CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the next few days my new and unlikely residence became known to the whole of Suburbia. After several attempts to worm it out of Frannie by telephone, Brad got in touch with the Mothers' Office Squad at Wingo and poured forth in detail the pitiful tale of his abandonment. This, added to the fact that Frannie came to school to pick me up in her convertible on a day when my battery went dead and the buses had already gone was enough to offer them one of the juiciest grapes that had ever hung from the vine: Jo has left Brad because of Frannie, and she's living at the Brownes'!

"What about Marc?" I asked her, when several hints of question had been dropped into the conversation of her friends. "I mean, the idea that it's getting around..."

"Marc's okay."

"It won't be easy to take..."

"Don't worry. Marc has something the rest of us don't seem to have: an inner core of confidence."

"Oh, sure," I said. "Marc has his love to live on! Which means by your lights, I suppose, that you can rip him to shreds and expect him to come up smiling. You figure you love him and Love is All. Well, I've been in love too, Frannie, and that isn't enough. You've got to live it a little. You can't treat people like that and then just kiss the hurt away! The poor guy needs proof of love!"

"Poor, poor poor..." She smiled cryptically. "Has anyone ever told you, Jo—you bear a striking resemblance to Delilah?''

By the end of the second week we had the eating arrangements down pat. One night we stayed home and the next we went out. On the nights' we were in I did the cooking. We usually ate too late for the kids, but Frannie took care of that at about five-thirty with easies like hot dogs, hamburgers, and chops. That left me the time and space for things like lasagna, chicken Cacciatore, divinely sauced vegetables, and various other specialties I'd picked up along my travels through Bohemia.

On the nights we went out we frequented local spots like the Black Bear Inn, the Llewellyn Tavern, and Harry's Delicatessen—saving the Juniper, in town, for special celebrations. It was Frannie who called the celebrations, and the need for them occurred with the risings and ebbings of her personal tides. It was understandable that we dine out on caviar and mammoth lobsters when, out of the blue, she sold two poems to a top woman's magazine; or on the day her agent called to say an editor was interested in a rewrite of one of her older stories. But it was less clear on occasions when she might insist on painting the town simply because: Did you know—Petey stopped wetting his bed exactly two and a half years ago tonight?; or: The laundry man's sister knows a girl who had triplets this morning!; or: Guess what! Mary McCarthy has a new book coming out this Fall!; or even because: I was depressed all day but I just this minute got over it!

It was on one of those End-of-the Depression nights that I suspected her of having simply compounded the blues by trying to run away from them. We were driving back from the Juniper, as we usually drove: all three in the front seat with me between Marc and Frannie. (She could never sit in the middle, she said, because she got car-sick and had to be next to an open window.) The evening had been gay enough. Frannie had had us and herself convulsed when, having waited a considerable time for Samuel, the maitre D, to take our order, she greeted his belated arrival with: Sam, You Made Us Pant Too Long!"; and again during dessert when she summed up the entire concept of psychoanalysis as: Fee and Sympathy. But she quieted soon after we'd started for home and I was aware of an uneasiness in the car: she kept straightening, taking deep breaths, squirming away from me, closer to the window. After we got to the house she went into the kitchen for ice-water. When she had it poured she put her arms and head down on one of the counters, twisting a little.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Back hurts."

"You seemed uncomfortable in the car."

"Well, it's crowded and hot and everybody sticks to everybody."

"Here," I said, walking over to her. "I helped in a hospital once. I was terrific at back rubs." I started kneading her neck, working downwards, then up again. "Better?"

"That's swell," she answered, standing up suddenly. "It's fine now."

"I don't mind," I told her. "They used to keep me at it for hours. I used to—"

"Look," she broke in, "I'm telling you: it's fine now!

"Okay. But if it isn't by tomorrow, I'll—"

She picked up the untouched glass of water and peered into it. "You're very kind," she said slowly. "Very kind..."

"Now just what does that mean?"

"What does it mean?" She put her glass down. "Well, let's see. One might assume that when one is kind one is not cruel. On the other hand—one might be kind simply to cover up the fact that one is cruel..."

"Oh, Christ," I sighed. "I'm full of a marvelous meal and it's too late at night for that!"

We didn't talk after we left the kitchen. Marc went to bed and Frannie, obviously still bugged from her morning depression, followed behind him.

Unsleepy myself, I decided to work on another job summary. My woman had not yet come up with anything definite so I figured I might as well try another agency. But when I looked in the desk for my resume carbons, thinking to copy parts and add a few things, there was a sheet of Frannie's typing lying on top of them. I moved it off to the side; yet, as I did, I found myself reading it. This, evidently, was the hurried piece she had written on her return from the zoo.

I don't know that she ever did anything with it; ever used it in any way. It may have been one of a stack of false beginnings which never materialized. In any case, I remember it; word for word. It went like this:

Memo—(for poem? short story? novel?):

Lions roar at feeding time. But at other times, unless agitated by extremely willful spectators (of which there are few) they sleep, pace their cages on padded feet, or lie stretched out—watching you with amber eyes. Compared with other houses in a menagerie (those with shrieking birds or jabbering monkeys, for instance) the Lion House, while holding within it the most murderous forces of hostility, is the house which appears, on the surface, to be truly at peace.