The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

by Robert H. Rimmer

  Feeling her way along the dark corridor and stairway, Anne held the warm bottle in her hand. "We've got to get to work tomorrow and make this place livable. You must be awfully easygoing to let Yale talk you into buying a place like this."

  "You're living here, too!" Cynthia said sarcastically. How could Anne know how much Langley Farm meant to her already? "Yale is a convincing talker."

  "I know it," Anne said, giggling as they fumbled for the light cord. "I'm just as simple as you are. Yale was smart. He found two simple women. If he had got mixed up with some of the sophisticated dames I've known, he'd have been told off . . . but good. Wasn't he funny? He wouldn't even take off his overcoat. He was so anxious to get to New York. Like a bad kid who has created a real mess and can't wait to beat it. I could have hugged him."

  Cynthia smiled. "I could have too." She sighed. "And that's the problem . . . What do we do when we both want to hug him at the same time? We will be afraid because one of us might feel that the other doesn't feel the same way, and the one hugging him would make the other jealous. Oh, gosh, Anne, it could be awfully complicated."

  "If we felt that way," Anne said thoughtfully, "Yale would get less attention from two women than one." She put the baby on the bed, and gave him his bottle. "We might as well start by being frank. I can't sleep with this nightgown on. I haven't worn any night clothes to bed since I was ten."

  She pulled her nightgown over her head, wondering if Cynthia would follow suit. Blushing a little, Cynthia took her nightgown off. "I never wore one until Mat and I were married. Funny . . . unconventional as Mat was in some ways, he always wore pajamas. I think he was embarrassed because he was so thin."

  "Yale used to go around nude in India," Anne said, shivering a little as she snuggled under the bedclothes. "Said he got the idea from a woman named Sarah Cohen. I remember I was jealous when he said it. I wanted to ask him who Sarah Cohen was but I was afraid she might turn out to be an old girl friend." She looked at Cynthia's body with interest. "You have lovely breasts."

  Cynthia smiled. "Yale has good taste. You have the kind of shape men ogle at."

  Anne repositioned the bottle in the baby's mouth. "It's funny," she said, "that it is only among humans that the shape of the female body is the source of sexual stimulation. Female birds and female animals are usually very drab. The male human body really has possibilities of being very much more beautiful than the female body."

  "You mean if it was developed like those muscle-man pictures?"

  "Ugh. No thanks," Anne said, getting out of bed. She put the baby in the crib. "I just couldn't see snuggling with a man built like that. I just mean a clean, male, youthful body."

  "Like Yale's?" Cynthia asked, a tinge of jealousy in her voice.

  Anne looked at her seriously. "Yes, like Yale's. Cynthia, do you think it would be possible for either of us to share Yale's love? Or would we just spend all our time trying to prove to him that one of us was better or loved him more than the other?" She pulled the light cord and the room was dark.

  For a long time Cynthia didn't answer. Then she said, "Jealousy is a funny thing. Just a minute ago you mentioned that Yale used to go around nude in India. Even before you finished I felt a second of jealousy that you must know Yale better than I. I could see a picture of Yale naked, and you looking at him . . . as he came to you, excited. I was jealous. Then you mentioned Sarah Cohen and the jealousy vanished. Sarah is a lovely plump housewife with three children. Maybe more, now." Cynthia chuckled. "She would mother Yale to death but never be interested in him sexually."

  "But if I hadn't mentioned Sarah Cohen," Anne said, "you would have just been jealous without the idea to compensate that you knew something about Yale that I didn't."

  Cynthia knew Anne was right. "I guess so, Anne. You know, the only way you and I could prevent being jealous of each other and having the jealousy become cancerous, would be to talk it out with each other each time it happened as unemotionally as possible. We would have to recognize when we were motivated by jealousy and admit it. A pretty tall order! And the discussion would have to be between us and not for Yale's ears in most cases."

  What am I saying, Cynthia wondered? Am I giving tacit agreement to the idea of all of us living together? She had to admit that she enjoyed Anne's perceptive mind and uninhibited friendliness. But no! It was impossible. Not in the United States. People didn't do such things.

  "I'd agree to that, Cynthia," Anne said, "but no matter how you slice it we would have to be pretty remarkable women."

