The High Cost of Living: A Novel Read online

“Hennessy. He’s a disaster.”

  Then Bernie had to know just who Mark Hennessy was and why she called him a disaster. He finished his hero and lit his after-supper joint. Things seemed to become quickly ritualized among the three of them, and it was already understood that Bernie would smoke dope all the time they were together but that Leslie would join him only right after they ate and sometimes just before they left, on the nights she stayed as late as Bernie did.

  “My birthday is coming,” Honor said as she stacked her dishes in the sink.

  “Like the millennium.” Bernie stretched out his long legs, passing the joint to Leslie.

  “A lot sooner. April fifth. I want each of you to buy me earrings for pierced ears.”

  Bernie sat up groaning. “That again. Your mother will make holes in me. Don’t you think, Leslie, her desire to be immolated is a little suspicious?”

  “You don’t also want your feet bound and your ribs broken for an hourglass figure?”

  Honor stood. “Do not, do not, do not ever patronize me!”

  “But Honorée,” Bernie groaned, “it is murky.”

  “It’s not! I want to wear the garnet earrings that belonged to my father’s mother. If you’re truly my friends, you’ll support me.”

  “Your mother is going to murder us,” Bernie grumbled.

  “It’s my birthday. And I choose to celebrate it by wearing my heirloom earrings. I’ll take care of her. That’s what I want for my birthday and nothing else. From you, that is. I’m asking her for a watch.”

  “You want us to go with you to have your ears pierced,” Leslie said, finally understanding.

  “Right. A simple request. Mama says it’s unsanitary. She says only peasants and hippies have pierced ears. I have pointed out that my grandmother, who was beautiful according to every photograph I’ve seen and who was married three times and buried all three husbands, ran a dairy farm with pierced ears. I want her earrings as much as you want your motorcycle. But I have them. It’s more frustrating that way, to have them and not be able to wear them.… And if having holes punched through my ears appears to you to resemble the sex act, I’d say that’s your problem.” She looked from one to the other while an upturn appeared at the corner of her mouth. Then with exaggerated dignity she sat. Only to jump up again when she saw the clock.

  “Mama’ll be here any moment. Out with you. Empty that ashtray. Bernie, take it out back to empty. Grab the flashlight. Leslie, clear the table. I’ll wash up.” She flung open both kitchen windows so the cool wet air flowed in. Quickly, madly she sprayed with an air deodorizer and washed the few dishes they had dirtied and put them away.

  When Bernie returned with the ashtray she washed it too and wiped the table frantically. Then she stood flapping a dish towel as if to change every breath of air in the small kitchen.

  “Does she go through this every time?”

  Bernie nodded. “We’re the secret callers. The worm in the heart of the quiet afternoon.”

  “If you’d rather wait for Mama and chat with her, that’d be lovely,” Honor said coldly. “Do have a couple of seats. You can offer her a toke and discuss my ear-lobes.”

  six

  Perhaps other people, strangers, were still unreal to Honor. Perhaps Leslie and Bernie were both more riddled with outcast resentments and a sense of being forced into role playing than she had realized. But whenever the three of them left the shelter of Honor’s untidy shabby kitchen, in fact they acted on stage. They fell into games. They assumed parts. Honor and Bernie did so at once, without speaking a word of conspiracy or even of consultation. She was sucked in reluctantly but could not resist, could not cast herself as a double outsider beyond their game too. Thus when Honor had to be fortified with a hot fudge sundae to face her immolation, in the ice cream parlor Bernie became Willie the Idiot Boy and they were his keepers.

  When they entered the jewelry shop in the mall—selected after they had squandered half the time they had on previous jewelry shops Honor pronounced too “sor’id” for her to endure—in the big shopping plaza with its glassed-in malls and piped music, occasional pieces of sculpture big and metallic, shrubbery in pots, they had not allotted parts. But by the time they were in the shop five minutes the roles emerged. If this game had a name it would be Governess, because Bernie and Honor became at once snotty and confined. Obviously they were in tow to her. Yes, her purse, her authority ruled them. They called her Madame.

