Now and Forever (31 page)

Christmas did not fall on a visiting day, so she couldn't spend it with Ian after all. She spent it alone, with three red pills and two yellow ones. She didn't wake up until four the next afternoon, and then she could go back to the shop. She wanted to mark some things down for a sale. They had lost money at Christmas and she had to make it up. A good fat sale would really do it. She would send out little cards to their best customers. It would bring them in droves--she hoped.

She worked on the books straight through New Year's, and finally remembered to give Zina and Kat checks instead of the Christmas presents she had overlooked. Jessie had gotten three presents, and a poem from Ian. Astrid had given her a simple and lovely gold bracelet, and Zina and Kat had given her small, thoughtful things. A homemade potpourri in a pretty French jar from Zina, and a small line drawing in a silver frame from Katsuko. And she had read die poem from Ian over and over on Christmas eve. It was quickly dog-eared as it lay on her nightstand.

She had taken it with her to the office, and now carried it in her bag, to bring out and read during the day. She knew it by heart the day after she'd gotten it.

Katsuko and Zina wondered what she did in her office all the time now. She would emerge for coffee, or to look for something in the stockroom, but she rarely spoke to them, and never joked anymore. Gone were the days of cozy gossip and the easy camaraderie the three had shared. It was as though Jessie had vanished when Ian did. She would appear at the door of her small office at the end of the day, sometimes with a pencil stuck in her hair, a distracted look, a small packet of bills in one hand, and sometimes with eyes that were bloodshot and swollen. She was quicker to snap at people now, quicker to lose patience over trivial matters. And there was always that dead look in her eyes. The look that said she lay awake at night. The look that said she was more frightened than she wanted them to know. And the unmistakable glaze from the pills.

Only the days when she visited Ian were a little different. She was alive then. Something sparkled behind the wall she had built between herself and the rest of the world. Something different would happen in her eyes then, but she would share it with no one. Not even with Astrid, who was spending more and more time at the shop, and getting to know Zina and Katsuko. In a sense, Astrid had replaced Jessie. She had the kind of easy-going ways that Jessie had had before. She enjoyed the shop, the people, the clothes, the girls. She had time to talk and laugh. She had new ideas. She loved the place, and it showed. The girls had grown fond of her. She even came in on the days when Jessie was with Ian.

"You know, sometimes I think I sit here just so I know when she gets back. I worry about her making that drive."

"So do we." Katsuko shook her head.

"She told me the other day that she just does it on 'automatic pilot'" Zina's words weren't much comfort. "She says that sometimes she doesn't even remember where she is or what she's doing until she sees that sign."

"Terrific." Astrid took a sip of coffee and shook her head.

"Grim, isn't it? I wonder how long she'll hold up. She can't just keep plodding on like that. She has to go somewhere, see people, smile occasionally, sleep." And sober up. Katsuko didn't say it, but they all thought it. "She doesn't even took like the same woman anymore. I wonder how he's doing."

"A little better than she is, actually. But I haven't seen him for a while. I think he's less afraid."

"Is that what it is with her?" Zina looked stunned. "I thought she was just exhausted."

"That too. But it's fear." Astrid sounded hesitant to discuss it.

"And pressure. Lady J has been giving her a rough time lately."

"Oh? Looks busy enough."

Katsuko shook her head, reluctant to say more. She had taken calls lately from people Jessie owed money to. For the first time the business was in trouble, and there was no money to fall back on. Jessie had bled every last cent of their spare money for Ian. So now Lady J was paying Ian's price too.

Jessie walked into the shop then, and the conversation came to a halt. She looked haggard and thin but there was something brighter in her eyes, that indefinable something that Ian poured back into her soul. Life.

"Well, ladies, how has life been treating you all today? Are you spending all your money here again, Astrid?" Jessie sat down and took a sip of someone's cold coffee. The small yellow pill she slipped into her mouth at the same time was barely noticeable. But Astrid noticed.

"Nope. Not spending a dime today. Just dropped by for some coffee and company. How's Ian?"

