Riven Rock Part 17

Nettie did finally get Stanley moving-how, Katherine would never know-and they both emerged from the room within half an hour, the suitcases and trunk neatly packed and secured and standing watch at the door, Nettie on Stanley's left arm, his coat draped over his right, but still they missed the first train and the evening was ruined as far as Katherine was concerned. There was some satisfaction in finally getting under way, sitting there in the intimacy of their compartment with her erect and proper husband at her side, even if she did have to share him with his mother and hers, but it wasn't what she'd hoped for. They made small talk, gazed out the window at the dark French countryside and the flitting lights, dined pleasantly enough, but all the while Stanley seemed tense and wooden, nodding his head automatically at any remark addressed to him, his hand-the hand she held in hers-as stiff as a marionette's. And if he was wooden, if he was a puppet, then who was pulling the strings? Katherine gazed at Nettie's tight self-satisfied smile as the train shot smoothly through the night and they talked in small voices of French painting, escargot, people they'd known in Chicago and the unsuitability of birds as pets, and she felt as depressed and deflated as she'd ever felt in her life.

When they finally arrived, Stanley was visibly drained. The whole business of the wedding and the move out of his hotel to Prangins for a night and then out of Prangins for Paris must have wrought havoc on his nerves. He was emotionally delicate, Katherine knew that, and she appreciated that in him-he was sensitive, artistic, retiring, as kind and thoughtful as any man in the world, the sort of husband women dream of. But the exhaustion was written on his face for anybody to see and when finally they were shown to their suite at the Elysee Palace, he merely wished her good night, ducked into his room and shut the door firmly behind him. She stood there a moment in the center of the salon, exhausted herself, thinking she should go to him, if only to pet and comfort him, but then she heard the sudden sharp rasp of the latch falling into place on the inside of the door and she sank into the nearest chair and cried till she was all cried out.

In the morning, Stanley was his old self, smiling and relaxed, and Katherine felt renewed too-they'd both been tired, that was all. They breakfasted in their room, treating each other with the exaggerated tenderness of a couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, and everything seemed right, the way she'd pictured it, gentle and soothing and intimate. Until Nettie showed up, that is. She burst in on them at nine, wanting to know if Stanley had taken his fish-oil capsule and if they were still planning to tour the Musee du Jeu-de-Paume or the Louvre. Immediately, Stanley's mood changed. A moment before he'd been gay and communicative, slathering his toast with b.u.t.ter and reminiscing about how he and Harold used to play at Indians when they were boys and steal out into the yard to eat their toast dry beneath the shrubbery, and now suddenly the words died in his throat. No, he admitted, he hadn't taken his fish-oil capsule, but he had it right here somewhere, and he would, and yes, they were planning on the Louvre, but he needed time to finish, well, his breakfast, and he hoped his mother wouldn't be too disappointed if they left at ten?

If Stanley's mother was going, then it was only right that Josephine should go too, and Katherine tried to make the best of it, chatting with her mother and snuggling beside Stanley in the carriage on the way over. But as they strolled through the galleries, Stanley quietly commenting on one painting or another, he unconsciously took his mother's arm, and Katherine and Josephine were left to bring up the rear. Then there was lunch. Nettie had invited some horrid missionary's wife who apparently ran a boardinghouse where Stanley had stayed while under the tutelage of Monsieur Julien. Her name was Mrs. van Pele, a dumpy, opinionated, undistinguished woman in her sixties, and Stanley nearly jumped out of his skin when she entered the room. He shot up from the table so precipitously he nearly knocked it over, his face flushing, and if it weren't for the potted palm behind him he might have fled the restaurant altogether. "Adela," Nettie chirped, trying to cover Stanley's confusion while the waiter looked on suspiciously and Katherine and Josephine gaped in bewilderment, "how nice of you to come. You know Stanley, of course, and this is his wife, Katherine, and her mother, Mrs. Josephine Dexter."

Stanley didn't offer his hand, nor did he bend forward to accept Mrs. van Pele's; he just stood there, his face crimson, staring down at his feet and clenching his fists. "So nice to see you again, Stanley," Mrs. van Pele said, settling into a chair with the a.s.sistance of the maitre d', "and congratulations. I wish you all the best."

"I'm so ashamed," Stanley murmured, raising his head to address the entire table, the maitre d' and the waiter as well. "I don't-I, well, I've never told anybody, I'm so ashamed, but I was impure and violated my mother's wishes and your hospitality too-" "

"Nonsense," Nettie said, and her voice cracked like a whip. "Sit down, Stanley. You've nothing to be ashamed of."

