The Immigrant’s Daughter (28 page)

But now that brief spell of excitement had worn off, and he sat, mute and worried, at the dinner table. Barbara took up the slack with observations about the role of food in the current world of the middle class, recalling that in her youth there was no ideology of food.

“And is that what you'd call it, really — an ideology of food?” Joan wondered.

“Pick up any newspaper — pages devoted to food, cooking, spices, quick cooking, gourmet cooking —”

“Like mine,” Bernhard said.

“Oh, absolutely. Or try a bookstore. Almost half is cookbooks. And this dinner — wonderful dinner. But thirty years ago, who would ever dream of serving this marvelous poached salmon, cooked by a man, no less.” She went on chattering, a woman who rarely chattered, and at the same time reflecting on the fact that she was clinging to this nonsense because Devron sat opposite her like some damn Indian sachem, never saying a word.

Whatever the constraints within the Bernhard house, the weather outside was delightful, rather warm for a seaside evening, but nevertheless with a clean edge in the air that called for a heavy sweater. So when Barbara suggested a walk on the beach after dinner, Joan was quick to second the motion and provide sweaters — and at the same time to be greatly relieved that the grim attitude Devron had fallen into would not be encased for dreary hours by the walls of her living room. “You and Carson go ahead,” Joan said. “We'll be with you as soon as we straighten up a bit.”

“Shoes full of sand,” Carson muttered, once they were out and walking on the beach. “I never did like the damn beach.”

“You loved the beach,” Barbara told him. “What happened, Carson? What awful thing happened to you?”

“No awful thing at all.”

“Carson, I'm no stranger. We were married.”

“Yes, we were.”

“Could you smile once? Once. Just once, so that I'll know that somewhere inside that damn perfect decathlon body of yours a human being survives.”

“Damn perfect decathlon body—” He began to laugh.

“There you are. Funny. You are still Carson.”

“Hardly. I'm trying to diet my way out of a triple bypass, which is why Jim served salmon. I passed on that marvelous cheese dish. I just spent a month at the Pritikin Institute. Your perfect decathlon body leaves a hell of a lot to be desired.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. I live with it, and if I've been a pain in the ass tonight, it has nothing to do with my health. At least not with my physical health. My life stinks, Barbara. That's the long and short of it. Aside from my work, it's not worth a plugged nickel.”

“I don't believe that,” Barbara said. “I don't believe it for one moment.”

“No,” he said with annoyance, “no, you wouldn't believe that. You never did understand me. You never could figure out why I didn't dance through life the way you do, without one damn care in the world. Oh, no. No —”

Barbara stopped short, grasped his arm and pulled him around. “Just cut that out, because it's pure bullshit, and you know it is. If you want to talk, we'll talk and try to make some sense. Otherwise, let's go back.”

“You're really mad,” Carson said in astonishment. “You're really angry. I've never seen you so angry before.”

“Sure I'm angry. I've been a widow for almost seven years. Try being a widow some time. Try looking at a telephone that stops ringing, that doesn't ring for a week at a time. Try being invited to a dinner party where you know damn well that it's poor Barbara, and it's just too long since we invited her, and try shopping around in a world that doesn't want you or need you! But I don't whine and whimper about it. I'm older than you. Damn you, Carson, I was so excited and delighted about seeing you again that I didn't sleep last night — not a wink — and what do I find —”

“You were? So excited you didn't sleep? Come on.”

“Damn right I was. And there are the Bernhards coming out of their house, so do we walk or go back and tell them the evening's over?”

“Let's walk.”

They walked on, the Bernhards making no effort to overtake them, and after a minute or so, Carson asked, “Is it true what you said before — you were that pleased to see me?”

“True. Good heavens, Carson, we were married, we slept with each other. We made love. We shared our dreams and our fears.” She took his hand. “You don't forget that.”

“No, you don't. I was whining?”

“I'm sorry I said that.”

