On Keeping Women (17 page)

Last year’s parties—what’s happened to her confidence? Town-parties. They skim by her. Would the face in the water be a woman’s or a man’s?

There’s Bob. Up on the columned front porch, which is lit like a stage. Or a cafe. Without his headphones, he looks less like a frog. Having work makes him look younger. Bob has respectable work tonight; Bob’s a host. Bob’s receiving, at the top of the porch steps. In black-tie. No sign of Bets.

“There,” James says, winded. A crowd is massed between them and the steps.

Up there in the spotlight, Bob has an arm flung around a shorter man in black-tie also—from the outline of both heads, a brother. As intros are made, the two men rock slightly, side by side. Bob makes everything an act; it occupies. All the while his rueful, molasses-brown stare admits to you, like a prep-school boy treading the boards in a varsity show, “
I’m
no professional.”

“Where do you suppose Bets is?” she murmurs. She’ll be the attraction. Once we greet Bob.

The man of a pair coming back down from the steps answers her. “The rival faction is at the pool.” He and his partner are clearly on their way.

Up on the porch, there’s a girl with Bob and the brother, half turned from the crowd below. Is she the one James has come with? Long brown hair, not a good figure, which is odd for James, though her dress is backless. She’s talking to several men, as James’s girls usually are. She’s not black.

“Press on, Sis.”

Politely, everybody is. Her foot gets on the first rung. “I was over here this afternoon. Bob was in the kitchen in a smoking-jacket, stirring a huge pot of soup.” The caterer’s men were working around him, stony-faced. Arthur the butler had gone to have his hair dyed. “Party or no party,” Bob’d said, ladling a fine stream on the air “—my kids get their soup.” When the men went out of the room, he said “Those apes.”

Everybody knows Bob’s politics. All hirelings—the whole conspiratorial class—are the enemy. Except for the ones who live in his house to give it character. And love him like relatives. When he meets any of the others he’s butter in their hands, and ferociously glaring, slips them large tips.

At her elbow, a woman says “What they’ve done here. Isn’t it unbelievable?”

“Unbelievable,” she murmurs back. Glad that she’s at last in the swing of it… What have they done?

James’s nose is up, sniffing.

“Why do all parties smell the same?”

He shrugs. “Human sweat. And bear grease. You should smell them in the Orient.”

He thinks she never will. Unless Ray does get into public health. She wishes—that she were wishing for Ray. And recognizes that part of the party feeling. What’s it like to go with the wished-for one, to have that girlish conception fulfilled, at your side? Probably, then you stay at home.

Down below the steps, the crowd is moving freely.

People stammer in and out of the dark, ready for antics already anticipated in the dressingroom. Knowing that for the next six hours or more they’ll stand so, chat thus, do that, in the framework that is part social confirmation—what a going concern we humans are!—part social surprise. In a unisex cabana. A party was all recognition. If it worked.

What if one could know all the artificial frameworks and rituals well beforehand, of a party, of a country even—and then move? Were societies where this was admitted more enjoyable? The exhaustion of rebellion, the waste of it, she thinks, is that so much energy is spent against the rituals, the framework—while the vital energies and justices escape. Was this why so many people of good will couldn’t be bothered? Passivity had its points.

Perhaps she’ll write an essay on parties. And send it to Plaut. Labeled “For My Incomplete.”

They go up another step, the next-to-last. “Is that her, James?”

“Who?”

The girl’s facing their way now. If she were pretty, her skin would be called “porcelain.” But as she’s plain, her eyes, nostrils and gums are merely outlined in thin, animal-pink.

“Your friend.”

“Her? No, I suspect that’s the Kellihy sister.” James says this through his teeth; they’re very near. One couple ahead of them now. Step lively. The last rung.

“Not a her, anyway, dope—” James says in his normal voice. “A him.” And they are up. “Ah, how do you do. How do you do, Mr. Kellihy.”

Her heart pounds. Can it be Ray—whom James has brought back here? And they are going to take her to court.

Bob never introduces. Present people are present friends. But he cases her pridefully; he likes his neighbors to shine when there are town-guests; she’ll do. And gets on to his usual eager burble. “Have you seen Bets?”

No worry in it; somebody always knows where Bets is. The wonder starts when you see her.

