Game Control (11 page)

  'Oh, go ahead,' Eleanor granted.

  'Yesterday I read about a uranium mining town in East Germany called Crossen. The incidence of still births and deformed babies is ten times too high; cancer and skin diseases rife—the works, the whole village is poisoned, nobody lives past forty-five, right? You know what the company does about it? They distribute
free wigs
.' Calvin laughed heartily for the first time in an hour. 'Thanks,' he said, wiping his eyes. 'I needed that.'

  'Some day I'll teach you to hold forth about gardening.'

  'It's far more likely I shall teach you to hold forth about uranium poisoning.' He led her back to the couch.

  Though resolved sleeping arrangements should have eased their earlier clumsiness, when Calvin put his arm around her shoulder something was peculiar. His body was still. His hand draped at her upper arm exerted no pressure, and she studied it with disturbed curiosity. The fingers were long and languid, the wrist small boned, and despite its manly slashings of old white scars, the hand seemed feminine. Then, it was girlish less from appearance than from what it was doing: nothing. His body against hers felt uncannily at rest. She could feel his chest expand at her breast, and his breathing was so Zen-slow Wallace Threadgill would tip his hat. Eleanor may not have been seduced in a long time, but she was dead sure this wasn't it.

  Without urgency, he lifted the hand and moved her head to his shoulder; his eyes were closed. 'Why don't you tell me about yourself?' he asked quietly. 'You never say anything about yourself.'

  'You're one to talk.'

  'No, I tell you everything, if you know how to listen. I'm not nearly so secretive as I would like.'

  'Me, what's to know?' Though he was not groping into the folds of her dress, their voices, gone low and soft, did mingle and interweave, and Eleanor was reminded that the best sex she'd ever had was in conversation. 'I didn't grow up in East Africa. My father wasn't in the British Army. I didn't shoot elephants in my youth. I was never the eccentric head of the largest population donor agency in the United States. I'm not very interesting, Calvin.'

  'Leave that for me to decide. Tell me anything. Tell me about your childhood.'

  'I was born in Virginia,' she despaired.

  He laughed. 'Is there anything you're not ashamed of?'

  'My father. Or not my real father,' she hurried. 'Ray. I'm proud of Ray. Bright, dedicated—'

  'To what?'

  'Justice, I suppose.'

  'What a thorn in the side.'

  'He's a US senator!'

  Calvin laughed again; Eleanor amused him more often than she'd like. 'That's the first time I've ever heard you display a character flaw. Does he make you feel more important?'

  'Well—yes.'

'You don't mean Raymond Bass? I've met him.'

'He was one of your supporters. He voted you oodles of money.'

  'He was not one of my supporters when I
retired
. Then, no one was.'

  'No one could afford to be.'

  'We are already back to me. Go on.' He smoothed her hair. 'You were born in Virginia.'

  'My mother was a schizophrenic. I lived in a strange world until I was nine, a little like flipping the channel all the time. I never knew what programme I'd wake up in. You learn to be cooperative with a schizophrenic; if she says she's Jacqueline Kennedy, then your mother is Jacqueline Kennedy. What was the phrase in the sixties? "Go with the flow"? You develop sea legs.

  'But then she was put away, and for three years I was kicked about from relative to friend. That life, it wasn't so different from being with my mother. With all these foster arrangements, they had their own kids, they were being nice, and I knew they'd only be nice for so long. So I kept being cooperative. I learned to keep my head down. In school I kept my hand down. In fact, I wouldn't even—oh, Christ.' She giggled.

  'What?'

  'I just remembered an ordeal I haven't thought about for a long time. Fourth grade. Mrs Henderson—funny how you never forget those names—that was my teacher. I was living with my Aunt Liz, who called me into the house one day after school. Mrs Henderson had phoned, it seems. Liz wanted to know if, in class, did I have a problem, uh, did I need to go to the bathroom. And the real story was yes, after lunch I was too embarrassed to raise my hand, so I would hold it in, and eventually it would get, well, bad. You know how little girls will grip themselves? I guess I did that, at my desk. I'm not sure if you stop holding on down there when you're older because you're socialized out of it or because you figure out it doesn't help. Anyway, if I was too embarrassed to raise my hand, I was certainly too embarrassed to admit that to Aunt Liz. So I told her I itched; that my underwear was too tight. Pretty resourceful.

