Another Marvelous Thing (6 page)

“Really starving,” Francis said. “I don't suppose you have as much as a moldy piece of bread in your so-called pantry.”

“Not so much as,” said Billy, yawning. Francis could count on the fingers of one hand the meals she had given him, mostly canned soup.

“Let's go to my house,” Francis said.

“Never,” said Billy, who was phobic about Francis's dwelling.

“It's too rainy to go looking for a restaurant,” Francis said. “I have some choice edibles at my place”

“I would rather eat cheese and garlic and live in a windmill,” said Billy.

“Oh, really?” Francis said. “Where'd you pick that up?”

“It's from
Henry the Fourth
,” Billy said. “My favorite teacher, Miss Chaffee, used to say it all the time.”

“Cheese and garlic,” Francis said. “How I long for it. Get dressed. You've given me a ferocious appetite.”

Billy yawned again. She was starving, too. Hunger made Francis restless. In his naked state he prowled around her study. He knew in advance that there was nothing of interest on her desk, so he opened her study closet, where her clothes were kept.

“I always hope I'll find something nice-looking in here.”

“Fat chance,” said Billy.

Francis surveyed her clothes. He rummaged in the back and pulled forth a blue cotton dress.

“What's this?” he said. “This is an actual nice-looking garment.”

“It was at the cleaners for a year,” Billy said. “I found the ticket by accident and picked it up the other day.” She turned on her side because she did not want to look at Francis. The sight of him naked and holding up her dress caused her heart to ache. These poignant moments, of which there seemed so many in a love affair, printed themselves indelibly on her consciousness. The result was that even on the happiest day, walking across a field in Maine out on a bird walk with Grey, for instance, these tender specters—Francis doing some preposterous thing—rose up before her and reminded her that her life was full of thorns.

Francis put on his trousers and socks and sat down next to her on the couch. At his feet lay the white cotton underpants he was given to understand she bought at the five-and-ten-cent store. Next to Grey's football jersey, coiled like worms, were two worm-colored socks. The look on Francis's face said: “Why are so many of her clothes
worm
-colored?” Billy knew this look very well.

“I'll take you to my house and feed you a beautiful roast beef sandwich with watercress and curried mayonnaise,” Francis said into her hair.

“I'm not going to eat the leftovers of your dinner party,” Billy said.

“It wasn't a dinner party,” Francis said into her neck. “It was family dinner right before Vera left.”

“Eeep!” said Billy, pulling away from him. “How can you utter the word ‘family' and slobber over me at the same time? Quentin and Aaron are probably coming out in hives right now and don't know why.” Quentin and Aaron were Francis's grown sons.

“Hush,” said Francis.

“You want to feed me
old
food,” Billy said. “You want to feed me something cooked by your very own wife.”

“Hush,” said Francis again. He put his arms around her.

“You have very long arms,” Billy said. “Has this been pointed out to you?”

“Many times,” Francis said. “You have pointed it out on many occasions.” He turned her toward him and kissed her.

“You have the wingspan of the California condor,” Billy said.

“The California condor is extinct,” Francis murmured.

“It is not,” said Billy. “It is almost extinct but is making a comeback.” She draped her arms around Francis's neck. “In fact,” she continued dreamily, “the last issue of
Condor Watch
describes how to feed condor hatchlings on simulated vulture regurgitation.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Francis. “Get up.”

In the kitchen they made a snack of peanut butter and stale water crackers. They were both ravenous and almost anything would have done.

Billy and Francis never stayed together—Billy sent him out into the rain and off to sleep alone. She did not like Francis prowling around her bedroom, which he did every chance he got. Francis was a terrible snoop. Accused of this, he claimed he would never go through her mail if she ever
told
him anything. Left alone he would doubtless have gone through all her bureau drawers, too.

After Francis left, Billy washed the teacups, locked the door, and checked the windows. Then she went upstairs and got into bed.

