Country of a Marriage

by Anthony Giardina

  When he was done, he looked up at the sky: what a night! Down at the water’s edge, it was even more visible, more stars than he’d ever seen before. The sky was actually twinkling! He felt bad for his family, but he had to admit it, too: he had begun to feel a preference for being out here, exposed. He couldn’t stay hunched up in that tent. So he was a bad family man. He took off his shorts and let himself into the water. It would be something to go out to the middle of this lake and float there and look at the stars. Desire for a woman was on him, that creepy unsettledness in the chest. Floating, he imagined the girl in the neighboring tent coming out on the lake, naked like him, and the two of them having a little tryst. This was cousin to a feeling he’d often had with his woman, one he didn’t like to think about too much: how, waiting for her on her bed, on days when he left the office before her, he fantasized another woman coming through the door, any woman, and he realized it didn’t matter. At heart, I’m a whore, he thought to himself, and laughed, and made a clumsy motion in the water, so that he had to work hard to stay afloat, and his belly surfaced and he thought: a man with a belly like that is not a whore. Sometimes you carried around a ridiculous sense of yourself, a mental picture in which you were handsome and dashing, and then you caught a glimpse of yourself that brought you back to earth. Seeing his belly was like that; no woman would come swimming out to find him. Yet one had! No, two had! And why? He gazed up at the stars again, and in the dazzling profusion of them, thought he caught some glimpse of anonymity, of all these men and women running around fucking one another and making up reasons for it that were grand and profound, when they might all be just like him: waiting, in beds, when almost anyone would do. Still, one person comes in, and because there must be some reason for that one person, we invent one, and arrange our lives around it. Just like right now, Bill Diamond was reading some book to his children, and fools like Theo might believe this was a fine and noble gesture, but really it was because Bill Diamond—just another whore at heart; he laughed, louder than before, when he thought it—had to justify Liz Diamond’s having come through the door, having climbed into bed with him, having produced these children.

  Well, perhaps these sorts of thoughts led nowhere. He floated awhile, cleared his throat as if to scoot away the unworthiness of these recent speculations. Somewhere a dog barked. It might have been in Canada, that was how still the night was. There was something a bit spooky about it now. He couldn’t tell how far out he’d gotten, and was afraid to touch down. What if there was a drop in the shelf, and he was floating above a hundred-foot descent? He tried to be brave, and stay where he was, to avoid the dash to shore. But he was entirely conscious of himself, and no further thoughts would come. Just one. Once, on vacation on a lake in Maine, he had made love to Anna—who could recall the exact circumstances?—and he remembered afterward stepping out onto the porch of the house they’d rented, looking up at the stars, and thinking: if you want me, take me. It was the ideal, he supposed: to love a woman with the nakedness of appearing before God, without purpose or will of your own. If you want me, take me. Some of the men he spoke to had started going back to synagogue, but not him. Sex taught you more than the rabbis, if you listened to it. He couldn’t remember whether it had been before Leah, even, that night in Maine. No, he remembered now, Anna was pregnant for the first time. Oh, what a good man he’d been then. He liked to think that sort of sex was what children came from, an orgasm you didn’t try to control, to make good. A shot without self-regard. Oho, he was climbing the intellectual ladder tonight. But where was he? There was a silence, like a broken synapse in his mind. Nothing came after it. He floated. He had a vague sense of falling off. His life had come to this, to not knowing. He waited, because any minute the earlier motion of his thoughts would resume. His arms made strong movements, as though he wanted to demonstrate to anyone watching that he was fine. But who was watching? Far off, he heard a boat. This late? Its engine died. Night fishing. He had come to the end of it, to whatever he knew about himself, or about anything. The mind lost its power after forty, that was for sure. It occurred to him that there would be nothing so extraordinary about a man floating naked on a lake, looking at the stars and thinking profound thoughts, and at the same time a snapping turtle coming along and biting off his penis. Such things happened all the time, he was sure. He stepped down and discovered that he had indeed gone out over his head, and this time, the thought was frightening enough that he began a one-armed crawl to shore, his free hand cupping his groin protectively.

  IV

  The next day, a hot one, an outing to the sandy beach was proposed. There, everyone seemed to gather quickly into appropriate groupings. The Doctor and his son, on the lake, played a game with rafts, while the little girls held a net in the shallows, hunting for tadpoles. On the blanket, Anna and Liz Diamond alternated between bouts of animated conversation and longish periods where they lay back, silent and unmoving, to take in the sun. Only Theo was left companionless, unless you counted Jacob, who had been fed and gone to sleep, belly down, against Theo’s forearm.

  The day had a soft, smoky haze to it that made him want to curl up somewhere. A breeze lifted some yellow, crumbly leaves—perhaps last year’s—and as he watched them carried to the water he was affected by a kind of displacement. Vague, unfocused, it still pulled at him, and brought him back to last night, to the memory of him and Anna in Maine. Afterward, he’d had trouble sleeping, as though an element had presented itself to be figured out, and he couldn’t, not quite. The water was perfectly still before him, white and glassy, and it seemed if he stared at it long enough, this elusive thing might come back to him, sharper, and with words attached, maybe.

