How to Fall (7 page)

And so, at six-thirty, she was feeling rushed. “All so unnecessary,” she complained to Marty. “Mrs. Fenton told me, while we were stuck in the airport tunnel, that she never expected to be picked up at all, that the Organization always pays for a cab. Why couldn't she have said that on the telephone last night?”

“She was too pickled,” said Marty. “Which reminds me . . .”

“I bought three jars.”

“Kosher spears?”

“Yes. You wondered how I'd recognize the lady, remember? Wait till you see her; you'll know why I didn't have any trouble. She's as big as a house—what crusader against famine wouldn't be?—and as red as a beet. Gray hair scraped into a bun. Glasses, of course, like all the best people”—her own spectacles twinkled—“and an aroma of, uh, recent refreshment.”

“Mouthwash?”

Judy nodded. “Preceded by bourbon. She seems eager and clumsy and . . . kind. She was kind to Ricky, who came with me. She and Ricky counted all the No Nukes bumper stickers.”

“Did you bring up the movie screen from the basement?”

“Yes, but not the slide projector. She's wearing a navy blue suit. Big shoulders, shiny skirt. She looks like a visiting nurse.”

“Are you kidding? Visiting nurses these days are snappy little
shickses
with advanced degrees.”

Judy smiled, as she was meant to. “You make good use of your two Yiddish words.”

Marty smiled back. “I'll get the projector.”

About the bourbon Judy was wrong. It was Scotch that Mrs. Fenton braced herself with. Not so very often. A quick one at lunch, another at around three o'clock, a few before dinner, and a good many at bedtime—but the nightcaps didn't count. Neither did the cocktails. Neither did the noontime snort; she drank less at lunch than most businessmen she'd met. It was only the midafternoon pick-me-up that indicated the . . . incipient problem. But it was only incipient; it was incipient only; and if a bottle or two were part of the provisions that she brought to the Compound when it was time for her tour of duty—well, those bottles were just restoratives, rather like the volumes of Whitman that her closest friend dragged along everywhere, or like the Reverend's needlework. Doilies, antimacassars, tablecloths . . . the man of God crocheted everything. His flying fingers, he claimed, enabled his body to keep still and his heart to refrain from . . . not from breaking, he said with a smile: to refrain from showing its heels. Terrible metaphor, carped the Whitman scholar. Walt would have thrown it out.

Lying shoeless on the bed, Mrs. Fenton reviewed the situation. Her black dress, only slightly malodorous under the arms, hung in the closet. The case of slides was safe in one corner of the room. It had been lugged upstairs by young Ricky, who had then wanted to open it and play with its contents. When she had said no, he had given her a winsome, effeminate look. She had said no again, and he had scampered off, thoroughly boyish.
Damn all kids,
she'd groaned.

She would not have anything to drink now. The good people downstairs would provide wine and a light supper after the presentation. She would not write to her daughter nor her grandchildren; that could wait until tomorrow. She would not
itemize her expenditures from this fund-raising trip; that could wait until Monday, when the secretary at the New York headquarters might give her a hand. She would not read; she would not think; she would simply lie here peaceably, gazing with a sort of affection at her feet in their snagged stockings. Women in the Compound Hospital often lay like this. Down the lengths of wasted bodies they communed with their own toes.

 

People started to arrive at seven. Judy and Marty soon regretted their decision not to serve cocktails. The guests moved awkwardly among the rows of bridge chairs. A few collected in the small space between the front row and the movie screen. One woman reached out and scratched the harsh white surface.

“I can't help thinking that movies are
in
the screen,” she confessed to a friend.

“Me, too. And music is in the piano.”

“French words are in the plume.”

“Of your aunt. Murderous thoughts are in the couch of my analyst.”

“You are very silly ladies,” said Bill Masmanian.

“Women,” corrected one of them.

“However,” Bill went on, “scholarly ideas really are in the typewriter. They reside there. Sometimes I have a devil of a time teasing them out. Is there anything like a drink around here?”

Only Marlene Winokaur, sole smoker in the crowd, seemed relaxed. “Where's the speaker?” she puffed at Marty.

“I haven't the fuckiest,” he told her. He found his wife in the front hall. “When is Mrs. Fenton coming down?”

“I'm to call her when everyone is here,” Judy said.

Marty greeted another couple. Then it was Judy's turn. The Foxes didn't confer again for another five minutes. By that time everyone had arrived except for the Satterthwaites, who were always late.

Marty said, “You wake her up. I have to review my introduction.”

Judy said, “Okay.”

But Mrs. Fenton was already on her way down.

It is the rare person who can descend a stairway with grace. Mrs. Fenton, Judy thought, was to be praised just for staying erect. She was wearing a black wool dress of the sort that, thirty years earlier, Judy's mother had dragged out for second-rate luncheons. Flashing from its front was a diamond pin. Her outfit included a pair of scuffed brown sandals.

“Forgive my shoes,” Mrs. Fenton said, one hand gripping the banister. “I forgot to pack my good ones.”

Judy said brightly, “Heavens!”

Mrs. Fenton's other hand was grasping the handle of the case of slides. Now, trying to steady its weight against her thigh, she lost hold of her burden, and it dropped. The catch, which Ricky must have been fooling around with, flew apart, and the lid opened slightly, and some of the slides spilled down the stairs.

“They're numbered,” said Mrs. Fenton consolingly.

Mrs. Fenton watched while the wife in the plain brown tunic retrieved the slides. The husband—now what on earth was the name of these people? Fitzmaurice? No, that had been the Chicago pair. The husband turned from whatever he'd been reading and moved forward to greet her as she reached the bottom stair. Fox? No, they were in Denver. “Good evening, Mrs. Fenton.” They shook hands. What had those busy fingers been up to
recently, she wondered: which orifices did they confidently enter? Or perhaps this fellow was the pathologist. She had been lodged with so many doctors. Greenglass! she remembered with relief.

