Come Pour the Wine

by Cynthia Freeman

  “You look wonderful, Janet.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How was the trip?”

  “I had a nice time … You look … happy, Bill.”

  He didn’t look happy or content in the least. She had never seen him with this haunted look. Nicole was right.

  “Do I? Well, starting over isn’t easy—”

  “Oh? I thought it was for a man.”

  “What makes you think men don’t go through … adjustments?”

  And change of life … it’s called male menopause. Up to now she’d never really believed it, taken it seriously.

  “I’m sure they do. Well, people don’t adapt so easily to change. Sometimes, I’m told, what we think will make us happiest turns out the opposite. Fantasy and anticipation don’t stand up to reality too well … I remember I said something like that when we first met….”

  She’d meant that rather long speech as a springboard for him to launch into his misgivings, if he had any. But if he had any second thoughts he apparently wasn’t about to admit them.

  “That’s true,” he said. “Now tell me about your trip. Nicole said you met … someone … a very nice man …”

  She looked at him. Wasn’t it strange, he didn’t seem a bit jealous. Quite matter of fact about it. But then that could also be a defense. She hoped. But then it hit her that it was typical of Bill. He had that marvelous facility of avoiding subjects he didn’t want to face … “Nicole told you that? I’m afraid she’s trying to make you jealous.” The next words were said with more confidence than she felt. “Now I think I should get on with the reason I called. Pride at this point between us is ridiculous. You and I have a lot of years invested and I can’t honestly believe that our marriage didn’t mean anything to you—”

  “You’re right, Janet. It did mean a great deal—”

  “Then what happened that suddenly made you want out of it?”

  He shook his head. This was very tough. Honesty was not charitable; it was cruel, devastating. But this demanded the truth, so help him God … please.

  “Before I answer, crazy as this will sound—I love you, Janet, so it wasn’t that. As for it being sudden, it wasn’t that either. I know you sensed my frustrations in Europe. Maybe it began then or long before. Between my mother’s possessiveness and my father’s sending me off to a military academy, I always felt as if I was in jail … like I was their property. Oh, who the hell really knows? I don’t. But the result was that as I got older I began to feel as if I’d been shut off from myself, as though Bill McNeil got lost somewhere. I started to rebel, I guess, against the conformity of … marriage.” Quickly he added, “Not to you, but the whole thing of it … the sort of finality of it. Wednesdays at the club for cards—I hated knowing I’d see those same faces week after week for the rest of my life. There were no surprises. I knew what to expect for dinner every night. The drive back and forth to Manhattan began to seem endless and each mile became longer each year. Then I got to hate taking the train in the winter. I got so sick and tired of the same conversations coming home that I used to hide behind a paper. After all these years, Janet, this is very hard to say, but I simply wasn’t cut out to be a suburban husband.”

  She’d become angrier with each word, with the triviality of his complaints when compared to what he had destroyed, and it was only with difficulty that she held herself in check. “But you seemed so happy.”

  “That’s how it appeared. You even get good at deceiving yourself. The truth is I was expected to act like Nat and all the others.”

  “Since I wasn’t aware of all this, tell me, what could I have done to make life different for you?”

  “Nothing, because it wasn’t you. It was me and I take all the blame.”

  “Let’s not talk about blame, let’s try to understand how we failed each other. Maybe then we—”

  “You didn’t fail, Janet. Unfortunately you just married the wrong man. You should have been married to someone like Nat, who loves what Kit loves. You want Westchester and I want Manhattan. I look for surprises, you want permanence, the expected … our needs are different, don’t you see?”

  “I was willing to come back to the city with you, Bill.”

  “Not really. You were doing it to please me and I didn’t want it on those terms.”

  “Bill, I would have gone any where with you. For God’s sake, you must know that.”

  “But you wouldn’t have, Janet. Not really. The children came first. Wait until Jay gets out of school, you said.”

  “Wasn’t that fair? Couldn’t you have stood it another two years?”

  “Maybe … but deep down I knew if I stayed I’d get sucked into the undertow, settle in, compromise … you begin losing your edge when you feel you’re being put aside—”

  “And you feel I did that?”

  “Yes, I guess I do … not that I ever stopped you. But the children came first. Period.”

  Janet took a long sip of wine. “All right, Bill, you say you love me, and you know I love you. I’m going to tell Nicole and Jay they’re simply going to have to understand my first priority is my husband. I want us to go back together, Bill … life without you is—”

  “Wait,” he said, swallowing hard. “I know you’ll never understand, but I can’t be more than I am, which is a variety of louse. That’s a fact of life I’m stuck with. So are you. The truth is, I don’t want to be married anymore …”

  She sat staring at him, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Finally she asked softly, “You don’t even want to make an attempt? Don’t I count? Don’t you think you owe me something? We had so much together once, you know we did …”

  The pain in her eyes was almost more than he could stand. He wanted so badly to take her and hold her. “We still do … but Janet, darling, I want my life back … I’m terribly sorry our marriage did this to someone as wonderful as you. But what it amounts to is, one person shouldn’t have to keep another’s life going at the expense of his own. Or hers. Life shouldn’t be a tradeoff … that sounds cold, I know … I wish I could put it better … it’s just my feeble attempt, I guess, to say I’m not marriage material. Twenty years late. I’ll provide for you and the children, and I hope you and I can be, well, sensible and mature enough to stay good friends …”

  When had she heard that said? In the very beginning of their relationship … Here’s to friends … friends and lovers. It was the first night she’d slept with Bill.

