Memories of a Marriage

by Louis Begley

  She arrived fifteen minutes late. I told her quite sincerely that I hadn’t minded. It was pleasant to sip a martini and eavesdrop on conversations at other tables. The way I lived now, I could go for days hearing no human speech other than that on the radio or when the doorman says, Have a nice day, sir.

  And how do you think I live? she countered.

  The hint of unprovoked aggression in that remark made me look at her more carefully. She was haggard, and I could see reddish blotches on her face, imperfectly covered by makeup. It could be an allergy to something in her garden; she had returned from the country only two days before. I offered her a glass of champagne, which she refused, and she asked for a martini like mine. There was a leak in her swimming pool, she told me, that couldn’t be fixed without emptying it and pouring some cement; in all probability she’d need a new heater; the pool man was a crook. She wouldn’t trust him with the repairs and wished she hadn’t quarreled with his predecessor, who was also dishonest but on a smaller scale and at least knew what he was doing. She’d called the trust company to say she’d need money for the repairs and the heater, and the trust officer’s assistant had been rude to her. When she complained to her brother John, he told her that the De Bourgh trusts were no longer among the trust company’s very important clients. He had the gall to tell her that it was her fault if the people at the trust company weren’t nice to her. She had alienated—“alienated” was the word he’d actually used—everyone there by being a constant pain in the ass. Of course, she hung up on him, but that didn’t solve the problem. There was no way she could fire the trust company. It was written into the trust. And obviously no one was going to help her bring them to heel! That’s what her Friday had been like. On Saturday, there was a party at the McGregors’, the next house over. At least they had the decency to invite her. She couldn’t imagine why they had invited about half of the other guests. Her great-aunt Helen Goddard King, who had left her the Little Compton house in her will, wouldn’t have let them in the door. She couldn’t believe that any of them had gotten into the club, not even as summer members. Not that she cared. She hardly set foot in there anymore.

  I interrupted and got her to tell the waiter what she wanted for dinner and ordered my own meal and a bottle of wine. It didn’t seem impossible, unless I put her on another track, that this particular jeremiad would stop only after I’d paid the check and told her I’d walk her home.

  Look, I said, I’ve been thinking a great deal about those terrible months in Geneva and the remarkable new start you made in Cambridge, and there is something I obviously haven’t gotten right. I think you told me that before you went to Geneva you had decided that you and Thomas were through, that it wasn’t going to work. Indeed, you joined Hubert without any thought for Thomas. And then you and Thomas get married anyway! Why? The other question that has been rattling in my head is why you didn’t continue your career in publishing. It seems like such a perfect fit.

  The second question is easy, she replied. I liked Emily Calhoun, my boss at Houghton Mifflin; I liked the publishing house in Boston. I liked the nice fuddy-duddy men who worked there. They’d all gone to St. Mark’s and served in the navy, and it was nice to go with them to the Ritz for lunch in the café. They liked martinis, and so did I, and I knew they would have given their left testicle to take me upstairs and get me undressed. I’m not sure they even wanted more than that, but whatever it was they wanted, they never dared to make a move. In New York, I was too sick, and I had Jamie. When he started kindergarten I had a couple of interviews. It wasn’t for me, even if I had felt better and Thomas hadn’t made me feel completely worthless. Those men in New York publishing houses, those second-raters with bad manners and egos like trailer trucks, were sexist pigs. The expression must have been invented for them. There was one, you won’t believe it, who was busy ordering a pair of chinos from L.L. Bean while I was there, sitting at his table, right across from him, and he asked me to measure the length of his pant leg from the crotch down so he’d be sure he got the right size! I walked out.