A silence fell over the table as Stanley slowly sank back into his seat. The tinkling of silverware and the buzz of voices became audible all of a sudden. Katherine was bewildered. She tried to take her husband's hand, but he pulled away from her.

"Utter nonsense and rubbish," Nettie said after a moment, as if for clarification. "You've just been married, Stanley. You have responsibilities now-you're not a boy anymore."

The waiter had retreated a few steps, wincing and sucking at his teeth, and Mrs. van Pele and Josephine began talking simultaneously, when Stanley stood again. "Excuse me," he murmured, pushing back the chair, "I need to, well, freshen up-that is, I mean, I'll be right back."

"Sit down, down, Stanley," Nettie said, peering up from beneath the armature of her hat. Stanley," Nettie said, peering up from beneath the armature of her hat.

Stanley didn't listen. His face was heavy, his shoulders slumped. He looked round the table as if he didn't recognize anyone there and then strode directly across the room, up the three steps to the entrace and out the door and into the street, and he never looked back.

Katherine didn't know what to do. She looked at her mother, at the missionary's wife, and then finally at Nettie: her husband, for some reason fathomable only to him, had just deserted her in a public place. On the third day of their honeymoon, no less. She was stunned. "Where could he possibly-?" she heard herself say.

Nettie said nothing.

"He's probably just gone out for some air, dear," Josephine said, and then she glanced over her shoulder and made a face. "It is a bit stuffy in here."

Mrs. van Pele agreed. Wholeheartedly.

And now suddenly Nettie was on her feet, a short brisk square-shouldered woman of sixty-nine who looked several years younger, dressed in the latest fashions from the Parisian couturiers and as used to the prerogatives of command as any mere Napoleon or Kaiser. Her hat alone-a ma.s.sive construction of felt, feathers and velvetta-could have inspired awe in any officer corps. "Adela, Josephine," she said, "would you excuse me for just a moment-I'm sure Stanley's quite all right; if anything it's just the excitement of seeing you again, Adela, so soon after the drama of the wedding, and I see now that perhaps we shouldn't have surprised him-but I do need a moment to speak privately with Katherine." She gestured for Katherine to rise and follow her. "You'll come with me into the next room, please? It'll only take a minute."

Puzzled, Katherine rose from the table and followed Nettie's brisk martial form through the main dining area and into the ladies' salon, where Nettie settled herself in a plush chair in front of an oval mirror in a gilt frame and directed Katherine to the chair beside her. There were two other women present, at the far end of the room, conversing in low tones. Katherine sank into the chair with an air of impatience-she was beginning to feel distinctly irritated, and who was this woman to think she could command her too?

"I'll get right to the point," Nettie said, drawing her mouth tight and staring into Katherine's eyes. "I don't pretend to know what's upset Stanley this afternoon, but I will say this"-she paused-"change has been very difficult for him. He's the best boy in the world, fine and bright and loving, but he suffers from a nervous condition. It's his extreme sensitivity, that's all, his artistic side coming out, but of course we've had him examined by a number of specialists because of his older sister, Mary Virginia. You see, Mary Virginia has been diagnosed as-" has been very difficult for him. He's the best boy in the world, fine and bright and loving, but he suffers from a nervous condition. It's his extreme sensitivity, that's all, his artistic side coming out, but of course we've had him examined by a number of specialists because of his older sister, Mary Virginia. You see, Mary Virginia has been diagnosed as-"

Katherine cut her off. "Yes, I know. She suffers from dementia praec.o.x. Stanley told me. Ages ago. But I really don't see how that should affect him in any way."

"Exactly. But he is delicate emotionally, and for some years now he's had bouts of nervous prostration, and I thought I'd better just tell you what you're in for, since you were so anxious to come between him and is family. He doesn't need coddling, not at all, but he does need understanding, and he does have his moods."

Katherine watched herself in the mirror, her face pale and eyes alert, the slightest movement of her hands and forearms duplicated as she smoothed the skirt over her knees. "I'm perfectly well aware of that," she said, and her tone couldn't have been colder or more final.

Nettie leaned forward, all the combative lines round her mouth and eyes drawn into fierce alignment. "I don't know if you appreciate what I'm saying: we're afraid his condition could worsen. We hope not-I pray every night for him-and the reports are encouraging, or at least most of them, but there is that possibility. Are you prepared for it?"

