Another Marvelous Thing Read online

  He sipped his drink and tried to make his mind a perfect blank, but the image of Billy in many guises darted through his tired brain. He looked over at Vera’s side of the bed and imagined Billy in it. Vera wore linen shifts to bed and piled her hair on top of her head to sleep. She slept like a kitten and smelled of Rose Bleue. Billy, he imagined, slept in a rotten-looking flannel nightgown. How he wished she were next to him!

  He dozed off, calculating that he had five days until Vera returned, and five hours until he could call up his grouchy girl friend and hear her voice again.

  That had been in the spring. It was now October. On a sultry, hazy day, Francis drove to Billy’s. She said she thought they ought to have a serious talk. Two blocks from her house, he was confronted by the sight of his beloved mistress struggling under a load of men’s suits in plastic bags—Grey’s suits which she was fetching from the cleaners. It was hot and Billy looked sweaty and cross. These were doubtless Grey’s fall and winter suits coming out of storage in time for Grey’s trip to Switzerland. This trip was of consuming interest to Francis as Vera was due to go to Honolulu at the same time, and it was his single-minded desire to take Billy away with him somewhere for a few days to find out what, if anything, she wore in bed.

  It occurred to him to stop the car and help her, but this seemed to him an ambiguous gesture, and so he drove on. Did Grey, that swine, expect Billy to run these errands for him? Or did she do it out of love? He gave her time to get home, and when he drove up her street he found her again, this time with a bundle of laundry. She was taking Grey’s shirts and the sheets to be laundered. This time she saw him and hopped into the car. Why, he wondered, did he always have to see her carrying such intimate bundles?

  Francis drove her to the laundry and then followed her into her living room where, he supposed, this serious talk was about to begin. But he was wrong. The sky darkened and lightning flashed directly overhead. It began to pour. Billy sprang up. “I left the windows open,” she said, and dashed up the stairs.

  Francis followed. She banged down the windows in her study and then went into the bedroom. Francis had looked into this room many times but he had never actually been in it.

  Of course, the lover’s nuptial couch is an object of horrible fascination. The lover is drawn to it, drawn to lie down upon it, and drawn to say what a miserable bed it is.

  Francis sat down. The bed was a four-poster, high off the ground and not, Francis noted, very wide. It was covered by a pink quilt, which was the nicest thing he had yet seen of Billy’s possessions. He stretched out, in a tentative way.

  “Jesus,” he said. “This is a very hard mattress. Or maybe it isn’t a mattress. Maybe it’s a plank of wood.”

  “I have a plank of wood, you have a football field,” Billy said, referring to Francis’s enormous cot, which she had been shown during a tour of his house. She thought his house was frightful, and said so often. She referred to it as “your charming little snuggery.” Francis’s house was usually considered to be quite beautiful. Billy said it made her feel as if she was imprisoned inside a tea cozy.

  It was amazing how many things prevented Billy and Francis from having their serious conversation. It was put off dozens of times, during which Francis went forward to achieve his heart’s desire: he wanted to take Billy on a little trip and sleep the whole night through with her next to him. He saw an ad for a cottage in Vermont and rented it on the spot for five days when Vera and Grey would be away at the same time. This happened very infrequently and not for this long—a whole week. Francis felt this should be taken advantage of. Billy, of course, was mute.

  The Sunday before he and Billy were due to leave, Francis put Vera on her plane and began his restless way back into Manhattan. He thought he might take a little drive past Billy’s just to see if she was visible. She might be sitting on her front steps, or walking down the street with the Sunday paper.

  She was walking down the street, but not with the Sunday papers. She was walking with her very husband, Grey. They were holding hands and laughing. It was not jealousy that lashed against Francis’s heart, but anger: she never told him that she held Grey’s hand or that they ever laughed. His vision of their marriage was a still photo of two people at opposite ends of the table who are silent because they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to say to one another. Francis had always assumed that she and Grey had nothing—nothing in common. It was amazing how exotic they looked to Francis, who was so used to the sight of Billy with him that he could not get over the sight of her with her lawful husband. Of course it was not unknown for Francis to hold Vera’s hand, or for them to laugh at the same jokes, but that was quite another thing entirely.

