Rich Friends (56 page)

“That was below the belt,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“Are they really hurt? Am I being cruel?”

“You don't have it in you.”

“No, tell me.”

“Cricket, you flunk cruelty.” He turned off the water. “Listen, I can take the way SOBs stare like I'm a freak. I can take Grandma calling me Roger. I can take the way Ma hovers over me, so proud I'm a Van Vliet like the big kids. Christ, though, she's on the sauce. Really. And Dad—he's pathetic. Whoever figured losing Roger would hit him so hard? I honestly believe he's quit screwing around. But you wanna know what it is that really gets to me?”

“Vliet, don't do this,” she said. “Not to me.”

He went on. “I can stand everything, Cricket. Except holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. With her wedding-present silver, bowls and platters and little jars, her good cutwork cloth covered. That food. So damn much food. That much food is obscene. And they expect me to eat and eat and eat and make up for Roger. And since I already said it, there's Gene and Caroline. They have sad eyes, too. So I eat your share. Nothing goes down right. I'm a full-fledged ulcer candidate before my time.” He came back into the room. “Forget any of that crap about you going into self-imposed exile. You always did live in your own peculiar, honest little world.” He leaned on the sink. “It's me. Me. Me. Cricket, I cannot eat all that damn stuffing and gravy.”

“Please, Vliet.”

He held up his glass, squinting at her through water. “God is my witness, I cannot face that Van Vliet's butterball turkey alone.”

“Here I'm all right. Pretty much.” Her voice faded.

“Cricket, Cricket. Six thousand miles to say this. I need you to be with me.”

A long silence.

“Look, I fly down for every possible holiday and occasion, and some impossible ones. I'll keep doing it. I'll be with you.”

Down the narrow room he was staring at her, so intently that she could feel her heart, and she thought of their son and the events preceding him. Upstairs, a phone rang. Her lips trembled.

Vliet didn't move, but the expression in his blue eyes changed. A warm look. And something more. Pleasure. As if he'd found the key to an Alfa-Romeo on his chain.

“Okay, I won't push it,” he said.

Why should he? He'd won, and he knew it.

She sneezed three times.

“My limey cousin better take her vitamin C.” He pronounced
vitamin
English-style, the first
i
short, the second long. “And I better move my tail.”

He phoned for a minicab. And was gone.

She found a George V shilling and pushed it in the meter. Electric coals glowed orange. She sat on the thin rug, warm on her front, her back cold, munching a stale tortilla. From time to time she sniffled. The upper lip protruded wistfully.

She listened to the rain fall on a city that, until two days ago, had been her haven.

3

Vliet kept his promise. He flew home so often that by April Gene was saying, “Joe McAllister's retiring next year. We better break you in while he's still around.” Joe was one of the old-time market men, he ran the seven Southern California warehouses. This was a big promotion, a challenge, a hell of a lot of work.

Alix had been sprung. It took Vliet three months to find time (get up the nerve? )to call her.

Vliet kept to the middle of the shabby runner. The apartment corridor was thick with the noncommittal hush that underscores muted television laughtracks. The window at the end of the hall was dirty, uncurtained. All the lonely people, he thought, this is where they all come to, and as his finger pressed down on the yellowing buzzer of 117, he saw, very clearly, a fat Down's syndrome face with crazy lipstick. Make her look okay, he thought, I don't ask for the old spectacular, okay is all.

The door opened.

Slender body in magnificently cut white pants, hair shining and curled at the tips as if blown dry by some hip faggot operator, makeup invisible but present. It was as if tragedy had made Alix aware of her unique gift, as if she now understood her luminous perfection demanded trusteeship. She was, without hyperbole, the most beautiful woman Vliet ever had seen—and he'd searched plenty. Relief exploded in him, she held out both hands, and he took them, kissing her forehead.

“You smell good, too,” he said.

The living room was ferns, wicker, charm, and a ringing phone. Glancing him an apology, she answered.

