The Amateur Marriage

by Unknown

  After supper Pagan went downstairs to watch TV and Pauline settled on the living-room couch facing the picture window. Dusk fell as she sat there but she didn’t switch on a lamp. She pleated the hem of her sweater between her fingers, over and over, and stared out at the trees growing steadily blacker behind the house across the street. From here the TV sounded like barking—ruff-ruff-ruff—cowboys shouting orders to each other above the gunshots. She knew she should go downstairs and check on Pagan, ask if he had any homework, offer to read him a book or play a board game, but she didn’t.

  When the headlights blazed into the driveway she felt her pulse take a leap. She thought of Michael’s description the evening before: “seemed like all the blood came rushing back into my veins.” She reached for a magazine and opened it, blindly, so that when he walked in she appeared to be reading in the dark. He flicked on the overhead light and stared at her. She squinted against the brightness.

  “I came for my clothes,” he told her.

  “Oh.”

  “Also, I’d like to arrange about Pagan.”

  “Arrange . . . ?”

  “I wouldn’t just desert him. We should talk about when I can see him.”

  “Oh!” she said. “Well, go ahead! See him all you want! Keep him for good, if that’s how you feel! I’ll collect his belongings.”

  “Okay,” Michael said, shrugging. “Fine.”

  “No, wait! No!” She stood up, clutching the magazine to her chest. “Oh, Michael,” she said. “Why do we have to be this way?”

  He gave it some thought before he answered. Then he said, “I don’t know.”

  She saw that this was the literal truth. It was true for both of them. She sank back down on the couch, and he hesitated but turned, finally, and went off toward the rear of the house.

  Every sound he made was identifiable. She didn’t have to be present. The attic stairway sliding through the trap door in the hall ceiling; his uneven tread up and down, twice, with suitcases clumsily knocking against the wooden steps; and then the stairway sliding back. Drawers in the bedrooms opening and closing, hangers in the closet grating along the rod, medicine-cabinet door squeaking in the bathroom. Then he went down to the rec room. She heard his murmur beneath the cowboys’ barks, but no response from Pagan. Probably Pagan’s voice was too thin to carry. Another murmur; then a silence. Was that for a farewell hug? (Michael was far more demonstrative with his grandchildren than he’d ever been with his children.) Footsteps—heavier and slower—climbing the stairs again and approaching. When he reappeared in the living-room doorway he had a suitcase in his right hand, a smaller suitcase hanging by its strap from his left shoulder, and a garment bag folded over his left arm.

  “I’d like to take Pagan on weekends,” he said. “Pick him up Saturday mornings and bring him back Sunday evenings, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Take him where?” she asked.

  “I’ve rented an apartment in that new building across from the store.”

  Ridiculously, she spent several seconds trying to think which building he was talking about. She believed it might be a beige stucco.

  “I’m moving in on Friday,” he said. “Till then I’m at the Colts Road Hilton, if you need to get in touch with me.”

  “The Hilton!” she said. “What that must cost!”

  “What’s it to you what it costs?” he asked.

  Which made her finally, finally understand that her husband truly had left her.

  And over such a trivial issue, after all their years together! She couldn’t even exactly remember the issue! Why that particular one? Why not any of the hundreds of others?

  Once again Michael hesitated, but then he turned toward the foyer. She heard the front door latch, and a moment later his car lights lit up and backed out of the driveway. She went on staring straight ahead of her. She had a slippery, off-balance feeling, the feeling a person might get if she were sitting on a stopped train and the train next to hers started gliding away and she wasn’t sure, for a second, whether it was her train or the other one that was moving.

  Thursday passed, and Friday. Still she told no one, not even her sisters. Not even her girlfriends or her children. (Who didn’t bother calling, anyhow. Too busy with their own lives, she supposed.) She was reminded of those first few days after Lindy left: best not to say the words. Saying the words made it real.

