Making Love (14 page)

“You'll pay the fine, won't you?”
 

“Of course.” It was the Rolling Stones and he lowered the volume. “In cash.”
 

“That's unworthy of you. Don't you want to hear the truth?”
 

He had a nervous twitch. She'd never noticed it before. In the freeway light his skin had a green hue and a pattern of wrinkles at the eye profile. Flourishing in sunlight, his face was as bleak and tired as the moon's in darkness.
 

“I've been hustled by experts at La Gorse, so don't think....” He had a sudden power failure and lit a cigarette. She watched him puff away, embarrassed by her lack of knowledge about his personal habits.
 

“I didn't know you smoked.”
 

“Someone left them,” he replied, his mouth tightening.
 

“But you don't inhale.”
 

“Jane, what the hell's the difference? Do I have to explain ... ?”
 

“I'm sorry.” She was contrite. “But I don't know anything about you.”
 

He pulled off the freeway and into a Howard Johnson's Motel parking lot.
 

“It's your tomorrow, Howard Johnson,” she said.
 

“What are you talking about?” He cut the engine.
 

“Can you leave the music on,” she asked.
 

A moment of conflict for him while he played with the key.
 

“I don't know if I'll be able to start the car. We're in the middle of nowhere.”
 

“God, you must've laid a lot of women in Mustangs.” She waited for a reaction but he turned away. “The guys are always worried about the goddamn battery. I'm something of an expert on the subject. I've spent a lot of time in the passenger seat.”
 

He lashed out and hit her on the bridge of the nose.
 

“Dear God, thank you for answering my prayer. I thought you'd never do it.”
 

“You provoked me.” He wrapped her head in the crook of his arm, a lover with no love. He whispered silly childish conciliatory words and she loved him for the exquisite fraud he was. His weakness had brought him to the point of success, and she wanted to encourage him. Speechless and shocked he failed her, turned placatory, and she despised him for what he was, the world's most beautiful bum. He switched on the radio, winked at her the way men did across rooms in those forties movies, and so that he was forced to push her hand way. Having conceded, there was no reason to go on.
 

“Tell me about my mother. Why you've stuck it out.”
 

“Oh, Jane, why do you want to go on with this?” he pleaded. “What the hell do you want?”
 

“Turn the radio off. I don't want to be stuck here with you.”
 

He did as he was asked. The car windows fogged, he found a rag and wiped the windshield, then opened the window. It was sour California smog drifting invisibly past the permanent arrangement of winter stars. He closed his collar button and his small round eyes, lighter than her mother's, had that furtive look of a sadness that could never be consummated because they couldn't understand. The small old boy begging forgiveness, admitting guilt, immune to complications.
 

“Why do I like you so much?” she asked. “You just shoved it into the wrong place at the wrong time. So why should this bring us together at Howard Johnson's?” He laughed without intending to. “Why do we feel?”
 

He lit the filter end of a cigarette, pulled a face, then stuck a piece of gum into his mouth. She touched his smooth face, one of those lucky men without nubs on his beard. She kissed him on the chin.
 

“You're a little teaser, aren't you?”
 

“My problem is I never tease.”
 

Fidgety, he offered her coffee and an English Muffin in the coffee shop. Men from trucks came and went. In front of them a girl was reluctantly persuaded into the back seat of a Buick Electra. They watched the girl hit the light in the back seat, but then her face vanished, covered by her dress. Her head sloped down out of sight and the man's hand switched off the light. Her father blinked.
 

“It's so wild. I had lunch with Nancy today. Seeing both of you in the same day.”
 

“Do you want to go back?”
 

She looked at her watch. The three-hour time difference began to make her drowsy. She switched on the air conditioning and pushed her face close to a vent.
 

“I vomited at lunch with her.”
 

“Stealing her thunder. I've been drummed out of more restaurants in New York than I can remember.”
 

“I'm her daughter.”
 

He looked at her for telltale signs of identification.
 

“She's much weaker. You're not like either of us.”
 

“Oh, I don't know about that. She's still floating along.”
 

He'd chewed the sweetness out of his gum and dumped it into the ashtray. The toes of the woman in the Buick crept across the back window of the car. They moved back and forth like an old rhumba step that had become a reflex.
 

“I wonder how she got herself in that position,” Jane said. “That car's got an enormous front seat. Maybe they borrowed it for this performance. Oh, let's see, he stole it. Professional thief. Christ, I hope he did.”
 

Jim started his engine and inadvertently switched on the headlights, and Jane saw the woman's toes bending to pick up something that wasn't there.
 

“She's a terrible lay,” Jane said.
 

“How do you know?” Jim asked, his curiosity genuinely aroused.
 

“The polish on her toenails. Real problems. She needs floor-to-ceiling mirrors to get there. She wants to see the expression on her face.”
 

“Where've I been all my life?”
 

“Making seventy-nines at Firestone.”
 

His room, even for a motel, even for the Buccaneer, was obviously the best they had to offer. She wondered how long he'd had to put up with curtains that didn't close, bellhops with plastered hair, club sandwiches woven with slimy cold bacon, bedside lamps designed for people suffering from cataracts, furniture built for endurance, everything virtually unbreakable, and the weighted bases cemented to the table which could defy a drunken Shriner. Why had he put up with this? Senseless. He explained that it was the best place on this leg of the tour, but that explained nothing, except his capacity to put up with the intolerable conditions only a lost, exhausted motorist would tolerate. His fortune, and great name, meant nothing. On tour he was one of the boys. She tried to understand, then dozed on his vertically striped bedspread which matched the curtains. He wanted to tuck her under the covers, but was afraid that she'd awake, accuse him of exactly what was crossing his mind and slap his face. Had she ever been an infant, a small girl he'd fondled, held in his arms without danger or concupisence? He pulled off her fat-heeled shoes and averted his eyes when they rested that uncomfortable second too long on her breasts. Her body contracted with exhaustion, forming a bent scissors; he sighed, peeled off his socks and peered at the crumpled panty hose drifting silently down her legs. Asleep he was her champion, but when she was awake, her eyes looking into his, his only instinct was to run.
 

