Victory Over Japan (6 page)

I'm doing it, Rhoda thought. I'm doing it. This is doing it. This is what it feels like to be doing it.

“This doesn't hurt a bit,” she said out loud. “I think I love you, Johnny. I love, love, love you. I've been waiting all my life for you.”

“Don't talk so much,” he said. “It's better if you stop talking.”

And Rhoda was quiet and he made love to her as the sun was leaving the earth and the afternoon breeze moved in the trees. Here was every possible tree, hickory and white oak and redwood and sumac and maple, all in thick foliage now, and he made love to her with great tenderness, forgetting he had set out to fuck the boss's daughter, and he kept on making love to her until she began to tighten around him, not knowing what she was doing, or where she was going, or even that there was anyplace to be going to.

Dudley was waiting outside the trailer when she drove up. There was a sky full of cold stars behind him, and he was pacing up and down and talking to himself like a crazy man. Maud was inside the trailer crying her heart out and only Joe had kept his head and was going back and forth from one to the other telling them everything would be all right.

Dudley was pacing up and down talking to Jesus. I know I had it coming, he was saying. I know goddamn well I had it coming. But not her. Where in the hell is she? You get her back in one piece and I'll call Valerie and break it off. I won't see Valerie ever again as long as I live.
But you've got to get me back my little girl. Goddammit, you get me back my girl
.

Then he was crying, his head thrown back and raised up to the stars as the jeep came banging up the hill in third gear. Rhoda parked it and got out and started walking toward him, all bravado and disdain.

Dudley smelled it on her before he even touched her. Smelled it all over her and began to shake her, screaming at her to tell him who it had been. Then Joe came running out from the trailer and threw his hundred and fifty pounds between them, and Maud was right behind him. She led Rhoda into the trailer and put her into bed and sat beside her, bathing her head with a damp towel until she fell asleep.

“I'll find out who it was,” Dudley said, shaking his fist. “I'll find out who it was.”

“You don't know it was anybody,” Joe said. “You don't even know what happened, Mr. D. Now you got to calm down and in the morning we'll find out what happened. More than likely she's just been holed up somewhere trying to scare you.”

“I know what happened,” Dudley said. “I already know what happened.”

“Well, you can find out who it was and you can kill him if you have to,” Joe said. “If it's true and you still want to in the morning, you can kill him.”

But there would be no killing. By the time the moon was high, Johnny Hazard was halfway between Lexington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, with a bus ticket he bought with the fifty dollars he'd taken from Rhoda's pocket. He had called the poetry teacher and told her he was coming. Johnny had decided it was time to see the world. After all, that very afternoon a rich cheerleader had cried in his arms and given him her cherry. There was no telling what might happen next.

Much later that night Rhoda woke up in the small room, hearing the wind come up in the trees. The window was open and the moon, now low in the sky and covered with mist, poured a diffused light upon the bed. Rhoda sat up in the bed and shivered. Why did I do that with him? she thought. Why in the world did I do that? But I couldn't help it, she decided. He's so sophisticated and he's so good-looking and he's a wonderful driver and he plays a guitar. She moved her hands along her thighs, trying to remember exactly what it was they had done, trying to remember the details, wondering where she could find him in the morning.

But Dudley had other plans for Rhoda in the morning. By noon she was on her way home in a chartered plane. Rhoda had never been on an airplane of any kind before, but she didn't let on.

“I'm thinking of starting a diary,” she was saying to the pilot, arranging her skirt so her knees would show. “A lot of unusual things have been happening to me lately. The boy I love is dying of cancer in Saint Louis. It's very sad, but I have to put up with it. He wants me to write a lot of books and dedicate them to his memory.”

The pilot didn't seem to be paying much attention, so Rhoda gave up on him and went back into her own head.

In her head Bob Rosen was alive after all. He was walking along a street in Greenwich Village and passed a bookstore with a window full of her books, many copies stacked in a pyramid with her picture on every cover. He recognized the photograph, ran into the bookstore, grabbed a book, opened it and saw the dedication.
To Bob Rosen, Te Amo Forever, Rhoda
.