  Anne wanted to say just how do you develop a ménage à trois, on a sexual basis, so the lady in bed alone on a particular night doesn't get jealous. How could she say to Cynthia or Cynthia say to her, "I was jealous last night when you were sleeping . . . hell, why use the euphemism, she thought . . . having intercourse with Yale. She said aloud, "Oh, boy, Yale doesn't know what he is letting himself in for."

  Cynthia held her breath and whispered, "I was jealous of you last night. I couldn't help thinking of you and Yale together."

  Anne squeezed her hand. "Yale spent the night at a motel. He picked me up this morning. I told him I wouldn't sleep with him again until we had all come to a decision.

  "Oh, gosh. . . ." Cynthia said. She suddenly realized that she felt genuinely sorry. How could she tell Anne? Yale should have stayed with Anne, she thought. Why should I have been jealous? It was suddenly apparent to Cynthia that being jealous of some unknown girl named Anne was possible. It was more difficult to be jealous of someone you really knew and, she thought, liked.

  "You know," Anne said, "I've been wondering why you haven't asked me why I never tried to find Yale? Why I never wrote him?"

  "You've explained to Yale, already. I guessed that eventually either you or Yale would tell me."

  Anne was silent. Cynthia listened to her slow breathing. Finally, she said quietly, "I guess I don't really know my-self. You knew I was married before I knew Yale?"

  In the darkness, tears in the corner of her eyes, Anne told her about Ricky. How they had grown up together. How she had always planned to marry him. Then the few wonderful months of married life they had before he went into the Army.

  "He was a very gentle person, Cynthia. His drives were different from most men. He would have been happy in a life of discovery and learning. One day he would have made a great teacher. You know the kind of teacher like William Lyon Phelps. The kind of person that would have had all the kids taking his courses just so they could enjoy the wonderful breadth of the man's thinking."

  Anne paused. Her voice trailed off, "If he had lived. . . ." She was silent again and Cynthia could feel her loneliness. "Well," she continued, "I guess I thought life was over. No man could measure up to Ricky. Funny, if there's some power over the lives of humans, I guess it wanted to prove me wrong. I met Yale. You know something, Cynthia, if I hadn't known Mat Chilling, I wouldn't have come here today . . . no matter what Yale said. You see, I figured that if you married Mat and loved him . . . and loved Yale and married him, then somehow or other we were sisters in our choice of men."

  Anne told her about Mat and their final conversation in India and how she had kissed Mat. "Your first love, Yale, was a dreamer; you married Mat, a militant dreamer. I was married to Ricky, an impractical dreamer. We both married Yale. Of course you may not feel that our Hindu marriage amounts to much. . . ." Anne's voice was sad.

  "Some people feel being married by a justice of the peace doesn't amount to much," Cynthia said, feeling strangely happy, enjoying the discussion with Anne. "Who is this man we married, now?"

  "Yale has changed, hasn't be?" Anne said, startled. "He was always gentle. But in just a year he has become so darned positive. Almost reckless. In India he didn't seem to know where he was going. I'm not sure what he's planning, but he gives me a feeling of dead certainty . . . as if nothing is going to stop him." She sighed. "Without his admitting it in so many words, I'm convinced that he is egotistic enough to think that we will both wa
nt him and stay with him."

  "I agree. But you haven't told me why you didn't write Yale in China, or try to locate him when you got home."

  Anne leaned on her elbow, looking at the shadow that was Cynthia's face. "For nearly five months last year, I saw Yale almost every day. We lived together as secretly as you can on an Army base. Yale's Indian bearer, Chatterji, built us a basha, a bamboo house, in his village. We were married by a Hindu priest named Sundari. I don't think the ceremony was so important to Yale. He just felt that it gave me something to cling to. Something to make it less like an Army shack-up affair. But gradually I came to feel that somehow in me he was trying to find you, Cynthia."

