Moving On (59 page)

Early the next morning, so early that Davey had barely finished nursing, Roger came by again, on his way out. Patsy was astonished; she was in her gown and robe and made some coffee, to stall him. She could not believe he would drive so far for just one afternoon. He had been to breakfast, but he had some coffee, just to be polite.

“Surely you can stay today,” she said. “We could go to the zoo.” It was the only thing she could think of that might appeal to him.

“Aw, no, honey,” he said. “I got to get on back. I’ve got too much to take care of.”

Other than the wind and a few animals she couldn’t think what, but she didn’t argue. Carrying Davey, and still in her gown and robe, she followed him down the driveway to his pickup. At the sidewalk he put his arm around her and hugged her against him and she smelled the starch in his shirt and the tobacco in his shirt pocket. For some reason she was on the verge of tears.

“Maybe old Jim will get tired of all them movie stars and come down and see me some weekend,” he said. “Hope so. Always enjoy talking to Jim.”

He got in the pickup and sat for a minute, as if girding himself for the ordeal of the freeways.

“I’m so glad you came,” Patsy said, blinking. Everything she said sounded inadequate, but not to Roger.

“Glad I did too, honey,” he said. “Sorry I missed Jim, but anyway I got to see you and old Davey. I like to check up on my folks once in a while. If you don’t hear from me I missed a sign and am off in Louisiana, in some bayou.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek and he squeezed her hand and smiled. “Take care of the boy,” he said. “When he gets a little older bring him to see me and we’ll go riding.”

“He’s just four months now,” she said.

“Six months is a good age to start ’em riding,” he said, smiling again. Then he put the old pickup in gear and drove slowly, deliberately away, the old black pickup looking as incongruous and strange beneath the trees of South Boulevard as had Sonny’s white hearse.

Patsy turned to go back to the apartment, but before she got ten steps up the driveway she broke into such a shower of crying that she stopped, stood still for a moment, and then sat down on the Whitneys’ lawn. She put Davey on her lap, but the burst of tears surprised and shook her so that she put her hands to her face to catch them and Davey rolled off and to his surprise found himself on his stomach in the soft St. Augustine grass. He was puzzled for a moment and then delighted and fingered the grass while his mother sat crying. Things that Roger did, such as the visit, went to her heart. She had begun to think her heart functioned only for Davey, but it wasn’t true, it had only seemed true. The emotion washed out of her in one hard burst of tears and then they were done and she sat wet-faced on the grass and picked up her son. She wiped a piece of grass out of his mouth and brushed off his belly.

“Don’t eat grass,” she said. “You’ve been fed today.” She took him up the steps and they sat on the landing a little while. It was early and still quiet, not even the sounds of lawn mowers in a part of town where lawn mowing began early. She felt sad but relieved, and whenever she thought of Roger, nervous on the freeways, tears ran out of her eyes. It was not every old man who would drive a thousand miles in a rattly pickup to see such curious folks as she and Davey, she was sure of that. Davey pawed at the neck of her nightgown and occasionally put his fist in his mouth, totally unperturbed.

When the sun struck the landing she went in, put Davey in his crib, and showered. She heard something and came quickly into the bedroom, drying herself with a large green towel, but what she had heard was merely Davey bashing a rattle against the side of the crib. “You peach,” she said and bent a moment so that the ends of her hair tickled his stomach. It was something he sometimes liked and sometimes didn’t. At the moment he was more interested in bashing his rattle. Patsy went to the dressing table, dried her legs, and uncapped some hand lotion. She was not quite sure what had caused her to cry so, but whatever the reason, she felt much better. It felt good to sit at the dressing table, good to walk across the room. Feeling whatever she felt had had the effect of giving her back her own body. During the days of coldness with Jim she had lost all sense of her own flesh. She might have been made of straw. But the sense had come back, and she felt it was a pity Jim was gone. In such a mood as she was in, they might have worked it out. But he was gone, and the only man there to take advantage of her was Davey, who had gone to sleep, his face pressed against the bars of the baby bed. She felt a little restless. She suddenly found herself with a surplus of energy, a surplus of self, and as soon as Juanita came she walked over to Emma’s and went with her to take the boys to their swimming lesson.

