The Bleeding Heart

by Marilyn French

  Letter from Tony this morning. He’d left Berkeley, had followed some girl to Omaha. Did they toss nickels and dimes in your guitar case in Omaha too when you stood in gateways and played? It might be cold in Omaha, his poor bare feet might need shoes. Did he have shoes? Twenty-two and still drifting barefoot through life. Sweet and gentle, self-deprecating always, he smiled his inadequacies at you. He was nothing but inadequacies. Even playing the guitar, at which he was very very good, he would be brilliant only in his bedroom: in public, he’d shy off, stop short of brilliant, and apologize. Always sure he would fail: and therefore, always did.

  TAKE YOUR HAND OFF THAT WALL! HAVEN’T I TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES!

  Yes, you have. A million times at least. Certainly enough times that Tony got the message: You are worthless. Tony never admitted to his father having received the message; he was, as Anthony perceived, stubborn. But he never rebelled, either, never fought back. The message was received. But Big Chief never believed it, and never stopped sending it until Elspeth grew up and he could send it to her instead. Yes.

  The whole house poisoned, the very walls reeked. Hated going back there at night after work, much as I looked forward to seeing the kids. Stomach would begin to churn about the time he was supposed to come home. Eventually, I got that ulcer. Not Anthony, though, he never got an ulcer. Friday-night blues: a whole weekend with him in the house in the house in the house. Never went out alone.

  And I didn’t go. I didn’t go. I stayed and tried to reclaim the story-child, why? To make my fantasy come true? Why? Can you call that love? As well call it hate. We were emotional savages, Anthony and I. Between us, we plumbed every depth, he of rage and I of grief. Together we chewed our own hearts.

  And destroyed the children.

  No, now, don’t give up on them, they have a shine on them still, Sydney, Tony. Yes.

  And Elspeth?

  Other people do it differently. Use a wastebin of emotions. Tina and Ralph, married thirty years and long since prosperous, go round and round still squabbling about nickels and dimes. Take a cruise around the world, come back and have a month-long bang-up fight because she wants a new washer. When she earns $30,000 a year on her own and doesn’t need his permission to buy it. But wants it. Asks for it. Why was that? Or he yells about her garbage, as if she manufactured it. And she yells about his garage. But it’s a happy marriage, they say.

  America and Russia, guns aimed at each other for thirty years, bayonets fixed, ready to strike, tanks ready to roll, missiles poised. While in a gilded room, under chandeliers, our diplomats meet, drink champagne, sign documents.

  Peace, it is called. Or domestic tranquillity.

  Victor says power is the key to everything.

  She stood up and crossed the room and poured more Scotch into her glass. It was going to be a very long day for her if Victor didn’t come back for dinner. A very long day if she couldn’t work. Horrible thought, life without work. Empty days, stretching. What could you do to fill them? Anthony in that wheelchair.

  Anthony lying on the couch watching TV, scratching his groin. Me in the study, working. Kids getting ready for bed, squabbling. Always squabbling. Natural, of course, but was it worse in our house? Good reason for it, if it was. But Anthony didn’t permit squabbling. He was the only one allowed to get angry in that house. He leaped up and marched down the hall, yelling the whole way. Then he cried out.

  Dolores leaped up and ran to him. He was lying on the floor. Another phony heart attack? But he had those only when we were quarreling, he’d never pulled those on the kids. Yet.

  “Anthony.” Stern.

  “I’ve broken my leg, you bitch!”

  Said he’d slipped on the waxed floor and broken it. Tried to make it my fault, impossible, the kind of housekeeper I was. Floor hadn’t been waxed in months. Never knew till last year: he was trying to kick Tony in the rear. And lied about it. Lied.

  Tony, of course (what else?) felt guilty. He’d learned agility in avoiding his father’s kicks, had ducked out of the way, heard the bone split, had started to giggle.

  I looked at him lying there on the floor, cursing me for the break, insisting he’d get up and drive himself to the hospital, cursing me as I called for an ambulance, cursing me for months after that, whenever his leg hurt, whenever he needed it moved and I was the one to do it. I was gentler with it than I had been with my newborns, but he always shrieked.

