“It happens to be very important what you weigh,” Ursula says. “Overweight people are not happy.”
“Bullshit,” Jack says.
Ursula sits up straighter, turns to Jack. “You may pretend not to worry about it—”
“I don’t worry about it!”
“You may pretend not to worry about it,” Ursula says, “but it does affect your self-image.”
“I’ll tell you what affects my self-image! Sitting around taking some ridiculous magazine quiz that purports to tell me whether or not I’m happy! You think MotorWeek is stupid? Next to this, it’s Feynman’s lectures on quantum electrodynamics!”
“Maybe,” Ursula says quietly, “this quiz is just bringing up some things you need to think about, Jack. Maybe it’s time to stop working so hard at keeping your blinders on. You deny everything. Your life is a lie. You need to see things!”
“Why,” he asks, “when you see them for both of us? Why don’t you just go right on telling me how I really feel, what I’m missing, Ursula? You’re so good at it. You seem to enjoy it so much. I’d hate to deny you.” He leaves the room. She hears him going down to the basement.
Ursula straightens up the family room, finds a fire truck and several Legos stuck behind a chair cushion. She feels an odd numbness as she picks them up; it’s as though her fingers aren’t quite touching the toys, as though some invisible lining is between them and her. She carries the toys into the boys’ room, then goes to stand beside their bunk beds. She straightens their covers, inspects them in the dim light. They are so beautiful. No matter how exasperated she has gotten with them during the day, when she sees them sleeping at night she aches with love for them. Jack is right, she thinks. They have a good life. Why does she analyze, question so much? They are lucky. They are happy! She will go downstairs to get him. They’ll watch Nightline together. She’ll make some dip for the chips. Maybe she’ll wear something special to bed. The red nightgown with the slit cut up high. Not that Jack ever needs incentive.
She goes into the basement. Jack is at his workbench, sanding the edges of a toy box he is making for the boys. He looks up when Ursula comes in, then away.
“I’m sorry I made you take that quiz,” she says. “I just … Sometimes I wish we could feel things more alike. It could make us closer, you know? I thought if we talked about whether or not we were really happy—”
He stops sanding. “I’ll tell you something, Ursula. I never saw much point in asking yourself if you’re happy, never saw the reason for that obsessive kind of self-inventory. It bores me. I’m a simple guy, Ursula. I love you and the kids, I like cars. I don’t ask for a lot more than for us all to be together and healthy. That makes me happy. I’m sorry I can’t be a malcontent for you. What do you want me to do? Tell you all my regrets, my failures?” He looks at her, takes in a deep breath. “I hate my job, Ursula. I’m sick to death of always being the one to initiate sex. You turned out … sillier than I expected. I believe nuclear war is inevitable, that existence is inherently pointless, that it’s too late to save the environment. Is that what you want to hear? Is that the kind of romantic prelude you long for?” He puts down his sandpaper. “I’m going to bed.”
He squeezes past her out the door, treads heavily up the stairs. Ursula stands before the toy box for a moment, then turns out the light and heads upstairs herself. She is aware of a sudden and profound fatigue.
After she is ready for bed, she climbs in beside Jack, nestles up to him. She is wearing perfume, the red nightgown. She moves closer, whispers, “Are you awake?” She hears his breath go evenly in and out. The familiarity of it calms her. “Jack?” She moves her hand across his stomach.
“I don’t want to talk anymore, okay?” He takes her arm from around him, moves away from her. A first.
“Okay.” She lies still, her eyes open, thinking. She is remembering the time she was nine and took apart a jewelry box she loved, to see what made the ballerina turn around. Though she paid careful attention to each step, when she tried to reassemble it, it didn’t work the way it had before. No one else could fix it, either. The ballerina stayed in place, permanently turned away, oblivious to the music she had danced to before.
Martin’s Letter to Nan
Dear Nan,
I feel like a fool, writing this. Not knowing if I’ll ever give it to you. Wondering what the hell I can say on a page that I can’t say to you in person when you get back. But reading your letters has made me think that maybe there’s something to this writing thing. Maybe it’s easier to say certain things when you’re alone and thinking about a person, rather than being with her. At any rate, I’ll give it a try. I’ve got your pile of letters here beside me, I’ve got a cigar and a glass of scotch. Here goes.
