“WELL, DID MELISSA confess anything significant?” Bill Duffin asked. His plane had been two hours late and he should have been tired from three days of boozing in Chicago, but instead he was feeling buoyant and was sitting in bed wearing the psychedelic pajamas his oldest daughter had given him for Christmas. He was drinking a stinger for a nightcap and was idly reading through a couple of book catalogues that had come in while he was gone. Lee was in bed too, reading Flannery O’Connor’s last book of stories.
“Nothing we hadn’t suspected,” she said. “She had some marijuana with her. The other girls and I all smoked some the night you left.”
“What a scene,” he said, chuckling. “Why did you wait till I left?”
“I guess she was afraid you’d take it away from her.”
“Maybe I would have. Then we could have smoked it sometime when we needed a thrill. Or I could have taken it to the MLA—it might have helped. I got trapped with the Southern crowd one evening. Tenth-hand Faulkner stories for the tenth time don’t do much for me. I did hear some good gossip about our friends in Virginia.”
“The girls and I missed you,” Lee said.
“Not a few of your old acquaintances missed you,” Bill said. “I don’t seem to be as popular up there when you stay home. All your usual beaus sent their love and sorrows.”
“I’m glad I didn’t go,” Lee said. “I can’t think of one person from our past that I ever want to see again. That’s goddamn sad, because I can’t think of one person from our present that I feel any different about.”
“It’s your New Year’s melancholy,” Bill said. “Have some of my drink. You’ve got friends galore from our past.”
“Sure. I don’t want them to know me like I am now, though.”
“That’s stupid. How was the pot?”
“It made Helen a little sick. Janie and I got pretty giggly. It didn’t seem to faze Melissa at all. I’m sure she’s a hardened pothead. It was fun, really. We all felt wicked and companionable.”
“Hum,” Bill said. “Our first born a pothead. If she stays out West it’s probably just as well she’s hardened to it. In fact it’s probably better. She’ll be that much less likely to get knocked up by some unsuitable young mystic. No LSD?”
“I didn’t probe and she didn’t say. I have a horror of being a prying mother.
“I don’t worry about Melissa,” she added. “She’s got your ability to take care of herself. Helen and Janie are something else. They’re more like me.”
Bill put down a catalogue and picked up his drink. “Speaking of probing,” he said, “I guess you’ll be glad to know that my days as a conventioneering cocksman seem to be over. I never even got laid. This profession could sure use some attractive females. I never saw so many drab bags, old and young. It made me think better of my beloved wife. At least she knows how to walk.”
Lee smiled. “Is that my New Year’s compliment?” she asked. “Maybe I’ll go next year after all.”
“This is a great story,” she said later. “The one about the girl trying to strangle the fat woman in the doctor’s office.” She stared solemnly at the ceiling.
The stinger had one swallow to go. Bill set it on the bedside table and turned to Lee, an open book catalogue in one hand. “I wonder if I should collect Robert Coates?” As he read the catalogue he put his other hand under the covers and under Lee’s gown and began to stroke her. She had been lying with her ankles crossed. She looked at him to see what was what. His eyes were going down the page of the catalogue but his hand continued to move lightly over her abdomen. She was not sure what to do. Sometimes she thought he was a sadist, but it was just as possible that he was only a normal absentminded man who even after twenty-one years didn’t really realize what her feelings were. She had grown afraid to respond to tentative, ambiguous caresses for fear that just as she became really aroused he would turn out to have merely been idling. Often that happened and he would stop touching her and yawn or read or go to the john. If she became insistent at such a time he was apt to be spiteful, and so insulting that she would not recover from the hurt for days. She opened her legs but lifted the book from her chest and pretended to read. Bill went on reading the catalogue. He was down to F. “I didn’t know Forster was published in America as early as 1913,” he said, quietly surprised. “Live and learn.”
“We’ve only got forty dollars in the bank, if that’s a consideration,” Lee said. His caressing had become very direct and she shut her eyes and ceased pretending to read.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I’m lecturing at La Jolla in February. If I like it we may just go there next year.”
Lee gripped the covers of her book. Her husband glanced at her with amusement, shifted onto his elbow a bit more comfortably, and went deeper with his caress. He still held the book catalogue. Lee half opened her eyes and saw that he was as cool as if he were reading Tennyson; she put an arm across her face. For a second she wanted to rip the catalogue out of his hand and scream at him, but she was already past the point of doing that. The scream would come days later, probably in the kitchen, when he pushed the wrong button verbally. She kept her arm over her eyes. Bill was down to James Purdy when she came. He had never liked Purdy, but he sometimes liked to own the scarcest book by a given author, and if he had had a hand free, and a pencil, he would have put a check by “63 Dream Palace, wrappers, mint, $17.50.” Lee sighed very heavily, her arm still over her face. Then she turned a little and hid her face against his shoulder. “Don’t quit now,” he said. “I was ever an indefatigable fingerfucker.”
She made no comment. After a while she drew herself away from his hand and went to the bathroom. When she came back Bill had finished the stinger and the catalogue and was lying on his back.
“Turn out the light,” he said. “These pajamas are so bright they distract me.”
“They’re really breakfast pajamas,” she said. She marked her place in Flannery O’Connor and turned off the bed light.
“See anyone while I was gone?”
“Virtually no one. I ran into Patsy Carpenter today and brought her home for tea. It didn’t work out too well.”
“Why not?”
“We got emotional.”
“By god. What about?”
“I told her to be wary of your attentions.”
“You bitch,” he said. “Do I do things like that to you?”
“Chase the one from California if you have to chase someone,” Lee said. She felt very tired and low.
“No, I’d rather play tennis,” Bill said. “Keep my legs in shape. If I decide to sin I’d rather have a Puritan like Patsy. Give me guilt and fear and remorse and darkness and shame. Takes it out of the category of exercise.”
“I guess that’s what’s wrong with us,” Lee said. “No darkness and no shame.”
“Of course not,” Bill said. “We’re mature adults, capable of rational mature acts like fingerfucking. I’ll save Californians for when we get to California.”
“I’m warning you,” Lee said. “Not Patsy.”
“Well, it’s in the hands of fortune,” Bill said. “Ordinarily I’d pursue her but I must be getting less compulsive as I grow older.”
“No. You’re working. When you finish the Pound book your compulsion will rear its head again.”
Bill chuckled. “I always wanted to live with a cynical woman.” He reached over, patted her on the shoulder, and attempted to stroke her cheek. Lee turned her head away.
“Go wash your hands,” she said.