Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (6 page)

Judy had simply told Jim she
was bushed when at last he asked her why she was so quiet. The
buying trip had been busy and she had ironing piled up to do after
dinner. No, she told Jim, of course the Cotes du Pore Charcutiere
that he had slaved over all afternoon didn’t suck. She just wasn’t
hungry, and why did Jim have to make World War III out of it? Jim
had scraped her virtually untouched Cotes du Pore Charcutiere into
the garbage and piled the dishes in the sink. She didn’t feel so
hot either, Judy told Jim as she set up the ironing board. Maybe
she was getting her period early, she speculated, for she was all
sore and swollen in her privates, and she was feeling as moody as a
sore-tail cat. And then when Judy turned the kitchen-counter TV on,
she asked why the screen was all sticky. Did you have all your
drunken lout buddies over here while I was gone? Did you all go and
spray the TV with beer again? Well, Jim and his drunken lout
buddies had, but he told her huffily, No way, Jose, and pretended
to sulk at the sink while he did the dishes, and Judy hadn’t made
an issue of it. Somehow Jim felt that he was off the hook about the
clinic, about the sticky TV, about everything. Somehow Jim even
felt that he had the upper hand for the moment, a rare occurrence,
but he didn’t know why, and that is what gave him a sudden case of
the willies.

Judy started to iron and Jim
did the dishes while they silently watched an old I Love Lucy
rerun. The half tab of acid Jim had popped just before dinner on a
defiant impulse started to kick in quicker and more exciting than
he had anticipated, and when he began to giggle uncontrollably at
that scene where Lucy and Ethel, who have taken jobs in a candy
factory, go bonkers trying to keep up with a conveyor belt run
amok, Judy fired up a cigarette and, regarding Jim through the
rising smoke with squinted eyes, asked him if he was on controlled
substances at that point in time. Jim turned around from the sink
flabbergasted and took Judy by her little hand and, although he was
slobbering and rubbery-faced with laughter by then, proclaimed his
innocence. You’ve gone and fried your brain again, haven’t you?
Judy said, and jerked her hand away. She put a blue blouse she had
just ironed on a hanger and hung it with some others on the handle
of the kitchen door. God how Jim had always loved the starched,
outdoorsy smell of freshly ironed clothes when his brain was
fried!

We better have us a real
long talk, Judy said with a sigh, and she turned off the iron and
sat down at the kitchen table. I’m sorry, honey, Judy said to Jim
out of the blue, as she flipped ashes into an ashtray and regarded
him with those squinty eyes that always made Jim extremely nervous.
She was sorry, Jim thought. She was sorry? At first Jim was
absolutely elated at this turn of the tables, but utterly clueless,
and then Jim began to get really scared.

Whereupon Judy had informed
Jim that she had been with a man. Just like that, out of left
field. Say what? Jim inquired. With? Jim inquired. You know, Judy
said, and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, with. I’m sorry, she
said, it just happened. It? Jim inquired. It, Judy affirmed. —It
did. When? Jim was curious to know. On the buying trip, Judy said.
Oh, Jim said, on the buying trip. Yes, on the buying trip, Judy
said. —It just happened. Who? Jim was curious to know. You don’t
know him, Judy assured Jim. —He’s a new buyer at the store. Well,
what exactly fucken happened? Jim was curious to know. If you don’t
fucken mind telling me. Well, Judy said, and tapped her cigarette
out slowly in the seashell-shaped ashtray Jim had given her for
their third anniversary, and then she immediately lit another, we
happened to be staying at the same hotel and we just went to
dinner together after a hard day. Then we danced a few times. He
walked me back to my room. So I said, Why don’t you come in for a
nightcap. He’d been so nice and all. Of course, all I had in the
room was a warm can of Pepsi. We laughed about that. We had had a
few toddies earlier, I’ll have to admit. So, I don’t know, nature
just took its course, I guess. So he kissed me. Then things just
got lovey-dovey.

So just which of the three
nights you were gone did it, you know, happen? Jim was curious to
know. It happened on the first night, Judy informed Jim. What about
the other two nights? Jim inquired. Well, to tell you the truth, it
happened on those nights, too, Judy informed Jim. Every single
night? Jim said, and then Jim said, You fucked him every single
fucken night? So, Jim said, just how many times did you fuck him in
three nights, if you don’t mind my asking? Whereupon Judy said, Who
knows? Who can remember something like that. What difference does
it make, anyway? she said. Jim said, What fucken difference does it
make? Jesus-fucken-Christ. Okay. Okay. So, Jim said, what happens
if you get knocked up, did you even think about that little
possibility? Judy said, I won’t. The first night, she explained,
her friend had practiced withdrawal every time. Then the next day
he went right out and bought a box of Trojans. Please, Judy said,
honey, honey, please, she said as Jim jumped up and attempted to
deck the kitchen door with a swinging back kick.

