American Appetites

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Ian said, “Is it a migraine? Can I do anything for you?”

  “Just a headache,” Glynnis said, her voice low, indistinct. “Please just leave me alone.”

  Ian stood hesitantly in the doorway, knowing Glynnis was angry with him, yet not knowing, not daring to guess, why. (Had she been brooding all day about last night’s abortive lovemaking? That was not like her, surely.) He said, “But isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “Let me sleep.”

  “I’ll make dinner tonight,” Ian said. “You’ll want to eat, won’t you? It’s already past seven.”

  Glynnis said, quietly, “I’ll make dinner, later, myself. Please just leave me alone now. I want to sleep for a while, now.”

  So Ian closed the door and went away, got a beer from the refrigerator, took off his coat and his tie, and went to his study to work. His hands were shaking slightly. She knows, he thought. But what does she know?

  Ian had not, to his shame, spoken to Glynnis of Sigrid Hunt, though he’d meant to, had fully intended to, months ago. Somehow the occasion never arose; the right words never came. For what was there to say, really? To confess? He had not so much as touched the girl; it was not that kind of relationship. (Though she’d offered herself, he supposed. If pressed, he would have had to admit that.)

  But: Once something is said in a marriage it cannot be unsaid. Those were Amos Kuhn’s cautionary words, and Ian had never forgotten them. (Though he could not now remember what had provoked the remark. Had Amos been in love with a woman other than Elizabeth? Ian seemed to recall rumors to that effect.)

  Once something is said. It cannot be unsaid.

  You inherited that chilly disposition of yours from your parents, Glynnis once said.

  Not accusing him, exactly.

  I didn’t realize I had a chilly disposition, Ian said.

  Didn’t you?

  Do I?

  Do you?

  He finished his beer and went to get another; the house was unnervingly silent; he wondered if Glynnis was actually asleep or simply lying there, in the dark. Why was she angry with him? Why did she reproach him? He had apologized for his ill-considered remarks about the birthday party; he had apologized for everything. Of course I love you. You know I love you. He wondered how Denis had summoned up the strength to confess to Roberta: what words he had used; what emotions were aroused; how poor Roberta—among their circle, the sweetest, the most sensitive of them all—had reacted. He felt a pang of disapproval; again, of hurt. Perhaps he should have spoken to Roberta about it, should have offered her consolation: commiseration. If Denis is capable of lying to you, he is capable of lying to us all.

  The telephone rang, in all, three times that evening. Each time, at his desk, Ian picked it up on the first ring, not wanting Glynnis to be disturbed. (The phone would also be ringing in the bedroom.) The first call was for Glynnis, from a woman named Stacey, of whom he’d never heard; the second call was from Leo Reinhart’s new woman friend, inviting the McCulloughs to brunch, in New York City, a week from next Sunday—an invitation Ian tentatively accepted, seeing that, on his calendar, the date seemed to be open; the third call was from Homer Taylor, an elder colleague of Ian’s, inviting him to lunch the next day—there were crucial matters to be talked of, concerning the “future of the Institute” after Dr. Max’s retirement. (Though he had misgivings, Ian accepted the invitation almost eagerly; it would provide a pleasant bit of news to share with Glynnis. It was she, rather than Ian, who hoped that the directorship might be offered him.) After that, Ian left the receiver off the hook.

  SHORTLY AFTER TEN, Glynnis knocked on his door and told him, without opening the door, that dinner was ready. “Not a very formal dinner,” she said, “but the best I could do tonight.”

  Ian rose at once from his desk, as if he’d been released from a prison cell. Though he had drunk several cans of beer he was very hungry.

  He supposed they would be eating, tonight, in the kitchen, and that he would set the table, as, on such nights, he usually did; so he was surprised to find the dining room table set, and covered, even, with a tablecloth, and candles burning. This was hardly Glynnis’s practice when they dined alone.

  A bottle of good white Italian wine had been uncorked, and a glass already poured, at Ian’s place. “Sit down,” Glynnis said. “Please.”

  Ian smiled at her, uneasily. “Shouldn’t I help? Isn’t there anything for me to do?” he said.