Bob leans close. He’s pink with sweat. “Bets and Violet were in the attic all afternoon; you shoulda joined them. Trying on each other’s jewelry. Drunk as coots.” He’s gleeful. A dirty story is what he’s telling them. Of history before it happens. “I finally hadda go up there, to break it up. ‘Steal what you want, Bets,’ I said. ‘And get the hell downstairs.’”

“Violet does better here. Than when she worked for us,” the one who must be the brother says, smiling. “Mother doesn’t like jewelry.” He has an endearing gap between his two upper front teeth. “Hallo. I’m brother Sean.”

“Yah, he’s my Irish one.” Bob’s proud.

“Come on, Sean,” the longhaired girl says, “—Violet never worked. When I was a kid, she used to pay a neighbor’s boy—remember Slouchy Fitzgerald?—to give me my bath … Excuse me. I’m Bob’s sister.”

“But that’s why I came over, Bob,” Lexie says. “This afternoon. I forgot to tell you. She’s been paying my Royal. To bathe your Dodo. Fifty-cent pieces. He has a cupboardful.”

“So that’s where my Kennedy collection goes.” Bob goggles at James. “Smart boy, your nephew. I better watch my Dodo. She’s only three.”

Somebody buttonholes Bob. He turns aside.

“And a ringer for Bets,” his sister says, glancing at the brother. “Slouch only got dimes.”

“I told Mother she ought to pension off Arthur and Violet, instead of passing them along,” Sean says, “She tried to give me Arthur. In a three-room flat.”

He seems proud that his flat is modest. And is that philosophy for you? Or for a Kellihy?

“Sean, I’m ashamed of you,” his sister says. “Arthur brought you up.”

The two Kellihys laugh. So this is the clan never seen. Or part of it.

“Bob reveres you,” Lexie bursts out to Sean. “You’re his archangel.”

He shrugs. “Because I’m a philosopher.”

“No. Because you work.”

The sister turns, stares.

They see her now. They hadn’t yet.

Bob returns.

“Where
is
Arthur?” The sister’s wistful, almost.

“You’ll catch him, Sis. When you change into a suit.”

“The pool’s beautiful, Bob,” Sean says. “But that huge high-slide thing into the middle of it … and all that other, er—equipment. Almost a gymnasium.”

“Not to worry. Rented,” Bob’s hands grope at his sides. For the telephones that wire him to the world, or release him from it. Working is hard work.

“A gym in Gomorrah,” his sister says.

Lexie stares at her. She may be an intellectual.

“And Sodom.” A man ambles out the central doorway of the house, his blond head bent to examine the front of his black swimming-trunks. On which a snarling tiger is printed, jaws wide. “Jesus. We don’t get these in Westchester.” He straightens. “Oh there you are, James. See you’ve met them all, eh?” He hitches the trunks. “I disown these, though, I’m just the family friend.”

And the mutual one. Her dress is draining to her feet.

Westchester hasn’t been that good for Kevin Sheridan. He’s put on the uneasy, whitish weight of the man who gives up drink for food. And that double-amber bar-room tongue of his—for home truth? “We-ell, Lexie-love. James said you lived up here … And very becoming to you, too.”

The Kellihys have turned to other customers.

She wheels around to smack James across his face. But James, backing in, waving benignantly, escapes through the door.

She smoothes her hair, instead. “It’s always a farce, over here.”

“Tolerably. But you—my God, Lexie.”

“A woman can never be thin enough.”

“Rats. You’ve waked up, haven’t you.”

The corners of his mouth always drew her. Firmer than the rest of him—except for that cock. It’s still good to have exchanged sexual pleasure with a partner who had given you confidence. Would it please Kevin though, to learn that his understanding is still the tiger she recalls best?

She peers into the house-doorway, down the long center-hall which opens out onto the back.

“No, he’ll keep off now. I made him bring me, you know.”

“He tell you I was alone? Etcetera?”

“I’ve known that for the past three months. He comes in the bar, you know. Always did. That’s where I met him. During the time you and I were on, he—”

Stayed away. Tactfully. Yes, that would be James.

“So you know the Kellihys. You never said.”

“Went to school with Sean. Sometimes run into him. When I’m in town.” His eyebrows lift. The pock beneath one is from a dogbite as a boy. Other marks are new—natural. “So I never said.”

“Anything.” She doesn’t even know the names of his kids.

