by Cecelia Frey
“I don’t know what she said.”
“No, of course not.” Silence. Esther tried to think.
She could hear him sigh, deeply, impatiently. “What do you want me to do?”
“If I knew,” she said, “one way or another. If what she said is true. It would help.”
There was another long silence.
“Do you know her?” said Esther.
Another blank silence.
“Can you say yes or no?”
“We’ll talk about it when I get home.”
“I can’t manage that,” said Esther. “I have to know how to think.”
“It’s more complicated than a simple yes or no.”
“I need a yes or no.”
Something in her voice, some hysterical undertone, must have decided George. “Yes,” he said. And then, “I don’t think it’s serious.” And after another tense silence, “I’m late for lunch. It’s a very important lunch.”
She hung up. She listened to the answering machine rewind tape to the beginning of the message and then click loudly. She had gotten what she wanted. Now she knew which way to think.
She felt a great surge of anger. George was such a fool, such a vain stupid foolish fool! He had destroyed them. He had brought the house down on their heads. And all because of his preening vanity. She hated him. She hated, hated, hated him!
She could not live without him. He was her life. When she thought of living without him, a deep black terrifying hole took the place of thought. And what about him? It was inconceivable that he would not live in this house, in this home that they had built together, that they had lived in for so many years. If he moved out, what would he do? Where would he live? In some dreary one-bedroom apartment like other bachelors? She could not bear to think of George living a lonely bare life. She could not think of it. That was not his life. His life was as her husband, as Delores’ father. She couldn’t think whether or not she loved him. It was too late for such considerations.
“I don’t think it’s serious.’ That was the phrase she must hang on to. What exactly did that mean? Not serious. A nonserious affair. Maybe only physical. Physical, but nothing deep, nothing that affects a person emotionally. And likely it was already over. George must have told her that it was over and so she had come to the house hoping to cause trouble between him and his wife. It was over, then. George did not love her. He may have been in love with her at one time, loved her in a superficial physical way, but he had come to his senses. But he was still tied to her. Because of the child.
And then it came to her. The child, of course! George must have wanted more children. She, Esther, had been a failure in that area. He had said it didn’t matter. He had not seemed disappointed. But here it was! The proof.
And what of the child? She did not want to think about how a child is conceived — the intimacy, the physical contact. That young woman had been the subject of George’s most intimate regard, his looks, his thoughts. She, Esther, had been, and even now was, the stranger. She, Esther, was the outsider, the peripheral hanger-on, the nuisance, the person to be dealt with.
A child certainly added a complication. Although, nowadays, such things happened all the time. When she had lunch or coffee with friends, the talk inevitably got around to the sex lives of other friends, of friends of friends, of their own grown-up children. What of Delores? She had not considered Delores. What would Delores think of a sibling twenty-one years her junior! What would Delores think of her father? She adored her father. They must not tell Delores. Delores would never have to know. She was there, they were here. She was safely out of it. Still, the thought that George had not only betrayed her but also Delores was another dagger in her heart.
How could he have done it? she cried over and over again inside her mind. She said it out loud. “How could he have done it?”
He would have ended it but he had not wanted to hurt the young woman’s feelings. Esther had a moment of compassion for the unfortunate George. He must have felt distress, trying to get out of a relationship without anyone being hurt. And it must have been painful for him to have to lie to her, his wife, to save her feelings. How he must have suffered shame when he found himself caught in an avalanche of lies. Esther let herself wonder about this suffering. She thought carefully about the past few years. Much of it she could not remember. She thought about the last few months. She could detect nothing, no evidence of his suffering. Perhaps he had seemed a bit distracted at times, but he had always been distracted because of his work. At no time had he acted guilty, penitent, more distant, in a word, different, than he had always acted. He had not been away from home any more than usual. He had always had to attend conferences, various gatherings of the scientific and educational communities. He had always had to attend evening meetings, committees, boards. He had always occasionally had to go over to the university in the evenings, to check on a research project, to meet with someone. When she thought about it, a professor’s life offered numerous opportunities for a particularly free lifestyle.
Perhaps I do not know this man I’ve lived with all these years, she thought. He may be a complete stranger to me.
But if he is a stranger, it must be my fault, she reasoned. I have not made enough of an effort to keep on knowing the young man I married. I’m the one who has failed, her mind carried on. I’m the one who has betrayed him by not being the person he needed, by not thinking enough of him, by not loving him enough. Somewhere during all the years I forgot that he was my hero.
Could it be possible that to that young woman George was a hero?
I’m just as much at fault as George, she thought.
Esther was holding a tea towel and was kneading it spasmodically. Maybe we have time, she thought, time in which I can make it better, undo the wrong I have done. He is still my husband. He is still alive. Death is worse than this. Death is the worst thing. Unless someone has died it is not a real catastrophe. Her aunt used to say that. George needed her love now more than ever. Had she the strength, the wisdom, the understanding to hold her love steady? To not let him down in his need? Yes. She felt powerful. She would see him through. Whatever it was, they would fight it together. She felt strong. She would be able to take what came. It was unthinkable that she might lose him. That they would lose each other. He was her George. They could not lose each other, not those two who had smiled like that for the camera.
