Buddwing

14

He sat up in bed and grinned and said, “Let’s make some coffee, okay? Would you like to make some coffee?”

“Sure,” she said agreeably. “I’ve got some on the stove. All I have to do is heat it.”

He was feeling very cheerful and cozy, and he liked being here with this girl, protected from the rain that oozed along the windowpanes and rattled in the street outside. The girl moved off the bed with a graceful swiveling motion, got to her feet, and walked to where her half-slip was draped over the chair. She put it on quickly, and then went to the stove in the kitchen. He watched her as she lighted a match. She bent to study the flame as it leaped from the jet. There was something about her pose, her attitude, that brought him great pleasure; the bent head, the concentration on her face, the curved back illuminated with a sheen of light from the windows facing Third Avenue, all were somehow familiar and reassuring to him. The apartment was very still, and the girl suddenly began humming as she stood with her hands on her hips and watched the pot of coffee. Outside, he could hear the clinging swish of automobile tires against the asphalt. The rain, the bookshelves bracketing the sofa bed, the girl’s humming and the hiss of the tires, the panes dissolving in reflected neon from the street outside, all seemed of a piece, harmonious and serene. He grinned and lay back with his hands behind his head and tried to read the titles of the books upside down.

“Have you read all of these?” he asked her.

“Most of them,” she said from the kitchen. “How do you feel?”

“Great.”

“Yeah, me too,” she said, and she grinned at him, and then turned to look at the pot again. He rolled over onto his stomach and looked up at the books.

The Sane Society.

Interviewing: Its Principles and Techniques.

Our Inner Conflicts.

The Neurotic Personality of Our Time.

The Compulsion to Confess.

Essentials in Interviewing.

The Psychoanalytic Approach to Juvenile Delinquency.

“Where’s your basic black?” he said.

“What?” She turned from the stove with a small inquiring smile, her hands on her hips.

“Freud.”

“Oh. I’ve got him down in the office.”

“It’s too bad I’m not Edward Voegler,” he said cheerfully. “You could have had a ball with me.”

“Why? Who’s Edward Voegler?”

“An escaped lunatic.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Didn’t you read the paper?”

“No. Where’d he escape from?”

“Central Islip.” He paused. “For a while today, I thought I might be him.”

“What made you decide you weren’t?”

“I met a real lunatic.”

“That’s always a good gauge. Do you like your coffee very hot?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. This is ready, then, if you want some.”

“Yes,” he said expansively, “yes, I want some. There is nothing I would rather have in the world right now than a good cup of coffee.”

“Do you always get like this?” she asked.

“When?”

“After...” She shrugged. “After you make love?”

“How am I?”

“I don’t know. Gentle, I guess. Your face looks very soft. You seem...” She shrugged again and sat at the table. “Just... soft.” Naked, he got off the bed and went into the kitchen. He stood behind her chair and bent over her and cupped her breasts and kissed the side of her throat. “Hey,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Okay.”

“You’re supposed to say you love me, too.”

“I do.”

“You do what?”

“I do love you, too.”

“So say it.”

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” She paused. “Too.”

“If you love me so much, why don’t you pour my coffee?”

“I’m waiting for you to sit down.”

“Do I need a tie in this place?” he asked, and she began laughing. “Because if I do, I’m sure I can borrow one from the headwaiter.”

Still laughing, she went to the stove for the pot. She poured his coffee and then gently touched the top of his head and bent to kiss him on the forehead.

“Will you excuse me a minute?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

He watched as she crossed the room. The bathroom door closed behind her. He heard her turn on the water tap.

Before their marriage, they had considered taking an apartment with a bathroom down the hall, but L.J. had said it was important for a new bride to have her own bathroom. L.J. had been married to the girl from Boston for more than a year by then, so Buddwing and Grace automatically assumed he knew what he was talking about. They had taken the more expensive Third Avenue apartment with its own bathroom, but for many months after they moved in, they had wondered aloud just what the hell L.J. had meant. Why did a new bride need her own bathroom? It was Grace who, with her curious combination of innocence and candor, came out of the bathroom one morning, woke Buddwing as usual, and said, “It’s for putting in the diaphragm.”

“Huh?” he said. “What?”

