Jack Curl was trying to listen but he was terrified. Jump suit or no jump suit, he was terrified. Wouldn't he have been better off rid of his genteel Virginia Episcopal tight-assed terror if Marge had got hold of him age six months and pitched him into the ocean?
Ed Cupp bunched the fingers of his left hand (which was big enough to hold a basketball from the top) and drove them up into his right. He was describing to Lewis Peckham the proper insertion of a Mercedes oil filter. There was a warranty problem with his car, whose engine had burnt up in Oklahoma City, where the Mercedes dealer had refused to honor the warranty, claiming that the oil filter had been inserted improperly. It was impossible to insert the filter improperly, said Ed Cupp, German engineering had seen to that. It was all he could think about. He too was credible. Listening to him, one shared his outrage and wished him well in his lawsuit against the Oklahoma dealer.
Leslie, leaning forward, smiling yet intense, was giving Mr. Arnold speech lessons, making a
p
by compressing her lips and puffing out the
p
against her hand, then holding her hand to Mr. Arnold's mouth, but when he tried to say
p,
his slack lips blew out on the left side. Mr. Arnold looked around angrily and made motions toward his mouth. He was hungry. Leslie was angry with him.
The tree was disappearing. There was a ripple in a glass windowpane. He knew that particular ripple. Sitting in a certain chair, not reading, not talking, not listening to music, he had discovered that the ripple lined up with the far rim of the gorge so that when he moved his head a wave seemed to run along the rocky ledge.
Something was happening. Suddenly, with a little surge of satisfaction under his belt, he knew what it was. Everything had the look about it of coming to an end. There was nothing more he wished to say to the Cupps. There was nothing more for them to say to him. Things do come to an end. There was an end to this room. It was impossible for him to imagine entering this whited-out room tomorrow and lining up the ripple in the glass with the rim of the gorge. The tree was vanishing for good into the cloud.
For at least a hundred times in past years he had lined up ripple of glass with rim of gorge. A novel thought occurred to him. Sooner or later there comes along a lining up which is the lastânumber 101 or 102. Ordinarily one does not keep track and does not imagine that there will be a last lining up. But why not decide which lining up will be the last? Very well. This one. He lined up ripple with the beginning of the gorge rim like the two points of a gunsight and moved his eye. The ripple ran along the rim until it came to the scarlet oak which hid the target like the tree in front of the Texas Book Depository. Anyhow, the tree had almost vanished in the fog.
Suddenly he knew why he remembered the triangular patch of woods near the railroad tracks where he wanted to make love to Ethel Rosenblum. It was the very sort of place, a nondescript weedy triangular public pubic sort of place, to make a sort of love or to die a sort of death.
The silence of the cloud seemed to press in upon the house like cotton.
Did you not then believe, old mole, that these two things alone are real, loving and dying, and since one is so much like the other and there is so little of the one, in the end there remained only the other?
Silence.
Very well, old mole, you win.
6
Kitty touched him, jostled him with her hip, shoulder, elbow. She looked at him. “You look as though you just made up your mind to do something, decided what you wanted, and know just how to get it.”
“Ah.”
“What is it, Will?” She moved closer.
“Ah.”
Her eyes widened. “Is it me?”
“Ahâ”
Kitty laughed, put her arm around his waist, and said she had a favor to ask of him. He smiled and nodded, noting with curiosity that everywhere she touched him a welt rose to meet her.
His body swelled. It occurred to him that it would be pleasant to take her hand and hold it against him. He turned his back on the others. But before he could take her hand, she laid both hands on him and tugged him playfully roughly into the corner beyond Marion's Louis XV secretary. As they went past, Kitty's hand went out to touch one of the brilliant enamel-like decoupage panels. Hand and eye made one swift appraisal. “My God, would you look at that,” she said absently to no one and in a different voice.
“Now, old dear friend Will, my first and only love. Oh, it's so good to see you. Do you remember Central Park?”
“Yes.”
“What a dummy I was. I should have taken you up. But you were always so vague. I never knew when you were going to wander off in one of your funks.”
