The High Cost of Living (31 page)

“Oh, dozens of scenes every week. My life is much more thrilling. But how can I tell if I'm imagining half of it? You don't understand. Mama has a tremendous imagination and I know I inherited it. We're terribly alike, Mama and I. In some ways.”

Yeah, she imagines wasting diseases. “You'll admit she exaggerates sometimes? About your being sick and things?”

“Oh, you know Mama, she's always worrying.… But when I was, oh, nine, ten, she got a notion that Dad was seeing another woman. She's always trying to find out what he's doing, he's so secretive. It's because she doesn't want him throwing away money on wild inventions. But she overheard some conversation with one of his cronies about an Adeline.… He was staying out late at night, disappearing weekends—like he does half the time anyhow, you never know where he is. Finally she confessed to me what she thought.…”

“Your mother told a nine-year-old?” But of course she'd always known too what was going on between her parents, even when her mother thought she was successfully lying about where her father was for two weeks.

“Mama
always
confided in me.… Anyhow, we played detectives. Yes, we honest to God followed Dad.… Adeline turned out to be a stupid motorboat one of his friends had on Lake Saint Clair, and they were rebuilding the engine together.… I could be just as full of nonsense about Bernie.… I think Mama writes novels in her head too.”

“Has he … made love to you?”

“Not
yet
.” Honor smiled as if she was quite proud of herself. “But I think he's
thinking
about it.… Mama's getting very suspicious. It's such a drag, I feel like saying, But, Mama, he's homosexual, you know. I'm disgustingly safe.”

“But you don't quite believe that.”

“Oh, he's been more open with me now that he doesn't have you to confide in. I don't believe he
is
anything, like some fate off an astrology chart. But he told me more of his experiences.… Besides, I'm discussing what I feel like saying to Mama.… It's part of what confuses me, Leslie, about what's happening!”

“Why don't you ask him what he has in mind?”

“Leslie! What am I supposed to say? Voulez-vous accouchez avec moi? Really!… Leslie, what did you quarrel about?”

“Thought you believed what he told you.”

“If only you'd tell me your side! Don't you think you owe that to me?”

“I'll think about it.” Leslie had no intention of doing so. “It's not something I feel I can talk about just yet.”

“Did you quarrel … about me?” Honor leaned forward, her lips a little parted.

Leslie was startled. “About you? Why do you ask that?”

“Well … Bernie said the strangest thing once.” Honor looked down into her lap. “When I told him I'd broken with you, after that awful Tuesday, he seemed glad at first. Then he started pacing and he said in a low nasty voice, I'm quoting him, that I'd be sorry and I'd come to love you.” A golden eye glinted from under lashes, watching her for a reaction. “Why did he say that?”

“I'm so lovable,” Leslie said. “Can't think of any other reason.” Honor was flirting with her, she knew it. I must not be rigid, she thought, I must be open to her. Better me than Bernie, after all.

“So you'll come over Monday, the way you used to?”

“This Monday I can't. George and I have a meeting with the foundation people.… I'm eating supper with them. I don't know how long it'll run, but I'll come over Monday night whenever I get away.”

Sue presented Leslie with a summery outfit, crushed natural cotton pants and a striped natural and brown top, from Greece. Sue said, “Oh, my sister Rosalyn bought it, but it's miles too tight on her,” but Leslie could see it had never been worn, and the label was from a boutique in a nearby mall. She imagined George and Sue consulting about how to get her into something more acceptable to meet with the foundation people, and Sue concocting the story about her sister.

In the mirror at the Japanese restaurant on the first floor of a local hotel, Leslie looked herself over. She actually liked the way she looked in the loose light pants and the top with its vague suggestion of faded awning stripes. In fact, she looked forward to getting away from George and the two men and going straight to Honor's in her new outfit. She had an excuse for arriving dressed up, because she was coming from the meeting.

At eight it was not yet dark; the night was mild and felt spacious. Almost, after the rather sumptuous dinner with teriyaki and saki and a plum liqueur afterwards, with her head a bit detached from her shoulders, a balloon on a string, almost she would have liked to hail a cab on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. But she resigned herself to a brisk walk and a couple of buses.

