Families and Survivors (22 page)

“The terrible familiar stories.”

“Yes.”

They have reached the Bay Bridge. Lights. Streaming cars above the black water. Not the bridge for suicides, but grim enough, at night, on the lower ramp. The night is unseasonably clear for California; this is usually a season of lashing dark rains, enveloping a persecuted city. Tonight is not only clear but freakishly warm, almost a Southern night—both Louisa and John think but do not say this; they shy off what might be sentimental. But the strange weather has excited them, has created in both of them a certain heightened mood.

Of the weather Louisa only remarks, “There’s going to be one of those extraordinary false springs. I can tell. With that bright unreal grass breaking out everywhere. Under the trees in parks.”

“Did that happen last year?”

“Yes, but later on, I think.”

They laugh, although nothing is expecially funny. They laugh as though already high.

“How beautiful Maude is,” Louisa says at last; it is what she has been wanting to say all along.

“Yes, very.” John says this seriously—he knows how seriously Louisa takes her daughter.

“When I think how I used to worry, God! I thought she had to be some sort of cripple.”

“You mean, like you?”

She understands him, and she is filled with pleasure. Which she must deny. “Well, I used to be sort of crippled,” she says.

“Sort of crippled—that suggests an interesting way of walking, I must say.”

They laugh again, very affectionate with each other.

They have passed the U.C. campus, and begun the winding climb into the hills, the narrow eucalyptus-lined streets, that smell of lemon.

“But which boy was Maude
with?
” Louisa asks, as though John would know.

He laughs at her. “Darling, you’re so conventional. Does she have to be with anyone?”

She frowns, never good at being teased. “You know what I mean.”

“You mean, which one is she screwing.” (This is not a word that John ordinarily uses; does he mean to suggest disapproval? This is possible.) “Maybe all of them, maybe everyone in the room. Girls, too.”

“You and your dirty-old-man fantasies.”

But she is right; he is a little turned on by what he is saying. He goes on, “Maybe right now, since we’re gone, they’re all having an orgy with each other.”

For several reasons, some of which she does not recognize, Louisa does not like this at all. Partly, she is jealous: much easier to imagine John at an orgy than herself, John with a lot of young girls. (With Maude?) She does not stop herself from saying, “In that case perhaps you should go back?”

He hears what is in her voice, and says, “I’d much rather go home with you.” He is a nice man, as well as being Southern.

Louisa feels a melting within herself, and a disbelief: he does then love her?

The house that Louisa and John have finally bought is an older house (fifty years, which is old for California), Spanish style, with long arched windows that overlook the Bay, a red mansard roof. They spent a year or so looking at lots and talking to architects, until it came to both of them, simultaneously, that they didn’t want to build a house; they wanted one that was already there, settled into the land. They spent more time looking at houses. Maybecks and imitation Maybecks, until on an October afternoon they saw this one, surrounded by bright Japanese maples, and they recognized it as their own.

Now they go inside and settle on the broad gray velvet sofa, Louisa in her long white wool dress (it is always hard for her to decide what to wear, visiting “the children”; she chose an old favorite), John in his habitual gray flannels and tweed.

Lights have been left on in their dining room and kitchen; here they turn nothing on. Through the long Moorish windows they can see the lights all over the hills of
San Francisco, the lights of both bridges, and the few stray lights from boats about the Bay. A view so glamorous that they are still not used to it, as neither of them is really used to California (but who could live in the South, they say to each other), even though Louisa has been in California for what is now most of her life.

The house could be read as an expression of Louisa’s (and John’s) attitude toward money and “things,” which could be summarized as: Well, we have it, why not? Nothing ostentatious, but everything very “good.” Good Oriental rugs and linen draperies, brown quilted leather on matching armchairs. The huge gray velvet sofa.

And very good pictures: a small (real) Klee, two Picasso drawings, a Matisse. A large painting by James Boynton, over the mantel.

Perhaps curiously, there is nothing of Louisa’s on display, although by now she has had several shows, is represented in several galleries. “I’d be embarrassed” is her disappointing explanation.

