For Esmé, With Love and Squalor Read online

  “Hey. Hello, Sybil.”

  “Are you going in the water?”

  “I was waiting for you,” said the young man. “What’s new?”

  “What?” said Sybil.

  “What’s new? What’s on the program?”

  “My daddy’s coming tomorrow on a nairiplane,” Sybil said, kicking sand.

  “Not in my face, baby,” the young man said, putting his hand on Sybil’s ankle. “Well, it’s about time he got here, your daddy. I’ve been expecting him hourly. Hourly.”

  “Where’s the lady?” Sybil said.

  “The lady?” the young man brushed some sand out of his thin hair. “That’s hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places. At the hairdresser’s. Having her hair dyed mink. Or making dolls for poor children, in her room.” Lying prone now, he made two fists, set one on top of the other, and rested his chin on the top one. “Ask me something else, Sybil,” he said. “That’s a fine bathing suit you have on. If there’s one thing I like, it’s a blue bathing suit.”

  Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. “This is a yellow,” she said. “This is a yellow.”

  “It is? Come a little closer.” Sybil took a step forward. “You’re absolutely right. What a fool I am.”

  “Are you going in the water?” Sybil said.

  “I’m seriously considering it. I’m giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, you’ll be glad to know.”

  Sybil prodded the rubber float that the young man sometimes used as a headrest. “It needs air,” she said.

  “You’re right. It needs more air than I’m willing to admit.” He took away his fists and let his chin rest on the sand. “Sybil,” he said, “you’re looking fine. It’s good to see you. Tell me about yourself.” He reached in front of him and took both of Sybil’s ankles in his hands. “I’m Capricorn,” he said. “What are you?”

  “Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you,” Sybil said.

  “Sharon Lipschutz said that?”

  Sybil nodded vigorously.

  He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. “Well,” he said, “you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn’t push her off, could I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, no. No. I couldn’t do that,” said the young man. “I’ll tell you what I did do, though.”

  “What?”

  “I pretended she was you.”

  Sybil immediately stooped and began to dig in the sand. “Let’s go in the water,” she said.

  “All right,” said the young man. “I think I can work it in.”

  “Next time, push her off,” Sybil said.

  “Push who off?”

  “Sharon Lipschutz.”

  “Ah, Sharon Lipschutz,” said the young man. “How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire.” He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. “Sybil,” he said, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll see if we can catch a bananafish.”

  “A what?”

  “A bananafish,” he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He took off the robe. His shoulders were white and narrow, and his trunks were royal blue. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, and then laid the folded robe on top of it. He bent over, picked up the float, and secured it under his right arm. Then, with his left hand, he took Sybil’s hand.

  The two started to walk down to the ocean.

  “I imagine you’ve seen quite a few bananafish in your day,” the young man said.

  Sybil shook her head.

  “You haven’t? Where do you live, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sybil.

  “Sure you know. You must know. Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives and she’s only three and a half.”

  Sybil stopped walking and yanked her hand away from him. She picked up an ordinary beach shell and looked at it with elaborate interest. She threw it down. “Whirly Wood, Connecticut,” she said, and resumed walking, stomach foremost.

  “Whirly Wood, Connecticut,” said the young man. “Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance?”

  Sybil looked at him. “That’s where I live,” she said impatiently. “I live in Whirly Wood, Connecticut.” She ran a few steps ahead of him, caught up her left foot in her left hand, and hopped two or three times.

  “You have no idea how clear that makes everything,” the young man said.

  Sybil released her foot. “Did you read ‘Little Black Sambo’?” she said.

  “It’s very funny you ask me that,” he said. “It so happens I just finished reading it last night.” He reached down and took back Sybil’s hand. “What did you think of it?” he asked her.

  “Did the tigers run all around that tree?”

  “I thought they’d never stop. I never saw so many tigers.”

  “There were only six,” Sybil said.

  “Only six!” said the young man. “Do you call that only?”

  “Do you like wax?” Sybil asked.

  “Do I like what?” asked the young man.

  “Wax.”

  “Very much. Don’t you?”

  Sybil nodded. “Do you like olives?” she asked.

  “Olives—yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without ’em.”

  “Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?” Sybil asked.

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” said the young man. “What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won’t believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn’t. She’s never mean or unkind. That’s why I like her so much.”

  Sybil was silent.

  “I like to chew candles,” she said finally.

