The Bleeding Heart

by Marilyn French

“But she must feel angry.”

  He gazed at her coldly, then away.

  Mary came in bustling, pink, laughing. “Well, I think that little crisis is resolved. I have the chicken in the oven, so that’s fine. I hope you aren’t starving, Dolores.”

  “No, not at all. I don’t usually eat my main meal in the middle of the day, so I’m not suffering from delay. If there is one. But I’d be glad to help.”

  “No, no, the kitchen’s so small, but do sit there and talk to me.”

  She ran around the kitchen, or rather she seemed to fly around it, so light and swift were her movements. And although her gestures appeared ineffectual, somehow she was getting everything done, she was washing broccoli and cleaning and chopping it, she was peeling potatoes and cutting them, she was checking on the chicken, she was making a roux, she was grating cheese, setting the table, stirring the cheese into the cream sauce, testing the broccoli, the potatoes, slicing tomatoes, finding serving dishes, a platter, some serving flatware, brushing hair out of her eyes, testing the chicken, drinking her wine, talking, laughing, pink.

  Gordon had returned to reading his newspaper.

  “Oh, I feel guilty, you shouldn’t have to do all this, you have your oral this coming week, isn’t it?”

  “Monday week. But good heavens, we have to eat, whether you’re here or not, you know, it’s no trouble, none at all, Dolores!”

  Monday week. Couldn’t Gordon cook the dinner so she could study?

  Mary was telling her about a case. “… and she said it was because she’d been raped and I suppose, you know, that makes sense, it must be terrible, but it had been two years, yet on the other hand the rape had left her pregnant and she’d had to have an abortion, and I know the man who performed it, they shouldn’t let him do them because he hates women and he butchered her, he really did, he’s cruel and tried to hurt, and that, on top of the rape, must just have been too much.

  “Still, it was awhile back and the examination revealed nothing out of order now. And her husband was such a lovely man, Dolores, really sympathique, you know? He was graceful and kind and he made so much sense: all he wants is to have his wife back, to have her sleep with him again. He loves her. It seemed … so little to ask, you know? I mean, he was perfectly sane and loving and kind. Whereas she seems so … oh, I don’t know. She’s difficult. She whines and she complains and she bursts out with the most extraordinary statements. She’s jarring. She’s very pretty and quite young. I can see why he wants her, but she’s really, I feel quite impossible.

  “And that’s a problem, because after all she’s my patient, yet I find myself so much more in sympathy with her husband. She is a little alarming, really. What do you think?” Mary turned and faced her, stopped her constant movement for a moment.

  “I think,” Dolores said slowly, “that the rape and the abortion have driven her over an edge. She’s probably had other bad experiences in her life and everything has come together and right now she can’t stand men. I think that to tell her to go home and be a good little girl and let her husband screw her is to violate the very fibers of her being.”

  “Yes,” Mary mused, “but her husband is such a nice man.”

  “It’s easy for him to be nice. He’s not fighting against anything. He probably feels very virtuous that he still wants her after the rape. He wants her back and feels he has every right to her body.

  “Whereas she knows she’s doing something wrong. I don’t know about British law, but it may even state that a wife owes her husband rights over her body. Some American states have laws like that. So in addition to the hatred and rage that’s all bottled up in her, she has the burden of feeling wrong towards her nice, kind husband. That’s enough to drive anyone to distraught behavior.”

  Gordon, Dolores noticed, had stopped turning the pages of his newspaper.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Mary said thoughtfully. “I just wish I could like her more….”

  She returned to her preparations.

  Mary called the children in to dinner. She went with them to see that they washed their hands, returned, shepherding them, seeing that they were settled comfortably at the table. Elise needed a cushion under her, Linton could have used one as well, but he disdained such baby things. Mary carved the chicken and set it on the table, then brought the potatoes, sprinkled with parsley, the broccoli covered with cheese sauce, sliced tomatoes. “Gordon?” she said lightly, and he rose, carrying his wine, and came to the table. Dolores poured more wine into their glasses. The children sat looking at the table. Then they looked at each other, and away. Mary sat down. Her face was flushed, her hair was askew, she acted a little confused. She was talking to the children, asking them what part of the chicken they wanted, helping them to vegetables.

