The Stories of Richard Bausch (39 page)

Honeymoon night, Howard
locked the motel room door, flopped down on the bed and, clasping his hands behind his head, regarded her for a moment. He was drunk. They were both drunk. They had come from the Starlight Room, where they had danced and had too much champagne. They had charmed the desk clerk, earlier, with their teasing and their radiant, happy faces. The desk clerk was a woman in her mid-fifties, who claimed a happy, romantic marriage herself.

“Thirty-five years and two months,” she’d said, beaming.

“Not even thirty-five hours,” Howard had said. His face when he was excited looked just like a little boy’s. “But it’s not Lisa’s first one.”

“No,” Lisa said, embarrassed. “I was married before.”

“Well, it’s this one that counts,” the desk clerk had said.

Lisa, twenty-five years old, three years older than her new husband, had felt vaguely sorry to have the woman know this rather intimate detail about her past. She was nervous about it: it felt like something that wasn’t cleared
up, quite, though she hadn’t seen Dorsey in at least two years—hadn’t seen him in person, that is. He had called that once, and she’d told Howard about it. She’d complained to Howard about it, and even so had felt weirdly as if she were telling lies to him. Many times over the weeks of her going with Howard she’d wished the first marriage had never happened, for all her talk with her friends at work about what an experience it was, being married to a rock-’n’-roll singer and traveling around the country in that miserable van, with no air-conditioning and no windows.

Somehow she’d kept her sense of humor about the whole bad three years.

And tonight she’d made Howard laugh, talking about being on the road, traipsing from one motel to another and riding all those miles in a bus with people she wouldn’t cross the sidewalk to see; it was astonishing how quickly dislikes and tensions came out in those circumstances. You just went from place to place and smiled and performed and shook hands and hung around and you hated everybody you were with most of the time, and they hated you back. It was worse, and somehow more intimate, than hatred between family members because for one thing you didn’t hold back the stuff that scraped the raw places; you didn’t feel compelled to keep from hitting someone in the sweet spot, as she liked to call it. You just went ahead and hit somebody’s weakest point, and you kept hitting it until you drew blood. She’d kept on about it because he was staring at her with his boy’s eyes, dreamy and half drunk, and finally they were both laughing, both potted, feeling goofy and special and romantic, like the couple in the happy end of a movie, walking arm in arm down the long corridor of the motel to their room. They had come stumbling in, still holding on to each other, and finally Howard had lurched toward the bed and dropped there.

Where he now crossed his ankles and smiled at her, murmuring, “So.”

She said, “So.”

“Nobody knows where we are.” “Right,” she said.

“We’re—” he made a broad gesture. “Hidden away.”

“Hidden away,” she said.

“Just the two of us.”

“Just us, right.”

“Strip,” he said.

She looked at him, looked into his innocent, ice blue eyes.

“Want to play a game?”

“A game,” she said.

“Let’s play charades.”

“Okay.”

“You start,” he said. “No, you start.”

“I’m really sick of starting all the time,” he said. “I start the car and I start—” he seemed confused. “The car.”

They laughed.

He got up and went to the bathroom door. “I know—wait a minute. I’ll come out and you tell me who I am.”

She waited. He staggered through the door. He was a very funny, very good-natured young man. It was what she loved about him.

“Here I come,” he sang.

She sang back, “I’m ready when you are.”

When he danced out of the bathroom, he lost his balance and stumbled onto the bed. As he bounced there, she laughed, holding her sides and leaning against the door.

“One more time,” he said, then paused and put one finger over his lips. “Shhhhh. It’s necessary to be very quiet.”

She said, “Right. Shhhh.”

“I don’t guess you could tell who it was from the first time.”

She shook her head. She was laughing too hard to speak.

“Sure?”

“Stumbly?” she said. “Stumbly.”

“Isn’t that one of the Seven Dwarfs?”

“Stumbly,” he said, looking around. He seemed out of breath, but of course it was the champagne. “Hey, how do I know? I never even met Sleeping Beauty.”

“Snow White,” she said.

He said, “Right,” and threw himself onto the bed, bouncing again, lying flat on his back with his legs and arms outspread. She let herself slide down
against the door, and her dizziness felt good, as though she were floating in deep space, held up by clouds.

