CHAPTER THREE

Though not especially given to little kids with big glasses and bitten nails (except in their correct chronological age-group) I found as the weeks went by that I was growing closer and closer to Frannie.

Remembering now the initial flush of our friendship I confess to a feeling of ambivalence: (what, for instance, of the kitchen scene?) Yet, there must always be some small smudge of doubt at the onset of any new experience; one moment at least when there is question and the desire to withdraw. Still, the simple truth is: I wanted her close. In all my years of moving from city to city for Brad's ever-changing jobs I had had to forfeit the possibility of lasting relationships. Never before had I been given the chance to lapse warmly and securely into the natural nest of female consortion.

Now: here was Frannie, ready, willing, and able to fill the void. And in spite of the huge black frames behind which she seemed to hide and her hands which were definitely those of a self-gnawed little girl there was an adult side to her that was strong and stimulating.

I began to see how it was possible for a spiritual oak of a girl like Jeri Perloff to bend before Frannie's subtlest zephyr; and also why one like Marian Deitz fought for her individuality against it. I soon found myself listening over and over to Frannie's records, trying my best to sound intelligent in my analysis of lyrics and deliveries which until now had seemed nothing but inane. And I read the books she told me to read because they were, she said, essential. Essential for what I didn't quite see, but the urgency with which she presented them was enough to swing me into line.

Her literary taste, along with her choice of music, was limited to the contemporary: it ruled out the past completely, almost compulsively, and stopped just short of the avant-garde. At times it seemed that if it weren't for life-savers like Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and J.D. Salinger she might have perished of cultural malnutrition altogether. But then—who was I to criticize? Aside from my concern over Wingo's young enrollees, a smallish interest in Leftist politics, and the constant re-evaluations I was called upon to make in order to stay married to Brad, I hadn't had a provocative thought since college.

Coming across an old faculty report on her which had been stuck into a book I borrowed, I was not surprised to read: "Frannie rarely comes to class prepared with the assigned material. Instead she makes up her own facts as she goes along. I would not know how to grade her if we did use the grade system here; but she has been most interesting to the group and to myself."

When, on returning the book, I handed her the report and kidded her about it, she smiled. "That was Hadley," she said. "Taught a course called Today's Classics. She was terrific. Five-feet-eleven, can you imagine? I mean without heels."

"Just what," I asked, "did her height have to do with her competence at teaching?"

"Oh, nothing, I guess." She sighed, falling suddenly into a meditative depression. "I wish I were tall," she mused. "I wish I were so tall I could watch a parade over the heads of everyone else in the world..."

"Well," I consoled, "when you get right down to it, how many parades does a person have to watch in this country?"

"Oh, Jo!" She grimaced. "You know what I mean!" And of course I did—that time; but there were others when I didn't have a glimmer.

* * *

One Saturday afternoon I drove back from a shopping trip in town to the little carriage house Brad and I rented and found her convertible in the driveway. It gave me a great lift to see it there. I honked a tattoo on my horn so she'd know I'd arrived and then flew in, grinning from ear to ear. She was lying on our second-hand sofa, head on one of its threadbare arms. Beside her on the coffee table there was an almost empty gin and soda and an ashtray spilling with butts.

"You been here long?" I asked.

"Two hours or so." She swung her jeaned legs down and stood up to stretch.

"Didn't you get bored waiting?"

"Bored? The quiet was heavenly. When I left the kids with the day's worker they were playing dodge-ball in the livingroom."

We went into the kitchen then to refill her glass and to get one for me.

"I've been thinking," she said, sliding onto a wooden chair. "How come you haven't divorced Brad?"

The question took me by surprise. "Why would you ask a thing like that?"

"Oh, I don't know... but it does seem rather obvious that you—well, that you don't really like him too much."

"I do like him!" I blurted defensively. "It's just that sometimes he's a little—oh, a little impossible to live with, that's all."

She laughed. "So I'd gather."

