When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  Paul, at ten, was easier—blunt, critical, funny, not polite, but so confident it seemed his rudeness was not that of an impertinent child but of an adult caught in a child’s body, unfairly expected to suppress adult opinions. Harold needed to look away when Paul scoffed at Nelson, who was so much taller—a thin, rangy kid with hesitant gestures, looking down at Paul and then away when Paul spoke, rarely answering. Nelson was afraid of insects. He took hours—literally hours—to work up the nerve to walk into the water and get wet, yet he wouldn’t stop trying, standing all afternoon in water up to his ankles. Nelson liked small objects—toys when he was small, little trucks and plastic animals and things he found in the house: a cap of a lost pen, rubber bands, boxes that had held matches. The inside slid into the outside. Now his toys claimed to be functional, but he still fiddled with small objects: a souvenir key ring, combs and scissors that folded into themselves, in case you ever needed a comb or a scissors.

  One hot August morning that summer, Harold made his way down to the dock early, with his coffee and James’s The Golden Bowl. Eating in the cabin was easier these days, now that it had a real kitchen. Myra’s father, who liked to fish, had done most of the work himself. He and Gus seemed to be friends, and Harold wondered what they knew about Myra that he himself didn’t know. His father-in-law felt proprietary about the cabin, and Harold, who had contributed little money, couldn’t object to his plans. Now the old man had said he was going to cover the rough pine walls of the main room with what he always spoke of as decent paneling, as if the present boards, which Harold loved, were obscene. The old bedroom had become an open hallway that contained a rickety red table with a phone on it and had three doors. Two led to dark but cool bedrooms, the other to the bathroom.

  Harold’s father-in-law had bought the lots on either side of the house when a developer subdivided them, and Harold was grateful. Now ten or a dozen houses stood on the lake, fishermen used boats with outboard motors, and occasionally children played wild games in the evening, rowing into the lake and shouting. Once or twice, Paul joined them. But often the other houses were empty. This morning the lake was still, and he saw nobody. The evergreens that ringed the lake—he’d never found out just what kind of trees they were—were so dark their green was almost blue.

  Harold had explained the topic of his dissertation to Artie as What are Jews for in Henry James?

  —For? What are Jews ever for? Artie said cheerfully. Many people think Jews are no use at all. He’d had nothing to do with Harold for two years. Then he had phoned and suggested they meet to play tennis. Harold understood that he was supposed to act as if this was nothing special, and he immediately agreed. After a few weeks of tennis dates, Evelyn had suggested that the two of them take Paul and Carol—who were still willing to go—to a museum or the zoo, and they went to the Hayden Planetarium. Walking to the subway that afternoon, Artie had asked, So what ridiculous topic did you pick to write about? and that was what led to his comment on the use of Jews. It was winter and the wind was blowing into their faces. Harold, who still wore a fedora, was clutching it. Artie was bareheaded.

  At the time, Harold had ignored what Artie said, but now he realized that the usefulness of Jews was exactly what he was writing about, though he didn’t think he could call his dissertation—or the book he was already imagining—What Is the Use of Jews?

  The Golden Bowl was one of several James novels in which lovers can’t afford to marry and do harm to naïve rich people so as to get money. He was fond of this pair, the Italian Prince Amerigo and the American Charlotte Stant. Without revealing that they are in love with each other or are even more than just acquaintances, the prince marries Charlotte’s best friend, an heiress, and later Charlotte marries this woman’s father. And then the old lovers must deal with constant proximity—they don’t plan to cheat. Harold, sitting on the dock with his feet in the water, opened The Golden Bowl to the page where Charlotte and the prince have a moment alone, and Harold found words he loved: they could breathe so near to each other that the interval was almost engulfed in it and the intensity both of the union and the caution became a workable substitute for contact.

  The Golden Bowl was a green book, most definitely. He looked up at the lake. Once, he and Naomi had met by chance in the street. They spoke without touching, and then she turned her head in the direction she was going. A few hairs that had come loose from her ponytail curled against the back of her neck, and he raised his hand, which just grazed the side of her ear.

  But not touching—and not speaking and not knowing exactly what’s going on—can take characters only so far, and that was when Jews became useful in Henry James, if not in real life, or so it seemed to Harold. In the book, several Jewish characters—or people who look Jewish—take small actions that set the plot in motion. (James wrote of these Jews with faint distaste, and that horrified but fascinated Harold.) And when the young heiress outgrows her stupidity and finally figures out what’s going on, she learns about her friend and her husband’s past from a Jew, a dealer in antiques.

  Where would the plot be without Jews, and where would James be without Jewish biographers and critics? But would the Columbia English department, with its sole Jew, consider Harold’s question worth asking? He believed that in James, Jews were good for saying what nobody else would say, but then what, then what?

