon, but he has been under enormous strain, terrific pressure, and she must realize that. He has never had to operate under a strict budgetary situation before while trying to do work of some achievement and value. “I think that when this is over I will go back to the Continent,” he says, “the Continent has very little money and an insignificant audience but there is a respect for serious work built into the culture and they do not torture you for being an artist. Here it is entirely different. However I suspect that I am just talking and I will not go back to the Continent after all because the corruption is already too basic. It is too late to change; what brought me here has made me irretrievable. You do not understand that, do you?” Susan says that she guesses she does not, and the director nods slowly, sadly, going on his way, a stooped figure afflicted by vagrant flashes of energy so that he pauses in midstride, every now and then, to commence an erratic skip. Then each time he immediately gains control of himself and moves ponderously until the next skip which is more of a twitch than a true vault. At least he does not seem to be interested in her sexually which Susan can appreciate. At the corner he turns, kisses his fingers, waves to her again and she wonders if she can be sure of that. Now he is out of sight and it is too late for any such speculation. Besides, she has absolutely no desire for him. She has no desire for anyone anymore.

She returns to Frank’s apartment because there is really nowhere else to go and most of her belongings are still there. Frank is out but his mother who is sitting, working out a crossword puzzle in the living room, says that he only went for a couple of minutes and left word that Susan should definitely expect him back soon. His mother says this as if she were reading it off a strip of tape projected on the far side of the room, then sighs, adjusts her glasses, and goes back to the crossword puzzle. “I don’t suppose,” she says, after a pause, Susan having gone halfway to the door leading to her own room, “I don’t suppose that there’s anything really going on between you and Frank, is there? I would be so happy if there were, but usually there isn’t; he finds it impossible to have serious relationships any more. He hasn’t been the same boy since he came back from school.”

“Nothing too serious,” Susan says. “I mean, I like him, but I’ve only known him two days and the reason I’m staying here is that I had trouble with my roommate. I wouldn’t want you to think — ”

“Oh I don’t think. I haven’t had a thought since 1952; I just do these crossword puzzles on instinct. You don’t have to worry about what I think, dear. Frank and I have had terrible arguments about this; he thinks that I’m making judgments and of course I’m not making judgments. I don’t try to judge anyone least of all my own son whom I don’t understand any more. You don’t think that there could be anything serious between you, do you?”

“It’s not that kind of thing. It’s — ”

“Yes, I know. It’s never that kind of thing. Frank has never had any luck. Of course that runs in the family: luck is inherited like everything else. You’re a very attractive girl; you know that.”

“I don’t think about it too much.”

“The attractive ones never do. You wouldn’t know a four-letter word for a Chinese hexagon, would you?”

“No,” Susan says. “I don’t do crossword puzzles.”

“I know you think that this is very trivial and obsessive but I’m an old lady and what else is there to do? What is bacchanalian cry? I always forget. I don’t even know the easy ones. The trouble is I have no talent for crossword puzzles.”

“I don’t know what a bacchanalian cry is.”

“I didn’t think you did, dear. Frank gives me nothing to do; he’s ashamed of me and we have this strict arrangement that I won’t interfere in his life. But what good does that do if he’s always interfering in mine? He has to know everything I do and he doesn’t like any of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So I wind up doing crossword puzzles because it’s easier than having fights with my son. I’ll be seventy-three years old next September. I was really quite old when Frank was born and he was something of a mistake. I never expected to get pregnant at forty.”

“Must we talk about this?”

“Well, what’s the alternative, dear? We must talk about something and I’d rather that it was basic things rather than hypocritical lies. Frank’s an only child, you know. He was born out of wedlock. Maybe I should have married the man; I’ve often wondered about that. Maybe that was the real problem with Frank from the beginning, that he needed a father. But I treasured my independence and felt that the child would have to come second even though I did want him. Well, you never know. The thing is,” Frank’s mother says, “the thing is that I had a very dull, uninteresting job as a clerk-typist with absolutely no future and I was fired when Frank was three years old anyway. I wish that I could be resigned and ironic, don’t you? That’s what old ladies are supposed to be, full of irony. But I’m just as mad now as I was back then. I can have the same feelings. You don’t understand that, you young people; you think that everybody over fifty stops feeling. But inside it’s always the same, there’s just nothing you can
do
about it and that’s why old people are so nasty and unhappy. You must be very hungry.”

