Moving On (73 page)

“Good luck with your second set,” Patsy said.

The Tatums were packed to leave but consented to stay until after dinner. There was almost a scene with Dixie, who wanted Patsy and Jim to go to dinner with her and the director. She was amazed that they would think of going to dinner with the Tatums, who were clearly hired help, in preference to dining with a director. She had apparently decided that even Joe was a little déclassé. Patsy grew irritated and Jim was smug: it always gratified him when Dixie’s
nouveau
streak showed itself.

Dinner with the Tatums was pleasant. They ate Mexican food and drank beer. It was Davey’s first trip to a restaurant and he displayed an amazing ability for grabbing spoons and forks, and a preference for grabbing spoons and forks with food in them. Patsy’s dress suffered so badly that the company began to wince every time Davey moved, but she herself remained unruffled. She had had three glasses of beer and felt a little high.

Soon after dinner they bade the Tatums goodbye. The sky behind Amarillo was deep violet, and the first stars had appeared. A breeze had blown up. Davey was asleep on Patsy’s shoulder; she walked him back and forth on the sidewalk while Pete stuffed a few last items into the station wagon. Joe Percy, to everyone’s surprise, gave Boots a big box of candy as a going-away present. She hugged him and burst into tears. Patsy too was strangely touched. Pete finished his packing, spat in the gutter, and regarded the scene with the little smile that Patsy remembered, the smile he had had the first night she met him. “Joe, you might have got
me
something,” he said. “After all, I carried her to bed after all that dancing. Better get in, honey. I got so much food in me I’ll be lucky to stay awake as far as Dumas.”

Boots managed to kiss Davey without awakening him. Patsy hugged her, and Boots waved at Jim and got in. “Come see us,” Patsy said to Pete.

He bent over to inspect a loose reflector and the street light lit his face and his curling thinning hair. When he stood up his eyes caught hers for a second and he smiled again. “We’ll get by sometime,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

“Well, there they go,” Joe Percy said.

The dark sky over the plains was very deep, a vast sky, good to stand under and yet not a quietening or a comforting sky. Patsy was troubled. Something about Pete Tatum touched her still. It would be nice to know what the little smile meant, why it came when it did, went when it did. And yet she was glad they had left. It was fitting they should leave in the evening and drive across the breezy plains all night, higher and higher, upward to Colorado, upward to Wyoming. Vicariously, in the hour that followed, she went along on such a drive, though in fact she went with Jim to their room, put Davey down, and read magazines while Jim read magazines. But her mind drifted away from news and fashions, back to the car and the plains at night, and the lights of service stations, so bright after one had been asleep, and the smell of the coarse dewy grass in the early morning—all things she had known but a year before.

“Do you ever wish we’d kept on with it?” she asked Jim.

“What?”

“Traveling. Going to rodeos.”

“No,” Jim said. “Why?”

“I guess I just feel like a drive,” Patsy said. “I mean a long drive.”

“You sure didn’t like it much at the time.”

“Didn’t I? I guess I didn’t. I remember some of the mornings as being nice.”

“Remember the first summer we were married?” Jim asked, apropos of nothing.

Patsy tried to, but couldn’t very well. The first months they were married had no reality for her, not even in memory. When she stared at the present, at the room and at the man and the baby who scarcely knew each other, she felt only apprehension, and time after time her mind left the magazine and went back to the time when she and Jim had been alone together on the long roads in the Ford.

Not much later her apprehensions were justified. The present forced itself upon her—Jim was horny. A day of watching her wander around in a bathing suit had whetted his appetite. The night before he had been hasty; but he became the opposite. It seemed to Patsy that after years of haste he had picked that night to settle down to a leisurely and rather studious consideration of her body. She could not have been less in the mood to be played with. It made her sick. The worldliness she had credited herself with suddenly deserted her; she felt shamed in so many ways that she could not even feel hostility. She didn’t want to be naked, didn’t want to be touched, and was afraid Davey would wake up. The shame she felt disarmed her. She didn’t want Jim to know he was making her sick, though he certainly knew she was not responsive. “We’ve got out of touch,” he said lightly, afterward. He said it nicely. They had got out of touch, but it was something he was sure could be remedied in a few days.

