The Big Why

by Michael Winter

  I went on a scouting mission. The ferry to Newfoundland leaves from Boston. Jenny was living in Boston. I thought, What’s the harm in looking her up. I called Jenny. She was having dinner with her sister. Did I want to join them. So all we did was eat dinner. Then I went back to my room at the Essex Hotel, and I was happy with myself. I’d withstood desire. I wrote Kathleen a postcard telling her of the meal with Jenny Starling and her sister. I wanted to be honest with her and prove my resistance. I’d promised myself honesty and a bolstering of restraint.

  The next day the ferry did not move. I was frustrated and worried about the expense of another night at the Essex. Then I saw Jenny. She had come down to wish me off.

  The ferry won’t depart, I said, until tomorrow.

  Let’s go for a walk, she said.

  We talked about Bob Bartlett — she’d recently met up with him at a party. Single man, she said, but he’s asexual.

  Could be otherwise, just not acting on it.

  Is there a difference, Jenny said, between suppressing your sexuality and being asexual.

  I think there are only a few asexual people

  So do you live far? I asked. She was wearing a new red sweater.

  Just down there.

  Then I’ll walk you.

  You mean if I lived far you wouldnt?

  Laugh.

  I meant to take a cab if it was far, but youre stuck with me until your door.

  Oh, youre not fickle.

  Do you have a problem with fickleness.

  I like consistency in people, she said. I dont like it when a person treats me well and then badly.

  Jenny was talking about me. About how I’d dealt with her and Kathleen.

  You have, I said, a dislike of fickleness.

  Let’s say I like people with ficklelessness.

  We walked on like this.

  I live in one of those flats, she said. It’s nothing special. Luis thinks an ordinary apartment will make me come back to him. I didnt even see the actual apartment but another one that happened to be vacant. And I took it.

  At the door. Well, Kent, thank you for the walk.

  I leaned in and we kissed. A tender kiss, and she did not move away. This is how you know that you can kiss again. The lingering. So we kissed. And held each other.

  Jenny: Are you fondling me.

  I’m a little fond of you.

  There was the sound of a metal door being roughly opened.

  I said, I hope youre keeping an eye over my shoulder for anyone wanting in.

  I can’t see over your shoulder.

  We kissed again.

  I dont have anything to offer you in the way of a drink. I have champagne.

  You dont have a cup of tea.

  I have tea. Would you like to come up for a cup of tea.

  I bent her hips. There was the cream ass. I lifted a leg. I felt the weight of her entire thigh in my hand. I immersed myself. It was the frustration at inaction that I drove into Jenny Starling. I pushed my optic nerve into the bridge of her nose. There was her head against the headboard. There was a hot fold of her with my fingers. I moistened my fingers. A heavy curtain flipped over beside the bed. You could hear a street. Things in a street.

  Youre a wolf, she said, in sheep’s clothing.

  I put the wool in wolf.

  17

  What you must understand is that my wife knew. I told my wife this would happen. I will marry you, I said to Kathleen, but you must know this: I will be with other women. I was honest to her about this. We came to an arrangement. Kathleen said this: If it must happen, dont let me catch you. I want no evidence.

  Truth: She said it with an air of martyrdom. And when she drew a scent of an affair, she demanded to know. She did not want to know, but then she had to know. And I felt guilt. I felt the guilt of having wronged her. But that guilt was mixed with the honesty with which I had approached our union. I am a man with big appetites. I confessed to these appetites, and now I was being judged for them. But I understand the love of a monogamous woman. Kathleen wants to believe that I won’t do it. She believes in the virtue of monogamy and that I am virtuous. My guilt was proof because I loved her so much. She was full of God, and I couldnt bear her censure.

