“I don’t want her to have to check into a hotel, Joanna. I think that would be difficult for her.”
“Fine, then, do what you like.”
“I want your okay on it.”
“Why? You live here, too, don’t you?”
“Then I’ll tell her she can stay, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Joanna?”
“I said sure.”
“Okay, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll tell her,” Jamie said, and went out of the room.
18
It was almost two in the morning when they got back to the Sixty-fifth Street apartment. The weather had turned cold again; he fumbled with stiff fingers to insert the key into the lock, and then opened the door, and turned on the table lamp in the entryway. There was the smell of marijuana in the air, Joanna detected it at once. Jamie went into the living room, snapped on the lights, and then stopped dead in his tracks, as though unexpectedly struck in the face by an unseen intruder. Joanna, turning from where she was hanging her coat on a wall peg beside Lissie’s fighter-pilot jacket, opened her eyes wide, and then went to stand speechlessly beside him. Aghast, they looked into the room.
A trail of debris stretched from the bay window fronting the street to the staircase leading to the upper stories, the flotsam and jetsam of what seemed to have been a wild party. Empty whiskey bottles lay scattered on the floor, glasses were on every table top. The ashtrays were bulging with butts and marijuana roaches, and someone had ground out a cigarette on the polished marble top of the mail table just inside the entrance door. A fire had been started in the fireplace, a log still smoldered there. But the screen had not been replaced afterward, and there were blown ashes and several large scorch marks on the Oriental rug just beyond the hearth. Someone had spilled a drink on one of the red plush-velvet easy chairs that flanked the fireplace. A white sweat sock was draped over one of the lampshades. A pair of panties, the crotch stained with what appeared to be menstrual blood, was crumpled on the floor near the big brass wood bucket.
Like hunters tracking a wild beast loose in their midst, they followed the spoor up the carpeted steps to the second floor of the building. The refrigerator door had been left ajar; its light cast illumination into the kitchen, revealing the stack of dirty dishes in the sink even before Jamie snapped on the overheads. A loaf of bread, an open box of cornflakes, a container of milk, a melting slab of butter were on the kitchen table. The mate to the sweat sock in the living room was on the range top, alongside a copper kettle that had been blackened because the flame under it had been allowed to burn too long and too hot. Down the hall, in the guest bedroom, the bed was unmade, and there were blankets and pillows on the floor. Whoever owned the stained panties in the living room had left her track upstairs as well, her menstrual blood ripening one of the white monogramed bath towels that had been a wedding gift from Joanna’s grandmother. Popcorn, matchsticks and newspapers trailed an uneven path across the carpeting. On the night table beside the bed, there was a syringe with a broken needle. A torn glassine packet lay beside the syringe, and beside that was one of Joanna’s sterling tablespoons, a wedding gift from her father, its bowl blackened.
In the library upstairs, the music stand had been knocked over and the charred remains of a manuscript were under the grate in the Franklin stove, where the pages had been used to start another fire. One of the stove’s tiles was cracked. Joanna’s flute case lay open on the floor. Someone had used the flute as a poker. The end opposite the mouthpiece was black, the hole clogged with ashes. It was the sight of the violated flute that infuriated them most, Joanna because the flute was her life, Jamie simply because he loved her. Eyes blazing, nostrils flaring as though she had at last caught scent of the elusive something they’d been stalking, Joanna threw open the bedroom door. Lissie was asleep on their bed, wearing only a T-shirt and cotton panties. In the ashtray beside the bed, there was a used condom.
“Wake up, Goldilocks,” Joanna said.
She sat up at once, blinked into the room, and then smiled and said, “Oh. Hi.”
“What the hell happened here?” Jamie said.
“Well, we invited some friends in, you know...”
“You had no right to do that.”
“It was just some...”
“Get off that bed!” Joanna said.
“This is where we live,” Jamie said. “This is our home...”
“We were going to clean up,” Lissie said.
“When?” Joanna said. “We told you we’d be home tonight, we told you we’d be home around midnight, it’s two in the morning, when did you...?”
“You’ve made a pigsty of our home!” Jamie said. “Goddammit, Liss, what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me,” Lissie said, suddenly defiant. “We had a fight is what, okay? Sparky and his friends ran out of here...”
“I don’t give a damn about your fight,” Jamie said, taking a step toward the bed. “You’re not six years old, you had no right to...”
“Who the hell gave you permission to use this room?” Joanna said.
“That was Sparky’s idea.”
“Was it Sparky’s idea to leave a rubber in the ashtray? What was that? A little souvenir of your tender romance?”
“He left in a hurry.”
“Which is just the way you’re gonna leave!” Joanna said.
“Listen, you,” Lissie said heatedly, “why don’t you shut the fuck up? My father...”
“Lissie!” Jamie shouted.
“Where’d you get this rotten kid?” Joanna asked.
“My father and I are trying to talk here,” Lissie said. “If you’d...”
“Get dressed,” Joanna said. “Pack your things and get out. Take your boyfriend’s scumbag with you.”
“I don’t have to do what you...”
“Lissie, darling,” Joanna said sweetly, “you almost spoiled our wedding day, but that’s the last thing you’re ever going to spoil. Get out. And don’t come back till you’ve learned a little common decency and respect. If not for me, at least for your father.”
“I do respect my father.”
“And I respect Adolf Hitler! Get rid of her,” Joanna said, and stormed out of the room.
“You heard her,” Jamie said.
“Dad, you don’t know how terrible it was,” Lissie said, and suddenly began sobbing. She got off the bed, and went to him, and hugged him close, her face pressed against his chest, her tears wetting his shirt, and all at once he felt his anger dissolving. He held her tightly and said, “What happened, Lissie?”
“He was a junkie, Dad,” she said in a rush, sobbing, catching her breath, “half the kids here tonight were junkies. I didn’t know that, Dad, I wouldn’t have allowed him to invite them if I’d known. He said it would just be for a few drinks, they tried to turn me on, Dad, it wasn’t the first time, Dad, I just wouldn’t do it, I’d never stick a needle in my body as long as I live, you know that, Dad.”
“Yes, darling, I know that.”
She moved away from him abruptly, as though remembering she was still wearing only T-shirt and panties, and went quickly to the chair across the room, and took her dress from it, and pulled it over her head. Searching for her shoes and socks, she said, “I’ll clean up before I leave, Dad, I promise, it’s just that it happened so suddenly, the fight with him, and he... he was gone before I... before I knew what was happening.” She burst into tears again, and he went to her and embraced her again, and then brushed her hair away from her face, and she nodded, and sniffed, and then, still sobbing, said, “I guess everything has to end sooner or later, doesn’t it, Dad, but oh, God, oh, God!”