Then Bob Rosen, or maybe it was Johnny Hazard, or maybe this unfriendly pilot, stood there on that city street, looking up at the sky, holding the book against his chest, crying and broken-hearted because Rhoda was lost to him forever, this famous author, who could have been his, lost to him forever.

Thirty years later Rhoda woke up in a hotel room in New York City. There was a letter lying on the floor where she had thrown it when she went to bed. She picked it up and read it again.
Take my name off that book,
the letter said.
Imagine a girl with your advantages writing a book like that. Your mother is so ashamed of you
.

Goddamn you, Rhoda thought. Goddamn you to hell. She climbed back into the bed and pulled the pillows over her head. She lay there for a while feeling sorry for herself. Then she got up and walked across the room and pulled a legal pad out of a briefcase and started writing.

Dear Father
,

You take my name off those checks you send those television preachers and those goddamn right-wing politicians. That name has come to me from a hundred generations of men and women…also, in the future let my mother speak for herself about my work
.

Love
,

Rhoda

P.S. The slate was put there by the second law of thermodynamics. Some folks call it gravity. Other folks call it God
.

I guess it was the second law, she thought. It was the second law or the third law or something like that. She leaned back in the chair, looking at the ceiling. Maybe I'd better find out before I mail it.

RHODA woke up dreaming. In the dream she was crushing the skulls of Jody's sheepdogs. Or else she was crushing the skulls of Jody's sisters. Or else she was crushing Jody's skull. Jody was the husband she was leaving. Crunch, crunch, crunch went the skulls between her hands, beneath her heels.

As the dream ended her father was taking her to the police station so she could turn herself in. The family was all over the place, weeping and wringing their hands. Her mother's face was small and broken, peering down from the stairwell.

She woke from the dream feeling wonderful, feeling purged of evil. She pulled on Jody's old velour bathrobe and sat down at the dining room table to go over her lists. Getting a divorce was easy as pie. There was nothing to it. All you needed was money. All you needed for anything was money. Well, it was true. She went back to her lists.

Today the real estate agent was coming to see the house. Then she would sell it. Then she would get a cute little shotgun apartment in the Faubourg-Marigny. Then she would get a job. Then she would get a new boyfriend. Everything would fall into place. Jody would hang himself and the will would still be made out in her favor and she would quit her job and go live in New York. In the meantime she might have to be poorer than she was accustomed to being.

That's okay, she told herself. She took off her robe and went into the dressing room and stood in front of the mirror. Dolphins don't have anything, she told herself. A hawk possesses nothing. Albert Einstein wore tennis shoes. I am a dolphin, she decided. I am a hawk high in the Cascade Mountains. I am not a checkbook. I am not a table. I am not a chair.

She got into the bathtub and ran the water all the way to the top, pretending she was a dolphin in the summer seas somewhere off the coast of Martinique or Aruba. The morning sun was coming in the window, making long slanting lines on the walls and shutters and the water in the tub…now what about those tablecloths, she began thinking, imagining the contents of a closet she hadn't opened in years. What am I going to do about all those tablecloths? She saw them stacked in rows, tied with small blue ribbons, monogrammed with her initials and her mother's initials and her grandmother's initials. Oh, God, she thought, what will I do with all those goddamn tablecloths? There won't be room for them in a tiny house in the Faubourg-Marigny. She sat up in the tub and began cleaning the mortar between the tiles with a fingernail brush.

She had worked her way up to the hot water faucet when the phone rang. “Now what?” she said. She jumped out of the bathtub and padded into the bedroom and answered it. She grabbed the receiver and threw herself down on the unmade bed, letting the sheets dry her body.

“Mrs. Wells,” the soft black voice said. “I hope I didn't wake you. I've been trying to get hold of you for days.”

“Who is it?” she said. But she knew who it was. It was the insurance adjuster who was in charge of her claim for the diamond ring she had sold last month.

“It's Earl,” he said. “Earl Treadway. Remember, we talked last week.”

