Rich Friends (7 page)

“Dan—”

“—and it hit me you despise being Jewish enough to kill everything else you are.”

She didn't say anything.

“And you were wishing you could kill me off, too.”

She bowed her head.

“Weren't you?”

She bent for her purse and gloves.

“Weren't you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

And at the admission, with no warning, tears came. She turned, resting her head on the chair back. Her crying made no sound. Rain alone was audible. Beverly was not a girl who could excuse herself. She couldn't simply think, It didn't work out between us, that's all. There was no way she could convince herself that her parents were at fault. She thought herself the worst monster. She tried to stop her tears by thinking of the rain, it had rained so much of the time they'd been together. And eventually the crying stopped.

Dan gave her a minute or two's grace. “Beverly? Look at me.”

God, no. She must be a holy wreck. She couldn't know it, but grief pared her features to delicate bones: beautiful amber eyes dominated the face. Grief, that was Beverly's color.

“Buzz?”

This time she looked.

He grimaced unhappily, stubbing out his cigar. “Buy you a drink,” he said, crossing the room. He pulled her to her feet.

“Who else do you know who can have silent hysterics?”

“Look, I … Buzz.”

The kiss started out light, but turned all tongues and teeth and a struggle to get every part of their bodies closer. He was tugging at her side zipper. She took over. No words. Unlaced shoes, hosiery like brown snakes on a white garter belt, shorts, slip, lace bra, panties, socks, everything falling to the carpet, and in the middle, Beverly and Dan. His hands moved up and down her hips. He led her to the turned-down bed.

Urgency left them. It was as if hotel sheets were hot water, they moved so languorously. He traced the almost invisible scar under her lower lip and she kissed his finger. He slid a hand between them, circling her navel. Waiting. And she almost stopped breathing. Waiting. Now she blessed the rain, it was a noisy curtain shutting them off from time and the world. She never had any physical shame with Dan, and she guided his hand down, reaching for him, her hand curving around the pulsing hardness, the smooth skin like a glove, veins in back, rubbery ridge. She had avoided looking at
it
and was glad they were under covers so she couldn't see
it
. Why? She didn't know why. She loved every part of him, the hair in his armpits, which wasn't beige like the rest of his body hair but a sort of reddish-brown, the flat mole the color of a cough drop on his left shoulder, she loved the smell of him, cigar, underarm sweat, and all, she loved the way his body stuck lightly to her body, his moist, warm breath penetrating her ear, his heart beating against her squashed breasts. She loved him more than she ever had.

“Buzz,” he said against her hair, “it's me, not you.”

“No.”

“I just couldn't take it. You're the gentlest girl, someplace off by yourself, so gentle. Don't let them ruin everything for you.”

She put both arms around him, feeling the crisp hairs on incurve of spine. He moved onto her. His shoulders and chest were strange like this, naked. He smiled dreamily down.

“S'a nice room,” she murmured.

“Shouldn't it be, at these prices?”

“In a good hotel,” she whispered.

“So they tell me.”

“No fleas biting.”

“Not one.”

“You're not Mr. Smith.”

“Nope.”

“I'm not Mrs. Smith.”

“You aren't registered, even.”

They whispered inanities, touching one another's lips, their breath conveying the depth of their feeling, pain and regret and flowing need. Far away a siren howled, then there was just the rain, softer now.

“Any other girl,” he said, “would be trying to patch things up. Thank you, Buzz.”

“You're shaking.”

“You, too.”

“Do people always?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I want,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“You do?”

“More than anything in my life.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. I have to get a—” All at once he forced himself off her, saying, “Oh God. Am I really this big a bastard?”

“Please?” She shifted in the bed. “Dan, can I, this?”

“Yes, ahh, like that. Buzz …”

And so, a victim to Dan's loyalty to the ancient code, you don't lay a Jewish virgin unless you intend marriage, Beverly was a virgin, semidemihemiquaver, but a virgin nonetheless when she married Philip Schorer.

Chapter Three

1

It didn't rain again until a Tuesday late in February.

