A Season in Purgatory (34 page)

It amazed her that she could be so physically attracted to a person she despised so much both before and after the act of love. No matter how strong was her intention each time to resist him, he had only to unbutton his shirt to reveal his chest, or unzip his fly and place his hand inside, running it along the length of his penis, for her to fall on her knees and beg him to take off everything, everything, quickly, placing her face in his most intimate parts, and beg for him to take her in any way he wanted her, it mattered not how.

Afterwards, he said to her, “After your bath, come over to the big house. I want you to meet my friend Harrison.”

“Oh, yes, Harrison. The old family friend. He’s the one who’s going to write the book that you are going to say you wrote, so all the voters in the state will know you’re just a regular guy. That Harrison?”

“You can be a real bitch, Charlotte.”

“They don’t call me rich and heartless for nothing, Constant.”

“I’m Harrison.”

“Oh, yes, the old school friend,” said Charlotte, when at last she met Harrison standing by the fountain. They looked at each other, each sizing the other up.

“What happens when you meet up with all those people you write about afterwards?” she asked, not waiting for the usual preliminaries of a new acquaintanceship.

“They’re usually in prison,” Harrison answered.

“Mrs. Goesler isn’t. Mrs. Renthal isn’t. The girls they left behind, I mean.”

“We don’t travel much in the same circles.”

“No, I suppose not. I felt sorry for Ruby Renthal. Care to walk for a bit?” she asked. “You can’t swim all the time.”

“Sure.”

“I was prepared to dislike you,” she said.

“I was prepared to dislike you, too,” Harrison replied.

She smiled at him.

“You’ve probably heard terrible things about me, from Kitt and Constant. And Maureen. And that ghastly Jerry. I just hate Jerry, don’t you?”

Harrison smiled. “He was never my favorite in this family,” he said.

“Don’t you think it’s odd that you’re the only real friend my husband ever had?” asked Charlotte. “He talks about you all the time. When he heard you were coming this weekend, he was beside himself.”

“That was years ago,” said Harrison.

“That’s the story of his life. He’s rich, beautiful, dazzling, witty, charming. People line up to look at him. They want to be close to him. He’s wonderful on the campaign trail. New people in a new town every day. That’s when he’s at his best. He says exactly the right thing to each one. Perfect, personal, charm personified. But what I’ve found over the years is that no one stays around long. Even you. Eventually they begin to discover that the very qualities to which they were first attracted only mask his inadequacies. Everyone knows it except his father.”

It was not a conversation that Harrison wished to pursue. He shifted the subject. “What’s it like being in the family?”

“Strange. Difficult. I was an only child. I’m from one of those old Baltimore families that had run out of steam, not
to mention money. I never knew from one year to the next if Daddy was going to be able to scrape up the money to send me back to Foxcroft. The year I came out, there was no money for a dance, so I came out at a tea. If I hadn’t been pretty and popular, it would have been a joke. Then I met Constant. I had a Catholic grandmother, so I qualified. He was the best-looking thing I ever saw, and so rich. Daddy was ecstatic, of course, even though he couldn’t stand Gerald. Micks. He called them all micks. I said, ‘If you know what’s good for you, Daddy, you’ll lose that word from your vocabulary forever.’

“But with the Bradleys, you marry into the whole family, this big vast army of people, with no privacy. Every weekend together. Twenty or more people sitting down to every meal. Those spoiled brats of Maureen’s, screaming all through dinner. And now with Grace getting so social, she has the worst kind of hangers-on coming to lunch every day. Of course, I never thought Grace was as blind to what goes on in this family as everyone thinks. I actually kind of like old Gerald, in his rough-and-tough way, but every time he snaps his fingers, all his children jump, and they’re now all in their thirties and forties. I see you’re maintaining a diplomatic silence.”

“I hadn’t seen any of them for years until yesterday,” said Harrison.

“I’ve never really been a member of the family. I was married to Constant for two years before I even heard there was a sister called Agnes in a madhouse somewhere, or that Des was once married to a maid.”

“They tend to hush up those things.”

“What is there about you, Harrison? I feel like I’ve been to confession.”

Harrison laughed.

