Looking for Mr. Goodbar (24 page)

“A birthday party for my mother.”

She laughed in disbelief.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious, jerk. If I’m kidding I’ll tell you I’m kidding so you can laugh.”

She said she’d appreciate that. With both hands he did his rapid finger tap dance on the bricks of the building.

“I’m starved,” she said, “I want a hot dog. You want one?”

They went to the Sabrett’s cart, where they got hot dogs and soda and, when she took out her wallet, he said, “Don’t be a jerk. When you’re with me, I pay.” As though she’d tried to go dutch at the Four Seasons. They walked across Fourteenth Street to the subway, eating and drinking. Tony making remarks about niggers and spics the whole time in a voice almost loud enough to be heard by others.

“What kind of party is it going to be?”

“A party, whaddya think? Food, wine, dancing. Her faggot boyfriend’s throwing her a birthday party.”

“How come you want to go when you hate him so much?”

“What are you, crazy? You think that faggot’s gonna keep me from my own mother’s birthday party?”

“No,” she said, “but . . . the thing is . . . I’m afraid I’ll feel strange. Not knowing anybody.”

How will you introduce me, Tony? Mom, I want you to meet this cunt I fuck once, twice a week?

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You know me.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re my girl, aintcha?”

She was so accustomed to his insane assumptions that she fielded it calmly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m anyone’s girl.”

“Yeah?” he said irritably. “What are you, just a cunt?”

“No,” she said, “but what we have—”

“Oh, shit,” he said. “What we have.” They were almost at the subway. “I gotta get to work.”

“When will I see you?” she asked automatically.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll call you. Remember next Sunday.”

When she walked into
the house the phone was ringing. She picked it up and said hello.

“Hello, Theresa,” James’s voice said. “It’s nice to hear your voice again.”

“Thank you.”

She hadn’t thought much about the conversation with Rose that morning but it had been with her, that and a strange sort of hangover from it, all day. James thought if she were free for dinner he might work a little later than usual at the office and come down and take her out.

Normally she would have just teased him about not going
home for a bath first (he always looked as though he’d just been put through some fantastically effective total laundry process, clothes and all). Now she just said that she’d been away so much she didn’t really feel like going out again, then, without thinking in advance, said that if he wanted to come down, she would make dinner. He was delighted with the idea and asked if he could bring wine. She said he shouldn’t because she didn’t know yet what she would be making, but as it turned out she settled on chicken and spaghetti and salad and he brought a bottle of nice white wine.

She found it hard to meet his eyes. She was afraid he would ask her why she was doing this and she would either snap back to her usual sarcastic self or burst out with something incredibly dumb like “I didn’t know your mother was crippled.” Which was, when all was said and done, the reason she was making him dinner. It was an act of contrition.

He stood at the entrance to the minuscule kitchen and asked if she minded his hanging around while she cooked. She said she didn’t. It wasn’t true. She never cooked for anyone and she felt self-conscious and awkward in front of him. They opened the wine and each had a glass, she working, he standing in the doorway. She asked if he didn’t want to pull over a chair and at least sit in the doorway but he said he’d been sitting in the office all day and preferred standing. She felt uneasy because he seemed to be saying more than that his feet didn’t hurt; he was saying that he was happy watching her make dinner for him. She looked at him and looked away quickly. She was fighting tears.

It had been so much easier when she could make mental fun of his bland Irish looks without ambivalence. Without knowing that he didn’t live with his mother simply because he was an underdeveloped choirboy. That he had great burdens which he hadn’t shared with her.

She decided to turn the chicken so she would have an excuse for hiding her face from him but as she did it, she burned two of her fingers on the Pyrex dish and burst into tears. He came over,
looked at her fingers, got an ice cube from the freezer, wrapped it in a piece of paper towel, wedged it between the two burned fingers and led her out of the kitchen.

