Edith’s Diary (10 page)

Cliffie remained on his elbow, blinking, glad to see the pale rectangle of his window. His mother was obsessed by politics, Cliffie thought. And his father had a mediocre job. Neither of them was getting anywhere important in life. Cliffie saw it suddenly very clearly. Maybe his mother was insane, in a way. It didn’t matter that she kept the furniture polished and dusted, and worked in the garden. Lots of insane people did those things. His father wore such sloppy, informal clothes, all right of course if you were a bohemian author of something, but not if you wanted to be a big-shot on a newspaper with several thousand – ten thousand? – circulation. As long as his father was playing the game at all, he ought to play it hard and well, Cliffie thought.
Win!
Cliffie sensed a crisis in both his parents just now, though he couldn’t say exactly what it was.

And the way his mother’s face had changed since Mildew’s death two days ago, her mouth down at the corners, so preoccupied, she didn’t even hear him till he’d spoken to her twice. Over a cat! Was that normal? Cliffie had heard enough about himself not being normal. He could throw it back at them.

Here Edith paused, her mind as muddled for a moment as if she were making a speech before an audience and had mislaid her notes. But she was alone, sitting in the semicircle made by the bay window, facing a framed print of a Chinese figure in pink and yellow costume, which she had always found relaxing to look at. She was thinking of Brett, and trying to be realistic. He had said, or confessed, a month ago, that he thought he was in love with his secretary called Carol Junkin, but that he knew it was absurd and wanted to put an end to it. Brett called it ‘a crush’. Carol was hardly twenty-five. Edith had seen her twice when she had gone to Brett’s office to pick him up, when they had been going to a play or a concert in Philadelphia. Carol was shorter than Edith, sturdier, a Swarthmore graduate, a divorcee living alone in a Trenton apartment, family in Ardmore and quite well-to-do. She read German, Brett said, and liked Günter Grass and Böll in the original, and that was about all Edith knew about her. Edith assumed Brett had been to bed with her a few times – just when Edith couldn’t quite imagine, but there were always times, always ways. But as of today, this morning before Brett set off, he had declared that he wanted to put an end to the ‘situation’ with a girl young enough to be his daughter. This was why Edith was making an entry in her diary, which she hadn’t touched in some three months.

The hints Gert Johnson had dropped! Edith still winced. ‘Have you met Brett’s new secretary?’ Gert had asked three or four months ago.

‘Yes, briefly. Why?’

‘Norm met her, because he was seeing about an ad in the
Standard
.
She’s rather attractive.’ And Gert had waited in her usual way for this to sink in, or for Edith to say something, but Edith hadn’t.

Edith hadn’t thought Carol a knock-out. She had rather a too pretty face, the kind Edith thought uninteresting, over-sized breasts, or maybe these had been emphasized by the sweater she had been wearing. Carol wanted to be a novelist, Brett had said. Well, well, didn’t a lot of people? That was no passport to success with Brett, but then he did like breasts. Cliffie had twigged it before her, Edith suspected. Cliffie had a curious intuition. But at least Brett had spoken to Edith frankly, which most men would not have done, Edith thought, at least so soon. Edith had thought things were all right with her and Brett in that department. They made love perhaps two or three times a month, if one had to gauge such things by frequency, and of course one had to. All the articles on marital problems mentioned how often, or how seldom. Were things necessarily any better, if people did it six times a week? Edith thought the atmosphere was also important in a marriage, and she had not noticed anything wrong between her and Brett. Edith had also read about the revolt of the middle-aged man, in fact there was a book with that title almost, so she supposed Brett at forty-eight or forty-nine was going through this, that a love affair might boost his ego for a while and – that he would get over it.

But Edith found that she couldn’t add any more on the subject of Brett in her diary. It was a relief, it amused her to make a note on Cliffie, who was now in her imagination going to Princeton.