  She was Madame: herself, not herself. She was cold and rational and judgmental. She sneered at their enthusiasms. When they asked, she refused or condescended. The names too magically appeared. Honor was Violet, Bernie was Tate. Part of the insulation the games conferred was that it didn’t matter if anyone else believed them; they were more play than disguise.

  Honor was covering nervousness with extreme hauteur mixed with bursts of giddy flirtatiousness toward the stout glib young man who was selling earrings. The piercing came free with the jewelry. Honor had gone through half the earrings in the place before settling on little gold-filled studs with filigree balls, one of the cheaper pairs they had looked at, of course. Madame’s role was to say no to most of them, which Honor hadn’t the money for anyhow: arbitrary, scornful, rotund noes.

  “Those aren’t bad. They’ll do. Hurry, please. I must have you back by six.” That was true, because Honor’s mother always called her on her supper break. If Mama did get a moment to call earlier, Honor could claim to have run an errand. “Yes, Mama, I just stepped out momentarily. I was only outside for two minutes peeing in the yard.” Honor imitated herself making excuses to her mother.

  Bernie nodded approval. She had seen him pocket one of the pairs, flattened irregular silver loops that looked hammered. Although she was sure the clerk had not noticed, it sharpened her haste. But Honor had not seen and would not be hurried. She very clearly did not want the clerk to touch her, and she was fighting a delaying action by pretending to contemplate pendants.

  At any moment the clerk might notice the pair had vanished. She would have liked to boost a pair too, because she did not want to pay for earrings. She did not approve of jewelry, which seemed all built on slave bracelets and wedding rings, signs of bondage, decorative brands of ownership. Yet she herself had pierced ears and wore that remaining turquoise stud. Did Valerie still wear its mate? Lena would make fun of such a lopsided arrangement. Indeed she could remember Lena’s voice, a voice with a dry sexual authority. “Did you know, my dear, that men started that fad of one earring? S-M, I assure you. For indication, you see: sadists on the right and masochists on the left. Yes, you’re on the masochistic side today, Valerie. I must say, I don’t know that it pays to advertise.” That was Lena at a long mahogany table with a centerpiece of those glass flowers she collected, as they ate a cold pale green avocado blender soup.…

  Honor’s fingers were digging into her arm; her gold-flecked light brown eyes were pleading. “… right now!”

  So they all went to the back of the shop, where Honor sat on a folding chair that looked as if it belonged at a bridge table. Then the clerk daubed her ears with alcohol and neatly with a shiny punch perforated first the left and then the right lobe, all the while keeping up a banter as she saw him wink at Bernie, lounging against the counter looking ostentatiously bored but with his gaze always on Honor. From time to time the clerk managed to brush against Honor’s stiffened body as if that too were part of a game, his game, the contact casually forced that could not be objected to. “Remember to drop the earrings in alcohol at night for the first month to sterilize them, honey. Now press this cotton ball, that’s a good girl, just press it hard till I tell you to let go. That’s right, honey, just that way, you’re a fast learner.…”

  As they straggled out, Leslie was musing why the tension had not annoyed her, the fear of Bernie being caught. It was almost pleasant, the tension, and it reminded her of something half familiar. Almost sexual. Honor let out her breath in a harsh snort. “That’s over!” She was glaring. For
a moment Leslie thought Honor was angry because of Bernie’s shoplifting. “Ugh! It did hurt. But not even much. And it feel so … messy.” She discarded the wads of cotton batting into a wastebasket and washed her hands together in recoil. “I suppose it’ll be worth it to put on Grandmother’s earrings. But the thought I allowed that oaf to touch me, to rub against me, to call me honey, makes me feel like spending a week in the bathtub. The two of you were no help at all!”

  Honor suffered herself to be led to Bernie’s old Mustang, of a metallic faded purple color. It seemed put together of sardine tins and clattered and clanged on the smallest bumps, and Leslie fancied she smelled fish in the air. It had a moldering salty odor. Bernie’s theory was that some large animal had died there in the midst of its winter hibernation on the used car lot and had not been removed until spring. What was left of the upholstery was spotted and stained, and some of the large discolorations in the back seat did suggest blood. It slumped toward the rear wheels as if sitting a little on its heels. It squealed turning corners at the sedatest pace, it squealed backing up, it laid down a palpable fog of exhaust like a black plumy tail, and it was a drunkard.

