MARGARET CLEARY WORKED through lunch hour on Fridays so that she could leave the office at four o'clock. She was an assistant in Babcock & Collins, Accountants, and though she worked overtime whenever she was asked, on Fridays she was out of there at four o'clock, no matter what. Nobody minded, because she always got her work done, and other people's too. She was efficient and reliable. She was always pleasant. She was discreet. Responsible. Everybody had a good word for her. She made the office run as smoothly as it did, and if she wanted to leave early on Friday afternoons, it was nobody's business.
Still, they wondered. Her Friday escapades had been going on for an awfully long time, for more than a year. They hoped she was having a love affair. She deserved a little romance in her life—everybody knew about her rotten marriage—and she was attractive when she fixed herself up. But if she was discreet about company business, she was absolutely secretive about her private life, so nobody asked her why she left early on Friday afternoons.
Margaret left early to get ready for Miles. Friday was the one night he had free from his mother, so they always spent it together. She might cook or they might go out for dinner, and recently they'd been making love—tentatively, not always successfully—but whatever they did, she found it nice just to be with this gentle, good, loving man for an evening.
Besides, they went back a long way. They had grown up in the same neighborhood and had gone to the same schools, though they never really knew one another until a year and a half ago when Miles moved back home to take care of his mother.
They had met in the supermarket. Miles seemed desperate to talk, and he told her about his father's death and his mother's collapse, her mind imprisoned in a body that was turning to stone. She had ALS, he said, Lou Gehrig's disease. And he rushed on, almost incoherent: her throat—she could barely talk—fed through a tube—crippled—the muscles collapsing one by one. And her mind, still sharp as a razor, trapped. She was trapped, alive, in a dead body, he said. He did not have to add that he was trapped as well.
He had said too much. Margaret could see he was embarrassed at telling her all this and ashamed of the way he felt, so she tried to reassure him. She understood, she said. She had had feelings like that, and worse, much worse. She was divorced now. She knew how he felt.
They were still standing at the vegetable counter in Star Market. They were at an impasse. There was nothing more to say, but they were too embarrassed to part without saying something, so Miles said, "Come back with me and say hello; she'd like that," and Margaret went.
The old woman was feisty, and funny in her way, and they had liked each other from the start. Very quickly and without a word, they recognized how each of them stood with Miles. Margaret was a permanent part of their lives now, with Friday reserved for her and Miles only.
This Friday, as always, she was ready when Miles came. She had her dark hair combed back in a French twist and she wore her blue knit suit that could be dressed up or down with jewelry, depending on where they decided to go for dinner. She had Miles' good sports jacket and a clean shirt ready in her closet and, in case he didn't feel like going out, she had thawed two steaks that she could pop under the broiler. She was relaxed, perfumed, ready for anything.
She opened the door to him as he came up the walk.
"Miles," she said. "Come in, sweet thing."
He took her in his arms and held her. She could feel him trembling.
"Come in," she said. "Come on in." And then, "Miles, what's wrong? Is it your mother?"
"No, no," he said. "No. Everything's fine. It's just something that happened at school. It's nothing. I'll tell you later. How are you?" he said. Despite his wide smile, his boyish face looked haggard.
"What is it?" she said.
"I need a drink first," he said.
So she knew it couldn't be too serious, whatever it was.
He followed her to the kitchen and sat at the table while she made his drink. He took off his glasses and put his hands over his face, rubbing. "Ugliness, misery, and piss," he said. She placed a large scotch on the table before him.
"I'll just make this and then you can tell me," she said. She poured a shot of rye into a shaker, and then water, and then the little packet of whiskey sour mix. She shook it and dumped half of it into her glass. "There," she said. "Come on."
In the living room they sat on the couch. He took a long drink of his scotch and then he slouched way down and just stared up at the ceiling. She leaned against him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.
"Don't," he said.
She sat beside him, silent, waiting until he was ready to talk. After a while he turned and looked at her. She wished for his sake she were not so plain.
"You know," Miles said, "you are the only altogether nice thing in my life."
"I know that," she said. "I work at it."
