Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“There’s probably one open on Charles Street,” I said. I didn’t want to go too far from here. I would talk to her for a while to humor her and then hustle back to the pool.

The bar was called The Library, which annoyed me, because there were only crappy books on the bookshelves — books for decoration. I ordered orange juice and Mrs. Mamalujian a double gin.

“I’ll bet you’re proud of yourself,” she said. “Is there anything wrong?”

“ ‘Is there anything wrong?’ he asks.” She might have been speaking to the waitress as she put our drinks down. She said, “You used me.”

She was wearing a big floppy-brimmed hat and sunglasses with yellow lenses. Her head looked like a wilted daisy and when she tried to look at me her hat wobbled. She was drunker than I had thought.

“You toyed with my feelings,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I leveled with you.”

“What a clown. You kept your clothes on all night in New York. Sleeping in your clothes is batty. You said you were afraid of fires in hotels. But I know better.”

“I am afraid of fires,” I said, but I saw myself full length on the bed in my army jacket and combat boots. The thought made me cringe.

“You can’t treat me that way, Andre. No one does that to me and gets away with it.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said lamely.

“Right!” she said — too loud, and when people looked around she showed them the lipstick on her teeth.

“I’ve been very straight with you. I haven’t lied. What are you accusing me of?”

I whispered so that she would whisper back.

“I just got through telling you,” she said, shouting to defy me.

My mother always said I just got through telling you that , and I wondered whether I would forgive Mrs. Mamalujian for saying it.

“I’ll never forgive you for it,” she said.

That was another one I hated. What was going on?

A squeak, just like the lurch of a rusty hinge, seemed to come out of her hat as she bowed her head. It came again, the beginning of a sob.

“I left my husband for you,” she said. “And you don’t care.”

I said, “Look, I have to get back to work.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said, suddenly angry. “You’re not running out on me.”

“I have work to do,” I said, thinking of Larry and Muzzaroll probably frolicking with those girls, lucky dogs, while I sat here with this crazy old woman. And I knew it was my own fault.

“You never call me.”

“I called you last week.”

“Because you needed money. That’s the only time I hear from you. When you need something.”

“That’s not true,” I said. But it was partly true. After refusing all her lavish gifts I had weakened and asked her for three hundred dollars. I had been desperate. “Anyway, I’ll pay you back.”

“You bet you will,” she said, in a way that made me dislike her. People were puzzling. They contained these other people, who were strangers. I was surprised to hear that voice. It was like Lucy saying to me on the beach at Manomet You’d better find it, sonny . Whose voices were these?

Mrs. Mamalujian ordered another double gin.

“You think I’m drunk,” she said.

I denied it.

“You’re a liar,” she said. “Look at the pansy with his orange juice.”

I started to get up.

She said, “You’re not leaving.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not going anywhere until I get my money,” she said.

I could only think of the doctor in New York who had said You’ve come to the wrong place , because I had no money. He had sent me away, and now I felt humiliated again. Mrs. Mamalujian had a mocking smile on her face, and her expression was a taunting one that said, I’ve got you .

“You’re staying with me,” she said.

It was the only hold she had on me — the money. But I had a hundred and seventy-odd dollars. I took it out and counted it onto the table, and pushed it over. “Plus a buck in change.”

“No,” she said, and put her hand over her mouth.

“Don’t move — I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to get the rest of it.” And before she could speak I ran out of the bar and down Charles Street towards the pool.

The four of them were at the far end, near the diving board. Muzzaroll was holding his hairy belly and demonstrating a dive. Larry saw me and trotted over to me.

“See what you’re missing? They’re nurses. It’s action. That pretty one is all over me.”

“I need some money,” I said.

“Smile, Andy. It’s not the end of the world.” He had pizza sauce on his cheeks.

“I need a hundred a quarter. I’ll pay you back.”

“I’m good for fifty.”

“What about Vinny?”

“He’s good for fifty. I’ll steal it out of his wallet.”

He got the money quickly and pushed it through the fence, apologizing for not giving me more. But he said that he too had to settle a debt.

“Thanks,” I said.

“What are friends for?”

That was perfect, and made me calm; and now I remembered where I could get the rest.

I wondered whether the place would be open. But I need not have worried. It was Labor Day, a holiday on which there were always terrible car crashes. And as the nurse said, they always needed blood. I saw Loretta, and when she smiled I rolled up my sleeve and stuck my arm out.

I had only been gone a half an hour.

Mrs. Mamalujian burst into tears when she saw me enter The Library, and she began to snatch at my hand as I counted the money onto the table. But I kept counting — Larry’s fifty, Muzzaroll’s fifty, and the twenty-five I had been paid for my pint of B-negative.

“That’s three hundred dollars,” I said. I felt weak from the loss of blood and the running back and forth.

“You completely misunderstood me.”

“Why did you say you wanted the money back?”

“You know I didn’t mean that!”

Yet it was too late. She was balling up the bills, and that was how I left her, crumpling the money like wastepaper. I wanted to stop her. I wanted to take it. But it wasn’t mine.

I couldn’t face the pool after that. I sat on a bench by the river until darkness fell at about eight o’clock; and when I couldn’t stand to see another happy hand-holding couple strolling past me I stood up and started writing in my head, the beginning of a poem, Drunk on the drooping street, watching your sad ass retreat but couldn’t go any further. On the bus home, reading Baudelaire I decided that the word that described my feeling for Lucy was spleen .

I had not avoided her. I worried; but because I felt so ignorant I did not want to think too hard about her. The day after Labor Day and then the whole week before I left for Amherst I called Miss Murphy’s and left notes at Pinckney Street. I was sure she had gone away. She hadn’t asked where the money had come from. She didn’t care. And I felt it had been that money that had ruined our love.

She called the day before I left home. My mother answered and handing me the receiver she said sourly, “It’s some girl.”

That was how little she knew. In her eyes I had spent the summer getting fresh air at the MDC pool, and had saved some money, but not enough.

She was listening, so I could not say what I wanted to Lucy, nor could I ask any leading questions. But Lucy seemed rather detached, too. She had registered at Boston University, she said. She had found a place to live on Newbury Street. She had agreed to stuff envelopes for the presidential campaign. And she finished by saying, “I’ve been out all day buying books.”

I had worried about her! I had sat on the bus and for the thousandth time that summer gone back and forth to Boston on the shuddering thing, looking at the poster that said For regularity take a lemon in water every day for thirty days . But she was all right: she had a new room, she was buying books and starting classes. And I was heading for Amherst in my army surplus clothes. I was short of money, doomed to a part-time job, and had to look for a place to live. Another summer had come and gone, and I hadn’t written anything except some bitter poems.