Joshua Then and Now (54 page)

“One more,” he said, “and then I’m driving you home.”

“Aren’t you gallant?”

“Oh, go to hell, will you.”

She blew him a kiss. “I’ve only fucked once with a Jew, and what he liked best was going down on me. Oy vey, trying to make an impression, even in bed. For the rest, it was thirty seconds of action and an hour of apology. Are you all like that?”

“We’re a bad lot.”

“If you stopped being so superior, I’d stop being coarse.
Give me my blouse, please.”

Startled, he fetched it for her.

“I don’t want to sit here like this. Not with you. I’m cold. Oh, I’m so cold. I’m beginning to grow little hairs on my upper lip. Have you noticed?”

“No,” he said, as she stood up and he helped her into her blouse.

“But don’t you even think I have beautiful skin? I don’t mean my neck, my neck’s going. But oh my arms. And my shoulders were always better than Pauline’s. Touch me, Joshua.”

He kissed her perfunctorily on the shoulder.

“Stop! Don’t do any more, you wild Jewman, you satyr, or I’ll come in my panties.”

He had to laugh. She giggled, and then all at once her mood soured again. “I think you’re full of shit,” she said, retrieving her coat from the hall floor, “you and Pauline.”

“I’ll drive you home,” he said.

“I wouldn’t dream of putting you out. Call me a taxi, please.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“I want a taxi. Do you understand?”

Diamond said they would be there in ten minutes.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said.

“Now come on, it’s freezing out there.”

“And here.”

“And here,” he agreed.

“I would have thought,” she said with a sudden smile, “that you would have enjoyed having me strip for you, just like your mother used to.”

“Who told you that?” he demanded, outraged.

“Why, I could tell you things about your precious Pauline that would make your hair stand on end.”

“Out,” he said, whacking the door open.

“Do you know why the senator really drove poor Kevin out of the house?”

Which was when he struck her with the back of his hand, sending her sprawling.

F
IVE WEEKS. SHE HAD BEEN IN THE HOSPITAL FOR FIVE
weeks. And from the day of his return from Ibiza, he had not missed an afternoon visit. Appealing to an unresponsive, mute Pauline. Once he had reminded her of their first dinner together: L’Etoile on Charlotte Street. A decidedly horny Joshua determined to get it over with nicely, but as quickly as possible. Then bed. Pauline in his bed.

Imagine.

“I don’t think,” she said, after he had apprehensively ordered what he devoutly hoped was a good wine, “that we ought to have a Bordeaux with our veal.”

“I ordered it,” he said, flaring. “We’ll drink it.”

“You’re being stubborn. It isn’t proper.”

“Neither am I.”

“It’s gauche.”

“So am I.”

“I’m not marrying you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Eat fast.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said, fiddling with her marinated trout, her lips parted.

Pauline’s lips.

“We can have our coffee and cognac back at my place.”

“And what makes you think,” she asked, her smile maddeningly mysterious, “that I’m going back to your place?” But he shrank so visibly that she immediately relented. “Can’t you wait?”

“No. Can you?”

“Why don’t we leave right now?”

“Really?” he asked, astonished, as under the table her bare foot was already riding up between his legs.

“Yes, please,” she said.

Pauline’s first retreat to her bed – a breakdown, Dr. Hamilton said, although Joshua bridled at such a clinical description – had come some six months after Susy’s birth.

Alex had the measles. Susy had colic and had to be walked through the night. The newly installed oil heating furnace conked out – the plumber blamed the heating engineer, the heating engineer blamed the electrician. The contractor, standing in the kitchen, flicking cigarette ash into the palm of his hand – a reproach – would not accept any responsibility. Pauline paced, her eyes heated, Susy struggling and squealing in her arms.

“Put more sugar in her bottle, ma’am.”

“Don’t tell me how to bring up my babies. Fix my furnace.”

He appealed to Joshua over her shoulder: We’re men. We understand.

“I’m in the middle of work,” Joshua said, retreating. “I’ve got a deadline to meet.”