“. . . and after my few words,” he was saying, “we'll turn out the lights and let the presentation begin. Is that how you want it?”

“Yes. The pledge cards . . .”

“Their little table is on the way to the dining room. There are some others in a box near the wine. In
vino caritas.”

“I hope so.” Oh, she was thirsty. She took the slide case from the hands of her hostess and stepped into the living room. Fortunately the projector and her chair were near the entrance.

“Do you want to see how the thing works?”

She couldn't design a cistern or speak much Somali, but she could handle any goddam projector anybody gave her. However, she allowed him to review the mechanism of his toy. Most of the Greenglasses' guests were seated by now, facing the screen, their backs toward her. Some looked over their shoulders to smile a welcome. Then they faced forward again, for the doctor had made his way to the front of the room.

Mrs. Fenton never listened to the introductory remarks. Since they were all derived from the same mimeographed sheet, they were pretty much alike. The excellent work of the Organization with its three Asian and seven African outposts. The continued need for more support, emotional as well as, of course, financial. The career of today's representative, Alice-Mary Fenton, a former schoolteacher who, fifteen years ago, recently widowed, responded to a call for workers. Has served, in no particular order and sometimes simultaneously, as teacher, administrator, nurse, cook, gardener, teletype operator, jeep driver, labor arbitrator, and
practitioner of minor surgery. Ripple of laughter. The members of the Organization staff spend some portion of every year back in this country, interviewing recruits and trying to raise money. Mrs. Fenton is on her stateside tour now. Mrs. Fenton. Mrs. Fenton?

The dogsbody rose. Thank you, she said to her host. She looked around for her hostess, nervous brown tunic, mother of Ricky the Wicked. There she was, off to the side, curled up in one of the real chairs, knuckles against sweet cheek. Thank you, said Mrs. Fenton to Judy. A touch of hunger makes the whole world kin, she said. We'll start with the slides, she said. The doctor turned out the lights.

“Distended bellies,” began Mrs. Fenton, “reside on every coffee table.” Marlene Winokaur caught the allusion just as Mrs. Fenton, having swallowed, began her second sentence. “I speak of course of
Life,
the
New York Times Magazine.
Magazine Section,” she clarified. “And other periodicals, and television. The media, which should excite our sympathies, in fact benumb them. But here is Digo's belly.” The voice was neutral, thought Marlene. No, not neutral: unforceful. A slight hoarseness... “Digo is six. It never fails to amaze me that not eating can make you fat. He came to the Compound the day before this picture was taken. Here is a slide of him some weeks later,” and sure enough, the child's proportions had improved. “Not all of our stories have happy endings, but this one did.”

“You have seen pictures like this before.” A mass of starving children. “They look pregnant, don't they? But malnutrition comes in other forms.” The woman crouching on the straw mat was shapeless because of her wadded garments, but the infant in her arms was all bones. “Paolo could not be saved. Here is Luonne. About thirteen. Anorexic, but not from nerves. The people of
Luonne's tribe subsist on rice and bananas. During famines they try to eat roots and leaves. I have seen, in the operating room, a child whose esophagus had been perforated by the twigs she attempted to swallow, she was so desperate, so willing to die.”

Mrs. Fenton paused. Why did she allow herself to relive that moment? Herself holding the retractor, ready to faint, and the nurse turning white above her mask. Later, cradling the little girl in her arms. Mrs. Fenton had wished that the child could have looked last upon a prettier face than her own. What sentiment: the eyes had been blind with dying.

She clicked the slides. Three sentences per slide was a satisfactory tempo, but sometimes she speeded things up. “There are two diseases commonly associated with starvation.” Gassem, lying on his cot. “In marasmus, the torso swells while the limbs waste.” Reynante, hooked to an IV. “In kwashiorkor, the body develops open sores. Children impassively allow flies to land on their sores.” Tiny Asha, who in fact had recovered and been sent home, permanently dulled, on the back of her father. “The parents of these afflicted children, though familiar with death and in particular with infant mortality, still feel, much as we would, that they are letting their offspring down.” Frances Masmanian's eyes were hot. “But of course it is we who are letting them down, we whose overconsumption is malnourishing the world. Did you know that the average North American consumes five times as much grain as the average third-world person, much of it in the form of meat, chicken, and eggs? That we foolishly nourish our cattle on this useful grain instead of on greenstuffs that humans can't eat anyway? When I see red meat on the tables of Americans, I want to puke.” She wouldn't puke much around here, thought Marty; he
and Judy got high on soybeans and fish. “Of course, people avoid the more wasteful foods when they give parties for the Organization.” Judy, who served the same delicatessen fare to everybody, even Marty's chief, nevertheless bowed her head. “Of the two,” said Mrs. Fenton, showing a hideous picture of a pair of adult sufferers, “marasmus is the more heart-rending, kwashiorkor the more repellent. It is hard not to shudder,”—the suggestible Marlene shuddered—“but whether we shudder in compassion or disgust is difficult to tell. I myself am continually disgusted,” she said with momentary agitation. “Here's our refectory,” she said more calmly. “That's my best friend in the pith helmet,” she said, glad that the show was nearly over, aware that, once again, she had been on the road too long.

Judy's sympathy shifted from the victims, who were pictures, to Mrs. Fenton, who was suffering right here in their house. Perhaps later that evening she would invite Mrs. Fenton into the little sewing room. The children always felt soothed there. Mrs. Fenton could talk—her looseness would be appropriate, even helpful, when they were alone together—and Judy would listen, listen . . . Now all she could do was help her guest bring the presentation to an end.