  They stared at her. “You’ve forgotten the napkins,” Linton said coldly.

  She started. “Oh, have I? Indeed I have!” And jumped up and fetched paper napkins from the cupboard and folded them and laid them at each place, but she was uneasy, Dolores could see it.

  “What’s that?” Elise said with a curl of her lip, peering into the broccoli bowl.

  “It’s broccoli, darling,” Mary said. “Will you have some?”

  “It’s yellow.”

  “That’s cheese sauce, sweetheart. It’s very good.”

  Linton put some chicken into his mouth and chewed it warily. “This chicken tastes funny.”

  “No, it doesn’t, dear.” There was an edge of hysteria in her voice.

  “Yes, it does!” He spat what he had in his mouth onto his plate.

  “Linton!”

  “It tastes funny!”

  She was near tears, Dolores knew it, but she did not show it, she smiled, she laughed a little, she said, “I’ve put some tarragon on the chicken, Linton. It’s a herb. It is supposed to go well with chicken, and it does taste good, darling, if you’d only give it a chance.”

  Tried to produce a special dinner. For me. Poor thing….

  Linton looked at his mother suspiciously. “It tastes funny.”

  “It’s only because you’re not used to it. It’s very good, really,” she smiled nervously. She swallowed some wine. “It’s really very good.”

  Linton looked at her, at his plate, and considered. He picked up a small piece of chicken with his fork, slid it slowly into his mouth, and chewed, slowly, considering.

  Mary smiled across the table at Dolores. “Children’s palates are so bound by habit, aren’t they,” she said, and Dolores, near hysteria herself, launched into a series of little pointless tales about her children’s early love for canned spaghetti and Big Macs, and about the night Anthony would not let Tony get down from the table until he had eaten his artichoke (although Anthony himself had never eaten an artichoke until that same night) and Tony had never eaten it at all, and Anthony had served it to him for breakfast the next day, but then Anthony had had to go to work, and she had gotten up and Tony was sitting there at the breakfast table looking at anything except the artichoke before him, and she had swept it up and hurled it down the disposal and had cooked him bacon and soaked bread in the drippings and handed him a huge sandwich of bacon, which he’d gobbled down and run off to school and and and … she ended nowhere, in confusion.

  It was all right. She had appeared an idiot, but her noise had covered Mary’s embarrassment. The children chewed slowly, as if they expected glass in the next chaw, and stared at the table. Linton left most of his chicken. Elise left most of her broccoli. Dolores could barely eat, could barely swallow, despite the fact that the food was delicious. She finished her dinner with relief. Gordon had thirds.

  Eventually, dinner ended. Dolores sat over Mary’s wonderful coffee, sighing. It was three o’clock. She could go back upstairs soon.

  “What shall we do this afternoon?” Mary inquired gaily.

  Where does she get the energy?

  “I want to build a fort,” Linton said.

  “No, dear, it’s not a good idea. Yo
u simply can’t take all the furniture out of the rooms, and block the hall that way. It’s too much work for me, dear.”

  “I want to go out on our bikes!”

  “Oh, Elise, darling, that would be lovely, but the weather looks so grey.”

  “It’s good enough,” Gordon said. “It won’t rain for an hour or two.”

  Mary turned from the sink, where she was scraping the plates into the garbage. “Oh, do you think so?” As if he were a deity and had decreed the weather.

  Elise jumped down from her chair and bounded around the room clapping her hands. “We’re going to go out on our bikes! We’re going to go out on our bikes!”

  “I’m not going on any stupid bike,” Linton said sullenly, slipping down from his chair and out of the room.

  “It won’t rain until evening,” Gordon pronounced.

  Dolores stood to help Mary. Mary told her to sit down, but she refused to listen. She did what she could without intruding on Mary’s ways.

