Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (9 page)

Ralph hides goodies from his
own kids, Alice Ann said. —He keeps a stash of chocolate-chip
cookies in his underwear drawer so he won’t have to share with his
own kids. That’s why they are reduced to thievery.

Those criminal kids can get
plenty of goodies of their own, Ralph said. —All they do is stuff
their greedy little ferret faces with goodies. Then who pays when
their pointy little teeth rot out? Tell me that. And that boy has
taken to stealing my, you know, Trojans. Right from my underwear
drawer, after he’s helped himself to my chocolate-chip cookies. I
know it. I’m a man who keeps count of what’s his. I have that
criminal boy dead to rights. A boy stealing his own old dad’s
Trojans, can you imagine? Is nothing sacred? But, Jesus, what can
I do about it? Ralph said. —I can’t even beat the boy to a pulp,
which, in my book anyway, is the sort of discipline he sorely
needs. That boy is bigger than me.

Ralph, Alice Ann said, is
the one who could use some discipline. If Ralph had a little more
discipline, he’d pay a little more attention to the quality of
women he’s eating out. And then maybe he wouldn’t always be getting
those little, runny sores around his mouth.

Jesus, Alice Ann! Ralph
croaked. (But he covered his mouth with one of his paws like a
reflex.) —Why do you always have to go too far, Alice Ann? Ralph
mumbled through his fingers.

Hey, gosh, come on, you
guys, Judy chirped. —Hey, I know. Somebody should make a toast to
something. To something, you know, romantic, in honor of the
occasion.

How about toasting romantic,
albeit sordid, buying trips? Jim suggested, which was about the
first thing he had had to say that evening, for he’d been basically
just parked there feeling real broody and mean and reconsidering
seriously his promise not to pound the crap out of his first wife’s
latest boyfriend.

Say what? Ralph said, his
own old, furry ears perking up. —What in the world does that mean,
old Jim?

Come on, Jim, Judy said,
eyes like daggers. —Don’t you start up, too, buster.

I know something tres
romantic we can toast, Alice Ann said, and raised her glass.
—Here’s to Ralph’s rubbers.

Holy moly, Ralph lamented,
and shook his head.

Or, Jim said, to love and
marriage. Some fool songster said they go together like a horse and
carriage. So come on, everybody, let’s all ironically bubble up,
Jim said, and tipped his glass against Alice Ann’s.

Oh, why not? Judy said, and
tipped her glass against Jim’s and Alice Ann’s glasses, and then
she uncharacteristically guzzled her drink down. —I just love
champagne to death, Jim’s first wife informed everybody.

Count me out, Ralph mumbled
through his fingers, which were cupped around his festering mouth
and chin again.

By the way, Alice Ann, Judy
said, refilling her glass with the cheap-ass bubbly, what did your
hubby give you for an anniversary present, anyhow?

A mercy fuck, Alice Ann
said, and threw back her own glass of bubbly. —But since Ralph was
out of his romantic rubbers, he had to practice withdrawal after
about, oh, six or seven seconds.

Let’s all drink a romantic
toast to the honorable practice of withdrawal, Jim suggested, and
lifted his refilled glass.

Okay, buster, Judy had
hissed, and if looks could kill...

A mercy fuck, Alice Ann?
Ralph said. —Are you trying to be funny? Are you? he said, and
picked up the little candle-lantern from the middle of the table
and held it in front of Alice Ann. He waved it slowly back and
forth before her face. —It’s so dark in this wretched cave I can’t
even see the expression on your face, Alice Ann. Alice
Ann?

2

Spanakopita, troops, Alice
Ann said as she exuberantly fed her face. —God, thin yummy layers
of pastry filled with spinach and feta cheese baked to a golden
brown. A perfect description of manna. Forgive me, please. It’s not
my fault. Greek food always does this to me. It drives me crazy
hungry, and I know this will sound crazy, but it makes me horny as
hell.

Feta cheese? Judy said. —You
mean that stuff is in here? Ugh. I didn’t know that. Feta cheese,
ugh. Feta cheese always makes me think of toe jam.

I agree with you
wholeheartedly on that matter, Ralph said to Judy. —That
spana-whatever-you-call-it is just so much smelly crud in my book.
Let my wife fill herself to the brim with toe jam. Far be it from
me to stop my wife from eating anything she has her heart set on
eating.

Later, after the waitress
had cleared the table and everybody had decided against dessert,
but Alice Ann had ordered a final round of drinks, Alice Ann smiled
at Ralph and announced that what she had her heart set on doing was
footing the bill for this whole night of fucking revelry. Ralph was
flabbergasted. Ralph dropped his jaw and fork. Jim raised a toast
to Alice Ann’s amazing generosity of spirit and good taste and the
lovely way she looked that evening. Ralph spluttered and gasped
that if they even pulled their way-beyond-their-credit-limit bandit
plastic out in public, they could well find themselves thrown under
a jail- house. No fooling, Ralph had lamented, this is no joke. At
the very least, Ralph lamented, as sincere as Jim had ever seen
him, that worthless, pathetic piece of plastic could well be
returned to them on a tray cut into quarters, which would not be
the first time for that singular humiliation. Like that shameful,
wretched time in Iowa City.

God, what a riot! Alice Ann
had laughed.

No, don’t even talk about
it, Ralph said. —I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Jesus. Talk
about stupid. That’s my middle name, all right. Stupid. Just call
me Mister Stupid. That’s one sleeping, flea-bitten dog we should
just let lie.

