Cloud Nine (9 page)

“Don’t you ever cross that bridge?”

“I said one thing at a time—”

“You’re always talking about it.”

“Can’t we talk when you’re yourself?”

“I’m myself now. I’m always myself.”

I left her, went down to the boardwalk, and headed across to the beach. As I passed the guard called down: “I’m sorry, sir, if I mistook the young lady for your daughter.”

“It’s okay, most people do.”

“I meant what I said about sharks—they’re out there, and they don’t always give notice by shoving a fin out of water. Sometimes they shoot up from below and help themselves to a bite. Sharks are nothing to fool with.”

“I’ll see that she stays closer in.”

I climbed down to the sand, found a small dune, and sat down, facing the sea. Then I tried to think. I told myself: “Now that you don’t have to, now that there’s no real need, you must be out of your mind, even considering marrying this girl, this teenage child, whom you barely knew until yesterday. It’s over—the crisis is passed. You’ve done the right thing, or at least you were willing to. Now, take her home and let her go on with her life—as what she is, a schoolgirl—and forget any idea you had of going further with it. No doubt she’ll suffer a bit, but she’ll get over it, and better have the break now, with no great damage done, than later, as utter disaster.”

That seemed to cover it, and for a time I sat there, under the illusion the thing was settled. Then I thought: “But now that you’re threshing it out, it wouldn’t hurt at all to talk it over with someone, especially the one person you’re close to, who’s smart on all such things.”

I climbed up the boardwalk again, walked down to a drugstore and called Mother. The phone rang and rang and rang, but then who answered, in a snappish, disagreeable way, wasn’t Mother but Burl.

I hung up without saying a word.

I went back to my dune and sulked at her. I thought: “You did tell her, that’s true, that you were getting married, and that ended the situation, so she had no further reason for keeping that rat under cover, but did she have to bring him in the house, within hours of the time I talked to her?” It turned out later she did, for a reason quite different from any I thought she had, but I didn’t know that then, and sat there for quite a while, feeling sorry for myself.

Then I got to thinking about my life, especially the other girls in it. There hadn’t been too many, call it two or three, beginning with the one I had had in college, who lived at the Taft Hotel, and would sneak out on weekends, when I’d drive her to Milford or Norwalk or Bridgeport, and we’d shack up at some motel. But her people moved to Boston, and though she hinted around about marriage, I wasn’t ready for it, and she passed out of my life. Then, after I started in business, I bumped into this girl in Baltimore, who worked in a TV station, and had an apartment on Charles Street. It was okay, but then her hours got switched, so it all got too complicated, and then we didn’t date any more.

Later, after I moved to College Heights Estates, there was a woman who showed houses for me. You have a house for sale, you put a woman in it Sundays, and she shows it to whoever comes. So my houses, for reasons I’ll explain, generally sell pretty quick, and she had a nice thing going. She was a widow up in her thirties, a bit on the plump side, but pretty, and always beautifully dressed. One night when I took her her check, she asked if I’d like to come in, and when I did, put out Scotch.

The rest was almost on cue—the pass, the brush, the brush of the brush, the peeling off in her bedroom. From there on in, we ran on kind of a schedule, except for one odd thing: After that one time, she never asked me to her place. She always came to mine, in her little Chevy, and after a cocktail, love, and dinner, drove home again, always around eight o’clock. And then one day she rang, to say she’d just been married. It turned out then that she’d been engaged all along, to a rich, middle-aged guy, whose mother was at death’s door, and who until it happened didn’t feel himself free. While he was marking time he was too decent to make passes at her, which left her with certain desires. And so, I’d come in handy.

That hadn’t been too long ago, and I sat thinking about her, about the girl in New Haven, and about the one in Baltimore. I’d been quite close to each one, and yet none of them had rocked me as Sonya had, in the twenty-four hours I had known her. And all of a sudden what had seemed to be settled wasn’t any more. I began wondering what this girl had that the others hadn’t had. And I heard my own voice answer: “Brains, for one thing. Maybe she’s just a schoolgirl, but she was the one, just the same, who figured out what could be done to mop up that awful mess.” That, I have to admit, put things in a different light. I sat there some more, with the breeze freshening up, and the surf really starting to talk. I thought of our swim out to sea, with her hand in mine, giving me courage. I thought how we’d looked at Cloud Nine and what she had said.

