ON THE WAY OUT, Belinda pauses at the door, throws the collar of the coat up, spins around to look at the room again, the details of artificial decay, the peeling plaster, the water stain, the tipsy safe, the open wall, and says in her best Bette Davis voice, “What a dump!”
Matthew thinks he may be falling in love.
AS SOON AS they’re outside, Belinda says, “That’s a straaaange pair.” She puts her hands in the pockets of her coat. In the right-hand pocket, she feels a small card. She pulls it out, glances at it, puts it back.
“They are, aren’t they?” says Matthew.
“They’re nuts, you know.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would. I can’t stand him.”
“Sorry. I should have said no when he asked us to join them.”
“He made me so uncomfortable. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who has ever made me more uncomfortable. He finds fault with everything. Even if he doesn’t say anything about it, you can see it. There’s a look on his face as if he smells something rotten.”
“You’re right. He’s a lot like BW, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is! Was he the model?”
“No, at least not consciously.”
“The difference is that BW can actually be funny. Harold has the weirdest sense of humor I’ve ever encountered.”
“You liked that business about the kid under the table.”
“Yes, I did. That I liked. It was quite insane, but completely appropriate. I definitely liked that, and for a minute there it almost made me forget the rest. Well, not for a minute. More like a second. And it may only have been because it got us out of there. But when he called the little woman a Luddite I decided right then that I despised him and nothing could make me change my mind. The wife thinks he’s a scream, though. There’s another weird one.”
“She’s not getting something from him that she wants,” he says.
She may not even know what it is, he thinks. Liz didn’t. Or claimed not to. All she said was, “It’s not this.”
“The next thing you know,” he says, “she’ll be going to some kind of counselor. And it won’t be long after that before she starts telling Harold that she’s discovered she never loved him. It’s a short step from that to complete lunacy.” Matthew is awfully close to telling more of the truth about himself than perhaps he ought to. “I’ve seen it happen before. People start cleaning up their lives and before you know it they’re left holding nothing but the pieces. It was only ignorance that held the whole thing together. A brick of compacted sand. It comes crumbling apart.”
The brick that is me wouldn’t last two weeks if I admitted all my anxieties, my disappointments, my wishes — I’m sure of it.
“God!” says Belinda, still on the subject of Gwen. “Those clothes! And she was out to celebrate, for God’s sake. I think I’m going to go home and burn every sensible piece of clothing I own. I’m going to start going to work in leather dresses and big boots. I am not going to become like that woman, ever.” She runs her hands up the lapels of the coat, pushes the collar up. “I don’t know,” she says, apparently subdued. “I may not keep the coat.” A long pause, and then suddenly she flings it open. She takes a deep breath and says, “But I am sure as hell keeping this dress.”
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 474, Mark Dorset considers Quotation: Movie Lines: “What a Dump” from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.
🎧 474: On the way . . .