Authors: Marjorie Lee
That night at home Brad wanted to know everything. He'd skipped work and had spent the day reading and puttering around with the furnace. "I felt so awful," he said.
"All right," I told him. "She's perfectly fine. And," I added, watching him mix another of those twelve-ounce martinis, "you'd better get to the office tomorrow. You're going to get fired; I swear you are."
"Don't kid yourself. They need me."
"That's what you think."
"Why is it," he asked, "that you
always
have to tear me
down?"
"I'm not tearing you down!" I barked. "I'm just telling you: if you don't start giving them their money's worth, you're going to get canned. And it just so happens I'm not in the mood to move again!"
"Of course not," he said quietly. "How could we move again? How could we possibly live without Frannie Browne...?"
"What have you got against Frannie?" I asked angrily.
He took a swig of martini. "We're fighting," he said. "What are we fighting about? We've been fighting all year, you know that, Jo? Ever since we met the Brownes we've been having trouble."
"We've been having trouble for twenty-three years."
"Yes
—but not the same kind. Now it's—I don't know. It's different."
I got up and went into the kitchen for a glass. When I came back I poured part of his drink into it for myself. "You ought to call her," I said. "Or go see her."
His face set hard. "Do you mind if I don't?" he asked. "Why the hell are you always pushing me off on Frannie? Have you got a spare husband somewhere? Why are you always giving me
away?"
I stopped talking; and when my glass was empty I went upstairs.
He followed me. "Come on, Jo," he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. "I take it all back, okay? Come on."
"All right," I said. But it didn't work. It never did when I felt like that. I ended up hating him; hating myself. And I couldn't fall asleep for hours, thinking about Frannie.
When I got to the hospital the next morning she was sitting in the armchair. She was wearing a pretty plaid robe she'd gotten in Bermuda with the collar of a clean pajama top folded over the neck. Her rash was all gone. She'd put on some orange lipstick and her hair was brushed and shining.
"How are you?"
"Fine," she said. "I can go home the day after tomorrow
—if I want to."
"Don't you want to?"
"I don't know. It's sort of nice here: meals served, sheets changed; what more can you ask? It'd be heaven if they'd put me on another floor. Hearing those babies all the time gets me down, sort of."
"Oh, cut it out," I said. "You've got three. Isn't that enough?"
"No," she answered, "I guess it isn't. I don't know how many would be enough. I love babies. My own, anyway. I love to hold them. I can sit around for hours and hours, just holding them. We had a nurse for Stu for eight weeks because I was new at it; and Petey was a preemie so they kept him here, boxed up for five weeks. But I had it with Blair. She didn't know what a crib was till she was five months old. I put her in a basket and carried her all over the house with me so I could be near and pick her up and hold her in my arms. Even at night we had the basket in the room. I didn't breast-feed her because I couldn't keep the milk coming, but when I gave her a bottle I did it with my clothes off so she'd be close and get the warmth. I used to feel as if my love were osmosing, kind of: from me into her; and I wondered how it made her feel. Sometimes, wondering like that, it almost seemed as if she were me and I were loving myself..."
The telephone rang. It was Jeri. Marian had told her.
A few minutes later it rang again: Marian.
Then a third ring: Jeff.
I waited for a fourth ring: from Brad. But it didn't come.
Frannie went home three days later. She could have left before; but she loved that little room. It offered, I suppose, an insulation against the world outside, and everything, unknown to me, that was bothering her.
A whole month went by before I reached the big blow-up with Henry Bradford.
It happened on a Sunday evening after dinner. We had nothing to do because the Brownes were at the Weinrick's, along with the Deitzes and Perloffs. "She's well enough physically," I was saying to Brad, "but she's so damned quiet most of the time. She hasn't mentioned that Church business again, but I think it's really eating into her. You never know with her: there's so much going on inside you can't even begin to sort it all out..."
"Who are you?" he asked. "Her psychoanalyst?"
"Her friend."
