Making Love (28 page)

Stoned to a degree of numbness, Jane found her resistance giving way. What was she trying to prove anyway? Moral superiority in a family whose only claim to relationship was a common surname? She'd played the parent to both Nancy and Jim for too long and she was tired of the role. It didn't fit, never would. And yet hope, like a shopkeeper's failing business, died slowly. She'd never been able to refuse her mother's plea and, unbeknownst to everyone, during her adolescence had been Nancy's booze connection. Land mines of gin had been planted all around the estate, and no one had ever suspected that Jane with her mother's connivance stashed bottles in bushes, under beds, in the dog kennel, in the pool filter house and pick-me-ups in perfume bottles and cold cream jars. She'd do anything to relieve suffering she neither understood nor sympathized with. It dawned on her, sitting in the dark—Doris gaily riding away with her good friend Sam Bass—that she'd come to see Nancy, not because she feared her father's displeasure, nor out of any desire to comfort her mother, but simply because she needed a drink and Jane could provide it. Conditioned reflexes cease at death or in Chinese prisons and Jane had experienced neither.
 

All she ever wanted from me
, she thought, as a reluctant tear secreted in the pocket of her eye,
was a drink
. In her desire to come to a sad conclusion, one that she could brood about, nurse in her psyche, she had been confronted by established fact. She'd been denied the very basis of sentimentality and the only thing she could do was swallow it.
 

“Conlon, do me a favor and get the thermos out of the car,” Jane said.
 

“You really want me to?”
 

“Please.”
 

“Jane,” Nancy said excitedly, “you've saved me.”
 

“Have I? Your salvation is a helluva thing to live with.”
 

“Jane, I've always hated myself.”
 

“The trouble is you've waited too long to admit it.”
 

Jane was immediately sorry that she'd bothered to sharpen her knives; ridiculous, for she was dealing with a stiff. Nothing she could say, and, even more irritating, nothing she could do, could have the least effect on Nancy. Impossible to humiliate the fallen. Conlon got up to leave and said:
 

“You were going to get her drunk all along, weren't you?”
 

“I suppose so. Christ, I love this bitch and I can't help it.”
 

 

* * * *

 

“It would be wonderful if we could spend some time together. Jane? Did you hear me?”
 

“Yes, I heard.”
 

Sprawled on the chaise lounge talking lucidly, Nancy might have commanded respect, if it had been anyone but Nancy. Conned by experts, her virginity fleeced by a fag, her existence a trunkload full of canceled checks, Jane had taken the crazy rollercoaster ride from innocence to disgust, never lingering along the way; and now with Sonny Jackson illuminating her star, she was too full to be anything but happy.
 

“Jane, I'm serious.”
 

“I know you are.”
 

“What do you think?”
 

She lit a cigarette, switched the TV to another channel, observed Conlon beginning to doze, and thought of herself as miraculously lucky: the real core of herself muscular, growing stronger by the minute, not merely because her mother provided such a sharp contrast (did she?) but simply as a result of never blaming anyone for her own failures.
 

“I could take a room in town till you were ready to go home.” Nancy's eyes shone fiercely with expectation. “Then when we got back home, we could play tennis, have lunches together in the city. Go shopping, catch matinees, serve on charity committees, get back into the cotillion swing, visit museums, art galleries, go to Lincoln Center, back a few plays for kicks—” Nancy came toward her, dropped on her knee, and held her hand—"put in a few afternoons at an orphanage, sell tickets to bazaars, wear funny hats, and flirt outrageously in restaurants.”
 

“Oh, Janey, you're absolutely fantastic. What a life! I couldn't have thought of anything better or more truly fun.”
 

She pulled Jane to her feet and danced crazily around the room with her. Conlon blinked at the scene and wondered if she were on a trip.
 

“Only thing wrong with that—”
 

“What, tell me, what could be wrong?”
 

“I'm simply not that kind of person,” Jane said. “And you're
you
, Mother!”
 

