Authors: Alison Lurie
Never mind; he would make it up to her. He was taking her back now, and she would never have to see southern California again. How happy she would be in Convers! The picturesque old houses, the green forests and fields that he had promised to Glory, who had no use for them, were all there for Katherine. The faculty apartment he had been shown backed onto a wide, mowed lawn ending in open woods; he saw Katherine running across the grass towards him there, smiling, her arms full of leaves and wild flowers.
It was Katherine that he really loved, Paul thought, and he felt in his wallet again for her picture, which he had, so to speak, rediscovered within the last few days. Hers was a real, a classic beauty, subtle, fine, and private—not blatant and public like the Hollywood sort: Glory, for instance, was most beautiful at a distance. When you got really close to her you could see that her bright hair was coarse and dyed; she had freckled, flawed skin. Katherine, on the other hand, was invisible at fifteen feet; but her skin and hair were fair and fine, and every detail delicately perfect.
It was almost dark out now. The whining of the jet’s engines had changed key; they were over Los Angeles. Paul looked down at the city, a black plain streaked with smoke and colored fights. He felt a faint anxiety at having left Katherine alone in such a place, even for a few days; he was glad to be getting back to her.
Paul had not asked his wife to meet him at the airport. It was a long way, and the telling of his news and her reaction to it would be more delightful staged in their own living-room. Too impatient after the delays of landing to wait for the bus, he got into a taxi, gave his address, and settled back to pleasant anticipation.
“Here y’are.” The taxi had stopped on the wrong street, next to a great ugly hill of bare earth. Then Paul looked out the other window, and saw his house. He got out of the cab, realizing what had happened. When he left Mar Vista four days ago, the bulldozers had been at work leveling the lots across the street, while trucks brought in fill dirt. This process had simply continued; the ground was being raised so that the new freeway, like all the others, would cross Los Angeles above the house-tops.
Still, there was something horrible about that long heap of dirt lying there in the street light with machines squatting on it. Even though he knew that the people and even the houses had been moved away, he had the fantasy that everything that had once been across the street was there still, buried beneath the dirt: the flowering bushes, the stucco walls and tiled roofs, the kitchen tables, the lemon trees, the children on their tricycles.
The lights were on in his house, and his car was in the driveway; the same old Ford that he had brought out from Boston. After all, he had never got round to trading it in for a Buick, a hot rod, a Jaguar, or a Thunderbird. But Katherine was out; she had left him a note on the mantelpiece:
Welcome home—
I’ve gone to Iz and Glory Einsam’s reunion party—
meet me there.
Irritated by the delay of the scene he had planned, and the change in the set against which it would have to be played, Paul washed perfunctorily, changed his shirt, found his car keys, and set out for Hollywood.
It was only about nine o’clock Los Angeles time, but in Cambridge it was midnight. No wonder he felt unsettled in his stomach and a little tired. As he drove along the freeway, though, Paul smiled and began to feel better. He was amused and pleased, he found, that Glory was reconciled with her husband; he was glad that she should be happy, and it relieved him of any obligation. Moreover, it was a final proof that there was nothing to Glory’s suspicions, for if Katherine really had been involved with Dr. Einsam, she would certainly not be going to this party. Not that he had ever thought she was, of course.
Paul located Glory’s house easily by the number of cars parked along the street and the noise and music coming over the fence. It was a very large party, he saw, as the maid showed him in (after checking his name against a list). The long pink living-room was full of people, mostly movie types, and they were standing in the hall and crowded around the bar in the dining-room. Opposite him doors stood open onto a terrace, and he could see more people out there.
None of them was Katherine. After he had looked into all the rooms at least twice, and walked round the pool, he had to admit, with considerable irritation, that he couldn’t find her. Nor, for that matter, could he find Glory or Glory’s husband. He knew absolutely no one here; it was as if he had got into the wrong house.
Probably what had happened, he concluded, was that Katherine hadn’t arrived yet, but (having thoughtfully left the car for him) was still on her way to Glory’s by some slower means of transport. He must simply wait for her. Holding a drink, he wandered out towards the pool. It must have been fixed recently, for it was full, spotlighted both above and below the water, and slowly filling with the debris of the party. Paper napkins, cigarette butts, and a few potato chips floated on the surface; their shadows skimmed over the white tiles below like pale fish.
