The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

by Robert H. Rimmer

  As they ate the stew Weeks had prepared, washing it down with corn liquor, Cynthia said, "I like my wedding present very much, Yale. But it is impractical."

  "May we never experience another practical day as long as we live," Yale said. Feeling the liquor, he grinned widely at Cynthia and Ralph.

  "That's my sentiments, boy," Weeks said, his face flushed. "But you'll never accomplish them with a woman. Women are made to keep men like you and me with their nose to the grindstone. There ain't no solution, you've got to have 'em."

  He poured them another glass of liquor from a stone jug. "Never hurt you," he told them in answer to their protests. "Drink your liquor straight. Stay away from that fancy sody water, ruins your stomach." Weeks got up and fished in his overall pocket. "There was a fellow here lookin' for you today. Said his name was Harrigan. I told him you'd be in tonight. He said he couldn't wait. Said he had spent half the day tracing you here. Left this here letter for you." Weeks handed him a crumpled envelope.

  Yale opened it. There were two sheets of paper. One was an invoice. "For completion of investigation in the case of Anne Wilson Marratt," Yale read, "$435.00. Due within ten days." Astonished, he looked at the other sheet. It was a report. "Subject: Anne Wilson Marratt, traced to 438 Terrace Road, Altmont, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Marratt, subject of investigation, is living in the home of Mr. &Mrs. John A. Terrence. Interview with Mrs. Terrence revealed that Mrs. Marratt is the mother of a four-month-old son named Yale Richard Marratt. The father was presumed dead by Mrs. Terrence, although no direct statement to this effect was ever made by Mrs. Marratt. Mr. Terrence teaches mathematics at the local high school. Mrs. Marratt has been accepted as a tenth grade English teacher for the fall term. In her talk with Mrs. Marratt interviewer posed as a representative from the school committee. Mrs. Marratt told her that her husband was killed in the Pacific. That it had been a wartime marriage. When asked if she had been in contact with her husband's relatives, Mrs. Marratt seemed startled. Subject stated that Mrs. Terrence was her father's sister. Stated that she preferred to live with her relatives, than with her husband's. Following our instructions no information was given as to true reason of investigation." The report was signed, Joseph Harrigan.

  Yale had read the paper at a glance. He folded it and put it in his pocket.

  "Yale, what's the matter?" Cynthia asked. "You look as if you've seen a ghost."

  "Nothing," Yale murmured, "nothing. A letter from a fellow I knew in the Army. Surprised to hear from him, that's all."

  Listening to Cynthia's delight with the canopied bed, watching her test the feather mattress and squeal with joy, Yale smiled. When he had read the letter he had tried to conceal his complete bewilderment. Why had Anne done this? She had been pregnant. She had even cared enough to name the baby after him. She was using his name. But still she had made no effort to contact him. What had he done to her? God what a predicament! He, Yale Marratt, had two wives!

  Cynthia was standing beside him in her slip. "Hey, come on, let's get in bed. Even with that fireplace going it's too cold to walk around."

  Yale lifted the slip over her head. She wasn't wearing panties. He unhooked her brassiere, and tumbled into the bed on top of her. She held her arms around him tightly. "Oh, that's much warmer," she sighed, "but your clothes are too rough."

  Sunk deep in the mattress, they loved while the wood in the bedroom fireplace crackled and the firelight made grotesque shadows on the walls and ceiling.

  Cynthia's face was snuggled into his chest when he said, "Cindar -- the letter I got . . . they've located Anne. She did have a baby. She's living in Philadelphia."

  He could feel Cynthia's body become tense. She pulled out of his embrace. She leaned on her elbow and looked at him quietly.

  "Well," she said finally, "I guess this is the shortest marriage on record. We can get it annulled tomorrow. You don't mind if I sleep in this bed tonight, do you?" She moved to the far side of the bed away from him. "There's no place else to sleep at Challenge Farm." He could hear her stifling her sobs in the pillow.

  Yale pulled her back to him. He kissed her tear-stained cheeks. "Look, Cindar, I love you. Do you understand that?"