A few days later a letter came from Roger:

Dear Patsy,

I am no good at writing letters but have been meaning to write and thank you for all that chicken you fixed, not to mention that gourd, I have thought it over and am sure it was a gourd. Last week sold an oillease, my first oil-lease in six years. Hope they get a good well, my eating system is gradually wearing out, could buy a section of land with what I owe doctors now.

Well, I thought Davey was a fine boy, will tell old Jim so if I ever see him. I hope you will bring Davey to see me sometime, Jim too if you can catch him, next time you come I will take Davey for a horseback ride. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a shower tonight, cloudy back in the west, think I left the windows down in the pickup and had better go check, it wouldn’t take much of a gully-washer to drown that old thing for good.

Your uncle,
Roger        

That night, in her robe and gown, during the late news, she wrote him:

Dear Roger,

It was nice of you to write. We are very lonesome these days. I agree with you now that it was a bad idea, Jim’s going up there. I don’t blame him for wanting to get away from my shrewish tongue but Davey is another matter—I’m sure he needs a father almost daily. Besides, it’s me that’s lonesome. I was never alone before. I’ve taken to watching television and the horrible part is I cry if anything sad happens, no matter how corny.

We will come, sometime. I imagine it will be a while yet before Davey can sit a horse. I hope your oil well comes in, but if you would try not frying those eggs so hard your stomach would fare better. You might even try eating a gourd or two, of the sort I had. If you were ever around me for very long you’d have to endure some culinary reform, I’m afraid.

If I get much lonesomer I guess I’ll have to break down and go to the Panhandle, after all, much as I’m opposed to it. I guess I just wasn’t meant to take care of myself. Anyhow, do write if anything comes up I should know. In the meantime, I love you.

Patsy Carpenter

She sniffed a little when she put it in the envelope. It was true, how the nights left her longing for Jim. Any silly late show could break her up, if it was sentimental enough; but TV was better than no TV. At least it was a voice. Jim called every two or three nights. She had told him that she missed him and had tried to let him know with her tone that she was sorry she had been so unbending about the matter of the whore; he had been polite, even comforting on one or two occasions, but he had not asked them to come to Amarillo and she could not quite bring herself to offer.

Davey began to cry. He had become a wiggly sleeper and often got himself contorted in corners, or his legs stuck between the bars. He was in a corner, crying heartily, and Patsy picked him up and shushed him and walked him a bit, humming “King of the Road.” After a time Davey hushed, his face against her shoulder. She became aware that he had shat his pants and switched on a little light she had arranged for such occasions. When put on his back he began to cry loudly again, but she deftly undiapered him, made a face at the consistency of the mess, and increased the volume of her own singing while she cleaned and powdered him. “
Trailer
for sale or rent,
rooms
to let, fifty cents . . .” she sang loudly and giggled. Davey, as if sensing some mockery, upped the ante with the loudest cry he was capable of, his face red with effort. “Oh, goodness,” she said, peering at his bottom to be sure it was clean before reaching for a safety pin. “Hush, baby, I wasn’t really trying to drown you out. Hush, Davey,” and in a minute she had him diapered and walked him again, humming. Soon he slept. When she eased him down on his stomach he stiffened and woke for a second, rubbed his nose with his fist, and tried to turn over, but Patsy stood by the bed and put her hand on his back, talking to him softly until he relaxed again. Soon it was so quiet she heard his breath. Then she stood up and yawned, tried to think of something she really wanted to read and couldn’t, scratched her hair and regretted not having washed it that day, and took the soiled diaper and rinsed it in the toilet. When she came back she sat in front of the TV set and hugged her knees. Rod Cameron was getting things thrown at him by Yvonne De Carlo, who seemed to be keeping a saloon. Nothing to cry about there. A Dodge commercial came on. Numerous local Dodge dealers appeared in white hats, giving away cars for thousands less than any other dealers in the world. Then there was a commercial of a girl who got a handshake one night, changed her mouthwash on the advice of a hip girl friend, and got a kiss the next. Such commercials sometimes brought on self-pity. Patsy was quite confident of her breath, and yet never got kissed any more, or anything else any more, either. But before self-pity could set in Rod Cameron was back, having chairs broken over his head. She turned to Johnny Carson, who was talking to a songstress with a hairdo that went up and up and up, almost out of camera. She turned back, hoping the movie might have improved. Rod Cameron was arguing with a sheriff. She heard Davey kick the crib with one foot, as if he were going to start scooting in his sleep. Then she heard him sigh, and he was still. She reached out one leg, punched the turn-off button with her big toe, and watched the light become a tiny bright point and disappear. Then she sat in the pitch dark room and thought a bit and hummed a bit and hugged her knees against her breasts.

