Victory Over Japan (14 page)

Lenny got up from the sand and walked across the
beach toward the water. “Come on, Lenny,” King called. “There's room for one more. Come on over.” Lenny stepped into the
water, it covered his ankles, it covered his knees. His feet were sinking down into the sand. It was quicksand. He fell forward into the water. He sank
to the bottom of the little shallow river. He took hold of a root with his hand. He was a fish. He, Lenny Weiss, could turn himself into a fish. He
could breathe in water.

“He's gone,” Roxanne said. “He hasn't come up. He's disappeared.”
She dove from the swing and pulled through the water until she found him. She tore his hands loose from the plant and dragged him to the surface. King
was beside her. Between them they dragged Lenny back to the beach and began to work on him. “There weren't enough mushrooms in that stuff to
get a robin off,” Roxanne said. “And now we're going to jail for murder.”

“Hold his legs,” King
said. “Hold his legs up. Goddamn you, Lenny, start breathing. Lenny, don't you dare die on me. Goddammit, start breathing, do you hear me.
Breathe.” Then King grabbed him around the chest and pushed and manhandled Lenny's skinny body until a little river of water ran out of his
mouth and the lungs filled back up with air. King took him in his arms, cradling him into his body like a child. “Oh, Lenny, you baby, you angel,
you old trooper you, good old Lenny, good old Uncle Lenny.”

“Stop them, King,” he said. “You've got
to stop them. Call the sheriff, will you. Get the sheriff down here. Can't you make them stop. They're sitting on the cypress knees. They
let the lion peepee on the beach. Stop them, you've got to stop them, King. It's up to you.”

“They're
leaving now,” King said. “They're all going home to go to bed.”

“That's right,” Roxanne
said. “It's bedtime. They're all going home.”

“Why did you do it to me?” Lenny said. “Why
did you give it to me, King? What did I do to deserve it? What did I ever do to you?”

“Nothing, baby. You didn't
do a thing and we didn't give you anything. It's just the moon and the wine. It's just the way it is.”

“What did you do to me?” Lenny said. “What did you put in that paella?”

“There's
nothing in the paella, Lenny,” Roxanne said. “And there's no one on the beach. They've all gone home to bed like good little
dreams.”

“What's going on?” Ernest said. He'd been hauling in his trot line around the bend and heard
the commotion. He pulled his skiff up on the beach and came walking over. He was half drunk on Dixie beer. His shoulders had rounded down into his
chest. He was into his nighttime mode. “What's happening?”

“Oh, nothing,” King said. “Lenny had
too much wine and fell in the river. Come on, take his other side. Help me get him up to the house. We've got to put him to bed.”

They pulled Lenny along between them. Up onto the porch and into his room. They tucked him into bed and left a small light burning on the
dresser.

“Can't ever tell what's going to happen next,” Ernest said. “Well, all's well that
ends well, as my granddaddy always said.”

“Are you hungry?” Roxanne said. “We've got some homemade
bread and some paella. Come on in the kitchen and have a bite to eat.”

“Ernest is the poacher,” King said, taking
her by the arm. “We don't invite Ernest in for food, do we Ernest? Come on, let's be hanging it up for the night. I want to get some
sleep.”

“Well, I wouldn't mind a bite if you've got enough,” Ernest said.

“Not tonight,” King said. He took Ernest by the arm and led him out onto the porch and down the steps to the yard.
“Good night, old buddy,” he said. “See you in the morning. Guard the beach.”

Lenny rolled his legs up
against his chest. His head sank down into the soft down pillow. He picked up his broom and began to sweep. The beach went on forever. It was going to
take all night. If he worked all night as hard as he could he could erase the footsteps before Mother came. He made a little pattern, starting at the
tree line each time, sweeping smooth paths down to the water. By morning it would all be clean again. By morning it would be like new.

IT is fall again, or what passes for fall in Alexandria. Sultry October days that drift into a brief wet winter without even changing
the leaves on the trees.

