At the top of the stairs she met Apple, who it appeared had been on the point of descending. The encounter surprised them, and they stepped far apart, regarding each other rudely. Grady said, “How’s the party going? Sorry if I’m late.” But Apple, rescrewing an earring with a petty precision that seemed to suggest their meeting had jarred it loose, looked at her as if she could not place her, as if, in fact, they needed to be introduced. It had the double effect of putting Grady on guard and off. “Really, I’m sorry if I’m late. Just let me run up and slip on a dress.”
Apple stalled her, saying, “You haven’t seen Toadie on the beach?” Toadie: an excruciating nickname for her husband, George. “He went out looking for you.”
“He must’ve gone a different way. But isn’t it a little silly, his going to look for me? I promised I’d be back to help with the party.”
Apple said, “You needn’t bother about the party,” and a disturbing tremor twitched the corners of her mouth. “I’ve sent the children home; Johnny-baby’s crying his heart out.”
“That can’t very well be my fault,” Grady said, uncertain, waiting. “I mean: why are you frightening me?”
“Am I? I should’ve thought it the other way round, which is to say: why are you frightening me?”
“Oh?”
Then Apple made herself clear; she said: “Who is Clyde Manzer?”
A flag lily, pulled from a stalk next to the path, tore apart in Grady’s hands, its colored scraps scattering like discarded theater stubs. It was such a long time before she said, “Why do you want to know?”
“Because not more than twenty minutes ago I was told that he was your husband.”
“Who told you that?”
She merely said, “He did,” but her pretty little face had gone suddenly wretched. “He came out from town in a taxicab; there was another boy with him, and Nettie let them in, I suppose she thought they had something to do with the party—”
“And you saw him,” said Grady softly.
“He asked for you, the short one, and I said, are you a friend of my sister’s? because actually it didn’t seem to me that you could know him; and then he said, no, we’re not friends, but I’m her husband.” There was an intermission, a sound of waves rocked the silence, and then, while both avoided the other’s eyes by gazing at the pieces of broken flag lily, she asked if this were true.
“That we’re not friends? I suppose so.”
“Please, dear, I’m not angry, really I’m not, but you must tell me: what have you done?”
What have you done what have I done, like an echo in a cave that reduces all to nonsense. She would so much rather someone had a tantrum, it was the sort of thing she’d prepared for. “But you are an idiot,” she said, summoning an amazingly natural laugh. “This is one of Peter’s tasteless jokes; Clyde Manzer is a friend of his from college.”
“I would be an idiot if I believed you,” said Apple, sounding like her mother. “Do you think I would ruin Johnny-baby’s birthday over a joke? Of course that boy is no college friend of Peter’s.”
Lighting a cigarette, Grady sat down on a rock. “Of course he isn’t. As a matter of fact, Peter’s never seen him. He works in a parking lot, and I met him there last April; we were married not quite two months ago.”
Apple moved a little up the path. She seemed not to have heard, though presently she said, “No one knows this, do they?” She watched Grady shake her head. “Then there isn’t any reason why anyone should. Naturally it can’t be legal, you aren’t eighteen, twenty-one, whatever it is. I’m sure George will agree that it isn’t legal; the thing to do is keep our heads, he’ll know perfectly what can be done.” Her husband waved at them from the beach, and she hurried to the stairs, calling his name.
Beyond him Grady saw the horses: dashing their hooves in the surf, splendid as horses in a circus; and remembering the promises they signified she caught Apple’s wrist: “Don’t tell him! Only that it’s a joke of Peter’s. Oh listen to me, I’ve got to have these next weeks, please, Apple, give them to me.” They held to each other, balancing, and Apple whispered, “Stop it,” as if her voice were lost. “Take your hand off me.”
But when Grady tried to release her, she discovered that really it was Apple holding on to her, and she twisted in this embrace, smothering with a sense of the scene gathering in upon her: the horses charged forward, George was on the stairs, Clyde she felt not far away. “Apple, I promise you, three weeks.” Apple turned away from her, and went toward the house: “He’s waiting for you at the Windmill,” she said, not looking back. A mist had risen on the water, and the horses, scarcely seen, streaked by like birds.