First of all, I am angry. Not as much as I was when I first found your note, but I am still angry. How would you have felt if you’d gotten out of bed, come downstairs, and found some note saying I was leaving and I didn’t know when I’d be coming back? You’d have been furious, Nan, admit it. You’d have been on the phone to your damn girlfriends, telling them not only that I had left, but other things you’re pissed off about as well. These would be things you would never dream of telling me—oh yes, I know you do that, because I’ve overheard you. You usually start with, “He is driving me crazy,” and then you reveal something very personal about me. I want to say right now that at least I never do that to you, Nan. I don’t go running off with my male friends and say terrible things about you. You remember that week or so when you were having trouble with gas? We didn’t know what it was, but Jesus Christ, you were farting to beat the band. We were going to take you to the doctor and then it all of a sudden stopped. You think I ever told the guys about that? But you talk about me to your women friends all the time, carry on about things I can’t help any more than you could help farting. My level of cleanliness. My denseness. I don’t see the flower the way you see the flower, okay, Nan? I’m wired differently. Most men are. And the ones that aren’t, I don’t think you’d be much interested in.
I wonder sometimes why men and women persist in living together, especially after the kids are gone. You can understand the biology of it, the need for us to be together to have and raise children. But after that, isn’t it just a trial? The way we’re constantly accommodating each other? The way, for example, I never get to smoke my cigars in the house unless you’re off on some trip to “save” yourself. The way I feel I must ask permission to put on a CD that I like. Why don’t people just organize same-sex colonies? I wonder. Visit each other if you girls can tear yourselves away from talk, talk, talking and if we can leave the ball games. Think of it, a group of people all living together who share the same opinion about what should be done with the toilet seat. About whether or not you should put on some tight-ass outfit and drive into the city to see the opera—hmmm, now there’s a hard one. About whether it will cut your life expectancy in half if you eat a piece of beef jerky. About whether a bed must be made every morning, the wet towels removed immediately from the floor, the whites done with the whites, the newspaper thrown away the second we’re done reading it—or before! Why don’t we separate—keep each other in our wills, attend graduations and weddings and funerals together, date, even, but live apart? I don’t know, I guess it’s because love works that way, that the person who bedevils you is also the one you need.
Well, I have read what I’ve written so far and it’s a bunch of crap. But you know what? I don’t care. I do not care. That’s what a good dose of a good scotch will do for you.
So let’s just see. Let’s just see what you wrote and let’s see what I have to say back. But first, my dear, another drink. Cheers.
In your first letter, you mention Kotex. Now, what in the hell am I meant to do with information like that, Nan? And you say you sat at the breakfast table with me, acting like nothing was wrong, when there was a hurricane inside you. What I want to know is, why didn’t you say anything? I sensed what I thought was a
kind of restlessness in you, but I let it go. You are often restless, darling. You are often a pain in the ass. I let it go because of the times when you are not.
But you might have said something. In a way that would let me know what was really going on. For example, when you were hurting at the thought of our daughter being gone after she graduated, how hard would it have been to say to me, “Will you miss Ruthie?” I might have told you something.
Well. I write that and then I sit back and read it and think, if truth be told, I probably would not have said much. I probably would have shrugged. I probably would have said, “Well, she’ll visit.” And so what? It is not my job or obligation to process things the way you do, Nan. But it is your obligation to try to tell me why things are a problem for you so you’re not always walking around with this dreamy, tragic look on your face. So that you’re not waking up and clutching at rocks you keep in your bedside table drawer, for Christ’s sake. There you are, a married woman, lying beside her husband in their bed at night, turning to rocks for comfort! Should you not accept some of the blame for that?
