After the War (25 page)

Melanctha asked, “You’re getting married soon?”

“Oh God, I doubt it.” Abby laughed again, less convincingly. “Marriage might spoil everything, the way I see it. I mean, why bother?”

“Well, if you wanted to have children—”

“We don’t, we don’t believe in it. There’re too many people already.”

Despite the unusual bright day, the warmth, both women felt a certain lowering of their spirits as they talked. Good friends for years, each had imagined that a few hours with the other would be cheering, instead of which the smiles that
they exchanged contained sadness, and a certain wry acceptance of the fact that friends are only so much help to each other.

She dreaded Christmas; that is what Melanctha was mostly thinking. All her brothers would be home from their schools, and Graham, getting ready for Harvard, talking about Harvard, and her baby half sister, SallyJane (God, how could they name her that?). Silly Deirdre trying to act like she was everyone’s mother. And big Ursula back out from Kansas again, being a sort of ambiguous housekeeper-servant-houseguest. (Russ many years ago in Kansas had run over a pig—Melanctha could still remember the smell, and Russ and then all the boys yelling “Pig shit”—a pig that belonged to Ursula; then when SallyJane was sick, Ursula had come to stay, and stay, although Deirdre couldn’t stand her, Melanctha knew, and probably Ursula hated Deirdre too.) In any case, for every reason, Melanctha hated the coming of Christmas.

As did Abby—what with her parents, and Joseph’s worries over his own family.

They were staring up the creek to where it bent, and a clump of pussy willows leaned out over the slow brown diminishing water—both silently staring, as though some help might come up from out of the water.

Which, astonishingly, it did.

Something dark brown, small and bobbing along, but not a piece of wood, an energetic little head emerged—not a bird or a rabbit.

Melanctha softly cried out, “It’s a puppy!” and she splashed out to where on a small shoal it had just managed unsteadily to stand—the puppy, trembling with cold and trying to shake off water, something it did not quite yet know how to do. Reaching the little dog, Melanctha grabbed it up, cradling him
inside her coat, peering down. The puppy raised his head and gave one light lick to her chin. An investigation, possibly—what was this new strong dry source of warmth?—but Melanctha took it for love.

She breathed, “Oh, he’s so lovely!” She added, “How could anyone—?”

“He could have just wandered off and fallen into the creek,” Abby told her. “Will Deirdre let you keep him, do you think? My mother—”

“She’ll have to, it’s not just her house. Shall we go on back?”

And they began the slow trudging walk back home, across the cornfield and up the pine-wooded hill to the smaller, lighter woods, to the road.

“Your sweater’s really wet,” Abby observed. “But he’s so cute.”

“Oh, I don’t care!” Melanctha grinned, and patted her dog, nestling him more securely beneath her muddied camel-hair coat.

They agreed to call each other soon, and to get together during what they both termed “these goddam holidays.” “I’ll come and see your puppy,” Abby promised, wistfully adding, “My mother loves dogs, in case Deirdre doesn’t.”

“Oh, to hell with Deirdre.”

The little dog turned out to be very pretty indeed. Melanctha, brooking no objections from anyone, bathed him in the kitchen sink, and dried him off with several towels—so that everyone could admire the wavy, silky dark brown hair, and enormous brown-black eyes. “His name is River,” she said.

“Why River? Why not Creek?” irritatingly asked Graham.

“I suppose you mean Graham Creek.”

“Well, that’s where you found him.”

“Be like naming you Pinehill Hospital.”

“I wasn’t born there, I was born in California—” As if they all didn’t know where Graham was born, and to whom. To Deirdre, and to Russ.

“You children!” Deirdre called out from the dining room, where she had been arguing with Ursula over menus, and cooking: what was good for the children. “You-all are supposed to be grown up!”

So are you, you dumb slut, Melanctha muttered under her breath, just out of the hearing of Graham. The other boys, as usual, were off somewhere, and SallyJane slept.

The beautiful puppy, River, could be said to have got Melanctha through that holiday. Melanctha bathed him in her own tub, and then surprised Deirdre by cleaning out the tub, cleaning up the whole bathroom. And River surprised them all by being even handsomer, wavier, and silkier than before.

“Too thin, though,” tall, gaunt Ursula observed. “That little dog needs some flesh on those little bones.” And for once Melanctha agreed with Ursula. “He sure does,” and Ursula set about making a special mush that they used to feed dogs in Kansas.