The bedroom Billy shared with Grey was the nicest room in the house. Billy and Grey were mostly indifferent to objects, and their idea of home decor had to do with placing inherited possessions here and there. In the bedroom, this inheritance was not only harmonious, it was actually pretty, a fact Billy had seen register on Francis's face.

Billy sat up. In the corner was the oak valet that for years had stood by her grandfather's closet. Now it was Grey's and when he was home his jacket hung on its shoulders, his trousers over its rack, and his watch and cuff links sat in its little tray. When he was not home it was as bare as a skeleton.

Billy had known Grey all her life. Both their fathers had worked in London, and at the same day school favored by American parents, Billy and Grey had met. Billy could easily remember him: a sturdy, wavy-haired boy wearing gray shorts, gray knee socks, and a football jersey, his fogged-up glasses concealing a fierce air of concentration. Both of them had been sent to college in America, and they had re-met in London when Billy was in graduate school and Grey was finishing at the London School of Economics.

In matters of the heart, Grey was rather a cave boy. He had hit Billy over the head, so to speak, and carried her off to his den. It had been their almost immediate intention to marry: they were both the sort who cannot imagine marrying someone they have not known forever.

Thus Billy had been a love object and a marriage object but she had never, so far as she knew, ever been the inspiration for anyone's romantic fantasy. The love affairs she had had in college with serious boys who liked to read were more like study dates than romantic encounters.

On Grey's side of the bed were his pile of astronomy books, his natural history magazines, his Russian grammar. Things had their place—the water jug on Billy's side because she got thirsty at night, the hooks on the back of the door for her night shirt and Grey's pajamas. In the known world her life had order, precedent. Anything could be dragged out into the light of day to be examined.

In the unknown world was Francis, to whom she would never be legitimately connected. She could never walk out in the sunshine with him—not in any place where they might be spotted. The experience of him was educational in a way Billy had not anticipated. She did not want to have these feelings: she had been so much happier when she had been unaware she had them. They reduced the world to a kind of love comic, or something in
One Hundred Standard Plots
. These feelings led nowhere. Unfortunately, they were hard to give up, although they caused pain more often than not. She rolled over to Grey's side of the bed, put her arms around his pillow, and fell asleep.

The next morning Francis turned up before noon. He knew Grey's schedule by heart—those parts of it Billy revealed to him. He knew when Grey was away, and if Vera was away too, as happened infrequently, he took advantage of this felicitous circumstance by seeing Billy as much as possible.

“I came for elevenses,” he said.

“Oh, dear,” said Billy. “There isn't anything for elevenses.” A nicer mistress, she had been told, would have kept a little something or other around to feed a person.

“I'll just have you for elevenses,” Francis said. Billy's heart seemed to slip. It never ceased to amaze her that the only thing she had to offer—herself—was what Francis seemed to want.

“I'm sure you'd rather have a lovely sandwich,” Billy said.

“You'll do quite well,” Francis said. “After all, I can always have a lovely sandwich. We can have lunch out later.”

They went for lunch to one of their haunts—a seedy delicatessen in an out-of-the-way neighborhood.

Billy wolfed down her pastrami sandwich and was watching Francis, a slow eater, slowly finish his matzoh ball soup. She leaned over and took a nip with her spoon.

“Get your own soup,” said Francis.

“I'm much happier with yours,” Billy said. “Or don't you like to have people eat off your plate?”

“You're the only person who does,” said Francis. “I rather do like it.”

Billy stared at him. Married all these years and Vera never snagged so much as a chicken wing?

“Really?” she said. “Then you won't mind if I take a sip of your iced coffee.”

“Vera feels very strongly about sharing drinks,” Francis said offhandedly.

“Gosh,” said Billy, who knew a cue when she heard one. “Think how strongly she'd feel about sharing
you
.”

Francis stared into his soup.

“On the other hand,” said Billy, crunching a piece of ice, “maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd be relieved, or maybe she would think of it as another opportunity for good works. Maybe she'd say: Oh, that poorly dressed Billy Delielle. Surely she deserved a crack at Francis to dress her up a little.”