Then I heard my own voice again: “Another thing about her: When you’re with her you think about God.”

I knew then I was going to marry her.

I went in, and to give her more time to sleep, had some dinner in the dining room. When I went up it was just after seven, though of course, with daylight saving, still broad day outside. I opened the door real quiet, expecting to tiptoe into the bedroom and see if she’d come awake. But there she was, dressed, in the clothes she’d had on yesterday, stuffing things into her bag which was on a chair. On another chair was a hatbox, which was open, the new hat in it. But there hadn’t been any hatbox, which meant she must have gone out, after I went to the beach, and bought one. I wondered how much of a hypo it was, but said nothing about it, asking: “Well? Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home,” she snapped.

“Some particular
reason?”

“You’re not wanted you take yourself off.”

“Somebody
say
you weren’t wanted?”

“Good as. At least they made it plain.”

“I just don’t seem to recall it.”

“Oh for Christ sake, Mr. Kirby, will you knock it off with the blibber-blabber? Yeah, you said it—you couldn’t look me in the eye, and that’s saying it, plain as it can be said.”

“When was this?”

“I said quit cracking dumb!”

I stood watching her, not knowing what to say, because of course, it was true, what she was dishing out, and you hate to own up to what makes you look crummy. However, this was the nitty-gritty, and no time for ducking and dodging. Finally I said: “Okay, I own up, I gave you a stall before, after the doctor left. I wanted to think things over, which I’d had no chance to do, up until then, at all. And if you think I apologize for it, you’re damned well mistaken. I wanted to think it over and did think it over, plenty.”

“Oh my, the Thinker, by Rodin.”

She called him
Rodang.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“My bus leaves at nine o’clock.”

“Well it’s not yet eight, so you have plenty of time. If you’ve got that much straight, that I did think it over, I’ll get on to the next thing.”

“You mean that bridge that never gets crossed?”

“So happens we’re crossing it now.”

“Oh no we’re not, I’m leaving.”

“First thing: I don’t have to marry you.”

“You’re telling me?
You’re telling me?”

“Sonya, have you got that much straight?”

“Do you want me to scream or what?”

“But I’m going to.”

“Going to what?”

“Marry you, what do you think?”

“You and who else?”

“Did you hear me?”

“I ain’t deaf... When?”

“Why not now?”

“Who would marry us now? We don’t even have a license!”

“Someone could be found.”

She looked me up and down, and I went on: “They’re right here in this room, everyone we need. Because when two people get married, who does it is
them.
The rest of it, the license, the service, the preacher, the clerk, is all for the law and the record. What’s for God,
they
do. ‘With this ring I thee wed,’ he tells her, and she swears to love, honor, and obey’—and you better obey, brat. As you know, I don’t have any ring, but I do have something else, something you’ve admired, and—”

“Then, I’ll think about it.”

“Then, suppose you get the hell out!”

Because I was wrought up too, more than I’d realized, and for some reason she riled me. As I spoke I kicked her square in the bottom, so hard she plunged and fell. Then horror swept over me, at what it might do to her, after what had happened before, and I dropped to my knees in front of a chair, whispering: “Dear God, don’t let it be that she’s hurt!”

But then she was there beside me, her arm on my shoulder pulling me, pulling me close and whispering: “Don’t take on like that, please, please, please! I love it when you bop me—and that was a dilly, a real boot in the tail. Okay, I thought about it! I’m willing, I’m ready! Okay, wed me—wed me nice, wed me!”

I
WEDDED HER. I
wedded her and kept on wedding her—that night, the next day, which was Sunday, and the next night. Some of those weddings lasted an hour, when time stood still, and we didn’t care if it ever got going again. Often, she would be topside, her head on my shoulder, whispering: “I’m not asleep, I’ve got my eyes open, I’m enjoying the view, up here from Cloud Nine. It’s so pretty you can’t believe it—things I’ve never seen, except on TV sometimes, horses and sheep and cows, and chickens running around. Ducks too, but I
have
seen them, flying over, V-shape. And flowers, red ones, white ones, and blue ones, all kinds of beautiful flowers. And trees, gray big trees, and bushes. And grass, green grass that smells like you... Now,
you’re
on our cloud, looking up. What do
you
see?”

“Stars.”

“Are they pretty?”

