Moving On (22 page)

Some places had no movie theaters, and such theaters as there were seemed to belong so totally to the forties that it was a little incongruous to see sixties movies in them. Patsy took walks and got stared at. She read the box of paperbacks from top to bottom, got dangerously far into the third volume of Gibbon, and began to ration herself and subsist on what she could pick up at drugstores.

They decided to go to Calgary, mostly because Patsy wanted to see the Canadian Rockies, but the Ford picked that week to throw a rod and they spent two days in Lewiston, Montana, waiting for a part to come by bus from Great Falls. The country they drove through was cool and high, gray distance in the mornings, brown distance at noontime, blue distance in the evenings. Patsy came to love the distances and often sat for long periods watching the wavering horizon. Jim’s picture-taking grew increasingly lackadaisical and they had little to do but talk, read, drive, and eat.

It was a month-long period of calm. The argument they had had in Phoenix left them both feeling chastened and a little ashamed. Each determined to be more considerate sexually and the next time they made love they were more considerate than enthusiastic. After that the driving seemed to sap them. They lived and slept together in placid, friendly chastity for three weeks, neither bothered, neither discontent. Jim had been very taken with Eleanor and had fantasies of her for a while, but he had only seen her the once and her memory soon began to fade.

The period of calm ended abruptly one night in a small town in northern Colorado. Jim went out to mail some postcards to their folks and completely forgot to bring back some cold cream Patsy had requested. He had also forgotten magazines—an essential of life. Patsy had suspected he would forget, since he often did, and had written him a little list, but he stuck the list in his shirt pocket and thought no more about it until he walked in the door of the motel room and saw her look up at him expectantly.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I completely forgot what you wanted.”

“I knew it,” she said coldly. “Just give me the car keys. I’ll get them myself.”

Jim offered to go, but she left without another word as he was apologizing. It was a tiny town, just one drugstore and a couple of grocery stores and one or two other small-town enterprises. Patsy got her stuff and drove restlessly back and forth through the little town, fuming. Dogs ran out to bark at the car. The town was in a flat valley, with mountains to the west, just visible in the dusk. There was really no place to linger, and after ten minutes she gave up and went back to the motel, the only accommodation the town boasted and one that was not to her liking. The walls were peeling, the neck of the shower hung crookedly, so that she practically had to stand in the bedroom to get wet, and there was no air conditioning. The room was cool in the morning, but the sun shone on it all afternoon and in the evening it was hot.

Jim looked up guiltily when she came in and he tried again to apologize. “Oh, quit apologizing,” she said. “I forgive you. I knew you had a bad memory when I married you. What I didn’t know was that you’d take me to towns like this, with no warning.”

“What do you mean, no warning? We’ve been staying in towns like this for weeks. You’re getting soft.”

The remark infuriated her. “Of course I’m soft,” she said. “I was born soft. I’m not going to lead a crusade or anything. I’m just a woman.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Jim said, annoyed by her tone. “I mean soft in the wrong way. You like luxuries too much.”

“Hush, you hypocrite,” she said, shucking off her dress. She flopped across the bed in her bra and panties, with
Cosmopolitan
, the only semi-readable magazine the drugstore had had. She felt more like arguing than reading.

“It’s steaming in here,” she said. “I’m sweating. You’re heartless and a hypocrite. You like money more than I do. You love being able to spend hundreds on cameras and stuff any time you decide your lens is inadequate, but then you think you can make up for it by staying in sleazy motels and living on corn dogs. I’ll never eat another corn dog as long as I live.” She had just eaten a corn dog for supper.

“I didn’t make you eat that corn dog,” he said. “The drive-in had other things. You can eat what you damn please.”

“Corn dogs are just my rallying point,” she said. “It’s the principle I’m attacking. I should never have married you.” She flipped the pages of the magazine angrily.

“You’re a puritan and a hypocrite and you wear your goddamn underwear three days in a row,” she said. “I always thought I’d marry a man with the decency to change his underwear every day. Squalor is all I have to look forward to, squalor and neglect.”