BOOK III

Sleeping Around

1

P
ATSY HAD NEVER THOUGHT
of herself as a lonely person and had never believed that loneliness would be a problem—not for her. First there had been her family, and Miri, and then there had been Emma and her other girl friends at college. She had not made deep friendships easily, but she chatted easily and got deeply involved in her chats, and it was almost as good; at least she had never lacked for companionship. And then there had been Jim—constantly Jim. She had to concentrate hard to remember when she had not been living with him. Of course they had not got on perfectly, but he had always been there, and she could usually get him to talk to her if she really wanted to talk. He was there in the bed at night, quiet and male, and she had always assumed he could be counted on to take care of her if she really needed to be taken care of. She had read a lot about loneliness and knew it was one of the great problems of modern life, but it had never been very real to her. Besides Jim, there was Davey. Who could be lonely with two males in the house? Even the trouble over the whore had not made her really lonely. It was a bad time, but there was no reason to suppose they wouldn’t get past it, sooner or later.

Then Jim went off to the Panhandle, and just as he did, Juanita had to leave for a week. She had a daughter in Matamoros who was in some kind of trouble. Patsy and Davey were by themselves for the first time. The first week went by all right—Roger’s visit helped—but by the second week she had begun to feel strange. It was nothing major, certainly nothing desperate, just a kind of restlessness. The days seemed hard to order. She either had too much to do at a given moment or absolutely nothing. Davey either demanded her total attention, or he slept and needed no attention at all. With Juanita gone she could not go out when he slept, and she found that she had suddenly lost her capacity for doing things. She had always been active, but her activity tended to come in spurts. She would do things and then lie on her bed and read, or else lie on her bed and read and then get up and bustle about doing things. But by the time Jim had been gone a week, she discovered that she had lost her taste for reading and also her interest in doing things. Very often, when Davey slept, she did nothing. She lay on her bed and didn’t read, or she sat in the rocking chair, rocking, contemplating the ends of her hair, gazing at the hot back yard, waiting for Davey to wake up and need her. At night she watched television and didn’t like it, but kept watching it anyway, feeling it might get better at any minute; sometimes she watched it because it was too much trouble to get up and turn it off. She only came to life when Davey was awake, when he was nursing or needing a bath or something, and she discovered, somewhat to her dismay, that she was not always as in rapport with Davey as she had supposed she would be. Davey was not always interested in her and didn’t always welcome her interest in him. He developed a dislike for her bed, where he had once napped so peacefully. When put on it, he fretted and kicked and squalled and turned over. Sometimes he would be nice, would gurgle at her, poke his finger in her mouth, smile, grasp her hair, and he was quite healthy and took quantities of her milk, but there were times when she found his fretfulness a bore and times when he simply acted as if she were bugging him. Often he would just as soon be let alone. If anyone was lonely, it wasn’t Davey.

Sometimes she thought of Hank Malory, but she tried not to. It made her feel sorry for herself, and she didn’t want to feel sorry for herself. Whatever guilt she had felt at the time had completely evaporated and she looked back on their two-week romance as something pleasant but not quite real. Actual life could not be that warm and that easy for very long. Had he not gone away just when he had, the bloom of their relationship would surely have withered and they would have become mean to each other, or else indifferent. She was glad he had gone when he had; she only wished there were some way to get him completely out of her mind. The trouble was that he was lovely to think about, except that thinking about him sometimes made her feel sexy; there was no advantage to that. Her idleness and the fact that it was summer just made such feelings worse.