by Hugh Hood
He paddled moodily in his soup bowl, putting down his spoon and taking it up as if reluctant to eat. It was his favourite soup — he relished all hot soups. As he said, they made him feel as though he were looking after himself, there was something healing about hot soup.
“I’ll bet anything she’s left him,” he exclaimed finally, looking resentful.
Paula didn’t have to ask to whom he referred.
“I saw him in the hall this morning,” grumbled Francis, “and he looked terrible. His face was grey, he hadn’t shaved; his hair was all standing up. He’s like somebody in Conrad. The poor guy, the poor little jerk!”
“I certainly haven’t seen her around,” said Paula. Until now she had hesitated to draw any inferences however obvious, preferring to let Francis take the lead; he was said to be very good at sifting evidence and cross-examination. “I used to see her all the time when she was selling those home freezers. I wonder where she is?”
“Reno,” said Francis glumly, “or in Mexico getting one of those quickie divorces, the little slut. I had her figured. I knew she’d do something like this.”
Paula thought of asking Francis why he disliked Mrs. Lovelace so much. But as she knew that he wouldn’t give her the right answer, and as she hated to watch him deceiving himself, she didn’t put the question.
“I don’t know why I dislike her so much,” he said rather startling her, “but I wouldn’t be their age again for anything, not for anything.” He grinned sadly at Paula. “There’s a lot to be said for middle age.”
“We aren’t middle-aged,” said Paula hopefully, “and we won’t be for another ten years. Thirty-four isn’t old.”
“It’s old enough to be dried out,” said Francis. Sometimes he exercised a perverse sense of parody on himself.
“Dried out?”
“Desiccated, hortus siccus,” he said, with what he seemed to think a pleasing melancholy, “passionless.”
Paula felt secretly offended and then was sorry, because he knew at once what she felt.
“I don’t mean ‘loveless,’” he said defensively, “I mean passionless. Not the same.”
“They usually go together.”
“Not with us.”
“No,” she admitted, “I suppose not. I don’t know that we’re any better off.”
“Yes we are,” he said positively, “because we’re lazy people. To be passionate you’ve got to get yourself in shape, like a distance runner, and you’ve got to stay that way. You learn to exhaust yourself just as you break the tape. Larry has to keep himself in shape, otherwise he couldn’t take what she hands out. He’s rolling with the punches all the time.”
“I wonder where she is.”
“Reno,” he said again, “or Mexico.”
“I wonder if he hasn’t walled her up in the cellar. She’s been gone a long time.” They looked sadly at each other. “How long,” she put it into words, “how long do the neighbours let things slide before they begin to ask questions? A month, two months, and then an inspector calls.”
“He wouldn’t dare touch her, you said it yourself, he just adores her.”
“That might incite him all the more.” She wondered if she really believed it.
“Each man kills the thing he loves? I never did think there was a shred of truth in that, and I don’t now. She’s alive, all right, she’s indestructible.”
“I guess so,” agreed Paula and the two of them began to eat their cooling soup, conserving its medicinal heat. Cold bones, thought Francis, cold bones.
He wondered and wondered at the complex feelings which their neighbours elicited in him, motives alternately homicidal and forgiving. When he thought of Elizabeth he always thought of the phrase “a punk kid” and then he hastily revised the phrase, trying to fit it to the facts of his feelings. He knew, and he supposed that Paula knew, that a woman like Elizabeth could still make his throat constrict and his pulse race, not because of her smooth buttocks and her always faintly traceable mons veneris, but by her fresh idiocy, her perfect unknowingness, her glad irresponsibility, some kind of childlike senselessness that made his head swim with the prospect of self-immolation she offered. You could fall into her and forget everything and that would be that, no more mimeographed bills for the Legislature, no more puttering around with music manuscripts, only slapping and clutching and giggling and quarreling and making up and not speaking for days and aching to speak and goo-goo eyes and babying.
How he hated all that, how he fled it, how he inflicted an Apollonian lucidity on Paula, he understood with every keen modification of clarity. A reputation as a skilled cross-examiner was not perhaps the best equipment to bring to an infatuation. He used to say to his wife, querulously, “Just remember that I have feelings, too.”
He couldn’t repress his reason, wouldn’t apologize for it, was all horror at Larry’s supineness, his allowing himself to be swamped by the flood of his wife’s senselessness. Before I’d let my wife take off like that, he told himself, I’d chain her up. Thinking this, he couldn’t help laughing. Nobody would ever chain Paula up; she didn’t invite it. The ideas were inassociable. Paula was, what Elizabeth was not, rational, to an unusual degree in a woman. She had not been quite that rational when he’d married her, but then neither had he. And he didn’t think her looks in the least impaired by her concepts. Though never precisely opulent, she was forever trim, the vaunted pride of her corsetiere, living proof of the efficacy of a good foundation garment; she continued, and would long continue, svelte and unimpassioning.