“No,” Susan says, giving up on the idea of leaving the room, and sits down on the couch opposite the old lady’s chair with a sigh. “No, I don’t have any appetite at all, really.”

“It must be the kind of work you’re doing. Oh don’t be embarrassed; I know exactly what you and Frank are doing. He says that he wants to lead separate lives but actually he tells me everything. Sometimes he comes into my room at two in the morning and tells me everything that’s on his mind and exactly what he went through. He just can’t stop talking. That kind of work keeps you from having an appetite, I bet.”

“I never had much of an appetite.”

“Well, I neither approve nor disapprove; it doesn’t make any difference to me. I guess it makes as much sense as anything else these days and a dollar is a dollar. At least you have a chance to do something creative although I never thought that Frank would become an actor. Somehow he never seemed the type to be an actor in that kind of business. But it shows that the apple rolls further from the tree than you can ever tell. You look a little ill, dear; are you sure that you wouldn’t want to get something to eat?”

“No,” Susan says and, shifting in the couch, decides that after all she will stand and leave this room, will even leave this house if necessary; but before she can gather herself together Frank walks through the apartment door holding a bag of groceries in both hands. “Hello Susan,” he says. “I was just gone for a few minutes; I hope it wasn’t long.”

“I think I want to leave, Frank.”

“Susan and I have been talking,” his mother says. “We’ve had a talk about this thing and that. I’m afraid that I haven’t made her very happy though, Frank. Maybe you’d better save the situation.”

“I can’t stand this any more, mother.”

“It’s your own fault, Frank; you talk too much. If you don’t want me meddling in your life or knowing what goes on, why do you tell me all these things? You can’t dump all this horrifying information on me and expect me to take it without a twitch. I’m seventy-three years old next September; I don’t have the resources that you young people have.”

“Let’s go upstairs, Susan,” Frank says, putting down the groceries on a table. “Look, we can talk there.”

“I don’t want to talk,” she says, getting up from the couch finally. “I’ve been talking all day. I just came back here really to pick up my things. I’m going to a hotel. Tomorrow I can look for an apartment.”

“There’s no reason for you to leave.”

“It’s your own fault, Frank,” his mother says. “You never really knew how to handle a girl. There’s something peculiarly self-destructive in you; I’ve seen it from the first. You make yourself less than what you are and then you want people to take you on those terms to show that they really care. And if they don’t care, then you can always say that you weren’t trying. You see, I know some psychology too. I’ve read up on this type of thing.”

“Please mother,” Frank says. “Please, no more.”

“It’s all your own fault. If you were a little more secretive about your life then I wouldn’t have all these things on my mind and you’d be able to carry on in your own way. But you never could keep your mouth shut, Frank; it’s your basic failing. A failing that runs in the family.”

“Come on, Susan,” Frank says and takes her arm gently, begins to tug her from the room. Susan yields, it seems easier that way. The old lady’s glasses glitter in some aspect of light as they mount the stairs. “Are you sure you don’t know a Bacchanalian cry, dear?” she asks.

“Evoe,”
Frank says. He leads her out of sight of his mother and into his bedroom. It is the first good look she has ever gotten of Frank’s bedroom, an expressionless place with a few pictures of a recent moon-landing taped on the walls, showing astronauts in space suits leaning over the ground. He puts her in the chair facing him on the bed and sits, clasps his hands, looks down at the floor. “I guess that wasn’t a very good idea,” he says. “Giving her the opportunity to get at you. I didn’t think you’d be in so soon. I wasn’t even sure you’d be back at all, to tell you the truth. I’m very glad you’re back.”

“I just came to pick up my things,” Susan says. “Listen, seriously, I want to find a hotel. It isn’t fair of me to stay here and I just don’t want to. I’ll pick up what I’ve got and go somewhere.”