  And her tendency to see Michael in every stranger—she’d experienced that with Lindy also. When you’re looking for someone, she’d learned, you try to turn other people into the one you’re looking for. You catch sight of a faraway figure and unconsciously you darken his hair or add six inches or subtract twenty pounds, all just wishful thinking. Just pathetic, wishful thinking.

  She thought she saw him dropping a letter into the corner mailbox. Waiting to cross Beverly Drive where it intersected with Candlestick Lane. Talking to a woman outside the Almost Unique Beauty Salon. She felt the same combination of feelings that she’d felt when she’d imagined seeing Lindy: joy and anger, in equal parts. She hated him! But was flooded with disappointment when she found it was somebody else.

  At home, the telephone seemed to swell with pent-up rings. The house seemed muffled in a cottony hush that she associated with houses belonging to lonely old ladies. She tried to stay away as much as possible, filling the day with errands till it was time to fetch Pagan from school. Never had she been so conscientious about those pesky little tasks like replacing the shower curtain, picking up sacks of mulch, hunting a square of tile to match the cracked piece above the stove. She went to the Safeway for supper ingredients—a revelation. (She was used to having Michael bring their groceries home from work with him. She had never realized how expensive food had become.)

  Then at last she could go get Pagan. When they walked in the front door together, the house came blessedly alive again. “I’m hungry!” Pagan announced. “I’m thirsty!” And “Look what I made in art class! Can we frame it? Who ate the pretzels?”

  Once or twice she tried to talk to him about Michael’s absence. “So,” she said Friday evening, “you know you’re going to see Grandpa tomorrow.”

  “Mrnhmm,” he said, and got very busy rooting through the utensil drawer.

  “You know Grandpa’s taking a little vacation. Living on his own for a bit.”

  “Have you seen my long curly drinking straw?” he asked her.

  “It’s in the dishwasher. People do that, you know. Take vacations from each other. It doesn’t mean that Grandpa doesn’t love you.”

  “Like Beth Ann’s daddy,” he said.

  “Beth Ann?”

  “Beth Ann’s daddy got a new mother.”

  “A new . . . oh. Well, Grandpa would never—”

  “Where in the dishwasher? I don’t see my straw anyplace!”

  “Look in the top rack, Pagan,” Pauline said. And she gave up.

  He was a beautiful child—olive-skinned and black-olive-eyed, under a smooth, round, upside-down cup of black hair—and she loved him deeply. But there had always been something too self-contained about him, something veiled and shut off that she found frustrating. In a way, she would have preferred it if he’d fallen apart, sobbed in her arms, demanded reassurance.

  Although of course it was nice that he was coping so well.

  Michael telephoned that evening after Pagan had gone to bed. “How are you?” he asked politely.

  “Very well, thanks. How are you?” Pauline said.

  “I’m all right. I was wondering if I could come for Pagan around eight o’clock tomorrow.”

  “Eight will be fine,” she said.

  “Well, good. See you then,” he said.

  “Bye.”

  She replaced the receiver.

  It occurred to her during the night that she had, in so many words, ordered Michael to leave. She had out-and-out, unequivocally demanded that he go.

  Naturally he’d left! What choice did he have? Naturally he’d stayed away! This wa
s all her fault. It was up to her to fix it.

  She rose early Saturday morning and put on a blue scoop-necked dress that she’d bought on sale at Hecht’s. But in the mirror it looked too new; it looked as if she were trying too hard. She changed into black slacks and a bright-red blouse. She combed her hair, applied her makeup, checked again in the mirror. The red blouse was a good idea. Not only did it match her lipstick and bring out some pink in her cheeks; it was a reminder of that red coat she had worn on the day they met.

  How many times, when she was weary of dealing with Michael, had she forced herself to recall the way he’d looked that first day? The slant of his fine cheekbones, the firming of his lips as he pressed the adhesive tape in place on her forehead. Really their problem was that they knew each other too well now. Going back to her original vision of him made her remember why she’d fallen in love with him.

  She headed down the hall toward the kitchen, pausing outside Pagan’s room to poke her head in and ask, “You up?”

