The High Cost of Living (10 page)

“The trouble with that is, it presumes everything that goes through your mind is honest.” Bernie put his cup down. “Suppose you have a toothache and hate the whole world.”

“If I had a toothache, I'd have sense enough to know it.” Honor carried off the empty plate to refill from the cookies cooling. Looking after her, Leslie noticed that Honor was wearing pants—gray wool slacks and a dark gold wool sweater. She looked fine in pants, although another pound or two and she would not. She was just within the border where voluptuous passes over to plump.

“But in a relationship, truth doesn't lie on either side,” Bernie said carefully. “You can't be honest by yourself.”

A tactual quality in the talk puzzled her. Serious, yes, they talked as if talking mattered enormously. In a way it was very young and yet that summed up nothing, because youth culture did not encourage intense, rather intellectual verbalizing. To her they seemed to be talking at times about something undefined, closed and half secret, which they brought out before her in tentative display. “I've just figured something out. What we have in common. We all believe in words. We get satisfaction from discussing. As if it changed anything. We're nuts to put everything into words and feel the pressure of another mind turning over.”

Honor smiled almost sadly. “I'm sure if I had to pick only one thing to do through eternity, I'd pick talking.… Please don't patronize me by saying I haven't tried everything yet.”

Bernie looked at his hands on the table. “Nothing in my life has felt like I'd want it to go on.… Maybe a moment or two when I felt accepted.… Once or twice at mass when I felt something touch me.”

“How about you, Leslie?” Honor asked.

“I can think of times with Valerie.… I can think of times too when I've felt an intense serenity. A white space—”

“You sound like the TM folks,” Bernie said.

“Not meditation, though obviously there's stillness in being still. But there's also a stillness at the center of motion—”

“We are being mystical today,” Honor said crossly. “Just as there's a chocolate chip at the center of this cookie?”

“When I'm doing something well and not thinking about
how
I'm doing. When I don't cloud it with worries or motives—like last night at the dojo, when everything flowed through me just right—”

“You mean to say when you're leaping around in baggy pajamas hitting each other and making noises like a cat whose tail has just been trodden on, that you feel serene?” Honor turned up her gaze theatrically.

Bernie leaned way back in his chair. “Leslie, you're a jock.”

“I guess.” She felt suddenly depressed: she saw herself as strange, outcast, twisted, peculiar, one of a kind and that kind not worth making twice. That sense since early adolescence. “Maybe I am crazy.” A rare pang of the confessional urge pricked her. “Maybe something's bizarre in me. That wants to be John Wayne. I have this insane desire to have a bike—a motorcycle. I really do.”

Honor stared and then went into a fit of giggles. Bernie shrugged. “From a practical point of view, it's hard to live in this city without wheels. And it costs less to operate a bike than my greedy baby buggy.”

“Sure,” Leslie said glumly.

“But that isn't the point of the passion, is it?”

“It bothers me, it bothers me. I say, Come on, do you want to be a man? But I don't. I don't even like men, present company excluded and maybe my boss George.”

“Who's he?” Bernie asked suspiciously, sitting up.

“Cam's boss too. I haven't met him yet.” Honor nibbled a cookie. “I'm dreadfully curious. But he's married.”

“On the other hand, why buy that? It isn't because it's macho I want a bike, it's because it's fun—a hell of a lot more fun than putting your hair up in rollers and knitting argyle socks. I like to go fast. I like the control, the sense of being on the road, out in the air, in the wind, the weather. It feels alive. That's joy! Not a machine that shuts you off the way a car does, a metal box around you. No, it's a metal horse!”

“A metal horse! My, my. Leslie, you're finally romantic about something. A greasy machine that makes as much noise as it can. It's like developing a passion for a riding mower.” Honor grimaced. “I can see myself explaining to Mama, No Mama, I haven't taken up with Hells Angels, really. It's only Leslie, the one-woman motorcycle gang. Resist! Buy an electric can opener instead and sublimate!”

“You haven't seen her room yet,” Bernie said. “She'll buy an electric hair shirt first.”

“When did you see it, hmmmm?” Honor arched her neck in mock jealousy.

“Why should everything beautiful be defined as masculine? How come freedom and skill should only belong to men?”

