My Life As A Man

feel I was there, with the two of you, having lunch that day in Siena-and remember that little pensione you stayed at in Florence?”

“In Florence?”

“Across from the Boboli Gardens. That that sweet little old lady owned, the one who looked like Isak Dinesen?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And the little kitty with the spaghetti sauce on its face.”

“I don’t remember that…”

“By the Trevi Fountain. In Rome.”

“Don’t remember…”

“Oh, she’s so proud of you, Peter. She boasts about you like a little girl. You should hear when someone dares to criticize the tiniest thing in your book. Oh, she’s like a lioness protecting one of her cubs.”

“She is, eh?”

“Oh, that’s finally Maureen’s trademark, isn’t it? If I had to sum her up in one word, that would be it: loyalty.”

“Fierce loyalty,” I said.

“Yes, so fierce, so determined-so full of belief and passion. Everything means so much to her. Oh, Peter, you should have seen her up in Elmira, at her father’s funeral. It was you of course that she wanted to come with her-but she was afraid you’d misunderstand, and then she’s always been so ashamed of them with you, and so she never dared to call you. I went with her instead. She said, ‘Flossie, I can’t go up there alone-but I have to be there, I have to…’ She had to be there, Peter, to forgive him…for what he did.”

“I don’t know about any of this. Her father died?”

“Two months ago. He had a heart attack and died right on a bus.”

“And what had he done that she had to forgive?”

“I shouldn’t say.”

“He was a night watchman somewhere…wasn’t he? Some plant in Elmira…”

She had taken my hand again-“When Maureen was eleven years old…”

“What happened?”

“I shouldn’t be the one to tell it, to tell you.”

“What happened?”

“Her father…forced her…but at the graveside, Peter, she forgave him. I heard her whisper the words myself. You can’t imagine what it was like-it went right through me. ‘I forgive you, Daddy,’ she said.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange she never told me this herself?”

Don’t you think it might even be something she happened to read about in Tender Is the Night? Or Krafft-Ebing? Or in the “Hundred Neediest Cases” in the Christmas issue of the Sunday Times? Don’t you think that maybe she’s just trying to outdo the rest of you girls in the Group? Sounds to me, Flossie, like a Freudian horror story for those nights you all spend roasting marshmallows around the therapist’s campfire.

“Tell you?” said Flossie. “She was too humiliated to tell anyone, her whole life long, until she found the Group. All her life she was terrified people would find out, she felt so-so polluted by it. Not even her mother knew.”

“You met her mother?”

“We stayed overnight at their house. Maureen’s been back twice to see her. They spend whole days talking about the past. Oh, she’s trying so hard to forgive her too. To forgive, to forget.”

“Forget what? Forgive what?”

“Mrs. Johnson wasn’t much of a mother, Peter…”

Flossie volunteered no lurid details, nor did I ask.

“Maureen didn’t want you, above all, ever to know any of this. We would try so hard to tell her that they weren’t her fault. I mean intellectually of course she understood that…but emotionally it was just embedded in her from her earliest childhood, that shame. It was really a classic case history.”

“Sounds that way.”

“Oh, I told her you would understand.”

“I believe I do.”

“How can she die? How can a person with her will to live and to struggle against the past, someone who battles for survival the way she does, and for a future-how can she die! The last time she came down from Elmira, oh, she was so torn up. That’s why we all thought Puerto Rico might lift her spirits. She’s such a wonderful dancer.”

“Oh?”

“But all that dancing, and all that sun, and just getting away -and then she got back and just took a nose dive. And did this. She’s so proud. Too proud sometimes, I think. That’s why she takes things so much to heart. Where you’re concerned, especially. Well, you were everything to her, you know that. You see, intellectually she knows by now how sorry you are. She knows that girl was just a tramp, and one of those things men do. It’s partly Mr. Egan-I shouldn’t say it, but it’s being in his clutches. Every time you go plead with her to come back to you, he turns around and says no, you’re not to be trusted. Maybe I’m telling tales out of school-but we are talking about Maureen’s life. But you see, he’s such a devout Catholic, Mr. Egan, and Mrs. Egan even more so-and, Peter, being Jewish you may not understand what it means to them when a husband did what you did. My parents would react the same way. I grew up in that kind of atmosphere, and I know how strong it is. They don’t know how the world has changed-they don’t know about girls like that Karen, and they don’t want to know. But I see those college girls today, the kinds of morals they have, and their disrespect for everything. I know what they’re capable of. They get a beeline on an attractive man old enough to be their own father-“

The doctor appeared.

Tell me she is dead. I’ll go to jail forever. Just let that filthy ·psychopathic liar he dead. The world will be a better place.

But the news was “good.” Mr. Tarnopol could go in now to see his wife. She was out of danger-she had come around; the doctor had even gotten her to speak a few words, though she was so groggy she probably hadn’t understood what either of them had said. Fortunately, the doctor explained, the whiskey she had taken with the pills had made her sick and she’d thrown up most of “the toxic material” that otherwise would have killed her. The doctor warned me that her face was bruised-“Yes? It is?”-as she had apparently been lying for a good deal of the time with her mouth and nose pushed into the mattress and her own vomit. But that too was fortunate, for if she had not been on her stomach while throwing up, she probably would have strangulated. There were also bruises on the buttocks and thighs. “There are?” Yes, indicating that she had spent a part of the two days on her back as well. All that movement, the doctor said, was what had kept her alive.

I was in the clear.

But so was Maureen.

“How did they find her?” I asked the doctor.

T found her,” Flossie said.

‘We have Miss Koerner to thank for that,” the doctor said.

T was calling there for days,” said Flossie, “and getting no answer. And then last night she missed Group. I got suspicious, even though she sometimes doesn’t come, when she gets all wrapped up in her flute or something-but I just got very suspicious, because I knew she was in this depression since coming back from Puerto Rico. And this afternoon I couldn’t stand worrying any more, and I told Sister Mary Rose that I had to leave and in the middle of an arithmetic class I just got in a taxi and came over to Maureen’s and knocked on the door. I just kept knocking and then I heard Delilah and I was sure something was up.”

“Heard who?”

“The cat. She was meowing away, but there was still no answer. So I got down on my hands and knees in the corridor there, and there’s a little space under the door, because it doesn’t fit right, which I always told Maureen was dangerous, and I called to the pussy and then I saw Maureen’s hand hanging down over the side of the bed. I could see her fingertips almost touching the carpet. And so I ran to a neighbor and phoned the police and they