  Glynnis said, “It’s late, we’d better start. You must be hungry.” She spoke with an air of mild reproach.

  So, hesitantly, Ian sat; and Glynnis brought in their food from the kitchen, setting his plate before him in silence. She moved with care, rather stiffly, for of course she was still drunk and was drinking again. He said, “Glynnis? Have you been taking aspirin, for your headache?”—meaning, Should you be drinking wine now?—but Glynnis seemed not to hear.

  “You’d better start,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s already rather dry.”

  They were having salmon steaks, one of Ian’s favorite meals, which both touched him and worried him. Yet he was hungry, and ate hungrily, with an appetite that surprised him. Glynnis ate slowly—indeed, with increasing slowness—until finally she laid her fork down and sipped wine, replenishing her glass before it was entirely empty. She stared at him contemplatively. She lit a cigarette and stared. Ian said, “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  Glynnis shrugged, and said, “You know me—remarkable powers of recuperation.”

  “What?”

  “My headache.” She smiled and continued to stare at him. She did not appear angry so much as bemused. “How is the salmon? You haven’t said a word. I’m afraid I grilled it a little too long. And there are bones, unfortunately. Watch out for the bones.”

  “The salmon is fine,” Ian said, smiling. “My favorite—”

  “Yes, I know. Watch out for the bones.”

  Indeed there were bones, a curving backbone of bones, saw-notched and cartilaginous. Ian picked them carefully out of the cooked flesh and off the tip of his tongue. The asparagus and small red potatoes Glynnis had prepared were overcooked; the salmon itself, dry as if baked, had rapidly cooled.

  “It’s delicious, actually.”

  “Is it.” Glynnis’s smile, stretching her lips, rapidly vanished when released.

  Ian, eating, saw that Glynnis’s cigarette trembled in her fingers and that, in the glass of the sliding door behind her, the entire table—the candle flames in particular—seemed to be trembling. The outdoor lights above the terrace had not been switched on, as they always were in the evening, so that the plate-glass windows reflected only the interior of the room against an opaque background of night. Ian thought, Someone should switch on the lights. But he made no move.

  Nonetheless he smiled and tried to eat, finished a glass of wine and poured himself another, thanked Glynnis for having prepared a meal, so delicious a meal, when she hadn’t been feeling well and probably should have gone to bed for the night. “It’s too dry,” Glynnis said flatly. “And there are bones.” She was adjusting one of the candles, which had begun to tilt in its silver holder, and hot wax ran down her fingers, unnoticed. She said, “I forgot to slice lemon. There are lemons in the refrigerator, and I forgot to slice them.”

  Ian said quickly, “That’s all right, Glynnis.”

  “No,” Glynnis said, rising from the table, but taking her wineglass with her, “I don’t at all mind.”

  When she returned she set a plate of lemon quarters before Ian. “There may be seeds,” she said. “Watch the seeds.” Ian thanked her, offered to squeeze lemon juice on what remained of her salmon, as well as on his own, and Glynnis laughed without smiling and said, “But do watch the seeds.” In her distracted state she had brought the knife with which she’d sliced the lemons to the table with her and seemed not to know where to place it: a steak knife, one of the new set from Bloomingdale’s, perhaps ten inches long, gleaming. She laid it down beside the plate
of lemons.

  Glynnis said, belatedly, “I’m afraid it will only make the salmon colder. The lemon.”

  Ian said, almost eagerly, “No. It’s fine. But you don’t seem to be eating, much, yourself.”

  “When I’m alone, sometimes, in the kitchen, working on a recipe, I eat a good deal,” Glynnis said slowly. “When I’m—you know—alone.” She laughed, again without smiling, and ran a hand through her uncombed hair.

  She was wearing a rumpled bathrobe and, over it, an apron, an old gift from Leonard Oppenheim, Beethoven’s face imprinted on its front. The face was somber yet tinged with cartoon mania, the hair lifting in wild tufts. Glynnis’s own hair, disheveled from sleep, lifted in wild tufts; her face, denuded of makeup, looked pale, puffy, flaccid, as if incompletely formed. She said, “I found the check.”