  Anne stopped talking. She tried to recall the days in India with Yale. "It wasn't as if he ever told me much about you. Just once. One entire evening, while we sat drinking hot orange soda and gin, he told me about your college days in detail. I felt that night when he took me in his arms that he thought he was with you. Nothing obvious, just a feeling. After that every once in a while I would have the same feeling. Then I found I was pregnant." Anne told her about the wedding and Colonel Trafford. "O, God, Cynthia, I don't know what happened. I just went to pieces. Yale was gone. I didn't know where. Then Colonel Trafford had me transferred. I knew in the bright light of day that Yale loved me, but at night I'd get crazy ideas. Maybe Yale thought I was on the make. I asked him about you once and he said of course he loved you. He implied that he would always love you. It made me feel funny somehow. I didn't want to bind him to me just because I was pregnant. Then I wondered whether he had really grown up. He seemed pursued by a demon. I knew he had to prove something to his father. Still has to prove it, I guess. Do you know Pat, Cynthia?"

  Again Anne shied away from revealing to Cynthia that she was sure that Yale loved Cynthia more than he would ever love her. In India, she had come to believe that Yale had given his love completely once, and the shadow of Cynthia would remain forever between them. It never occurred to Anne that Yale felt he was, in a sense, an inadequate substitute for her husband, Ricky.

  "I know Pat," Cynthia told her. "I think you are right that Yale is trying to prove something to him. Whatever he proves, he won't do it in a way that will make Pat happy. All his life Pat has tried to own Yale. Some day he will have to realize the impossibility of it. They really are two sides of the same coin. It frightens me, Anne. I think Pat would destroy himself to make Yale heel to his ideas."

  Cynthia told her about the day Pat had ordered her to come to his office. Anne listened with a feeling of horror, deep sympathy for Cynthia flooding through her. Vividly she realized Cynthia's fears and her courage, and beneath it all Cynthia's love for Yale.

  "You must know, Anne, I'm Jewish. Oh, I'm not an orthodox person, but I do have a love for our traditions. No Jew can ever escape . . . ever really wants to escape his heritage. You know, Anne . . . lying here with you in bed, I can't help but wonder how you feel. So many people in the world have such a deep hatred of the Jews. It's strange . . . but if the three of us managed to live together successfully, and we were very happy among ourselves . . . nevertheless some day . . . someone like Pat would find that we were living together, defying the mores and morals of our society. Then, you can be sure . . . the fact that I am Jewish would inevitably be excoriated. In some subtle way people would be told that only the Jews would dare to set up a new pattern of marriage. That the Jews were trying to destroy a monogamous society. Honestly, Anne, people would even try to prove you were Jewish!"

  Anne shook her head angrily. "Cindar, may I call you by Yale's name . . . ? I would never have married Ricky or Yale if I could hate a person because of his religion. If we stay together, and I'm beginning to hope we do, then when Yale Richard is thirteen, we'll have a Bar Mitzvah for him! By that time, because I'm curious . . . because I think you have the same god-given curiosity as I we will have blended the Judaist and Christian traditions so thoroughly no one will be able to tell in this family who is Christian, who is Jew -- or Hindu or Mohammedan for that matter."

  Cynthia laughed. "You know something? I think we're talking right through the night. Look, the sky is getting lighter."

  "It's good to talk. Words are so incomplete. We will have to use trillions of them in our lives to stay close to each other and convey our real feelings. I want to tell you about yesterday."

  Anne explained that when she had left the Red Cross, she had visited with her father's sister. "She's a very jolly person. She and her husband have a little suburban house. No children. John, her husband, teaches math at the high school. Of course, she saw at once that I was pregnant. I told her that my husband was missing. You don't have to tell Hazel much. She immediately started to talk about war widows and how dreadful it was to be alone. It was a welcome nest she offered. I had the baby at the local hospital. They have been wonderful. John found an opening at the high school in the English department this fall. I have a certificate to teach English, or sociology . . . So I have spent the days studying. Up until yesterday it seemed the best way. I felt I would never marry again. I wanted too much from a husband, a Yale or a Ricky combined. Yesterday, I went shopping for Hazel. When I got back Yale was in the living room bouncing the baby on his knees. Hazel was beside herself with joy. I nearly sank to the floor. I was trembling so much that I had to excuse myself and run to the bathroom

  "I know how you felt," Cynthia interrupted; "like the impossible suddenly became possible, and it was so frightening you couldn't believe it."