I sit here two blocks from Fanny's house, gazing out my window. I sit here nearly every afternoon,
listening to jazz on the radio, waiting for Duncan to come home and ruin my day. And two blocks away his revered ideal idol, Fanny's husband,
Gabe, Gabe Yellin, the gorgeous ageless archconservative, by which means he means with Duncan's help to conserve whatever made and keeps him a
millionaire, Greedy Gabe, as Fanny calls him, her stormtrooper, lugs his briefcase up her stairs and hands her the pills.

And no
one knows and no one wants to know and no one wants to talk about it anymore. There is nothing anyone can do, they say. No one can help her unless she
helps herself. It's nice of you to be concerned, Lilly. It's nice of you to care. It's nice of you to visit her.

“Twin beds,” Fanny is saying. “Twin beds all over the house. Darling, when I first met those people, when Gabe took me
to visit them, I thought they must be real old. I didn't know married people slept in twin beds. I thought to myself, what is the matter with
these people?”

She is talking about my in-laws. That's what Fanny and I do when I visit. We say terrible things about
my in-laws and her in-laws and my husband and her husband and Yellin-Kase, the water heater factory that makes us all that dough. Yellin-Kase, The
World's Largest Manufacturer Of Water Heaters.

At the moment Fanny and I are working over my mother-in-law. “I kept
looking around the house for evidence of life,” she is saying. “For something that wasn't put away. It was all put away. It was all in
cabinets. Even the pillows had these plastic covers. We spent the night, and I said, Gabe, can I take the cover off the pillow while I sleep? Of course,
that was the beginning, when they had just begun the factory. When it was all a dream. But she had money, your mother-in-law. Even then. But it was put
away. Everything was put away.”

“Look at her sons,” I say. “Donny has ulcers, Jerry has asthma and
Duncan's practically impotent. The perfect mother. They kiss without touching. I swear they do. I never saw such armor.”

“Hush,” Fanny says. “You know this room is bugged.” She laughs her wonderful laugh, wishing it really were.

“I forgot,” I say in a whisper, laughing back into her beautiful ruined face, hypnotized by her great black eyes, her musical
voice, forgetting she is crazy, forgetting I am crazy to be there.

I am seated on a soft flowered chair, my feet propped up on her
bed. I have been for a walk in the park and stopped by for a cup of chicory coffee and cookies from the tall glass jars on the nightstand. Who else but
Fanny keeps Oreos and Lorna Doones and Hershey's Kisses out in the open for anyone to see? Usually I do not sit in the chair. Usually I get my
cookies and jump right into bed, kiss her soft welcoming cheeks, hold her in my arms. But today the bed is full of dogs. There are six or seven of them,
spaniels and terriers and Irish setters.

“Goddamn these dogs,” I say. One of them is licking me.

“Bribe them,” she says. “They can be bribed.” I take dog biscuits from the package she hands me and lead them out
into the hall.

“Go for a walk with me,” I say, returning to the room. “It's a glorious day. You can't
afford to miss this day.”

“I can see it,” she says. “It's outside the windows. I've been
watching it.”

“Aren't you ever going to leave the room again?”

“Oh, I go down to
dinner. I go nearly every evening. It's the new game. We have dinner. Then we have dessert.”

“Who cooks
now?”

“Gabe does. Since his cook died.” Everything is his with Fanny. His house, his children, his dogs, his
factory, his game. Only the room is hers. “Or we send out for things. It doesn't matter. It's all right, Lilly. I know what I'm
doing.”

“You don't know what you're doing.” I stand up, starting to walk around the room. “You
can't take those pills without seeing a psychiatrist.”

“He goes for me. I told you all about it. I told Treadway
that if he liked me so much he could just come over here and see me. I was tired of going over there. Get dressed. Get in the car. Go see Treadway. Come
back home.” She laughed, falling back against the pillows. “Now Gabe goes. They're crazy about each other. They give each other
things. Gabe gives him money and he gives Gabe pills.” She looked away.

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to make
you unhappy. I know what you're afraid of. I just don't like the idea of you staying here forever taking those pills….”

“They'll lock me up again if I don't take them.”

“They can't lock you up unless
you let them. There's a new law. Oh, God, Fanny, why won't you believe me? Or go to a good psychiatrist and believe him. There are good
psychiatrists. They aren't all like Treadway. They don't lock people up anymore.”