  One night in the bedroom of the rented love nest in Vermont, Francis turned to Billy. She was wearing his T-shirt and reading a book. The bed they were lying in was a little smaller than the bed Billy and Grey shared, and it was necessary for Francis and Billy to sleep like bunnies, or spoons or vines.

  “Is that what you normally wear to bed?” Francis said.

  “Normally I don’t wear your T-shirt to bed,” said Billy.

  “Isn’t that the one I wore today?” said Francis.

  “Uh-huh,” Billy said. “I like ’em broken in.”

  Francis was in a partial swoon. The cottage was drafty and the television didn’t work. Now they lay in bed with their separate books. The idea that he was actually in bed with Billy and reading—or pretending to read—made his heart a little wild.

  “Sex is a funny thing,” he began in a fatherly tone.

  “Yes, hilarious,” said Billy. “Listen to this.” She held up her book. It was entitled Green Demons, by someone called Ardith Chase Lamondt. “He drew her to him with a quick intake of breath. The delicate ribs along her spine quivered slightly.”

  “Yours never do,” Francis said.

  “You never draw me to you with a quick intake of breath,” Billy said. “I tell you, sex in this book is a pretty funny thing. What’s your book?” She leaned over and turned his book toward her. “Oh, yick,” she said. “I got my book off the shelf in the living room. You actually packed yours. I didn’t see any books by Important Thinkers in this house. I think it’s hilarious that you actually brought a book along to our illicit love nest.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk that way,” Francis said.

  “Oh, come on,” Billy said. “Isn’t that book the most boring thing you’ve ever read?”

  “This man is very important, miss. If you weren’t so smug, you’d read him, too. Besides, a man needs to keep up with his times.”

  “Huh,” said Billy. “Well, I made up an all purpose Important Title for you in the car. I was thinking about your bookshelves and I synthesized all the titles into one Very Important Title. You can use it when people ask you what you’re reading and you aren’t actually reading anything.”

  “What’s that?” said Francis.

  “It’s Towards a Scarcity of Needs,” she said. “I’m ever so proud of it. It has a nice, official sound and it means absolutely nothing at all. It’s the right title for a man who goes on an illicit trip and brings a book along, to say nothing of constantly listening to the news on the radio.”

  Towards a Scarcity of Needs! No one in the world except Francis and Billy would ever know what this meant. If he ever mentioned it in passing, no one would have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

  Having a love affair, Francis reflected, was not unlike being the co-governor of a tiny, private kingdom in some remote country with only two inhabitants—you and the other co-governor. This kingdom had flora and fauna, a national bird, language, reference, conceit, a national anthem (Towards a Scarcity of Needs), cheers, songs, and gestures. It also had national censorship—the taboo subjects are taboo. The idea that one of the co-governors has a life outside the kingdom always brings pain. For example, the afternoon Francis’s eye fell on a thick air letter in an elderly hand. When pressed, Billy turned red and explained that for ma
ny years she had been having a correspondence with a retired schoolteacher in the town of North-leach whom she had met during one of her research periods in the Cotswolds. He sent her hand-knitted mittens of local wool. She sent him new mystery books. They wrote a letter each month. This information left Francis speechless, like a blow to the stomach with a flat object. The moment he stepped out of her house her life without him began. Of course, the same could be said of him.

  What richness! what privacy! what sadness!

  Suddenly, Francis was exhausted. It had been a long two days: a tiring drive to Vermont, the strangeness of having Billy all to himself with no curfew, their odd and scarce hours of sleep. He leaned against the insufficient pillows. At home he slept with two pillows filled amply with European goosedown.

  Life was really very simple. What he wanted to know was this: did Billy love him more than she loved her husband, Grey? On the other hand, life was very complicated. He did not want to know any of the possible answers to this question. His eyelids were heavy but he thought he might rouse himself and ask Billy some burning question such as: what are we doing together?

