Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  “No, it’s our marriage that’s in danger. Neil, can I really talk to you about this, or is it better not? Can we ever get back to the days when we were friends who confided in each other—the days before I found you with Teresa? I know I’ve given you hell this past year, but I was so goddamned mad when I saw how ready you were to abuse your power at my expense that I just couldn’t resist giving you some of your own medicine in return.”

  “I know. I understand. Yes, of course we can talk again. Sure we can.” I was so shattered I hardly knew what I was saying. I had just realized he was on the brink of going to pieces and that he had picked me for the job of holding him together. I tried to take control of the conversation. “Now, calm down, Sam, and start at the beginning. Why is this new pregnancy a disaster?”

  “Every pregnancy’s a disaster. Scenes, tears, locked bedroom doors, you name it. Then after the baby’s born, we just manage to get back to normal when—wham! Another pregnancy. Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t one long gripe about getting no sex. I can deal with that problem—I have dealt with it. I may not always have dealt with it in the smartest possible way, but at least I’ve dealt with it without upsetting Vicky. Unfortunately, Vicky’s all shot to hell anyway.”

  “Obviously she must see a psychiatrist.”

  “Christ, we’ve been knee-deep in psychiatrists for years! She saw every top psychiatrist in London!”

  “You mean …” It was hard to speak. “All these years. … How long has this been going on?”

  “Since we moved to England, and it’s just got worse and worse. Why do you think I let you beat me back here in the end? It was because I was worried to death about Vicky. I thought she might improve if she came home, and so she did for a time, but now everything’s worse than ever. My biggest fear is that one day she’ll walk out on me.”

  “What!” I half-rose to my feet, then sank back in my chair. My breathing was ragged. I fumbled in my pocket for my medication.

  “Believe me, Neil, when I say the marriage is on the rocks, I don’t mean I’m tempted to walk out on her. Do you think I’d be here talking to you if I was? I’m here because I’m crazy about her and I’ve got to talk to someone, and I figure you can’t be too hard on me once you know how much I love her. I didn’t love her before we were married, I admit that, but afterward I … she was just so lovely and so sweet and so young, and … I …”

  He was going to break down. The scene was a nightmare. I found a handkerchief, put a hand on his arm to comfort him. “Take it easy, Sam.” My ineffectual words dropped emptily into the huge sea of his grief. I doubt if he even heard them. I knew I had to be terse and unsentimental in order to get the conversation back on an even keel, so I knew it was vital not to think of the source of his unhappiness as Vicky. I tried to think of her as just some woman I knew socially, a partner’s wife, no one special.

  “Let’s get back to the present problem, Sam. This new baby that’s on the way—I guess that was an accident?”

  “Jesus, they’ve all been accidents since Paul. I used rubbers before that because I didn’t think she was old enough to cope with birth control, but after Paul was born, she said she wanted a diaphragm, so I said okay, if you want, give it a try. Well, it didn’t seem to work too well, and we got a bit careless and … Samantha came. Well, afterward I said hell, don’t go back to the diaphragm, we’ll try the rubbers again, and she said okay, but then she thought she couldn’t get pregnant if she nursed the baby—she’d never tried nursing before, but she read something about mothers in India spacing their families by breast feeding, so she tried breast feeding, but it didn’t seem to work out too well … and she got pregnant anyway with Kristin. Boy, I had a rough time of it. Then she heard about some experimental pill she could take, but the doctor wouldn’t prescribe it, said it caused cancer, so okay, I took no chances and used rubbers again from the very first time we got together after Kristin’s birth.”

  I wanted to ask why she was apparently so set against him using rubbers, but I couldn’t. It was because I knew that “she” was Vicky. I couldn’t ask a question like that. I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Well,” said Sam, “that was okay. We got along all right until … hell, you know what it’s like when you’re forty-nine—or maybe you don’t. I know nothing about your sex life nowadays. But I was working too hard trying to handle all the new power I’d beaten out of you at the office, and I started drinking in order to keep going, and although I still wanted sex, I found I couldn’t make it like I used to. And then one night I really wanted it but it just didn’t seem to work with the rubber on …”

  I thought: Just a wife, just an acquaintance, no one I know well.

