“Dolores?” His head was tilted, trying to catch her face, her attention. “Are you really all right?”
She peered up at him. It had been raining, she remembered, raining right inside the room.
“Elspeth was coming back,” she said in a thin little-girl voice.
He jumped up and crouched in front of her. He took her hands. “Dolores?”
“I’m hungry.”
He rose and went to the telephone. He said something into the telephone. She sat there, drooping, in her underpants. He brought her robe and helped her put it on. “You must be cold,” he said. Then he picked up the pillow and blanket and threw them on the bed.
“Victor,” she said uncertainly, and he turned immediately and came to her. She looked up at him, and he crouched down again, took her hands again. She took one away from him and stroked his face.
“You left me alone,” she said in the same little-girl voice. “You do it all the time.”
He bent his head and kissed her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said in his throat. “I’m really sorry.”
Somebody knocked on the door and Victor got up and let him in. It was a man with a rolling tray-table, lots of things on it, smell of coffee. The man went.
“Oh!” Dolores said, and jumped up. She sat on the bed, but Victor brought the chair over and told her to sit there. He sat on the bed. They opened the metal covers. There were eggs and sausage and broiled tomatoes and fried potatoes and coffee and toast and orange juice out of a can. Dolores ate like a starving woman. It was greasy, but she didn’t care. She had four cups of coffee. Then she sat back and sighed.
“Feeling better?” She nodded.
He handed her a cigarette and she took it. She breathed out and looked at him. “I was crazy last night, wasn’t I?”
“You were,” he spoke slowly, “distraught last night. You had, as far as I can tell, no lunch and no dinner, and you drank nearly a fifth of Scotch. You were angry with me, quite rightly. And you’d been talking about Anthony, and had stirred up old memories of distressing things.” He spoke very precisely.
He is giving me my cover story.
“No, I was crazy. Do you never go crazy? I don’t, usually. But sometimes, when I drink. That’s why I don’t drink. Still, I wasn’t really crazy. Maybe I acted crazy, but the things I was feeling weren’t crazy.”
“I know,” he said gloomily.
“I’m just like Anthony, you see,” she said, gazing sadly at her cigarette ash. “I live with ghosts.”
“Maybe we all do.”
“Do you know who I am?” she asked suddenly.
“Of course.”
“No, you don’t. You know somebody called Lorie. That isn’t me.”
He looked down.
“You were crying,” she recalled, dimly.
His face, as he raised it to her, was wrenched. She rose, and went to sit beside him on the bed, and pulled his face to her shoulder. He buried it there, clasped her, and sighed. They rocked for a while. Then he sat up.
“I understand … about mixing me with Anthony. And somebody else, I don’t know….”
“Marsh?”
“Maybe. Anyway, I understand.”
“Yes.” Dead voice.
“I’ll take you home. We’ll go home.”
“Yes.”
He got up and went to the telephone. He was talking to people over the telephone, he was saying sorry, sorry, sorry.
Back at Oxford, Victor opened the windows a bit to get the stale smell out, then turned on the electric fire. He sat her on the couch with her feet up, tucked a blanket around her, went into the kitchen and came back with a cup of tea for her.
Dolores thought: Mommy. It was nice to have a mommy. Everybody needed a mommy, once in a while.
Yes, that’s what he’d been doing, she finally worked it out, canceling all the day’s appointments in Manchester. Because of her. Because she was crazy.
She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to take his hand when he brought her the tea, wanted to say, Oh, I’m sorry, Victor, sorry for putting you through all that when it wasn’t your fault, no it wasn’t.
But then you did turn me into an appurtenance. And all those other things, the hiding me away, all the little angers I’d stashed away and tried to forget. When you said that and then you didn’t and you did do this and I decided to forget. Yes.
Yes, but you’re not to blame for my whole rotten fucking life.
But she couldn’t say it. She was too embarrassed.
He came and sat on the couch beside her, he turned her face, he made her look at him. “I’m going to the market. There’s no food in the house. You sit here and rest, okay?”
