The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [80]
The Lovers keep having little showdowns, followed by periods of heavy necking, followed by more showdowns, and so on. And then Larry goes off to his lousy poetry and painting, and Missy goes off to her room to suck on her plums, and Bax goes off to his wood to start chopping it, and that’s what’s been going on here for the past five days in the rain.
May 7
Tuesday
Rain.
Missy is trying to make a Southern gentleman out of Larry. She won’t get out of the car unless he opens it for her, and she won’t get into it unless he does, and we all stand around in the rain waiting for him to make up his mind. The doors of the car have got stuck with the damp and it’s like trying to get in and out of a safe, anyway.
Then she says would he mind running upstairs and getting her coat for her, and he says, yes, he would mind very much, and then we all have to wait around again until he thinks better of it and goes up and gets it.
Then she says just a second, if we’re going into town she has to comb her hair, and she wanders upstairs in slow motion and stays there for about an hour combing it. Or putting on lipstick. Or just looking at herself in the mirror.
Then we go out to this cheap restaurant that we’ve found in town and Larry gets even with her by flirting with the waitresses in a way that would cause a sailor from Marseilles to blush, and Missy just gets more and more plantation, and magnolia, and Southern belle. Then we all go back and play bridge.
Missy won’t play with Larry any more. She’s jes’ not used to being spoken to like that, merely because she forgot what trumps wuh. So I play with her, and Larry plays with Bax, and as bridge has an insidious way of getting under your skin by the time the evening’s over we’re lined up solidly against each other; boys against girls.
Even Bax has begun to crack under the strain, and lets go with a few sharp retorts from time to time. But so far, poor jerk, he’s always at the opposite end, trying to pull one or the other of us out of our frantic gloom.
May 8
Wednesday
Today was something of a miracle, I suppose.
It began unpromisingly enough with the usual steady rain and bickering around the breakfast table, but suddenly, by lunch time, it became apparent that Larry and Missy were getting along for a change. They were in one of their sexy moods, which lasted right through the meal and afterward as they lay around the living room kissing each other and holding hands all over the place.
Bax went off to chop wood, and I went upstairs to my room and picked up the oblong rug off the floor and flung myself on the bed and took a nap.
I dreamed vividly of Jim.
Woke up at seven feeling rotten; rotten in the stomach and in the throat. Heavy, leaden, out of tune. Looked out of the balcony window at the lights in the harbor.
Raining gently.
If it doesn’t stop I shall go mad.
We ask the people in the shops every day when they think the rainy season will be over. They shrug. Now they’re getting quite excitable when we ask them. What can they do about it anyway?
There was another bridge game this evening. But obviously something has happened. Missy and Larry played together.
May 9
Thursday
Have been watching our house chat for some days now, a real phony if I ever saw one. Noticed him hanging around the garden the first couple of days we got here making sure we were staying on. Then one morning—he must have waited hours for us to get up—he came barreling over to the back door just as Bax and I got to the kitchen, wriggled in through the screen door and deposited a token mouse at our feet. Bax threw the mouse away and the chat went right back and retrieved it. A much-used mouse. We threw it in the garbage pail and gave the chat some milk. He seemed to like it just so-so. All right, nothing to go mad over—all right for a start you know, but not really what he was accustomed to from the house. I don’t know how he managed to convey his fairly complicated chain of reactions, but he did. Let us know