“Our own john. It would be very embarrassing down the hall.”

“What would?” Buddwing asked sleepily.”

“Putting in a diaphragm down the hall.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, and rubbed his eyes.

Their bridal couch was the sofa bed they had bought on 34th Street, and upon which they were still making installment payments. The folding spring mechanism was bolted to the heavy upholstered frame of the couch, and one night while they were making love in a particularly energetic fashion, the head and part of the bolt snapped off, leaving a portion of the threaded body in the frame of the couch, and dropping the spring a good six inches from where it should have rested. In the morning, Buddwing Scotch-taped the broken head onto the frame and into the metal hole, where in some miraculous fashion it continued to support the spring, though in a rather lopsided manner. Grace went to the 34th Street store to complain about the broken bed, but she did so in such high good humor that they never came to fix it. In her eyes, he was sure, the bed had taken on a personality and an identity, which was all a part of being married, something like making coffee on one’s own stove. He told her this one morning while she was washing in the bathroom. From behind the closed door, she said, “Oh, so who cares? We’ll tell all our friends that our marriage is held together by a Scotch-taped screw.”

Buddwing burst out laughing, but he heard no sound from behind the door. He went to the kitchen table, sat, poured himself a cup of coffee, and then said, “Hey, did you know that was funny?”

“Of course,” she answered. “Why do you think I said it?”

“I never can tell with you.”

“Ha, I’m a woman of mystery.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she said, and opened the door.

She came to the table and watched him as he put cream and sugar into his cup. He lifted the cup to his lips very delicately, with his pinky outstretched, wearing the look of a bored, supremely confident, magnificently poised English peer taking his tea in the vicar’s garden, totally unaware of his nudity. “Ahhh,” he said, smacking his lips, “magnificent! This is magnificent coffee!”

“Thank you.”

“Aren’t you going to have any?”

“I was just watching you.”

“And?”

“Nothing. I love you, that’s all.” She gave a curious little wiggle, as though it were an involuntary shudder of joy.

“Do that again,” he said.

“What did I do?”

“I don’t know, that sort of writhing motion.” He tried to imitate it.

“This?” she asked, and she did it again, and then laughed.

“I like it when you laugh.”

“I don’t laugh enough,” she said. “I’m usually very solemn. I guess it’s my Russian background. My parents are both Russian Jews, you know.”

“I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Really?”

“Well, sure really. What would I be doing otherwise? Trying to pass for Jewish if I wasn’t?”

“You don’t look Jewish,” he said.

“Oh, boy,” she answered. “The Chinese rabbi. You know that one, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, and smiled. “I meant, you look Italian.”

“Who? Me? No. Italian? With this blond hair?”

“Northern Italians have blond hair.”

“Yes, but still. Look at my face. It’s a very respectable sort of Jewgirl face that you can find on the New Lots Avenue Express every day of the week including Sundays. It usually has blue eyes, though. That’s the only difference.”

“I still think you look Italian.”

“No, non sono italiana,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’m usually taken for Irish. I’m what is known as a Yiddishe shiksa.” She turned suddenly on her chair and fell into his arms in a mock swoon of despair, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “It’s all over between us, right?” He laughed and was about to answer her when she said, “The truth, now! You were a Nazi storm trooper during the war, right? Worse yet, you were a baker.” Still laughing, still trying to answer her, he jostled his coffee cup with his elbow and spilled half of it over the table. “Ah-ha!” she said. “See! It’s true!” She turned suddenly in his arms, precariously balanced, and kissed him on the mouth.

