Beautiful Kate (7 page)

“How come you never stayed before?” she asked. “I mean, the other times, it was just for a day or two.”

“I was busier then, I guess. My scripts were more in demand.”

She ignored the explanation. “Was it Cliff and Kate? Because of what happened to them? And you just couldn’t stand it here after that?”

“Something like that.”

She smiled happily. “I thought so. When I was little, I figured it was me. Or all of us. I figured that maybe you just didn’t like us. And so you never came.”

She waited, but I could not think of a thing to say. I poured another drink for myself.

“It’s funny,” she went on. “I barely remember you from when I was a kid, before you left. And then you dropped in—what was it—four times in all these years? And yet somehow I feel closer to you than I do to Junior. Does that make any sense?”

“Sure. The more you’re with a male Kendall, the harder they are to take.”

It was a limp attempt at levity, at lightening the moment, and all it got was a wan smile. But I think that Sarah did get my message: that I had no desire to talk about the whys and wherefores of my long exile from home.

After she had gone back to bed, I remained there in the kitchen for a while, working on the scotch and mulling over the other matters she had touched upon. Though I’d already had an inkling that Junior was homosexual—as I’d explained to her—I was still surprised at having the suspicion confirmed. Other people have gay brothers, not I. At the same time I have to admit that this alleged homosexuality of Junior’s makes it easier for me to deal with the other part of Sarah’s revelations—that he now holds the family purse strings—which could only have enhanced his appeal for Toni. Now, though, the matter seems moot. Junior’s interest in her would appear to be sexual only in the narrow deviant sense, in that she is the kind of woman he has always wanted to be. Or at least that is how I interpret the curious adulation the gay community always seems to whip up for the Marilyns of the world.

But enough of my little brother. The thing that really fascinates me in all this is
how
he came into his bank account, the idea that Jason would simply surrender it to him out of fear and timidity. For whatever weaknesses I may have thought my father possessed, timidity was never one of them. In fact, of all the men I’ve ever known, I would say that Jason is easily the most cocksure, most overbearing, most arrogant sonofabitch of them all. Why then this sudden fever of self-doubt and cowardice? Could it have been simply a matter of age, an old man coming to terms with his diminished strength and faculties? If so, then I still can’t think of a less likely candidate than Jason Kendall, if for no other reason than that in all the years I’ve known him, the man has never exhibited the slightest talent for self-knowledge. To the contrary, I think he always had himself convinced just as he did Cliff and Kate and me that it was his destiny to lead and to rule. The fact that he temporarily had to make do with ruling his family instead of a state or nation never confused us—or him, I’m sure—as to what his ultimate lot would be. He was our Napoleon waiting out his exile in the cool Elba of the library.

I don’t imagine you would be surprised to learn that Jason was an only child whose mommy was rich and his daddy good-looking. My grandmother was distantly related to the Chicago McCormicks and inherited a comfortable amount of stock in International Harvester, which her husband, a dabbler in women, liquor, and public relations, kept whittling away in various star-crossed ventures until finally there was only the hundred and sixty-some thousand dollars left to pass on to Jason. In the meantime, though, he had managed to live reasonably high on the hog, getting his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern and doing graduate study in philosophy at Yale and at the Sorbonne. He toured Europe and the Middle East and later tried his hand at being a playboy and then a businessman (a travel agent) but ultimately gave them both up in favor of farming. And I never really have understood this either: why a rich, well-educated young man would freely elect to retreat to the country and start a cattle farm, unless of course he happened to like animals, the out-of-doors, and manual labor, none of which Jason ever demonstrated the slightest affection for. That paradox has been scratching away at my brain stem for longer than I care to remember. My guess is that somewhere along the way—in the Yale library perhaps or sitting on a quay next to the Seine—he got this vision of himself as Squire Kendall strolling over his fields while thinking deep thoughts about Jefferson and agrarian democracy and a Return to the Land. I imagine that he saw himself as a kind of practical Thoreau, a
pater familias
living out his belief in the philosophic line running from Rousseau on down through Jefferson and Warren and all the other bucolic crackpots since. (Jefferson a
crackpot?
)

In any event, he bought this place and moved here with Cliff and my mother (then pregnant with Kate and me) when he was only twenty-six. And here he has stayed ever since, living off his modest inheritance and overseeing the operation of the farm and—except for his brief flyer at politics—somehow filling his time with random reading, cranky causes, and the care and feeding and intimidation of his offspring. Especially Cliff. Poor Cliff.

