knew the score, knew what was happening. A mover and shaker. I don’t think he cared all that much about the money, except it proved that he was on top. Does that make sense?“ She looked at me.
”Yeah, like making the football team,“ I said. ”I understand that.“
”You ought to,“ Susan said.
Pam Shepard said, ”Are you like that?“
I shrugged. Susan said, ”Yes, he’s like that. In a specialized way.“
Pam Shepard said, ”I would have thought he wasn’t but I don’t know him very well.“
Susan smiled. ”Well, he isn’t exactly, but he is if that makes any sense.“
I said, ”What the hell am I, a pot roast, I sit here and you discuss me?“
Susan said, ”I think you described yourself quite well this morning.“
”Before or after you smothered me with passionate kisses?“
”Long before,“ she said.
”Oh,“ I said.
Pam Shepard said, ”Well, why aren’t you in the race? Why aren’t you grunting and sweating to make the team, be a star, whatever the hell it is that Harvey and his friends are trying to do?“
”It’s not easy to say. It’s an embarrassing question because it requires me to start talking about integrity and self-respect and stuff you recently lumped under John Wayne movies. Like honor. I try to be honorable. I know that’s embarrassing to hear. It’s embarrassing to say. But I believe most of the nonsense that Thoreau was preaching. And I have spent a long time working on getting myself to where I could do it. Where I could live life largely on my own terms.“
”Thoreau?“ Pam Shepard said. ”You really did read all those books, didn’t you.“
”And yet,“ Susan said, ”you constantly get yourself involved in other lives and in other people’s troubles. This is not Walden Pond you’ve withdrawn to.“
I shrugged again. It was hard to say it all. ”Everybody’s got to do something,“ I said.
”But isn’t what you do dangerous?“ Pam Shepard said.
”Yeah, sometimes.“
”He likes that part,“ Susan said. ”He’s very into tough. He won’t admit it, maybe not even to himself, but half of what he’s doing all the time is testing himself against other men. Proving how good he is. It’s competition, like football.“
”Is that so?“ Pam Shepard said to me.
”Maybe. It goes with the job.“
”It’s a job that lets me choose,“ I said.
”And yet it cuts you off from a lot of things,“ Susan said. ”You’ve cut yourself off from family, from home, from marriage.“
”I don’t know,“ I said. ”Maybe.“
”More than maybe,“ Susan said. ”It’s autonomy. You are the most autonomous person I’ve ever seen and you don’t let anything into that. Sometimes I think the muscle you’ve built is like a shield, like armor, and you keep yourself private and alone inside there. The integrity complete, unviolated, impervious, safe even from love.“
”We’ve gone some distance away from Harv Shepard, Suze,“ I said. I felt as if I’d been breathing shallow for a long time and needed a deep inhale.
”Not as far as it looks,“ Susan said. ”One reason you’re not into the corner that Pam’s husband is in is because he took the chance. He married. He had kids. He took the risk of love and relationship and the risk of compromise that goes with it.“
”But I don’t think Harvey was working for us, Susan,“ Pam Shepard said.
”It’s probably not that easy,“ I said. ”It’s probably not something you can cut up like that. Working for us, working for him.“
”Well,“ Pam Shepard said. ”There’s certainly a difference.“
”Sometimes I think there’s never a difference and things never divide into column A and column B,“ I said. ”Perhaps he had to be a certain kind of man for you, because he felt that was what you deserved. Perhaps to him it meant manhood, and perhaps he wanted to be a man for you.“
Pam said, ”Machismo again.“
”Yeah, but machismo isn’t another word for rape and murder. Machismo is really about honorable behavior.“
”Then why does it lead so often to violence?“
”I don’t know that it does, but if it does it might be because that’s one of the places that you can be honorable.“
”That’s nonsense,“ Pam Shepard said.
”You can’t be honorable when it’s easy,“ I said. ”Only when it’s hard.“
”When the going gets tough, the tough get going?“ The scorn in Pam Shepard’s voice had more body than the wine. ”You sound like Nixon.“
