Dry Your Smile (18 page)

“Anything interesting?” he asked.

“World-shaking. Bills. Feminist periodicals. A request for a fellowship recommendation from a woman I've never heard of. ‘The Mel Chester Show' wants me again, this time to debate Hugh Hefner about pornography. They can forget it. Two petitions asking for signature, donation, support. More bills—”

“Well, leave the rest for now. Food's ready.”

“—An announcement of my forthcoming appearance at a benefit for the Women's Electoral League—which I have an awful feeling I forgot to write in my datebook—and a résumé assuming I've got a job opening for the secretary I sure could use but have never had. And bills. And a rejection of the two new poems, from
Poetry America:
‘Well-crafted but too polemical.'”

“It looked like there was a royalty check …?”

She sat down at the table, still scanning her papers.

“Yeah. I was saving the best for last. It's about enough to cover a quarter of the telephone bill. The vast sum of $71.38. I'm underwhelmed with gratitude. So much for writers who get rich off political movements. I better call Herb Becker at
Trends
tomorrow and tell him I'll do that five-hundred-word potboiler on women in the armed forces after all.”

She rose abruptly, just as he was about to swallow his first forkful of noodles.

“Sorry. Be right back. Forgot to wash up. You go ahead, don't let it get cold,” called backward as she disappeared toward the bathroom.

Laurence put down his fork and stared at the pile of mail on the table between them. She hadn't mentioned the arrival of the monthly bank statement on their joint account, though he could see she'd already opened it, too. In fact, three canceled checks lay on the floor where they'd dropped in her swirl of movement from the table. He bent and retrieved them. Damn. All three from him to O'Neil's liquor store. But she knows I often just cash checks there, he thought. Still, he placed them at the bottom of the pile of canceled checks and carefully moved the whole stack of mail to the sideboard.

Julian returned and sat down again. As she unfolded her napkin, he saw her glance flit over the table, taking in the flowers and candles.

“Oh, nice, Larry.”

But he also registered—from a momentary lingering of her eyes on the glasses and silverware—that there were waterspots on the glasses and he'd put the forks on the wrong side again. Fuck it, he told himself, that's the way we did it in my part of Colorado. To hell with it. This reception, even if imperfect, is one your feminist sisters all over the country would gladly give their Valium prescriptions to come home to. But he only said,

“So what happened this time?”

“Nothing much. Sort of wall-to-wall trauma day before yesterday, before I went to the airport. I was going to stop off at the hospital and see her”—“Her” needed no further identification to either of them—“before taking off for California, remember?”

“Oh yeah. So how was it?”

“A living nightmare. I swear, Larry, the L-Dopa might reduce the tremors, but the side effects, Christ! They're monstrous. None of the doctors' explanations prepare you for it. The bouts of blindness come and go without warning. She still trembles, and her hands are beginning to stiffen and turn in at the wrists. But worst of all are the hallucinations. The paranoia. God knows she's conducted her life wretchedly, at least by my standards, but nobody should have to suffer like this. Day before yesterday—well, I was with her only an hour, because the doctor wanted to have a conference with me and then I had to rush to catch the plane. At first she didn't have a clue who I was. Then she recognized me, and I thought we were having what could almost be called a conversation for a few minutes—nothing earth-shaking, you understand, just the weather and how was she feeling and that I wouldn't be by for two days because I had to go on a trip—and at some point I realized she thought she was talking to Aunt Yetta. So I gently tried to tell her I was me, Julian, her daughter, not Aunt Yetta. Then she all of a sudden remembered that both Yetta and Essie were dead and burst into tears about how she was all alone in the world. Then she picked up the flowers I'd brought and threw them at me. In my face.”

“She thought you'd look great with a flower behind your ear or what?” He helped them both to second heapings of Baked Dish although there still was some on her plate. He refilled his wineglass. Hers was untouched.

“Hardly. Behind the ear is where the adorable pink hairbow was always supposed to go.”

“I hope you threw them right back at her.”

“Larry, be serious. It was terrible. And then, and then—” A look of surprise washed all color from her face. She put down her fork.