  But my desire for Jenny Starling. To exercise with her, to permit her muscles to flex and push my body, was to accept her influence over me, and Jenny knew it. Our fucking was personal, as though I were confirming myself in the world, or it was a spiritual proclamation intended to persuade the world. Intimacy created meaning. I had turned Jenny Starling over several times with just my hands. It’s true that in those days I wanted to press against any woman if she allowed it. I had a gear I could reach called abandon. I wanted to be remembered. It was vanity, and my vanity about Jenny Starling lasted an evening and a morning. We were raw from the sex. It was not erotic now but a motion that united us. It was a farewell joining, a gentle but brutish thrust to assist us over the separation. The push was to be kept in the brain. And Jenny had no problem with my departure. We linked like insects that cannot unhinge. She came several small, unexpected times, and I pulsed in her and burned from the excess. It was not enjoyable but necessary, as we were addicted to it. For we knew the extent of our time — what little we had of it.

  I remember her open closet door. Jenny had fabric hung on it with pockets, and in the pockets were pairs of shoes. I thought it interesting that someone had realized that doors werent shouldering enough work. It was only one side of the door. So you could shut the door and forget the work the door was always doing.

  In the morning I heard her up. She showered. I smelled coffee. And she came in dressed. A black-and-charcoal top. Jenny bent down and kissed me. It’s nine, she said. I’m late for work.

  But it’ll be okay?

  Yes, but they’ll know. Women know, she said.

  On Jenny Starling’s kitchen table was a white cup full of black coffee. The white was so unblemished.

  18

  I’d had this affair with Jenny Starling on my first trip to Newfoundland. I had promised my wife I was done with her, and, through a coincidence, I’d ended up spending a night and a morning with her. Then my ferry left Boston for Nova Scotia and then a train to St John’s. I met the prime minister, Morris, on the train. He waived the duty on my sketch box. He listened to my plans for an artists’ colony. He suggested Burin. Ice-free port, he said, solid storerooms on the water. I’ll give free passage, he said, to artists and tax breaks for students.

  I loved Burin. The birch groves and blueberry bushes and there was a marsh I sank in.

  After seeing Burin I returned to New York. I did not tell Kathleen about staying with Jenny, though she knew I’d had dinner with her. I sold the house we had in Monhegan. I had my wife and son ready to leave. While I was in the middle of a set of push-ups with my feet on a kitchen chair, the postman came and Kathleen knelt down and laid the blue letter franked in Boston on the linoleum between my hands and oh she knew.

  I finished my twenty repetitions, stood, and primly tore off one end of the envelope. Near the middle of the letter was a word with the tails of a p and a g. I knew the word before I’d even got to it; it was next to the face of my thumb. I knew the information contained in this word as though the word itself had impregnated the letter. I was shocked at how I had not thought of this possibility, how dumb I was not to connect. But I did not tell Kathleen anything. I held on to the idea of the way things were.

  I said to Kathleen, I have to go to Boston.

  That was it. It’s hard to believe that Kathleen accepted this without any other words being said. We both knew it, and somehow not saying the words undid it.

  I stayed with Jenny Starling three days. She demanded that I leave my wife, that I take up with her. She almost convinced me that I should. And perhaps a promise leaked out of me. I am a bad man for promising. There was my desire in the idea of being with a woman I could talk with, but there was something repellent in her now being pregnant. That th
e two should mix. It had begun with the letter: I did not like the handwriting. How could I be passionate with a woman who writes this way? But how is a man to relieve himself of repellent thoughts? I did not tell this to Jenny but resorted to the responsibilities I had to my wife. Yes, I would accept Jenny’s child as my own. I would do all I could to take care of her and the child. But I would not leave my wife.

  We did not sleep together. Jenny wanted it to be our last three days. Fucking is a declaration of just the two of you. It excludes the world. I refused it. I felt of all the things I’d done to Kathleen, this resistance could shore up some goodwill. I had sold the Monhegan house because it brought Kathleen memories of Jenny. That was where I’d slept with Jenny while courting Kathleen. So. These three days were the end and the end is different from knowing you have only a short time. I had the rest of my life with Kathleen, which makes you feel different. I am not a great man. I have fucked over those I love. I hurt Jenny and did very badly by Kathleen. I am a man of appetites and an inability to refrain from the most intimate act a man and a woman can do. I love the feast of fucking, the permission and the giving. It is a religious act. I am not religious, except for sex and art. They are my king and queen, and I do not mind lying to honour them. There is a greater honesty at work, or at least to hell with telling the truth. To lie does not betray integrity. At least, my definition of integrity.