"What do you mean?" I knew what she meant all right, but I was annoyed—as I always was when I had to face the fact that Brad's shortcomings were obvious. Now, willfully hurting myself, I pressed her further. "What, precisely, do you mean?"

She looked away. "You know," she said.

Had there, then, been sequels to the ice cube episode? My annoyance flared. "If you mean his penchant for les jemmes," I said, "don't take it to heart. You, baby, are approximately Number Twenty-Five..."

She lifted the glass to her mouth with both hands and focused her eyes on the rim so they seemed to cross a little. Then she pulled one knee up against her chest. I was sorry I'd said it.

"What I mean is—" I began, trying to make amends.

"Forget it, Jo," she interrupted. "Standing in queues for things has never appealed to me. Not for inessentials anyway."

I had been put in my place in a way I'd watched her stop others. Having enjoyed witnessing those thrusts, I was less intrigued when I myself was the target. "I happen to be used to it," I said, attempting to be light "Got him that way myself, as a matter of fact"

She looked up, interested.

"That was twenty-seven years ago," I said, wanting for some reason to tell her things. "He was twenty-two then and I was nineteen, in on a college vacation, supposedly visiting an old Baltimore aunt of mine. He was living in a little dive near the Patapsco River with this woman my aunt knew, named Sonya, who was old enough to be his mother. She must have been tired of playing Jocasta though, because she was really insistent about my coming up for dinner to meet him."

"So you went?"

"So I went. And stayed for three weeks, I might add. Then I had to go back to school; but after that it got to be my headquarters for holidays."

She reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table and lighted one thoughtfully. "Could you—could you enjoy a thing like that?" she asked. "I mean—with her there? Wouldn't it sort of—cramp a person's style?" Then she faced me, eye to eye. "Unless, of course," she added, "one needed an audience for kicks..."

Her earnestness amused me. "Don't tell me you're shocked," I said. "I thought you were rather Bohemian yourself!"

"I am neither shocked nor Bohemian," she stated flatly.

"Well, you sound pretty unfettered to me," I argued. "At least in comparison with most of the people around here. I can't say I've heard of many Pillars of Society going to cocktail parties with their slacks' crotches torn out."

"Don't be deluded," she said. "Mere counter-phobic action. Jewish: Middle-to-Upper-Middle. Chicago's Marjorie Morningstar. Uncle was my grandmother's brother. Neville Sapperstein could have been my nephew! I'll admit I've made an honest try, Jo; but you can lose a leg unfettering yourself from a setup like that..."

"It doesn't show at all," I said. "Not the kids, or Marc either. I wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for the law firm and the mention of Mill Pond. Not that I ever know who's what anyway...I never think of it," I added, flushing just slightly at the partial lie.

"You don't have to think of it," she said. "I do."

We were quiet for a few minutes. It wasn't until after I'd poured her another drink that she carried the conversation back to Brad. "He must have been really something in those days," she began.

I was always pleased to dwell on Brad's looks. They were, I think, one of my major rationalizations for putting up with him. "He was incredibly beautiful," I said.

"He still is."

"Not as," I told her. "You should have known him then. I've got a picture upstairs. Shall I go get it?" I went before she answered. It was a little snapshot in a silver frame, sitting on the bedtable next to one of my father. I stood there for a minute looking at both of them, even though doing that always made me feel like hell. Brad's reminded me too much of the past and the crawling of time, towards what end I didn't know; and my father's had been taken on our old lawn just outside of Providence a week before he'd died of pneumonia brought on by nothing more than a common cold and no real interest in living any longer.

I picked up Brad's and carried it down to Frannie.

"Hey..." she breathed, and then she brought both legs up, feet on the chair edge, and stared at it between her knees.

"Nice?" I asked, leaning over her from behind with my chin just brushing the top of her head.

"Dorian Gray..." she murmured. Then, passing it back to me over her shoulder: "Take it!"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she half-laughed. "I was just thinking of that portrait in the attic!"

"Come on," I said, "he isn't all that bad." But the analogy had hit me and when I put the picture down on the sink top I turned my face away to hide my irritation.

