Starting Over (12 page)

“Thanks.”

They walked, heads down against the rain, to the Arlington Street station, and Miss Korsky stopped at the entrance, smiled, and said, “Thanks again.”

Potter put his hand on the top of her head, very lightly. “Be Okay,” he said.

“You, too,” Miss Korsky said, and then descended quickly into the dank entry of the trains.

Potter walked swiftly away, as if going somewhere, and then slowed down, allowing the tears to come because they were hardly discernible from the rain, and no one could tell he was quietly crying, nor could he have explained that he felt quite warm, and good, because he had somehow experienced a blessing. That visit. That hour. That day.

6

“We need to get away,” said Marilyn. “Take a trip somewhere.”

Potter thought how often he had heard that advice, or given it himself, when things were going wrong. It was supposed to be a cure-all for failing relationships, like taking Vitamin C for a cold. He didn't mention that, however, not wanting to take a defeatist attitude. He simply asked, “Where?”

“Well, I was thinking—how about someplace New Englandy. Vermont, maybe.”

“Vermont?”

“Why not? It's supposed to be beautiful. We could see the leaves turn.”

Potter glanced out the window, and back at Marilyn. “Honey, they've already turned. In fact, they've fallen off.”

“Not all of them.”

“It's almost the first of November, for Christsake.”

“Well, then we ought to go right away, before it snows.”

Potter tried to examine the logic of this for a moment, but saw a maze that would lead nowhere but a fight, and so agreed to drive up to Vermont for the weekend. He tried, genuinely, to sound enthusiastic about it. He even convinced himself that it might really help. Perhaps the change of scene, the novelty of sleeping in a new and different place, strange and remote, might help revive his steadily waning desire for Marilyn. An old familiar syndrome was setting in. The excitement of novelty was gone, and Potter had begun to notice little flaws in Marilyn he hadn't originally seen: the slight but sure sag of her breasts, the lack of a real curve to her calves, the corns on her toes, like reddish sores. One of her lower back teeth was slightly discolored.

He drank more before taking her to bed. In an effort to recharge desire with variety, they had stopped going to the comfort and familiarity of the bed itself, but fucked on the couch, on the living room rug, on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor, and once, standing up, in the closet. He had gone down on her, and she had gone down on him, and they had gone down on one another together. They had done it at her place and at his place, and once they did it in the Bertelsens' upstairs bathroom during a cocktail party.

They were running out of places.

They would try Vermont.

Vermont looked just like Vermont should look. What leaves remained were deep red and gold, and Potter agreed they were beautiful. He agreed that in fact the whole state, leaves or no, was a beautiful area, with its rolling hills and picture-postcard red barns and white clapboard farmhouses, its drowsy little towns and sweeping valleys. It seemed to Potter that in the course of the drive from Boston to the Middlebury Inn he had agreed to Marilyn's endorsements of the beauties of Vermont at least five hundred times.

They arrived a little after four in the afternoon. Marilyn thought the place was charming and that their room, though rather spare, was appropriately quaint. Potter agreed, pulling a quart of Cutty Sark out of his suitcase and bringing the two water glasses from the bathroom.

“Are you starting already?” Marilyn asked.

“What do you mean, ‘already'?”

“Well, it's not even five. Is it?”

Potter looked at his watch. “No, it's not five. It's eleven minutes and some seconds after four. And I've been driving for five hours.”

“You had a martini at lunch.”

“I know I had a martini at lunch. What does that have to do with wanting a drink after driving for five hours?”

Marilyn got out a cigarette. “Never mind,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Potter set the glasses down on the bureau. “Oh, no. Jesus. I don't want to offend you.”

He took out a cigarette for himself, and jabbed it into his mouth.

“Phil, I'm sorry. I just want us to have a good time. I want it to be nice. Let's not spoil it.”

“You mean if I have one drink before five that's going to spoil everything?”

Marilyn sighed. “Please? Phil?”

He took a deep breath. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Listen. Let's take a walk. OK?”

