Galatea (7 page)

“I feel so weak.”

“What cures that is sleep.”

“How do you mean, cures it?”

“There are two ways your body gets replenished; one’s food, the other’s sleep. Cut down on one, come up on the other, your strength remains the same.”

I could see she didn’t yet get it, so I told her stories to prove it, like the six-day bicycle riders who get no sleep at all and equalize with spaghetti, so they weigh twenty pounds more at the end of a race than they did at the start. I said: “That was the beautiful part, for those muggs I trained out there, that they could hit the hay all day and
sleep
the lard off. You can do the same.”

“Go to bed now and—”

“Wake up five pounds lighter.”

“I think you’re kidding me.”

She toddled off to her room, and I toddled off to work, having plenty to do. Homer had been taken back and would be out in the morning, so I had to have stuff for him to haul. But by six I was washed up, and when I went in the house she was waiting, in a filmy pink dress. She said: “Duke, it’s a miracle. I was out three hours, like a top. I woke up feeling wonderful and I’m not weak at all.”

She asked what was next on the program, and I said a salad, which I’d fix, to start her dinner off and fill her up, and a dessert, which I’d also fix, with cut-up dates to add some sweetness, to wind it up. I said: “In between, you eat what’s offered, except of course no potatoes or fried stuff, and small portions, which, with the salad inside you, ought to leave you satisfied.”

I went to the kitchen to fix up the salad and dessert, and she came to keep me company. We got on the subject of raw food, and I told her: “It’s the rawness that keeps you healthy, not bulk, though that helps keep appetite down. Raw stuff eat first, while you’re hungry, as we always do out west, so you’ve got it and don’t hit meat so heavy.” I explained about stomach juices, how they digest cooked stuff too soon, so the large intestine quits from lack of work “and makes all kinds of trouble.” If she got what I was driving at, I didn’t quite know, but I kept on with it, as I suspected her of every ailment there was, and meant her to see the point. I told her: “Raw stuff digests slow, so the large intestine keeps working on it, clear to the end of the line.”

She listened, her eyes quite big and friendly, and then, in a complete switch: “Duke, when I woke up I called Dr. Semmes. I told him I’d read of a diet, in the paper somewhere, and had driven to town, now I’m able to be about, to get the things it called for, and he was all for it, really enthusiastic. So when my other fight begins, at least I have that advantage: I got the idea from some place that’s not personal at all, and I’m backed up by someone who knows. However, when Val comes in tonight, I don’t want you here at all. You come out of the cottage to take his car, you wait before coming to dinner.”

“Just put on a vacant look?”

“You notice nothing.”

As she had told it, Val was due to act silly, but ugly is the word I would use. He got so furious he trembled, the first time I’d seen him like that, and said it made no sense. He called the doctor, with a squawk that reminded me suddenly of what Bill had said about power, and the kind of people that want it. The idea, as he dished it out, was that Dr. Semmes had “exceeded his authority,” and that he “ought to have been consulted.” Dr. Semmes, to judge from the rasp in the receiver, dished out some stuff of his own, and told him he was responsible to his patient and nobody else, and also spoke pretty sharp of the treatment the patient had had, and the horrible effect of “all that rich food,” words Val picked up and roared back, so I had to know what had been said.

All that time, while Val was camped by the phone table, which stood against the wall with two chairs beside it, and I sat on the love seat, she sat on the sofa, the pink dress ballooned all around, not looking at me or at him, but somewhere out front, her eyes narrowed to slits. I felt the hammers’ beat, and then fear of prison would speak. I made myself simmer down, but kept having this hot wish I could smash things up for her, set her free of this man I was starting to hate. It was a grim meal, and at the end of it I was the one who took the dishes out and started them in the washer. She went in the living-room, while he still sat blinking, at the rib roast on its plank, for the first time only half eaten.

