After the War (7 page)

That night he was to take Esther Hightower out to dinner. Esther, also up here from Pinehill, doing her Jewish refugee work. Beautiful Esther, with her big high pointing breasts. Oh Jesus!

But when evening actually came, and he was seated with Esther—Esther across from him at a small sidewalk table at the Brevoort, on lower Fifth Avenue—he barely thought of her breasts; he only thought, and he said, that the dark red suit she wore was extremely becoming. “You’re looking like a real stylish New York lady, Miss Esther. I don’t see the Oklahoma in you one bit, nor the Pinehill either.”

She answered in a serious way. “I feel very at home in New York. Really more than I ever did in Pinehill. Maybe it’s because of all the Jews. In Pinehill, I’m the only Jew in town.” She laughed to indicate the essential non-seriousness of that remark. “Although I guess a few of the students are Jewish. Very few,” she added.

“That’s changing now,” Russ told her, in his own more “Northern” accent. “Over at the college they’ve hired three of these ‘refugees,’ one from Austria and two from Germany. The German ones are both Jewish, I believe.”

“And the Austrian’s a Nazi, probably.”

“Now, Esther—”

“Well, the Austrians mostly were. They welcomed Hitler, the
Anschluss
. Except for the Jews, of course.”

“The Austrian’s a tennis coach, so he shouldn’t do too much harm. One of the Germans is an economist, the other teaches German.”

“I’ll have to meet them when I come down to see Jimmy and the girls,” Esther mused. “I’ve been studying German, hard. It’s a real intensive course.”

So many beautiful women passed by on the sidewalk, just separated from their table by a hedge. All ages and sizes and colors of lovely women, in their wartime short skirts and high heels, with the pointed toes. Hard for a man to imagine how they could walk; Russ could not, his imagination tripped at the very thought. But they did, some slowly and languorously, seeming to savor the unseasonably warm fall night, enjoying the men at their sides, the uniformed heroes back from or off to wherever, the glamorous ones. Other women, a few of them alone, or sometimes in groups of two or three, hurried past, but probably they too had some war-heightened rendezvous. They all looked so fresh, so beautiful, so remotely alluring. Admiring, and dimly lusting after them all, Russ felt infinitely old—a finished old poet, a finished man. A very old husband and father.

He watched as a shy-looking, very young, very thin girl walked by, her dark face wistful, he thought, as she scanned the terrace where he and Esther and other (rich, successful) older people sat and drank and talked, and perhaps made plans for love that might or might not work out. Don’t envy us, he wanted to say to the girl. It is not what it looks like. But before he could further explain, in this imagined, partly paternal speech to the pretty girl, a young sailor rushed out of the restaurant to seize her arms, to bend and to kiss her,
avidly, familiarly; they knew all about kissing, those two. And Russ now saw the girl’s unshy, not wistful face as they broke off to laugh, still looking at each other, and then to leave the terrace, heading back into the restaurant.

“I could use another drink,” Russ said; he felt that he had not said anything for a while—he was not being a good host, or “date,” and so he added, “Sure you won’t join me?”

“Actually I will have another lemonade.” She laughed a little. “Jews don’t drink, you know. Almost never.” And then she told him a long, somewhat involved story about a waiter once who assumed that Jimmy, her husband, was trying to get her drunk—“I’d ordered something called a Horse’s Neck, which I just thought meant no liquor, but apparently it’s some kind of signal. Whatever it was I got was mostly gin. Jimmy drank it, he thought it was really swell.”

“I’ll have to remember that the next time I want to get a lady drunk,” Russ told her, with his special small polite laugh, as he thought: That’ll be the day, hell will burn first. I can’t stand it when women drink, Jesus Lord. SallyJane, and now Deirdre, so often—

Reading his mind, it seemed, or maybe his expression, Esther frowned and reached forward to touch his hand, very lightly but kindly. As she said, “I’m sorry, Russ,” she looked at him with her great depthless dark eyes that were full of pain.

Very suddenly then, Russ thought, or he knew, that he was truly, was absolutely in love with Esther Hightower, wife of Jimmy, the wildcat oilman, the writer, the ass. He loved her! and she would never, never in a month of Sundays, she would never love him! There would always be this beautiful distance between them, always. Beautiful! Enraptured by this perception, this marvelous insight, Russ beamed beatifically across the table at Esther.

