“What she have to say?”
“Helen? Well, you heard her.”
“Your mother! What did she want?”
“She told you: She brought pictures of me.”
“Where are they?”
“At the office — I haven’t been there since lunch. I came direct from a guy who wants me to sell his house.”
“What did she say? About her! Mrs. Sibert?”
“Nothing. I did but she didn’t.”
“And what did you say?”
“The same, no more, no less.”
“Then what did she talk about?”
“Burl, and the torch he’s carrying for you. She says you mustn’t see him. Mustn’t let him in this house, mustn’t go to that pad where he lives.”
“Does she think I’m a kook or something?”
“I don’t know what she thinks, only what she said.”
“Burl’s not what I’m afraid of.”
“Well, I’m not, so that makes two of us.”
“Mrs. Sibert is.”
“Maybe, but I know nothing to do about it.”
“The thing of it is, what I do about it.”
“For now, may I suggest?”
“...Suggest what?”
“Get a cloudy look in your eye.”
“Is that all you ever think about?”
“You know something better to think about—?”
“...There isn’t innything better!”
“Peel.”
“Carry me upstairs first.”
“I’m getting hooked on you. Could it be love?”
“I don’t but it’s sump’m.”
Chapter 16
Then, for three or four weeks, came the period of readjustment, when all kinds of things got done, and we shook down to a new life. Mr. and Mrs. Lang came over, and we straightened the announcements out — they sent envelopes to the office, and I addressed them myself, so they’d be ready when the engraved cards came from the stationer. Then I took Sonya to the bank, to open a personal account. I wanted her added to my account, to make a joint thing of it, but she wouldn’t hear of the idea. “I might make some silly mistake,” she said, “that would cost you all kinds of money. So she opened her own account, with a check for $1,000 that I gave her, and that covered that. Then there was her car, as well as her driver’s license. I got her a little blue Valiant, that she picked out for herself, and sent her to driving school, where she learned fast, and got her license in a couple of weeks.
Then at last she met Modesta, my cleaning woman, and wanted to fire her, but I balked. I said, “So maybe she’s not much of a cleaning woman, but what cleaning woman is? There could come a time when you need her bad, so she stays.”
Then came the piano, a beautiful little Steinway, a baby grand, and when Sonya saw it she cried. But when she sat down and played, I wanted to cry. I mean, her playing had something, and I saw why Mother had liked it.
And in between, every few nights, she gave little dinners — for Mother, for her parents, for my friends, by twos and fours and sixes, each better than the last, and all of them together kind of easing off the necessity for some kind of general reception. The drinks kept baffling her, and she would peep at her icepick, there in the table drawer, and perhaps it was how she put it in there with the napkins, but it seemed to be some kind of reminder of what she mustn’t forget, in the way of bitters, cherries, oranges, or vermouth — none of which did she understand.
And then one afternoon at the office, when I’d just got back from lunch, my phone gave two or three rings I sensed as urgent rings, and when I answered Elsie said: “Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Kirby just called in and said get home at once, quick!”
I got there quick, I’m telling you.
When I saw Burl’s car outside, you may be sure I didn’t waste time on neat, fancy parking. I banged the curb as I banged it, jumped out, went up the front walk at a trot, and stabbed my key in the lock. I was almost afraid to look when I went in the door, but when I did I saw her at once, on one of the living room sofas, a sulky look on her face. On the cocktail table was a tray, with Scotch, ice, and fizz water on it, and off by itself, a half-full highball glass. Burl was at one of the windows beside the fireplace, looking out, and he turned around quick to face me. I hadn’t seen him in quite some time, but he hadn’t changed much. He was a tall, slim guy, as I’ve heard Don Juan was, but there was something rawboned about him, as though plenty of strength was there. He had dark eyes like Mother’s, and a fairly handsome face. It was nicely chiseled, with kind of a curl to the lip, but what caught your eye about it was its color. He had two red spots on his cheeks that gave him an arrogant, hungry look, and when his big brown eyes opened wide there was something almost animal about it, I mean a predator. Don’t get the idea he was just a jerk. Three parts of a somebody were there, and that kept making you wonder why he didn’t add up to more. Then for a flash something else would show that was just crafty, or crooked, or mean, or something — not in harmony with the eyes, the mouth, or the color. He greeted me, “Oh, hello,” very sour, and then snarled at her: “So that’s why you got me a drink — so you could go to the kitchen and put in a call for this crumb?”
“You didn’t think I’d really give you a drink?” she snapped at him, “unless a glass of warm piss in the face.”
“That’ll do,” I warned her. “I’m here.”
“Okay, but I wouldn’t.”
I asked him: “What are you doing here?”
“Why,” he answered, “calling on Sonya, of course.”
I asked her: “And why did you let him in?”
“Because,” she answered, speaking very slow and distinct, “I knew when he’d spoken his piece, through the pigeonhole, that we’d come to a certain point, where things had to be said, so we could make a fresh start, and then life could go on. So I asked him in and put in my call to you. So now we commence with the saying. Go on,” she told Burl. “Explain to your brother, please, why you’re calling on me.”
He glowered, took a seat, and picked up his glass.
“Put that down,” she snapped.
He did, and she carried it to the table against the wall, the one where she kept her icepick. Then, to him: “Get going. Tell him.”
He glowered some more, but didn’t say anything. She went on, herself: “To begin with, he doesn’t believe, or says he doesn’t, that I had inny miscarriage. He says that’s an invention of yours, on account of your being a fag, unable to do it to me, and figuring a slick way that I could have his child while you pretend it’s yours. And so, he says the child had rights, like to his father’s seminal fluid” — she called it siminal fluid — “on his unborn head every day, so he’ll grow up strong and healthy, and normal in every respect, from the vitamins that it has. So he came here to do his duty, by the unborn child in me, out of the goodness of his heart — or something.”
“If you don’t mind I’ve heard enough.”
He got it off in an elegant way, slapped his hands on his knees, and got up. But she moved too, and took position to block him. “You don’t leave this room,” she snarled, “until I say what has to be said.”
“For Christ sake, what else has to be said?”
His elegance was wearing off, so he yelled it, but sat down when I motioned him. She sat down, but not on the sofa, this time. She perched on the cocktail table, to look down on him. “Burl,” she went on very softly, “did you think it funny, when we were going together, and I got so shook at how you were grieving for Dale, that I wouldn’t go with you to that hideaway you had, your father’s old suite of offices, in the Harrison Stuart Building? You want to know why that was? It was because you stink. Because to me you smell like feet, feet that haven’t been washed.”