The Last Lovely City (6 page)

“You’re ruining your life—”

“It’s my life, you’re completely insensitive—”

“You’re crazy—hysterical—you have no sense—”

“I never want to see you again—just stay away—”

Since then, and since Jennifer’s birth, there has been a polite, somewhat stilted, occasional exchange of notes—Alison’s sent to Jack’s office, of course, as in fact her notes always were. For a while he sent money, checks that in her high pride Alison never cashed. Besides, by then she was doing pretty well on her own. The magazine, though tiny, paid her a good salary; its backer needed the tax loss. And she sold more and more articles.

Jack had never asked to visit, although she assumed that he still came to San Francisco from time to time.

Now Alison asks Sheila, “What shall we do with all this food? Would your dogs eat it?”

“No, the bones are too small. We’ll have the waiter wrap it and we can leave it in a package for some homeless person.”

That night Alison’s sleep is broken, very troubled. She is plagued with dreams that vanish at the slightest touch of her conscious mind. She believes that Jack has been the focus of these dreams, but she is not entirely sure; nothing is clear. And when in her waking mind she thinks of him, his image is confused, as possibly it always was. There is the sensual memory of him, his weight, his bones crushing into hers, the hot smooth skin of his back, in her clutching hands. And then there is the loud-voiced angry Jack, who insists that she have an abortion. She finds, though, still another man, Jack the kind and super-intelligent good friend, with whom for hours she discussed almost everything in life—the environment; their childhoods;
Bosnia, Zaire, and Haiti; Jack’s relations with the Sierra Club and other local environmentalists; Alison’s magazine; local painters. And sometimes, even, their own connection (both disliked the word
relationship
). They alternated between celebration (it was so good; they cared so much for each other) and sadness (it was necessarily limited; they could not, for instance, travel together, or, more to the point, live together).

Alison thinks too of what Sheila was saying, describing those windows of niceness that keep even battered women going (Did even O.J. have moments of niceness? she wonders). As she stuck around with a man who meant to and probably would stay married, for whatever responsible, guilty reasons of his own.

She wonders, What will I do when he calls tomorrow, as he most likely will? She thinks, At least Jennifer’s out of town, I don’t have to lie about that.

At breakfast, raw with sleeplessness, she decides to spend as much of the day as she can on a long city walk. When Jack calls, her answering machine will pick it up, and she can do as she likes. She does walk, in the bright cool windy day, fog lingering on all the horizons of the city. Perfect for walking. She hikes down to the Embarcadero, and along all that way to the Ferry Building, past the new incongruous row of palms, and the old decaying empty wharves.

When she gets home, having walked for a couple of hours, she finds no messages, not one on her machine. Digesting what feels like keen disappointment, not relief, she simply stands there in her kitchen for a moment, looking out to her view of the Bay Bridge, the bay, and Oakland hills. And the Embarcadero, where she just was.

The phone rings. She hesitates, answers on the third sound.

Jack. After a polite exchange of greetings, he says, “In a way
I’m sorry about last night. I hope you weren’t as shaken up as I was. But you know, I’ve wanted to see you. To be more in touch. And Jennifer—”

Some honest quality of pain in his voice is very moving to Alison; it was good of him to say that he was upset. She tells him, “I’m really sorry, Jennifer’s down in Santa Barbara with my mother.”

A long pause before he says, “Could I just see you for a little? I really want to.”

She too pauses, and then says, “In an hour. I’ve just got back from a walk. I have to take a shower.”

As he comes into her living room, and they shake hands—again, Alison observes what she had almost forgotten: that Jack is rather shy, and his glasses tend to slip down his longish nose. He is very tall, his posture bad, and he is still too thin.

He says, “You’re really nice to let me—”

“Well, of course—”

“No, not of course—”

Both wearing their shy smiles, they sit down at opposite ends of her sofa (as they have before). Alison tells him, “Jennifer. I’m sorry she’s not here; a friend was going to Santa Barbara for the weekend, Susan, I don’t think you met her. And it seemed such a good chance for Jennifer, she likes Susan and she really loves her grandmother, and she thinks Santa Barbara is great, the beach and all—”

She is babbling to stave off the sudden and unaccountable tears that threaten her eyes, and her voice. Alison realizes this, but she is afraid to stop. She adds, “She’s really nice—”

Looking at her with his slow shy smile, Jack says, “Of course she is.”