“Sure … No-no, not tonight … Mmm, sad. Sounds fun.… Six tomorrow? Fine, Vic … Yes, here.…”

Vliet noted a desk with books. Alix, still on the phone, pressed the rolltop. The desk rumbled shut.

After she hung up, he asked, “What's that you're hiding?”

“A mess. I'm working on a paper. Didn't Cricket mention UCLA?”

Cricket, who saw Alix, had. “Full time?” he asked.

“Pretty much.” And the phone rang. As far as Vliet could tell, she made three dates in five minutes. So much for all the lonely people.

Leaving down the drab hall, he asked, “Not to get personal, but have you considered someplace newer?”

“First, it's near Beverly Hills and UCLA. Mother feels more secure if I'm nearby. Second of all, it's cheap. And third, the rooms are good-size, and if there's one thing I cannot stand after being in hatches, it's small rooms.”

“Real finesse,” he acknowledged. “I haven't heard a crackup handled so beautifully since my first Sutherland
Lucia.
”

They ate in the Rathskeller in Westwood, surrounded by others in the uniform of casual chic. They drove along Pacific Coast Highway. By the time they neared Malibu, they had talked, briefly, about her stay in Mount Sinai. “I was stuffed with Thorazine and soggy coffee cake. I weighed in at one ninety-eight when I left.” And Pleasant Elms. “I went on a diet.” He told her of his job, riding assistant herd on Van Vliet's warehouses, playing down his hard work. He pulled into the Malibu pier parking.

“Buy you a drink,” he said.

“Let's walk.”

So they moved along the dark pier, listening to the hollow crash of waves beneath them. She put her arms on the rail.

“It's been easy,” she said.

“Why the surprise? Isn't it always with us?”

“I was terrified. Vliet, I did crack in front of you.”

He didn't care to open that can of worms. He lit a cigarette.

“It bothers you, my saying that?”

“You never were one for confessionals, Alix.”

She stared down. Breakers roared, ghostly white.

“Dr. Emanual says I must be more open with my feelings.”

“You've still got a shrink?”

“One that looks like a lizard.”

“Ahhh. You haven't reached the transference stage.”

“Not yet.” She laughed.

“Openly then, Alix. How do you feel about the date you made with the first joker?”

“Sincere.”

“Too sincere to cancel?”

“It's Vic. One of Dan's sons. They're in for a month—they live with his first wife in Rome. Vic's eighteen. No-no. Nineteen.”

“Do you confine yourself to foreign adolescent stepbrothers?”

“Absolutely.”

At her khaki-drab front door, he put his arms around her. She pushed at his chest with her palms, breaking free. “That's the trouble with the world today. Everything's rush-rush.”

“It's called instant gratification.”

“Never touch the stuff.”

“Then, Alix, you're out of step.”

“Sure I am. You're with a certifiable corkscrew.” And rising on her espadrilles, she kissed his cheek.

In the cool, rarefied atmosphere of rejection, she had managed—with well-known Schorer charm—to shift the onus from rejected to rejectee. From any other girl he would have accepted it, figuring next time, babe, next time. But walking down the long, dingy hall, he muttered, “Frigid bitch,” aloud, remembering how often he had left her with these words on his lips. The front door was inset with a stained-glass mermaid. You can't step into the same river twice, you can't relive the past. Roger was dead. Alix the same all-American tease. His policy of forget-what-can't-be-helped applied here. Vliet was not given to dramatic gestures, yet pausing in the streetlight, he flipped through his little black book (gold-cornered Gucci) to
S
. He crossed and recrossed through her name and number.

Alix sat on the edge of her tub, her back straight, her muscles stiff. She heard his Mercedes start and fade into the night. For five minutes she was motionless. Then she stood in front of the mirrored door, looking at herself. At the worst times she had seen nothing in mirrors. Now a girl stared at her with dark, frightened eyes. Was this what other people saw? She lifted her hand, examining the reflected wrist. The hand in the mirror shook.