Otherwise, taken to the vet, Dr. Marx, River was pronounced an exceptionally healthy dog, about four months old, probably. “Don’t exactly know what breed,” said Dr. Marx when questioned. “Part Lab, part collie, maybe part setter, I’d guess.”

River was friendly and playful but showed no real interest in anyone but Melanctha, at the sound of whose voice or footsteps
he raced forward with small yelps and licks of love. At night he slept on Melanctha’s bed, cuddling his small body next to her back, or if she lay on her side in the bend of her knees.

Abby, while acknowledging to herself Melanctha’s greater need for a dog, generally for love and companionship (after all, she had Joseph, there for Christmas), still could not resist the thought that they could have somehow shared the puppy. Joint custody, she wryly thought. After all, they had come upon him together, and just because Melanctha was the one to go out and pick him up, did that mean—? But even as she inwardly voiced this query, its sheer childish selfishness came loudly through, and she erased it from her mind.

However, Abby had to admit that she could have used some help, from somewhere.

Harry had come down for the week of Christmas, and at night he and Cynthia went out to a lot of local parties: the Bigelows’, Mrs. Lee’s, the Hightowers’. During the day, they nursed hangovers and exchanged bad jokes at each other’s expense. Abby thought if she heard one more Veracity joke she would leave home, for good.

Cynthia had fixed up the guest room for Joseph, everything pretty and fresh and clean, flowers in a silver pitcher on the dresser. But as things turned out that room was where Harry slept; Joseph stayed with Abby, in her room.

About which Abby and Cynthia had a whispered conversation in the kitchen, the first morning Joseph was there (one among many whispered conversations, in the course of that holiday):

Cynthia: “Abby, I really can’t let you just—”

Abby: “Oh please, would you rather we tiptoed around, lied about where we sleep? We live together—”

“I know, but—”

“Besides, last night Harry was in the guest room—”

Cynthia had no answers; everything that Abby said was true.

The trouble, for Abby, was that she and Joseph spent most of their awake time in bed talking. His parents were separating but not exactly saying so, Joseph told her. His father was moving out to L.A., “at least for a while, he says,” his mother was staying in New York. “The apartment’s rent controlled, you can’t believe how cheap. I think around two hundred.”

“That wouldn’t be so cheap around here.”

“Yes, but New York—a block off Fifth?”

His sister Susan was trying to transfer to Wisconsin. “She’s got this bee in her bonnet about Madison. I don’t know, she must have met some guy who goes there. I know her, that’s how she functions.”

“It’s a good school—”

“I know, but I just don’t think that’s it. Susan’s a long way from being academic.” He sighed. “Anyway, it’s creepy at home, she may just want to get out of it all. I wouldn’t blame her.”

“Creepy how?”

“We’re being spied on. I know that sounds melodramatic, but we are. Crazy stuff, like the mail comes and a lot of it’s been opened. Some of your letters, by the way.”

“God, how embarrassing.”

“I know, and the maid says somebody went through the garbage can. Talk about embarrassing.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. My father thinks the FBI’s investigating him, and Mother thinks the Party’s after her.”

Neither of them at that moment added what they both knew to be true, which was that an FBI investigation of either (or both) of the Marcuses did not bode well for Joseph in terms of future jobs in physics.

All terrible, and nothing to be done.

But why are we even having this conversation? Abby wondered. Why are we talking so much? She was thinking of a recently discovered sexual pleasure for which they had no name, or words, but which was intensely exciting to them both.

At just that moment, Joseph moved closer to her ear, and he whispered, “We’re wasting time—”

“Shall I—?”

He murmured something, some assent, and Abby began to move slowly down his body, licking lightly at all that smooth stretch of skin.

In Cynthia’s room a couple of doors beyond, she and Harry were less happily engaged, in what threatened to be an endless conversation. It had begun with some of the old familiar phrases: “—you always,” “—you never—”

There was then what seemed to Cynthia a protracted interval in which they were making speeches to each other, each striving to sound in the right, to sound generous and wise. And honest, terribly honest, as though they had discovered honesty (a much overrated virtue, Cynthia thought).