She nodded. She heard the door close behind him.
The house was very still.
It came to her that his face was scarred, covered with scratches. Her scratches. She had torn his face to shreds.
No. She had killed Anthony.
Yes, that’s what she’d done. He was dead, he was lying on the front seat of her car, dead, and Elspeth was sniffing. His spirit wouldn’t forgive either. He paced the corridors of her mind, asking her why, why. “I loved you so much,” he wept. “You never loved me the way I loved you.” He never hated her, he said. He was never angry with her, he said. He said he loved the children: how could she doubt that?
She tried to shut him in his room, but he kept wedging his foot in the door, he was so big, she couldn’t close the door. He got out, he stormed into the living room. His eyes were great dark holes, devouring her, trying to kill her. His face was purple and his mouth was open, it was a dark saucer, open and letting out noise like an air raid siren. She tried to get away, she tried to run out the front door, but he was after her in an instant, he pulled her back, he left black-and-blue marks on her arm, he smashed her against the wall and her earring flew off and scudded across the room and she never found it again until they were moving and the room was emptied of furniture. And she said I’m leaving, I’m leaving, you can’t stop me, and she ran into the kitchen and got a knife and brandished it at him, and he stood there and looked at her and he was laughing, laughing, he was laughing so hard the tears came into his eyes, and she threw the knife against the wall, and she stalked off and he came after her, he put his arm around her, he said Honey.
She wouldn’t have stabbed him, of course, but she wanted at least the respect of fear. He laughed. How can you threaten someone who laughs at you?
Still, in the end, I killed him. That’s what Elspeth thought. She said so. Just once.
Dolores put her head back against the pillow, her throat was aching again, she waited for the knife, for the throat slit. Do it, do it.
The door slammed, Victor was back. He was in the hall, hanging up his coat, he was in the kitchen, putting down the parcels. She was afraid to see him. He opened the door and came into the sitting room. She would not look at him.
“Are you all right?”
She averted her face. “Did I scratch you very badly?”
“Scratch me?”
He came closer, into the circle of the lamp. “When?”
“Last night.”
He sat down beside her. “You didn’t scratch me, darling.”
She turned her head then and looked at him. No, he wasn’t scratched. But she could see the marks plainly when he was across the room, in the shadows.
His eyes were burning into her. Like Anthony’s, when he was jealous, sitting across a room full of people, staring at her, she could feel him through the back of her head, and she’d turn and he was glaring, worse than glaring, eyes burning with hate.
Like Elspeth, later.
Was she so terrible? What did she do to make them feel this way?
“Am I so terrible?”
He held her against him, her head on his shoulder, her cheek against his. “Oh, you’re terrible. As terrible as any of us, all of us. Oh, darling, Dolores, there’s no justice, there’s only love.”
2
THAT
NIGHT HE SIMPLY held her. She was exhausted, she was grateful for the warm smooth body against her own, the feel of his arms holding her, they weren’t imprisoning her, no, you could always tell the difference. Dinner party at the institute, Edmund Low’s hand on his wife’s knee, and she sat there calmly, Naomi, her own hands folded quietly in her lap. Beautiful Naomi, calm, placid. She had contempt for him, you could feel it, it pervaded the air around her when he was near, but he didn’t feel it. His soft pudgy banker’s right hand lay on her knee and it was a shackle. Yes. She sat there, accepting it, her shackle. Why? Her hands rested quietly in her lap, shackled in diamonds.
Everything was a matter of power, Victor said.
But now he was saying love. And he was holding her with love, holding her for her sake, holding her for his sake, holding her out of love, not out of possession. You could tell the difference, even across a room, even on the street, watching the young men’s owning hands clamped on their women’s shoulders. Did the women think that was love? Anthony’s arm on her back at parties: light enough, but a clear message. No one would ask her to dance. Never touched her when they were alone.
