CHAPTER TWENTY

Frannie never did get my next letter. It was returned to me weeks later. Instead she called me from Idlewild. There she was—bag, baggage, and brood; and Marc, having been paged by cable the day before, had driven over to pick her up.

"Enough!" she said on the phone, sounding near and gay. "Isles of Love are slow death on solos!"

I was overjoyed and forgot immediately the jolt of that last rejecting note of hers. "How long will it take you to get home?" I asked.

"We just got through Customs and they're loading the station wagon. Something over an hour, I guess."

"I'll be there waiting for you!"

"But it'll be 'way after midnight!"

"So what? I'll pack a grip and sleep over."

"How will you time it?"

"I'll leave here in a half hour and be there when you arrive!"

"It may take longer. Marc hasn't eaten and we may stop for a sandwich."

"That's okay. I'll read and have a drink."

She asked me to hold on for a second. I did; for several. Then she came back. "Marc says the doors are locked. You can't get in."

I sighed. "Then I'll wait in the car. What is this? Don't you want me to come?"

"Oh, for God's sake," she said. "Of course I want you to come."

I got there before they did. It was a warm night with a moon out and stars jamming the sky. I walked up and down the road awhile and when I was tired I got into my car again and curled up in the back seat. In spite of my excitement I willed myself to sleep to make the time go faster.

I awakened to the sound of a brake in the driveway. As I leaped from my car door Frannie leaped from hers and we ran towards each other all the way across the lawn.

"You look marvelous!" I gasped through the tangle of embraces. "Look at the color!" In the silver light from the sky the skin of her face and arms was almost black.

She stretched her hands out and squinted at them fondly. "I've got it all over—from head to toe!"

"Hey, break it up!" Marc called from the car. "Help me get some of this stuff out!"

Blair and Petey sleep-walked into the house, and even Stu seemed to be knocked out enough not to know what was going on. Frannie and I got them to bed as fast as we could and then she, Marc, and I dragged the luggage in. After that I mixed us some drinks while Frannie changed into some shorts and the orange shirt I'd given her. When she came down to the den she looked at me for a minute. "Your lipstick's smeared," she said.

I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth.

"There on the side, and over on your cheek."

"Hey," I laughed. "That's right—you kissed me, didn't you; without tightening up like a God damned wire!"

"Yes..." she said slowly. "I kissed you."

I glanced up. "Now look," I told her, "don't start getting complicated, will you? You just got here!"

"I'm not complicated."

"Oh, Christ," Marc said, "here we go again. I've been driving for hours. Can't you save this crap for tomorrow? I'll take the kids to the office with me and you can contemplate your navels all day. Right now—I'm for bed."

"In a bit," Frannie said, lying down on the couch. "We've got a lot to catch up on."

"You mean you didn't write it all?"

"No. Not all... Anyway, Jo has to give me the latest installment on her sex life. Oh, wait—listen!" She began to laugh. "I've got a new book title: Biography of Gordon Potter—Bon Voyeur!"

"That's not fair," I said. "Gordon's got a lot more to him than that!"

"What—necrophilia? Beating? Corn cobs? Or that thing about waving burning newspapers over the supine torso?"

"You dog."

She quieted. "My morbid interest in Gordon," she countered, "has been forcibly fanned by you, sweetie. Those letters! I still have them! I'd have cremated them but I felt it wasn't even safe to leave the ashes!"

Marc yawned.

"All right," I announced, standing up. "We'll get some sleep and talk tomorrow."

"Thank you," said Marc, with a stiff mock bow.

I left the den first, shutting the door behind me. When I got upstairs I closed the door of my room. But the straight, open stairwell was a channel for sound; and I could have sworn, some ten minutes later, that I heard Frannie crying: brokenly, unceasingly—like someone who had lost her mind.

* * *

In the morning Marc left with the kids at about ten thirty. I was awakened by a succession of bangs as they went through the screen door; and by the running of Frannie's bath water into the tub. I got up and took one too. When I was dressed I heard her moving around in Blair's room where we'd piled the unpacked bags the night before. I went in. She had nothing on. It was true about the sun-tan: she had it all over; and in the sunlight it was even more striking than it had been in the dark: there were parts of it that shone like bronze where she was still wet from her bath.

"Oh," I said inanely.

"Oh," she said, just as inanely, crossing her arms over her breasts. Then she brushed past me quickly and wet into her own room to get dressed.

I fried us some eggs, reheated the coffee Marc had left and carried it all into the den. When she came down handed her a plate.

"Look at that Rouault," she said, leaning towards over the liquor cabinet. "God, how I've missed that Rouault. If we ever went broke and had to sell it I think I'd—"

"Aren't you going to eat your eggs?"