  When I left, when Jenny Starling saw that I was certainly to return to Kathleen, she relaxed. She began to smoke. She loosened up. She became herself because she had lost everything. In that becoming of her self I was glad to have chosen Kathleen. I wanted a clean woman. There was a fixed ideal in my head, and I recognized the hypocrisy of my own moral waning. But also there was a keen realization that I had not known Jenny. She had kept her self from me because she felt that if I’d known who she was, I would never have been with her for a minute. There was something strong in my character that made people act a role they hoped I’d admire. A strong character does not mean a champion of moral high ground. It is alluring but damaging. And here she was, drinking heavily, smoking, her stomach relaxed and big. Surprisingly, she became beautiful.

  19

  The train home to New York from Boston. Speed damaged the trees and small towns. Then dusk destroyed the world. I told Kathleen everything, except the fact that on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday morning I had not permitted this woman who had sent the letter to unbutton my sleeves and clench the back of my hair and lift me. That I did not lift her and turn my hips to search. This denial of sex seemed paltry, and I could not use it as a confirmation of my love for Kathleen. It seemed like a position, and if I had done that, it was only to use it as collateral against the guilt of previous misdeeds. I would admit to the child, I would accept him. But all Kathleen said to me was, You shaved.

  What.

  Youve shaved.

  She made me throw out all of my underwear.

  I remember the waste of that. She closed her ears to my plea for mercy. At my attempt to be good but the boat out of Boston was delayed. I said I’d had no idea that Jenny would come down to see me off. She hauled out my postcards from the scouting trip. Omissions, Kathleen said, are horrible. They are the worst forms of lying. For they harbour the scent of truth. About the boat’s delay and Jenny’s send-off she said, A coincidence is never that impressive to someone else.

  Kathleen did not know what to do. We had a child, Rocky, and she was pregnant too. Kathleen hated the thought of another woman pregnant when she was pregnant. How can a man make two women pregnant at once? And claim to love? Does he think he is a god? She did not know what to do. At times it was only her goodness that prevented her from hating me.

  I was frantic. I wanted her. I wanted everything about her. What I wanted was the form of life I was living. I wanted to be married.

  She had to be away from me, she said. Would I book a train, upstate. Her parents in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She was dragging her parents into this. But what did I expect. How long do you need, I said.

  I dont know.

  She was gone a week. I wrote and called her. Rocky had a fine time. He loves his grandparents. They have a farm. He was pulling up fresh new carrots clotted with soil.

  We will give her, Kathleen said, the proceeds of the house.

  She did not say her name.

  Yes.

  And our savings.

  Okay.

  I dont want you to have anything to do with her.

  Agreed.

  And youre emotionally stupid.

  I admitted to this.

  So that ended our first attempt at Newfoundland.

  20

  Was I relieved? I had salvaged things. I’d realized that my own ambition, let’s call it Rockwell Land, was tied up not with a place but more with the idea of who I was. The primary things had been salvaged. The family. My son, Rocky, my pregnant wife. New York. I could live in New York. I did some drafting for Ewing and Chappell. I pushed my T-square away from the plans for a confident bank and exhaled. I worked for three solid years. We had two more children, girls. Jenny had her son, George. I was lucky. My friends were married. The frame of marriage. I needed the structure of it. I was a crazy man who needed parameters. A wife. I liked my wife.

