Constance

by Patrick Mcgrath

  —It’s none of your business, she said.

  —Did you throw out our wedding photos?

  —Yes.

  —Then it is my business.

  We were in the bedroom for this conversation. I’d gone in to find a clean shirt. She tried to leave but I blocked the door.

  —You’d like to throw me out, I said. You’d like me to fall under a train.

  —Let me go, please.

  —Why are we doing this, Constance?

  —What?

  —Keeping up this sham of a marriage.

  —I thought you wanted it.

  I stepped away from the door and sat on the bed. She left the room. Why did she act like this? Then: Why did I act like this? Why didn’t I just take her in my arms like the petulant child she was and give her what she needed, I mean tender love and affection and sympathy and understanding? That was in the morning, around ten.

  We had an argument in the afternoon, a bad one. I told her she was a hysteric. She called me passive-aggressive. Neither of us emerged well from this ugly skirmish. I started it. I’d grown impatient with forbearance. Her hostility was fierce and unwavering and I’d done nothing to deserve it. I didn’t care anymore what had soured that woman’s soul. I’d tried to be a good determinist and see her as the victim of a vindictive stepfather but my heart was never really in it because at root I believe each one of us makes our own destiny by choosing whether or not to remain the victim of our childhood. Hers didn’t seem to me to be so very terrible, and I said this in the course of our horrid argument and of course it was destructive because Constance saw herself as a woman brutally deprived of a father’s love, a perception she’d allowed to color all her dealings with the world. She was a bitter, unpleasant person, I told her, and she made others unhappy, and she’d been a great disappointment to me and not even Howard’s welfare was enough to keep me in this marriage any longer.

  There was a sudden silence. Was I going to leave her? I’d never said that to her before, even after she betrayed me. But I was saying it now. The silence lasted for a few astonished seconds and I waited to see if she’d break down and melt my anger with her tears. She didn’t. Instead my words were like oil spilled on the flames that burned in her angry heart and she screamed at me for a while before I realized that Howard would be home from school at any moment and that I’d better get away from her so the boy didn’t see us like this. I was leaving the building just as he came along the block. He saw that I was upset. He asked me if we were still going to Ravenswood in the morning. I knew he was looking forward to it. It was a family outing and he didn’t get too many of those. Of course we are, I told him.

  I walked for an hour in Central Park. Eventually I found a place on the grass and lay down amid the sunbathers and the guitar players and the lovers, young and old, and all the other New Yorkers who wanted to be anywhere but inside. Central Park, the lungs of the city. It was still hot in the late afternoon, but not as hot as it would be in an apartment, all the more so if you were implicated in the terminal convulsions of a failing marriage. Central Park was preferable to that all right. I lay on my back and watched the sky and asked myself what I was going to do, and how much time I had, and was I really so sure I was in the right. My certainties had been shaken after the incandescent debacle and I sensed that in the darkness large structures were beginning to collapse.

  We spent the evening as usual. After an almost silent dinner in the kitchen we went to the sitting room where Howard was eager to beat Constance at chess. To my surprise she’d won three games in a row. I wouldn’t have picked her for a chess player, but of course to a devious, paranoid woman like Constance chess would come easy. Chess is made for people like Constance. There it was again, and for the third time I experienced doubt. I attempted to quell it. Didn’t I know my own mind? I was reading through the few finished pages of A Scream in the Night and it occurred to me that I might blame New York City for the collapse of my marriage, or the polluted waters of the Hudson River, any damn thing if I shared Constance’s philosophy, but no, it was trite and shallow thinking. I knew what had gone wrong, and strangely enough it was a problem she’d indentified early in the marriage: It was her repetition compulsion complex. She’d married her father. Then she’d realized what she’d done and wanted out. I should have let her go as soon as she said it, but I didn’t take her seriously. She’d never been able to see me as other than patriarchal, a controlling, withholding father figure. I didn’t believe I was guilty of any of this but she did, and she made trouble so that I became controlling and withholding and in this way validated her conviction that I was just like Daddy, or that I was Daddy, at least in her unconscious mind. And Constance’s unconscious mind was a dank and dripping cellar that harbored various punitive archetypes, the result being that she never even attempted to see how I differed from Morgan Schuyler in reality. At the same time she refused to visit a psychiatrist. She didn’t want to change. She was terrified of change. She’d once said to me: You change or you die. But her existence was grounded in her hatred of Daddy and she didn’t know how to live without it. She was afraid to be free.

  As I’d lain on the grass in the park earlier, listening to the plinky-plonky banjos and the reedy tuneless voices, I’d realized that Constance would never sing freedom’s song. She’d surrendered her autonomy. She showed no defiance, no resistance, she was constrained in bands of steel of her own making. She was trapped. She’d been silent when I told her that not even Howard could keep me in this marriage. That silence was her admission that she needed me. But she only needed me in order to hate me. That’s what she did to fathers, she hated them. Not her fantasy father, of course, not Walter Knapp, the blond whispering ghost who feared nothing and died for the honor of the English mama, oh no, she didn’t hate him, she romanticized him, she idealized him, him she could love because she didn’t have to deal with him in the real world. But I’d had enough. It was disheartening to think that I’d lost a third marriage but it was too bad. It was impossible to go on this way.

