‘See?’ Sally said to Jerry. ‘It’s a joke. He doesn’t care about me, he thinks it’s funny.’
Jerry shrugged. ‘It’s his night,’ he told her.
Richard turned with his curious massive ease, a jug of California sauterne slung across his shoulder in hillbilly manner, his head tilted as always. ‘Thank you, Jerry’ he said. ‘I like that. My night. It is my night. You’ve had your night’ – he bowed to Ruth – ‘and you two have had your night – nights. And now it’s mine. Everybody gets a night. Jerry, look.’ With the hand not touching the jug he made horns on his forehead. ‘My son the cuckold. Nobody’s laughing.’
‘What did you get us over for?’ Ruth asked. ‘It’s late.’
‘Ruth,’ he said, ‘you’re right. You’re always right. I wish you were my friend.’
‘I am your friend,’ she said.
‘Would you like to marry me?’
Ruth, blushing, refused the proposal as gently as if it had been seriously made. ‘Thank you,’ she said, flirting her head in a way Jerry didn’t recognize, ‘but I don’t think you want it, and I don’t think I want it.’ Richard stood flatfooted and blinking, the jug wobbling on his shoulder. ‘But it’s a pretty thought,’ Ruth added.
Richard said, ‘I’m only trying to find out what I’m supposed to do. I’ve been let in late; forgive me if I seem stupid.’
Jerry, always an eager and rude guest at the Mathiases, gestured towards the jug and asked, ‘Are we going to drink that?’
Richard looked amazed, and slowly said, ‘No, Jerry. It’s not good enough, is it? It’s what college kids drink at beach picnics, and I think we’re out of that now. I think we’re too mature for that now, some of us more than others. Right?’
He waited, and Jerry had to say, ‘Right.’
‘But I do see wine, don’t you, Jerry boy? For this occasion. White, don’t you think? White for innocence? For our two chaste brides here? I have some Chilean, but maybe that’s a bit artsy-craftsy You’re the artsy-craftiest person here, I’ll let you decide. Not Chilean. Some Bordeaux. No, not after dinner. I assume you’ve both eaten.’
‘Sure,’ Jerry said. Like Ruth before him, he felt genuinely asked. He had expected to be condemned, and instead was being fed. Ruth glared to get his attention and drew an upward arc across her mouth, to indicate that he was smiling and should stop.
Richard was rummaging crashingly through the bottles in his crowded liquor cabinet. It was an entire closet, refurbished with a little sink, built thick with shelves bottle-crammed. His stained back straightened and he dragged forth by its neck a yellow bottle, bigger than a quart, with a yellow label. ‘Retsina!’ he proclaimed. ‘A good-a Grec-a bevereega! The Greeks know how to meet their fate.’ From another shelf he produced four wineglasses, tulip-shaped, and blew out the dust, and set them on the tiled coffee table in a careful rectangle. He considered, switched the glasses into a different rectangle, glanced sideways at Jerry, and made as if to guffaw and slap the other man on the back. But the guffaw was noiseless and his hand halted before it touched Jerry, who had already winced. Richard uncorked the bottle, poured, carried a glass to his wife and another to Ruth, handed one to Jerry, and lifted his own to the level of his eyes, to the eye that saw. He studied the liquor as if for sediment and spoke slowly. ‘I would like to propose a toast, but since all three of you are not my friends that leaves only me. So I propose a toast to me. To me.’ He drank, and the others might have followed, but he lowered his glass before they could lift theirs. ‘Nobody’s drinking,’ he said. ‘How rude. How uncivil. May I try again? Another toast. Let me think. To happiness? Let’s not be silly. To the Queen? Who-dat? Ah. Our children. To our children. To the cunning little devils, all – how many do you have, Jerry? I’ve forgotten.’
‘Three.’
‘Three. Right. You’re a good father. I’ve always thought that about you, that you’re a good father. A swell dad. Here we go. To the half-dozen little devils, the future of America, God bless ’em every one.’ Sally, obedient, sipped; Ruth and Jerry followed. The retsina smelled like scorched varnish and tasted medicinal. Drinking in unison aligned them in a ceremony, whose central mystery was still to be divulged.