  “… so I took off the rubber and then I made a mess of things and didn’t get out in time and … oh, Christ, it was bad luck to be caught out like that—no, it was worse than bad luck, it was hell, it was the biggest possible disaster, it was like some terrible punishment …”

  I said in my most clinical voice, “Sam, it’s absurd to suffer like this. It’s bad for both Vicky’s mental health and yours. Obviously the pregnancy should be terminated.”

  “Right. Just what I said. God knows I’ve always spoken out against abortion, but—”

  “When is Vicky having the operation?”

  “She’s not having it.”

  “Not having it?” I thought I’d misheard him.

  “No. It was all set up, but when she got to the hospital, she couldn’t go through with it. I took her home, and she cried all the way.”

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday. Neil, I’m terrified she’ll leave. I think she hates me. I think she hates the kids. And I don’t know why, Neil. If I knew, I could do something, fix it somehow. And what makes the situation even more nightmarish is that I don’t think Vicky knows either. It’s mad. I think we’re both going completely crazy.”

  “Well, it’s obvious,” I said, “that Vicky’s undergoing some kind of breakdown. She must be hospitalized, and if you weren’t so close to breakdown yourself, this would be obvious to you too. I’ll talk to my doctor and fix up something at the best sanatorium.”

  “She won’t go into a sanatorium, and I couldn’t possibly have her committed. She may be having a breakdown, but it’s not that kind of breakdown—she’s not seeing visions or feeling as if little green men are out to get her. She’s still coping. She puts on a front before the children … and before you too, of course. Neil, whatever happens, you mustn’t tell Vicky you know about all this. I think it would kill her. It’s very, very important to her that you should think she’s well and happy and that the marriage is grade-A.”

  I felt as if I were lost in some dark valley but above me on the hillside I could see the lights of a beautiful house, while inside, beyond the lighted windows, I could see all the people who were so far beyond my reach. I saw Emily and Alicia and Sebastian, even Andrew, and Kevin and Jake, and now Vicky was there too, her face pressed against the glass in a mute appeal for help. But I was cut off from her. I couldn’t get out of the valley, and although I searched and searched for the driveway that would take me up to the house, I kept getting lost in the dark.

  “Jesus, look at the time!” Sam was saying, perturbed. “I must go at once, in case Vicky needs me.” Stubbing out his cigarette, he finished his martini before adding in a brave attempt at optimism, “Well, I guess we’ll survive somehow—I love her, and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? We’ll lick this problem in the end.”

  “Sure. Sam, if there’s anything else I can do …”

  “No, not for the moment. I feel better now I’ve talked it out. I want to thank you for listening, Neil. It must have been hell, and I’m sorry.”

  “I’m glad we talked.”

  Outside, on Fifty-fifth Street, it was cold, and a bitter wind was blowing east from the frozen American hinterland as we paused beside our cars to shake hands.

  He said suddenly, “It’s okay now, is
n’t it?”

  “Yes, Sam,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “We’ll play ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ again?”

  “Yes. And talk. Like the old days.”

  “Great. I’ve missed you, Neil. It’s been a long time. … By the way, do you still see Teresa?”

  “I’m on my way to her right now.”

  “Funny how unimportant all that seems nowadays. … Well, be sure to tell her hello from me, won’t you? I was always so fond of Teresa.”

  He got into the Mercedes, but as the car drew away from the curb he looked back at me and waved. I waved in return. Then I crawled into my Cadillac as painfully as if I had broken every bone in my body, and was swept crosstown to the Dakota.

  V

  Teresa and I had come to resemble a certain type of married couple; we bickered occasionally, had sex as a matter of routine, spent our time outside the bedroom watching television, and secretly enjoyed our humdrum domesticity. Our relationship might have become a habit, but it was a hard habit to break, like smoking.

