Lie Down in Darkness (41 page)

“Why, baby, it wasn’t my idea——”

“No, not the whisky. I mean—oh listen, Bunny, you’re a dear and I love you but please lay off all the sentimental slop today. I like being back here—in a way I do,” she added in a thoughtful voice, “with everybody trying to be nice again—but I feel that you’re so worked up about it all that you’re ready to just smother me. Please don’t smother me,” she said crossly, tossing her hair, “just don’t
smother
me, Bunny! I wasn’t doing you a favor by coming back here, it was a favor for me. I’ve had my time of wandering around. Do you think I’ve enjoyed being the so-called wild bitch, which I’m sure everyone has thought? Some girl I met in New York from school, she had been down here on a vacation, and she said that everybody thought I had been kicked out of school. How do rumors like that get started?”

“I don’t—baby, now don’t. It was——”

“Small-town crap, that’s what it was. What makes older people love, just adore, thinking the younger people are hell-bent for destruction? They just love sitting around on their fat behinds figuring out some sort of new moral perversion that the younger generation is indulging in.”

“Baby——”

“Not you, Bunny.” She flourished both hands outward and down, in an exasperated motion, spilling drops from her glass. “I don’t mean you. You’d love me half to death if you could. But don’t you see, don’t you see, Bunny? I come back here all sweetness and light trying my best to play the good sweet role, the prodigal daughter come back home at her parents’ whim, seeing the error of her ways, back in the fold of the family. Well I’m playing it pretty well, aren’t I? Kissing Mother back when she kisses me, pretending to forget everything. Don’t you see, Bunny, I’ve got my own reasons for coming home. I’ve wanted to be normal. I’ve wanted to be like everybody else. These old folks wouldn’t believe that there are children who’d just throw back their heads and howl, who’d just
die,
to be able to say, ‘Well now my rebellion’s over, home is where I want to be, home is where Daddy and Mother want me.’ Not with a sort of take-me-back-I’ve-been-so-wrong attitude—because, Bunny, you can believe me, most kids these days are not wrong or wrongdoers, they’re just aimless and lost, more aimless than you all ever thought of being—not with that attitude, but just with the kind of momentary, brief love recognizing those who fed your little baby mouth and changed your didy and paid your fare all the way. Does that sound silly, Bunny? That’s all they want to do, that’s what I’ve wanted to do and I’ve tried, but somehow today it all seems phony. I don’t know why. I lied. I’m really not excited at all. Maybe I’ve got too many sour memories.” She paused and looked at him, her eyes enormously sad, and he approached her, with the day in its crumbling promise going before his vision, tried to put his arms around her. “Baby——”

“Don’t,” she said, “don’t, Bunny. I’m sorry.” She held him off without even a look, for she was gazing down at the lawn, at the guests moving toward the house, all together, silent, but with a sort of giddy haste, like picnickers before the storm—holding him off as much by her silence as if she had finished erecting between them a curtain of stone, then said gently: “I’m sorry, Bunny.” She looked up at him. “I can’t figure where the trouble starts. Mother. She’s such a faker. Look at this circus. Flaunting the blissful family. Oh, I feel so sorry for us all. If just she’d had a soul and you’d had some guts … Come on now,” she said, grabbing his sleeve, “let’s go downstairs, sweetie. I’ll put up a real good front for you.”

He stood rooted to the rug, wishing to faint there forever. He had been bludgeoned half to death, not so much by these truths, he told himself while he drained the sedative glass, as by necessity.

“O.K., baby,” he said.

The ceremony was carried out in fine style, although the living room was crowded, which made some people sweat a little. In secular times like these it
is
often the custom to get married in a hotel or in the city hall or in a vine-covered cottage across some state line, where an elderly JP waits in a soup-stained vest; one can get married there for as little as five dollars. Some people who are titillated by religion but who don’t believe in it get married in a hotel filled with palms and ferns, with a friendly old judge in attendance, and have readings from a book of oriental poetry called “The Prophet.” To most people it really doesn’t matter how they are married, except to Episcopalians, who are often partial to the home and always partial to the poetic quality of their service. The service does have considerable poetry in it, and an observer at this wedding who happened to be keen on aesthetics would have been a little awed by Carey’s performance. Among people he was no actor, and in his natural reticence he preferred to leave histrionics to highly charged individuals, the great Northern ministers in their marble and collegiate churches and such; he was not bishop material, but in his own mild and plaintive way he was a sweet singer of the liturgy, and could embroider upon the fabric of Christian poetry, already so rich in texture, the most exquisite designs. An altar cloth had been laid across a gate-leg table, and there were candles, and as he read from the service the flickering light covered his spectacles with orbs of fire and made him look—with his plump cheeks and small round chin and the deep furrow running from his nose to his pursed, budlike mouth—like a compassionate, brunet owl.