Ruth, entering the room, had taken the first chair inside the doorway, a rush-seated ladder-back that had strayed from the dining room. Jerry had seated himself on the centre of the white goosedown sofa, so that the two women – Ruth near the doorway and Sally in the wing chair near the fireplace – were equidistant from him. He crossed his legs and spaciously spread his arms along the sofa back. Now Richard overweighted Ruth’s side of the room by sitting heavily near her, in the worn leather armchair that Sally hated, Jerry knew.
Why should you hate it?
It’s just like him. Isn’t that awful? I mean of me to say.
Creased and flaking, it had been his father’s chair. As he sank into the dour mass of old leather, Richard became his father’s revenant. He put his hand limply to his forehead and his voice took on a deadly, deceptive weariness.
He said, ‘Jerry, Sally tells me you’re a big ass man. Frankly, I was surprised.’
Jerry sipped again, and said, ‘Are you sure this stuff is safe to drink?’
‘It’ll grow on you,’ Richard promised. ‘It has resin in it. I move a dozen cases of it a month. It’s only twenty proof. I mean, Jesus, Jerry boy, you just haven’t acted the way human beings are supposed to act.’
‘How is that? Tell me.’
‘I don’t mean just fucking her, I can’t get too sore about your fucking her, I’ve done it myself, and I’m not the only one. I suppose she told you? That winter I was away. She even fucked the ski instructor.’
Jerry nodded.
‘But for Chrissakes, Jerry you should’ve either broken it off or run off with her. You’ve put that woman through hell. You’ve put – my wife – through hell.’ He slapped the arm of the chair three times for emphasis.
Jerry shrugged. ‘I have a wife too.’
‘Well you have to pick. In our society you have to pick.’
‘Don’t make him!’ Ruth cried suddenly. ‘This isn’t the time.’
Richard turned to her lazily. ‘Shit, Ruth. Six months. They’ve tried to break it off. If it’s lasted six months, it’ll last forever.’
It was wonderful to hear. Jerry felt that with Richard they had arrived at firm ground at last. ‘Longer than that,’ he said. ‘I’ve always loved Sally.’
‘Fine,’ Richard said. ‘Done and done. Sally babes, get me a pencil and paper.’
Ruth jumped up. ‘What are you saying, Jerry? No. No. I won’t stay.’ She was quickly through the doorway. Jerry caught her in the hall that ran between the kitchen and the front door.
‘Ruth,’ he said. ‘You know how it is now. You know we have nothing. Let me go. Please let it go now.’
His wife’s breath was hot and moist and flickering. ‘She’s a bitch. She’ll kill you. She’ll kill you like she’s half-killed him.’
‘It’s silly of you to hate Sally. She’s helpless.’
‘How can you say she’s helpless? Who do you think’s got us all here? We’re dancing at her wedding.’
‘Don’t go. Don’t leave us.’
‘Why should I stay and see you stripped clean by these two vultures? Of your children, of your talent, of your money –’
‘Money?’
‘Why do you think Richard wants pencil and paper? He’s happy. Can’t you see that, Jerry? He’s happy because he’s getting rid of her.’
‘He’s drunk.’
‘Let me go. Save your lover routine for others.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He had been pressing her against the wall, holding her shoulders tightly in a forcible arrest. Yet, released, she did not move towards the door, but stood sullen, softly panting, all her skin breathing the strange familiar warmth of his wife. ‘Come back and talk to us,’ he begged.
‘I’m going back,’ she said, ‘and fight for you. And not because I li
ke you but because I don’t like these other people.’
‘Not Richard either?’
‘I hate him.’
‘Don’t hate,’ he begged. ‘We’re all too close to hate. We must all love each other now.’ As a boy he had been bored by all of church except communion, the moment when a crowd of them rumbled to the rail and dissolved the wafer in their mouths. Now he felt that in the living room something comparable would occur, or had occurred. His unbelieving wife let herself be led back. He was proud to show the Mathiases that he could still control her – that she was his wife to the end.
Richard had found pencil and paper and had shifted to the edge of the chair, so he could write on the coffee table. Sally had not moved, and the eyes of her heart-shaped, swollen face were shut. Upstairs, the baby their coming had awakened was still crying. ‘Sally,’ Richard said, ‘your child is crying.’ With a rigid reflex of the defensively flamboyant bearing that had distinguished her from the good women of Connecticut, Sally rose and stroked back her hair and with long strides left the room.