  “I’m up,” he mumbled, from beneath a tangle of bedclothes.

  “Come on, sweetie. Grandpa will be here in half an hour.”

  In the kitchen, she bustled around setting up the percolator, popping toast in the toaster, pouring Pagan’s orange juice. “Pagan!” she called. “Breakfast!”

  “I’m coming.”

  She went through the dining room to the foyer, where she opened the front door invitingly and plumped the cushions on the cobbler’s bench. Passing back through the dining room, she caught sight of their anniversary gift propped on the buffet. She picked it up and returned to the foyer and set it on the table there, angling it toward the door so that anyone entering would see it. In the morning light the two photos seemed more faded. Also, the young Pauline appeared to have an edge to her that the young Michael did not. She seemed older than he, and harder.

  “Grandma? Where’d you get to?” Pagan called from the kitchen.

  “Just coming, Pagan,” she said. But instead she went back to her bedroom. She took her hairbrush from the tray on her bureau and started brushing and tossing her hair until it fluffed around her face in a more youthful fashion.

  “It’s Saturday, Grandma! Saturday I have cocoa!”

  “Oh, you’re right. I’ll make some.”

  But she was fumbling with her buttons now, flinging off her blouse and reaching for another—a pink-and-white rosebud print, softer, with ruffles.

  By the time Michael arrived, seven and a half minutes later than he had promised, she was back in her red blouse (the rosebuds had been a mistake), stationed at the front door, smiling and opening the screen for him as he started up the walk.

  “Hi,” she told him.

  “Hi.”

  “Pagan’s just getting his things together.”

  “Okay,” he said. He stepped inside. He was wearing a shirt that she hadn’t seen on him in some time—a button-down blue oxford that made him look crisp and businesslike.

  “Will he need a sleeping bag?” she asked.

  “No, there’s a guest bed.”

  “Your apartment comes furnished?”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking,” he said. “It’s sort of rudimentary.”

  He wasn’t meeting her eyes. He was looking everywhere else, jingling his keys, and she had to restrain herself from stepping purposefully into his line of vision.

  “How about a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?” she said.

  “No, thanks. I thought we might go over the checkbook.”

  “The checkbook,” she said.

  “It’s pretty straightforward, really. I mean, a bill comes; you pay it. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure. But I’ve written a couple of checks that need to be recorded—deposit on the apartment, and such.” He was reaching into his shirt pocket, bringing forth a slip of paper. “Here, I’ve noted them down.”

  She took the slip of paper but went on looking into his face.

  “I opened a new account with Friday’s paycheck, but that’ll take a few days to clear,” he said.

  “I see.”

  “Any other subjects we need to discuss?”

  She said, “I’m sorry I told you to leave.”

  After a pause, he said, “That’s all right.”

  “I didn’t really mean it. How could you think I meant it? It’s just that you hurt my feelings. You talked like we’d never had a happy moment together. You can see why I would react that way.”

  There was something patient and forbearing about the way he stood listening to her, not responding, the jingling of his keys finally stilled. It gave her a sense of defeat. She felt tears spring to her eyes, and she said, “We’ve been married thirty years, Michael. We’ve been through so much together! You can’t just toss that away because of one little thing I said!”

  “It wasn’t what you said,” he told her. “It was how I felt when you said it.”

  She waited.

  “When you said ‘Go,’ I felt . . . freed,” he said. “I thought, Why, yes, I could go, couldn’t I? There’s an idea! It came to me like the lifting of a burden.”

  “A burden,” she said.

  The tears had stopped, but her cheeks were still damp. Not that Michael appeared to notice. He was looking toward a point slightly to her left. Musingly, he said, “I don’t know why I reached that conclusion at just this particular moment. In a way, it’s sort of pointless now. I’m too old to begin all over again. But it seems like such a waste to go on being wretched together. Better late than never, as my mother used to say. No use throwing good money after bad, or good years after bad—”

  “Well, I would certainly not want to be a burden,” Pauline said, treading hard on the last word.