“How can you call a smelly noisy puttering motorcycle beautiful? I think that's perverse.” Honor rose. “I must put on my supper. I'm so stuffed with cookies I don't want it, but if I don't eat, Mama will be convinced I'm perishing and frail, her consumptive darling.”

“I can see it as beautiful inside that Kenneth Anger leather S-M death's-head cult,” Bernie said. “But where do you fit in?”

“Look, if I was nuts about horses, you wouldn't think I was craving to join the cavalry and shoot Indians, so why assume I can't honestly want to be on top of a bike? It feels good, damn it. Sometimes I feel like I'm shriveling up in school. The rest of me. What isn't required by classes and seminars and George.”

“What does George require?” Bernie asked. He had seized on that name. He broke out his hero sandwich as Honor ate spaghetti warmed over and Leslie brought out her container of yogurt.

“Only complete fidelity.” She laughed. “Only my life.”

“Leslie, Cam is going out with a creep who also works for mysterious George. Mark, I think he's called.”

“Hennessy. He's a disaster.”

Then Bernie had to know just who Mark Hennessy was and why she called him a disaster. He finished his hero and lit his after-supper joint. Things seemed to become quickly ritualized among the three of them, and it was already understood that Bernie would smoke dope all the time they were together but that Leslie would join him only right after they ate and sometimes just before they left, on the nights she stayed as late as Bernie did.

“My birthday is coming,” Honor said as she stacked her dishes in the sink.

“Like the millennium.” Bernie stretched out his long legs, passing the joint to Leslie.

“A lot sooner. April fifth. I want each of you to buy me earrings for pierced ears.”

Bernie sat up groaning. “That again. Your mother will make holes in me. Don't you think, Leslie, her desire to be immolated is a little suspicious?”

“You don't also want your feet bound and your ribs broken for an hourglass figure?”

Honor stood. “Do not, do not, do not ever patronize me!”

“But Honorée,” Bernie groaned, “it is murky.”

“It's not! I want to wear the garnet earrings that belonged to my father's mother. If you're truly my friends, you'll support me.”

“Your mother is going to murder us,” Bernie grumbled.

“It's my birthday. And I choose to celebrate it by wearing my heirloom earrings. I'll take care of her. That's what I want for my birthday and nothing else. From you, that is. I'm asking her for a watch.”

“You want us to go with you to have your ears pierced,” Leslie said, finally understanding.

“Right. A simple request. Mama says it's unsanitary. She says only peasants and hippies have pierced ears. I have pointed out that my grandmother, who was beautiful according to every photograph I've seen and who was married three times and buried all three husbands, ran a dairy farm with pierced ears. I want her earrings as much as you want your motorcycle. But I have them. It's more frustrating that way, to have them and not be able to wear them.… And if having holes punched through my ears appears to you to resemble the sex act, I'd say that's your problem.” She looked from one to the other while an upturn appeared at the corner of her mouth. Then with exaggerated dignity she sat. Only to jump up again when she saw the clock.

“Mama'll be here any moment. Out with you. Empty that ashtray. Bernie, take it out back to empty. Grab the flashlight. Leslie, clear the table. I'll wash up.” She flung open both kitchen windows so the cool wet air flowed in. Quickly, madly she sprayed with an air deodorizer and washed the few dishes they had dirtied and put them away.

When Bernie returned with the ashtray she washed it too and wiped the table frantically. Then she stood flapping a dish towel as if to change every breath of air in the small kitchen.

“Does she go through this every time?”

Bernie nodded. “We're the secret callers. The worm in the heart of the quiet afternoon.”

“If you'd rather wait for Mama and chat with her, that'd be lovely,” Honor said coldly. “Do have a couple of seats. You can offer her a toke and discuss my ear-lobes.”

six

Perhaps other people, strangers, were still unreal to Honor. Perhaps Leslie and Bernie were both more riddled with outcast resentments and a sense of being forced into role playing than she had realized. But whenever the three of them left the shelter of Honor's untidy shabby kitchen, in fact they acted on stage. They fell into games. They assumed parts. Honor and Bernie did so at once, without speaking a word of conspiracy or even of consultation. She was sucked in reluctantly but could not resist, could not cast herself as a double outsider beyond their game too. Thus when Honor had to be fortified with a hot fudge sundae to face her immolation, in the ice cream parlor Bernie became Willie the Idiot Boy and they were his keepers.

