SKETCH OF LATE AFTERNOON
The woman and the
man are not old. Not yet. True, the skin on her face is so tight that
it mismatches the sagginess elsewhere, and when she smiles it sometimes seems
as if it might crack. He has visited the
plastic surgeon less frequently, and looks both younger and older than he is;
younger because he still stands with a military bearing, older because his eye,
though it falters no more than in his youth, now seems to show age rather than
weakness.
They had thought
to buy a house in Florida, with a pool and a guesthouse, but in the end she
could not bear to leave her North Shore home – the home where she had raised
three children and been through, so far, one and a half husbands. The home which also had a pool, and a garden that
was almost featured in House Beautiful until she decided that her
privacy would be far too invaded for comfort.
She looks at him
with scorn, and hatred, and love. He
looks back at her with emptiness.
Perhaps he will play golf tomorrow, he says, though he does not really
care for golf. He took it up to please
her, just as he bought her a business, and moved into her house, and gave up
going to all the common places where he felt at home. He fantasizes, briefly, of killing her with a
sharp stiletto across her tan neck, the blood crimson and beautiful and
alive. He loves the freshness of the
image, and can actually hear the sound of the tear and the damp smell of
death. She is still looking at him
though, so he blankens his mind.
She had seen the
quickness of his eye, the interested, intent look. Perhaps he wants to make love, she thinks,
only she thinks in pictures not words, and visualizes a purebred poodle humping
a purebred cocker spaniel. It has been
several weeks since the act has occurred, but she has been so busy, deciding
about the house, entertaining. Her
“routine,” as she calls it, takes many more hours a day than it used to as
well; the health club (not one where young people go, who are so smelly and
sweaty), the tanning booth, washing and conditioning and coloring her hair,
putting cream on her face and rinsing it off.
At times it occurs to her to wonder for whom she is doing this routine
if not to hump him, but she answers herself, “For myself, because I’m worth
it!”
Her fingers are
long and sinuous, her nails painted and perfect. She has him get manicures as well. Years ago he fussed about it and was
embarrassed, but the girl comes to the house and her English isn’t good enough
to gossip. His nails are short, of
course, as a man’s should be, and shiny – little blobs of pink like a newborn’s
ass with whitish half moons at the bottom.
She supposes the half-moons come from his childhood. But that was before her and not very
interesting.
They are sitting
in their perfect living room, idly sipping martinis. She does not like to drink, particularly, but
she likes the idea of martinis. She
knows that, had she been a man, she would have done well in the fifties.
The living room is
her room; she insisted they have the piano although they do not play, and she
chose the knickknacks from her travels to stores all around the world, and she
commissioned the paintings. The den is
his room, because she conceded to the home entertainment center with the big
screen TV where he watches football if they are not too busy.
It is a hot day
and they both think at the same time about installing air conditioning. Neither
one of them speaks their thought, however, for fear of renewing the argument
about whether to sell the house and move to Florida. In fact, he does not care, but he argues to
please her. If they stay, he would like
to get air conditioning, but, after all, it is her house.
She looks out the
picture window to the gardens. The phlox
and roses are bright patches of color that please her. She recounts to herself that there are 123
distinct plants in the back yard, and each one flowers perfectly. Their lawn care company put in a time release
watering mechanism for each plant. She
is not too proud to admit that she doesn’t understand how it works; her garden
is the best, and that’s what counts.
The doorbell rings,
and he jumps a little, sloshing some of his drink onto his hand. He is confused
for a moment about whether he should dry off or answer the door. Then he remembers that the maid will answer
the door. He thinks that the gin will
dry by itself in time, but she is looking at him so he goes and wipes his hand
on a plush red towel in the bathroom.
Then he washes his hands for good measure, and moves to dry them on the
towel, and wonders whether he should put it in the hamper, since now it has gin
on it. But he wouldn’t know what clean
towel to put up in its place, so he’ll leave things be.
His birthday is
coming soon, and she’ll throw him a party as she always does. He was born on the fourth of July. For that reason they went to see a movie of the
same name, but it was sad and political and not their type of thing at
all. Because of the date their friends
are always free. They go to great
lengths to give him extravagant presents: picnic baskets with complete meals
and champagne; the very latest golf balls that you can only buy in Japan;
beautiful hand-knit Irish sweaters. His
mind wanders to when he was very young and his favorite uncle gave him enough
cash to go to the movies every Saturday for a year. He’ll never forget the vibrant red of Flash
Gordon’s costume – the blood lust that even the good guys could feel back
then. It is not the same as traveling to
Japan or Ireland to buy him something, he thinks, but after all his uncle was
poor. He wonders if he will ever like
anything so well again.
He learned to
dance at the movies. He needed a job and
everyone knew that they would hire you to dance with the old ladies in the
Catskills if you had any talent. So he
went to Fred Astaire’s latest twelve nights in a row, and practiced at home while
the others slept.
She fell in love
with him by dancing with him, feeling the firmness of his hand on her waist,
the command with which he spun and dipped her, while his aftershave invaded her
body. His first wife had fallen in love
with him for the same reason, and other women here and there as well. She does not know or care about them. She no longer likes to dance with him because
he is clearly so much better at it than her that she feels foolish. At parties she steps aside and lets him dance
with the ladies among their friends, while she dangler her leg out of a slit
skirt, and smokes a cigarette (although she does not like to smoke and
generally does not inhale) through a long filter and sips her martini and
smiles like Mona Lisa, whom she studied in art class most of a lifetime ago and
has seen in person many times.
He is still in the
bathroom, looking at the towel. She will
be waiting for him, annoyed. He rejoins
her and smiles a little foolishly as he picks up his drink again, careful this
time not to spill anything.
It was no one at
the door, just some college kid wanting money to save the whales. She hates that crap, and told the maid to
send him away. She is glad he was not
here, because he would have given the kid money. She knows that he gives cash to beggars in
the street when he thinks she is not looking.
She used to tell him not to, but once aware that she too had seen their
condition, he felt he had license to get worried and teary-eyed and
sentimental. Although he has told her
strange stories about the Great Depression, his father rebuilt the family
fortune. They have nothing in common
with the beggars. It reflects badly on
her when he demeans himself so.
At their age it
makes little difference but she is younger than him by several years While he remembers FDR as the man who saved
his family from starvation, she remembers him as the man who made the world
safe for democracy. She doesn’t understand
why he is not more nostalgic for those times, since, after all, it was the war
that made his father rich.
Evening has softly
stolen the afternoon. The colors on the
flowers in the garden have become deeper, richer. She is satisfied. He, too, looks out the window and sees the
blood-red sun lowering itself into the horizon, and feels awe.
