Promised Land

Chapter 9

Protests, excursion and alarums followed Pam Shepard’s decision but in the end it was agreed that we would, in fact, stroll down toward the harbor and that Jane and Rose would follow along, at a discreet distance in case I tried to chloroform her and stuff her in a sack.

As we walked along Front Street the light was strong on her face and I realized she was probably around my age. There were faint lines of adulthood at her eyes and the corners of her mouth. They didn’t detract, in fact they added a little, I thought, to her appeal. She didn’t look like someone who’d need to pick up overweight shovel operators in bars. Hell, she could have her choice of sophisticated private eyes. I wondered if she’d object to the urine stain on my shoe.

We turned onto the bridge and walked far enough out on it to look at the water. The water made the city look good. Oil slick, cigarette wrappers, dead fish, gelatinous-looking pieces of water-soaked driftwood, an unraveled condom looking like an eel skin against the coffee-colored water. Had it looked like this when Melville shipped out on a whaler 130 years ago? Christ, I hope not.

”What did you say your name was?“ Pam Shepard asked.

”Spenser,“ I said. We leaned our forearms on the railing and stared out toward the transmitter tower on one of the harbor islands. The wind off the ocean was very pleasant despite the condition of the water.

”What do you want to talk about?“ Today she had on a dark blue polo shirt, white shorts and white Tretorn tennis shoes. Her legs were tan and smooth.

”Mrs. Shepard, I’ve found you and I don’t know what to do about it. You are clearly here by choice, and you don’t seem to want to go home. I hired on to find you, and if I call your husband and tell him where you are I’ll have earned my pay. But then he’ll come up here and ask you to come home, and you’ll say no, and he’ll make a fuss, and Jane will kick him in the vas deferens, and unless that permanently discourages him, and it is discouraging, you’ll have to move.“

”So don’t tell him.“

”But he’s hired me. I owe him something.“

”I can’t hire you,“ she said. ”I have no money.“

Jane and Rose stood alertly across the roadway on the other side of the bridge and watched my every move. Semper paratus.

”I don’t want you to hire me. I’m not trying to hold you up. I’m trying to get a sense of what I should do.“

”Isn’t that your problem?“ Her elbows were resting on the railing and her hands were clasped. The diamond-wedding ring combination on her left hand caught the sun and glinted.

”Yes it is,“ I said, ”but I can’t solve it until I know who and what I’m dealing with. I have a sense of your husband. I need to get a sense of you.“

”For someone like you, I’d think the sanctity of marriage would be all you’d need. A woman who runs out on her family deserves no sympathy. She’s lucky her husband will take her back.“ I noticed the knuckles of her clasped hands were whitening a little.

”Sanctity of marriage is an abstraction, Mrs. Shepard. I don’t deal in those. I deal in what it is fashionable to call people. Bodies. Your basic human being. I don’t give a goddamn about the sanctity of marriage. But I occasionally worry about whether people are happy.“

”Isn’t happiness itself an abstraction?“

”Nope. It’s a feeling. Feelings are real. They are hard to talk about so people sometimes pretend they’re abstractions, or they pretend that ideas, which are easy to talk about, are more important.“

”Is the quality of men and women an abstraction?“

”I think so.“

She looked at me a little scornfully. ”Yet the failure of that equality makes a great many people unhappy.“

”Yeah. So let’s work on the unhappiness. I don’t know what in hell quality means. I don’t know what it means in the Declaration of Independence. What’s making you unhappy with your husband?“

She sighed in a deep breath and heaved it out quickly. ”Oh, God,“ she said. ”Where to begin.“ She stared at the transmitter tower. I waited. Cars went by behind us.

”He love you?“

She looked at me with more than scorn. I thought for a minute she was going to spit. ”Yes,“ she said. ”He loves me. It’s as if that were the only basis for a relationship. ‘I love you. I love you. Do you love me? Love. Love.’ Shit!“

”It’s better than I hate you. Do you hate me?“ I said.

”Oh, don’t be so goddamned superficial,“ she said. ”A relationship can’t function on one emotion. Love or hate. He’s like a…“ She fumbled for an appropriate comparison. ”He’s like when one of the kids eats cotton candy at a carnival on a hot day and it gets all over her and then all over you and you’re sticky and sweaty and the day’s been a long one, and horrible, and the kids are whiny. If you don’t get away by yourself and take a shower you’ll just start screaming. You have any children, Mr. Spenser?“

”No.“

”Then maybe you don’t know. Are you married?“

”No.“

”Then certainly you don’t know.“

I was silent.

”Every time I walk by him he wants to hug me. Or he gives me a pat on the ass. Every minute of every day that I am with him I feel the pressure of his love and him wanting a response until I want to kick him.“

”Old Jane would probably help you,“ I said.

”She was protecting me,“ Pam Shepard said.

”I know,“ I said. ”Do you love him?“

”Harvey? Not, probably, by his terms. But in mine. Or at least I did. Until he wore me down. At first it was one of his appeals that he loved me so totally. I liked that. I liked the certainty. But the pressure of that…“ She shook her head.

I nodded at her encouragingly. Me and Carl Rogers.