  "You don't have to say that. She has your baby. You have to love her. What have I got? Another man's child in my belly! Yale, why didn't you just leave me alone? I'd have made a life for myself. O God, I should have known better. Of course, Anne would turn up. I really knew it in my heart. You can't recapture the past. There have been too many years between. Can't you see that? You're not the same, Yale. I know that. I'm not the same person you knew, either. For a few weeks it seemed possible, but I should have known better. If it weren't Anne, it would be your father. Pat would never be happy or just stand by and let you go your way." Cynthia turned away, refusing to look at him. "Your father will approve of Anne."

  "Listen," Yale said, angrily, "my life, so far, has been conditioned by people making tragedies where there is no tragedy. If you had come to me and told me what Pat had said to you, I would have told him to go to hell. I would have married you. We would have found a way somehow. I doubt very much if, faced with our marriage, he would have attempted any old-fashioned vengeance on your father. It would have gained him nothing except further alienation of me. Cindar, did you ever stop to think of how most people live life with a suicidal complex, a masochistic drive to hurt themselves? That's what I mean by making tragedies where there is no tragedy. Look at my father. He could make a tragedy out of my love for you simply because you are Jewish. He multiplies tragedy by trying to make me something I'm not. My sister is making tragedy where none need exist. Anne has a tragic complex evidently; or else she would have tried to find me. Everywhere you turn people have twisted their lives out of perspective over some human failing. Some person or persons fail to measure up to some idiotic idea another person has of himself, and boom you have the seeds of self destruction. Look at the world around you. What is the basis of all the hatred but a deluded idea of the importance of 'self'? Look at the murders in the morning papers, the divorces, the man-made scandals. What does it all amount to but a form of ego-mania? A feeling that the I is so damned important that it must justify itself at all cost. Do you know, I'll wager ninety-five percent of the novels written or the plays produced each year would have no basis for existence if it weren't for making tragedies where no tragedy should ever exist. There is only one tragedy in the world, and that is this terrible delusion with the importance of self."

  Cynthia had stopped crying. She listened to him in silent wonder. "What has this to do with us?" she asked, thinking Yale hasn't really changed. He could still run wild with words.

  "It means simply, I love you! I love Anne. Your solution for that situation is for you or Anne to withdraw in lonely resignation, wishing the winner good luck in the best jolly-old-cricket tradition -- while the unseen audience wipes away the tears; because of course that is the only thing to do. That's the way they want the world to end," Yale said, bitterly, "not with a bang . . . but with a whimper. Man must love the idea of whimpering idiots; there are so many of them!"

  "But you prefer to have the world end with a bang!"

  "Let's say rather our world can begin with a bang," Yale said. "Here's our situation. Let's assume that for x reason, which I will discover, that Anne has decided that our Hindu marriage didn't mean much anyway. Her tragedy will be to raise a son without his father. Maybe she would have luck and marry someone else -- or just as likely, knowing that she lost her first husband, she won't marry again. Instead, she will try to live out her life without marrying; lonely and frustrated. If I stay with Anne and we have our marriage annulled that will leave you, loving me, but raising Mat's child . . . lonely and frustrated."

  "Or I could meet someone else and marry and be happy," Cynthia said sadly.

  "I suppose you could," Yale said. "On the other hand, why do you have to take a chance? You love me, don't you?"

  Cynthia nodded slowly. "Of course I love you. I gu
ess I can't remember when I didn't love you. But you can't leave Anne either if she loves you. She has your son."

  "You really mean I can't love you and Anne, at the same time?"

  "You can't love two women!" Cynthia said. Her eyes were large with tears.

  Yale grinned. He kissed her salty lips. "If I could love two women, it would solve all our problems, wouldn't it?"

  "Oh, I see," Cynthia said sarcastically. "The great Yale Marratt. The man with two wives! What a great idea -- for you! Two women at your beck and call. You didn't happen to become a Hindu when you were in India, did you?"

  "Cindar, don't pin labels on me. If I had married you six years ago, we would have lived a monogamous life."

  "Or by now, you would have had some other woman on the side, like your brother-in-law whom you think so highly of."

  Yale looked at her sadly. "You haven't understood anything I've said, have you? You like the idea of making a tragedy out of our love."

  Cynthia grabbed him by the hair. She rolled on top of him.