"I'm not hungry. Do you want them?"

"Go on, eat them. Protein."

"Here." She brought the plate over to me and slid the eggs off it onto mine.

"I don't want to sound like your mother," I said, "but if you don't start eating like a normal human being you're going to starve to death."

"Death by any cause frightens me not at all," she intoned grimly, slinging the empty plate across the cabinet. "Starvation, in fact, would seem tidier than most—if a bit on the slow side."

I put my plate down. "What is it?" I asked. "What's on your mind?"

She walked back to the couch.

The draperies were still drawn from the night before, and the sun seeping through them held us both in a soft orange light.

She didn't answer me. Her silence lasted whole minutes; and, as happens in the midst of most waiting-silences, I became aware of the trivial sounds surrounding it: the splash of a hose on a neighbor's lawn; the grind of a tree-saw down the road; two dogs barking at each other, and the motors of three passing cars.

"Listen, Jo," she broke through at last.

"I'm listening."

"I'm tired to death of all this."

"Of what?"

She looked up at me. Then she shook her head slowly. "When are you going to stop that?" she asked.

"Stop what?"

"Stop asking what? Stop pretending you don't know anything! Stop living your life as if it were a dream or something—as if all you have to do is wake up to make it all go away and not matter anymore!"

"Oh, Christ," I said, "don't tell me you're about to sermonize! Really, Frannie, if there's one thing about you that does drive me wild it's that moralistic thing you do. Half the time you're some crazy, rootless hoyden shouting Freedom from the hilltops; and then when you get people over to your side so they trust you and go along with it—you turn around and hit them over the head with a Bible! I swear, if you start Holy-Rollering me about Gordon, I'll scream!"

She leaned forward, shocked out of hesitance. "Not Gordon, Jo," she said with a quiet anger that annihilated the force of my own. "Me."

“You?"

"Listen to me, Jo. I've just come back from a four-week nightmare. That I had the guts to come back at all amazes hell out of me. It would have been so simple the other way: one dive off that villainous cliff into the rocks; one big wave—and finished. But I couldn't do it. I had to come home. I had to get it said. That's the thing about people like us: we keep having to say things. One day we're going to talk ourselves right out of existence. There isn't going to be anything left of us to prove to the world that we were ever in it—except some God damned echo of a million words! And you know what's even worse? When they get it all taped and try to decode it, they aren't going to be able to. They'll chalk it up to the wind, or the rain, or a trick of the elements. They'll never understand it. They'll try for all of eternity—but they'll never understand it. And you know why? Because we didn't understand it ourselves!"

"That's beautiful," I said, "but what does it mean?"

She got up and went over to the cabinet. "What time is it? I lost my watch a while back..."

"Yes. I know."

"Is it too early for a drink?"

I got us some ice cubes and mixed two gins and soda. We were about a third down on them before she spoke again. "Listen," she began, seemingly fortified. "I sat on those cliffs like a sun-crazed lizard, trying to think of a way not to say it. I figured if there were just some way to keep quiet, just some way to go on as we've been going, without putting it into words—then maybe I could work it out the way you work things out: turn it all into some sort of bad dream that would vanish in the morning. But I couldn't. I just couldn't—"

"For someone who has to say everything," I put in, "you're certainly doing a good job of saying nothing."

She set her glass down and bent towards me, seeming to brace herself against the thing that was about to break over us. "All right," she said. "Stop—seducing me."

I sat there staring, not believing I had heard her.

"You see, Jo," she went on, "there isn't any need to anymore. You've—got it made."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying what I had to say," she answered. "That I can't stand fooling around anymore. You've—got me."

I was speechless.

"It might have gone on for a while longer," she said, "if only I hadn't been down there alone. I kept praying Marc would come back and, in some magical way, make it untrue. But he couldn't come. The only thing that came and came and came and came were those letters!"

"I was letting you know about Gordon," I broke in.

"You wanted to know! You know you did! I was writing to you because you were my friend. I was giving you news!"

"You were giving me yourself," she said. Can’t you see that, Jo? Gordon was just some sort of vehicle you used to get yourself across to me."

"You're out of your mind."

"Am I? Tell me honestly, Jo: have you ever heard of a woman who could make love with a man as rapturously, as completely as you said you did with Gordon and then, three minutes after it was over, dash to a typewriter and send it all to some girl she knew? And I do mean all. Why would she do a thing like that, do you think?"

"Frannie," I said, fighting to keep the quaver out of my voice. "Frannie, you've gone mad!"

