Looking for Mr. Goodbar (27 page)

They were plain black pumps. Not the height of fashion, maybe, but the only thing that would be remotely okay with the dress.

“I don’t have any others.” She waited for him to check the closet again but he seemed to believe her this time; maybe she’d said it differently. He looked over her makeup and they left.

Tony’s mother was a
small, pretty woman with bleached-blond hair and a flirtatious manner. Her boyfriend was a big, handsome truck driver with a booming voice, who looked like the most jovial easygoing person in the world until he laid eyes on Tony, at which point a remarkable change came over him. His eyes narrowed, his cheek muscles tensed and his whole body stiffened into a boxing stance. He said hello, they both did, with a wariness that suggested each was prepared for absolutely anything. Joe relaxed slightly when nothing happened. He was very charming to Theresa.

The people were mostly friends of Joe and Angela—Angie, as everyone called Tony’s mother. Tony kept muttering about the fact that it was more Joe’s friends than the family, but when Terry asked who was missing from the family, he could only think of two people and he finally admitted, grudgingly, that they were a very small family for Italians.

He drank a great deal of Scotch. She’d never seen him drink hard liquor before, maybe because she never had it in the house. Everyone danced, mostly foxtrots and old-style dances, but once in a while some rock and roll. The room was crowded enough so that she didn’t feel self-conscious about her dancing, and she was loose from three drinks, anyway. She danced with Tony, with some of Joe’s friends, with Joe (while Tony danced with his mother). She had begun to feel quite good about dancing and about Tony’s being so agreeable, when she found herself standing in a corner of the living room next to Angie, facing Joe and Tony.

A foxtrot had just ended. Tony had danced with Angie and Theresa with Joe. Tony had grabbed another drink—gin or vodka—from the long table that was the only piece of furniture they hadn’t cleared out of the room. Tony finished off the drink in one gulp, put his arm around Joe, who was a head taller than he, wiped his mouth, gestured at the two women and said fondly, “Look at them, the two biggest cunts in the world.”

Whereupon Joe wheeled around and slapped his face with such force that he staggered back against the wall. Quickly Joe was on him again, getting a grip on both of Tony’s hands (behind Tony’s back) and steering him past the guests and out of the apartment.

It was so fast that Theresa didn’t have time to react beyond her initial numb shock at Tony’s words. Many of the people in the apartment seemed unaware of what had happened but a few pressed around Angie in sympathy. There were tears in Angie’s eyes.

“Again, huh?” someone said.

Joe came back, white-faced and tight-lipped. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s it for good.”

Angie nodded.

“I mean it this time. Don’t tell me in a month he’s your only kid and he’s gotta have another chance.” He turned to Theresa. “You okay, honey?”

Theresa nodded numbly.

“Poor kid.” Angie put her arm around Theresa. “How’d you get mixed up with Anthony?”

“I—I met him at a party.” Her mouth was dry. She wasn’t sure what to do. She couldn’t just stay here without him but she was afraid to leave if he was out there and mad.

Suddenly Tony began banging on the outside door so furiously that all conversation in the apartment stopped except for the low music on the record player. The banging continued.

Joe went to the door and called, “Can you hear me, punk? Bang once more and I get the cops! And your mother won’t stop me!”

The banging began again, and then Tony’s voice.

“He wants you out there,” Joe called across to Theresa. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. We can get you home later.”

But there was no point to that. She’d have to face him sooner or later. Still dazed, she moved across the floor. Everyone was watching her. She opened the door and he was facing her, a few inches away, flushed, drunk, enraged. He moved back just far enough so she could come through, although he’d obviously not expected her to do it so readily.

“Call us if you need help, honey,” Joe’s voice said behind her. Tony made a lunge past her toward Joe, who quickly slammed the door in his face. Tony stood facing the door as though trying to decide whether to break it down. Theresa said, her voice so small and choked as to make her realize for the first time how frightened she was, “Let’s go home.” And before the words were out of her mouth he had turned on her and slapped her, sending her back against the hallway wall as not five minutes before Joe had sent him back against the living-room wall. Except that she let herself sink down against the wall until she was sitting on the hallway floor in her beautiful sexy black dress. Crying.