He kissed her lightly on the lips.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
"Not now," he said, "not yet. Let's just sit here for a while and then I'll have another drink and tell you about it." He took her hand and held it tight, and began at once to tell her everything: the crazy feeling he'd had all week as if he was losing it, as if his whole world was about to break apart, and then the Detention with Polcari and calling him Polecat and the look on his face, and then poor old drunken Coach, what a mess he was, and then jogging and getting sick—though he didn't tell her why—and finally, when he had built up to it enough, when he could face it, he told her what he had seen in the boys' locker room.
"You think they actually tried to rape him?"
"Or something."
"With a broom handle? That's so sick," she said. "That's crazy." A tremor started in the back of her neck and she could feel a nerve pulsing in her forehead. She reached for her drink.
"I know," he said. "You can't believe a thing like that could happen." He closed his eyes for a moment. "It had to be a game that went bad; that has to be it. They were drinking, I suppose, just horsing around, and they were probably playing castration or something, some sick game, and it got out of hand. It happens. Like those kids in New Jersey or Delaware who raped that retarded girl with a miniature baseball bat; a whole bunch of them watched and nobody even tried to stop it. Not one of them. It's as if their craziness feeds off each other."
Margaret closed her eyes, tight.
"Kids, boy, I don't know. Kids are a very strange breed, especially in a group, and athletes are the strangest of all. They knock the shit out of each other out there on the field, it's kill or be killed, but at the same time they do all this fanny patting and macho hugging and bare-ass roughhousing, and I've always been convinced there's something a little fishy about it. A little homoerotic play they only half understand, if they understand it at all. And it can get really ugly, like today. What do you think?" he said.
She hadn't been listening. "People do strange things," she said.
"Poor Billy Mack," he said.
Margaret reached for her glass. It was empty.
"I was useless, completely useless. I was paralyzed. I couldn't think what to do, or how to help. That look he gave me was pure hatred. I just kept banging on Coach's door, like a fool."
"You were coping. We all cope in different ways."
They sat in silence for a moment.
"I didn't go to the office. He told me to go to the office and wait for him, but I got dressed and got out of there."
"Yes," she said. "Who?"
"The principal. Endicott. The ambulance was just pulling in when I left." Miles took a sip from his scotch, looked at it, then took another. "The dumb shit. I know what he wanted, of course. He wanted to make sure I didn't breathe a word of this to anybody. When it comes out in the papers, he'll make sure it appears in some sanitized form. It was an accident, he'll say. It was nobody's fault. Billy Mack just slipped in the shower room and cut his balls off. It could happen to anybody."
"Miles," she said.
"Of course, then he'll have to establish that it was Billy's own fault that he slipped." He assumed a drill instructor's bark: "'This school was in no way responsible. Malburn High has always made the safety of its students a primary goal of education. We put safety first at Malburn and we put education last.'"
Margaret laughed and kissed him on the cheek. "Sweet Miles," she said. "Let me get you another." Her own glass had been empty for some time.
They had another drink and then Miles changed his clothes for dinner, but just as they were leaving, the phone began to ring. "Maybe it's Tillie?" Margaret said, and moved to pick it up, but Miles said, "No, don't answer. It's that fool, Endicott." She answered anyway. She told Endicott that no, Miles was not here, and yes, he was expected for dinner, and yes, she would tell him to call the office, and no, it was no trouble, and goodbye, thank you, goodbye.
"Maybe you should give just a quick call home to make sure Eleanor is okay?" Margaret said.
"Not to worry," Miles said. "The dread Tillie has it all under control."
At Miles' house, things were not going well. Eleanor Bannon, Miles' mother, sat in her chair watching one of the three daily re-runs of "Benson," annoyed because she hadn't had her five o'clock feeding. She didn't care about the feeding—to tell the truth she didn't want it, now or ever—but it made her wild to think that Miles paid Tillie all that money and she didn't do a thing except sit out there in the kitchen looking at her wrestling magazines. Wrestling magazines. That told you everything about her you needed to know, Eleanor felt. In the old days she wouldn't have had a minute for a woman like Tillie. She'd have been nice to her if they were in the same church, of course, or in the PTA, or something like that, but she would never have invited her to her home even for a visit, and now here she was living in it and eating her food and, on Fridays, sleeping under her roof. It made her wild, just wild, to think about it. She tried to concentrate on her program, but her mind kept wandering off to Tillie, fat and comfy with her wrestling magazines and never sick a day in her life.