Why are you crying? Sally? Why?
It’s too silly. I’m sorry
Tell me. Please tell me.
You’ll laugh.
No I won’t.
I’m so sorry. I’ve ruined it for you.
No you haven’t. Listen, you’re lovely. Tell me.
I just remembered it’s Ash Wednesday.
Oh. My poor love. My lovely lapsed Catholic.
Am I lapsed?
Not if you care about Ash Wednesday. Get up. Get up, put on your clothes and go to church and get your smooch.
It’s so hypocritical.
No. I know just how it is.
I must really be crazy if I can lie with a man and start worrying about Ash Wednesday. I’ve ruined it for you. You’re getting sad and soft.
No, I love your remembering. There’s such a thing as spiritual satisfaction too. You satisfy me. Go. Leave me. Go to Mass.
I don’t want to now.
Wait. I’m trying to reach the ashtray.
Don’t be blasphemous, Jerry. I’m frightened.
Who isn’t?
Ruth, infected by Sally’s show of energy, crossed to the Buffet print above the fireplace and said, ‘That’s a lousy painting. All these are lousy.’ Her wave took in the Wyeth print, the Käthe Kollwitz lithographs, the anonymous watercolour of a single skier poised with his blue shadow beneath a sky of the same slanting blue. Ruth included the furniture. ‘Trashy’ she said. ‘She has expensive, trashy taste.’
Both Richard and Jerry laughed. Then Richard said mellifluously ‘Ruth, you have qualities she doesn’t have, and Sally has qualities you don’t have.’
‘Oh I know that,’ she said hurriedly, blushing, and Jerry resented it, that Richard had taken it upon himself to rebuke her, when she was so naturally shy.
Richard went on, ‘But you’re both very desirable women, and I’m sorry neither of you wants to be married to me.’
Jerry resented this, too, the insistent note of self-pity. He told him, ‘You seem to be taking it philosophically.’
‘Oh, but I’m boiling inside, Jerry. I’m boiling.’
‘Why don’t you take him outside,’ Ruth suggested, ‘and beat him up?’
‘I’m sure you’d win,’ Jerry said. ‘You weigh twenty pounds more. It’d be like Liston and Patterson.’
‘I don’t operate that way,’ Richard told them. ‘What I may do, I’ll have to think about it, is hire somebody to beat you up. One thing about the liquor business, you know where the hoods are. Have some more wine.’
‘O.K., thanks. You’re right, it does grow on you.’
‘Ruthie babes?’
‘Just a splash. One of us must go back and take the babysitter home.’
‘You’ve just arrived,’ Richard said, filling her glass to the brim. ‘We really haven’t seen very much of the Conants this summer, and I felt very hurt. I felt snubbed.’
‘I knew you would,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m sorry it was one of the reasons I wanted to tell you. My own life falling apart, and I was worried about your hurt feelings socially. But I just didn’t feel up to looking at Sally more than I had to. Volleyball was as much hell as I could take.’
‘You knew all summer they were fucking?’
‘No, I thought they’d stopped. I thought Jerry had promised to. So I was even dumber than you were.’
‘That’s pretty dumb,’ Richard said. ‘I guess I assumed Jerry was queer, I don’t know.’
Jerry called, ‘You’re sweet. How did you find out, anyway?’
‘Phone bills. I went back over the whole year. There was a collect call from the city this spring whose number hadn’t rung a bell, but I’d let it pass. They didn’t really get careless until August. A lot of a New York number that I figured out as his office and, the craziest thing, she charged a couple calls from Florida to him on our number.’
Ruth said, ‘She must have wanted you to find out then. She was angry with Jerry for not coming to Florida.’
Jerry said, ‘She wasn’t. He beat the truth out of her. He’s a bully. You heard him. He’s a big brave liquor store bully, probably he hired somebody to beat her up.’
Richard told him, ‘Watch it, Jerry. There’s such a thing as defamation of character. I never beat Sally, that’s one of her fantasies. She may believe it herself, Christ, though I didn’t think she was that far gone. You’ve been sold a bill of goods, sonny.’
‘I’ve seen the bruises on her.’
Ruth said, ‘Jerry. Must you?’