  Teresa had changed since we had first met. Having finally reverted to her early, natural style of work, she painted less but better, and with her creative life in firmer control, her organization of her surroundings had improved. She kept the apartment clean, wore smart clothes when she wasn’t working, and made serious efforts to control her weight. The left-wing books in the apartment had long since been replaced, first by romantic novelettes, then by popular books on psychology and dieting, and as she discarded bohemianism to embrace the trappings of middle-class life, I began to suspect that she enjoyed thinking of our relationship as an informal marriage rather than a love affair. I offered her a charge account at Saks, and she said she would prefer Bloomingdale’s. I asked her to choose a present at Tiffany’s, and she did not laugh with scorn but spent half an hour selecting a hideous gold pin. Once a year, on her birthday, I took her out to dinner. In the early years she would drag me to some cheap ethnic restaurant in the Village, but now we patronized the smart restaurants midtown.

  Occasionally we discussed art together, but usually intelligent conversation was too much of an effort. We yawned over trivia, picked over desultory issues, and watched Dragnet together, or perhaps a rerun of I Love Lucy, now irrevocably tainted for me by the thought of Sebastian’s exploits off the New Jersey Turnpike.

  When I arrived at the apartment that evening, Teresa was wearing a smart red wool dress which displayed her breasts to advantage, a black chiffon scarf, and the gold pin from Tiffany’s.

  “Why the hell didn’t you call to say you’d be late?” she said, aggrieved, as I walked through the door. “The chicken Kiev’s been keeping hot in the oven for well over half an hour.”

  “Cut it out, Teresa, I’ve had the most godawful day.” I pecked her cheek in lieu of a kiss, walked wearily into the living room, and sank down on the ugly orange couch which she had bought long ago to match an ugly orange lounge chair.

  Without further questions she fixed me a drink, turned on the television, and said she would bring in dinner.

  “Teresa, forgive me, but I don’t think I could eat a mouthful. I’ve had a bad shock about Vicky, and I’m worried to death about her. I don’t want to go into detail, and I must ask you to keep this in confidence, but it’s turned out she’s very unhappy.”

  Without expression Teresa said, “Poor kid,” and switched off the television.

  “I don’t understand it, Teresa. I want to fix it, but I don’t know how to.”

  “Write a check to someone. Come on, have your drink and you’ll feel better.”

  “Teresa, please don’t try to joke about this. This problem can’t be solved just by writing a check.”

  “Then welcome to the club of the ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the world who can’t solve their problems by writing checks! Okay, don’t get me wrong—believe me, I’m sorry if that poor kid of yours is unhappy, but if you want me to be truthful, I can tell you it’s no big surprise. This is a repeat pattern, isn’t it? You’ve never told me much about your past when you and Sam were just two young kids scaring Wall Street shitless with your fifty million bucks, but I’ve kept in touch with Kevin over the years, and now and then he’s told me a thing or two about the seamy side of your past. You gave the orders and Sam was the executioner, isn’t that right? Well, here we go again. You gave the order for Vicky to be happy and Sam’s busted his ass being a yes-man, but unfortunately for everyone concerned, it was the wrong order and Sam’s done a hatchet job.”

  I tried to focus on what she was saying. “Teresa, you might as well be talking Chinese. What do you mean?”

  “Vicky should never have married Sam. Hell, Sam was my lover for four months—I should know what I’m talking about! If Vicky had been grown-up, as I was, she might have survived, but she wasn’t grown-up, was she? She was just a kid, running away from her parents and blundering, by a series of accidents (or were they accidents?), into the bed of a man who underneath all that smooth talk is very insecure with the opposite sex.”

  “Insecure? Sam? Why, he had women all over the place in the old days!”

  “Yes, and the best ones all walked out on him, didn’t they? Any woman with a mind of her own would walk out on Sam Keller—he has a very rigid idea of what a woman ought to be: sweet, willing, and submissive to his authority. But let’s be honest—not all women can take that kind of nineteenth-century junk nowadays, some women don’t want to spend their lives wrapping a man’s ego in lamb’s wool, some women have figured out there are more rewarding ways of occupying their time!”