Lists began to accumulate. Lists and lists of lists. Overwhelming her. Broken dishes in the dinner service had to be replaced. But John Barnes no longer carried the line. Imported. Discontinued, madam. But you promised I could always get replacements. Would you like to see the manager?

“Look, darling,” he said, “I really don’t give a damn about the dinner service, or whether or not the plates match.”

“But I do.”

He shrugged.

“You have a way of diminishing everything I do for you.”

“Should I pretend to care, then?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Oh, help me, Josh. Please.”

Reuben helped.

She came to adore him, though at first she was fearful. “He doesn’t approve of me. He thinks I’m too prim. I don’t shoplift.”

He reminded her of the time, maybe a year after their return to Montreal, when Alex had complained to Reuben about his teacher at Selwyn House.

“He picks on me,” Alex wailed.

“Well, yeah, right. Now, what’s his name?”

Pauline, chopping vegetables, froze. “Don’t you dare give him your teacher’s name,” she called out instinctively.

Reuben hooted with laughter. Pauline broke up. A kinship was forged.

Now she lay in her hospital bed, wasting, and Joshua came by every afternoon to sit with her.

The worms must be crawling in his mouth now. The flesh putrefying
.

Then one afternoon, after she had been there for five weeks, he managed to provoke her into a conversation by insisting, “I’m bringing the children here tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to see them.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not their mother any more. Or your wife. I don’t want to see anybody.”

“The house isn’t the same. They need you. So do I.”

“Get a housekeeper.”

He stared at her, astonished.

“The children can survive very well without me. So can you. And I don’t need anybody any more.”

Joshua hastily lighted a cigarette.

“Surprised?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Is your sweet Pauline being ugly?” she taunted.

“I didn’t say that.”

“The truth is, you never say very much, but you expect a good deal.”

“I see.”

“I can find fault with all of you. That’s what I do here. I lie in bed and make lists of your failings. My family’s failings. Especially yours. You’re not what you once were.”

Don’t I know it.

“You never should have married me or had a family,” she said, her voice rising. “You might have written more instead of frittering away your time at The King’s Arms. Joshua Shapiro. Regular guy.”

“Possibly I needed you more than I ever cared about writing.”

“Or, more likely, you were less afraid of having us than of testing your limits. You use us, Josh. You resent us. You tell yourself that if not for them, you would be able to live on a pittance and write what you wanted. You think you’re one fine fellow. You’re a coward.”

“That’s simply not true.”

“Once I thought you had sufficient appetite for both of us. You were such a grabber. Charging into any roomful of people, determined to make an impression. ‘Look at me. See what I made of myself.’ Now you’ve learned to sit back and wait. Strangers will bring you drinks at any party. Others will attend to your needs. Obeisance must be paid to Joshua Shapiro, television’s fool.”

Biting back his anger, he protested, “But I love you.”

“So what?” she shrieked back.

“Pauline, please.”

“Will your loving bring back the dead?”

Do you know why the senator really drove poor Kevin out of the house?

“There are people who say you married me because you’re a climber.”

I could tell you things about your precious Pauline that would make your hair stand on end
.

“Why wasn’t a Jewish girl good enough for you?”

“That’s enough. Really, Pauline. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do. I do. Something in you called out for a prize. A golden shiksa. And what if they had to cut off my breast? Like Barbara. Snip, snip. Would you find somebody younger?”

“I’m going to find out exactly what drugs they’ve got you on. I want you taken off everything.”

“You wanted Seymour and your cousin – what’s his name? – to envy you. ‘
Dress classy. I want your breeding to show.’
Do you remember saying that to me?”

“Did Kevin mean that much to you?” he demanded.

“Yes. Yes. Kevin meant that much to me. And I betrayed him.”

“Or, more likely, he betrayed you.”

“You don’t understand. How can I make you understand? I don’t care about the money. The hell with the money. He was my brother. I should have helped him. I should have lied for him. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t want Joshua to think badly of me. Well, the hell with you. Who do you think you are? Even my father’s frightened of you. He turned down that dreadful Izzy Singer, those directorships. He wanted the money for his grandchildren but he turned it down because he didn’t want to offend you. He never cared about his son. His own son. But he didn’t want you to think badly of him.”

