Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (43 page)

Sorry, Alice Ann said, then
said, I dreamed about you last night, Lindsay. I dream about you a
lot, actually. I don’t remember much about last night’s dream, but
you were beautiful in it. I dream exclusively in black and white.
Your skin absolutely glows in black and white, Lindsay. Your skin
is absolutely luminous in all my dreams, even if they’re bad
dreams, horrible dreams, even when they’re my worst
nightmares.

Well, hon, Lindsay said, for
a girl who grew up with the nickname Pimple Plantation, that is
not unwelcome news.

They’ll make the film of my
life in black and white, Alice Ann said, blowing a series of
perfect smoke rings, while she observed Lindsay’s movements about
the kitchen. —Color is too much a record of the world. Black and
white takes one beneath the surface to the real mystery of the
world. Black and white signals that we are in another world. I want
the movie of my life shot in a sort of fragmented black-and-white
light. I want the shadows to jerk like fucking war footage. Faye
Dunaway will play my beautiful tragic part. And she’ll win an
Academy Award. That movie will make people bawl like babies when
they see what I’ve had to endure with Ralph. Lindsay, I just hope
that in our next incarnations you get stuck with Ralph for a
fucking change.

Hey, Ralph said, what did I
do around here? How come you’re picking on me so early in the
morning, Alice Ann?

On the television a mouse
made its hole, barely. A cartoon cat crazy with anger and
frustration and desire banged its head against a wall.

You called me by another
woman’s name again last night, Ralph, Alice Ann said. —So what else
is new? I’m nobody’s fool, you fuck. I can read the handwriting on
the wall. I’ve been living under the illusion that while Ralph’s
and my marriage has sustained serious damage over the years, it
was still, oh, maneuver- able. Maneuverable, as on Star Trek, when
Spock radios Captain Kirk that while the Enterprise has sustained
serious damage, it is still maneuverable. Well, folks, I have to
run, Alice Ann said, and dunked her cigarette in her unfinished
drink. —I’ll be late as it is. I’ll see you guys this evening if I
don’t die in a car wreck or something. Don’t anybody do anything I
wouldn’t do, she said, and hurried from the room.

Hey, old Jim, can I have
Alice Ann’s eggs? Ralph said.

You may or may not get any
grub, you old dog, Jim said over his shoulder from the stove. —I
ain’t decided yet. Plus I gotta meet Shorty and I’m running late,
too.

I’ll fix Ralph some eggs,
Lindsay said.

Well, I, for one, don’t have
to take this ongoing abuse. I, for one, will be up on the deck
minding my own business if anybody cares to bring me some breakfast
sometime today, Ralph said, and snatched the bottle of vodka and
headed out the back door.

Okeydokey, Jim said to
Lindsay. —You fix Ralph’s fucken eggs. I gotta roll.

And why are you in such a
rotten mood, too? Lindsay said.

Never mind, Jim
said.

And just what are you and
Shorty up to today, anyway? Lindsay said, and sat down at the
table.

We got a couple of little
errands.

How long will these little
errands take? Five or ten years in prison?

So just who do you love,
anyway? Jim said. —Have you figured that one out?

So just who do you love?
Lindsay said. —That’s the real question around here.

The fuck it is, Jim said,
and tossed his spatula onto the stove and strode from the
room.

2

Lindsay walked up the back
stairs carrying a plate of eggs and hash browns, and she noted the
particulars of her immediate life with a feeling vaguely like
penitence. In the shade of a soaring pine below in the next
courtyard several Chinese women squatted while they sliced
vegetables into a wide white bowl. When Lindsay smiled at them they
looked away, and she was suddenly filled with an aching sadness.
Wind chimes tinkled in a slight breeze that smelled of bread baking
and fresh wash hung out on lines strung on the surrounding flat
rooftops, and tears flooded Lindsay’s eyes. As though seen through
a lens, or in a fever, the colors of the vegetables in the white
bowl far below, luminous in a shifting flush of light, the greens
and reds of peppers, snowpeas, stringbeans, mushrooms white as
pebbles, were pure enough to blind. Here I am in San Francisco and
I am carrying Ralph’s eggs up to him, Lindsay told herself, and
looked at eggs so yellow they hurt her eyes. This was the intense,
timeless light Lindsay had waited in for her childhood to end. As
she had felt her body change cell by cell. Atom by atom.

Is that my plate? Ralph
said. He was sitting in a chair beside the round glass-topped table
on the far side of the deck. Ralph’s expression was anxious,
vaguely baffled. He looked so helpless somehow, sitting almost
crouched, smoking intently, pinching a cigarette against his lips
with those huge, hairy fingers Lindsay had sucked on.

Lindsay placed the plate she
carried in front of Ralph, who finished his butt and pulled his
chair up to the table.

Where’s yours? Ralph said,
as he shoveled eggs into his mouth.

I’m not hungry, Lindsay
said, and sat down at the table.

Where’s your
husband?

He took off in a huff, not
unlike your wife.

That man you’re married to
is a nut, Ralph said, chewing mightily. —Jim Stark is crazy. Just
plain crazy. Jim and Alice Ann are like two peas in a pod, a padded
pod. Whoever sold them their tickets from Mars ought to be
arrested.

Ralph, don’t start up,
Lindsay said. A foghorn sounded from the Bay and the chimes from
Saint Peter-Paul’s Cathedral rang forth, and Lindsay gazed for a
moment more lightheartedly over her glorious postcard of a view.
Although she couldn’t see Sausalito yet, the sun had burned most of
the morning fog off, and already the white sails of boats flicked
about in the dark green water. Rising above the trees of Washington
Square Park down the hill, the cathedral’s spires looked white as
bones in the clear, washed light. But all of this was lost to
Lindsay, now that Jim loved another woman.

