Free The Unpossessed by Tess Slesinger Page A

where you’re wrong, my dear. I don’t believe in courting, any more than marriage. Dynamics , I tell you—I only believe in nature. I tell you honestly how I feel—and I know damn well you feel the same. So there isn’t any courting needed. It’s entirely up to you. Either you go against your nature; or you follow where it leads.” Yet in the very face of nature she observed he lowered his voice; as though nature were something belonging exclusively in the kitchen and by no means to sidle down the hall to the room where Miles and Norah sat. “You resent that I seem to put more ardor into making drinks? Why Margaret! you romantic lady! back to the middle-ages, darling, I’m no Galahad.” His voice changed—she loved his trick of turning with a grin, feeling quick joy from some little thing: disarming, almost admitting his own absurdity. “But really—I confess it: I do get a kick out of mixing drinks. Why not? it’s part of living. And out of so many things besides, Maggie—and that’s all the courting I can give you darling, invite you to share things with me, get a kick out of something together, you and I and nobody else. . . .”
    That was it, that was the whole thing, she reflected, handing him the can-opener for which he had not asked, on an impulse to contribute something to his joy—he got a kick out of practically anything: men, women, gin without juniper, jokes and espousing justice and his own shallow sparkling books; there was nothing Jeffrey could not eye with pleasure. (She heard Miles in the other room explaining to Norah how economic determinism was responsible for even private motives; “even most marriages” he said in what sounded to her a grim and disillusioned tone.) Avidity immediately followed; insatiable hunger to capture, to make a part of Jeffrey whatever caught his eye—what Miles called spreading himself thin like synthetic cheese to reach indiscriminately everywhere. ( Oh Miles, it wasn’t economic determinism darling, that was responsible for us—why Miles, have you forgotten everything? ) And Miles was right about the cheese, he always was right in some meaningless mental zone that took nothing human in account; but that Jeffrey was democratic to the point of spreading indiscriminately she found she suddenly could forgive. It was a pleasant quality, and pliable, proof of his being alive and young. (“Well, I don’t really know, Miles,” she heard Norah’s calm and laughing answer; “now take my father’s rooster; you can’t tell me he only thought of ways to earn his keep! And I never heard a banker crow so loud!” Then Norah too had found the shell-door bolted! but Norah could stand on the shell-step laughing; she knew she had no rights inside.) That capacity of Jeffrey’s for uncritical enjoyment—Miles would condemn it forever, Miles would never understand it—but let Miles go! who sat and explained the nature of economics and forgot to consider his pulse-beats; who turned deliberately from her warmest gifts and chose to wander off alone, carrying his hard-shell integrity on his back like a hard-shell baptist beetle—let Miles go!
    â€œI do like to enjoy things,” she said; “and I like to enjoy things with you. But Norah—she’s my friend, Jeffrey, after all, as well as you.” This was taking Jeffrey seriously! she was almost frightened.
    â€œI don’t put much value on a friendship embalmed in vinegar—which is all that denial is.” She thought it odd that Jeffrey, with all his talk of nature and denial, continued to resemble a poetic, fair-haired priest. “Now let me see. Oh yes—I have the bitters: it’s the sugar I want next.” He worked his way happily with the can-opener around the seal-tite grapefruit. “If you can find it, Maggie. And when you come to your senses, darling, about life, I