By the time she came down Honor's street she was sober, but the night was soft and gentle enough to keep her mood good. It was a long lingering twilight, a night she could imagine sleeping outside with a lover. The air felt just the same temperature as her skin. It was neither warm nor cool but perfect and sensual. She wished she could be with Honor in some more pastoral setting, on a lake, on the screened-in porch of a lake cottage; there must be a hundred thousand such objects within two hours' ride of here. The lake would look lighter than the shores, reflecting the pale gray of the sky that still retained a faint plum glow.… Car in the drive? In fact there was Bernie's Mustang parked across the street, and in the drive was a '71 Chevy she vaguely thought she had seen before, right there in that drive.

Damn Bernie. Damn Honor. What was he doing here when Honor knew she was coming? She felt like turning on her heel and leaving. She was furious. Yes, she would simply turn and walk off and leave Honor to her own devices, the little two-faced conniver. She was surprised by the rush of her own anger, ashamed; she must not yet be as sober as she had thought.

She stood undecided on the front walk and then she heard loud voices inside. “No!” Honor was wailing at the top of her lungs. “You don't understand!”

A fight? She went forward hurriedly and climbed the rickety front steps, hopping over the broken one to bang on the bulging screen door perfunctorily.

“… think I find it pretty hard to understand! I think it'll take some tall explaining,” said Mama Rogers' very loud voice.

“Hello?” Leslie said. “I'm here!”

“Oh, Leslie! Come in!” Honor ran to the door and almost embraced her with relief. “Oh, Leslie.… How nice you look. You're so dressed up!”

“Er, yes,” Bernie said. He was standing in the livingroom barefoot, wearing Honor's lavender dressing gown, looking awkward with discomfort. “We were actually expecting her some time ago.”

“Oh were you?” Mrs. Rogers said. She was holding something to her face, an ice pack, and when she took it away to speak, her right cheek looked swollen. She wore a baby blue pants suit, and she was shining with anger. She stood very straight, her shoulders thrust back, springy with indignation, her face flushed, her eyes glittering. She looked ten years younger. “Do you always lie on my daughter's bed in a dressing gown when you're expecting company?”

“I explained about the bicycle accident. The construction site. I hadn't expected a big puddle there.”

“And then you got off your bicycle, got in your car, and drove over here to take a bath. Of course. I understand completely.”

“Leslie, how come you're so dressed up?” Honor asked ingenuously. “Where were you?”

She wants me to impress Mama with how respectable I am. Why not? Just so it doesn't rub off on Bernadine in the bathrobe! She addressed herself directly to Mrs. Rogers. “I couldn't tell exactly what time I'd get free. I was having dinner with my faculty adviser, Professor Sanderson, and two men from the Rockefeller Foundation. I'll be working on a project that they're financing, and I was having dinner with all of them near the University.”

“How fascinating,” Mama said, and turned back to Bernie. “I suggest you put your clothes on and go home.” Briskly she turned back to Honor. “Why don't you get Leslie some lemonade?”

Honor backed reluctantly out of the livingroom, throwing a glance of appeal to Leslie. What was she supposed to do? And what had been happening? She glared after Bernie's retreat into the bathroom. “Is something wrong?” she asked Mrs. Rogers. “Your face looks swollen.”

Mama Rogers snorted, still standing with the ice pack to her face. “When I was eating in the cafeteria, I felt this awful sensation, and then a piece of my crown broke right off. I almost swallowed it.”

“That sounds painful,” Leslie said, still standing also. She wouldn't sit until told to. She did not want to leave, but she was not sure she was going to be asked to stay.

Bernie bounded back in with his clothes on. They did not look markedly muddy, although he had obviously tried to do what he could in that line. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mrs. Rogers cut him short. “Good night, Bernard. I'll say good night to Honor for you. I know you have to be hurrying along, immediately.”

Bernie opened and shut his mouth and then fled, saying at the door, “I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Rogers.… Really, I think you misunderstood.…”

“How stupid of me,” Mama said dryly. “Good night.”

Honor came dashing back in. “Where did Bernie go?” She had made up a pitcher of frozen lemonade, obediently.