Jim felt guilty for having forgotten the things, and he let the accusations break over his head. She didn’t sound seriously angry. Since he was directly behind her, sitting at a little lampstand that was all the room had in the way of a desk, her spleen was actually being directed at the headboard of the bed. He was writing in a journal that he had decided to keep. Sometimes he felt that he was more of a writer than a photographer, and the journal might come in handy. Besides, there was nothing else to do until bedtime.

Looking up, he caught an exciting hind view of Patsy as she lay on the sheets of the thin bed. Her legs were wide and she held one foot in the air, waving it erratically as she talked. A small tuft of dark hair showed beneath the edge of her panties. He ceased writing in the journal and began to doodle, and he looked at the rear view of Patsy again and got up and locked the door.

“I wish I had read Helen Gurley Brown sooner,” Patsy said. “I’m sure she has some very practical ideas. Probably I should have been promiscuous when I was younger. I might have learned about men who don’t change their underwear. According to this magazine, sex is everything.”

“It would be everything if you lived in a town like this,” Jim said. He sat down by her and ran his hand up her leg and underneath her.

“Quit,” she said. “That was not a cue. I was merely remarking on a cultural phenomenon. I’m really glad I wasn’t promiscuous and I don’t feel sexy right now.”

But Jim kept on rubbing her through her panties, intent on changing the way she felt. Patsy kept reading, feeling irritated, impolite, and stubborn. Finally she wrenched her bottom away from his hand.

“Stop,” she said. “Go take pictures of small-town emptiness, or something.”

“You’re getting sexier,” he said.

“Well, you’re not getting any more inventive. You’ve used that line for six months. Go away and suffer. You can’t afford luxuries like sex. It would only weaken you as an artist. Sublimate. I’m reading and I don’t feel sexy.”

“I’m your husband,” Jim said, annoyed.

“I’m your husband,” she mimicked. “I’m sweaty and this bed is lousy and I have to read this and find out why sex is everything. I have the right to abstain if I want to and I choose to abstain.”

“All you ever want to do is abstain,” he said, trying to roll her panties down her hips. Patsy thwarted him by rolling off the bed. She went in the tiny bathroom, shut the door, and sat on the commode to read. When she came out fifteen minutes later, soaked with sweat, Jim was in bed looking aggrieved.

“You certainly don’t seem to find me very attractive,” he said. “I doubt you really love me any more.”

“Don’t lie there pitying yourself,” she said. “It just makes me worse. I wish I had a milkshake. With all the cows around here you’d think there’d be milkshakes available.”

But after a time she grew contrite and decided she was mean and bitchy and worked it so she got seduced. Jim was grateful and sweet, but also uncharacteristically slow. They were very sweaty and the bed was creaky and not at all firm. After a time, wondering what was wrong, Patsy turned her face toward him and saw from the rather strained look of pleasure on his face that he was considerately holding himself back, waiting for her.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” she said. “I’d rather you beat me than to look like that.” She felt suddenly furious and hopeless.

Jim was startled, stopped moving, and then began again uncertainly. Patsy felt contrite at her outburst and gripped his shoulders, trying to get with him. But they had both become self-conscious and slipped further and further out of rhythm. Jim came and hardly felt it and Patsy simply gave up. She threw her arms wide on the bed and lay panting, shaken with a combination of frustration and hopelessness. Jim was silent and very depressed and Patsy cried a little and when he said nothing began to feel angry.

“Move,” she said, just as he was about to. “I’m drowning in sweat. You can give me the silent treatment after I’ve showered, if you insist.”

“I’m not giving you any kind of treatment,” he said.

“Not the kind I thought I’d get when I married you,” she said, going to the bathroom. The shower was cold and left her feeling edgy and more wrought-up than ever.

When she came out Jim was dressing, as if he meant to go somewhere, and it crossed her mind for a moment that he had stopped loving her—probably with justice—and was about to abandon her in a miserable little town in Colorado. He was looking for a sock that had been kicked under the bed. All he had on was a brown short-sleeved sports shirt and one brown sock.

“Why are you dressing?”

“I’m going out.” He found the sock and sat on the edge of the bed to put it on.

“I hope you at least put some underwear on. Where are you going? Out where?”

“Just out. Away from your nagging tongue.”

