“I think you’re getting the wrong impression. She’s fifty-one.”
“Fifty-one!” I can contain myself no longer. I burst out laughing, wild, rollicking laughter, and Victor grabs the butt from my fingers and punches my shoulder. I punch him back and we tussle for a moment, but halfheartedly; he is restraining himself, ever the gentleman, not even hurting me. Ah, this man is really shot to hell.
“An older woman.”
“Nine years older than you, Lydia. That’s not so old.”
“But this woman is a mother! Don’t you see it? You’ve gone to a mother, Victor.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. … Maybe. Actually she isn’t a mother. I mean she has no children. She was widowed very young and never remarried.”
“Ah, she must love it, then. Does she love it? Tell me how she loves it.”
He puts his hand on my throat, the source of the words. “Shut up and listen! The first two times, I did it … the way men do these things. That was before. It didn’t mean much. I don’t know why, maybe to prove something, see what it would be like. Because I never—I was so goddamn attached to you. Somehow it … And I liked her. Look, I did it, all right? For whatever reasons.”
He removes his hand and I breathe. “Only you should never have told me.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t have, except for … It would have been over by now. I would have felt whatever regrets I had to feel on my own. But after that day, when you got like this … The silhouette of his upper body looms, a dark shadow in the dark. “You’re not the same person,” he hisses at me. “I can’t tolerate the way you are. All during the days, it’s as if nothing happened, as if that snow never fell and the bus never crashed and your life wasn’t split open. You go around exactly the same as before, only at night you’re like this. You’re like a witch in a fairy tale. A woman by day and a witch by night. You do your work, you go to rehearsals and teach, you even go to concerts—”
“For God’s sake, I went to hear Rosalie at Lincoln Center, dammit. It was a great thing for her.”
“I don’t mean you shouldn’t have gone. Jesus, what do you think I am! I’m glad you went. I mean you have it to spare for Rosalie, but—What I mean is, you shop and run things, you’re so fucking efficient about everything! Where’s it all coming from? You’ve even got their closets almost all cleaned out and the stuff out of the house. Like they were never here. I liked seeing that stuff around. Why’d you have to get rid of it so fast, for Chrissake!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter, that’s not the point. You look terrific. You fix up your face every morning so no one can tell you’ve barely slept in over a month. Only I know it. You even bought new clothes, I noticed. Oh, you look fine. No one even comes near you, and they haven’t lost their children. You don’t cry, you don’t scream, you don’t need anyone, do you? You sent your friends away when they wanted to help you. You don’t need to touch me or anyone else. What are you doing, setting some kind of example? For who? Pretending you don’t care? Just a minor change? Oh God, even the kids are smarter than you are. They cry themselves to sleep. No, listen!” He pulls my hands from my ears. “They do! But you’re so damn perfect! So self-sufficient, it’s horrible. How do I live with someone so perfect, Lydia? Tell me. What could you possibly need me for?”
“When you wanted to marry me you thought I was perfect. For you, I mean. I thought you liked perfection.”
“That was different. This is no time to be perfect. I liked it better when you threatened to slit your wrists and didn’t comb your hair because you couldn’t cope with two babies. At least that was the truth.”
Oh, so you’d like to see that again, buddy? Sorry, no go. I’m playing to the last breath. The message of the Titanic was not lost on me. Never that again.
“You can cope with anything now, can’t you, Lyd? You just can’t fuck. That’s the only little problem you have. Otherwise you’re adjusting fine. But no one has to know about that, right? The world will never know. The world will see only the perfect—”
“Stop it!” This time I smack him hard, and he takes it. “All right, you’ve made your point. You’re right, you’ve justified yourself. Go to her. Tell me something, though. Don’t you work also? You go to the studio every day.”
“No. I don’t do any work. I look at the old paintings. But that’s all right. I’ll get back to it in time.”