Edith was thinking of physics and math as she wrote that, as these had not been Cliffie’s best subjects in high school. In her imagination, Cliffie was specializing in hydraulic engineering, loved the work, and was determined to stick with it. Irrigation, dams, desert pumps, water tables, all that Edith imagined in Cliffie’s head as he studied in his dorm room at Princeton. Girls would write him notes, fraternities – Well, Cliffie would already have joined one by now, been invited. Edith imagined his having started in September this year, but so brilliant that he was going to finish in three years, maybe even two. Edith had been imagining a girl in Cliffie’s life, two or three girls, but one who might be more important than the others, and Edith had given her a name – Deborah, Debbie. She’d be pretty, intelligent, going to Princeton also (they admitted a few girls now), though only seventeen, and so popular that Cliffie wasn’t sure he was number one in her books. But all would work out in the end, and the girl was and would be a constant inspiration to Cliffie. He had become a new boy since he had met her. But Edith decided not to begin writing about Debbie today. Debbie had come into her mind only a couple of months ago. Edith’s final note was on George. Solid and real he was, and always there, for all his frailty more solid than Brett lately.

Edith closed her pen, put the diary away and stood up. She faced a fact as solid as George now, that Brett was bringing Carol for a drink tonight, or rather that Carol was coming in her car at the same time as Brett.

‘I want you to meet her again,’ Brett had said in his earnest way, ‘and see that she’s a decent, serious girl at least.’

Edith certainly hadn’t wanted to make better acquaintance with Carol after what Brett had told her, but Edith had thought it might help Brett, ease his conscience somehow. His conscience clearly was bothering him. Edith looked at Nelson, coiled on the flat cushion on the bay window seat. He gazed at her with drowsy blue eyes. He was a lilac point Siamese. Melanie had sent him by special messenger last July, after writing Edith a note to tell her that a kitten was arriving. This was less than a month after Mildew’s death. Last month Nelson had had his castration, which Edith had detested having to have done, but knew was necessary at six months, if she wanted to keep him home and free of battle scars.

Edith glanced into George’s room before she went downstairs. Its door was ajar as usual, and lately she didn’t bother knocking or calling to him, because he wouldn’t have heard her. George was sleeping on his side, facing her, one arm bent under him with its bluish white hand outstretched, fingers curled, as if beseeching something. Good Christ, it was like slow death, Edith thought. She had been going to ask if George wanted his tea now, but why bother, if he was asleep? It was ten past 5 already.

Brett would be home by a quarter to 6, probably, with Carol in tow, and since there was a bit of time, Edith decided to make a brief effort with Cliffie’s room. Cliffie was out. If she tidied his room slightly, having respect still for the careless way Cliffie preferred to live, he never noticed, never thanked her for vacuuming. Margaret, the black cleaning woman who came one afternoon a week for four hours, didn’t or wouldn’t tackle Cliffie’s room, not that she and Margaret had ever had words about it. Edith could understand: there were so many clothes, shoes and magazines on the floor, it was twenty minutes’ work trying to put them away somewhere so one could start cleaning.

Edith experienced the usual mild shock on entering the room, seeing the four drawers in the chest half pulled out, sweater sleeves dangling, one drawer even down on the floor – because it looked like the classic picture of a room just after a burglary. Mechanically, Edith began folding sweaters, closing drawers, then she made the bed. Beside the bed, one damp sock. Did Cliffie have sweaty feet? Nerves? Was that why he washed his own socks so often? He’d squirm if she asked, Edith thought, so maybe it was better not to ask. She put away slightly muddy tennis shoes, gathered from among the shoes on the floor of his closet five or six more socks, obviously dirty, some even stiff. Ten or twelve comic books had slid onto the floor in front of his bookcase, ancient and creased. The top two shelves of the bookcase were reasonably neat, because he never touched them: a complete encyclopaedia for children, bound in red imitation leather, several children’s books like
Winnie-the-Pooh
and
Treasure Island
(a nostalgic faded blue binding that had, and Edith recalled that it had been hers as a child), next to this
A Manual for Sexual Pleasure
,
and several books by Ian Fleming. Cliffie had a desk of sorts, which was a rectangular wooden table with a big front drawer in it. He even had a typewriter, a Hermes Baby, on the table, its gray plastic cover dusty and now dented, as if something heavy had dropped on it. Edith remembered herself and Brett buying the typewriter one Christmas six or seven years ago, choosing it carefully, because they had hardly been able to afford it at the time. Had Cliffie broken the typewriter? Edith couldn’t remember when he had last used it.