‘Let him talk, Ruth, let him spill it. Let the happy cock crow. I have seen my true love naked. How does it go? I have looked on beauty bare.’
Jerry said, ‘Once you hit her on the side of the head so hard she was deaf in that ear for a week.’
‘Eh? What’s that you say? You’ve heard of self-defence? I raised my hand to protect my eyeballs and she ran her head right into it. Want to see my bruises?’ Sweating and inspired, Richard stood and made as if to undo his belt. Sally, carrying Theodora, re-entered the room; she moved with wooden, disdaining dignity through the party that had been building in her absence. She sat in the wing-backed chair and swayed the bleary child back and forth on her knee. To Jerry they seemed two brilliant dolls.
Richard said, ‘Sally-O, pal Jerry here is wondering why you squealed on him.’
‘My sister-in-law told him,’ Sally told the Conants.
‘Horseshit,’ Richard said. ‘She told me you had a lover who called you in Florida every day, she didn’t know who it was, I knew fucking damn well you had a lover all summer from the crappy way you treated me. You just about drove me back into therapy.’ He explained to Ruth and Jerry, ‘She wouldn’t screw. And when Sally won’t have it sunny-side up, there must be a sunny-side down. I’d touch her and she’d run the other way, except once or twice when I guess Jerry hadn’t gotten to her for a while. I hope, dear,’ he said to Sally, ‘you haven’t deceived your lover into thinking you weren’t diddled at all?’
‘Weren’t what?’ Sally asked. She seemed sealed with the child on her knee into a soundproof booth.
‘Diddled. Fucked. Carnally embraced,’ Richard said, not quite drunk enough to be unembarrassed.
‘See, she’s still deaf in that ear,’ Jerry said, and Ruth laughed.
Richard was humourlessly intent upon his grievance; his good eye and bad eye together focused on remembrance of his maddening summer. ‘I couldn’t understand it,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t done anything. We’d had our troubles, but then we’d come to terms. It was just me, old horseshit me, everybody’s patsy.’
‘Quit it,’ Ruth said. Her sisterly directness was a revelation to Jerry; he felt now that all four of them had been pressed into a single family and he, an only child, at last had sisters and a brother. He was happy and excited. He wanted never to leave them.
‘That woman’ – Richard pointed dramatically to Sally, and a smile dawned on Theodora’s puffy puzzled face ?
?? ‘put me through hell.’
‘You’re repeating yourself,’ Jerry said.
‘And then,’ Richard went on, ‘then to complain to her fucking boyfriend that I beat her when I never lifted my hand against her except to keep myself from being brained – Sally, remember that bookend?’
Sally answered him with a cold stare and a prolonged, almost asthmatic sniffle.
‘A brass bookend,’ Richard explained to Jerry and Ruth, ‘lead for Chrissakes it felt like, I caught it on my forearm, just because I asked her why she’d stopped fucking me. Remember, Sally-O?’
Sally stiffened, shivering, and cried, ‘You talk as if I did everything deliberately. I hate being in love; I wish I didn’t love Jerry. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt Ruth and the ch-children.’
‘Don’t cry on my account,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s too late for that.’
‘I’ve cried plenty on your account. I feel sorry for anybody who’s so selfish, who’s so weak she won’t let a man go when he wants to go.’
‘I tried to hold my children’s father with them. Was that so contemptible?’
‘Yes!’
‘You can say that because you treat your own children like, like baggage, like little trinkets to set you off when it suits you.’
‘I love my children but I have respect for my husband too, enough respect that if he made up his mind I’d let him do what he decided.’
‘Jerry never decided anything.’
‘He’s too kind. You abused that kindness. You used it. You can’t give him what I can give him, you don’t love him. If you loved him, you wouldn’t have had this affair we all keep hearing about.’
‘Girls, girls,’ Richard said.
‘He wanted me to,’ Ruth cried, leaning from her chair as if refracted in water, ‘I thought it would make me a better wife!’ She was pulled by her tears into an abject forward-twisted shape; it seemed to Jerry her grief and humiliation were trying to fly her body away. Exposed, rosily flushed, she bit her knuckle in shame. Jerry spoke to shield her.
He said to Sally carefully, ‘Haven’t you been listening? It’s all over, don’t keep fighting. I’m asking you to marry me.’