”In bed,“ she said. ”If I didn’t have multiple orgasms I felt I was letting him down.“

”Have many,“ I said.

”No.“

”And you’re worried about being frigid.“

She nodded.

”I don’t know what that means either,“ I said.

”It’s a term men invented,“ she said. ”The sexual model, like everything else, has always been male.“

”Don’t start quoting Rose at me,“ I said. ”That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t do a hell of a lot for our problem at the moment.“

”You have a problem,“ Pam Shepard said. ”I do not.“

”Yes you do,“ I said. ”I’ve been talking with Eddie Taylor.“

She looked blank.

”Eddie Taylor,“ I said, ”big blond kid, runs a power shovel. Fat around the middle, and a loud mouth.“

She nodded and continued to as I described him, the lines at the corners of her mouth deepening. ”And why is he a problem?“

”He isn’t. But unless he made it all up, and he’s not bright enough to make it up, you’re not as comfortably in charge of your own destiny as you seem to be.“

”I’ll bet he couldn’t wait to tell you every detail. Probably embellished a great deal.“

”No. As a matter of fact he was quite reluctant. I had to strike him in the solar plexus.“

She made a slight smiling motion with her mouth for a moment. ”I must say you don’t talk the way I’d have expected.“

”I read a lot,“ I said.

”So what is my problem?“

”I don’t read that much,“ I said. ”I assume you are insecure about your sexuality and ambivalent about it. But that doesn’t mean anything that either one of us can bite into.“

”Well, don’t we have all the psychological jargon down pat. If my husband slept around would you assume he was insecure and ambivalent?“

”I might,“ I said. ”Especially if he had a paroxysm the morning after and was last seen crying on the bed.“

Her face got a little pink for a moment. ”He was revolting. You’ve seen him. How I could have, with a pig like that. A drunken, foul, sweaty animal. To let him use me like that.“ She shivered. Across the street Jane and Rose stood poised, eyes fixed upon us, ready to spring. I felt like a cobra at a mongoose festival. ”He didn’t give a damn about me. Didn’t care about how I felt. About what I wanted. About sharing pleasure. He just wanted to rut like a hog and when it was over roll off and go to sleep.“

”He didn’t strike me too much as the Continental type,“ I said.

”It’s not funny.“

”No, it isn’t no more than everything else. Laughing is better than crying though. When you can.“

”Well, isn’t that just so folksy and down home,“ she said. ”What the hell do you know about laughing and crying?“

”I observe it a lot,“ I said. ”But what I know isn’t an issue. If Eddie Taylor was so revolting, why did you pick him up?“

”Because I goddamned well felt like it. Because I felt like going out and getting laid without complications. Just a simple straightforward screw without a lot of lovey-dovey—did-you-like-that-do-you-love-me crap.“

”You do that much?“

”Yes. When I felt like it, and I’ve been feeling like it a lot these last few years.“

”You usually enjoy it more than you did with old Eddie?“

”Of course, I—oh hell, I don’t know. It’s very nice sometimes when it happens, but afterwards I’m still hung up on guilt. I can’t get over all those years of nice-girls-don’t-do-it, I guess.“

”A guy told me you always went for the big young jocko types. Muscle and youth.“

”You have yourself in mind? You’re not all that young.“

”I would love to go to bed with you. You are an excellent-looking person. But I’m still trying to talk about you.“

”I’m sorry,“ she said. ”That was flirtatious, and I’m trying to change. Sometimes it’s hard after a long time of being something else. Flirtatious was practically the only basis for male-female relationship through much of my life.“

”I know,“ I said. ”But what about the guy who says you go for jockos. He right?“

She was silent awhile. An old Plymouth convertible went by with the top down and radio up loud. I heard a fragment of Roberta Flack as the sound dopplered past.

”I guess I do. I never really gave it much thought but I guess the kind of guy I seek out is big and young and strong looking. Maybe I’m hoping for some kind of rejuvenation.“

”And a nice uncomplicated screw.“

”That too.“

”But not with someone who just wants to rut and roll off.“

She frowned. ”Oh, don’t split hairs with me. You know what I mean.“

”No,“ I said. ”I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t think you know what you mean. I’m not trying to chop logic with you. I’m trying to find out how your head is. And I think it’s a mare’s nest.“

”What’s a mare’s nest?“

”Something confused.“

”Well, I’m not a mare’s nest. I know what I want and what I don’t want.“

”Yeah? What?“

”What do you mean what?“

”I mean what do you want and what do you not want.“

”I don’t want to live the way I have been for twenty years.“

”And what do you want?“

”Something different.“

”Such as?“

”Oh“—tears showed in her eyes—”I don’t know. Goddamn it, leave me alone. How the hell do I know what I want. I want you to leave me the goddamned hell alone.“ The tears were on her cheeks now, and her voice had thickened. Across the bridge Rose and Jane were in animated conference. I had the feeling Jane was to be unleashed in a moment. I took out one of my cards and gave it to her.

”Here,“ I said. ”If you need me, call me. You got any money?“

She shook her head. I took ten of her husband’s ten-dollar bills out of my wallet and gave them to her. The wallet was quite thin without them.

”I won’t tell him where you are,“ I said, and walked off the bridge and back up the hill toward my car back of the museum.