Francis did not respond. It was Billy's theory that she had been given the function in Francis's life of hating Vera.

Billy was sick of Vera. She was sick of hearing about the library for handicapped citizens which Vera was designing free of charge. A million do-good projects did not compensate for the fact that Vera had strong feelings about sharing drinks.

She felt she knew Vera like the back of her hand. She knew the names of Vera's three closest friends as well as the names of their husbands, children, and pets. She knew the history of Vera's career as an interior designer. She had heard three or four or five times the story of how Vera had packed an entire set of yellow French crockery into her suitcase by seamailing all her clothes home from Paris. She had had replayed conversations between Vera and someone called Dr. Holleys Wiener, a director of the soon-to-be-built Rees-DeGroot Library for Handicapped Citizens, conversations revealing that Vera had discovered design angles to help the handicapped that even he, Dr. Holleys Wiener, an expert in the field, had never imagined.

She had, of course, met Vera. Soon after Billy and Francis had been introduced, Francis thought it a jolly idea to invite his new friend and his new friend's husband for dinner. The yellow crockery, Billy recalled, had been much in evidence. Since she had already been told the yellow crockery story at least once, she spent a good deal of the dinner party wondering how Vera had gotten all those plates, cups, saucers, and bowls, to say nothing of an oversized platter and a number of serving pieces, into a suitcase.

Vera had been wearing a black dress with bat sleeves, black stockings, black high-heeled sandals, and a necklace of African amber. She was wiry, lean and chic, and wore her chestnut-colored hair piled on top of her head in a stylish knot. She had small, strong, efficient-looking hands, and Billy had already been told a number of times that Vera was an ace cook who had been trained at a cooking school in France.

In the dining room, next to the carving knife and fork and the oversized yellow platter, Billy had noticed two hat pins, one topped with amber and one with coral. She could not imagine what hat pins were doing on a sideboard, but she found out.

Dinner was glazed duck, and while Francis attended to the wine, Vera prepared to carve. She rolled up her bat sleeves and stuck a hat pin in each one to keep it from unrolling while she sliced. Whenever the thought of Vera kept Billy up at night, she usually appeared in her black dress about to carve the ducks with the hat pins through her sleeves.

And now she was sitting in a crummy delicatessen with Vera's husband, who was reading the paper and checking out the local movies.

“I think we should see
It Oozed from Mars
and
Ghost Dogs from Outer Space
,” Francis said. “They're playing right around the corner.”

Billy knew that Vera, who liked a film with high social or artistic content, would never go to see any such film. At the same time she felt a combination of longing and despair because
Ghost Dogs from Outer Space
was just the sort of movie Grey liked to see, although Billy would never have told Francis so.

Billy never told Francis anything about Grey. Every now and again he said: “You never talk about Grey.” If Billy told him something—that Grey knew how to play fives, that Grey had been taught to knit as a child, that Grey knew Russian and read about astronomy—a terrible blank look came over Francis's features and Billy would say: “You asked.”

She did not know which was worse—the huge bundle of information she was constantly given about Vera, or to get no information at all. Of course, the things they really wanted to know were unaskable.

Billy fell asleep in
Ghost Dogs from Outer Space
but woke up just in time to see an asteroid destroy the entire canine ghost fleet. She was hungry and she said so.

“You have the metabolism of a child,” Francis said. “You're either hungry or sleepy. In between, you're cranky.”

“Little children don't have complications in their emotional lives that tire them out,” said Billy.

“Oh,” said Francis. “Am I a complication?” He seemed thrilled with the idea.

Just as they had a lunch haunt, so did they have a dinner spot—a Chinese restaurant in which they had never seen another Occidental. It was not a very pretty place. It had tile walls, worn linoleum on the floor, and the menus were soft with age. Taped to the wall, on shirt cardboards, were the specials of the day, written in Chinese. Billy and Francis always had the same meal: flat noodles with meat sauce, steamed broccoli, and fried fish. As they began to eat, it began to rain so dramatically that it was impossible to see across the street.