Moving On (50 page)

She got the posters and a small cute turn-of-the-century etiquette book that had just been reprinted. She rushed home, hid the posters, and bundled up her laundry before Emma came. They went to the Sudsy-Dudsy and washed and yakked. Emma was envious of Sonny’s visit.

“The boys would go out of their minds if they could meet someone like that,” she said. “You have all the luck. What did I ever get to do but come to this laundrymat? It’s a big night for us if there’s something good on television. You’re going out with the Duffins and you know a famous cowboy and a screenwriter. Maybe I better reduce.”

“I was never less reduced,” Patsy said. “Don’t go envying me the Duffins—they’re no blessing. I think they’re evil. Maybe not evil individually, but evil in combination.”

“Everything you say makes it worse. I don’t even know anyone evil. Everyone we know is nice, more or less. This is supposed to be a crazy confused age and here I don’t even know anyone who’s all that crazy. What’s the matter with me? Why did I get left out of the age?”

“You may know somebody crazy if you keep knowing me,” Patsy said. “I’m likely to crack at any time.”

It was a small squalid laundrymat, poorly lit, with old top-loading washing machines that were always konking out. The reason they liked it was because scarcely anybody else ever came there. Emma’s machine did konk out and Patsy watched her adjust it.

“It’s getting so these machines won’t take two diapers at a time,” Emma said. “Remember the night the man tried to wash the rug?”

Patsy giggled at the memory. They had been roommates at the time. In those days the Sudsy-Dudsy had been more prosperous and a number of people were there. While she and Emma sat talking a little man came in and, unobserved by anyone, stuffed his living-room rug into one of the machines. He couldn’t even get the top closed on it, but he did get the machine started. The first intimation anyone had that something untoward was happening was when the lights in the building flashed blue and went off and the cheap metal chairs all began to rattle. Then the machines all began to shake and a horrible vibrating sound was heard. Everyone leapt up and ran out into the parking lot, expecting earthquakes, crumbling buildings, air raids, Russian paratroopers, and mushroom clouds. When they calmed down enough to look back into the Sudsy-Dudsy they saw the little man clinging as nonchalantly as possible to the washing machine, which was flinging him from side to side and attempting to wrench itself from its bolts. He tried to indicate by his expression that nothing unusual or dangerous was happening—he was just getting his living-room rug cleaned in the quickest way—but finally all the fuses blew and several of the ladies harangued him mercilessly while he dragged the sopping rug out of the machine.

“That was crazy,” Patsy said. “You see, your life hasn’t been totally devoid of incident.”

“True. Something like that is good for a laugh once every five years, when you remember it. Still, it’s hardly wild debauchery.”

“Small loss. I doubt wild debauchery’s all it’s made out to be.” She remembered that she had almost been debauched the day before and wondered.

“I’ve got to quit reading novels,” Emma said. “They’re full of crazed sensualists. It makes me feel cheated by life. I never even met a crazed sensualist.”

“Are you kidding?” Patsy said. “You’re married to one, if you ask me.

“That’s around you. He’s only intermittently crazed around me and then half the time he’s in too big a hurry to take his shoes off. I seldom even get laid by anyone barefooted and that seems the very least one can ask of life.”

“Oh, come on,” Patsy said, trying to remember if Jim had ever made love to her with his shoes on. She could not remember him being in that big a hurry.

When she got home he was there, and in a high state of excitement; but his excitement was social, not sexual. He had just managed what he considered a brilliant piece of social maneuvering. He had seen Sonny, been offered a job as a still photographer on the movie, and had invited Sonny and Joe Percy to dinner with them and the Duffins. The only fly in the ointment, so far as he was concerned, was that Sonny had already made plans with Dixie, which meant that she would be coming along.

“This ought to be an evening,” he said proudly.

“Shit, damn, and hell,” Patsy said. So far as she was concerned there were more flies than ointment. To make matters even worse, they were going to her aunt’s club. It was high atop a bank and everyone there was so conservative they were practically paralyzed, the waiters included. “I can see you’re looking forward to my poor aunt making a fool of herself in front of your patron intellectual,” she said. Jim was too cheerful to be affected by her mood and tried to hug her. She shrugged him off. “I slave over washing machines while you think up schemes to humiliate my aunt,” she said. “Sonny was by this morning. He must be mellowing; he didn’t even try to rape me. I hope you told him you weren’t taking his crummy job.”

