Marion's Wall Read online

  All the way across the Bridge and San Francisco she slept, but at the sound of the ratchet as I set the hand brake, she opened her eyes, glanced up at the house, then at me. “Hi,” she said.

  Blinking against the gin I’d had, forcing my vision, I studied her face; we were almost directly under the street light before the house. “Hi, Jan.”

  “Hi.” Her hand came up to her mouth, ladylike, to stifle a belch. Then she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Nickie … I don’t feel so good.”

  4

  A little before noon I stood in the kitchen in pajamas and slippers waiting for the toast to pop up, trying not to listen to the loud plopping pulselike gurgle of the percolator. I had a full-blown hangover, and it helped to stand absolutely still while I waited, arms hanging at my sides, eyes closed; when the toaster popped it made me wince. I had to make my way to the other side of the kitchen then, but by walking without lifting the soles of my slippers from the linoleum I managed. Getting the plates out wasn’t too bad, but the trays are propped in the narrow space between stove and refrigerator, resting on the floor on their edges, and I had to stoop. I made it by bending very slowly, at the knees only, eyes straight ahead, locating a tray by feel.

  Al scratched at the back door; it was past time for him to be let in, and he knew it. I called to him, eyes closed; I told him we’d decided to get rid of him and had bought a plant instead. Maybe he believed me, because as I walked to the refrigerator I heard him pattering back down the stairs.

  I was looking for, praying for, tomato juice, pushing milk cartons aside; vodka and tomato juice, I’d remembered, was supposed to be the remedy for this kind of pain. There wasn’t any, though; we seldom drank it. But there was a big chilled bottle of California champagne Jan had bought at a local liquor-store sale and was saving for our anniversary. This was an emergency, and I got it out, peeled off the imitation lead foil, and worked out the plastic cork, careful about noise.

  The tray vibrated in my hands all the way down the hall, the liquids slopping over. Jan’s face, as I turned into the bedroom, was bone-white above her pink nightgown and the dark knitted shawl over her shoulders; she’d had more gin than I’d had. She was sitting up against her pillow, and she said, “Oh, thank God. I couldn’t possibly have gotten up myself, I’d have starved right here. Thanks, Nickie, darling,” she added so nicely, so lovingly, that my conscience began to ache more than my head.

  “I made it entirely by touch; didn’t dare open my eyes.” I set the tray at the center of the bed and climbed back in again. Then, slowly, slowly, chewing by an act of will, swallowing carefully, we got the dry toast down with careful sips of ice-cold, incredibly delicious champagne; washed down aspirin; swallowed coffee. When we sat holding our second cups, I said, “How you feeling?”

  Jan considered, cup cradled in both hands. “Better,” she said, voice a little surprised. “My headache’s not too bad now; I guess the aspirin’s taking hold. And I feel a bit less horrible in general; the coffee and toast, I suppose.”

  “With a big assist from the champagne. You aren’t supposed to do this, you know, or you’re on the road to alcoholism.”

  “Well, it helps.” She sipped a little more champagne, a little more coffee, then sighed, put down the cup, and sat back, closing her eyes, and dozed.

  I sat looking at her, pale and vulnerable: this was Jan, this was my wife. Last night and the night before that I had … It didn’t matter that it was her body; it was another woman, absolutely no question about that. Once in a while I’d daydreamed a little about other women, but still the answer to whatever problems we had was never actually someone else; I wanted to work things out with Jan. I sat looking at her—there was a little color returning to her cheeks—remembering times before we were married, remembering our honeymoon, that kind of thing, feeling very tender toward her and almost fiercely protective. Then I slipped off into sleep, too.

  “Nick?”

  “Yeah?” I opened my eyes and ran a quick check over my system. I was definitely healing.

  “What happened last night? I can’t remem…” Her voice trailed off, and she sat frowning at the foot of the bed. Then she focused her eyes on me again. “Nick! Last night. Did I—dance? I did, didn’t I?”

  “Well. Yeah. A little.”

  “By myself?”

  I nodded, watching her.

  “It’s funny, I can barely remember. It’s like catching a little glimpse of myself for a moment, then it’s gone.” Her eyes widened. “I sang, too, didn’t I? Up there on the platform!”

