After Bathing at Baxters Page 10
It was a bad winter in Cook County that year. Eight feet of snow fell on Choctaw. The meteorological centre at Dyersburg registered thirty degrees of frost one night in January and the cattle froze to death in the fields. Driving backwards and forwards to Nashville – the paper was talking about offering me a full-time job but nothing would happen before spring – I used to wonder about Travis, holed up in the big house on the empty estate, as the snow fell over the artificial lake, with only the birds and the picture of his great-great grand-daddy for company. But there were other people, I found out, with an interest in Travis Fuller. An associate professor from the University of Texas had called in at the Sentinel office, Barrett maintained, wanting to get in touch with him. ‘Girl looked like Farrah Fawcett,’ he explained disbelievingly when I went round. ‘Reckoned she was writing some thesis on Confederate families and wanted to know about the old general.’
I looked on while Barrett, who had skidded his car into a ditch coming back from an Oddfellow’s convention in Lafayette and emerged two hours later with first-degree exposure and three frost-bitten fingers, attempted to light a cigarette. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘What would you have said, my man? Told her to drive straight on out to the Heron House and take a look.’
The Nashville paper got in touch again after that inviting me to come back for an extra two weeks’ work, so I never got to meet the girl from the University of Texas. But back in town a month or so later I caught sight of Travis buying liquor in the off-licence Joe Brackus ran as a sideline to the bar and diner. He had his head down low over the pile of cans wedged to his chest and didn’t look up when I waved.
Barrett called that night: random shards of gossip floating over the wire. ‘Yeah, the County Treasurer comes up in court next week … Plus I got to speak to that girl, the one that reckoned on talking to Travis Fuller. You never heard anything like it, my man.’ Barrett hadn’t sounded so pleased since the time his editor had shot himself in the hand out duck-shooting in Johnson City marshes. ‘Seems from what she turned up that old Lila-Mae’s great grand-daddy weren’t no Confederate general after all. Just an ordinary powder monkey died of a fever at Louisville years after, she told Travis, and the old picture ain’t nothing to do with him.’
I remembered the medallion on Travis Fuller’s dungarees. ‘What did Travis say to that?’
‘Didn’t seem to make no difference to him, she said. Anyhow, I got a card here asking me to the grand re-opening of the General James T. Peterson Memorial Reserve.’
I got to look at Barrett’s invitation card, all black borders and fancy type: a fortnight away. But two nights later the alarm bells started ringing all over the Fuller estate and the Choctaw neighbours called up the county police department on account of the noise. I hitched a ride with one of the local sergeants Barrett used to give bottles of whisky to at Christmas in return for services rendered. I remember the night for the weather, a great protuberant moon that drenched the highway with blood-red light. By the time we reached the Fuller estate the alarm bells had stopped ringing, but it wasn’t difficult to work out what had happened. There were dead birds all over the driveway, cranes with their heads torn off and their carcasses cut to ribbons, and a pall of smoke hanging over the heronry. The big house was shut up, but eventually they broke in. Travis was sitting with his eyes back in his head staring at the body of an old lady. Miz Fuller, the doctors said, though it was hard to tell, she’d been dead so long.
They buried the old lady with a Confederate flag draped over her coffin, and you could tell from the way the whole town turned out that they figured it was some sort of occasion. There was a state congressman at the church and the County Treasurer came, flanked by a couple of guys from the D.A.’s office and smiling whenever anybody tried to shake his hand. Later, looking at the photograph of the old general that the Sentinel printed along with its obituary, I thought about the gun carriages rusting in the fields, realizing that I would never see them again, however hard I looked, and that this, somehow, was the saddest feeling of all.