The fight went out of him. She could feel it without looking at him as he squatted down close to her. The door opened and someone’s voice, Joe’s, probably, asked if she was sure she was all right. She nodded without looking up. After a moment the door closed again and she could hear the bolt being drawn.

“C’m’on,” he said tenderly, helping her to her feet. “Let’s get outa here.” They were friends again. Them against the others.

They didn’t speak again until they reached Theresa’s apartment. She was profoundly depressed without being ready to examine the reasons. It certainly wasn’t just a matter of Tony’s acting crazy—he’d done that often enough before. Or even of his having hit her; if he hadn’t done that he’d come close enough so she’d known the possibility was there. And being hit wasn’t the end of the world, either.

Then why this depression? She wasn’t angry and she wasn’t scared, she was numb and depressed. She flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was cracked and in a couple of places shards of painted plaster had fallen to reveal a layer of ugly yellow paint. That was depressing, too. The whole apartment was depressing. She should either fix it up, once and for all, or move.

Tony turned on the radio, low, got a beer, and then turned on the TV, loud. Vietnam, plane hijackings, the Mississippi flooding. He turned off the TV and turned up the radio.

“You mad at me?”

She shook her head. She wasn’t mad at him. She just wished . . . what? She wished she had never known him. Or he were someone else. Someone she could talk to. Like James. Just thinking of them in the same sentence was so funny she had to smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re sure you’re not mad at me?”

“I’m sure.”

She wished James were there right now. She would love to talk to him. Or just sit and hold his hand. She wouldn’t even mind if he talked about the office. Very often what he talked about was interesting, actually. It was just some rotten crazy quirk in her that wouldn’t allow her to listen and be interested. She really wished James were here right now. Tony could just go away—not forever, necessarily, but for a while. Until she could shake this awful feeling and be interested in sex again. After a while he lay down beside her, kissing her, running his hand over the silky fabric of the dress. At first she was barely aware of him, but then she felt her body responding. Mildly. She didn’t feel like
doing
anything; if he wanted to kiss her, play with her, that was all right, as long as she didn’t have to move. Do anything. He told her to turn over so he could unzip her dress but she murmured no, she was too lazy. He took off her shoes and gently pulled down her panty hose, then her pants. For a while he just rubbed her gently, played with her,
rested his head lightly on her stomach in a way that at some time would have affected her. Now she was relieved not to be responding more strongly.

Look at them. The two biggest cunts in the world.

It popped into her head, disembodied from the rest of the afternoon. What was so upsetting about it? He’d called her a cunt before.

But there hadn’t been anyone else around, then. That was the difference. The things he said to her when there were just the two of them in the closeness of her apartment might be crazy but they didn’t count like something in the real world, where there were witnesses. She had realized some time earlier that she thought of it that way, that of the compartments into which she’d divided her life, only some were labeled real. School was real. Visits to her parents were real. What else? Tony was unreal. James was . . . James was real. What did she mean by real, then? Tony was no less
himself
than James was James. Maybe it had more to do with who
she
was when she was with them than with who
they
were. She was more herself, the real Theresa, in some ways with James, than she’d ever been with anyone. Maybe that was why it had always been such a strain to be with him; her whole self had been engaged, even if it was usually in keeping him at a distance. Her whole self except for her sexuality. And that had only made it more difficult, more engaging. She’d had to constantly define her boundaries for fear of his stepping over them. While with Tony there was no boundary except around her mind, which was not susceptible to invasion by him.

Or hadn’t been, anyway, until there were witnesses. They’d gone out together into the real world, she and Tony. And it hadn’t worked.

He was spreading her legs now, sucking her, getting her ready. That was all right. It felt pleasant. He could make love to her if he wanted to. As long as she didn’t have to make love back. Or get undressed. Or
do
anything. He slipped off his pants, not bothering
with his shirt. He got into her. She was so far away that it took her a while to realize that his erection had disappeared.