On Thursday of each week, they both had classes that broke at five o’clock. They would have coffee in the Chock Full O’ Nuts near the school, and then walk uptown to Klein’s, where Buddwing would impatiently hang around while Grace shopped for bargains. She rarely bought very much, and never anything expensive, but she told him she was used to an extravagant way of life, and did not want to get out of the habit now that she was married to a starving young student. From Klein’s, they would take the subway up to the theater district, have a meal in the Automat, and then see a Broadway show. Their tickets were always mail-order balcony seats, ordered months in advance, $2.40 the pair. The actors they saw on the stage sometimes resembled performing fleas, but they enjoyed their Thursdays immensely, and considered them an essential luxury to which they were undeniably entitled. Actually, they allowed themselves very few luxuries. Occasionally, they would take a break from their studies each night and walk up to Addie Vallins’ on 86th Street, where they would indulge themselves in banana splits brimming with ripe Burgundy cherries and toasted almonds at sixty cents apiece. Once they bought a hand-tooled edition of Shakespeare’s plays for thirty-eight dollars, and on another occasion they had a wooden radiator cover designed and built by a carpenter in the Village for twenty-two dollars, simply because they could no longer bear looking at the huge cast-iron monstrosity in their living room. But for the most part, they lived frugally on Buddwing’s G.I. allotment, asking neither his parents nor hers for help. At the time, if they had been asked what they thought of being married as opposed to being single, they both would have answered, “It’s the same thing, except we live together. It’s lots of fun.”

Laughing, he tried to sop up the spilled coffee, but it ran toward the edge of the table and then dripped onto her slip.

“Ick, you’re a slob,” she said, and pulled the wet slip up over her thighs. “I tell him I’m Jewish, so he spills half a gallon of coffee all over me!”

“Are you really Jewish?” he asked.

“Sure, I’m really Jewish. What do you think? Yeah, really, really. I mean, I don’t go to synagogue or anything like that. I’m not even going to my mother’s Seder this year. But I’m Jewish, all right, the same way you’re Jewish. In fact, the same way Adlai Stevenson is Jewish.”

“Well, I don’t know about me,” Buddwing said, “but Adlai Stevenson ain’t Jewish.”

“Sure he is.”

“No, I think he’s Protestant. Maybe Episcopalian.”

“What’s that got to do with it? Only a very small percentage of the Jewish people in this world are Jews. As a matter of fact, there are many Jews who aren’t Jewish at all. Being Jewish has nothing whatever to do with religion or culture or background. Harry Truman, for example, is Jewish.”

“Oh, I see,” Buddwing said. “Ah, yes.”

“But she isn’t.”

“Who?”

“Bess.”

“No, of course not,” Buddwing said. “Come to think of it, we’ve had very few Jewish Presidents.”

“I know, I know,” she answered. “And that’s odd when you realize some of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Jewish.”

“Like who?”

“Benjamin Franklin, for one.”

“Right, and John Hancock.”

“Sure. But did we have any Jewish Presidents in the beginning? Was George Washington Jewish?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Or either of the Adamses? Or Jefferson? Do you know who the first Jewish President in this country was?”

“Who?”

“Abraham Lincoln.”

“That’s right,” Buddwing said.

“Eisenhower certainly wasn’t Jewish.”

“Neither was Mamie.”

“Or Nixon.”

“Which is why they couldn’t get along with the Russians,” Grace said.

“Why?”

“Because Khrushchev is Jewish.”

“Of course he is,” Buddwing said. “He’s an old Jewish grandpa.”

“Right, and Castro is a rabbinical student. That’s why they get along so well.”

Buddwing snapped his fingers. “Hey! You know who else is Jewish?”

“Who?”

“De Gaulle.”

“Right. And Senator Dirksen.”

“Right, right, and Mayor Wagner!”

“Very Jewish. You know who isn’t?”

“Who?”

“Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater.”

“Abdel Nasser is Jewish,” Buddwing said.

“Sam Levene and Molly Berg are not Jewish,” Grace said.

“No, they’re Jewish impersonators. Sophia Loren, on the other hand, is Jewish.”

“Oh, of course! So is Vittorio De Sica and Marcello Mastroianni. For that matter, Italy is a Jewish nation entirely.”

“No, not entirely. Gina Lollobrigida is not Jewish.”

“How about Federico Fellini?”

“I think he’s only half Jewish on his mother’s side,” Buddwing said, and they both burst out laughing.

“Philip Roth is not Jewish,” Grace said.

“Neither is J. D. Salinger.”

“But you know who is Jewish?”

“Who?”

“James Jones.”

“Naturally.”

“Norman Mailer isn’t.”

“Neither is Sammy Davis, Jr., or James Baldwin.”

“No, nor Elizabeth Taylor.”

“Marilyn Monroe was Jewish,” Grace said.

“Yes, but Arthur Miller isn’t.”