  At the edge of his vision, he saw Liz Diamond get up from the blanket and begin moving into the water. She tucked her hair into a blue bathing cap, carefully, slowly, then, lowering her fingers an inch or so, rippled the water in a circle. Finally, she plunged. As Theo watched her, he felt a great, sentimental compassion for this simple woman, this mother, this soft, slightly goofy being for whom he had only good wishes; he hoped, sincerely, that she was loved. Once she had risen to the head of Bill’s raft, they talked briefly, then kissed. From somewhere far off, the smell of hamburgers cooking wafted over the trees, a pure summery essence. “Let’s go to that picnic, Anna” appeared in his mind, as though the way had been paved for them and was now clear, they had only to take the steps; he experienced a moment of amnesia, assuming it was all because of this secret of Anna’s, this new sadness that lay on her like a second skin, that they had somehow missed the boat of family happiness.

  Anna chose that moment to turn and stare at him. It was a direct stare, and unsettling. She had on sunglasses, so much was uninterpretable, but Anna’s body had always been expressive. The turn of her knees had sometimes been enough to gauge her affection by, and whether she was approachable. Now he sensed an invitation.

  He deflected it. His gaze turned up to the sky, absorbed there for an instant. It seemed, even while he was doing it, a stupid choice on his part, one he would have to pay for. Still, when he turned back, and saw that she had already gone away from him, he was relieved. It had been only a matter of a moment. He could honestly say Anna hadn’t given him much of a chance.

  That night, predictably, it stormed. Hints had been given at dinner, when the wind picked up, and the trees, shore-side, bent at the neck. Theo saw the Doctor taking note of this, but prevented himself from saying anything. It was simply too embarrassing to admit that he took the lead from another man as to how, and when, to worry about his own family’s safety. Instead, he pretended not to notice the genuflecting trees, the ball of aluminum foil picked up and carried to the site’s edge by a sudden gust.

  There were still a few stars visible when they bedded down. Perhaps it would be all right. In the middle of the night he was awakened by the sound of droppings on the tent’s fly. Squirrels, was his first, hopeful thought. Acorn husks. Within moments, the rhythm was unmistakable. Well
, after all, he thought, it’s only rain, nothing in itself so dangerous. Then came the sound of rumbling, far off. He clenched his teeth. Thank you, he said, in anger, to someone not immediately present, for your eternal dependability. He heard, by the sound of breathing within the tent, that someone, at least, was asleep, though beside him, Anna’s silence and immobility suggested a tension like his own.

  “Are you awake?” he whispered.

  There was nothing at first. Then the small word yes dropped from her, unwillingly released.

  “Do you hear?” he asked.

  She returned no answer.

  “The rain?”

  Still nothing.

  “Anna?”

  “What?”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Go to sleep, Theo.”

  “I heard rumbling across the lake.”

  “It’s only rain.”

  “So you say.”

  He rose to a sitting position, goaded into alertness as much by her downsizing of the threat as by the actual rumble, which had seemed to diminish somewhat. He wished for its return, if only so that he could say, “See? See?”

  He listened to the plattering. No, there was no immediate danger, though it could still come. He lay back down.

  “Why are you awake, then?” he asked cautiously.

  She seemed to have made a resolve now to offer him nothing.

  “Anna?”

  “Can’t I even have this time to myself?” she asked, and rolled away from him.

  Time to herself, was that all she wanted? But if that were so—a thing so small, so easily granted—why was she crying now?

  He drew himself alongside her and attempted an awkward embrace. Her crying grew loud, threatened to drown out the rain, and he became afraid she would wake Leah.

  As always, too, though he was ashamed to admit this, her crying roused him.

  “I wish you would tell me,” he whispered, and kissed her. In his voice he attempted to place tenderness, empathy, but she detected only lust, and shrugged him off.

  “Go to sleep,” she said, matter-of-fact.

  “How can I? With you like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, nothing. Crying so loud you’re going to wake the kids, and I’m supposed to act like it’s nothing.”

  Even that didn’t prompt her to answer.

  “I think we should move,” he said.

  After a moment: “Why?”

  “The branch above us. It could fall.”

  She made no response at first.

  “I thought you were talking about the house,” she said, and snorted.

  “Our house? Why would I bring that up here?”

  It was curious, and hopeful: the mistake, her assuming he was talking about something he was not, opened up in him a pocket of calm. The little domestic arrangements by themselves might yet have the power to hold them together. The house. He didn’t want to push this, or overestimate its strength, but his breathing had gotten a little easier.

  “Why were you crying?” he asked. He made the effort to be calmer, quieter, more serious. Now he could afford to be like her doctor.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Of course it’s my business.”

  “Don’t you know?” she asked.

  He waited a moment; then, chagrined, answered, “No.”

  It drove her away, he could tell.

  “This afternoon, I felt you were ready to tell me.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Were you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then why not now?”

  He could sense, from the quality of silence in the tent, that she spoke out of a place where, metaphorically at least, her teeth were gritted.

  “Theo, you’re a million miles away. You’re so locked into your head you don’t know the first thing about anything.”

