Moving On (42 page)

“But what’ll we do with her presents?” Jeanette said. “She didn’t get a single present from us. We expected her here.”

“We could open them and divide them,” Patsy suggested. “In my present state none of them will fit me.”

“I guess you don’t think there’s anything wrong with smoking marijuana,” Garland said. He and Patsy tended to get more and more at each other’s throats as arguments progressed. Their fights invariably reduced Jeanette to a wash of tears.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it and what isn’t,” Patsy said. “And neither do you.”

“I know it’s against the law.”

“I believe it’s against the
Reader’s Digest
too.”

It seldom took Garland more than five minutes to drive Patsy to extremes. Soon she was arguing passionately for Communism, free love, drugs, the banning of alcohol, and compulsory racial intermarriage. Finally Jim intervened and turned the conversation back to the Packers and the Cowboys, and all were grateful to him. Jim was adept at calming them down. Patsy and Jeanette went upstairs to look at snapshots, that being the only activity that soothed Jeanette when she reached certain depths of despair.

In the early fifties Garland had decided that travel was broadening, so the family, Miri only a tot at the time, had broadened themselves to the extent of five or six trips a year. There were boxes of color snapshots from every trip. They had gone to all the old places—Florida, California, Hawaii, Canada—and to all the new places as soon as they became known. Patsy and Jeanette sat on the floor of Patsy’s bedroom, the boxes of pictures between them, and there they were, hundreds of color pictures of her and Jeanette and Miri the tot, with a background of the Grand Canyon or Lake Louise or the Royal Hawaiian, or a deep-sea fishing boat, sans deep-sea fish, the girls’ grins always toothy and sun-blinded.

“I was all knees and teeth in those days,” Patsy said. The only funny picture was one taken in Las Vegas. The family was grouped around a roulette wheel, with a thin croupier behind them looking obligingly evil.

“She was such a darling then,” Jeanette said, holding up a picture of Miri, a tiny curly-haired bump on the back of a mule, about to descend to the bed of the Colorado.

“She’s a darling now,” Patsy said, but she could not stop her mother from worrying. Worrying had become her function. The one unworried moment she had had in years was when Jim, all handsome and proper, his family wealth three generations old, had landed Patsy, or been landed by her, whichever it had been. Jeanette assumed that with a little one coming nothing could be righter than Patsy and Jim, and when they left to go back to Houston it had taken Jim thirty minutes to load the baby stuff in the Ford. Garland followed him halfway down the driveway, pointing out the financial advantages of buying a house immediately. Real estate was always rising.

“I must call Miri tonight,” Patsy said, peeking once again at the gray day and the line of traffic. “I sympathize with her not wanting any more Dallas Christmases, but I suppose there’s a chance she might be in some kind of trouble.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you loose in California at that age,” Jim said. His neck was stiff from the strain of watching the traffic so closely. In fifty miles he had managed to pass one truck and three cars.

“That’s a little condescending of you,” she said. “I could have taken care of myself.” But she didn’t believe it, really, and rubbed his stomach some more. “I like you better in cars,” she said. “Why is that? You’re so tight at home. That’s my basic impression of you, these days. You’re very tight.”

“It’s just graduate school,” he said. “That’s not serious. I’ll relax sooner or later. I’m not tighter than you are, anyway. You’re very withdrawn, you know. You don’t even want to talk about the baby, any more. We haven’t even decided on a name.”

It was true. At first she had had a great need to chat about the baby, to plan and consider and theorize, but as the months passed, that need passed with them, and as the event drew closer she ceased to want to talk about it at all. As soon as it became publicly evident, it became for Patsy very private. She thought about it often, calmly and at length, but she felt no urge to talk to anyone and often found herself even resenting her doctor’s questions. Her life with Jim went badly or went well but it didn’t seem to affect her feelings about the child inside her.

“There’s time to decide on a name,” Patsy said to close the subject. She sat close to him the rest of the way to Houston, but they scarcely spoke again. Jim was thinking of the finals he would have to prepare for, Patsy of her child and of her sister. Whatever they had been about to conclude about themselves and their parents got lost on the road, somewhere near Centerville, Texas.

