The High Cost of Living: A Novel Read online

  “Truly? I sometimes think that’s all I ever do experience.”

  She turned with the pitcher, smiling. “I guess we do belong to different sexes.”

  “Don’t you ever feel just plain horny?”

  “Even that term is male. A horn.”

  “Don’t you have anything like wet dreams? Dreams about sex with strangers, people you wouldn’t touch awake?”

  “Bernie, we’ve been talking about sex for two hours.”

  “Ann-Marie isn’t exactly sex. But in ten years we’ll talk this way about money, right? But we won’t trust each other enough to do it frankly.”

  “How much do we trust each other now?” She brought the juice. They could use the same glasses.

  “Les, take the earrings. I won’t ask you again. If you say no, I’ll throw them down the toilet.”

  She frowned. “All right, I’ll take them. I’ll keep them for a while. If I feel good about it, I’ll wear them. But you mustn’t badger me.”

  Bernie sank back, his head on her pillow, and shut his eyes. “I badger not. Who, me? Lord, I’m tired.”

  She finished her glass and poured more grapefruit juice. “Don’t fall asleep. It’s very late. It’s after one.”

  He did not open his eyes. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Then you’d better go now.”

  He lay still and answered after minutes in a voice thick with sleep, “Oh, let me stay. I’m half dead.”

  She shook him. “Bernie, no. Get up and go home.”

  He made himself limp as a rag doll. “Cruel Leslie. Why? So dark, so late, so cold, so far to go. Blood on the sidewalk.”

  “Blood on the bed if you don’t move.” She hauled him up and propped him against the wall. “Where are your shoes?”

  “Let me stay. Why not? I don’t mean anything by it but the coziness and I’m tired. I not only wouldn’t try anything, but I can’t.”

  “It amuses you to push on my limits. Well, you hit a wall. Not pushable.”

  “You’re more pushable than you think.” He put on the shoes she had been trying to cram on his feet. “But I go. To my death by mugging.”

  “Good night, Bernie.” She took hold of him and hauled him up just as he was starting to slide toward the mattress again. They were both laughing silently. “No, out the door this time!”

  “You’re so conventional. Let George come in by the door. I like the other route.” He let himself be shoved out.

  When she went to bed, of course the earrings were there, hard little blue eyes she rolled in her palm. And beside them, the earrings for Honor. She did not want to give Honor jewelry, but she felt obliged to. What she imagined giving Honor was a beautiful antique dagger in a silver sheath to wear at her waist. Tasha had told her about a culture in the Caucasus where women had carried such knives until recently and worn the Amazon cap. But she had no money for antique daggers and Honor could scarcely wear one to school or on the streets of Detroit, no matter how practical that might in truth be.

  She tossed both pairs of earrings in her drawer among her woolly socks. A book about freedom? A compass? A rucksack? Ideas of the Women’s Suffrage Movement? Martha Shelley’s poems or Judy Grahn’s? For Mama to read. Well, why not? Because she would be thrown out of the house. Undressing in under a minute, she crawled into bed with her head simmering.

  Why can’t I open her life up a bit? If I can’t make love to her, I can help make her into someone worth loving. But the glib recipe bored her. Honor would be eighteen in a couple of days, and eighteen was not a child. At eighteen she had been going to college, supporting herself, having her first real affair with a woman, Sandra, for whom the relationship was equally new and experimental. Sandra and she had been intense, explosive and quickly burnt out, but quite real. The affair had changed her. It had transformed her from a girl who suspected she was perverted, that she had nameless or too easily named dykey longings, who fell shamefully and silently in love with unattainable women who belonged to men, to a woman who could and did love another woman and who would love others. It was a sunny transfiguration, a beautiful simplification. She had been only eighteen. Eighteen was no longer a child. Bernie was not a rival, for as he said he couldn’t make love to Honor.