Victor and she were breathing in rhythm. He was caressing her body, running his hand gently down her sides, her thighs, her buttocks, over her breasts, and she had her arms around him, and after a time she began to caress him, his thighs, his sides, his buttocks, his breasts, he felt good—smooth and cool and silvery. Oh, it was smooth and easy, they were together, they comforted the body for what could not be comforted in the mind, and it was all right, it helped.
Maybe it was possible to give up control, once in a while. Maybe one could give up control and the world wouldn’t fall apart. All those years of staying in control (because disasters occurred when she didn’t) when Anthony went off into a crazy rage, all those years of holding together when Elspeth, when Poppa, when Marsh said the most beautiful name in the world, when yes, but here she’d gone and done it, for the first time, really, in her life, had given up control and acted like a madwoman. And nothing so terrible had happened. Here she was, in her bed. And here was Victor, stroking her, easing her, loving her.
Trust was what it was. Yes, to be able to go to sleep in his arms and know he would still be there in the morning, that he would not try to kill you in your sleep, and that, in the morning, he would not look at you as if you had baggy eyes and bad breath (even though you did) and therefore were no longer desirable. The way Phil did, looking at her in the morning as if he had suddenly discovered she was an old hag. Reverse of the fairy tale: go to bed with the princess and wake up with the frog. Frogess?
She let herself down into it gradually, a warm tub. Down into it she settled, oh, delicious, warm and lapping and smelling of fresh herbs and sandalwood, all around her body the caress, the soft warm water, buoyant. She leaned in it, she turned in it, turned over and over as she did in the surf, the act of turning a joy, moving in water, with water, against water. She was swimming straight now, the list had disappeared. The water receded, proceeded. It wrapped around her, it enclosed her, it embraced her. She shot up, her head above the wave, then sank in it, surrendered to it. She floated for a moment, she drifted, then a kick of her legs sent her bounding off again. Joy, in the movement, in the power of her legs, in the feel of the water surrendering to her force.
She floated out to sea with Victor in a peace and surrender she hadn’t felt before, not this completely anyway, as if her body had finally found itself, found the place where things meet, where they make sense, where you don’t have to think anymore. Like finding the position, so hard for her to learn, that the body must sink into if one is to ski downhill. Bent at the knees, relaxed; bent at the knees, but not kneeling. Then go: the snow ruffles hair, face, jacket, snow flies up behind the skis, wind against, wind with, body against it, body with it, all at once, the mountainside whizzing past, a valley of delights, oh, last longer, last longer!
Longer and longer it lasted, and she realized they were making love after all. It was fine, it was what she wanted now, downhill faster and faster, the sky whizzing by, the water lapped her, she flew, she turned.
And then, suddenly, before she was ready, he was on her, he was in her, he was like a pole, she panicked. No, no, no! Don’t! Not yet! Her speed broken harshly, she cried out in pain. Hard he was, and fast, angry fucking, she didn’t like it, she cried to him to slow down. He tried. He slowed a little, but then speeded up again in moments, speeded up suddenly, harshly, ferociously, he was plunging into her, over and over, as if she were an enemy, as if his penis were a hand digging fiercely in foreign soil for a root to eat, for desperately needed food food food. He came in a spasm, he cried out in agony, he fell against her shoulder, his face wet.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cried.
Sorry. He’d been saying that all day. That was the trouble. You can’t say sorry all day without finding some way to get even. He had to hurt her, because she’d hurt him. Couldn’t forbear. Had to possess, get back his edge, to reassure himself.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and tried to caress her, tried to use his hand to start her up again. But she turned away. “No,” she said.
3
ONLY WITH A GOD, she thought, next morning, carrying her coffee into the sitting room and curling up in the rocker near the window. She had wakened before him. It was a dim pearly day, no sun visible, but the slate roofs opposite glistened as if they were wet with light. And considering the gods they’ve offered us over the past couple of millennia, not even then.
Her vagina was sore.
Yes, it was a lovely fix: you must trust lest you turn into petrified bone, but you cannot trust. Never.
Was it women and men, or was it all people?
It was clearly about power, Victor was right about that part at least.
She got up for more coffee, emptied the pot, thought of making more, then didn’t. Let him make his own.
