Everything Happened to Susan (3 page)

At home she finds Timothy asleep over his typewriter, a half-page of his novel still in the machine. He is incredibly dedicated to his work but his job in the Welfare Department gets him down; constant demands are being made upon his compassion and sense of balance, he says, and he finds it impossible to maintain toward his work the kind of polished detachment intrinsic to the creation of great art. Nevertheless he cannot leave the Welfare Department, having tenure and needing the income too badly to be able to take time off to finish his book or look for another job. His face looks astonished in repose; his pores open, his nerves twitch under the mask of impassivity, and he groans heavily, adjusting himself more comfortably in the chair, allowing his head to sink fully into his cupped hands. Susan pats him on the neck and reads what is in the typewriter which seems to have to do with the reaction of a welfare investigator to a particularly aggressive client. “I CAN’T STAND THIS ANY MORE,” MR. MORALES SCREAMED, the page reads, “MY WIFE AND CHILDREN ARE STARVING FOR LACK OF BREAD AND YOU STAND THERE IN YOUR BUSINESS SUIT AND TELL ME ABOUT RULES AND REGULATIONS. I TELL YOU THAT THIS IS NO TIME FOR RULES AND REGULATIONS. EVERYTHING IS BURNING. THE WORLD IS BURNING. THE FIRE IS COMING UPON ALL OF US, EVEN UPON WELFARE INVESTIGATORS, AND YOUR OLD SIMPLE RIGIDITIES WILL NO LONGER HOLD US BACK.” HENDERSON FELT THE WAVES OF TERROR MOVING UP HIS PORCINE BACK, WAVES OF TERROR INTERMINGLED WITH COMPASSION BECAUSE HE COULD PLACE HIMSELF IN THE MIND AND HEART OF THE MAN MORALES, THIS SIMPLE DISPLACED PERSON. TORN FREE FROM HIS HISTORY, WHO COULD EXPRESS HIS LOVE NOW ONLY THROUGH HATRED. THROUGH THE VENTINGS OF HIS TERRIBLE FEELINGS. HENDERSON COULD FEEL A TWITCH OF COMPASSION BUT THEN, WHEN MORALES REVEALED HIS KNIFE, THIS COMPASSION TURNED TO ASHES AND HE WAS AFRAID. TERRIBLY AFRAID. IN THE NEXT ROOM HE KNEW THAT THE TEN MORALES CHILDREN HUDDLED, EARS TO THE THIN WALL LISTENING FOR THE SOUNDS OF DESTRUCTION, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEN SEEMED TO OCCUR UNDER THE EYES OF MANY WITNESSES, WITNESSES UNREACHABLE THROUGH PLASTER. “WE ARE BURNING,” MORALES SHOUTED, “BURNING FOR YOUR SINS,” AND HE ADVANCED UPON HENDERSON WITH THE KNIFE. THE CLEANNESS OF THE FEAR JOLTED HENDERSON, HE … and at this point the page, 261, ends. It is the first part of Timothy’s novel which Susan has read since the time, some weeks ago at the beginning of their relationship, he handed her the opening chapter, saying this was what he was doing and perhaps she would like to see it, not that he particularly cared what she thought because no serious writer could bend and sway to another’s opinion. Susan had found that first chapter, which seemed to be about Henderson’s initial sexual experience in Bedford-Stuyvesant with a fat welfare client many years older than himself, vague and somewhat confusing, but it did have color (as did this section) and it convinced her that Timothy was certainly a novelist. Now she turns away from the typewriter already disinterested, already feeling herself turned inward toward abstraction, having very little to do with any of this, just for the moment a visitor in the room, someone extrinsic to the entire situation. Timothy could be a stranger, this apartment a museum preserved frozen in time, for all her responses; she wanders idly off to the kitchen and, deciding to let him sleep for the time being, makes herself a cup of coffee and allows the events of the day to work through her. The mail is in, scattered on the kitchen table, and among the envelopes is a letter from an old college girlfriend, forwarded from her last address. She is interested in reading the letter but her curiosity is mixed with a good deal of trepidation and she decides to let it wait for a moment. Just for a moment; she hears Timothy groaning and stirring in the other room and knows that he will come in shortly in a foul mood and she will have to tell him what her day has been like. She already knows the composition of his; it has come out of the typewriter.