“Well, tell me how your work’s going! You’re still happy in Washington, and mad at most of the Bureau?”

“Well, yes and no.”

He talks for a while, and Alison does not hear a word he says, as she thinks, He’s a very nice man; he really is. It wasn’t “just sex,” whatever that means. I think we can be friends, and he can come and see Jennifer sometimes.
Friends
. And I’m not going to cry, and we won’t make love.

But Alison is wrong.

After she has made tea, Twinings English Breakfast, which they drink, and after a lot more civilized conversation, Jack gets up to go, and as, staring at her with his very dark, myopic, and beautiful hazel eyes, he starts to say good-bye, Alison distinctly hears the smallest catch in his voice, and she sees the effort at control that he makes.

Which is just enough, at last, to set off her tears—a minute before he truly meant to leave.

Jack puts his arms around her, intending comfort, friendliness, but it does not work out that way.

They begin to kiss, and minutes later they have moved to Alison’s bedroom, where, on her bed, once more, they have great—the greatest sex.

Every evening, despairingly, Mary Alexander, a former actress, puts out tin bowls of food for Linda, her cat, who is lost: stolen, starving somewhere, locked in a strange garage—maybe dead. In any case, gone. And every morning, on the deck of her small house in Larkspur, California, Mary examines the bowls and sees that nothing is gone, and her heart seems to shrink within her, her blood to chill. Out there among all the pots of luxuriant roses, bright geraniums, and climbing, profusely flowering bougainvillea, Mary looks blindly at all that color, that bloom, and at her pretty house, in the rare fine August sunlight, and she mourns for Linda; she is inhabited, permeated with loss. She takes in the plates and washes them off; she makes and eats her own breakfast, and then goes out for a walk. She spends the day in an effort to pull herself together, as she looks and looks, and calls and calls for Linda. And then at night she puts out the food again, and she waits, and hopes. For lovely Linda, who is as beautiful and as shy as a little fox.

This is very neurotic, Mary lectures herself, rather in the voice of her very helpful former shrink, a gentle, kindly, and most courteous man from Louisiana, who spoke in those attractive accents, and whose sternest chiding was, “That’s just plain
neurotic.” And he would smile, acknowledging that they both already knew she was neurotic; that very likely most people are, including himself.

For comfort, Mary sometimes thinks of a man she considers the least neurotic among her friends: Bill, a biologist. Internationally known, he goes to conferences all over; he does a lot of work in Africa on AIDS. Bill is absolutely devoted to Alison, his wife, herself a distinguished watercolorist. Bill is also intensely attached to Henry, their cat. Once, in fact (this is the memory from which Mary takes comfort), Henry was reported missing by their housesitter; Bill and Alison were on a rare vacation in Paris. Many transatlantic phone calls ensued; Bill was almost on the plane to come back from Paris, to walk every block of their San Francisco neighborhood—when, of course, Henry strolled into their house, insouciant and dirty. But Bill, this internationally famous scientist, had been poised to cut short a trip with his much-loved wife, to come home from Paris to look for Henry, his cat. All of which now makes Mary feel a little less crazy, less “neurotic,” but no less sad.

Mary’s own life, viewed by any friend or acquaintance, would be judged comparatively rich, and in many ways successful. Early days in New York included occasional Broadway parts, some off-Broadway, and mostly good reviews. Too little money, usually, and too many (but generally good) love affairs. Then the move to San Francisco, the Actors Workshop, and ACT, plus some TV ad work, boring but well paid. More love affairs, some of which became rewarding friendships. Even now, at what she herself considers an advanced age, there is a man with whom she sometimes sleeps (Mary much dislikes the phrase
to have sex
, but they do), a man of whom she is most extremely fond (which surely beats being in love, has been Mary’s conclusion). They would see each other more, except that he has a very mean, vindictive lawyer wife; it is not all
perfect, but then, what is? In any case, Mary’s life does not fit the stereotype of the lonely old woman whose only companion is her cat.