I was so happy to see you
tonight when you came home, Jim told Judy as he collapsed back down
at the table and put his head in his hands. —I’ve been thinking
hard about things while you’ve been gone this time. I thought about
how we could make a fresh start. And I didn’t just loaf around with
my lout buddies and drink beer while you were gone. I slaved over
fiction is what I did. My time in the sun is just around the
corner, and you better believe it. And I hardly had a drink while
you were gone, and I lifted weights and I lost six or seven pounds,
and I’m beginning to feel like my old self. And I went to that
clinic like you told me

to do, and they said we can
probably get you pregnant real easy. Sure my sperm count is a
little low, they said, but hey, they’ve sure seen lower sperm
counts, they said. Hey, why are you telling me this shit, anyway?
You never told me about your last loverboy. I had to figure that
shameful business out for myself. You kept your last loverboy a
dark, sordid secret. You lied to me about him until I confronted
you with the undeniable evidence in hand. And here I am tonight
half deranged from drugs and you expect me to deal with this shit
about your new boyfriend.

See, I knew it, Judy said,
and stabbed out her cigarette. —I just knew you were on controlled
substances. I can always tell by your eyes, Jim. They get wide as
saucers and sort of runny. I’m telling you because my conscience is
guilty, I guess. I guess I just don’t want to sneak
around.

Are you trying to tell me
you and this guy are going to be an item in the romance department?
Jim said, as he attempted to surreptitiously check out his eyes in
a windowpane.

I want to see him again. And
I don’t want to sneak around.

Is he single or
what?

Melvin is married, but he
and his wife have been talking about a separation.

Melvin! My wife is fucking
some clown named Melvin! And a married Melvin to boot! Too much, I
say. So the bottom line is you want to keep sleeping with this
Melvin clown, is that it?

I want to see him. I don’t
want to sneak around, Jim. Jim, when was the last time we made
love?

Hey, don’t try to turn the
tables! Don’t dump all this on my doorstep. I don’t turn you on.
You think I’m too fat and smell like beer. Don’t deny it. Do you
want a divorce, is that it?

I can’t recall the last time
we made love. Yes, you could lose a few pounds and quit drinking
beer. But I haven’t thought about any divorce.

So you think that because we
haven’t slept together much lately. . .

Lately? Are you kidding
me?

You think I shouldn’t mind
if you have a sordid affair, is that it?

I haven’t thought much about
anything. Things just happened, that’s all, like I told
you.

Just like with your last
loverboy? Swept away with desire and passion and hot,
uncontrollable, animal lust?

I guess so.

Oh, Lordy. So you want an
open marriage, is that it?

What in the world does that
mean?

It’s what they call it out
here in hip, decadent, trendy California when a husband and wife
agree that they can both fuck and suck anything cute that
scoots.

That sounds downright
disgusting. All I want to do is see Melvin sometimes. Until we
figure out what’s what.

All right. All right. I get
the picture, Jim told Judy, and filled his Mickey Mouse Club glass
with vodka. Then Jim told Judy that his bottom line was, he didn’t
want them to break up over this. They had survived her other
loverboy, and they could survive this one, too. Get it out of your
system, that’s what Jim told Judy. —Christ, enjoy yourself. There’s
no reason for you to feel guilty even. You’re just, you know, a
normal woman, Jim told Judy, trying to be big about everything,
but, also, he would have to admit, entertaining a chubby. —Just do
some things for me. Do some things for my sake. One, please don’t,
for God’s sake, get pregnant. I will absolutely draw the line when
it comes to raising any little Melvins around here. I absolutely
will not abide the sound of any little fucken webbed feet running
around here. Two, be discreet. This is nobody’s business but ours.
The last time you blabbed to all your goddamn girl friends and I
was a laughingstock. And, three, I want to know everything. You owe
me this. I want to know when you’ve been with this so-called
Melvin. Or when you plan on seeing him. There has to be absolute
honesty between us about this sordid business. It’s like we’re
taking a brand-new vow of honesty. If we want our marriage to work
under these trying new circumstances, we have to tell each other
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

You mean you want me to tell
you the lovey-dovey details?

