Listening to Billie (10 page)

But she was not rich, she did need the money. And her fears were disproportionate; she knew that.

She knew, too, that she had always overreacted to everything; very likely she always would. Wasn’t poetry itself an overreaction to experience?

She got out of bed and, dressing, she dropped things. Her jeans zipper stuck.

At breakfast she was cross with Catherine, who banged out of the house.

And then, in the paper, Eliza read:

Trembling, Eliza dialed Miriam’s number; also, of course, Miriam’s mother’s number. Busy, busy. Busy for twenty minutes.

Panicked, Eliza telephoned Kathleen at the hospital office.

“Kathleen, it’s Eliza, did you read in the paper—is Miriam there?”

“No, she’s not, and yes, I did read it. Of course it could be her. Dumb black bitch, always messing around. I’ve told her—”

But Eliza was unable to listen, today, to Kathleen’s raging monologue.

And it was time to go to unemployment. On her way out she dialed Miriam. Still busy.

That day, in the huge, hangar-like, dreary greenish room, (called, euphemistically, the Office of Human Resources Development), in the unemployment lines, everyone looked like
Miriam. The room was full of tall black girls with skinny legs, hunched over in their coats. But why would Miriam be here? She was almost anywhere else. Or dead.

And Eliza’s head was raw with sleeplessness.

Sometimes, perhaps because of the weather, there was unreasonably a sort of festive atmosphere in that room, up and down the waiting lines. Kids in bright crazy clothes, tall black men with terrific swaggering hats, all getting something for nothing. Sometimes it felt childish and fun.

But not today. Today the kids looked pale and shabby, the black men dangerous.

And this was Eliza’s interview day; about every six weeks the unemployment recipients had to say where they had applied for jobs. Possibly Eliza was not the only person who was not really looking for a job; possibly other people did as she did, which was to make up a few plausible places. (Miriam’s instructions: “List some folks you know. Like that, if they check you, you be okay.”) She listed Ted Kennerlie, sometimes The Lawyer. Still, she was always terrified of being somehow found out.

But her system worked, her small deception. The efficient-looking young Japanese man on the other side of the railing barely glanced at her list. He handed her her check, as once more she caught a glimpse of a black girl across the room, who was not Miriam.

She took the check to the office next door, where it had to be exchanged for cash: more danger. She headed for the bus stop across the street, afraid of everyone, of everything.

Miriam.

At home, with her coat still on, she picked up the phone and dialed, and Miriam answered on the first ring. “Hey, there, Eliza, how’re you doing? You okay?
I’m
okay,
real
okay—”

The departure of Eliza’s terror left her weak, too weak for anger; she felt shriveled, and suddenly small.

She said, “Well, I just wondered how you were—” and she
hung up, thinking, But it could have been Miriam; Miriam’s life is dangerous. She is endangered; we all are, but especially Miriam. (We are not human resources.)

Half an hour later, Peggy Kennerlie called. She said that Ted was behaving strangely: he was talking about joining the Peace Corps.

Already bored, Eliza felt disloyal both to Peggy and to the Peace Corps. Peggy sounded ridiculous.

But not so, of course, to Peggy herself, who said, “I’m really worried, Liza” (an old college nickname that Eliza very much disliked). “It’s so unlike him. But I guess it beats chasing his secretary.”

“I guess so.” As she said this, Eliza had a clear and certain vision that that would be next: Ted would dump Peggy for his secretary, especially if he had a virgin secretary. Ted as a sexual person would only be convincing to a virgin.

“Well, what do you hear from old Harry?” Peggy asked.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Eliza sounded more irritated than she meant to, and for that she could not fairly blame Peggy.

The truth was she had not heard from “old Harry” since the weekend, almost a month ago now, when she flew to meet him in New York; and Peggy’s question reminded her of what now seemed another failure in love—in love, or perhaps simply in judgment. How crazy to go off to Mexico with a man you didn’t know, and even to imagine that you loved him, to think of marrying him. (How crazy to have married Evan Quarles.)

