“And you had another call from that man in Key West,” Jeanne added, in a tone that answered the question.
“Yes?” Something inside Polly’s chest rose in a kind of excited hiccup, but she swallowed it down. It was over between her and Mac — it was only her weakness, her vanity that twitched to this news, that wanted to hear him say, one more time, So when are you coming back to Key West? (“You let me know before Christmas, and I’ll tell Tony not to rent my house in January after these tenants leave,” he had added when they last spoke.)
“It was about ten minutes ago,” Betsy offered helpfully, moving her legs in a scissors pattern.
Damn, Polly thought. “And what did he say?”
“I d’know,” Betsy said, breathing and scissoring. “Jeanne talked to him.”
“He left a message, would you phone him again tonight after eight. Again.” Jeanne underlined the word with her voice.
“For God’s sake,” Polly exclaimed. “You don’t need to look at me like that. I only called him once.” And only because I had to let him know what I’d told Lennie about the paintings, she added to herself — not aloud, for Jeanne knew nothing of this rash lie.
“I think you should call him again,” Jeanne said. “I think you should ask him to please stop phoning here, because you’re not interested in speaking to him.”
“I can’t do that. He might have remembered something useful to tell me; he might even have changed his mind about lending those canvases for the show.”
“If that’s really so, he can always write a letter,” Betsy said. “You could tell him that.”
“I suppose I could,” Polly conceded, looking at Betsy, who was now awkwardly pedaling an imaginary bicycle upside down. If it were a real one and right-side up, she would fall off and hurt herself.
“I wish you would,” Jeanne said. “You know it really upsets me, having to speak to someone like that. Someone who took advantage of you that way, when you were so vulnerable.”
“I know.”
“I should think it would be even more unpleasant for you.”
Not wanting to lie, Polly made no comment.
“Anyhow, let’s forget about that creep for a while,” Jeanne said in a different, warmer voice. “Come and show us what you found at Macy’s.” She shifted her papers to the coffee table to make room, and patted the sofa beside her, ready now to hear of Polly’s struggle with the grizzling gray weather and the jammed stores and buses, and to give her an affectionate hug.
“Just a second; I’ve got to stop in the bathroom.”
Polly headed down the hall; but on reaching her destination, instead of lifting the lid of the toilet, she sat down on it and began, very slowly, to pull off her boots.
Yes, it ought to be unpleasant for her to speak to Mac, she thought. She ought to want to put all that behind her. But she still couldn’t forget the way he looked, the way his body had felt, the way he had moved, the flat cubist breadth of his chest, his long hard legs, his long square-tipped fingers. Worst of all, she kept thinking of his cock: its length, its strawberry-vanilla hue, its slight upward curve.
After two weeks, she ought to be getting over this. She was getting over it, really; in a few months she might forget the whole thing, as she had said to Jeanne only yesterday. “Of course you will,” Jeanne had agreed. “Probably even sooner.”
But not everyone they knew was of the same opinion. Ida and Cathy, for instance, thought differently. When Jeanne told them about Polly’s adventures in Key West they hadn’t been encouraging. Not knowing that she was being overheard, Ida had said she wasn’t convinced it had been a temporary aberration, a last bout of fever. “Polly hasn’t got it out of her system, dear, and she’s not going to get it out of her system,” Ida had pronounced. “It is her system.” And Cathy had remarked that the sad truth was, you could never really depend on a bisexual.
Ida and Cathy were wrong, Polly told herself, lifting the lid of the toilet, for which Jeanne had recently bought a dusty-pink plush cover, and sitting down again. All she needed was a little more time; and maybe a new emotional interest. She stood up, washed her hands, picked up her salt-and slush-stained boots, and started back down the hall. On her way the phone began to ring. With her heart leaping about annoyingly, she answered it in the bedroom.
“Mom? It’s Stevie.”
“Oh, honey, hello!” Polly’s voice eased half an octave. “How are you? Is everything all right?”
“Sure, it’s fine. I just wanted to tell you, I’m coming back a day sooner than Dad wrote you. On the twenty-second. Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay. It’s great.” Polly laughed.
“And listen, Mom.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going to be bringing a lot of stuff. Well, see, all my stuff.”
“You mean, you’ve decided, you don’t want to go back to Denver after Christmas vacation?” Polly gasped.
“No. I mean, yeah. I want to stay home.”
Home; the word repeated itself in Polly’s head like a muffled triumphant drumroll through the rest of the conversation, which was concerned with flight numbers, arrival times, and contingency plans.
“That was Stevie,” she cried, running into the sitting room.
“Oh?”
“He’s coming home a day early.”
“Ah.” It was clear that for Jeanne the time of Stevie’s arrival was a matter of indifference.
“And he’s not going back to Denver!”
“Not going back?” Jeanne stuck her tapestry needle into the center of a Victorian rose, and sat forward. “Well,” she said. “You must be awfully pleased.”
“You must be awfully pleased about Stevie,” Jeanne repeated an hour later, as she beat lemon juice and egg yolk together for a hollandaise sauce while Betsy, who usually served as her kitchen maid, peeled potatoes.
“Yes, I really am,” Polly answered. “But I know you’re not,” she added.
“Don’t talk that way,” Jeanne said, her voice rising to a soft quaver. “I’m very happy for you.”
“Sure, but I meant — I realize it’s going to be inconvenient for you and Betsy, having to move out so soon, I mean. And I’m really sorry. But what else can I do?”
A rhetorical question; however, Jeanne answered it. “Well.” She paused to add a lump of butter. “I thought maybe we could stay on for a while anyhow. Until we find something else, of course.”
“But there’s no place for you to sleep,” Polly protested. With a sinking sensation she imagined Jeanne and Betsy camped out in the sitting room: Jeanne on the sofa, and Betsy humped untidily on an air mattress alongside.
“There’s plenty of space in this apartment really, you know.” Jeanne smiled persuasively. “If Stevie moved into the spare room we’d all be perfectly comfortable.”
“I can’t turn Stevie out of his own room,” Polly protested.
“But it would only be for a little while,” Betsy whined. “And it wouldn’t be any trouble, really, Polly. We’d move all his posters and stuff, of course. And all our things are there already, and our bed.”
My bed, Polly thought. She imagined trying to explain to Stevie that Jeanne and Betsy had taken over his room. Then, for the first time, she imagined trying to explain to him why they were sleeping together in a double bed. “No, I can’t do it,” she stated.
“Jeanne said you wouldn’t agree,” Betsy remarked dole fully. “But listen; there was another idea that occurred to me.”
What had occurred to Betsy, it turned out, was that Stevie should be sent away again almost as soon as he got home. It was the logical solution really, she said, because the New York public high schools were so awful, while the private ones were expensive and snobbish. Besides, the city was a dangerous place for teenagers in a whole lot of ways.