He slept but Patsy could not. She was too low. After a while she began to feel very strange. She didn’t want to stay in the bed with him. She went to the bathroom but didn’t turn on the light. She felt hurt, but she also felt sorry for Jim. It was all her own fault. But when she stood in front of the darkened mirror, in which she could only see flickers of her image, her mind began to spin. Confusion and hopelessness almost overcame her; she felt herself spiraling helplessly, felt that her marriage was over. She must take Davey and leave. She went to the door and looked out across the empty courtyard of the motel to see where she might go, or if anyone was there to help her or hold her back. No one was there. The moon swam in the empty pool. She went back into the room, still swirling in her mind. If she were dressed and packed she might leave, but she couldn’t turn on lights and dress and pack. Toys and baby clothes were strewn everywhere. She couldn’t go, but neither could she get back in bed. She felt terribly tight, as if she needed to cry, but her eyes were tearless and even the inside of her head felt dry.

She bent over Davey’s bed and made sure his pen was secure, and then slipped on her robe and tiptoed down the concrete steps to the courtyard. She pulled a pool chair back into the shadows and sat on it, her feet tucked under her. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. She chewed nervously on a fingernail, something she never did. Nothing was at an end; that was the awful thing. She didn’t know how to bring anything to an end. She remembered what Jim had said: They were out of touch. What could put them back? So many things would have to change before they could be put back; she didn’t know how to change them, nor did Jim. He didn’t even know what the things were, neither did she, not very clearly. Perhaps they had never been in touch—she didn’t want to think about it. She was grateful when a couple walked along the sidewalk. She could listen to their voices for a minute. It was Sonny and the girl with the marvelous tan. They didn’t see her. The girl had her arm around Sonny’s waist. They went into a room and Patsy was alone again. She felt such a dread of the future that it made her queasy.

Then she thought of Joe. It was not very late. She went to his door and his light was still on so she knocked. “Who goes?” he asked.

“Me.” It surprised her that her voice sounded normal and not like the voice of a madwoman.

Joe had been lying on his bed smoking, reading
Herzog
, and intermittently watching a Lana Turner movie. Patsy’s face startled him. She had been happy, chatty, and serene-looking during the afternoon. But her face was pale and she looked sick.

“What is it, honey?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said and shrugged hopelessly. “What were you reading?”

He seemed unable to remember, the sight of her face had thrown him off so. “Ah, Bellow,” he said. “More or less for professional reasons. We’re trying to decide if a movie can be made of this. Do you want a drink?”

“I don’t think so.” The brightness of the room depressed her. She felt it was a mistake to have come. “You were watching a movie,” she said.

Joe saw that the room depressed her. “I’ve seen it before,” he said. “You have a caged look. Let’s sit outside for a while.”

“I feel caged,” she said. “It’s no one’s fault, don’t sympathize with me. I made the cage myself and it’s not fair for me to have sympathy.”

“Let’s go outside, anyway.”

“I don’t want you to let me cry on your shoulder,” she said, but she followed him out. “You probably have problems of your own, and they’re probably worse than mine. You probably don’t deserve yours.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetheart,” he said in a voice so kind and concerned that it turned the dust in her head and bosom to water, to such a flood that she could not see where she was going. She stubbed her toe painfully on the leg of an iron table. Joe could not quite reach her and she almost stumbled into the pool, blind with tears. But she found a chair and sat in it crying, and he pulled one near and sat smoking and watching the pool. After a while he fumbled in his pocket but found no handkerchief.

“That’s me,” he said. “I was never a ladies’ man, as you can see. Always poorly equipped, never have a handkerchief, always on the wrong side of whoever I’m with when there’s a door to be opened.”

Patsy wanted to chide him but her throat was not in operation. She kept crying.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t fall in the pool,” he said. “I would have leapt in after you and we might both have drowned. I always see black humor in these situations.”

“Do you mind if I talk while you cry?” he asked a little later.

“No, but I’m stopping.” She was, but her voice remained unsteady.

“It would be nice if it were an ocean instead of a swimming pool,” Joe said. “Primordial emotions sort of go with the ocean.”