  I nodded again.

  “Oh, Nick, how awful!” She covered her face with her hands. “Why didn’t you stop me! What’ll I ever say to the Hursts!” She lowered her hands and sat staring at me wonderingly. “And afterward … I’m not sure I really remember this; it’s like a dream you can barely recall. But … didn’t we drive around? Speeding? Skidding on the curves? And didn’t you—you did, Nick! You threw a bottle at a tree!”

  I nodded again.

  “I don’t understand it. We’re not people who get drunk!” She sat staring at me.

  I didn’t know what to tell her or whether to say anything. I shrugged and said, “Well. It happens sometimes. Sneaks up on you.” There was beginning color in her cheeks but dark smudges under her eyes. She looked delicate, fragile, and a wave of guilty tenderness moved through me. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  She smiled at the truth in my voice. “I know you are. You’re better, too, aren’t you?” I nodded. “I’m glad.”

  I leaned toward her and kissed her lightly. Then I leaned far across the tray, took her shoulders in my hands, and kissed her again, much longer and harder. I wanted to make things up to her, and it seemed to me this was how. “Well!” Jan pretended to catch her breath. “What’s this all about? And with a hangover at that.”

  I grinned. “Especially with a hangover. That’s how it works with me, I don’t know why; always has.”

  “Always? Does that mean—”

  “Never mind the ancient history. This is what matters.” I leaned across the tray again, reaching for her.

  “Well, maybe we should get rid of this, for heaven sakes.” She lifted the tray and set it on the floor. Then she turned back to me as I moved closer, and we kissed, long but gently. Presently we slid down to lie heads comfortable on her pillow. We both smiled, appreciating each other, appreciating in anticipation the leisurely, almost languorous, hangovers-still-persisting quality of the domestic lovemaking just ahead.

  Again we kissed, snuggling closer, making ourselves comfortable. Jan searched for and found the handkerchief she keeps under her pillow and wiped at her nose. I pulled the blanket up over our shoulders and punched up my pillow; a pulse had begun at the base of my neck, a headache deciding whether to come back or not. But I didn’t care. I had a burden of guilt to make up to Jan, and the nice thing was that I was enjoying doing it. I was kissing her now with a slow passion, she was responding, I felt the beginning blur of my senses, and grinned with relief because I was enjoying this every bit as much as, even more than, last night. Jan’s hands met behind my neck, clasped, and she drew me tightly toward her, kissing me harder and again and again very rapidly, and my arms tightened around her till she gasped. “Jan?”

  “Yes?…”

  I was overwhelmingly tempted to kid myself into thinking I’d been fooled. I wanted to. Lord, how I wanted to. But I knew this was the moment of truth, the test I must not fail, and I shoved her away so violently her clasped hands were torn apart and she cried out. But I kept on shoving, brutally, frantically, using both hands. “No, goddamn it, no!” I was yelling. “It’s you, and I know it!”

  “Oh, what’s the diff!” Marion said angrily.

  “All the difference in the world!” I’d thrust my leg straight out, holding her off, the sole of my foot flat against her stomach.

  “Yes, there is, isn’t there? All the difference in the world.” She lay smiling at me, Jan’s
face but Marion’s hot and mischievous eyes.

  I’m a silent-movie buff, a term I don’t much like but I haven’t a better one. And I’ve watched many an old Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, Mack Sennett. So I know that the best of the old slapstick routines are far from slapdash. Granted the beginning premise, some of those fine old sequences—like Keaton and the mortar on the flatcar in The General—are marvelously logical, each event deriving inevitably from the one preceding. In a weird way they’re true to life; they could have happened. So it doesn’t surprise me that what occurred now, right in my own bedroom, turned into something the Keystone Kops would have understood.

  She tried to move toward me, but my foot was still pressed to her stomach, holding her off, and she said, “Nickie, you want to and you know it!”

  I knew it. “No, I don’t. Now, cut it out.”

