Marion's Wall Read online

  I was puzzled by her expression: she stood staring at the back bar, her mouth hanging open slightly. The back tables were covered with bottles, a really lot of them, both opened and full. There was whiskey of every type and many brands; dozens of bottles of gin and vodka; there was wine and sherry; rows of Cokes, 7-Up, ginger ale, soda, and the like; on the floor under the tables stood stacked-up cases of still more liquor and mixes. It was an impressive display, but still—Once in a while out of excitement and exuberance Jan took it into her head, as shy people sometimes do, to clown at what I usually thought was an inappropriate moment. I thought this was one of them, and started to nudge her to cut it out, but it was too late. A bartender stood waiting, brows raised inquiringly, and Jan smiled brightly and said, “Wow! Would you look at all that hooch! Is it good stuff?”

  “Come on now, Jan,” I muttered, “what do you want?”

  “Well, just to start things rolling I’ll have a Bronx cocktail.”

  The bartender frowned; a man down the bar was staring at us.

  I muttered again. “I don’t think they serve fancy cocktails at a thing like this. Takes too much time.”

  “Okay, we aim to please. I’ll have a gin buck.” Jan stared at the bartender, then shook her head in amazement. “You don’t know what that is? Where have you been! It’s just gin, ginger ale, and lime juice. Put in plenty of gin, and you can forget the lime; it’s the booze that counts!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said through my teeth, and turned to stare down the people near us. The bartender brought Jan’s drink, face almost expressionless, though he let me see a little sneer way back in his eyes. I said, “Bourbon and soda,” and put down my two tickets. I stood watching the bartender, who mixed my drink fast enough, and I took it, glad to turn away. Jan was halfway down the floor, making her way back to the Hursts. Then I saw her stop in the midst of a crowd and, throwing her head way back, toss down her drink like a thirsty longshoreman. She turned and walked back to me.

  “Do it again, Big Boy,” she said, handing me her empty glass. “That’s real stuff; right off the boat!”

  “Baby, you’re a laff-riot, believe me,” I said. “I know we haven’t been out much lately, but let’s try to get it out of our system, eh? Before we rejoin the Hursts and their friends? I’ll meet you there, and bring back your drink.” I made myself smile at her and turned back to the bar; goddamn, I’d looked forward to tonight!

  There was a bar at each end of the room, I discovered. Walking back toward the Hursts once again, I saw Jan and Frank Hurst turn from the circle toward the other end of the room, then I saw the other bar. When I’d worked my way through the crowd, carefully carrying Jan’s full glass and my own drink, she and Frank were on their way back, Jan sipping from her new drink as she walked. She rejoined the circle, eyes sparkling, face flushed, finishing her drink, then handed me her empty glass, took the new one I’d brought, and drank off half of it. A couple of women were watching her, still eying her dress, and Jan looked at them insolently till they glanced away. She suddenly flicked a hip sideways and began snapping the fingers of her free hand. “This party’s dead on its feet,” she said. “Let’s get things moving!” She tossed off her drink and, without looking at me, held out her glass. I had to take it—I was holding three glasses now—and Jan turned from the group again.

  I was as mad at Jan as I’ve ever been, I guess, and I made myself hang onto my smile and stand there, the two empty glasses down at my side inconspicuously, or so I hoped. I stood listening attentively to what one of the women was saying about the day-care center’s need for more room and equipment, refusing to turn and see where Jan was going; I knew she didn’t have any money.

  The woman finished, someone replied, and I took a swallow or two from my glass, casually shifting my position a little as I did so to sneak a look after Jan. I was absolutely astounded: she was standing at the bar smiling and accepting a drink from a man, a complete stranger to her, I knew. He was bowing slightly, waggling a hand in response to her thanks. Jan raised her glass in toast to him, drank off a third of it, then turned into the crowd—not back toward our group as I’d thought for a moment, but angling off toward the other side of the room. For a few steps I could follow her dress, then it was lost in the crowd.

