look black with wetness, dank, submerged, Atlantean. There were three irrational shootings that week, and two multiple-car pileups on the freeway; a Pirate, in a much-discussed lapse of sportsmanship, broke three teeth belonging to a hapless Phillie; a live infant was found in a Bloomfield garbage can.
And in bed, as our last week in the Weatherwoman House drew to a close, our dealings with each other became distinctly more Venusian. The stranglehold, the bite, even the light blow, found their way into our sexual repertoire: I discovered purple marks along the tops of my shoulders. It's the weather, I said to myself; or else, I added-once, and only for an instant, since I was so firmly opposed to consideration-this is just the way it is with another man.
I'd given my father the phone number at the Weather-woman House, and I wondered what he imagined I was doing there, since I had a perfectly good house of my own. I'd been putting him off for days now, uncomfortable with him not only because of Cleveland and Punicki and Phlox and my mother and my new, willfully unconsidered activities, but because of the edge of pleading in his voice when we briefly spoke, because of the blatant genuineness of his desire to see me. Our seeing each other during his previous visits had always been neither a priority nor something to be missed. We just saw each other if we could, and then he would leave again for Washington. This time he'd gone so far as to extend the length of his visit by a few needless days, and the strangeness of his determination not to leave without taking me to the movies made me feel more acutely the distance between us, the sorry pass things had come to. I did not like to see my father bending over backward; it didn't suit him. And in the late afternoon of that Wednesday on which Velva was horrified, I got in from work and found a message from my father on the Weather-woman's answering machine, and I trembled at the sad charm in my father's voice, his amusement with the machine, his terrible confusion.
'Ahem. Art, this is your father,' said his voice. 'Can you hear me? Ahem. Well, I'm glad to know you're moving among the phone-machine set. It's the-ahem-last night of the Joe Bechstein Festival and our records show that you still haven't used your ticket. What about this science fiction film that everyone is so crazy for?'
'Is that your dad?' said Arthur, coming up from behind and surprising me, wrapping his arms around my throat.
'Does that sound like a good idea?' said the voice.
'Yes,' I said. 'Shh.'
'He has a high-pitched voice!'
'Quiet, you made me miss it. ' I rewound the tape. 'He wants to go to the movies.'
'He sounds like the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh.'
'-a good idea? Because I'm leaving town tomorrow morning. Art-'
'Sure, let's go. I'd love to meet him.'
'Quiet! Don't make fun of his voice.' I rewound the tape again.
'-town tomorrow morning, Art-'
'Does he know?'
'Please,' I said.
'-is everything okay?'
I called him back and told him I'd be bringing a friend along. A different friend.
'Indeed,' said my father, and suddenly, again, I didn't want to see him. 'Is that necessary? Couldn't we be alone for once?'
'Well…'
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, and now Arthur knelt before me and began to undo my pants.
'Are you afraid to be alone with me, Art?'
'That must be it, Dad. Don't.' I pushed at Arthur's burrowing head.
'Don't what?'
'Nothing. Oh. Yes. I don't know.'
'Art, there's a good deal I have to say to you, and it isn't the sort of thing I want to discuss with one of your friends around.'
'Ah,' I whispered, pushing, grasping. 'Please.'
'Art?'
Jesus. 'Yeah, then let's, ah, forget it, Dad, okay? I probably wouldn't want to hear what you have to say, anyway, would I? No, I wouldn't.' Jesus! 'Go back to Washington. Say hi to Grandma. Ah.' Ah!
'Art.' There was a terrible shrillness in the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh, the note of dispossession, of loss of control. 'What's happening to you?'
'I'm sorry, Dad,' I said, feeling myself slip, slip, through fingers and fingers, into the pitiless wave. I fell back onto the bed; Arthur very precisely hung up on my father. He stood, wiped the corner of his mouth, then put me back together and zipped me up, with neat, rather waiterly gestures.
'Which other friend did he meet?' he said.
I slid forward and knelt before the telephone, head hung.
' Cleveland.'
'Oh? Why didn't I know that?'
'I suppose your intelligence service failed you.' I stared at him. Didn't he know what he-what I-had just done? What had I just done?
'I guess I'm not paying those fellows enough,' he said, and smiled unhappily.
'Well. I must have forgotten to mention it.'
Cleveland. When I'd thought of him at all in the past few days, it was only with a vague anxiety, easily dispelled by Arthur's slightest syllable or caress, and at that moment it seemed possible-no, forgive me, but it seemed desirable-that Cleveland, with his new career, was lost to us forever, vanished into the vanishing world of my father, two polar bears on an ice floe drifting off into a waste of white fog. I might never see anyone but Arthur, my fancy Arthur, ever again.
'Why are you smiling?'
'I'm free,' I said.
Arthur was polishing off the last half-inch of wine, I was rinsing the speckled film of herb butter from our dinner plates, and we'd just decided to go for a walk, when the doorbell rang.
'Who could that be?'
''I must have forgotten to mention it,'' he said, rising and heading for the hall. I turned the water off, so I could listen, but Arthur had swung shut the door to the kitchen, something he never did. Who could it be? I thought I heard him say hello, in an uncharacteristically morose tone of voice, then thought I heard a woman say, ''Lo.' Something heavy was dropped in the hallway, and then there was the sound of a loud kiss, a real smacker. I set the sponge down, dried my hands on my pants, and went out into the hall.
Arthur, blushing deeply, was tugging at a woman, trying to draw her into the living room. Her eyes were blue and cold as his, though ringed with dark circles; she had his straight nose, and his mouth, set between two deep lines, and his blond hair, though long and full and veined with the colorless strands of age; her faded clothes fit her poorly; and a tiny silver Jesus writhed on a cross that hung from her neck. There were, in the ducking motion of her head, in the red devastation of her hands, the marks of submission to hard work and sorrow, and she looked at me now as though she expected me to deliver some very unhappy news.
'Art Bechstein, this is my mother, Mrs. Ondine Lecomte. Mother, this is my friend Art.' He made the introductions quickly, with an odd chopping motion of his hands, then began almost literally to push her out of the hallway, into the living room.
'Wow, hello, Mrs. Lecomte, how great to meet you,' I said, coming on strong. I didn't want Arthur to deny me this clue, this glimpse into the most secret of secret worlds. Mrs. Lecomte would not, however, look me in the face; her eyes went to her ruined hands, and she turned bright pink, a mannerism of Arthur's whose source I might have been charmed to discover, had it not made me feel painfully ashamed of myself. I felt as though it were I who'd corrupted Arthur; I felt the word 'corruption.'
'I just came over with some of Arthur's mending,' she muttered. 'Your shirts, honey. I sewed new buttons. Fixed that collar.'
'Great, Mom, thanks. Okay, let's go into the living room, here. What a nice house.' As they went out, he turned back toward me and said, 'I'll be back to help you with the dishes in a few minutes. Then we can go for a walk.'