  She ran her hand suddenly up the back of my leg under my pajama pants, her fingers scrabbling, and my leg yanked away reflexively. Instantly she was scrambling toward me, and I backed right off my edge of the bed onto one foot, and stood up stumbling. She flung herself toward me, shrieking with laughter, and a hand shot out to grab an end of my pajama cord. It yanked, dissolving the knot, and my pants instantaneously dropped to the floor in a white puddle of ankle-deep cloth. I stooped quickly, reaching for them with both hands, but she was at the edge of the bed grabbing for me, and I swung away, one foot coming loose from the pants, which trailed after me from the other ankle as I ran. Marion was rolling off the bed in a whirl of pink cloth and flying legs, and—feeling naked and exposed, tugging the front of my pajama coat down—I ran across the room, yanking my other leg free from the trailing pants. There’s a big closet running clear across the end of the room, the door nearest me open, and I stepped in. It’s a sliding door, and I rolled it closed.

  Instantly it was rolled open again, and Marion stood there grinning with excitement. She stepped toward me, and I whirled away, shoving at the clothes hanging beside me. “Marion, for god sakes! This is absurd!”

  “But fun! Fun in a closet, hey, Nick! I’ll say!”

  I was at Jan’s end of the long closet, moving off into it, frantically sliding armloads of her clothes back along the rod toward Marion, who was struggling after me, flinging the hangered clothes behind her almost as fast: it was as though we were swimming through clothes. “Nickie,” she called happily, her voice muffled, “isn’t this exciting!”

  Weirdly, it was. If she so much as laid a finger on me I knew what would instantly happen, right here, and using both arms together in a kind of side stroke, I began shoving still greater swaths of hanging clothes back past me as I fought toward the other end of the closet.

  I stopped suddenly and stood motionless: light had just appeared ahead, the door at that end of the closet soundlessly rolled open. I stood silent, listening, hearing nothing, breathing as shallowly as I could. The silence continued, and I knew she was standing somewhere outside the closet, gleeful, waiting to hear me commit myself to one direction or the other. I stood halfway between the two open doors in an empty little no man’s land between my end of the long closet just ahead and Jan’s behind me. Reaching silently out toward my end, my fingertips brushed nylon and I recognized my ski jacket. Very slowly I reached under the jacket, touched softer material, and closed my hand on it.

  Then I heard her, empty hangers suddenly jangling, shoving her way toward me through Jan’s clothes, probably hoping to catch me coming toward her. Under my own hanging shirts, suits and folded pants was an empty space a yard high. I squatted quickly, then waddled rapidly along under my clothes, and walked silently out into the empty bedroom like a duck, my sky-blue ski pants in my hand. I stood and, balancing on one leg, quickly thrust the other into a pant leg. But I’d moved too quickly, lost my balance, and had to hop, my bare foot thumping the floor like a hammer.

  Instantly I heard her switch directions inside the closet, and she appeared in the doorway at Jan’s end. She stood looking at me, then slowly raised both hands to shoulder height, her fingers curving into claws, and distorted her face into an idiot parody of lecherousness, her hunched-over shoulders shaking with silent laughter. She began walking slowly toward me.

  There’s a kind of mindless panic in being chased, and without thought I simply dropped to the floor of the bedroom onto my hands and stomach, shoving hard with both legs against the closet wall, and slid right across the polished floor and under the foot of the bed.

  Revolving frantically on my stomach, I turned to face the room, then lay there under the bed watching her bare feet and pink hem as she staggered around the room gasping through peal after peal of helpless laughter. I had one leg in the ski pants, and in the foot-high space under the bed I tried to slide the other leg into them but couldn’t find the opening, couldn’t maneuver or see behind me; I was sweating horribly. Then my toes found the opening, and—enraged—I shoved my leg violently down the pants by sheer force.

  She was stooped over, watching me, her hair hanging almost straight down, her excited upside-down eyes looking into mine. For a moment, both motionless, we stared at each other. Then a hand appeared beside her inverted face, the hooked forefinger slowly and lasciviously beckoning, and I began to curse.

  She stood, then the bed was rolling swiftly forward on its casters, about to expose me. I reacted before thought and, like an infantryman crawling under fire, began scrambling to keep up with the bed. Then at last my mind worked. I’d banged my head hard on the underside of the bedsprings; I’d hurt my wrists in the fall to the floor; I was hot, dusty, angry; right now I could resist any woman in the world. I stopped moving and let the bed roll forward till it cleared me.

