Gone to Soldiers (62 page)

“Me?”

“I wasn't speaking of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“I am proud of myself. You were the one who taught me to fly, and for years, I wasn't sure you'd done me a favor. I felt I'd been given a door into freedom and then denied entrance.”

“Why didn't you leave home years ago? Look at Amelia Earhart. Wasn't she a heroine of yours?”

“I had to take care of my father. I worked part time and I spent what I made on lessons. It took me years to get my commercial license—eight of them.”

“Oh, if it was money, you should have asked me.”

“Zach, how could I have done that?”

“By phone I would suppose, by letter, by cable at last resort.”

“Zach, come on! Both Jeff and I have been on the short end of things for years. He wanted to go to art school abroad. The last thing he wanted was to spend years of his life harvesting wheat and building roads and planting trees.”

“Oh, I rather think he liked being on the road.” Zach sniffed at his scotch appreciatively. “He liked loving them and leaving them. He liked walking or hitching away from whatever messes he created or blundered into. Freedom can be an addiction, potent as any other.”

“Perhaps. But I'd guess he was making the best of second best.”

“He's always been a hero to you, hasn't he?”

“Not at all. I'm just close to him. We were all each other had after our mother died. I see his faults, Zach, how could I not? I got stuck and he could walk out. But that doesn't mean I don't also understand his disappointments and frustrations.”

“Closer than to anyone else. I suspect that's always been true, au fond.”

“Of course.” Surreptitiously she kicked off the borrowed shoes, wriggling her numb toes.

“Siblings don't automatically adore each other. I was never close to my older brother. I found him a pompous and nasty bore, who tried, unsuccessfully once I caught up to him in size, to bully me. Your closeness was unusual and fascinating. It seemed at times to border on incest. But you never did consummate it, did you?”

“Don't be absurd.”

“You think those things never happen?”

“Not with Jeff! How can you even imagine that?” She felt as if Zach might have seen some flaw in her she had overlooked.

“I see things other people may be too banal to imagine. And I act on them. I taught you to fly. That gives me a kind of permanent interest in what you do with it, and I'm very pleased right now.”

“If I could take you up! I'd love that.”

“It can be arranged.”

“Oh, you can't guess the number of regulations that hem us in …”

“I have a few friends and more than a few acquaintances. I have certain powers.” His arm that lay along the back of the couch fell hard on her shoulder and he turned her to face him. “I have one theory about Jeff's flight into spydom. That he was getting away from me. He found me too demanding.”

“Jeff finds everybody too demanding.”

“Except you.”

She shrugged under his hand. “What do I demand?”

“That's it, exactly. Did you ever happen to guess, when the three of us were playing musketeers together, that Jeff and I were lovers?”

“No.”

“You never guessed. Yet you don't seem shocked. You should be fainting.”

“I don't know how to say this, but perhaps I don't know enough about the subject to be shocked by what other people do. I knew you had some special kind of intimacy, but probably I wouldn't have put the label lovers on two men.”

He smiled wryly, his hand still heavy on her shoulder. “I seduced him, of course. Now it's your turn.”

She heard her breath exhale. I am drunk and this is not happening. She said that aloud. “I am drunk. This is not real.”

“You are not drunk. You shouldn't tell yourself such nonsense. You have a pleasantly relaxed buzz and nothing more. I would under no circumstances get you drunk before laying you. And what in hell else do you suppose I came to Detroit to do? I have a nice official cover, but that's my aim.”

“This is insane! Are you playing an elaborate joke?”

“I'd like you better in your flying gear, as you like yourself better, but I couldn't think how to arrange things that way tonight. Come.” He pulled her to her feet. “You always did want to do this. It's time.” With the one hand still gripping her shoulder, he zipped her dress down.

She stood there in her slip, with her dress around her bare feet, and could not move. She felt as if all her gears had locked, her rudder unresponsive. She was frozen with fear and she simply did not believe what was happening. “Zach, this is a bad mistake! It's ridiculous. What do you want with me? Yes, I had a crush on you. I always hoped you hadn't noticed. But that was when I was a kid!”

