Chapter 10
She awoke on the floor of Mary Alice's bedroom, naked and covered with filth. She was freezing; it was late morning, but the sun apparently still hadn't broken through the chilly fog that sometimes seeped over the hill. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, feeling no pain, particularly-whatever that stuff she'd drunk had been, last night, it didn't leave you with a hangover-but stiff in the joints.
God, what a night it had been! She could only remember little snatches of it, now and then. Thinking of them, she shivered, and, for want of other clothing, pulled the coverlet off Mary Alice's bed.
When she did, a small white box and a piece of paper fell to the floor. She picked them up. The paper read:
Hey, kid, you were kind of down last night Ii yon get to feeling that way again take a couple of these, I'll be by tonight to see how you're doing. Ol' Doctor Zora.
The pills, when she opened the little box, were multi-colored Spansule-type capsules full of little red and white particles. She put the box down on the floor and thought about the evening.
She couldn't quite put it together. There had been the business with the wild dance, at the beginning. She remembered that Then they'd got to playing games, as Zora had called them-sexy games. She....
She looked at her wrists. They were red and raw. She had been bound! It hadn't just been the game!
"God," she said. Her head was reeling from the memory. She got up suddenly, and, still wearing the coverlet went to the kitchen to put some coffee water on. Then she headed for the bathroom to look at herself in the big, full-length mirror and survey the damage, if any.
But the mirror only confirmed that she was dirty-what could she have been rolling around in, for heavens' sake, to get so all-over filthy?-and that she needed a bath as badly as she needed a cup of coffee. She looked at the red marks on her wrists: perhaps a little body make-up would conceal that. She certainly hadn't brought anything to wear that had sleeves long enough to cover her up.
"God," she said. "God, God, God." She ran her fingers through the close-cropped hair; turned on the tap to splash water on her face. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked terrible. She'd have to do something about that
In the kitchen she fixed coffee, but brought the cup into the bathroom to set it on the sink. Then, running the hot water, she stepped inside to give herself a good hot scrub down. Toweling off and looking at herself in the mirror afterward, she noticed the drawn quality of her face again. Quickly she pulled the towel away, studied her bare body. She could see every rib clearly. There was a...scrawny...look to her shoulders and collarbone. There was no other word for it
She stepped on the scale. God, she'd lost seven pounds! In a couple of days! And she'd been trained down pretty fine before-as thin as you could afford to be and not look up, the way a fashion model does. She didn't look at all well. Why hadn't she noticed this before?
She dressed now-tight dress and sandals-and went down to the office. Louise looked up as she entered. Her smile was troubled.
"Oh, Annie." She opened a drawer on Her desk, pulled out a notebook. "There was a man called a few minutes ago, from the hospital." She pawed through the little book, looking. "Let's see...."
"Hospital?" Nan said, remembering with a sudden sinking feeling in her chest "Did...did he say...I mean anything about Mary Alice?"
"No-o," Louise said, thumbing to the back of the book. "No, it wasn't that kind of call. It was something about the insurance. Are you handling that now? Because if you are, I'll stop worrying. About that anyhow."
"Yes...yes. I understand. I'll take care of it And Louise. What about the bills? The tax, all that? Did you find out whether Mary Alice had paid it up before...before she had the accident?"
"Paid it up? How could she? She was broke. The place is on the rocks, Annie. We'll be lucky to make it to the end of the term before they close us down. I've been sweating it out day by day already. It's so depressing."
"Oh. Oh, my. She didn't tell me." Nan sat down now, her brow knit with thought. "Are we that close to deadline on the tax thing, then?"
"Worse. We're at the end of an extension she'd wangled out of them down at the Board of Equalization. The mortgage payment's overdue also. And...and there's a lot more, really. I'd have to go through her desk to make sure."
"Yes, could you do that? I mean for me? Please? Could you come up with some figures today, maybe tomorrow, on just how much she...on how much we owe everybody? To bring absolutely everything up to date? And maybe even...if you find the time...what you'd need in the bank to get us through the term safely?"
"Why, sure, Annie, but....Oh, here's the name and number. You want to call this man here. Anyhow...gee, could I ask why? What do you think we can do?"
"Oh, I can get us out of trouble, I think. On this, anyhow. It's a matter of, well, I have a checkbook on me, but it's sort of little mad-money account. I couldn't even have paid for the airline ticket out of this. I...I only expected to be here a couple of days. Now it seems I'd better stick around a while. I mean, at the very least until...well you know." A sudden rush of tears to her eyes necessitated quick repairs with a Kleenex. "Oh, Jesus, Louise. I hope she comes out of this okay."