Katherine was already getting to her feet. "I don't know what you think I am, but I'm no child and I resent being treated like one. I'm fully aware of Stanley's neurasthenia and fully prepared to do anything I can to see him improve. It's not as if he's-"

"Yes? Not as if he's what? Crazy? Is that what you mean to say?"

"Of course not," Katherine said, but even as she said it the idea was there in her head, ugly as a scab that refuses to heal. "I meant it's not as if his behavior is cause for alarm, not to me, anyway, because I know him in a way you never will. He's my husband, don't you understand that? He's not yours anymore-he's mine."

The old woman in the armorial hat just stared at her out of two eyes that were exactly like Stanley's. It took her a moment, and then, in a voice so low it was barely audible, she said, "Yes. That's right. He's yours."

They stayed a month in Paris, occasionally making overnight motor excursions in the Renault Stanley bought, and they switched hotels at Katherine's whim-from the Elysee Palace to the Splendide to the Ritz. "I need a change," she would tell Stanley as he staggered through the door with the bundle of string-bound parcels and hat boxes that represented the day's removable offerings, but she never gave him a reason beyond that. The reason, of course, was Nettie. She was entrenched in her suite of rooms at the Elysee Palace like a fat swollen tick, sucking the blood out of everyone, and Katherine only wanted to get away from her-and to get Stanley away too. That was the important thing. That was essential. Because they'd be all right if she would just leave them alone, Katherine was sure of it.

But Nettie was tenacious. She insisted on lunching and dining with them daily and consulting on every purchase they made, from the andirons, vases and oil paintings that would grace their future home to the white fox tippet and m.u.f.f and tourmaline bracelet Stanley picked out for his bride, and Katherine's only recourse was to use her own mother as a buffer every step of the way. It was like a game of checkers: Nettie advanced a square and Katherine countered with Josephine. "Should we go to the theater this evening?" Nettie would propose at lunch, and Katherine, looking up languidly from a book or catalogue, would say, "Why don't you and mother go?-Stanley and I are exhausted, aren't we, Stanley?"

Stanley was a prince through it all, though he refused to hear any criticism of his mother-he wouldn't even allow Katherine to mention her without bunching up the muscles of his jaw till they began to shift beneath the skin like some sort of abnormal growth. He was dutiful and patient, the soul of propriety, and never once did he let a thought of socialism or Eugene Debs come between him and the determined campaign of acquisition Katherine had embarked on: they did have a house to fill, after all. Or would have soon. There was only one thing in which he continued to fail her, the biggest thing, the ultimate thing, the thing all the creatures of the earth did as naturally and unconsciously as they drew breath and ate and gamboled in the fields, and there was no fulfillment without it, no security, no consummation, no hope.

Each night was a repet.i.tion of the first. He was busy. He was worried. The Harvester Company. Correspondence. Accounts. Bills. If she would just give him a minute, just a minute.... Alone, in their rooms, just before retiring, he would take her hand, bend to her with a formal kiss and excuse himself, and no matter how seductive she tried to be, how suggestive or shy or elaborately unconcerned, he sat at his desk in a sea of paper until she gave up and found her bleary way to bed. That was her hidden affliction, that was her sorrow, and she blamed Nettie for it-the proximity of Nettie, Nettie's face and image and her fierce emasculating will: if she couldn't have her son, then no one could.

Finally, in desperation, Katherine hit on the idea of a motor tour to the south of France, a tour that would be certain to deflect both mothers, what with the dust and mud and sheer barbarity of the lurching, fuming, backfiring monster of a contraption they would be expected to immure themselves in for days at a time, and hadn't Nettie sworn she would never set foot in an automobile as long as she lived? Yes, of course: a motor tour. What could be better? Katherine woke with the inspiration one crisp morning in October and let it incubate while the maid laid out her clothes and she brushed her hair and studied her face in the mirror. She waited till the waiter had brought their breakfast and Stanley was poking idly through the newspaper, and then she let out a little gasp and clasped her hands together, as if the notion had just come to her. "Stanley," she exclaimed, "I've just had the most wonderful idea!"

But yet again, Katherine had underestimated her adversary-and her own mother, for that matter. Both women greeted the plan enthusiastically, and when the morning of their departure arrived, Nettie and Josephine appeared at the Ritz in identical motoring costumes, a sort of pale dust-colored webbing that covered them from crown to heel and suggested nothing so much as beekeeping or an escape from the seraglio. Stanley climbed into the front seat beside the chauffeur and took the wheel himself, while Katherine and the coc.o.o.ned mothers jostled for position on the narrow rear seat. They got no farther than Montrouge before the first tire blew, and after languishing beneath an unseasonably warm sun for an hour and a half while Stanley and the chauffeur patched it, they made two brisk miles to Bagneux before mechanical failure forced them to call it a day.

