Alison Lurie - Last Resort

“Hey,” she said finally, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “S’pose I wanted to save manatees, what would I do?”

“You’d sign this petition,” he said, pushing forward a clipboard.

Slowly, Barbie took the pen he offered. “That’s all?”

“Well, no. If you want, you could really help us.” He removed his sunglasses to see her better, exposing watery blue eyes ringed with a rim of paler, untanned skin that gave him the look of a surfer or a raccoon.

“Like how?” she asked, inscribing her name and (after some thought) Jacko’s address on the petition.

“Well, you could give us a few dollars,” he suggested, evidently appraising Barbie as someone without extensive financial resources. “Or, you could address envelopes, hand out flyers at Mallory Dock, put up posters. Maybe sit at a table somewhere with this petition, like I’m doing now.”

“Yeah?” she said thoughtfully.

“If you’re really interested, you could come to the meeting next week with me.”

“Yeah. I could do that,” Barbie said slowly. “Sure. I’d like to save the manatee.”

10

LATER THAT DAY, AS the sun grew even warmer, Jenny lay on the chaise longue beside the pool, protected by wire netting from the bugs that, since Mosquito Control, no longer existed. This afternoon the place looked neglected: Jacko was at work on other people’s gardens and hadn’t had time to sweep up the tropical debris that had fallen during the week of rain.

Jenny was tired of the pool and of the house that went with it. What she really wanted was to see Lee Weiss, even though she’d seen her on Friday and would see her again tomorrow. But she felt something almost like terror at the possibility that if she walked into Artemis Lodge unexpectedly Lee would look not only surprised, but a little bored.

Instead, she had thought, why shouldn’t she go to the beach with Wilkie? After all, he was her husband, and couples who were married usually went to the beach together. She’d approached him to propose it as he descended from the study at the usual time.

“I thought I might come swimming with you,” she’d said, touching his arm, smiling nervously.

Wilkie stopped cold. He stared strangely, fiercely at his wife, as if he were about to strike her. Then he said in the tight, controlled voice of a professor pointing out some obvious flaw in a student’s argument, “But you’re not ready.”

“I’ll get my suit on now; it won’t take a minute,” she’d promised.

“Sorry,” her husband muttered. “I can’t wait. Maybe another time.” Then he pushed past her, across the sitting room, and out the door.

Jenny, stunned and faint, stood by the stairs, holding on to the ugly chrome banister so she wouldn’t fall. Wilkie had been abrupt with her often lately—but never so harsh, so rude. Maybe he doesn’t love me anymore, she thought. Maybe he hasn’t loved me for a long time.

And maybe I don’t love him either, she thought suddenly. Because how could anyone love a person who was so cold and unkind?

As she lay in the warm, dappled shade, a shudder went through her. Because if Wilkie didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him, everything was changed and wrong.

Perhaps he hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, she told herself. Perhaps she was just touchy because she was physically frustrated. After all, it had been nearly two weeks since Wilkie had wanted to make love, and even longer before that.

Jenny wasn’t used to being troubled by desire: for most of their marriage, Wilkie had always been the more passionate one, the one whose need was greater and more frequent. Then, about fifteen years ago, his demands had begun to slow down gradually, until at last they were perfectly matched at once a week. Those had been wonderful years, years of harmony during which Jenny never had the unkind thought (not that she’d ever expressed it, of course) Oh no, please, darling, not so soon.

But then, last autumn—It was because Wilkie was getting older, he claimed. One sad wet night he had mumbled those words, asking Jenny if she minded waiting a few days more. He had even asked if she’d like him to, as he put it, “stimulate her.” “Would that be nice for you?” he had said.

“Oh no, thank you,” she had replied with an embarrassed half-laugh, glad that Wilkie couldn’t see her recoil and blush in the dark. No, that wouldn’t be nice for me at all, she had thought. If he didn’t want it too, it would be mechanical and horrible.

“Just asking,” Wilkie had said, and he had laughed also, more freely. “I guess you’re getting older too.”

But she wasn’t getting older, not the way he meant any-how, Jenny thought. Especially not—here in Key West where, as in most resorts, everything seemed designed to recommend and encourage sensual pleasure. In such a place, either you went along with it or, like Wilkie, you became more and more cross and tight and withdrawn.

Except for a few days last week, he’s been even colder to me here in Key West, which was supposed to warm us up, Jenny thought. I wish we’d never come—

But she couldn’t wish that, because if they hadn’t come to Key West, she’d never have met Lee Weiss. And at the thought of Lee, she smiled in spite of her confused unhappiness.

When she couldn’t see Lee it was nice just to think about her: Lee’s deep laugh, Lee’s smooth brown arms, Lee standing square on strong brown legs and feet below bleached cutoff jeans. Lee making salad in her big mahogany bowl: she never used a fork or spoon to mix greens, but tossed the lettuce and cucumber and tomato into a froth of green and white and red with her broad, tanned hands. Watching her, Jenny’d wanted to put her own hands into the salad with Lee’s.

It was no use pretending, she said to herself, frowning now. It wasn’t just Lee’s intelligence and goodness and warmth she loved, it was the way she looked. She felt a sensual attraction to another person of her own sex.

And this wasn’t anything new, not really. The only difference was that it was much stronger than ever before. Jenny had always thought that in general women were more beautiful than men. Most men, even good-looking ones like Wilkie, had scruffy hair in the wrong places—sometimes all over their backs, even—and coarse skin and rough hands and big, knobby feet, and unaesthetic red dangling parts that ought to have been designed to be more private. Women were more graceful, more elegant, more delicately made.

She had always enjoyed looking at women’s bodies, Jenny remembered. For instance, one of the best things about swimming at the college pool was watching people in the showers and dressing rooms: women of all shapes and colors, and all ages from toddler to grandmother. All so different, and most quite beautiful, really, even when they had tan lines or freckles or long strings of dark wet uncombed hair, big hanging breasts or almost none. They bent to pull on bathing suits, or twisted round to soap narrow knobby backs, or broad fleshy ones, or raised long-muscled legs to limber up before their laps.

Jenny had liked watching them for years without really thinking about it, or mentioning it to anyone. If Wilkie knew, he would be disgusted with her, even more than he probably was already. According to Wilkie, love of one’s own sex was either a freak of nature, or a sign of immaturity, a selfish refusal to face up to adult responsibilities.

But that didn’t make sense if you thought of Lee, who was more mature and responsible than practically anyone Jenny knew. And there were lots of mature responsible people like Lee, or like Jacko, one in ten, she’d read somewhere, and it wasn’t their fault any more than it was anyone’s fault for being tall or short or lame or blind.