I phoned the hotel every half-hour for five hours. Just as well she didn’t answer. I needed arguments to preserve my future defined in the terms I’d defined it the night before. I couldn’t give up that forward-looking vision, so couldn’t give her up. Strangled bellows of rage, little sounds of hurt and grief and prostrated silence were no arguments. Something had to be salvaged from this.
I took a sheet of paper and started listing the points to be made, trying not to let a deadly insight focus. Why this act of treachery? I scrawled. Act of sabotage. Like smashing rudder of ship. Crippled ship could stay afloat in fair weather but weather was cyclic too. When it blew foul, ship would sink. I would sink, go down and down. Black abyss. Help. Help. Return and rock my head instead of this betrayal. Betraying me that crazy way: revelation of our basic incompatibility. Oh no, Beth, not incompatibility, cross that out. But betrayal, yes. Had flagrantly violated tacit contract that exists between all couples.
Suppose she asked about the terms of our contract? I put the pencil down and pondered. That my craziness took precedence over hers, that I was fundamentally the nursed, not the nurse? No, no. But it was true I’d been dependent on her to pull me out of the quagmire of time past. Help. Help.
Help? The deadly insight focused now. She too was caught in those same slow sands to the quivering nostrils, in her own selfish past with no reference to mine. We were sinking together, side by side but light-years apart, unable to help each other. But anyhow: help, help.
It began to take shape, sheet after sheet, structured with roman numerals, capital letters, small-case letters, numbers. Scribbling away I almost forgot my woe in the semi-creative act of accurately outlining it on paper. My despair and rage were finally laid out like a classical French garden. I reached for the phone. I’d have to be careful not to monopolize things, not to read the seven sheets like a lecture, punctuated by, “You’re listening?” “You’re not dozing off this time?” I dialed and dialed.
Finally at about 3:30 am, my time zone, she answered. I glanced at the first sheet, rejected the violent introduction, chose the quiet one. I said quietly:
“How come you’re in that hotel, Beth? I know it’s a long story and it’s late but I’d like to hear it anyhow.”
She didn’t know where she was and who I was, barely who she was. I identified myself and repeated the question, a little less quietly. A long pause.
“Oh, that. No reason to wake me up for that. Terrible story. Don’t even like to think of it, much less talk about it. All right, if you insist. I can’t stay at Martha’s because of Larry. My brother-in-law. Knew each other before he met Martha. Used to be in love with me. Not love really, something awfully … carnal, animal almost. Didn’t like the idea of staying in the house alone with him. Then I thought, okay, with Martha in the hospital, my own sister, for heaven’s sake, no danger. But he started in as soon as we got back from the hospital. Brutal. Can’t tell you what he asked me to do.”
Even my arm was aghast at that. It sank. At thigh-level her voice continued, tiny. I hung up. She rang back. “We were cut off,” she said. She went back slandering her brother-in-law. “So that’s why I’m in a hotel,” she concluded. I glanced at the script: II A, the three alternatives: a, b, c. I chose c, again something quiet.
“A wise move. But why pick a hotel in LA? Don’t you find commuting five hundred miles every day to the hospital in Phoenix a little wearing?”
I departed from quiet irony, yelling: “Your goddam values. How can you lie like that? I can’t stand crazy women who lie, who betray trust, who practice deliberate sabotage on loved ones. Where’s sincerity in that? Where the hell is compassion? Never mind me. Forget about me. How about your sister, though? She rang up and told me she was in perfect health this year. What a thing to wish on your own flesh and blood. Your murderous fantasies. And poor Larry. Those sex fantasies of yours. All in the head. And me, for Christ’s sake, how about me? Look, stop this bullshit. I saw the leaflet in that phony 18th century jewel box of yours where you put the Valium. So I know there’s a monster one-week meeting of the Golden Galaxy lunatics tomorrow in LA and I can guess you hope your ex-husband’ll be there and there’ll be a big reconciliation and you’ll drop me and he’ll drop the twenty-year-old girl for you. For God’s sake you’re forty, going on fifty. Sixty isn’t that far off, believe me. He’ll never come back, get out of the past.”
Of course tears and sobs at that. I pictured her mouth square with grief.
“Come back,” I commanded. “I want you here by tomorrow evening.”
“I … I can’t do that. Not yet. This is the last time, Jerry, I swear it is. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able to. I won’t go to Martha’s this year, she’s fine, thank God. You’re right, you’re so right about that, Jerry. How could I have said such awful things about my own sister? Like wishing it on her. I love Martha so much. Larry almost tried to kiss me once, that’s true, but he never … I was possessed that day. It happened all of a sudden when I saw that leaflet, like that time in the subway. I never told you this, but I spent that whole day taking line after line, IRT BMT Bronx and Manhattan and Queens looking in the cars, getting off and on, on and off, looking for him until way into the night and dangerous. And knowing it was crazy all the time I was doing it but going on doing it anyhow. And it happened lots of times, once in the middle of a Wall Street crowd, two months ago. But this is the last time, Jerry, I swear it is. This time I’ll get it out of my system.”
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. As soon as I’m able to.”
“You don’t know when you’ll be back. But I know when I’ll be gone. Don’t be alarmed. Stop crying. I won’t betray the trust you placed in me. I’ll go on watering your hydrangeas twice a day and feeding your goldfish till June sixth. That’s in a week. You’d better be back by June sixth if you care more for your plants and your fish than you do for your sister and me. I’m not staying in Forest Hill any more. How did I ever get involved with you grotesques anyhow? I have a better place to go to. I saw us both there but I can do it on my own, don’t think I can’t.”
A lie. A lie.
Suddenly I broke off in total departure from script and joined her. Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, from both ends of the wire 3000 miles apart. Oh Beth. I can’t do it without you. I don’t want to be alone again, Beth. O Jerry, Jerry, my darling, forgive me.
It went on for some time. Finally she promised she’d be back in a week, never, never again, out of her system this time, and we’d leave for the seaside together as planned. It was badly damaged but I’d salvaged something of the dream.
After I hung up I realized she’d still been thinking of Maine. She’d been dozing when I’d talked about the permanent house for the two of us. I almost rang back but knew I wouldn’t be able to summon the lyrical impulse for the sales pitch. It was better this way. The surprise would be total for her when we got into the car and started heading south instead of north.
Who wants to remember what followed? What lesson can be drawn from that? For what future?
I fell asleep in the armchair. Sunshine pouring through the window woke me up. I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon clearing up the enraged mess I’d made the day before. I examined all the rooms critically. The house was exactly as she’d entrusted it to me two days before. Impeccable. I fed Oscar, watered the plants. Then I went over to Harvey’s.
But who wants to remember that? Who wants to remember what followed?
O Lord for Thee I yearn.
Through the jungle tangle of wires I reach out for Thee.
The spirit hath fled the temple, an empty shell labeled $8.99.
But the hosts of Lord are numberless. Let me reach for reinforcements beneath the console to combat the pain of lucidity. Ah, thy pale blood fills my mouth, thrice, activates ulcers or worse.
More. More.
Perhaps now, at the price of this terrible bowel pain, better though than the other, I’ll be armed to r
eview what followed.
Behold him tiny down there, jigging about. Some of it must be good for laughs.
***