by Belva Plain
“Marian … There’s no purpose in this. You’re only tormenting yourself. It’s finished, I tell you.”
“In your cabin or hers, I asked.”
“All right. Hers.”
“And you slept together in Paris? Yes, naturally, why am I even asking such a ridiculous question? And then afterward here … How long did it go on?”
The wronged spouse always wants to know the details and also dreads to know. Paul understood.
“Not long. She’s married now. Happily married, as you can see.”
“Who broke it up? You or she?”
“I—it was mutual. Mutual.”
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
“She was better in bed than I am. She looks the type. I suppose she did things—”
“Marian, please. You’re only hurting yourself.”
“I want to know. If you don’t tell me, I’m going to go to the phone and call her. I’ll talk to her husband.”
She moved toward the telephone. Paul grabbed her.
“You’ll make yourself ridiculous. You’ll accomplish nothing,” he said, and, feeling desperate, added an appeal to his wife’s sense of propriety. “You’ll only lower yourself.”
“How I hate you!” she cried out. “Hate you!”
Tears dripped on her red silk dress, scattering small stains. She ripped the sleeve. “This dress—it comes from her. She touched it. I’m getting rid of everything she touched.” The silk screeched as it tore from neck to wrist. “Getting rid of you, too. Oh, how I hate you!” she cried again. And, clutching the flapping pieces of her dress, she stumbled out, down the hall to her room.
Paul heard the door slam. There was a poignancy in the sound, something frightening and final, as in the Ibsen play. The door slams and echoes. What next? it says. He went to the window. In a time of stress one went to the window and looked out. What else was there to look at or where else to go? Surely not to sleep.
He stared at the lonely night. There were not more than two or three lighted windows on the block. His skin crawled with cold. His head ached. He should never have said what he had about Ben; he had promised Hank not to, and all these years had kept the promise. In losing his temper—how the man had goaded him tonight!—he had assuaged his anger, but it had accomplished nothing. The whole business had been a disaster. Disaster. And what was he to do now about Marian?
Alarm shot through him. Suddenly he was aware of the silence. He thought of the medicine cabinet; who knew what she might—and he tore down the hall to the bedroom.
She was lying on the bed, still wearing the ruined dress. In a heap on the floor near the wastebasket lay a pile of clothing, a wool suit trimmed in mink, a black velvet dress, a white summer coat, and others, all things purchased from Leah. There was something pathetic about the way they lay, these beautiful garments crumpled and blameless, as though they could know they had been discarded. He picked them up and laid them smoothly on a chair.
Then he went over to the bed and stood looking down at his wife. She, too, was crumpled; her knees were drawn up, her hair had fallen over her face, and one hand clutched a wet, balled-up handkerchief. She sobbed; long, gulping, stifled sobs shook her weak shoulders.
He stood there for a long time. He knew he was expected to feel remorse, and yet he did not, for it was impossible to link remorse to the natural joy that he had known with Leah; it was far more possible to apply it to his rejection of Leah. What he did feel was pity, much more now for Marian than for Leah, who knew how to cope and survive. He put out his hand and touched her head.
She looked up. “Why did you? Why did you, Paul? You must hate me, that’s why.”
Hate her! She had no comprehension, none at all.
“Oh, my dear,” he said, “it had nothing to do with you or what I feel for you. It was only the time and the opportunity. The flesh, if you want to call it that. Never the heart.”
And that, he thought as he spoke, was more of a truth than a lie, for if what he meant was the whole, pure heart and the whole, pure spirit, why then—these had always and only belonged to Anna.
Marian was whispering. “The anger’s gone now. I could have killed her and you.… And suddenly it’s all gone, just drained away. I’m only crushed. I’m nothing.”
“Oh, Marian,” he said. He understood that her self-esteem, under the proper and proud facade, was shaky. A childless, neurasthenic, frigid woman, she lived on the surface of life, and perhaps in some unconscious way, she knew it. Not her fault, not her fault, he said to himself, while still stroking her head.
“I’m nothing,” she repeated. “Nothing.”
He felt a lump in his throat, a helpless ache. No human being should feel like this.
“How can you say that about yourself? You are a kind, good, valuable human being. Think of how many friends you have. People admire you.” And he added, “You’re a pretty woman, besides …”
She wiped her eyes. “I don’t know. Do you really think I am?”
“Of course.” He tried a touch of joviality. “You know my weakness for art. Do you think I would have married you if you hadn’t pleased my taste?”
A small smile touched her mouth. “But then I don’t understand. Why Leah? She’s no beauty.” And while he was preparing an answer, she gave it herself. “Just sex, I suppose. It’s the animal nature of man.”
“Ah, yes.”
“It’s sometimes hard for me as a woman to remember that you’re different. It means so much more to you than to a woman.”
She really believed that, still.
“I’m glad you can look at it so,” he said gently. “Do you think you can keep reminding yourself of it, so that we can put this behind us some day?”
“I’ll try.” Sitting up, she saw her reflection in the mirror opposite. “I look a mess. I’ve ruined this dress, and it was new.”
“Never mind. Buy another tomorrow.”
“Not at Leah’s. I swear I will never see her or talk to her again.”