“Beautiful.”

“There’s just one thing.”

“Yes, little Sonya. What is it?”

“This cloud is shaped like a bubble chair. Suppose something made it go
pop.
What would happen to us?”

“We’d go
bump.”

“That wouldn’t be so good.”

“We can’t let it happen, ever.”

“That’s it. It’s up to us, Mr. Kirby.”

“There’s one other thing, too.”

“...Yeah? What’s that?”

“Must
you call me Mr. Kirby?”

“You mean, now that we’re married?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean, of course.”

“Or are we?”

“I thought that was settled.”

“Then—what does your mother call you?”

“Gramie.”

“Would you like me to call you that?”

“I’d love it.”

“I’ll practice up, in my mind.”

So she practiced up, in her mind, and then one time, in a flaming moment, whispered: “Gramie!” That did it, and from then on she seemed like a wife. I began telling her things, bragging I guess, like my system for selling houses. “I lose three listings out of ten,” I explained to her, “from being so tough, and as some say, so dictatorial. But—the other seven I sell fast. And what makes me so objectionable? I won’t list a house unless the owner agrees to accept a reasonable price. That’s the trouble selling houses, you list it and list it and advertise it on Sundays, for months, simply because of a dream price they think they can get, just by holding out. I jar them loose from that dream. I tell them: ‘Come off it! I know what your house will bring—it’s my business to know and I do. But if you don’t believe me, put an appraiser on it, put your own appraiser on it, and what he comes up with I’ll accept. I’m an appraiser myself, but if he says I’m nuts okay—find yourself another agent.’ As a rule they listen to me, but three out of ten don’t, and I lose ’em. But the ones I don’t lose are making me the most successful broker in Hyattsville.”

“I always heard you were.”

“Kiss your famous husband.”

And finally, the second night, when she was lying close in my arms, I told her about the Dream. She listened as I lined it out: “The whole farm, Jane Sibert’s sixty seven acres, I mean to chop into one-acre lots, big places, estates, and write it into the deed, that I approve exterior plans. It’s how you do, in an exclusive development, to make sure it doesn’t run down, that pikers don’t build on the cheap—it’s how they do in Malibu Beach, Williamsburg, and all places that really have class. And I’ll approve nothing but Southern mansions, with oaks, elms, gum, and magnolias. And that house that Jane Sibert lives in, I’ll use it for demonstration, first remodeling, to make it the most Southern mansion of all. I’ll peel off that front porch, put a neat little entrance in, and an annex right and left, a rec room and a garage, and—lo and behold—it’s Southern something to look at. And that mudhole she calls a drive, that circular thing out front, what am I doing with that? I’m dozing the mud out first, then lining it with bricks—putting brick borders down, inside and outside the loop, and painting them with whitewash. Then, between the two rows of brick I’m filling with oyster shells.

“Everyone’s forgotten about them, all they know now is blacktops. But oyster shells are cheaper—there’s a place in Washington that sells them, a restaurant on Maine Avenue with a tremendous pile out back—and they’re prettier. They’re snow white, and they look like Dixie! And in the middle, in the circle that runs around, I’m putting a rose garden in—and then I’ll guarantee you, I’ll have something they’ll come to see.”

“...A rose garden? Why?”

“It’s the Dixie flower, that’s why. They have them all over the South—even in Mexico. With the roses I’ll put across the idea that these are the Dixie Estates!”

“I wouldn’t plant ’em, no such.”

“...What wouldn’t you plant, then?”

“‘Oh I wish I was in the land of—
roses?”

“I see what you mean,
cotton.”

“Gramie, did you ever see cotton growing?”

“I can’t say I have, no.”

“I have, and it’s beautiful. One summer we went on a trip, my mother and I, to visit her sister, Aunt Sue, who lives in New Orleans. But we drove by way of Paducah, where my father’s sister lives, Aunt Annabelle. From Paducah we drove south, along the Mississippi, and all the way down we saw cotton, the prettiest growing thing you ever saw in your life—the leaves are so green, the rows are so even. It was six inches high in Kentucky, ten inches in Tennessee, a foot in Mississippi, and bush-height in Louisiana. But in Louisiana we saw the flowers, big, creamy white ones, that turn red when the sun goes down. Did you know that, Gramie? The second day they’re red. But they weren’t all.