Besides that, unlike me, he looks awful. The Greeks believed that land where blood has been spilled by violence suffers blight, from seepage. He is a land struck by blight. His face is hollowed and sallow, his hair grayer, lifeless. His clothes hang on him. He clears his throat a lot. He drinks. Once in a while, in the evening, he is a little vague from drinking, and the children, especially Phil, look at him with censure. He is kind to them, though, kind to everyone, considerate of feelings even as he trips over things and forgets things—to bring home milk, change a bulb, return phone calls, pay bills. Sometimes at dinner he will stop eating and stare, and his eyes will fill with tears. Phil leaves the table. Althea starts a bright conversation. After dinner he lies down on the living room floor on his stomach with The New York Times spread out before him, open to the same page for an hour. He rarely answers the telephone, and only after four rings. With the overweight nursery school teacher, maybe he comes to life.
“I thought you were doing some work. Please try.”
“Lydia.” He takes my hand and speaks softly. “Why are you being so perfect?”
“I don’t know what else to do. I learned how and now I can’t stop. I’m afraid if I stop I’ll …” I am endeavoring to persevere in my own being.
He takes me in his arms. “You have no more babies. You can cry, it’s allowed.”
No. But how good it feels to be held. By him. This good feeling is what destroyed us. It set the atoms in motion, bopping along to their inevitable end. We could have escaped by denying love, saved our children by not having any. I could have found another apartment when Gaby got married, could have not proposed and not accepted, sent him home with his harmonica, maybe slept with him from time to time as Nina does with George. We could have tricked the atoms by aborting their course.
I whisper, “How can you do it with her? How can you forget?”
“For a little while, I almost forget. Afterwards I remember and I feel shitty. But for that little while.”
“Does she have a nice body?” I whisper.
“Well, large. Lush.”
“Lush. I’m not lush.”
“No, you’re different,” he murmurs. “You’re—” But he doesn’t say what. He takes my hand and puts it on his penis. He is all ready.
“All right,” I say. No preliminaries—neither of us is up to that. That would be too purely for delight. We are reduced to essentials. He slips it in, except slips is not the word; it’s not so easy. I’m cooperative but I cannot will lubrication. Once he’s worked his way in it takes him a long time. I hope he’s not gallantly waiting for me, because I feel nothing but the friction. Finally he clutches tighter, shudders, moans. Over. He stays awhile, then slips out and lies back on his side of the bed, and very soon in the dark I hear him quietly weeping, so I reach out a hand.
“Vic.”
“You make me feel I’m not a man.”
“You’re a man, believe me. It’s not your fault.”
This has been a longer night than usual. He drinks some Jack Daniel’s—he has taken to keeping a bottle in the bedroom closet. Dawn creeps in around the curtains.
“The fire,” he says.
“It was very quick. Try to sleep now.”
I should never have laughed at her age. How far I am from perfect. Worse than stupid, it was a strategic error. It’s not true that I don’t need him. I must keep him here in this bed at all costs, a last wrap against the snow. Yet what I need more is them. Without them the world is dead, the field is blighted. Victor is feeling and alive, and left his sap in me. A live disturbance in
a dead field.
A week later, side by side with the crack between us, we watch the one o’clock movie, Casablanca. Two-thirds of the way through, we turn off the sound since we know the dialogue by heart and it’s fun to read their lips. “We’ll always have Paris,” etc. As Ingrid Bergman points the gun, Humphrey Bogart moves closer as if to embrace the barrel with his heart. She might obliterate him, in the fervor of her need for the letters of transit. But we know she can never obliterate her memory of him. We also know she can’t shoot—her pointing the gun is more of a sexual assault. The small space between them is weighted with erotic tension: inches apart, they quiver attractively, and we learn that the invulnerable Humphrey Bogart can be overcome by a woman, if by nothing else. But all their erotic tension leaves me cold; the character I would like to be overcome by is the obese proprietor of the Blue Parrot cafe, pitiless Sydney Greenstreet, gross and dapper in his white suit, sinister in his fez and phlegmy accents; greedy, sensual, and oily. I imagine him as hairless. His fingers would be smooth and unctuous, his fat smothering. Yes, something about that sleek white corpulence slowly lowered onto me is alluring, exciting. I would levitate into it while he fell into me, and rest forever suspended, wrapped in his flesh.
