Disturbances in the Field

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  The bed is really two beds hooked together. One sheet, but I can feel the crack clearly dividing the territories—his, hers.

  We lie awake together, sometimes clasping hands, flat on our backs like the flat figures carved on sarcophagi, shadows of the substance entombed beneath. I’ve always liked his hands, warm, dry, and rough, the fingertips especially rough, from working. I rub my fingertips against his, a sensuous, asexual exploration. We lie for hours, mostly silent, now and then speaking into the dark.

  “I can’t stop wondering what it was like,” he says.

  “Quick, I’m sure. They hardly knew.”

  “Do you think they might have been asleep?”

  “I doubt it. It was only six o’clock.”

  “But maybe they were tired out from the skiing.”

  “Maybe.”

  We lie still for another half hour.

  “The fire,” says Victor.

  “I don’t think they felt much. It was very quick.” Quick and erratic. The phases of fire, Heraclitus said, are craving and satiety. It throws apart and then brings together again; it advances and retires. Also cruel: “Fire in its advance will catch all things by surprise and judge them.”

  “But their clothes were charred.”

  “They were? How do you … ?”

  “The down jackets. I mean just the … the backs. The man took me aside and showed me, in a bag. He said we could have it but I left it.”

  Again. He has become a spring. Victor, who wept only five times before in my presence. When his mother was dying, then died. Once in despair that he would never sell another painting, and once when the first two were babies and things were so bad between us we thought of parting. Last when on the platform at a disarmament rally a paraplegic Vietnam veteran strained to rise out of his wheelchair and throw his arms around the speaker from Japan, most of whose family had been wiped out in Hiroshima but whose two daughters lived on diseased. Death-in-life, the wrinkled, elegant Japanese man called it. And now so readily. I, who wept vicariously for movies and books, weddings and assassinations, massacres in Cambodia and bombings in Israel, am dry.

  He is crossing over from his side to mine to be soothed. I take his head on my breast and stroke his hair, but say nothing. He would probably like it if I spoke, crooned something, but I feel ungiving. I have nothing to croon, and I don’t like this new bed he chose. After a while he moves back to his side, switches on a lamp and picks up the book which for a week or so has been lying open, face down, on the nighttable, one side gradually fattening, the other shrinking: a work of Malinowski that he read long ago in college—Magic, Science and Religion. A book filled with myths.

  Less often it is I who speak into the dark.

  “Maybe they should have had seat belts.”

  “There are no seat belts on buses, Lydia.”

  “Maybe there should be.”

  “Then they would have been trapped. It would have been worse.” Worse? What is worse? “Do you think they were sitting together?” “I don’t know. Did they usually, on those school trips?” “I don’t think so. They must have been sitting with their friends.” “Which one was her best friend now? I lost track.” “Monica.” I pause. “She was that redheaded girl, Monica.” Victor clears his throat, a recognition of the fate of Monica. “I guess Alan was sitting with Joel.”

  Vivie was fickle, but Alan had the same best friend for years. Joel escaped; concussion, burns up and down the left side of his body.

  “They must have been hungry. It was six o’clock.” I had packed lunches, but lunch was a long way back. Alan couldn’t stand mustard. He made me put margarine on all his sandwiches, even salami. Salami with margarine is outrageous, I tried to explain, but he didn’t understand. Did they buy a snack for the trip home? They started out with three dollars each in their pockets, two bills and four quarters. Vivian might have dropped some on the slopes. Well, so they were hungry. So? If they had stopped on the way back for a snack. If some kid had complained that he was starving and couldn’t they please stop. If this same kid had then eaten too much or too fast and implored the teacher to make the driver stop again so he could get out and throw up. Then the driver could have stepped outside for a moment too, to clear his head. Any of this might have saved them. Usually there is that sort of kid on school trips. Why not this time?

  “What did they have for lunch?” Victor asks. “I don’t remember.” I do remember, but I will not say. That is going too far, going overboard.

