&$9
In Boston she had wanted to make friends with another woman. She thought perhaps her mother was right, it might help her to be more gay and light, it might help with the carsickness, and so she’d tried with Louise.
Louise was an old college dorm mate who lived in New York. When B. phoned her she seemed very eager to meet. “I’ll drive up today.” They met at a restaurant near B.’s apartment and Louise talked nonstop from the moment of their first martini.
“I volunteered for a while, you know, MoMA. One of the other girls was young, a coed. She would read these awful poems that went on and on and didn’t rhyme.” Louise sighed. “She wore blue jeans all the time and smoked grass and I thought it was really sort of disgusting, but she liked me, you see. Maybe subconsciously she had some kind of effect, an influence of some kind.”
B. did not know what to do with this flood of words from another woman but it did not matter because Louise asked her nothing, just went on talking about New York and drinking more martinis. At some point her face turned slack with alcohol.
“Anyhow, I had this day — we have a horrible little flat in the Thirties but Ed is working his way up in the firm, you know, we’ll have a whole floor on the Upper East soon — well, I was trying to cook a roast in that silly little kitchen with no counter space and so I used our little table to chop the vegetables and then I was on the floor with the roasting pan because there was nowhere else to put it. I was trying to arrange all the trimmings and he came home and found me and laughed at me. He thought it was unbelievably funny somehow, me on the floor. And I don’t know what made me so mad. . I don’t know what I was thinking. . I bit him. I grabbed his arm and bit him! Have you ever heard of such a juvenile thing? And he laughed at that too. He thought I was being. . romantic.” Louise’s eyes were large in the slack face as she spoke. “But I felt like biting his other arm, really gnawing his skin, and we made love right there on the kitchen floor — I can’t believe I’m telling you this — and that part was fine. But he fell asleep afterward, there on the floor, and he was snoring, and of course, yes, he works those long hours, but there I was with the roast uncooked and him snoring. And I walked out. I didn’t even bring my coat, you know. Already fall, but I wasn’t thinking — not even my coat! I kept walking until my teeth chattered. I didn’t even have money for a hotel, so I stayed with a friend, told her Ed was out of town on business and I was too scared to stay in the apartment alone, and she laughed at me too — everyone considered me just hilarious that day — and that night I went back and told him I was leaving him. And the funny part is I still don’t know why.
“My family doesn’t know yet. Well, no one really knows. When you called, I took that as a sign! I could move up here near you. A new city, fresh start. We could go out together.”
“I don’t go out much.”
“Well, we could start, you know. We could have cocktail parties and potlucks and things.”
“Maybe you should go back to Ed,” was all B. could think of to say.
Louise’s slack face shook. “I didn’t think you’d say that. I thought you of all people would say something else.”
B. tried then to tell Louise about the carsickness. But the other woman stiffened. “Well that’s quite strange,” she said coldly. “You should see a doctor.” B. told her she had and it hadn’t helped, and after that Louise grew quiet and said she was going to vomit from the martinis and B. took her home.
She passed out on B.’s couch. In the morning, Louise’s black makeup flaked under her eyes and her cheeks were rutted from the couch. She made a fuss about an early appointment and spilled her coffee in her rush to leave. After that the rug was stained and the carsickness was worse and B. decided to try San Francisco.
&$9
She woke up sometime after midnight. The television was blaring a rainbow screen. She switched it off. The girl snored lightly, mouth open, arms flung out across the bed and hair splashed across the pillow, face calm and untroubled.
B. went into the bathroom for her travel bag — she could at least comb her hair. But when she opened the bag she found her nightgown folded neatly on top. How many days now had she slept in the dresses? She took out the nightgown and held it up before her, the filmy length pleating onto the floor. Then she removed the top of the back of the toilet, lifted the nightgown by one finger, and sank it into the water. It billowed like a last gasp. She forced it under and replaced the lid.
She walked back into the bedroom and watched the sleeping girl. B. was closer to the girl’s mother’s age, she realized. The girl’s mother having undoubtedly worn the kid gloves, danced with the Brylcreemed boys, perhaps received her own vanity set. The realization made B. sad and weary. The girl’s knapsack was next to the bed. B. opened it. The notebook was on top. She held it up to her face but she could not make out the words in the dark. The girl moved. B. put the notebook back in the knapsack and crept into bed.
24
They slept in the warm room until noon. The bill when they checked out was too much to use just the roadhouse money. B. excused herself to the car for a moment and reached under the seat. When the clerk counted out her change, she stared at the dirty worn bills in place of the beautiful crisp one. She shoved them in the ostrich-skin purse. Outside, the carsickness was in full bloom. Her temples pounding and jaw clenched in the searing parking lot with dead grass in its cracks. In the rearview mirror, she noted the sallow flecks in the whites of her eyes, the lines in her forehead.
They stopped for gas. B. hooked one of the rusty pumps into the gas tank and leaned against the car. Her gaze landed passively around her. On her legs, sunburned and growing hair. On the filthy bone-colored heels. On the back of the girl’s head, the white part in the two braids and the blonde down against the brown neck. Next to the gas station a dun-colored eucalyptus break stood motionless in the heat. B. watched it, waiting for movement. She decided she could make her plan later. She could drive with the girl for now. Why not.
When the tank was full she went inside and returned with coffees and two packages of doughnuts.
“I don’t eat that,” the girl said.
“Oh.” B. hesitated, then slid both packages under the seat. “The guy inside said there’s a gold rush park just down the highway.”
The girl did not look up. “We studied it in school.” She was flipping again through the torn LIFE magazine. B. sipped her coffee, hiking up her dress to rest the paper cup between her legs. She liked the idea of her legs splayed like the girl’s. But she did not want to see the magazine again, the magazine agitated her. She started the engine and drove past the eucalyptus break, where no branch had moved.
“Which direction should we go?” B. asked.
“I don’t care,” said the girl. “Not Sacramento.”
B. took a road north. The girl lit a cigarette. The smoke and the musky scent and the half-nakedness felt more normal in the car now. Today, the girl wore only the suede vest, without a bra, and the jean cutoffs. Long gray feathers were braided into her hair on each side of her head. She fiddled with the radio until a rock-and-roll station flickered in and out. A man was singing low to an accompaniment of calliope bells. B. tried to open her mind to the bells, to the man’s slithering tones. But the odd notes and exhortations seemed to highlight the dirt and dead insects on the windshield, the trash on the road.
“Maybe I should head to San Francisco,” the girl said. “Jed is probably sick of them by now, waiting for me. He told me we’re soul mates from another life. Like a cosmic link. Like I’m his Cleopatra, his old lady from another time.” B. was sure Jed was no Anthony but held her tongue. “So those dingbats can ball him all they want. For now.” The girl put her feet up on the dashboard and picked at some open skin on her knee.