When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  —Do you remember how I used to get? she said now.

  —How you used to get? You mean, upset? When you and Virginia—

  He wasn’t sure he was allowed to speak of it. Sometimes, even now, she’d panic as she had at the cabin, but she never referred to these episodes later.

  —When we met, she said.

  —I remember.

  —Well. That’s the kind of thing I’d think about. You know.

  —What kind of thing? He didn’t know what she meant.

  She sighed, putting her compact and lipstick into her purse, closing the clasp with unnecessary attention.

  —That’s what I used to think about. I didn’t know how to stop. People killing other people. Not like wars, but just like this. Deciding to kill people and doing it. Maybe smiling.

  He put down his cheese danish. What made you think things like that?

  —How should I know? Maybe I read something when I was a kid, heard something. Scary stories. Most kids laugh.

  He had so many questions he couldn’t speak. He wanted to know what her thoughts were like, why she couldn’t stop, how it was for her—for a woman—to have these thoughts.

  —So I know it’s true, she said. People can do that. Hitler—he’s not like one of the bad guys we have around here, you know?

  —No.

  What did he want to say? He had to say something large and loud to Myra Thorsten, but they were in the third booth of a crowded luncheonette, with people at the counter, people walking by. He had half a cup of coffee left and part of his danish. His fingers were sticky. Will you marry me, Myra? he said.

  —You mean that? She had reached for her bag again, and she held it in front of her like a shield, or as if she displayed it.

  He didn’t know if he meant it. They’d known each other for more than six years. He kept returning to Myra. He loved taking her to bed, but just as much, he loved waking up, late on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, to discover she was gone, and he was free to think of other women, other people, other topics. His parents were baffled that he’d know a woman as American as Myra.

  They left the coffee shop and walked holding hands, his sticky hand in hers. They scream at me all the time for seeing you, she said.

  —Who screams?

  —My mother, my sister. My father doesn’t know I sleep with you. He’d kill you.

  —Really?

  —He might. Or he might kill me.

  —They don’t trust me?

  —They say you’ll never marry me.

  Harold had often thought that he would never marry Myra, but it was new to consider himself a potential villain for that reason. The idea pleased him, but he was offended, though they had guessed right about his intentions. Of course, he never intended the drama of abandonment they apparently believed possible of him—and now he couldn’t say just what he had thought would happen. Myra would get tired of him and disappear—that must have been it.

  —They don’t care that I’m Jewish?

  —They figure you’ll make money.

  Instead, weeks after their wedding, early in 1943—it seemed to happen immediately, as if a dress, a dinner, bridesmaids (Myra’s two cousins, including the one who had spoken to Harold at the party) had been lined up waiting—Harold lost his job. He couldn’t find steady work as a reporter. If he hadn’t been married, he’d have gone to graduate school at last and become an English professor, making a scanty living writing reviews and freelance stories, but now he finally took the exam to become a teacher. Meanwhile, they lived mostly on Myra’s earnings. When they married, he’d given up his apartment (he didn’t know what Artie did with the cameras and tripod, when at last he had to insist they go) and moved in with Myra, whose place in the West Village was slightly bigger. But now they couldn’t afford even that. On a tip from somebody, Artie found them an apartment near his own in East New York. Artie, with his years of marriage, his children—Evelyn had given birth to another girl, Carol—seemed older, though he’d always look boyish compared to Harold.

  —We can play tennis again, he told Harold. I’ll show you a thing or two. Suddenly Harold was living a mile from the neighborhood he’d grown up in, teaching in a nearby high school not very different from the one he’d attended. He’d attempted to flee into Manhattan—into adulthood—and had been captured and returned.

