A Southern Exposure (21 page)

For the store, after all, was her idea in the first place. Wings of excitement flutter within her at the thought of this definite, original, and possibly lucrative project. And
even in the midst of her excitement, her busy and efficient mind moves forward, moves ahead with plans and designs and calculations.

It is pleasant too to have Dolly returned as a friend. Dolly who even now is more bright-eyed, much more herself, than when she first came in.

Dolly now leans forward. “Something interesting,” she says, in her lowest, most excited voice. Her gossip voice. “You know what? We’re finally going to get to meet the famous wife of that Clyde Drake. Mrs. Norris Drake is coming up for the weekend, and they’re going to give a party. SallyJane swore to me that this was so, this very morning in the drugstore!”

“Deirdre, thy beauty is to me

As of yore

A great bore …”

Russ has scribbled those lines on his writing pad, smiling furtively as he did so—before he quickly tears off and crumples that page. He does not even want to see it again himself, and he does not want that name even written in his house. And besides, it is not true: Deirdre is still the most perfectly beautiful woman he ever saw, with those translucent sapphire eyes—including New York and Hollywood, nowhere a woman as lovely as Deirdre is. Which perhaps is the problem, her perfection. Once or twice he has cruelly thought that she looks like one of those match-cover ads
that say “Draw Me.” The curves of her forehead, of her nose, and of her cheeks are all perfect curves, and her rich tawny skin is flawless. She is perfect.

He is not so much bored with Deirdre’s beauty, actually, as he is unmoved. Never these days stirred, in the old breathless blood-tingling way that he used to be, for what now seems a very long time. These days when he goes to see her, which he does religiously at least once a week, it is almost never to make love (although sometimes it ends up that way), it is just to say hello. To check in, as though they were married. And to see Graham, about whom his feelings are strong, and ambivalent. And though these visits are mostly innocent, they still must be accomplished with the utmost secrecy. Furtive visits, requiring infinite pains and trouble. Sometimes he almost wishes she would leave, go somewhere else. But he hates himself for that thought, especially since poor Deirdre has no place else to go. Not back out to her furious terrible father, Clarence, in California—and what would she do alone in New York, for example? Thanks to him, she is saddled with a child, and she is certainly bright enough for a job but she can hardly type. What she is best at (Russ is fairly clear on this) is domesticity; she has made an enchanted cottage of that old house, with handmade curtains and flowers all over, and her cooking is marvelous—Graham has never had a store-bought cookie in his life. She is wonderful with Graham, a natural mother, Russ thinks, with a heavy sigh. She would make some man a most wonderful wife, but whom can she ever marry?

Russ tries not to think about Deirdre, and for most of the time he succeeds.

Norris Drake has a small dark intense monkey face, or perhaps the face of some exotic cat, with great unblinking yellow
eyes. Her features seem all in focus, all concentrated, surrounded by a mass of wild black hair, which is so extremely dark as to be almost blue. And she is a small thin woman, lively, laughing a lot, and talking. She always seems to be moving, doing something—although when she looks at anyone she seems to consider very carefully, to take that person all in. Or if she is only looking at a table, she takes it in, her gaze comprehends the table.

When she first looks at Russ, as they are introduced, he has a sense of never having been before so seen by a woman, or by any person at all. It is not anything as simple or direct as just seeing through him, through all his usual costumes and disguises, his accents. Or not like seeing him naked. Though both these descriptions of her seeing would apply. But it is rather that she seems to see him entirely, all at once, without in any way hinting at her reaction to what she sees. What she has taken in. Although Russ instantly feels certain that she plans to let him know, in one way or another, just what she makes of him.

He is not at all sure how he feels about her.

Before they met, he was sure that the whole thing was just a nuisance—Clyde Drake and his wife coming up for the whole damn weekend, a party. Just when, after long dry weeks and months, his work had begun to be going along almost well. The Kansas play, the pig play, had finally seemed to be moving along, taking on some life; he feels that everything he has seen and thought about for the past ten years or so, the years of the Depression, is contained in this play. He has even been tempted, very tempted, to send a rough draft out to California, to his Hollywood agent, which is something he never does. (His contract specifies that this play, known as “Byrd’s next work,” go first to Hollywood, rather than starting in New York, as his work more usually did.)