On the creaking camp chairs, rented for the occasion, the guests sat silent and bemused, and though the canvas of one ripped with a squeal beneath Mrs. Turner MacKaye, who was a large woman, no one noticed, for Carey’s voice rose soft and sweet, insidiously compelling above the almost breathless breathing and the rustle of clothes and the distant bluster of the wind. It was a rich voice, slightly husky, in the middle register, and it became, as if singing, a strong, melancholy yet uneffeminate tenor upon the word “love,” and mystically, caressingly baritone when it said, “Lord.” Thus, in the fashion of an oratorio, this splendid voice seemed to express with each modulation of the text all manner of human longings—tenderness and love and hope—and cast a spell through the room that was at once celestial and erotic; it was a voice unique and compelling, and many women wept out loud.

Loftis hardly heard the words. Somewhere during the ceremony, the guests all arose. He stood in the front row of chairs, for some reason not next to Helen but next to Edward, who was visibly weaving, his breath coming hoarsely, pumping out with each wheeze a fruity odor of beer. Helen he could see from time to time out of the corner of his eye. She was standing stiffly on the other side of Edward, watching the proceedings with a look that was intent and thoughtful—almost analytical, it occurred to him; it was a look neither pleasant nor unpleasant as she stared at the backs of Peyton and Harry, or moved her head ever so slightly to get a better view of Carey. It was rather just a calm and studious expression, but touched with a curious, fleeting light of triumph, and Loftis had the sudden picture of some humorless philatelist gazing at a particularly valuable stamp. Why she should look like this he couldn’t say, nor did he try to anymore, for he felt unbelievably depressed, and neurotic, and he had to go to the toilet very badly; yet he only faintly knew the cause for these feelings. There was no doubt about it: Peyton had been cruel, she had refused to become a part of the spirit of the day—he gazed up now at her back, to the place where her legs met her skirt, made of some green stuff that looked like satin, and she suddenly said, “I will”—and by not becoming a part of this spirit, which had really been just his joyful spirit, she had begun to destroy it … damn. He stirred. Harry said “I will,” a deep pleasant voice with a New York inflection, and a woman snuffled somewhere in the room.

Why? Why this unbearable depression? Peyton’s dress was drawn tightly against her hips; he could see them, the two crescent shadows that a tight girdle makes when you look at a woman’s behind, joining above like a curved Dutch roof: it was too obvious, or something; she should have dressed more demurely. Now it wouldn’t be long, the ordeal would be over, for Harry was slipping the ring over her finger. Carey suddenly said a few words which, though they escaped Loftis, seemed impossibly theatrical and hollow. Soon it would be over and there’d be the reception and of course by then Peyton’s mood would have changed: he’d kiss her, she’d laugh, he’d shake hands with Harry, they’d all be one big happy family while, with one arm around Helen and the other about Peyton, he’d nod to the guests and smile, tip bubbling glasses of champagne, and hear Peyton whisper, “Oh, Bunny, I
am
glad to be home.” Yet before this, he knew, there were these last fading minutes and he was suffering boundless, inexplicable anxiety, and consumed by the same hunger he had felt so gluttonously this very morning. It was different. But this hunger was
different,
because it was inverse and oppressive and awful. He felt that the room had suddenly shrunk to the dimensions of a small hothouse in which the flowers and perfumes and powders and rouge, all the woman scents, had been compressed into one monstrous tropical odor; through this spongy stuff, above Carey’s lilting words, across the slant of October sunshine, through the sound of sniffles and the brief, lecherous smacking of lips, through all these his anxious hunger groped like antennae, seeking refuge and escape. He let his eyes close, began to perspire, and thought of the blessed release whisky might give. Yet it was not only this; his eyelids slid open, he saw Peyton, those solid curved hips trembling ever so faintly; he thought desperately, hopelessly, of something he could not admit to himself, but did: of now being above—most animal and horrid, but loving—someone young and dear that he had loved ever since he was child enough to love the face of woman and the flesh, too. Yes, dear God, he thought (and he thought
dear God, what am I thinking?)
the flesh, too, the wet hot flesh, straining like a beautiful, bloody savage. He thought vaguely of Dolly, wondering why she was not here. Well …