  But getting back together with Thomas: you’re right to ask about that. Probably it wouldn’t have happened if my dunderhead brother John and Alex had kept their big fat mouths shut. Thomas was in the second year of business school. He went to the Harvard Club in New York for some sort of reception for business school students and important younger graduates, and saw Alex there. Alex asked him about me, and Thomas told him the truth: I’d stopped answering his letters, and he didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. What he didn’t tell Alex was that at the time he was himself seeing a Radcliffe junior, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn with a big nose and big tits, who’d take him in her mouth and tell him he was a great lover. If he had, perhaps Alex wouldn’t have felt so sorry for Thomas. Instead, your Lampoon buddy said, That’s terrible, we’ve got to do something about it. I’ll ask old John De Bourgh what’s going on and let you know. Your letters must have gone astray! Thomas says, Thank you very much, that’s so good of you, Alex calls John, who gives him my address and telephone number, of course without bothering to ask whether I mind, and Alex gets on the phone to Thomas and says, You’re in luck! I don’t know whether it slipped John’s mind or whether it was an attack of belated discretion: he didn’t tell Alex about McLean or Dr. Reiner. I know John knew about McLean, because it was necessary to make arrangements with the trust company for paying the bills; I’m not sure he knew I was still in treatment. Next thing, there is Thomas waiting for me when I come home from Houghton Mifflin, right there in Louisburg Square, sitting on the stoop and reading some awful business-school book. He was so absorbed I could have walked on and hidden somewhere. Anywhere! As it was, I said hello. I have to admit, he was very clever. He didn’t complain about my not writing, he didn’t ask where I had been or even what I was doing, he just kept on repeating how glad he was to see me, how beautiful I was and how chic. It’s a fact that I’d lost weight and had a very good haircut. Then he asked if he could take me out for tea or a drink. I think he said, Let’s go to the Ritz. It was a five—ten—minute walk, and I was tired, so instead I asked him in. I offered him tea, although I really wanted a whiskey, because I didn’t want to drink with him. Liquor seemed to go to my head more quickly, perhaps because of the medication I’d been on at McLean, and I wanted to remain self-possessed. I was also careful to tell him to sit down on the sofa and to sit down myself in the Queen Anne wing chair that had belonged to the same great-aunt who later left me the house in Little Compton. We drank the tea. I’d also put out some Pepperidge Farm cookies. It was all very peaceful until I put my teacup down. Right away he was on his knees before me, caressing my legs. I let him, although I hadn’t shaved my legs, and there was bristle on the insides of my thighs. I hadn’t been with anyone since Hubert walked out, and he got me very excited. I wasn’t wearing stockings. He worked his hands under my skirt up to my waist, pulled off my panties and shoes, and pushed my legs apart. I thought it would be the old Harvard-boy routine. All those clubmen who’d stick a finger into you and churn and come in their pants, leaving you humiliated and furious. But he’d learned about female anatomy and actually made me come. Was he ever pleased! Lord knows from the very start I had tried to explain to him how it worked, but he just couldn’t get it. Later he told me it was the girl from Brooklyn who’d taught him. When we finally made it to bed, he made me come the first time with him inside, and I remember telling him, Yes, this is the way. This is how you should always do it. Break me, break me like a mare.

  Her own story had aroused her. I was certain it had. For the first time that evening, there was color in her cheeks, and I am ashamed to admit to having felt myself a degree of unwholesome excitement. Before I could learn whether that incident had marked the resumption of their relationship and its progression toward marriage, the waiter brought the first course.

  I shouldn’t be telling you these things, she continued after a while, putting down her fork. They’re so embarrassing. But o
therwise you won’t understand how it happened. They all work hard at the business school. Thomas had always been a good student. Perhaps he didn’t have to work as hard as most others. Anyway he was constantly after me. Mostly wanting to fuck. Very soon after the first time he said very proudly that he’d told the Brooklyn girl about me, and that ended that. Perhaps he should have kept her; his performance stopped improving. It was the old story. One night I was so mad I got up and sat in the Queen Anne chair with a knit coverlet over my shoulders, shivering from cold. I was crying. He got out of bed too and said, Please stop, I’m going to make it all right. And he did. It was another useful trick the girl from Brooklyn taught him. A couple of men in France had showed me, and Hubert used to do it before he decided it was too much trouble, but I didn’t think Thomas knew about such things. It drove me wild. Later we did variations on that theme that he really liked and I didn’t. All I knew was that he was no Hubert. He wasn’t a real man. It didn’t help that when he came over in the evening—which was most evenings because he’d get his work done by the late afternoon—he wanted to spend the night and leave early enough to get to class on the MBTA. I couldn’t allow that. The house belonged to the Mathers. Peter Mather taught Greek and ancient history at the college; both he and his wife were very stiff and agreed to rent the apartment to me only because they knew my family. I was sure that if they saw Thomas going out the door in the morning and hanging around on weekends all hell would break loose. They’d want me to leave. The argument over this went on and on. He’d insist, and apart from him and Dr. Reiner and my work with Emily, I had no one, nothing. I asked Dr. Reiner what I should do, and he said, You should do exactly as you wish. I thought about that advice and told Thomas I didn’t think it was right to go on having an affair that tied me down and led to nowhere. All you and I do, I said, when we’re not in bed is to go to your classmates’ parties on football weekends, and all that happens there is they drink martinis and get smashed.

  I knew his friends didn’t know what to make of me. I was older and different from the girls they invited. At some point I asked Dr. Reiner whether he thought I could get married and have children. He said, You certainly are able to get married if that is what you really want to do, although normally it is best to avoid long-term commitments when one is in therapy, and he asked whether I had told Thomas I was in analysis. Because if you haven’t, you might consider doing so. Thomas was a born snoop, and it was difficult to speak about my breakdown in Geneva and Dr. Reiner and leave out Hubert altogether, but I managed it by being vague. Anyway, I’m sure the last thing Thomas wanted was to understand. When I told Dr. Reiner I’d done what he’d said I should, I expected some sort of praise, a pat on the head, but it was just the usual umm. A short time afterward, Thomas refused to leave after we’d finished; I couldn’t get him out of the apartment until the morning, and when I looked out the window I saw him and Professor Mather literally walking out of the house together. The next day when Thomas came over I yelled at him and told him we were through. If he wanted me he would have to marry me. I couldn’t go on being his slut. He looked at me coldly, it was the first time I’d seen that, and asked, How can I marry you when you need to see your psychiatrist every day? I told him to get out. He didn’t. Instead he practically raped me. If I hadn’t let him do it, he’d have strangled me. When it was over he said he couldn’t give me up, but before we talked about marriage he wanted to see Dr. Reiner.