Turning away, she unbuttoned her jacket, giving it a little shake, examining collars and cuffs for any line however faint to indicate a trip to the cleaners. None. Meticulously she placed shoulder seams to padded hanger. She arranged her pants, cuff to cuff. She hung jacket and pants on the hook above the mirror. Tying back her hair, she washed her face then peered, examining her eyebrows. Continents might shift if one unplucked stub remained.

In bed, propped on her pillows, she opened her bedside drawer. Always a list maker, Alix had incorporated into her night routine, no matter how late it was, a noting of items to discuss the following morning. She saw Dr. Emanual each weekday at eight. Along with the pad, she inadvertently fished out an earlier note (she saved them compulsively) written in a large, unfamiliar hand:
why always blood? isn't death the ultimate desertion
? The big letters wobbled crazily.

She pushed the scrap far into the drawer, writing in her usual neat hand:

it was a mistake to tell him i was terrified. i almost left the apartment a half hour before he was due, but forced myself to wait. lizard, does that earn me a gold star
?

why couldn't i let him kiss me
?

She sat among her pretty flowered pillows questioning the evening. Alix, vigilant. She might walk and talk like others, but she knew she was not like them. Once you lose your footing, once you've slipped into the crevasse, you never can escape the black ice.

Eventually she folded her list. She waited for sleep.

4

Under taut hospital linen, her body had dragged her into the safety of sleep. Food and sleep, that was what she needed.

Always she was empty. When her trays arrived, she would lift the covers: she, who always had been delicate, grabbed with fingers, dribbling down her hospital smock. Finishing, she would reach for a snack. She would find bear claws sticky with sugar, or a box of stale vanilla wafers, or Twinkies, or a pair of bran muffins bridged by a neat square of butter, or See's chocolate softened by warm hospital air. It didn't matter. Food was not for taste. Food was for the emptiness.

She got to know her ceiling. The chaotic soundproofing squares sagged like wet patchwork.

Once—fluorescent tubes held back the ceiling and therefore it was night—her mother wept. Warnings floated around Alix. Terrified, she didn't dare move on her barred bed. She watched amber eyes and twin trickles. Then the lights cracked and the ceiling gave way, oozing red. Alix screamed and screamed and screamed, frantic to make someone understand that the holes were leaking blood.

And after that the ceiling tormented her.

And after that, she didn't know whether it was the same week or month or year or century, Dr. Emanual came. A voice lacking condescension and a saurian mouth. Dr. Elizard-ual. Lizard. He had understood her. He had protected her.

I can't sleep with him, I cannot
.

Did he suggest it
?

No-no
.

Then why is it a problem
?

I like him. That's brilliant, isn't it? I like him and am terrified of sleeping with him. Or anyone. Don't you think we're wasting Father's money
?

You're my star patient
.

Sure
.

Why must you demand so much of yourself? We've made progress, so much progress. It's taken tremendous courage on your part to get this far
.

(Long silence.)

In high school, sometimes before I went to sleep I'd have this fantasy. I was living in another time
.

What other time
?

Oh, not real long ago
.

Your mother's time
?

When she was in school, yes
.

Why then
?

You want me to say I was jealous and unresolved about her? But isn't that a mite obvious
?

Or too difficult to deal with
?

No-no. But in the forties sex was taboo
.

(Dr. Emanual chuckled.)

Shrinks aren't meant to laugh, Lizard. It was more programmed then. You know, there were codes
.

Does it reassure you to believe people lived by the Hayes Office
?

That's not the point
.

What is the point
?

She didn't have to. When she didn't, nobody hated her
.

Are you saying Vliet hates you, Alix
?

Yes. Now he hates me. Maybe he always did
.

From what we've discussed, I'd say the reverse were true
.

You didn't see the way he bolted down the hall, leaving me. Oh God
!

Is how he feels so important
?

You know how everybody feels about me is important. This especially
.

Why
?

I told you. I like him. For God's sake, he's Roger's brother
.

Alix, I want you to think about this. You've characterized last night as threatening. Very. Do you think it's wise to see him again
?

Don't worry. He won't call
.