Balancing Acts Read online

  ‘Sure. You don’t propose using the kids to test it, do you?’

  Slowly Fats transferred his body from the ladder to the rope.

  ‘Put your feet on the knots. Attaboy. Swing a little, be a monkey. There you go.’

  The rope swung tentatively in a small circle. Fats curled his body around it, his shoulders and arms tense.

  ‘Oh, if I had an old friend of mine here now,’ the man whispered to her, ‘you’d see a real monkey. This fellow looks like an ape but hasn’t got the bounce.’

  She grinned back at him as Fats, rather pale, reached the floor. ‘Do you think that’s all right now?’ he asked, rubbing his palms together.

  ‘Fine, Fox. We’ll put sturdy mats underneath. No need to fear.’

  ‘What kind of new torture is this?’ she asked Fats.

  ‘Mr Fried is going to teach rope climbing and trapeze skills. Why is your attitude so negative? And aren’t you supposed to be in a game anyhow?’

  ‘Oh, all right. See you around.’

  The old man nodded his head in farewell. ‘A pleasure running into you again. Hasta luego.’

  The river was the Seine, but she doubted now that he was a painter.

  At three o’clock she saw Hilary and Karen headed for the pizzeria. They waved and beckoned—so they weren’t mad any more—but she only waved back and continued on her way. Hilary shrugged as she walked off, fluffing out her long loose hair with one hand. On the left back pocket of her jeans was sewn a broken red heart with an arrow going through it. The heart was for Bobby Cavale, on the swimming team. Karen, plump and a head shorter, chattered and walked fast to keep up with her. They would find the boys there and most likely chase them around the parking lot again. The few times she had gone along she had felt completely hollow inside. Even her voice sounded phony, and tier mind stood somewhere apart, watching, judging every word she spoke. Wanda had warned her. ‘Do you think they’ll keep asking you forever? Do you want to be alone all the time? You’ll be sorry, believe me.’ But she wasn’t sorry yet.

  On the way to the library she stopped off in Bamberger’s to go up the down and down the up escalators, and so it was near dark when she finally got home, her knapsack bulging with books. Wanda was busy at the stove, stirring something in a big pot. She wore a long flowered robe in a silky fabric, and her lipstick was a frosty pink.

  ‘Set the table in the dining room, would you, Allie? And take out the salad. He ought to be here any minute.’

  ‘Yes’m. Right away, ma’am.’ She opened the refrigerator. There was a bottle of champagne next to the salad bowl. ‘What are you two celebrating?’

  Wanda squeezed her frosted lips shut, as if something might slip past them. She bent to open the oven. ‘Just his return, I guess. Use the good silver.’

  She couldn’t get a clear picture of Josh’s face. It happened every time he stayed away more than a week: she kept only a blurred outline with dark curly hair and a square jaw. Days went by when she hardly thought of him, except now and then some image would flash through her head like a lingering bit of dream: in his white tennis shorts, going to work out at the gym-tanned and muscled like the tennis pros he watched on TV. Going over the bills at the dining room table, so concentrated, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, a sharpened pencil in his hand and a cigarette between his teeth. She wished he wouldn’t smoke, yet that cigarette in his teeth gave him an air of...she couldn’t think of the word. Or the way he used to hold her on his lap, with that funny lopsided smile, and she would put her arms around his neck and feel...But that had not been for a very long time. You couldn’t force people to keep loving you in the same way, and anyhow, she was much too big. Only babies got petted like that.

  As she finished setting out the plates she heard the car. In a moment he was opening the front door, suntanned, his dark hair rumpled, his jacket and tie slung over his shoulder, a suitcase in his hand. When he saw her he gave that same lopsided smile, one corner of his mouth crooked as though something were secretly funny, and he dropped everything to reach out his arms. He was firm and warm, and for a moment she let herself relax against him, wrapped up snug like an infant. Almost too cozy. She drew back before the hug seemed really over.

  After he hugged Wanda, Josh picked up his jacket and took a tiny white box from the pocket. ‘I didn’t forget to bring you something this time, Allie.’

  It was a silver ring with a narrow double band and a blue stone in the center, a rare blue, bluer than any skies or flowers. She put it on her middle finger. ‘Nice,’ she said, not looking at him.