When they entered the jewelry shop in the mall—selected after they had squandered half the time they had on previous jewelry shops Honor pronounced too “sor'id” for her to endure—in the big shopping plaza with its glassed-in malls and piped music, occasional pieces of sculpture big and metallic, shrubbery in pots, they had not allotted parts. But by the time they were in the shop five minutes the roles emerged. If this game had a name it would be Governess, because Bernie and Honor became at once snotty and confined. Obviously they were in tow to her. Yes, her purse, her authority ruled them. They called her Madame.

She was Madame: herself, not herself. She was cold and rational and judgmental. She sneered at their enthusiasms. When they asked, she refused or condescended. The names too magically appeared. Honor was Violet, Bernie was Tate. Part of the insulation the games conferred was that it didn't matter if anyone else believed them; they were more play than disguise.

Honor was covering nervousness with extreme hauteur mixed with bursts of giddy flirtatiousness toward the stout glib young man who was selling earrings. The piercing came free with the jewelry. Honor had gone through half the earrings in the place before settling on little gold-filled studs with filigree balls, one of the cheaper pairs they had looked at, of course. Madame's role was to say no to most of them, which Honor hadn't the money for anyhow: arbitrary, scornful, rotund noes.

“Those aren't bad. They'll do. Hurry, please. I must have you back by six.” That was true, because Honor's mother always called her on her supper break. If Mama did get a moment to call earlier, Honor could claim to have run an errand. “Yes, Mama, I just stepped out momentarily. I was only outside for two minutes peeing in the yard.” Honor imitated herself making excuses to her mother.

Bernie nodded approval. She had seen him pocket one of the pairs, flattened irregular silver loops that looked hammered. Although she was sure the clerk had not noticed, it sharpened her haste. But Honor had not seen and would not be hurried. She very clearly did not want the clerk to touch her, and she was fighting a delaying action by pretending to contemplate pendants.

At any moment the clerk might notice the pair had vanished. She would have liked to boost a pair too, because she did not want to pay for earrings. She did not approve of jewelry, which seemed all built on slave bracelets and wedding rings, signs of bondage, decorative brands of ownership. Yet she herself had pierced ears and wore that remaining turquoise stud. Did Valerie still wear its mate? Lena would make fun of such a lopsided arrangement. Indeed she could remember Lena's voice, a voice with a dry sexual authority. “Did you know, my dear, that men started that fad of one earring? S-M, I assure you. For indication, you see: sadists on the right and masochists on the left. Yes, you're on the masochistic side today, Valerie. I must say, I don't know that it pays to advertise.” That was Lena at a long mahogany table with a centerpiece of those glass flowers she collected, as they ate a cold pale green avocado blender soup.…

Honor's fingers were digging into her arm; her gold-flecked light brown eyes were pleading. “… right now!”

So they all went to the back of the shop, where Honor sat on a folding chair that looked as if it belonged at a bridge table. Then the clerk daubed her ears with alcohol and neatly with a shiny punch perforated first the left and then the right lobe, all the while keeping up a banter as she saw him wink at Bernie, lounging against the counter looking ostentatiously bored but with his gaze always on Honor. From time to time the clerk managed to brush against Honor's stiffened body as if that too were part of a game, his game, the contact casually forced that could not be objected to. “Remember to drop the earrings in alcohol at night for the first month to sterilize them, honey. Now press this cotton ball, that's a good girl, just press it hard till I tell you to let go. That's right, honey, just that way, you're a fast learner.…”

As they straggled out, Leslie was musing why the tension had not annoyed her, the fear of Bernie being caught. It was almost pleasant, the tension, and it reminded her of something half familiar. Almost sexual. Honor let out her breath in a harsh snort. “That's over!” She was glaring. For a moment Leslie thought Honor was angry because of Bernie's shoplifting. “Ugh! It did hurt. But not even much. And it feel so … messy.” She discarded the wads of cotton batting into a wastebasket and washed her hands together in recoil. “I suppose it'll be worth it to put on Grandmother's earrings. But the thought I allowed that oaf to touch me, to rub against me, to call me honey, makes me feel like spending a week in the bathtub. The two of you were no help at all!”