  I’ll never forgive that bastard, she said after a moment of silence.

  I assumed that she was referring to Thomas, but she made her meaning clear a moment later.

  Can you believe it, she asked, he gave his word to Thomas that I was sound—that’s the word he used—that marriage would be good for me, and that there was no reason I shouldn’t have children? The next day I asked him how he could say such a thing after telling me I shouldn’t make long-term commitments while I was in analysis. He looked at me, raised his eyebrows, and said that one’s views change with circumstances. The conversation with Thomas had convinced him that this was my big chance for happiness!

  VII

  I WALKED LUCY HOME after dinner. Finding she was leaning on my arm more heavily than her doubtless very real fatigue justified, I declined the invitation to come upstairs for a nightcap. You needn’t be afraid of me, she countered, and kissed me on the lips. I’m lonely but hardly dangerous. Come to see me soon. The truth was, however, that the rawness of her narration had made me uneasy: I felt I was being drawn closer to her than seemed wise and instinctively placed the blame on her. I knew that was unfair. She had spent years in analysis—she had said that she continued to see a psychoanalyst after she and Thomas moved to New York—learning how to speak explicitly about feelings and actions that were once, and perhaps still were, considered unmentionable, and I suspected she was still in some sort of therapy. Moreover, if I put aside habits she might have formed during all those years on the couch and looked at the problem strictly as a novelist, I had to ask myself a question to which I had no convincing answer: how else was she going to tell her story? It was also true that my curiosity, initially piqued by the gratuitous harshness of the way she had spoken about Thomas when we met at the ballet, had turned into something like an obsession. Prudence be damned: I was determined to understand how the quirky but beautiful, charming, and seductive young woman I had known had changed so, had become an embittered and aggressive shrew. It was a question that now greeted me each morning. Age and solitude had clearly done their work, but there had to be something else, a poison that she and Thomas had secreted. Was it possible that the guileless young man she had introduced to me more than half a century earlier, whom I had later known as a prominent and very successful financier credited with having made an important contribution to the resolution of the Latin American debt crisis, and, to use a sobriquet I dislike, a public intellectual of sorts, had been a monster in private life? More of a monster anyway than I and practically everyone else I could think of? So it happened that during the weeks that preceded her summer removal to Little Compton and mine to Sharon, I saw Lucy a number of times, at her apartment for tea—I had sworn to myself I would avoid having meals there—and over dinner in Jane’s Lexington Avenue bistro that had become my East Side dining room.

  I was impressed by her ability to keep the narrative going in chronological order, making it relatively easy to reconstruct as I thought about it later. The story developed relentlessly.

  The very evening Thomas received Dr. Reiner’s blessing he came to her apartment carrying a bouquet of red roses and proposed. On bended knee. In her opinion, he was in fact terrified of the marriage that lay ahead and needed to commit himself to it quickly, burning his bridges. How was she to respond? She had set him on that path; she knew she needed to give shape to her life. Of course she said yes. Thereupon he called his parents, right from her apartment. She had assumed the parents would be over the moon when they heard that a De Bourgh had agreed to marry their son, but she was in for a surprise. They said—he had made the mistake of not telling them she was at his side, and both the mother and the father spoke loudly so that she heard every word—that he was too young, that he shouldn’t get married until he had a job and was independent, and that this was a decision he would regret all his life. In subsequent conversations, all of which Thomas incomprehensibly repeated to her, they went after her, saying they could tell she was unsuitable for marriage and motherhood. At first she couldn’t understand. What kind of gossip had they heard, why were plumbers, electricians, and pool men in Newport, the sort of people Snow père et mère consorted with, talking about her? Apart from one beach party she’d been to with Alex that had gotten out of hand and was broken up by the police she’d never done anything there that anyone could point a finger at. Then one day she understood: that idiot Thomas had told them that she was seeing a psychiatrist five days a week and was in analysis. That was more than enough for Mr. and Mrs. Snow. They got the picture. She was spoiled goods. O
n one level she had to hand it to the garage owner and the bookkeeper: they didn’t let visions of De Bourgh money and social standing distract them from wanting their darling boy to find someone as perfect as he. They thought an unequal marriage would hurt him. On another level they made a big mistake. All that talk made Thomas dig in his heels. If there had ever been the slightest chance of getting him to back out of the engagement it was gone. Moreover, they had succeeded in giving her all the respectable reasons she needed not to have anything to do with them. Thomas would understand if she too dug in her heels and didn’t want them in her house or near her and Thomas’s children. Or if she relented, she would be doing him and them a big favor and would have every right to hold her nose.