Now in the second letter you tell me about a dream you had. The truth is, and I say this in the kindest of ways, Nan, I am just not interested in dreams—yours or anyone’s. They don’t matter to me, they matter only to the person who had them. And every time you tell me your dreams, you stand hawklike before me, watching to see if I’ll “get it.” And I don’t want to get it. I don’t want to hear it. If I said urgently to you, “I had this dream last night,” would you be so interested? Maybe you would. But only so that you could take it apart and psychoanalyze me some more. Or so that you could see where you figure in, in my dream. You are like a kid that way, Nan, always needing so much to be in the center of everything. More than other women I’ve known. And I have known my share. You don’t know about all of them. You think you do, but you don’t. Some things weren’t worth telling you. Some things were too hard to tell you. I loved a girl when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and she died of leukemia. That, for example. Which I still don’t want to talk about, but there, you never knew that, did you? Or the time I went to my thirtieth high school reunion and you didn’t want to come and Sandy Miller offered to
Well, suffice it to say you don’t know everything. You are not the only one who runs deep, Nan, who does not say everything because of the feeling that you will not be understood.
I know I’m being tough on you, okay? It is my right and my privilege. It is what you owe me, the opportunity to state my piece. You felt you had the right to leave. I now have the right to respond to your leaving. I hope you will read this all the way through. Please read this all the way through. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m not through yet. I am warming to this.
Ah yes, now we come to the side roads portion of your correspondence. Your old complaint of how I never want to take the side roads. How many times will I have to tell you this? The side roads take five times as long, and you expect me to get you places. You sit beside me looking out the window, making up your little fantasies about everything you see, wanting to stop at every peach stand and every antique store, and I’m the one who has to drive, drive, drive. And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say you offer to drive and I hardly ever let you. Right. Because if you drive you get on your beloved side roads and you get behind a tractor and then you’re afraid to pass. So there we are, off to a place five hundred miles away and driving eighteen miles per hour. It makes me feel like I could tear off the roof of my car with my teeth and eat it. If we go on a trip, it’s to get somewhere. The side roads are all right for a mile or so but then you’ve got to get going or you’ll never get there. Easy for you to be the romantic artiste, the sighing sufferer, when you know that good old Martin will be taking care of the practical things, such as getting you where you need to be when you need to be there. And Martin will lock the doors at night and turn off all the lights you left on and if the dog starts puking at 4 A.M., it’ll be Martin who gets up to let him out. A noise downstairs that wakes you up? Why, just send Martin down to take the bullet. Then call the cops.
I’ll say one thing about your letter about the bed-and-breakfast—at least you sounded cheerful there. At least you got off yourself and onto something else. You’ve been so self-obsessed lately, Nan, worrying about how you’re getting older and losing your looks—oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to say a word to me, I know all about it. I know too that you’re worrying about the wrong things. Instead of your thighs, worry about the fact that you’ve lost your sense of sexual self-assurance—to put it plainly, Nan, you’re no fun in bed anymore. Trying to cover things up. Not wanting the light on. No interest in trying anything new, or doing any of the wilder things we used to do with some frequency. When will you women understand that what turns men on isn’t what you think? Sure, I look at the beautiful girls who walk past our tables when we’re having dinner out. But not as much as you do, Nan! And don’t you know that I’d take a lusty, happy, overweight fifty-year-old woman over one of those skinny, miserable, navel-gazing twenty-year-olds anytime? I don’t know if all men are like this but I think most of them are: what we want is someone who likes herself, who finds herself attractive. It gives us ideas. Makes us think maybe we ought to like her and find her attractive, too. A woman who knows how to find the music, Nan, that’s what we like. You don’t seem to find the music anymore. You seem to spend your days standing at the window. At least that’s what you were doing before you left. Maybe you’re better now.
I wonder if
Phone just rang. Marion Kirshner. You know, the divorcée who moved in a few doors down a couple of months ago. Always out in her garden half naked. She was wondering if you’re home yet—she’d heard from our neighbors that you were on vacation, that’s what I told them. Nope, I said, she’s not home yet. Well, she said, how about dinner tonight? I said fine. I said we’ll go on over to Roger’s and have him burn us a couple of steaks and we’ll knock back a couple of martinis. Do I say this to make you jealous? Why, yes, I do, Nan. I don’t have any intention of doing anything but dinner. No interest, to tell you the truth. For one thing, that woman puts on makeup with a trowel. But you should know that on the open market, I wouldn’t last long. And what better thing to drink a toast to, won’t you excuse me.