“No, I sort of think I might,” Jim said. “It would just be for six weeks and it might make a good change from graduate school.”

Patsy was infuriated. It had never occurred to her he would seriously consider taking the job. Jim anticipated her.

“Don’t go blowing off,” he said. “I didn’t make him any promises, but I can’t see why I shouldn’t take the job. It would be fun. Don’t you have any curiosity about how movies are made?”

“Not much. Where is this one going to be made, may I ask?”

“Amarillo. Or somewhere near there.”

“Oh, great!” Patsy said, striding about the apartment. “I’m supposed to take our infant child and live in Amarillo? Monster! Infanticide! Amarillo! You’re out of your mind.”

“Is that all the epithets you can think of?” he asked, amused.

“Don’t you be polite to me,” Patsy said. “I’ll make you rue the day you were ever polite to me. I will not live in Amarillo.”

“Well, it’s six months away,” Jim said. “We don’t need to fight about it just yet. You look great today. We should make love, not war. Pretty soon we’ll have a baby and won’t be able to in the afternoons.”

“Yeah, well too bad that didn’t occur to you months ago,” Patsy said. “I feel more like making war.” And she went off in a huff to put the clean laundry away.

Later, as she was dressing, she began to feel that her life was dissolving, losing its natural shape. What had happened the day before with Hank did not seem very real. It was much more natural to be fussing and bitching at Jim. But the dinner to come also seemed unreal, and the people unnecessary forces pressing in on her. She wished the baby were born, so she would have an excuse to stay home. She dressed with unusual care, irritated that she had to be so large, slow, and bulky on such an occasion. She was sure to be outshone by both Lee and Dixie. Since she could not be slim she combed her hair out to see if she looked good that way. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. She simply had no glow. In the morning she had had some glow, but the afternoon had dissipated it and she felt flat and sallow. She was tempted to fake a stomachache and stay home but decided that would be ignoble. She chose a black dress that she thought made her look mature and austere.

They went to pick up the Duffins and found them already a little in their cups. They were throwing verbal daggers at each other. Bill was wearing a white dress turtleneck and looked a little too high-colored, whether from drink or anger Patsy could not tell. Lee wore a blue dress with a very short skirt and was dancing by herself to the Mammas and the Papas.

“Come in, fellow sufferers,” Bill said. “My wife’s just been castrating me.” He used his deepest oracular tone.

“Ignore him,” Lee said. “He dresses like George Plimpton, pontificates like John Kenneth Galbraith, and cries like Johnny Ray, if anybody but me can remember Johnny Ray.”

“Everybody remembers Johnny Ray,” Bill said. “In our circle everybody remembers everybody. It’s one of your persistent delusions that you are the only one who remembers people.”

“I don’t remember Johnny Ray,” Patsy said.

“Stout girl,” Lee said. “I’m teaching her the art of castration,” she said to Jim, smiling. “Hope you don’t mind.

“Let’s get on to the cowboys,” she said.

“There’s only one,” Jim said. “The other guy’s a screenwriter.”

“One cowboy will wreak enough havoc,” Bill said. “Two would just overstimulate Lee. She once had a thing on a shot-putter, as I recall.”

“He was a javelin thrower,” Lee said. “Shows how observant you are. Makes me wonder how you ever find those cute little things in the texts of poems, on which your reputation is based.”

“I like poems better than javelin throwers.”

“Or me, for that matter,” Lee said. She saw that the Carpenters were a little disconcerted by the acrimony and dropped it. “Sorry. Bill and I should never have seen
Virginia Woolf
. Let’s do go.”

They found their party at a nearby hotel. Dixie was resplendent in an orange dress. Joe Percy had on a conservative gray suit but a bright pink tie, and Sonny had a white turtleneck to match Bill Duffin’s. It looked good with his maroon coat. He also wore a black Western hat, and that too looked good. They were all three in good spirits, Dixie particularly.

“Hi, duck,” she said, kissing Patsy. “I love these people. Mr. Percy’s the nicest man I ever met in my life. Isn’t Sonny something in the sweater. I see your friend has one too.”

Lee smiled, but Jim was uneasy. Bill shook hands gravely with all three of them. His gravity made an instant impression on Dixie, who got her impressions in an instant, most of the time.

“You have to promise not to mind me,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll be afraid to open my mouth. You’re probably the smartest man I ever met.”