  Saturday morning we were up at dawn to catch the early train upstate. I still didn’t trust Constance’s motives for this visit to Ravenswood but I didn’t care anymore. I was doing it for Howard. I didn’t know how I’d break it to him that the marriage was over. I’d spent half the night in my stifling airless cell trying to figure it out. But living with Constance for Howard’s sake was no longer feasible. About this at least I was resolved.

  She made him breakfast and I saw that her mood had changed in the night. The brooding shrew was gone, in her place the bright, brittle hausfrau with a plan in her mind and a timetable to keep to. After breakfast she asked me to please go to the corner and get us a cab to take us to Penn Station. She and Howard would be waiting in the lobby. It was another very hot day. I was wearing light trousers, striped blue suspenders, a white shirt, a gay bow tie, tennis shoes, and a Panama hat. It was a good Panama. I’d bought it in a store across the street from Macy’s and it wasn’t cheap. Constance was wearing a white summer frock and flat shoes. She had a straw hat with a gaily colored ribbon, and sunglasses. Howard was wearing shorts and sandals and a white cotton shirt. He had sunglasses and a floppy beach hat and she’d smeared cream on his face because his delicate milky skin burned in the sun. She was very attentive to him now. A few nights earlier, after he’d gone to bed, she said she didn’t want him catching her disease. I said, what disease, and she said, Daddy’s disease. I didn’t pursue it.

  I went down in the elevator to get us a cab. There were no cabs. It was inexplicable. There were always cabs. It was Saturday morning, that must be the reason. I looked at my watch. I had to make a decision. I walked back along the block and found Constance and Howard waiting in the lobby. I told them we’d have to take the subway to Penn Station. Constance was furious with me but she didn’t make a scene in front of Howard. But she knew it would be humid down there and we’d be dripping with sweat before we even got to Penn Station.

  We went
into the subway and narrowly missed a downtown train. Constance was no longer so brisk and brittle. My failure to find a cab had upset her plans. Now we were all perspiring. She was mopping Howard’s face with a handkerchief and although she was wearing sunglasses, and I couldn’t see her eyes, I felt her rage. The train didn’t come. The minutes ticked by. People kept arriving on the platform, more and more of them, and it got very close down there, and too densely crowded for us to get back up to the street easily. We were packed in together like sardines in a can as far back as the turnstiles, and the temperature continued inexorably to rise.

  I checked my watch again. I was worried about finding the ticket office in Penn Station. Then I heard a downtown train approaching in the tunnel. The crowd moved forward. Constance was pressed against my back. She clutched my shirt with both hands. She was terrified, she felt she’d be crushed, she became claustrophobic in any public space with a crowd of people around her, I’d seen it happen. She gripped me tight as the crowd shifted and again forced us forward toward the oncoming train. My Panama came off and reaching for it I stumbled.

  Chapter 12

  Sidney’s Hat Fell off and I saw him stumble as he reached for it. He was very close to the edge of the platform. I turned away and covered my face with my hands but I didn’t scream. I was with Howard. I didn’t want to alarm him. The crowd was moving forward, trying to get to the train like a great ponderous unthinking animal or a slow, heaving tide, irresistible and mindless. Then I saw Howard going under, I saw his arm lifted and I heard a cry of panic, so I did what any mother would do and I lunged forward and swept him up in my arms and clutched him tight to my body. I was being pushed and jostled from all sides now but I didn’t move. I refused to move. I stood resolute with my back to the train and my child in my arms, a rock in the stream. They didn’t like it, they were desperate to reach the train, there was no knowing when there’d be another one.

  Then I began to push against the moving crowd. I had to, to get him out of there. The child was terrified. I lifted him so he was high above their heads and able at least to breathe. I shouted to him, asking him if he was okay, and a man in a thin tie with his collar unbuttoned and sweat-stained collided with me and for a second his furious face was close to mine and in his wild eyes I saw depths of rage and misery even as he muttered at me to get out of his goddamn way. Howard shouted that yes he was okay, and Papa was right behind us. He was right behind us, he hadn’t fallen onto the tracks, and it was a relief to hear that at least. I heard the train pulling out of the station and the great herd, what remained of it, subsided and grew quiet and we were at last able to move. Sidney joined us as we found the exit. Then together we climbed the steps to the street.

  The air was oppressively humid and the sky was black. A cab pulled up and a man came leaping out of it and ran into the subway. We clambered into the cab and Sidney told the driver to take us to Penn Station. We fell back against the seat and Sidney heaved a sigh and reached for my hand, thanking me. I guess it was because I’d taken care of Howard but what did he expect? We were quiet as the cab rushed down Broadway. I was glad that Sidney was safe. I told him so. I meant it. Below Columbus Circle the driver took Seventh Avenue and so we continued downtown through that strange thundery day.