That night, when she did call Miri, Patsy herself grew somewhat alarmed. In the first place, a boy answered the phone, and though she asked clearly for her sister another boy succeeded the first; she asked him for her sister and yet another boy came to the phone. They all sounded friendly, but rather vague and puzzled, and they all kept assuring her that Miri was right there. By the time Miri’s voice finally came over the wire, Patsy was angry. She had spent five long-distance minutes and it was the sort of expenditure that brought out the Scotch in her.

“Who were those boobs?” she asked. She and Miri were always extremely blunt with each other. Their affection was built on bluntness.

“Boobs?” Miri asked. “Do you mean breasts, or what?” She did not sound blunt at all. She sounded fully as vague as the young men.

“Those boys,” Patsy said crisply. “What’s wrong with you? Come on, be incisive. I’ve just paid for five minutes of heavy masculine breathing.”

“Oh, those were just some guys.”

“Momma thinks you’re leading a dishonorable life,” Patsy said. “She thinks you’re pregnant and a dope addict and is thinking of coming out to check. In their world it’s a pretty radical thing, not coming home for Christmas.”

“I didn’t want to,” Miri said. “It’s too much more fun. Out here is too much more fun, I mean.”

She sounded unlike herself, quite foggy, as if she might simply wander away from the phone at any moment.

“What’s wrong with you?” Patsy asked. “I hate to probe like this. I don’t particularly care if you’re living dishonorably. I’ll even tell Momma you aren’t, if you’re okay and all. But what’s up? You hardly sound like you’re there.”

“I’m just high,” Miri said. “It’s okay. I was gonna call you. We’re having a party right now.”

“It must be a slumber party,” Patsy said. “I can’t hear it. I thought California was noisy. I don’t know if I like you being high if it’s going to cut you off that way. On what are you high?”

“Just pot,” Miri said. There was a silence. She was clearly having to strain to talk.

“Exactly as Momma feared. You better watch it now. I don’t know which would be worse, the cops finding you like that or Momma finding you like that.”

Miri didn’t respond.

“Miri?” Patsy asked.

“Hey, you know I think somebody fell down the stairs,” Miri said. “We have very bad stairs in this house.”

“If it was one of those boys, don’t worry about it damaging his brain,” Patsy said. “You’re too high to talk to. When do you expect to be down to earth again, like low enough to talk to your sister?”

“Oh, any time,” Miri said. “I can talk any time.”

Again Patsy got the feeling that Miri was not on the phone at all but was watching something that was happening in the room.

“What’s happening!” she insisted. “I can’t believe it’s you. Are you in the midst of an orgy or something?” Miri normally talked her ear off. She was, if anything, more verbal than Patsy.

“Oh, no,” Miri said. “Don’t tell Momma that. We never have orgies any more, anyway. Nobody’s much interested now.”

“What?”

“The guys had just rather get high, mostly. Hey, you’re having a baby soon, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Are you, by any chance?”

“Me? I’m not having a baby. I’m not even going with anyone special. I don’t think my grades are going to be too good this year.”

“I don’t wonder. Between marijuana and orgies I don’t know when you’d study. Have you really been in an orgy, Miri?”

“I guess so,” Miri said. “At least there’s been a lot of us around doing things a few times. But everybody’s done that.”

Patsy was silent, suddenly very shocked. It occurred to her for the first time that Miri might have become a person she didn’t know.

“Hey, don’t let Momma come,” Miri said. “Why don’t you come?”

“I’m having the baby, remember? Now you’ve depressed me. Why don’t you call me sometime when you’re low, okay? And watch out for the cops.”

She hung up, put on her nightgown and robe, and sat on the couch weeping. Jim had gone to the library to get some books and when he came in her face was red from crying and the front of her gown was damp above her breasts.

“What now?” he asked wearily. He wanted to take a hot bath and read.

“Momma’s worst fears are realized,” Patsy said in a very broken voice. “Miri’s smoking pot and having orgies. I never heard her sound so disconnected. It upset me. I guess I miss her.”

Jim looked at the title page of a book on Swift and then looked at Patsy again. “Why should you cry?” he said. “She’s always been pretty wild. It doesn’t surprise me at all. Your father was a fool to let her go to California. Given her temperament, she was bound to do exactly that.”