“Taken me up on what?” he said absently, watching the tree. The room was closed up in a cloud, a white room whited out by a white cloud, but no one seemed to notice.
“Ha ha, haa haa. Don't give me that, son,” said Kitty, coming even closer.
“All right.”
Maybe he had “proposed” to her. In any case, he saw that Kitty had made over her past life in her head so that it became as clear and simple as a movie. He had proposed to her and she had turned him down. If she had taken him up, it was possible for her to think she would have been happy. But she hadn't and so her life had been screwed up. If onlyâBut even an “if only” is not so bad if it is simple. Regret can be enjoyed if it makes sense. The difference between them was that the older she got the more sense her life made. Yet she was not altogether serious in her swaying and swooping against him and her “if onlys.” The seriousness showed in her quick sure appraisal of the Louis XV secretary, the split-second touch-and-look. She knew what she wanted. What did she want from him?
The tree grew dimmer. Some of the leaves came off and blew straight up. There must be an updraft from the gorge.
“What a good-looking couple we made, Will!”
“We did?”
“Do you remember what my housemother told me at school?”
“No.”
“That you and I were not only the best-looking couple she had ever seen but the most distinguished.”
Distinguished. What could Kitty mean? Undoubtedly Kitty was making up her own bad but clear fiction and the always unclear tact. What could the housemother have meant? What was distinguished about a coed cheerleader and an addled ATO who didn't know whether he was coming or going? Ah, suddenly he saw what Kitty meant. She meant
now
they were a distinguished couple, he with his silvery temples, she with her lithe branny brown arms and gold swatch of hair.
Kitty drew closer. “Stop giving me that Scorp look. It takes one to know one you know.”
“What?”
“You haven't forgotten that we are both Scorps?”
“Scorps?”
“Scorpios.” She jostled him. “Don't hand me that.” Perhaps he had not remembered everything. “Did you think I had forgotten your birthday? It's next month, the day after mine, remember? Not that I needed to know. I could take one look at you, the way you stare right through people, and know you were a Scorp. And I got news for you, son.”
“What?”
“Pluto, who governs both the positive and negative aspects of sex, is at this moment entering his own sign, which happens to be our own sign.”
“Is that good?”
“Not good or bad as you damn well know. It all depends on the Scorps themselves. And I'm here to tell you one thing about one Scorp.”
“What?”
“I'm no longer the little gray lizard Scorp you once knew. You're looking at a fully evolved eagle Scorp, with the well-known Scorp sexuality and only us Scorps know what that means.”
“I believe I am.”
“And as for youâ”
“Yes?”
“Clearly you are somewhere in between, in transit. That's fineâas long as you don't forget one thing.”
“What?”
“What happens when two fully evolved Scorps get together.”
“What happens?”
“They can save a country. Or destroy it. Or have an awesome love affair. Hepburn and Burt Lancaster are Scorps.”
“That's notâ”
Kitty's face came into his neck. “Actually, that's not why I grabbed you.”
“Why did you grab me?”
“I wanted to tell you where I'm coming from.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“I'm fixing to beat Marion's time. And it's perfectly all right with Marion. She gave me permission before she died. In fact, it was her idea.”
“Beat Marion's time,” he mused. “I haven't heard that for a long time.” He couldn't seem to tear his eyes from the tree, which had all but vanished.
He was trying to listen. Kitty was talking about what a good person Marion was, he was, she Kitty was. She was. He was. It was true. They were. Ah, what had happened to them all, all these good persons, all those good things Marion stood for, God, church, home, family, country? Why had he always felt glum when Marion spoke of these good things? What had happened to marriage? Why was not goodness enough for marriage? Why did good married couples look so glum? Old couples, young couples, thirty-five-year-old Atlanta couples in condos, sixty-five-year-old Ohio couples in villas, each as glum as if one had got stuck with the other at a cocktail party for two hours. Two hours? Ten years! Thirty years!
“What?” he said and gave a start. Kitty seemed to be talking about her daughter.