Seeing London
Bobby walked in front of us, stiffly, over the wet grass. Roxeanne said (it was a Sunday lunch party at somebody’s house): ‘I guess you were right when you said I needed someone to show me London: with you being at the office all day. But I never thought I’d find him just like that. Can you believe it? I’m sitting outside one of those pavement cafés in South Molton Street when this guy comes up and says in the cutest English accent: “Excuse me, is this yours?” And it’s that ivory comb you bought me, that time you took me round the antiques market in, where was it, Portobello. It just fell out of my bag. You ever hear anything so corny? Anyway, there’s a spare seat at the table and pretty soon we’re talking like old buddies and I suppose I must have said something about wanting to see the sights, because pretty soon he looks at me all serious and says: “Would I do? As a guide I mean” – still with that accent like Jeremy Irons. So I put on my best Manhattan voice – you know, that husky drawl you laugh at over the phone – and said: “So where are you taking me, honey?” Just like that.
‘“Don’t worry,” he said. “I can show you London.” And that was the time I thought I’d made a mistake, because usually when an English guy says he’s going to show you London he means Westminster and the Tower and between you and me I don’t ever want to see another Beefeater again. Anyway it was raining by then so I said, “Let’s take a taxi.” But he just looked at me and said, “What’s wrong with your legs? It’s not very far.” He can be very authoritative, you know. So we started walking down through Soho looking in the shops and, boy, does he know his history. Do you know they call it Soho because they used to hunt foxes there and that was what the huntsmen used to shout? I asked Bobby how he knew about this and he said he read a lot and he was interested. I like it when people are modest like that. There are some guys would have given you a reading list. A bit later I had to go – you remember I was meeting you to go to the ballet?– but I gave him my address. Yeah, I know what you told me but I could see he wasn’t a psycho or anything, and next morning a guy turns up on a motorbike with a dozen white roses and a note from Bobby saying can he see me again? Can you believe it? Just like in a movie with Robert Taylor.’
Bobby lingered behind us at the bar, paying for the drinks. Roxeanne said (it was at a theatre in the Strand): ‘OK. I’d better be straight with you. I know I haven’t been about much the last two weeks, but you see Bobby moved in a month ago and I thought I ought to stay around. Don’t worry, it was my idea, well both our ideas, and anyway I was so angry with the way Bobby was treated by the guys in his house. You remember when I met him he lived in this place in Battersea? Anyway, last week somebody stole fifty pounds off the landlord and they decided it was Bobby and he had to leave. And Bobby knew it was one of the other guys but he’s so straight he didn’t want to say so. Can you imagine that? So when he turned up at the apartment with a couple of suitcases, of course I let him in. Not that I actually mind having him around the place. He’s so considerate – not like some of your Englishmen – and boy, does he like doing it. I talked to my mother on the phone the other night and she told me I sounded tired. ‘You’d be tired as well if you were doing what I’ve been doing,’ I told her.
‘Plus I finally got to find out what he does for a job. You know I always wondered why he was around in the afternoons but wouldn’t phone for a couple of days? Well, it turns out he’s an actor! Not in movies or anything like that, but TV ads. You know the ad where the guys are sitting there drinking coffee and the first one has to borrow the second one’s fountain pen? Well, that’s Bobby standing there in the background mixing a drink. I got him to tell me about it. He told me he’d been to RADA on some scholarship – but there weren’t any proper jobs for actors over here so he had to do ads for coffee powder. Can you believe that? I told him he ought to come out to the States and try for the network shows and he said he’d think about it. He’d go down a bomb with t
hat accent.
‘And the joke of it is he isn’t English. Not properly. It came out because I was talking a lot about Mom and Dad. I mean, I guess if your father teaches at Princeton and your mother went to Vassar you tend to talk about it. He looked serious, you know that way he has, and said did I want to hear about his family? Anyway it turns out that he’s Greek Cypriot. His father came over here just after Independence and married an English girl. I guess I can relate to that, what with Mom’s family coming from Athens. He’s really serious about that side of his life. I mean, if he has a spare couple of weeks in the summer he goes back to Cyprus to see his cousins and stay on the farm. I said I might go with him this year – you know how I always got off on that primitive community thing – if I can square it with the faculty. Yeah, and that reminds me, I thought you said actors over here were dumb? Well, I took Bobby to this party the department had last week – the one I told you about where all the lecturers come along with their wives and it’s all terribly English and cultured – and he really wowed them. Spent half an hour talking to the Professor about the novels of Anthony Powell. When we came out I said to him: “How come you know all that stuff?” and he just said – you know that way he has of turning his head when he looks at you?– “Oh, I have hidden depths.”