But he knows better, really, than to risk an ignorant
agent’s look at a rough first draft (they are all deeply ignorant, in Russ’s view). Besides, he hasn’t even finished that first draft, not really, and he knows what even the most carefully phrased negatives can do to him. And what makes him think that he could count on such careful phrasing? Those guys play rough out there, even rougher than in New York, which is bad enough.

Russ still has a lot of the countryman’s distrust of city folk, which is reinforced, much strengthened, by the Southerner’s distrust of Yankees, and especially those Yankees in roles of authority: doctors, business agents. What could they know, he deeply if half-consciously thinks, about Southern poetry? Which of course would include his plays, essentially.

And then there is Jimmy Hightower’s novel, that whole problem. The novel is awful. But Russ is not sure about what kind of awful. If he had written it himself—but that is impossible; he could never in all his born days have written a piece of garbage about early settlers in Oklahoma. Indians. Oil strikes. All that junk. The characters are all one-dimensional, sentimentalized, and, for Russ’s money, over-sexed. Which sounds like a surefire best-seller formula, except that it might not be. Russ is not at all sure of his judgment along those lines. And he is certainly not going to voice such an optimistic view to Jimmy, getting his hopes up so cruelly. On the other hand, should he even encourage Jimmy to send it off, to risk a highly possible rejection, and harsh, un-Southern-gentlemanly words?

All that sex. It has certainly made Russ wonder about the actual life of Jimmy. Of course he knows, he would be the first to know, about a writer’s fantasies, or actually any man’s. Still. He himself, for example, simply does not think all that much about sex; he has never done so, not since he was a boy.

In any case, he does not know what to do about this
goddam book, nor about Jimmy himself, whom Russ, despite himself, Russ sort of halfway likes. And the more he likes him, the more tiresome and boring Russ finds him; that is the terrible paradoxical truth of it, a truth indecipherable to anyone but Russ himself (or possibly SallyJane), and even he is not quite sure of its deepest meaning. He is bored by people he likes? It is more interesting to be a little angry, a little disapproving, even?

Does he disapprove of Norris Drake? She walks right in with her case of Cokes, says “Where’s the goddam icebox,” and comes out of the kitchen swigging from a bottle. As SallyJane later puts it, “She sure gets right down to making herself at home.”

Norris stares at Russ again, and she grins her tight monkey grin, and then she says to SallyJane, “Well, I can see from the kitchen that you and me got our work cut out for us. Big party.”

As Russ knew she would, SallyJane demurs. “Oh no, I can—I’ve really got it all organized, much more than it looks.” Which Russ also knew was not quite true; poor SallyJane was never organized these days. Their meals were later and later, as SallyJane got slower and more confused. Sometimes his heart could break for SallyJane.

Knowing none of that, though, Norris can be brisk, “No, no, no, I have to help,” she says. “Whatever are houseguests for, now I ask you?” And she laughs, low and sexy, a surprising laugh from such a small woman.

And then, according to what SallyJane said later on, she really did help. With incredible speed and efficiency she did everything; she saw whatever was needed to be done and did it, without any directions or any discussion about it.

•  •  •

And the party arrived. All Russ’s familiar friends, their familiar smiles and gestures, known voices. Their same old clothes—their costumes. And Russ himself slips back into his part as the host, and his voice takes on his host accents, his hostly laugh, and smile. Genial, very country.

He watches poor pale fat SallyJane taking Norris and Clyde all around, introducing. Poor SallyJane, he can see that she believes herself in love with Clyde, in a sad, defeated hopeless helpless way, and for the first time he wonders: Could SallyJane be truly sick, something organic, not just all that heavy depression in her head? You would think that Clyde Drake would know, or would have noticed if she was sick; he’s supposed to be a doctor, isn’t he?

