I told Andy I’d had lunch with him.
I didn’t tell him Jack had said I was beautiful.
Andy was very quiet when I told him. He didn’t say anything for a long time afterward. Then later, we were watching television, everyone had gone to bed, and we were sitting in the living room watching Johnny Carson, and out of the blue Andy said, You don’t really love me any more, do you, Mure?
I told him he was crazy.
He blew his nose then. I think he was crying.
Of course I love him.
I adore him, in fact.
Tuesday, August 26
Today I got an answer to the letter I wrote to United Airlines. I hadn’t told Andy I’d written to them (and also one other airline) and now he wanted to know why I’d done that behind his back. I told him I hadn’t done anything behind his back, and he said that writing to an airline was something behind his back. What did I plan to do? he said. Take a job with an airline? And go flying all over the world? I told him United doesn’t fly outside the United States, and he got angry and grabbed my wrist and said I shouldn’t kid around when he was being serious. He said I knew exactly what he meant, whether it was all over the world or all over the United States didn’t make a damn bit of difference. What he meant was that I’d be taking a job where we’d be separated a lot. I told him I wasn’t taking a job, I hadn’t even applied for a job, all I’d done was write some letters of inquiry, that was all. Besides, in the material from United, it said I had to be a high-school graduate and at least twenty years old to become a stewardess. I’d dropped out of school, and I wasn’t eighteen yet, I wouldn’t be eighteen till March. So it was a long-range thought, even if I did decide to maybe become a stewardess one day. He said that an airline stewardess was nothing but a waitress with wings, did I want to become a goddamn waitress? And that’s when I blew up and said to him what did he want to become? A waiter in a steak joint?
That’s when he told me he planned to register for college, after all. We were in his car, we were parked on a street about six blocks from the house. I turned to look at him, I said, Andy, that’s wonderful. I’m very happy to hear that, Andy. And he said, Sure, I know why you’re happy. You’re happy because my going to college means we won’t be able to get married for a while, that’s why you’re happy. I told him that getting an education was more important than rushing off to get married, and he said again that I didn’t love him any more, he could tell I didn’t love him any more.
I don’t know what’s the matter with him, I mean it.
Wednesday, August 27
In bed tonight, I was reading the Bible. Patricia asked me how come I was suddenly interested in religion. I told her I was only interested in the stories, there were some interesting stories in the Bible. What I was looking for was proof that what Andy and I are doing is wrong. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t find anything in the Bible that says so. Even so, I know that if I’d have been pregnant that time, we could have had idiot children, I know that for a fact. There has to be something wrong with it, otherwise you’d see plenty of cousins married to each other, brothers married to sisters even. But a society protects itself by making laws against that sort of thing — though I don’t know if there’s a real law against it. I’m sure there’s a religious law, though.
9
Carella looked up at this point, puzzled, and then opened the top drawer of his desk. From it he took a paperbound edition of the state’s criminal law, and thumbed through the index at the rear till he found the word INCEST and a referral to page 151. On that page, he found:
Incest
—
PL 255.25
—
Class E Felony
and alongside that, under the word “Elements,”
Marrying or engaging in sexual intercourse with a person whom one knows to be related to him, either legitimately or illegitimately, as an ancestor, descendant, brother or sister of either the whole or the half blood, uncle, aunt, nephew, or niece.
No mention of cousins. Whatever the Bible had to say about matters incestuous, the Penal Law was clear. If you were kissing cousins, that was quite all right with the state. Carella couldn’t quite understand the niceties that made it okay for a boy to marry his cousin whereas that boy’s father, who would be the girl’s uncle, could not marry her unless he wished to be charged with a Class E felony and sent to jail for a maximum of four years. In the eyes of the law, however, Muriel and Andrew hadn’t had a thing to worry about. Carella turned back to the entry for August 27.
But a society protects itself by making laws against that sort of thing — though I don’t know if there’s a real law against it. I’m sure there’s a religious law, though. That much I’m sure of.
As I write this now, Patricia is watching me from her own bed across the room. She interrupted me not a minute ago to ask what I can possibly find to write about each night. I told her that a million things happen every day, and I just try to put them down so I won’t lose track of them. She told me that all the things that happen to her are just boring, and it would bore her all over again to write them down.
Well, she’s really very young. I love her a lot, but she’s only fifteen. There’s a difference.
Thursday, August 28
Jack took me to lunch again today.
He’s really a very mature and level-headed person, different from Andy in so many ways. I can’t imagine Jack, for example, taking a fit about a little old diary. This morning I happened to mention to Andy that Patricia had asked about the diary, and he immediately wanted to know if I’d written anything about us in it. I said, Yes, I’d written a lot about us. He said I mean about us, you know. I said, Yes, about us, you know. I was smiling when I said this, and imitating his voice a little, and he suddenly slapped me, we were sitting in the kitchen having coffee, he slapped me and the cup of coffee fell on the floor, and Aunt Lillian called from her bedroom, wanting to know what was going on. The walls in that apartment are paper-thin, you can hear everything all over the house. Andy said there’d been an accident, cup of coffee fell off the table, and Aunt Lillian said to be sure to wipe up the linoleum, and Andy said he would.
Then, while he was wiping the floor, he looked up at me and said there was nothing funny about any of this, he couldn’t understand why I’d begun taking it so lightly. I said I didn’t think it was funny at all. In fact, I was the one who kept saying it was wrong whereas all he wanted to do was get into my goddamn pants all the time! He told me to shut up, the whole house would hear me, but I really didn’t give a damn by then who heard me, I mean it. That slap had really hurt. He had no right slapping me that way. I finally told him the diary was none of his damn business, and when he asked me if he could read it, I said absolutely not.