  Ian did not hear: or, hearing, vaguely assumed that Glynnis was referring to a household matter about which he was supposed to know but had forgotten. He remembered to tell her about the invitation to the brunch in New York City—“I accepted, tentatively; I hope that’s all right with you?”

  He had thought this might cheer Glynnis, as under ordinary circumstances it would, for Glynnis thrived on social invitations and did not mind, as Ian surely did, driving all the way into Manhattan for a meal. But she took it in silence, then said, “You could always go alone.”

  “Go alone? Why? Why should I go alone?” Ian asked.

  “Leo is your buddy, not mine,” Glynnis said, replenishing her wineglass with an unsteady hand. “We are not shackled together by leg irons after all.”

  “Why do you say that?” Ian asked. “That’s a rather odd thing to say.”

  “Nonetheless it is true,” Glynnis said.

  She rose abruptly from the table, went into the kitchen, returned with a tossed green salad and a fresh bottle of wine. Ian, who had thought the meal was over, saw to his surprise that the wine was French and quite expensive, one of the birthday gifts brought by their friends. He said, indicating the bottle, “Do you really think we should? Tonight?”

  Glynnis said indifferently, “You don’t, of course, if you don’t want to. We are not shackled together by leg irons after all.”

  The salad, which consisted of coarse Romaine leaves, some of them spotted with brown, was rather warm; the dressing was both vinegary and oleaginous. The first bite brought tears to Ian’s eyes but he said nothing. Glynnis had given up all pretense of eating.

  Ian asked again about her headache; she dismissed the question with a negligent wave of her hand. He asked if something was wrong, if perhaps she’d heard from Bianca that day; again, the negligent wave of her hand. He remembered that she had agreed to do several articles, in conjunction with her new regional cookbook, for the food section of The New York Times, but he could not remember if she had completed the articles; he could not remember, even, if they had already appeared in the paper . . . and dared not risk her anger by inquiring. She would say, You pay no attention to me, you do not take me seriously; and what reasonable defense would he have?

  He’d laughed hard when, once, at the periphery of a typically ambitious multi-course Hazelton dinner party, a like-minded fellow had murmured in Ian’s ear, “When I hear the word ‘cuisine’ I reach for my revolver.” Yes, Ian thought, it is so. He would not hurt Glynnis’s feelings for the world but, in truth, everything that had to do with food elitism, gourmet philosophizing, “the science of cuisine,” and the like struck him as utterly, utterly trivial.

  Guiltily, as if fearing that Glynnis might read his thoughts, Ian told her about the invitation to lunch at the Institute, thinking that this surely would not fail to please her; but she confounded him by saying, coldly, “As long as I’m not expected to be there.”

  “Of course you’re not expected to be there,” Ian said, hurt. “It will be just—”

  “You and your colleagues.”

  “Some of my colleagues.”

  “Well,” Glynnis said, with a conspicuous effort not to slur her words, “if you take the job, we can always use the extra money.”

  Ian’s own hands were trembling. He recalled—not many days ago, when had it been?—a return flight from Washington in a small twelve-passenger plane and they had had a good deal of what pilots call “turbulence,” and though Ian’s hands shook and his handwriting on his yellow legal-sized pad was virtually illegible, he’d continued working nonetheless, jotting down notes for this paper he must give, this “seminal” paper he must concoct, for the damned Frankfurt conference. Ian McCullough had become a world-renowned figure in charting the courses of populations, in many cases of countries he had never visited, populations he’d never seen; thus any paper delivered by him must be “seminal,” if not “definitive” or “ground-breaking.” Outside the airplane’s rather smeared windows there were clouds gusting about, and patches of blue bright and terrible as fissures in the skull. If the plane does not crash I will have done my work, Ian told himself, with his usual pragmatic equanimity. If it crashes, it will not matter.

  That day, the plane had not crashed. He had been returned safely to Hazelton-on-Hudson, New York.

  Glynnis said again, in her tight, careful voice, and this time Ian could not fail to know what she meant, “I found the check.”

  “The check?”

  “For one thousand dollars. Made out to ‘Sigrid Hunt.’”

  Ian felt cold; tasted cold; could not, in the face of his wife’s accusatory silence, speak. Finally he managed to say, weakly, “It isn’t what you think, Glynnis.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “It was a—”

  “How do you know what I think?”