It occurred to Eleanor that any minute now she would have to go to the toilet. Well, she would not ask Tillie's help. Period. "Benson" ended and "Wheel of Fortune" came on, with the new man who replaced that dwarfy little one, Pat Something, and with Vanna, goofy as ever. The contestants didn't look very sharp tonight. Eleanor felt that twinge in her bladder and realized there was no more postponing it. She would have to get to the toilet, but she was damned if she would ring her little silver bell for the wrestling queen. She'd manage by herself. If only she could shift a little farther forward on the chair, she could get it rocking—it was a platform rocker—and sort of launch herself from it, and land with both hands on the aluminum walker. This was how she'd been doing it for some time now, and it almost always worked. She scrunched down and then leaned forward hard and indeed the chair began to rock very nicely. It would only be a minute now.
In the kitchen Tillie was studying Wrestling World, her favorite magazine. She liked the looks of a good beefy wrestler, all that flesh covering all that strength. She read these magazines because they were interesting—her Charlie, God rest his soul, had been a wrestler—but mostly she read them to keep herself from killing the old lady. This skinny little Miles had hired her to look after his mother, Lady Eleanor, which meant feeding her that nasty liquid dinner. You had to funnel it into a special plastic bag and then hang the bag from the top of a door so the fluid would run down a tube that hooked up to the tube sticking out of her stomach. You had to be careful to regulate the flow so that it took about forty minutes to get into her … and then an hour later you had to take her to the bathroom to let out the foul stuff that you had just put in. It was disgusting and nobody should be expected to do that for another person. She had to, of course, because Charlie had left her with nothing. On top of this, Miles expected her to keep the old lady company. But Eleanor didn't want company. What she wanted was a slave who would appear whenever she clapped her hands for you—though she couldn't even clap, she was in such bad shape with the ALS—and then disappear when she didn't need you anymore. What she wanted was to be the Lady of the Manor, and not to be old and sick and have a stranger in her house looking after her. Well, too bad about her. She was sick and she was old and Tillie was in her house, like it or not. And Tillie was not going to be anybody's slave. To hell with Eleanor. And to hell with her five o'clock feeding. She was going to read Wrestling World and to hell with everybody.
In the living room Eleanor was rocking back and forth, back and forth, trying to gauge the right moment for takeoff. The problem was that she had skootched a bit lower than she should have; now, though she could propel herself nicely out of the chair, she was at the wrong angle to land squarely on her feet within grabbing distance of the walker. She tried to shift her weight higher in the chair, but the damned thing just kept on rocking and she could see there was no going back now. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she said—a sort of prayer—and leaning as far forward as she could, she just took off. She hit the walker squarely but with too much force, and she took it with her as she crashed to the floor. The noise was tremendous.
She lay there dazzled for a moment and then she tried to get up. Her little legs flailed a bit and she could see her pink booties moving back and forth at some distance, but she couldn't get them under her and she couldn't push herself up with her hands. She was like that bug in the Kafka story Miles always talked about. It was really quite funny when you thought about it. She began to laugh soundlessly. She wasn't hurt, or at least she didn't think so. She just couldn't move. She began to shake with laughter.
Then Tillie moved into her line of vision and Eleanor could see she was white with rage.
"Now what have you done?" Tillie said, and stood above her looking down.
"I'm sorry," Eleanor whispered in what was left of her voice, but it was too late because Tillie was already at the phone, calling for Miles. Eleanor continued to laugh.
They had dinner at L'Auberge, with some good wine and a little Armagnac afterwards. When they got back to Margaret's place, the phone was ringing. Margaret made a move to answer it, but Miles was feeling very much in charge by now and he got there first, answering at once in an overripe British accent: "Hallo? Hallo? Are you there?" He paused for two seconds and then said, incredulous, "Miles? Sorry? No, there's no Miles here. There's never been a Miles here, you know. You've rung up the wrong number, cocky. Best to check a directory, I should think. Well, then, there you are." And he hung up.