For a while the sheer magnitude of pornography on the newsstands of New York had dazzled Susan; she passed newsstands and magazine stores with the slightly averted and astonished eyes that she had once turned on the boxes of sanitary napkins displayed in local drugstores; later she had gotten used to the pornography along with the rest of New York and finally, in fear and caution, had actually begun to buy the newspapers, only to get a lead, she told herself, on the kind of environment she lived in. The models who posed for the pictures were easy enough to understand; they looked like almost anyone who you might see in the street who had elected to pose nude in sexual positions for the money, but the advertisements were a different matter altogether, and, in the reading of the personal ads, Susan’s comprehension began to buckle. There was simply no attitude with which to properly handle them. Pleas for partners were published by fetishists, lesbians, homosexuals, heterosexuals, urinary-oriented males and females, coprophiliacs, and animal-lovers. They were placed by leather devotees, young men interested in massage, and people seeking various kinds of anal intercourse. They were written by stocking fetishists, ear fetishists, breast-feeding fetishists, and old men only interested in conversation and companionship. Women were looking for mixed sex and mixed groups were looking for women. Old men sought young boys and young boys sought older women. It was the need, the desperation, the insistence of the advertisements and above all the mad sense of certainty that their needs were somehow justified and justifiable which informed all of them left Susan feeling slack and empty. She had read about such people. She supposed that at one time or other she had seen them, but the idea that they actually existed, that they were as serious as she and were willing to publicize the fact was something with which she could not deal. It would be easy to believe that the ads were not real and that they were being printed by the owners of the newspapers themselves as a kind of satire. But the advertisements had a mad patterning and consistency which no publishers could possibly simulate and they repeated — she began to become familiar with certain quirks of phraseology — shades of meaning which were peculiar to the authors. The same blurbs would recur over a span of weeks. Not long before she met Timothy, when she was very much in between all kinds of things, she had had to struggle against an urge to make contact with some of the advertisers, simply to see if they existed and then, at the moment of actual connection, to flee but she had resisted this impulse. It was cheap and she also feared getting into very dangerous waters. The people who published these advertisements were a fraternity, a conspiracy in fact; they were humorless, passionate, and devoted and they would not suffer outsiders easily. Besides, Susan was simply not prepared to deal with the kind of people who found water sports interesting. It had taken her long enough to find out what water sports
were
(one of the personals columns in the newspapers had filled her in finally) and that was as far as she wanted to go with the matter.

But there was that feeling of something lacking and it complicated everything. Reading the advertisements, Susan, past her initial shock, had begun to feel a sense of regret, even loss, probing through the delicate parts of her, fine tendrils which almost touched the quivering, dirty pages of the newspaper: here at least were people possessed of certainty. They had their lacks, they had their losses, but one thing was clear: they knew exactly what they needed to make themselves complete and they could put it into words, send their prayer through newsprint out into the world. It would be very simple if you only knew of one thing in the world which would ease your needs; coprophilia or Greek culture would be a small price to pay for the knowledge that dreams could be made flesh through simple connection. Susan had not had that certainty for a long time; ever since she had turned against her father for failing to understand her many years ago, she had given up the belief in easy answers. Of course this had nothing to do with the newspapers which made everything very easy indeed. She toyed for a while with the idea of placing her own advertisement under a box number: YOUNG ATTRACTIVE GIRL, NYMPHOMANIACAL, DESPERATELY SEEKS SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARTICULARLY WITH INEXPERIENCED OR UGLY MEN, just to see what kind of replies she would get. The responses would be very interesting and amusing and she could discuss them with her friends but finally she decided against it. In the first place, very few women seemed to advertise in the sex newspapers and, in the second, the monomania and desperation of the kind of man who placed advertisements made her feel that she would be getting in beyond her depth, even to release so much as a box number. So she had begun to lose interest in the sex newspapers which, shocking and amusing at first, turned out to be the same old stuff, week in and week out. The advertisers became familiar to say nothing of the editorial content and meanwhile her money had seriously begun to run out and she could not bear the idea of having gone through everything she had to become a receptionist-typist in New York City. So she had begun to read the advertisements with something else in view, maybe a job, maybe a real contact, and the movie thing, when she had seen it, had been not unlike hundreds of similar ads that she had passed over. But this time it was different because she really wanted to get work related in some way to the field of her talent and she had had a bad fight with Timothy the previous evening — a raw, ugly one having to do with the kind of neighborhood in which he was living which could not, like some of the other arguments, be sealed with sex. So she had gone for an interview and was eventually selected to star in a pornographic film. It was simple, really. She wondered if people who enlisted in the Army and wound up in really serious trouble in the war zone had found it as easy and inevitable to get into the situation as she had. There was nothing consequential to it at all. The most complicated or unspeakable acts could occur in broad daylight, in expressionless buildings, surrounded by people leading unknowing routine lives. She knows that she must think about this as well as the compromises Phil’s offer will lead her to in her artistic career but there is time enough for that later.