“I find it impossible to believe that I’m making pornographic films. It’s just an incredible situation, something that I can’t adjust to. Here I go to the studio, a man of my background, and make a dirty picture and then I come home at night and back into this. You couldn’t possibly appreciate the ironies. There just seems nothing I can do to break this pattern. She was with me all through graduate school, you know. We lived together out there and when I dropped out we used her savings to come to New York and take this place. It isn’t even rent-controlled. I told you a lie. We pay four hundred dollars a month for it only because she had some savings. We’ve always lived together. I had this dream that finally I’d be able to do something so outrageous that it would be inconceivable for me to live with her any more and dirty movies seemed to be the thing, but do you know something? It’s the same thing. I don’t mean to burden you with my troubles, of course. You have problems of your own. Did you work things out there?”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you get rid of your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know what happened to him.”

“Well,” Frank says, “they’re efficient. I’ll give them that; they do the necessary and they do it very well. They can discriminate between what is important and what is not which is something that intellectual types such as myself have always found difficult. I wouldn’t worry about him; I’m sure that they just gave him the message and sent him on his way.”

“I’m not worried about him at all. I’m not even thinking about him.”

“Well, that’s best,” Frank says. He grips the arms of the chair, shifts slightly; there is an extended pause. “You wouldn’t like to, uh — ”

“No,” Susan says. “I’m sorry but it’s just impossible. I can’t do anything now at all.”

“I’m not forcing you. It’s not my way to force people. I just can’t. I was just asking — ”

“No,” Susan says. “All I want to do is to get my things and go to a hotel.”

“It’s not as if it would be anything much for you,” Frank mumbles. “I mean — ”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, with the filming and all.”

“That’s different.”

“All right,” Frank says with a sigh. He shrugs, groans, picks up small bits of litter from the floor. “I understand that. It isn’t the best approach possible. There’s something in the way I approach girls that always puts them off; it’s almost as though I’m driven toward denial and — ”

“Frank,” Susan says, feeling her voice go slightly out of control, “Frank, I just can’t discuss this kind of thing anymore. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to hear any more of your analyses. All I want to do is to get out of here,” and with an act of her will she stands, a feeling of disconnection overtaking her as she does so. She feels the room revolving slowly at a great distance. Only a little while longer and she will be able to sleep. “Now, if you’ll help me get my things together and call a cab, that would be all I need. Or you don’t even have to help me with the things. I can do it myself.” She takes one stride, moving toward her room, feels herself lose her balance, tumble gracelessly backward, grasps a chair, and falls into it heavily. “I’m tired,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m really tired. I thought that everything was all right, but it isn’t.”

“Stay here tonight, Susan. It will be just like last night. I won’t do a thing. Tomorrow you can leave.”

“You’ll just start again. I tell you, I can’t listen any more. All that people do is talk to me and talk to me and make me do things. This has got to stop.” Susan finds herself thinking that this may well be true; nevertheless, she sounds like one of the characters in a scene she has been playing, perhaps Mrs. Millard Fillmore. Maybe Mrs. Millard Fillmore had this problem; this is why she and her husband are both two of history’s most obscure characters. “I just can’t,” she says, and tries to stand again, does somewhat better this time, moves toward a door. “I should go. I mean, it’s nothing personal; I’m sure I like you but — ”

“I won’t lay a hand on you,” Frank says intensely. “I won’t say a thing. I just want you to stay; it would be a great thing for me if you would stay. Just to have a girl like you in my house. You don’t know how I felt last night, just knowing that you were here; that if I wanted, I could open your door down the hall and look in, could see — ”

“Oh God,” Susan says. She leaves Frank’s room, walks to her own, notices that it is just as she left it this morning and thinks, I’ve got to get out of here. But she sits on the bed for just one instant trying to decide the most efficient means for exit. This is either her usual mistake or the best thing that has happened to her today because the bed absorbs her, envelops her, and she sinks upon it with a sigh, feeling the sheets close over her comfortably. Susan leans back with a gasp; sleep overtakes her completely. It has been a long day. All of her days since she began to work for Phil have been long; very possibly it is for the best that she use the time allotted her now for rest. Beyond rationalization, beyond the ordering of a vigorous program of activities which will show her to her best advantage, Susan dreams.