“Thank you. My wife is no longer alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Peter, did this girl you were telling me about remind you of your wife in any way?”
“No,” he said quickly, then conceded, struck as though by insight, that it was not impossible. “In a way,” he said. “How did you know? When Helena wouldn’t see me …”
“Go on.”
Peter closed his eyes in an attempt to see. “I felt betrayed again,” he said with effort, “as if Lois were rejecting me all over again, but really they’re not at all alike, Helena and Lois, except that they’re both in some way …” It was still not quite clear to him.
“Yes?”
His sense of things had a way of eluding words. “They’re both childlike,” he said, stopping to reconsider, “and at the same time experienced beyond what they are, a kind of guileful innocence about them, their capacity for knowing things instinctively — Lois in this way more than Helena — disillusioning her, so that she felt, in order to justify her awareness of the world, she had to …” He felt on the verge of an important insight about his life. “She had to …”
“Excuse me, but you’re intellectualizing,” the doctor said.
“… ruin things, the very things she wanted, satisfaction impossible to accept while so much of the world suffers.”
“Who are you talking about?”
He wasn’t sure. “Lois,” he said. “I’m talking about our life.”
The doctor made a noncommittal sound. “Peter,” he said abruptly, “you said you felt betrayed — I think that’s the word you used — what did you mean by that?”
“Well, that … I meant … you know, betrayed, cuckolded.” He had a sense that no matter where you went, whatever you did, it was impossible not to suffer. And there were worse things than suffering.
“Why does that upset you so much?” the doctor asked.
‘Who’s upset?” A nerve like a horsefly buzzed at the back of his ear. “I admit I was jealous — I was obsessed with being betrayed.” He attempted a laugh which never came out.
“Did you feel rejected? Is that it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you feel that these other men were preferred to you?”
“I don’t know.” On the edge of tears he willed, as a matter of choice, not to cry; the tears came anyway, trickling foolishly down his cheeks. He closed his eyes, the lids sticking, flash bulbs exploding red lights at him from all sides. A thin girl, a red spotlight on her, danced naked in his memory. “I didn’t think about whether they were preferred or not, I don’t think I did — maybe sometimes I did. Even so …, People always seem to expect something from me and then are disappointed. I disappoint them. That’s what bothers me most, that people come to me for help and I fail them. Lois needed me, and with all my good intentions I failed her.” He blew his nose.
“And she failed you. It works both ways, doesn’t it?”
“No, it was my fault. What I mean is, why wasn’t I enough for her?” The question came out louder than he intended it, almost a shout.
“Isn’t that a presumption on your part? Look at it this way: why wasn’t your wife enough for you?”
“She was. Lois was.”
The doctor could be heard shifting in his chair. “But didn’t you tell me,” he said with only the slightest attempt to hide his irritation, “that while you were married you also had relations with other women? Didn’t you consider that you were betraying Lois when you had these affairs?”
“You should have been a lawyer,” he said, lifting his head with a kind of giddy pleasure, a sour taste in his mouth.
“Answer my question, please,” the doctor said sternly.
“Why the hell should I?” Peter sat up abruptly, cramped by the enclosure of the couch. “Excuse me,” he said, “but do I look like a philanderer?”
The doctor coughed, choked on something invisible lodged in his throat. “Who does?” he whispered.
Peter sank back onto the couch, luxuriated in the pleasure of lying down. “When I was a kid,” he mused, “I used to daydream almost all the time.”
‘You’ll have to speak a little louder.”
“I’m sorry. As a kid I had daydreams in which I would come across some beautiful girl, usually someone I knew remotely, being attacked by several guys who were bigger than I was, and I would chase them away, rescue her. In return she would fall in love with me — ha! In the dream it was the heroism that was more important than the love. And I think that at the time, if the circumstances had presented themselves, I would have done what I imagined myself doing. I would have tried … It wouldn’t have made any difference.” He remembered a time …
“About three years ago I was walking with a girl in Prospect Park — it was a few months after I had gotten out of the Army — when these two teen-age kids went by and whistled at her; one made an obscene remark. The girl was upset, so I asked the kids to apologize to her. They refuse. I insist. The wise one says it’s a free country and he can say whatever he likes. ‘If that’s the case,’ I said, ‘then I can break your neck if I like.’ ‘Just try it,’ he said. I couldn’t back down in front of the girl, so I get into a fist fight with these two jerky kids and get my nose broken. When the fight’s over — I nearly had to kill one of them to get him to back down — the girl’s gone. And when I call her up she won’t have anything more to do with me, because of the fight. And I had fought the kids for her. That’s what I mean about having a talent for screwing things up.”
The doctor sighed audibly.
“And another time …” Now that he was started — reminiscences of past failure pouring out of him like sweat — he didn’t want to stop. He told of knocking down a drunk in a bar who seemed to be molesting a woman — everyone else there minding his own business. “I didn’t even hit him,” Peter said, “I just pushed him away, but he lost his balance and hit his head on the floor. He was out cold for about thirty minutes, fish-eyed, his leg twitching as if he was dying. The woman left without thanking me. I don’t think I even noticed her leave. I thought I had killed the man. Even after it was clear that he was all right, I kept thinking, What if I had killed him? So much depending on chance, on accident. Afterward the bartender tells me that the woman was the guy’s wife, a really terrible bitch who deserved what she was getting. And anyway, I had no right to interfere. Do you see what kind of gift I have for screwing up? Last night, coming home from a movie about eleven o’clock, I find Gloria and Herbie’s partner, Ira Whimple, scuffling about in the living room — I told you, didn’t I, that I’m staying at Herbie’s place?”
“Uh huh.”
“Ira and Gloria were sort of dancing, mostly wrestling, when I walked in. Ira was trying to get her onto the couch; Gloria kept yelling, ‘No, Peter will be back.’ Neither of them noticed that I was standing in the doorway. ‘You don’t have to worry about him,’ Ira was saying. You just come to my place, Glory.’ Gloria pushed him away, said something I couldn’t hear — the phonograph drowning her out; then this bastard Ira hit her across the face with the back of his hand. I rushed in before I knew what I was doing and knocked Ira down — I only hit him twice. Gloria was screaming and crying. It took me a while to realize that it’s me she was angry at and not Ira. You’re a maniac,’ she screamed at me, and while I’m looking the other way, thinking what to do about Ira, she hauled off and slapped me across the nose, drew blood.” Peter felt his nose, still sore from the blow. “Then she went over to Ira, who’s curled up on the floor with his hands over his head, and makes these cooing noises over him as if he were a baby. It took a while but finally, between us, we got Ira on his feet, dusted the bastard off and sent him home — all the time Ira cursing me under his breath. Then Gloria started packing her things.”