  “But it’s like riding in your great grandfather. The miracle is that it moves.” They were always in danger of running out of gas because Bernie refused to put more than two dollars’ worth in at a time, claiming the car might break down any minute.

  Normally Honor sat in the front as her due, leaving the back seat to Leslie, but now she crawled back after Leslie and curled up, her head hanging. “I feel like the chauffeur,” Bernie complained. “Do I smell bad?”

  “Shush,” Leslie said, and put her arm tentatively around Honor. Honor did want comforting and cuddled nearer, letting her head fall against Leslie’s shoulder. “Someday I’ll do something Mama forbids and it’ll be exciting and glorious instead of crummy. Someday!”

  “Does it hurt?” Gently she stroked Honor’s hair.

  “A little. I just feel icky.” Honor’s head was pleasantly heavy on Leslie’s shoulder. The girl pressed against her like a tired child, looking as if she could not quite decide if she wanted to cry.

  Sue had taken the kids to visit her parents in Houston, leaving George a temporary bachelor. Not that he would act the way she had observed other married faculty behaving, like horny little boys let out to play. Because of George’s famous arrangement, he could always play. Instead they worked early and they worked late. Normally, George was controlled by a desire to spend time with his children. Whatever tenderness lurked in George poured out over his son, Davey, and his daughter, Louise, and his own widower father who lived upstate. Leslie thought of it as vertical tenderness: no competition, no envy. At night George rushed home to his children; when they were out of town nothing restrained his zest for work.

  He sent her out for Chinese food in cartons. They did not let up until ten, when he drove her home. He parked, so she invited him up. She was not surprised, because although he hadn’t visited her since they’d moved to Detroit, he had used to have a cup of coffee with Val and her in Grand Rapids. Occasionally Val would cook a supper, not for him and Sue but for him and his current youthful girlfriend. She imagined he was curious about where she was living and whether she-was living with anyone yet.

  Chuckling, he looked around. “Is the university paying you too little?”

  “Sure. But there’s an aesthetic of emptiness.”

  “Yes, but don’t you think that blanket’s a little gaudy?” Easily George sat on the floor, arranging his long legs. “That was mediocre Chinese. We’ll have to locate a decent take-out place for worknights. Next time try one of those Black chicken-and-ribs joints.” George was a gourmet. He counted every bad meal a missed opportunity.

  “There’s a Syrian place we could try if I borrow your car.”

  “Just don’t get it in an accident. I’m supposed to fly down Thursday and come back with them Sunday,” George said plaintively. “What a ridiculous potlatch of money. I don’t want to hear Sue’s mother carry on about how she’d torture the kids, which she calls raising them. Arguing politics with her old man. He tries in his crude way to patronize me as an ivory tower academic as opposed to his two-fisted businessman. Whereas the only reason he never succeeded in losing Sue’s nest egg is because her grandfather was smart enough to tie it up in trusts that petty crook can’t undo. He’s a barbaric old hard-drinking failure. Why should I spend half a grand to fly there for two days of watching him drink himself stupid and trying to abuse Sue?”

  “You’re well on the way to persuading yourself not to go.”

  “The bitch is I can’t figure out if Sue will be mad if I don’t show. That is, how mad?”

  “George, whatever I guess is likely wrong.”

  “You think I’ll blame you for bad advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “But think how much more annoyed I’ll be if you advise me to do my duty and fly down, when I’m itching to be told not to.”

  “What you need is a good excuse.”

  “I’ll have to come clean with Sue. I can’t fool her.”

  They were supposed to be truthful, which amounted as near as she could see to George advising Sue of his infidelities. Sue had none. She was busy with the kids and the house, and she never met men who weren’t George’s colleagues or his students, none of whom were apt to take the risk of getting involved with her. Their arrangement seemed to Leslie to come down to a rationalization of the fact that George had more freedom, more power, more choice than Sue did. But she kept her mouth shut.