  I looked at him lying there on the floor, having broken the leg he’d put in the fire, listening but not hearing his curses, his orders, I foresaw all of it, knew how it would be, my life turned into a worse hell for months ahead now and the thing delayed, delayed. I knew he wanted to break his leg, wanted to break something, because he knew, how did he know? that the day before I’d gone to a lawyer to see about getting a divorce.

  How can you divorce a man in a wheelchair?

  Even if he is home all day, starts drinking manhattans at ten in the morning, spends the day listening to the call-in shows on the radio and spying on the neighbors with his telescope. Is furious drunk by the time the kids get home from school, drives them out and away. They spend a lot of time at their friends’ houses. By the time I get home he is hungry, grouses and asks jealous questions for a while, but I ignore them, ignore him. I prepare dinner, holding my mouth in place, thinking I have to get through three more months, two more months, one more month.

  The house is empty of children. I miss them but I am grateful. He wants affection, he wheels himself close to me, he puts his arms out to me, calls me “Honey.” I shudder away. Oh god.

  Dolores got up for another drink. Her back hurt: her shoulders have been hunched over tightly. She exercises them, but they still ache. She pours an extra-large Scotch.

  Sits down. On the bed this time. Stretches out, wrinkles her notes, doesn’t care, sweeps them together carelessly. Head back against the pillow, neck stretched out, waiting for somebody to come and slit her throat. If you had to have all that, and everybody had it, that pain from which nothing is learned, which changes nothing, if you had to have all that energy spent on suffering, at least it ought to mean something. It could run dynamos, that much energy. It could feed the world. If only your pain ran up brownie points in some great ledger somewhere, so that you wouldn’t have to come back and repeat it all in some reincarnation. But you do, you do. Passed on from parent to child, every generation going through exactly the same things, nothing learned, nothing changed. It was intolerable.

  Sydney’s new poem, the one she sent last week, was really about hate. Sydney had thought it was about love, the pains of love. Well, maybe it was, but it was also about the pain of hating. Dolores drinks thirstily.

  Yes, and when all the tumult dies down, the dust settles, the car motor is turned off and the body removed under a canvas, and the police cars have taken their terrifying red turning lamps back to some dark garage where motors are not allowed to run, and you lay your cold body on a bed and try to sleep, you look out your window and the moon is high, it rides behind some clouds, and a sea gull screams out over the shore. The ocean is pounding, you can hear it from your window. Forgotten. Nothing remains. Cottage swept out to sea.

  You needed a cause, some cause: Christ or communism or Israel. Something respectable enough to convince your mind, not just your passions. Something worth suffering for. You could bear anything if you had a cause. It wasn’t the pain that was unendurable: it was the pointlessness.

  It is getting dark out. She picks up her head and peers out at the rain. The streetlights are on. It must be late. She looks at her watch. No watch.

  He won’t be back for dinner. No.

  Again.

  She sat bolt upright. That was why! Why she hadn’t loved him, as he was leaving.

  She put her head back on the pillow, gently, her wits slowly coming together again. She put the glass down on the bed table. Her heart felt cold and hard as a rock, and hot, flaming, at the same time. Yes! He argues, he sulks, he gets angry,
he pressures her into coming with him on these trips, and then what does he do? He leaves her alone in a hotel room, all day and all night. Leaves her to eat alone in a large empty cold hotel dining room, to wander alone the streets of some unfamiliar and uninteresting town. This was the third time. He’d done it in Leeds, and once in Birmingham, and now, again.

  Of course. He brought her along so he didn’t have to sleep alone, and could see England from a car, but not have to drive alone. Companionship when he wanted it, not when he didn’t. How convenient for him! Brought her along the way he brought his bottle of Scotch, to be there when he wanted it.

  And it never occurred to him to think about her. He wasn’t trying to be selfish. He didn’t have to try, it came naturally. He was involved with people, with appointments and meetings, trips through the works, meeting a new man, someone important, psyching him out, go for drinks, stay to dinner, fun, full of life for him. Yes. He had it all arranged for his pleasure: work, then Scotch, then her.