"Maybe. But not the way you think I have. I can stand it, that it's happened. I've known for a long while anyway. I've been living with it day after day—like you'd live with one eye, or an atrophied arm. You can get used to things like that—if people will let you. That's the big thing: if people will let you. Maybe I have gone mad—but not because of a dirty name. I've gone mad because—you're turning tail. And I'm in too deep now to get out alone!"

I flung my hand across the end-table by my chair and my drink went over. Neither of us moved to wipe it up. "What do you want me to do?" I asked through my teeth. "Marry you to make an honest woman of you?"

Her face began to give way. "I want to cry," she said. "I want to cry so badly."

"Well, cry," I told her. "I'd cry like hell if I were you!"

"I can't. It won't come."

I couldn't stand seeing her that way. What comfort could one give or take from anger? I got up from the chair and went towards her, as I had gone to Gordon the night of the window, as I would have gone, and would still go, to anyone or anything alone and stricken. "You've got to get some help, Frannie," I said, laying my hand on her shoulder. "You've made up this whole thing in your mind. You know that, don't you?"

"No!" she shouted, striking my hand away. "I didn't!" Then she folded on the couch, head buried in a cushion.

"You've got to get some help," I repeated.

"Look, Jo," she said a minute later, facing me again, "can't you see how it's been for a year now? The thing with Brad? Can't you see how strange that was?"

"Yes," I answered, going back to my chair. "You, my best friend, took him right out from under me. Strange is putting it mildly."

"I did," she said, "and that's where I went off. But what about you, Jo? What about the wife who does everything she can to make it easy?"

"I? Make it easy?"

"Didn't you? Wasn't it you who sent me out for soda? Wasn't it you who wanted me to go upstairs and wake him? Didn't you hand him over on a platter every chance you got? When you knew, finally, what was going on, did you try to stop it? Did you write me off for the bitch I was? Did you break up the friendship? Did you even so much as get angry? No. And when the whole thing blew up in your face what did you do? You moved in here—with me!"

"That's ridiculous. That's—"

"Hold it, Jo, and listen: there's more. After you got here, what happened? Do you remember? You cooked, you cleaned, you took over the kids. There was Blair—"

"You're going to drag Blair into this?"

"Yes—Blair. I knew how you felt about little girls. I knew how much you'd always wanted one of your own, and how you felt you couldn't—because of Brad. I saw the way you looked at her when she came into a room, and heard the tone of your voice when you spoke to her. One night I woke up and went in to see her. She wasn't there. I went into the boys' room, and she wasn't there either. Then there was a sound behind your door. You were saying something softly, and I heard you use her name. I knew: she was in there—with you. Do you know what all that did to me? You're going to laugh. You're going to roll on the floor. I began to have a fantasy; the God damnedest fantasy in the world: She wants my little girl, I thought; she needs my little girl. How sad, how heart-breaking; Jo who is so dear to me can't have the thing she wants most of all! How can I help her? What can I do? And then I knew: I'll give her one, I dreamed. I'll hope and pray and wish and believe; and in some strange and supernatural way, the miracle will come to pass: I will give Jo a baby girl; a real one; one that will grow inside of her and be born and be her own!"

"That's fantastic, Frannie, and you know it!"

"Yes, I know it. I said it was a fantasy. But there were other things that weren't fantasies; they were real. Marc—"

"Marc?"

"The cooking, the cleaning, the caring for the children: what were you doing when you did all those things? You were showing me up as child; proving me, in front of Marc, unworthy of a man. In that way, and in many others, you tried to separate us."

"That's a lie!"

"Oh, is it? What about that sweet, motherly advice you gave me while I was down there on my cliff, going crazy: that kind and generous suggestion about filling my need with the guys at the military bases? And the thing about Marc the night you had dinner with him: how you had the feeling he was ready to have it with you; how you wanted to ask him in for a drink, but felt it safer not to? I told him about that, last night in the car on our way back. You know what he said? He said he'd like to break your God damned neck!"

"Don't give me that, Frannie," I said. "You can trap the whole world with that clever tongue of yours, but I'm not buying a nickel's worth! You're sick. You're sick as a dog. I used to think you were neurotic. You're not. You're insane."

"I'm sick," she said quietly. "But I know it. And that makes me a hell of a lot less sick than you."

I looked to the window. The drapery across it seemed a barrier between us and reality. I yanked the cord and opened it. The sun poured in so fiercely I had to shut my eyes. When I could see again, she was sitting on the floor beside the couch with her knees drawn up, cradling her head. With a pang of something I couldn't understand I saw that her glasses were off, lying near her on the floor. They became alive to me; and somehow lost and suffering. I wanted to walk over to them; pick them up; put them back on Frannie where they belonged.

