Odd Jobs (7 page)
Authors: John Updike
The motorman, the back of his neck in thick folds above the sweat-blackened collar of his uniform, pounded the floor gong and swung a burnished brass handle back and forth in a fury. The long inside of the car lurched, and the other passengers lost their faces. The smell and the throbbing and the vow to hold on had rubbed them out.
Her voice tugged at him gently. “Willy, let’s get off here. We can walk across the school grounds.”
“No. I can make it.”
But she had decided. She had become girlish and animated, insisting, “Come on, I
want
to. It’ll be
good
for us.” She pushed the bell. The old trolleys did not have pull cords; instead there were porcelain buttons like doorbells above each seat.
The double-hinged door flapped open. The little step magically flopped down. His feet firm on the concrete road, Farnham inhaled real
air. His relief overwhelmed his guilt. The trudge across the fields, with their cinder track and wooden bleachers and the bucking sled for the football players, was long enough for his stomach to settle and his color to return. He put away his mother’s hand as something he no longer needed, and raced ahead. When, having reached the hedge at the bottom of their own yard, he turned, she seemed a distant stranger, a woman walking alone.
1982
YOUR LOVER JUST CALLEDA Playlet
Adapted from the Short Story of the Same Name for an Evening of Fifteen-Minute Plays at the Blackburn Theatre, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on April 10, 1989
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
Richard and Joan Maple, in their thirties
SCENE 1:
An upstairs hall, Friday morning, ten o’clock
SCENE 2:
Same place, next day, same time
(Stage set: A table with a telephone on it. Chair. Door left leads to bedroom.)
PHONE:
(Rings. Rings twice. Thrice.)
RICHARD
(sniffing, coughing, in pajamas, emerges from bedroom door):
Hello?
(Listens, then sings musically)
Hello hello?
(Hangs up. Stands there puzzled.)
JOAN
(coming upstairs, carrying a blanket, a jar of vitamin C, a glass of apple juice, a book):
Richard, you
must
stay in bed if you want to get well enough to entertain Mack tonight.
RICHARD:
Your lover just called.
JOAN:
What did he say?
RICHARD:
Nothing. He hung up. He was amazed to find me home on a Friday.
JOAN:
Go back to bed. Here’s an extra blanket, some chewable vitamin C, a glass of apple juice, and that book you wanted from the library.
It took me the
longest
time to find it. I didn’t know whether to look under “L” for “Laclos,” “d” for “de,” or “C” for “Choderlos.”
RICHARD
(taking book):
Great.
(Reads title) Les Liaisons dangereuses
.
JOAN:
How do I know it wasn’t
your
lover?
RICHARD:
If it was my lover, why would she hang up, since I answered?
JOAN:
Maybe she heard me coming up the stairs. Maybe she doesn’t love you any more.
RICHARD
(after blowing his nose):
This is a ridiculous conversation.
JOAN:
You started it.
RICHARD:
Well, what would
you
think, if you were me and answered the phone on a weekday and the person hung up? He clearly expected you to be home alone like you always are.
JOAN:
Well, if you’ll go back to bed and fall asleep I’ll call him back and explain what happened.
RICHARD:
You think
I’ll
think you’re kidding but I know that’s really what
would
happen.
JOAN:
Oh, come on, Dick. Who would it be? Freddy Vetter?
RICHARD:
Or Harry Saxon. Or somebody I don’t know at all. Some old college sweetheart who’s moved to West Gloucester. Or maybe the milkman. I can hear you and him talking while I’m shaving sometimes.
JOAN:
We’re surrounded by hungry children. He’s sixty years old and has hair coming out of his ears.
RICHARD:
Like your father. You
like
older men. There was that section man in Chaucer. You and he were always going out for coffee together after the lecture.
JOAN:
Yes, and he gave me a C for the course. C for coffee.
RICHARD:
Don’t try to change the subject. You’ve been acting awfully happy lately. There’s a little smile comes into your face when you think I’m not looking. See, there it is!
JOAN:
I’m smiling because you’re so ridiculous. I have no lover. I have nowhere to put him. My days are consumed by devotion to the needs of my husband and his numerous children.
RICHARD:
Oh, so I’m the one made you have the children? While you were hankering after a career in fashion or in the exciting world of business. You could have been the first woman to crack the wheat-futures cycle. Or maybe aeronautics: the first woman to design a nose cone. Joan Maple, girl agronomist. Joan Maple, lady geopolitician. But for that patriarchal brute she mistakenly married, this clear-eyed female citizen of our milder, gentler republic—
JOAN:
Dick, have you taken your temperature? I haven’t heard you rave like this for years.
RICHARD:
I haven’t been wounded like this for years. I hated that
click
. That nasty little I-know-your-wife-better-than-you-do
click
.
JOAN:
It was some child, playing with the phone. Really, if we’re going to have Mack for dinner tonight, you better convalesce now.
RICHARD:
It
is
Mack, isn’t it? That son of a bitch. His divorce isn’t even finalized and he’s calling my wife on the phone. And then proposes to gorge himself at my groaning board.
JOAN:
The board won’t be the only thing groaning. You’re giving me a headache.
RICHARD:
Sure. First I foist off more children on you than you can count, then I give you a menstrual headache.