“I understand. Just as well for all of us.”
“What about you?”
“Finished, I told you.”
She grasped his hand. “Paul … if anything like this ever happens again … will you leave me?”
“No, no. Nothing’s going to happen again.”
“But it might. You’re a man. Oh, if you ever left me, I couldn’t bear it, Paul! We’ve been together so long.… All my life, since I stopped being a child.”
You’re still a child, he thought. And his throat was filled again with aching.
“Even when I’m in Florida, I know you’re here. I wouldn’t have gone, I still wouldn’t go, if you didn’t want me to.”
“It’s all right, it’s fine. I want you to enjoy yourself.”
“What would I do without you? Don’t leave me, Paul. Promise me you won’t. Say it.” Her swollen eyes, her blotched and mottled cheeks, were piteous.
“I won’t leave you,” he said.
“Never? No matter what happens?”
“No matter what. But nothing’s going to happen, I told you. Now go bathe your face, get comfortable, and let’s go to sleep. We both need it badly.”
On her way to the bathroom, Marian remembered something. “Is that true about Donal and Ben? They’d had a terrible quarrel that day?”
“Quite true.”
“Can you tell me how you know?”
“No, I shouldn’t have said what I did. It served no purpose, and I’d given my word besides.”
“Then you really think that Donal—”
Paul countered grimly, “What do you think?”
“I think the answer’s yes. It happens all the time, according to the papers.”
“You had better forget it, Marian, as if you’d never heard it.”
“Of course. But how awful for Meg! What do you suppose she’ll do?”
“I have no idea, …”
Tumultuous thoughts kept Paul long awake. Ben, Donal, Leah, Marian, and Meg, a
ll went whirling through his brain. Then among the confusions of the past week and the events of this painful night, there appeared of a sudden a queer fantasy: that Anna’s husband had died, she was free and had come to him. What then would he do about Marian? A fantasy, to be sure, only an imagined complication on top of the existing one. Nonetheless, he was wrung out.
Meg had been silent all the way home, aware that Donal was stifling speech only because the children were in the car. She was so shaken that she had actually felt a sharp pain dart in her chest. Disaster! Again and again she had gone over it all, beginning with the dreadful instant when Paul had left the dining room.
After the stricken silence, suddenly all the civilized and proper people around the table had begun to talk. Lightly their voices had rung in slightly hysterical chatter about Fred Astaire and Flying Down to Rio or the coming Picasso retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. But Meg, with stinging-hot face, had been silent, careful to meet no one’s eyes for fear of what they might read in her own.
Then that explosion at the coat closet. Never had she seen such hatred in Donal! Pure, naked, terrifying hatred of Paul, it had been. And why? Because of what Paul knew.…
Harsh white lights in the Lincoln Tunnel had revealed her desperate hands knotted in her lap. Beside her on the limousine’s rear seat, Donal had stared straight ahead; his mouth had a downward curve; he was still angry, probably at Agnes, too, who had revealed what Meg had not been supposed to know. So even in the total union of marriage, the nightly honey-sweet connection, things were hidden.… Had she not been doing the same?
And as the car had rumbled through the tunnel, she’d had a sudden flash of recollection, of sitting on a bench near the museum on Fifth Avenue, filled with panic and despair; then of making her way to Leah’s place. It was Leah who had sent her to the doctor and saved her sanity, who had made it possible for her to be happy again with Donal. And if it was true about Leah and Paul, it was no business of hers, because they were people she loved, kind people.
Home now in their bedroom, Donal spoke. “What a ridiculous display from your fancy cousin!”
Not answering, Meg went on methodically undressing, hanging up her clothes and replacing the heavy necklace in the locked box.
“You always thought he was so holy, didn’t you? I could have told you about him long ago if I weren’t the gentleman I am.”
“I wouldn’t have listened and I won’t now.”
“Not interested in Leah either?”
“No. She’s my friend.”
“Defiant tonight, aren’t you?”
“I just don’t want to talk about people I like or someone that I love like Paul.”
“Well, love him or not, that’s your privilege, but he made a fool of himself tonight. That moral lecture at dinner—”
“Well, somebody had to answer you! You were actually defending Hitler! Don’t you realize how outrageous you were!” Her voice was intense. “It was shocking, when people are being tortured! And your remarks about the good having to suffer for the bad! Who are the good? The Jewish millionaires or the Jewish socialists? Perhaps the fish peddlers or the operatic sopranos? The Jewish Nobel prize winners who fill up the universities? Oh, you should have heard yourself! And then, what Agnes said about you listening to Father Coughlin—”
“Have you ever listened to him? You don’t know anything about him. You just mouth the things you think you’re supposed to mouth. He makes a whole lot of sense, let me tell you.”
Meg stared at her husband. He looked the same as he did every night getting ready for bed. How was it possible?
Indignation rose, choking and hot. “He’d do well to remember, he and all the rest, that it doesn’t stop with the Jews. As Paul said, they go first and most, but others go too.”
“What makes you so Jewish all of a sudden?”
“I’m not, I’m nothing. But it’s a matter of human decency.”
