Thomas McGuane - To Skin a Cat

Jack wandered over to the bar and made himself a nightcap. He was already in a cloud. Betty went up the stairs and Jack slumped in the peculiar apelike repose produced by patent recliner chairs. But there was a slumberous burn still in his eyes. When Iris came down the stairs in her robe to get some ice cream, Jack smiled at her and kept smiling, finally smiling to himself. The burn went out of his eyes as the sweet sound of the scoop in the ice-cream container reached his ears.

“Daddy,” said Iris, “I know this isn’t what you wanted to happen.” She stopped to think. She was comfortable with Jack. “I realize … my condition. But me, so long as it’s healthy, at this point I don’t care. It did occur. I’m the first to admit that. But aren’t we trying to pretend that all this will go away here at the lake? Daddy?”

Jack unfortunately was sound asleep. Among the key effects Betty brought to the lake was Jack’s stadium blanket in blue and maize, his school colors. Iris covered him with it, knowing he had to work tomorrow and needed his rest. With the ice cream in one hand, she reached the stairs and turned out the light.

Passing time was a kind of sedative for Betty and Iris. They became like old friends, the kind who can’t leave each other on deathbeds. When Jack came home at night he thought they were babbling, and sometimes there was a genuine issue: Iris still wanted the baby; then Betty wanted the baby because of the one she had lost through her ectopic pregnancy; then Betty and Iris thought they could team up and raise the baby. Under the last plan, Jack would have to move out. Even Jack thought so.

They lay out on the lawn with bright tanning reflectors under their chins; they were stretched on lawn chairs; and the heat, the big midwestern heat, was everywhere.

“I realize this is crazy,” said Betty. “Sunbathing will make an old bag out of you in a New York minute.”

“Did you ever get the name of this lake?” Iris asked.

“Don’t move your head when you talk, Iris! You’re blinding me!”

“All right.”

“I don’t know, Lake Polliwog or some fool thing. Don’t you wonder what’s going on at home? I see grass growing knee high. I see four feet of morning papers on the porch; a storm door slams back and forth in the wind. Maybe the fire department broke in looking for bodies and stole my silver. The TV we left on to discourage burglars has become some kind of haunted Magnavox. It’s awful what your mind will do to you. We never got around to putting a decal on the picture window, so the birds with broken necks have gone on piling up. Life just rushes at you and the birds keep dying.”

“My feet are swollen.”

“This happens.”

“And my fingers too.”

“Mm-hm,” said Betty.

Iris held her hands up in the glare and examined their watery thickness. “I could go for a foreign film right now,” she said. “In the picture this girl is pregnant. Out of wedlock in Italy. It’s a spa, and Marcello Mastroianni is careless about cigarettes and their effect on the unborn. The spa carries extremely complicated pastries which resemble pretzels. There’s a bilingual midwife, and all the cars are low-slung. Sometimes the girl rides in the cars with Mastroianni. Sometimes they pass the evenings playing chess, which they call ‘shess.’ The girl only knows how to play checkers, which they call ‘sheckers.’ When she says ‘king me,’ they are pleasant about it and give the girl soda water, a ring, a buncha stuff. Finally the baby is born, so pink, so perfect and all. They call a wet nurse from the village but the baby won’t have a thing to do with this stranger. The baby returns to the girl … by suction.”

“Iris, that’s impossible. A baby can’t fly through the air by suction.”

“Mom, it’s a movie.”

“What about Marcello Mastroianni? Does he get around by suction too? When your father was courting me, it was like a real movie. He lived in a boardinghouse. The lady who ran the place raised enormous Belgian hares. And when the lady slept, the Belgian hares guarded the stairs. They had two big teeth in front, and if you didn’t go up the stairs in a slow and dignified fashion, one of those huge rabbits would have you by the leg like that!”

“What were you doing up the stairs of Dad’s boardinghouse?”

“Not what you think, young lady.”

“I’m sure.”

Silence; then Betty said, “I’m not going to let this pass.”

“So don’t.”

“I’m terribly afraid that you have confused my morals with your own.”

“What a lovely remark,” said Iris in a broken voice.

“The truth shall set ye free.”

“You bitch.”

The two were now sitting up, reflectored heads facing each other like two nodding, miserable sunflowers.

“You won’t hear this child calling you what you called me,” said Betty. “You won’t hear it call you anything.”

Betty had always enjoyed her cocktails, but she never drank in the daytime. That changed. It didn’t make her sentimental or angry or any of the usual things. It just sped her up. She didn’t drink that much, but it was enough to get her darting around and creating an atomosphere of emergency.

One unseasonably cold afternoon, Iris sat dog-earing a paperback with the glass porch doors closed and the oven door open to supplement the baseboard electric heating. Betty was coasting past the windows about the time Jack was expected. Suddenly, she froze in place.

“Here comes your father followed by Sid Katzendorf in a Cadillac! It’s the low-mileage Eldo!”

When Jack came in, he was equally excited. Even Iris felt the desperation in this; there had never before been any conversation about Cadillacs. It was just desperate.

“A beauty,” Jack said, “and it’s loaded. But let’s don’t rush. You drive it. Try it in a few spots, the freeway, here in the neighborhood. At first it seems like the Queen Mary, but you’ll get the hang of it. If you like it, tell Sid to mark it sold. We can swallow the tab. I’ll spare you the details. Try the factory air.”

When Betty went out the door, things calmed down. Jack had bought Iris a Swiss Army knife, the one that must weigh a pound, and she immediately treasured it. Then they had some orange juice. It almost seemed as if the Cadillac were a decoy. Iris thought Jack loved her.

“Iris,” he said, “you’re going to survive all this. You’re going to finish school. You’re going to go to college. If that Polack and his squashed hand don’t take my company away from me, I’ll give it all to you. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds wonderful.”

Jack hugged Iris and said, “Then I’ll never lose you.”

The whole house seemed to go quiet. Iris marked her place and put the book aside. She opened and closed each blade and implement of the knife. He loves me very much, she thought. The evening sun got under the clouds and began to suggest a normal summer evening. The door burst open and Betty ran in, struggling for composure. When she spoke, her voice was tragic and bore the keening finality of a summing up. She quit talking like Massachusetts.

“We’re going along the freeway. I see this other Cadillac but it’s a two-tone. I’m sitting there trying to think which I like better. Obviously, the driver of the other Caddy is having the exact same thought. We get real close and head for the identical off-ramp. Suddenly it looks like we’ll collide. I swerve. I crash into a jalopy. The jalopy takes off.”

“That’s it?” said Jack.

“That’s it.”

“Where’s Sid?”

“Sid has gone.”

“What did he say?”

“He stared at me and said, ‘You own it.’ ”