  3

  On a Saturday afternoon, Artie stayed home with Brenda, who was taking a nap, while Evelyn took Carol along in the baby carriage to the grocery store. It was spring 1944, and when Brenda woke up, Evelyn instructed Artie, he should take her outside. Evelyn’s hair was pulled back with barrettes, and her eyes looked large and weary. He maneuvered the carriage down from their second-floor apartment while she carried Carol. When he heard Brenda talking to herself a little while later, he went into the children’s room and found her sitting up, frowning deeply. She put up her hands to be lifted, and he took in her urinous baby smell. She was trained but often wet the bed. He changed her and gave her a snack, but he wasn’t wearing his shoes and didn’t feel like the major nuisance of getting himself and Brenda out the door, so he decided to teach her to play golf, showing her how to use her push toy to knock small toys into a box he placed on its side in the kitchen doorway. Brenda was entranced. She shoved things with the push toy, yelled I win, I win, and ran back and forth, becoming wilder. Artie found her delectable, with her disorderly light brown hair flying, her clothes hanging out, her voice loud. She had a bellow and she indulged in it now. They ran together. When she fell, he picked her up and pretended to eat any part of her that might have been injured, each limb, her neck, her ears. He set her down again. He was tired, and now it seemed that Evelyn should come home, but not much time had gone by.

  —All right, you play now, and I’ll watch you, he said, and lay down on the couch with his book.

  Soon Brenda began to scream in a different way, more frantically, with abandon. At first, Artie put down his book and watched her, taking even more pleasure. But then she picked things up and threw them—first a magazine, then some mail, then the book he’d been reading. She hurled the book, then dove after it, and tore the page that came to her hand, holding up the torn piece of paper and laughing.

  —Wait a minute! Artie shouted. What’s the matter with you? He was screaming as if she were an adult. Why are you tearing my book? Do I tear your books? Brenda started shrieking, and he turned away disgustedly, half intending to find one of her books and tear it, to show her how much she wouldn’t like that. He picked her up roughly. She was wet with tears and needed to be changed again, because he’d forgotten to take her to the toilet, and her shoes were untied. She did not stop screaming. What, are you stupid or something? he said. What do you think will happen, you do things like that? He smacked her backside.

  A moment later, Evelyn came in carrying Carol. What’s going on? she said. The people downstairs complained about the noise. What is wrong with you? What did you do to her? She picked up Brenda and held both children, and now Carol began to cry.

  —Your back will hurt, he said, but she carried both girls into the bedroom. She’d left the carriage and groceries downstairs, so he went down and lugged them up, and then he put the perishables in the refrigerator, but he was too angry—with all of them—to put the rest away, so he waited resentfully in the living room until she came through alone, on her way to get a bottle for Carol.

  —Maybe you want to call the cops on me, he said then. Maybe you think I’m dangerous! Send me to prison. It’ll make a good story in the paper. Give the downstairs people a little more to think about. He picked up the cheap camera he used these days for snapshots and walked out of the house. How he missed developing pictures—the smells, the suspense, the strange surprises. He’d sold all that equipment without saying anything to Evelyn.

  Home was not easy, but in the classroom the unexpected only inspired Artie. The riskier the better. He could not discipline his seventh- and eighth-grade social studies students because
they knew he was amused by bad behavior. Eventually, though, he’d lose his temper. Once, he kicked his metal wastebasket around the room, scattering papers and causing a terrible banging, scaring the children. They quieted down, and the look in the girls’ eyes made him uncomfortable. But when he told them that maybe their teacher was dangerous and they should call the cops, they laughed, unlike Evelyn, who didn’t speak to him all day after he said that. The children liked his whistling and his games. Artie devised games to teach everything, managing to use his outdated maps to let them see how badly the Allies were doing in the war, then how things began to improve. Children would play General Eisenhower and Winston Churchill deciding what to do, and once he chose someone to play Hitler, but the boy refused and Artie didn’t push it. He never concealed his own opinions except as a trick. But he encouraged the children to disagree with him and held debates that got louder and louder, until the bell rang and the kids said they had to go to math, while Artie wanted to keep arguing.