“Jule? You all right?”

She breathed in deeply. It seemed to pass.

“Yes. Thanks. Just felt—peculiar.”

“The Baked Dish isn't
that
bad, certainly?”

She smiled weakly. “No, silly ass, of course not. It isn't the food at all.”

“Well, something made you turn a fetching shade of chartreuse there for a minute.”

She pushed her plate away. “No. Really. I'm okay. Think I'll wait a bit before finishing dinner, though, if it's all the same to you.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Want anything? Glass of water?”

“No, thanks.” She glanced at him and their eyes caught. Impossible to tell whether her look of apprehension mirrored his, or the reverse.

“Now I ask you”—she brightened into her comic tone—“what other man would have the perverse bravado to cover up his disappointment about the reception to his
cooking?
Oh, Lare. You
are
a dear person.”

So some little bubble of deformed love must have mutated inside her and floated up to her mouth. Affection and pity. Thank you, ma'am. His jaw tightened.

“
No
, oh, Larry, I didn't mean it like it sounded. ‘A dear person'—like some sort of charming acquaintance. Jesus but we can be supersensitive with each other lately.”

“Yeah, well, ‘lately' has stretched quite a while—”

“No, no. Look, all I meant. There was—She did something else that really was hideous. It's just that … I'd sort of put it out of my mind, didn't want to think about it. Anyway, there was plenty else that happened. A hair-raising scene with the doctor, who wanted to know—”

“But what about Hope? What did that bitch do to you now, Julian?”

“Don't call her that! She's a helpless, ghastly old woman all twisted with her disease and her unlived life, Laurence! For god's sake can't you see it doesn't help when you try to play the heroic prince?”

“Pardon
me
. For being interested in what Hope Travis-ty laid on her hapless daughter this time. Demanded money, perhaps, when she's got it all already, thanks to your child labor? Berated you about your commie husband with workingclass dirt still under his fingernails? Or just managed to ignore—for the thousandth time—the fact that you're a writer, a grown woman, a political leader, my wife?”

She put her hands over her ears and screamed at him, “Stop it! Have some mercy, Larry!
Stop
it!”

Once she'd so loved his defense of her against Hope, his intransigence. The first time he ever hung up the phone on her mother—grabbing the receiver out of Julian's hand where she sat crying at the venom pouring through it in Hope's voice—she had thrown herself into his arms with sheer gratitude and admiration. Julian had never hung up on Hope in her life; it was
her
tactic for ending an argument, one Julian neither wished to nor was able to imitate. But he, having survived the first twenty years of his life in family basic training, used to violent voices and well-aimed fists, was not intimidated. Wasn't it for this that Julian had fled to him in the first place? Why then did the same tone of protecting her now seem merely gratuitous, devoid of human compassion?

“Is it my craziness, that you seem to be getting off on Hope's downfall? Or is it just that I sometimes feel like the grass being trampled when the elephants fight?” she murmured, as if in answer to his unasked questions. They sat in a silence broken only by the clink of his fork against the pottery plate, his chewing. He refilled his glass again. Then he said formally,

“So what did the doctor want.”

She bit her lip.

“He wanted to discuss ‘extreme measures.' He says her heart is strong as a horse, but you never know with a Parkinson's patient, it could go at any moment. On the other hand, she could continue like this for years. In fact, they'll be releasing her again on Monday. Anyway, for the record, he wanted to know did I want respirators, oxygen tents, all that stuff, in case there should ever be an emergency.” It came out flatly, like a journalist reporting on an overheard conversation in a hospital corridor.

“And what'd you tell him.”

There was another pause.

“I told him no extreme measures. Let what happens, happen.”

“That's decent. She'll die with dignity, thanks to you. She never lived with it.”

Julian ignored his judgment.

“I must have pronounced my decision so quickly—I've thought about it for months now—that Dr. Bernstein looked at me funny.” She let out a cynical laugh. “Then he said, ‘You know, Ms. Travis'—he's very proud of being
au courant
, always uses ‘Ms.'—‘you know, Ms. Travis, the law itself says we have to take
some
measures. If your mother starts eating less, we'll have to go to intravenous. The law reads that to do otherwise would be to starve her to death.' As if, by implication, I was suggesting they do that. As if I was some kind of murderer.”