"Yeah, me too. But hon...I mean, you can get the money somehow? like borrow it? I don't think she'd want you to do that"
"No, I want to. It's...it's a matter of transferring some funds here...I mean out of another account Maybe cashing some bonds or something." She didn't really know the mechanics of it all; Mills had handled most of it the banks the rest
"Oh, no, honey," Louise said, putting her hand impulsively on Nan's. "Not...I mean, your future. Not the old-age money."
Nan looked at her, her eyes full of tears again. "I don't even know how to say this, Louise. II it beggared me...and it won't...it wouldn't matter. I'm going to give Mary Alice her school, if she lives. And I'm going to get it out of the red, and make it work tike clockwork, if the job takes my every waking hour and every dime my husband left me." She wiped her eyes. "Could...could I borrow your car, please? I'm going to the hospital, and I might as well talk to the man while I'm there. I'll fix it with the finance department."
Louise pressed the keys into her hand, her own eyes moist "Gee, Annie...you're a peach. You really are. But...you think you can swing it all? Really? I mean, you never told us who you were, anyhow...."
"Who am I?" she said, her eyes going out of focus as she pondered the question. I've been having a lot of trouble with that question lately. I used to think I knew. I used to think I was plain old Polish Anna Karpowa of Pigiron City, Pennsylvania. Then...then I was Ed Mikell's wife, for a long time, and until he passed away I was very happy to be nothing but that Since then...I don't know. But I can tell you one thing. I'm going to find out"
She went to the finance office first; visiting hours weren't until early afternoon, and it seemed better to take care of the practical things first since they were, at the moment virtually the only thing she really could take care of reliably.
The interview went quickly. As she'd suggested, the man had called D and B first and his tone was respectful and reassuring, in a way she knew he wouldn't even consider if she were, indeed, plain old Anna Karpowa, from the wrong side of a town that'd never amount to much in a million years-a steelworkers' company town full of Polacks and Ukrainians and Hankies and Bohunks and all those other low-class parish Catholics from the poor countries of Central Europe, people with good hearts and hot tempers and ten kids apiece and no more chance of ever getting out of their grubby ghetto life than....
But of course she had. How lucky she'd been!
Or had she? she thought now. Was she, after all, all that much happier than the girls she'd grown up with had been? She who'd had one kid-practically barren, by Pigiron City standards-and who virtually never saw her? She who was, right now, lonelier than she'd ever been back in the crowded little brick row house in the narrow valley the Monongahela had cut through the folded mountains of Western Pennsylvania millions of years before? She wasn't sure. When all this was over, she promised herself a trip back to Pigiron City, just to see. She hadn't been back in years, not since she'd paid to have Mom moved to a nice nursing home and settled an annuity on her sister Polya for taking care of Pop. Now she had to know, had to go there and...and pay attention, this time, and really see.
Had her childhood been really so bad?
Was her adulthood really so good?
The years with Ed...how much was there to remember? Mickey had grown up under the care of a nanny. You did that kind of thing in Ed's upper-class Church-of-England, everything-modeled-on-the-English-upper-class sort of world. She'd missed all the lovely things her sisters had told her about in their own kids: the first words, the first little sentences....And what had she to show for what she'd missed, not really being a housewife? Not really being a mother? Not, perhaps even, really being a woman all those years?
That was easy. She had a house full of empty memories, and a bunch of family friends who turned out on closer inspection to be his friends, not hers, and she didn't have a damned thing in common with them. She had closets full of clothes she didn't wear, and fifty pairs of shoes she didn't need...and all she needed to be happy was what would fit in a weekender bag tike the one she'd flown here with. Mary Alice hadn't known a damn thing about her except that she was her friend, and she'd done everything she could to make her feel loved and at home and happy on the basis of that. For that you didn't need twenty million dollars. What did you need to be happy? Just a roof over your head, and a way to keep food in the larder, and the good body God had given you. And people you loved around you....
She was in a good mood when she went to the ward where they'd moved Mary Alice. The doctors took some of this away almost immediately, with their talk of trauma and possible paralysis and the loss of one eye. And their long faces. Doctors didn't have long faces-not in her experience. Not unless they'd been straggling with something difficult all night and now found themselves on the verge of losing.
Nothing could quite have cushioned the shock of seeing Mary Alice, though. Most of her face was covered with white bandages, including one eye. The mouth, gray and drawn, was visible, and one bloodshot eye. The eye looked at her; she could see no sign of recognition.
Nan-Annie, she was now, ah Annie-sat down beside her. She looked, and she gulped, and she tried three times before she got something out
"Mary Alice," she said finally. "I...I hope you're feeling all right I don't know if you can hear me...and I guess I'll have to take that chance...anyhow, darling, I...I wanted you to know that I'm taking care of the school, and it'll all be okay...I'm going to pay up all the bills...and I'm going to stay here until you're okay...and maybe I won't go back...and I'm going to pitch in here and make the place work until you'll be so proud of me...."