But Sydney Greenstreet disappears from the plot, and my flicker of excitement along with him. In the end Humphrey Bogart relinquishes Ingrid Bergman (surprised and not entirely pleased) to her husband: she must board the waiting plane with that moral hero of the Resistance, himself appealing in the noble style, but with whom sex evidently yields less in the way of fireworks. No doubt she will ever after feel a pining for Humphrey Bogart between her legs, but such is life. Fighting the Nazis is undeniably of greater moment than a woman’s secretions. We sigh ruefully.
Victor goes to switch off the set, pours himself half a glass of bourbon, adds a little water from the bathroom sink, and returns, leaving the bedside light on. He hands me the glass. I take a sip, but it’s too strong and too warm for me.
“Tomorrow,” he says, “is the night I had those three tickets to the hockey game.”
“You could have Phil bring a friend. Maybe Henry would like to go.”
“Henry is going. It’s all arranged. Another boy is going too, Christopher. There’s no point in my going along with Phil and Henry. I’m not the hockey fan—he was.” He is Alan, of course.
“So you’ll be home tomorrow night?”
“Yes, probably. Why?”
“Althea is sleeping over at Diane’s, and I’ll be at Rosalie’s, rehearsing. You know we have the Donnell again next week. Also there’s that Stravinsky festival at Purchase we have to get ready for. Do you want to come and listen? We’re in pretty good shape—it’ll be practically like a performance.”
“I can’t tag along with you, Lydia. It’s all right. I can be left alone.”
He’ll drink, with The New York Times spread out on the floor. Or if he can’t stand the emptiness and he’s not feeling too guilty, he’ll go to her. I’d almost prefer that.
He lies in bed naked. I watch his chest and belly rise and fall with his deep breaths. He picks up Magic, Science and Religion, reads for about ten minutes, and puts it back on the nighttable, open, face down. “I can’t concentrate—I keep hearing them sing the ‘Marseillaise.’” He smiles, then the smile is pained. “I was in there this morning. I noticed she was reading Green Mansions. That’s not an easy book,” he says with pride. “She had the page turned down at the part where Rima the bird girl first appears, with that mess of hair.”
“I’m so tired, Victor. Let’s not, tonight.”
“Do you want to go to sleep? I’ll turn out the light.”
“No.”
“What shall we do, then? Play cards? Battleships?” He turns to me quizzically and smiles anew. “I know. I have an activity to suggest.” He puts a hand on my breast and circles the palm against the nipple. My eyes cloud over. He kisses me. “You’re going to do it. You’re going to like it, too,” he says gently. Victor is starting to find his strength once more. I do not think I will be any match for him. Blighted, at least he is real.
“Do you really want to?” I ask. “I have the feeling you’re just looking for something to do.”
He finishes his bourbon, pours another quarter of an inch, and drinks that up. Then he glances over at me again. Very sexy, though he’s not even trying. “I’ll want to, after a while. I’ll get there.” The smile edges into that intimate, ironic, accepting grin. “Why don’t you take off your nightgown? I’ll look at you and be fired with passion.”
I have to smile too, despite myself. I have no more resistance. I take off the nightgown while he gets up and locks the door.
He looks at me, and his eyes, the way they meander, are like hands. Yes, he is more himself, but I must try not to … I must feel nothing. Fight it if I have to, for I know exactly what will happen otherwise.
He strokes my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Do you remember,” he says softly, “after you had Althea, those stitches, that first time? You pushed because you said there had to be a first time. You said it would only hurt once. You were right. I didn’t like hurting you but you said go ahead, it’s the best thing for it. Remember?”
“That was different. That was birth. I was all sore.”
“Well, this … You’re sore again.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do me any favors, Victor. Do it for yourself, please. It’s fine, I don’t mind.”
“You don’t mind? A woman who doesn’t mind? I don’t need that. That’s not you. You’ll see in a minute who you are. I’ll show you.”