  “She’ll probably think it’s some girl. I’m getting too old for all that anyhow.” George patted his belly, not believing it for an instant.

  “No doubt you’ve been busy getting settled.”

  “The only stunning women around are Blacks, and that’s just too complicated. This town is so charged, we couldn’t even go to a bar together.”

  “You could spend a day doing something she asked you to fix in the house. That’d cost you a day, but three less than flying down.”

  He chewed that over, rubbing his mustache. “I could arrange it so that … Hmmmm. If I actually got a plumber to fix the hot water system … I could send you or Cam out there to wait.… We’ll call plumbers tomorrow morning.” He looked around her room as he talked as if taking an inventory.

  Finally she teased him. “My life is not only an open book, but practically an empty box.”

  He tapped his mustache, smiling with his best father-confessor air. “Surely you don’t need to be lonely here. There must be lots of places you can meet women. There seem to be plenty of women’s activities on campus.”

  “Sure. I can go volunteer for the rape hot line.… I don’t especially want to meet anyone. Not yet.”

  “Have you heard from Valerie?”

  “Not since I saw her at Christmas. She never writes. I know she moved because the phone’s disconnected.”

  “Is she living with somebody else?”

  As if she had been caught unbraced by a blow. “I suppose. I guess I’ll find out when I go see her. Maybe I’ll do that spring vacation.” She sounded ridiculously vacillating, but it hurt so much to talk about.

  “I don’t mean to pry.” But he did. He was always curious. She felt George was genuinely sorry she did not have something going here, in part because he wanted things to go well for her as he wanted what was under the hood of his car to work well. She hoped she wouldn’t have to spend Friday sitting in his house waiting for the plumber.

  “I’d better be going.” George meant it, for he got up dusting his pants. She saw him to the door and down the straight steep flight. The street door clicked shut behind him. Then she locked her door and stood in the center of the room. She wished he had not mentioned Valerie. She took off her boots, stood with her hands laced on the top of her head, and waited to see what she felt like doing with the short end of her evening.

  A fumbling at the window. She froze. Wind? No. She found herself crouching,
then, thinking better of it, she reached into the rack over the hotplate and pulled out the stoutest knife. She walked toward the window. She was frightened, her body sang with tension and she felt over-wound as if an arm might suddenly fly off. Lightly she crossed the room on the balls of her feet, almost bouncily, and then, hefting the knife, drew back the blind. A man crouched there pawing at the window. “Hai!” she screamed and feinted with the knife, the glass between them.

  “Hi yourself, Les. Let me in.” Bernie’s silky voice came unmistakably through the window.

  As the adrenaline receded, she felt weak. “Bernie? What the hell are you doing on my fire escape?”

  “Let me in. It’s cold.”

  She unlocked the catches. He was dressed just as he had been earlier in the day, with his old leather jacket on and a plaid cashmere muffler around his neck. As he climbed in she shook him roughly by the shoulder, then slammed the window and locked it again. “I do have a door.”

  “Yes, but no buzzer. Am I supposed to stand in the street bawling Les-Lee, Les-lee, like an eight-year-old? Leslie, come out and play-ay! It’s cold and crappy standing on your street. I keep expecting to get mugged, and rough trade keeps trying to pick me up. I have as much trouble standing on a street corner as you would, my dear, and you shouldn’t forget it.”

  “The hell you do. And you don’t fear rape. And you don’t have to come crawling up my fire escape like a cat burglar.”

  “But I am a cat burglar.”

  “I think not,” she said coldly. “Maybe a shoplifter. Well, take off your jacket and enjoy my amply furnished, sensuously outfitted digs. Everyone complains but everyone comes visiting.… How long were you out there?”

  “Oh, since ten-thirty. Thursdays through Sundays I work as a waiter at a restaurant near here—À Votre Plaisir. Supposed to be French. The menu’s sort of French. A couple of Cubans own it and everybody in the kitchen is Puerto Rican.”

  “Since before I got here with George?”

  “Just a couple of minutes before.”