Finished the bottle with that one. Hadn’t realized we were so short. Guess you’ve been the one to keep us supplied in liquor, too. Yesterday I ran out of toilet paper at a most inconvenient moment. Looked in the drawer for the extra roll and nada. Shit! I said. And then had to laugh, of course. Sat there awhile and thought about the fact that it’s been nice to have things there. That I may fix everything that breaks, including things that you should know how to do, it’s just obvious, for Christ’s sake, but you do keep the house well supplied. There is not a goddamn thing to eat here now.
Well, you say in this next letter that you passed a field and the cows standing there looked like chess pieces. I would have liked hearing that if I’d been with you, Nan. As I too like the taste of so many things we’ve eaten together, but I never say so because you always get there first. Oh, Martin! you say. Taste this! Taste it! Isn’t it good? And you’re so insistent, Nan, that the joy leaves for me. You make me feel contrary. You make me want to say, NO, okay? No, it is not so good. No, I do not taste it. I know, I know, I can hear you saying how hostile I am, how HOSTILE MEN ARE. You women say that all the time, and you’re always making fun of men. Just how do you think you’d react if men did that to you? If a man put a sticker on his bumper saying A man without a woman is like a fish without a bicycle, some woman lawyer would come along and sue him. Oh yes, Nan, when you’re on your little road trip I hope you give that one some thought, about how men have taken just as much bullshit as women have. If not more!
But anyway, the point I was trying to make about the tasting thing is I wish you would just let me have a chance to say something first. Let me be the one to say it first. Oh, Martin, lo
ok at that painting! Look at it! Oh Martin, listen to the violin, listen to it. It’s like you’re a culture Nazi. I see it, Nan, I hear it, I taste it, I fucking smell it, I just do not need to TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK about it!
Well, I’m sorry. But I needed to make that point. If you’d just let me go first, once in a while. Or if you could just stand quietly beside me, trusting that I do see things, if only in my own way. And what is wrong with that?
I’ll tell you something, Nan. Sometimes I want to say something to you about myself but I just don’t. Sometimes it’s because you’re usually talking, but sometimes it’s—well, I don’t know what. Maybe shyness. Maybe I’m ashamed that if I tell you, you’ll think I’m weak. But I had dreams just like you as a child. I had plans and adventures that were interesting, too. Like what, Martin? I can hear you saying. Well, like this.
When I was eight, there was some newspaper article speculating about where the winter Olympics would be held. And I thought—I don’t know why, but I thought, well, how about I invite them to use my backyard? The idea just grew and grew. I thought about it every night before bed. I wanted all the details to be worked out before I wrote to the Olympics committee and offered my place. I figured I’d ask the neighbors to pull their cars into their driveways so as to leave room on the street for parking. The ski jump could be off the garage roof. I worried about there being enough snow, so I was going to also ask the neighbors if I could shovel their walks and driveways and then use their snow. I saw a picture of the queen of England on the front page of the paper and I thought maybe she might like to come, and I was going to invite her to have dinner with the family. But I wanted to make sure the little kids ate in the other room—no spilled milk or nose picking in front of Her Majesty. Every night I lay in my bed and thought about it and got myself so excited I couldn’t sleep. And when I was finally ready to send the invitation, it was announced where the Olympics would be held. And it was not my backyard, because I was too late in asking—that was my feeling, that if only I had asked in time.… And I went into my bedroom and lay on my bed and punched the pillow over and over. And then I went out to throw the baseball against the side of house, because things do not last with me like they do with you. You don’t get over things quickly, as I do. I wish you would, as long as we are being so honest here. I wish you would not hold on to anger the way you do. And also I wish the house would not be so crowded with crap, so that I could move. And I wish you would stop buying fat-free EVERYTHING. Eat a real hot dog once in a while, knock yourself out.