  We lie silent awhile longer, with the crack between us, till we fall asleep. Who knows, maybe we fall asleep at the same moment, like a simultaneous orgasm, a voguish goal in our youth, vestige of the era of togetherness. Something one mastered, like a souffle. We wake early on far sides of the bed and roll closer together; he studies my face. My face: he could look at it forever and not get bored, he said when we first made love, but I sensed he meant it as a painter, not as a lover, and was disappointed. Later on, older and less romantic, I grasped it was far better that he should mean it as a painter. Right now I’m not sure how he’s looking at it. Eyes alert in a sleepy, craggy face, he studies, maybe touches, and we get up. We go into the bathroom together; he showers, I pee and brush my teeth. He shaves, I shower. Such proximity implies that we are very close. In fact we are very estranged. For once, not at all similar. We are going about this process very differently. “Handling it,” as George would say. But some things are too hot to handle.

  And yet our nights are not without diversion. We peruse the TV listings for late movies.

  “Oh, the one about the Titanic! I must see that. Rosalie always used to tell me about it.” In the distant past, she told me about the musicians who keep on playing while the ship goes down. The best part, she said.

  “I saw it years ago at the bar, before we were married, but not the whole thing.”

  “That night, that’s what you said you were watching.”

  “What night?”

  “When you came over to my place. The night Gaby and Don got married. You brought your harmonica and played part of the ‘Trout.’”

  “Ah.” He smiles. “How could I forget? You were so touched that you, uh, proposed.”

  “I accepted, you mean.”

  “Well, why quibble now? Okay, let’s give it a whirl.”

  We pile up pillows, and sitting side by side, hand in hand, Victor sipping Jack Daniel’s, we enjoy the sinking of the Titanic. The musicians, playing aslant and wet as the great ship lists, as families split, chaos threatens, and people’s true natures are ruthlessly bared by disaster, are inspiring indeed. I can see why Rosalie held them up as an example, joking yet earnest, when my children were small and I had to struggle to get to rehearsals, against the lure of weariness and inertia. They play till the very end, serenading death and mocking it. Not to keep up morale, nor to shield their spirits from the inevitable. They play because it is the best way to spend their final moments; they play to prove that something of them abides to the last breath.

  Once upon a time a movie like this one might have made me weep: women and children setting out in lifeboats, fathers left behind to drown. I sit and smoke; Victor yawns. During the last quarter of an hour or so he plays absently with my hand, places it on his leg, spreads the fingers, draws designs on the back, traces the outlines of the fingernails, rides the bumps of the knuckles. Very estranged. Afterwards we agree it was a terrific movie. An emotional workout. “Good show,” says Victor, and kisses my hand, rubs it along his lips. He flicks off the set and dims the lights so we lie in near-darkness.

  “Lydia? Do you think Althea sleeps with any of those boys who come over?”

  “I don’t think so. I think I could tell. But then who knows what they do these days? Maybe she used to with Darryl.”

  “With Darryl? She was barely sixteen then. You think so?” There is a prurient tinge in his voice.

  “They must have done something together.”

  “I wonder what it’s like when you’
re so young. I wasn’t that young when I first started.” He pauses. “They—”They, in that tone, is a code term. “They never got to feel any of that.”

  “No.” Alan had reached the stage of pushing and poking girls he liked. Vivie found the idea of romantic love laughable. But Victor, I can tell, doesn’t want to talk about them tonight. Victor wants to talk about sex. Why just now is curious: the sinking of the Titanic was scarcely an aphrodisiac.

  “Haven’t you any feelings left?” he says into the dark.

  “Apparently not.”

  “You’re not going to bed with anyone?”

  “Who would I be going to bed with? I’m right here, aren’t I?” This is a diversionary tactic. He wants to tell me about the woman on the shag rug. Well, there’s plenty of time. Take your time, Victor. The nights are long.

  “I thought maybe George. You see him a lot.”

  “Yes, I’m very fond of him. I find him entertaining. However, I don’t sleep with him.”