  He turned and there was Billy wearing his T-shirt. Her hair fell into her eyes, and she brushed it off her face with a drowsy hand. She was fast asleep, her head full of alien, unknowable dreams.

  French Movie

  Billy Delielle sat in her study on a rainy afternoon staring out the window and watching the rain fall in steady sheets. Her papers were spread before her. She was rewriting the third chapter of her dissertation, which was entitled “The Economics of the Medieval Wool Trade in a Cotswold Village.”

  Three years ago Billy had gotten a study grant which she had spent in a cramped alcove in the Gloucester records office tracing the rising and declining fortunes of shepherds, landowners, weavers, and cloth merchants. Grey timed his vacation with Billy’s grant. Together they put up at the Heald Hotel outside of Chipping Camden, where they shared a lumpy bed in a room wallpapered with cabbage roses.

  Billy remembered the exact smell of her alcove: dust, old paper, floor wax. She remembered the afternoon hikes she took with Grey and the hours they had spent exploring in their rented car. When her grant expired they drove to Scotland to visit Grey’s sister and her family.

  These recollections were not sweet to Billy, although that time had been one of the sweetest in Billy’s life. It was disconcerting to be dreaming of a lovely time spent with your husband when you were, as Billy was, waiting for your lover.

  Francis Clemens had taken his wife, Vera, to the airport, and now Billy was tracking his probable progress back into the city. Vera was consulting on the construction of a library for handicapped citizens in Seattle. By this time, Billy figured, Francis would be driving through the Midtown Tunnel and soon enough would be cruising her block for a parking space.

  Billy’s previously safe, organized, and tidy life had been transformed, by the presence of this extraordinary irritant, into something resembling one of those oddly shaped freshwater pearls—Billy knew about these because of an interest in zoology, not jewelry.

  As wool prices reached their zenith between 1450 and 1550, farmland was worth more as pasturage, and farm laborers were suddenly out of work. This simple switch destroyed entire hamlets. It was the history of one such hamlet Billy was describing. The topic of her dissertation turned Francis glassy-eyed: his passion for Billy did not mitigate his indifference to the medieval wool trade. The business of money, which held no charm for Billy at all, was Francis’s meat and drink. He loved to put together a complicated transaction. This left Billy cold. Economics was a science, an art, an approach to things. Francis, on the other hand, delighted in making money. What were they doing together? Billy wondered.

  The doorbell rang. The extraordinary irritant had arrived. He hung his dripping raincoat on a hook in the hall and surveyed Billy. She stood before him wearing a football jersey, a pair of faded trousers, and socks.

  “A vision of radiant loveliness,” Francis said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Billy said. “The laundry ruined my filmy peignoir.”

  “Get me a towel,” said Francis. “I’m soaked.”

  He followed her upstairs to the bathroom and permitted a towel to be hung around his neck. The bathroom was at the top of the stairs. Next to it was Billy’s study, where, on Billy’s hard, ratty couch, she and Francis had been lovers many times.

  Francis was tall and slender. His hair was turning gray on the sides. He looked down at Billy and she looked up at him. In an instant they were in each other’s arms and very soon thereafter they found themselves on Billy’s couch. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm moved overhead, accompanied by dangerous lightning as Francis and Billy lay on Billy’s couch covered by the limp, faded quilt.

  “You look happy,” Billy said.

  “Of course I look happy,” said Francis. “Aren’t you happy?”

  He was answered by one of Billy’s long silences.

  “Aren’t you?” he said again.

  “No.”

  “You’re never happy with me?”

  “No,” said Billy.

  Francis sat up. The quilt slipped off his somewhat bony shoulder. He turned to her.

  “Is that true?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Billy. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you. It just means that I’m not very happy about these circumstances. It doesn’t seem very appropriate to be happy.”

  This time Francis was silent.

  “I’m starving,” he said after a while.