There are some large framed photographs by John. (He has, in San Francisco, taken up photography. He is very good.) Victorian houses. Whales spouting, out at sea—from the Mendocino coast. Louisa, in her studio (his best).

New Year’s Eve, in common with other major holidays, enforces memories of other New Years. Louisa remembers a dismal psychologists’ party, with Michael, and then a desperate night with (or, rather, without) Bayard. And, before either of those, a terrible party at home, in Hilton, with the Flickingers (Kate’s parents). Jack contemptuously courting Jane Flickinger. Kate off somewhere else (with John?). Jack drunk and mean, Caroline weeping in her room. Determinedly shaking all that off (and at the same time wondering what John remembers; she is still jealous of
his past), Louisa says, “What a perfect way to spend New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?” She has been struck by the sentimental thought that John is her defense against her past; she feels the bravado of a second marriage.

(But why will he never speak to her of his first marriage? Is she—Louisa—not also his friend? She thinks sometimes that Southern John would consider any reference to a dead—a suicided—wife as tasteless, but the fact of his not mentioning Lois keeps her very present to Louisa. And the similarity of names—how ominous! Louisa thinks frequently of Lois, and wonders everything about her. How beautiful was she? What did she like to do in bed? Was she bright, as well? All impossible, unimaginable questions, in terms of John. And she is reminded, of course, of King—of the presence of “Bobbie” in their “affair.” Does she somehow need Lois?)

She asks, “Shall I get the champagne?”

“I’ll get it.” Lightly, he has already stood up. “Are the joints on your dresser?”

“Yes.”

He goes out, and comes back with the wine, chilled glasses, ashtray and matches, and two neat thick joints—all ceremoniously on a silver tray. He opens the bottle deftly, a napkin held over the cork. He pours.

They touch glasses. Smile, take sips. Lean toward each other in a light warm kiss. They put down the glasses to light the joints.

“Wow, it really tastes good.”

Smoking grass, they tend to sound like kids. But it is an important addition to their life. They much prefer it to booze; in fact they drink a lot less, wanting to savor the high.

Somewhat later one of them says, “I don’t feel a thing, do you?”

An old joke between them, at which they both laugh.

They turn to each other, and for what seems like several hours, but is actually more like numbered minutes, they make love.

What is happening back at the house where the children live is not an orgy but an argument. What to do next: they are all (all but Allison) in various ways involved in this. Their party was planned as an early evening event, an interim before more important plans—in some cases, before obligations to parents and parents’ parties. The (faggy) son of the well-connected lawyer, however, has no such obligations, or if he does, “Well, screw them,” he unconvincingly says. He wants to go to see the Cockettes, the midnight transvestite show at the Palace Theatre, and he wants the burly son of the cop to come with him.

“Oh, come on, it’ll broaden you.”

As titillated as he is frightened, the boy tries to be gruff. “It sounds ridiculous. Why not just go to Finnocchio’s with the rest of the tourists and be done with it?”

“Oh, but they’re so old.”

A nervous laugh. “Suppose the Cockettes get busted and it’s my old man who makes the bust?”

“Well I think that would be a real gas. Then my old man could get us off. But we won’t be all that lucky.”

A girl squeals, “Can I come, too? Oh, the Cockettes, how
neat!
”

Another group departs for a midnight show of
2001
, along with several old Beatles movies: classics from their early adolescence.

The fat red crocheted girls are with that nostalgic group.

Allison has passed out on a small Victorian horsehair sofa—from a combination of fear and fatigue and too much wine.

Maude argues (who should stay with Allison) on the basis of numbers. “You see? Between you and Stephen, you have three parties. You’d be disappointing three groups. For me there’s just Dad and Persephone. They’ll talk about it a lot but I don’t think they’ll really care.”

Jennifer knows that all her people will care, and that she will worry about their caring. She says, “Okay, you’re really nice to take care of her. Poor old Allison.” Worriedly she smiles down at her sister.

Stephen says, “Oh, Jennifer, come on. We’ll never get to all those places that you say we have to get to.”

She smooths her hand over his high hard buttocks. “Oh, Steve, calm down.”

They leave.

“Listen, Dad, Allison’s had too much wine, so I said I’d stay and take care of her.”