While Esther’s thoughts and emotions had been swinging wildly from one extreme to the other, she had kept herself busy with real tasks. Disregarding the fact that Louise of the Lady Anne crisis would come in the morning , she vacuumed the upstairs, polished the bedroom and dining room furniture, put in a load of laundry. She was now in the living room, giving everything in sight a coat of lemon polish. She picked up the wedding photo from the top of the piano. She looked at those bland, unmarked faces. She looked into her own dreamy, asleep eyes. For better and for worse, she repeated her vow.
I ought to have been a better wife, she thought, as she sewed a button on the cuff of George’s shirt. She ought to have listened to his stories about what was happening in the department, his concerns about students. She ought to have gone with him to conferences instead of cocooning herself in her comfortable life in this house. She had been lazy. She ought to have been interested in how his book was coming along. She hadn’t asked him about his book for months. True, the last few times she had asked, he had been abrupt with her, even hostile. But that was no excuse. Of course, he would be hostile if it wasn’t going well, but that was just the time he needed her. She should have persisted, broken through his wall of hostility, been loving and tender.
She raised her head suddenly, as though listening. I should have taken up jogging with him, she thought. I will, starting tomorrow.
She was passing through the kitchen, from dining room to laundry room when it happened. In a single moment, her strength abandoned her. She felt h
er mind go slack at the same time as her body slumped into a chair. She collapsed into a creature writhing in pain. She existed only as pain. She sobbed, she moaned, she grabbed handfuls of hair at each temple and pulled until her head hurt. She raged, she screamed. Her head pulsed, throbbed. Mucus and drool and tears streamed down her face and mixed together and slobbered onto her apron. She got up and stomped up and down, stomped through the house, raging and screaming, still tearing her hair. When she was exhausted, she stumbled into the bathroom. She bathed her face with cold water, she combed her hair. She looked at her face in the mirror. She saw puffy spotty skin, swollen red eyes. She saw hairs starting to grow from her chin just like her old granny used to have. What an ugly old beast, she thought. No wonder he prefers that beautiful young woman with smooth porcelain complexion.
She looked at her hands. She saw skin, dry and cracked from the long winter, fingernails, rough and splintered. One was broken from doing the vacuuming. That young woman probably had a career, worked in a library, an office, put on makeup every morning, spent her salary on her wardrobe, frequented body shops for manicures and pedicures. All my life I’ve been a housewife, thought Esther. I should have taken evening courses, kept up with what’s happening in the world, made myself into a more informed conversationalist. No wonder he prefers a young woman. She probably listens to his stories. The articles say you should draw a man out of himself. You should keep up with the latest fashions, the latest trends, the latest news. It was my duty as a wife to be interesting and interested. I have failed in my duty.
Between three-thirty and four-thirty, Esther jumped at every sound. When the furnace fan came on, when the hot water tank flared into action, when the fridge motor started, when a squirrel jumped from deck rail to roof, she started, her heart pounding. When she heard a car on the street outside, her ears perked up. If the car moved slowly, seemed to be coming to a stop, she ran to the window. Then she remembered that George walked to the university. Although sometimes, if he had to go across town during the day, if he had an appointment at another place, for any one of a dozen reasons, sometimes he took the car. She could go out to the garage and look to see if the car was there. She would if he didn’t come soon.
She became more and more nervous about the meeting. Would he be angry with her? She couldn’t stand it when he was angry with her. It didn’t happen often but at such times, his Latin background emerged. He became snappish, even contemptuous. He waved his arms, he stomped about.
But why was he so late? She tried to remember, she was sure he had said three-thirty. But maybe she was mistaken, her mind was such a jumble. She needed to speak to someone. Anyone. She needed to hear her own voice, to have at least that much physical release from her tension. But she did not want to use the phone in case he might try to call her.
At five o’clock she grabbed at the phone and dialled Helena’s number. I won’t tell her, she thought. I’ll just ask her about her day. But Helena was not there or, at least, not answering. Where was she? With Ben, of course. They were always together now. They might even get back together permanently. Miracles did happen. People were truly amazing. People did build themselves new lives, they found reasons to live. She had been so worried about Helena when she had first come home looking like a skeleton. Three months ago. So much can happen in three months. Lives can begin, lives can end.
Esther hung up the receiver slowly. It was just as well Helena was not home. I didn’t mean to tell her, thought Esther, but I would have. I would have betrayed George. I would have dragged her into it. Because of my own selfish need.
There was something else, too. Esther did not want Helena to know. She did not want anyone to know. She was too embarrassed. She felt as if she had committed some terrible social faux pas, or as if she had failed an exam or been fired from a job because of her ineptness.
Esther’s mind was a whirl of disjointed thoughts, a muddle of wild ideas, but one idea that stood out was that somehow this was her fault, for not being attractive enough, slim enough, witty enough, a good enough cook, housekeeper, and mother. There was definitely something wrong with her. Her body. What sort of woman couldn’t have children? She had failed in the most basic function of being a woman. She leaned against the wall, pressed her forehead against the corner where two perpendicular walls met, felt the sharp edge against the bone of her head.