JOAN:
Darling. If you’ll get into bed with your apple juice, I’ll bring you cinnamon toast cut into strips the way your mother used to make it.
RICHARD:
You’re lovely.
(Kisses her brow, takes blanket, pills, and juice, and goes into bedroom. She turns to head downstairs.)
PHONE:
(Rings.)
JOAN:
Hello … yes … no … no … sorry.
RICHARD
(shouting from behind door):
Who was it?
JOAN:
Somebody wanting to sell us the
World Book Encyclopedia
.
RICHARD
’
S
voice, after pause, with obscure satisfaction:
A very likely story.
(Blackout to indicate lapse of time. Next morning.)
PHONE:
(Rings.)
JOAN
(entering from downstairs in tennis dress):
Hello … oh, pity … don’t worry about it … I’ll be there.
RICHARD
(coming out of bedroom still in pajamas):
Who was that?
JOAN:
Nancy Vetter. Francine has had to take little Robbie to the orthodontist this morning because Harry’s plane got fogged in in Denver. So our tennis won’t be until eleven.
RICHARD:
Mmh
(the noise indicating slight surprise: not
Hmm
or
Humph). One good thing about a hangover, it makes a cold feel trivial.
JOAN:
I don’t know why you drank so much. Or why Mack stayed until one in the morning.
RICHARD:
It’s obvious why. He had to stay to make sure there were no hard feelings.
JOAN:
Why would there be? Just because you were sneaking around outside
your own kitchen windows and saw him giving me a friendly peck?
RICHARD:
Friendly peck! That kiss was so long I thought one of you might pass out from oxygen deprivation!
JOAN:
Don’t try to be funny about it. It was shockingly sneaky of you, and we were both embarrassed on your behalf.
RICHARD:
You
were embarrassed! You send me out for cigarettes in the dark of the night, and stumbling back through my own backyard what do I see all lit up in the kitchen but you two making like a blue movie!
JOAN:
You could have coughed. Or rattled the screen door or something.
RICHARD:
I was paralyzed with horror. My first primal scene. My own wife doing a very credible impersonation of a female spider having her abdomen tickled. Where did you learn to flirt your head like that? It was better than finger puppets.
JOAN:
Really, Richard, how you go on. We were hardly doing anything. Mack always kisses me in the kitchen. It’s a habit, it means nothing. You know for yourself how in love with Eleanor he is.
RICHARD:
So much he’s divorcing her. His devotion borders on the quixotic.
JOAN:
The divorce is her idea, you know that. He’s a lost soul. I feel sorry for him.
RICHARD:
Yes, I saw that you do. You were like the Red Cross at Verdun.
JOAN:
What I’d like to know is, why are you so pleased?
RICHARD:
Pleased? I’m annihilated.
JOAN:
You’re delighted. You should see your smile.
RICHARD:
You’re so incredibly unapologetic about it, I guess I keep thinking you’re being ironical.
PHONE:
(Rings.)
JOAN:
Hello?
Hello? (Hangs up, stares at him.)
So. She thought I’d be playing tennis by now.
RICHARD:
Who’s she?
JOAN:
You tell me. Your lover. Your loveress.
RICHARD:
Honey, quit bluffing. It was clearly yours, and something in your voice warned him off.
JOAN
(with sudden furious energy):
Go to her! Go to her like a man and stop trying to maneuver me into something I don’t understand! I have no lover. I let Mack kiss me because he’s lonely and drunk! Stop trying to make me more interesting than I am! All I am is a beat-up
housewife who wants to go play tennis with some other beat-up victims of a male-dominated society!
RICHARD
(studying her as if for the first time):
Really?
JOAN
(panting):
Really.
RICHARD:
You think I want to make you more interesting than you are?
JOAN:
Of course. You’re bored. You left me and Mack alone last night deliberately. It was very uncharacteristic of you, to volunteer to go out for cigarettes with your cold.
RICHARD:
My cold. I feel rotten, come to think of it.
JOAN:
You want me to be like that woman in the book, in the movie. The Marquise de Whatever. Glenn Close. All full of wicked schemes and secrets.
RICHARD
(putting hand to forehead):
I think I do have a fever now.
JOAN:
When I’m really, sad to say, that other woman. Poor Madame Something. Too good to live.
RICHARD:
You are? You’re Michelle Pfeiffer?
JOAN:
Exactly. Without you, I’d just go back to the convent and curl up and die.
RICHARD:
Feel.
(Puts her hand to his forehead.)
JOAN:
A
teeny
bit warm.
RICHARD:
Would you …?
JOAN
(sharply, on her mettle):
Would I what?
RICHARD:
If I went back to bed would you come tuck me in before you go off to tennis?
JOAN:
I’ll tuck you in. No toast, though.
RICHARD:
No nice sliced cinnamon toast. It’s sad, to think of you without a lover.
JOAN:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry to disappoint you.
RICHARD:
You don’t, entirely. I find you pretty interesting anyway.
(They move toward the door and through it. From behind the door.)
You’re interesting here, and here, and here.
JOAN
’
S
voice:
I said I’d just tuck you in.
(Silence. Empty stage.)
PHONE:
(Rings. Twice. Thrice. Four times. Stops. Then a little questioning pring, as when someone in passing bumps the table. Then, perhaps, more rings, as many as the audience can stand, unanswered.)
MEDIA