“It wasn’t so primordial,” Patsy said. “I don’t know what it was. I’m going to look awful in the morning.

“I broke my toenail,” she added unhappily. “You sounded so sympathetic you started me crying.”

“Well, I’m naturally on your side, even if I don’t know who the battle’s with. Cheer up a little.”

“Please get me a Coke. My stomach’s unsettled and I think my toenail’s bleeding.”

She sipped the Coke while he went to his room and got a drink and came back. He was reticent—almost too reticent. Patsy found herself hoping he would ask questions. If he would, she might find answers to them. She thought of telling him that she had a lover, but, as with Emma, she couldn’t form the sentence that would expose her. “I guess something’s gone terribly wrong in my life,” she said finally, but even that sounded pretentious. She had ceased feeling so bad. Thin white clouds were passing overhead, rapid, lovely in the dark sky. The sense of constriction left her.

“You were happily married,” she said. “You told me so. How did it happen? Or maybe you don’t want me asking.”

“I wouldn’t mind telling you if I knew,” he said bemusedly. “As near as I can remember it was mostly luck. I tend to be simplistic about these things. We met by accident and happened to get on beautifully.”

“You’re not much help,” she said. “Except as a shoulder to cry in the vicinity of. Tell me the secret of it all, so I can be happy.”

“You know me,” he said. “Besides being simple-minded I’m a lecher. Maybe lechery is the secret.”

“No, no, no,” Patsy said. “Don’t say that. You’ll drive me to despair. Sex is not supposed to be overemphasized in marriage any more. What about stability and sharing duties and all that?”

“I’ve never known two people to keep one another happy by taking turns dishwashing,” he said, as if that were the end of that.

Patsy felt very discouraged. Her legs felt heavy as stone. Joe noticed and did his best.

“Don’t be so sad,” he said. “If it doesn’t work out with Jim it will work out with somebody else. You’re in splendid shape. Lots of good fellows around. For god’s sake, don’t mope. You’re too pretty to mope.”

She stood up. It occurred to her that Davey could have rolled out of his pen. “You don’t make me feel very dutiful,” she said, “but thanks for being on my side.”

“It’s no accomplishment. Leaving tomorrow?”

“So far as I know.” When she reached the second level he was still standing by the pool, and she waved.

Jim was awake when she stepped into the room. His bed light was on. He looked at her hostilely and she felt discovered—seen through.

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“Been to see your friendly marriage counselor?” he asked.

“I was just talking to Joe awhile. Don’t pick a fight now, please. Please don’t.”

“Why were you talking to him at this hour?”

“I felt wretched. It isn’t so late.”

“It isn’t my fault you felt wretched,” Jim said. “You didn’t have to. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t accuse you. I can feel wretched on my own hook, can’t I? I know it was my fault.”

“You think it’s my fault, though.”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Please don’t be angry with me now, Jim.”

“Technically I didn’t do anything wrong but I still lack some sort of generosity of spirit or something so that you become wretched when I touch you, right?”

“Well, you’re lacking it right now,” she said with a flicker of vehemence. “I asked you not to pick a fight. I’d like to try and go to sleep.”

“I’m not keeping you awake,” he said, flicking off the light. “Where I wish you’d go is to a psychiatrist. Maybe we could find out what’s wrong with you sexually.”

Patsy had been about to get in bed, but she stopped. “Listen,” she said. “Shut up. I know I wasn’t any barrel of fun tonight but there’s nothing wrong with me sexually. I can not be in the mood. You were out of the mood for six goddamn months, until you happened to be in that whorehouse in Richmond. So maybe I got cut off, I don’t know. You just be careful what you say to me.”

“Big deal,” Jim said. “What will you do, run back down and cry in Joe’s arms? I know we were cut off. I was trying my best to turn us back on.”

“You just tried on the wrong night,” she said. “If you’ll forget it and shut up, it will be okay. I didn’t do anything so bad, either. I just got blue and went and sat by the pool awhile.

“I do not need a psychiatrist,” she added flatly.

“Well, okay,” he said. “Maybe you need a gynecologist, I don’t know. I just know we need something.”