In the Land of Dreamy Dreams Page 8

  “I’m afraid I’m busy Wednesday,” LaGrande said, imagining balloons flying all over the courts when the serious players arrived for their noon games. “Look,” she said, “let’s go on and get started. I can’t stay too long.”

  They set down their pitchers of Gatorade, put on their visors and sweatbands, sprayed a little powdered resin on their hands, and walked out to their respective sides of the court.

  Before they hit the ball four times LaGrande knew something was wrong. The woman wasn’t going to warm her up! LaGrande had hit her three nice long smooth balls and each time Roxanne moved up to the net and put the ball away on the sidelines.

  “How about hitting me some forehands,” LaGrande said. “I haven’t played in a week. I need to warm up.”

  “I’ll try,” Roxanne said, “I have to play most of my game at the net, you know, because of my leg.”

  “Well, stay back there and hit me some to warm up with,” LaGrande said, but Roxanne went right on putting her shots away with an assortment of tricks that looked more like a circus act than a tennis game.

  “Are you ready to play yet?” she asked. “I’d like to get started before I get too tired.”

  “Sure,” LaGrande said. “Go ahead, you serve first. There’s no reason to spin a racket over a fun match.” Oh, well, she thought, I’ll just go ahead and slaughter her. Of course, I won’t lob over her head, I don’t suppose anyone does that to her.

  Roxanne pulled the first ball out of her pants. She had a disconcerting habit of sticking the extra ball up the leg of her tights instead of keeping it in a pocket. She pulled the ball out of her pants, tossed it expertly up into the air, and served an ace to LaGrande’s extreme backhand service corner.

  “Nice serve,” LaGrande said. Oh, well, she thought, everyone gets one off occasionally. Let her go on and get overconfident. Then I can get this over in a hurry.

  They changed courts for the second serve. Roxanne hit short into the backhand court. LaGrande raced up and hit a forehand right into Roxanne’s waiting racket. The ball dropped neatly into a corner and the score was 30-love.

  How in the shit did she get to the net so fast, LaGrande thought. Well, I’ll have to watch out for that. I thought she was supposed to be crippled.

  Roxanne served again, winning the point with a short spinning forehand. Before LaGrande could gather her wits about her she had lost the first game.

  Things went badly with her serve and she lost the second game. While she was still recovering from that she lost the third game. Calm down, she told herself. Get hold of yourself. Keep your eye on the ball. Anticipate her moves. It’s only because I didn’t have a chance to warm up. I’ll get going in a minute.

  Old Claiborne stood watching the match from a secluded spot near the door to the dining room, watching it with his heart in his throat, not daring to move any farther out onto the balcony for fear he might distract LaGrande and make things worse.

  Why doesn’t she lob, Claiborne thought. Why in the name of God doesn’t she lob? Maybe she thinks she shouldn’t do it just because one of that woman’s legs is a little bit shorter than the other.

  He stood squeezing the Styrofoam cup in his hand. A small hole had developed in the side, and drops of coffee were making a little track down the side of his Fred Perry flannels, but he was oblivious to everything but the action on the court.

  He didn’t even notice when Nailor came up behind him. Nailor was a haughty old black man who had been with the club since he was a young boy and now was the chief groundskeeper and arbiter of manners among the hired help.

  Nailor had spent his life tending Rubico tennis courts without once having the desire to pick up a racket. But he had watched thousands of tennis matches and he knew more about tennis than most players did.

  He knew how the little fields of energy that surround men and women move and coalesce and strike and fend off and retreat and attack and conquer. That was what he looked for when he watched tennis. He wasn’t interested in the details.

  If it was up to Nailor no one but a few select players would ever be allowed to set foot on his Rubico courts. The only time of day when he was really at peace was the half hour from when he finished the courts around 7:15 each morning until they opened the iron gates at 7:45 and the members started arriving.