“Then you were green, and now you are ripe.” He kissed her, his hand sliding down to her buttocks. When he stopped, he gripped her, saying, “I don't believe it, but you're a virgin, aren't you?”

“Do you see, it's ridiculous! A virgin at my age. I don't even know what to do. You could find a million women who would know exactly how to do it and how to please you.”

“Bernice, little buttercup, I can please myself very well, thank you. Now come along: I'll teach you a different way to fly. Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“Of what?”

“Wanting what other women want. Wanting what I'm not fit for. Settling for what other women settle for.”

“But I am nothing to be settled for, I'm the caviar of lovers, Bernice. I made you what you are today, and I am very very well satisfied. Come along.” Vigorously he pulled her toward the bedroom. “You owe me a little return, and your virginity while admirable is about to meet its just desserts.”

Reluctantly she dragged along but as she saw the bed, she dug in her heels and grasped the lintel. “No. This isn't what I want.”

“Bernie, it is, you simply don't know yet.” He stroked her back as if she were a large cat. “The kingdom of touch awaits us. Isn't it time? Besides, I'm done arguing. You're a great big strong woman, but I am stronger than you and I know lots of nasty tricks. It'd be very undignified to flop about on the floor making ugly noises, and end up the same way with bruises that will need explaining.”

She let go of the lintel and stood dumbly, flat-footed. Zach laughed and picked her up in a fireman's carry, dropping her gently on the bed, and then undressed methodically, placing his clothes over a chair. It felt unreal, lying in a hotel bed waiting for him. Then she thought, maybe he was right. Maybe this was the best way for her if she was ever to know what sex was. No awkward dating, no making lame conversation, no trying to act feminine as if it were a duty to make a fool of herself. No. She was Bernice and he knew her and he wanted her and she would try to see what it was all about.

She should have been more shocked at what he had told her about Jeff and himself, but she had always known Jeff to fall into bed with almost anyone. With his flippant comment about incest he had struck a sore within her. She had observed for years that when Jeff and she were together, they were interested in nobody else. They felt complete. She had so frequently been called mannish, she had brooded on what gender meant and found it murky and implausible, where others seemed to find it simple as a light switch that was on or off. No, she was not affronted or disgusted. She was more shocked that Zach suddenly wanted her.

He knelt over her, grinning. “Resigned to her fate. Ah, Bernice, give me a little smile. That's right. You can leave the slip on for the moment.” He lay down beside her and began to explore her body with his hands, large, warm, competent as her own. After a moment she touched his back tentatively. He felt enormous under her hands and well muscled. She had imagined men's skin would be as prickly as their beards, but his face was smooth from recent shaving and his back was satiny and hot.

“Will you get undressed now?” he asked her, and she obliged.

“Can I touch you there?” she asked him, her voice sounding oddly polite against their heavy breathing. “Am I holding too tight?”

“No, sweet, no. Move your hand. Yes.”

When he reached between her legs searching for her clitoris, she put his hand on it. “Around is better,” she said simply.

He laughed, softly, against her ear. “I believe you have been guilty of self-abuse, my child.”

She smiled. “What do you think I have been doing all these years?”

“You'd be surprised how many married ladies don't know how to press their own buttons. Like this? You can tell me what you like. I'm never too proud to learn a new trick.”

It was strangely familiar and strangely different, for no one else had ever touched her except herself. She felt embarrassed to be huffing and puffing and making little noises in the company of someone else, yet it also felt exciting. When she came, she stopped the movement of his hand.

Then he let his body down on top of hers and pressed the cock she had held earlier against her flesh. It hurt and an involuntary cry escaped her. He said nothing but pulled back, then thrust harder. She turned her face aside. She knew he would not stop and she could imagine that amused grimace he had sometimes when he was causing pain that she would bet was on his face now. He thrust and thrust until she felt herself tearing. She bit the inside of her cheek open. She bit her lip until it bled. At least he was inside her now and the tearing was done, although the pounding hurt too.

