Chapter 7
Jim Marks wandered aimlessly along the beach. He carried a large, burlap sack into which he threw old beer cans, the candy wrappers, and an occasional piece of woman's underwear. The summer season was approaching; one more week and it would officially begin with the 'Welcome to Summer Dance' at the Seaside High School Auditorium. As with everyone else in the small town, Jim and his Mother were preparing.
The chore of cleaning the beach had once been a fascination one for the young man. The old junk he found there told a story; once he found a pair of women's panties and a bra. The cups were a 'C and his imagination had gone wild with the visions of a hugh breasted girl wandering into the Pacific Ocean. But today, in another season and at the beginning of another summer, Jim felt no interest in the rotting garbage he lifted from the sand.
The past months had given Jim if nothing else a tremendous sense of his own failure. His lovemaking seemed to make Lee happy but it destroyed him. Each time they met, each time they undressed and began their search for satisfaction, Jim had felt more and more unable to face it. He felt trapped, caught in a gigantic spider web woven with the skillfull hands of Lee.
Jim leaned over and began picking up one beer can after another from a stack of twenty. He thought for a moment about the day the drinkers of the beer must have had. He tried to imagine what kinds of lives they led; if, after gorging themselves with the stuff they had returned to their homes where their lives were being lived. It angered him now that he did not have a life anymore. It frustrated him deeply, but there was nothing he could do about it. Running was his only alternative. But that would mean failure in the highest sense. And Jim had no desire to brand himself a failure at the young age of twenty-two. Once again, as he had done countless times over the past winter, Jim Marks decided to resign himself to the Motel. And with that choice, he would also accept his mother, his relationship with her, and the possible consequences of that relationship. At least, though, he would have the Motel ... and no one could label him a failure for that.
The sand felt cool and comforting. Jim closed his eyes and listened to the waves breaking gently on the shore, the wind seemed muffled, and very few seaguls could be heard. He slept for an hour, peacefully dreaming of his adventures as a small boy on this same beach. But then he was awakened by the presence of another human being.
"Hello there!"
Jim shaded his eyes, struggled to his feet and gazed into the lively face of Anne.
"My God! where the Hell did you come from?"
Anne flopped herself down on the sand. She wore her old faded levis and her tee-shirt. Her breasts were visible, outlined against her shirt with clarity.
"Well," she began, playing with sand at her feet, "I went up to the Motel and tried to see you there. Your Mother seemed awfully upset, like I was a bummer wind blowing in or something. Any reason for that?"
She eyed Jim curiously. The reaction she had gotten from Lee had startled her. She had never expected an open arm reception, but the icy stare and crisp answers from Jim's Mother had been quite surprising.
"Yeah," replied Jim, suddenly seeing his life complicated by the appearance of Anne, "I guess she has her reasons."
Jim seated himself next to her. They were afraid to touch, to begin anything that might trigger the old passions. Both sat in silence, sifting the sand through their fingers.
"You leave school?" Asked Jim, beginning to sense a strange thud at the pit of his stomach.
"Oh yeah, a longtime ago. I left after you did. Then I moved into 'Frisco and worked in a bar."
"A bar? What the Hell did you do in a bar?"
"Walked around half naked and served drinks...." Anne was pleased with herself. She was feeling like a jaded woman coming home after a life of perversity and recklessness.
"What about you?" She asked after another brief silence.
Jim stared out towards the middle of the ocean. He wanted to be there but instead was sitting next to the only girl he had ever really cared about. Suddenly, his resignation to his life with Lee had taken on very bad ramafications. "Oh nothing much, just running the Motel like I said I would...."
Anne waited for a sign, some indication that his interest was still alive. But Jim absracted himself from the situation, seemingly drifting out to sea. She wondered if all of this hadn't been some gioantic mistake.
"Where are you staying?" He asked finally, trying to relieve the tension with small talk.
"With a friend...." Anne had decided that she would tell Jim who that 'friend' was. He seemed very unreceptive to her, and she wanted to do something that might possibly evoke a reaction in him. She had realized, after the first second of the meeting, that she still wanted him.
"Ben Grant!!!" He was plainly shocked by her description of her present state, and who was involved in that state. "Jesus, baby, the town stud! I mean, every chick in this shitty place is after him. And you wind up living with him!"
"Is your Mother after him, Jim?" The tone of her question tightened him up immediately. His outrage and shock was replaced by a deeply settled sense of depression and fear.
"Shit if I know, Anne, my Mother keeps pretty well to herself. You know that."
"And to you, doesn't she?" She was shooting her arrows now. Anne had never been a girl to waste much time in throwing her arms at the enemy. When she wanted something she would discharge everything she had and blatantly go after it. If she missed, then not much time would have been wasted in the effort.
Jim kicked at the sand. She had touched a nerve. She watched him carefully, his anger now becomming visible in his neck and cheeks.