Without making much effort, Paul fell into several curiously meaningless conversations. At one point, for example, he found himself talking to Glory’s press agent about airplane fares, at another to an odd pair of women: a pretty plump little Japanese in a cotton shirtwaist named Mrs. Haraki, and a handsome bony American named Mrs. Smith who wore a silk kimono and had chopsticks skewered through her hair. They were trying to identify the movie stars present, most of whom Paul had never heard of.
It was now after ten o’clock; Katherine should have come. Unless, of course, she had already left, feeling too nervous and shy to bear a party like this any longer alone. But in that case, surely she would have left a message?
Paul went back into the house, where he got another drink and spoke to a couple named Dodge who said they were college teachers, though Paul had taken them both for actors. He asked Mr. and Mrs. Dodge if they had seen his wife.
“Your wife? Have you lost your wife?” Mr. Dodge held out his glass to the bar for more whisky.
“No,” Paul explained. “I was supposed to meet her here, and now I can’t find her.”
“Gee, that’s too bad,” Mrs. Dodge said, eating salted nuts. “I don’t know, maybe we saw her. What does she look like?”
“Well, she has long kind of light brown hair, done in a knot at the back. She’s very pretty. Beautiful, but not, you know, striking. Quite pale. She’s rather shy.”
“No,” said Mrs. Dodge, shaking her head. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Mr. Dodge. “Marge and I haven’t seen anyone like that. But there’s lots of pretty girls here,” he added helpfully.
What was he supposed to do now, Paul wondered. It was getting on for eleven, two
A.M.
by Boston time. Maybe he should go home, or at least call.
The party was growing louder and louder. He drifted into the hall, looking for a telephone, where a dark, striking girl came up to him. “Hey, I know you,” she said woozily. “You’re the college-boy type was talking to Glory at the rehearsal last week.” She told him, giggling, that Glory and Iz Einsam were celebrating their party in bed. “Come on in an’ say hello to them,” she urged Paul, pulling his arm. “They won’t mind. Ev’body’s going in. Wait, first we gotta get you ’nother drink. ... There. C’mon now.”
Against his better judgment, Paul allowed himself to be pulled down the hall and into a huge white room. There were two walls of mirrors, a lot of tropical plants, and a large white bed covered with fur and pillows. The man he had recognized before as Dr. Einsam was lying in bed, smoking.
“Brought you ’nother friend,” said the dark girl. “This is whatsis-name.”
“Paul Cattleman.”
“Well! How do you do.” Iz sat up, naked at least to the waist, and held out his hand. He gave Paul a penetrating look, but not a hostile one; so Glory hasn’t told him anything, thank Christ, Paul thought. He crossed the room and shook hands. “We’re going to get up pretty soon,” Iz said. “You’re having a good time?”
“Yes, thanks.” Embarrassed to be shaking hands with the man he had so recently cuckolded, Paul turned to go, and then turned back halfway across the room. “Only I want to ask you something. What’s happened to my wife?”
“Ya.” Iz paused, and narrowed his eyes. “Let’s talk about it later,” he said finally. “I would like to answer you, but I don’t think this is the time and place for a metaphysical discussion.”
Paul stared, then laughed nervously. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I mean I don’t know where my wife is. She left me a note to come here and meet her, but now I can’t find her.”
“Ah, I see. Well, I know she was here earlier. I’ll ask Glory. Hey, baby.” Instead of raising his voice, Iz lowered it, and laid his hand on the pillow beside him. “Do you know where Katherine went?”
“Huh?” From under the sheet, Glory lifted a tumble of pink curls, a blurred face. “Uh-uh. Somewhere round.” Her head fell again.
“Aw, I know where
Kay
is,” the girl who had brought him in said suddenly. “You wanna find Kay? She’s in the living-room. C’mon.”
Closing the bedroom door behind him, Paul followed her into the hall. “Hey, you’re Kay’s
husband,”
she said. “I wasn’t so loaded I woulda caught on sooner. I’m Ramona Moon, pleased to meetcha.”
“How do you do.” Paul and Mona shook hands. He realized that he had finished his third drink. Probably that was why everything seemed so odd.