She broke down a little here, and the unseeing eye stared at her out of the bandages, uncomprehending, and it took her a minute or so before she could go on. But when she could, it was to bend over close to Mary Alice's one visible ear to tell her "I love you" and kiss her softly on the cheek. The one glaring eye saw nothing, registered no knowledge that she'd even been there.
It was too much. She made it out of the room, made it down the stairs and out to the parking lot, and to Louise's car. And then, sitting in the driver's seat with the key in her hand, she broke down. She had a long cry, but this time it didnt seem to help the way it had in the past when she'd had a long cry. It got something but of her system but it didn't change the situation. And it did nothing, nothing at all about the terrible, nagging feeling of guilt that was eating away at her.
After all, while Mary Alice was out there, having these...these awful thing happen to her, where had Nan been? Taking her pleasure with two other women. Betraying her friend's love and affection with not one, but two other women....With a strangled sob Nan banged her head savagely against the steering wheel. "You fool!" she said to herself. "Damned weak fool!"
...And as she reached into the pocket of her dress for Kleenex, her fingers closed around the little box of pills Zora had given her, wrapped in the little note that had accompanied them. She opened the paper with trembling fingers and read again:
...If yon get to feeling that way again take a couple of these. I'll be by tonight to see how you're doing....
Taking the pills was a bad mistake. She realized this the moment she got out on the freeway. The white line started to weave the first time she got the car into high, and the cars ahead started going in and out of focus. She narrowly missed sideswiping another car, getting back into the right-hand lane where it was supposed to be safer. And, weaving in and out of her lane, she steered into the off-ramp as soon as she possibly could. At the bottom of the grade she pulled over and shook her head, but the cobwebs wouldn't clear. Things kept going in and out of focus, in and out.. .
It took her a full half-hour to get the rest of the ten or twelve blocks home. She kept having to pull off to one side and stop to shake her head; once she saw a cop car slow down, its driver giving her a suspicious glance. She would have been a cinch for a ticket if he hadn't almost simultaneously spotted somebody up ahead doing something wrong, blatantly and recklessly. And when she finally pulled the car up in the school parking lot she knew she was in such bad shape she'd really do best to avoid Louise; she left the keys in the car and headed for the stairs to Mary Alice's apartment, weaving drunkenly.
At the stairs, it became obvious she wasn't going to make it up on her own two feet She got down on all fours and took the steps one at a time, testing every handhold and foothold as if she were climbing a mountain. On the way she lost a sandal; she could hear it clatter down the staircase. And at the top of the staircase she simply collapsed, her face against the dirty floor, and lay there letting the world spin wildly about her....
Dreams wavered in front of her eyes, going in and out of focus the way the world did when she tried to sit up. After a while she stopped trying to sit up. She lay there and took it all in. It wasn't as if she really had any part in it though, even when the visions that entered her mind were visions in which someone named Nan, or Annie, or whoever, took part-looking strangely like herself the way she looked when she looked in the mirror, only...kind of far away somehow, kind of uninvolved. The people in her vision touched her and prodded her and poked her and fondled her and did things to her, some new, some old, some strange and some familiar. It all didn't seem to be happening to her, really: she seemed to be seeing and feeling at one remove....
...There was a strange smell in the air, and voices talking. The woman's was familiar, the man's strange to her. She blinked and looked around her face. A few feet away she could see the legs of the couch, and, before it two pairs of bare feet, a man's, thick-veined and hairy, and a woman's, soft-skinned and graceful, As she watched, the woman's foot crept across the man's and, toes clenching sensuously began to caress the man's instep, slowly, languorously. Voices:
. . Hey, gimme the roach, dammit, don't go Bogarting on me there...mmmmmmm.... yeah...yeah...Oh, yeah.. . "Mmmmm. Right Riiiiiight."
"Jesus Christ what a mess this joint is."
"Mmmmm-hmmm. Me and the lady of the house over there had a party last night Not bad either. I was just gettin' warmed up when I had to go pick yon up. Damn you, Artie, anyhow. I could have balled all night And you have to go use it all up on the old lady."
"Right Best fucking stud in Brentwood. Don't bitch, baby, it pays the rent"
"Faggot You couldn't even get it up."
"Shit I needed some sleep. Balling that wrinkly old bitch is work. She'd put anybody but me in die hospital in a week of that"
"Faggot! Faggot!"
"Get your goddam hands out of my fly. You want it you gotta beg for it."
