Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

“Aw, what a mess. Lemme help you.”

“No, thanks.” Vinnie, on hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water and the same sponge she used on Chuck, glances up. Scrolled leather boots, thick naked muscled legs furred with pale-red hair, fringed homespun bedspread which, draped round his bulk, looks smaller than before. She stands up.

“You have some kinda green plant stuff in your hair.” Chuck picks it out and presents it to her.

“Watercress.” Vinnie throws it away. “It was watercress-and-avocado soup. I’d better go put my dress to soak, excuse me.”

“Sure.”

In the bathroom she shakes out her sticky Laura Ashley and lays it in the tub, then checks the mirror to make sure there is no more soup in her hair. How awful I look, how old, gray, unattractive, she thinks. Of course he’s not going to make a pass. As she leaves she glances again into the tub, where her dress and Chuck’s shirt and slacks lie wetly together in embarrassing proximity. She runs in lukewarm water to give them more room, causing the garments to turn and slosh about in a promiscuous embrace. Come on, get ahold of yourself, she thinks, and returns to the kitchen where, surprisingly, Chuck has just finished mopping the floor

“I didn’t expect-thank you,” she says, noting that the bedspread has managed to transform Chuck from a fake cowboy to a fake Indian. “Would you like another cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.” He gives her a brief smile, a longer stare. Vinnie, uneasy, returns neither.

“Well then,” she begins, “maybe you’d like-”

“Y’know what I’d like?” Before she can answer, the imitation Indian grabs Vinnie by both shoulders and kisses her full on the mouth.

“Mm! No!” she protests, but after the fact.

“Aw, Vinnie. If you knew how long I’ve been wanting to do that. Ever since that day we had tea. But I didn’t have the, I don’t know, the nerve. I was too goddamn low.” He hugs her again, warmly rather than hotly-perhaps he only feels especially friendly?

“Please, let’s take it easy,” she says. “And let’s get out of the kitchen, before something else spills.”

“Okay.” Chuck stands aside, then follows her into the sitting room. But they are hardly there before he moves closer again, crowding Vinnie against the wall under a watercolor of New College. This time his intention is evidently more than friendly. Vinnie feels the flutter of satisfaction that has always, for her, followed any expression of sexual interest: I may be plain, but I’m not after all hopelessly plain, it says. Then she catches her breath, tries to collect herself. But it is the first time since she left America that anyone has done more than shake her hand or kiss her on the cheek, and Chuck’s embrace is close, strong, deeply and alarmingly comforting. A flush of warmth spreads through her, an impulse to relax, to forget who she is, where she is-.

“No, no,” she tries to say. “You’re making a mistake, I really don’t want this-” But the words are hardly more than a murmur. Push him away, she commands herself; but her body refuses-though one hand, with great difficulty, manages to keep their lower torsos separated a vital inch or two.

It is Chuck who first pulls back. “Vinnie. Hold on a minute.” He removes his large warm hand from within her shirt, breathing hard. “God, this is great. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you.” He drags the bedspread back round his shoulders. “Let’s sit down a minute, okay?”

“Okay,” she echoes shakily.

“What it is, is-” Chuck, who has lowered himself to the sofa, halts. “Oh hell.”

“Go on,” she prompts, taking a chair across from him and beginning to regain control. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“You can’t. How could you?” He sounds angry, perhaps frightened.

“Because I’ve heard it before.” Vinnie’s voice is almost steady now. She glances at Chuck, thinking how ridiculous he looks: a comic oversized pink-faced Red Indian, incongruous among the English furniture and flowered chintz. “You’re going to tell me that you’re awfully fond of me, but you want to be honest, and I should realize that your marriage is very important to you and you really love your wife.”

“The hell I am. I don’t love Myrna-I hate her, or pretty near. My marriage is as dead as a skunk.” Chuck looks dark. “What I hafta say, it’s a lot worse than that.” He clutches at the bedspread, clears his throat. “Uh, you remember I told you I was in an accident back in Tulsa, smashed up my car.”

“Yes,” Vinnie says, wondering if Chuck is about to confess some incapacitating and shameful sexual disability.

“Wal, it wasn’t just my car I smashed up. There was this kid in a VW. It was out on the Muskogee Turnpike, about two A.M. I was tearing along, doing near eighty I guess, in my usual midnight funk, and suddenly there was this old VW pulling out from the access road right in front of me, weaving like a drunken chicken. I still keep seeing it. It was this sixteen-year-old kid, half out of his mind on amphetamines. I tried to stop, but my reaction time wasn’t fast enough, I was too goddamn pissed.”

“So what happened?” she asks finally.

“So I killed him. That’s what happened.” Chuck throws a panicky, searching look toward Vinnie; then, as if afraid of reading her expression, he transfers his gaze to the floor.

“You know those little old foreign cars, they don’t have a hope in hell in a crash,” he informs the carpet. “That beetle crumpled up like a broil-in bag. The Pontiac wasn’t in such great shape either, but I got out of it somehow. I had a cracked knee, and my head was bleeding, only I didn’t notice it then. But the kid-He was stuck inside the VW with the wheel shaft through him, screaming. I couldn’t do anything for him-I couldn’t even get the door open.” He looks up at Vinnie again.

“So there we were,” he goes on. “It was dark all around, black as hell. One of my headlights was still working, and I could see a slice of the road, with ripped-off pieces of metal thrown around, and a lot of smashed glass, looked like crushed ice.

“By the time the cops got there I was kinda incoherent. I had point twelve percent of alcohol in my blood, and I tried to fight them when they wanted me to get into the patrol car; I had some idea I had to stay with the kid. So naturally they took me in. Resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer, and driving while intoxicated, and exceeding the speed limit, and failure to exercise proper caution… And then the kid’s parents decided to sue me for manslaughter. I wanted to plead guilty; the way I felt, I didn’t care too much what happened to me any more. Myrna thought I was nuts. If I didn’t have any self-respect, she said, at least I might have the decency to think of her and the children, of their standing in the community.”

“And did you?”

“Yeh. In the end. I let her get me an expensive lawyer, and he won the case for us. I had the right of way, see, and the kid was on drugs, that’s a lot worse than booze in Tulsa. Except if I hadn’t been so damn bombed I would have seen him in time, easy.”

“I’m sorry,” Vinnie says. “What an awful thing to happen.”

“I can’t fucking get it out of my mind. At least I couldn’t. It’s been better lately. For a long time I felt like I oughta die too, to make it up to the kid and his parents. That’s what it was mostly. Not so much losing my job like I told you. Whenever I get in a car, even sometimes just crossing the street, I think about it. I keep taking chances, to see if I’ll cash in; and if I make it, maybe I’m forgiven. I know that’s sort of crazy.”

“Of course it’s crazy,” Vinnie says decidedly. “It wouldn’t do that boy or his parents the least bit of good for you to be killed in an accident.”