“Schizophrenics often are.”
“Are what?”
“Shrewd. Walter wanted to call the cops when she escaped but Alistair said that Allison is very shrewd in her own wayâit's true!âand that she'll probably come back to Valleyhead.”
“Then you don't know where she is,” he said absently. Now he knew why the girl in the woods looked familiar. She had the same short upper lip, the little double tendon below her nose pulling the lip into a bow and just clear of the lower. The first time he had seen Kitty on a park bench, lips parted so, he had wanted her mouth.
“Actually, I think I do. She has some hippie friends in Virginia Beach. Yes, I'm sure that's where she is. Actually I think it might do her good. She's no dumbbell. She planned the whole thing, swiped four hundred dollars from her father, and disappeared into thin air. I'm going to give her a few days and then go find her. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you mind having your old flame in your hair for a few days?”
“Ah no.”
There were three shells on the quilt of the Negro cabin where he was lying. The Negro boy had brought them, and even the one dead quail, and put them on the bed beside him. Some guide. What guide would retrieve empty shotgun shells? The Negro woman wiped the blood from his face with the clean damp rag. “You ain't hurt bad. You just lay there until the high sheriff comes.” The room smelled of kerosene and flour paste. Fresh newspapers covered the walls. She leaned over him. The movement of the rag against his cheek and lip was quick and firm but did not hurt. “Your daddy be all right. Ain't nothing wrong the good Lord cain't fix,” the woman said. He turned away impatiently. “Where's the shotgun?” The Greener lay on the other side of him. The guide had found it and brought it back. He broke the breech. There was a single shell in the right barrel.
Yet only now, thirty years later, did he do the arithmetic. One shell for the quail, two for me, and one for you.
Well well, he thought, shaking his head and feeling in his pockets for the Mercedes keys. He must have been smiling because Kitty gave him a jostle. “What's the matter with you, you nut?”
To his surpriseâyes! now he could be surprised!âa strange gaiety took hold of him. Something rose in his throat. What? Laughter. He laughed out loud.
“What are you laughing at, idiot?”
“Everything. Nothing. I'm sorry. What were you saying about ahâ”
“Allison.”
“Allison?”
“My daughter, dummy. Allie.”
Allie. Yes. That was her name. That was Allie sitting on the stoop of the greenhouse reading the fat pulpy
Captain Blood.
Allie.
“I want you to meet her, talk to her, listen to her. I want her to get to know you. She can't talk to people but somehow I know that she would talk to you. I can't tell you how many times the thought has come to me that if only you had been there all along Allison would have been all right. And here's the strangest thing of all. Sometimes I have the strongest feeling that you could be or ought to be her fatherâha! fat chance, yet there is a slight chance, remember?”
“Remember what?” Had he forgotten something or had Kitty rewritten the entire book of her life? His eyes went unfocused on the white cloud.
“No, really, Will. There is something about her, about us, about Allison. We were together once in another life.”
“What?” He gave a violent start.
“I saidâWhat are you smiling about, you nut?”
“Was I smiling?”
“Like a chess cat.”
“A what?”
“Like somebody had let you in on a big secret.”
“A secret. Yes.”
He looked at Kitty. In the corner of his eye he could see Leslie talking to the Cupps. She was nodding and frowning. They were arguing, he knew, about the after-rehearsal party. It was the custom for the groom's family to give the party. The Cupps proposed to rent the Buccaneer Tavern at the Holiday Inn. Leslie looked sullen.
Kitty's hand, he noticed, was on his arm. He gave a start. He had not been listening.
“Don't forget,” whispered Kitty in his ear but not quite managing to whisper.
“What?”
“Three o'clock.”
“Okay,” he said absently.
“Isn't it a shame that we waste so much time figuring out what we want,” said Kitty. “To think of the yearsâ”
“Right.” Marion had wanted to serve God, eat, and to do good. Jimmy Rogers and the dentist wanted money. Kitty wanted what? him? his money? out from the dentist? He wanted what? Kitty's ass? Death? Both?