  Nailor had known LaGrande since she came to her father’s matches in a perambulator. He had lusted after her ass ever since she got her first white tennis skirt and her first Wilson autograph racket. He had been the first black man to wax her first baby-blue convertible, and he had been taking care of her cars ever since.

  Nailor moonlighted at the club polishing cars with a special wax he had invented.

  Nailor hated the new members worse than Claiborne did. Ever since the club had moved to its new quarters and they had come crowding in bringing their children and leaving their paper cups all over the courts he had been thinking of retiring.

  Now he was watching one of them taking his favorite little missy to the cleaners. She’s getting her little booty whipped for sure this morning, he thought. She can’t find a place to turn and make a stand. She don’t know where to start to stop it. She’s got hind teat today whether she likes it or not and I’m glad her daddy’s not here to watch it.

  Claiborne was oblivious to Nailor. He was trying to decide who would benefit most if he made a show of walking out to the balcony and taking a seat.

  He took a chance. He waited until LaGrande’s back was to him, then walked out just as Roxanne was receiving serve.

  LaGrande made a small rally and won her service, but Roxanne took the next three games for the set. “I don’t need to rest between sets unless you do,” she said, walking up to the net. “We really haven’t been playing that long. I really don’t know why I’m playing so well. I guess I’m just lucky today.”

  “I just guess you are,” LaGrande said. “Sure, let’s go right on. I’ve got a date for lunch.” Now I’ll take her, she thought. Now I’m tired of being polite. Now I’m going to beat the shit out of her.

  Roxanne picked up a ball, tossed it into the air, and served another ace into the backhand corner of the forehand court.

  Jesus Fucking A Christ, LaGrande thought. She did it again. Where in the name of God did that little Jewish housewife learn that shot.

  LaGrande returned the next serve with a lob. Roxanne ran back, caught it on the edge of her racket and dribbled it over the net.

  Now LaGrande lost all powers of reason. She began trying to kill the ball on every shot. Before she could get hold of herself she had lost three games, then four, then five, then she was only one game away from losing the match, then only one point.

  This is it, LaGrande thought. Armageddon.

  Roxanne picked up the balls and served the first one out. She slowed herself down, took a deep breath, tossed up the second ball and shot a clean forehand into the service box.

  “Out,” LaGrande said. “Nice try.”

  “It couldn’t be out,” Roxanne said, “are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” LaGrande said. “I wouldn’t have called it unless I was sure.”

  Up on the balcony Old Claiborne’s heart was opening and closing like a geisha’s fan. He caught LaGrande’s eye, smiled and waved, and, turning around, realized that Nailor was standing behind him.

  “Morning, Mr. Claiborne,” Nailor said, leaning politely across him to pick up the cup. “Looks like Mr. Leland’s baby’s having herself a hard time this morning. Let me bring you something nice to drink while you watch.”

  Claiborne sent him for coffee and settled back in the chair to watch LaGrande finish her off, thinking, as he often did lately, that he had outlived his time and his place. “I’m not suited for a holding action,” he told himself, imagining the entire culture of the white Christian world to be stretched out on some sort of endless Maginot Line besieged by the children of the poor carrying portable radios and boxes of fried chicken.

  Here Claiborne sa
t, on a beautiful spring morning, in good spirits, still breathing normally, his blood coursing through his veins on its admirable and accustomed journeys, and only a few minutes before he had been party to a violation of a code he had lived by all his life.

  He sat there, sipping his tasteless coffee, listening to the Saturday lawn mowers starting up on the lawn of the Poydras Retirement Home, which took up the other half of the square block of prime New Orleans real estate on which the new clubhouse was built. It was a very exclusive old folks’ home, with real antiques and Persian rugs and a board of directors made up of members of the New Orleans Junior League. Some of the nicest old people in New Orleans went there to die.

  Claiborne had suffered through a series of terrible luncheons at the Poydras Home in an effort to get them to allow the tennis club to unlock one of the gates that separated the two properties. But no matter how the board of directors of the Lawn Tennis Club pleaded and bargained and implored, the board of directors of the Poydras Home stoutly refused to allow the tennis-club members to set foot on their lawn to retrieve the balls that flew over the fence. A ball lost to the Poydras Home was a ball gone forever.