Em, aware of the patter on roof shingles, snuggled deeper into her blankets. Her small bedside Sentinal was tuned to KFI, an organ rose majestically and her thin little face grew eager: “Stella Dallas” was one of her favorites. Her anticipation shamed her. Still, what else could she do? After Christmas she'd gotten so huge she could barely totter around the apartment. Dr. Porter had ordered her to bed.

The first six months of her pregnancy, Em had felt contemptible, like a child who's done something nasty in her pants: to justify the fast-growing evidence of her misdeed, she had prepared feverishly for her new role, devouring books by Spock, Gesell and Ilg, any expert in the field of child development. Now, though, her body unequivocally invaded and alien, she had sunk into mindless acceptance.

“Ahh, Stella, how can I tell you.”

Em retrieved lipstick and brush from her drawer, carefully painting her dry mouth. She wore a pink bedjacket crocheted by her mother, and her limp blonde hair was neatly curled at the ends. Here, at least, she hadn't let herself go. Later she would turn on the oven. In it was a lamb stew that Caroline had dropped off on her way to class—every day either she or Mrs. Wynan would pop in with a casserole so at least Em rested easy knowing Sheridan always ate a hot dinner.

Em's head tilted. The staircase was shuddering under a man's shoes. Sheridan had a heavy step. But it was way too early for him. A key scraped in the front door.

“Sheridan?” Em called, hastily turning the black knob. Stella faded midsigh. “Sheridan?”

He came into the pocket-size bedroom.

“You're soaked through,” she said.

“Rain'll do that.”

“You're so early.”

His lips grew taut. She had learned to dread this angry white at the corners of his mouth. But why should he be angry? All she'd done was mention his being home.

He stripped off his loafers, dark with rain, and his sopping argyles, knitted from dangling spindles by Mrs. Wynan. At last Em ventured, “It's Tuesday. You have a lab until five.”

“School's out.”

“Because of the rain?”

“You take every word literally.”

Pushing up in bed, wincing, she peered through her glasses at him. “Sh-Sheridan, I don't understand.”

“I had an appointment with Mr. Cambro at twelve, so I came right on home.” Sheridan used their wedding-present Ford to deliver emergency night prescriptions for Mr. Cambro.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong. Tom Marshall's quitting. We were talking about me taking Tom's job.”

“But Tom works full-time.”

“A six-day week,” Sheridan agreed.

“You can't handle that, not with your schedule.”

“You might as well know the worst.” With a sardonic grin, he deposited water-heavy socks in the clothes hamper. “I've dropped out.”

“You what?”

“Cashed in my chips.”

“But we never even discussed it!”

“Why should we? My mind's made up.”

His full meaning sank in. “You won't have a degree,” Em cried. “You won't be a pharmacist. Ohhh, Sheridan.”

“It's no three-alarm fire,” he snapped, heading for the kitchen, returning with a slice of Weber's white smeared with Skippy.

“Fall, I'll get another teaching position,” she said. At notification of her pregnancy, the Los Angeles Unified School District, naturally, had canceled her contract.

“Cambro's starting me Monday.”

“I'll send for the papers.”

“Don't you listen?”

“Yes, but—”

“It's settled, so lay off will you, Em?”

She wouldn't. Couldn't. “I'll apply now.”

“And what'll you do with the twins? Drown 'em?”

“Dr. Porter could make out only one heartbeat.”

“He's looked at your belly, though.”

Through Max Factor pancake, patches of red appeared. She pulled blankets higher, over that horrendous mound with the navel popping like a cherry atop a sundae.

Sheridan had been pacing barefoot. He stopped, wagging bread over her. “Listen, Em, I know it gripes you, and I understand it. You want the big future. But you picked the wrong guy. I'm too old for this homework crap. I'm not about to brown-nose some 4F prof into an
A.
”

“But you'll have wasted two and a half years, and—”

“And I've got me a wife and kids to support. I need money. Cambro's giving me one fifty-five to start. Don't look like that, Em. Your hubby'll be out there prescribing St. Joseph's and Midol with the best of 'em.” His cheerful words didn't track with his expression.