"No. No, stop it you're hurting me. You're hurting me. Goddammit Artie, you're hurting me. You're gonna leave a bruise, and then what the fuck am I going to look like when I play that house party gig Friday?"
"Cover it up, hey? Wear a Band-Aid." r
"You son of a bitch."
"Anyhow, we got all night tonight."
"No I don't I gotta get back to class."
"No you ain't. Get the kid to teach it. The assistant what's her name."
"Oh, Artie...."
"Suck my dick."
"Now?"
"Yeah. I wanta get my cock sucked. Right now."
"But, honey...."
"Fuck it get down there and eat it Look, you got it up, you gotta get it back down again."
"Do I have to?"
"You bet your ass, bitch. And you better swallow every drop. I don't want any spots on my pants. I gotta wear these things to Bel Air tomorrow night Come on, don't fuck around. Get your fat ass down there and gimme the best blowjob in town. Theeee best, right."
"But Artie.. . " (the man's feet moved apart, splayed, turned out The woman got down on her knees, her round bottom in the air, her wrinkled soles bunch, the toes clench. The woman was enjoying this. Nan looked up, now. The woman's head was bobbing crazily up and down over the man's lap. From her position Nan could see the woman's hand come down between her legs, and, visible between the voluptuous thighs, rub her crotch vigorously.)
"Hey, ohhhh, that's nice, that's nice. You just don't look right baby...unless you got your mouth full of dick...just you wait till tomorrow....yeahhhhhh
....I'm gonna chain yon up and pass you around to the crowd...and we're gonna play post office my way...Yeahhhh...pass of Zora around in the circle...spin 'er in the middle of the floor...an' whoever she points to...she's gotta do whatever they want....Right in front of everybody...I can't wait to see...that big buck nigger from the Cop Story cast...fuck you up the ass...with that big tool o' his...I'm gonna get it all on videotape...and we're gonna play it back the next day...and...ohhhh, yeahhhh...bh, yeahhhh...that's the old cocksucker...oh, yeah...oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, I'm gonna blow it...you better get ready, kid...here I come...here I come...oh, yeah....Yeah...Yeahhhh...YEAHHHHHHHH...."
"I gotta get to work."
"The fuck you do."
"No, Artie, I do."
"Call the cunt, what's her name. Tell her you got the curse, can't go shakin' that old ass if it smells like a fish market and you got it all stuffed full of rag."
"I don't wanta."
"I don't give a fuck what you want You get that? Now get over there and call!"
(Nan got her hands under her and pushed. She raised her body an inch, two inches.)
"Hey, look Sleeping Beauty."
"Yeah. I think she must be comin' out from under that shit I gave her."
"Maybe she'd like to suck me off too. I got a bone on again."
"So ask her. Tell her. Who the fuck you think I am? You ain't Miles Standish."
(Nan sat up gamely. She shook her head. She had to get out of here. Maybe Louise or someone would help her. She had to call...call someone...Maxine...Max...the sculptress...she had to find help...)
"What're we gonna do with her?"
"I dunno. She's freaked out on that stuff I gave her."
"She's comin' out of it Maybe she needs some more."
"Yeah, why should a jerk like you have all the fun."
"So get her a glass of water. I got some more in my pocket."
"Okay."
(Strong, none too gentle hands guided Nan on hands and knees to the couch. She looked up; a rigid penis stared her in the eye. "Here," the voice said matter-of-factly, hands forced her slack jaw down, forced the big penis inside her mouth. She gagged; her head shook; she tried to spit it out)
"Hey, God dammit none of that. Give her the pill."
"Okay. Just figured she ought to be working for her keep."
"Okay, just give it to her. There...drink it down, cookie...there...we're gonna take you for a nice ride."
"Ride? What the fuck do you mean ride? She ain't going with us."
"Oh, hell, Artie. Let's take her to the party. We'll have some fun with her. She won't mind. Look, she's happy. She's smiling."
"That's the shit taking effect"
"Same difference. Look, she's on a downer. Well cheer her up."
"I dunno...you're gonna get in trouble doin' that sometime."
"She isn't a bad piece of ass."
"How would a goddamn frigid bitch tike you know?"
"I asked the ouija board, you dumb faggot."
"Fuck you."
"Look. Just put her in the back. You can get in the back with her. Put the seat down. She can blow you while I drive us back to the beach."
"Okay. What the fuck."
"That's what I say."
"Okay. Okay, well have a party. Practice for the big party tomorrow night"
I'll go get the wagon and back it up near the door."
"Balls. She doesn't weigh anything. I'll carry her down."
"Okay. Just lemme get our shoes."
"Check the medicine cabinet while you're at it"
"Sure. The chick won't miss it where she is."
'I'll meet you downstairs."
"Okay."