“Well, not notorious for their empathy, doctors,” Laurence said carefully, as he cleared away the plates and went into the kitchen. Julian trailed after him, bringing the glasses and the wine.

“Yes, well … it was most unpleasant, to say the least.”

“And then what?” He began washing the dishes.

“What do you mean? Here, let me wash those. You cooked.”

“No, I'll do them. I mean
then
what? What was the next yard laid down in the wall-to-wall trauma?”

“Oh, sort of a blur, I guess. I rushed to the airport, almost missed the plane. Worked on my notes for the speech during the flight. Did some mail. Then there they were, waiting to meet me in San Francisco. Really good women, though.”

“Yeah? So then?” His voice was raised above the running water.

“Well, so then. The usual. Motel, shower, change. The dinner—with faculty women this time, all of them struggling to keep some shred of women's studies alive despite the cutbacks. Then the speech—on battery, this one—and then the reception afterward and then the motel again and then up at six for a breakfast meeting with the women artists' group, then the midmorning guest workshop on poetry, the rush to the airport again—and here I am.” She wound up lamely, standing in the kitchen with empty hands.

“Just garden-variety trauma, you mean.”

“Yeah,” she smiled, “garden variety. God, I'm tired, though. What happened with you while I was gone?” She yawned.

He dried his hands and strode back purposefully to wipe down the table.

“Me? Oh, nothing.”

“Well, something must have happened.”

“There were lots of calls for you. I put the messages on your desk. Oh, except the last one. It's by the livingroom phone. Tim Monahan wants you to—”

“I don't care about Tim Monahan.” Her hands hung helplessly at her sides. “Laurence,” she pleaded, “what did you do, think, feel?
Talk
to me.”

He rinsed out the sponge and dried his hands again.

“Want to go out on the roof for a while? There's not many warm evenings left.”

“Sure, Larry. I'd like that.”

The hell you would, he thought. What you'd like is a bath and the wipeout of sleep. But you feel obligated to “communicate.” So all right we'll “communicate.” Julian's agenda: finish speech, autograph books, catch plane, arrive home, read mail, do telephoning, sign statements, make deadlines. Agonize over mother. Change the world. And at the very bottom of the list—usually bumped to the next day's list because of space limitations—Have Meaningful Communication With Laurence. So why do I give it to her, he wondered. Because I'm an addict, that's why. Because I'm as hooked on believing our marriage can still be transformed as Julian is on believing the world can still be transformed. Because I keep hoping maybe we can have just one conversation and keep Her out of it since we'd actually be hearing each other for a change.

The roof was quiet in the evening cool; even the traffic sounds seemed far away. How proud they both had been of having “made the tar bloom”—the pots, basins, window boxes, the hanging plants, the cherry tomatoes and lettuces, all the herbs—dill, parsley, marjoram, thyme, mint, rosemary, chives—and the ivy and the impatiens and his own beloved little avocado tree nurtured from a pit.

“All this has to come in soon,” he said wistfully. “Strike the set, as you'd say.”

They unrolled two tatami mats and sat down.

“I know. It's always a shame to see it go when September comes.” She was the one waiting now, a signal of restraining her own leadership, of denying it.

Finally, he spoke. He could hardly hear his own voice.

“Me? What did I do, think, feel?” He laughed softly. “I should thank you for remembering to ask, Jule. Last on the list of ever growing priorities: your writing and the movement and your being the burdened breadwinner and now Hope again and doctors.”

There was no reply to this. There never had been.

“Me?” he went on. “Well, let's see. I clipped an article from the
Times
. Thought maybe it'd be useful for the chapter you're working on in the new book—some new study of long-term effects on rape victims. I wrote a nasty letter to the head of the station about his refusal to let me turn over the program to women for a month next March, in honor of International Women's Day. I got an even nastier letter back from him. I got groceries. I got the stuff at the cleaners. I got depressed. I got drunk. I think I got a cold.”