“But can you?” (Persephone is also on the line; they have answered the phone simultaneously, as they often do.) “Let’s see, Ian McMillan is coming soon, and I could
easily
—” Persephone always knows a lot of doctors; next to food, medicine is what she most likes to talk about.

From the other phone Michael addresses himself to Persephone. “Now, honey, don’t you worry about Allison. Maude is perfectly capable—”

“But Allison’s been so sick. It might be some sort of catatonia. I mean I don’t see how Maude—”

“If anything goes wrong, Maude will call us, won’t—”

“But I made all those little anise cookies, I thought Maude—”

They are both enjoying this exchange, but Maude breaks into it. She says, “I’m really okay. I’ll just watch her. Have a good party.”

“Darling, yes! Happy New Year!”

“Happy—”

“Good night—”

As Maude hangs up, Jonathan comes into the room.

“Oh, hi. I forgot you were here.”

“Thanks a lot.”

But they grin at each other. Good friends. In fact they do look alike. Tall thin fair people, somewhat delicate. Long noses, large eyes. Jonathan is wearing Levis, a clean unironed blue work shirt.

“She looks uncomfortable.” Jonathan goes over to where Allison is (indeed) uncomfortably sprawled on the too small sofa. Gently he lifts her legs up and stretches them out, over the arm of the sofa.

Allison sighs in her sleep, then wakes and looks at him. She is frightened. “Douglas?”

“No, Jonathan. And Maude.”

“Oh.” She smiles, and goes back to sleep.

Stephen and Jennifer go first to her mother’s house. Grace and Martin. (“Let’s get them over with first.”) Jennifer does not dislike her mother; she is genuinely glad that Grace is happy with Martin, but she has less and less to say to them.

It is actually a reception, rather than a party, that Grace and Martin are having. A reception honoring the new
year, and themselves. Their sparkling house still looks brand-new. Possessions have been added, and they have a lot of shining new friends: rich successful glossy people—somewhat like themselves, somewhat unreal. Women in long opulent dresses, graying men in black ties. Waiters in white gloves.

Barbara and Eliot Spaulding, who still think of themselves as Bostonians. (By now, when Barbara makes her remark about the first Jews she ever met being horrible, she forgets that Martin was one of them—and so does he.)

People are saying things like:

“You don’t see much of this sort of thing any more.”

“No, people just don’t.”

“Well, Grace and Martin really know.”

“All the stops.”

What Stephen says to Jennifer is “Jesus Christ. Don’t these people know there’s a war on?”

Although he is of course serious, she (of course) laughs, and they head toward her mother—majestic Grace, in cream-colored satin and diamonds. (Martin chooses her clothes and buys her jewelry.)

At the sight of her daughter, Grace frowns a little, as though she were not entirely sure who Jennifer is. And in a sense she is not; often weeks pass in which she does not think of her youngest child, and she has successfully put Allison out of her mind. And Douglas—she never thinks of Douglas. What she does feel about Jennifer is that she can take care of herself, and in that she is fortunately correct.

(But that taking care requires more of an effort from Jennifer than almost anyone is aware of; even Stephen tends to take her steady pleasant competence for granted.)

With an effort Jennifer tells her mother that she looks marvelous, that it is a marvelous party; she is sorry they have to leave so soon.

Stephen makes no conciliatory effort at all. Visibly out of place, with his beard and long red hair (World War II Army surplus clothes), his stance and expression make it clear that he is there by accident; it is not his scene at all.

“Do let me get you some champagne,” says elegant Martin, who believes his outrage to be well concealed. (“God, Grace, darling,
why
do they have to come?”)

“No, thanks, we’re on our way out.”

“You don’t find all that hair a nuisance to take care of?” (This is envious; Martin’s own hair has begun to thin.)

“No.” Stephen gives him a level, long-eyed look.

Unreasonably frightened (Stephen is a kindly boy), Martin retreats (as he has before) into girlishness, a girl that no one could possibly hurt. He simpers, “Well, I didn’t mean—” and he walks away, mincing more than he has for years.

Grace and Martin are happiest alone; dangers lurk in any social life for them. Later in the evening they will wonder why on earth they had to give a party. Next year they won’t.