  “Who doesn’t?” said the young man, getting his feet wet. “Wow! It’s cold.” He dropped the rubber float on its back. “No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait’ll we get out a little bit.”

  They waded out till the water was up to Sybil’s waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

  “Don’t you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?” he asked.

  “Don’t let go,” Sybil ordered. “You hold me, now.”

  “Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,” the young man said. “You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.”

  “I don’t see any,” Sybil said.

  “That’s understandable. Their habits are very peculiar.” He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. “They lead a very tragic life,” he said. “You know what they do, Sybil?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas.” He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. “Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again. Can’t fit through the door.”

  “Not too far out,” Sybil said. “What happens to them?”

  “What happens to who?”

  “The bananafish.”

  “Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the banana hole?”

  “Yes,” said Sybil.

  “Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die.”

  “Why?” asked Sybil.

  “Well, they get banana fever. It’s a terrible disease.”

 
“Here comes a wave,” Sybil said nervously.

  “We’ll ignore it. We’ll snub it,” said the young man. “Two snobs.” He took Sybil’s ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil’s blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure.

  With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, “I just saw one.”

  “Saw what, my love?”

  “A bananafish.”

  “My God, no!” said the young man. “Did he have any bananas in his mouth?”

  “Yes,” said Sybil. “Six.”

  The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil’s wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch.

  “Hey!” said the owner of the foot, turning around.

  “Hey, yourself! We’re going in now. You had enough?”

  “No!”

  “Sorry,” he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way.

  “Goodbye,” said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.

  The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel.

  On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.

  “I see you’re looking at my feet,” he said to her when the car was in motion.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the woman.

  “I said I see you’re looking at my feet.”

  “I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor,” said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

  “If you want to look at my feet, say so,” said the young man. “But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.”

  “Let me out here, please,” the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

  The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

  “I have two normal feet and I can’t see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them,” said the young man. “Five, please.” He took his room key out of his robe pocket.

  He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover.

  He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

  * * *

  Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut

  * * *

  It was almost three o’clock when Mary Jane finally found Eloise’s house. She explained to Eloise, who had come out to the driveway to meet her, that everything had been absolutely perfect, that she had remembered the way exactly, until she had turned off the Merrick Parkway. Eloise said, “Merritt Parkway, baby,” and reminded Mary Jane that she had found the house twice before, but Mary Jane just wailed something ambiguous, something about her box of Kleenex, and rushed back to her convertible. Eloise turned up the collar of her camel’s-hair coat, put her back to the wind, and waited. Mary Jane was back in a minute using a leaf of Kleenex and still looking upset, even fouled. Eloise said cheerfully that the whole damn lunch was burned—sweetbreads, everything—but Mary Jane said she’d eaten anyway, on the road. As the two walked toward the house, Eloise asked Mary Jane how it happened she had the day off. Mary Jane said she didn’t have the whole day off; it was just that Mr. Weyinburg had a hernia and was home in Larchmont, and she had to bring him his mail and take a couple of letters every afternoon. She asked Eloise, “Just exactly what is a hernia, anyway?” Eloise, dropping her cigarette on the soiled snow underfoot, said she didn’t actually know but that Mary Jane didn’t have to worry much about getting one. Mary Jane said, “Oh,” and the two girls entered the house.

  Twenty minutes later, they were finishing their first highball in the living room and were talking in the manner peculiar, probably limited, to former college roommates. They had an even stronger bond between them; neither of them had graduated. Eloise had left college in the middle of her sophomore year, in 1942, a week after she had been caught with a soldier in a closed elevator on the third floor of her residence hall. Mary Jane had left—same year, same class, almost the same month—to marry an aviation cadet stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, a lean, air-minded boy from Dill, Mississippi, who had spent two of the three months Mary Jane had been married to him in jail for stabbing an M.P.

  “No,” Eloise was saying. “It was actually red.” She was stretched out on the couch, her thin but very pretty legs crossed at the ankles.

  “I heard it was blond,” Mary Jane repeated. She was seated in the blue straight chair. “Wuddayacallit swore up and down it was blond.”

  “Uh-uh. Definitely.” Eloise yawned. “I was almost in the room with her when she dyed it. What’s the matter? Aren’t there any cigarettes in there?”

  “It’s all right. I have a whole pack,” Mary Jane said. “Somewhere.” She searched through her handbag.