“I sent him home. Sit down. Won't you sit down too, Leslie? I'm sorry you came all this distance to walk into a family altercation. You might as well have a glass of lemonade before you go home too.”

“Thank you,” Leslie said humbly, glad of any delay. At least she wasn't being kicked out with Bernie. And Bernie was gone. She felt an enormous relief. She had managed not to look at him, not to speak to him. But she felt a loose raw anger in her just pushed down. She looked now at Honor, asking with her eyes what had happened.

“Mama came home early because she hurt her tooth,” Honor said. “Does it hurt terribly, Mama dear? Did you take any aspirin?”

“Were you smoking marijuana too?” Mama asked icily, sitting down on the couch with a deep sigh of exasperation.

“Mama, I don't know what you're talking about? I've never smoked anything. I don't care to. He was merely smoking a regular cigarette.”

“You're not as good a liar as you imagine,” Mama said. “I have a nose. I caught Cam with that three times already, and you know it.”

“I didn't know what he was smoking, and I think it was just plain old tobacco without a filter. I certainly wasn't smoking anything.” Honor clasped and unclasped her hands and then forced herself to stop. She shook her hair back and tried to adopt a confiding manner. “Mama, really, how could you be so rude to him? He lives in a roominghouse, he's a student putting himself through college. He doesn't have hot water where he lives.”

“Do you invite every young man you meet to come and take a bath at our house, alone with you?” Mama took down the ice bag and groaned. “I'm ashamed of you. You show no sense at all. There's something absolutely out of control in a young high school girl entertaining a man older than herself alone in her house at night. Him with no clothes on except her own dressing gown. Her in a provocative dress.”

Honor was wearing the apple green dress with the deep V-neck. “But Mama, you made this dress for me. What's wrong with it?”

“It's not suitable for wearing in the house alone with a man. You know that. Why did you put it on?”

“Well, Leslie was coming, and she was going to be dressed up too.”

“I presume she had a reason, since she was coming from an important dinner.”

“Mama, Bernard's my friend. He's not going to … attack me. Really. I'm not ten years old. How could you throw him out of the house without consulting me? While I was in the kitchen making lemonade!”

“I asked him to leave and I don't want him back. If you want to have him over when I'm here, that's one thing. You can invite him to luncheon this weekend. But not otherwise. Do you hear me?”

Honor sobbed into her hands for a moment as if experimentally. Her mother did not even look at her but put the ice pack back against her face. Honor put down her hands and stared at her mother. “How can you be so angry at me? I didn't do anything!”

“Oh?” Mama glared at her over the ice pack. “Perhaps I came home too soon?”

Leslie felt a strange grateful kinship to Mama Rogers, allies in their opposition to the slimy Bernie machinations. As if Mrs. Rogers sensed their bond, she turned suddenly to Leslie without bothering to remove the ice pack. “What do you think about the situation, Leslie?”

“Oh … I wasn't here … I don't really know Bernie that well, but I'm sure he's not … dangerous.”

“I thought you were friends,” Mrs. Rogers said with sly curiosity, putting down the ice pack.

“No,” Leslie said shortly. “We're not.”

“I thought you were,” Mrs. Rogers looked as if she would have liked to ask a great many more questions, but politeness restrained her. She glanced at her daughter again, her eyes narrowing. “You're not to have him here again without me. Do you hear me, Honor?”

“Mama! Don't you trust me?”

“Perhaps you trust yourself a bit too much!” Mrs. Rogers spoke quietly now, but her anger had not abated. Her eyes flicked over her daughter warily, with a certain disgust and almost a certain amusement. Leslie felt as if Mrs. Rogers was rapidly constructing a great many scenarios in her head about what might have happened, and liking none of them.

sixteen

The following Monday Leslie came to Honor's in her old late afternoon time slot. They were operating in awkward carefully arranged shifts. Leslie was to leave before supper, Bernie to arrive at six for the early evening shift, and he was to clear off by nine-thirty to be out of harm's way long before Mama got home. Leslie and Honor sat at the kitchen table about five-thirty. The evening was cool again but clear, in the fifties.