The Loving Couple

by Patrick Dennis

  And so it had gone. After he'd finished shaving, he'd changed his tactics. Instead of bellowing like a mandrill, he'd gone in for silent dignity and stalked naked into the room with thin lips and raised eyebrows while she let him have it good and proper. Well, she reflected, there were two schools of thought as to just how dignified you could be when your costume consisted of a wrist-watch and a Band-aid, but as he began adding clothes his eyebrows went higher and his lips grew thinner. His comments were restricted to cold expletives such as Really? Indeed? How interesting.

  While she railed at him he had dressed rather grandly in one of his new English suits which were usually reserved for such vital business functions as Board Meetings, the President's Cocktail Party and Lunch at Twenty-One with the Advertising Agency. And he had dressed with an elaborate calm that infuriated her. It had only been when his hand shook so badly as he picked up his change from the dresser that she knew how terribly angry and upset he really was.

  "Where are you going?" she had shouted. Then she was furious with herself for having shown any curiosity about him at all.

  "Out," he said, clapping the homburg onto his head.

  "When are you coming back?" she had yelled. Once more she could have bitten her tongue off. As if she cared!

  "I'm not," he had said rather too elegantly. Then he had seen in the mirror that his hat was on backward. All his reserve failed him. He had ripped the hat off his head and thrown it to the bedroom floor. "I'm not coming back!" he had roared. "I'm not coming back to you or this goddamned house or this stinking little suburb, ever!" Then he had pounded down the curving stairway, with her hot on his tail, shouting at him and damning him, and slammed out of the house. It had been, for all practical purposes, the end of the marriage.

  "Five years thrown away on the wrong man," she said, dropping the remains of the coffee maker into the garbage can with a crash. Still angry, she stomped up the stairs to their bedroom. There was his hat on the floor. She stepped on it very carefully and then kicked it across the carpet. The silent disorder of their bedroom depressed her. She tripped over one of his slippers as she crossed the room. "Slob!" she said, picking up the slipper and hurling it into his closet. It struck the door jamb and bounced back into the room. Furiously, she began making the bed, setting the room to rights. When she saw the drops of his blood on the yellow satin comforter she said aloud: "I wish he'd cut his throat!"

  She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth again—that always calmed her—and to take a couple of aspirin. There she saw his pajamas. They had actually been hanging very neatly in exactly the place where they were always hung, but today the sight of them enraged her. "Men!" she muttered, "dirty, untidy, inconsiderate . . ." She tore them off the hook with a loud sound of ripping. She had bought them for him herself last Christmas. They were made of shantung and monogrammed by hand and they'd been very expensive. Now she wanted to slash them with a knife. Instead, she rolled them into an untidy ball and crammed them into the laundry hamper. Then she stalked back into the bedroom and sat fuming at her desk.

  She was a tidy and systematic young woman. She had always had to be tidy and systematic. The dour Scotswoman who had raised her and her sister, Alice, had taught her to be. Life with Mother, in a series of hotel suites, after Daddy died and Alice married, had given her practice, what with picking up Mother's underwear and finding her purse and her pearls and her traveler's checks and packing and tagging her luggage when they moved on to still another hotel suite. And working for Mrs. Updike's decorating firm, with samples of chintz and wallpaper cluttering up the squalid little offices behind the elegant showrooms and Mrs. Updike and Gerald having perpetual crises de nerfs over lost invoices, had shown how well tidiness and system could pay.

  "Now," she said, "what are the things a woman does when she leaves her husband?"

  She got out a pad of scratch paper and a pencil and began to write tidily and systematically:

  1. Go Home to Mother.

  Well, that was out. In the first place, Mother was more an old Toots than a mother. In the second place, Home was whatever hotel in whatever country Mother happened to be visiting at the moment. Home was now the Royal Danieli in Venice. Next week it would be the Albergo Something in Genoa. Then the Negresco in Nice until the thirtieth, when Home would be Care of Morgan and Company, Paris, Ier. And Mother could drive you madder faster than any brute of a husband, what with her vacillating from Methodism to Swedenborg to Christian Science to the fruit and nut diet to deep massage to henna packs to the Hay diet. Hadn't she sent Daddy to the grave before he was sixty? No, Mother made a better pen pal than a wailing wall.