From what you’ve read so far, I imagine you have formed the notion that Cliff was something of a prig, not wanting to kill sparrows and all that. If you have, then the fault is mine and I will try to correct it as I go along, for in reality Cliff was nothing like that. He was prudent, yes, but never prudish. And I guess you might say that he was
other-directed
, in that once modish phrase, a boy who all his life wanted desperately to please grown-ups. Especially Jason. And I can’t see that there was anything unusual in that. I myself, like most children, had a strong desire to please my parents, and I don’t doubt that I would have gone even further in that direction if Kate had not always been at my ear, whispering contrariness and mischief. But the real problem for Cliff wasn’t so much in his constant need to please Jason as it was in the standards that Jason set for him. All his young life Cliff was like a high-jumper continually setting records, only to have his coach grumpily move the bar yet another notch higher.

I remember the time that Mother, Kate, and I went to see Cliff’s investiture as a First Class Boy Scout, a rank he had attained as quickly as the rules allowed. On the way home Mother suggested that we stop at the Eskimo and celebrate over some ice-cream sundaes, but Cliff begged to go straight on home so he could show Jason his First Class medal. And Mother of course relented, with the result that all of us were soon trekking into the library, acutely aware that we were interrupting Jason in some vital musing or other. In his spiffy khakis, Cliff shyly stepped forward, his eyes shining as brightly as the new medal pinned to his shirt. But Jason did not bother to get up, merely swiveled sideways in his desk chair and gave the medal a cursory examination before looking up at Cliff with an almost bored expression on his face.

“Yes, that’s fine,” he said. “But of course it’s only a beginning. You’ve still got a long way to go to become an Eagle Scout, haven’t you?”

Cliff gulped and nodded. And he went right back and jumped a little higher. He became a Star Scout and finally an Eagle Scout. He also was valedictorian in grade school and in high school he maintained a three-point-nine grade average while joining numerous clubs and earning yearly letters in track and basketball, all in addition to a part-time job he held at the Eskimo and an almost full-time job at home, helping me and Stinking Joe keep the farm and the cattle in that state of high gloss Jason deemed appropriate for a true country gentleman. And what sort of reaction did all this industry elicit from Jason? Mostly silence, a kind of glum acceptance of it as only his due, what every father had a right to expect. In fact, I don’t think he ever spoke to Cliff about his accomplishments except in a negative way, as when he would point out an occasional local newspaper article about this or that high school star in track or basketball, someone who was doing better than Cliff. Why did Cliff think that was, Jason would ask him. Was it because the boy had more natural talent? Or was it because he had “worked harder than my son”?

Though Cliff never seemed to have an answer, Kate usually did.

“It’s because he’s a Negro, Jason. Didn’t you notice?”

Toni has long since left her bed of nails (I’m a sucker for that kind of pun) and now she has returned from downstairs and the afternoon television soaps, still wearing the white pajamas and her hurricane hairdo. She hovers behind my chair—pouting, I have no doubt—occasionally brushing my shoulder with a glossy hip.

“What are you gonna call it?” she asks.

“Call what?”

“This phone book you’re writing.”

“I’m not sure. How about
Me and My Diary?
”

“How about
Killing Toni?
”

“That’s good too.”

“Well, that’s what you’re doing, you know.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, it’s a fact!” she snaps. “Outside it’s all ice and spades. You can’t lay out in the sun. You can’t swim. And inside there ain’t a damn thing but TV and Junior. And he’s really beginning to bore me, you know that?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I’m going crazy here, Greg. I really am. I’m flipping out. So please.
Please
. Let’s leave. Okay?”