Dolly Bigelow, very demure and pretty in pale blue, sits there demurely next to Willard, her eyes dancing along with Clifton, who is getting drunk. Irene Lee is watching Clifton too, for all the good that will do, poor woman. Harry Baird, home from D.C. on a visit, is flirting very unseriously with every single woman in the room, making them all feel prettier, better (how Russ wishes that he could be so light, so unimpeded). And Cynthia Baird, who is beautiful if not exactly virginal in white, is watching, watching everyone and everything that happens. That is a woman whom Russ cannot understand, not at all.

And everywhere there is Norris Drake, flitting through the party like a firefly, in her light yellow silk, cupping her hands with their long crimson nails around the cigarettes that all the men hasten to light for her, her fingers always touching theirs. Observing all this play of fingers, of touches, for no reason Russ shivers.

Norris comes over to him for a drink—she asks for a Coke: why doesn’t she drink, or “hold with drinking”? He pours it for her as they exchange an empty look, a smile. But then, just as she is turning to go back to the party, she comes back to Russ, and with no smile at all she stands up
on tiptoes, reaching to whisper. Her breath comes silky in his ear. “I want you to fuck me. I really do. You have to.”

And then, with a pure social and public smile, she is gone back into the crowd.

Never in his life has Russ heard a woman, any woman whatsoever, utter that word. Its shock is profound, echoing, rippling through his blood. But then he thinks, No, she did not say that. She’s a flirt and she teases, but she can’t have said
that
. Much less have meant what she said. What could she have said, or meant?

For the rest of that long and eventually drunken party, sober Russ feels a sort of nervous frenzy in his blood, much closer to fear than to desire. But what has he to fear? It is all impossible. What can she do? Besides, she didn’t really say that.

For some time now Russ has slept in his study, which is downstairs, almost in a separate wing of that huge house. He sleeps on a narrow cot; its discomfort wakes him from time to time and imparts a sense of monkish virtue, of sacrifice. Upstairs, in their wide deep marital bed, SallyJane sleeps the sleep of the deeply drugged, from which she sometimes cries out, loud and passionate cries, and groans. Impossible now to sleep with SallyJane.

But Russ, all alone, is deeply asleep when at some weird pre-dawn hour he feels again that sultry breath in his ear, and a whisper, “Don’t worry, I gave him some of that stuff he fills SallyJane up with—” And then a mouth against his mouth, a small strong tongue forcing it open, darting in. But not for long—nothing for long. The mouth and the breath move down, slowly down all the length of his naked body, coming at last to his sex—oh Christ! (He has heard about this act, read about it, but no one, not ever …)

Inside her mouth is all wet and slick, and the tongue
now moving all around, and back and forth, up and down, until quite suddenly she has moved, changed everything, and is now up and astride him, and it is her place not her mouth that he is inside, her red hot place, as she rides him, rides him, pushing him down, her long nails pressing his arms, until his whole being breaks like a dam, and he is gone.

The silky voice in his ear, louder now, cries out, “
Shit
, I didn’t make it, shit, I never do, and it makes me sick, I am sick. I can’t even do it to myself.” She is sobbing against him.

Russ has never heard a woman say “shit” before.

“I don’t know, honey. I just can’t quite seem to get a handle on what Russ thinks I should do.”

“But, Jimmy—”

“I know, I’m a grown man and all that. But you know, comes to literature and the publishing business, I’m as ignorant as a field hand. And Russ—well, he was so very helpful. Up to a point. I don’t know.”

“How’s SallyJane doing?”

“I just can’t tell you. She sure is putting on weight, and seems to me like a most unhappy lady. She may be a lot on Russ’s mind these days. He sure seems, like, distracted.”

“And Deirdre Yates too.”

“What was that? This long distance, I couldn’t hear you.”

“I just said, and all those children too. This connection is terrible.”

“Anyways, I’m not getting any clues from Russ about how to handle this novel of mine. I just don’t know what to do with it.”

“Is that psychiatrist still around all the time?”

“Not so much, I don’t think. Not since that party.”

“Must have been some party.”

“Didn’t seem like too much at the time. But I don’t know. Something’s sure changed since then. Up to and including Russ.”

“Jimmy, this new friend of mine, this Helen? Her brother’s a big shot at some publishing house. I’m just going to ask her what she thinks we should do.”