“Actually, I quite like being a Catholic. I adore confession.
Oh, wait until you see us go to Mass on Sunday. They line up to look at us. I like that, too. And I can do a better job than Nancy Reagan of looking up at Constant whenever he makes a speech, no matter how many times I’ve heard it before. Of course, I’m not listening, but no one knows that. I bet she wasn’t, either.”

Harrison laughed. “I don’t think you’re as bad as you make yourself out to be.”

“You’re not really going to write this asinine book for Constant, are you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“We’ve got things to talk about, Harrison,” said Constant. “Mass is at eight-thirty and ten in the village. Bridey and the maids go to the eight-thirty usually, and we all go to the ten. Then the family breakfast. After that we can spend the day together. Walk on the beach, talk, figure it out about the book. It would be great working together.”

“You go. I’ll wait for you here.”

“No church?”

“No church,” replied Harrison. “I have ceased to be a practicing Catholic.”

“Since when?”

“Since I could no longer receive Communion.”

“Why can’t you receive Communion?”

“Because I witnessed a murder and did nothing about it. It’s not the sort of thing you can tell in confession and expect to get absolution from the priest. Apparently you don’t have the same qualms,” said Harrison.

“Jesuschrist, Harrison.” Constant looked toward the closed door, as if Harrison had uttered words of unspeakable vulgarity in front of his mother. Any reference to that long-ago night in Scarborough Hill was brushed aside as if it had
not been heard. It was a thing never discussed. “My father felt—” Constant stopped before he completed his sentence, and turned away.

“Oh, of course. I understand. Your father felt it wouldn’t look right for a son in politics not to attend Mass and receive Communion. Did your Cardinal Sullivan give you some special dispensation, or do you just confess the fuck and booze sins and overlook the murder sin?”

“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden, Harrison?”

“It’s not all of a sudden.”

“I’ve had enough of this. I have no memory of what you are talking about.”

“Yes, you do, Constant. It’s like a big black cloud hovering over the two of us. The unmentioned subject. The thing we pretend never happened. The thing we blocked from our minds that we carry with us year after year. Dare I even say the words? Winifred Utley.”

Constant, breathing heavily, stared at Harrison and shook his head and waved his hands in front of him, as if he were warding off a curse.

“I should never have come here,” said Harrison. “My life was going along fine, in its own sick, neurotic way which I have grown to find normal. I had put all this in the back of my brain somewhere. Then your big-deal father began to interfere. ‘Write a book for my son. It’ll be good for him.’ Puffing away on his big fucking cigar. I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to spend the weekend here. But as always, with you people, I revert back to the awestruck scholarship boy and end up doing what you want to do, not what I want to do. You and I should never see each other again, Constant.
Never
.”

“You are becoming hysterical,” said Constant.

“Yes, I am, aren’t I? And I am not ashamed of my hysteria. I don’t seem to possess your composure. Where does
this reserve of yours come from? I am eaten inside by what I know, and I am not responsible, while you, who are responsible, act as if what happened is some inconvenience in your life, like being kicked out of school for reading a dirty magazine. Ever since I saw you again, that night is all I can think of.”

“After all, it wasn’t deliberate,” said Constant.

“Oh? What was it then?”

“You are tiresome, Harry. It’s over, forgotten. Why do you linger with it?”

Constant rose and walked slowly toward Harrison. He reached out to him and pulled him to his feet and shook him, all the time breathing heavily and staring into his eyes. Then he kissed Harrison fully on the lips and put his arms around him, enveloping him into his own body.

Harrison, impassive, neither resisted nor acquiesced. “No, Constant, that’s not going to do it,” he said.

“I’ve got a hard-on,” said Constant.

“I don’t,” said Harrison.

“Do you want to see it?”

“No, I don’t.”

“There was a time.”

“Yeah, there was a time, but that was long ago, and we were very young.”

“I remember when we used to jerk off at school looking at
Playboy
, you always used to look at me, not the beaver shots,” said Constant.