He’d come off the bed. “Okay, let’s try again.”

“Snow White,” she said.

He laughed. “Now watch. You’ll know who it is.”

Again he went into the bathroom.

“I’m ready,” she said.

He peeked out at her, held one finger to his lips again. “Shhhh.”

“Shhhh,” she said.

Once more he was gone. She made herself comfortable against the door, letting her legs out and folding her arms. It seemed to her now that in all the three years with Dorsey she had never had such a lighthearted time. Everything with Dorsey had been freighted with his drive to make it big, his determination to live out some daydream he’d had when he was thirteen. Married to him, traveling with him, watching him pretend to be single and listening to him complain at night about bad bookings, stupid sidemen, the road, and the teen hops where kids asked over and over for the cheap radio stuff—living with all this, she had never felt the kind of uncomplicated pleasure-in-the-moment that she had experienced from the beginning with Howard, who was quite unlike Dorsey in all the important ways. Oddly enough, for all Dorsey’s rock-band outrageousness and all his talk of personal freedom, she felt much less constrained around Howard, who was a plumber’s apprentice and had no musical or artistic talent whatsoever. From the beginning, she’d felt comfortable with him, as though he were a younger brother she’d grown up with. The fact that he
was
younger wasn’t as important, finally, as the fact that he made her feel like laughing all the time, and was wonderfully devoid of the kinds of anxiety that always plagued Dorsey. Worries about health, about the world situation, the environment, the future. The trouble, finally, was that Dorsey had never learned how to have fun, how to let go and just see what happened.

Dorsey would never have allowed this, for instance, getting tight and being a sort of spectacle to the other guests at the hotel. She remembered that Howard had stopped someone in the hall—a squat-looking, balding man in a blue bathing suit with a towel wrapped around his neck and shower clogs under one arm—and, with a voice soaked in portent, announced that all the moons were unfavorable. Somehow he’d managed it
with such good-natured goofiness that the man had simply smiled and walked on.

“Hey,” She said
now. “What’re you doing in there?”

“I’m transforming,” he said. “You won’t believe it.”

“I’m getting sleepy.”

“Guess who this is,” he said.

“I’m waiting.”

When he came out this time, he had removed his shirt, and his shoes and socks. He came slowly, bending down to peer in all directions, looking very suspicious and wary. “Well?” he said, barely able to keep his feet.

“I don’t know. Not Stumbly?”

“No,” he said. “Look close.” And he paraded past her again.

“God, I can’t get it.”

“Groucho. Ever see him walk? Groucho Marx. Look.”

“Oh.”

“Okay,” he said, smiling, straightening with exaggerated dignity. “I’d like to see you try it.”

“I want to see you do Stumbly again.”

“Hey,” he said. “You think your mother likes me as much as she liked old Dorsey?”

“Better,” she said.

“Can’t understand how a lady could like somebody like that.”

“She liked his hands,” Lisa said. “Isn’t that silly? I think that’s just so silly. She liked his beautiful hands.”

“Do I have beautiful hands?” he wanted to know.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Okay. Try this one.” He lurched into the bathroom again.

“Howard?” she said. “My mother likes you a lot.”

“She thinks you’re robbing the cradle.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

“True.”

“That’s just dumb. If anything, she’s jealous.”

“Of my hands?”

“I think she likes your tush, in fact.”

“Well, that’s nice to know, anyway.”

She said, “Hey, what’s taking so long?”

He said, “Just wait.”

“I’m getting dizzy and sleepy.”

“Wait.”

When he appeared again, he had crossed his eyes and was clutching an imaginary something to his chest. She laughed. “Harpo.”

“No.”

“Stumbly.”

“There’s no such thing as Stumbly.”

“Okay,” she said, laughing, delighting in him. “Who then?”

“How could you say Harpo?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Harpo,” he said. “Jeez.”

“All right, who is it, then?”

“It’s my uncle Mark.”

“I never met your uncle Mark.”

“Never met Stumbly, either.”

She laughed again. “You win.”

“No,” he said. “Who’s this?” And he went back into the bathroom.