  Three years passed like this and my wife grew closer to me. But there was something in the new form of her closeness — she kept a veneer. I had hurt her and this was the result. It was not anything we spoke of, but it shone on her skin. Kathleen was self-conscious around me. A little formal. And then I remembered how she’d been when that letter arrived from Boston. She had laid the envelope on the floor while I did push-ups, as if she’d known of the affair all along. As if nothing I did surprised her and she was above it. She knew better than me. She had a good spirit, whereas I had the devil in me. She judged me but loved me for the devil. It was the one thing she was superior about, and I was a coward to mention it. I was glad she was the way she was. I did not want a confrontation. It meant rubble. A confrontation meant everything that we were would crumble. So I took it. I accepted it like a punch to the ribs to protect the face. Faces. I hated the way my wife’s face remained steady, and I knew she had an ugly face when it fell into emotion (we all do) and she would not let me see her face ugly. It wasnt the affair or the baby but the way we dealt with it that made me think we could not be together forever.

  21

  I thought of all this after walking with Rupert down to the Bartlett tunnel. He was offloading a floater. The tunnel is about eighty feet long, through solid rock. At the far end is Molly’s Island, and around it the green-and-white thrusting of the tide onto rocks, spraying up forty feet. We took a pony with us. The waves pushed in and rose, making the pony nervous. The men off the floater shook hands with us. Flour, roofing tar, new barrels, and pipe for a water pump. So, Rupert said, rumour has it you were in Newfoundland once before.

  He had heard something. I tried coming, I said, to New-foundland, yes. Four years ago. Soon after meeting your brother.

  We loaded the cart and pointed the pony back at the tunnel.

  You had plans, he said, for an art school.

  I wanted to bring artists and students here.

  You met Morris.

  Morris. Yes, Morris, the prime minister. He loved the idea. How’d you know that.

  Oh, I know Morris.

  So it was Morris who’d told him. We were walking back through the tunnel, and the underground aspect of Rupert’s questions made me feel like I was being interrogated.

  I guess youve found out about me then, I said.

  A thing or two.

  I decided to be open with Rupert. He was being nice to me, so why not confess. Morris told me that there are good ideas and bad ideas, and that this one, to make a university in Newfoundland, was good.

  Yes, Rupert said. That man’s mouth never goes slack.

  A promise, I said to Rupert, can shape you even when the promise is broken.

  You went to Burin.r />
  The prime minister suggested it. I liked the name. It’s the name of an engraving tool.

  Rupert: The bays are good there. Ice-free in winter. There are good storerooms on the water in Burin. Unlike here.

  Yes, what is it with this tunnel.

  We dont use it much now. But we needed it back when the fishery was good. Say fifty years ago. All this harbour was blocked with boats and wharves. Our claim was this here rock, and we got tired of lugging our gear around it.

  He smacked the rock with his hand. You were ambitious.

  To Rupert it must have been as if some external circumstance too chagrining had upset my distinct vision. And he would have been right. It was because I did not want to men-tion Jenny Starling in Boston. I did not, even now, want to mention it to you. I helped coax Rupert’s pony with his heavy load up to Hawthorne Cottage. We unloaded her.

  22

  Even though I do not believe in God. Even though this. When I was alone in that house. When I was waiting for Tom Dobie to join me. While I waited for the coffee pot to heat. Even though I believed in experiences and objects and was a man who believed that a good, godless life can be lived on earth, even so I prayed to God. I knelt and prayed. I prayed to the fireplace, which was praying north. I asked God to make me strong and make me love the things that were good. I wanted to love Kathleen. I wanted her to be enough and to be a vessel through which all the things of the world could be funnelled. I believed in children and friends. The fact that we do not live on, I did not let this depress me.

  23

  I met up with Rupert Bartlett down at Chafe’s. I was buying supplies: nails, oakum, food. Bud Chafe told me that people did not usually buy on a day-to-day basis. They bought provisions, stores. They bought barrels and sacks and tubs. They sold the same way. They sold nothing for eleven months and then on one afternoon in the fall they hammered out a price for their fish. When the fish ran good, Rupert said, the price fell. When the fish were poor, the price was a little better. Bud Chafe smiled. Just a little bit better.