“Neither is Frank Sinatra.”

“But Pablo Picasso is very definitely Jewish,” Buddwing said.

“So’s Pat O’Brien.”

“Right. And Spencer Tracy!”

“Certainly. And Jack Paar.”

“But Johnny Carson isn’t.”

“Neither is Hugh Downs.”

“Or Helen Hayes.”

“Never! Listen,” Grace said, “for that matter...” and then she stopped with a shocked expression, and buried her face in his shoulder and began giggling.

“What?” he said, smiling.

“Oh, no!” she said, giggling.

“Who? Tell me.”

“I think...”

“Who?”

“I think Adolf Hitler was Jewish!”

“Oh, my God, you’re right!” Buddwing said, and he erupted into laughter. He held her in his arms, rocking with glee, while she giggled into his shoulder.

“Oh, please,” she said, giggling.

“I’m not doing anything!” he said, his stomach aching, tears running down his face.

“Please, I’ll wet myself,” she squealed, and they both burst out laughing again.

“Hey, watch it!” he shouted, laughing, losing his balance on the chair.

“Oh, my God!”

“Hey!” he said, and they fell noisily to the floor.

“Oh, I broke my arm,” she said, giggling.

“Here, let me kiss it,” he said, laughing, bringing her arm to his mouth and running his lips over the length of it with small noisy kisses.

“That tickles!” she screamed, and began tickling him in return, under the arms, on the soles of his feet, across his belly, until finally they both rolled onto their backs and roared hilariously to the ceiling. The rain was gentle against the windowpanes. There was the smell of coffee in the small kitchen. Their laughter trailed. She sighed gently, and closed her eyes, and he put his hand on her breast and felt the beat of her heart.

In his eyes, she was an enchanted being who had magically come into his life and filled it with a radiant glow. Never very imaginative himself, he entered into each new preposterous game she invented and played it with delight. He was even willing to listen to her astrological prognostications because somehow there seemed to be a distorted kernel of truth in each of her predictions. When she consulted her charts and then dolefully wagged her head because a Philosophy examination happened to fall on a day when Venus or Saturn were in conjunction with whatever the hell — he could never keep her signs and symbols straight — he felt a small pang of terror in spite of himself. He began to believe he had married some sort of woodland witch who stirred frogs and bats and eyes of newt into a huge caldron and muttered incantations to the stars to keep herself forever youthful, forever desirable, forever innocent.

He never knew what to expect from her next. She performed each of her magic tricks with the immunity of a child, never seeming either ridiculous or theatrical, no matter which preposterous pose or fantastic situation she was conjuring. She could feel perfectly confident in saying to a drunk lying in the gutter, “Shame on you,” and then could suggest one Saturday night that they buy two bottles of Scotch (a luxury) and try to consume them both before they went to bed. She could cheat on an examination without batting an eyelash, and then launch a tirade against Russian diplomats who broke their word. She could turn her back to him one night with a frosty “Is that all you ever think of?” and then wake him at two in the morning with the sheet pulled over her head like a tent while she whispered seductively from its depths. She was totally mercurial, and it was her very unpredictability that made that first year together so completely alive.

If either of the two had any plans for the future, they were the plans of the very young, amorphous, fleeting. They had met when they were both freshmen and now, in their junior year, they were married. They talked continually of graduation as though it were some sort of mysterious rite that would pass them through an invisible barrier separating them from the real world of productive people. Once through that barrier, they would assume their rightful places in the order of things. But they had no notion as to where their rightful places were, or how they would go about occupying them. Their plans were spontaneous and ephemeral, providing excitement each time a new one was outlined. One week, they decided they would go to Paris as soon as they were graduated, and just bum around, drinking absinthe in the sidewalk cafés, and making love in garret rooms overlooking chimney pots. The next week, it was decided they would both go West for their master’s degrees, either to the University of Colorado in Denver, or U.C.L.A. in Los Angeles. But the week after that, Grace suggested that they go to the Scandinavian countries for the summer, taking jobs as English-speaking guides on the bus tours, which would enable them to save some money for their future education. Buddwing bettered her idea by suggesting that they live in Puerto Rico for a while, where the sand was white, the sun was hot, and the income was tax-free. No corner of the globe was safe from their imaginary visits, no occupation too bizarre, no dream too fantastic. A new batch of travel folders flooded into the apartment daily, and they picked over the world like explorers impatient to set sail. Their dreams all hinged upon “graduation,” that fabulous passport to the world of real adults. Once out of school, once free of the cloistered atmosphere of academics, they would come to grips with the world through discovering it — and would incidentally find themselves as well. They seemed unaware that at least some of their plans centered about a continuance of studies, an extension of the cloistered atmosphere that nourished them as surely as an incubator. “Graduation” would solve everything. “Graduation” would enable them to lay their future plans and choose their destinies. There was really no rush because they would have the whole summer to decide. In the meantime, they could live as they had done from the very beginning, in a curious world of make-believe that neither of them recognized as such.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m trying to remember if we have enough liquor.”