Mary was never beautiful; as a very young woman she was too thin, almost gaunt, with a long thin nose, a wide and sensual mouth. But she was both intelligent and talented, capable of projecting passion, irony, and humor, qualities that she could be said to contain within herself. Her friends, including fellow actors, generally liked her, and several men loved her extremely.

Aging is easier, somewhat, for a not-beautiful actress, Mary has thought; critics are less apt to point out that you are not as young as formerly. But this must be true for all women, not only those in her own narcissistic profession? You do not suddenly observe that heads are not turning, if few or any ever did. These days Mary could have more TV ad work than she does, if she would accept more happy-grandmother shots. The problem is that her capacity for tolerating boredom has diminished, she finds. She can no longer endure certain endless hours before hot cameras—as she can no longer listen raptly at dull dinner parties. She cannot escape into steamy trash fiction as she once did, in dressing rooms, awaiting calls. (She has lately been rereading Colette, and has recently discovered Carl Hiaasen, who makes her laugh aloud.) The move from San Francisco up to Larkspur constituted a sort of retirement; she lives mostly on residuals, a little stock. She believes that she lives fairly well, with Linda.

Still, certain things have happened, inevitably, to her face and body that she does not like, and cannot much change. Mostly she objects to dry skin, and increasing fatigue.

Mary has—or she used to have, with Linda—certain small rituals. Rituals of love and intimacy, you might say. One was that whenever Mary went upstairs, Linda would race ahead of her, and then stop and lie across a step, in Mary’s way, so that Mary had to stop. And to pet Linda, to scratch her beautiful yellow stomach as Linda stretched along the step. They always did this,
and now, as Mary walks up the stairs alone and unimpeded, she misses Linda as acutely as she has ever missed a lover, and she thinks, in somewhat the same way as she used to think, He’s gone!

So that now she thinks, I must be truly mad. All this about a pretty little cat? I carry on as though it were a major love affair?

Linda now has been gone for five days, and nights. Mary continues her nightly routine of putting food out on the deck and bringing in the untouched dishes in the morning. Washing them out.

Getting through the days.

And then one night, as she lies upstairs in bed, alone, she hears from down on her deck the rattle of tin plates—her plates, with Linda’s food.
Linda!
In an instant she grabs up a robe, shoves her feet into slippers; she runs downstairs and flicks off the burglar alarm. She rushes to the french doors that lead to the deck. Where she sees, to her horror, three raccoons. Two large, one smaller, all with their round black staring unfrightened eyes and their horrible bent clawed feet. At times Mary has argued that raccoons are cute, nice little visitors at picnics. But tonight she sees that they are hideous intruders, feral and dangerous, fearsome.

She is afraid that if she opens the door they will run in, searching for more food (they have eaten all of Linda’s), and so she only bangs on the glass, afraid too that it will break, and she will be defenseless. But the raccoons, having eaten, now leave, loping, ungainly on their short legs and ugly feet, back across the deck.

Very slowly Mary goes upstairs, and gets back into bed.

Raccoons attack cats; they sometimes hurt or kill them. Everyone says that.

Mary gets up, and in her bathroom she takes a tranquilizer, then gets into bed again.

She lies there, coping as best she can with the probable fact
of Linda’s death (later she does not understand how she did this). Linda must be dead, killed by horrendously ugly, murderous raccoons; if not those, some others, equally hideous. Mary only hopes that it was quick, as one hopes for air-crash victims. Poor crazy fearful Linda could well have died of fright before she was hurt, Mary thinks.

She tries to sleep, and at last she does, and she wakes in the morning very calm, and much, much more sad.

And although she has more or less accepted the fact of Linda’s death, she continues in a minor way to look for her, and she still puts out the food.

“What you need is another cat,” the few friends in whom she has confided begin to say, and in theory Mary agrees; she does need another cat.

One day (it is now September, Linda gone for a week) the sun comes out earlier than usual, burning through fog and leaving only a few white mists that hang above the tall dark trees, above the town of Larkspur. Mount Tamalpais is sharp and clear, less distant, more inviting. And Mary’s mail comes earlier than usual, just before lunch. In it there is a check that she has been owed and has needed for some time, from her agent in L.A. These are all good signs, she thinks; Mary has certain unvoiceable, eccentric superstitions. Perhaps this should be the day when she goes to the animal shelter and finds a new beautiful cat.