  'So the next day, spanking new, were six pairs of panties laid out on my bed. They were
enormous
. Far from being too tight, they waddled down my legs. I always hated that underwear.

  'What's funny is I only figured out years later what Mrs Henderson was really on about. She thought I was masturbating. In class. Or no—Mrs Henderson would have said "playing with herself". So the whole débâcle was even more horrific than I thought.'

  'When you try too hard to be no trouble, you often cause a great deal of it.'

  'I've noticed that. One of the things that used to drive Jane—that's Ray's wife—to distraction was when she'd ask what flavour icecream I wanted, I'd say, whatever there's more of. She'd say there's plenty of vanilla
and
chocolate, and I'd shrug, and she would go bananas until I wouldn't get any ice-cream at all—which, I would claim, was fine with me, too. I do recall, I was difficult to punish. I'd get sent to my room, but I was perfectly happy in my room.' Eleanor clasped the hand on her shoulder, but it did not seem to have a life of its own. He had given it over as something to play with, a bauble to a child.

  'I was improbably well behaved,' she went on. 'When I was punished it was usually for something one of the other kids did. I'd take the rap and keep my mouth shut, and Jane's kids figured out early that I was a bonanza too sweet to pass up. What always amazed me was that Ray and Jane weren't clued in enough to figure that of course I wouldn't have swiped Ray's stapler without asking; I was terrified of his study. Or it would have been unheard of for me to spill Kool-Aid all over the floor without cleaning it up. That was my only criticism of them—they were bad readers of character.'

  He rearranged her with her head on his knee, stroking her forehead with the warm distraction of petting a cat. Perhaps because you couldn't do that with Malthus, who was now glaring at the two of them from the opposite side of the room, gnawing on a kernel of hard corn as if he wished it were Eleanor's head.

  'Anyway,' Eleanor continued as Calvin's fingers coaxed the tiny hairs on the edge of her scalp, 'that house was the last

place I was going to run amok. Jane was a college friend of my mother's before Mom went completely gonzo. They had no obligation to keep me. But I adored them. I was petrified they would give me up. I was intent on being above reproach. That was the tragedy—we both read each other wrong. In fact, they had no intention of abandoning me. Moreover, they wished I would act like a normal, demanding child. They wanted to be generous, and for me sometimes to ask for something unreasonable so they could be stern and teach me that, no, there were limits; I could not have a Jaguar on my sixteenth birthday. In fact, birthdays—I'm sorry, am I running on?'

  'For once, thank heavens. Keep going.'

  'My thirteenth birthday Jane wanted to make special—I now realize. She wrapped up several packages with voluptuous ribbons. When I opened them I was so overwhelmed and, I don't know, even upset that I went rigid and shut up. I didn't respond at all, jump up and down—I'd make a deplorable game show guest. I just fingered the presents lamely and stared at the floor. From the outside, I must have looked sullen, because I'll never forget Jane slamming down the box on that slinky dress with matching shoes and shouting. "Well, you wouldn't say what you'd like, if you're not satisfied, it's your fault!" and whisking away to splurt furious sugar roses on the cake I'd not be able to stomach. I incurred her displeasure every time I tried too hard to avoid it. I made such an effort not to be burdensome it was—'

  'Burdensome. People who ask for nothing leave you guessing. Because it isn't as if they
want
nothing, is it?'

  Eleanor looked at her lap. 'I need very little.'

  Calvin raised her chin. 'I wasn't talking about what you
need
.'

  He leaned down and kissed her, with that odd stillness, on the lips. She thought that this was the beginning of, you know, but he leaned his head back and asked her to keep talking. She felt a brief panic that she had already run out of stories, since in Eleanor's version of her life nothing had ever happened in it.

  Her eyes narrowed. 'Then there were the
hunger meals
. Did those ever backfire.'

  He sighed, obscenely content. 'This sounds too perfect. What in God's name is a hunger meal? I detect a contradiction in terms.'