  I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to embarrass either of us by obviously going into the crowd looking for her, though I wanted to. I made myself stand there, and finished my drink. Then I smiled at Hazel Hurst beside me and, gesturing with my own empty glass, said, “Can I bring you one, Hazel?” She drank very little, I knew, and when she said no, I smiled again, turned and walked toward the bar, slowly and casually, looking brightly around me, trying to suggest a man enjoying himself. I thought if I took my time about this, I might catch Jan returning to the bar and somehow get her the hell out of here.

  Halfway to the bar I heard the piano abruptly stop in mid-tune during a medley of songs from musicals, heard a slight rise in the level of conversational hum, saw heads turning toward the platform. I turned, too, not knowing what I’d see, but the instant I did, it seemed to me that I’d known all my life. Up on the raised platform the pianist sat smiling politely, head bowed over the keys, listening to a woman whose head was ducked level with his as she spoke into his ear. The bulk of the piano stood between her and me, and her head was partly concealed by the pianist’s. I couldn’t actually see her, but I knew. Then, smiling broadly, Jan stood erect up there on the platform, her dress the most vivid object in the room, and as the pianist began what I knew must have been her request, she hopped up onto the piano top, legs swinging, and began to sing along with him, “Bye Bye Blackbird,” singing the words when she knew them, and “da-da, DA-da” when she didn’t.

  She carried the tune well enough, her voice true though thin. And as I worked through the crowd toward her, the song—the pianist cutting it a little short—ended, and people immediately around the platform applauded, but the hands came together limply, lazily, the applause sardonic; someone mockingly called “Yay!” Jan had slid from piano to floor, her head ducking down beside the pianist’s again. He nodded, his smile rigid, and began playing “Sweet Sue” with a pronounced rapid beat.

  Incredibly, Jan began to dance: knees together, feet and elbows flying, her dress a blaze of flying color. And she was good; she did it beautifully, feet flashing in perfect easy rhythm, fingers snapping, face lifted to ceiling, eyes half closed in ecstasy. It was her shoulders and arms that moved, and her legs, but from the knees down mostly. Except for the sway of her hips, her body moved very little, and she stayed in one spot. You could hear her feet shuffling, leather on wood, and it was a wild exciting dance, primitive and with a kind of innocent sexuality, and when I’d pushed my way to the edge of the platform, all I could do was stand and stare up at Jan—angry, really furious, and at the same time with a ridiculous feeling of pride in this astonishing accomplishment.

  With a flutter of notes and a chord, the pianist finished, and now most of the room applauded, this time genuinely, a dozen or more voices calling out “More!” and meaning it. Jan was bowing almost professionally; left, then right, slowly revolving to face all her audience. Turning, she saw me staring up at her, and she walked to the platform’s edge, directly before me. “Catch, Nick!” she said, revolving as she spoke to let herself fall backward off the platform into my arms, my three empty glasses exploding on the floor.

  I wouldn’t let myself even think about the meaning of this, not now. My smile fixed, forever it seemed, I set Jan on her feet, slid an arm around her waist, and gripped her left wrist with my left hand. I took her right wrist in my other hand, and, keeping our hands low and out of sight, I led her—forced her, really—through the grinning still-applauding people around the platform, who stepped aside reluctantly to let us through. I’d seen a glass-paned door beside the bar at this end of the room that led onto one of the side porches and a short flight of steps to a lawn, and we moved toward it fast
. We’d nearly reached it, walking along beside the bar toward it, when Jan stopped so suddenly her left wrist was yanked loose. I turned to face her, still holding the other arm, and she stuck her hand out at me, palm up. “Give me twenty dollars.”

  “Outside,” I said softly, nodding eagerly, placating her. “Come on outside and I’ll—”

  “No.” She waggled her hand impatiently. “Here. And right now. Or I don’t move a step.”

  People watching, I yanked out my wallet, found a twenty, and pushed it at her. Jan took it and—I had had to let go of her—she walked around the end of the bar past the staring gray-haired woman to the back bar. She picked up an unopened bottle of Gordon’s gin, turned and slapped the twenty down on the cloth before the woman, and—me following—walked on toward the exit smiling and blowing farewell kisses to the grinning, murmuring, incredulous room.