‘Plus I’m still seeing London. Bobby’s very serious about that. Sometimes I get back to the apartment in the evening really exhausted. But Bobby just says: “I promised I’d show you London,” and so we’ll get up, go to Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly or someplace and just look at the lights going on and all the people. And he has these plans, you know, about the places I ought to see. I mean, last week he got me up at six to drive down to Greenwich Park and see the dawn come up. He says you get a light there like nowhere else in London. We just had half an hour. Bobby had to get back for a shoot. Half an hour running around in the wet grass, playing hide-and-seek behind the trees. Bobby can be a real kid when he wants to – and you know, I couldn’t remember a time when I was so happy …’
Bobby sat in the deck chair, staring silently at the newspaper. Roxeanne said (it was at our house one evening in summer): ‘Yeah I know I didn’t come to the concert last night with you and Sam like I said I would. I know I didn’t phone you at the office like we arranged. But Bobby had these friends round and I figured I ought to stay home. It was my fault. He was going to take them to a restaurant. But I told him: “Listen sugar, this is a partnership, right, and if you want me to stay home and cook for your friends then I’m happy to do it.” I did that jambalaya you had when you came over that time and hash browns. Anyway they all seemed to like it. Just some guys Bobby knows from acting. To tell you the truth, he doesn’t really like them. He just says that if you’re an actor you have to hang around with people, you know, so you can find out when the jobs are coming up. Actually Bobby hates all that. He said he felt morally degraded having to sit there, smile and listen to these asshole directors. I said, listen honey, you don’t have to tell me about that, you should see how things are in the faculty, the way people hang around the Professor trying to kid him he’s got a sense of humour. Still I agree with him about those guys. After the meal they just sat there round the table, wouldn’t help with the dishes or anything. And then when they’d gone I found someone had stubbed a cigarette out in that Sèvres vase – the one Dad gave me a couple of years back. Bobby was really furious about that – and when Bobby gets mad with someone he gets mad. He said if he could find out who did it he’d make them apologise to me personally. If I hadn’t stopped him he’d have telephoned everybody right there on the spot at two o’clock in the morning. So I said, forget it hon, it’s just a piece of china. No need to worry yourself about it. But do you know what he did? Next evening when I got back from the college – you know I’ve been working late a lot trying to finish that article on Robbe-Grillet – when I got back there is the most beautiful, not to say expensive, porcelain dish lying on the table and a note from Bobby saying he was sorry. Must have cost two hundred, three hundred dollars. And you know how broke Bobby always is …
‘Which reminds me, I know it was all fixed and I know I said I would and everything but we can’t make it to your picnic on Saturday. The fact is I said I’d get up early and drive Bobby out to this shoot someplace in the country. I mean, he has to be there at nine, and boy, don’t we know all about the transport system over here. So I reckon the least I can do is to take him. Plus the really exciting thing is that Bobby thinks it’s his big break, yes sir, a whole three-parter on TV. It might even get shown in the States, Bobby reckons. He told me the plot, you know, one of those mystery stories set in a country house, that Agatha Christie thing. So, no more crummy ads for a while. He’s been working terribly hard, filming all week and there’s another week after this one. Anyway, we’ve got quite a routine going. We get up at six, we have breakfast – Bobby’s so English about breakfast, bacon, eggs, the whole caboodle – and drive down. And then in the evening I pick him up and we head back into town for supper. I don’t know where Bobby gets his energy. After a day like that I’d be ready to flake out, but no sir, not Bobby. He wants to go out dancing, to the clubs, take in a movie. He’s cute about that. He says to me, ‘Don’t think, do’ – you know how introspective I can get. And, Jesus, I get so tired sometimes. Especially in the mornings. The mornings is when he likes doing it, too. But then I reckon anything that makes my Bobby happy is fine by me …’
Bobby wasn’t there.
