“You think it’s unmanly.” I was really angry. My causes multiplied. I would never get them sorted.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. She said “olright.” It was not all right.
“I don’t know how to be married,” I said, stalling her.
“My life is therapeutic,” I said. “My life is a cure for my life.” She let me go on.
A strange lassitude had come over me. Though I still thought about The Club, though it was still urgent— indeed, the idea kept percolating in my mind — there had been in my life a sort of substitution of intensities, as when one playing with a shaped balloon absently shifts volumes of air from one of its sections to another. It was difficult for me to do so many things at once.
In August we went with the Holiday-of-the-Month Club on a weekend trip. Gathered with forty-five other couples at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, we looked, with our overnight cases and our name plates, like so many kids going off to summer camp. All the women except Margaret were wearing slacks or Bermuda shorts. The men in their Bermuda shorts and knee-length stockings (I wore trousers) recalled to me city people I had seen out West in starched, fresh bluejeans, as though summer, like a distant state, were something in which they would forever be dudes. The members milled about casually, introducing themselves to us unself-consciously.
“We’re waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cohen of Queens,” said Eddie, the tourmaster.
“Where we going this time, Eddie?” asked Dodo Shivitz of Great Neck, Long Island.
“Dodo baby, I’m surprised at you,” Eddie said, grinning.
“It’s a regular military secret,” Lorraine Land said.
“Come on, Eddie,” Dodo said. “Don’t be like that.” She turned to Margaret. “In May Eddie flew us to Miami. None of us had swim suits or anything. It was terrible.”
“Sealed orders are sealed orders,” Eddie said, and walked off to another group.
Al Medler, a fat man from Queens, said, “I’m not too crazy about surprises. There’s too much of a strain on the heart.”
“Your first time? I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” said a small dark man whose card identified him only as Harris. He shook my hand.
“We just joined,” I said.
“Oh, yes.”
“All you people seem to know each other,” Margaret said.
“We know each other all right,” Harris said. “That’s crap about the Jerry Cohens. They won’t show up. Mister is still sore from June.”
“What happened in June?” Margaret asked.
“Grossinger’s,” Harris said darkly.
“Oh.”
“Look a’ Eddie, look a’ Eddie,” Mrs. Sylvia Fend said. “He’s whispering to Gloria.”
“It’s not right,” Mrs. Land said.
“Live and let live,” Al Medler said. “It’s less strain on the heart.”
“She’s a w-h-o-r-e,” Harris said.
“She is?”
“Of course,” Harris said expertly. “I’ve studied the economics of this thing. Your average trip is ninety-five miles.”
“Miami?”
“Once a year there’s a big trip. You don’t know when it’s coming up, though you can count on its being off-season.”
“What’s that got to do with Gloria?” Mrs. Sylvia Fend asked.
“Well, you got to figure it costs the company with food and lodging and travel twenty-five cents a mile. That’s $23.75 per person per trip. They usually get about sixty couples each trip, but summer is the slow season because the members go on their own vacations with the kids. So Eddie has to call out Gloria to make up the difference.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Dodo Shivitz said.
“I’m an actuary. I got to keep up,” Harris said.
“I can’t get nobody to write me a policy,” Al Medler said.
“You’re too fat, Al,” Harris said.
I drew Margaret aside. “Margaret, this isn’t for us.”
“Why? It’s more fun than Book-of-the-Month,” Margaret said.
“All aboard,” Eddie shouted from the bottom step of the bus.
“Where’s Jerry Cohen, Eddie?” demanded Harris.
“All aboard.”
“What about Jerry Cohen?”
“Jerry’s a god-damned puritan sorehead,” Eddie said.
Everybody laughed.
“All right,” Eddie said. “All right. All aboard for Mysteryville. What’s it going to be this time, folks? North, east, south, west? Where she stops nobody knows. The management is not responsible for stolen or misplaced property. Keep your eye on your own wife.”
“Whooopee,” everybody said.
“S-e-x,” Harris said.
Margaret and I weren’t allowed to sit with each other on the bus. As soon as we stepped aboard Margaret was commandeered by a tall, good-looking man named Marvin Taylor. Mrs. Taylor, a small, pretty woman of about thirty-five, sat down beside me.
“Your lovely wife and yourself aren’t Jewish, if I may ask, are you” —she leaned across my chest and read my card—“Mr. Boswell?”
“No, we’re not, Mrs. Taylor.”
“If I may say so without giving offense, we Jews are usually better sports than you gentiles. Do you play badminton, sir?”
“No.”
“It’s not important,” she said. Sighing, she settled back into the deep seat.
“It’s just that a nice game of mixed doubles helps to break the ice,” she said suddenly. She laughed and turned around to address the couple behind us. “I was just telling Mr. Boswell here that a nice game of mixed doubles helps to break the ice. Pass it on.” She turned back to me. “Your wife is very lovely. I noticed it. You two must be very happy. But tell me, she isn’t native-born, is she?”
“She is the former Principessa Margaret dei Medici of Italy,” I said.
“That’s very funny,” she said. “That’s really very funny.” Then she startled me by reaching over and taking my hand. “I like goyim,” she said, leaning back against the seat dreamily.
“Some of my best friends are Jews,” I offered gallantly.
We had come out of the tunnel and were driving down the New Jersey Turnpike through country that looked like a huge, well-kept golf course. Mrs. Taylor had fallen asleep holding my hand and I took it back as gently as I could. Behind and around me I could hear the mixed doubles speculating about our destination. There seemed to be a strong feeling that we were going to Washington, D.C. Sylvia Fend didn’t believe this. “Washington in the summer?” she kept saying. “Are you kidding? The heat is terrific.” In two hours we had crossed into Pennsylvania and in another half hour the bus had left the turnpike. After a while the driver pulled off onto the side of the road and Eddie, who had been sitting in the back with Gloria, went up to speak to him. As he passed through the bus he was booed. He held up his hands good- naturedly.
“We’re lost,” Al Medler said. “The thing to do is keep calm.”
“It’s a rest stop,” J. Y. Krull said. “Come on, Gloria, it’s a rest stop.” Everybody laughed. Gloria thumbed her nose at J. Y. Krull. “Gloria!” he said.
“Well, come on then,” she said and stood up and stepped into the aisle. J. Y. Krull bolted out of his seat and everyone laughed.
“Oh, sit down,” Emma Lewen said, pulling at J. Y. Krull’s arm.
Mrs. Taylor had awakened and was rubbing her eyes. “Why’ve we stopped?” she asked. “Are we there?”
“Al Medler says we’re lost,” I said.
“What a way to run a railroad,” Mrs. Taylor said.
The bus turned around ponderously; apparently the driver had made a wrong turn ten miles back. Harris leaned across the aisle toward me. “Eddie’s sore,” he said. “The company lost about five bucks because of that mistake.”