“Enough liquor for what?”

“Some of the kids are coming over later.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah?”

“Yes, about eleven o’clock.” She paused. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I thought we’d be alone.”

“Well, it’s only nine-thirty.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’m sorry, but I invited them yesterday.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t know I was going to meet you, you know.”

“I know that.”

“I really hadn’t planned on doing anything the early part of the night. In fact, I wanted to wash my hair and do some laundry, is all.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I spoiled your plans,” he said.

She rolled over beside him and propped her chin on one hand, her elbow bent, and looked directly down into his face and said, “Hey.”

“What?”

“Cut it out.”

“Okay.”

“Because you know you haven’t spoiled any of my plans.”

“Okay.”

“And we don’t need this kind of crap between us.”

“Okay.”

“Because it’s too good the way it is.”

“All right.”

“And anyway, I won’t have to wash my hair now because the rain took care of that.”

“But you do have to do your laundry.”

“Yes, but the machine is right in the basement. I don’t have to go out or anything.”

“Good. I want to go down to the basement with you and help you do your laundry.”

“What we could do, you know...”

“Yeah, what?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it only takes a minute to carry it downstairs and put it in the machine, you know.”

“Mmmm?”

“Yes, and we do have until eleven o’clock, or maybe a little after. One of the kids is in a show, you see, and they’re picking him up and then coming over. So let’s say eleven-fifteen, maybe eleven-thirty.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So we could bring the laundry down, and then come up here while it’s in the machine. It takes, oh, forty minutes, I guess. How does that sound to you?”

“I kind of wanted to watch your dirty clothes spinning around behind the glass.”

“Well, okay, if that’s what you want. But I thought since we’ve got until eleven-thirty, well, that gives us plenty of time.”

“For what?”

“Well, for whatever you want to do with it.”

“With it?”

“Yes, the time.” She paused. She pushed her hand through his hair roughly and said, “What are you, a wise guy?”

“Yes,” he said, grinning, “I’m a wise guy.”

“You want it all spelled out, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’ll spell it out for you.”

“When?”

“Later. Come on, let’s get dressed.”

They were graduated on the fifteenth of June, 1950.

The commencement exercises were held on Ohio Field at the University Heights campus in the Bronx. Sitting beside Grace in his cap and gown, Buddwing heard the university registrar telling the gathered students and guests that this 118th graduating class was the largest in the history of the school, and he looked up at the glowering clouds on the horizon and wondered if it would rain. The university officials were used to soggy graduation exercises, since it had rained during four commencements in the past five years, but the promise of rain seemed like an ill omen to Buddwing.

9,158 degrees would be conferred today, the registrar was saying as Buddwing watched the clouds apprehensively. Fifty-five per cent of these degrees would go to veterans of World War II. How long had he waited for this promised day — through how many goddamn cacophonous nights in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Japanese guns pounding, through how many dreary lectures in stuffy springtime classrooms, through how many eternities of crap courses and ten-minute quizzes and final examinations and papers due on Friday the twelfth? He hoped it would not rain. 5,866 bachelor’s would be conferred, 2,885 master’s, 196 doctor’s, and 209 certificates in specialized fields, he had visualized this ceremony as taking place in brilliant sunshine, Get these troops out of the hot sun, Colonel, his face and Grace’s touched by the glancing rays, the promise of the future. Now, with rain clouds threatening the sky, he listened while he was told that Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne would receive jointly an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. He was suddenly glad that he and Grace were receiving separate degrees, and he waited impatiently for the actual ceremony to start, frightened lest it begin raining before this culminating act was consummated.