  Lying on her mattress in the dark, she could feel the weight of Honor’s head on her shoulder and she could feel the caress of silky hair on her cheek, could feel then Honor leaning against her to be comforted. Tenderness held back at the time flooded her now till she began to sense that hot tension gathering low in her abdomen. For the first time she wanted Honor. Her fingers caressed the silky hair, the head, the nape, the face, the arm as they had in the car, but then she let her palm slide down Honor’s back, then she was kissing her mouth. Her tongue pushed against her own teeth and a vein throbbed in her labia. Unlike Valerie or Sandra, Honor was bigger than she was. The awkward car with Bernie in the front seat dissolved around them and she was holding Honor standing body to body, their arms taut around each other, their breasts exquisitely swaying together, belly to belly softly and the pressure of mons against mons. The vein throbbed like a swollen heart.

  She opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling, deciding not to make herself come. Another twenty-four hours, including the presentation of her paper on railroads to her seminar (only one other woman in it), and it would be Saturday, Honor’s birthday. Honor was summoning them into the problematic presence of her mother to celebrate it. Leslie was nervous but determined. How could she ever pass for that fabulous creature of Mama’s imaginings, a proper ordinary young woman friend?

  seven

  Mrs. Rogers was a big woman, as tall as Honor and Cam and stout rather than fat. Stocky, big bosomed, and wide hipped, she had the armored care that a woman who goes out to work maintains over the equally overweight woman who stays home. Her own mother had never been able to maintain that surface; always something straggled, as with Cam. Mrs. Rogers’ hair was dyed blond, kept short and curly in a simple hairdo probably reinforced with a permanent. Her glasses had light blue rims. Her eyes behind them, magnified, were light too. Leslie could not tell if they were pale brown like Honor’s or light blue like Cam’s. Finally she saw that Mama’s eyes were blue. Her make-up was pink as was the dress, a little tight, a little worn, with an odd-looking flounce at the waist as if she, the clever seamstress, had made it over for some ulterior motive: to disguise weight, to cover a stain. On the whole Cam looked more like her mother than Honor did, but her mother did not seem to favor her for that.

  But Honor did not resemble her father either. He was of a piece: gray sweater, gray pants, gray hair, gray skin. He did not look well. He was skinny and always coughing or smoking or both. His cough was incessant but quiet, smothered, and no one but she seemed to notice it. Even with a pronounced stoop to his shoulders he stood as tall as Bernie, but he did not seem tall, because he took up so little space and did it unobtrusively. He emitted a steady litter of ashes—he never seemed to look for an ashtray until he was ready to stub out a butt, and once she saw him squash one underfoot in the kitchen as if he were on the street—and parts of the daily paper, clippings he tore out and dropped on the arms of chairs, tools he carried around and forgot on the telephone table or the back of the toilet, half-used white handkerchiefs and books of matches with their covers ripped off, leaving the matches exposed like fangs. Mostly he ignored the rest of them, including Honor and certainly including Bernie and her.

  Mama did not ignore them, however, but watched carefully. “It’s so nice Honor has made some friends.” She pronounced her daughter’s name “Honor.” Leslie could not decide if it would annoy Mama more if she stuck to the pronunciation she had carefully schooled herself in, “Hon-or-ay,” or if it would annoy Honor more if she dropped that affectation. She avoided using Honor’s name and mumbled when she could not avoid it. Bernie caught on and looked amused. As she waited to hear what he was doing, she did not notice him using the name at all. “So nice Honor has made friends. I’ve been upset that
she hasn’t made friends at school.… Of course, Honor is intellectually precocious, so she’d rather have older friends. But I’d have thought she could have gotten to know some of the nicer girls at school. Others in the Service Society perhaps.”

  “The SS. Oh, Mama, they’re all such … flips. They do nothing but giggle about boys.”

  “They must do something or they wouldn’t be in the Service Society. It’s nice for your college friends to take an interest in you, but it’s important to have friends your own age. You have more in common.”

  “Mama, I don’t have a thing in common with anyone at General Custer! And they don’t like me either. I’m not common enough.” Honor laughed nervously.

  “There’s no reason to be defensive.” Mama pursued the point like a glacier moving down a river valley scraping everything before her to the last pebble. Leslie found her palms sweating. “I’m sure you could be very popular with the other girls in the Service Society if you spent a little effort listening to them instead of drowning them out with what you think.”