The smile drifted from Nancy's face and she dropped Jane's hand.
 

“Why is it that no one's ever quite as cruel as your own child?”
 

“I don't know the answer to that. Maybe if you ever found out something about yourself, you'd be able to tell me.”
 

The conflict of the thermos was speedily resolved when the sound of a heavy car crunching the hard pebbles of the driveway brought Jane to the window. It was dark and she couldn't see the man whom the chauffeur held the door for, but there was no doubt in her mind that James Harmon Siddley had come to call.
 

“You've got another visitor.”
 

“Oh, Christ, who wants to see him?” Nancy said, rushing into the bathroom embracing the thermos; the old team together again, brought out of yet another phony retirement.
 

He drifted into the room, deeply tanned and beautifully tweeded against the railing, cold winds that had begun early in the evening. Jane studied him. There seemed no estrangement between him and Nancy as be stooped to kiss her.
 

“I've let you down again,” she said, but his attention moved to Jane and he put his arms around her, then nodded to Conlon.
 

“How are you feeling, Jane?” Nancy, a lost cause in a war that ended without treaty or declaration, shrank back into her seat, for he had that skill of ignoring people without appearing to, a talent for giving pain which had a peculiar innocence about it. Motiveless. Jane had never before been able to see it so clearly, define it. He piled his coat, muffler, and hat on the sofa, asked a vague question about Nancy's treatment, and icily ran his eyes over Conlon. She glared back at him, refusing now to leave. He hadn't asked, simply tacitly insisted, and her contempt for these rich, cruel, thoughtless people increased. No faint air of superiority emanated from them, they drowned you with it.
 

“I'm okay,” Jane replied. “Our little girl isn't, though, is she?”
 

Nancy came to life, the center of attention again. Jane knew her child. Jim sat with his back to Conlon and she got up to leave, denied the satisfaction of being asked. God, their incredible arrogance.
 

“You've been drinking,” Jim said. Nancy made an attempt to protest but gave up. “You don't think you can fool me after twenty years.”
 

So calm and reasonable, Jane thought. Where had it gone wrong? How could they hate each other—Jim told her he loved Nancy—so bloodlessly?
 

“You fuck around and I drink,” Nancy said angrily.
 

“I didn't begin....” He stopped, half-smiled to Jane, not with embarrassment but a kind of superiority which masked his weakness. “Jane's heard all this old claptrap before, so why don't you drop it.”
 

Her mother rose unsteadily and Jane thought that if she'd been armed, someone would have been dead.
 

“He always ran from a fight,” she protested. “Even let himself get pushed out of his own company.”
 

“Nancy, what's the point of this? You can't hurt me.”
 

“Are you sorry I'm not dead, Jim? Is that why you came up?”
 

“Did you get her the liquor?”
 

“Yes,” Jane admitted. “I wanted her to like me, but—well, it doesn't really matter.”
 

“You're such a silly girl. She's always hated you. I thought you'd found out that years ago. I haven't done a marvelous job as a father, but I cared, Jane.”
 

“Don't believe him, Jane. He's a liar.”
 

Jane looked at his puzzled face. Why had he come? Why had he sent the telegram to her? They had survived happily for years as strangers.
 

“You're both so pathetic,” she said. “I mean, why go on ... why? You're crazy.”
 

“She takes dope, Jim. Marijuana. She and Conlon have been smoking it all day.”
 

“I don't blame her,” he said unhappily. “She's been through a lot. In fact, if she never had anything to do with us after the way we've acted, I wouldn't blame her.”
 

He picked up his hat and coat and then flung them down on the floor, startling Jane. She'd never seen him angry and the emotion struck her as anomalous, wild, coming from that controlled face.
 

“Have I got to you, Jim? Finally?” Nancy shrieked. “She's a tramp like me. Just like me. You couldn't tell us apart twenty years ago. Isn't she your type?”
 

“I think I'm going mad,” he said to Jane.
 

“He likes to touch little girls, Jane. Did you know that?”
 