  “I suppose it would be all right, if we don’t go too far. Elise can’t ride too far.”

  “I can so! I can!”

  Linton was absent

  “We could go up the back lane to the river.”

  “I don’t want to go there! I want to go to the woods, the big woods!”

  “Well, darling, we’ll see.” Mary left the room in search of Linton.

  Dolores took over, scraping plates, putting food away, then washing the dishes. Gordon puffed on a pipe. Elise and Gordon were arguing about where they should go. Mary came back into the room, breathless and pink, behind her son, who was insisting stubbornly, “I don’t want to go.”

  “I’ll show you how to do that trick I do, Linton,” Gordon said.

  Linton eyed him. Silence. “Well, perhaps,” he said, his nine-year-old face an arrogant mask of suspicion and pride.

  Elise ran up to her brother and clasped his waist. “Oh, do come, Linton, it’ll be fun!”

  Mary was smiling at Gordon, her face was soft and pink and yielding. She was smiling at him, her eyes were sending promises to him. Thank you, she was saying with her eyes, her smile. Her face was like a kiss, a gift, a surrender. Thank you, she was saying. Thank you for paying some attention to my children. Thank you for paying some attention.

  5

  DOLORES CLIMBED THE STAIRS to her own flat wearily.

  Yes. Because of her politics, she, Dolores, was ruining her love affair. But that is what comes of not sticking to your politics.

  Ah, well. We all do what we can do. The best we can do.

  Her heart ached for Mary, but she refused, absolutely refused, to drop down into the salt pit for Mary again. Mary was an adult, she made her own choices.

  When you swim upstream, there isn’t any right way to do it. There isn’t any right way to do anything, but at least when you went with the current, you could be graceful, poised, assured. Going the other way, everything was catch-as-catch-can.

  She let herself down in a chair. Her bones were tired, and from what? From having Sunday dinner with some friends.

  It was three weeks now since she had heard from Victor. She understood. He had told his tale, he had laid himself out on the table for her to stick darts in, but he couldn’t do anymore. He must have seen something in her face, heard something in her voice over the telephone, that made him hesitate. And she had not called him, although he was surely back from Brussels by now. Feeling like a moral monster, he looked in the mirror and saw only deformity. Seeing himself so, how could he call her, ask for love? Seeing himself so, he would be sure she saw him that way too, worse, probably, given her politics.

  But she felt rather like a moral monster too. For when she had sprawled her pain and rage all over the floor for him to see, he had remained, had been steadfast, had been angry and had found a rotten way to get even, but he had not flinched. Whereas she, right now, did not think she could bear to look at his face. Rotten, it was: no justice. Poor Victor.

  She remembered Victor saying, late one night: “I know what you mean when you say your life with Anthony was truer than anything you’ve lived since. Because you were young then and didn’t have the defenses you have now, and you allowed him to hurt you in terrible ways. He bruised your soul, he damaged your dreams, as well as your heart and mind. You wouldn’t let anyone do that to you now. You wouldn’t let anyone even get close enough to you to do that.”

  He was right, she supposed. But here he’d gone and let her get that close to him, opened himself up to her, and what had she done? But there was no use castigating herself for it, because she could not control what she felt. If she called him, if they got together, he would sense her distance, her new vision of him, see it in her eyes and mouth, hear it in her voice. You couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend, about a thing as strong and deep as her present aversion to him.

  You can’t salve your conscience by going through motions, pretending that everything was as it had been, pretending she liked him as much as ever. That was the terrible thing about an honest conscience: you couldn’t cheat. You had to live with the knowledge that you were rotten, that you were betraying a person who had been dear to you, that you were closing a door in the face of a man who had been utterly honest with you.

  Yes, but on the other hand, was he so free from rottenness? Wasn’t he slowly, slowly, trying to put you in the same pumpkin shell he’d finally locked Edith up in? Oh, you were quick to catch him in the beginning, calling him on his Businessman self, but then habit sets in, and affection solidifies, and you got slower and slower, you let him leave you in those hotel rooms three times before you complained, and then you had to have a hysterical fit to do it. Other irritations, disturbances, you buried, and then you slid, slid like mud right down into your own yard, your own well, muddying your own waters. You fell in with the dominant force, you gave up your critical distance. And he was not unhappy with that.

