The 158-Pound Marriage

by John Irving

  He stalked around the old board track like a predator, and at the closed door to the wrestling room, his suspicions seemed to be confirmed: music was playing in there. Severin was a Viennese with an education; he recognized Schumann's 'Papillons'. At least the invaders had taste, he thought. He could not conceive what lewd karate act awaited him, what weird rite was in progress within! Silently he slipped the key in the lock. Suddenly anxious, he wondered what anyone could be doing to the accompaniment of Schumann.

  All alone, a small, dark woman was dancing in sleek black leotards. She was tiny, sinewy, tense; her movements as graceful and nervous as an antelope's. She did not notice him slip in and slide the door closed behind him. She was working very hard to an insistent, staccato passage. Sweat drenched her elastic body; her breathing was hard but deep. A portable tape recorder was responsible for the Schumann; it sat neatly out of the way on a stack of towels in the corner as she ranged the room in an athletic interpretation that was close to gymnastics. Severin leaned against the padded wall of the wrestling room as if his spine were sensitive to Schumann.

  He knew who she was, but something wasn't right; he also knew she was crippled. Her name was Audrey Cannon; she was an assistant professor of Dance and Theater Arts, and something of a metaphor for everything that was ironic and unlikely. She was a former dancer who taught dance, but she was a tragically graceless, even awkward person whose career had been ruined by some mysterious accident which was never discussed. She limped - in fact, she clomped her way around campus. The way she was used as a metaphor was cruel; of a ridiculous plan, say, someone might joke, 'That makes about as much sense as Audrey Cannon teaching me how to dance.'

  She was a single woman, pretty and small but so shy and self-conscious and seemingly scarred that no one knew much about her. She declined invitations to parties and went to the city every weekend; she was thought to have a lover there. Edith claimed that the best story about Audrey Cannon had been invented by Severin. It was not malicious; it was pure speculation. Severin used to say that the woman's past 'shone on her face like a fresh sin'; that her accident was no doubt a wound of love; that in her mid-thirties she had lived more than any of them; that the accident probably happened on stage as she was dancing with her leading lover, and that a jealous woman in the audience (who had been taking rifle lessons for months, for just this occasion) precisely shot off her left foot so that she would never be graceful again. She was still a beautiful woman, Severin claimed, but her awkwardness made her feel ugly. 'Dancers are concerned with grace,' Severin said. That he thought her beautiful was a surprise to almost everyone; no one else thought she was even very attractive (Edith described her as 'neurasthenic'). But Severin claimed that her beauty was in her grace, which was in her past. He claimed that he could love a person's past. We historical novelists are rarely as sentimental.

  When Severin Winter saw Audrey Cannon dancing, he must have imagined that some hypnotic power had possessed her. It was no cripple who was dancing on his wrestling mats. But when the tape recording ended, he was treated to another shock: she collapsed into a neat bundle in the center of the mat, breathing hard and deep, and when she'd recovered herself enough to stand, she limped toward the recorder in the corner like the crippled woman she'd previously been.

  She was a very private woman in the midst of a very private moment, and when she saw Severin frozen against the padded wall she screamed. But Severin bounced out on the mat, calling, 'It's all right, it's all right, it's just me - Severin Winter. Miss Cannon? Miss Cannon?' as she huddled, cringing on the mat, wondering, no doubt, what her dance had inspired.

  They talked a long time. He'd caught her with all her defenses down and she had to tell him about her whole life; she felt as if he'd seen her whole life. He would never tell Edith or me what that 'whole life' was. He remained faithful to that intimacy. 'I think when a private person tells you everything, you're bound to each other in a way no one really planned,' he said. But Edith reminded him bitterly that he'd always thought Audrey Cannon was beautiful; he'd had feelings for her even before their dramatic meeting. I never heard him deny it.

  Audrey Cannon could dance on wrestling mats because they were soft; they gave under her slight weight and didn't distort her balance the way a normal surface would. It was an illusion, of course. I think she was able to dance on wrestling mats because of the trance she put herself in; it's my opinion that Severin Winter's wrestling room inspired trances. She said she had relearned dancing there. Harvey, the watchman, had made an exception for her.