What did happen with Harry in New York? She had tried, with not much success, to sort that out. For a start, a bad start, they were both very tired, Harry from filming—a strenuous schedule—in Morocco, and then the trip, jet lag. Eliza was
simply tired, for no reason. And the city, New York, seemed to conspire against them; everywhere, despite reservations, despite Harry’s flamboyant force, they had to wait for meals. For taxis, for theatre tickets. Harry’s joke was “Maybe we can only function in hyper-efficient Mexico,” but Eliza feared that this was indeed the case.

Worse, as the weekend went on, she feared that she had built up Harry in her mind as a kind of super and hitherto inexperienced combination lover and friend. She had even (Christ! embarrassing to remember) brought along a couple of poems that she had been working on for him to see. And no possible moment for poems ever arrived.

By the end of the weekend, Harry’s fatigue had evolved into a ferocious cold. They spent Sunday afternoon in bed, not making love (not reading poetry). Harry was coughing and blowing his nose with great violence; Eliza gloomily thinking.

But she had found it hard, somehow, to write off Harry. He would not become, in her mind, The Hollywood Producer, would not join The Consul and The Lawyer. To think of him was a further depressant, on a dark depressing day.

And that night Daria telephoned. She seemed to be crying, or barely succeeding in not crying. “I really feel okay,” she said, “but I have to stay in bed for a while, and it is disappointing. We’d really wanted—”

She had had a miscarriage.

“Oh, Daria—Christ, I’m so sorry. But you know, you are so young.”

“I know, sure, we can go on and have eleven children. But I wanted to have this one.”

On a classically lovely day in early June, a Wednesday—the day after an unemployment appointment that was less frightening than usual—Eliza went down the slate steps to her mailbox, about midmorning. She found there mostly bills and advertisements, as usual. Macy’s, Saks, Catherine’s dentist. A mail order catalogue, some fliers from magazines soliciting subscriptions.

Retrieved and spread out on her coffee table, the array of envelopes was discouraging: there was nothing among them to read. Which meant no respite or postponement of work, from either messy old unfinished poems or the perfectly blank paper on her desk upstairs. Idly and without hope, she looked at all those envelopes, and then, with a small rise of irritation, she thought, I
subscribe
to the
Nation
; why are they writing?

Inside the
Nation
envelope was a short and graceful note: “We are accepting, with particular pleasure, your poem … an early issue … twelve dollars.”

Involuntarily, in disbelief, Eliza’s hands flew up to cover her mouth as she stared at the small and important piece of paper. And then happiness like new blood flooded through all her veins. It was a moment of pure joy; she recognized and greeted it as such, looking out to the pale blue spring sky, the fluttering gray-green eucalyptus leaves, and much farther away
the rising wrinkled green hills of Marin County. Pure joy, and a moment that she would remember, would recapture, resee.

And now—whom to tell—to call?

Catherine was in school. Daria was in Italy, recuperating from her miscarriage. Harry Argent was in Morocco again, and she had no current lover.

Josephine? At the thought of phoning her mother and telling her this news, the familiar web of emotions began to knot and tangle in her chest: fear, guilt, affection, apprehension, anger. She dialed the well-known number: the house in Maine, which Josephine had gone to open for the summer.

The phone rang and rang, while Eliza pictured the house perfectly: the large rooms, long windows looking out to the June-sparkling lake, or, on the other side, back to the pale and green leafed-out apple trees. She could even smell that slight odor of disuse—perhaps less an odor than a need of air—that came from a neglected, although immaculately clean and polished house at the start of summer.

“Darling!” said Josephine, “how lovely to hear from you, such a surprise. And not calling collect!” She was out of breath, but insistently conversational. “What time of day is it out there? I can never remember which way it goes.”

Not saying: I haven’t called you collect for at least ten years (although knowing that she will say this, in her mind, to Josephine, repeatedly; she is fated to such unspoken fights with her mother), Eliza said, “It’s eleven-fifteen. Mother, I have some really good news.” And Eliza told her the news.

“Oh, Eliza, how marvelous! I’m absolutely delighted for you. But you didn’t say that you’d been writing poetry.”