  Anne nodded. "He said he wanted to talk to me alone. Hazel followed us out to his car as happy as a cupid. We drove to a little roadhouse, and we talked and drank manhattans."

  "Yale's favorite drink for silent tongues," Cynthia murmured sleepily.

  "Honestly, Cindar, we talked steadily from two to five o'clock. By that time we had to eat in order to sober up. We stayed in that booth until seven-thirty. When he told me about you I wished him luck. He had nothing to worry about. Our marriage wasn't a Christian marriage. It didn't mean a thing in the United States. I would bring the baby up. He needn't worry himself. He kept begging me to meet you. Finally, somewhere in the afternoon I agreed. Maybe it was the fifth manhattan. Maybe he would have persuaded me anyway. He had some fantastic arguments. He felt that a marriage such as the three of us would be attempting would be equivalent to the world . . . a microcosm. He quoted Pascal to me . . . you remember, Cynthia, where Pascal in Les Pens&eactue;es discusses the infinitely great and the infinitely small . . . Yale quoted it all to me word for word in French, and then ended with toute notre dignité consiste donc en la pensée .

  "In our little world we would discover the ultimate of how people could live together harmoniously. The conflicts we would naturally have would have a wider pattern of meaning for man as a whole.

  "Cindar, Yale is a super salesman. He is so darned sincere when he talks to you, so convinced that you must feel the way he does, that you are caught before you know it. Anyway, I told him I'd have to think it over. I made him take me back to the Terrences'. In the morning he returned. I asked Hazel if she would help me by not asking any questions, that I might want to come back. Poor Hazel, she was bewildered. You could see the questions leaping out of her eyes. I had found my husband. Why would I ever want to come back? . . . Cindar, are you still awake?"

  "Mmm, but I am sleepy," Cynthia said. She touched Anne's shoulder. "Don't go back, I like you, Anne.

  When Cynthia awoke the room was filled with sunshine. Anne was standing over the bed, already dressed. "Gee, I hated to wake you, Cindar. I had to get up with the baby. Come on, sleepy-head, our married life has begun. The house is bustling with men from the telephone company. They are stringing a line in from the highway. One must be a local superintendent. He told me that Yale was the most insistent person he had ever encountered in his life." Anne grinned. "A telephone and an extension phone must be installed today. Yale must have given them a bad time. The man thinks it's a matter of life and death or something. Yale
told them that he was negotiating an important financial deal and he must be in constant contact with his home while in New York. Come on, we've got to decide where to put the phones."

  Cynthia dressed hurriedly. "What are these men going to think, when they see two of us?" she asked nervously.

  "Stop fretting," Anne laughed. "We aren't going to introduce ourselves!"

  6

  Yale arrived in New York Tuesday night and took a room at the Hotel New Yorker. Before going to bed he located Sam Higgins by telephone. Sam lived on Long Island. While Yale talked with him he could hear the sounds of a party. "The place is jumping, Yale," Sam said, "My wife is throwing one of her cocktail parties. Why don't you come out?"

  Yale refused. He made an appointment to see Sam in the morning. Yale had a quick picture of the way Sam probably lived. A wealthy suburban home, probably brick, flanked with large lawns and decorated with a pretty but somewhat calculating wife. He knew Sam had married into a wealthy family. Coupled with his father's wealth, it would mean a marriage without denial. Sam had been married the summer after graduation from Harvard Business School and somehow had managed to stay out of the Army. He had now experienced five years of uninterrupted connubial arrangements. If he knew Sam and the world he travelled in, a minor boredom had set in. At this moment, Sam was probably holding a Scotch with one hand and the fanny of somebody else's wife with the other. His wife would accept this as natural so long as someone else's husband was available to pat her fanny with a suggestive gleam in his eyes and the interest to back it up.

  Once, Yale reflected, he would have been shocked by the casual sexual contacts of the middle-to-wealthy class. He had witnessed plenty of them in his own home and at the Midhaven Country Club. He didn't doubt that Pat had wandered into more than one escapade on his many business trips, and he guessed that Liz had stumbled into at least one affair. with Frank Middleton. For all he knew Liz might still be quite involved with Middleton.