He did, an hour later; she heard him moving around in the kitchen, heard the clunk of the electric kettle being set down, smelled fresh brew. He came to the door of the sitting room. “Would you like more coffee?”
She nodded, and rose, went into the kitchen with him, and he poured it for her. He followed her into the sitting room, wearing his Viyella robe. They did not speak.
“Mad?”
She looked at him soberly. “What a way to get even. Why didn’t you yell, I’d have preferred it. I’d even have preferred a little violence to that. At least then I could hit back.”
He bent forward, lighted a cigarette, looked at the floor. “You know I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t control it, Dolores.”
She sighed. “I guess.”
“I am sorry.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that. I feel that every time you say you’re sorry, I have to pay something.”
He half-smiled ironically. “I imagine you’re right.” He sat hunched over the coffee table, drinking coffee, smoking, gazing at the floor.
She got up and went to him, sat on the couch beside him, touched his shoulder. “Look, Victor, I’m not that angry.”
He suffered her touch. “Yeah.”
“What is it? You act as if you’re angry with me.”
He lifted his head, sighed, leaned back against the sofa, losing her hand as he moved. She replaced it in her lap. She watched him.
“I don’t know,” he sighed, “everything seems wrong, suddenly.”
Her heart stopped. Her mad scene had done damage.
“I seem wrong,” he concluded, miserably.
Her eyes spurted to life. “Have you ever seemed wrong—to yourself—before?”
“Once. Just once. But it was a long once. Or no, maybe twice.”
“Want to tell me?”
“No. Yes. Both.” He never looked at her. She rose and went into the kitchen. She made more coffee, some toast, and brought it out on a tray, with butter and cheese, and set it down on the coffee table before him. He was still smoking.
“Preparing for a long siege, huh?” he said, giving her his first full smile of the day.
“I think you’ve earned one,” she smiled back, smeared cheese on toast, and returned to her rocker.
He buttered some toast, poured fresh coffee into his cup, lighted another cigarette. “The thing is, I don’t know how I ended as I did. I don’t think I started that way. It’s as though I was meant to live on a branch line, but someplace or other got switched to the main line, and have been happily blindly shuttling between New York and Washington ever since. And not remembering….”
He spoke with his eyes firmly fixed on a dark spot across the wall, never looking at her.
“I remember being fifteen or sixteen. I remember one day in particular, it was in the summer after my sophomore year of high school….”
Long, thin, too thin, everybody said. Aunt Gladys laughed when he tripped—as he invariably did—on the little step up to her porch, and came flying through the porch door headfirst, arms outstretched.
“A skeleton with wings!” she’d announce, and laugh, and so would everybody else. After a while, he laughed too. It was better than blushing.
His long, thin, too thin body sprawled in the hammock, legs dangling out. Around him were the green hills of Ohio, overlooking a valley. Green for miles. Beautiful day, baby-blue sky of the Middle West, puff-ball clouds, warm sun, shady tree, green grass, garden in bloom. He lay there trying to think of one good thing. He couldn’t. He hated this book, it was ridiculous. The ice in his lemonade was all melted. And then he felt a tingling on his chin, oh, no, oh, no, and put his finger up and it was, shit! it was a whole cluster.
“Don’t pick at them, it only makes them worse,” Mother said.
How could things be any worse? Everything was against him. The book slid from his lap and fell to the grass, knocking over the lemonade, which then trickled into the pages of the book. Shit! But he let it lie. Shitty book, anyway. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Giant bestriding the world, winning battles with his own sword, not with bombs and airplanes and tanks, but with his own hand and arm, his own sword. He’d go on forced marches, days and days of marching, sleeping on the ground. When there was no water, he could drink horses’ urine. He was the greatest soldier in the world, like Alexander in his time. The way Nelson had been the greatest sailor in the world. These people were real, not fake, like Superman or Batman. No one had made them up. People like this had really lived on the earth once. And women fell madly in love with them, Cleopatra, Emma Hamilton, the great beauties, they loved these heroes, they lived for them.