Margaret was standing beside him, her hand at her mouth. "He'll know," she said. "Won't he know it was you?"
"Of course," Miles said, completely satisfied. "He'll be certain it's me, but he can't prove a thing. And there'll always be a tiny bit of doubt in his tiniest of minds. Or at least there should be."
Before she could answer him, the phone rang again.
"It's him," Miles said, whispering. "He thinks he really did get a wrong number."
"What should we do?" she said.
"Shhh," Miles said. He stood with his hand on the receiver until it stopped ringing; then he removed it and turned it on its side.
"Sweet Margaret," he said, kissing her hair, and then he led her into the bedroom.
They had been in bed for ten minutes now, with the lights off at Miles' request, and still nothing was working.
"Don't rush it," Margaret said. "We've got all night."
"I want to do it," Miles said, "but I just can't get this goddam thing to work." There was a terrible urgency in his voice.
"We don't have to do anything," she said. "We can just lie here and hold one another."
"No, wait a minute. I've got it, I've got it, I'm getting nice and hard."
"Okay, okay," she said, picking up his urgency.
"Here, now, I'm getting it."
"Push it," she said, "just push."
"You can't just push spaghetti."
They laughed, together, because it was so absurd. Then Miles rolled to the side, done laughing, but Margaret laughed again. "Spaghetti," she said. "You can't push spaghetti. What a funny man you are, Miles." She sighed. "That's funny."
"But it's exactly the problem, isn't it. I'm just spaghetti. I'm limp."
"Oh, come on," she said. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just because we've had so much to drink."
"Yeah, sure, but you don't have to perform."
"Neither do you, Miles. Not with me."
He was silent for a while and then he said, in a tone that had changed completely, cold now, and hard. "I begin to think this whole thing has been a mistake. A bright, glamorous, glittering mistake."
He was lying on his back, his hand over his eyes, but he could feel her whole body stiffen beside him.
"What?" she said. "What's been a mistake?"
"Us. You and me. As lovers."
She sat up in bed and looked at him. She got out of bed and threw on her dressing gown. It was white silk, lustrous in the dark, and much too expensive. She had bought it for these Friday nights with Miles.
"We can end it if you want, Miles. Right now. All right? Only don't be mad at me. Please."
Immediately Miles was out of bed too. "It's all right," he said. "It's not your fault."
"Oh Miles."
"It's all right. It's me. I'm full of booze and I just can't perform. I'm sorry." He took her hand in both of his.
"But we can end it if you want, Miles. I won't call you. I won't bother you at all. I …"
He waited, but she had nothing more to say. "Let's go into the living room and talk about it," he said. "I'm going to have a drink, okay? I might as well. It can't do any more harm. Right? Do you want one too?"
"Yes," she said. "Let's. And we can talk."
They talked, and after a while Miles began to see his anger was not at her but at himself, disappointment and a special kind of doubt. He wanted to tell her. He leaned forward and traced with one finger the line of her breast. "I'm just not much of a man,' he said, confessing. "I just can't make love like other men. That's it. That's what it comes down to."
"That's not true," she said. "You make love wonderfully. It's natural and gentle with you."
"Sure, when I can."
He caressed her slowly from her breast to her waist. He let his eyes follow his hands. He kept on this way for some time, until he felt his pulse racing and he had to catch his breath. It was very quiet in the room.
"This is how it used to be," she said. "Why can't you just let it be like this, without worrying about a performance. We don't ever have to go to bed again. We can just sit here forever in the living room, touching, and that's a kind of lovemaking. It's enough for me. Isn't it?"
He lay back against the couch and looked at her. "You're wonderful to me," he said. He continued to caress her breasts, quietly, carefully, even after he was hard and knew he could do it successfully this time. They half-sat, half-lay on the couch, their hands moving across each other's body until, sodden with desire, they stood and moved slowly into the bedroom.