She stirred, rubbed her eyes and sat upright, disoriented.
 

“Sorry. The time jump always knocks me out.”
 

“You don't look very well.”
 

“I'm going back tomorrow.” She straightened her dress and swung her legs over the side. “So I guess this is it for a while.”
 

“I thought you might come around with me.” He sounded disappointed and relieved; an opportunity to showboat and freeze, both of which she'd bring out, undoubtedly leading to a disastrous round. “Back to school?”
 

“I don't think so.”
 

He wanted to argue, but he was a man of lost inclinations and well-powdered feet, she observed, an athlete who took many precautions to prepare himself for a victory that had never come. The silly poignancy of playing to lose was a subtlety that evaded her.
 

“You're old enough to make up your own mind.”
 

“While I'm at it, I may as well relay a message.”
 

“Really? Who from?”
 

“Mother wants you back....”
 

“That's a crazy way to put it. I've never left.”
 

“I think she's put a slightly different interpretation on it. Why don't you get a divorce? I asked her the same question.”
 

He was genuinely astounded by the suggestion, and small red spots emerged from under the deep tan that coated his face permanently. She hadn't intended to disconcert him.
 

“This has really turned into a delightful little visit,”
 

“I'm only asking out of simple human interest.”
 

“Since you put it that way, I'll answer you in the same spirit. Our marriage was arranged. It was one of those awful dynastic matches that looks great on paper and in gossip columns, but in practice never works. Yet in spite of it, I loved her, still do, but it was never any good you know where. Now why didn't I divorce her or she me ... ? You're entitled to know. She'd have been committed to an institution and I couldn't let that happen to her. I had to move around, Jane. I've been an indifferent husband and an absent father. I admit it. Apologizing for what's done is a form of stupidity that even I'm incapable of. It's all such a godawful mess that you've inherited along with your money.”
 

He faltered but had the courage to remain unemotional and contrite at the same time. She wanted to hold back, but could not control her instincts and sat on his lap, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and felt for the first time in years that he was the father of a small girl.
 

“I'm sorry if I've hurt you.”
 

“I'm not hurt,” he replied. “Look, let's plan to spend Thanksgiving together. Either at home or in Florida. You decide where.”
 

She put on her shoes and sat down opposite him, patted her hair down.
 

“I didn't come all this way to ask why your marriage wasn't working. I accepted that a long time ago.” She waited in vain for him to question her, but he refused to be lured. “Am I a horror if I tell you the truth?”
 

“I don't seem to have any choice, do I?”
 

She saw him grasp both arms of the chair, a passenger on a bumpy flight unable to accept the hostesses' assurances. He forced himself to look at her. His eyes remained steady, but when she said, “I'm pregnant,” he winced. His head moved back on the pillow of the chair.
 

“Why did you have to tell me?” he protested. “I just don't understand.”
 

“I went to bed with this man and ... well, that's how it happened.”
 

“Why do you feel this need to confess?”
 

“I guess I assumed that children did that sort of thing with parents. I assumed wrong.”
 

“You just wanted to hurt me.”
 

“No, not really. If I had cancer or pneumonia, wouldn't you want to know about it?”
 

He dropped his chin on his chest and sat immobile, hardly breathing, she thought. What an accomplishment, she'd made him aware of her existence.
 

“What about the man?” he asked. “Aren't you going to marry him?”
 

“No, I don't like him.”
 

“That doesn't make any sense.”
 

“Why? Haven't you gone to bed with someone and the minute it's over, you wish you were a million miles away? I mean you'd never dream of spending your life with that person, would you?”
 

“I'm a man.”
 

“That's very helpful.”
 

“Well, I suppose you'll have to get it fixed. Was it a white man?” he inquired nervously.
 

“In this instance. Does that make you feel any better?”
 

“You know, Jane, if you weren't in your condition, I'd beat you.”
 

“I wish you'd made that offer a few years ago.”
 

He hung his head on her shoulder, gave her a slippery kiss and droned futile apologies which made her helplessly regretful. He was such a boy, in over his depth, so frightened of life touching him that she found herself consoling him. It was too big a job for her, making a man of him, and even if she undertook to try, succeeded, would he be any happier?
 

“I'm going back east in the morning,” she said.
 

“I'll come with you.”
 

“I'd rather you didn't. My roommate will call you.”
 

“Jane, I want to help.”
 

She snuggled against his hard lithe body, the body of a beautiful, mindless stud who'd fallen in love too late.
 

 

* * * *

 

Abortions can be troublesome but Jane's was a straightforward affair. She found herself ineligible for tragedy at the moment but still capable of bowel movement, and had, as such events go, an easy time. A friend of a friend of Conlon's similarly afflicted had recommended Dr. Bruce Charney who had offices on East Fifty-sixth Street a clinic in a brownstone on the same street, and judging from the photos and trophies in his office was a spectacular skeet shooter. He was neither butcher nor crank and his office was antiseptically clean and staffed with three pleasant nurses who hadn't worked in women's prisons. Dr. Charney offered no wisecracks or friendly advice; and there was no horseplay during the examination.