They walked around the town square and found an old-fashioned drugstore with the curling metal-backed chairs. There was a sign behind the soda fountain that advertised phosphates. Marilyn and Phil both had cherry phosphates, marvelling over the fact that you could still get this wonderful concoction that neither of them had had since childhood. The phosphates confirmed the fact that they had escaped the jangling city, the Pepsi Generation present; that they had gotten away from it all.

They returned to the room a few minutes after five, and Potter pretended to have forgotten all about the booze. He said he'd like to change for dinner, and Marilyn said that was a good idea, she wanted to do that herself. Before Marilyn had unpacked her clothes and selected what to wear, Potter had washed his face, doused some Old Spice cologne under his armpits, and put on a new shirt and tie.

“I think I'll head on down to the lounge,” he said casually, “and meet you there. OK?”

“Oh—sure,” she said, a little surprised to see him ready so soon. “I think I'll take a bath.”

“Swell. Take your time.”

He was able to bolt down a double dry martini on the rocks and then order a regular-sized one that he was sipping in a casual way by the time Marilyn came down. She was wearing an outfit he hadn't seen before. It was a blue taffeta dress that came down just a few inches above her ankles and had a big bow at the neck. It struck Potter as just the right thing for a formal tea at the Ladies Aid Society in 1955.

“What's the matter?” Marilyn asked.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I just hadn't seen that before—your, uh, frock.”

“Oh, this,” she said, looking down at the dress as if surprised it was on her. “I thought it would be Vermontish. You know. Conservative.”

“Oh.”

She ordered a dry vermouth, and Potter had another martini.

There was only one other couple in the dining room when they ate. An elderly pair. In the heavy silence of the room, the clink of silverware sounded like gunfire.

Potter had a steak and most of a bottle of wine. Marilyn had the New England Boiled Dinner, and Indian Pudding for dessert. She said it was delicious, and chided Potter for having the same old thing he could have had in any restaurant in Boston. Potter mumbled something about freedom of choice being one of the most sacred principles of the New England heritage. While she finished her Indian Pudding he had a cognac.

He couldn't get his mind off her dress. It reminded him of Mamie Eisenhower.

When they went to their room, Marilyn sat in the rocking chair and lit a cigarette. Potter filled up one of the water glasses with Scotch, loosened his tie, and flopped down on the bed.

“It's so quiet,” Marilyn said. “So peaceful.”

“Yeah.”

“No television or anything.”

“Nope. Nothing.”

Marilyn got up and poured herself a glass full of Scotch.

“Why don't you relax?” Potter suggested. “Take off your dress.”

Marilyn drew on her cigarette. “You really have a thing about this dress, don't you?”

“What do you mean, ‘a thing about this dress'?”

“You can't stand it.”

“I never said any such thing.”

“You don't have to paint a picture.”

“I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

“Don't be so fucking crude.”

“Kiss off.”

Marilyn stood up and jerked the dress up over her head, ripping it as she pulled it off. “Now,” she said, “are you satisfied?”

She started bawling.

Potter belted down the rest of his glass of Scotch and got up and put his arms around her. “Come on,” he said. “Please. This is a holiday. A vacation.”

“Not anymore it's not! You ruined it, you asshole.”

After another ten minutes of sobbing, Marilyn washed her face, put on a nightgown, took two Valium, and went to sleep.

Potter took the bottle of Scotch and sat down in the rocking chair. He felt loggy and his head had begun to ache, but he was wide awake. There was nothing to read, or watch; no place to go. He couldn't even walk down to the old-fashioned drugstore for a phosphate. It would be closed by now. This was a quaint little town in Vermont. As far as Potter was concerned, it might as well have been San Quentin.

Potter and Marilyn both tried to salvage what they could from their trip to get away from it all.

He took her to see a Buñuel movie at the Orson Welles Cinema, even though he knew in advance it would bore the shit out of him. Because she liked Buñuel he pretended to find it fascinating. Afterward he took her to dinner at Casa Mexico, even though he thought it was a pain in the ass because they didn't serve cocktails and you had to bring your own wine.