"If you're her friend, quit trying to dissect her. German measles
—a kid's disease; and everybody acts like Hiroshima or something."
"German measles," I said, "but under the circumstances, a rather cruel blow of fate, I'd say."
"Yeah?" He let out a long sigh. "Well, maybe. But you know what? It's an ill fate that blows nobody good."
"What do you mean?"
He sighed again. "Jo, old girl," he said, "ever since the day I met you you've been making me feel like an A-One Nothing. But the fact is: you're stupider than anybody."
"That's not true," I argued. "I
don't
feel that way about you, and I can't see why you have to keep feeling that way about
yourself!
There have been times for us when
—well, you know what times. Nobody's had it the way we've had it, Brad; just nobody. You know how it's—"
"Sex," he said nodding. "You do things great with sex, Jo; but even then
—you're on top."
"Can the Male Chauvinism," I told him. "What difference does it make who's where and how as long as it works the way it does?"
"Ever hear of
levels?"
he asked. "You must've heard of levels before. Your little friend Frannie is very hot on what level a thing seems, or means, or is. Well, I think if a thing works all right, maybe that's
one
level, and it's fine. But you know something? I've got a feeling there're some other levels around, and those little levels may not be working at all..."
"Listen," I said, "please don't start giving me
that
bull. I get more than enough of it from Frannie."
"You think it's bull?"
"On a couch," I said, "where you're paying for it, with a trained person behind you who knows what it's all about? No: there it isn't bull. But with Frannie who'd part with her right arm before she'd learn it the real way? Yes: the kind of thing Frannie throws around free, for the fun of it
—is bull!" I was expecting a debate: a Brad-type debate in which I'd wind up flailing at vague, bodiless clouds. But this time I didn't get one. This time he said, "Okay by me." And the silence, somehow, was harder to take than the noise.
We sat there for a while, trying to drink ourselves out of it. And then I thought of Frannie and the things she had tried to tell me in the hospital while she was still doped up and could barely get the words out. "What did you mean," I asked Brad suddenly, "about my being
—stupid?"
"It was fate all right," he muttered. "That little job that doctor did on her might just have been the luckiest thing that ever happened."
"Why?"
He drained his glass. "Because," he said blurrily, "all things considered, and all things
—well,
considered
—it might just've been—and mind you, I say
might
just've been
—that we'd never have known... whose it was."
"You mean, then," I said, with a new, incredible, and terrible calm, "that it hasn't been 'all over' after all. You mean that in believing it would 'never happen again' I've been wrong. You mean also,
too,
along with
that
—it's not for peanuts anymore.
Now,
you mean to tell me, it is all and everything..."
"Once," he said. "Only once; and even then it was
—well, there's no point in going into that..."
"Go into it," I told him.
"No," he said. "It's details. You always make me feel
bad
when I give you
—details."
It's funny how it is when you decide a thing is finished. It’s funny how a decision isn't a decision all by itself, separate, or sudden; how
now
is always built on
then;
and how nothing ever exists without holding, right there inside of it, making it whole, the thousand other things which existed before it. So
—why did I decide that night? I didn't. That night was simply the point in time when all those other times cohered and made the whole. And I was calm, because that too comes with decisions. It's only the piling-up and the moving-towards which causes all the clamor. The actual decision hardly makes a sound.
I didn't go to bed that night. I waited till Brad had; and then I went up and looked through everything I owned. Finally I packed a sweater and skirt; some blouses; a sequined dirndl and the top that went with it; a week's worth of underwear; and some other things
—things I didn't really need but couldn't bear to leave behind: a clay turtle a little girl at Wingo had made for me; the white cigarette cup Frannie had given me for Christmas; and the framed snapshot of my father.
By the time I was finished the sun was out. Brad was still asleep and I was glad he was: I wouldn't have to talk to him; or listen to the protestations I'd heard so many times before; or see him cry; or cry myself. I could just stand beside the bed with its sheet and blanket kicked aside and look at him, sprawled out and smooth-skinned like something from the sea: not human, or even animal
—but a giant sleeping plant which, with its beauty alone, could lure its victims to destruction.
