‘I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for my children. And yours, for that matter. Richard is their father.’
‘He doesn’t care about them.’
‘Every man cares.’
‘You only know Jerry.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Excuse me, I forgot. You did have this little lover. That seems so unreal.’
‘You know, Sally,’ Ruth said, ‘you’re gorgeous, but you have one fault.’
Sally said carelessly, ‘Only one?’
‘You don’t listen. You strike a pose and hold it and don’t pay any attention to what anybody is saying. I’m trying to be generous. I’m trying to give you Jerry, if that’s the way it has to be, and keep some honour for both of us. How much better you’d feel, in the end, if you let go now. I came here determined not to be angry, or weepy, or preachy; and you haven’t given an inch. You haven’t listened at all.’
Sally shrugged. ‘What can I say? That I’ll give him up? I’ve tried. He won’t let me. I love him. I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to hurt you and your children. And Richard and my children.’
‘You weren’t trying very hard when you went to Washington.’
‘Jerry asked me. He took me.’
‘The second time. The time you forced yourself on him.’
Sally’s gaze lost focus, remembering. ‘It didn’t seem so wrong. I can’t justify myself to you. It’s not up to us, Ruth. Jerry’s the man. I’m his if he wants me. But he has to be man enough to come for me.’
‘That’s your idea of a man, isn’t it? Somebody who leaves his children.’
Sally lifted her cup and put it to her lips but set it down without drinking. It was cold. ‘I learned very early’ she said, ‘to put a face on things. I may not show it, but I’ve been in hell over this.’
‘No doubt,’ Ruth said. ‘But it’s a hell you made.’
‘All by myself? You’ve been talking about faults as if you don’t have any. You and Jerry have been living too long up on that little arty cloud of yours. You have so much conceit, behind that gracious-lady manner of yours, you’ve never learned how to take care of a man. I’ve had to work at my marriage, you never have. You’ve turned Jerry loose, and you’re too conceited to take the consequences.’
‘I’ll take them when they come. But –’
‘I don’t think you will at all. I know damn well you can keep him if you pull out all the stops and use the children. But do you want him at such a price? I know I wouldn’t want Richard that way.’
‘I haven’t meant to scold and don’t expect to be scolded. I’m asking you, I think very nicely to keep your hands off my husband for a few weeks.’
Sally’s pale face went pink. ‘You and Jerry do whatever you Goddamn please. You’re both, in my opinion, extremely immature.’
‘I’ll tell him you said that. Thank you for the coffee.’ In returning through the living room, Ruth saw that the square arms of the white sofa were worn and the Wyeth print was askew. Outdoors, on a lawn that needed mowing, Caesar had just knocked Geoffrey down. The child screamed, less in pain, Ruth judged, than in fear that his collarbone would be reinjured. ‘Caesar!’ Sally shouted, and Ruth said to her, ‘It’s all right. Geoffrey’s had a hard week.’
‘I heard,’ Sally said.
Ruth glanced at Sally for confirmation that the scene in the kitchen had not happened; the other woman grinned back. But when Ruth was in her car, Geoffrey whining behind her, Sally in her white slacks kneeled on the grass, her long hair flowing, and classically put her arms about her children, one on each side, the dog standing as additional guard on Theodora’s other side. The Invader Repelled: this was Ruth’s impression of their pose as the spark ignited, and a mixture of gasoline and gravity flung her down the drive.
Home, she paid Mrs O, who had fed Joanna and Charlie and seen them vanish into the neighbourhood, then settled herself in the wing chair for a nap. Ruth poured some vermouth into an orange juice glass and called Jerry’s office. His line was busy. She tried four more times in twenty minutes, before the busy signal lifted, and she heard his voice.
‘Who were you talking to so long?’ she asked.
‘Sally She called me.’
‘Really I think that’s treacherous.’
‘Why? She was upset. Who else could she call?’
‘But I had just got done asking her not to.’