  Yet Mama obviously doted on Honor. Her gaze was always brooding on the girl like a big cooing dove when she wasn’t giving one of them a quick inspection. It wasn’t that Mama lacked pride in Honor but that she believed in upping the ante constantly. Mama was so unlike Leslie’s parents. Her own mother complained constantly but rarely criticized her and never with such will. Her mother had worried Leslie would get into trouble, which meant pregnant but also in jail, kicked out of school, caught at something. Caught, that was it. Caught with your pants down, caught in the till, caught shoplifting, caught smoking dope in the john, caught with a belly. When Leslie began to do very well in classes halfway through high school, her mother had been pleased but surprised. It would never have occurred to the small harried woman to suggest how Leslie act in school. The idea of Leslie going to college had simply astonished her mother, who never got to finish the tenth grade. Mrs. Rogers told them exactly how many colleges Honor had applied to and what was wrong with each.

  “We’ll open the presents now,” Mama said. “Then let’s have the cake.”

  They sat in the livingroom, barely fitting in. “Do get started,” Cam said with her eyes on her watch. “Mark will be here soon.”

  “I don’t know why you invited him on your sister’s birthday, if he doesn’t want to take part with the family,” Mama said.

  “Why should he want to watch my kid sister open presents? It’s me he’s interested in. I’m glad somebody is.”

  Bernie smiled at her with his eyes only, sideways glance on the sly, and she thought, as if they had spoken aloud, that yes, in a funny way this afternoon was like a childhood birthday party with the presents in piles and the cake and ice cream waiting while the party girl’s mother directed the show and behind the door two kids were punching each other in the snoot. Yes, and she had never had the money for a real present. Oftentimes her mother tried to cover with something around the house (oh, they can’t tell it isn’t new) or at least better than that, some twenty-five-cent nothing from the dime store. This afternoon too cooked up the sense of being observed: whether you measured up, if you had manners, if you ate too much, not to mention whether your gift was ample.

  “I’ll open your present first, Cam.” There were quite a lot of presents—from Mignon, the married sister, and individually from nephew and niece, from other relatives, from a Mrs. Gordon who worked with Mama. Cam had given her a pair of ice skates, which Honor exclaimed over without conviction. Cam wants to get her out of the house too, we’re secret allies, Leslie thought. When Honor came to their presents, Honor opened first hers and then Bernie’s, an order that made Leslie jealous. The earrings, the book of excerpts from the journals of women she had finally selected as at least carrying some quiet freight of content with it, the unlocking of a door or two in the imagination. When Honor opened Leslie’s present, Mama seemed about to speak but did not until Honor had opened Bernie’s. “Oh, I’ll put one on each side! I’ll have to use that antiseptic gunk. Just wait!”

  Honor ran to her bedroom. Mrs. Rogers eyed them both. “Apparently you knew Honor had her ears pierced, against my wishes. I hope you didn’t pick out those earrings before she had it done?”

  “Oh, no,” Leslie started to stammer as Bernie said in his best humble smooth tones, “I think Honor asked each of us for exactly the same thing on her birthday. That’s what she wanted.”

  “But we can’t always give Honor everything she wants, can we?” Mrs. Rogers picked up her card. Leslie felt prickly, although she had written nothing more compromising than “Happy Birthday to Honorée on her 18th Birthday! Love, Leslie.” Mrs. Rogers’ eyebrows rose. “But Honor isn’t eighteen. Heavens! They grow up fast enough as it is!”

  “But … how old is she?” Bernie said.

  “She’s seventeen today. Whatever made you imagine she was a year older?”

  “I … thought she said she was seventeen last month,” Leslie said.

  Honor came running back in turning to and fro to show them one earring of each pair. “How can I be bothered saying sixteen and eleven months? I rounded it off.”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times, you shouldn’t exaggerate. It gives people a misimpression.” Mama turned back. “Perhaps you didn’t realize I was against Honor having her ears pierced. It’s unfortunate. Rewarding her for disobeying me—it does give that impression. Or perhaps since you thought she was eighteen, you didn’t think my objection mattered?”

  Right on the first guess, Leslie thought. Bernie had drifted over to sit beside her on the sagging couch, and they huddled side by side. She had the feeling that if they dared they would be holding hands for comfort, although they did not even exchange glances but sat eyes forward. Honor, very slightly smiling, was unwrapping her next present.