Ralph was a student at Iowa
then, Alice Ann said. —And he was in John Cheever’s writing class.
Ralph just adored John Cheever. We had noticed that John seemed
distracted and sort of lonely at a faculty cocktail party one
Friday afternoon. You know, sort of quiet and sad and off to
himself, lonely, yes, if you can believe a famous man like that
being lonely. So we just said to ourselves, Why not take John
Cheever out on the town? Buy John Cheever a big dinner and show him
a high old time. Shoot the works in the John Cheever department was
our motto that night.

Who is this John Cheever
guy, anyhow? Judy asked.

He’s a pretty famous writer,
hon, Alice Ann said. —So anyway, we took John to the best
restaurant in town. Or was it to that swanky place at the edge of
town? Whatever. So we ordered champagne, and not this cheap stuff
Ralph insisted upon tonight. I did the ordering that night, so we
were drinking nothing but Mumm’s no less. Two, maybe three bottles.
Who remembers. Shoot the works for John Cheever was our motto that
night.

What was old Cheever like?
Jim asked Ralph.

You know, Ralph said, the
first thing I remember Cheever saying to me about writing was that
you aren’t your characters but your characters are you. The man
took me seriously enough to sit down with me and go over a story
and move words around until they fit perfectly.

He must have thought you
were cute, Jim said.

I was, Ralph said. —Back in
my youth.

So everything was going to
be on us that night, Alice Ann said. —John Cheever’s money was no
good in Iowa City that night. So we ate high off the old proverbial
hog, and when the check was presented, we offered up our dubious
plastic.

Cheever told me to trust a
story’s accidents, Ralph said. —Its accidental revelations. The way
things you never suspected could emerge in your story. Unlike your
life, of course.

Then the old proverbial shit
hit the fan, Alice Ann said, and laughed. —Every month or so, Bank
of America issues a hit list of bad cards, you know. Well, for some
reason the asshole maitre d’ checked out our card.

He checked it, Ralph said,
because you had bounced a check there for lunch a couple of weeks
earlier.

Actually, I had bounced two
checks there before, Alice Ann said, and laughed. —Anyway, the
asshole maitre d’ checked our card. God, were we ever over our
credit limit. Bank of America had been sending us nasty letters for
weeks begging us to be responsible American citizen adult types and
please quit playing with our poor plastic. We had become your basic
B-of-A bandits.

We hadn’t always been like
that, Ralph said. —Things had just gotten out of hand. We’d gotten
so far behind the eight ball, we just sort of threw up our
hands.

Well, if you’re going to
sink, sink with style, Alice Ann said. She blew thin streams of
smoke through her elegant nostrils. —Anyway, the asshole maitre d’
brought the little card back to our table personally. He put the
fucking little tray on the table and just stood there smirking.
And, sure enough, there was our poor little precious, plastic baby.
Mutilated. Cut into quarters. It was hilarious.

It was not either, Ralph
said.

What in the world did
you-all do? Judy asked.

Alice Ann asked if they
would take a check, Ralph said, and laughed, the big slope of his
shoulders shaking with mirth.

You’re kidding! Jim said, in
genuine appreciation.

Honest to God, Ralph said.
—Alice Ann didn’t bat an eye.

Tres true, Alice Ann said.
—I didn’t give an inch.

They almost called the
police, Ralph said. —They were not amused. They made
threats.

Well, Christ, what was
Cheever doing all this time? Jim asked.

John simply sat there
through all this humiliation and smiled, Ralph said. —A sad smile,
though, is how I would characterize it. Kindly, but really sort of
sad. And his eyes held that same expression, too. As though he had
seen people like us going down that old road before and he knew
what was in store for them. For us. He was somehow serene about it
all. All the yelling and screaming in the ensuing scene. He was
drunk, John was, sure. Weren’t we all! But he was somehow serene as
a Buddha. That’s the word that comes to mind. Serene. He was that
night, anyway. I had the feeling this really was an old story for
John and he knew its ending by heart.

That’s not the way I
remember it happening, Alice Ann said. —John started yelling at
that fucking maitre d’, too. That’s what happened. He was as irate
as I was at our treatment. Then they wouldn’t even touch his
plastic either. They wouldn’t even consider it. And of course the
assholes wouldn’t take a check.

Well, my lands, what really
did happen? Judy asked.

Oh, Alice Ann said, John
spotted some university people he recognized across the room. So he
stumbled over and borrowed the necessary funds from them. One of
them was a bigshot dean. No, I think two of them were
deans.

That’s not what happened,
Ralph said.

How would you know, you
motherfucking smarty-pants, Alice Ann said. —You were
ripped.

Well, so were
you.

But you, as usual, were more
ripped.

I know what happened that
sorry night, Ralph said. —No one has to tell me what happened that
wretched night of my life.

We should have walked that
fucking check, Alice Ann said. —It was a failure of imagination not
to walk that check. Cheever was drunk enough. He would have done it
in a second. What a character that wonderful man is. What a story
that would have made.

But what in the daggone
world really happened? Judy asked. Not much really, Ralph said.
—When all was said and done. John just shelled out. He got stuck
with the tab that night. Which was embarrassment enough, let me
tell you.

Did you ever pay him back,
old dog? Jim asked Ralph.

Not yet, Ralph said. —But I
intend to. Any day now.

Shoot fire, Judy said. —I’m
going to have to visit the little girls’ room pretty soon. Where is
it, anyhow?

Go back through the bar,
Alice Ann said. —Turn left.

Sounds like you really do
know this place like the back of your hand, Ralph said.

Oh, come on, hon, Alice Ann
said, and put her cigarette out. She stood up from the table and
tossed her napkin on the table. —Let’s go powder our
twats.

3

When the wives had walked
away, Ralph said to Jim, okay, just what all has Alice Ann told
you?