  Penn Station was far along in its destruction. Above the grimy facade rose a frame of steel girders and a towering crane. Scaffolding clung to the exterior wall in the few places where the granite hadn’t yet been torn away. We climbed a wooden staircase. Travelers sat in the waiting room beneath billowing tarpaulins. They browsed in stores that sold souvenirs and candies and magazines. It was a travesty of normality in that huge ruin with its deafening crashes of steel on steel and its shouting men. Sidney went off to buy our tickets. Standing with Howard in the cacophony I became disturbed and had to press my hands to my ears. He hated it too.

  —Howard, I shouted, let’s get out of here.

  We went back down the wooden staircase and retraced our steps through the taxi entrance to the street. The storm was about to break. I knew by then that I wouldn’t go back to Ravenswood. I’d never go back.

  —Let’s take a walk, I said.

  —What about Papa?

  —Papa will find us.

  Hand in hand we walked away from the station. A few minutes later we stood in front of the Dunmore Hotel. It was closed now. I felt the sadness that decrepitude arouses when you see an empty structure no longer useful or attractive to anyone. That would be me one day, I thought. One day soon. And was I then to be alone? I felt a first few drops of rain on my skin.

  —Come on, kiddo, I said, let’s see what it looks like inside.

  Was I to be alone?

  We were standing under the canopy at the top of the steps when the rain came sweeping down with sudden violence. As we gazed out into the deluge, lightning flickered in the black clouds and then came a peal of thunder very close overhead and very loud. The street was brilliantly illuminated for a second or two and in that strange light I saw the tenements and fire escapes and the line of long, low, beat-up automobiles parked along the curb opposite. A few bent, scurrying figures clutching newspapers over their heads fled along the sidewalk. They were seeking shelter in doorways and stores.

  I banged at the door of the hotel. It was opened. The old man recognized me and let us in.

  —It’s Miss Constance, he said.

  —Hello, Simon.

  The doorman. He told me they’d kept him on as a caretaker until the demolition began. I said I wanted to take a look at the place one last time. He told me how sorry he was to hear about my sister. He was genuinely distressed. I thanked him. The lobby was empty and all the furniture had gone. The rain continued heavy. I took Howard through to the cocktail lounge. A few chairs stood against the wall and the piano was still there but little else. I sat in my usual booth and Howard wandered away. The room seemed much larger than it had before. I lit a cigarette.

  I thought about Iris. How could I not? I saw her as she was before the affair with Eddie ended, Iris in that absurd red cocktail dress, flaunting her body to the world. Sidney believed I’d caused her death. Perhaps I had. I didn’t realize her heart was so fragile. Howard played a note on the piano. I looked up and he was standing with his mouth open, staring at the ceiling. The note he’d played hung in the dusty gloom then slowly died away. I thought about Eddie Castrol, who had no heart at all. Impurity is contagious and so are secrets. It’s not the dead who haunt us, it’s the empty space they leave inside us with their secrets: the crypt. Then Sidney appeared in the doorway. I’d almost lost him. He’d known where to find us. Howard saw him before I did. He ran across the empty room, then he was clinging to his father’s legs. Sidney put his hand on the boy’s head. He was looking at me where I sat smoking in the booth with the red plush upholstery. Detaching Howard from his legs he came over and sat down beside me. His clothes were wet and so was his hair, and with his shirt and trousers glued to his body he looked like a wild mad hobo and he moved me. Now he was gazing at me like he used to in the early days before the wedding when he was still in love with me. I hadn’t seen that face in such a long time. It had gone badly wrong with us but I didn’t want it to fall apart now, no I did not, I was exhausted and so was he. He’d suffered enough. He’d paid for what was done to me and I couldn’t ask him to do more. He put his hand in his pocket and laid three damp railroad tickets on the table. I shook my head.

  —No? he said.

  —Never again.

  He took my fingers to his lips and held them there with his eyes closed. What a sentimental man he was. Howard watched us for a few seconds then returned to the piano. I heard a chord this time then it too died in the ceiling. The boy stood at the keyboard looking at us. He played the chord again.

  —What do you want to do now? said Sidney.

  —Go home with you.

  —And Howard?

  I didn’t want to say the words aloud. Instead I mouthed them: I’m his mother now.

>   He seemed not to understand. I did it again.

  —You’re his mother now?

  I nodded. He reached across the table for my hand again. He pressed it to his cheek. It was still damp.

  —And who am I? he said quietly.

  —You’re his papa. You’re Daddy.

  And you will never do him harm.

  A Note on the Author

  Patrick McGrath is the author of seven previous novels, including Asylum and Trauma, and two collections of stories. He lives in New York.

  By the Same Author

  Blood and Water and Other Tales

  The Grotesque

  Spider

  Dr. Haggard’s Disease

  Asylum

  Martha Peake: A Novel of the Revolution

  Port Mungo

  Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now

  Trauma

  Bloomsbury Publishing London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  Copyright © 2013 by Patrick McGrath

  First U.S. edition 2013

  Electronic edition published in April 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York