Not too much later Timothy awakens and comes into the kitchen, finds her sitting solemnly, stirring a cup of coffee and asks her about her day. Did she actually get some work? His demeanor seems to shift between trepidation and excitement; he wants to know what has happened to her but, on the other hand, is afraid to find out. She says that it was nothing much — mostly nude posing and posturing and that there was no physical contact with any of the other actors, all of whom were unattractive. Timothy nods and shrugs, shakes his head, and says that he will not discuss it anymore. Even though they are living together, they are entitled to lead their separate lives, at least up until a point of real commitment, and therefore she has the right to her privacy. He says that he has had a terrible day at the office. There is a new state investigation beginning in the area of Manhattan covered by his welfare center and all of the unit supervisors must submit complete reports to the auditing committee describing the efforts at rehabilitation made for clients and telling what percentage within the last six months have been fully restored to a normal way of life. Timothy says that he is not quite sure what the state means by “rehabilitated” but supposes that, if they are using the word in the financial sense, they want to know how many clients are actually off relief which, he says, is too small a percentage to make the very nervous administrative head happy. The administrative head, therefore, in a full meeting with the supervisors, has instructed them to interpret “rehabilitation” as meaning those welfare clients who have been led to a higher and deeper and more fundamental understanding of their lives due to the efforts of caseworkers, which would be a very large percentage indeed. “Under the new social casework procedures, over eighty-five percent of our client-load is showing some genuine capacity for enlightenment as well as a high deceleration of the level of decompensation in terms of unnatural mores,” the administrator has said and Timothy had spent the remainder of the day putting together charts and statistical studies indicating that four hundred and fifteen of the five hundred and twelve families carried by his case unit have shown a high deceleration of the level of decompensation. “I can’t stand it any more,” he says to her, pouring a cup of coffee and running a hand absently down her shoulder, “I simply can’t stand it any more, it’s too insane,” and then his fingers become insistent, the cup of coffee is forgotten, falling with a clatter to the table, and he presses his groin against her. “Let’s do it,” he says, “let’s make love,” always showing at the moment of insistence a delicacy in his language and bearing which Susan finds amusing; he seems incapable of using the word
fuck
in talking about sex although in other contexts he uses it all the time. “Let’s put ourselves together,” he says stammering and she sees as always the core of vulnerability in him, the thing which has always excited her about Timothy. Never has she seen a man so needful who does more outside the context of sex to deny that need. “Oh God,” he says, “I want you so much,” and moves toward her, puts himself against her. She can feel him arching, rising. All of this takes place outside a core of fundamental detachment in her because Susan has already had quite a bit of sex today. “Please,” she says, pushing gently against him and trying to disengage herself, “please, not now, I’m tired,” but Timothy will have none of that. “Why,” he says, “what’s wrong? Have you had sex already today, is that why you don’t want it?” There is nothing she can say to that at all. Having sex with him now is a matter of pride, a matter of showing him that she has not been touched, not been used, and so she permits herself to come against him. Her clothes are falling away from her; she is sore inside; she feels now as if her body is closing down heavily against the pain in her center but she must show him that she can react, can participate, and so, falling onto the kitchen floor, she allows him to work on her. As always he is quick, forceful (unlike the characters in his novel who always take a great deal of time to have sex and then think about it endlessly afterwards), grinding himself into her and she feels the spurt of his come surrounded by his groans, closing her eyes, turning inward, shutting it all off from herself. She has proven herself to Timothy, she thinks as he lies heavily on top of her, has proven that she can meet him on his own ground and then it occurs to her, almost for the first time, that she is not sure that she even cares enough for Timothy to make this proving valuable to her. In fact she is not sure that she cares for Timothy at all, but, in its strangeness and complexity, this becomes a thought with which she is utterly unable to deal and so she lets it pass, sliding from various levels of consciousness, down the roof, into the eaves, through the sidings, into the basement, and sleep overcomes her like rainfall.