  “I thought maybe you did.”

  “You thought wrong. If ever I have a lover, I’ll let you know, if it’s so important to you. I’ll tell you all about it, blow by blow. But it seems unlikely at the moment.”

  Victor sighs. “Don’t be so bitchy.”

  “Well, it’s irritating when you ask like that.”

  We lie there another half hour, holding hands. I could turn on the radio; they play chamber music all night on WNYC. While the City Sleeps, it’s called.

  “What was it like, with George?”

  This is an interesting question. Funny he has never asked before. But before, in our innocence, we were principled and discreet. I wouldn’t mind talking about it either. Maybe we could work ourselves up in the dark, Victor and I, like dizzied adolescents reporting back to their pals. Like Esther, on her trip to Coney Island with Ralph: He put his hand on my knee. He moved his hand up my leg. He put his tongue in my ear. He rubbed his, you know, thing against my stomach. And for such dazzling originality she went and married him.

  I sit up in bed. Victor turns towards me, head propped on his hand. It is like telling a bedtime story in the dark. “I was very young and inexperienced, as you know. There was that boy in high school but … He managed to find his way but that was about all. And George—well, you know George. ‘Purche porti la gonnella.’ Anything in a skirt, that means. They sing it about Don Giovanni. So I was very impressed.”

  “Yes?” he encourages.

  “He was … oh, how can I put it? Quite … lively. He bounced around a lot.” Victor chuckles. He is beginning to enjoy himself. “He was all over the place. Oh yes, and he suggested I read the Marquis de Sade. Not that he had such bizarre tastes; I wouldn’t say he did anything especially weird, but I think he wanted me to get an idea of the range of possibilities.” I’m really playing to my public. Catering, Rosalie calls it. And this is only the opening. The exposition. “I did read it, in parts. But it was boring. Also, I could never figure out how many people were present or keep their positions straight—there were so many at once and they kept moving around from one to another. And then when they came, it was very peculiar—they got strangely articulate. Poetic. They would say things like, Oh, I’m coming, it’s like this, it’s like that … very sort of rhapsodic imagery. Maybe it made more sense in French.” Victor is a fine audience, listening intently in the dark. Is he getting an erection, maybe? Can I do that with banal words? “But George was too serious. I don’t mean there was no humor. I mean … purposeful. Oh, he was okay, but there was something basically wrong. For me, anyway.” Ah, I’m starting to fade, losing the concentration, diffusing into abstraction. I’m no pornographer.

  “What do you mean, wrong? Did he come too fast?”

  Men show such a lack of imagination. There are only two things they can readily think of that could be wrong with a man. Of course with a woman all sorts of things could be wrong. George was curious to know, vaginal or clitoral. I found it hard to make the distinction. He would look at me as if I were half-witted. Had it been ten years later he might have said I wasn’t in touch with my feelings.

  I groan with sarcasm. “No. Well, sometimes. But that wasn’t it. You all do that sometimes.” From what vast experience do I sound so knowledgeable, I who have been such a faithful wife? Hearsay. “Anyhow, being George, he was glad to do it again if that happened. Or at least lend a hand. That wasn’t a major problem.”

  “So what was?”

  “His soul was not in it.”

  “His soul?” Victor is astonished. “Is that what you said?”

  “Yes, his soul. It was as if he had read too many manuals. He was too accomplished. It was like a showcase production.”

  Victor clears his throat. I know what is coming. “Is my soul in it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. But I’m not sure I can … put my finger on what you’re referring to.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to put your finger on it.”

  “Where would you say his soul was, then?”

  “I would say … his soul was extracted like juice from an orange. The juicer was his Freudian psychiatrist. George has been distilled. He has only a self left. Pulp. That is what makes him interesting. He is highly evolved and self-aware, but lacks a spiritual dimension.” This is the development section, swirling off with the theme.

  “How about getting back to the facts, sweetheart?”