‘And did she promise not to?’
‘Not exactly. She said she thought we were both very immature.’
‘Yeah, she said you’d tell me she said that.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘She said you said I still loved you.’
‘What did you say to that?’
‘I forget. I said I supposed I did, in a way. I don’t know why this should upset her, she more or less assumed it was the case anyway. Obviously.’
‘Why should it be obvious to her? You’ve told her you love her, you made love to her, you’ve led her to think I don’t matter to you.’
‘You think?’
‘Of course, baby. Don’t be so dumb, or sadistic, or whatever you’re being. You’ve led her to think you love her.’
‘Well, sure; but clearly it isn’t a case of my feelings for her cancelling out my feelings for everybody else.’
‘Oh, clearly.’
‘Now you’re mad. This is hopeless. Why don’t you both just shoot me and marry each other?’
‘We don’t want each other. We tried a sisterly embrace and recoiled like a pair of wet cats.’
‘She said you told her to stay away from me.’
‘Till the end of summer. That’s what you and I agreed on.’
‘Did we?’
‘Didn’t we?’
‘Well, I didn’t think you’d go over and ram it down her throat.’
‘I didn’t ram anything down her throat. I was so amiable I sickened myself.’
‘She said you were very cool and arrogant.’
‘Not true. Not. If there was any arrogance it was hers. I thought she acted like a pretty tough cookie.’
‘She feels betrayed,’ Jerry pleaded. ‘She says she’s in love with me and I’m just playing with it.’
‘Well. In a way you did confess to me as an experiment. You wanted to see what would happen. If I blew up, it would relieve you of a decision.’
‘That’s not quite fair. For one thing, you were on the verge of guessing. For another, she’s been pushing me to do something.’
‘I do think “betrayed” is an exaggeration. I’m the one who should feel betrayed. But nobody seems inclined to let me feel anything. All the time I was talking to her, I had to keep telling myself I wasn’t the one in the wrong. You both seem to think it’s terribly unkind of me not to drop dead.’
‘Neither of us thinks that. Now don’t start crying. You’re heroic. Sally said so.’
‘What else did she say about me?’
‘She said you talked very well.’
‘She did? How funny. I didn’t at all. I talked in tight little spurts that went in all directions.’
‘Did she talk about Richard?’
‘Hardly a word.’
‘What did she say about the children?’
‘She doesn’t seem to think the children part of it is very significant. She thinks they’re just an excuse we’re using.’
‘She said that?’
‘She implied it.’
‘Anything else?’ His hunger for Sally’s words seemed something bottomless she must forever feed.
‘Let me think,’ Ruth said. ‘Yes. She was very interested in my lover and asked if it had been David.’
‘Sweetie, forgive me for telling her. But I thought it somehow evened things up for her to know.’
Ruth had to laugh, through the tears and vermouth, at the image of Jerry the judicious handicapper of this little horse race he had arranged.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You are.’
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m a perfectly reasonable decent human being trying to do right by everybody and at the same time participate in umpteen dumb conferences on the exact shade of grey to make your average third-worlder in this fucking dumb series of thirty-second spots!’ When she failed to respond to this outcry, he asked, ‘Was it David?’
‘No it was not David Collins. I have never been attracted to David Collins. I can’t even dance with him. I don’t like the way my old affair is turning into comic relief for everybody.’
‘It’s not, sweetie. Everybody takes it very seriously. Actually, I think your affair is the clue we all need.’
‘I think it’s the clue your little friend needs for some friendly blackmail.’
‘Why are you so Machiavellian? What else did Sally say? Did she sign this hands-off contract you offered her?’
‘Not at all. She just kept saying, you must decide.’
‘You meaning you, or me?’
‘You. The man. God, the way that woman says “man”, like it’s the holiest word in the language, I wanted to throw up.’