Harrison remained impassive. “Over. Out,” he said, pulling back from Constant. “You’ve always talked a great deal about erections. Have you noticed that about yourself? I wonder if, perhaps, you have trouble getting one, or maintaining one. I wonder if that is not the cause of the rage that made you do what you did. What did you do that night?
Stand there in the path and wait for her to go from the Wadsworth house to the Utley house?”

Constant, enraged, roughly pushed Harrison away from him. “We’ve done a lot for you in this family,” he said. The tone of his voice was unpleasant.

“Listen, you son of a bitch, you haven’t done as much for me as I’ve done for you,” said Harrison, matching Constant’s tone. “You killed a woman, and I kept my mouth shut for you. I hate you for having involved me in that terrible act. What the hell more do you want out of me?”

Constant, momentarily frightened, looked at him. “You could have said no that night, you know,” he said. “I didn’t force you to lift her up. You came along willingly enough.”

“Next thing you’ll have it worked out that it was I who raised the baseball bat and crushed in her head. Get real, Constant. The schoolboy crush is over. I know who you are. I know all about you. No more games between us. Tell me about Maud somebody or other.”

“Maud?”

“Yes, Maud. The one in the hotel room in Chicago, who cracked her head on a bedside table, who had seventeen stitches. Surely, you must remember Maud.”

“Maud Firth, you mean.”

“Yes, Maud Firth.”

He dismissed Maud with a gesture. “She was drunk. She fell. That was all. However did you hear about Maud Firth?”

“She was a cousin, or some relation, of Fruity Suarez. Fruity told me.”

“Who’s Fruity Suarez?”

“The one you pissed on at Milford.”

“Oh, her. Fruity. Didn’t she get kicked out for kissing somebody’s dick? Or trying to? How is old Fruity? Still pursuing bachelors, I assume. Is this who we’re listening to these
days? Is this our source of information? Fruity-fucking-Suarez?”

“That’s nice talk.
She. Her
. That’ll go over big with the gay vote when you run for governor,” said Harrison.

“How is Fruity involved?”

“He called me out of the blue at two in the morning a few years ago. Woke up my wife. Maud went to him after you left her there in the hotel room. She was afraid to go to her parents. Your version of the events of that night differs somewhat from Fruity’s.”

“I hear you’re fucking my sister,” said Constant.

“What a Bradley way to put it.”

“My father says you seem to have an affinity for his children.”

“Tell your father Eloise Brazen said he was a pretty good fuck for an old guy.”

“Who’s Eloise Brazen?”

“You have no memory for names, Constant. A bad trait for a politician. Eloise Brazen was the one you called looking for your father on the night you killed Winifred Utley.”

“Lower your fucking voice, Harry. We’re in my mother’s home. Not everyone understands your kind of humor.”

“Humor, huh? Is that what it is?”

“You see, I don’t remember anything about that night. Not one single thing.”

“Don’t remember?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, I see. The old blackout cop-out. Is that it? You were drunk. And don’t remember. So therefore not responsible.”

“If it ever came to that, yes.”

“I could blow a hole in that story a mile wide,” said Harrison.

“But you won’t,” said Constant.

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“You’re right, Constant. I won’t,” said Harrison.

“Is this true?” asked Constant.

“Is what true?” asked Kitt.

“You and Harrison? Are you sleeping together?”

“You’re not getting moral with me, are you, Constant?”

The two youngest, Kitt and Constant had once been each other’s favorite in the family. Young, they shared secrets. They discussed their older siblings endlessly. Kitt, of all the others, had understood Constant’s moods. She knew that somewhere he felt inadequate to the great expectations his father had for him. “It should have been Jerry,” he once confessed to her. “Not me.”

“What about Cheever?” Constant asked.

“What about him?”

“You’re still married to him.”

“Your marriage doesn’t seem to have curbed your wayward habits. Surely, you of all people are not going to discuss the sanctity of marriage with me?”

“It’s different.”

“It’s not, Constant. That’s Pa’s thinking. It’s all right for the men, but not the ladies. You’re never going to win an election with that line of thinking. I might not even vote for you.”

They were walking on the beach. Far off, they could see Harrison swimming. Both watched.

“Are you curious about him? Is that it? Are you curious what it’s like, Constant? It’s marvelous. Does that answer your question?”