  In the Packard I was so confused I had trouble getting the key in the ignition, and when I got the car started and backed out onto the driveway, I almost nicked a fender of the car behind us. I swung out onto the dirt road then and drove half a block leaning toward the windshield trying to see by moonlight before I remembered to turn on the headlights. I was driving away from the freeway toward open country and a place to pull over and talk; just now I couldn’t speak.

  But the top was down, a smooth flow of air cooling my cheeks, and pretty soon I felt I’d be able to make my voice speak calmly. I said, “Jan,” but she ignored me, frowning and picking at the seal of clear plastic around the neck of the bottle in her lap. Impatiently, she began to twist the cap off without removing the seal. My control was thin, and I yelled, “Jan! Goddamn it!” We’d reached more or less open country, nothing behind us, and I swung onto the narrow shoulder and stopped, braking hard. “Jan, answer me, or so help me I’ll—”

  She smiled pleasantly. “Call me by name, and I will.”

  I sat looking at her, but once again I knew, and had known, it seemed to me, for a long time. I knew who, this afternoon, had bought the screaming dress with a hem eight inches above her knees, who knew most of the words to “Bye Bye, Blackbird,” and who could dance the Charleston as though she’d invented it. “Marion?”

  “I’ll tell the cockeyed world. Open this goddamn bottle, Nickie; you need a little drinkie!”

  She was right. I grabbed the bottle and began peeling the plastic seal loose, the driver of a passing Volkswagen turning to stare back at us. And three drinks and four miles farther on down the winding dirt road—we were beyond the town limits and the last of the houses, out into open farm country—I needed another. I took it, steering with one hand, straight gin gurgling out of the bottle mouth down my throat.

  “Pass it here.” I did, she swigged, then grinned “That’s no bathtub gin, Baby; that’s real prewar stuff!”

  “We have got to talk.” A short driveway just ahead led to the gate of a field, and I slowed to pull off.

  “Sure, but not now; this is fun! Drive!” She put her foot onto mine and jammed the accelerator flat. The car bucked, leaped forward, and I yanked the wheel away from the driveway and the ditch just beyond it. “Step on it! Let’s take a spin!” she yelled and turned to climb up on the leather seat and sit on the folded canvas top. “Whoopee!” she screamed, and some fragment of my mind was able to note that I was grinning and that my foot on the acclerator stayed flat on the floor.

  This was dangerous, the curves unbanked, the rear end of the big car fishtailing around them. But without slackening speed I leaned forward and with one hand loosened the big nickel-plated wing nuts of the windshield and lowered it to lie flat on the hood.

  The rush of night air, cool and fragrant with country smells, whipped my hair, pressed my glasses to my brows and cheekbones, and narrowed my eyes. We took another curve, sliding sideways for a yard this time before the wheels bit in again, my heart soared in my chest from excitement, and I yelled, “Whoopeeeeee!” Upon the folded top, Marion sat waving the bottle of gin in the air, a look in her eyes, half closed against the rush of air, of utter pleasure in the moment, her lips molded in a little smile of pure, unthinking, animal joy.

  “To hell with the speed cops!” she yelled, and took a long swig of gin, her taut throat white in the moonlight, then shoved the bottle down at me. I snatched it and drained the last of the gin without lifting my foot from the accelerator. A tree was rushing toward us, and I half stood behind the big wheel and with all my might threw the bottle at it. It hit squarely, smashing magnificently, splinters of glass flying like ice, and we both howled with delight, wild and free, more than I’d been since I was a child, more than I’d remembered it was possible to be.

  But a quarter mile farther on I slowed, pumping the brakes, then jounced off onto a two-rut dirt road leading toward a farmhouse whose lights showed in the distance. There were horses in a field, and trees extending over the shoulder of the road. I pulled off under them, set the hand brake, and turned off the ignition and lights; we had to talk.

  Marion was sliding down onto the seat beside me, her skirt pushing back, turning toward me, lifting her arms. “Oh, Nickie, Nickie,” she said, “it’s so good to be back.”

  “Hold it.” I put a hand up. “Listen, do you think I’m my father?”

  “Of course not. I did last night. When we saw my movie. I was still confused then: you lose track of time. Because it doesn’t matter.”

  “These aren’t the Twenties, either, you know.”