Roxeanne said: ‘You know I never did like to bad-mouth people, and I hate talking about Bobby behind his back, but if I ever meet a guy with problems like that again then I’ll count myself unlucky. I mean, I didn’t know there could be people that jealous. You remember Max. You met him that Fall at my folks’ place. I haven’t seen him in years but he sometimes calls me up in the evenings, just to talk about old times. He has this associate professor’s job at Syracuse now. Well, he called one evening and Bobby picked up the phone. As soon as he heard it was a man’s voice he said: “Forget it, she’s out.” Just like that. Anyway, I played it cool. I told him: “Honey, you might be a little upset about something but Max is one of my oldest friends and I can’t have you talking to him like that,” and he apologised, but it kind of pissed me off all the same …
‘… But between you and me it was the dishonesty I couldn’t take, because as you know I have this thing about being honest in a relationship. I mean, when Bobby moved in I said: “Look honey, I want you to treat this place as if it was your own. Don’t think you have to ask permission every time you want to take a shower.” But boy, did he take me at my word. Sometimes I thought we were just throwing one big party for Bobby’s friends. And then I started missing things. Just little things. You know that bracelet Mom gave me when I got my doctorate accepted? It couldn’t have been worth more than a few dollars. I thought I must have just lost it, you know how good I am at losing things. Same thing happened when I started losing bills out of my wallet. Nothing major, just fives and tens, and I thought: Uh huh, you must have spent more last night than you thought. But then finally I reckoned I had to confront Bobby about this: “Look, sugar, I know this is a difficult thing for me to ask but I think you’re stealing from me and I have to know why.” And do you know what he did? He started crying. Just lay down on that sofa there and burst into tears, said I’d been so good to him and he felt so ashamed and could I ever forgive him? So I told him: listen, it doesn’t matter. You know I’d have given you the money if you’d asked me, just don’t ever lie to me. And after that everything was OK for a while …
‘… But it was the stuff about the job that really threw me. All that business about Bobby being an actor and waiting for a break. Well, let me tell you that Bobby had as much chance of being a star as I have of teaching semiotics at Yale. Straight up. I once went to see him in this play at some theatre in, where was it, Lewisham, just in a room over some pub, and you know it was pathetic? Like some kid in a high-school prom, screwing up his lines a
nd looking sort of helpless and upset. What beat me was how seriously he took it. I mean, he really thought he was going to be Scofield or someone. And then finding out that all the stuff about the shoot in the country was just a fake. Just hanging around with the guys in the tape room and hoping that someone was going to give him a job. How can you respect someone who behaves like that?
‘… The sex? Well, when you get to my age, honey, you can take or leave the sex, especially when it’s coming courtesy of some gorilla who can’t even wait for you to get your breath back. But do you know what really blew it? Do you know what really knocked it on the head? Last week, when I was really tired – you know I had to rewrite that Robbe-Grillet piece for the Journal of Aesthetics – well, one night Bobby says: “We’d better get up early tomorrow. I’ve got something really special to show you, somewhere you have to go if you’re seeing London.” So we got up – four, five in the morning, I can’t remember, I was so bombed – and took this cab way out through the City. Someplace called Billingsgate guys in white coats and stinking fish lying around in piles. Bobby was really excited. He was sort of proud of it, if you know what I mean. He said: “Isn’t this great? Right out of Dickens. I bet you never saw anything like this before.” And I said: “Let’s get this straight. You’re making me lose four hours’ sleep just to see a fish market? Forget it.” And after that I thought, this is it, this is the end, this is where I quit …’