Her telepathy seemingly turned off, Esther smiled back very pleasantly, and she told him, “I’m really glad you like it here. I do. Jimmy and I often come here when he’s in town. They have the best vichyssoise—I can’t get used to that name, can you?”

Not hearing much that she said, but able still to make the requisite sounds of polite response, Russ’s poet-playwright’s inventive, romantic mind raced ahead: he foresaw a lifetime of immense and extraordinary love for Esther (“My vegetable love will grow, / Vaster than empires, and more slow—”). Marvell? he thought so; in any case, old lines that he had always loved. And it was wonderful that she would never know—unless, miraculously, she could somehow read between the lines of some poem of his, some great new poem, for Esther, that he would start tomorrow, or maybe tonight.

But she would not love him. Not ever. She wasn’t
like that
(he often thought in these phrases from his Baptist boyhood). He could not bear any more women who loved him, who “responded.” Or who, in some cases, even with Cynthia, but even more so with that cat witch, that psychiatrist’s wife, whose name he could never remember—in those cases, the women had started off the whole thing themselves. Initiated aggression—which Esther would never, never do;
she wasn’t that kind
. Contemplating this long life, or perhaps a short one, of unrequited love, Russ felt a vast peacefulness. A wonderful release from so much anxiety and pain. From the terrible doom of sex. Forgetting for the moment that he was married, and to a young and frequently amorous wife, he thought: I’ll never have to do all that again. Esther wouldn’t even want me to.

“Well,” he said, “maybe we should order?”

“We just did!” she cried out. “Russ, I don’t think you were
even listening.” And she laughed. “Well, you’re getting the vichyssoise, and lobster salad. Whether you like it or not.”

And Russ, the inland Southern boy, who secretly hated lobster and almost all seafood, told her, “Of course I heard. Sounds wonderful!”

As he thought, No more bad dreams. No more terrible hot breasts. Only dreams of Esther, who is lovely and regal. And unattainable.

Back at home, in Pinehill, Melanctha, like her father, had bad, obsessive dreams of her breasts. Over and over, in dreams, and then lying awake, she heard again that horrible voice on the phone: “Your tits—”

And there she was, that hanging heaviness on her chest, from which there was no escape.

And that old man, almost falling on top of her, then dying, at the Deke House.

She is not sure how she feels about being dead, herself. I am not suicidal. She has been forced to repeat this to the doctor who was summoned to see her, and, very coldly, also to Deirdre.

But, is she? She likes the word “suicidal.” What she does not like is the idea of herself as a body, limp and dead. Exposed to anyone who wanted to see her. In the morgue or funeral parlor, wherever they took her, she would probably lie naked. All exposed. Dead.

In the meantime, she is so tired of her room, which is up at the top of the house, big windows on three sides, so that on very sunny days, like today, it gets very hot. Even now, in November.

If it wasn’t important that everyone still believe that she
was sick, she could walk out into the woods. And then Melanctha remembered that no one was there today. All her brothers—even Graham—were off in school; Deirdre had taken the baby, SallyJane, somewhere for her birthday or something. Her father, Russ, was in New York, or maybe Hollywood by now, and Ursula was off. She
could
go out. She could step on dry leaves, and breathe the fall smells of earth and smoke and pines, and just air.

In a hurried way she pulled clothes on, her college dungarees and a big old gray sweatshirt that was one of her brothers’. (Deirdre: “Melanctha, you just swim in that old sweatshirt. I sure wish I’d had something like that when I was pregnant.”) God, what a stupid bitch, and getting stupider, the more she drinks. Melanctha had not had a drink since Hilton, the Deke House.

Outside, in the woods, Melanctha breathed more easily, and with less anger. There was no one around, none of the people she feared and who so enraged her, both the easily named and the nameless.

The day was so bright; unused for a while to natural, real light, Melanctha was dazzled as her nostrils were assailed by many smells, and so strong, of rich fall rot, of wood smoke from some Negro cabins, much farther out in the woods, around by the creek. Almost happy, almost forgetting the body and the self that she could not bear, she walked along the dry leaf-crunching path, sure-footed over tough exposed roots and slippery needles, with almost nothing in her mind but November, and air. Just breathing.

But there is another person out in the woods. Someone walking very lightly and carefully. Someone else who does not want to meet anyone she knows; it must be a woman, with those delicate steps.

Mrs. Baird. Cynthia Baird, in a dark green coat, almost the color of pines. Surprisingly friendly.