She waited, a little impatiently now. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to get too sleepy. In fact, there was a heavy, buzzing sensation in her ears when she closed her eyes.

“Boo,” he said. He had mussed his hair and made it stand on end, and he was wearing his shirt like a cape around his neck. He went through the pantomime motions of lighting a cigarette, and then she saw that he meant her to understand it was dope, not tobacco. He fake-puffed, rolled his eyes, breathed with a thick, throaty rasping, and held his index finger and thumb in the pose of passing a joint. “Well?” he said.

“I’m thinking.”

“This is no ordinary cigarette.”

“I can’t think of his name. The Supreme Court guy.”

“Wrong,” he said, smoothing his hair down. He went back into the bathroom, but then leaned out, holding on to the frame, and smiled at her. “You know what you get when you cross a doctor with a ground hog?”

“A court date,” she said, laughing.

“Somebody told you,” he said.

“Is that
it?”

“Six more weeks of golf,” he said.

“I don’t get it. Tell me another one.”

“You know what you get if you mix rock ‘n’ roll and Dorsey?” His eyebrows went up. He seemed to be taking great delight in the question. “You get stumbly.”

“Howard,” she said.

He disappeared into the bathroom again.

“Hey,” she called, getting to her feet. This time he leaned out the door, bending low, so that he was looking at her from a horizontal angle. He tipped an imaginary hat and said, “You slept with Dorsey before you got married, huh. That’s the stumbly truth, sort of.”

“Stop talking about Dorsey,” she said. “Stop that.”

He grinned at her. “Wouldn’t be surprised if you went out and met him while we were engaged. I mean, you know. Talking to him on the phone and stuff. You and old Dorsey maybe decided to play a little for old time’s sake. A little stumbly on the side?”

“What?” she said to him. “What?”

He lifted his chin slightly, as if to challenge her.

“Look,” she said, “This isn’t funny. I know you don’t mean it but it’s not in the least bit amusing.”

He had disappeared past the frame.

“Howard,” she said.

Now he let himself fall out of the frame, catching himself at the last possible second with one hand. Again, he tipped an imaginary hat. “Dorsey has beautiful hands, and you made some rock ‘n’ roll behind my back.”

“Howard, stop this.”

He was laughing; he had pulled himself up and was out of sight again. She moved toward the bed, so that she could see into where he was. But now he came out, walking unsteadily, carrying his folded shirt and pants.

“Howard,” she said.

He turned to her, his face an impassive, confident mask. “Wait,” he said.

“Howard, say you’re sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” he said.

“I mean it,” she told him.

He went to the bed and dropped down on it again, clasped his hands
behind his head, and seemed to wait for her to speak. But he spoke first. “Strip.”

“What?”

“Go ahead. Strip for me.”

She said nothing.

“Come on. Dance—turn me on a little.”

“Look,” she said.

“Hey—look,” he said. “I mean it. I really want you to.” His face was bright and innocent-looking and friendly, as if he were a child asking for candy. She had a moment of doubting that she could have heard everything quite exactly.

“Honey,” she said. “You’re teasing me.”

He crossed his legs. “I’m not teasing—come on, this is our honeymoon, right? I’ve been waiting for this.”

“You—” she began.

“Look, what’s the situation here,” he said. “You’re not like this, Howard, now stop it.” “Well,” he said. “Maybe I am teasing.”

“Don’t tease like that anymore,” she told him. “I don’t like it.”

“Aren’t you drunk?” he said. He was lying there staring at her. “Didn’t you strip for Dorsey?”

She turned, started fumbling with the door. “Hey,” he said.

She couldn’t get the door to work; at some point she’d put the chain on. He got off the bed and came up behind her. She was crying. He wrapped his arms around her, was holding her, kissing the back of her neck. “Let go of me,” she said.

“Don’t be mad.”

“Let go of me, Howard.”

He stepped back. She pulled the hair away from her face, feeling sour now—sodden and dizzy and alone. She was leaning against the door, crying, and he simply stood there with that open-faced boy’s expression, staring at her. “Hey,” he said. “I was just teasing you.”

“Teasing,” she said. “Teasing. Right. Jesus Christ.”

“I was teasing. Didn’t you know I was teasing?”

She looked at him.