“You shouldn’t let me get you to do things. It’s wrong—the man should be the stronger one. He should exert his authority. The man is the ultimate authority in a marriage. The woman follows his lead… how’s she supposed to know what’s night and wrong if he doesn’t tell her? I expect you to tell me. I depend on you.”
He said, “And by doing things for you, things you asked for, I’ve let you down.”
“You’ve let yourself down,” she connected. “So I suppose yes, you’ve let me down. The best way to help me is to be yourself and do what you know is night. I’ll respect you more if you assent your moral authority. The children need that.”
He said, “It’s wrong for the children to see a man doing the dishes?”
“Doing anything the woman tells him. They should see him telling the woman what to do. That’s the principal thing I see in you—a deep moral authority. That’s what you bring to this house. We all need that.”
“And by that ‘deep moral authority,’ “he said, having difficulty breathing, “you mean my taking a firm stand and opposing you. Well?” he said. “Suppose I do oppose you? What will you do?”
“Respect you,” she said.
“No,” he said. “You won’t like it. Don’t you see the paradox? If I do what you say—”
She broke in, “That’s right. Shift the responsibility to me.”
“What?” he said.
Fay said, “I’m at fault.”
He stared at her, not following her fluctuation of mood. “No,” he said finally. “This is something we’re involved in mutually. That’s what we should strive for, a mutual sense of responsibility and authority. Not one of us manipulating the other.”
Fay said, “You manipulate me. You try to change me.”
“When?” he demanded.
“Right now. You’re trying to change me now.”
“I only want you to see the contradiction in what you want.”
“I see,” she said. “I see that you resent me.”
Nat said, “You want to fight, don’t you?”
“I’m just tired of your covert hostility,” she said. “I wish you’d be honest. I wish you’d express your hostility directly instead of in these devious ways, these pious pedagogic ways.”
For a time he was silent.
“You can go,” she said. “Any time. You don’t have to stick around here. Why should you? This isn’t your home anyhow. This is my home. This is my house, my food, my money. What are you doing over here anyhow? How’d you get in here?”
He could not believe he was hearing what he seemed to hear.
“You know you dislike me,” Fay said. “You’ve hinted at it in a thousand different ways. You feel I don’t take responsibility; you feel I’m demanding and self-centered and childish, always wanting my own way, that I’m not mature, that I don’t really love you—I just want to use you. Isn’t that right?”
Finally he said, “To—some extent.”
“Why can’t you stand up to me?” she said.
“I—didn’t get involved with you to ‘stand up to you,’ “he said. “I love you.”
To that, she had nothing to say.
Nat said, “I don’t understand. What’s this all about?” Getting to his feet he came toward her; he wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her. “Why are you in this state?”
“Oh,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder, “it’s something Doctor Andrews said today.” She put her arms around him. “He said that whenever I talk about you I don’t really depict anything. As if I never really see you. As if nobody’s really real to me. It was so much like something you said—maybe it’s true. God, if I thought for one moment it was true—” Drawing away, she gazed up at him. “Suppose it’s true, what Charley’s always said about me, and I never accepted. That I’ve degraded him and used him and absorbed him to get what I want. I was so spoiled as a child … I always got what I wanted. And if I didn’t I had tantrums. And he had to get drunk and come home and hit me; it was the only way he could fight back.” She stared at him starkly. “And I made him sick. And—possibly I want him to die because I’m through with him; I don’t have any further need for him. And I deliberately involved you with me, broke up your marriage—without any concern at all for Gwen, or even for you, so that I could get you because you’re good husband material and I need a new husband, now that I’ve used up the old one. And if you do stay with me, I’ll treat you the same way as I treated him. It’ll be the same thing over again; you’ll be running my errands for me, and doing my chores for me—I’ll degrade you, and then you won’t have any other recourse but to get drunk and hit me. If you even got to that, I’d die. It would kill me if you even hit me.” She ceased talking, then, and stood, gazing past him absently.
“I’ll never hit you,” he said, stroking her dry, short hair.
“Charley never hit anybody before me,” she said.
“The thing is,” he said, “that you and I can talk. We can discuss this. We verbalize in the same way. He doesn’t.”
She nodded.
“We can express our resentments. The way you’re doing now. We can deal with them directly.”
“Let’s face it,” Fay said. “I’m clumsy and vulgar. Why do you want me?”
He said, “Because you’re an intelligent, brave woman.” Stroking her, he said, “You remind me of a pioneer woman.” He was thinking of her with the lamb, now.
“You don’t think I’ll make you into a domestic servant?” Pulling away from him she went to get a log and kindling for the fine. “That’s what I want, an army of men: decorators to paint things, paint the house, gardeners, electricians, men to cut my hair, remodel the kitchen—add a new room on the house when I want a room to work in, to work on my clay in. Would you build me a room to work in? Where I can have a wheel?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling.
“Suppose I ruined you,” she said. “Made you give up any hope of going on to school. Put a financial responsibility on you that tied you up for the nest of your life. – .supponting me and the girls, and I’d want to have more children, as soon as possible. Incidently, did I tell you about my diaphragm?”
“Yes,” he said.
She went on, “Force you to stay in the real estate business when you actually want to—” She hesitated. “Go on into a profession. Whatever it is.” Her eyes twinkling, she said, “What did you say you wanted to be?”
“Maybe a lawyer,” he said.
“Oh god, then you could sue me,” she said.
“I want to marry you,” he said. “I want to divorce Gwen and marry you.”
“What’ll we do with Charley?”
“Can’t you ask him for a divorce?” he said, feeling the tension everywhere in him.
Fay said, “It’s wrong. I know it’s bourgeois of me—it shows what a bourgeois nogoodnick I am. I just feel divorce is wrong; a marriage is for life.”
“Well,” he said, feeling futile, “then that’s that.”
“I guess that’s misplaced loyalty,” she said. “But I can’t help it. When I married him I married him for better or worse; I took those words seriously.”
He said, “So the only way you could leave him would be if he died.”
“If he died,” she said, “I’d have to remarry. For the girls’ sake. They need a father; it’s the father who establishes the authority in the home. He relates the family to the outer world, to society. The mother does nothing but keep everyone fed and clothed and warm.”
After a pause, with some trepidation, he said, “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Ask him what?”
“Which he’d prefer,” he said, feeling that he was making a mistake to say it, but, at the same time, wanting to say it to her. “Being dead on being divorced.”
At that, she got the fierce, cold look that he had seen only once or twice before. But when she spoke her voice was completely under control, as calm as he had even heard it. It had, in fact, a deeply national tone to it, as if she were speaking out of the depths of her wisdom and experience, from the most educated part of her. Not from emotion at all, but from the most widely-accepted, the most incontrovertible knowledge. “Well,” she said, “it’s a lot to ask a man, to take on the responsibility for children, especially another man’s children. I don’t blame you. You have a relatively easy life, as it is. In the long run I doubt if you could sustain this family. I’d really have to be married to a man who could support me. Let’s face it. You haven’t got the capability to do that.” She smiled at him, the brief, aloof smile that he had come to recognize. Almost a gracious smile.