I don’t want anything left
to my imagination, that’s right. Leaving things to my imagination
would be ten times worse than knowing the truth. If I know what’s
going on, I can just accept it after a certain period of anger and
pain and general anguish, and then hopefully forget it. If I have
to sit around imagining things, I could easily go crazy. If you
don’t want to hurt me unnecessarily, you’ll tell me the things I
need to know in order not to go crazy with wondering. For instance,
did you and Melvin, when you all were shacked up night after night
on the buying trip, did you all have a lot of, you know, oral
sex?

What exactly do you mean by
a lot, Jim? Judy asked, and then she reached across the kitchen
table and grabbed Jim by his arm and said, Honey, please, don’t go
banging your head on the table like that.

Later, Jim couldn’t really
recall much else about what he and Judy had talked about at the
kitchen table that early evening. He could recall whining around
pitifully for a time, and probably promising to do better, and
begging for another chance. He was sure he begged for another
chance until he was blue in the face. It seemed to him as though he
had told Judy that what he had thought about while he was
masturbating in order to fill the sample jar with his so-called
seed was how he used to watch her when she was a cheerleader back
in college. She was the cutest cheerleader Jim had ever seen, he
told her, and he would sit up in the stands and watch her out on
that blinding green grass, under those blazing lights, her little
hands on her sweet, wagging ass, while she did all those cute
little steps and jumps, and the way her cheerleader skirt swirled
up above her sweet, Man- Tanned, shaved legs. And then Jim had
reminded Judy that she had once been a Homecoming Queen, and that
homecoming queens sort of represent a code of proper behavior for
women, not unlike Miss America in many ways, and that there are
responsibilities that former Homecoming Queens have to consider
over the course of their lifetimes. And those responsibilities
didn’t include giving goddamn sportswear buyers blow jobs, Jim
suddenly sobbed out, but then quickly regained his composure. You
were the Homecoming Queen of my heart, Jim could recall finally
informing Judy, as that insipid line of whimpering sort of petered
out.

Judy had said something
like: You’ve sure got a funny way of showing it, Jim. And then she
told Jim sadly how unhappy she had been for such a long time, and
Jim could understand that. And then Judy asked Jim not to get
himself worked up into a dither and wreck the house, but that she’d
like to see Melvin that night for a little while. That if he could
get away Melvin was going to call her. And that she didn’t want to
make up some sneaky lie to tell Jim. And when Jim asked, Judy said
that just because she and Melvin might see each other tonight
didn’t necessarily mean they’d get lovey-dovey, but if they did
she’d try to remember all the dirty details to relay to Jim, and
for Jim not to worry about her getting in a family way either,
because surely Melvin had a couple of Trojans left over from the
buying trip. And then Judy told Jim that she didn’t mean to hurt
him, she really didn’t. But she had been so sad for so long. And so
lonely. And Jim could understand that. In those days Judy and Jim
lived in a redwood-shingled bungalow back in a stand of trees
across a short, narrow, private bridge over Matadero Creek just
south of Palo Alto. The little bungalow had been lovingly
hand-built nearly fifty years earlier by an old salt returned from
a dangerous life at sea who had lived in it until his death at
ninety only a year earlier, when he had been struck by lightning
from a clear summer sky while sailing alone on a small mountain
lake. Jim and Judy, such a nice, stable-appearing young couple, had
been the first people the old salt’s aged niece had trusted enough
to rent the bungalow to. Jim had loved that little house like no
other he had ever lived in, and he had rubbed his fingers over
every smooth board in the place. Night after night, Jim would sit
out in the kitchen smoking dope and drinking alone, long after Judy
had wandered off to bed and his drunken lout buddies had staggered
out the door, and in the soft light of the brass wall lamps he
would simply gaze around the room, at the thin, vertical redwood
boards of the walls that seemed to glow from some inner source of
light, and the low, dark ceiling of redwood boards so warm and rich
with golden light and shadow. The bungalow’s redwood walls were
dark with age and the ceilings of the rooms curved gendy toward
the walls like the inner hull of a boat, which is what the whole
house resembled vaguely, a boat, an old sailing vessel of some
kind, as though after all those years upon the high seas the old
salt could live only in a place that at least resembled something
you could sail away in. Jim would look at the grains in the old
boards and imagine giant redwoods aging in sunlight and fog a
thousand years ago. He would follow a thin, dark, curving grain
with his fingertips down a board slick as bone and think of those
cross-section cuts of ancient redwoods in California state parks,
their dark rings tagged with time and events, the Battle of
Hastings, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the birth of
Christ, the end of love as we know it.