Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

When the whole marvelous show was over in the waning hours of the afternoon, Potter took a long, hot shower, singing “Deck my balls with boughs of holly,” feeling quite appropriately mad for the spirit of the day. He vowed he would be a glowing guest at the Bertelsen party. He would not let Marva get under his skin with the inevitable questions about where Marilyn was, and why, and whether she and Potter were still an item even though she’d gone away and left him on Christmas.

“Merry Christmas!” Marva said, giving Potter a mistletoe peck on the cheek, then peering around as if someone might be hiding behind him.

“Where’s Marilyn?” she asked with concern.

“In Florida,” Potter said, steeling himself with a studied smile.

“ Florida? By herself?”

“With her mother. Her mother lives in Florida.”

“Oh! How long is she there for?”

“Just a few days. Till the day after Christmas.”

Marva took Potter by the arm, leading him toward the bar, obviously still concerned about Marilyn’s absence and the possible hidden meanings of it.

“I’ll have a Scotch and soda,” Potter said to the man tending bar.

“We haven’t seen you for ages,” Marva said. “Why don’t you and Marilyn come for dinner when she gets back from Florida—I mean, if you’re still—”

“We’re ‘still,’” Potter said.

“It’s a shame she had to leave you at Christmas,” Marva said. “I’d have asked you for dinner, but it’s been so long, I thought you and Marilyn probably had other plans. But you could come, Phil. I won’t hear of you being alone on Christmas.”

“Oh, thanks. But I can’t.”

“But what will you do? You can’t just sit at home!”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m leaving early in the morning for Maine.”

“ Maine? All by yourself?”

“Well, I’ll probably drive up by myself, but there’s plenty of people coming to this—well, I don’t know how you’d describe it,” Potter said mysteriously, trying hard to improvise.

“What do you mean? ”

“Well, this guy I used to work with in New York has a sort of estate on an island off the coast of Maine, and he’s invited a whole bunch of people up—show people, you know—for a big bash on Christmas Day. You know.”

“No, I don’t think I do!”

“Well, you know how show people are. They like things a little—uh— different . And this place is so isolated, anyone can do whatever they want.”

“Phil, it sounds like some kind of orgy or something!”

“Well, you never can tell.”

“An orgy, on Christmas?”

“I didn’t call it an orgy, Marva. You did.”

“Yes, but—”

“Really, I don’t think I’d better say any more about it,” Potter said, trying to sound sincerely apologetic.

He moved off quickly into the guests, leaving Marva with her inflamed imagination. He nodded to the Harvard couple he’d met at the same dinner where he met Marilyn, waved to Max through circles that gathered around him, avoided the rival bachelor Hartley Stanhope, and went toward a frail, nervous-looking woman who seemed to be shivering in a corner.

She turned out to be an old college friend of Marva’s who taught Medieval history at Connecticut College for Women, and had come up to Boston for the holidays, to stay at the Bertelsens’. Another of the lost sheep Marva had gathered to the fold. She was tiny, and prim, and her mouth kept twitching. Potter found her appealing, and after her initial shyness wore off a bit she displayed a sharp wit, skewering the Harvard contingent. She shared with Potter an aversion to eggnog, preferring straight Scotch, which he felt was an immediate bond between them. Besides, beneath her hesitant and birdlike demeanor he sensed a sexual magnetism and responded to it, like picking up a wavelength.

He had just invited her to go out somewhere for dinner with him, when he saw Marva motioning wildly to him from across the room. Potter excused himself, and went to Marva, who was all in a lather.

“Do you know who that is you’re over there in the corner with?”

“Her name, she told me, is Melissa Vanderbush. Isn’t that right or is she really someone else?”

“Phil, don’t be funny now. Melissa is a very sensitive person and she’s had a terrible time this year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Her husband is in the Institute for Living.”

“The Institute for Living?”

“In Hartford. You know. It’s one of those exclusive booby hatches. Like McLean’s and Austen Riggs.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Melissa’s all at loose ends right now, and I feel responsible for her while she’s here.”

“Fine. What do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t want you to do anything about it. That’s the whole point. She’s very vulnerable right now, and she just isn’t the type for a one-night stand.”

“It sounds to me like that ought to be her own business. It certainly isn’t yours.”

“Phil, she’s my friend.”

“The trouble with you, Marva, is you think that being a friend of someone allows you the license to meddle in their private life and act like you were their shrink and their minister and their welfare worker. I’m sick and tired of it myself, and I imagine your friend is too, and if she isn’t yet she will be. She’s an adult and I’m an adult and what we do or don’t do is no fucking business of yours!”

Marva backed away and put her hand to her cheek, as if she’d been struck, and for a moment looked at Potter with a frozen expression of horror while he stood, hot with his own fury, and she suddenly broke into tears and rushed to the stairs. From across the room Max saw her and followed. Potter went to Melissa and said, “Listen, let’s get out of here.”

They had dinner at Stella’s and she sympathized with his explosion and assured him Marva’d get over it; she had been like that in college.…

They went back to Potter’s and started necking as they wrestled out of their coats and without a word went straight to bed. Potter was excited but apprehensive. He kept thinking he had to be very gentle and careful and solicitous, as if she were a scared virgin. With that in mind he eased himself into her, cuddled her small shoulders close to his chest, and very slowly and discreetly began moving in and out of her, with the rhythm and feeling of a lullaby. Suddenly she cleared her throat, sighed, and in a voice that was deeper and steadier and firmer than he had till then heard come out of her mouth, she said, “Move it around, will ya?”

Potter did his best.

He woke in the night to find her gone, and, on the back of a cocktail napkin, in prim handwriting, a thank-you note, as if for an afternoon tea.

The silence of all the Sundays of the year was gathered into the great holy hush of Christmas Day. Outside, nothing stirred. The day was sharply cold, the sky grey and featureless. Potter woke around ten, straggled to the living room, and poked his head out the door, surreptitiously, looking up and down the empty town, trying to get the lay of the land. Later, armed bands of children would make small sorties into the street and over the frozen yards, menacing strangers with shiny pearl-handled revolvers and glistening M-16’s, bright new bazookas and bows and arrows. The greatest supplier of arms in the world had made his annual distribution of weaponry the night before, bestowing on eager little children replicas of every instrument of death devised by man from the hatchet to the armed helicopter. Peace on Earth! Bang-bang, you’re dead!

Potter closed the door, drew the blinds, and went in the kitchen to make a cup of instant coffee that he doused with Scotch. After he drank it, he would call his parents. But first he had to open their packages. He wished they hadn’t sent things this year. Opening presents by yourself seemed like dancing alone in an empty room.