“Melanctha! You are a nice surprise. I heard someone and I thought it must be—oh, several people I’m not dying to see.” A complicitous smile, as Melanctha wondered who she meant that she didn’t want to see. Deirdre, or maybe even Russ, Melanctha’s father?

“It’s nice to see you too,” Melanctha answered politely.

“Shall we walk a little way? I just remembered this old path from when we lived out here, in the Hightowers’ house. It goes from where you live almost out to where we do now.”

“Oh? I’ve never walked exactly here.”

Cynthia said, “Actually I don’t think I’ve seen you since that awful night at the Deke House, in Hilton. That must have been terrible for you, Melanctha. Just awful. I started to write you a note but it was so bad—I didn’t know—”

“It’s okay. I’m a lot better now.”

“Well, good. I was with a friend, Derek McFall, you know, the correspondent. And then later at the dance I just caught a glimpse of you.” She added, without much of a pause, “I miss Harry a lot these days, and most of the time he can’t call from London, and his letters take forever. I miss Abby too, but Swarthmore seems so much closer, and she’ll be home for sure at Christmas.”

“Oh, that’s neat. I miss her too.”

“I’ll tell her I saw you.” A big smile from Cynthia.

“She still likes Swarthmore?”

“Oh, yes. And she seems to spend more and more time in New York.” And Cynthia began to talk about the Marcuses. At first Melanctha was puzzled, this stream of unself-conscious conversation from a woman she knew but really did not know at all—a grown-up, Abigail’s mother. But then she thought,
It almost doesn’t matter who I am, she needs someone to talk to. She’s lonely—although “lonely” seemed an incredible word to use for a beautiful, stylish,
perfect
woman like Cynthia Baird.

“Dan Marcus is something in Hollywood, I think a producer, though I’ve never exactly understood what producers were. They’re both Jewish, I guess, and they have these two children, Susan and Joseph. They seem to be Communists—the parents, I mean. I don’t really know any Communists, do you? I guess Russ might, in Hollywood. You might ask him if he knows Dan Marcus. Anyway, they’re very involved with Joint Anti-Fascists and Russian War Relief, things like that. All very worthy, I’m sure, though my Republican parents would not be enchanted to meet them, exactly. What I don’t quite understand,” said Cynthia, with a pretty, small frown, “is just what Abby finds so fascinating there. I wonder if I’m jealous! But almost all I hear about is the Marcuses, and weekends in New York. Good heavens, I’ve talked so much we’re almost to my house. You’ll come in for a cup of something hot, I hope?”

It was over fragrant English tea, in Cynthia’s luxurious sun-warmed living room (bright silk cushions everywhere, and all the chairs were deep, enfolding) that Cynthia said, “I hope you won’t mind if I say this, dear Melanctha, but now that you’re feeling better, and you are! I can tell—I do think you should pay a little attention to your posture. I hope I don’t sound like some gym teacher—” and she laughed, “but I used to have a good friend who slouched a lot, so it’s something I know about. And maybe for the same reason. She had a really big chest, that she wanted to hide. Of course all of us flat-chested types really envied her. We thought, If only we had her problem! But she told me how it embarrassed her, a
certain kind of attention she didn’t like. She finally did start standing better, though, and that was a big improvement, honestly. I hope you don’t mind my saying all this—please don’t mind. Oh, Melanctha, I’m so
sorry—
”

For Melanctha had burst into tears, her whole body shaken with sobs, her throat choked, tears raining from her eyes. She had instantly covered her face with her hands, but the tears leaked through her fingers. So horribly embarrassing—embarrassment made her cry harder.

Cynthia now stood beside her; she patted and stroked Melanctha’s shoulder, until as suddenly as the tears had begun, they stopped. “I’ll go wash my face,” said Melanctha.

In the pretty powder room, with its starched embroidered linen towels, jars of scented soaps and oils, as she splashed cold water on her face, Melanctha had a curious sense of feeling better, despite embarrassment, some shame. She had to admit it, she felt better now.

To Cynthia, in the living room, she said, “I’m sorry, really. I don’t know—I’ve been sort of sick, I guess.”

“Sit down and have more tea.
I’m
sorry. God, I’m so dumb sometimes. Harry tells me so. God, I say things that are really none of my business.” She smiled, and laughed a little. “Please don’t tell Abigail what a dumbbell her mother is.”