  “You want us to be friends… sensible and mature,” she said, past caring about his feelings now. “We might even sleep together on occasion when you have nothing better to do. Like lovers? Friends and lovers. Remember? We started out that way. But let me tell you what you can do … go fuck yourself, Bill McNeil. Is that shocking coming from wholesome, sweet Janet, former Miss Kansas? Well maybe, but I’ve changed too. I’m not quite as ladylike as I used to be. You can go to hell.” She was nearly screaming as she picked up her wine glass and poured its contents into his lap. Then, with everyone looking on, she ran out of the restaurant.

  How she got home she’d never know. She had humbled herself, begged. But what hurt worst was that he didn’t want her. Suburbia was out, Manhattan was his mistress. Always had been …

  For three days and nights she scarcely got out of bed.

  She told the children nothing of her meeting with Bill, but they were beside themselves, thinking she was having a nervous breakdown.

  Kit was as concerned as they were, but she wasn’t going to stand by and watch Janet fall apart day by day. Not again. In feigned anger, she said, “He just didn’t want to be married. Get that into your head, Janet. He told it to you straight … it was boring … not stimulating enough. Bill’s a guy who needs a lot of excitement, even if he doesn’t know what excites him.”

  Between tears Janet said, “I despise him, Kit, and to think I lived with a stranger for almost twenty years. He wanted back his life. But how do I pick up the pieces of mine?” />
  “It seems we’ve been through this one before. I remember having to haul you out of bed at the Barbizon a long time ago. Now you get the hell out of bed right now and stop feeling so damned sorry for yourself.”

  “You’re right, Kit … I just made up my mind not to delay the divorce any longer … I want to get the damned thing started. This being separated is agony, but I keep hoping … and that’s stupid. Imagine, after he said he no longer wanted me—”

  “That’s a wise decision. Bill hasn’t made a move to do it yet … Damned if I understand him. He’s nuts … doesn’t want you and still can’t seem to let you go.” Like the little boy tied to his mother’s apron strings, she thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  GRADUALLY THE DAYS PASSED and became weeks. With Kit’s prodding she began playing tennis and going to the club. She despised it, but loneliness drove her … The first Saturday night dinner dance was the worst. If it hadn’t been for Kit she would have stayed home. It could hardly be a secret that Bill had walked out on her. How could she face anyone? “Screw them,” Kit said. Some joke …

  She felt as if she were on autopilot for most of the evening, as if she had dressed in the right thing, smiled at the proper moments, made the appropriate comments—all without really being there. She tried to assume an I-don’t-give-a-damn air. But the whole evening was unreal.

  Their old friends stopped at the table, saying how nice it was to see her. And mechanically she smiled. Then Richard Conners, one of Bill’s old golf foursome, stopped by the table and asked if he could have the pleasure of a dance. Sure. He’d never asked before, but why not? Respond appropriately and politely, Janet.

  As they moved across the dance floor, they passed Richard’s wife, Buffy, who was dancing cheek to cheek with George Hamlin.

  Suddenly it seemed Richard was holding her closer, and closer. She seemed to wake up from a trance when Richard whispered in her ear, “I’ve always been crazy about you, Janet. God, the times I wanted you, thinking how great it would feel to have those gorgeous long legs wrapped around me. Of course you were married to good old Bill, but now it’s different. Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow and then go to a—”

  She swung her arm with all her might, and it landed square in the middle of his nose. The blood ran down his face and onto his white dinner jacket.

  Suddenly there was a hush. The music continued but all eyes were on her. Quickly Janet weaved through the crowd and out to Nat’s car, where she sat shaking.

  Within minutes Kit and Nat were sitting beside her.

  “What happened?” Kit asked.

  “I want to go home.” She didn’t trust herself to say more….

  Kit came over the next morning. By now Janet could bring herself to tell her the things Richard had said.

  “Why, that rotten old—”

  “I wonder if I’m going to get a phone call from his wife …” Even the thought of it made her feel like throwing up … she could imagine how ugly and distorted it might get … “How do you think he’s going to explain what happened, Kit? I know I’m going to become the heavy in this.”

  Kit laughed. “So you think darling adorable little Buffy is going to call you? Buffy … is that a name for a woman close to fifty, I ask you? Have no fears, darling. They’ve been playing around for a long, long time, and not with each other. They’ll pretend to have a fight. It’s part of the act, but she’ll forget about it by lunch at the motel after a little roll in the hay with dear dignified George Hamlin the Third.”