A waitress, her apron appliquéd with chintz windmills, put two beers on the table and lighted a lamp. “You gentlemen staying for dinner?” Gump, who sat cutting his nails with a pocketknife, spit a piece of nail toward her: “So what have you got?”
“To start with, we have got Cape Cod oysters or shrimp New Orleans style or New England clam chowder—”
“Bring us the chowder,” said Clyde, just to shut her up. It was fine for Gump, he’d had a good time thumbing comic books and fooling with girls on the sluggardly Long Island local that had brought them out; but Clyde had sat the whole way as though he were riding a roller coaster. Once when the train stopped a butterfly had lazied through the open window; he’d caught it in a peppermint sack, and the sack sat before him on the table: it was a present for Grady.
A bell jangled as she closed the door, and she saw Clyde’s face, leaner, less sturdy, flash in the light; someone she’d never seen shook her hand, Gump, a lanky boy with stained skin wearing a summer shirt gaudy with shimmying hula dancers, and she felt the stubble of Clyde’s unshaven chin against her cheek. “I know. I know,” she said, avoiding his reconciling whisper. “It isn’t anything to talk about now; not here.”
“Say, who’s going to pay for this?” cried the waitress, wagging bowls of chowder, and Gump, following out after Clyde and Grady, said: “Send me a bill, honey.”
They all three fitted into the front seat of Grady’s car. Clyde drove, and she sat in the middle. Her unrelaxing profile discouraged talk, and they drove in silence; winding round curves, the car left a trail of tension. It was not that she meant to be cold; rather, she meant nothing, felt little, except, perhaps, a fallen-in, ironed-out apathy. An orange moon was mounting like an airship, and road signs, studded with glass that leapt before their lights like cat eyes, said NEW YORK 98 MILES, 85.
“Sleepy?” said Clyde.
“Oh so sleepy,” she said.
“Got just the thing.” Gump spilled the contents of an envelope into his hand, a dozen or so cigarette ends. “Only roaches, but they’ll wake us up.”
“Go on, Gump, put that stuff away.”
Gump said, “To hell with you,” and lighted a butt; “Look,” he said to Grady, “here’s how you do it”: he swallowed the smoke as though it were something to eat; “Have a drag?” Like a drowsy patient who never questions what the nurse brings she took the cigarette and kept it until Clyde jerked it away; she thought he was going to toss it out; instead, he smoked it himself. “You’ve got the idea—get your jumps from Doctor Gump.”
The butts were passed again, one for each, and someone turned on the radio: You are listening to a program of recorded music. Ash sparks darted, and their faces grew smooth as the young moon. Let’s take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack,/Let’s get away from it all. “Feel good?” said Gump, and she told him that she didn’t feel anything, but a giggle escaped her, and he said, “You’re doing fine, honey, just keep it up.”
It was Clyde saying, “I forgot your present, it was a present I brought you, a butterfly in a candy sack,” that set her off: like fish-bubbles the giggles rose and burst into laughter, and, laughing, she slung her head from side to side—“Don’t! Don’t! It’s too funny.” No one knew quite what was funny, yet they all were convulsed; Clyde, for instance, could hardly hold the car to the road. A boy on a bicycle, careening before the rush of their headlights, plunged into a fence. But even if they had killed the boy the laughter could not have stopped: it was all so hilarious. A scarf loosened off Grady’s neck and trickled into the dark; and Gump, producing his envelope, said, “Let’s pick up again.”
A red votive haze hung over New York, but as they streaked across the Queensboro Bridge, the city, seen suddenly full-length, went off like a Roman candle, each tower a crumbling firework of speeding color, and “I want to dance!” cried Grady, applauding the voluptuous skyline. “Throw off my shoes and dance!” The Paper Doll is a flimsy side-street catchall somewhere in the