She laughed because it seemed like such a perfect ending for the day. Her movement made his limp penis slip out of her.

“Boy,” he said bitterly, “you’re some doll.”

“I’m sorry,” she said listlessly.

He got up, put on his pants and stalked out of the apartment without another word. Her first thought was that she was never going to see him again and that was all right. Then she saw that his suit jacket was still neatly hung over the back of one of the chairs, and she thought, with a mixture of relief and regret, that he would have to come back after all.

But she was wrong. He didn’t. She hung the jacket in the closet because she was sure that if she got rid of it, he would show up within a week and be furious with her. When summer came and she had her warm clothes cleaned and put them in a garment bag in her big closet, she put the jacket in along with the other things.

Meanwhile, in the next few weeks, she saw only James, at first enjoying him more than she ever had. He sensed her mood in the first week and talked less than usual. Often now, if they sat together in a movie or at the apartment or in a coffee shop, he would hold her hand or keep his arm around her. Sometimes he kissed her cheek or forehead and tried to draw her into an embrace, which she usually avoided.

In the middle of June she went with him to the wedding of a cousin of his. She wore the black dress, partly in a mood of defiance (she wasn’t sure it was appropriate, a sexy black dress for a wedding). She swept up her hair and wore a lot of makeup and big silver earrings.

“How beautiful you look,” he said.

She stood stock still—a resistance to her immediate impulse to run into the bathroom, change her clothes and wash off her makeup.

He laughed. “You can’t stand compliments, Theresa. I’ve noticed that about you.”

“How clever of you,” she retorted. It was the first time she’d been sharp with him since the episode with Tony.

He looked at her helplessly.

“Would you like to stand there all afternoon admiring my great beauty? Or do you want to go to the wedding?”

“I’d be quite happy to stay here with you,” he said, “but there are people waiting in the car.”

People. Car. Panic. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would be going with other people. It made sense, of course; the wedding was in New Jersey. She just hadn’t thought about it.

“Who?”

“Just family,” he said. Sensing—and misinterpreting—her panic.

“Family.”

Look at them, the two biggest cunts in the world!

His mother. Was his mother out in the car?
Paralyzed?
She really should have bought some nice flowery dress that was appropriate for a wedding. What was wrong with her?

“My sister and her husband, and their two older girls. And my mother.”

“Are you sure they have room for me?” Knowing it was a funny question but somehow hoping that she would get by with it.

“It’s a van,” he assured her gently. “Patricia and Frank’s. We have a special contraption in the back,” he went on when she didn’t respond, “that secures my mother’s chair. We wheel her up on a ramp and then secure the chair in the back. Frank is very good about making things like that. The children are sitting in the back seat with Patricia . . .” He sensed her nervousness and he was talking to reassure her. As though she were a skittish horse being soothed into walking into a trailer. “You and Frank and I will sit in the front.” When she was depressed she’d appreciated his understanding; now it made her uneasy; if only because it worked. His very matter-of-fact description of the basic physical setup in the van had somehow calmed her slightly.

“Is it going to rain?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think so. But I have a couple of umbrellas in the van, just in case.”

She smiled.

“You may not tease me while there are people waiting for us,” he said, smiling back.

The blue-and-white
van was parked in front of a hydrant. She climbed up with help from James, who then got in and introduced her to the others, except for his mother, who was asleep. (She slept most of the afternoon. In the brief period that she was awake James introduced them and Theresa thought she saw fear in his mother’s eyes.) His mother said something unintelligible. It turned out that she was fully paralyzed on one side, only partly on the other.

Patricia looked very much like James except that she had light, reddish hair. The girls both looked like her. Frank looked like James’s description of him—homely, gruff, decent. In general she found she knew them better than she would have expected to just from James’s descriptions. She thought of him as having perceptions quite different from her own. How then could he look at his family and see what she saw?