  Janet was as shocked as she looked. “Where have I been? I’m a member of this community too. How come you know everything?”

  “Because you’re not interested in gossip and I happen to have big ears. You learn a lot when you play golf and bridge.”

  “Has anything like that ever happened to you, Kit … I mean since you’ve been married?”

  “Once or twice, but from the look in my eye they knew they’d get their balls chopped off.”

  “But when a woman’s single every man thinks he can … my God, it’s so degrading. I’m sending in my resignation. I don’t want to belong to the club … I’m a member of a different club now.” The outcasts.

  In the three months since Bill had taken to his freedom, more than once he had wanted to call and ask Janet to take him back. Which was why he still hadn’t asked her to go ahead with the divorce. That step was so final … Having been married for so long had changed him considerably more than he’d realized the night he’d left … Yes, he had hoped that being apart might help him sort out the pieces, but now it seemed as if he had only meant it as a temporary measure. He had just wanted to be alone for a while. With, he now realized, the assurance that Janet would always be there in the background. But he’d asked for a divorce and it looked as if he was getting it.

  He sat with a drink in his hand, looking at the large legal envelope on the coffee table. This afternoon at the office he’d received the preliminary papers from Janet’s attorney. She was going ahead with … Well, why not? Hadn’t he spelled it out that afternoon in Maxwell’s Plum? But down deep, he also felt crushed. Time to pay the piper, in more ways than one….

  Getting back into action hadn’t been as great as he’d thought it would be. At times his loneliness pushed him to drink too much. The little fillies at the singles bars bored him and while he found rock dancing sort of fun it was hardly, as alleged, a turn-on. There had to be something wrong with him. Those young broads would have given any normal man a hard-on, dressed in their tight jeans, sandals with four-inch heels and those revealing, glittering tops. Nothing was left to the imagination. An hour or so of that and he’d had enough. Boy, life had sure changed since the fifties … and so had he.

  He called his sister Harriet more often. She was far from the comfort he apparently needed. She told him that what he’d done went beyond her understanding. Kit would have nothing to do with him, and Charles … well, he was a married man. All the people they knew had come through Janet. His only companion now was his damned feeling of guilt. There were times he couldn’t think of one good reason why he’d left her. If she had been the least bit difficult maybe he could have justified it. But he knew he’d been somehow wrong, and it was a very bitter pill, indeed, to swallow. He even wondered if maybe he was a latent homosexual. Having deliberately gone to those singles bars to prove he wasn’t hadn’t accomplished anything. Women simply turned him off. He, Bill McNeil, ex-stud … ex …

  The first time he picked up a girl and brought her to the apartment he got only as far as taking off his pants, then looked at the young blonde standing nude with her thick long hair hanging loose to the waist and felt literally sick … Janet came flooding into his thoughts, and he said more sharply than he meant, “Get dressed … here’s twenty dollars for a taxi.”

  She turned red. Getting into her clothes, she told him he was sick, a fairy, and to hell with him … Bill McNeil, some stud. When he heard the front door slam he walked to the bar and proceeded to drink himself into insensibility.

  The next encounter wasn’t much better. The moment he managed to get the girl in bed he had an erection. Great. Return of the stud. But when he tried going inside, his manhood suffered an abrupt relapse. The stud goes west …

  She did everything possible to excite him, maneuvers that would make the average man do handstands, but memories of Janet stood firmly in the way.

  After she left he lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling. What in God’s name was wrong with him? Maybe he’d become impotent. But he knew that was untrue. He really knew … what he wanted was Janet.

  There was a special excitement with her … nothing contrived, no gimmicks. She had spoiled him as a lover. He couldn’t accept it and he couldn’t do without it. Why couldn’t he take being married? No doubt about it, he should see a psychiatrist.

  He called Nicole, but Janet answered.

  “Janet?”

  She froze. “What do you want?”

  “To see how
you are.”

  She slammed down the phone. She was not going to be civilized, sensible and mature.

  He didn’t blame her. What would have happened to his ego if she’d walked out on him?

  He dialed again, and again Janet answered.

  “Don’t hang up, I want to speak to Nicole.”

  “She’s not home.”

  “Janet, don’t turn the children against me, please—”

  “I haven’t. Strangely enough, Nicole happens to feel very sorry for you, and I don’t discourage it.”

  “Thank you … may I please speak to her?”

  “She’s not home, I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Jason?”

  She dropped the receiver on the bed and walked down the hall to Jason’s room. “Your father’s on the phone.”

  “Tell him to go to hell.”

  “Jason, don’t talk like that. Speak to him.”

  “When hell freezes.”

  It was useless … She went back to her room and picked up the phone. “Jason doesn’t want to speak to you.”

  Pained silence.

  She didn’t really love him anymore—at least she was trying hard not to—but she felt a deep sadness for him in spite of herself. He was so mixed up, confused, but he hadn’t been a bad husband, or father … a good one, in fact …