"Fine, I guess. Full of the book. How was business today?" She didn't seem to want to talk about Ian. She rarely spoke of anything important to her anymore. Even to Astrid.

"It was pretty quiet today." Katsuko filled her in on business while Zina watched the slight trembling of Jessie's hand.

"Terrific. A dead business, and a dead car. The Volvo just breathed its last" She sounded unconcerned, as though it really didn't matter because she had twelve other cars at home.

"On your way home?"

"Naturally. I hitched a ride with two kids in Berkeley. In a 1952 Studebaker truck. It was pink with green trim and they called it the Watermelon. It drove like one too." She tried to make light of it while the three women watched her.

"So where's the car?"

"At a service station in Berkeley. The owner offered me seventy-five bucks for it, and agreed to drop the towing charge."

"Did you sell it?" Even Katsuko looked stunned.

"Nope. I can't. It's Ian's. But I guess I will. That car has had it." And so have I. She didn't say it, but they all heard it in her voice. "Easy come, easy go. I'll pick up something cheap for my trips up to Ian." But with what? Where would the money come from for that?

"I'll drive you." Astrid's voice was quiet and strangely calm. Jessica looked up at her and nodded. There was no point in protesting. She needed help and she knew it, and not just with the drive.

Astrid drove Jessica up to see Ian three times a week from then on. It saved Jessie the trouble of waiting to take the two yellow pills when she got there. This way she could take two in the morning, and another two after she saw him. Sometimes she even threw in a green-and-black one. Every little bit helped.

And Astrid could no longer talk to her. There was no use even trying. All she could do was stand by and be there when the roof finally came down. If it did, when it did, wherever and however. Jessica was heading for a stone wall as fast as she could. Nothing less was going to stop her. And Ian couldn't reach her either. Astrid saw that clearly now. He couldn't face what was happening to Jessie, because he couldn't help. If he couldn't help, he wouldn't see. And each time Jessie appeared, looking more tortured, more exhausted, more brittle, more rooted in pain and draped in bravado, it would only hurt Ian more. He would feel greater guilt, greater indebtedness, greater pain of his own. Their eyes rarely met now. They simply talked. He about the book, she about the boutique. Never about the past or the future or the realities of the present. They never spoke of feelings, but only threw out "I love you" at regular intervals, like punctuation. It was grisly to watch, and Astrid hated the visits. She wanted to shake them both, to speak out, to stop what she was seeing. Instead they just went on dying quietly on opposite sides of the glass wall, in their own private hells, Ian with his guilt and Jessica with hers, and each of them with their blindness about themselves and about each other. While Astrid watched, mute and horrified.

If only they could have held each other, then they might have been real. But they couldn't, and they weren't. Astrid knew that as she watched them. She could see it in Jessie's eyes now. There was constant pain, but there was also the look of a child who does not understand. Her husband was gone, but what was a husband, and where had he gone? The pills had allowed her to submerge herself in a sea of vagueness, and she rarely came to the surface anymore. She was very close to drowning, and Astrid wasn't entirely sure if Ian hadn't already drowned. Astrid could have done without the visits. But they were all locked into their roles now. Husband, wife, and friend.

January bled into February and then limped into March. The boutique had a two-week sale that brought scarcely any business. Everyone was busy or away or feeling poor. The last of their winter line hadn't done well at all; the economy was weak, and luxuries were going with it. Lady J was not a boutique to supply ordinary needs. It catered to a select clientele of the internationally chic. And her clients' husbands were telling them to lay off. The market was bad. They were no longer amused by a "little" sweater and a "nothing" skirt that cost them in toto close to two hundred dollars.

"Christ, what are we going to do with all this junk?" Jessie paced the floor, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes. She had seen Ian that morning. Once again through the window. Still through the window. Forever through the window. She had visions of finally getting to touch him again when they were both ninety-seven years old. She didn't even dream of his coming home anymore. Just of being able to touch him.

"We're going to have a real problem, Jessie, when the spring line comes in." Katsuko looked around pensively.

"Yeah, the bastards. It was due in last week and it's late." She swept into the stockroom to see what was there. She was annoyed much of the time now. The pain was showing itself differently. It wasn't enough now to hide: it was taking more to silence her inner voices.