  "Sure, sure, I understand, my friend. But two women can't live under one roof -- not in these United States! You know why, my sweet idealist?" she asked, biting his ear. "Because there isn't room on top of one man for two women!"

  5

  The first few days for Anne and Cynthia were tip-toe days.

  Yale went to Philadelphia the next morning and returned a day later with Anne. Although Cynthia had promised to stay until Yale returned, several times in the long day and night she was tempted to pack her few clothes and leave. Lying alone in the feather bed listening to the night sounds of the old house and the strange quality of time captured, she felt profoundly sad. She wondered what fate had brought her into Yale's life; why, ever since the days at Midhaven College she had become so compulsively involved with him. And now this wild idea. She knew that he had to go to Anne but it was folly for her to stay here and wait. He would try to persuade Anne to come back. Anne would probably refuse, and Yale would be torn between his duty to her and his love for Anne. But if Anne did come back what kind of a woman would she be to agree to such a crazy plan?

  "All I want you both to do, Cindar," Yale pleaded, "if I can persuade Anne, is to stay here together in this house for two months." He explained that he would stay in New York. "I've figured it out this way. If the idea is crazy, the first place it will break down will be between you and Anne. If you simply can't adjust to each other, or decide you have no desire to live together with me well . . ." Yale had looked so dejected that Cynthia agreed to wait until he came back.

  He promised that no matter what happened he would be back the following day. Lying alone in bed, Cynthia wondered if she were jealous. If he had found Anne, was he right this minute making love to her? She tried to force out of her mind a vivid picture of Yale naked in bed with Anne; stroking her body . . . touching her intimately just as he had touched her last night. Oh God, she thought dejectedly, what kind of a marriage could it ever be sharing the man you loved? It was impossible . . . impossible!

  The next day crept by. When three o'clock came she decided that the only thing to do was to leave. She could go back to Boston. She was packing her suitcase when she heard Yale yelling, "Cindar, Cindar, where are you?"

  Coming slowly down the stairs, Cynthia was stunned when she saw the tall, graceful girl standing near Yale. This is Anne, she thought, as she shook hands awkwardly. She has sparkling blue-black eyes. She is beautiful.

  Anne looked at her, smiling. "You are even more lovely than Yale said you were," she said quietly. "I've seen you in a madonna painting by Bellini. Gosh, the competition frightens me." Anne took off her coat. She looked around the empty room for a place to put it down. Giving up, she dropped it carelessly in a corner. "Yale has told me so much about you that I feel I know you already. Of course, I knew Mat. It was a terrible shock. I liked him very much, Cynthia." Anne paused. She changed the subject. "What a house this is! It looks as if George Washington must have really slept here. Yale wants you and me to live here together for two months. I think it's a crazy idea. Two women can't get along. Yale doesn't know women! I haven't burned my bridges behind me. I can go back to Philadelphia. Ye gods, Yale -- excuse me, Cindar . . . we left the baby in the car." Anne rushed out the door. In a minute she came back with the baby in a laundry basket. The baby opened its eyes, looked at them and started to cry angrily. Anne produced a bottle. "It's still warm; we heated it at Howard Johnson's."

  "He looks like you, Yale," Cynthia said, trying to hold back her tears, feeling awkward and useless. Yale grinned at them, embarrassed. He kept his overcoat on.

  "Will you stay and give it a try, Cindar?" His voice held the overtones of the unspoken words: Cindar, please, Cindar. "I know maybe it seems crazy," he said. "You both agree: two women can't live under one roof, but . . ."

  "Or share one husband," Anne interrupted. She grinned at Cynthia.

  Yale blushed. "Well, I'm not an old-time Mormon, or a Hindu, as Cindar seems to think. The sex aspects don't seem impossible to me. The important thing is whether you and Anne could adjust temperamentally to each other. Strangely, I think you are both very much alike. I read somewhere that a man tends to love the same type of woman over and over again."

  "If he gets the chance," Cynthia said. She was beginning to find the situation amusing.

  "Touché, Yale!" Anne said, laughing at him. "Your trouble is that your knowledge is all out of books. Cynthia and I will give you something really practical to think about. After a few weeks together you probably won't want either of us."