I did love her. I knew it then. But not the way she thought I did; and not the way she loved me. It wasn't I who had the dream confused with reality; it was she. Why had I let myself be snared by her sad delusions? Why had I responded so deeply to an illness that wasn't mine?

"Look, Frannie," I said calmly, "call up your Paige woman. Maybe she can do something. Call her, will you?"

"I don't want Paige," she answered. "Can't you understand? It's true about you: I don't know how it is, or what it is, or why it is—but everything I've said about you is true. You're wrong; you're so wrong. You're wrong about a thousand things: you don't see it; you don't know it; you never have; and maybe you never will. And that kills me; that kills me more than anything. I want to tell you, and teach you, and make you be right. It's funny: I'm righter than you are; but I don't want to be! I'd gladly be wrong any day if it could make you right. So don't tell me to call Paige. Who is Paige to me? I don't love Paige; I love you. I don't want Paige. I'm sorry, Jo. I can't help it. I want you."

The directness of the thing shot a chill through me. I got up and opened the door. "I think I'd better go," I said.

I went upstairs to get my overnight bag. While I was there I remembered something: the duplicate key to my apartment. I'd given it to her the week we'd fixed the place and had never thought to ask her for it.

Before leaving I went back into the den. "Give me my key," I said.

She got up and took it out of the side drawer of the desk. "Why do you want it?" she asked, looking at it in her hand. "You've got another, haven't you?"

"Just give it to me."

"Do you think I'd—use it?" Her mouth twisted into a crooked smile. "Really, Jo—there's decency even in perverts, you know."

"I'm sorry," I told her, "but if you ever did come, it would be an—intrusion."

"Do you know how funny that is?" she asked. "You being fussy about intrusions?"

"I'm sorry," I said again. "That just happens to be the way I feel. I don't want to; but I do."

She handed it to me. "How about your letters?" she asked. "Would you like those too? You might want to use them someday—for a textbook on Normal Heterosexuality."

I thought a minute. Then: "Yes. I think it would be better if I had them. It can't matter; but I'd rather—"

She went up to Blair's room and got them from the valise.

“Here."

I took them. There were twenty-one. "Forgive my negligence," she said. "A tasteless rubber band. No blue ribbon..."

I stuffed them into my bag as she watched me. "You're really going," she said. It was not a question. It was a statement of fact, spoken only to force acceptance of its actuality; to clarify its emptiness of choice. When had I last verbalized the obvious to give myself the sense of what was real? Years and years ago, at my father's funeral. I had held together tightly through it all; but the truth was not the truth until the very end, when, seeing him lowered and away, I said, You've really gone.

She followed me out of the den into the livingroom. I pushed at the screen door and it swung open. Standing in it, I looked around. "What are you going to do?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "At the moment I think I may—die. In any case, I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. What was it you said once—about Pam Coulton in Connecticut? You casually inspect the universe? It's all right with you what other people are? You haven't anything against it, but it has nothing to do with you...?"

When I got home there was a letter in my box from Gordon. It was short. California was beautiful, and he was selling Potter Pens a million a minute. He was staying on, as he'd told me he might. He missed me. When he came back he would give me a call..."I bought you a present," the P. S. read. "Silver earrings. I had them sent, and they should get to you soon. They're very modern—hammered out by the queerest queer in Hollywood—and three guesses what they look like! They're a little crazy. But so are you."

I had hoped for something longer, less flip. But somehow it didn't seem to matter. It had occurred to me when he left that I might never see him again. He had almost seemed to want to get away.

And the earrings? They would come, of course. But would I wear them...?

Why, I wondered; why, why, why had I never been able to read Walden?

* * *

Up in my room I lay down on the bed and fell asleep. It was dark when I awakened. The first thing I thought of was Frannie: for a minute I had the icy premonition (or was it a dream?) that she was dead.

I called her number. Marc answered.

"Is Frannie there?" I asked.

"Yes—but I don't think—"

"It's all right," I told him. "I don't want to talk to her. I just wanted to know if she was—okay."

There was a pause. Then: "If you mean did she kill herself, the answer is No—she did not."

"Oh, Marc! Did she—tell you?"

Another pause; and finally: "She didn't need to, Jo."

"You mean—you knew?"

"Yes. I knew."

"But how?"

"How didn't you?”

"How could I have?" I asked.

"Well," he said, his voice dead-soft with anger, "I should think you'd have gotten a pretty clear view of things from way up there, on top...”

I smashed the phone down—too late: I had already heard the smash of his. I sat there with my hand on the cradled receiver and cried myself blind.