Naturally, the inn at Bagneux was considerably less than what they might have hoped for, and Stanley's mother, crusty and outraged, was the princ.i.p.al soloist in a chorus of complaint. Katherine was testy herself, and at dinner that night, after they'd staggered up three narrow flights to rooms that were like pigeon coops, she found herself drawn into a ridiculous argument with her mother-in-law over the French p.r.o.nunciation of "orange." They'd all changed and freshened up and settled themselves in the dining room with a decent sparkling wine and a consomme madrilene that was really quite refreshing, and the waiter had just taken their orders, when Nettie, grimacing sourly under the baggage of a bad day, leaned toward Katherine and said, "You p.r.o.nounce that like a foreigner."

Katherine looked to Stanley, but he was studying the wine list so earnestly you would have thought he was going to be quizzed on it, and then looked to her mother, but Josephine could only shrug. "p.r.o.nounce what? "

Nettie drew herself up, her tongue working behind her teeth to produce a nasty mincing parody of Katherine's French: "Canard a low-ron-zheh."

"And how, pray tell, am I supposed to say it?"

"Like an American. Because that's what you are, despite all your Geneva airs, and you should be proud of it, like Stanley is-aren't you, Stanley?"

Stanley gazed up from the wine list. He looked mystified and vaguely guilty, as if he were being punished for something he hadn't done. "I-well-I, yes," he said in a low voice.

"I'm sure it's just a matter of-" Josephine began, but Nettie cut her off.

"Decent people," Nettie hissed, "do not talk like"-and here she paused to glance round the table, stern, pampered, autocratic, an empress of money, McCormick money-"Frogs. " "

Katherine was so outraged she wanted to smash every bit of crockery on the table and walk out the door and never come back, but she restrained herself-for Stanley's sake. "Yes," she said, barely able to conceal the contempt in her voice, "and how do you p.r.o.nounce it then?"

All eyes were on the old woman in the adamantine hat, and she savored the moment, held it just a beat, and said: "Awwrenge. "Awwrenge. " "

So it went for the three and a half weeks it took them to get to Nice. They were constantly thrust together, exposed to all sorts of weather and every conceivable type of roadway, from cobbled village streets to cartpaths that began in the middle of nowhere and wound up at the end of it. Everyone was irritable, even Katherine's mother, who was the gentlest, most even-tempered woman alive, and by the end of the trip they were taking their meals in a brooding silence broken only by the occasional murmured request for salt. or vinegar to rub into their wounds. It was an unmitigated disaster. Hateful. Utterly hateful. And Katherine, the scientist, always alert for unusual specimens, was ready to write all the major journals and testify that she'd discovered the single most horrible and irritating member of the human species, and to name her too so there would be no mistake about it: Nettie Fowler McCormick.

And then, miraculously, Nettie threw in the towel. She'd had enough. Her kidneys were scrambled, her sinuses clogged with dust and dander and dried horse feces and all the rest, her feet were dead to all sensation and both her legs and the small of her back were separate crackling bonfires of unadulterated pain. At Nice she announced that she would be boarding a liner for London and thence for the United States of America and Chicago, Illinois. She made Stanley suffer for it, there was no question about that, and they were closeted for hours at her hotel before she decided to go, and on the day she left he was so consumed with guilt and fractured loyalty he could barely speak, but to Katherine's mind it was worth it: she was gone. The ogre was gone. And now the rest of their lives could begin.

"Mother," she said, sitting with Josephine in the hotel lobby the day Nettie left, "I don't know how to say this-and I hope you won't take it the wrong way-but I wonder if you might not be feeling a little home-sick yourself? For Prangins? Or Boston, maybe?

Josephine was in her late fifties then, a compact lively woman dressed in her eternal black, her hat mad with feathers, her eyes too small for her face. She c.o.c.ked her head and smiled. "I understand you, dear: you need time alone with Stanley. I can take the train for Geneva tomorrow. "

"You don't mind?"

Josephine shook her head. "No, of course not. I remember how it was with your father"-and she looked down at her hands and then gave Katherine a guarded look-"on our honeymoon, I mean. You know, we had a big wedding-half of Chicago was there-and when we finally got off on our own, that first night in the hotel ..."