“Sure. You got any money?”

“You could call your friends, couldn’t you? All those high and mighty Malibu friends of yours. A couple of thousand, they wouldn’t even miss it.”

“The police would beat the money here.”

“Then you’ve got some real neat friends, mister.” She sags onto the edge of the bed. “So that’s it, then? Here we stay. In this ugly old icebox, and with nothing to do but sit here and watch you scratching away? That’s it, huh? That’s my fate?”

“That’s it, all right. For now anyway.”

“Greg, I’m serious.”

“Go wash your hair,” I tell her. “Go take a bath.”

On her way past, she slugs me in the arm, hard enough to make me drop my Bic. But the important thing is that she is gone and I am free again. In my mind I try to pick up the thread, some raveling line leading back to where I left off, but all I hear is the water running into the tub beyond the door, and now her body, sloshing, making more noise than she normally does. The Bic becomes like a bird in my fingers, drifting here and there, refusing to light upon the paper. And I wait—no more than a dozen seconds.

“Honey,” she calls. “Come here, will you?”

I stand in the doorway. “What’s the trouble?”

Her smile is a work of art, coquettish and rueful. “I’m so dirty. I doubt if I could ever get myself clean.”

In the water she is a beguiling archipelago, her breasts a pair of perfect little islands, her hip and right thigh a steeply plunging peninsula.

“You’re interrupting my work,” I say, my father’s son.

She sticks out her lower lip à la Shirley Temple. “Don’t you want me to be clean?”

I don’t answer her because by then I’m already rolling up my sleeve. I take the bar of Dove and begin to soap her, giving special attention to her breasts and groin. And she just lies there soaking up her pleasure like a sponge, not closing her eyes or even averting them as any other woman would do. Even as my fingers enter her she does not look away. Her mouth peels back in an expression of raw animal gratification that is, I know, a thing of fearsome beauty. Yet, flaming phony that I am, I feel not just sexual excitement but also a slight touch of revulsion, wondering why she can’t experience at least an occasional moment of shame amidst all the throes of her raging naturalness. I realize that this thought never crosses my mind when I am similarly engaged with her, or when she is ministering to my own specific needs, but then I never professed to be overly fair-minded. All I know is that if I had been in her position and she in mine, I would have had a hard time not looking away from her at least, if for no other reason than out of simple loyalty to the family name. I am sure Jason would never have lain back in the tub with bared teeth and open eyes while Mother stroked him home. We Kendalls are a proud, if fraudulent, people.

In any case, my lovely Toni does not close her eyes until she is coming, and then only because her paroxysms probably leave her no choice in the matter. As she lies back finally, stretching and smiling, I resist an impulse to push her head under the water and hold it there, for never in my life have I had an orgasm even half as long as this marathon one of hers. Nor, I don’t doubt, has any other man. I feel cheated for all of us.

“Feel clean now?” I ask.

“Some,” she admits. “But I could be cleaner.”

“Really?”

“Well, sure. It’d be better than scribbling, wouldn’t it?” To set the hook deeper she rolls onto her tummy, thrusting her enthralling bum up out of the water. “I might even let you do it your way.”

By then of course there is no hope for me. I lock the door and begin to shuck off my clothes.

“You don’t play fair, baby,” I croak. “But, Jesus, I do love you for it.”

4

We were in the third grade at the time, which meant that Miss Josephson was our teacher, just as she had been for a generation of third-graders before us. A short, sturdy, gray-haired woman, she seemed to know all there was to know about everything and had no compunction about sharing it with us. Whenever the male principal visited our class she treated him with great deference and rigorously put us through our paces, accepting his authority as naturally as she did her own spinsterhood and a salary that prevented her from even owning a car. She was, in short, a thoroughly exploited woman—and thoroughly indifferent to that fact.