“I
was
whining. You're right. Absolutely right. I'm trapped. You may be suffering all the miseries of being a widow — which I don't believe for a minute, because you would beat the shit out of being a widow or anything else — but still you're not trapped. Not the way I am. There's something you can't really understand, which is a very beautiful woman who is stupid. But you meet such a woman, and her beauty spells out everything else, because that's the American doctrine, fed everywhere by Hollywood, and she has to be wonderful and understanding and kind and clever, and that's what I married, and so help me God she's as stupid as our Irish setter, who's also very beautiful and very stupid. Only the Irish setter can't talk, thank heavens. This one can talk. Would you believe it, she calls me Kit Carson in front of others? But she doesn't understand anything I say and never will. Do you know why she's in Palm Springs, which is, forgive me, the utter asshole of creation? Damn it, you're laughing at me!”

“Carson!” She threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Carson, Carson, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at our ridiculous world. Don't be offended. Why is she in Palm Springs?”

“Because she thinks people like Sinatra and Hope and Jerry Ford and the Reagans and the Annenbergs are wonderful and bright and diverting and admirable, and she believes that to be in that hot desert pisshole is the summit of human achievement.”

“You could divorce her.”

“My dear lady, divorce is not something you make a profession of, not if you're a damn Devron, and we have three kids, and she's as decent as one can be with an IQ, of about ninety, and she knows by now that I'm delighted for her to be in Palm Springs while I'm here in L.A. running the paper, and we haven't had sex in the three years since my heart attack, because if I'm going to pass out while screwing someone, it won't be my miserable wife. It'll be someone I care about.” He stopped suddenly, and then, “Are you listening to me? Have you ever heard me talk like this before? What has gotten into me? Let's join the Bernhards before I say anything else.”

Devron called the following day, just before noon, and asked Barbara to have dinner with him that evening, to which Barbara replied that she would love to, except that she was leaving today, having already overstayed and abused the hospitality of the Bernhards.

“Stay another day,” Carson begged her.

“I simply can't.”

“Well, where will you go from here?” Carson wanted to know.

“I don't know. I had thought of driving down to Tijuana, but I've lost the taste for it, and now I don't know where I want to go, except that I have no great desire to go home.”

“Then listen to me, please,” Carson pleaded. “I have an important meeting tonight, but I put it off until ten o'clock, thinking I could take you to dinner. Let me do that. If you feel that you must leave the Bernhards, then why not drive into town and spend a night at the Beverly Wilshire or some such place and then take off tomorrow?”

“Carson,” she said, “is it so important to see me again?”

“Important for me — yes. Believe me. Seeing you after all these years is not something I can leave with an argument on Malibu Beach, which I concluded with the ravings of a lunatic. My God, we do enough clowning in the normal course of things. Don't leave me with this kind of memory of being with the one woman I have been able to love.”

Poor Carson, she was thinking. What a mouthful of words! He'd never tolerate that in one of his editorials.

She couldn't refuse, and she said, “All right, Carson. The Beverly Wilshire.”

“I'll pick you up at six-thirty. That's not too early, is it?”

“Six-thirty,” Barbara agreed.

But when she told the Bernhards what she intended, their response was to be hurt and to spell that out. “You've been here ten days,” Joan said, “and it's been a perfectly wonderful visit, and why you should feel for a moment that you've overstayed your welcome, I don't know. At least stay another night. Let Carson come here.”

“No. I think he wants to stay in the city. He said something about an important meeting at ten o'clock. You've been wonderful, but no guest ever left too soon.”

After Barbara had driven away, Joan Bernhard admitted to herself that she was somewhat relieved. “Even with someone you love,” she said to her husband, “ten days is long enough. And Barbara — I love her, I do love her — but she makes me feel that nothing in the world is right. She won't leave it alone — the government, the bomb. Can't she just relax and live with it?”

“No. That's Barbara.”