Frannie had a wrist watch on that day (the same one she was later to lose), and when she glanced at it, she whistled. "Have to leave immediately!" she said. "We're going to the Perloff's for dinner."

"Oh, stay awhile. Brad'll be home soon. He'll want to say hello to you."

"Can't."

"Oh, come on. Please."

I don't know why it seemed suddenly to matter so much, to matter at all, that she wait and see him. But there had been something exciting in telling her about our early relationship, in showing her the picture of him when he was young. Or maybe the remark about Dorian Gray was still cutting me. Maybe I wanted him to walk in and charm her out of the conviction she had that he was—inessential. Maybe it was twenty other things. I didn't know. I only knew that I wanted her to wait.

She was still refusing when I heard his car in the driveway, and he was in before she could get out. "Hi, darlings," he said, putting an arm around each of us. His body between us seemed to act as a kind of conductor and I could almost feel her tighten on the other side of him. Then he dropped his arm from me and the current was broken. "Where are you rushing?" he asked, still holding her close.

Carefully, deliberately, she freed herself. "Dinner party."

"Oh." His face fell.

"You could—crash," she said hesitantly. "Jeri and Len. It's not as if you didn't know them."

He brightened. "Bring our own bottle?"

"The Perloffs have enough bottles for everyone," I put in. "The point is: you weren't invited."

"Invited? What do you need—an engraved announcement from Tiffany's? Frannie's their friend, and Frannie invited us."

"You might call them first," Frannie suggested.

"I'm not calling them first," I said. "I'm not calling them at all."

She left then and Brad walked her out to the car. It was quite a while before I heard the motor start up and even longer before he came in again, looking, I thought, slightly on the Cheshire side. I supposed he had kissed her goodbye and was dying for me to ask so he could tell me about it. It wasn't simply Brad's pleasure to sow wild oats about the entire social terrain: he had to let me know exactly where they had been strewn and how they were doing. But in all our years together I had learned a warfare of my own: a refusal to reach for the bait, to even notice. So, when he returned from Frannie's farewell (which, at the time, I felt certain must have been distasteful to her) I merely handed him a drink and smiled back.

But hidden gripes have a way of festering to large angers and in no time at all the evening became intolerable. Though I had been eager for him to come home while Frannie was still there, her departure left a frustrating void in its wake. Her absence, in some strange way, robbed the night of any possible compatibility. Over a pot-luck supper of cold chicken and leftovers I wished we had been invited to the Perloff's. Not that I had expected much come-on from that quarter. The close friends of close friends rarely like each other. Jeri was quite possessive and probably felt her relationship with Frannie and Marc threatened by the deep inroads Brad and I were making.

At about nine I threw down a book I couldn't concentrate on and went upstairs.

"Don't go to sleep," Brad said. "I'll be there in a minute."

"I'm tired," I told him. "Come on, Jo," he pleaded. "Your way..." But even my way, without the awkward burden of his weight, would have been unbearable that night.

I went up to the other bedroom and took my clothes off. Looking into the long mirror I saw the fullness of my breasts. Unaccountably, I thought of Frannie. I suspected that the loose boys' shirts she wore covered next to nothing. Brad was right: what was she? A little kid with big glasses and bitten nails. The realization of this somehow elated me; and seeing my body once more, I was suddenly filled with desire. I went to the door to call down to Brad. But something stopped me. I don't know what; but it stopped me cold. I turned, got into bed, and fell asleep.

I rarely remember my dreams. But I did have one that night and for some reason it stays with me: I was walking down a street; a busy street, like Broadway. At the corner I saw a man. He was very tall and very handsome and around his neck he wore a beautiful orange ascot. I didn't recognize the man, but I seemed to recognize the ascot; so I went up to him, and took it off. As I was standing there looking at it in my hands, a girl appeared. She was quite young, almost a child. "Here," I said to her. "This scarf is your color. It belongs to you." At that moment she began to run. I ran after her. "Wait," I kept calling. "You forgot to take this, and it's yours!"