KR: Did you force yourself upon Rhoda?
ME: We were just...
KR: You, let’s talk about you. Did you force yourself upon Rhoda?
ME: Rhoda liked me a lot.
KR: You’re not answering my question.
ME: I could’ve laid Rhoda anytime I wanted to. Why would I have raped her?
KR: I don’t know why. Why did you?
ME: We didn’t. Sandy was always very kind to her. We were all very kind to her. We taught her how to swim. We took her everywhere with us.
We took Foderman everywhere with us. All over the mountain. His courage was his only asset. Because of his frontal approach, his insistence upon a direct confrontation with the fall line, we never had to wait for him to catch up; he was invariably at the bottom of any trail before we were even halfway down. The problem was in channeling his energy. Foderman wanted to fly, and whereas we were in sympathy with what is, after all, one of the basic allures of skiing, we felt he should learn to walk before he tried his wings so outrageously. I honestly didn’t know why we were bothering. For although I was beginning to know him a little better, I can’t say he added any fun to the proceedings. As a matter of fact, he was a downright drag.
Sandy’s patience with him was puzzling and a trifle annoying. She cajoled him, she scolded him, she encouraged him, she placated him, she ignored us. At one point, she did a startling imitation of him, somewhat like an instant television replay, in which she fixed herself in his rigid pose and went tearing down the mountain full tilt to execute a sudden stop inches before she would have crashed into four startled skiers standing by the side of the trail. “Loosen up, Seymour!” she shouted over and over again, and Foderman would reply, “I am loose!” and then squat over his skis and rumble down the mountain, God help anyone in his way. She tried to show him that skiing could be fun, that those long flat things attached to the feet could actually be moved at the discretion of the skier; that once they were set on a course it wasn’t necessary to assume speed and direction had been predetermined by some almighty being. “You can ski up the mountain, you know,” she said, and he said, “Up the mountain?” and she said, “Sure, watch,” and pointed herself at a huge boulder half-poking out of the snow, and skied down on a collision course toward it, traversing the hill. “Watch out!” Foderman yelled, and Sandy merely sidestepped the boulder by climbing in motion up the hillside away from it, a possibility that had never occurred to him. “Come on,” she said, “let’s run a little,” and she began dancing up and down the hillside in a traverse, flattening the skis to slide down, and then edging to climb up, always in motion, never losing speed, gamboling like a mountain goat. Foderman could not believe such versatility was possible. He tried the exercise with clear foreboding, and then fell back upon what he knew best, a battering-ram charge on the main portal of the castle, never mind this frolicking up and down, never mind having any fun. (“Are you having any fun?” David sang, and I picked up the next line of the song immediately, “Are you getting any lovvvvving?” and we both burst out laughing while Foderman far below shrieked into his emergency stop.)
On the chair alone with Sandy, I said, “What do you think?”
“Oh, he’s getting there,” she said.
“It’s more fun without him,” I said. “I didn’t come all the way out here to be a ski instructor.”
“I’m enjoying it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “Maybe I think the stupid bastard will break his leg if we don’t watch over him.”
“The one opposite Schwartz’s.”
“What?”
“You said...”
“Right, right. Be no fun at all if he broke the same leg. Which one did Schwartz break anyway? I forget.”
“The right one, I think. Or the left.”
“Sure that eliminates all the possibilities?”
“Reasonably sure.”
“Try to be a bit more adventurous, Peter. Take a gamble. Right or left? I’d hate for Foderman to end up with the wrong broken leg.”
“Well, if he breaks the right one, we’re safe.”
“How so?”
“How can the right one be the wrong one?”
“Wild laughter and applause,” Sandy said.
“You didn’t think that was funny? I thought it was very funny.”
“Oh my, yes.”
“At least as funny as a broken leg.”
“What is your obsession with broken legs, Peter dear?”
“Mine? I was about to ask the same question.”
“I have no interest whatever in broken legs. Just talking about them makes me nervous.”
“Yet you were the one who raised the matter of broken legs, Sandra dear.”
“I beg your pardon, you were the one.”
“Me? I have a morbid fear of broken legs.”
“I have a morbid fear of turtles,” Sandy said.
“To me, a broken leg is like a broken promise,” I said.
“More lusty applause, cheers from the balcony.”
“You didn’t think that was literary? I thought it was very literary.”
“That’s one of your shortcomings, Peter. Thinking.” She tapped her temple with a gloved forefinger. “Nothing upstairs, Peter.”
“Dr. Krakauer agrees with you.”
“He does? I retract my statement.”
“He says if I thought a bit more, I wouldn’t have to act-out all the time. Acting-out is neurotic.”
“I should think so. I prefer indoor performances myself.”
“Sandy, dear...?”
“Yes, Peter dear?”
“Do you know what acting-out is?”
“Of course I do.”
“What is it?”
“You’re the one who’s spent four years on a couch...”
“Three years.”
“And you’re asking me what acting-out is? Go ask Dr. Crackers.”
“What does he know about true love?”
“Ahh, Peter, what does anyone know about true love?”
“True love is a fountain.”
“True love is a broken leg.”
“There you go, Sandy. Back to broken legs. You know what I think?”
“There you go, Peter. Back to thinking.”
“How else would I know I exist?”
“Try stopping on a dime.”
“Thinking is safer.”
“Not the way you think.”
“Actually, I’m a very good thinker.”
“Actually, you’ve got a bad lisp. Has anyone ever mentioned that to you?”
“Not until this moment.”
“Think about it,” Sandy said.
“Listen,” I said, “let’s get rid of Foderman.”
“Sibling rivalry, Peter?”
“I admit it, Dr. Crackers.”
“Well, let’s try it a bit longer, okay?”
“We’ve already tried it a bit longer. He’s a pain in the ass.”
“I want to see what happens,” Sandy said.
Nothing happened.
By the end of the day, I was convinced we’d done our best with Foderman, but that it was impossible to teach an old dog new tricks or even to force a horse to drink from water to which he has been led. David was equally discouraged. Only Sandy seemed to have enjoyed herself. In the ski room, when Foderman asked, “Shall we try the north face tomorrow?” Sandy cheerfully replied, “I think you’re ready for it, Seymour.”
David and I looked at each other sourly, and went upstairs to the bar.
I was on my third scotch and soda when Alice the waitress wandered into the bar. Sandy had gone to her room for a nap after her strenuous day of coping with Foderman the Intrepid, and David had gone downstairs to play ping-pong with Max the Meister. I felt totally abandoned, deserted, ditched, and depressed. Alice, much to my surprise, was not dressed in her customary dirndl and blouse. Instead, she was wearing tight black ski pants and a black jersey turtleneck shirt. Nipples poking and peering into the room, she spotted me where I was nursing my drink, and immediately perambulated over.