"You know, I've been thinking." Katsuko had followed her into the stockroom and was watching her.

"Was it painful?" Jessie looked up, smiled awkwardly, and then shrugged. "Sorry. What were you thinking, Kat?" That sounded like the old Jessie. But it was rare now.

"About next fall's line. Are you going to New York one of these days?" On what? A broomstick?

"I don't know yet."

"What'll we do for a fall line if you don't?" Katsuko was worried. There was almost no money for a new line, and there were still unpaid bills all over Jessie's desk.

"I don't know, Kat I'll see."

She walked into her office and slammed the door, her mouth in a small set line. Zina and Kat exchanged a glance. Zina answered the phone when it rang. It was for Jessie. From some record store. She buzzed Jessie's office and watched her pick up the phone. The light on the phone Zina had answered went out only a few moments later.

And in her office Jessie's hands were trembling as she toyed with a pencil on her desk. It had been another one of those calls. They were sure it was an oversight, undoubtedly she had forgotten to send them a check for the amount that was due ... at least these had been polite. The doctor's office had called yesterday and he had threatened to sue. For fifty dollars? A doctor was going to sue her for fifty dollars? ... And a dentist for ninety-eight ... and there was still a liquor store bill for Ian's wine for a hundred and forty-five ... and she owed the cleaner's twenty-six and the drugstore thirty-three and the phone bill was forty-one ... and I. Magnin ... and Ian's old tennis club ... and new plants for the shop and the electricians' bill when the lights had gotten screwed up over Christmas ... and a plumbing bill for the house ... and on and on and on it went, and the Volvo was gone, and Lady J was going down the tubes, and Ian was in prison, and everything just kept getting worse instead of better. There was almost a satisfaction in it, like playing a game of "how bad can things get?" And meanwhile Astrid was buying sweaters from her at cost, and "amusing" gold bracelets at Shreve's, and having her hair done every three days at twenty-five bucks a crack. And now there was the fall line to think about. Three hundred bucks' worth of plane fare, and a hotel bill, not to mention the cost of what she bought. It would sink her further into debt, but she didn't have much choice. Without a fall line, she might as well close up Lady J on Labor Day. But it was getting to the point where she was afraid to walk into the bank to cash a check. She was always sure that she'd be stopped on the way out and ushered to the manager. How long would they put up with the overdrafts, the problems, the bullshit? And how long would she?

As she was trying to figure out how expensive the trip to New York would be, the intercom buzzed to let her know she had a call. She picked up the phone absentmindedly, without finding out from Zina who it was.

"Hi, gorgeous, how's about some tennis?" The voice was jovial and already sounded sweaty.

"Who is this?" She suspected an obscene phone caller and was thinking of hanging up as the man on the other end took a large swallow of something, presumably beer.

"Barry. And how've ya been?"

"Barry who?" She recoiled from the phone as though from a snake. This was no one she knew.

"Barry York. You know. Yorktown Bonding."

"What?" She sat up as though someone had slapped her.

"I said ..."

"I know what you said. And you're calling me to play tennis?"

"Yeah. You don't play?" He sounded surprised, like a small boy who's just been severely disappointed.

"Mr. York, do I understand you correctly? You want to play tennis with me?"

"Yeah. So?" He belched softly into the phone.

"Are you drunk?"

"Of course not. Are you?"

"No, I'm not. And I don't understand why you called me." Her voice was straight out of the Arctic Circle, long-distance.

"Well, you're a good-looking woman, I was going to play tennis, and I figured maybe you'd want to play. No big deal. You don't dig tennis, we can go have dinner somewhere."

"Are you out of your mind? What in God's name makes you think I have any desire whatsoever to play tennis, play hopscotch, have dinner, or do anything else with you?"

"Well, listen to the red-hot mama. Sing it, sweetheart What's to get so excited about?"

"I happen to be a married woman." She was shouting and Zina and Kat could hear her tone from the other side of the door. They wondered who had called. Kat raised an eyebrow, and Zina went to help a client. Inside, the conversation continued.