I may be a bad person, she conceded. I may be stupid and shallow and self-indulgent, but do I deserve to suffer like this? No one has the right to make another person suffer like this.
Slowly, moving like a sleepwalker, she made her way into the living room. She lowered herself onto the sofa. She posed herself like a piece of crystal on the edge, knees together, clasped hands on her knees. She felt that if she moved anything, any part of her body, it would shatter into a thousand pieces. Her face was stiff, stern. She could feel it so, but she could not relax it. If she did, it, too, would shatter. She must not allow herself to move or to think, or she would break. She would run mad through the house, mad through the streets. She must sit here. She must sit here very straight and still.
IX: GEORGE
THE JIG’S UP, thought George. He leaned his elbows on the table as though he were listening. It occurred to him that they might take back the appointment.
In the pale light of the Faculty Club dining room, George was only dimly aware of the bee-hive of activity around him. He was surprised that the room was still intact — high ceiling, tall windows — that it looked the same as on the many other occasions, hundreds of them, when he had eaten here. His inner vision had shifted so dramatically in the last hour, he found it difficult to believe that the outer world — the murmur of voices, the clink of cutlery and dishes, the disturbance of air as waitresses swished past with coffee pots, water jugs, dessert carts — was as it had always been. It seemed bizarre that people sat around the tables, unconcerned, like lizards on hot rocks, drawing spring warmth from a sun streaming unfettered through tall windows, as if a catastrophe had not happened. He felt himself to be in a surreal space, the light thick with sunrays and dust motes. It was like being suspended in a diving tank preparing to be plunged to the bottom of the sea.
George became aware of silence. Two of the three other men at the table were looking at him expectantly. The Dean, on his left, was setting his white coffee cup into a white saucer on the white cloth. What had they been talking about? Should he hazard a guess, make a noncommittal remark? But even a noncommittal remark might be way off base. No, better to admit his wool-gathering and plead his humanness. “I’m afraid,” he said, “my mind was wandering.”
It was the right comment. They all laughed good-naturedly. “That’s allowed,” said the Dean. “Once the reality sets in, you won’t have time to think, let alone daydream.”
Once the reality sets in, thought George, will I ever be invited here again by this group? Such a thought caused him great distress. George liked these men. He liked this room, liked the view of the downtown core across the river, the river itself. He liked the privileges of having membership in such a room. He had moved above the rank and file, the lower class blue-collar status of so many immigrants. He had achieved what his parents, his father in particular, had wanted him to achieve. For, while his father had made a good deal of money in the restaurant business, he had wanted his children to have class. George wondered what his father would think of Veronica. He pictured his father having an affair with a shadowy someone or other. Quickly, he put the image out of his mind. He did not seriously consider that his father would have done that. His father had a strict, albeit superstitious and irrational and, therefore, mistaken Roman Catholic moral code.
The dessert cart stopped before him. He shook his head at the poppy seed cake, his favourite. Normally, he was a man who enjoyed his food, but today he could have been eating sawdust. A shame, too, since a very good lunch was to be had at the Faculty Club. But George’s digestive tract had been dis
turbed before entering this room, before sitting down at the dazzling white cloth with its bouquet of fresh flowers, the glint of sunlight on cutlery, the sparkle of wine glasses as the waitress filled them with something soothingly cool poured from a bottle wrapped with a crisp white napkin. It had been disturbed by Esther’s phone call, or more properly, by his to her.
Think it through, he told himself. Think it through. That’s your education and training, thirty years of it, rational thinking through. If only this was a project, he thought on. What do you do when you run into problems with a project? You try another method of attack. But not without first making careful notes. “There are no failures.” How often had he said that to his students? You learn as much, maybe more, from an experiment that does not turn out as from one that does.
But why did this have to happen today of all days? When he should be enjoying himself, when he was receiving plaudits and honours, when he should be keeping his mind on the conversation, when he should be having his wits about him. Likely it was not a coincidence. Knowing Veronica, knowing her intelligent scheming nature, likely she had timed her visit to Esther to coincide with his lunch with the Committee.
Yet things had been better between him and Veronica this last while. It was as though they had settled down like any married couple to await a planned event. While there was an undercurrent of agenda to be addressed, she seemed willing to table it for future discussion. The question as to when he was going to bring things to a head with Esther had become mechanical, her manner like that of a wife inquiring of her husband when he might clean out the garage. As for George, he was happy to drift along in what was, for the moment at least, a calm sea. He knew that he would have to deal with the situation, but he had been so busy with end-of-term concerns, with restructuring curriculum for the fall semester, with politicking for the new position. He was teaching a spring course. He had two graduate students ready to defend their dissertations in the fall. He told himself that he would do something in August, when he had more time. George had to admit that, when they were not quarrelling, with Veronica he was still the man he was born to be. He felt able to rise to great heights of heroism. Not that he did, but he could have. As for Veronica, she seemed less agitated. Inward turning of the female during gestation, he decided. But whatever the reason, he was thankful for the peace and quiet.