“After all the years your father spent trying to forget he’s Jewish.”
That she could not deny. Poor Dad. Poor Alfie. And she thought of the country club that still refused him as a member, although he had given them liberty to ride their horses over his land. Other memories came: the dancing class that had refused to take her, the child who had let the real reason slip, and Alfie’s insistence that it was not so, that it was only because the class was already filled.
“And your mother,” Donal persisted. “Believe me, she’s felt the handicap plain as the nose on your face, as your father would say.”
That, too, was true. With a child’s eyes and ears she had known that, in spite of her mother’s protestations of total tolerance, it was her mother’s one regret that the husband whom she so loved had had the misfortune to be a Jew. Yes, yes, he was right, Donal was. He saw everything. Well, to be sure, he had not gotten where he was by being stupid.
She could only say stiffly, “I don’t want to talk about my parents, either.”
“You don’t want to talk about anything, do you?”
“That’s right, I don’t.”
It wasn’t quite true. She wanted to talk about Ben, but she was also afraid to talk about Ben. The subject was in the room between them, the spectre risen again from the grave, jolted out of it by what Paul had said this night. And she knew that before the night was over, they would have met it head-on. Now each of them was only waiting for the other to start first.
Donal drew a cigarette from the pocket of his robe, lit it, threw his head back and inhaled.
“But if your parents don’t want to be mixed up in Jewish affairs, I can’t really blame them. Why look for trouble? It’s funny, I really like them both, even though they didn’t exactly welcome me at first. But they’re harmless people, and they’ve treated me decently all these years since. Goodness knows, I’ve treated them more than decently too.”
What did he want? She couldn’t take her eyes away from him. Dark and nonchalant and graceful, he waited. And she stood as if she were hypnotized, as if she were still the girl who had gone to her marriage on that spring day so long ago, the girl in the gentian-blue suit who had gone with him so willingly.
“Well, haven’t I?” he asked.
She started. “Haven’t you what?”
“Treated them well. Your parents.”
“Yes, of course. You’ve been wonderfully generous. I’ve thanked you many times, haven’t I?”
“I’ve treated you pretty well too.” He looked around. In the window bay on a shelf stood an array of plants, rich greenery overflowing onto the rosy carpet. Porcelain lamps stood on the bedside tables, which were piled with books. On the chest of drawers the children’s photographs stood in silver frames. Meg had decorated this room in her own taste; now it looked like a room in old Virginia with an eighteenth-century dignity.
“Yes, there’s good living in this house. Nothing to worry about anymore.”
The look on his face alarmed her. There was something too deliberate about it. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I mean that I’m respectable now. No more liquor business. So when people ask you what your husband does, you don’t need to evade the way you once did. You can say straight out that he manages his investments.”
She had the impression that he was mocking her—as if respectability were not what he himself had wanted from the very beginning.
“And pleasant it is, I admit, not to feel the government breathing down your neck.”
“Why are you saying these things, Donal?”
He had moved so close that she could smell his cologne. He grasped her arms. “I’m saying them so you’ll put your crazy ideas out of your head and keep them out.” His nails dug into her.
“I haven’t got any crazy ideas.”
“Don’t play cat and mouse, Meg. I know you too well. You’re all worked up over the Ben affair again.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I would like to know the final truth about it.”
&nb
sp; “We had this talk a long time back, Meg. We almost split up over it, if you remember, until you came to your senses. Don’t try it again, I warn you.”
“I didn’t know then what I learned tonight.”
“From Paul Werner?”
“He wouldn’t lie.”
“But I would?”
“You would conceal. You are concealing. Playing cat and mouse, as you put it.”
“Damn you, Meg, you think your husband’s a killer, do you?”
“I know you know more than you’ve told.” As her fear grew, so, paradoxically, grew her daring. “You closed your eyes to Ben’s death, you close them now to the sufferers of Europe, you don’t care about anybody or anything but growing richer—”
He flung her away so hard that if the bedpost had not been within reach, she would have fallen. The locked box on her dressing table was still open. He dug his hands into it and came to the bed with his palms full.
“Look here at what I’ve given to you, I who don’t care about anybody! Look! Diamond earrings, ruby bracelets, Greek gold, Burmese pearls—”
A little rubber object fell out among the glitter and lay on the quilt. Meg’s hand reached to cover it, but Donal was quicker.
“What the hell do you call this?”
She raised her eyes to meet the astonishment in his. There was nothing to say.
“Then you’ve been using this? And that’s why there’ve been none since Agnes? You did this?”
She nodded. Her heart seemed to be slowing down, whereas one would expect it to be racing. Queer, she thought, in that long instant.
“Why, damn you to hell and back.… Who put you up to this? That smart piece of work, that Leah, ten to one. So, you put something over on me, did you? Take your clothes off. Take that thing off.”
“No,” she whispered, pulling the sash around her robe.
“Take it off, I said.”
Suddenly she was terrified, as if she were in a room with a stranger. “What are you going to do?”
He laughed. His mouth made the sound of laughter without the shape of it, for the lips were grim. “Beat you, do you think? No, but I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you who runs things here and will run them. My way from now on. Do you understand that, Meg?”