  ‘It’s Navajo. Silver and turquoise, and made by a real Indian. I got it at a trading post.’

  She held her hand out and gazed doubtfully. Too brilliant on her hand, or she was too pale. A person should be beautiful and glittery, to wear that ring.

  While she ate she twisted it and moved it up and down over her knuckle, watching the stone catch the light of the globe above the table. Wanda poured tomato juice. ‘Aren’t you two going to have your champagne?’

  ‘Oh, that’s for later.’ Lowering her eyes, Wanda began to eat quickly.

  ‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Alison,’ said Josh. ‘Now tell me what you’ve been doing these past three weeks. Read any good books?’ He gave her the broad empty smile, the smile that looked ready to become a laugh whatever she might say.

  She hesitated. ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Oh, this girl. She gets into a lot of trouble. Her illegitimate baby dies.’

  ‘I don’t know where she finds these books,’ Wanda groaned. ‘But you can count on her. They’re either pregnant or alcoholic or both.’

  ‘It’s a famous book! I found it right in the school library. Oh, and by the way, I saved a man’s life last week.’

  ‘You never told me that.’ Wanda stopped chewing and stared across the table, her green eyes wide. ‘How?’

  ‘I was in the A & P—that night you forgot to cook dinner, remember?—and he was sort of stretched out over the meat counter. I got him a box to sit on and I gave him a can of orange juice. I guess he was having heart failure or something, but after a while he seemed to get a little better. He was really old, seventy-four. I offered to walk him home but he said no.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad of that.’ Wanda went back to her rice. ‘You never know, with strangers. Better to call the manager.’

  ‘He didn’t want the manager. Anyhow, he must be all right now. I saw him at school today.’

  ‘At school?’ Josh shifted in his chair. ‘Was he hanging around outside?’

  ‘Oh, no. He wasn’t that type. Putting up some equipment with the gym teacher. He seemed rather interesting. Well, anyway, how was business?’

  ‘Business?’ He smiled over at her. ‘Business is not bad. Everyone’s interested in mobile homes these days—with the market so high they can’t afford houses any more.’

  ‘Did you see anything exciting this time?’

  Josh cocked his head and slid two fingers up and back along his jaw. ‘Same old thing—desert, cactus, canyons. Grumpy Indians. They certainly seem to have it for white people. Oh, I did finally stop in to have a look at the Grand Canyon. It was grand, just like they say. I got some postcards I’ll show you after dinner. It’s amazing,’ he said, turning to Wanda. ‘They’ve got motels, buses, even supermarkets. You can practically live there.’

  ‘But how did you feel on the edge of that huge thing?’ Alison cried. ‘I mean, it must be...I don’t know...overwhelming.’

  ‘I felt mighty small, baby. Wouldn’t want to get lost down there, I’ll tell you.’

  She pushed the slice of roast beef around on her plate. It lay in its puddle of lukewarm gravy like something dead. The first moment he returned was always exciting, but after that everything remained exactly the same. She would try to get behind that lopsided smile to its source, while he, like a dumb camera, would produce whatev
er had passed before him: deserts, cactus, canyons. Never what any of it meant to him, what he really thought about it. Maybe it meant nothing and he had no thoughts. The hollow space opened inside her again, floating up through her like a bubble.

  ‘I’ll clear,’ she said. As she circled the table gathering plates she studied them, pretending she didn’t know them: a nice-looking couple from a TV commercial for dishwasher soap, maybe. But those people on TV were not real; they were actors. Everyone knew they didn’t behave that way in real life.

  ‘I’ll look at the postcards tomorrow,’ she told Josh. ‘I have a lot of homework.’

  Curled in a corner of her bed, she wrote quickly on a fresh sheet: ‘Social Contributions of Three Professions. Scientists do experiments in laboratories to find cures for the dread diseases that plague humanity. On the other hand they also invent nuclear weapons and napalm that destroy humanity. Therefore they sometimes strike an objective observer as seeming to defeat their own basic purpose.’ That was logical so far, only it seemed to be a dead end. Move the main idea along, Miss French always said. And it was supposed to be objective, which meant no private opinions. All she could do was another half page of specific examples—on the one hand and on the other hand—to get it up to a decent length. But specific examples were so boring, and the main idea had been stated quite clearly. It did lack an introduction, development, and concluding paragraph, yet it had a certain neatness. Definitely not wordy. The bricklayer and reporter were simple; she could do them during lunch tomorrow. She dropped the school notebook to the floor and got out the other from under the mattress.