Katherine had been leafing through a book of poems, but now she quietly closed it and gripped its leather covers as if it were alive and wriggling in her lap. Her heart was pounding. "Yes?" she said.

"Well, it was a real adventure for us both, because we'd never been alone together in that way, and your father was"-she looked down again-"he was very amorous."

There was an awkward silence. After a moment, Katherine cleared her throat. "I've been meaning to ask you about that, Mother, just that subject-about marital relations, that is-because Stanley, well, he-"

"Oh, dear," her mother cried, "will you look at the time? It does fly, doesn't it?" She looked as if she were about to leap from the chair, dash across the strand and plunge headfirst into the sea. "I did want to get up to my room for a nap before dinner-it's all this sun, it's positively draining."

"Just give me a minute, Mother," Katherine persisted, "that's all I ask. Will you, please?"

Her mother's head moved just perceptibly, the faintest nod of that feathered hat. Her eyes were pinp.r.i.c.ks, her mouth a slash of distate and disapproval.

"Stanley doesn't seem-" Katherine began, and then faltered. "He doesn't act as if he-" She reddened. Her voice wadded up in her throat. "Intimacy, I mean."

Josephine looked startled, and her face had colored now too. She made as if to get up, then thought better of it. "Katherine," she said finally, in the tone of voice she might have used to scold the servants, "there are things one just doesn't discuss-or one isn't comfortable discussing."

"But I need to discuss them, Mother," Katherine said, and all the pain and confusion of the past weeks stabbed at her, goading her on, "because Stanley isn't my husband, not, not the way I thought he would be, the way everyone ..." She trailed off.

"Not your husband?" Josephine had put a hand to her mouth, and she shot a quick glance round the room. "What are you talking about?"

Katherine was miserable, she was abject, she was a little girl all over again, and all her scientific training, all her understanding of what men thought and knew about the systems of life and reproduction availed her nothing: her mother knew what she didn't. "He won't ... perform."

It took Josephine a moment. She sat there rigid in the chair while the Mediterranean moved luxuriously beyond the windows, and she had the look of a torture victim, a woman whose nails were being prised from the flesh, one after the other. "Get him out of doors," she said finally. "Fresh air. Meat. That sort of thing." Another pause. "Why not take him skiing?"

The place Katherine chose was St. Moritz, in the Rhaetian Alps, not far from the Italian border. They booked rooms at the Grand Engadiner Hotel Klum, an immense and charming old place with snow-sculpted roofs, great roaring fireplaces and a Viennese quartet playing at dinner and tea. In the mornings they went for long walks through the snow-bound village, all the houses and shops decorated for Christmas, the air fragrant with woodsmoke and the smell of roasting chestnuts, and after a leisurely lunch they took to the slopes. Katherine was an accomplished skier, but Stanley was nothing short of magnificent. Graceful and adept, he moved across the unblemished hills like a line drawn across a blank page, tackling even the most daunting trails with a confidence and elan that bordered on recklessness. She'd never seen him so exuberant. Or physical.

By the end of the first week he was a new person altogether, utterly reborn, and Katherine kicked herself for not having gotten him away sooner. He laughed at the slightest pretext-an open, cheerful sort of laughter and not the startled hyena's cry that seemed to burst out of his mouth when his mother was around. He grew reminiscent over dinner. He was soft-spoken and confidential. He antic.i.p.ated his wife's every need. This was what Katherine had been waiting for, the slow sweet unfolding of the days, each one opening on the next like a vase of budding roses ... and yet still the nights remained problematical. And chaste. Maddeningly, insufferably, heartrendingly chaste.

But what to do? She had plenty of time to turn it over in her mind-a surfeit of time, nothing but time-lying awake at all hours, sitting over breakfast, lunch and dinner with her grinning husband, schussing down the slopes while he cavorted round her, launching himself dizzily over every hummock and mogul as if his legs were coiled springs, the silence of the mountains absolute, the sky a vast empty ache. Her muscles firmed. Her appet.i.te grew. She felt vigorous and young and so wrought up with frustrated desire she couldn't have slept if she'd wanted to.

The solution came to her one afternoon just before Christmas-the day before, in fact-and it was so clear and self-evident she almost gasped aloud. They were skiing the runs at Pontresina at the time, high above the village, out of sight of their guide, the peaks rising up around them like the white walls of the earth, and she'd broken the heel binding of her left ski and Stanley had knelt before her in the snow to repair it. Even through the integument of his gloves and the insensible thickness of her boots, she could feel his touch. That was what set her off, that touch, that lingering humble subservient gesture of love, her husband there at her foot, and in that instant she knew what she had to do: she had to take charge. she had to take charge.