  She’d become an appurtenance in his life. Like Edith.

  The most beautiful name in the world.

  Marsh, calling late at night from California: “I must see you, darling, can you meet me in New York, I’ll be there on the twentieth, god, it’s been so long!”

  She raced down to New York in the car, wearing the three-hundred-dollar leather suit she’d bought in Saks months before in sheer anticipation of his next visit. Couldn’t afford the suit, but didn’t care. It was splendid, white with black piping. Had the car washed before she went to the airport. Here we are all clean and new for you. She charged through the airport crowd like a blind woman, breathless. But didn’t recognize him when he appeared. He walked over as she was still searching the crowd. He was fat: he’d gained thirty pounds.

  She thought: He’s eating. Because he misses me. And was not displeased.

  He didn’t like her suit, it was hard and it squeaked. He kept complaining about it. He didn’t like anything. He complained about the paintings in the Modern (“a lot of crap”), the hotel (“I told you to book a single! They had me down for a double!” “I did book a single! They made the mistake”). They argued, finally dropped it. He never believed her. Thought she was trying to ruin him, unconsciously, of course. His secretary would see double on the bill, and suspect something. He could not afford to be under suspicion. What she really wants is for me to divorce my wife and marry her. Oh, she says she doesn’t, but all women want to be married. Unconscious, of course, she doesn’t mean harm. But I’ll have to be wary.

  Dolores saw what he thought. And knew there was no way she could convince him of anything else. She’d been very careful to book a single, he’d given her precise instructions about it. But he’d never believe that. He’d never believe that she didn’t want to marry him, didn’t want to marry anyone (he didn’t know what marriage meant to her), but especially Marsh, a politician, what a life for a woman!

  It made her feel strange that he didn’t, wouldn’t ever, believe her, though. As if for him she was a different Dolores, someone other than she was, someone who didn’t really know what she felt, someone who needed a man to feel whole.

  Over cocktails that evening (she having discarded the hated leather suit and wearing plunging black) he asked: What’s the most beautiful name in the world?

  She looked at him: that was a question?

  “Edith,” he announced, smiling with satisfaction.

  It was his wife’s name.

  She sat in numb stillness in the hotel room while he gave his speech. Why did he call me? Why didn’t he say: I can’t handle this, loving my wife on the West Coast and you on the East. That would have been honest, and she would have understood. Why didn’t he say: My guilts are too strong, I can’t go on with this. Why didn’t he say: My political career …

  Oh, god, what a coward he was! He couldn’t admit to being a mere human himself, so he came and turned her into a subhuman. Came and found fault with everything she did, everything she said. Everything she wore, for godsakes. Came and unwound, ribbon by ribbon, my finery of love, stripped me bare so he could find nothing inside. And I, loving him, let him do it, let myself undergo it, and let myself feel stripped and empty, felt like the nothing he wanted to find.

  But that night he was sweet and loving, the way he’d been in the past. He was going to Princeton the next day, would she drive him? It would mean staying over an extra day, but they’d have dinner at the Forum tomorrow night, have a chance to spend some time together.

  She thought: Maybe it’s just New York that makes him paranoiac, maybe he’s right to be worried here, so many people who might know him. Maybe it’s New York that’s unnerving him.

  So she called Carol and spoke to the kids to explain, and asked Carol if she’d mind keeping them an extra day. Then called someone to cover her Thursday classes for her. And rose early Wednesday morning and drove, nervously, the unfamiliar roads. They arrived at Princeton before noon. Then he told her there was a luncheon before his speech, and that she should go somewhere and have a bite and be back to pick him up around three thirty or four. And to park far from the building. He didn’t want anyone to see her.

  Chauffeurs are treated with more respect: at least you pay them.