Afterwards there was little blood on the sheets: a blob about the size of a clenched fist, bright red. When he returned her to the barracks, she had stopped bleeding. Her thighs were sore, the tendons stretched from his weight.

Flo and Helen were sitting up for her, and when she came in, they murmured and cooed about her, avid with curiosity. She saw herself in the tiny mirror of the shared bathroom, hair mussed and loose, makeup long gone, her dress rumpled where it had fallen to the floor.

“What happened?” Flo asked.

“Did you have a nice evening?” Helen asked more cautiously.

“What happened? What was supposed to happen? Don't women get tricked up like that to attract men? So he was attracted. So he made me go to bed with him. That's what happened.”

She had silenced them both. She took a shower and went to sleep.

The next day orders came that she was to pilot Major Zachary Taylor to Washington, leaving immediately. Zach wanted to see more of her, and he had so arranged things. She felt a little encumbered by his will, his power. She also felt deeply confused. The sexual connection was interesting to her, but in a way she did not approve of. Down, it led, into murky depths of wanting and needing and being caught.

She did not worry about pregnancy. Zach told her he had failed during five years of marriage to impregnate his wife, who had finally borne him a son that was not his, whom he had acknowledged because it got him off the hook to produce an heir. He believed he was sterile, as none of the women he had slept with had ever gotten pregnant, and for the last three years he had not bothered taking precautions.

She could not find in herself any different feeling toward Zach than she had before. It was only that he had suddenly grown from a distant cloud to an overarching sky. She did not usually think of herself as object rather than as subject, but that was how she experienced herself with Zach.

In Washington Zach spent half his time on the telephone and most of the rest in meetings, so that she saw comparatively little of him in the thirty-two hours they spent there. “I'm getting into the war when I return,” he said. “Probably Italy. Lots of fun and games there. I rather fancy Rome or Florence where the underground is hopping. I'm not even passing through London, so I won't get stuck this time. I'd love to take you with me. Think you could pass for a man?”

She told him the story of her impersonation in South Carolina, and he was amused. “Someday, we'll give it a try. Put on my uniform and let's see.… A little big on you. Baggy as it is, however, it's true catnip. Come here.”

When she boarded a train in Washington, the roomette arranged and paid for by Zach, she could not decide whether she hoped the affair would end as abruptly as it had begun, or if it would, at least as an occasional aside in both their lives, continue. Her cheek against the dirty pane of the railroad car, she thought of him much as the Greek maidens so violently chosen must have experienced Zeus or Apollo. The god descended and choice vanished. Then the god went about his business, and you resumed your own forward motion at your own pace. She was neither altogether sorry nor altogether pleased. What she looked forward to was the regular run of ferrying, her solitude in the plane that was hers for the ride.

LOUISE 6

The End of a Condition Requiring Illusions

Louise awoke too early in the apartment that suddenly felt too large. She had set the alarm for eight, but again she woke at six and could not coax her way back down into the warm pool of oblivion. A few years ago, four people had lived in these rooms. Now with Kay at college, only she remained. Perhaps if she were home more, she would not feel the air of disuse that seemed to taint the apartment. Disuse? Louise smiled. Maybe it was only dust, without Mrs. Shaunessy to keep the rooms spotless. Louise had once been a diligent housekeeper, ten years before, but she did not think she was about to be one again.

That particular joy, of keeping a clean apartment, had belonged to the golden stage of her marriage before and for several years after her pregnancy. She had not felt trapped with her young child in farthest Flatbush in those penniless years, but safe, shining, fortunate. She had a home. In her orphan's bones she believed her family could vanish, and therefore her housework held an element of magic play: here is Louise pretending to be a good balabusteh, washing windows and making stew of chicken gizzards and backs; here is Louise playing mommy with her kitten-doll K-K-K-Katie. Nor had she ever found Kay a burden in traveling, even the months they had spent in Germany while Oscar was studying with Franz Widerman.