  Because there was no choice, Anne and Cynthia slept in Martha Weeks' feather-bed. Before he left, Yale located Ralph Weeks in the barn. He introduced him to Anne. Weeks made no comment, but later, when Yale was gone he walked into the kitchen with an old-fashioned rocker crib. He handed it to Anne. "This is for the kid. You can't keep him in a laundry basket, Mrs. Marratt." Both Anne and Cynthia looked at him astonished.

  Weeks chuckled happily. "Don't be alarmed: I know you're both Mrs. Marratt. When that fellow Harrigan was here I just asked him what he was doing for Yale. He said that he was looking for Yale Marratt's wife. Since I knew Yale had just took himself a wife, I figured doggone if the lad ain't got himself two wenches." He continued, his unshaved face creased in a wide grin. "But it won't pass beyond me. Damned if I don't think it's the best thing to happen at Langley Farm since Ezekiel Langley built it. Dad-bust-it, it sure would have set the old geezer's eyes a-poppin'." They watched astonished as Weeks poured them a drink of corn liquor. He clicked glasses with them. "Here's to two of the prettiest wenches I ever saw. That young Marratt has good taste."

  Undressing later by a bulb that dangled from an open socket in the center of the bedroom ceiling, Anne and Cynthia turned away from each other. They hastily pulled nightgowns over themselves. "What do you think of Weeks?" Cynthia asked her.

  "Isn't he a character?" Anne said. "Boy, I tell you that old man still feels his oats. Yale says he has agreed to work for nothing, if we feed him. We'll have to work him to death to keep him out of our hair."

  Cynthia grinned. She knew that she was beginning to like Anne. She was attracted by her easy lack of concern. "If Weeks mentions this anywhere around Midhaven, Yale will have no further worry. The top will blow off."

  "He won't," Anne promised. "We'll take him apart tomorrow and put him back together right on that score. I've got to pee-pee. Don't tell me you have to walk out back to that awful contraption."

  Laughing, Cynthia pointed at a chamberpot in the corner. "Don't watch me!" Anne warned, squatting over it. "I'll never go if you do."

  They were in bed about an hour when the baby awoke crying. Cynthia knew that both of them had been lying awake, trying not to move or to disturb each other. Somehow words wouldn't come. Silently, they had considered each other. It wasn't a question of liking each other. Anne felt that Cynthia was quiet . . . charming. Cynthia had found Anne gay . . . unaffected. They both knew that somehow in t
he coming days they would have to bare their innermost feelings to each other about every facet of their life and their love for Yale. If it was going to work it had to be, in a real sense, a marriage for Cynthia and Anne. A marriage in many. ways so intimate, so against normal human impulses of jealousy and fear, that it was frightening to contemplate.

  "You know," Anne whispered, "I stopped nursing him a week ago. The little devil has a tooth. I still can't get used to this bottle business."

  Cynthia followed her into the kitchen. Huddled in coats worn over their nightgowns, they waited, shivering, for the water to boil on the coal stove.

  "I'm not much help, but I suppose I might as well learn," Cynthia said, trying to fill the silence of the kitchen.

  "Oh, there's nothing to it," Anne said, "just getting used to routine. When is yours due?" Cynthia told her that it would be sometime in June.

  While Anne impatiently tested the water, murmuring that this was really primitive, Cynthia hummed a tuneless song.

  "How come the piano, and no other furniture?" Anne asked.

  "That's Yale's idea," Cynthia said nervously. "It was a wedding present." When she said it she realized that Anne had probably received no wedding present in India. Cynthia was embarrassed.

  "Good heavens!" Anne said, choking with laughter, "if that isn't typically Yale Marratt to buy a piano when there's nothing but a hundred-year-old stove in the house. You know, I suspect that he hasn't any real reason for spending two months in New York. He was so darned embarrassed with the idea of two wives that he just lit out."

  "And he's hoping that if he leaves us alone," Cynthia agreed, "we'll solve the problem for him of how we could all live together." She wanted to ask Anne if she thought it could be solved, but she was afraid. It seemed impossible to her. Even the problem of money would plague them. Yale admitted he had none. He certainly couldn't ask Pat's help. Pat wouldn't hire a man with two wives . . . and one Jewish. It was so silly as to be almost ridiculous.