The Theoretical Foot. M. F. K. Fisher
stuck a tiny green bow in the hollow of her washerwoman’s knot and sniffed again.
Well, what shall I wear, then? she asked silently. Which gown from my extensive wardrobe? What would the famous Sara Porter appreciate? What’s correct for a girl to wear to a Swiss casino at ten thirty in the morning, coming to see an older woman known as much for her smooth chic as for her snobbishness?
How could I—how could anyone—keep up her self-respect after three months of tramping over Europe with nothing more than a collapsible zipper bag for luggage? A bag that for years had been just big enough to carry her father’s dirty slipovers and stockings home from the golf club every Saturday night? She was startled now to have thought of Father and of his pleasantly high-balled breath when he came in from a good game, how he’d then solemnly split his winnings with her.
What would Father think if he knew where she was now?
My green tweed skirt, she decided. Oh, that, by all means, since it is the only skirt I have. And my yellow sweater instead of the white, or shall I wear both at once to show her I really do have two? And my yellow socks instead of the white. I’ll be a vision, but a vision!
It was all Joe Kelly’s fault, of course, giving our last cent almost to every pathetic refugee who looks at us! And what good does it really do? No country wants its poor; there were such vast numbers of refugees suddenly and it occurred to Sue that helping them was only keeping them alive and this meant they’d live on longer in abject misery.
Then she, of course, instantly felt ashamed of herself for thinking such a thing, but her exasperation was again mounting as she looked at Joe Kelly. He was lying in bed on his back, his great hairy body spread-eagled; his heavy hand lolled darkly toward her. Still asleep! she thought. Still taking up the whole bed as he did even when she was in it.
Though she didn’t need the light over the washstand to dress, she snapped it on in a vicious way, thinking, Well, maybe this will wake him.
Joe stirred, sighed once, murmurred Sweet Sue and was asleep again.
Susan watched him with her mouth pinched tightly against her fine, large white teeth. Suddenly all her crossness vanished and she was filled with such great tenderness and yearning for Joe, seeing his unprotected infant face as he lay there, that she felt almost dizzy, almost ill at ease, to have this great coarse and ultimately so mysterious man completely in her power, to have him lying there so innocently, as defenseless before her as a snail without its shell.
She leaned against the cool enamel basin—the cold burned into the soft flesh of her abdomen until she forgot about and now thought of how much she loved him. She wanted to draw him into her arms, to enfold him forever with her passion. Could she? Would she be able to stay with him? What if her boat back to the States should sail without her? What if she should simply appear, show up having followed Joe to Oxford? Then he would have to keep her with him! It wouldn’t be decent of her to force him, and anyway—she clenched her teeth as the question arose in her brain—did he really want her?
She sniffed, shook her head to clear it. There is no use going over all this again and again. It had been decided, hadn’t it? Maybe Sara Porter could help her. She was older. She’d done a lot.
Sue scowled at herself in the cheap wavy glass. Her nose dripped. She sniffed again.
Her white net panties were finally dry, thank God. Of course, there was the extra pair, pale green, rolled up like a stocking in the pocket of her father’s golf bag. But for so long now she had washed the white ones every night in the sink of the next of their cheap hotels and hostels—she’d washed them out in a brook one time. She’d hung them up and would find them dry the next morning. Now it had become almost a point of honor to keep the green ones fresh, as if getting down to her last panties would be admitting that this strange life of theirs had become too hard.
She shook the panties out with one deft quiet flap, then stepped into them.
Sue was so small that even when she stood on tiptoes the mirror showed only her head and neck. She padded barefoot into the center of the room looking down at her thin and tiny panties, little more to them than a G-string, she thought with a great degree of complacency. The fabric shone white against her dark brown body.
How beautiful! she thought, to be so brown! Even the midsummer fog and mizzle of these last ten days in Germany had not faded her and she was glad. She felt again, as she looked down at herself, the steady, exhausting, exciting heat of those forty days with Joe on the beach near Cros-de-Tallas-Cagnes and the cool voluptuous water that slipped up over her body like milk. Perhaps now she’d never fade. Perhaps this satin darkness was as permanent as the other changes that had come over her.
She smiled, thinking of the envy of her school friends, of all the girls in her sorority house, when she showed them how brown she was. And she’s dark all over too! Sue could hear their squeals.
But no, of course she couldn’t show them as she wouldn’t be in college at all this coming winter. Joe said he wanted her with him in England this year. He’d swore to it. Would she have to go back home?
She shook her head again, as if to doggedly clear it, then looked down at her thin brown body. She really was too thin now. She’d stood on a peasant market-woman’s scales in Berne the day before: forty-one kilos, under a hundred pounds.
But she wasn’t hungry anymore. It seemed to her that they’d been eating nothing but cheap sausages and heavy cheeses and thick, mud-colored bread for longer than she could remember. Joe was always glad to eat her portion or give part to the quiet refugee child, starving and half hidden in some dark Munich alley.
Their eyes haunted her.
Suddenly she brightened. Yes, it was true then, that making love made your breasts fuller. She peered downward. Yes, there was no doubt about it, her two little warm brown breasts were definitely rounder. She cupped her hands over them delightedly—they were firm as apples.
“Come here, self-worshiper,” Joe said. “You’re my own particular and peculiar little pervert.”
At the soft sound of Joe’s voice from the bed, she stared foolishly. His eyes, half-closed with sleep, gleamed in the light she now turned on.
“Your master speaks,” he said. “Come here, woman!”
She pulled her hands away from the warm places where they’d rested and walked quickly toward the enormous armoire where her one skirt hung primly in the darkness next to Joe’s hung-up slacks.
“No,” Sue told him.
Joe’s smile spread from his eyes to his mouth and he whispered almost menacingly: “Shall I have to make you, then?” He then shook one foot free from the covers as if to get up.
“No, no, don’t,” Sue said. Though she felt deliciously nervous she made her voice sound cool and sensible. “It’s late. You know we told Mrs. Porter we’d meet her at the casino at ten thirty and it’s almost ten now. And you still have to shave.”
“Come here,” he said again.
She moved almost timidly toward him. He stretched out one arm, dark with black hair and sunburn, drawing her into its curve. She sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, scowling at him from under her wide, thick, dark brows.
He drew his other hand, warm and limp with sleep, from beneath the covers and watched as he seriously cupped one large hand under both breasts, having room to spare. Then he squinted at her as Sue burst into an unwilling laugh, throwing herself across his enormous chest.
“Oh, Joe! Joe!” she cried. “You’re so damned big!”
“The better to love you with, my dear.”
“No,” she said, “we can’t. There’s your Mrs. Porter?”
“My Mrs. Porter?” Joe asked. “Are you jealous of her? Sara’s the—why, you little fool—I’ve known Sara—oh, Sue, sweet Sue, my lady, my tiny lewd and beautiful love . . .”