  2. Call Alice.

  That was absolutely out. Alice was her older sister. Alice lived about two thousand yards down the road in a severely modern house. Alice had got her to move out here in the first place. Alice would tell her that Alice had told her so. Alice would give her the complete psychiatric reasoning behind every word and gesture that had occurred. Alice was very interested in psychoanalysis and knew everything about it. In fact, Alice knew everything about everything and had never once in her life been wrong about anything. No, Alice just wouldn't do; not quite yet.

  3. Get a job.

  The job wouldn't be so hard. She could return to Mrs. Manley Updike, Inc., Interiors. Hadn't Mrs. Updike and young Gerald Updike both wept when she said she was leaving to have a baby? Hadn't they offered her a hundred and twenty a week to come back the minute the baby was born? Hadn't they sent her off with a non-expense account luncheon and a fitted alligator bag and a pint of My Sin and a carriage robe trimmed with point de venise lace? If the Updikes wouldn't take her back, a dozen other decorators would leap at the chance to get her.

  4. Get an apartment.

  She'd look at the Times tomorrow and call an agent on Monday.

  5. Get a lawyer to get a divorce or at least a legal separation.

  Yes, a lawyer would be essential—a lawyer to do the talking to John. She wouldn't say another word to him if her life depended on it. She knew a lot of people who had been divorced, but she didn't know much about the details. She supposed she could get alimony, but she didn't want any. The house and car were in her name, but she didn't want those, either. All she asked were the few knick-knacks she had brought to the marriage and her freedom. As for him, well he could . . .

  The doorbell rang.

  If a bomb had fallen in the middle of the bedroom she couldn't have been more startled. She glanced wildly around the room and saw the car keys on his dresser. If he had forgotten the car keys, of course he had forgotten his house keys, too.

  "So, he's back," she said aloud.

  The bell rang again.

  She caught a harried glance at her reflection and flew to her dressing table. Dabbing on lipstick and running a comb through her hair, she squinted out through the glass curtains. There was no car, no delivery truck. It could only be he.

  The bell rang again, louder and louder.

  "The gall of him! Storming the house as though this were an MVD raid."

  She hurried to the stairs and started down them. Then wisdom overtook her. She straightened her back and slowed her pace. She became rigid with cold hauteur. Whatever it was he wanted, he could have—his clothes, his tennis rackets, his trophies, the silver, the car, the deed to the house. He could have anything except her forgiveness. Fortified, she marched to the door and swung it wide. "Yes," she said icily,

  "Well! I thought you were dead." It was her sister, Alice.

  "Oh," she said. "Alice. It's you."

  "Certainly it is." Alice swept into the hall. "I've always hated this hall of yours, Sis—these Regency affectations, this harking back to a dead past. Not appropriate to contemporary living. And certainly not appropriate for the country."

  “I’m so sorry, Alice."

  Alice stalked along the hall, her tweed cloak billowing out behind her. She leaned her alpenstock against the white wall, leaving a mark. Alice looked like a caricature of a coun
try squire. She was wearing a pork-pie hat, a three-piece tweed suit, gaiters and a tattersall waistcoat. She felt that this costume was appropriate for the country. Alice had a good deal to say about what was and what was not appropriate and few people ever saw fit to disagree with her.

  Alice clomped down into the living room, reached the exact center of the floor, spun about with a great flourish of her cape and stood there arms akimbo. "I passed that husband of yours this morning as I was driving back from the supermarket. I waved, but naturally he preferred not to see me. If you ask me, he has dangerous hostilities. I do think a talk with Dr. Needles would do him good. Why, the doctor released most of Fred's tensions in three sessions and said there was no need for him to come back."

  "How nice for Fred," she said. Really, she thought, how very much the big sister Alice seems today. And Alice was the big sister. Not only was she seven years older, but she was bigger, taller, heavier, bonier. Alice had inherited neither their mother's beauty nor their father's gentleness, but she made up for looks and tact with size and force.

  "Not dressed?" Alice asked with a note of disapproval.