  The old-fashioned steel girders of the Huey P. Long Bridge hung languidly in the moist air. The sun beat down on the river. The low-hanging clouds pushed against each other in fat cosmic orgasms.

  LaGrande stood on the bridge until the constellation of yellow balls was out of sight around a bend in the river. Then she drove to her house on Philip Street, changed clothes, got in the car, and began to drive aimlessly up and down Saint Charles Avenue, thinking of things to do with the rest of her life.

  She decided to cheer herself up. She turned onto Carrollton Avenue and drove down to Gus Mayer.

  She went in, found a saleslady, took up a large dressing room, and bought some cocktail dresses and some sun dresses and some summer skirts and blouses and some pink linen pants and a beige silk Calvin Klein evening jacket.

  Then she went downstairs and bought some hose and some makeup and some perfume and some brassieres and some panties and a blue satin Christian Dior gown and robe.

  She went into the shoe department and bought some Capezio sandals and some Bass loafers and some handmade espadrilles. She bought a red umbrella and a navy blue canvas handbag.

  When she had bought one each of every single thing she could possibly imagine needing she felt better and went on out to the Country Club to see if anyone she liked to fuck was hanging around the pool.

  Things Like the Truth

  Suicides

  Joshua and Philip Treadway were the shining lights of the University of Seattle English Department. They were identical twins, tall, blonde, graceful, brilliant.

  They completed each other. Philip was the scholar. Joshua was a musician, the creative, mad, lighthearted brother. He did it first. Did it without saying a word to anyone. Didn’t leave a note, not a word of farewell.

  Just walked out one night and dumped himself into the Puget Sound. Two witnesses saw him remove his shoes, sit them neatly under an upright, and do a swan dive into the cold, restless water. Not a sign, not a wave. The witnesses stood for a long time, staring down at the spot where he landed, thinking they had been let in on some elaborate practical joke.

  Philip made it through the funeral, sleeping across the foot of his mother’s bed, trying to be a consolation.

  “We’ll make it,” he told her. “Josh was an artist. You always lose them one way or the other.” Philip was the down-to-earth twin, always following Joshua around, picking up his caps and jackets, carrying his extra guitar strings, lending him money.

  “But where is the note?” his mother said for the thousandth time. “There must be a note. Surely we’ll find the note. What could have happened to the note?”

  “We’ll stick together,” he told his mother. “We’ll see each other often. I’ll come for weekends.” He was saving the good news to tell her later. His wife, Janet, was going to have a baby. There would be new life. It would make a difference.

  That was June. In September Philip fell apart. Perhaps it was the beginning of the school year. There he was, with the leaves falling all over the campus, faced with two sections of freshman English, their little, moist, bored faces waiting to be amused.

  “How do they seem this year?” Janet asked, handing him a drink, settling beside him on the sofa. She took his hand and placed it on her growing stomach.

  “Like visitors from another planet,” he said. “Like an army of baby bottles. They stick together. They keep their secrets. Who knows? Perhaps they’re harmless. Perhaps they will learn to trust me.” He encircled her stomach with his hands. “What will he look like?” he said.

  “Like us, of course,” she said, touching his soft blonde hair. It was a joke with them, how much they looked alike. With Joshua along they had passed for triplets, in bars, or when they traveled together.

  “If only Josh had known about the baby,” Philip said. “It might have saved him.”

  Janet hid her surprise. Joshua had known. They had told him. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said. “Nothing we could have done would have mattered.”

  “We will name him Joshua,” Philip said. “It’s the least we can do.”

  “Of course,” she said, glad he was talking about it. “It will be a way of forgiving him.”

  “He doesn’t need forgiving,” Philip said, moving away from her. “He knew what he was doing. He had a right to his death. He heard a different music.” He was thinking about something Joshua had done, once, when they were apart on their birthday.