It was so obvious it was ridiculous. Though it violated every notion of the woman's role-the pure vessel, the pa.s.sive partner, s.e.x an onus-she had to take charge, seize the initiative, go where no wife had gone before her. Stanley was a special case, and no one would know what happened between them in the privacy of their bedroom-and there was no shame in that, none at all. She was determined. She would come to him in the night-that very night-and use her hands, her mouth, any means necessary to excite him to his duty. Of course. Of course she would. It was either that or die a virgin.

They dined that night in a restaurant not far from the hotel. Katherine had made herself up, a red-and-green bow in her hair, a new dress, the tourmaline bracelet Stanley had given her sparkling on her wrist. She encouraged him to drink-a Grignolino that smelled potently of the earth-and she drank two gla.s.ses herself, for courage. When they got back to their rooms, she submitted to his stiff nightly kiss and then told him she was worn out from skiing and thought she'd retire early-If he had no objections. "Oh, well, yes-sure," he said, jerking each word out as if it was fastened to his teeth, his eyes running up and down the wall behind her. "Well," he said again. "So. Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night."

She waited till the light had gone out in his room-the very moment; she didn't want him drifting off-and then she padded across the floor, perfumed and naked, and she could have been anybody, any wanton, any wh.o.r.e, and tried his door. It was unlatched. And she pushed it in with the breath caught in her throat and every nerve strung taut. "Who is it?" he said, and she could see the dark form of him sitting up in bed in the cool blue light the snow threw at the windows.

"Hush," she whispered, "it's just me. Katherine. Your wife."

"What are you-?" he began, but then she was on the bed, naked in the frigid light, the springs jostling, the mattress giving, naked and on all fours, the chill sweeping over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her navel and groin till she was all gooseflesh.

"Don't talk," she said, "don't say a word," and she found his face and his lips and she kissed him, a wet kiss , a true kiss, the heat of their bodies conjoined, she poised there atop the covers and Stanley forced back into the headboard and no place for him to go. He fought away from her mouth and came up sputtering like a diver, his nightcap knocked askew, the blue light in the window as solid and tangible as a block of ice. "I'm not," he said, "I-I-I-"

"Shhhh," she hushed him again, and in the next moment she was beneath the covers with him, her toes seeking his, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s tender against the fabric of his nightshirt, her head cradled under his arm, and she just held him for a long while, an eternity, till she felt him relax-or begin to. She kept kissing him, kissing the side of his face, his throat, his fingers, and then, after another eternity, she worked an expeditionary hand up under his nightshirt till she found what she wanted.

His p.e.n.i.s was limp. Or not limp, exactly, but by no means was it stiff either. It was the first p.e.n.i.s she'd ever held in her hand and she was amazed at how small it was, at how she could cradle the full length of it in her palm, but she knew enough to rub it, stimulate it, make it swell, and all the while she was kissing his throat and breathing hot endearments into the collar of his nightshirt. At first he stiffened-in every place but one-and tried to move away from her touch, but after a time (five minutes? ten?) she began to feel something, a definite movement, a twitching, a palpable thickening. Encouraged, she brought her other hand into play, rubbing furiously now, rubbing Stanley's awakening member between both palms with all the intensity of a red Indian rubbing two sticks together to produce fire.

And she did produce fire-of a sort. He was erect now-or nearly erect; she was no expert-and she lifted his nightshirt and rolled atop him, rubbing now not with her hands but with her own groin, and the sensation was intoxicating, like nothing she'd ever known, except maybe for Lisette and her precocious forefinger, and "Stanley," she whispered, "Stanley, I'm ready. Make a baby for me, Stanley, make a baby. "

But he didn't make a baby. Didn't even try. As soon as she spoke he shrank away to nothing, less than nothing, the softest, smallest, most irritating little thing in the world, all coiled up in its nest, and when she reached for him again he pushed her away-and with more force than was necessary.

There was a shock of cold air, a great flapping of the covers, and suddenly he was standing over her in the glacial light of the room, and she could just make out his face, the lips curled in a snarl, the wild glint of his eyes. He was trembling. "You wh.o.r.e!" he shouted. "You dirty wh.o.r.e! "

ON SHAKY GROUND.