  "Certainly, I'm dressed, Alice," she said. Let me get through this session just as quickly and lightly as possible, she thought, I just can't take too much of Alice today. "I'm wearing a rose brocade ball gown and a feather fan and an emerald tiara. I thought surely you'd remark about its inappropriateness, Alice."

  The older woman thought over her sister's reply carefully, realized that she was not wearing any such thing, and continued with her mission. "What I actually came for was to deliver an invitation. Today's our fifteenth anniversary. I suppose you've forgotten . . ."

  "I haven't forgotten at all, Alice. In fact I went into town last week and ordered something—nothing very grand—for you and Fred. It should have been delivered by now."

  "Perhaps it has been," Alice said curtly. "There are a lot of things at home I haven't troubled to open yet. Everybody keeps sending me things."

  Everybody damned well has to, Mary thought.

  "Anyhow," Alice continued, "Fred thought it would be nice if we drove into town for dinner and then go on to some sort of night club—just the Martins and us and, of course, the two of you, if you can come. I'm sorry this is such short notice. I meant to call earlier, but I've been so busy addressing notices to the League of Women Voters, and then there was the meeting about the school last night—I didn't see you there, by the way—and Timmy's stomach has been upset and I haven't been feeling any too well myself with this new one on the way and . . ."

  Alice's incessant talking always gave one time to think of a splendid excuse and today she was grateful to wait out the calendar of events in her sister's busy life. "Alice, I'm so sorry. We—I just can't."

  "Why?" Alice was never satisfied with a simple yes or no. Being versed in psychoanalysis, she often took her interrogation through the conscious, the subconscious and the Id for the true facts.

  "Well, Lisa's having one of her big dos and she's invited . . ."

  "Really, Sis, why you waste your time with that foolish Lisa Randall, I'll never know. She's schizoid, empty-headed, lives in a pure fantasy world and there are decided signs of the worst infantilism—just as there are in you. Well, it doesn't matter, I suppose. Come afterwards. You can leave Lisa's by seven."

  "I'm so sorry, Alice, but we just can't. Thank you so much for. . .”

  "I don't see why not, you can leave Lisa's and get uptown in plenty of time to . . ." Alice's eyes narrowed. "Unless," she said, slowly, "unless you still feel an animosity toward me because of the father relationship. Well I can tell you that fifteen minutes with Dr. Needles would . . ."

  "Alice, I don't feel anything. I—that is, we—just can't make it and it was sweet of you to . . " She saw Alice stand a little straighter, arch her back, lift her head and take a deep breath. Oh, please God, don't let her start play-acting now.

  Before the war effort, marriage, child bearing, psychology, suburbia, the League of Women Voters, the Parent-Teachers Association, the Committee for Political Awareness, the American Association of University Women and Planned Parenthood captured so much of her time, Alice had a passion for the stage. As a school girl in Santa Barbara, she had thrilled the whole community with her performances of Shakespeare. Alice had been a stern Portia, a brisk Ophelia, a business-like Juliet. Only German measles had prevented her ultimate triumph as Goneril in King Lear. But although Alice had cast aside the Bard for bigger things, her dramatic background was still evident.

  "Listen, Sis," Alice began, "the behavior pattern you and John have been following has given me great concern. I went to a lot of trouble—and so did Fred—to get you out of New York and accepted here among well-adjusted, oriented people, totally unlike the neurotic milieu you ran with in town. But ever since you had that miscarriage—and both Dr. Needles and I feel that some inner compulsion toward self-destruction forced you to throw yourself down the stairs—you and he have . . ."

  "Alice!" Mary cried, "Alice, he's gone. He's gone and left me. He . . ." she buried her head in her arms and burst noisily into tears.