  With difficulty I pulled myself up by the headboard, the bed out in the middle of the room now, and stood erect, looking something like a merman, I suppose, both legs bound tight together by the stretch cloth of one leg of my ski pants. Marion couldn’t talk; her outstretched arm pointing at my sky-blue-wrapped legs looking like one thick, strangely contorted leg with two feet emerging from a single stretched cuff, she whooped with laughter, eyes enormous with astonished delight. I was damned if I’d hop, I told myself, and just stood there, holding onto the bedpost, then I had to grin, too. Marion collapsed helplessly onto the bed, rolling and shouting with laughter, and I watched her, grinning sheepishly, until I had to laugh, too.

  She stopped presently and lay there, tears running down her cheeks, gasping for air, shaking her head in disbelief. I looked at her lying there, and fought. Fought harder. Fought furiously. And lost. I couldn’t walk, so I simply leaped—dived through the air, a streak of white tapering off into sky-blue—landed beside her, and grabbed her on the first bounce. When presently I sat up, it was very slowly. I reached for the blanket, dragged it up, and wrapped it around my shoulders, a corner of it lying on top of my head, and sat there, knees drawn up, huddled. “Oh, damn,” I said. “Oh, goddamn, damn, damn.”

  “You get my goat!” Marion was punching up a pillow, then she lay back, drawing the sheet up over her. “That was some pajama party! And you know it!” She smiled. “Oh, it’s so good to be back! To love again.”

  “Then possess someone else, goddamn it!”

  “It can’t be just anyone! This is my house, it’s where I belong, so it has to be Jean, Jane, June, whatever the hell her name is. You don’t suppose I like it?” She held a strand of hair out before her eyes. “Look at this scraggly hair. What a punk color.” She let the hair drop. “And thick eyebrows! Skinny arms!” She brought one leg out from under the sheet, and lifted it high, extending it gracefully. “Not bad legs, I must say. Though mine were better.” Smiling wantonly, she held the pose till I looked away, then brought the leg swinging closer to me, toes straightening to show off the graceful arch.

  “Cut it out.”

  She drew the leg back under the sheet and began making smacking sounds. “The inside of her mouth feels funny. Not quite big enough, or something. But fine for kissing, eh, Nickie?” Suddenly she flung
her arms out, arching her body under the sheet till it was supported only at the shoulders and heels. “Oh, it’s so wonderful, Nick! Everything is! It’s wonderful just to stretch! I’d forgotten!” Lying back, she saw the tray on the floor beside her. “Hey! Been a long time since I tasted champagne!” She leaned over the side of the bed, filled two glasses and sat up again, handing one over to me. I sipped mine gloomily, she tasted hers, then drank it down. “Oh, boy! This is swell! Where’d you get hooch like this?”

  “Liquor store near Haight Street.”

  “The bootlegger has a store?”

  “No. Prohibition’s over, Marion. Since long before I was born.”

  “Well, that saves a lot of trouble.” She picked up the bottle, filled her glass, held the bottle impatiently till I’d finished mine, then filled it, too.

  “Marion. You’ve got to go. And leave us alone. Got to.”

  “While there’s still some champagne left? You don’t know Marion Marsh.”

  “I’m beginning to.”

  We finished the bottle; there was less than half a glass left for each of us. Marion emptied her glass, head tilted far back, draining the last drops, then set it down on the table beside her, smacking her lips. “We need some more of this good, good booze, Nickie.”

  “Not a chance. You’ve got to go, damn it!”

  She threw back the sheet, and stood up, naked and beautiful, walked to Jan’s end of the closet, standing open, and pushed one foot and then the other into Jan’s oldest and only pair of high-heeled shoes. She took Jan’s purse from the dresser, turned toward the bedroom door, and as she walked out, her arm reached into the closet to drag Jan’s street coat from its hanger.

  In record time I got pants and shirt on right over my pajama top, and a pair of loafers on my bare feet, shoving in shirttails as I ran down the stairs. But when I hit the sidewalk she was far down the street, almost at the corner. I slid into the Packard over the door top, then rolled down the hill after her, accelerating as much as I dared. Before I reached the corner she turned it to the right.