“I’m okay,” she said, feeling like one of the idiots of the world. “It’s not that bad. I just . . . I had a weird week.” She was always saying that to him; it was repulsive.

He led her to the bed and with his arm around her, guided her to sit down on its edge with him.

“I wasn’t sick,” she said, looking at her fingers and the wrapped ice cube. “I told Rose my mother was sick but that wasn’t true, either, but I can’t tell you what was really true. It’s something I can’t talk about.” He held her. She buried her face in his chest and cried more. He kissed the top of her head. “I never lie to you,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

“I’m sure you’re not much of a liar in general,” he said.

“That’s not true,” she told him. “I lie all the time. Not all the time, but most of the time it’s just as easy for me to lie as to tell the truth.” It wasn’t so much that she thought he could tell the difference. It was more that
she
could tell the difference when she was with him, while usually telling a lie felt virtually the same as telling the truth. A lie was something that hadn’t happened but might just as well have.

“That’s hard for me to believe,” he said.

“But it’s true.” She stood up abruptly. “I better get back to that chicken.”

He didn’t follow her into the kitchen this time. She did the things that had to be done and set the table, feeling as though she were in a charade. Much more so than at the Americana, where she’d actually been playing no role. (It was rather the absence of her real life that had been striking.) While now there was her real self plus some domestic person she was pretending to be. A sweet little woman who made dinner for her man at the end of his long workday. He wasn’t watching television, of course, so it couldn’t be a real marriage. Still, if you weren’t careful you could end up
with a house in New Jersey and six screaming kids. Or maybe five, and one who was too sick to scream and just lay in the bed and stared at you.

He was subdued when he came to the table. She served the food, having trouble with the strands of spaghetti, many of which ended up between the plates instead of on them. With her fingers she transferred them to the plate.

“When I told Rose my mother was sick she told me about your mother.”

“Yes?”

“How come you never told me about her?”

“Told you what? You mean that she’s paralyzed?”

She nodded.

“I suppose it hasn’t come up. It’s not a secret but it’s not the kind of thing you bring up all the time.”

“Some people do.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Looking for pity, maybe.”

“Maybe.” He smiled. “Pity certainly isn’t what I want from you.”

She was silent.

He said that the food was delicious and she said thank you.

“Why did Rose bring up my mother, do you think?” he asked. “Was she pleading my case with you?”

“No,” she said carefully. “I mean, I wouldn’t call it that. She thinks a lot of you. We don’t sit around and talk about you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did. I’d prefer it to your forgetting about me entirely, which is what I usually think happens between the times I see you.”

She smiled. “You don’t talk about me with Morris, do you?”

“There’s not very much we can talk about. Morris finds me mooning, staring out of the window or something, and says I must be in love. The first time he said it I blushed, I’m afraid, which confirmed
his suspicions. And now he just asks me Monday mornings if I had a good weekend and gives me a sort of gleeful paternal grin. As though to say that if I’m happy, he’s responsible.”

“Are you?”

“Happy?” He smiled. “I don’t know. How can you tell?”

She laughed. “Don’t ask me. I can only tell if I’m high or low. It’s not the same thing.”

“Where are you now?”

“I don’t know. In between, I guess.” She was always in between with him. Nervous, on guard, not exactly high or low. “I’m nervous. I guess that’s the truth.”

“Why are you nervous?”

“It’s you,” she admitted. Standing back inside herself. Refusing to believe she could admit it to herself, much less say it out loud to him. “You make me nervous.” It was blurted out. The truth. Before she could cave in to the temptation to bury it.

“But why?” He’d stopped eating and he looked upset. As upset as he ever looked. She didn’t want him to be upset. She felt confused and guilty and miserable. “It’s nothing you do. It’s me. I
like
you, James, I just . . .” Her lips trembled and her throat ached with held-back tears. “I can’t tell what you were telling me, but please . . . don’t love me.”