What did Jim say about that
Mary Mississippi business? Ralph said, as though reading Lindsay’s
mind. —You didn’t tell him who tipped you off, did you?

I didn’t tell him anything,
Ralph. I haven’t even mentioned it. I haven’t found the right time.
I don’t know. Right now I try to put it out of my mind. For the
time being, anyway.

Do you know something? This
is about the first time in weeks we’ve even been alone. I’m amazed
Jim actually left us alone. Sometimes, too, I’ve had the impression
you were trying to avoid being alone with me.

Don’t be paranoid,
Ralph.

Well, you can’t imagine how
much I’ve missed talking with you. You’re my best friend on earth,
Lindsay. I mean that.

What about your best friend
Jim?

You’ve been my best friend
from the first day we met. I’ve never gotten over that.

Well, Ralph, no matter what
else transpired between us, or didn’t, I have always thought of you
as a dear friend.

I am your dear friend. Your
dear, dear, dear friend. And more. In my book, anyway. Much more.
And I can talk with you like I’ve never been able to talk with
anybody else in my life. I can open up with you like I’ve never
been able to do with anybody.

What about your wife, Ralph?
What about Alice Ann?

Not even with Alice Ann when
it was still good between us. You can’t imagine how good it is to
talk with you again. You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed
it.

I’ve missed it, too,
Ralph.

I’ve missed it more than
anything. I mean it. That’s the honest- to-God truth.

What really is the
honest-to-God’s truth, Ralph? What’s the truth about your
life?

My life is crazy, and
getting crazier by the day. I’ve finally arrived at the end of my
rope. Alice Ann and I are history.

I’ll say. About eight or
nine thousand years* worth, Lindsay said. —According to Alice Ann,
you two have shared countless lifetimes together. And she has
inspired your work. She has lived your stories with you. She gave
birth to your two children, Ralph. Your family.

Right, Ralph said. —Remind
me to write her a fat letter of thanks about that. If I wrote
monster stories I could use those kids as inspiration. Maybe I
could rent them to Stephen King.

You are talking about your
children, Ralph.

God, but I wish we could
have had kids together, Lindsay. I wish we had a son of our
own.

Oh, Ralph, don’t you think
we already had our shot at happiness?

Did we? Do you only get one
shot? You know, Lindsay, I can remember exacdy what your kisses
taste like.

My, my, what an amazing
memory the boy has. What do you think Jim would do if he caught you
kissing me?

Give me a knuckle sandwich,
I guess, but it would be worth it. I love old Jim. I do. We go at
each other a lot, I know it. But I do love him. It’s just that you
went and married him. And the last good kiss I ever got I got from
you. Lindsay, we could still sail into the future like we used to
talk about.

Which way is
that?

I mean it. Finally
everything in my household is just too crazy. Alice Ann is
convinced she’s some kind of medium. That spirits, you know, of
dead people, can speak through her. Can you beat that? And then
there’s her old Egyptian spirit pal Horus, who she apparently got
real tight with down in the lower delta during the Old Kingdom. So
old Horus gives Alice Ann a ring from the beyond now and then to
shoot the breeze. Talk about long- distance bills. And I’ll
probably get stuck with those charges, too. Like all the other
outrageous charges Alice Ann levels at me day and night. Outrageous
charges from other lifetimes. I can hardly get through one day at a
time intact in this lifetime and I’m being held accountable for
crimes I committed in other lifetimes. Did you know that in Roman
times I once tossed Alice Ann, who was this Christian virgin
martyr, to a lion. And once in ancient Egypt I supposedly had, you
know, carnal knowledge of Alice Ann’s royal sister down on the
banks of the old Nile.

Well, did you,
Ralph?

Probably, Ralph said. —But
after six thousand years, so what, I say. Cut a fellow some slack.
There has to be a statute of limitations, doesn’t there? Let
sleeping dogs lie is my motto. Especially six-thousand-year-old
sleeping dogs. Well, I, for one, am out of all that ancient history
now. Let somebody else look back on the long, sorry record, its
scraps and tirades, the deadly silences and innuendos, the screams
in the night, and let them figure out what it all adds up to.
Goodbye, I’m saying. Goodbye to that history of
heartbreak.

Really, Ralph? Goodbye?
Goodbye to eight or nine thousand years of togetherness?

I’m kissing it all goodbye,
Ralph said. —I’m laying it all to rest. I should have taken a hike
out of that tragedy four or five centuries ago. And I’m going to
turn over a new leaf in this lifetime while I still have time. For
one thing, I’m going to stop drinking. Any day now, I mean it. And
I’m going to become the sort of man a son could look up to. The
sort of man a son, a son like our son, if we had had one, or ever
have one, could be proud of. God, Lindsay, but it really is good to
talk with you.

It’s good to talk with you,
too, Ralph.

Really. To talk my heart
out. To be able to get things off my chest like this. I have
always, no matter what the course of events, thought I could count
on you as my best friend.

Thank you, Ralph. I feel as
though I can count on you, too.

That settles it, then, Ralph
said. He got up and stepped over beside Lindsay and rested a hand
on her shoulder. —We can count on each other. Through thick or
thin. Come hell or high water. For better or worse. Until death us
do part, Ralph said, and put out his hand as though to
shake.

Come hell or high water,
Lindsay said, then took Ralph’s outstretched hand and shook it,
laughing.

God but I wish we had hours
and hours to talk, like we used to. Talk the day and night away.
Talk and make love until the sun comes up. Can you remember
that?

Yes, Lindsay
said.

Talking. Telling stories,
gossiping, dragging all our friends through the mud, eating about a
dozen scrambled eggs at three in the a.m., making love about every
fifteen minutes