She went to the kitchen for the coffee, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand — hard thought irritated her sinuses — feeling vaguely troubled and sorry for Francis. Little irregularities disturbed him so. He couldn’t possibly know, she knew this with utter certitude, why he felt so drawn to the little Lovelace thing. Paula didn’t care, not she, let him for Heaven’s sake enjoy a little unappeasable lust somewhere, anywhere, so long as its object were safely in Mexico City. She longed so for Francis to enjoy himself; but he never enjoyed himself, his hobby, his work, his home, his holidays, herself. She couldn’t draw him to her anymore, she reasoned him to her, and to do his consistency justice he came, smiling, when she thought the idea up.
No, I don’t look as good as she does, at least not in the imaginable nude, thought Paula frankly to herself. I have angles now, where she has arcs and my breasts lapse a little where hers spring up and out, so who cares? In twenty years it will be all the same and then, poor Larry, his sedative will have worn off. Men need women like me for the long pull; these little rubbery things are good in their twenties, and then they’re done. She took the trouble to look ahead for Larry and Francis, and made herself feel proud. At fifty, one would have a workable wife and the other a sick doll. In the end, she wondered, facing the problem out, which is better, the short run or the long?
What we had, we have, and we will have, and it’s worth the short-term loss. She burnt her fingers picking up the Silex and went back to the living room.
“How do people survive divorces?” asked Francis aggressively, as she sat down. “Even people without any children?” When he heard what he’d said he winced, and looked his apology at her. They had been kindness and tact itself to each other on the question of children, and they were considering an adoption. He flushed perceptibly. “How can there be so many divorces? I only know three or four people who’ve been divorced. And they all tell me that it was complete hell, that they couldn’t live through it again. How could they bear it the first time? Who get all these divorces anyway?”
“There must be a group of frequent repeaters,” said Paula, “who bring the average up.”
“The divorce-prone?”
“Exactly, people who shouldn’t marry at all, like alcoholics.”
His face was all dismay. “Do you think Mrs. Lovelace is like that?”
“She may be. She’s certainly putting him through hoops.”
“It’s terrifying,” said Francis, “it’s a horror.”
They contemplated together the consequences to society of the existence of such a group, the ravages, the underminings, the imminent decline and fall.
“How can they be so irresponsible?” said Francis the censor. “They get children and then dismember them psychologically.”
“To be fair,” said Paula, “the Lovelaces don’t have any children.”
“They might just as well. I’ll bet they don’t take any precautions. They wouldn’t think twice about bringing a child into the world.”
“Most people don’t,” said Paula, teetering on the brink of fairness.
“We would,” said Francis, carried away with his reasonings, “in fact we did.” Then he felt a stab of pain. “I’m sorry, dear. I’m honestly sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said. And they went wretchedly about their business.
The final snows of the winter kept them confined when they would sooner have been anywhere else than in the old apartment house. They kept bumping into Larry and thought again of asking him to dinner; but it seemed so condescending and inquisitive that they let the idea go, and he did not encourage the offer. To their eyes, he grew thinner, greyer, more and more anxious, older, more like themselves, less a boy, in short a brand from the burning. They kept hearing the “New World” symphony on Larry’s phonograph, turned up very loud.
“I’ll bet that was ‘their song,’” said Francis. “Wouldn’t you know?” And he thought comfortably of his recordings of Hasse and Stamitz.
“I noticed a whole row of whisky bottles on their windowsill this morning,” said Paula.
“Can he actually be drinking to forget?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but the bottles were there.”
They had their romance all worked out, all configured to allow them to hate and despise Elizabeth, to pity and feel contempt for Larry. They allotted all the clichés and fastened on the neighbours every element of bathos that the situation suggested. It made them feel comfortable and hopeful until the Saturday afternoon when they encountered the Lovelaces in the hall. All day the snow had been melting, exposing patches of dirty mud and grass around the building. You could hear trickling water everywhere. At one o’clock the Roseberys decided to drive up to the Centre, not to shop for anything special, just to get out of the house. As they came into the hall, they heard a bumping sound and their neighbours’ door flew open. Elizabeth came falling out backwards to land with a thud on the floor at their feet. She was decently covered in an enormous terrycloth bathrobe but plainly had nothing on underneath. Francis caught a momentary glimpse of ivory inner thighs and averted his head. She looked up at them and they looked down at her.
“We were wrestling,” she said foolishly. Larry appeared in the doorway clothed, and approximately in his right mind.
“Go and put some clothes on, for God’s sake,” he said rejoicingly, “hello Francis, hello Paula.”
“Hello,” they said.
“Did Elizabeth tell you? She has a job in New York, decorating. She’s been looking for this job all winter. And I’ve got a transfer to Westchester.” He looked so happy that the Roseberys were a little mollified. “Do you want to buy our broadloom?”
“It wouldn’t fit,” said Francis absently, staring at Elizabeth as though she were a ghost. He’d never expected to see her again. She got to her feet, pulling the bathrobe around her a bit self-consciously.
“Maybe we can find an apartment we can fit it into,” she said, “but I had it cut for this one.” She shivered. “I’m cold,” she announced.