Dr. Kempf's time began in 1926, but the need for him-for direct action, for hope, for change-had been a long time coming, as O'Kane would have been the first to admit. And it wasn't just that everything fell to s.h.i.t and ruin under Brush and the new estate manager (a grubbing incompetent multiple-chinned little fraud of a man by the name of Hull), it was Mr. McCormick himself. Very gradually, day by day, in a way you might not even notice, he began to withdraw into himself again, as if he were slipping back into the catatonia of the early days, and O'Kane was afraid they'd have to break out the sheet restraints and the feeding tube all over again. Mr. McCormick was torpid and morose, barely articulate, and there were days at a stretch when he didn't want to get out of his pajamas-even the prospect of a drive in the country didn't seem to get much of a rise out of him. And of course it was always unpleasant to have to force him to undress and get into the shower bath, much less try to get him to put his feet into the legs of his trousers if he was fundamentally opposed to it.

O'Kane was no psychiatrist (even if he did have more experience in the field than half the headshrinkers running around the country with their dabbed-on beards and Krautish theories), but he was finely attuned to Mr. McCormick's moods and he was worried. As far as he could see-and he'd discussed it with Mart time and again-Mr. McCormick's present decline was traceable to a series of traumatic events over the course of the past few years, the first and most devastating of which was the loss of his mother. That was in 1922 or '23, and it was followed by his brother Harold's divorce and remarriage and the hullaballoo the papers made over it, which to Mr. McCormick's mind was a shame and a blot on the whole family and the Harvester Company too. Then came the news that Dr. Brush finally had to commit his wife because she was parading naked through the streets and setting trashcans afire; this seemed to disturb Mr. McCormick on all sorts of counts, from his sheer horror at the notion of aggressive female nudity to the sad contemplation and reevaluation of his own hopes for cure and release into the world of men and women. And finally, just when it seemed as if he were coming out of it, making his little jokes and eating his meals calmly and nicely, there was the earthquake that knocked down half the city of Santa Barbara and gave Riven Rock such a rattling that all the windows broke out, the piano wound up on its back in the middle of the music room and the garage fell away into a random-looking heap of stones with a dozen cars crushed like salmon tins in the middle of it. Any man would have been hard-pressed to remain cheerful and forward-looking in the midst of all that, but for a man in Mr. McCormick's state of mind it was like putting up walls on top of walls.

Indeed, when the old lady died, O'Kane braced himself for a major outburst at least equal to the business with Dr. Hoch and the gopher, but if Mr. McCormick was anything, he was unpredictable. He barely blinked, and officially, for Dr. Brush's records, he said all of seven words. He was playing a game of solitaire when O'Kane broke the news to him. (Brush had thought it would be best that way, for the main and simple reason that Mr. McCormick was more comfortable around his head nurse, who had, after all, known him longer, and the news was bound to be traumatic, for the main and simple reason that Mr. McCormick was so pathologically attached to his mother, though of course he hadn't actually seen her since nineteen-ought-seven, and he was very likely to give vent to his grief in a volatile way and to resent the bringer of the news, which for obvious reasons shouldn't if at all possible be his attending psychiatrist for the main and simple reason of the risk of alienation.) "Mr. McCormick, I'm afraid I have some bad news," O'Kane had announced, Brush concealed behind a closet door on the landing, Mart looking on as placidly as if they were discussing a change in the luncheon menu.

Mr. McCormick glanced up quizzically from his cards. "B-bad n-news?" he echoed in a kind of bray.

O'Kane steeled himself. "I'll come right to the point, sir: your mother's died. Last night. Peacefully. In her sleep." He paused. "She was eighty-eight."

For a long while Mr. McCormick merely sat there, looking up at him out of a neutral face, the last card arrested in his hand. He cleared his throat as if he were about to say something, then turned back to the table before him and laid the card at the head of one of the four neatly aligned rows. After a while he glanced up again, and he had a sly secretive look on his face, as if he'd just gotten away with something. "I won't be going to the funeral," he said.

Outwardly, he showed nothing, but you could see he was grieving, as he had for Dr. Hoch, and O'Kane kept waiting for some sort of manic episode, especially when the news of Mr. Harold McCormick's divorce broke. The first O'Kane heard of it was when he came into work one morning and all Mr. McCormick could talk about was the subject of divorce-divorce in all its legal, historical and anthropological ramifications, how so-and-so had divorced his wife of thirty years and what King Henry the Eighth had done and how the Trobriand Islanders would kill and eat their wives on divorcing them and offer the choicest morsels to their in-laws, if savages could be said to have in-laws, and how did he, Eddie, feel about the subject? He'd been divorced, hadn't he? From what-was-her-name, Rosaleen?