‘How can I decide? I don’t know enough. I don’t know if you love me or not; you say you do, but I don’t feel it. Maybe a divorce from me is what you really want, and you’re just too polite to tell me. Maybe it would be the best thing that ever happened to you.’
‘I doubt it,’ Ruth said slowly, trying to picture herself divorced, single, barefoot, greying. But Jerry was hurrying on.
‘I don’t know if the children would have nervous breakdowns or not. I don’t know if Sally, once she had me in the bag, wouldn’t find me pretty boring. Sometimes I think my charm for her is that I’m not in the bag. Maybe she only likes things she can’t have. Maybe we’re all like that.’
‘Could be,’ Ruth said, not following.
‘Well, if so,’ Jerry pointed out, as if she were arguing to the contrary, ‘it’s ridiculous to smash up two households that more or less function and screw up half a dozen children. On the other hand, there is something about Sally and me. Something very solid, in a way.’
‘I don’t want to hear about it.’
‘You don’t? O.K. Tell me about you. How do you feel? Happy? Sad? Want a divorce?’
‘I’m not happy and I don’t want a divorce.’
‘You’re sad.’
‘Low. I’m into the vermouth. The talk I had with her is just beginning to hit me.’
‘Was it so unpleasant? Weren’t you amazed, how neat her house is? It’s that way no matter when you go there, day or night. And wasn’t she more sensitive than you expected?’
‘Less.’
‘Less?’
‘Much less. What time are you coming home?’
‘I don’t know. Normal time. A little later, maybe.’
‘You’re going to go see her.’
‘That O.K. with you?’
‘No.’
Jerry seemed surprised. ‘I think I better. She sounded pretty frantic.’
‘Seeing you will just make it worse for her.’
‘Why would it? She likes me. I always cheer her up.’
‘Richard might be there.’
‘We could meet at some beach.’
‘It’s clouding over.’
‘It always does at noon,’ Jerry told her.
‘I suppose you’ll make love,’ she blurted.
Jerry’s voice pulled back, became the receiver’s components of metal and crystal. ‘Don’t be grotesque,’ he said. ‘That’s gone. Thanks to you. Congratulations.’ He hung up.
She felt chastised; she had overstepped. There were rules in this mystery, like stairways in a castle; she had mistakenly knocked on the door of the chamber where the lord and lady lay and made love. Before this door she felt small, appalled and ashamed, rebuked and fascinated: a child. Ruth noticed that while her left hand had been holding the receiver her right had been doodling, on the back of a windowed bill envelope, squares interlocking with squares. Their areas of overlap were shaded; light and dark were balanced, confused though she had been. She studied this abstraction, wondering if, abandoned, she might be revealed to herself as an artist after all.
The day was hot and the children clamoured to go to the beach. They did not understand the day she was giving them. Rats of fear seemed to skid through their noise. Ruth felt she must stay here, to be here when what happened next happened. She did not know what it would be, but imagined that Jerry would need her. This imagined need was a positive pull on her stomach. In time, Geoffrey slept, and the two older children dispersed into the neighbourhood. They were happy to leave her. She settled herself at the piano, but the music had no power; Bach’s baroque scrolls failed to interconnect. Ruth went to the phone and called Jerry’s office and was told he had left for the afternoon. It was after five when he came home; she happened to be upstairs, having come to check on Geoffrey. The length of his nap seemed unnatural; perhaps, she thought, being knocked down by the Mathiases’ awful dog, what was its name? –
The front door opened. Jerry’s voice called; his steps struck the bottom stairs. She called, ‘Don’t come up!’ When she entered the living room, he was circling the furniture as if looking for something, and smoking. The lit cigarette looked dirty in his hand, though it had been only three months since he had quit. ‘Why are you smoking?’ she asked.
‘I bought a pack driving home,’ he said. ‘I gave it up so I could taste her. Now I’m hungry for cancer.’
‘What happened?’