He received his document and he shook hands with Dr. Chase, the school chancellor, and he went back to his seat, following Grace who was walking back off the platform, just a few paces ahead of him. When they were seated again, he covered her hand with his own and squeezed it gently.

It began raining before Dr. Chase could deliver his commencement speech. It rained lightly at first, and he and Grace sat with the other students and guests, hopeful that the clouds would blow over. But the drops began falling more heavily and more steadily, and one by one the gathered crowd began to run for cover. He and Grace stayed until they were certain Dr. Chase would not make his speech. They fled with the rest then, and learned in the Alumni Bulletin the following week that some five hundred foolhardy souls had remained seated throughout the entire downpour, college graduates who had not learned enough to come in out of the rain.

Their families were present at the exercises, of course, and Buddwing found this togetherness almost unbearable. He had never liked Dan and never would, and his presence at something that was terribly important to Buddwing and Grace seemed almost an affront. Grace’s father chattered on about his new Arabian steed, and Grace’s mother asked Buddwing’s mother if she played bridge, and would she like to join her weekly Mount Kisco game? Grace pulled Buddwing aside and whispered, “I wonder who got top billing?”

“Huh?”

“On their joint degree. Alfred or Lynn?”

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just... how do you feel?”

“Stupid,” Grace answered. “How do you feel?”

“Stupid.”

“Fine way for college graduates to feel.”

“Well, I guess we’re stepping out into the world,” he said. “I guess that’s why.”

“Yes,” she answered with a solemnity that startled him.

In the summer of 1950, Sam Buddwing, or whoever the hell he was, stepped out into the world that was New York City and began looking for a job. He had been advised during the commencement exercises that fifty-five per cent of N.Y.U.’s graduating class was composed of World War II veterans, and that the class was the largest in the school’s history. He had only to extend these spectacular figures to Harvard and Princeton and Rutgers and Yale and C.C.N.Y. and Fordham and Dartmouth and Cornell and Syracuse and any and every college or university, big or small, in the United States of America in order to determine exactly how many eager young graduates were storming the largest city in the world that summer, looking for work. These were the young men who had invaded the fortress of Europe, who had hedgehopped their way from island to island across the Pacific, who had watched their comrades in arms die in muddy ditches and steaming jungles, and they came now like a new invasion force, bristling with knowledge, the greatest peacetime armada ever assembled, to storm the bunkers lining Madison Avenue. They all carried parchments stating that they had completed the required course of study for a baccalaureate degree, and they all came equipped with transcripts of their school records, and bright cheery smiles, and perfect speech learned in elocution courses. None of them knew what a buyer’s market was. None of them realized that jobs which had once been going to high school graduates could, in this embarrassment of educational riches, now be bestowed upon men who had completed a four-year college course of study.

Buddwing did not know quite what he wanted, but he knew he had not gone to college to become a bank clerk trainee. He began seriously entertaining the notion of leaving for Paris with Grace, where they would indeed become bums, drinking absinthe and rotting their brains away with wormwood. They had their first serious argument the day she suggested that perhaps she could find a job to carry them through the summer, after which they could make further plans and either go on with their studies or go to Europe, or whatever.

“If I can’t find a job, how the hell do you expect to find one?” he asked.

“I’m only offering it as a compromise suggestion,” Grace said. “I mean, you can’t find a job, can you?”

“I could, if you wanted me to go out digging ditches,” he answered.

“Well, I don’t want you to do that. But I wouldn’t mind taking a job as a salesgirl someplace or—”

“The hell with that,” he said. “You’re a college graduate!”

“I don’t think we can eat our diplomas, do you?” she asked.

“No. That’s why I think we should go to Paris.”

“We haven’t got the fare.”

“I could take some kind of job to earn the fare, and then we could go.”

“All right, if that’s what you want to do. I simply thought that, since my sign is Gemini—”

“Oh, come on, Grace, not that again. You don’t really think—”

“Yes, I do.”

“That’s all nonsense and you know it.”

“What was it that put me in bed for a month then, would you mind telling me?”