Poor Sheridan, Em thought with a quick rush of sympathy. My poor sweetie. She wanted to cuddle his face against her swollen breasts. She wanted to express her very real sympathy and her equally genuine gratitude for his never once having thrown the pregnancy up to her. But watching his strong teeth clamp on white bread and peanut butter, she found herself wondering, Is he taking the course of least resistance?

The question hurt, turned her traitor, yet doubts already were planted within Em. Sheridan, she knew, tested 130, Binet, yet at finals, lower IQs walked off with the grades. For the longest time she had assumed Sheridan's tight, ridiculing smile turned professors against him. Then she'd realized he did as poorly on anonymously corrected blue books. The past month, in her serious, methodical way, Em had worked out the reason for this low performance level. Sheridan was afraid. His classes filled him with dread, not knowledge. She had taken so long reaching this conclusion because Sheridan was no physical coward—in the bottom drawer of their chest he had stored medals dangling from faded ribbons, medals he'd earned across the Pacific. Em, always endeavoring to see both sides, concluded her husband had reason to fear education. She'd never met his parents—they hadn't been able to afford the trip from Wichita for the wedding. From Sheridan's remarks, however, she knew they were poor, mean-poor, obsequious to, yet belittling of those above them. His three older brothers, returning from active duty, had gone back to their assembly jobs at Kelvinator. Sheridan alone had taken up the gauntlet of the GI Bill. And at USC, a private school where well-off students accepted college as their due. Last semester Sheridan had gone down two grade points (all those chem labs!), which meant this semester he had to earn better than
C
s.

Chewing, he sat on the end of her twin bed. He's delighted to drop out, Em thought. It's a relief. And in the Reed family, clerking in a drugstore is a step up. Over my dead body, she thought.

“You haven't told anyone?” she asked anxiously. “In Admissions, I mean?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. I'll talk to my parents.”

“About what?”

“My Van Vliet stock.”

He gave her a dark look.

“Our st-stock. It's preferred, so we can't s-sell, but—”

“What're you getting at?”

“It can be c-collateral. You won't let me work—you're right. A b-baby's first years are formative. But I'm sure we can borrow enough.”

“For what?”

“You must finish.”

“Listen to me, Em, and listen good. We're getting this straight for once and all. To cut down utilities, us boys bathed once a week in the same water. I didn't take piano lessons, I don't have a cashmere sweater to my name. Face it, I'm ordinary. And there's one thing us ordinary joes do. Support our families. Next Monday I'm starting.”

“Sheridan, Upper Division is hard for everybody. After a while it gets easier. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“Afraid?”

And swallowing the last of his peanut butter sandwich, he raised his right hand. Slowly. Deliberately. A sharp sound rang inside her skull. The slap wasn't hard. But it jarred into her brain an image: Sheridan's black-and-white snapshot of his father, a fat, brutal-shouldered man who, or so she'd been told, wore a hernia truss from moving overstuffed Kansas upholstery and who had beaten his sons (his wife, too, Sheridan hinted) with his belt buckle, a man who hadn't gone beyond sixth grade. In that brief moment Em realized how much she despised the poor. Tears glittering behind her glasses, she stared at Sheridan.

“Just letting you know,” he muttered, “who wears the pants in the family. We won't have any more, Em. And that's that.”

Her tears, flowing now, bore no relationship to the slight sting on her cheek. She wept because she was realizing the violence (and unfairness) of her prejudice against the background of the man who had rescued her, miraculously, from spinsterhood, the man whom recently, in the eyes of God, she'd vowed to cherish and obey. Unlike Caroline, Em cared little for luxuries. It wasn't important to her that Sheridan make a lot of money. Rather, it was the idea that without a college degree, without a profession, he would be only a cut, a very small cut, above his father's class. She wept because up until now she hadn't realized how ruthless her snobbish proclivities were. It must be the Van Vliet in me, she thought. And argued no more.

Sheridan moved on the bed, stroking thin, pale hair, breathing peanut butter on her, calling her his little puffy.