What the hell are you doing, Theresa? All he did was tell this story about Morris. He didn’t say he loved you. Idiot. He didn’t ask anything of you. Idiot. He didn’t ask you to marry him. He’s hardly ever had a hand on you. He’s . . .

But he wasn’t laughing at her. He was regarding her with the utmost seriousness and the little color he usually had was gone from his face.

She was so mixed up! She wanted to scream and to cry at the same time. She wanted him to hold her but she couldn’t ask him to hold her because it was wrong when she wasn’t at all attracted to him and would hate it if he were to try to make love to her! Victor! If only Victor were here! With Victor she could cry and scream
and carry on and tell him to hold her and it wouldn’t matter because he’d be going to the airport the next day anyway. And then part of the problem wouldn’t even arise because if Victor held her and comforted her and then it turned sexual, they would just go to bed and everything would be all right.

“I’m all fucked up, James,” she said. Not having specially prepared the profanity for his benefit as she usually did. “I don’t even know what I’m saying. I . . . I don’t even know why you want to have anything to do with me. That’s the truth. Why do you . . . why do you even want to see me at all? There’re thousands of women around New York, it’s not as though there’s a shortage.” She was getting a hysterical edge now. “I’m not kidding, James . . . do you think I’m kidding?”

“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you’re kidding.”

“Then why?”

“I’ve liked you since we met, Theresa,” he said. “I find you a charming and interesting person.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded.

I find you a charming and interesting person.

What could she possibly say to that? He must be blind. Or crazy. Or both. Maybe he was like Victor. Maybe he had some kind of very elaborate fantasy built around her that had nothing to do with who she really was. If he’d said I love you because you’re this and that it would have been easier to deal with, because she could have made fun of him. Focused on the word “love.” Proved beyond a doubt that whatever he felt for her couldn’t be love. This was much more difficult. Maybe he knew that; maybe he’d said it that way on purpose. He was smart, James Morrisey. She’d never denied that. He had blind spots, but he was smart.

She smiled. “James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree,” she quoted, “Took good care of his mother, though he was only three.”

“Ah,” he said, “so we’re back to my mother.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It just popped into my head. I read it to my kids in school and I thought of you.”

He was silent.

“Will you always live with her?” She had no right to be asking such questions. It wasn’t as though she cared.

“Not necessarily. My sister has agreed that if I should need to be free, if I marry, for example, and my wife and I want to live alone, that she would have Mother with their family for as long as possible.”

As long as possible. A tricky phrase. His sister could find it possible for two weeks and then say that Mother’s presence was putting an intolerable strain on her family life—the children were horribly depressed, having to live with someone who was paralyzed from the neck down.

“What is she like, your mother?”

“She’s a very sweet person,” he said. “She always was. Sweet, quiet, somewhat stoical. Of course being helpless has tended to . . . she’s very religious. She prays a great deal. There’s no doubt in my mind that her belief in God and in the hereafter has kept her from going mad.”

“Do you still believe in God?”

He smiled. “How could I not believe in the God who’s kept my mother from going mad?”

“You might believe in Him as a force in your mother’s mind without believing in Him as a reality.”

“That’s true, of course, but I suppose I don’t choose to differentiate. No. That’s not true. The truth is that I’m wary of religious arguments. I’ve heard one too many. A thousand too many. All through school, amongst my friends who’ve left the Church and haven’t, and so on. So I tend to not meet a question like that head on, as I should.”

He was so decent. So honest. His decency and honesty were painful to her, as they must be to him.

“The truth,” he said, “is that I have chosen to believe in Him. I’m not sure even that’s true. I believe in Him and I choose not to challenge my own belief. Because if I found that my challenge was successful . . . I would feel myself totally alone. And then I would know despair.”

And then I would know despair.

She looked at him in wonder.

I would be alone and then I would know despair.

“Welcome to despair,” she said, feeling her own bitter smile and then becoming overwhelmed by confusion. “I don’t know what made me say that,” she blurted out.

He was watching her.