  “Umm,” said Billy. She had drifted away. Outside the rain beat down and the thunder was so loud it made the windows rattle.

  “Really starving,” Francis said. “I don’t suppose you have as much as a moldy piece of bread in your so-called pantry.”

  “Not so much as,” said Billy, yawning. Francis could count on the fingers of one hand the meals she had given him, mostly canned soup.

  “Let’s go to my house,” Francis said.

  “Never,” said Billy, who was phobic about Francis’s dwelling.

  “It’s too rainy to go looking for a restaurant,” Francis said. “I have some choice edibles at my place”

  “I would rather eat cheese and garlic and live in a windmill,” said Billy.

  “Oh, really?” Francis said. “Where’d you pick that up?”

  “It’s from Henry the Fourth,” Billy said. “My favorite teacher, Miss Chaffee, used to say it all the time.”

  “Cheese and garlic,” Francis said. “How I long for it. Get dressed. You’ve given me a ferocious appetite.”

  Billy yawned again. She was starving, too. Hunger made Francis restless. In his naked state he prowled around her study. He knew in advance that there was nothing of interest on her desk, so he opened her study closet, where her clothes were kept.

  “I always hope I’ll find something nice-looking in here.”

  “Fat chance,” said Billy.

  Francis surveyed her clothes. He rummaged in the back and pulled forth a blue cotton dress.

  “What’s this?” he said. “This is an actual nice-looking garment.”

  “It was at the cleaners for a year,” Billy said. “I found the ticket by accident and picked it up the other day.” She turned on her side because she did not want to look at Francis. The sight of him naked and holding up her dress caused her heart to ache. These poignant moments, of which there seemed so many in a love affair, printed themselves indelibly on her consciousness. The result was that even on the happiest day, walking across a field in Maine out on a bird walk with Grey, for instance, these tender specters—Francis doing some preposterous thing—rose up before her and reminded her that her life was full of thorns.

  Francis put on his trousers and socks and sat down next to her on the couch. At his feet lay the white cotton underpants he was given to understand she bought at the five-and-ten-cent store. Next to Grey’s football jersey, coiled like worms, were two worm-colored socks. The look on Francis�
�s face said: “Why are so many of her clothes worm-colored?” Billy knew this look very well.

  “I’ll take you to my house and feed you a beautiful roast beef sandwich with watercress and curried mayonnaise,” Francis said into her hair.

  “I’m not going to eat the leftovers of your dinner party,” Billy said.

  “It wasn’t a dinner party,” Francis said into her neck. “It was family dinner right before Vera left.”

  “Eeep!” said Billy, pulling away from him. “How can you utter the word ‘family’ and slobber over me at the same time? Quentin and Aaron are probably coming out in hives right now and don’t know why.” Quentin and Aaron were Francis’s grown sons.

  “Hush,” said Francis.

  “You want to feed me old food,” Billy said. “You want to feed me something cooked by your very own wife.”

  “Hush,” said Francis again. He put his arms around her.

  “You have very long arms,” Billy said. “Has this been pointed out to you?”

  “Many times,” Francis said. “You have pointed it out on many occasions.” He turned her toward him and kissed her.

  “You have the wingspan of the California condor,” Billy said.

  “The California condor is extinct,” Francis murmured.

  “It is not,” said Billy. “It is almost extinct but is making a comeback.” She draped her arms around Francis’s neck. “In fact,” she continued dreamily, “the last issue of Condor Watch describes how to feed condor hatchlings on simulated vulture regurgitation.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Francis. “Get up.”

  In the kitchen they made a snack of peanut butter and stale water crackers. They were both ravenous and almost anything would have done.

  Billy and Francis never stayed together—Billy sent him out into the rain and off to sleep alone. She did not like Francis prowling around her bedroom, which he did every chance he got. Francis was a terrible snoop. Accused of this, he claimed he would never go through her mail if she ever told him anything. Left alone he would doubtless have gone through all her bureau drawers, too.