Benjamin Markovits - You Don't Have to Live Like This

“So he was old. He had a brain thing.”

We sat there feeling the waves underneath us. “When was this?” I said.

“Maybe it started three years ago. He died last fall.”

“So what are these temporary concerns?”

But he was done talking. “They’re not important. They’ll go away.”

After a while he got out and I followed him (I kept following people) and we walked back up the faint slope into the garden.

“Listen,” I said, taking his arm, “I just want to say good-bye to someone,” because I had seen Gloria in the line of people making their way onto the bus. She was standing and waiting her turn.

“You going?” I said to her. “I want to talk to you. I’ve thought of a better answer to your question.”

“I can’t even remember it anymore. I don’t remember your name.”

“Marny,” I said. “Can I give you a call?”

“You’re drunk. If you can remember it you can call me.”

And she told me her number and got on the bus. For several minutes I wandered around in a daze, repeating it, until I found a pencil in the kitchen and wrote the numbers down on the back of a Sports Illustrated subscription card, which was lying by the telephone. When I came out again Tony Carnesecca was standing in the porch light.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he said. “You were mumbling like a crazy man. Anyway, there’s something I want to tell you. Cris is pregnant.”

“That’s terrific.”

“She wanted me to explain why Michael’s been acting up. She’s weaning him. They’ve all gone to bed.”

“That’s terrific,” I said again. “I think I’m gonna go to bed, too.”

I felt a little sick, walking up the stairs, but then I saw a light under Beatrice’s door and knocked. She had the room next to mine — we shared a bathroom. When there wasn’t any answer I got undressed and went for a piss, but after brushing my teeth I couldn’t help myself, and knocked again on the bathroom door.

“What is it, Marny?” she said. “What do you want.”

“I want to come in.”

“I’m trying to go to sleep.”

“Why can’t you sleep? I don’t want to be alone.”

“Just come in for Christ’s sake and stop shouting. It isn’t locked.”

So I went in. She was lying in bed with her hair spread out against the pillow. The bedside lamp put half her face in shadow. Her skin in the light looked tired. I thought, she’s thirty-four years old.

“What do you want?” she said.

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing, staring. I forgot my book.”

“I want to sleep here.”

“What are you, twelve.”

I felt weird standing there in my pajamas while she lay flat on her back, covered in bedclothes. I said, “I don’t think you’re very happy either.”

“I don’t want to have one of your talks. I’m not in the mood. I don’t want to explain anything about myself and I don’t want to hear your explanations either.”

“Beatrice, this is what I’m like. You used to like me. You used to like me for being like this. So I like to talk. Sometimes I don’t even know if other people have intimate conversations with themselves in their own heads or if what they talk about to themselves is the same shit they talk about to me. What time their babies wake up and how much their fucking kitchen is going to cost. For example, I have no idea what you talk about to yourself. No idea. If that’s just adult life, count me out. There are things that became very clear to me tonight.”

She didn’t say anything so I went on. “I used to be in love with you. You probably know that but I thought I should tell you anyway.”

“God, Marny. Is this how you talk a woman into bed?”

Suddenly she seemed in a good mood, she looked cheered up. “Come here,” she said and I sat down next to her. “You can lie down if you want to. I’m not going to sleep with you, but you can lie down here if you want.”

So, feeling dutiful, I climbed under the sheets beside her and lay on my back. Beatrice rolled over and switched off the bedside lamp.

“Come here,” she said, rolling back, and held me. Her eyes looked right into mine, too close for me to see her properly. She kissed me on the face a little and then kissed my mouth. I kissed her back, trying not to kiss too hard.

“You’re going to be okay. We’re all going to be okay. Anyway, I’m not unhappy, just in the dumps. There’s a difference.”

“What’s the difference.”

“The dumps doesn’t matter.”

“Was it seeing his wife?”

“I’ve seen his wife before.”

“But is that what it was?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and turned over again on her back. Then she said, “I don’t mind if you stay all night, but I want to sleep.”

I don’t think she fell asleep right away, she couldn’t have, but I didn’t get another word out of her. I just lay there, not moving. I didn’t want her to kick me out. This funny phrase came into my head: you must be so happy . I meant me. But the truth is, I couldn’t sleep at all like that and the night stretched ahead. I got that feeling I sometimes got as a kid of looking at myself through the wrong end of a telescope. Eventually she started breathing softly, one breath after another, and the fact that this big warm female animal, almost six feet big, was lying next to me and not wearing much started to take effect. An erection climbed up my pajama pants and wouldn’t go away. I don’t know how long I lay there, not sleeping — several hours. Sometimes my erection went down a little, but this made it touch my thigh so it came back up. Jesus, I wanted to rub it against her like a dog. But I also wanted to show her, Look what I got, what am I supposed to do with it. All kinds of crazy thoughts came and went. I thought about Robert’s dad. I thought about Gandhi. I read once that he liked to sleep naked with naked girls, to test his chastity. And it occurred to me that all this sexual pressure, which had been building up all day, and not just all day but for months and years it seemed, wasn’t building towards anything. It was just there and maybe what you did was learn to ignore it. I don’t know how to put this without seeming crazy, but I started to have kind of saintly fantasies, I mean fantasies about a life of chastity and repression and so on, and this was the first test of it. I was doing okay. If you can get through tonight you’re going to be okay, you might make it through to the other side of all that stuff.

Eventually I tried to sneak out of bed and she half woke up.

“Are you going, Marny?” she said and pulled at me a little so that she could kiss me. Her breath was warm, almost hot. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry,” and let me go.

The next morning was Sunday. After church, Bill Russo planned to put on a caucus brunch for some of the big donors. (Russ is what Bill Russo’s MDP friends called him, and since they knew him better than I did, I started calling him Russ, too. And then stopped.) Apparently these donor types like to meet each other, and the Michigan set wanted to rub shoulders with Robert James. After that some quiet time was scheduled. Maybe a ride in the speedboat and a little swim. Drinks on the sunporch, etc. But I’d had enough. Tony Carnesecca was driving back early, with his wife and kid, so I asked him to give me a ride.

They’d had a bad night, sleeping three to a room, in two beds. Michael was just getting used to being out of the crib. He woke up scared around two in the morning and came in with them. So Tony got out. Then Cris tried to sneak out, too, and sleep with Tony, but Michael heard her and cried, so Tony tried to get him down but couldn’t, and eventually they all ended up together again. Only Michael slept.