  “Really, Mama.” Cam stood up. “If Honor asked them for earrings, what were they supposed to do? How the … heck do they know if her ears are pierced? What difference could it make to anybody except you and her in the whole wide world? Honestly, do you think the neighbors are gossiping because Honey has holes in her ears?”

  “Don’t call me that old nickname, I hate it,” Honor said. “What a gorgeous dress. I have to try it on at once!”

  I’m in love with the wrong sister, Leslie thought. Cam fidgeted with an eye on her watch. Honor returned in the new dress, filmy and pale blue. Rosy with pleasure, she swirled. It was not particularly flattering because it billowed out below the high empire waist and made her look pregnant, but it was cut low front and back. Honor was ravished by it because her breasts showed. What were all those dresses for? Honor hardly went out. She wore them around the house, parading in front of mirrors; she showed them off to Bernie and her. Where was Honor supposed to go in them and with whom? They were the trappings of Mama’s fantasies that none of them belonged in.

  Of course Honor Rogers must be a girl with an ambitious mother. Honor was Mama Rogers’ creation. Every cent that could be leached from the house, from the food bills, from taxes and mortgage went into or onto her. The third daughter, the last chance, the beautiful youngest princess. Maybe the elaborate dresses had no more function than the clothes made for dolls, to be put on and taken off at affairs of the mind? It frightened her. It frightened her for Honor. What did Mrs. Rogers want? What did she imagine? Leslie saw mother and daughter living in a private Victorian serial, waiting for the rest of the cast to arrive, the wicked tempter, the virtuous suitor, the lord of the manor.

  Then she had to glance at Bernie, who was sitting very still and straight with his hands on his knees and his mouth crimped into a polite smile; but the line of his jaw was unusually sharp. He was clenching his teeth. As if we could carry Honor off between us. I couldn’t keep a cat. I couldn’t keep Valerie. It comes down to money. She clenched her own teeth. I will, I will stick it out. I’ll stick out anything George hands me, I will! I’ll go on my knees crawling through that obstacle course of a department. I’ll earn the damned degre
e. I’ll be so good they have to let me in, they have to accept me, because I’ll be so much better than anyone else, yes, they have to. I’ll do it!

  Honor, perched with the blue gauze draped around her chair, was opening her last package. It held an old fashioned gold locket on a fine chain. “Mama, it’s beautiful!”

  “Thank your father too,” Mrs. Rogers said with cool justice.

  Honor looked around. He had wandered into the kitchen, where he was doing something with a screwdriver to the toaster. “Dad, thank you for the locket.”

  “The what?”

  “Cal, what are you doing to the toaster?” Mama asked.

  “The pop-up mechanism is jammed.”

  “But we just turn it sideways, Daddy, and the toast falls out,” Honor said.

  “I’ll have it working in no time.”

  Mrs. Rogers grimaced. Honor came to her and bowed her long swan neck to have the locket attached. “But, Mama … I did tremendously want a watch. You know? I told you.”

  “And I told you you’ll get one when you’re eighteen. You’d only break it. You’re not very good at taking care of your possessions. Cheap watches look cheap. You want a good watch.”

  “But I’m always late.”

  “That’s no one’s fault but your own. You have an alarm clock. There’s a clock in the kitchen. Taking responsibility is part of growing up.… Don’t you care for the locket, my darling? It’s an antique.”

  “It’s lovely, Mama. Of course I adore it.… What shall I put inside?”

  “Whatever you like, dear heart.” Mama beamed. “It’s such a sweet fragile old thing. Makes me think of pressed violets and locks of hair of lovers long dead. I think photos are … a little cheap. You don’t have to put anything in it until you have a memento you cherish.”

  Bernie got up restlessly, apparently determined to actively charm rather than passively suffer. He headed for the locket to admire it, starting out, “It’s really a lovely piece of antique jewelry.” Then he realized that admiring the locket close up would bring him nearer to Honor’s half-bare breasts than seemed wise in front of Mama and he came to a sudden halt, tilting a little back. She had the sensation that invisible strands of nerve fiber ran from Bernie to herself, along with bolts of amusement and dismay as one or the other committed their little faux pas and bobbled uneasily under that pale blue maternal gloat “You could have a kind of religious souvenir—”