And I planned to be faithful. It was all I could think about for at least the first hour. Gliding past streets of stunted row houses and out onto the open highway next to Maggie in the backseat, who rattled on and on about how much the trip was costing her—the motel, dinners for two, and so on—I dreamed out the window about Eddie. The hangover had sanded my nerve endings to an extravagant pitch. I felt wave after wave of tender pity for him as I pictured him lying back there, under a sheet, in our hot box.
Once the car started hitting the potato fields, however, the specter of a drained and sweltering Eddie began to pall. Almost alone on the road on this weekday morning, we drove through the small resort towns on the South Fork, where big, fat oaks and glamorous copper beeches were planted at considered distances. On the central greens, willows dipped into the still ponds. Hedges and flowering bushes set off gabled, freshly painted houses. Maggie lit a cigarette and opened her window. Air swept in, gala fresh. She asked the silent chauffeur (whom she had tried to engage in conversation earlier, but who had cleverly refused to bite) if he would mind turning off the air-conditioning. Reluctantly, apparently against his principles, he obeyed. A sweet breeze blew against our faces. I began to feel prodigal. Why had I forsaken the bourgeois life? Order, refinement, design. By this time, I couldn’t stand to think about that melting asphalt netherworld and that pale, blank-eyed loser sunk in his circle of hell. He reminded me of those transparent animals, the ones with no coloration at all, who live in the heart of caves. My stomach heaved with disgust. I was free now, returned to my world.
Maggie shifted around in her seat. Silences made her nervous, suspicious. She felt conspired against. I could tell that she was casting about for some topic.
“Did Eddie get a job yet?” she asked me.
Of course, Maggie couldn’t care less whether Eddie worked. In her moral lexicon, work for work’s sake didn’t count as a virtue. Blue-collar outdoor kinds of occupations blurred as one. Besides, Eddie had been job-hunting since the day we met. It was a rhetorical question.
“Let’s agree right now not to talk about my love life,” I said.
“Why, you two breaking up?” Maggie asked.
“No, no, but the subject just gets us going,” I said.
“What is there to talk about? Everything I bring up is taboo. No matter what I say, you fly at me.”
“That’s because you’re always looking for a way in, a way to get to me. Let’s just stick to impersonal things, you know, like the trees, the beach, what’s on Masterpiece Theatre, stuff like that.”
“I don’t see what’s so personal about wanting to know whether Eddie’s working or not. Seems like a pretty ordinary question to me.”
“Forget it, OK?”
“Fine. We won’t talk at all then. We’ll just pass the days like the Dominicans. It’ll be good for the soul,” Maggie said, turning to look out the window.
Perfect circles of sweat had formed under the arms of the chauffeur in his miracle-fiber short-sleeved leisure shirt. He carried all four bags at once up the flight of stairs, where he deposited them just inside the door of our motel room. Maggie pulled her usual routine of “Just wait a second! I have to find my purse,” followed by endless rummaging until she located her wallet, then the long examination of its contents, the fingering of money, the contemplative look. Finally she tipped him—not enough, I thought.
It was a snazzy motel room, the kind at the time I liked best. All-American, with no individual character to intrude on the tactile experience of comfort: two queen-sized beds, a twenty-one-inch color TV on a swivel stand, a refrigerator, and a terrace overlooking the ocean.
I wanted to go out right away, have a beer, swim. Maggie insisted that I unpack first. She pulled off the bottom part of the hotel hangers and threw them on my bed.
“Now you do this or you can go back on the next train,” she said.
“All right, I’ll go back on the next train,” I said.
“That’s fine. I don’t know why I brought you here. You’re not fit company anymore anyway. Help me with this bag, will you? I can’t lift it,” she said, dragging her big suitcase across the room.
I did that, also helping myself to ten dollars out of her wallet. It had not eluded me for one minute that I needed a drink. I put on my bikini, which didn’t look half bad since I had sweated all the bloat away on Sixth Street, and covered it with one of Maggie’s beach jackets, the one with pockets. I excused myself and split, before she had a chance to object.
We both used to love the ocean, but ever since Maggie’s eyes went bad, she preferred to swim with her glasses on and her head above water in the motel pool along with the little kids. I walked across the street to the beach by myself, where I dove under the surf and swam parallel to the shore. I had the energy of an escaped convict.