  Alice stopped with a gulp. She was of many minds about this scene. First of all, Alice did not like being interrupted by anyone at any time for any reason. Secondly, she detested signs of weakness in people because the mature, adjusted person could arrange life to suit himself and face it on his own terms. Thirdly, Alice had always had a sneaking suspicion that her young brother-in-law found her, in some inexplicable way, comical. The feeling jolted Alice's firm security and she had to admit—if only to herself and Dr. Needles—to disliking him and wishing that he were out of the way. Fourthly, Alice saw in her weeping sister the beginning of what might be a very interesting case—a kind of guinea pig or charity patient psyche—which she might plumb, examine, dissect, discuss and then turn over to the better-worn couch of Dr. Needles. Alice was a zealous missionary for her analyst. On a commission basis, she would have been a very rich woman. Fifthly, Alice saw herself in the role of the understanding older sister, experienced with the peccadilloes of the human emotions. It was a part she had never been invited to play and she was anxious to get her teeth into it.

  "Sis," Alice said briskly, "you're allowing yourself to sink into the quicksands of emotionalism and . . ."

  "Shut up, Alice, p-please." The sobbing continued. She hadn't cried so hard since the day Daddy died.

  Alice was stunned. She had always talked to her children this way, analyzing away the pain of skinned knees and the dentist's drill and it had always worked with them. Eventually they stopped screaming.

  "Sis, um, dearie,” Alice said uneasily. "Sis, dear, please don't cry so—so terribly. It isn't the end of the world and . . ."

  "It f-feels like it," Mary sobbed.

  "He was all wrong for you, anyway. I thought so, Fred thought so and Dr. Needles said so. Besides, you're young. You have years ahead of you. And you always have Fred and me." Alice couldn't have sworn to it, but she thought she saw her sister almost shudder. "You've made a mistake—a serious mistake—but it isn't irreparable. The best thing to do is to admit it. Have a little talk with Dr. Needles. Cut your losses and start over again with a new slant and a new outlook and a new personality."

  In spite of her determinedly motherly rendition, the old matter-of-factness was creeping back into Alice's voice. She had once been very active in the Camp Fire Girls.

  "Now the thing for you to do, Sis, is to get a good grip on yourself. We all go through the emotional traumas and the best way out is . . ."

  There's one thing about Alice, Mary thought through her sobs, nothing's ever so bad that Alice can't make it seem worse. Visions of her divorce raced through her head as Alice droned on. There might be the collusive New York divorce with embarrassed, stammering witnesses perjuriously testifying as to the "unknown blonde" in a West Side hotel room. She could already feel the vulgarity of the dude ranch outside Reno, the humidity of the hotel in the Virgin Islands, the loneli
ness of six weeks in Idaho. She thought of all the dreary places where weary women waited to shed their men.

  ". . . thing to do is to get out of this atmosphere," Alice was saying. "Now just go upstairs and pack a little overnight bag and you can come right home with me. It'll do you good to be around a wholesome household full of well-adjusted people. We'll all go out tonight, just as though nothing had ever happened, and on Monday I'll run you into town for a good talk with Dr. Needles while I'm getting my check-up . . .”

  "No!" Mary said. Then she was afraid that she had sounded rude. "Alice, thanks, but I can't. I'd rather stay here alone, thank you just the same. I. . . ."

  "He'll only come back and you'll have to undergo . . ."

  "He won't be back. He'll more than likely be staying at that club of his. I guess he'll arrange to come and get his clothes sometime when I'm out. Or maybe I'll go and he can keep the place. I don't want it."

  "You mean he's moved into the Bacchus Club? Well, if that isn't a sure sign of immaturity! Talk about returning to the womb! Why . ., ."

  "I didn't discuss housing with him, Alice. Now, if you'll excuse me for just a minute, I'd like to go upstairs and get a hankie." With a resonant sniffle, she left the room.

  Two

  "Goodbye, Alice," she said for the tenth time, "and thanks again. Thanks for just everything. Yes, I'll telephone this afternoon. Really I will. Now don’t let me keep you any longer, dear. Goodbye!" She closed the front door behind her sister and leaned limply against it.

  Even the ruse of going upstairs for a handkerchief had failed. She hadn't been alone for five minutes before she'd heard the stealthy clump of Alice's Space Shoes on the stairs. Like a zealous Saint Bernard, Alice had found her, pushed her down on the bed and dabbed cologne on her temples, pouring a lot of it into her hair and a good deal more onto the bedspread. Then, Alice had sat down beside her and treated her to a brief psychoanalysis.