  'But we just talked!' Severin insisted. 'That first night she just talked to me. We talked all night.' No sauna, no swimming? 'No! Just talk--'

  'Which is the worst kind of infidelity,' Edith said. Of course; it's what bothered Severin the most about Edith's relationship with me.

  That first night, then, there was nothing more intimate than storytelling - except that she showed Severin her crippled foot, the muscular, highly arched remnant missing the ball of the foot and the three biggest toes. Jesus, what a sick story! A dancer with a maimed foot!

  And he told her the history he'd imagined about her. And did he tell her he'd always thought she was beautiful? 'No!' he cried. 'It wasn't like that. I was just available ... to listen.' Well, it was no jealous woman who shot off her toes. Audrey Cannon had squared off her left foot years ago when mowing her lawn in a pair of sandals; she pulled a rotary-blade power mower over her own foot. It cut the first three toes off clean, chewed the next-to-last one and took all but a bit of the ball of her foot. There was so much blood she didn't know anything was missing. When they told her in the hospital she was convinced that some over-eager doctor had amputated everything too hastily.

  I think I know the part of the story which must have touched Severin to his curious core. When she came home from the hospital, there was her lawnmower out in the yard where she'd left it, with a severed sandal-thong nearby. And when she looked under the lawnmower, there were her toes and the ball of her foot, looking like a halved peach. 'Her old toes!' Severin said. 'And do you know what? They were covered with ants.'

  My God, what a love story.

  'But if you just talked, that first night,' I said, 'why didn't you tell Edith when you went home? You never said a word.'

  It discomforts Severin Winter to believe in his own premeditation. But he must have known that later there would be more than talk. I think he knew back when he knew nothing about her, except that to him she was beautiful.

  We always know.

  Still, he likes to stress the fact that he went back to riding his bicycle after that first meeting. Knowing she was in his wrestling room, riding by and seeing the light, he would ride on, reaching ever more faraway towns, pedaling furiously and not allowing himself to reach the wrestling room until his customary pre-dawn hour when Audrey Cannon would have long since limped home. No harm, was there, in his habit of looking for traces of her? Small, warm dents in the mat. Her dark hair in the sauna. A ripple not yet vanished from the surface of the swimming pool.

  In the morning, bicycling home to Edith, he'd take the route by Audrey Cannon's small apartment. Just to see if her car was legally parked? To see if her window shade was properly down?

  What a fool. I am familiar with the ways we talk ourselves into things. One way is by pretending we are talking ourselves out of them. Severin can tell me all day that he's not like me. ('I was falling in love with her!' he has cried. 'I wasn't out to grab a quick piece and get my rocks off any old way like you do!') But a part of him knew what he was getting into. He can use any euphemism he likes.

  The fact remains that one night he rode by the gym and couldn't keep the pedals going. He felt faint of heart at the notion of yet another faraway town. He circled the old cage, he stood in the dark trees, he crouched by the softly blowing rows of tennis nets, he scuffed up dirt on the baseball diamond, but he kept ending up back where he began. Suddenly he was tired of bicycling, of course; also - pure coincidence, of c
ourse - he had not made love to Edith before starting out that night.

  And did he shower in the locker room before he slipped into a clean robe? I'll bet he did. And was it simply neglect which made him dress lightly under the robe? When he slid the door closed behind him, he saw that Audrey Cannon wasn't dancing. Schumann was playing, but she was resting. Or meditating? Or waiting for Severin Winter to make up his mind? And did he say, 'Ah, um, I came to ask you if I could watch you dance?' And did Audrey Cannon stumble up on her foot and a half?

  Clearly, there were positions in which her lost toes were no loss.

  So much for bicycling; so much for Severin's fabled endurance. When he came home to Edith now, he wasn't up to making love to her. He had pedaled to too-faraway towns, established new time records. When he came home now, he slept until noon. How long did he think Edith would put up with it?