Later that afternoon, I found myself sitting in a dark bar looking hard at where my life had gone. I couldn’t exactly blame Eddie. I knew, I took comfort in the fact, that he had never sunk so low before either—not on a day in, day out basis. We were like spelunkers. That’s what I told myself, spelunkers exploring the depths. I couldn’t leave him any more than you could leave a partner dangling from a stalactite under the earth. Nevertheless, something had to give.
Sometimes you throw your hands up in despair and it works, which was probably why Maggie seemed undeniably cheerful when I walked into the room. She was getting ready to go out to dinner. It was as if the question of whether she would be eating with me were beside the point. I was safely peripheral now.
“You’re home early,” she said.
“I thought we had a date for dinner,” I said.
“Since when did that matter to you?”
“Well, I’m here aren’t I?”
“And you’re drunk again, just like every other day so far this week. So what?” she said, arranging a white silk shawl over her shoulders. The skin sagged under her arms. I wanted to tell her to keep that shawl around her. She was wearing a sundress underneath it with one of those built-in bras that stands up by itself.
“I’m not drunk,” I said.
“Hurry up and put on some clothes if you want to eat,” Maggie said.
My impressionable mother never forgot the book she read years ago on the subject of alcoholism, the one that counseled the wives of alcoholics not to enable their spouses. This meant that she could contemplate leaving Rayfield in good conscience. To stay would be to enable him. It was a new idea at the time. She fitfully resumed the studied air of detachment she had learned from the book whenever it occurred to her. I recognized the old ‘you can’t get to me’ attitude. Forced as it was, it had its effect.
I went to the closet and pulled out a cotton dress that I had found at the Goodwill. It smelled like its previous owner, but I didn’t mind. The previous owner was obviously wealthy, and her odor was that of a cautious, contained woman. A kind of subdued sweat smell. Probably better than mine, I thought. This dress made me feel beyond reproach. It was seersucker, with its own real leather belt and little capped sleeves, which made me feel coltish and inspired me to assume poses. I stood at the mirror over the desk next to Maggie and applied lipstick in a very controlled way, only reeling slightly.
“I’m ashamed to be seen with you,” Maggie said.
“Ditto,” I said.
“What have you got to be ashamed of? I’m not drunk,” she said, gazing into the mirror and yanking up her bosom by the straps of her shiny cotton sundress.
“No, but you look tacky and that’s worse,” I said.
“Thanks. Thanks very much. Just for that you can sit here and starve for all I care. Or go back to those bums in the saloon. I’ve had it with you,” she said, picking up a hairbrush, then slamming it down. Maggie was really pissed now, shaking with anger.
Naturally, I immediately felt the old remorse. It was as though I had spoken for the sole purpose of reminding myself of what heel I was. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it,” I said.
“What’s so tacky? The dress? It’s just a sundress. Everyone wears them out here. It’s comfortable.” She was smoothing the front of it, looking down at herself. “Is it that awful?” she asked.
“Of course not. Don’t pay any attention to me. Plus which, as you so wisely pointed out, this is Montauk. What could be more appropriate?”
Maggie stared at herself in the mirror, sucked in her cheeks, her stomach, and then threw back her head. “Not bad for an old girl,” she said.
We walked away from the ocean, down the main road that led to the harbor. The land was so flat it created the illusion that the house lights in the distance were far below us. It was dark on the road. Maggie made me take her hand because she had night blindness. Even though we were walking on a sidewalk, she was afraid of tripping and falling and, for all she knew, being left there on the pavement to die. So she clung to my limp hand as cars flashed their brights, illuminating this spectacle of two women who looked like stumbling refugees fleeing from a war-ravaged town.
“Stop walking so fast. You know I can’t see,” she said, squeezing my hand until it hurt.
“Would you loosen your grip, please? What do you think, that I’m going to run away and leave you out here? You’ve got all the dough, remember? And I’m hungry,” I said.
She relaxed immediately and chuckled. “That’s right, isn’t it?” she said. “I know I’m safe with you as long as you need something.”
To the left, a lake shimmered, reflecting the twinkling lights that were hanging from the branches of the trees. We turned off the main road and gingerly made our way along a sandy path to the Grey Swan Inn. There was a half-hour wait. The main room was packed with tables like a dining hall in a dorm. Babies in high chairs were screaming at their mothers in their lobster bibs. I suggested we go to the bar, a relative oasis. Strangely enough, Maggie was receptive to the idea. It was agreed that I could have one drink there and then only a carafe of wine with dinner.
“I want to get home tonight,” she said, still afraid of losing me and being left stranded in the dark.