V
AL GOT UGLIER AND
uglier as the summer crept along, and two things made him worse. One was the sugar, which she was improving on, as she knew from some home testing-kit the doctor made her get. But instead of making him glad to accept the diet, it seemed to act just opposite. He dingdonged at it; there was no need for diet now, and she should enjoy her food. There was some little honesty to it, as he loved to show off his cooking, as well as the applause it got him. But it seemed a costly bid for a hand to risk his wife’s health, and maybe even her life. The second thing was the awful Maryland weather. I had never known anything like it, a heavy, push-down heat that was out there whether the sun was shining or not, a mug, a humidity, that wouldn’t let you sweat, relax, or even so much as breathe. It was simply hell on this earth, and when a storm would come piling up, generally around supper time, it never helped with the mug, but it did frazzle Val’s temper. He snarled and snapped and growled, and once, when a flash put the power on the blink, I thought he’d throw things at her.

But the first big fight, or say the first one when she fought back, wasn’t about food, and wasn’t even during a storm. It was about church, on a bright Sunday morning when we’d been sitting in recliners, the three of us, out front. They’d been going to church as usual, and each Sunday I’d load take-outs into his car, twenty-five for needy people, which seemed to be the “good” she had talked of so much, or the main part of it anyway. I had done the same today—brought the car out front, and sat down, as invited. I was in shirt and slacks, he in fresh blue mohair, she in a house dress, a new one but not at all fancy. By then her weight had come down, under the two-hundred mark, so she had bought herself a few clothes, “in-between things,” as she called them. Soon he looked at his watch, said: “Dear, I don’t want to hurry you, but—it’s getting quite late. It’s getting on to ten, and we really ought to get started.”

“Oh, I’m not going to church.”

“Holly, I’m surprised.”

“But I’ve nothing to wear.”

There was kind of a break, and she said: “I’m being sensible, I think. On this clothes question at least. I still have to come down by pounds and pounds, so nothing I get can be more than temporary. I can’t go in this very well, and my decent things, such as I have, are practically hanging on me.” She went on, very airy: “Besides, I’m only human, and I don’t relish the talk.”

“What talk, Holly?”

“About the change in my figure.”

“I didn’t know there was talk.”

“Oh, there will be.”

“It’s not a thing you can hide.”

“Then all right, Val. When I’m normal, properly dressed, and ready, I’ll go through with it once and for all. Right now it doesn’t suit me to do it over and over, week after week, telling all those women how I lost the weight.”

“I would think it would be duck soup.”

“Val, I don’t understand you.”

“A normal woman likes such talk.”

That’s what I thought, and I wished she’d get off that tack. But I also thought it was time for me to get out, so I asked if I could have the day, and went back to put on a coat. When I came from the cottage and started out front, they were at it again, and I could see him, through his bedroom windows, marching around. As it seemed a bad time to walk past, I stopped and heard him say: “Why don’t you out with it, Holly? It’s not the clothes and it’s not the talk.”

“What is it, then?”

“And it’s not a what. It’s a
who
.”

I could feel her heart stop as mine did, as she said, very muffled: “... Oh.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh.”

His voice was mean, and he roared on: “It’s me, the forgotten man on this place. That tries to please you. By giving you the one thing you ever loved in your life, which is food. Food fit for a king. Food I’ll
serve
to a king, if a king’s coming to town. But no, though you love it, you look down on those who make it, and so you try to be half married and half not married. You want to eat a little bit, enough to live on, but not a real meal, enough to thank me for. You—”

“Val!”

She got up and did some marching, of a kind I’d never seen. Her hands, though pretty, had always seemed quite clumsy, as to keep them from bumping her side, she did what a fat woman does, swung them wide from the elbows, as though doing the crawl stroke. But now, with the hips straighter, she could let her hands act natural. One went to her belt, the other hung down straight, as she went to him and said: “What’s the matter, Val, you afraid to go alone?”

“Go where?”

“To church, of course.”

“What’s to be afraid of, there?”

“Mr. Commissioner Dayton, and his prowtocowl. And Dr. Carroll, and his hawndshake. And Mrs. Carroll, and her lorgnette. And—”

If it was how she mimicked, or what, I don’t know, but he broke, without letting her finish. He cringed, rubbed his hands, and was the same old bus boy again. He said: “What’s come over you, Holly? We had our differences, like when we gave the party. But we’d each concede a point, and—”

“I conceded the points!”