The table was covered with scraps of paper mostly written on by Cliffie, names and telephone numbers, Edith saw at a glance, and she had no intention of trying to sort or stack those. I HATE caught her eye, because it was in block letters, and Edith deliberately didn’t read further. Had it said GEORGE, or one of the boys in town or even – herself? Cliffie blew hot and cold toward her and everyone else, Edith was well aware. She couldn’t say, in fact, that she had ever had the feeling that he loved or liked her in the filial sense. She occasionally felt that he resented her, even disliked her. Edith couldn’t make out Cliffie’s emotions, never had been able to. She left his room with some dirty socks in her hands, with the usual feeling of being glad to leave the room, glad to close the door and pretend the room wasn’t in the house.

A busty pin-up girl on a calendar in Cliffie’s room (dated November 1964) stayed in Edith’s mind. Was she thinking of Carol? Probably. Edith dropped the socks in the wicker basket in the kitchen, which held things for the launderette.

Edith went upstairs and had a quick bath, then dressed in a long wrap-around madras skirt of green and white floral pattern. It was not a cold day and it was sunny. She topped the skirt with a white sweater, a gold chain which bore her grandfather’s signet and a couple of gold trifles including her tiny Phi Beta Kappa key. She took a little more care than usual with her makeup. Now that it was too late, she thought.

She was just bringing a plate of canapés into the living room, when the first car came up the driveway. Edith went back to the kitchen for the ice bucket, a black plastic thing. She heard Brett’s voice, thought he had brought Carol, then Brett and Cliffie came in.

‘Picked up our son on the —’ Brett stopped, because a blue Volkswagen was turning into the drive.

‘Hi, Mom,’ Cliffie said.

‘Hello, Cliffie. And what’ve you been doing?’

‘Taking a walk.’ Cliffie looked at his mother sharply, knowingly, and unzipped his waist-length jacket.

Carol came in the front door, which was opened by Brett. She was blonde and smiling, with a bright lavender scarf at her neck, a blue suede jacket, tweed skirt, and the kind of shoes called sensible. ‘Hello, Mrs Howland,’ Carol said.

‘Hello, good evening,’ Edith replied.

‘How are you, darling?’ Brett said. ‘I’ll just go and wash – for a second.’ He disappeared.

Edith offered to take Carol’s jacket, but Carol kept it over her arm.

‘What a lovely house!’ Carol said. ‘And the garden. I’m living in a cramped place in Trenton.’

‘Won’t you sit down? What would you like to drink? I think we’ve got just about everything.’

Scotch, Carol wanted. Edith was thinking that Carol’s parents’ house was no doubt a lot grander than theirs. The girl did have a seriousness about her eyes and brows. She wasn’t silly, she had nice hands, and a general look of good family. Brett came back, smiling and pleasant, and soon they were all sitting around talking rubbish and platitudes with drinks in their hands. Edith thought, what if she should burst out with, ‘You’ve been to bed a few times with my husband, I take it, so why the hell are we all so pleasant and smirking now?’ Then Cliffie joined them, frankly smirking, which to Edith at that moment was a kind of relief.

‘Have a scotch, Cliffie,’ Edith said.

‘Don’t moind if I do,’ Cliffie said with a mock English accent. ‘Thenk you.’ He made his own.

Edith was waiting for Carol to say, ‘What a big boy you have,’ from the way she was appraising him, or did she have designs on him too? Edith stifled a genuine smile.

‘Carol’s moving soon to New York,’ Brett remarked. ‘To bigger things.’

‘Oh, bigger?’ Carol said. ‘With newspapers dying like flies there? I’ve got hopes for the
Post
.
For a job,’ Carol said to Edith. ‘But frankly it’s more because of a connection through my father than – my qualifications. And my father’s not even in the newspaper business, he’s in electronics, but somehow – too difficult to explain, he knows someone who knows someone.’

‘You don’t have to be
so
modest,’ Brett said.

‘Yuck-yuck,’ said Cliffie, half a laugh, half mocking the absurd antics of the middle-aged trying to be polite.

Carol recrossed her legs and dangled a walking shoe. She had lovely dark blonde hair, cut shortish, with natural waves as Edith’s had, though Carol’s had not a bit of gray.

Carol accepted a second scotch, which Brett would have liked to make, but Edith was up first. Edith made a generous one. Carol looked the type that could hold it. Carol said she was going to be an assistant editor in the foreign news department, a nobody hanging on at first, she assured Edith, but she preferred that department to a better-paying job she could have got in the film and drama critics department.