  He returned in high spirits, his speech had gone well, there were important people in the audience. He talked continuously, telling her everything, every detail, assuming she was fascinated. He didn’t notice her silence. Then said that he was very sorry but he’d have to get up and be out of the hotel very early the next day, his plane left at eight, and he wouldn’t get to see her at all next morning, unless, of course, she cared to drive him to the airport on her way back to New England? …

  The airport? On her way back to New England? She smiled.

  He saw her smile, and it was a full one, no sadness in it. He leaned back comfortably in his seat and smiled at her benevolently. “You know, Dolores, I think you’re beginning to learn. To accept the way things are, the way they have to be.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to learn,” she said.

  When they reached the hotel, he said, “Shall I have the boy park your car?”

  “I’m not parking it,” she said, and jumped out. She got the key from the desk clerk (forbidden!), and went up to the room and packed her things hurriedly.

  When she returned to the car, he was still sitting in it, looking puzzled. “Where do you want to go?” he asked her, glancing at the suitcase in her hand.

  “I’m going back to Boston.”

  “Boston? Now? I thought we were having dinner at the Forum.”

  “You have it. With your vanity, your superiority, and your stupidity.”

  He sat there gazing at her. She could feel a fire mount slightly in him, the fire he’d had for her in the beginning, before she’d shown herself docile.

  “Get out, please.”

  He opened the car door. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider? It will be dark driving to Boston now.”

  “Move!” she ordered, and took off, speeding into the line of traffic as soon as he was away from the door, but while it was still open. It felt good to do that, yes: action. Then reach over while driving and slam the door shut. Felt good.

  For a minute or two. Because for the rest of the night and for months afterwards, she felt raw and scraped, felt she had swallowed a burr and it was stuck in her esophagus. Love, that was.

  God loves you, He will fill you, diet for Jesus.

  Tears stood in Dolores’s eyes. She stood up, a little unsteadily, and poured another Scotch.

  She never knew what to do when she felt this way, felt devoured by her own emotions, felt her stomach eating itself away. She wasn’t given to physical violence. Jack used to knock over furniture, vases, throw things. It was a good way and she would have approved it had it not been her furniture, her vases. If she’d done that here, they’d cart her off to the loony bin. A man could get away with it, if he were drunk. They’d calm him down and put it on his bill.
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br />   Okay, Victor wasn’t coming back for dinner. It was really dark out now, must be eight or nine. He said he’d call. Maybe he forgot that too, along with me. Well, I think I’ll go back to Boston.

  There might be a late train. Couldn’t take the car and drive. Too many drinks. Must be late trains to someplace. Doesn’t matter where, she’d go to Glasgow, Wales, anyplace. Just to go, to get out of this pumpkin shell. Leave. Show him. He can’t treat me this way, the children are grown up and I don’t have to stay here anymore. Just walk out of the house like that and not come back for days? What kind of thing is that to do, Martin, I ask you! Poppa, where ya going, Poppa? Can I come, Poppa? Can I come this time? Can I come next time? Poppa? Come back filthy and unshaven, Momma standing there looking at him with a face full of contempt. I love you, Poppa, little voice, hand slipped through his, he’d stroke my head, embarrassed, go to your room, Dolores, Momma would say, not unkindly. Lie there on the bed wondering why Poppa always goes away why Momma was always mad at him….

  She drank her Scotch down, got up for more. She had not turned on the lights in the room, because she could not stand all the mirrors, and she stumbled around finding her way by the light cast by the street-lamps outside. The phone rang, at least she thought it was the phone and not her ears, which were also ringing. She could not find it, she stumbled around, she tripped over something, fell on the floor, crawled toward the sound, it was ringing ringing ringing, and found it finally, picked it up and a man’s voice said “Lorie?” and she said “Who?” and then he said “Lorie!” and she said “No,” and then he said something else she couldn’t understand and then there was a strange noise, a buzzing, it must be a bad connection all the way from California but if Marsh thought she was going to see him again after the way he’d acted, he was really oblivious, oblivious yes, oblivion….

  Well, she was sick of his rages! Sick, sick, sick! Slamming the phone down on her like that. Calling up to check on her, make sure she was home, it was a joke, he called wherever she went, everybody knew it.