well.
Some of the gang were still down there by the
Lullaby
, but I didn’t want to join them. I went aboard the
Shifless
. I was glad Helen wasn’t home. It was just nine o’clock. On Thursdays she went to Spanish class and got back after ten.
You go along, minding your own business, and you get the illusion of invulnerability until somebody comes along and shows you how easy it is to peel off all your armor. Leo had brought Jerry back to me, brought him back to life. Big solemn gentle Jerry. Before Jerry there had been boys who made the automatic social gesture of trying to kiss the clown girl. I disguised terror with a buffoonery that collapsed them. Until Jerry. At first he responded to my clowning with a tolerance that was almost solicitude, as though I had a rash or a stammer. I could not divert him. And pretty soon I loved him with all my heart.
He wouldn’t let me go into any of my acts or imitations, or make any of my faces when I was with him. He said I was very funny and later on I could amuse the hell out of our children, but right now he felt more comfortable being in love with a girl instead of a joke book, and for him I could, by God, be a girl-type girl. And I was. For him. Thoroughly girl.
He told me I was beautiful, and it made me feel beautiful and when I felt beautiful, I didn’t have to be hilarious.
Then, with marriage inevitable, there was a little hitch in the timing. We decided to be very sensible and delay it until after his participation in a certain police action. Not a war, of course. God damn all sensibleness, all logical decisions, all reasonableness. They killed him over there, on a hill with a number instead of a name, and when they’re dead you can’t tell whether it was a police action or a war. So I went through all the motions of life for a year, while my heart rotted in my chest. No kids to amuse. No new name.
After a year I woke up and counted my losses, brushed up on all my acts, rejoined, in a limited fashion, the human race. At least my spinsterhood was not virginal. Twice on the beach, twice in his boat. That was all. So damn little, and so damn wonderful. Bright little memories for the empty nights.
So you make all the adjustments, lock all the cup-boards, sweep out the floor of your heart and wait with indifference for the years when you will be a very funny old woman. Then, without warning, an odd and gentle man comes into your life and responds to you in a way so reminiscent of Jerry that all the tidying up is undone. Debris all over the place. It isn’t fair.
I sat in the dark for a while and then I turned on a light and looked at myself in the mirror, trying to see prettiness. I really looked. Not that half-conscious morning inspection.
This hair—a coarse cropped thatch in four beach-bleached shades of sand and brown. This too-round face, devoid of any suggestion of a romantic gauntness. An after-thought of a nose, so inconsequential as to look embryonic. Mouth enough for a girl and a half. Eyes of a funny shade of green under furry black brows set into a face so asymmetrical that the left one is noticeably higher than the right. The figure, I freely admit, is a little jim-dandy. Things seem to be in the right places in the right quantities. It is a good and faithful gadget that can water ski all day without complaint, digest scrap iron, and slay any virus foolhardy enough to come within range. Only Jerry knew how well and quickly it learned its primary function. But unused now. Aching at times from disuse. Sad faithful gadget, whose basic remaining function is to hold this silly head five feet four inches off the ground.
Be pretty, girl, like the man says. So I moistened my lips and blinked my eyes at myself and attempted a provocative smile. I looked like an urchin stifling a gastric disturbance. I knew what was coming then. First time in years. It took me thirty seconds to strip, slip into my bed—teeth unbrushed—and huddle into a sour little ball of
Some of the gang were still down there by the
Lullaby
, but I didn’t want to join them. I went aboard the
Shifless
. I was glad Helen wasn’t home. It was just nine o’clock. On Thursdays she went to Spanish class and got back after ten.
You go along, minding your own business, and you get the illusion of invulnerability until somebody comes along and shows you how easy it is to peel off all your armor. Leo had brought Jerry back to me, brought him back to life. Big solemn gentle Jerry. Before Jerry there had been boys who made the automatic social gesture of trying to kiss the clown girl. I disguised terror with a buffoonery that collapsed them. Until Jerry. At first he responded to my clowning with a tolerance that was almost solicitude, as though I had a rash or a stammer. I could not divert him. And pretty soon I loved him with all my heart.
He wouldn’t let me go into any of my acts or imitations, or make any of my faces when I was with him. He said I was very funny and later on I could amuse the hell out of our children, but right now he felt more comfortable being in love with a girl instead of a joke book, and for him I could, by God, be a girl-type girl. And I was. For him. Thoroughly girl.
He told me I was beautiful, and it made me feel beautiful and when I felt beautiful, I didn’t have to be hilarious.
Then, with marriage inevitable, there was a little hitch in the timing. We decided to be very sensible and delay it until after his participation in a certain police action. Not a war, of course. God damn all sensibleness, all logical decisions, all reasonableness. They killed him over there, on a hill with a number instead of a name, and when they’re dead you can’t tell whether it was a police action or a war. So I went through all the motions of life for a year, while my heart rotted in my chest. No kids to amuse. No new name.
After a year I woke up and counted my losses, brushed up on all my acts, rejoined, in a limited fashion, the human race. At least my spinsterhood was not virginal. Twice on the beach, twice in his boat. That was all. So damn little, and so damn wonderful. Bright little memories for the empty nights.
So you make all the adjustments, lock all the cup-boards, sweep out the floor of your heart and wait with indifference for the years when you will be a very funny old woman. Then, without warning, an odd and gentle man comes into your life and responds to you in a way so reminiscent of Jerry that all the tidying up is undone. Debris all over the place. It isn’t fair.
I sat in the dark for a while and then I turned on a light and looked at myself in the mirror, trying to see prettiness. I really looked. Not that half-conscious morning inspection.
This hair—a coarse cropped thatch in four beach-bleached shades of sand and brown. This too-round face, devoid of any suggestion of a romantic gauntness. An after-thought of a nose, so inconsequential as to look embryonic. Mouth enough for a girl and a half. Eyes of a funny shade of green under furry black brows set into a face so asymmetrical that the left one is noticeably higher than the right. The figure, I freely admit, is a little jim-dandy. Things seem to be in the right places in the right quantities. It is a good and faithful gadget that can water ski all day without complaint, digest scrap iron, and slay any virus foolhardy enough to come within range. Only Jerry knew how well and quickly it learned its primary function. But unused now. Aching at times from disuse. Sad faithful gadget, whose basic remaining function is to hold this silly head five feet four inches off the ground.
Be pretty, girl, like the man says. So I moistened my lips and blinked my eyes at myself and attempted a provocative smile. I looked like an urchin stifling a gastric disturbance. I knew what was coming then. First time in years. It took me thirty seconds to strip, slip into my bed—teeth unbrushed—and huddle into a sour little ball of
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