“C’mon. ... This way. See, there she is, over by the piano.” Mona pointed across the living-room to where a girl sat on the piano bench, talking to two men: a pretty girl in tight yellow pants, with a smooth California tan and ash-blonde hair piled up onto her head like a mound of whipped cream; an obvious Los Angeles type; he remembered vaguely seeing her over there earlier in the evening.
“Oh, that’s not her,” Paul started to say, when the girl, laughing at some joke that had been made, turned her face full in his direction. He realized that it was Katherine.
He should have known then, of course. But the untangling of any long-standing illusion is a difficult matter, and over three weeks of miserable scenes, baffling explanations, and inconclusive arguments had intervened between Glory’s party and the smoggy morning when Paul climbed into the plane for Boston again.
Of it all he remembered now only a few things: for instance, the moment when Katherine, sorting clothes for the cleaners, had finally said that she didn’t
want
to go back to New England. Once the words were out, she repeated them many times, each time more clearly. Even her voice had changed: it was louder, with almost a California twang—not Katherine’s voice at all. Somehow his wife had disappeared; still, if he could only get her away from Los Angeles, if she would only come back East with him, he was sure, he said, that she would turn into herself again. “Yes, I know” Katherine replied. “That’s what I’m afraid of. ...”
Eating, dressing, undressing, carrying the groceries in and the cans and trash out, through all the small routines of domesticity, their argument discontinuously continued. “But you know you can’t stay here,” Paul remembered saying as he wiped a plate with a damp towel (not since the first months of marriage had they washed up so conjugally). “Why, the house is going to come down in a couple of months. You won’t have anywhere to live.” Katherine, her hands moving beneath the suds, sourly smiled. “You think I can’t even find an apartment by myself,” she stated. “No,” Paul replied, inaccurately. “I didn’t mean that. But for instance, suppose you did get an apartment; what’d you do with all your parents’ furniture, out in the garage?” Briefly, Katherine’s face altered: a shadow of her old, pale, complex inward look crossed it. Her wrists were still under the trickle of rinse water. “After all,” (Paul pushed his advantage), “those are pretty valuable antiques. You can’t just leave them in a garage.”
“Well, if you feel that way,” Katherine said slowly. Sweeping her arm across the sink, she pulled out of the soapy water a handful of knives, forks, and spoons; she splashed them under the faucet and set them bristling on end in the rack. “If you want them, I could ship them back East to you,” she offered. And he—who of course had nothing to put in the new apartment at Convers, and hoped that Katherine’s ancestral furniture would, eventually, draw her back across the country—agreed.
At night, in bed, they had long, vaguely intense conversations—lying far apart, in pajamas; Paul knew Katherine better than to try and change her mind by appealing to her body—he appealed instead to her emotions. At times, he thought, with some success; at others not. Once, across the chilly landscape of sheet, he asked what she thought would
become
of her, if she stayed in Los Angeles. Instead of answering, Katherine said to him calmly, pushing back her ash-blonde hair (it wasn’t dyed, she had insisted, only bleached by the sun), “You know what’s the matter with you, Paul. You’re always thinking of what happened before now or what might possibly happen some time later. You’re squeezed up between the past and the future; you’re not living.”
Finally, there was the time, perhaps worst of all, and late at night, when he had come out of the bathroom in a towel and exclaimed to Katherine, “I suppose what this all means is that you hate me; you can’t forgive me. Well,” he added bitterly, thinking of Ceci, of Glory, of all the others whose existence, it had turned out, she had suspected all along, so that finally she had—but he didn’t want to think of that—“Well, I guess maybe you have a good reason.”
“No,” Katherine, or Kay, had said, sitting up in bed, brown now against the sheets except for the pattern of a bathing suit burned on to her body in negative. “I don’t hate you. It’s funny, but you just don’t seem real to me any more, somehow. I just
don’t care.”
The airplane taxied down the field to the end of the runway, wheeled round, and hesitated a moment, its engines blasting harder. Then it started forward, lifting heavily into the air. Out of the cabin window Paul saw Los Angeles tilt and sink away from him. As the plane made a circle he saw, in rapid panorama, the bleached green of the Pacific Ocean wrinkled with white waves against the beach; billboards, factories, and palms; block after block of houses; cars speeding like insects along the glittering freeways; the towers of oil wells on the barren hills.