  “—a loan. She asked for a—”

  “I found it in your desk. The canceled check. I was looking for something else, and I found the check. Pay to the order of. One thousand dollars. February 20, 1987—a long time ago.” Glynnis spoke slowly and thoughtfully, regarding him with bright, narrowed eyes. Ian did not think he had ever seen those eyes, quite those eyes, before.

  He began to speak, and she cut him off. “How do you know what I think?” she said. “What is it you think I think?”

  “She asked for a loan. She was in need of money.”

  “Money from you? Us?”

  Ian put his hand to his forehead in a sudden gesture of pain. Was he telling the truth? Was he lying? He could not remember clearly: was he lying? “She seemed to be in desperate need of money,” he said, beginning to stammer, “and I lent it to her, and I’d meant to tell you, and—”

  “Your lover Sigrid. Sigrid Hunt,” Glynnis said, as if the name amused her. “And you thought I would not know. You thought I would not know.”

  “She isn’t my lover, Glynnis; don’t be absurd,” Ian said. “You know as well as I—”

  “You thought I would not know. Could not guess.”

  “It was just a loan, and—”

  “What a fool you are. Your mistake was not providing her with cash.” Glynnis smiled and stubbed out her cigarette in her salad plate, crudely, amid the Romaine lettuce leaves. “You thought I would not know—as if I were an idiot. A fool like you. As if I could not guess.”

  Ian said quickly, “But it isn’t what you think, Glynnis. I scarcely know her; she was your friend—”

  “Who is ‘she’? ‘Her’? Are you afraid to say her name?”

  “—and somehow I met up with her, with Sigrid, after that party here—when you introduced us—”

  “That’s important, isn’t it—a bit of evidence for the record—that I introduced you?”

  “—and I don’t know how or why, for the life of me, Glynnis, I don’t really remember the sequence, when she called me, or how it developed,” Ian said, stumbling over his words. “One day she telephoned me at the Institute and seemed to be—hinted that—wanted me to see her, to help her in some way. And I—I didn’t think I could—I couldn’t say no. She seemed so desperate and so—”

  “Your lover. Sigrid Hunt.”

 
; Glynnis spoke in a tone of supreme yet amused disgust. If she was drunk, as Ian guessed, quite seriously drunk, as he suspected, and as he himself, rather helplessly, was beginning to be, nonetheless she maintained a really quite extraordinary control: might almost have been giving—granting?—one of the frequent interviews she had begun to give, in recent years, since the unexpected development of her public “career.” And Ian too began to speak assertively, emphatically, as if for the record. “The woman is not my lover. Sigrid Hunt is not my lover. I do not have a lover, I have a wife. I scarcely know her—”

  “Who is ‘her’? The lover, or the wife?”

  “I said: I do not have a lover.”

  “Why cannot you say her name? Sigrid Hunt.”

  “I’ve told you, I scarcely know her.”

  “Yet you love her. You fuck her. You—and her.”

  Ian stared at her, shocked.

  “Glynnis, that’s absurd.”

  “You—and her,” Glynnis said. “That diseased little tramp.”

  She lit up another cigarette, and tossed down her matches, and exhaled smoke from both nostrils, and said, fixing him with a look of rather theatrical contempt, “Did you think there would be no consequences? You—and her?”

  Ian laughed angrily. “You’ve been drinking and you’re in no state to discuss this. I tell you there is nothing between Sigrid Hunt and me; there has been nothing; I scarcely know her—really. I think we’d better save this for another time.”

  “But did you really think there would be no consequences?”

  “There are no consequences.”

  “Except that, by accident, though possibly it wasn’t entirely an accident, I found the check,” Glynnis said. “One thousand dollars. Payable to Sigrid Hunt. Signed, Ian McCullough.” She too laughed, with a strange joyous violence. “In Ian McCullough’s inimitable hand.”

  “She was in desperate need, I told you, of—”

  “What was the money for? An abortion?”

  “—It was a loan, Glynnis, not a gift. I’ll have Sigrid explain—”

  “Was it for an abortion?”