  4

  Harold came home one evening, late in 1944 when Myra was a few months pregnant—he had found time despite teaching to write a book review, and he’d just turned it in—to find Gus Maloney in his living room. He hadn’t seen Gus since long before the war. Harold had known him as a newspaperman, but Gus had left his paper to work in a family business not long after Harold and Artie borrowed his cabin in the Adirondacks. When Myra, now and then, mentioned Gus, it was with irritation, possibly fond irritation.

  —Gus has no sense of direction, she said once, when they were looking for an unfamiliar place.

  Another time she said, Gus doesn’t eat chicken. Have you ever heard of someone who doesn’t eat chicken? They were eating chicken—or, Harold was eating chicken. Myra was rarely observed to eat. Her remarks made it seem as if Gus might be waiting just outside the room, and indeed, now he had come in. He sprang to his feet to shake Harold’s hand and give him a slap on the arm that made him think Gus had been in the war. He stumbled slightly as he sat down again, and it turned out he’d served in the Pacific, had been wounded and discharged. His arms and legs were long, and he seemed ready to spring up again, despite the limp, to do what Harold couldn’t. Harold became intensely conscious that Myra and Gus were a couple of goys while he was a Jew, as if they’d have ways of deceiving him he couldn’t begin to imagine. Gus was lanky, craggy-faced, older than Myra and Harold, with graying hair he flung off his forehead with a careless gesture.

  —We were talking about the cabin, Myra said.

  —You still own it? Harold said, remembering the silence and the smell of the woods. It was several years since he and Myra had been there, and again it had seemed unreachable, maybe because Myra didn’t mention it and Harold, always wondering about Gus, couldn’t.

  —More than ever, Gus said. It’s mine since my father died. I have some plans for it, and I thought it might hold a sentimental value for you too. He cleared his throat. Since I take it that you met there.

  Harold didn’t answer. He was taking off his hat and coat. Gus kept talking. For what he called a pittance, Harold and Myra could become part owners of the cabin. With some money, Gus could enlarge it and put in a bathroom.

  —Nobody can go there often, Gus said with a broad gesture. There’s no point in just one family owning it.

  —We don’t have a car, Harold said. What Gus was proposing would put him permanently into their lives, but they’d also have the cabin.

  —The bus goes pretty close now, Gus said quickly, while Myra said, You know my father would let us use his car.

  Harold hung up his coat, leaving his hat on a chair, and considered coffee or whiskey. Myra had offered nothing. She was deep in their most comfortable chair, her legs drawn under her, looking sleepy. She disliked pregnancy.

  Harold said, What does your wife think about asking us into this deal? He lit a cigarette, then became uneasy—Myra said smoke nauseated her—and stubbed it out.

  —My wife? Gus said. She thinks it’s a good idea.

  Pouring drinks, Harold kept his back to Gus. Well, we don’t have any money, he said. We can’t consider it. He found himself angry that he couldn’t own the cabin or some of it, while he was simultaneously angry with Gus for making the proposal. He’d always been suspicious of Gus and now found himself wondering whether Myra’s child was his own. But he loved the cabin.

  —Not for me, she was saying. He handed a glass to Gus and took one. Myra said, Maybe my parents would put in some money. It would be nice for the baby. She spoke, as she occasionally did, in a slight falsetto, and when she did, there was trouble. When they were alone, she’d tell him four or five things he already should have done that he’d never thought of—bought her a present or told her not to wear something she had decided was unbecoming. She’d become more and more outraged, then would weep for hours, no matter what he did.

  Maybe her parents already knew the whole scheme. We’ll talk about it, he said. What did I hear about you, Gus? You’re in business?

  —Funerals, said Gus.