"Goddammit, Anne, you don't call, you don't write and suddenly you show up making all kinds of fucked up stories. And besides that, you're living with Ben Grant! Why the Hell don't you go back to that damn school where everything's put into books so that you won't get hurt!!!" He was standing above her, his eyes flashing with anger. For a moment, Anne was frightened. She had never seen his body tense up like this, or had she ever been yelled at by a man like this.
"Go to Hell little girl ... go play your fucking whore games with someone else!!!" He turned and ran back down the beach towards the Motel.
Anne watched him until he disappeared up the shallow ciff and into the courtyard. She had been right, but her weapons had started a war instead of getting them both into a potential treaty. It astounded her that a Mother could have such a holdover her son, but she knew that to be the fact with Jim and his Mother. She was keeping him there, probably feeding him cookies and milk before bedtime and making everything just simply wonderful. As she started back up the hill, Anne became more determined than ever to snag him from the trap into which he had fallen. She felt that she was the only person Jim knew who could help him before it was too late. As she moved quickly along the highway towards town, Anne tried to imagine just how far things had gone with Jim and Lee, but couldn't. She laughed at the thought that possibly they were lovers.
Anne walked alone through the small town for over an hour. She tried to think of someway to reach Jim, some approach that would not immediately pit her against his Mother. That would be a fatal move on her part, and one she could ill afford at this particular time.
By the time she reached Ben's house other matters were being considered. She had told Ben earlier that she was going down to the beach for a walk. She hoped that he did not mistrust her because that would mean the end of her stay in the town. She hurried to the front door, and barged through in her old, exhuberant way.
Ben was sitting on the couch with Elaine. They were not touching, but their faces showed that Anne had invaded a very intricate moment between them.
"I'm sorry" Anne said, feeling the sting of Elaine.
"That's allright. Anne, I'd like you to meet Elaine...."
The tall, thin woman nodded. Her eyes were on fire, she was trying to burn a hole through Anne.
"So this is your scene ... very well done, Ben. She's beautiful.
Ben was at a loss. He moved around the living room, poured another round of drinks and offered one to Anne. She took it gratefully.
"Well, well," Elaine said, "the little girl drinks big people's drinks!"
Anne was getting a little weary of being called a 'little girl.' Once from Jim, and now from this woman who was obviously a former lover of Ben's.
"She's not a little girl, Elaine," said Ben, a touch of humor in his voice. He had obviously relaxed himself enough to enjoy the scene. Anne wondered if he cared for either of them enough to even get angry or upset.
"Yes," replied Elaine, her eyes firmly planted on Anne's breasts beneath the tee-shirt, "I supose she isn't. At least her body seems slightly developed."
"Oh, come, ladies. There's nothing to get upset about! I mean, life must go on and everything." Ben smiled to himself. He hadn't the slightest idea of what to do, or how to rectify the situation and his total impotence in the situation was almost amusing.
"Well, I'll be on my way," said Elaine, standing up strongly and straight, trying to impose her lifetime of manners and culture as a way of hiding what she felt. As she opened the door, she turned towards Ben, after first looking Anne up and down as a Man would and said, "I've got to meet Helen."
She slammed the door behind her. Ben stood in the center of the room, astounded by this revelation. She had taken up with the town lesbian, after all. His leaving had caused her to seek it with another woman. Suddenly, Ben was more angry with Elaine's husband than he had been with any man in a longtime. "That bastard!" He shouted.
"Who?" Asked, Anne, not really knowing if she should involve herself any further in the day's events.
"No one...."He turned from her and went into the bedroom. Anne suddenly felt very small, as though the events which she had witnessed were taking place in another realm of understanding.
She felt as though she were invading another land, a country reserved only for those who passed some secret kind of initiation and were admitted for life. She didn't even know what the ceremony consisted of, and therefore would never be a member.
With Ben's penis in her mouth, though, Anne began re-establishing her own presence. As she sucked and licked on his prick, she knew that her identity and her being were once again a part of someone's life; once again she was having some effect on another human being.
"What brought that on?" Asked Ben after she had finished by licking him dry.
"Just felt like it, that's all."
"I didn't till you started, then I really felt like it. You do everything well...." He was being complimentary. His sincerity was real. After the scene with Elaine, even before Anne arrived, Ben had found himself apologizing for things which he had no business feeling bad about. After all, it wasn't his fault that she would not get a divorce. Yet, talking with Elaine had brought him to the point of feeling that everything was his fault. It had done one other thing, also, and that was to reinstill the images of Lee Grant in his mind. He had felt that with Anne present the desire he held for the woman would have left him a long time ago. Instead, Elaine managed through her self-pity and accusations to rekindill the desire even more.
Anne laughed because she felt the same way. If anyone had asked her the same question, she would have replied with the same bitterness and sense of despair with which Ben had. When she started laughing, Ben also began to laugh. In a sense, both knew deep down inside what was causing the laughter. But it was not yet time for either to admit that they were after the same family; she, the Son and Ben and the Mother.