  “Teresa, just what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the real world, Cornelius, the one you ride through every day in your insulated glass bubble of a Cadillac, the one you keep at arm’s length by signing checks. I’m not talking about your masculine pipe dreams of the way women ought to be, I’m talking about the way women really are! Believe me, I’m fond of Sam, and if he wants a crying, walking, sleeping, eating, living doll for a wife, good luck to him—we all have our different tastes, and I’d be the first to say we’re all entitled to them, but he should have picked a woman who is that way, a woman who wants to be that way, not a mixed-up little girl who doesn’t know who she is or what she wants!”

  I stared at her. Then I said rapidly, “Okay, maybe Vicky shouldn’t have married him, but she still had to have a husband, didn’t she? It was obviously best for her to marry young … all I’ve ever wanted was the best for her!”

  “You’d have no idea what was best for any woman—you’d only know what was best for the bank in a multimillion-dollar business deal! And why should it have been best for her to marry young? No, don’t give me that crap about her being an heiress who had to be protected from all the wicked gigolos! You just couldn’t wait for her to marry because you have this psychological need to see her as the perfect wife and mother—you were desperate to begin weaving these fantasies that were obviously so necessary to you!”

  “What garbage!” I burst out. “What absolute bullshit!”

  “Is it? I’ve lived with you for nine years now, and, honey, I’m beginning to think I know you better than you know yourself. Your trouble is that you’re fixated on, quote, being a success in life, unquote. Why do you go chasing after money and power the whole damn time? It’s because way back when you were learning the facts of life, someone—Uncle Paul?—taught you that for fifty percent of the world’s population—men—the only equation worth worrying about if you wanted to be happy and masculine was the one which read: money plus power equals success. And what about the other half of the world’s population? What was the magic formula they had to learn in order to ensure happiness and femininity? Oh, yes! Marriage plus maternity equals perfect fulfillment for all females! Marriage plus maternity equals success! Never mind who taught you that—your mother? your sister?—because it doesn’t matter. You could have picked it up anywhere. It’s become one of the most popular fairy
tales of our time.”

  I just managed to get my temper under control. Speaking in a voice that rang with a calm, measured logic, I said evenly, “I wanted Vicky to be happy. I thought she would be happy as a wife and mother. Therefore, if I thought finding such happiness constituted success, will you please tell me why I shouldn’t have wanted that kind of success for my daughter?”

  “Why? I’ll tell you why! It’s because you didn’t want that kind of success for her sake, you wanted it for yours! You wanted—and still do want—a so-called successful daughter so that all the world can say in admiration: Gee, what a successful father he is to have such a successful daughter! Sam isn’t the only guy around here who’s not as confident as he seems to be, Cornelius, and he’s not the only guy I’ve ever met who uses women to boost his ego!”

  “Jesus Christ!” I shouted, but again I somehow got my temper under control. “Look, I’ve had just about enough of this pseudo-egghead crap you keep dishing out to me. Where did you get it all from? Those popular psychology books you picked up from the racks in the five-and-dime? Let’s get back to the facts. I’m only interested in the facts. Fact number one: Vicky genuinely wanted to be a wife and mother. Fact number two: all women basically want to be wives and mothers—”

  “No, honey, they don’t. Sorry, but they just don’t. My fifty percent of the human race isn’t a bunch of identical plastic dolls. We’re human beings and we’re all different, and incredible though this may seem to you, we don’t all want the same thing. In fact, the real rock-bottom truth is that we’re as diverse as that other half of the human race, the half you take such arrogant pride in belonging to!”

  I had a better grip on myself now, but I was still taut with rage. “I’m not denying the diversity of the human race! I’m talking about the basic instincts of mating and reproduction which are common to everyone! Of course there are different types of women. God knows, no one could be less like you than Vicky!”