Barbara had her own sharp twinges of guilt. Her mother had long ago impressed upon her that in polite circles — which were the only circles a lady should ever seek — one did not discuss three subjects, namely, religion, money and politics, which as far as Barbara was concerned left very little of interest. She had learned long ago that dinner table discussion of art and letters was limited to very few, and while the partial liberation of women had made talk of sex possible, it was often less than enlightening. However, why annoy people who liked you? Why indeed?

After Barbara had greeted Carson in the hotel lobby and then seated herself in his car for the drive downtown to a restaurant of his choice, she said to him, “Do you find me boring when I dwell on things not very nice?”

“Most things are not very nice,” Carson decided. “And boring? No indeed; I have never found you boring. But it's an odd question.”

“I feel guilty. I like the Bernhards enormously, but I think I troubled them. You know, when I was a little girl and left food on my plate, our nanny would remind me that there was enough food left on my plate to save the life of some small child dying of hunger in China, after which I stuffed the food into my gullet, never inquiring how one could get what was left on my plate to China and save the life of the poor child.”

“The curse of those rich enough to have a nanny.”

“You're missing the point completely, and I've paid the price in guilt for being a rich kid.”

“I don't think I've missed the point,” Carson said. “I'm only needling your guilt. The fact is that the Bernhards live out there in one of the loveliest spots on earth, and they want to live pleasantly and quietly and forget about all the small starving kids, because they feel they can't do much about it and they've never really felt that they had to do much about it. You and I, Barbara love, are different. We are cursed with what Veblen called the conscience of the rich, and all our lives we've brooded over what a cesspool most of society is.”

“That's not because of any such notion as the conscience of the rich,” Barbara protested. “Most of the rich I've known don't have a shred of conscience — and as for Mr. Veblen, he wrote as much nonsense as anyone else who sets out to be a fancy philosopher, and you call me Barbara love and never even paused to give me a peck on the cheek there in the hotel lobby. I suppose you decided that there was no way you could walk into the hotel without half a dozen people saying, There goes Carson Devron, and if you bussed me, you'd be compromised.”

“Exactly. Would you like me to kiss you now?”

“Too late. Tend to your driving. Anyway, if someone saw you kissing me, they'd think I was your mother—”

“You're nothing like my mother.”

“Or your Aunt Becky from — wherever she comes from. For heaven's sake, Carson —”

“I love you,” he said quietly. “I always have. I forget what desire is until I'm near you. Goddamn it, don't lament your age. It's a damn lie and a fraud you're using, and I've never known you to lie before!”

Barbara made no reply, only thinking about what he said, until they reached the parking area of an Italian restaurant on Washington Boulevard in Culver City. Neither had he spoken. When he got out of the car and opened the door for her, she said, “Thank you, Carson. That was a good thing you said to me.”

“May I kiss you now?”

“If you still want to.”

He took her in his arms and held her to him, his open lips against hers. It was the first time any man had done that since Boyd died.

The restaurant was called the Gondolier, and the proprietor, Vito Lucheno, knew Carson and welcomed him as if he were royalty, which perhaps he was as such things go in Los Angeles. The restaurant was dark, poorly lit, as are most restaurants in Los Angeles, as if each and every one of them recognizes the city as a place of countless assignations. When Barbara was with Carson, she had the feeling that everyone in the city knew him, even though, as he explained, he came to the Gondolier only two or three times a year.

“But why come here at all?” Barbara wondered. “It's so out of the way.”

“That depends on one's destination. We're only a few blocks from the M-G-M Studios, so it's a good place to eat if you're seeing someone from Metro, and the food is good.”

“Is that where you're going tonight — to the studio?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. There's a little enclave of people, mostly refugees and illegals, from El Salvador, and I promised to see some of them tonight, leading figures in the struggle against the government, and since it's not far from here, I decided this would be the best place to eat and squeeze out the last minute I can be with you.”