“And I did!”

“No.”

By then she was looking right up at him, smiling, almost laughing. She said: “You love to crack the whip, don’t you, Val? But like all whipcrackers, you jump at a whip too, don’t you? And those people, in church up there today, frighten you, don’t they? Well, they won’t bite you. You go now, leave soon if you want, and when I’m normal—we’ll see.”

She snapped her fingers under his nose and went swaying into the house. I waited, whistled some tune, scuffed my feet, and came bustling out. By then he was in the car, and said he’d ride me to town. For some minutes he had nothing to say, and then: “Holly, if you ask me, spends entirely too much time on the telephone, talking to her relations.”

“ ... You mean, in St. Mary’s?”

“I mean in Waldorf.”

Then one of those fights jarred me in a way I didn’t expect. It was late September, and his special dish that night was some kind of a lamb roast, done like a broil, on top of the stove. But while he was working on it and I was in the pantry, putting stuff in the freeze that he’d brought in the car, she called from the living-room door: “If that’s lamb you’re cooking, just leave me out altogether. I thought it would simplify everything if I had dinner alone. Little stew I made—not much but quite enough. I’ll keep you company and have some coffee with you, but on dinner, no.”

His face went white as usual, and he licked his lips in a way I hadn’t seen. But he said nothing until she’d drifted into the alcove and sat down at the table, to wait until we would come in. Then he said: “Duke, we’ll eat right here. In the kitchen, just us two.” And then, in a rotten way, raising his voice to make sure it carried: “That health food, stews and stuff like that, leaves kind of an odor.”

From where I was I could see and I strictly didn’t hear. He got out the white metal table and set it for two, with doilies all very snappy. He ladled my soup in a two-handled cup, put crackers on my butter plate. He served the lamb and carved it, ladled his own soup, took his place at the table, and waved me to my seat. She came in, looked at the lamb very interested, and listened while he talked, to the oven it seemed like, on how some roasts are better broiled, and some steaks better roasted. But he didn’t get up, and he didn’t get a third chair.

She turned to me and waited, and when I made no move to sit down she raised one foot and kicked. The table hit the deck with a crash you could hear a mile. She said: “Val, you and Duke will eat your dinner,
if
you eat your dinner, in the alcove, when it pleases me to drink my coffee.”

“You do this to me? Before Duke?”

“You spoke to Duke about an odor.”

She was walking around by then, her right hand at her belt once more, and once more he took what she said. Because once more here was the eye of a Hollis, and once more he couldn’t meet it. So we ate in the breakfast nook, or alcove as she called it, or went through the motions thereof. But all that, except for the table, was kind of a retake on other brawls, and wasn’t what shook me up. The unexpected part, to me, was she’d lost still more weight, so it swept over me, as she swayed around in front of him, that inside that blubber, once I’d melted it off, was a shape to set you nuts. I had never once suspected it.

From then on, my life was simply a hell. Because while I’d known that I loved her, that was love of a different kind. It was friendship, which in a way is deeper than love, as it’s there in spite of fat, and in spite of anything. This was all that and more besides, so it was more like insanity.

Y
OU CAN LIVE INSANE IF
you have to, but not forever, and one day I woke up I was near the end of the plank, and had better watch what was next. It was an October morning, with the mug gone and the weather fine, and began by the water tank. I had run the pump, but we’d had a drought, and the well couldn’t take it, to use my usual system, which was pump till the tank was full, as shown by the overflow pipe squirting out. I had to pump half full, and do it somewhat by guesswork, so after I cut I would have to climb up, throw open the vent on its hinges, and gauge with a bamboo pole I had hung up there on a nail. As I started down, here she came from the house, and I may have stalled on the ladder, to watch her a second or two. She wasn’t quite normal yet, but was something to see just the same, round, strong, beautifully put together, with a high-born tilt to her head. In place of the waddle was a graceful, swaying walk, and in place of the crawl stroke was this way she had with her hands, of putting the right one to her belt, just over the hip, and letting the other one swing. In her tan skirt, maroon sweater, and maroon shoes, she looked more Spanish than ever.