No, it was not fair—and his senses returned just a little, and he opened his eyes—it was not fair of Peyton to ruin his hopes like this. It was most certainly not fair of her to shatter his dreams of a perfect day and he had the sudden impulse to rise and call off the whole proceedings, tell everybody here that the ceremony was postponed to a more auspicious time, when he and Peyton would have things straightened out. It was almost over. He saw Carey turn and face the altar; Helen bent forward, rapt and studious and without emotion, and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Edward coughed, rattling phlegm in the back of his throat, and Loftis groaned aloud, though nobody heard. And his hunger went forth again, sending fingers through the crushed, vegetable air; only this time, helplessly, his thoughts became flaccid and wet and infantile, and he hungered to go to the toilet more than anything else; in spirit he wandered down the aisle, mincing painfully past the lulled and turgid guests. They didn’t notice him or, if they did, paid him no heed. Their heads would be bent in prayer—his too, in fact—but now he was standing in the downstairs bathroom, in fancy watching the mosaic of tiles, the immaculate tub, feeling all anxiety flow blissfully away, along with the lemon-clear stream.
My God,
he thought,
my God, my God, so far away.
Desire and hunger settled over him, and he thought of things past and passing, of all things fleeting, and of himself a child again standing above the ancient plumbing forty years ago; watching it then, that yellow jet, why hadn’t he been made sick with the strangeness of the water flowing from him so promiscuously? Sick as he was now, stifled by roses in a strange room, and knowing that to be born is unbelievable.

“Let us pray.”

He opened his eyes, closed them again, tried to pray.
Stand close, son,
his father had said,
hit the hole.

From the tiny portable organ there came a volcanic burst of Mendelssohn, incredibly loud. Before he knew it, Peyton and Harry had vanished smiling up the aisle, the guests had dispersed in a noisy herd behind them, and Edward laid a paw on his shoulder, saying, “Felicitations, old man. Let’s have a drink.” Loftis shook him off, suggesting hurriedly, with a weak attempt at irony, that he go ambush some champagne. The effect of the ceremony had worn off somewhat, though he still felt dizzy and vaguely disoriented, and he took Helen’s arm. Carey joined them. There was sweat on his brow, but he looked proud and somehow purged.

Helen looked up at him. “It was beautiful, Carey. Simply beautiful. You made magic out of it.”

“Nothing, Helen,” he said in a tone Loftis could not help feel was pompous. “I felt that I was joining those fine children in a union that was somehow … more significant and … meaningful.” He paused with a smile. “I’m sure you know what I mean.” He removed his vestments and stole with a chipper remark, which for some reason made Loftis squirm, about taking off his work clothes in order to show off his drinking clothes. Why, Loftis wondered, were these boys such hypocrites? He excused himself to go to the bathroom.

“Well, it was lovely, Carey. As I say—” and she touched him lightly on the hand—“you do have the magic touch.” As a matter of fact, it was true: she had been held in thrall, as much as any of the dimmest and most susceptible of the women present, by the service and by Carey’s artful mannerisms. Throughout the ceremony, she had forced herself to conceal her joy, revealing it, she knew, only in the light of triumph which flashed briefly across her eyes. It was a strange sort of triumph. Life until her reconciliation with Milton had been miserable and disappointing. In the past few months she had gone over her life in her mind, minutely, always trying to avoid thinking of Maudie. She remembered a time when she was young. She had wanted the future to be like a nice, long, congenial tea party, where everyone talked a little, danced a little and had polite manners. She had come to the party and it had been ghastly: everyone misbehaved and no one had a good time. Religion had been a toy, a trifle, and she had cast it aside in despair when Maudie died. But she had always been motivated by a stern, if misty and primitive, belief, and when she took the last nembutal, sinking not into death but into what she hoped would be an endless sleep, filled with only the friendliest of dreams, it had been with a prayer on her lips and a mysterious, whispered apology to her father. Milton had rescued her. She knew the limit of his patience and, in a sort of marathon, had teased his patience to the very brink. But she had got what she wanted. She had got Milton back, along with the chance to watch him plead and grovel and humiliate himself. What more, for one who had suffered a lifetime of indignities, of so much emotional privation, could be asked? Because she did love him; she loved him desperately, and although he had hurt her—and she was wise enough to admit (but only to herself) that she had hurt him, too—he had, by coming back to her, saved her from certain death. Saved her not only from those endless, drugged dreams but from death. Too many thoughts of Maudie would have driven her, she knew, quite insane, but Milton had saved her from all that. And there had been a period, in the first few weeks of their reconciliation, when her brain throbbed, intoxicated, and in her thoughts Dolly drifted like a vanquished corpse face-downward upon some swollen stream. It had been the first time she could remember that she had ever laughed aloud, privately—alone in her room swooning backward upon the bed, clutching her throat with nerveless fingers, in a spasm of soundless, hysterical laughter.