  The screen door behind him slammed. He turned his head, one finger in the book, to watch Myra step firmly in his direction. She carried two hardcover books with colorful jackets. Halfway to the lake, she detoured to loop onto her arm the back of her canvas chair, which she moved each night to a spot that got sun in the morning, so dew or rain would dry by the time she came out. She came more awkwardly after she picked up the chair, the faded yellow canvas slung on her left arm, the books held in her right. She wore a black bathing suit with a white terrycloth jacket, and her red hair, roots showing a little since she bothered to look her best only when she was working, fell in waves around her head. When the sun grew warmer, she’d return to the cabin for a big straw hat. She came to the edge of the water and put the books on the dock while she set up the chair. They were Lady Chatterley’s Lover—only recently legal—and Justine, the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet. She set up the chair, wiggling it to make sure the legs were evenly set into the ground. Then she retrieved her books and sat down. She didn’t open them, and Harold didn’t speak.

  Myra drummed the heels of her hands on Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as if imitating a fanfare, and laughed a little, perhaps at her gesture. Harold, she said, I’m in love with someone.

  4

  Brenda twisted her knee stepping from a train onto a subway platform on her way to work in 1961, the summer she was twenty and had just finished her sophomore year at Hunter College. She went down on all fours, a little too close to the edge of the platform, as the train moved out behind her, and a man reached to steady her. Careful, he said, supporting her arm with a firm hand as she stood. He was maybe in his thirties and wore a jacket and white shirt but no tie, and he somehow resembled her father’s friend Harold Abrams, though this man looked Chinese. It was the slope of his shoulders that recalled Harold, a combination of claiming quite a lot and modestly denying it, built into the shape of his body. She didn’t think this clearly until later.

  Brenda went to Hunter College because it was free. It felt like a continuation of high school with no men, but she liked having a reason to come into the city every day. She was majoring in math, but it was too hard. The summer job gave her a different reason to come into Manhattan. She liked the anonymity among people, the warm, gritty breeze off the Hudson.

  The man on the train platform looked at her with frank laughter, as if to say, Look at us, touching when we don’t know each other! and Brenda was surprised too. She laughed back, feeling her mouth open wide and her big teeth protrude—Brenda was appalled at the size of her teeth—though her knee hurt and it was hard to walk. Her hands were dirty from landing on the platform
.

  Brenda had been in love four times, twice with teachers—both women—once with the man who supervised her work in the college bursar’s office during her freshman year, and once with a boy in high school who didn’t like her. She had never been touched by someone she was in love with except inadvertently. She’d dated and kissed boys in high school but didn’t like it when they touched her. So she had little experience of the welcome, deliberate touch of a man’s hand. This man said, Take your time, and Brenda felt something like an expanding balloon in her chest. Together, they started up the stairs to the street.

  —Don’t you have to go to work? she said.

  —I work odd hours. His jacket was clean and somehow fragrant, even in the subway. My name is Douglas, he said. Where are you heading?

  —A couple of blocks from here, Brenda said. The company she worked for supplied clothing manufacturers with buttons and hardware, such as hooks and eyes and snaps, but Brenda rarely saw the objects themselves except in storefronts in the neighborhood, where there were many such companies. She dealt with pieces of paper.

  She thought she could manage on her own after a minute, but she liked climbing the grimy stairs with Douglas, in pain but not agony, looking down at chewing gum wrappers. He might be dangerous: he wasn’t hurrying to work, and he used a full first name by itself. She thought a normal person would have said either I’m Doug or I’m Douglas X—but she was interested in putting herself in possible danger, figuring she’d escape just in time, waiting to watch herself do that.

  When they reached the street, Douglas said she should rest her knee, and they went into a luncheonette and ordered coffee. Brenda watched herself curiously, as if she were watching a movie. He offered her a cigarette and she took it. He said, Are you a student?

  Douglas said he tutored people applying for citizenship. I make it easier, he said. Papers. He didn’t have a foreign accent, but his speech seemed slightly formal, and he said he’d come to this country from China as a baby. She began talking about her classes, and he asked intelligent questions. After an hour, he said, I think we should go to my apartment.

  It was as if the decision was already made. The apartment was a block away, in the opposite direction from the office. Again, Douglas supported Brenda on the stairs. She followed his lead. Inside, without discussion, he removed her clothing, one piece at a time, led her to a clean bed, and kissed her cheek. He helped her onto the bed and began stroking and rubbing parts of her body vigorously, and then at last he undressed, turned aside to put something on his penis, and entered her. She had never done it before. She had tried to imagine it. How did the penis fit? The penis felt big. Brenda didn’t go to work. Maybe she never would. In some tentative way, she was pleased with herself.

  Douglas believed in good behavior, though she was pretty sure that whatever work he did involved illegalities. The second day, when they met in the same coffee shop, Douglas bought her coffee but then insisted she had to go to work.

  —That’s stupid, they’ll fire me.

  —Maybe not.

  —Why not? I didn’t even phone them yesterday, and now I’ll be late.

  —Tell them you got hurt. You were at the hospital all day.

  —What about today?