“There’s nothing but prairie out there. You’ll get snake-bitten.”

“Snake-bit.”

“Oh, hell. Bitten by a snake. Or else lost. Why do you want to embarrass me by getting lost? I’ll probably have to hire a search party.”

“Just shut up,” he said. “I won’t get lost. You’re no one to talk to me about anything. You nag me and you don’t like to sleep with me. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You don’t even like for me to see you naked.”

Patsy had been holding a towel in front of her loins but she yanked it up and flung it at him. It draped over his shoulder but he shrugged it to the floor.

“There, I’m naked,” she said. “Peer all you like, you’re nothing but a goddamn voyeur anyway. An amateur voyeur. Take pictures of me if you want to. You think I’m frigid just because I don’t come the minute you want me to. I can do it fine if you just let me do it like I like to and not bother with me so much. Get out and get lost—I want you to. I don’t want you coming near me again.”

“I don’t know why I would want to. You always manage to make me feel I’m no good.”

“Shut up,” she said. “You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. What do you think I am, some kind of applause meter? Look at me!” And she stuck one leg out and pointed to herself. “See. I’m just a woman. I’m not equipped with any gauge that registers how great you are.”

“Let’s quit,” he said dejectedly. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

But Patsy felt wild and violent. She picked the
Cosmopolitan
off the floor and flung it at the wall of the room. “To hell with sex,” she said. “I wish I’d been a nun and never got involved with it at all.”

“Hush,” Jim said. He was putting on his underwear.

“I will not,” she said. “I’d rather never do it than have to fight about it every time. Phooey on the penis—people were nuts ever to worship it. I think I’ll write an article called ‘Phooey on the Penis’ and send it to that stupid magazine.”

“My, you’re witty,” Jim said. His voice was so wretched that it broke Patsy’s anger, though her bosom continued to heave.

She sighed and went over and put her head on his chest and hugged him. “You poor man,” she said. “What an unlucky day for you when you married me. How could you suspect I’d turn out soft and frigid? I’m sorry I talked so mean.”

Jim was relieved. Instead of going out he undressed again and they got back in bed and chatted and were friendly. “I wish we could forget about all this,” Patsy said, her head on his arm. “Maybe if we forget about it for a while we can start over and everything will work.”

“Maybe,” Jim said, but he had little confidence that it would ever work.

Then, all unexpectedly, only two nights later, their sexual fortunes changed for the better. Late in the afternoon they crossed Berthoud Pass—crossed it at a speed of two miles an hour, in reverse. The Ford was not at its strongest and refused to take the pass in second or even in low, and Jim had to resort to backing over, while behind them a string of cars and trucks waited and watched, the drivers surprisingly patient, even amused. Patsy felt the center of all eyes. It was very ignominious to have to back over a mountain, and had she not been nervous and scared she would have been angry.

“Fool! Idiot!” she kept saying. “Why can’t we get a new car?” She kept her dark glasses on and tried to look unconcerned and inscrutable. Jim tended grimly to his backing and ignored her. When they finally topped the pass he turned around and drove downward a few miles to a little mountain town, a sort of truckers’ village. Both of them were edgy—Jim had been a little scared too.

“I want a new car,” Patsy said. “I really insist. Our very life was in danger.”

“Nonsense,” Jim said. “You’re too cowardly. Besides, that must have been the highest pass in the Rockies. We just won’t come this way again.”

“
I
sure won’t, not in this heap of junk,” she said. “I didn’t see anyone else backing over. Most people have strong cars. You’re insanely stubborn, Jim.”

“You’re insanely bitchy,” he said, not yielding an inch.

They ate a silent supper, each determined not to weaken, but the little cafe where they ate was so unexpectedly jolly that they couldn’t stay low-spirited. It was bright and noisy and paneled in pine. The kitchen threw out good smells, and the place was packed with a score or more of loggers and truck drivers, a boisterous and devil-may-care group of men. It was hard to be depressed around them. The stew they had was excellent, and that helped too. When they stepped outside it was dark and very cold and they walked up the highway for a mile or more, smelling the pine trees and the mountains. They were so high that even the height itself seemed to have a smell. They were both shivering, and Jim put his arm around her.