  “That dopey maid,” Eloise said without moving from the couch. “I dropped two brand-new cartons in front of her nose about an hour ago. She’ll be in, any minute, to ask me what to do with them. Where the hell was I?”

  “Thieringer,” Mary Jane prompted, lighting one of her own cigarettes.

  “Oh, yeah. I remember exactly. She dyed it the night before she married that Frank Henke. You remember him at all?”

  “Just sort of. Little ole private? Terribly unattractive?”

  “Unattractive. God! He looked like an unwashed Bela Lugosi.”

  Mary Jane threw back her head and roared. “Marvellous,” she said, coming back into drinking position.

  “Gimme your glass,” Eloise said, swinging her stockinged feet to the floor and standing up. “Honestly, that dope. I did everything but get Lew to make love to her to get her to come out here with us. Now I’m sorry I—Where’d you get that thing?”

  “This?” said Mary Jane, touching a cameo brooch at her throat. “I had it at school, for goodness sake. It was Mother’s.”

  “God,” Eloise said, with the empty glasses in her hands. “I don’t have one damn thing holy to wear. If Lew’s mother ever dies—ha, ha—she’ll probably leave me some old monogrammed icepick or something.”

  “How’re you getting along with her these days, anyway?”

  “Don’t be funny,” Eloise said on her way to the kitchen.

  “This is positively the last one for me!” Mary Jane called after her.

  “Like hell it is. Who called who? And who came two hours late? You’re gonna stick around till I’m sick of you. The hell with your lousy career.”

  Mary Jane threw back her head and roared again, but Eloise had already gone into the kitchen.

  With little or no wherewithal for being left alone in a room, Mary Jane stood up and walked over to the window. She drew aside the curtain and leaned her wrist on one of the crosspieces between panes, but, feeling grit, she removed it, rubbed it clean with her other hand, and stood up more erectly. Outside, the filthy slush was visibly turning to ice. Mary Jane let go the curtain and wandered back to the blue chair, passing two heavily stocked bookcases without glancing at any of the titles. Seated, she opened her handbag and used the mirror to look at her teeth. She closed her lips and ran her tongue hard over her upper front teeth, then took another look.

  “It’s getting so icy out,” she said, turning. “God, that was quick. Didn’t you put
any soda in them?”

  Eloise, with a fresh drink in each hand, stopped short. She extended both index fingers, gun-muzzle style, and said, “Don’t nobody move. I got the whole damn place surrounded.”

  Mary Jane laughed and put away her mirror.

  Eloise came forward with the drinks. She placed Mary Jane’s insecurely in its coaster but kept her own in hand. She stretched out on the couch again. “Wuddaya think she’s doing out there?” she said. “She’s sitting on her big, black butt reading ‘The Robe.’ I dropped the ice trays taking them out. She actually looked up annoyed.”

  “This is my last. And I mean it,” Mary Jane said, picking up her drink. “Oh, listen! You know who I saw last week? On the main floor of Lord & Taylor’s?”

  “Mm-hm,” said Eloise, adjusting a pillow under her head. “Akim Tamiroff.”

  “Who?” said Mary Jane. “Who’s he?”

  “Akim Tamiroff. He’s in the movies. He always says, ‘You make beeg joke—hah?’ I love him. . . . There isn’t one damn pillow in this house that I can stand. Who’d you see?”

  “Jackson. She was—”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. The one that was in our Psych class, that always—”

  “Both of them were in our Psych class.”

  “Well. The one with the terrific—”

  “Marcia Louise. I ran into her once, too. She talk your ear off?”

  “God, yes. But you know what she told me, though? Dr. Whiting’s dead. She said she had a letter from Barbara Hill saying Whiting got cancer last summer and died and all. She only weighed sixty-two pounds. When she died. Isn’t that terrible?”

  “No.”

  “Eloise, you’re getting hard as nails.”

  “Mm. What else’d she say?”

  “Oh, she just got back from Europe. Her husband was stationed in Germany or something, and she was with him. They had a forty-seven-room house, she said, just with one other couple, and about ten servants. Her own horse, and the groom they had, used to be Hitler’s own private riding master or something. Oh, and she started to tell me how she almost got raped by a colored soldier. Right on the main floor of Lord & Taylor’s she started to tell me—you know Jackson. She said he was her husband’s chauffeur, and he was driving her to market or something one morning. She said she was so scared she didn’t even—”