  Harold needed to go outside and walk. Funerals! He wondered how long it would take to walk all the way to the reservoir in Highland Park. It was a bleak spot, an enormous angular stone bowl of dark water with a fence and a treeless cobblestone path around it. From it one could see distances. Gulls flew from Jamaica Bay to the reservoir, if rain threatened, and settled on the water. Harold got up, hitching his trousers self-consciously, and stood near the chair on which he’d dropped his hat. Out of the corner of his eye, Myra, in her dark green robe, had grown sharper, more alert. Why was she entertaining a visitor in her bathrobe? Well, since her pregnancy, she often worked all day in it, making drawings in bed of models and clothes she’d seen only once—clothes that wouldn’t fit her now. Once a week she’d dress in stylish maternity clothes and take her portfolio into the city.

  Sometimes, after she’d criticized him, Myra cried and said, I know I’m impossible. I don’t want to be impossible! Harold, don’t let me be impossible! He’d take her in his arms, soothe her, talk to her in nonsense syllables, offer to open a can of soup, but she’d shake her head. The chair with his hat was as far away from her as he could go.

  5

  When Harold heard that President Roosevelt had died, in April 1945, he surprised himself by crying, though he’d often quarreled—sometimes out loud, in one-sided arguments—with Roosevelt. He had turned on a radio and was caught by surprise. It was another shock, after the shock of seeing the films of concentration camp survivors a few weeks before. Myra came running with the baby when she realized that Roosevelt was dead—with their long, skinny son, their floppy baby, whom people tended to hold horizontally, so he seemed less organized than the usual compact infant squashed comfortably against an adult shoulder. She’d insisted on calling him Nelson, a name that sounded pretentious to Harold. Now she was speechless, then distracted, saying they had to go see her parents, who had never been enthusiastic about Roosevelt. She went to get dressed, scattering hairpins, then changed her mind. They stayed home, and she squeezed against Harold on the sofa. Nothing is the same, Myra said.

  Evelyn Saltzman was devastated, weeping over her daughters and then handing Carol to Artie so she could cry in private, which meant in the bathroom. Artie was upset too but didn’t say much. He distracted Brenda from the sound of Evelyn’s sobs by carrying her around the house on his shoulders, neighing and clutching her feet, trotting and even galloping, though she was afraid and after a while begged him to stop. But Artie neighed louder and ran faster, not wanting to think too hard about the ways in which time had passed, the man who seemed as if he’d be president forever was dead, and Artie himself had turned into an adult, despite everything. He felt sure he must be a boy still, but there was so much evidence to the contrary, more every day.

  Chapter 4

  When We Argued All Night

  1951–1952

  Beatrice London, Harold said, swinging his arms as he walked, when Artie couldn’t guess who of all p
eople was teaching in Harold’s school. A jolt of irritation passed through Artie before he remembered who she was. The three kids ran ahead of them on the bumpy hexagonal paving stones of the paths at the Central Park Zoo: Brenda, sturdy and yet unsure, self-consciously pumping her arms, her thin curls tight against her head; Nelson, almost as tall as Carol, his feet flopping as if his ankles had no bones; Carol, who seemed like a different kind of kid because she was not awkward. Artie quickly, superstitiously, counted them, though Beatrice London was not a kidnapper or a dangerous zoo animal possibly out of its cage, just the grouch who had been his night school supervisor.

  Now she taught homemaking at the high school where Harold taught English. I recognized her name right away, he said. She’s pretty. I imagined a gnome, with her nose touching her chin.

  Nelson was afraid of the seals and couldn’t stay away from them, yet wherever the children led them, they came back to the seals—Artie was sure Nelson made this happen—and he would cry. Now his head was down and his nose dripped. Brenda kept walking, but Carol took his hand. One seal sat on an exposed shelf, another slithered out of their dirty pool. Sea lions, were they sea lions, not seals, and what was the difference? Artie could imagine being afraid. Not afraid that they’d hurt him, afraid of the way they flopped. Maybe Nelson feared turning into a seal.

  —Did she recognize your name? Artie didn’t remember speaking of Harold to Beatrice, but he might have. He had tried to make friends. Let’s buy them Cracker Jacks.

  —Cracker Jacks would spoil their lunch, Harold said. Artie thought he might buy Cracker Jacks anyway.