She saw her father, the man, fold, crumble, and she had a numbing dread feeling like going under ether. He lurched forward but caught himself as he was about to strike the swaying drunken woman standing in the middle of the room.
 

“I didn't mean it,” Nancy said. She began to laugh, cry, and an awful wheezing sound came out of her mouth that sounded like an asthmatic gasping. A window pane was smashed and Jane lunged forward to catch her mother. Behind her there were people, loud voices, nurses and men, pulling her away from the window.
 

“Oh, Jim,” she whined like a child, “why couldn't you give me my way?”
 

Conlon skulked in, strangely satisfied by the commotion and at the same time moved by Jane's distress.
 

Like a broken record, her father kept repeating: “It's not true, it's not true...” as if his denial offered evidence in his favor; and Jane held his hand, the hurt little boy, and assured him that she believed him.
 

“She'll say anything in her state.”
 

“I know,” Jane agreed.
 

Crumpled, oddly older—for constant sunshine sometimes did cruel things—Jim led Jane down the stairs and out to the parking lot. The blue winter light hid his face now.
 

“I'm not going to see her again. I don't think I can,” he said.
 

“Funny thing is, during the day I saw a nice side of her that I never knew was there.”
 

Conlon stood some feet away by Jane's car and Jim held up Jane's face and kissed her affectionately. He had something to say but couldn't bring it out, hesitated; the air punctured by the icy gray breath that steamed from their mouths.
 

“I'll see you, honey.” He got into the car and she stumbled exhaustedly toward Conlon who sat behind the wheel, prepared to escape.
 

“They're very lovely people, your parents.”
 

“I spent my childhood lying for them.”
 

She wouldn't see them again if she could help it.
 

 

* * * *

 

Locked in Sonny's arms, his clean Palmolive smell tickling her nose, Jane looked at the tangled forest of his hair, the soft relaxed beauty of his face caught in a sound innocent sleep; but despite the fullness of her love, she felt confused and restive. Wesley Junior had been shipped off to Sonny's cousin in Vineland, New Jersey, for the weekend, where six second cousins, thirty acres of wilderness, and an elderly pony awaited him, all living on the precarious ledge of a second mortgage.
 

His shaving kit packed to bursting, socks, a suit, and clean underwear stuffed into an A&P shopping bag, Sonny had moved into Gramercy Park for a few days to savor Jane uninterrupted and the gaiety of life on the East Side. Conlon completed the triangle—which, to give Sonny full credit, was without angles. Sated with Jane, Sonny lingered in bed for a twenty-seven-hour stretch, and when not charting the unique topography of her limbs and belly, he slept, ate, or waited impatiently for the second half to begin as he coiled his legs around hers to show her that there was more to his ardor than mere activity. Never had his glands served him so superbly.
 

During rest periods he had achieved the remarkable feat of reading the New York
Times
, even the obits, in its entirety. With the exception of the crossword puzzle which stymied him after three words—who the hell were Norse gods anyway? he asked Jane—he plodded through editorials; letters; the singular algebra of stock-market quotations, which hurt his eyes; dreamt of himself peering through binoculars, earphones on his head, conveying wisdom to the coach who hung on his every syllable.
 

Conlon, earning her keep by short-order cooking, knocked on the door of the love nest and announced bacon, griddle cakes with eggs, sausages, and coffee. Keeping Sonny's strength up had become her principal occupation.
 

“They also serve who only stand and wait,” she said, quoting Milton. The bedroom seemed just the right place for him.
 

Sonny stirred, scratched his spiky chin and inhaled Jane and the cooking, all of it fighting for his attention at once. At table, no training camp, and certainly not Jane or Conlon, had seen his peer. Eating with a diligence usually reserved for systematic passion, he would unwittingly grow lyrical, finding images for pancakes and syrup with fried eggs draped on top never dreamed of by advertising copywriters. He kissed Jane on the tip of her nose, noted the time, two p.m., had an unusual hankering for a cold beer, and said: