Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

Out on the screened part of the patio beyond the glass doors they could talk in normal tones. Natalie wore a swimsuit patterned in dull shades of orange and yellow, straw slippers with thick cork soles. She seemed much less guarded, less constrained and tense than when she had first arrived in Florida. She seemed cherished and content, her small face less drawn, her movements more fluid, her spare body a little more mature. That unmistakable look of being loved gave Kat a little antagonistic feeling which she immediately identified for what it was and discarded as being a most narrow and unworthy emotion.

“Won’t the phone bother him?” Natalie asked.

“I had it put on temporary disconnect yesterday, before I knew he was coming here.”

“Jigger is child-watching. He’s really very reliable. He counts heads constantly. Kat, about Jigger and me...”

“Don’t feel you have to tell me anything.”

“Suppose I want to? Would you mind?”

“Of course not.”

“I dumped the whole thing in your lap, so you have a right to know. And the way my father went off, it sort of left everything entirely up to us. We spend every possible minute together. I guess you couldn’t help noticing that. Anyhow, what happened made it all kind of dirty and uncomfortable. We tried to tell each other it didn’t, but it did. So we’re being distinctly moral. I guess it’s sort of a tantalizing game, after... knowing each other, but it’s more than that, too. We slipped once, but we won’t again. I’m finding out how much of a man he is, and I think I’m more than half in love with him.” A blush darkened her small tanned face. “Isn’t it absurd? He’s seventeen years old! But I keep forgetting he is. He’s found a summer job, starting next Monday. We think it will be better for both of us for him to have a job too. I know it’s... really kind of egotistical for me to think you’d be interested when there’s so much going on for you and people are giving you such a hard time and all, but I thought maybe you’d like to know that one... pretty good thing has come out of all this bay-filling war.”

“Nat, honey, I’m glad to know and I’m touched that you’ve told me. I hope everything works out for both of you.”

Natalie frowned. “We’ll be apart when I go back to school. I can guess how these things usually work out. I feel sad when I think what will probably happen. But right now it’s so good to be halfway in love. Some of it is very young love. You know. Silly things. Jokes and games. And some of it is very adult, I think. Because we sort of started backwards. What we have now is what we should have had first, I guess. But we had the other part first, the six times that we were together like that, with it getting more tremendous every time, as close as two people can get. So now that it’s all a... younger kind of love, the things we already know about each other sort of shadow it, and make it more... I don’t know if any word fits... marriageable? But we can’t even think about that. I’ve got a terror complex about marriage. I’ve always promised myself I never would be. My father set such a dandy example.”

“He and Claire are all right.”

“Are they, Kat? They like the same things. A lot of people swarming around. And she gets the lush life she adores, and people to do the scut work for her. And he gets the girl-wife for his declining years, which is sort of a public advertisement of his manhood. Is it a marriage or a sort of a truce?”

“Most marriages are.”

“Yours wasn’t. I know that.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“What about Jimmy Wing’s? What was she like, really?”

“Gloria was a very beautiful girl. Not a complex person. She had a lot of earthy vitality, and she was easy to be with before she got sick because she was essentially a merry person. I guess she was good for Jimmy because there’s sort of a dark, involved, tortured side to him, and he’d need a marriage that would... would simplify the world instead of complicate it. Everyone who knew her knew she was a totally loyal and faithful wife. That’s why it was so shocking and ugly and incomprehensible when she began to change. She seemed to coarsen. She seemed to stop giving a damn, about anything. Poor Jimmy thought it was something he had done. He thought he was inadequate or something. Then he tried to turn into the Biblical husband and wham the mischief out of her. So when they found out it was a physical thing, an illness she couldn’t help, the guilt over how he had been handling it nearly destroyed him.”

“The poor guy.”

“She was put away for keeps over two years ago, and she’s been in what I guess you could call a coma for over a year. It’s supposed to be a very interesting case. Not very interesting for Jimmy.”

“He’s an interesting-looking man, you know. When he interviewed me at the Center, I was looking at him carefully. Every feature he has is actually ugly, all by itself. Those pale eyes that slant the wrong way and that big nose, the long head and sandy hair, and the crooked mouth and big uneven teeth. But he has all that darn presence, and that strange kind of...”

“Elegance?”

“That’s the word. Lazy grace, I guess, plus complete confidence and that freshly scrubbed and polished look. Actually, I think he’s wonderfully attractive.”

“I can’t think of him in just that way, Natalie. While Van was alive I didn’t care for Jimmy particularly, even though he was one of Van’s best friends. It wasn’t jealousy. I just thought he was... a sort of contrived person. Artificial and sort of superior-acting. I didn’t understand why Van was so fond of him. I found out this past year. He’s a valued friend. An old shoe. When I’m with him I feel comfortable and safe and understood. When things were the worst I walked a hundred miles with him, said all the crazy things that came into my head, cried a gallon of tears onto his shirt fronts. He’s seen me at my worst and still puts up with me. I love him dearly as a good friend.”

“He could have other ideas, you know.”

She stared at the girl. “Jimmy? Bless you, no. Not toward this raddled old redhead, honey. One man had the pleasant delusion I was a sexy exciting woman, and that was enough for one lifetime. Just because you’re in the midst of romance, dear, don’t turn those rosy glasses on the rest of us. Jimmy is racked up, and I am taking care, and if I ever made a pass at him, his little eyes would bulge with horror.”

Natalie smiled and sighed. “I better get back to the younger set.” She stood up. “By the way, Mortie was in rare wild shape this morning. Things are a mess down at the Center, you know.”

“Tom told me Morton was having the same kind of problems as the rest of us.”

“There’s been a big membership petition asking him to either give up his S.O.B. activities or resign as director. My classes are down to about half what they were. Two of his people on the board have resigned in protest. People are canceling their pledges. All of a sudden his little empire has turned shaky, and Mortie is stomping on his hanky and dithering around all over the place. We’re getting a lot of crank calls at the Center, and some absolutely filthy mail. It’s such amazing reasoning, isn’t it? The reason why Mr. Dermond opposes the bay fill is because he is a Communistic homosexual pervert, and opposing the fill is part of his long program of foisting degenerate abstract art on the duped citizens of Palm County.”

“Do you think he’ll knuckle under, Nat?”

“I don’t think so. He’s much too furious. But I don’t think he’ll have time to do you much good. He’s too busy trying to mend the fences as fast as they’re falling down around him. He had to have his home phone changed to an unlisted number.”