  “Ain’t it the truth! Some party. Everybody standing around talking about nursery schools! What the hell kind of party was that? Nobody getting any kicks. What was that big red bridge we came over?”

  “Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “What happened to the ferries?”

  “They got rid of them.”

  “Good night! How stupid! They were fun.”

  “Well, we kept the cable cars. A few of them.”

  “That’s nice. Oh, listen! Did Dempsey beat Tunney?”

  “No. Tunney won. Twice. They had a rematch.”

  “Darn. Dempsey’s so attractive, much cuter than the Prince of Wales. What year is this?”

  “Nineteen eighty-five.”

  “What? Why, that’s … fifty-seven years.”

  “Fifty-nine.”

  “I hate arithmetic. That means I’m…”

  “Eighty.”

  Her mouth dropped open, then she smiled. “No, I’m not. And you know it.”

  Something stirred in the back of my mind. It had been there for some time, now it moved forward, demanding recognition. “Marion. … Last night. After the movie. Was that … you?”

  She leaned back against her door to face me, her shoulders trembling with silent laughter. Then she nodded.

  I swung away, staring across my door top at the tree beside us. I heard Marion slide across the seat toward me, then she poked me in the ribs. “Hey,” she said softly, “what’s so interesting over there? Hey, Nickie, look at me!” I shook my head. “Why not?”

  “No, goddamm it!” I swung around to stare at her, then shook my head in disbelief. “Lord, I’m sitting here looking at my wife’s face and body, talking to you about how I was unfaithful to her! It’s like incest! Only worse!” I set my elbows on the lower rim of the big wooden steering wheel and put my face in my hands. “Jesus! I must be the only man in fifty thousand years to discover a new kind of sin.”

  “And wasn’t it nice?” I didn’t answer or move. “Come on,” she said softly, coaxingly, “it won’t hurt you to say it was nice. Because it was. And you know it.”

  “The hell it was.”

  “Oh, yes, it was. A lot better than what’s-her-name, Dishwater Janice, knows anything about.” She was quiet for a moment. “Look at me, damn it! I don’t really look like your wife at all!”

  I turned, then narrowed my eyes. This was Jan’s face, her dark hair, her arms, hands and body, but … there was a recklessness in the eyes, a fullness to the smiling lips, a tension and excitement in every line of that familiar b
ody, that I’d never seen before. There was a resemblance to Jan but, incredibly, nothing more. This was another woman, this was Marion Marsh and no one else, leaning toward me now, moist lips smiling, offering herself. “Kiss me, Nickie.”

  I shook my head and turned away fast.

  “Why not?”

  “For an absolutely ridiculous reason: I don’t want to be unfaithful to my wife!” I was staring almost blindly at the trees beside me fighting back a temptation—oh, Lord, I wished I hadn’t drunk that gin—so intense it caught my breath, wanting so much I couldn’t believe it. I squeezed my eyes shut and began taking slow deep breaths, thinking cool thoughts, knowing that this girl was right beside me waiting, offering … and I won. Opening my eyes, finally, I felt actually weak.

  I took a few more slow calming breaths, then turned to Marion to make her understand that she had to get out of our lives. Still turned toward me, smiling, she didn’t move, and said nothing, just waited as I hunted for words. She looked—but how could she, how was this possible?—voluptuous, the most sensual absolute female I’ve ever seen. It shone from her eyes, exuded from that familiar, utterly strange body, filled the air. “Nickie,” she said softly, “do you realize that under these clothes there’s a naked girl?” and the intensity of the sudden disappointment I felt, the cold shock of knowing I had won and was going to successfully resist, was more than I could stand, and I grabbed her. I grabbed her, she grabbed me, and there, staring horses and all, parked on a country road like a high-school kid, my wife’s body in my arms, I was wildly unfaithful to her all over again; oh, Jesus.

  We passed the house where, incredibly, the party was still going on and reached the highway before I felt I could talk. I heard myself then, voice solemn and actually trembling a little with the seriousness of what I had to say. “Marion. Listen to me. You can’t ever, ever do this again.” But she didn’t answer, and in the greenish light of a highway lamp I saw that she was asleep.