They stare.

And then you—stayed away. She won’t say it, because she no longer feels it—that whole scenario. Desertions on street-corners, in houses, lovenests—the whole psychic-dependence story of the woman who’s left. To plead publicly, or mourn secretly—her scenario.

“I won’t offer excuses,” he says. “There were some. Homely ones.”

“How you use words. I learned a lot.”

“Not from me, baby. You had it before.”

“You squander words. I—hang onto them.”

“Irish cadence, that’s all. My brother makes poetry of it.”

“And you—.” She will say it. For the sake of all the scenarios that bar must have been witness to. “Made love with it.”

“We’re using the past tense,” he said. “Aren’t we. Both of us.”

But the breath of the party, that childish vanilla, is still blowing. The string trio is terrible. People are wandering toward it anyway.

“Why’d you come?”

“James keeps talking about you, you know. Talking you up. With a sort of pride. Noticed that even before I met you. He had me wanting to. And I wasn’t disappointed.”

“Pride?
James
?”

“You seem to be totally unaware. That you’re one of those persons … whom people keep in view.”

“Me? Whatever for?”

“I think it’s because you’re waiting,” he said. “With an energy we can all feel. And watching. Not only us.”

That part of it’s not strange. She knows he’s right. In adolescence how scared she had been of it. And never told. Never yet. Say it to him. You can say it to him.

“I watch the double spectacle of myself, that’s all.”

“There you go.”

“You didn’t come up here for that, surely.”

“Oh I was fond of you … Though my fondness doesn’t reach far.”

His sense of his own limitations is as acute as a woman’s; can this be what he seeks us out for, one after the other, searching for that tenderest sexual spot as other men go for our mounds? An overnight Don Juan, next morning nursing his maleness to size again, in the veiny morning of the hangover bar?

“Oh I explained it to myself fine—why you left, Kevin.”

“Tell me.”

This is called flirting. When you interest a man with himself. He had done the same for her, hadn’t he—interested her in herself? “I told myself the landlord had served you a writ, for taking women in adultery. Or you’d found your eldest and most teenage son kneeling outside the door, blubbering ‘Poppa, come home to us.’ Or best of all, your wife had the clap. And you didn’t want to give me it.”

He takes her left hand with his left one. “And you don’t really want to know why?”

“Oh I know that. Your only reason was—you do it all the time.” And go home to Westchester, which is the boon place, the safe one. Where you keep your “old lady.” That canny, despairing, blond old neophyte—I saw her. Who pretends she’s asserting herself with you. Every time.

She takes his right hand with hers, so that their joined hands form the box with which old folk-dances begin—“People use sex like money, don’t they?”—and they start to dance, to the terrible string band.

He tightens his arm around her waist, drawing her to him, closing the square of space between them. “You don’t ask a dollar-bill where it comes from, do you? Maybe you should.”

We’re not going to. Across the blended, musical grass, James waves at them—still alone, but moving briskly.

“My brother, the pimp.” And I’m drunk already. With money in my pocket for more drink.

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Okay, the
guilty
pimp.”

Never trust what you say at a party.” Kevin grips her lightly. “Or what you hear. That band’s going to have dreadful guilts, tomorrow morning.”

They begin to waltz, as other couples are. It’s the only thing to do.

Beyond them, still others are shaking themselves ragtime, out of the fringe of the dancers, toward the pool.

His naked chest must find her dress scratchy. A woman’s thoughts texture always toward kindness. Toward the putative child. I want to jump out of that skin. Like a female slave, jumping out of the chariot taking her where she herself wants to go?

At the thought of the tiger on his shorts, she begins to laugh. With her head on his chest, in direct radial with her own tiger further down, his head bent to hers, they begin circling toward the pit of themselves. Behind them, faint, faint, she hears the squelchy clop-clop that beach sandals make against the heel—a pair of these, following them for a time. Not James. Many people must be wearing them.

From the porch above the dancers Bob calls out. “
Have
you seen Bets?”

When the searchlights go on, Bob’s the only one not at the pool, though nobody says. The two beams rove the horizon from a setup among some trees at the top of a ridge, their rays intersecting heavenwards and flanging down, one into the river, one into the hill—only to reappear. All faces strain upward to watch the moving fingers write—and say nothing. She sees dozens she knows. She strains toward them, and with them.