  When she had finished, he lay back again, and listened to the surrounding noises, the rain lapping almost casually now against the tent.

  “Tell me what I don’t know.”

  She waited. At first he thought he would again receive no answer. Then she turned to him. The lightning assisted the terrible eloquence of this moment by flashing somewhere nearby, then again, so that the darkness in the tent was briefly lifted. Her face as she regarded him was drawn, as though she had aged terribly tonight. He had married a beautiful woman but tonight he found himself bound to—he didn’t want to say it—to a crone. There. He was ashamed of thinking that; still, something true was in it, and something not to be ashamed of. He felt a tenderness mixed in with his horror. He wanted to touch the dry hardened places in her face, but feared the act would be misinterpreted.

  And as if this wasn’t enough, it was only half of what he’d seen in that brief, firelit instant. As she regarded him, he understood that she knew nothing of his affair. But it didn’t matter. She knew something worse, a fact about him, a truth that had been with them all their married life but was only now being faced. It had no name, this fact, no incriminating detail attached to it, but it was at the core of everything.

  Then something rose in him, a kind of rebuttal. They were in darkness now, he could hear the sounds Jacob made preparatory to waking. They were in the midst of a storm, too, a terrible drenching downpour that had heightened in the last few minutes and begun to sound like bending aluminum. Yet there was no possibility of movement until he could say the thing he had to say. He dug for it; it retreated.

  “The night in Maine, Anna” was what he finally blurted, but in a low, barely coherent voice, as though he were not certain of it as a piece of evidence.

  Not only did she not say anything. He could tell, from the character of her silence, that she had no understanding of what he meant. That night in Maine when he had offered himself up to God had been perhaps the most private moment of his largely private life, unobservable by anyone. In the light of this, he watched it go backward, lessen. It counted for nothing. And did that mean that his love, the manner in which he had loved, counted for nothing as well? No, it had been there on too many occasions to list, a tiny opening in the heart that had been, afterward, quickly closed up, as if he hadn’t known what to do with it. And it was true, he hadn’t.

  Somewhere nearby he heard thunder crack again; the cross-webbing at the tent’s apex was briefly visible. Jacob’s low, goatish voice lifted once or twice, working itself up to a good cry. And now Leah, too, was awake.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Was that thunder?”

  “Yes.”

  He wished they would go back to sleep. Let him have a little more time to work out this thing of his. Leah began climbing over him to get to her mother, and then the scream Jacob had been levitating toward was achieved. As if to top this, from outside the tent came a kind of movement, a working against the tent’s zipper that suggested to Theo the teeth of an animal. Alerted, he sat up. But when the zipper finally rose, it was Bill Diamond’s face that peered in.

  “We’re moving into the lean-to,” Bill said. “That storm’s getting close.”

  The Doctor hesitated a moment. Their faces were only inches apart now. Theo could see the man’s hair clinging wetly to his forehead. He had experienced this odd sort of moment before with men, the sudden, forced closeness that occasions an uncomfortable looking in on the other. Theo could feel now all the difference in himself, the true difference, as though Bill were staring into the eyes of a strange breed of animal he was only now recognizing, and feeling repulsed by. He wanted to shout, “But it’s true! Yes! Everything she says about me! I’m distant, detached, I haven’t a clue about life!”

  “I suggest you join us,” the Doctor said curtly, ignoring, or not hearing, Theo’s silent confession, and disappeared back into his own family, joining them in their little exodus from tent to lean-to, clutching sleeping bags, flashlights, each other.

  Now there was an urgency set loose in the tent. They grabbed what they could, a
nd tried to force Jacob’s stroller through the too-small opening, cursing one another as they did. Finally Anna had the presence of mind to lift the boy out of the stroller and they made a run through the rain, and arranged themselves, with a kind of awakened midnight joviality, among the Diamonds in the lean-to.

  The younger children they tried to hush back to sleep, but the older ones knew there was a show to watch. So, eventually, Jacob nursing at Anna’s breast, the Diamonds’ little one laid out in a sleeping bag, they formed a small audience of seven on the lean-to’s lip. Protected by its cover, they were relatively safe, even cozy, though Theo found himself unable to enjoy this as the others seemed to be doing.

  Across the lake, at irregular intervals, the lightning opened up its own jagged path. “Oo,” Liz Diamond said, each time it hit. “Did you know,” their son informed them, in the vaguely obnoxious tones of the young scholar, “that what you see is the lightning’s upward movement?”

  Theo turned to Anna. She watched the lightning with unabashed interest. It amazed him that she could look away from their plight to concentrate on this. She gathered Leah close to her and again he tried to read hope in the simplest of her actions. Certainly nothing tragic or final had yet happened. In the morning, he would get her aside, he would demand to be told. And then he remembered—the internal motion was like an elevator plummeting—that he knew, he needed to be told nothing, it was now up to him to respond. In his mind he worked at this, and worked, and watched the lightning as if it were nothing but a wild distraction, a facade keeping them from the true thing. And at every break in the storm he expected it would go away, and leave behind it a pocket of peace where he and Anna might be alone. Then he would begin to unburden his heart, though what the actual words might be, or how the thing itself begun, all of this remained the deepest mystery.