  But Dolores was not certain that her motives were simple. She gave herself examinations, probing. Are you sure, she asked herself, that part of what appealed to you about him wasn’t a tinge, just a tinge mind you, of white-knightliness? That his desire for you felt just an iota like being snatched from the jaws of a celibate withering monster, and carried off to lush play-lands? Saved for the forces of sex and mutual affection, all warm and wet and, these days, morally proper.

  Are you sure, she continued, that he didn’t come close to reminding you of Anthony in the picture of himself he drew? The tyrant-child’s breath, cold and dreadful, was perceptible at the edges of the room when he talked, wasn’t it? The difference between them was that Victor was married to someone who said Yes, dear, the kind of woman she used to think poor Anthony should have married.

  Oh god. She got up and went into the kitchen, heated the kettle for tea, put the breakfast dishes in the sink to soak. She took her tea and went back to the sitting room and began to work at her notes. But she had no concentration. Writing on the reality of women and the images of them purveyed in culture, she put down her pen.

  And I have probably done that to him. Made him up. Maybe I made them all up, Anthony and Marsh and poor sweet Jack with his eyes that looked as if the light came through them. Had she done to Victor what men did to female characters in novels, made him one-sided? Powerful but without malevolence, without a single dire consequence issuing from his power; bringing joy but not pain; beauty without a single bad smell; generosity without the expectation of repayment. Yes, had she done that to him? Because if she had, there was no alternative but to kill him off at the end of her novel, because such a creature cannot be moved from romance into marriage. That’s why all those dead heroines …

  Yes, if she had created a fantasy figure, it was inevitable that she would turn away from the real one. Whereas he, when he had seen her naked—or partly naked—had accepted her. Had learned her true name, and called her by it. He was better than she was, larger, kinder, more generous.

  He could afford to be. He was a man in the full flus
h of success, enjoying his life, having a glorious time in London, while his wife …

  His wife sat in her wheelchair.

  He had broken his bargain again.

  Even as he laid his sorrow in Dolores’s lap, even as he suffered from his past and his present, even as he asked for sympathy, he was breaking the bargain which was the reason for his plea!

  She breathed in sharply.

  Oh, Victor.

  Spring was arriving, the daffodils were beginning to bud, there were crocuses and violets and bluebells. The gardens were beginning to be a joy again. Dolores worked well and swiftly. She had three finely polished chapters and material for another two. She figured she would have all her research finished by the end of June, which would give her three weeks free. Perhaps she’d take a holiday, fly down to Greece or Spain or Italy for that time. If she had enough money left. Maybe one of the children would like to join her. But they were always broke, and she was too.

  Tony was back in Berkeley without his lover. Omaha was a drag, he wrote. Berkeley was beginning to be a drag too, in fact What did she think about his coming back East and trying to get into Juilliard to study composition and scoring? If he could get in, if he could raise the money. But he thought he might be able to, a friend of his was working at a cafe in the Village, and his combo would be needing a guitarist soon, the present one was leaving.

  She wrote back instantly, a one-word letter: Go!

  Sydney, proudly, shyly, you could see her face through her language, sent along two poems she had had published in a little magazine called Avanti. They were about animals and they were sparse and tough and fine. The women in her commune were about to do their planting, she wrote, and were gearing up for a hard siege. But this year they were going to borrow some mechanized equipment, so perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad as last year. They were going to plant a little corn this year, along with the alfalfa.

  Dolores went to a party at the Carriers and met a good-looking young man who talked to her all evening, and asked if they could have tea someday. They did, their eyes playing and teasing a bit. He had a nice body, and Dolores thought of inviting him to the flat for drinks. But he was terribly boring, so she put it off, thinking she could call him the following week. She wasn’t sure she would be able to tolerate listening to him even if he should prove to be a good lover.