“You had the flu,” he said.

“No, I had a touch of bronchitis.”

“Dr. Manero said it was the flu.”

“Dr. Manero doesn’t know anything about it,” Grace said. “When you’re born under the sign of Gemini, the weakest part of your anatomy is your lungs. I’ve always had trouble with my lungs. I’m always catching cold very easily — you know that, honey, so admit it.”

“I catch cold easily, too, and I’m Capricorn, so what the hell does that prove?”

“You don’t catch colds, you get slight touches of rheumatism. If you’re Capricorn, the weakest parts of your body are the knees, bones, and joints.”

“I’ve never had trouble with my knees, bones or joints,” Buddwing said.

“Except when you get a slight touch of rheumatism.”

“I don’t get slight touches of rheumatism, I get common colds.”

“Well, you can call them what you like, but I happen to know,” Grace said.

“Yeah, Omar the Mystic.”

“Don’t make fun of it,” she warned.

“Queen of the Zodiac,” he said.

“Because I don’t happen to think it’s very funny.”

“No, that’s because you have no sense of humor.”

“That isn’t my fault. I was born under Gemini. I’m not supposed to be some sort of flibbertigibbet scatterbrain.”

“No, you’re supposed to be intelligent, logical, and meticulous.”

“That’s right.”

“Which is why you flunked Greek Mythology the first semester I knew you.”

“I flunked Greek Mythology because Geminians always dissipate their energies. I’m a very changeable person, you know that. I start out to do something and then I lose track of it and start something else. That’s very common if you’re born under Gemini.”

“Sure,” he said.

“But that doesn’t mean I’m not ambitious.”

“No, I know that.”

“Or sensitive.”

“You’re very sensitive,” he said.

“Yes, and I say what I think, which is another characteristic of Geminians, and which happens to be burning you up right now. Huh? Isn’t it?”

“No. You can always say what you think. Nobody’s telling you not to say what you think.”

“Well, then, it seems to me that an intelligent woman who’s a college graduate should be allowed to go out and take a job if her husband can’t find one to support them.”

“Nobody’s forbidding you to work. What do you think this is, the Middle Ages? If you want to work, work. I’ll stay home and mop the kitchen floor and have the babies you’re supposed to have.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“By the ‘babies’ crack.”

“Nothing. I simply thought that having babies was a woman’s function, and that a man was supposed to go out and—”

“I’m not about ready to have a baby, so let’s get off that, if you don’t mind. You can’t even keep the two of us fed, and you’re talking about a baby.”

“What am I, all of a sudden? A mental incompetent? I don’t want to take a job that doesn’t lead anywhere, is that so unreasonable?”

“Not at all. But is it unreasonable for me to suggest that perhaps I can help out? I thought this marriage was a partnership. If you really want to go to Paris, as you say, then why shouldn’t I—”

“I don’t know if I want to go to Paris.”

“Well, what is it you’d like to do, exactly? Would you please tell me?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“When will you know? When we’re both on home relief?”

“Look, Grace, I refuse to take some kind of jerky job. I am not a jerk, goddamnit!”

“All right, I grant you that. I have granted it to you a hundred times tonight. I will continue to grant it to you. All I’m suggesting is that—”

“Oh, go on!” he said angrily. “Go get a job. If you think you can get one, go ahead.”

“Thanks. That’s very goddamn encouraging.”

“What do you want me to do? You’ve just cut off my balls, would you like me to garnish them with a little parsley?”

“Cut off your what?”

“Balls. B-A-double-L—”

“Now that is the Middle Ages. That is positively the Middle Ages. The concept of a man in armor, and a woman as a... child-bearing sow who mops the kitchen floor and—”

“Boy, you’ve got a real thing about babies, haven’t you? What are you so afraid of?”

“I don’t want a baby,” Grace said. “I should think—”

“Oh, I know that. Oh, brother, do I know that. I mean, all the creams and jellies and tubes and insertions, and God forbid you’re ten minutes late, wow, the fingernails get bitten down to the elbow, and the hair gets pulled—”

“I do not want a baby now,” she said with dignity.

“Yes, I know.”

“I do not want one.”

“I heard you. Why not? How about answering that one?”