  Alice decides to leave the truckdriver, Hal, after four days. Being idolized is too much of a strain, and besides, she feels unworthy, remembering the crimes she has left behind her in the city. As a matter of fact, Alice seemed to be undergoing some peculiar change. Between the lines, almost, she was getting closer to the kind of person she was destined to be, a person neither she nor Alison knew yet. The words came out as if dictated by a creature partly herself and partly Alice, a creature just beyond her control. With an eerie curiosity, she watched what appeared on the page. ‘And so an instinct told Alice the time had come to move on. The unknown stretched before her and the call of adventure sounded in her ears. As she left the kindly truckdriver sleeping peacefully in the back of his truck, his wallet lay exposed before her, bulging with bills. She touched it, but no. Although it would certainly be helpful in her future life, whatever that might be, she could not do that to Hal. It would weigh too heavily on her conscience.’ She read the paragraph over and crossed out the last sentence.

  Alice resolves right then to give up the life of crime. For a moment she even thinks of turning herself in, but no, again: her spirit would be broken in prison. Alice feels exactly the same as Joan of Arc, in that scene Miss Patten read aloud at the beginning of the term. It is not bread and water I fear, but to be shut away from the light of the sky. Do you think living is nothing but not being stone dead?

  She hitches a ride with an older girl with long straw-colored braids who offers her a joint, but recalling her past addictions, Alice turns it down. The girl tells about the vegetarian commune in Nebraska where she is headed, and Alice agrees to go along and do her fair share of the domestic work. In Nebraska the bearded boys and the girls in long peasant skirts are friendly, but since they smoke a lot of dope and are very involved in their non-exploitive relationships, Alice pushes on after a week. The next driver who picks her up, an elderly white-haired lady in pink-rimmed harlequin glasses, catches on immediately that Alice is a runaway; meaning well, she plans to turn her in at police headquarters in Laramie, Wyoming.

  Her hand was aching; she stopped. She could hear them downstairs, still murmuring and laughing. She pictured them sitting together on the coffee-colored sofa: Wanda, her furry slippers off and her feet tucked under her, sat sideways leaning towards Josh, one arm resting across the back of the sofa. Her long flowered robe swirled around her in folds. She was smoking. They were both smoking, and their words and laughter drifted up in mists of smoke. Josh had his shoes off too, and his long legs were stretched out to the oval coffee table. He leaned his head back against Wanda’s arm and blew smoke rings up at the ceiling. They were drinking their champagne and talking of...what? It was not possible to imagine now they spoke when she was not there, the real selves underneath the faces, as impossible as it was to picture the other things they did together, when they were upstairs, under the quilt of the huge bed. Unthinkable but true that they touched each other everywhere. That was normal; she had read about it in books. Wanda and Josh were normal.

  She lay in bed reading A Member of the Wedding till midnight, then turned out the light. Like a cat, she ran her tongue over the silver ring Josh had brought her from Arizona. It tasted like metal, bitter and sharp. Feeling her way in the dark, she put it back in its box.

  CHAPTER 3

  MAX WAS FEEDING LETTIE this time. In three weeks he had consumed quite a few bowls of her distinguished soups; it was no more than proper to reciprocate. But he had to admit, besides, that he was lonely and he liked her, more than he had foreseen liking anyone again. He had chosen a menu appropriate to her bountiful nature—plump sweet Italian sausages with green peppers, beefsteak tomatoes doused in oil and oregano. Lettie ate it slowly, with a muted ardor.

  ‘You should be teaching them cooking over there at the school. This is delicious. Don’t get up. Max, I’ll get myself some more from the kitchen. How about you?’