He straightened a rug and aligned some books. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing much. She cried. I told her I couldn’t come to her again unless I was free, and she said, Yes, that’s what she expected. I said it was unfair any other way. She agreed, and thanked me for making her feel loved. I thanked her for making me feel loved. It was all very reasonable, until she cried.’ He took a deep, annoyingly dramatic drag on his cigarette, sucking it down as if never to let it out. ‘God,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to this. It makes me dizzy.’ He paused by an end table and set a lampshade straight. ‘She said she hadn’t expected me to give in to you so soon.’
‘And then I suppose you took her into your arms and told her it would just be a few days before you’d talked that old bag into giving you a divorce.’
‘No, not really. I didn’t say that. I wish you’d been there to think of it for me. I didn’t say much of anything. I was really quite stupid.’ He inhaled again, did a little staggering act, and sat down in the Danish armchair so hard its fragile frame cracked; next, with a surge that seemed to gather behind his head and knock it forward, so that Ruth thought he was about to cough, he started crying. His sobs were tangled with loud sighs like the hissing of truck brakes and with the broken words of his attempt to keep talking.
‘She told me – almost the last thing she told me – was to be nice to you – not to torture you with her.’
‘But that’s what you’re doing.’
‘I don’t mean to. Listen. I don’t want our lousy marriage to get better because she taught me how to make love and taught you – that I was worth loving.’
‘I’ve never said you weren’t worth loving.’
‘You’ve never had to – I’ve always felt it. You married me because – I could draw. I’d make the outlines – and you’d put in the – colours.’
‘That’s absurd. Look, Jerry, I don’t want you if you’re going to go on this way in front of me. For that female. I’m sorry, I can’t stand it. I can’t take it seriously.’
‘Then tell me – to go. Tell me now.’
When Jerry had his asthmatic attacks, he would wake in the night and find his breathing shallow. He would go to the bathroom for a drink of water or the ease of moving about and come back to the bed, where she had usually awakened, with his back bent. He described it as a wall in his lungs, or a floor that kept rising, so that he could not take enough air in; and the harder he tried, the tighter the wall became, so that he would break into a sweat, and cry out this was deat
h, and ask her why she was smothering him, why she had had so many children, why she couldn’t keep the house dusted, why she refused to believe in Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Lazarus, the immortality of the soul – there was no limit to the height of his accusations against her, and she submitted to them because she knew as long as he could find breath to voice them he was not asphyxiating. At last, after an hour or more, he would tire of abusing her, and God beyond her, and relax, and fall asleep, snoring trustingly as beside him she stared into the dark. She could not understand how he, knowing that only his fright and panicked constriction separated his lungs from the abundance of oxygen, could not will himself free from his attacks; but now, reaching into herself, Ruth found something akin to his strange inner wall, for her imagination could not quite grasp the need to let him go. She saw that he was determined to punish her if she did not, and that her dignity lay with the immediate sacrifice of their marriage. Such sacrifice would be simple, bold, pure, aesthetic. It would remove her from these demeaning people, these Greenwood adulterers. She even sensed, behind the wall within her, a volume of freedom and dream. But she could not break through to it. In good conscience she could not. An innocent man and a greedy woman had fornicated and Ruth could not endorse the illusions that made it seem more than that. They were exaggerators, both of them, and though she could see that beauty was a province of exaggeration, someone must stand by truth. The truth was that Sally and Jerry were probably better married to Richard and her than they would be to each other.
‘I’d do it,’ she told Jerry, ‘I’d see the lawyer tomorrow, if it was a woman I respected.’
‘A woman you respected,’ Jerry responded quickly, ‘would be a carbon copy of yourself.’ He had stopped crying.
‘That’s not true. I have no great admiration for myself. But Sally – she’s silly, Jerry.’
‘So am I.’
‘Not that silly. You’d hate her within a year.’
‘You think?’ He was interested.
‘I’m sure. I’ve seen the two of you together at parties – you’re nervous together.’