“Which reason do you want? I have about a hundred and ten.”

“Give me all of them.”

“All right,” Grace said, holding out her hand and beginning to tick off the points on her fingers. “Number one, we have exactly forty-eight dollars in our joint savings account, forty-eight dollars, and the rent is due next week. Number two, you seem incapable of finding any sort of employment—”

“Listen, Grace, if you imply once more that I’m a Mongolian idiot who can’t—”

“You said it, not me. Number three, I thought you wanted to go to Paris, and I don’t intend to go there with extra baggage in my belly. And number four, I don’t even know who the hell I am yet, and you want me to have a baby. What would I tell a baby? Your mother doesn’t know who she is?”

“Oh, come on, Grace, you know who you are. Go look at your charts; they’ll tell you. Look it up under Saturn in the tenth house of Taurus in conjunction with Venus in the third phase of the moon.”

“Haha.”

“I thought that was pretty funny.”

“Yes, you would. You Capricorns are all alike.”

“Well, your brother warned you, didn’t he?”

“Keep him out of this. At least he’s supporting his wife.”

“Yeah, well, if my father owned half the goddamn horses in the world, maybe I could go out and set up my own office, too.”

“My father has one horse. One.”

“And one precious daughter, one, who’s starving in a Third Avenue tenement.”

“Oh, the hell with this,” she said suddenly. “This is stupid as hell. There’s no sense even talking to you.”

“All right, then, don’t. But I’m not going to take the first crumby job that’s offered to me. I’ve got a right to know who I am and what I am. You just remember that.”

“I’m sorry if I confuse your identity image.”

“And don’t give me any of that college-girl crap-talk.”

“I wasn’t aware—”

“Well, now you’re aware.”

“Is it all right to talk in my own damn house without being interrupted?” she asked furiously.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be so goddamn sorry after the fact. That’s only Capricorn talking. The poor, lonely, misunderstood, hypersensitive, self-pitying little boy.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, too,” she said, and began crying. He stood beside her helplessly, leaning against the wall, while the tears streamed down her face. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her robe and then turned her head away from him and wept softly. Snuffling back her tears, she said, “There’s a draft in here. Would you please close the windows?”

“It’s ninety-sev—” he started to say, and then closed his mouth and went to the window.

“Thank you,” she said. She sniffed. “Have you got a handkerchief?”

“Yes. Here.”

“Thank you.”

She blew her nose. She would not look at him.

“Honey?” he said.

“What?”

“I’m sorry if—”

“I’m all right now. Forget it.”

“But you—”

“I was just feeling bitchy, that’s all.”

“I’ll get a job, but... it has to be what I want. Don’t you see that?”

She sniffed again, and nodded. “What is it you want?” she asked gently.

“Ahhh, what do I want?” He leaned his head back against the wall and a curious smile touched his face. “I want happiness growing on trees in a garden, Grace, to pick like big golden apples, to bite into, to feel the juices running down over our chins. I want the sun to be shining all the time, and I want your hair to stay long and golden, and your eyes to stay bright with wonder, and your mouth to taste of clover. I want a long white beach with an ocean like a murmur in a conch shell, and I want to kiss your fingertips and your navel, and make love under the sun and laugh when it rains, if it ever rains, but it’ll never rain. And, oh, our babies’ll be fat and healthy with your blond hair and my blue eyes and God will smile down on us, Grace, oh Jesus, He will nod his big white shaggy head and smile on us, and shower us with happiness and joy. We’ll live forever, honey, we’ll roam the world like young Vikings, we’ll go to England and Spain...”

“Yes, Majorca...” she said.

“La Costa Brava...”

“France...”

“France, yes, and Italy...”

“Rome and Venice...”

“Florence and Milan...”

“Yes, Milan...”

“Everywhere, darling, wherever we want to go, because we’ll be so goddamn happy, and together, and in love, if only... if only...”

“What, darling?”

“If only you’ll stay with me,” he said.

She looked up at him in surprise. “Why, of course I’ll stay with you.”

“Always,” he said.

“Always,” she repeated.

“Grace?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t... don’t ever wonder who you are again.”

“But—”

“Please. Because if you do... I won’t know who I am, either. And then we’ll both be lost.”