O'Kane had to admit that he hadn't.

That stopped Mr. McCormick cold. They were outside at the time-they'd just come back from hurtling aimlessly round the property at a pace that varied from a jog to a sprint-and Mr. McCormick blinked at him in incredulity. "You mean you-all these years-and she, she-all by herself? Or maybe, maybe even with, with other men?" men?"

Mart, still heaving for breath, was looking on. They were at the front door and b.u.t.ters was there, his nose in the air, holding the door stiffly open for them. "I, uh, I guess I never told you-remember when she had to leave to go back and nurse her mother? And her brother, the one that had brain cancer?"

Mr. McCormick gave him a blank look. He probably didn't recall much from those days. In fact, O'Kane was amazed that he'd remembered Rosaleen's name.

"Well," O'Kane said, painting the picture with his hands, "sad to say but she caught the brain cancer from him and died. So I'm a widower, really. A widower-that's what I am."

Mr. McCormick seemed satisfied with the explanation, but when they got back upstairs and settled into the parlor, he became agitated all over again. "Here," he said, "here, look at this," and he thrust a pile of newspaper clippings into O'Kane's lap, clippings that hadn't actually been clipped, since he wasn't allowed access to scissors, but which he'd painstakingly creased and torn out of the papers.

The first headline read HARVESTER PRES TO DIVORCE ROCKE- FELLERHEIR, and there were half a dozen more of that ilk. It seemed that Harold, who was now president of International Harvester since Cyrus Jr. had retired, was divorcing Edith, to whom he'd been married for twenty-six years. She'd spent the last eight years in Switzerland as a devotee and disciple of Karl Jung and his school of psychoa.n.a.lysis, and Harold, who was the playboy of the family, fond of fancy clothes, expensive cars, airplanes and women, had fallen for the Polish diva, Ganna Walska. A dark and fleshy beauty, Madame Walska was once widowed and twice divorced at thirty, and she was twenty years Harold's junior. And she couldn't sing, not a note-or not enough to keep people from stampeding for the exits, anyway.

After O'Kane had read through the articles and handed them to Mart for his perusal, he looked up into Mr. McCormick's expectant face and shrugged. "It happens sometimes, Mr. McCormick," he said, "you know that. It's nothing to get excited about."

"No, no," he said, rapid-fire, and the floor turned to magma suddenly and he had to hop from foot to foot, "no, no, you don't, don't understand. He's the president, he's the president, president, and he could, I could-Katherine. I could divorce Katherine." and he could, I could-Katherine. I could divorce Katherine."

The idea remained fixed in Mr. McCormick's brain for some time, and when he wasn't debating its finer points in a high ragged voice, he was brooding over it in a chasm of silence. If Harold could divorce, then so could he. But if he got divorced, then he wouldn't have Katherine, and if he didn't have Katherine who would be his wife and run his affairs for him? And he loved Katherine, didn't he? Even if she was running around with other men and that Mrs. Roessing? On and on it went, round and round, like a dog chasing its tail.

Meanwhile, Harold's situation only got worse. Because after his divorce was granted and Edith got custody of the children and the better part of their joint property, including their Lake Forest mansion, the Villa Turic.u.m, which she would convert into a "Mecca for devotees of psychoa.n.a.lysis," Ganna Walska turned around and married an American millionaire by the name of Alexander Smith Cochran. Harold was devastated and the press howled with delight. But then, a year later, Madame Walska jettisoned Alexander Smith Cochran and married Harold, but only on condition that he finance her operatic tour of America, replete with the finest choruses, orchestras, costumes and staging money could buy. Again the press howled in derision and howled so vociferously and at such length that Harold was forced to step down as president of the Harvester Company in the wake of the scandal.

All this Mr. McCormick seemed to absorb with a growing sense of despair and gloom till the day came when he wouldn't get out of bed. O'Kane arrived to find Dr. Brush and Mart trying to reason with him. Wouldn't he like to get up now and have a nice shower bath? No, he wouldn't. Wouldn't he like breakfast? No. A drive? A movie? A concert with Mr. Eldred? No, no and no. Well, and what seemed to be the problem? He wouldn't say. But after Dr. Brush and Mart had gone out in the hallway to consult, Mr. McCormick reached into the breast pocket of his blue silk pajamas and handed O'Kane a newspaper clipping folded so rigorously and so repeatedly it had been reduced to the size of a matchbook. "Go ahead," he said. "G-go ahead, Eddie-read it. Out loud."