  'Ray and Jane were keen to impress their kids how unjustly privileged we were and how the rest of the world was much worse off, though my bids to post my morning oatmeal to the "starving Armenians" went, regrettably, nowhere. You know that Skip Lunch campaign in the UK, and then you send a quid to Save the Children? Ray and Jane were way ahead of that game. For a while, once a week, Ray would begin dinner by reading some titbit about the Third World—yes, I am used to news clippings at supper, why do you think they get on my nerves—one of those heartrending vignettes of deprivation you get out of Oxfam in the
Guardian
. We put up with it. Another friend of mine had to listen to Bible readings, which must have been worse—those gospels were longer. So then Ray would sonorously take ten bucks out of his wallet and put it in a jar in the middle of the table, money that would get sent to CARE or something.'

  'What a hopeless ghett,' said Calvin.

  'No, there's more. The ten dollars was what we were saving on food. We were supposed to learn how the world's poor had to eat every day, so instead of pork roast and broccoli, at a hunger meal all we had was rice. There was only one little problem.'

  'The Burger King next door?'

  'Worse. I loved rice.'

  'You were supposed to suffer.'

  'Exactly. All the other kids groaned, and whined for dessert, and moped about how dumb it was, and probably did pick up a burger at that. They acted the way they were supposed to: deprived. I was delighted. I detested pork roast; I was a picky eater but I adored starch, especially buttered rice, and I looked forward to our hunger meal all week. Jane went—
insane
.' Eleanor started to laugh. 'I'll never forget one week she exploded: "In China you wouldn't get any butter, you know!" Until finally, if I was going to be so damned happy about it, they refused to have any more hunger meals to spite me.' Eleanor was doubled up with the memory, a precious subversion, though she feared that, given opportunity, she

herself would turn into just the same sort of parent, with stagy liberal rice bowls on Thursday nights. Why would that be so terrible? But somehow it would be terrible. She couldn't explain.

  'I love it when you laugh.' He curled a ringlet at her ear. 'You don't do that often enough…. Sleepy?'

  'A little.' Her yawn was fake. She rose with an exaggerated stretch, but froze at the picture of two V-shaped indentations in the arms of the opposite chair. Like—elbows. Incredibly sharp elbows. And there was a malicious little snicker on the edge of Eleanor's ear. Eleanor rubbed her eyes, and when she looked back the indentations had disappeared.

  Calvin shot her an inquiring look when she took her briefcase into the bedroom, but said nothing.

  Eleanor snapped the case open on the bureau gaily, a family planning toy box. 'What'll it be? We have red, black and clear condoms, lubricated or ribbed. Advantages: non-systemic, easily stored, no side effects. Disadvantages: not always effective in use, and may reduce pleasure. Unpopular in most of Africa. Injectables? Longacting, not related to coitus, and can be provided non-clinically. Disadvantages: minimal side effects, and removal of implants requires clinical back-up—'

  'Eleanor—'

  'Rhythm has no side effects and is approved by the Catholic Church—'

  'Eleanor—'

  'But poses difficulties in calculation of safe period in lieu of a thermometer—'

  'Eleanor!'

  'I thought you'd appreciate my growing sense of humour about my profession.'

  Calvin had removed his jacket and tie and hung them up, and was methodically unbuttoning his shirt, undressing, she could tell, in exactly the same way he did every night without her. His shirt open, she stared at his chest, taut and dark, and she could not help but think, in an almost male admiration, that he had the most beautiful breasts she'd ever seen. His face, however, looked pained.

  'I owe you an apology,' he explained. 'When I asked you to

stay, I did not mean like that. I would enjoy
sleeping
with you. I like companionship.'

  Eleanor coloured. 'You did only ask if I wanted to—stay.'

  'It's not you.' He arranged the arms of the hanger into the shoulders of his shirt. 'I don't do that any more, with anyone. Not for years. Please don't take it personally.'

  'Of course not!' Eleanor turned aside to practise a trick developed as an easily injured adolescent: if you press a forefinger to the inside corner of each eye before it floods, the overflow will run down your hand rather than your cheek and no one is any the wiser.

  'If you'd prefer to go home, I'd understand.'