Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

Katherine’s head ached terribly now with the smoke and the noise; she said nothing, but focused on Susy Skinner and nodded vaguely.

“Of course, it’s too bad, the courses all started last month, in September, and they don’t begin again until February; but maybe you could get into a discussion group. They have some awfully good discussion groups. They don’t get the very best-known lecturers, but they usually have some very nice young instructor for the discussion leader. They meet in one of the member’s homes once a week, and they serve coffee and refreshments afterwards. For instance, there’s a New Book Discussion Group, with Mr. Evert, that discusses all the new books. I mean if you’re interested in keeping up with the new books.”

As sometimes happened during her sinus attacks, Katherine found it very difficult, even painful, to refocus her eyes; she continued staring at the side of Mrs. Skinner’s face with a meaningless fixity which Susy no doubt took for deep interest. “Well, I’d like to, but it’s really a question of time for me—” she began slowly to say.

“Oh, I know it is. I mean moving and getting settled into a new house, it honestly is the complete end: you don’t have to tell me. But when you have time you ought to look into it. Some of the discussion groups meet in lovely homes up in Bel Air and Brentwood. Fred used to lead a group on Major Trends in something, I forget what, Major Trends in—Anyway, it met at this absolutely gorgeous home in Laurel Canyon right above where Glory Green lives. You could see her swimming in her swimming pool from their dining room. It was at night, of course, but she has these spotlights built in underneath the water, so you could see her real well. American Realism. That was it. Major Trends in American Realism. Anyway, I’ll lend you the catalogue, and Fred can tell you which are the best professors.”

Katherine returned Susy’s hundred-watt smile with a weaker one. Her head was throbbing loudly. She was also confused by the innocent enthusiasm of this creature in what she would have unhesitatingly classified as the costume of a hard, successful chorus girl or, since this was Los Angeles, movie starlet. She rested her head on her hand, pressing the flesh along her cheekbones as if this might loosen the congestion. “Thank you, it sounds very interesting,” she said. “But I’m afraid I won’t have much time for anything like that. I’m planning to find a job as soon as I can.”

“Oh, I see.”

Katherine put the other hand on the other side of her face. She felt dizzy and in considerable pain. Peering out at Susy above pale distorted cheeks and a mouth compressed into a grotesque pout, she said: “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I’m not feeling very well. Do you suppose I could lie down somewhere for a little while?”

“Oh, gee. I’m awfully sorry. Would you like to lie down in the bedroom?”

“Yes, thank you.”

They went into a tiny room almost entirely filled by king-size furniture. Katherine lay down on the bed beside the coats of the guests and let Susy cover her with a green satin puff. She lay on her back because that seemed more normal, but as soon as Susy had shut the door she rolled over on to her face, crept across the chenille, and hung her head over the end of the bed at a forty-five-degree angle.

She lay there a long time, feeling neither happy nor well, listening to the blur of voices in the other room. How hot it was here, and dry; terribly dry. It was the dehydrated air of Los Angeles that she and her sinuses could not get used to; she imagined it full of minute grains of soot and sand. It wasn’t her fault: she had never wanted to come to Los Angeles. Why was she here, then? Well, because Paul had expected it of her, and so had everyone else. If she had refused to come, there would have been questions, and talk, and opinions, and life cracked open in an ugly way. And besides, she had really not liked it very much in Cambridge either, or in Boston where she had gone to school. She had not liked it very much in Worcester where she had been brought up, the only child of a second-rate professor in a second-rate college; or anywhere in the East, or anywhere that she had ever lived or been, for that matter.

But Los Angeles was worst. She hung down farther off the bed; her long, silky hair fell over her face and brushed the straw matting, and her head throbbed as the blood ran into it. Paul must have noticed by now that she had left the party, and no doubt he was annoyed. Probably he too wished that she had never come to Los Angeles. Probably he wished she were dead.

No, that was unfair. Katherine knew that her husband’s attitude of tolerant impatience concealed only impatient tolerance. He took life so easily, swimming through it as through a warm, shallow stream; he could not imagine what it meant to be rubbed raw by every ugly sight and sound. He had no idea of what it had cost her to come out here; of how nearly she hadn’t come at all, of the weeks of anxiety while she had tried to make up her mind. In the end perhaps she had decided to follow Paul just because he didn’t know and never would know what she went through—in the same blind hope that had encouraged her to love and marry him, the hope that somehow his good spirits and good luck would rub off on her.

Staring at the floor, Katherine thought these familiar thoughts. Meanwhile her position began to have its effect: drainage began on one side of her face. Being careful not to raise her head, she burrowed into her bag and took out a wad of Kleenex. She blew her nose.

“How are you feeling; are you feeling any better?” Susy said, coming into the bedroom suddenly. “Oh, please don’t get up.” Katherine subsided to a renewed view of matting flowered all about her head with used pink Kleenex like damp, crushed paper roses. “Look, I brought you another drink. Or would you rather have some coffee or tea or something?”

“No, thank you, nothing. I’m draining my sinuses,” Katherine added, to explain the position in which she had been caught, as if she were either looking for dust under the bed, or planning to throw up. “I have to lie this way to get drainage.”

“Gee, that’s too bad.” Susy sat down on the far end of the bed. “I know what it’s like; my sister had sinus for years and years. Only hers went away after she moved to California.”

“Well, mine hasn’t,” Katherine said. “Ever since I moved to California it’s been much, much worse.” She tried to gather up some of the Kleenex. “Most of the time my passages are completely blocked.”

“But you’ve only been in L.A. a little while,” Susy objected. “Just a few weeks. You have to get used to it. Why, I had a terrible skin condition when I came out here, and even though I went and lay on the beach practically every day it didn’t get better for months. That’s what you ought to do, go and—”

“When you came out here? I thought you were natives.”

“Oh, lordy no. Nobody’s a native in L.A. The whole city has practically been built from the ground up since the war. I’m from Muncie, Indiana, and Fred’s from Tennessee. But of course we’ve been here, lemme see, eight and a half years. It was awful coming out here for the first time and feeling sick and sort of terribly lost; and I didn’t know anybody and I hadn’t a glimmer how I was going to live here. I mean I know just how you feel and I’d like to help.” Susy clasped her hands, red-nailed and loaded with gold and glass, around her knees. “I mean it may seem funny, me thinking I could help anybody,” she said in her soft squeak of a voice. “Fred says I’m a bigger baby than my Markie is. But anyhow I could show you where to go to the beach, and which are the best places to shop, and you know, things like that.”