I did not want
to jepoardize our marriage that looked like it was getting back on its feet especially, after that weekend we spent in the Poconos, that was like a second honeymoon. Do you remember your mother and father did everything they could to keep us from going? Including not being able to mind Maureen because of your father’s sudden attack of a bilious headache that just came out of the blue? I never knew your father to suffer from anything except maybe too many boilermakers, as you yourself have agreed with me about many a time. But that’s all water under the bridge and I don’t want to point fingers.
Ralph also mentioned that you’ve been getting advice from Pastor Ingebretsen, who is, for my money, a regular creeping Jesus, along with that skeleton of a wife of his and her knitting club, spelled GOSSIP. For God’s sake, Clara, call me or call Ralph or Anna. I know that I’ll never get you if I leave a message with your mother or father. Maybe we can meet and have lunch or a cup of coffee even, and talk everything out. I look in your empty closet and my heart feels as if it’s going to break, can you really throw away eleven years of marriage because I made a stupid mistake just once and never did again, as God is my Judge. And that, as I told you, happened because I had a little too much to drink at the salesman of the year party for Bill Greenleaf, and in a way I have to take all the blame and I cannot in all honesty even blame Janet who I really took advantage of. Though you think she is loose or even a little tramp, she is just a kid who had one too many too that evening and I lost my head. So please call me, or Ralph. I know it’s not important since I know how hurt and angry you must be, but I brought home from Chicago a little present for you that I thought you would really like, something you’ve wanted for a long time. And for my darling Maureen, a doll with three complete outfits that cries and wets, she will love it. I would love to give it to her.
Please, please call. I love you and do not want to lose you. I will even talk to your mother and father if you want me to and if they will let me, although our marriage is none of their business. Do you remember that’s why we moved out to Rego Park so that we could live our lives without having them drop in on us whenever they felt like it, and being hurt and angry if we so much as hinted that we wanted to be by ourselves for a change. You were even more fed up with it than I was. But I will talk to them if you wish it, my dearest wife, I will crawl if that’s what they want.
Please get in touch with me, and please believe me that I have had nothing to do with Janet for months, actually, I never did except for that one terrible mistake that I made by giving in to temptation, that was only human.
Your loving husband,
Ray
ALovers
I’VE KNOWN IRENE GREENLEAF FOR A LONG TIME, SINCE the year that she and Bill were engaged, in fact. After they separated and then divorced over Bill’s affair with Charlotte, his secretary — whom he married soon after — Irene and I had a brief romance, if one can call it that, but we’ve been no more than friends for almost thirty-five years now. As if having an unfaithful husband wasn’t enough, her brother, a true deadbeat, who gambled away every penny he got his hands on, was beaten to death outside Papa Joe’s, a real bucket of blood, patronized by drunk lowlifes like the brother, whose name I forget, a small blessing. It would have been poetic justice had he been killed over a bad debt, but the fight apparently began with a shouting argument as to the relative merits of Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale. Perfect. In any event, Irene has lately become depressed, very obviously so, about Bill and Charlotte, which seems absolutely crazy, considering the lifetime that has elapsed since their initial dalliance. I don’t ever bring it up, nor does Irene, but it’s been clear to me for years — it was clear to me at the time — that our long-ago sexual fling, an expression, I grant you, even more stupid than “brief romance,” was simply Irene’s reaction to Bill’s infidelity, his cold and sudden abandonment of her. As far as I know, Bill was the only man that Irene had ever gone to bed with, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the first time was on their wedding night. I flatter myself that I may be the only other man she favored. At any rate, what I’m trying to get at is that Irene’s thoughts have never been far from Bill, and over the years she has shown an obsessive interest in him and Charlotte, an unhealthy interest, as they say, although I’ve never used that expression with her. This interest has become much more pronounced in recent months. The whole thing has not been helped by the fact that Bill and Charlotte live in a house in the old neighborhood, a house that Bill bought soon after their marriage. Irene still has many friends, gossips all, in the neighborhood, who have been and still are more than happy to report on Bill, Charlotte, and their three children: Irene and Bill, you may have guessed, had no children together. As I’ve said, Irene has seemed increasingly depressed, more stagnant, may be the word, and shows very little interest in anything, including her monthly trips to Atlantic City, sometimes with me, sometimes with one or another of her gossipy friends, to play the slots, drink Margaritas, and eat steaks. I knew that something was really wrong one night when we were sitting on her couch watching a television show, one of those in which actors who resembled large pieces of lumber moved spastically about to surges of hysterical laughter — this is the sort of show Irene watches lately, her face frozen. I suddenly felt her breath on my cheek, then her tongue in my ear, and at the same moment, she caressed me between my legs. I pulled my head away, turned and looked at her, and said something, God knows what, and she began to cry, but stopped almost immediately. We finished watching the manic show, watched another, and then I went home. We had said nothing about the brief aberration. A couple of weeks later, Irene, still quite low, but now on antidepressants that safely maintained her unhappiness, told me, over whiskey sours in a quiet new bar a few blocks from her apartment, that she had almost committed suicide a month earlier; she’d bought a bottle of a hundred Advils, a bottle of Nytol, and a liter of vodka, but changed her mind. Maybe that’s why, she said, that I, you know, that night on the couch? I nodded, then started to say something vapidly positive, life is sweet, is precious, is worth living, is a bowl of cherries, but she touched my hand and looked at me and I knew enough to shut up. She had gone, she said, to Our Lady of Perpetual Help at least twice a week for the past five years, to light a candle each time and to pray for the agonizing deaths of Bill and his whore and their three rotten children. I thought, idiotically, that she didn’t even know the children, and stared at her glass as she took a sip of her whiskey sour. Five years, she said, five fucking years, and nothing happened. Her face was flushed and distorted with anger and pain. Five years and they’re all fine, they’re all hale and hearty! I was smiling irreverently. Can you, she said, lighting a cigarette, get a goddamn ashtray for Christ’s sweet sake in this bar?