Larry slipped his arm possessively around her. “Get your clothes on,” he said, “we’ve got to drive to New York this afternoon.” The two of them linked arms around each others’ waists and wandered blissfully into their apartment. They turned on the threshold and looked at the Roseberys, their cheeks touching. “Goodbye,” they cooed. They went inside and shut the door.
Francis almost stamped his foot, he was so upset. Turning on his heel he flounced into his own apartment and didn’t come out again all weekend. Paula followed him, thinking various things to herself. When she caught up with her husband, he was deep in his armchair with a fixed glare on his face. “Wrestling!” he said. “God!” She could see that she would have to find something else for him to despise.
“Do you know,” she hazarded, trembling, “we made that story up. That was all ours.” She wanted to make him laugh if she could, but she didn’t know how. “They’re beautiful,” she said. She wished that Francis trusted her that much. “What is it that you want, Francis?” she begged.
He went on bumping back and forth in the heavy armchair. “I don’t know,” he said, “I just want to have a good time.” Thump went the chair. “Do you have to be stupid to be tranquil?” “Serene” and “tranquil” were his magic words, his absolutes, serenity and tranquillity the perverse unattainable objects of his lust.
Nobody’s Going Anywhere!
Haggerty stood irresolutely in his workroom trying vainly to ignore the street noises which crowded through the windows, open for the first time this spring, Claudine, Bernard, Marisa, quarreling over tricycles, Brigitte’s spaniel barking forlornly, puff of airbrakes from a bus on the corner, the Diesel roar as it hauled away, an alarming screech from a Volkswagen as a ball-chasing child just missed a fatal accident for the second time in three days. The street was overflowing with children free of their winter clothes like freshly-shorn lambs, bounding in the pale sunshine.
This light is no good, thought Haggerty irritably, it doesn’t give me any tones, I ought to rent an office in a loft downtown. He put his head out a casement and squinted at the sky, which was a streaked grey, and realized that it was indeed April. The winter had been tediously cold, a genuine old-time Montreal sub-zero mess; but today it felt warm for almost the first time.
As the light was no good, he decided to do some men’s-wear roughs. He got out a block of newsprint and began to hunt for a 6-B pencil, there was one around somewhere, he kept his pencils in a stone marmalade jug, and the jug was in plain view on the bookcase underneath his talisman.
His genius loci. He tried to ignore the picture (with which he carried on perpetual war) as he examined his pencils one by one. If he acknowledged the picture by the slightest sign, there would be no 6-B in the house. He dumped the jug on the draughting-board and at length found what he was seeking; then he permitted himself a sneer at his talisman.
This god of Peter Haggerty’s is an enormous yellowing full page picture from the New York Times of the late W.C. Fields, which once illustrated an impassioned plea for NBC TV Programming, an irony of whose inner structure Haggerty was grimly aware. The comedian wore and wears his Micawber hat, a frock coat, peccable gloves unbuttoned at the wrists, and an expression of profoundly mistrustful contempt for his species. He guarded, guards, a poker hand against his chest and is about to place a card on the table, probably the King in a royal flush, and his face, in which the eyes are the arresting feature, moves and slides in a living ecstasy of detesting and detestable calculation, the ultimate caginess.
Haggerty revered this picture, which exactly expressed his own most frequent feelings.
But there was a terrifying doubleness about the picture of Fields. No matter how armed at all points, how guarded aware contemptuous his stance, there was ineradicably in the face the tormenting fearful suspicion that somebody somewhere somehow out there, in the great Beyond, was getting at him in some hidden way, against which he just couldn’t cover himself. It was this dawning suspicion in the picture that pleased Haggerty most, this high artistic infirmity of guard.
Still, he had found the pencil he wanted, and switching on the light over the draughting-board, he seated himself and began to execute a series of roughs of a tweed spring t
opcoat, blocking in the general layout and the copy. As they always did when he was doing this sort of work, the first six sketches emerged as rule parodies of the essence of topcoat, hate-filled gibes at all who might conceivably buy and wear such a garment from such a store. And then as always, having worked off the effects of looking at his talisman, his hand steadied and he settled down to serious production.
On the eighth or ninth try he began to get what was needed and the coat began to seem wearable and even desirable, but at this point the door to the workroom opened noisily and Sally came into the room and stood next to his chair, looking up at him expectantly.
“What is it, Sweetie?” he said absorbedly. He didn’t want to stop just at this moment but he was always telling her to run away and play, and didn’t like to do it. That was the worst, or almost the worst, of working at home in a small apartment. He was present in the house, and Sally knew it, but he might as well have been downtown from nine to five for all the attention he could give her; it was an imperfect situation; maybe he should take a studio.
“Mummy’s doing the drying,” she said, “and she asked me to go out and play.”
“She didn’t tell you to come in here, did she?” he said with some vexation.
“No.”
“Then why …” he began and checked himself. Someday soon she wouldn’t be so eager to see him, in about fifteen years, and he would be wise to seize the present good. “Can’t you find something to do?” he asked gently. She had about four million toys.