  —It will be better that you’re late, he said, and gave his abrupt laugh again. They’ll know you do things your own way. He had a light voice that rose and fell in pitch. She was disappointed, but she needed the money. He walked her to work, and Brenda went upstairs and was not fired. The people weren’t interested enough to fire her. She was glad to be meeting Douglas later: he’d want to know what had happened. The woman in charge of her shrugged, and Brenda got back to work. She was not smart enough to be a math major, but she was a genius at Volkman Trimmings, and that was her only trait there: she was the girl who could add in her head.

  She sat before the pile of bills—larger than it would have been yesterday and thus less boring. Her vagina was interestingly sore. She had been a virgin and now she wasn’t one. She had allowed her clothes to be taken off in the apartment of a man she had known for an hour. He had not killed her, or seemed to dislike her thick, straight body. It saddened Brenda to recognize in herself something like a wish to be killed, something that had made this encounter possible. But she was pleased as well—eager to know what would happen next.

  The boy she’d loved in high school was straightforward and pleasant, and they’d been in honors classes together term after term. When she realized she loved him, she made herself noticeable by starting arguments with him in class. Once she made a class laugh at him, correcting his misconception about the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal. She thought he might seek her out for more argument later, but he avoided her.

  That day Douglas asked if she’d like to look at pornography with him. The magazine he showed her was stupid. In her fantasies, men asked her to do strange things, but nothing like what she saw in the magazines, which mostly concerned what women wore, tightness and fullness and hidden or exposed body parts. She planned what she’d say—how she’d get out of his apartment—if he asked her to wear something like that. They went to bed as before. He didn’t ask. He didn’t hold or hug her, and his kisses on her mouth were mild bites. But his firm touch was kind, and this time she felt pleasure.

  Several weeks passed. Sometimes Brenda visited Douglas during her lunch hour, thinking she’d go back to work. His eyes lit up with humor. He often held his long, narrow hands up and out, as if to prove they were empty. Usually she didn’t go back to work. When she left Douglas’s apartment alive and unharmed (everything in her upbringing would have suggested this was unlikely), she found herself nodding briskly on the stairs, and she noted that she nodded the same way when, once again, she arrived at work after an unexplained absence and nobody cared, something else she’d been raised to think was impossible.

  It was a hot summer, and in the dead air of the city Brenda was loose, adult. She held herself upright, straighter than usual, as if something inside might tip and spill. One afternoon she argued with Douglas. It was about a plant in his bedroom. She demanded to know why he didn’t put it near a window, where it would get sunlight, though Brenda knew nothing about growing plants.

  He took her to bed and said politely, Do you think you might like me to give you a little spanking, just because you are such a bad girl for arguing with me about the plant?

  Brenda sat up quickly. I don’t think so, she said. She was confused and troubled, partly because she thought she might indeed like Douglas to give her a little spanking, but she could never admit that that was so. She dressed and, when he apologized, assured him that she wasn’t offended and would come the next day.

  When she arrived at work the next morning, her supervisor said, Never mind, just go to the office and they’ll pay you what they owe you. After that, Brenda had no reason to be in that neighborhood and, belatedly, she didn’t want to be. She told her family the trimming company didn’t need her anymore. Douglas had known her last name, but she hadn’t told him her father’s name or where they lived, so he couldn’t look her up in the phone book unless he was prepared to speak to many Saltzmans and Salzmans.

  With three weeks until school was to begin, Brenda spent a few days at home, restless and bored, alone all day. Carol had a babysitting job. Now the city felt intolerable. She thought of the cabin in the Adirondacks, where she hadn’t been for years. She knew she’d feel better if she could be somewhere where she could think, and she asked her father if he thought Harold would let her go to the cabin for a few days.

  —All by yourself? he said. What do you know about a place like that? There are things you have to know. The stove.

  —I might call him, she said.

  —He has no time for us! Harold was busy, she knew that. The last time he’d been in the house, he’d explained the book he wanted to write. But she didn’t need his time. It took a few days to work up the courage to phone him. She imagined herself telling him the story of Dougla
s, gratefully accepting his inevitable disapproval and careful advice—but she wouldn’t do that.

  Brenda felt worse about the breakup with Douglas than she expected to, better about her lost virginity and how little she had to give to lose it. He always used condoms, and she had just had a period, so that was all right. What seemed most remarkable was the size and unmanageability of the person she had discovered herself to be—her recklessness—as if she’d planned to be a dog or a cat and found that she’d become a rhinoceros.

  She didn’t know when she’d find Harold at home, and she didn’t want to talk to Myra. At last, one evening, she went for a walk after supper and phoned his number from a pay phone. Harold answered, and she asked if she could use the cabin for a few days—if nobody else was there. Maybe there was some painting or cleaning he wanted done?

  He paused. Nobody’s there, he said slowly. My father-in-law was there, but he’s gone. But how will you get there? Do you have your license?

  She had her license, but her father would never lend her his car. She would take the bus to Schroon Lake, she said, buy groceries, and find someone she could pay to drive her to the cabin and come back for her when it was time to leave. I bet there’s a taxi service, she said confidently.

  —The phone in the cabin is connected, Harold said. If something goes wrong, call me. She realized he was hesitant not because he thought she’d harm the cabin but because she herself might come to harm, and she almost cried.