  Now he looked at her.

  “Heaven forbid you should feel any sense of responsibility, or duty, or obligation. No, definitely you should go, Michael. I wouldn’t dream of holding you back. Go! Go! Go!”

  Pagan said, “Grandma?”

  He was standing in the dining-room doorway, hugging an overstuffed duffle bag. Michael said, “Well, sir! How’s my boy?”

  “What’s wrong with Grandma?”

  “Nothing, son. Ready to hit the road?”

  Pagan looked at Pauline. She made herself smile. “Bye, sweetie,” she said.

  When they’d left, she fumbled behind her for the cobbler’s bench and lowered herself to a sitting position. Her knees were trembling visibly and her face felt overheated.

  Over the weekend, she told everyone. The telephone was her lifeline, her only source of oxygen. It seemed that if she went two minutes without connecting to some other person, she grew short of breath and panicky. She started folding laundry but suddenly, unaccountably, found herself dialing her oldest sister on the bedroom extension. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Donna. How will I live? How will I get through the days? He’s the center of my life!”

  Donna said this would blow over. She said, “Pauline, I’m going to forget you ever mentioned this to me, because tomorrow morning the two of you will be right back the same as always.”

  “You think?” Pauline asked. She brightened, and after she’d hung up she went off to empty the dishwasher, forgetting about the laundry. But then it seemed she was dialing Katie Vilna on the phone in the kitchen, telling her story all over again.

  Katie said, “Oh, Poll. Oh, how could he? Oh, what a rat! You two have been married forever!”

  “Thirty years,” Pauline said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

  “Thirty years! Imagine! And to such a—well, I shouldn’t say it, but he’s always been so holier-than-thou. You know? So calm and cool and virtuous. A person had no hope of looking good, next to Michael! I don’t know how you put up with it for so long. Why, the longest I stayed married myself was four years, that second time, with Harold, and I was just barely hanging on by my fingernails for the last three and a half.”

  “Well, but . . . Harold,” Pauline said. Harold and Michael were two entirely different spe
cies, she could have pointed out.

  Wanda wanted to know what they had been fighting about. Pauline said, “Urn . . .” Then she said, “What it was about had very little do with it. In fact, I can’t honestly say. Isn’t it peculiar how an argument will take off from nothing? Once, I remember, we got into this quarrel over whether it could actually be too cold to snow. Michael said that of course it could; if I ever paid proper attention I would realize that on a really cold night you never see snow falling. I said that was an old wives’ tale. How else to explain all that snow at the North and South Poles, I asked. He said I didn’t know what I was talking about. I said he had no right to sound so condescending. We practically came to blows, by the end. We didn’t speak for days!”

  “Mom used to say that marriages were like fruit trees,” her middle sister told her. “Remember how she would say that? Those trees with different kinds of branches grafted onto the trunks. After a time they meld, they grow together, and it doesn’t matter how crazy the mix is—peaches on an apple tree or cherries on a plum tree; still, if you tried to separate them you would cause a fatal wound.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Megan? Why don’t you tell him? You think this separation is my idea? I had nothing to do with it! He’s the one who walked out. He’s got a whole new apartment! A fat lot he cares if he’s caused a fatal wound!”

  After she hung up, though, the grafted-fruit image stayed on in her mind. She did feel as if she’d been wounded. A raw space seemed to have opened in the hollow between her breasts.

  And it struck her as appropriate to view her marriage as a tree. She imagined one of those gnarled, wizened, whiskery trees you see on windbeaten cliffs where there’s not enough soil or water.

  Mimi Drew said, “Excuse me for bringing this up, Pauline, but I can’t help noticing that you’re sort of . . . temperamental, shall we say. Sometimes people can find that a bit of a challenge. Maybe Michael just needs a little respite.”

  “Respite! And how about me? With a house to run and a grandchild to raise! Wouldn’t I like a respite too?”

  “Well, of course you would. I know that. Don’t think I don’t know that, Pauline.”