  “Ah, men. Okay. When I came he used to watch me. My face, that is. It was embarrassing. He didn’t watch as part of the pleasure of it, you see. I wouldn’t have minded that. He seemed to be watching acutely because he was proud of what he had achieved. It made me feel like something you wind up with a key and then you watch it go.”

  He reaches over the crack between us and puts a warm hand on my leg. “Lydia …”

  “Please. I can’t.”

  He removes his hand. How easily deterred. He is not the man he was. The death of his children has taken the iron out of his spine. I can play with him like putty. I don’t like him this way. In the silence he hears it.

  “If you don’t like me any more, you could do it with someone else. Do it, if you need to.”

  Don’t tell me what I need, you fucker. I know what I need. But I say, “And whom would you suggest?”

  “Jasper. Didn’t you ever sleep with Jasper?”

  “God almighty, I never slept with anyone, Victor. Especially not Jasper. You know who I would like to sleep with? Marlon Brando. Harry Reasoner. John Lindsay. Julian Bond. Jon Voight. Ralph Nader. Humphrey Bogart. Rudolf Serkin. You see I’m not just a sucker for a pretty face. All of these people have—”

  “Oh, cut it out, Lydia, will you?”

  “Well, those are your rivals. You wanted to know. But they’re all unattainable. Particularly Humphrey Bogart. He is without a doubt unattainable. Those are the people you need to worry about. Not Jasper. Jasper should be the least of your worries.”

  “You have turned into a real bitch,” Victor says quietly. “There is simply no way of reaching you.”

  It is five and a half weeks that they are dead. He wants me to make love. He feels I have been … what do they call it in the women’s magazines? Withholding sex. (How the phrase would make Rosalie screech, as she does at all moronic infelicities of language, “I love it! I love it!”) But I haven’t really refused until a moment ago; he has not suggested it, explicitly, at any rate. Waiting for me to volunteer to caress his guilt. Now that he has tired of waiting, I am supposed to be the string that quivers at the approach of the bow.

  “Do you want to tell me about the one with the shag rug now?” I ask politely.

  Victor switches up his bedside lamp, reaches into a drawer of the nighttable, and on a tissue spread on the blanket, rolls a joint. Then he dims the lamp. Lots of drinking and pot smoking for a man your age, Victor. I can’t say I approve. The sweet rough smell rises around us. “I met her in a bank.”

  “In a bank!” I
laugh.

  “If you laugh at me I’ll kill you.” He sounds as if he means it.

  “Okay, I won’t laugh.”

  In the dark the lighted orange tip comes towards me. He is offering me the joint. I accept, take a couple of drags, and give it back. The smoke is in my eyes, my throat, my hair. Is this what burning hair smells like, perhaps? Hair that easily ignites?

  “She’s the director of a Montessori nursery school near the studio. I used to see her in the bank a lot. Finally one day we spoke. I don’t remember how, we were on line together or something. It turned out she knew Tom’s latest wife. Tom’s wife’s kid goes to her school.” Tom shares Victor’s studio. His custom is to marry women with young children—he has never had any of his own. “We had coffee, she seemed interested in paintings, so I asked her up to see them, Tom’s too. She came, not that day but another.”

  “What does she look like? Is she very attractive?”

  “Not as attractive as you.” This line is delivered straight. No more sense of humor, kid? “She’s shorter, and a bit overweight.” I smirk secretly in the dark. “She dresses in a rather conservative way. Skirts and blouses, not jeans or anything too colorful or offbeat. You know the way I mean. Pre-sixties.” I stifle giggles, taking another drag, and another. I’m not used to smoking much grass—everything about this woman is turning out to be hugely funny. “She has an apartment in the East Sixties.”

  With a white shag rug. “The East Sixties! Hm!” I pass him back his joint.

  “Ordinary people live there too.”

  “I thought mostly expensive call girls lived there.”

  Victor keeps silent. He could burn me with the cigarette, but instead he passes me the shrunken butt and I inhale deeply. “I suppose she’s very young.”