  I don't think he saw anything clearly. Outside the wrestling room, out in the real world, he had no vision. He saw and thought and acted clearly under the moonlit dome, within the clear circles inscribed on the wrestling mats, but he left his mind behind whenever he hung up his clothes in his locker.

  Severin's feelings and worries were always as obvious as boils; he could conceal nothing. ('I'm not good at lying, if that's what you mean,' he told me. 'I don't have your gift.') He must have known that Edith would find out. How long did he think she'd believe that he was bicycling all night in the rain? And after Thanksgiving, it snowed. For a while she thought Severin was just indulging his masochism - the last struggles of an over-the-hill wrestler, one more feat of foolish stamina.

  What else could she have wondered when he bought the Air Force survival suit, the bright orange one-piece zippered sack designed to float in the ocean or withstand sub-zero weather? The pretty white bike came back bent, rusted, its vital parts scraping. Daytimes, Severin would repair and oil it. He put up a map in the kitchen - supposedly of all the roads he'd traveled. That he was too tired to make love when he returned was understandable; that he was often too excited to make love before he left was slightly harder for Edith to bear. And what was that music he whistled around the house?

  Though all his wrestlers were supposed to keep their nails cut, some of them were sloppy, so Edith was used to an occasional scratch on his back or shoulders. But not on his ass; those were her scratches or they were nobody's. And gradually she was sure that they weren't hers.

  Twice she actually said to him tentatively, jokingly, in real but concealed fear: 'Sometimes it's as if you have a lover.'

  I don't know what his reply was, but I can't imagine him responding naturally.

  What finally convinced her was the way he was with the children. He took too long putting them to bed, told them extra stories, and often she found him standing in their room after they'd fallen asleep, just staring at them. Once he was crying. 'Aren't they beautiful?' he said. She recognized the look in his eyes: he was saying goodbye to them, but at the same time he couldn't.

  The night of the great December buzzard, Edith woke up with the shutters flapping, the storm door slamming, the wind howling under the eaves like mating cats. The trees appeared to be bent double. She doubted that a bicycle could even be held upright in such weather. It was 3 a.m. when she managed to get the car unstuck in the driveway and slithered her way down the snowy streets. She had always believed the part about the wrestling room and gym and sauna and swimming; she could smell the chlorine in his hair while she was sniffing him for other odors. She saw the light on in the wrestling room. She also recognized the parked car; on the dashboard was a pair of ballet slippers. The slippers weren't the same size as each other, but neither were Audrey Cannon's feet.

  Edith sat in her car with the windshield icing over and the dark hulk of the new gym squatting over her. Ironically, she thought of how angry Severin would be with her for leaving the children alone at this hour on a night like this. She drove home. She smoked in the living room and played a record; she smoked in the bedroom where she found Severin's ring of extra keys. There was the extra car key, the extra house key, the extra gym key, the extra wrestling room key ...

  She did not want to go there. At the same time, she imagined confronting them. She did not want to slide open the door to the wrestling room and catch them at it; on the other hand, she imagined various shocks she might give them. They would be walking around the old board track - did she always limp? Would they be wearing anything? - and Edith would start toward them around the track, headed for a confrontation.

  No. She lit another cigarette.

  She imagined catching them in the tunnel. Surely he would lead his maimed dancer through the tunnel; he was always showing off. At mid-tunnel, by the light switch to one of the squash courts, Edith would brace herself and wait for him to walk into her. His startled hands would grope and find her face; she was sure he would recognize her bones. He might scream; then Audrey Cannon would scream, and Edith would scream too. All three of them yelling in that echoing tunnel! Then Edith would flick on the squash court light and show herself to them - blind them with herself.

  Somehow her distress had woken Fiordiligi. 'Where are you going?' the child asked; Edith had not realized that she looked as if she was going anywhere, but her coat was still on, and when her daughter asked, she realized she was going. She told Fiordiligi that she'd be back before breakfast.

  All the slithery way back to the gym, Edith thought of the smell of chlorine in Severin's hair. When she saw that the light was still on in the wrestling room, she let herself into the gym and groped her way through it with her cigarette lighter. Once her lighter went out and couldn't be relit and she cried for a few, controlled minutes in what turned out to be the men's showers; they opened into the swimming pool. She found the underwater lights, flicked them on and then off again, climbed the stairs and sat in a corner of the first row of the balcony. She wondered if they swam in the dark or turned on the underwater lights.