“You don't
understand,” she says. “You just don't understand.”

I am staring at the open drawer of the nightstand. The
drawer is always open, the bottles are always there for us to see, Elavil and Stelazine and lithium. Her little maids, she calls them. They travel day
and night around her bloodstream, destroying the muscles, doing God knows what to the liver and kidney and spleen, to the will and desire and ambition
and rage. Not the intelligence. Her intelligence is beyond the reach of chemicals. Who knows? Perhaps she is right to believe this bed, these pills,
this childlike life are her only refuge.

“Oh, Fanny, I love you,” I say, knocking the dogs off the bed, for they have
come back in, cuddling up in her arms. This morning light is pouring in the tall windows of the famous room.

“I will save
you,” she says. “I will save you if I can. I cannot bear it if they have you too.”

It is Friday, the worst day
of my week. On Friday nights we dine with Duncan's family. Two black women cook all afternoon in the Kases' kitchen, making stuffed
artichokes and oyster soup and rack of lamb and au gratin potatoes and creamed spinach, setting the long table with finger bowls and heavy silver and
crystal wineglasses.

At six-thirty we assemble in the den, all the Kase sons and their wives. We talk about taxes and crime and
corruption and society people who are deadbeats or hippies or drunks. I do not speak of Mrs. Kase's sister's suicide. They do not speak of
my childlessness.

At seven one of the black women calls us to dinner and we file into the dining room and light the Sabbath
candles.

“I saw Fanny today,” I say. “She looks wonderful. She's the wisest person I've ever
known.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” my father-in-law says. “That's nice.”

“It's criminal what Gabe is doing to her,” I say. “I think all the time about reporting him to the police.”

“It's such a shame,” my mother-in-law says, not daring to tell me to shut up.

My father-in-
law sighs and attends to the lamb. Gabe is his business partner in the factory. My husband, Duncan, is third in command, the golden boy, the one they
hope can hold it all together. They think of themselves as being in a state of siege, from the government and its meddling, from the labor unions'
constant attempts to unionize the plant, from competitors in other states and foreign countries. It is hard staying rich. At any moment it could all
fall apart. Meanwhile, their alliance is all that holds it together.

“She must have been beautiful when she was young,”
I say. “The paintings De Laureal did of her are wonderful. She put them back up. Did I tell you that?”

“That's nice,” Mrs. Kase says. “It's such a shame what Gabe's been through.”

“She's the one to pity,” I say. “She might have been a great artist. She's the one to feel sorry
for.”

Duncan coughs, gets up, and starts pouring the Bordeaux. His mother and father exchange a long look.

“What in the world does Fanny say to Lilly?” the Yellins ask each other.

“What on earth is Lilly
telling Fanny?” the Kases sigh.

“You are next,”
Fanny said to me the night we met. “Come to see
me. Come right away.
I will save you if I can. You have to come to see me.”

That was the night I met her, a New
Year's Eve, the year I married Duncan for his money and came to live in Alexandria. I am from Monroe. My parents are schoolteachers. I thought I
would have a more exotic life. I was raised to worship money. I was raised to get money any way I could. I met Duncan at Tulane. He couldn't even
ask me to marry him without asking his parents' permission. I married him in spite of that. I married him to have his money. Now I have to pay for
that. I have to pay and pay and pay. I am a cliché. Except for Fanny. She makes my life different from the lives around me.

That
New Year's Eve I was wearing a black and white satin evening suit I ordered from a magazine. My hair was long and loose and shiny. I was
Duncan's dream girl that winter, his bride, and he was taking me around to pay New Year's duty calls.

Fanny still went
downstairs back then. She was seated on a loveseat before the fireplace watching her youngest son roast chestnuts. She was wearing a wrinkled red silk
dress and her legs were folded under her. No stockings, no shoes. She looked up at me, smiling a wonderful mysterious smile. She was the most
interesting person I had ever met. I sat down beside her and told her anything she wanted to know, drinking martinis as fast as Gabe could bring them
from the kitchen.