  The phone began ringing at dawn. When Philip answered it, Joshua was on the other end of the line playing the saxophone, playing wonderful music, playing on and on. Then he hung up, without a word.

  Lately, whenever Philip answered the phone, he expected to hear that music.

  “Not need forgiving?” Janet said. “How can you say that? After what he’s put us through. Look what he’s done to your mother… to your father…to you…to me….” She never got to finish the sentence. Philip was gone.

  When he showed up three days later he walked into the den, put a new album on the phonograph, turned it up as loud as it would go, sat down at the dining-room table, and wrote her the first of the letters.

  The album was Keith Jarrett’s Death and the Flower. Philip was through with subtleties.

  Dear Bitch,

  I have had all I can take of your stupidity. Get rid of the kid. You won’t manipulate me with that old trick. Get your fat body out of my bed. Get things cleaned up around here before I burn the place down. If this sounds like a threat, it is.

  Softly, Philip

  He tied a necktie into a noose, placed the letter in the knot, and hung it on the refrigerator door.

  “Don’t worry,” the head of the English Department told her. “We’ll find him the best doctors. We’ve been expecting something like this. We were lucky to have a few months’ grace. Don’t panic. We’ll save him. He’s our golden boy. And you’re our golden girl. Hold on. Help is coming.”

  Things got better. By the end of the week he fell asleep in her arms, begging forgiveness.

  They moved to a new house, a pleasant condominium overlooking a wooded area. There was even a stream nearby, flowing down from the pleasant hills. It would be different now, a new beginning.

  Janet rushed around all day, cleaning windows until they squeaked, hanging white curtains, arranging greenery in pots made by their clever friends, cooking thick soups and stews and meat pies.

  The baby arrived for Christmas. Philip took one look and disappeared for two weeks. He sent a note with a box of flowers.

  Dear Bitch,

  The title of this note is WHEN THE CHILD IS BORN THE PARENTS START DYING.

  Josh called today. He said it is more beautiful than you could imagine. He said everyone we like to talk to is there. Yeats is there and Thomas. Sylvia is there and Anne. John is there and Ted and Dylan. Albert and Margaret ar
e there and Blake. Imagine, Blake is there.

  Josh wishes he had someone of his own to talk to. You know, someone who really understands him.

  Your bosom, your buddy, Philip

  P.S. The baby doesn’t like it in the little box. Please have him moved to more suitable quarters.

  Janet dropped the letter on the floor beside the hospital bed. She looked out the window at the white landscape. She was all ready to cry. Then a strange thing happened. She raised her hand to her lips and laughter poured out between her fingers.

  “It will be all right,” everyone said. “Don’t panic. It is important not to panic. This was to be expected. It will take some time. It isn’t easy.”

  This time Philip returned with a friend, a huge tangled sheep dog he insisted on keeping in the house although Janet was afraid it might eat the baby. He fed it at the dining-room table, allowed it to sleep on their bed, played his records for it, turning up the speakers until the poor creature howled with pain.

  “Truth hurts,” Philip said, “truth is very painful.”

  This time Janet left, taking her books and her baby and fleeing across town to her mother’s. The letters grew worse, the threats more terrible.

  Dear Bitch,

  Who do you think you’re fooling? We’re onto your game. We’re watching every move you make. Remember, the ocean gets hungry. We must keep feeding the ocean. It is very important. Nothing else is important.

  Your Philip, your city of swollen faces

  Dear Bitch and Company,

  Last night I dreamed you turned the English Department into a cathedral. There were crosses all over the place. There were big crosses and little crosses with real men on them. Very cute. I thought. Then I called the cops. They came and cleaned out the place. Josh says he loves you. He says he needs you.

  Your divine, Your Philip

  She tore up his photographs, applied for a job in New England. She ate a lot of ice cream, gained a lot of weight. She was very lonely. Who would have anything to do with her, embroiled as she was in this tragedy?