She made him Baked Alaska, and went to a Celtics game with him, cheering whenever he did and trying to learn the names of the players.

He bought her a bottle of Jean Naté bubble bath, and gave her a bath in it.

She bought a copy of
The Sensuous Woman
, and gave him a treat the author prescribed called “The Sylvan Swirl,” a sort of glorified blow-job. She even tried the whipped cream recipe for sexual excitement, but it only made him giggle.

He bought her a new Miles Davis album.

She bought him a new Carole King album.

One night when he knew she'd be tired after her night class, he brought over a sumptuous take-out meal from Joyce Chen's.

One night she gulped a lot of brandy after dinner, and asked, “Would you like me to tie you up? To a chair or something?” He thought it over and said, “No, I don't think so, really. But thanks. Really.”

They watched Johnny Carson instead.

It was almost Thanksgiving.

Potter knew it was over with Marilyn, knew that the short course of his infatuation had run itself out. There was nothing he or she could do to revive it, no amount of whipped cream on the cock or gourmet dinners designed to reach his heart by way of his stomach, no amount of booze he could consume to wash away his indifference. But he hadn't had the guts to come right out and tell her. It would be a torturous scene. It always was. He had played it out so many times, before meeting Jessica.

For a couple of days he didn't call her.

One night he just stayed home and watched television. Relentlessly. He settled in the easy chair, put a fifth of Cutty and a glass and a full ice bucket beside him, and just watched, whatever came on, not changing the channels, just letting it come at him, wash over him—the canned laughter, the stupid situations, the news and weather and talk shows. Around eleven he opened a can of vichyssoise, and laced it with Scotch. That was dinner. He fell asleep in his chair watching the late movie, and woke from a nightmare with the test pattern glowing and the static crackling. It was still dark out. He turned off the tube and flopped into bed without taking his clothes off. But he couldn't sleep. Old mistakes, regrets, embarrassments, crowded his mind.

Maybe he should have gone to Law School.

Ginny deFillippo, a secretary at Olney and Sheperdson, whom he tried to make out with after coming back to the office from a drunken lunch at The Ground Floor. She had spit at him.

The time he went home with Stephanie, a girl in his acting class, and fucked her even after she told him she had the clap.

Maybe he should have married Barbara Brickett, the Tri Delt he was engaged to at Vanderbilt. She probably would have been a good wife and mother. He might have settled down and had children with her. They would be teen-agers now.

Maybe he ought to go to Europe. Live in an old stone farmhouse in the south of France.

On what?

Berries. Nuts and berries. And the local wine.

Shit.

He got up, washed his face with cold water, and made a drink. A cold grey light was oozing into the silent street. He turned on the television, and got Sunrise Semester. A black man with a goatee was lecturing on State and Local Government.

Potter listened.

Marilyn pulled her quilted bathrobe around her, holding onto it at the neck, as if protecting herself against a blast of cold wind. “You don't want to fuck me anymore. Is that it?”

Potter wished she hadn't put it so bluntly. He got up and went to the kitchen to put another ice cube in his glass. When he got back he sat down on the far end of the couch from where Marilyn was huddled up, knees drawn to her chin.

“Well?” she asked.

“I wish you wouldn't put it like that.”

“How would
you
put it?”

Potter took a drink, and looked down at his knees. His pants needed pressing. “I wouldn't put it so—harshly,” he said.

“You mean honestly.”

“Goddamn it,” he yelled, “I can't help it! I wish I still wanted to. I like you. I don't want to hurt you.”

She spoke in the same calm monotone. “Is it always like this?”

Potter closed his eyes. “Mostly,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

“What happens?”

Potter got up and splashed his glass full of Scotch. He felt she really wanted to know, and he wished he could really explain it—to himself as well as to her. He started walking slowly, aimlessly, around the room.

“It's hard to explain because it doesn't make sense. I mean logically. I first saw you, and right away I was attracted. I wanted to fuck you. Then after doing it a couple of weeks, it's as if the desire drains out. And yet you're the same person.”