“ ‘In love’ is hardly the point anymore,” said Harry. “We
know
each other, you and I. I’ve known you longer than anyone. I think you’re beautiful even early in the morning. Or
usually you are. And you’re sexy. I just seem to have this problem—”

“Well, maybe it’s my problem,” Cynthia assured him. “Maybe it’s me. Or maybe we just shouldn’t expect sex to last.” She was really thinking, though, that she had never been so tired, and that the burden of what he did not say was exhausting. She did not, could not say: And what about Veracity? Are you up to snuff with her? Do you mean that sometimes I look awful in the morning early? Well, as for that, you look pretty awful yourself, with that half-gray stubble and those bleary eyes. But I feel mostly friendly toward you; sometimes I actually hope that Lady V. is nice—nice to you, I mean. Marrying a Lady might be just the thing for you. Maybe we’re meant to be friends?

She said none of that, but those and similar thoughts kept her awake for a long unaccustomed hour.

River did various bad puppy things around the Byrd house, none of them original; he barked at the mailman and chased the paperboy, who came on a bike; he dug up some recently planted (by Ursula) bulbs and scattered them around the lawn. He peed under one of the boys’ beds, and worst of all he made a smelly mess on Deirdre’s puffy boudoir rug, so that it had to be thrown out.

Melanctha defended all these terrible acts; to her they were mostly funny. She thought River had a great sense of humor, and she said defensively, “The bulbs may come up all around the lawn, and that’ll be beautiful, I think. Those boys’ rooms are such a mess, I don’t see how anyone ever even smelled dog piss.” And, “That leftover meat loaf Ursula fed him wasn’t good for him. I don’t think dogs like meat loaf.” (Besides, a
“boudoir rug,” what could be tackier? She heard her mother’s voice in this unspoken judgment.)

The clearest fact about River, aside from his increasing beauty and energy as he visibly changed from a puppy to a young dog, was his total love for and loyalty to Melanctha, feelings that were more than reciprocated. There were really no words for Melanctha’s emotions concerning River. Love, gratitude, affection, admiration, adoration—all of those came close but did not quite say it. River warmed and brightened the very center of Melanctha’s heart; she had no idea how she had lived before they met. She thought, If anyone ever hurt River, I would probably kill him.

Sometimes she worried about the future of River, along with her own. She had heard from someone, maybe her father, that in Paris it was fine to bring dogs into restaurants. She and River could go and live in Paris?

On the other hand, River seemed to like it very much where they were; he liked the house, liked running up and down stairs with his big growing feet, nails clicking on bare floors. And especially he liked the woods that surrounded the house where he and Melanctha went for walks every day. Sometimes he ran ahead of her, but never for long and never completely out of sight.

Melanctha stuck to those woods around her house. For every reason, she did not take him down to the creek.

Maybe, she sometimes thought, she should take a little apartment in town and get some sort of part-time job at the college, and take a course or two, and still have afternoons free for River?

In not too many years, as she saw it, everyone but her would have moved out of that house. Deirdre would marry that Derek, or someone or other, and she would have to take
little SallyJane along. And the boys, including Graham, would all be at college and then off to jobs somewhere.

And then there would just be River and her at home, the house and the woods left all to them.

Although sometime they might take a very small trip to Paris.

22

I
N Cambridge, that heady March with its wild swooping winds of spring, Graham fell in love with almost everyone he saw in Harvard Yard. So many incredibly handsome young men, many of them ravishing in their uniforms or in their Harvard civilian uniform of tweed and gray flannel. Lucky for him, he thought, that a New England tradition of reserve prevailed; if anyone had smiled in a friendly way, he would have come unglued. He thought of the words of one of his mother’s favorite songs, “He’ll look at me and smile, I’ll understand—”

That was the good part of being there, the look of the Yard itself, so beautiful and dignified, with all the old brick and stone and hard white paths, the green irregularly sloping but perfectly tended grass. And mainly all the faces. The marvelous male ways of walking. The possibilities.

The bad came late at night, when the three boys with whom he shared the suite in Weld had gone to sleep, probably, and he lay there alone, crying like a baby, a mute, dumb baby with an inconsolable erection as he thought, You goddam little Southern queer faggot, you fairy pansy, just wait till someone finds out about you and what you’re really like,
you’ll be punished, sent home for everyone to see. They don’t want little boys like you around Harvard, or anywhere else.