  It seemed to her that she'd been there for a long time before she heard their voices; they were coming through the showers from the sauna. She saw their silhouettes - a short, thick one and one which limped. They dove separately into the pool; there were moans from each when they surfaced, and they met near the middle of the pool. Edith was surprised that they had turned on the lights; she'd expected that Severin would prefer the dark, but she didn't know this Severin. They were as graceful and playful as seals. She thought with particular pain that Severin must love Audrey Cannon's smallness; how strong he must feel with her; he was a strong man anyway, but with her he was also big. For a moment she wished she could hide in the balcony; she felt so ashamed that she wanted to disappear.

  Then Audrey Cannon saw her sitting in the first row of the lower balcony, and her voice pierced them all; in the sound-bouncing swimming pool it came at them in stereo. She said, 'It's Edith, it must be Edith.' Edith was surprised to find that she was already on her feet and coming down the stairs toward them; in a moment she was standing at the side of the pool. Lit up, bobbing in the aqua-green glowing pool, Audrey Cannon and Severin were suddenly as vulnerable as creatures in an aquarium. Edith said that she wished she had secretly assembled an audience - that she had filled the entire balcony, perhaps with the wrestling team, certainly the German Department, and of course his children. 'Later I wished I'd had the courage to be waiting there for them with just Fiordiligi and Dorabella,' she said. 'Just the three of us, perhaps with all of us in our pajamas.'

  'He really was thinking of you,' Audrey Cannon told her, but Edith roamed the rim of the pool as if she were looking for hands to stamp on, as if she were a cat intent on eating every fish in the bowl. When Severin tried to get out, she shoved him back in. She was crying and shouting at him, though she doesn't remember what she said. He said nothing; he treaded water. While he held Edith's attention, Audrey Cannon slipped out of the far side of the pool and limped toward the showers. It was the last Edith ever saw of her; her narrow, bony back, her lean sprinter's legs, her sma
ll pointy breasts, her hair as dark and rich as wet chocolate. Her painful, grotesque limp jarred her sharp hips but failed to even jiggle her high, hard ass, as small as a twelve-year-old boy's.

  'I could catch you, you cripple!' Edith screamed after her. 'I could run you down and snap your fucking bones!' But Severin hauled himself out of the pool and offered her a larger, unmoving target. She began to beat him with her fists, kick him, scratch him; she bit his shoulder and would have sunk her teeth into his throat had he not pried open her mouth with his strong fingers and held her at arm's length. She bit deeply into his thumbs; he used his thighs to shield himself from her knees, but she remembers the spurts of blood. She was wearing the Tyrolean boots he had given her, and she mashed his toes with them. She kicked and bit and hit as hard as she could until she was too tired to swing her arms anymore. She tasted the blood from his thumbs in her mouth. She looked at the tears streaming down his face - or was it simply water from the pool? She realized that she was doing what he probably most wanted from her, and that if she shoved him back in the pool, he would probably gratefully drown. She could not bear what he had done to her, but his obvious guilt sickened her even more.

  On their silent way home, she told him that she would never let him see the children again, that he would have to beg her to even see a photograph of them. He sobbed. She realized how helpless he was, and the terrible power she had over him made her feel ugly; it made her be cruel, but it also made her feel that she needed to love him. 'You've confused me terribly,' she told him.

  'I've confused myself terribly,' he said, which enraged her. She scratched him slowly and deeply down one cheek; she drew blood; he never moved his face. She was horrified that she could do this, and even more horrified that he would let her. 'The whole thing gave me an awful responsibility,' she told me.

  For weeks she thought of leaving him, reconsidered, tried to hurt him, tried to forgive him - and he took it all. 'He was un-Severined,' she said. He was completely at her mercy except when she wanted to strike back at Audrey Cannon. Then he said dumbly, 'I loved her. I loved you at the same time.'