“Sometimes,” he said, his voice subdued, “I think you married me in the first place only because you wanted to shock your father.”

“Well, in the end, we were both shocked, weren’t we?”

“How come?”

“You turned out to be more moral than we were. Possibly because you’re new to it. Me, I come from an old family. Well established. Rotten to the core.”

“What is it you want, Pauline?”

“I want to be complete unto myself. I want to live alone. I don’t want to need anybody.”

“But we’re so right together.”

“We were. But not any more. We’re on a new standard now.”

He tried to take her in his arms, but she slid away from him, trembling. “What would I do if anything happened to you? Or Alex? Or Susy? Or Teddy? Don’t you understand? Look at me. Take a good look. How could I survive another loss?”

“We can’t live without risks.”

“I can. I will. Our kind of loving is madness. Harden yourself, my darling. I have. I’m going to live alone. I’m going to become my mother. I’m going to go to bed with other women’s husbands and I’m not going to feel a thing when they’re fucking me. Neither am I ever going to be left for a younger woman or be denied by my children. Look,” she cried, sweeping up her nail scissors from her bedside table and driving them into the palm of her hand, “I can hurt myself more than anybody else can possibly hurt me.”

He leaped up to yank the scissors out and took her raw bleeding hand in his own. A shaking Pauline yielded to sobs. The nurse came running. Pauline required five stitches, a sedative. Joshua sat up with her through the night.

A moaning Pauline.

Her legs curled up, with her knees all but touching her chin. Her hands locked between her thighs.

J
OSHUA SLEPT IN FOR MOST OF THE NEXT DAY, AND THE
following morning he went to Morty Zipper’s office. He had meant to talk to him about Pauline, but once he got there he found that he just couldn’t trust himself to mention her. So he asked Morty about Seymour instead. Morty said that Seymour was going to be all right.

“When you guys say ‘all right,’ I get the shivers. What exactly do you mean, Morty?”

“His second attack was very minor. It was to be expected. His chances are good. What more can I say? Now roll up your sleeve. I’m going to take your blood pressure.”

“Well?” Joshua asked afterwards.

“Two months ago, Seymour’s was normal too. Have you been to North Africa yet?”

“No. Why?”

“Last year we went to Yugoslavia. This year we’re going to North Africa. I don’t postpone things any more. Neither should you.”

Seymour, Seymour.

Seymour, who had suffered his initial coronary while Joshua was in Spain, had been back in circulation as soon as he was sprung from the hospital two weeks later. One evening he had barged into The King’s Arms, flushed with excitement, not even stopping to
introduce the plump giggly young girl on his arm, but pulling Joshua abruptly away from the bar and hurrying him into the toilet.

“Seymour, you ought to be taking it easy. What in the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Quick,” he had said, dropping his trousers, “we’ve got to change. I need your underwear.”

“You’re out of your mind. Nothing will get me into those goddamn lace panties.”

“Put them into your pocket, then. But I need your shorts,” he had said, tugging at Joshua’s belt.

“It’s late-night closing. Try Simpson’s.”

“Come on,” he had said, unzipping him.

“What if somebody found us here like this, dear?”

“No jokes, please.”

So they had exchanged underwear, and Joshua had lingered at the bar until closing time, forgetting all about his car parked outside. And the next morning Stuart Donald McMaster had come to the house.

Now Seymour was back in the hospital, the Jewish General, and Joshua went there directly from Morty’s office. A minor attack, Morty had said, but Seymour had aged, leaping a generation in ten days. His face seemed drawn, his eyes without heat. He had already lost twelve pounds and had been ordered to shed another ten. He had given up smoking and had been put on a salt-free diet. Seymour diminished. All the same, Joshua should have known better than to enter his room without knocking. A shapely black nurse leaped away from his bed.

“Hi,” Seymour said. “I’d like you to meet Ms. Brenda Hopkinson. What a mind! Honestly, she’s one of the most intelligent women I’ve ever met. Brenda’s a Seventh Day Adventist. It’s fascinating. She’s given me a book to read on it. I’ll lend it to you.”

“Excuse me,” Brenda said, leaving the room.