He moves down to get his face between my thighs, and he licks. Slowly. The sure-fire tactic. When in doubt, gentlemen …
Well. I am only human. I have a long, reflexive history with this man. He pushes my legs further apart. After so long it feels very new, yet very familiar. It also feels like fire. The phases: craving and satiety. It throws apart and brings together again; advances and retires and advances till we reach the edge where, researchers have discovered, orgasm is inevitable. A subtle boundary, and really rather clever of them to have pinpointed it. It is inevitable, and sure I need it, I can’t deny that. Except the more inevitable it grows, the more clearly the jumbled images come into focus, exactly what I expected and dreaded. I knew, I knew I shouldn’t do this. Flames lick at the down jackets and the damp heavy corduroy pants. The burning books slide from their laps. Smashing noises, a shattering of glass, and we hurtle through the snowy air, hurtling torches past white-branched trees. We are stunned, falling, breathless, terrified, and I scream, “Stop! Stop! For God’s sake, stop it!”
I have said stop before. A game: at that peak, pleasure slides easily across the border to pain and back again. The sensation can be played with to the point of mock danger, to the point where I nearly dissolve in a puddle like the Witch of the West. Victor has heard me say stop before. He likes it, why not? It makes him feel powerful, and when he stops—relents—he is a sultan showing mercy. But this … he doesn’t see … this is no lovers’ game with its moans for mercy, its teetering boundaries. I can’t bear the fire any more! Her hair is aglow. Hair that easily ignites. Fine dark hair like mine. My baby, all alight.
He has to stop because there comes a pounding at the door. Althea, banging and yelling, “Mama! Mama! What is it? Open the door!” She hasn’t called me Mama in fifteen years. Mother.
Victor looks up, gray with shock. And he thought he was doing so well. I raise myself to my elbows, still on fire.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I call out to her.
“Open the door! Who’s in there?”
Thank God he locked it. Did he know?
“No one, just me and Daddy.”
She pounds. “Open the door!”
I get up and throw on a robe. Victor covers himself. I unlock the door and show myself intact.
Althea looks very small and suddenly still, standing at our doorway in a pink flowered granny nightgown th
at reaches to her ankles. Her taut neck rises, pale, from a white ruffled collar. Her face is pale and sharp, each feature as purely and delicately traced as in a Botticelli. Her pale hair is pulled back; her gray eyes are pale too. Caught short and frightened, the face looks about twelve years old. I gaze down at the rest of her: five feet two, narrow-waisted, full-breasted, slender wrists, small hands and feet. When I reach out to touch her shoulder she shrinks slightly from my touch.
“It’s all right, dear. I’m sorry I woke you.”
She is not twelve, she is seventeen, and as she stares at my flushed face and rumpled hair, my hand clutching the front of the robe together, my pupils probably large and ablaze, she is busy figuring, figuring, trying to work it all out in her head.
Down the hall, rubbing his eyes and stumbling around the doorframe, Phil appears. “Phil, it’s okay, go back to bed. I had a dream.” Phil shuffles to the bathroom, half asleep.
Althea stands as if frozen, her lips closed tight. I see she has not slept with Darryl or with anyone else.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” I repeat softly, keeping my hand on her shoulder. She peers past me into the bedroom, but from that angle all she can see is the edge of the bed. As she steps back her eyes darken accusingly. A look of cunning comes into her face.
“It’s not what you’re thinking, Althea. It’s not like that. Really, everything’s all right.” But what is she thinking? Love is not like that, I want to tell her. Do not catch by surprise and judge, like fire. But I cannot. Because love is—she has seen and heard for herself. At last she turns to go, tossing her ponytail, a pert aloofness in her walk. Still I’m throbbing. All the time I have faced her and talked to her I have never stopped feeling it, advancing and retiring, craving satiety.
I shut the door, lock it, and throw off the robe.
“Oh God,” Victor says, clapping his hand to his head, as I switch the central light on so the room is bright. Blazing. “Does she think I—or we—”
I shrug and raise my eyebrows and fall onto the bed. Slowly, wickedly, we start to laugh, quiet hard laughs. For they are only our children; what do we care for children now? So easily lost, easy come, easy go. This is important. This is revenge.
Disturbances in the Field Page 30