Maggie was sitting inside the motel room on the token chair in the corner, gripping the armrests and staring at me with a look of angry consternation on her face like I was someone she had never seen before. Her eyes were blown up to the size of hens’ eggs by the magnifying lenses of her bifocals. I couldn’t stand to look at those conspicuous eyes. They reminded me of how, practically overnight, she had stepped into the guise of old age, with a vengeance it seemed, as if this were her last great role and she was going to play it to the hilt. The purple muumuu she had on, plastered over with a chunky purple coral necklace, did nothing to dispel the image. It sent spasms of guilt through me just to look at her.
“Where were you all night?” she asked me.
“Your guess is as good as mine, but I can tell you where I found myself this morning.”
“Where?”
“On a boat, a fishing boat I’m pretty sure. Anyway, it certainly smelled like it. God, I was sick.”
“By yourself on a fishing boat?”
“Did I say I was by myself? There was a guy next to me, oh yeah, probably a fisherman,” I said, as if I had just deduced this.
“Janet, I’m sorry to have to bring this up now of all times, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I believe it’s a question of survival—my survival. I can’t take it. I really can’t. I don’t want to see you anymore when you’re like this.”
“Fine, fine with me. Is that why you’ve been sitting here waiting for me, to tell me that?”
“No. Your stepmother called. She tracked us down out here. Janet, your father is back in the hospital. How awful—and I dragged you out here—of course I never would have if I thought there were any chance he would be going back so soon. He didn’t get much time at home after all. So sad. Poor Betsy. Apparently, you did tell her we were going to Montauk, but that’s all. Betsy said she spent the whole morning phoning one motel on the beach after the other...said she asked you before you left the name of the motel where we would be, just in case something like this happened, but you couldn’t remember. Obviously, you couldn’t be bothered to find out either. And you promised to call Betsy and your father when we arrived. Obviously, you forgot.
“Janet, are you listening to me? Really, Janet, under the circumstances, you’d think you would make a point...”
Suddenly, my mother’s tone changed, from one of stern reprimand to despair. Her anger, a feigned emotion to begin with, collapsed. Her face crumpled. No. She was crying. Not that. Pretend to be mad at me. It’s much better when you do. Out of nowhere she said, “Where is that adorable, elfin little girl running toward me with her wild hair blowing in the wind? Where did she go? Am I never going to see her again?”
I had a mad impulse: I longed to pat her fragile little head, to hold her hand again on the dark street, but gently this time. I wanted to hug her—my mother—and just be with her forever. I loved her that much. Too much. I was terrified I would disappear inside that love. Consciously and conscientiously I courted my fear, because if I lost it, I might tumble in for good. I would be like a stillborn, without a life of my own. So I held on tight and said nothing.
Maggie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. She put the glasses back on and tugged her muumuu farther over her knees. She stayed still for a minute just trying to compose herself. Then she recaptured her indignant posture.
“Well, never mind, forget it, Janet, your father is back in the hospital. Betsy says it won’t be long now.”
They had let Rayfield go home for a while, mainly because he refused to die. Under the circumstances, since he’d endured the maximum radiation therapy a person was normally allowed and there was nothing more they could do, they had to let him go. He actually rode his horse a few times that summer. Someone had to put him in the saddle, but once he was up there, he did fine, apparently.
One of the last times I had been to see him before he went home, I heard him whispering in his delirium, “Dixie, Sinbad, Clover...”
Alarmed, I moved my chair closer. Those were the names of former pets of his, the border collie and two Siamese cats. All three of the animals had died. In spite of the numerous wives, children, and wars, what did my father cling to in his waning hour but his dead pets. A strange man indeed.
“Don’t worry,” he said to me, coming to, “I know they’re dead.”
But then he slipped back into his doped reverie and continued to call out to them in his hoarse whisper: “Dixie, Sinbad, Clover...”
I thought I could sense his spirit rise up and leave his body for a moment. Surely he was close. Instead, they sent him home a week later.
Now he was back, and I knew that if I didn’t hurry, I would miss the chance to say good-bye. I had to see him.
I wanted to be his daughter at least this once.
Maggie loaned me some cash, about a hundred dollars, which was surprisingly generous for her in those days. I threw my clothes in my suitcase over her protests (“That’s no way to pack, Janet”) and, without bothering to check the timetable, took a cab to the train station. It turned out I had an hour to kill, so I left the suitcase on the empty platform and walked over to the local gin mill, the Big Clam. The place was nearly empty. I did manage to catch the last train.