“Well, it sounds sort of silly.”

“Not silly at all, when you impress a magazine like the
New Republic.
”

“The
Nation
, Mother.”

“Oh, I meant the
Nation.
It’s like the problem I used to have: no one could remember whether I had a piece in
Harper’s
or the
Atlantic.
Darling, I am so glad you called. I had a card
from Daria this morning. They’re in Florence, and she seems to be feeling enormously better.”

“Oh good.”

“Well, I did think Italy would help. And they do seem to do it in style. I must say that Smith has rather grand notions.” And then, unfortunately in the same breath, she asked, “How much do they pay for poetry? The
Nation
, right?”

“Right. Oh, not much. In fact, not much at all. I may take Catherine out for a Chinese lunch, or something.”

“Oh, well, money.”

That’s easy for you to say: Eliza prevented herself from saying this to her mother, who had always earned a lot of money writing, and had inherited a lot. But she eerily recalled Smith Worthington saying those words to her, last summer in Maine, on the night before his marriage. “Mother, I have to go now,” she lied. “I have a lunch. I just wanted to tell you—”

“Darling, I’m so glad—how good you were to call.” And then Josephine’s voice sounded tremulous: was that because they were saying goodbye, or because she was truly glad for Eliza’s poem?

As she hung up, Eliza was trembling, and she did not understand,
really
, what had happened—or she could not face what she seemed to understand. Which was that Josephine was not entirely pleased.

An hour or so later, as she sat on her worn wooden front steps, in the sun, Eliza almost managed to return to her moment of joy. Smelling lavender, she thought of the enormous difference between having sold even one small poem and not. Being a published poet or not.

She wished that she were, in fact, meeting someone for lunch, but she did not have the right friend for that moment, and besides, it was too late—after noon.

Harry, if he were there—Harry would have been terrific, but he would have overdone it. Lunch at the Palace,
champagne—he would have overwhelmed the event, and thus, not meaning to, have minimized it. Still, it would have been more fun with him.

And she thought of the splendid weekend that had succeeded the not good one in New York. Harry had had to come back to Los Angeles to look at rushes, and he managed three days on Nob Hill, at the Huntington—to which Eliza rushed for long afternoons of wine and love, some tiny naps—rushed home for supper with Catherine, back to Harry for more love and midnight feasts.

After that visit, Eliza thought, Well, he’s marvelous, but I couldn’t see him very often; I wouldn’t last.

Inside, she considered calling Miriam, but that was crazy, too much to explain. Considered, and dismissed, Kathleen.

She even thought of calling Peggy Kennerlie.

And then she saw a possibly oncoming wave of self-pity, against which she firmly braced herself. Firmly she spread her competent hands before her on the table, and she thought, Of course it would not be as important to anyone else; no one else has been inside my head, feeling my craving for any recognition, my really dying to be published.

She said to herself, I send poems out into space; that’s how it feels. And so, how extraordinary that someone should have heard. Someone bought my poem.

The threatened wave of self-pity did not strike.

The phone rang. It was Josephine, who said, in a hurried, out-of-character voice, “I just called because I wasn’t sure I’d said how really glad I was. Just surprised. I wouldn’t have thought of you as being a poet. But, darling, that’s absolutely terrific. First-rate.” Was Josephine crying? “Well, I must hang up. We don’t want to start supporting the phone company, do we?”

Her daughter was totally confused.

But Eliza had almost returned to her earlier euphoria, when she heard loud and unexpected feet pounding up the stairs. It was, of course, Catherine, but then—at lunchtime?

“Mom, don’t you remember? There’s a teachers’ meeting, so we all got out early! I told you!” Blond and beaming, plump and almost twelve, Catherine burst into the room, trailing books and a favorite bedraggled pink wool cardigan.

“Oh, no, I did forget, but, Cat, I’m so glad. And guess what happened to me today.” Eliza told Catherine her news.

“Oh, Mom, a poem in a real magazine with your name on it? Mom, that’s terrific—God, that’s wonderful!”