“Oh, Earl. I'm so glad you called. I talked to Father Ryan about getting your son into the summer arts program. He said he was sure it could be arranged. Are you still interested in that?” Five thousand dollars, she was thinking. She shivered, a wonderful shiver that went all the way from her scalp to her groin. Five thousand dollars. Easy as pie.

“I told my son about talking to you,” the black voice said. “He was excited about it. But listen, before we start talking about that. I need to see you about your claim. I think we have it straightened out now.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I'd almost forgotten about it. It's all so embarrassing. I can't believe I left that ring lying out when there were workmen in the house. I guess I've just always been too trusting. I just couldn't believe it would happen to me.”

“It happens to everyone sooner or later,” he said. “That's what I'm for. Look, would it be possible for me to come by on my way to work? I have the check. I'd like to go on and deliver it.”

“A check?”

“For four thousand, six hundred and forty-three dollars. Will that settle it?”

“Oh, well, yes. I mean, a check. I didn't know they did those things that fast. But, sure, come on by. I mean, I'm up and dressed. How long will it take you to get here? I mean, sure, that'll be fine. Then this afternoon I can go out and start shopping for a new diamond, can't I?”

“I'll be by in about thirty minutes then,” he said. “I'm glad you were there. I'm glad it's all worked out. I'm looking forward to meeting you after all these nice talks we've had.” Earl hung up the phone and leaned back against the refrigerator. The baby's bottle had spilled milk on the counter. He reached for a rag to wipe it up, then changed his mind and left it there. He straightened his tie and took his coat off the back of the highchair and put it on. It was too hot for his corduroy suit but he was wearing it anyway. All those nice talks, he was thinking. All those nice long talks.

Rhoda rolled off the bed and started trying on clothes. She settled on a tennis skirt and a red sweater. They love red, she told herself. They love bright colors. Besides, what had she read about red? Wear red, red keeps you safe.

Well, I don't need anything to keep me safe, she thought. All I'm doing is cheating an insurance company. It's the first time I ever stole anything in my life except that one time in the fifth grade. Everybody gets to steal something sooner or later. I mean, that little Jew stole my ring, didn't he? And Jody stole five years of my life. And this black man's going to bring that check and I'm going to take it and I don't give a damn whether it's honest or not.

She sat down on a chair and pulled on her tennis shoes and tied the strings in double knots.

Cheating an insurance company hadn't been Rhoda's idea. All she had started out to do was sell her engagement ring. All she had done was get up one morning and take her engagement ring down to the French Quarter to sell it. A perfect stone, a two-carat baguette. A perfect stone for a perfect girl, Gabe Adler had said when he sold it to Jody. It was insured for five thousand dollars. Rhoda had thought all she had to do was go downtown and turn it in and collect the money.

She drove to the Quarter, parked the car in the Royal Orleans parking lot and proceeded to carry the ring from antique store to antique store. One after the other the owners held the diamond up to the light, admired it and handed it back. “There's a place down on the Avenue that's buying stones,” the last dealer told her. “Near Melepomene, on the Avenue. A new place. I heard they were giving good prices. You might try there.”

“Oh, I don't think I really want to sell it,” she said, slipping it back on her finger. “I just wanted to see what it was worth. I'm a reporter, did you know that? It would be a real pity if all those people out there buying diamonds found out what it's like to try to sell one, wouldn't it? If they found out what a racket you guys have going? This ring's insured for seven thousand dollars. But no one will give me half of that. I ought to write an article about it. I ought to let the public in on this.”

“There's no need to talk like that,” the man said. He was a big, sad-looking man in baggy pants. He took the glass out of his eye; his big droopy face was the shape of one of his chandeliers. “There's no need for that.” A group of tourists lifted their eyes from the cases and turned to watch.

“You antique dealers are just a bunch of robbers,” Rhoda said as loudly as she could. “Selling all this goddamn junk to people. And the jewelry stores are worse. How can my ring be worth seven thousand dollars if no one will buy it when I want to sell it? You want to tell me that? You want to explain that to me?”