“What?” Joe Percy said. “You just conveyed that distinction on me, not five minutes ago. I thought sure I’d hold the title a little longer than five minutes.”

“Too bad,” Dixie said.

“Good to see you again, honey,” Joe said to Patsy, taking her hand for a second. “Surely you realize I’m the smartest man you ever met.”

“Give me your keys, Dixie,” Sonny said. “I’m the dumb-ass in the crowd, but at least I can drive.”

“Don’t be surprised when I say dumb things,” Dixie said to Bill. “Do you like
The Carpetbaggers?”

“I don’t believe so,” Bill said.

“We just won’t talk about books then,” Dixie said.

They got in Dixie’s Cadillac and Sonny whirled them smoothly downtown. Dixie regaled them with an account of life in Puerto Vallarta, where she had just been.

“I even took Squatty,” she said. “He speaks all kinds of Spanish, from working in South America so long.”

“Squatty?” Lee asked.

“My little fat ex-husband.”

They were soon seated atop of Houston, with a view of half the city. Lee sat between Sonny and Jim, Patsy between Bill Duffin and Joe Percy. Bill Duffin did the ordering and did it in his most solemn editorial tone. The presence of Dixie, perky in her orange dress, right at his elbow, seemed to have sunk Bill into a kind of reserve; he talked to her as he might have talked to a class of graduate students, only more politely. Lee, on the other hand, was very pepped. Sonny was paying her a lot of attention and she liked it. Once she turned and said something to Jim, even put her hand on his wrist, but in a maternal fashion, as a lady of presence might put her hand on the wrist of her son’s roommate.

Though it irked Patsy to admit it, it was Sonny who dominated the table. A few passing guests glanced at Bill Duffin curiously, or at Dixie, whose dress was so bright it was almost impossible not to glance at her; but the person they really looked at was Sonny. The force that Bill Duffin was able to project at a graduate party or a gathering of his colleagues was not being projected. He looked old and seemed scarcely the man who had been saying acid things to Lee an hour earlier. To Patsy’s surprise he said almost nothing to her. He passed her the pepper mill, he gracefully poured her wine, but otherwise he left her be.

Sonny stood out. If he had seemed diminished that morning standing under the great overlapping trees of South Boulevard, he seemed diminished no longer. His white teeth and black hair and white shirt worked for him; and unlike everyone else at the table he was perfectly at ease. Everyone else was eating fish, but he was eating steak. He gave most of his attention to Lee, grinning at whatever she had to say and occasionally putting in some quiet sardonic comment of his own. Once in a while he glanced at Patsy. She was almost glad, since he was the only one who did glance at her; but she was not entirely glad. In the glances she saw the only Sonny, the man who had lifted her like a doll in Phoenix. Once he looked at her just as he was lifting a buttery piece of French bread to his mouth, and his lips curved and he bit slowly into the bread, as if he had slowed down his bite just because he knew she was watching. He inclined his head to hear something Lee was saying, but his eyes stayed on Patsy for a moment. Then he bit into the roll.

Patsy nibbled her trout and felt low and confused. She had tried to chat with Joe Percy, but his mood seemed to correspond closely to hers. He had become suddenly and undisguisedly melancholy, and though he responded politely and even wittily, his heart was clearly not in the conversation. She gave up on the evening and sat silently looking out at the lights of Houston; she felt unwanted, unnoticed, and unsure. Everyone there was stronger and surer than she was—Joe Percy in his melancholy, Bill Duffin in his reserve, even Dixie in her bright strong ignorance. They were all strong compared to Jim and herself; they were all grown up; they all knew what they were doing. She thought wistfully of Emma and Flap; they would have looked incredibly out of place in such a posh club, but their wry out-of-placeness would have been a comfort. She thought of Hank Malory and could not picture him in such a place at all. He had said he loved her. If he did she could not see how it could help but make both of them more unhappy. She could scarcely believe she had spent an afternoon kissing him. She didn’t know what she felt and took what comfort she could from the lights of Houston.

The company wanted to go to the bar for brandy, but she didn’t feel like moving and fortunately Joe Percy came out of melancholy sufficiently to second her. “Stay here with me and have some more coffee,” he said. The company went and they stayed. Jim was puzzled; he could not see why anyone would prefer the company of Joe Percy to that of Sonny Shanks and William Duffin. But he said nothing.