“Don’t be so smug about her,” Patsy said sadly. “She’s my little sister. It isn’t her being wild that made me cry. She just sounded so dumb tonight, and she’s always been so bright. She’s really brighter than me, and she sounded like a moron. The boys that answered the phone were as stupid as cows and I bet they’re the ones she has orgies with. I don’t mind any number of boys if they’re bright boys, but it makes me sick to think of her having orgies with morons. If that’s what pot leads to I’m against pot.”

“She’s very undisciplined,” Jim said. It was unfortunate, but he could not help sounding stiff and moralistic when he spoke of Miri. Her behavior had always annoyed him, not because he cared so much about Miri but because he considered that Miri embodied in pure form all the bad qualities he disliked and feared in Patsy. Miri had had a marriage, a strange love affair with a bisexual gynecologist, and a nervous breakdown, all in eighteen years. Whenever Jim thought about it he grew uneasy about Patsy, for whatever had broken out in Miri might break out in Patsy any time, and he doubted his ability to control it.

“I think she needs a good psychiatrist,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt if she were put in a good strict girls’ school, either.”

“Oh, go away and read scholarship,” Patsy said. “Don’t carp at my poor confused sister.”

“Poor? She’s had everything money can buy and she gets more pathetic and more neurotic by the year.”

Patsy stood up in a fury and grabbed an ashtray. His cool assured tone at such times all but maddened her, and she just managed to stop herself from flinging the ashtray at him. “My sister is not pathetic!” she yelled and stood quivering. “Maybe she’s sick but she’s not pathetic! Don’t you say that again. You’re pathetic—you wish I would just vanish and not exist, so you could get on with your work. What are you going to do when I have the baby? You’ll be twice as bad. You’ll have to find some way to hide from both of us.”

Jim felt like hitting her, but he turned quickly and went to the bathroom; he had visions of some horrible miscarriage occurring if he hit her, or if she didn’t calm down. When he came back in she was in bed, her face turned away from him. It took him twenty minutes of coaxing to get her to turn and look at him. Her back and neck stiffened when he tried to rub them and she covered her eyes with her hair. Though it had only lasted an instant, it had gone deeper in some way than any fight they had had. Patsy wouldn’t cry—she just kept her face hidden from him.

“Okay,” she said finally, turning toward him. Her face held no feeling at all. “I’m sorry. Miri and I both are just what you said, pathetic and neurotic. You’re just lucky I’m the scaredy cat of the two. If I wasn’t I’d probably be smoking pot and having orgies. Be thankful you got the inhibited one.”

“Don’t look so flat,” he said. “I’m sorry I said it. I know I shouldn’t get so priggish about Miri. She’s just young and confused, like you say.”

“So am I. I’m everything she is, only less honest.”

“You’re not. Remember how good we felt today when we were driving.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Patsy said truthfully. “I don’t know what I’m doing, bringing somebody into this world. I’ll just be responsible for their unhappiness.”

Her eyes, usually so quick and clear, were spiritless and hopeless. Jim couldn’t stand it. “Don’t look that way,” he said. “It was just an argument. I was tired and I apologize. Put your hand on my stomach again, like you did today.”

Patsy looked past his head. “Don’t request things like that,” she said, sitting up. “Please remember not to. I only do things like that when I feel like it.”

She got out of bed and went to the kitchen. One of her remedies for low spells was to pour herself a glass of milk and then crumble five or six crackers in it and eat the soppy crackers with an ice-cream spoon. Then she would drink the milk. She brought her glass into the living room and sat on the couch eating the soft soaked crackers and looking at Jim thoughtfully. He was lying on the bed reading the acknowledgments page of the book on Swift. He looked up at Patsy and was relieved to see that she seemed to have reclaimed a little of her spirits.

“You’re a cool one,” she said. “Reading when I’m in despair.”

“You aren’t in despair any more. I wasn’t reading when you were. I guess I might as well have been, for all the good I did you.”

“Why didn’t you clobber me?” she asked. “I deserved it. I probably deserve it frequently.”

Jim was at a loss. “You’re too pregnant,” he said.

Patsy sniffed. “That’s a weak excuse. You’ll never clobber me. Nothing tastes quite like milk that’s had crackers soaked in it.”

“It occurred to me to clobber you,” Jim said. “Do you suppose it would have helped matters if I had?”