"Goodbye," I whispered; and after all those years of hate and love, and hope and hate, and love and hate and hope again
—it seemed that simple.
I drove off slowly, not wanting to wake him with a bumping exit down the unpaved driveway; and I kept on carefully even after I'd come to the road. Reaching a village, I stopped at an early-opened drugstore for a cup of coffee and broke my only five-dollar bill. Where could anybody go on four eighty-five? I would have to borrow; but from whom? I don't know how or why I thought of Frannie; though, actually, it wasn't so strange:
there was no one else.
* * *
The house was quiet. Marc and the kids had left; and Frannie, per usual, was back in bed sleeping away another morning. I stumbled up the stairs, hitting my elbow a nasty crack on the banister. I stood outside her door a minute, rubbing my arm, trying to catch my breath. Then, without knocking, I whammed it open.
She shot up like a spring. "Jo! What is it?" She had slept naked and she pulled the sheet up and held it over her breasts, staring at me, bewildered. Then she bent down and fished her glasses out from underneath the bed. "What is it?" she asked again. "What's happened?"
They used two double beds. I walked past hers and threw myself across Marc's, face down. We were quiet for a second. Then I raised up on my elbow and peered at her. She was soft in the dim light that came through the draperies, drawn always against the morning sun. I saw the sweep of her neck, her shoulders, and the curve of her breasts where the sheet began. She seemed so young: ten years younger than she was; eons younger than I. And small: very small in the big, big bed; small enough to be lifted, carried, buffeted, blown away. But it was the look of innocence that got me: oh, how innocent she seemed; innocent of all things, but mostly, of herself.
What right has she to be this way?
I thought, senselessly, foolishly, wanting to scream.
What right has she, at this ugly moment, to be beautiful?
All touch with control was drowned in a wash of envy; or impotence. "I know the whole damned thing," I told her raggedly. "I know what's gone on; and I know why you betrayed that holy God of yours and let them take the baby!"
I heard the intake of breath; and the long sigh, "You're right about the first thing, Jo. But you're dead wrong about the second. If he let you believe it, about the baby, he was only hurting you more than he had to."
"You'd never know!" I said. "How could you ever be sure?"
"I'm sure all right. There was a thing, Jo; but not what you think. Don't make me talk about it; please don't; I can't. Just believe me; will you please believe me?"
"Believe you!" I said. "I may be dumb, Frannie. But not that dumb. Why should I ever believe you again?"
"No reason," she answered. "No reason in the world that I can think of, except
—"
"Except
what?"
My voice was rising; I couldn't seem to keep it down.
"Except that
—Oh, God, how can I tell you? It's too insane..."
I got up and came around to her side of the room. I stood there beside her bed, towering over her. I wanted to rip the sheet off and beat her. But I couldn't.
She turned her head away and hugged the sheet even closer. "Except that I love you," she said simply.
I began to laugh.
"I know," she went on. "It doesn't make sense. It never has, right from the beginning. It's so crazy: how can you do a thing like that to somebody you love? It's weird, Jo; it's scary. You'd think I didn't love you at all. You'd think... I
hated
you..."
I kept on laughing; and then suddenly I knew I wasn't laughing: I was crying. I was crying so hard I couldn't stop. There were sobs I'd never heard before breaking out around my fist against my teeth. I couldn't stand up anymore and I fell across the foot of her bed and tried to hold it back, biting the fist, but it wouldn't work.
She got up then, the sheet still swathed around her, took some shorts and a shirt that lay heaped on a chair, and went out of the room.
I must have stayed there an hour. When finally I got downstairs I found her dressed and washed and freshly lipsticked, sitting at her desk in front of her typewriter. But there wasn't any paper in it. There hadn't been any paper in it since the Fall. "I guess you can begin now," I said. "That crazy little novel you once talked about; that crazy plot you were waiting for? You've got it now, haven't you?" I wasn't crying anymore. My voice was flat and feelingless.