  He shook his head. Relaxing in the chair, he sighed over the soothing flavor of garlic. He was a good cook indeed, by instinct. The better of the two—Susie, who could fly with the abandon of a swallow, had been cautious in the kitchen. She used to work with a book propped on the table, always worried about the measurements, while he would let himself go, tossing in whatever he could find. ‘How bad could it be?’ he teased her. He drank Scotch neat as he cooked; the more he drank, the finer the results. Afterwards, often, they spread blankets on the floor and made love. He saw his dinners as a prelude.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ he said to Lettie, returning with her plate refilled. I’ve cooked since I was a young man.’

  ‘There aren’t many men who do. I bet your wife appreciated that.’

  ‘Oh.’ He poured more red wine for them both, and looked away. ‘It seems like another life,’ he muttered. ‘Goddammit.’

  ‘I feel the same way,’ Lettie said calmly. ‘Twenty years. Would you believe, a fellow who used to come to the club for a drink after work. He saw the show and came backstage. How do you do, et cetera. Like in the movies.’

  ‘Yes? And you were happy?’ He drank more wine and took the cigar from his shirt pocket. Better to listen than talk. Let her, if she was able to.

  ‘We were. I don’t usually tell people about it. It gets me down...He was killed in an accident. He drove a truck for a bread company. This is good French bread, by the way. I know bread. Where’d you get it? The bakery, not the A & P, I bet?’ Max nodded. I thought so. He drove at night. It could be he fell asleep, I’ll never know.’ As she spoke she ate, with an air of meditation. ‘Anyway, he was crushed to bits. Bits. They called me at five in the morning. I was wide awake. I used to stay up all night then, even after the second show, and sleep in the day, with him. Oh, I wasn’t still dancing, I was too old. But I did things at the club—I sang a little, I fooled around with the customers, taught the girls the new routines. So, they called me at five in the morning.’ Mechanically she broke off a chunk of bread and rubbed it in the oil of her salad, a small, obsessive motion, like an absent-minded caress. Max kept his eyes down. ‘You know why I can talk about it like this? Because I’ve said it to myself so many times—those same words, crushed to bits—that they hardly mean anything any more. I don’t feel anything much when I say them. It’s peculiar. Oh, when I first met him, Max, you should have seen me.’ She gave him a faint smile. I was a knockout, if I say so myself.’

  ‘I don
’t doubt it.’

  ‘Yes, I was. I was just a chorus girl, and the place was not exactly the Copa, but it wasn’t too bad, either. I was never ashamed of it. I did a good job, I earned a living. I didn’t need to go to bed with every customer who got an idea in his head. People think...A few here and there maybe, you know how it is, but that was not my way of making money, never.’

  ‘No need to apologize.’

  ‘No, I know that. I just want you to understand that it wasn’t like he rescued me from a terrible life or anything like that. I could pick and choose. I chose. So’—she sighed, and stopped eating at last—‘they called me at five in the morning, after twenty years. I was cooking a meat loaf for the next day. I remember I had to wipe the chopped meat off my hands to answer the phone...He was a real nice-looking man. A gentle type. Soft-spoken. He was satisfied with how things turned out. So was I. I didn’t imagine anything like that could ever happen to me. I mean, not many women can say this, Max, but I had an easy time. Not as a kid, but later, with him. I suppose I expected it to just go on forever. I didn’t expect a tragedy. We had it real nice and easy.’

  He had an impulse to reach out and take her large hand, spread out flat and still on the tablecloth, but he held back. The way she absorbed her grief put him in awe.

  ‘All alone now,’ Lettie went on. ‘I didn’t have the right kind of life for children. And I think I never had that instinct they say a woman is supposed to have. I liked being out and working. Can you picture me with a baby? I mean, I would have been good to it, God knows. But I guess I was too selfish then.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t regret much of anything I’ve done. Except that I shouldn’t have let him go on driving the truck at night. He was getting older. Fifty-nine. I should have noticed and not let him. That I regret. Didn’t your wife ever want a child?’

  ‘She—’ Max began. His throat tightened with the effort to say something, anything, about her. He couldn’t see Susie contorted in childbirth or trudging behind a carriage. Though for all he knew, that was his own lack of vision. To him she was always a flier, with an urge in the blood and a skill in the bones. His skill was laboriously learned. He was there to catch her, and she had seemed content, more than content, with that.