Laura looked confused and unhappy. " What happened to you?" she asked.
" I fell off a horse," Gloria told her.
" I' ll bet you did."
" Well, I had a frisky gentleman caller."
" My God. Is it anyone I know? He should be arrested or shot," Laura said.
" No," Gloria explained. " It' s somebody nobody knows. He' s just about getting an introduction to himself. I made him a little angry."
" Angry?"
" He was very sensitive, and I called him an ox, or something like that."
" Gloria," Laura said, " I don' t want to go on as if you' re on the couch and I' m not, but you' re not trying to get killed are you? I mean, I can perfectly well understand the decision, but it doesn' t seem fair to make someone else do the dirty work."
" Why, you cunning girl," Gloria said with distaste. " How did you guess? You didn' t nearly use up your twenty questions."
" I' m sorry," Laura smiled. " I suppose I' m trying to get knocked off myself, going around with my juicy welcome insights. I just think this is a pretty insane world, and I get a kick out of taking informal surveys."
Gloria studied Laura' s face – her mousy hair, cut like a boy' s, a thin mouth that could look like a thread when she was thinking or angry. But her eyes bulged with an eagerness and warmth that made her face seem compassionate and lovely. Laura' s face was always pale and a few thin blue veins were transparent in her temples and forehead. She came from an inbred Boston family and had a starchy dry elegance. But her aloofness was only a part of her family inheritance, and she voraciously befriended the penetrators of her manner. Along with her family looks, she had inherited enough money to support a very artistic husband. He made sculpture and she made him. Laura always looked breathless and overworked; her heart constantly quickened with her husband Christopher' s infidelities. He always came back to her, and after four years of marriage, neither of them knew if he returned for the convenience of her bank account or the comfort of her unquenchable love.
Laura lit another cigarette with a burning butt, and then tucked the blanket under the mattress. She was disastrously neat and tried not to show that she was tucking the sheet in with hospital corners. Gloria watched her feverish and disjointed movements.
" How is Christopher?" she asked.
" Christopher is fine." Laura' s voice was tight.
" Is he sculpting?"
" Oh, yes. Christopher is absolutely undaunted."
" Well, he' s got plenty of energy," Gloria said.
" Last week," Laura continued, not stopping for Gloria' s words, " he did a Henry Moore. It had a really magnificent hole in it."
Gloria laughed.
" The night he finished it," Laura leaned back in her chair, " he felt faint tremors of failure. But just at the crucial moment, he saw my nail file and got an important idea for a Brancusi."
" You' re too harsh, Laura," Gloria warned.
" No, no," Laura insisted. " I mean that' s all I have, to know what Christopher really is. My ounce of truth. If I ever woke up one morning and looked at his work and thought, ' Christopher is a genius,' I' d hang myself."
" Christopher," Gloria suggested, " has very good taste in sculpture."
" Sure," Laura agreed. " He' s a connoisseur. That' s because he isn' t even good enough to be mediocre. Really, you think I' m vindictive, but Christopher couldn' t sculpt a faithful horse or a southern general or a convincing wreath."
" Well," Gloria said, to keep the conversation unhysterical, " I think that Christopher could use a little life study. I mean just work from a model for a few months."
" I thought so, too," Laura said dryly.
" So?"
" So I convinced Christopher to get a model for a few hours a day."
" Oh."
" Oh, yes. So now Christopher gets her services for nothing. In fact, he' s living with her. He can study from morning to night. She may succeed where I' ve failed. She may make a great artist of him." Laura began to cry.
Gloria looked silently at the miserable girl. She understood the torment of choosing the one object, of wanting the one man. She knew how the world emptied to make room for the one enormous figure of the disinterested. She also felt, lying bruised on her bed, that the whole game was a monotonously programmed circus. The wanted and unwanted, the necessary and unnecessary; and too often nothing more necessary than the unwanted and nothing more unnecessary than the wanted. She thought of Christopher and Laura, how violently they stimulated each other into aliveness. Laura with her love for Christopher, and Christopher with his love for the woman on the other side of the street. She knew that if Laura lost Christopher and recovered – and of course, she would recover – she would find another Christopher; that her husband' s piddling conquests were meaningless to him without the tortured balm of Laura' s tears.
" It' s ridiculous," Laura sobbed. " I know I' m ridiculous."
" No, of course not," Gloria soothed.
" I' m the only woman to take him seriously. He builds his prison cell and his comfort out of my love. That' s what makes it all ludicrous. You know what I think of Christopher. I think he' s beautiful. Sometimes I feel myself choking when he' s in the room with me. I think he' s precious and beautiful and fine and courageous."
" Then he is beautiful for you," Gloria answered. Laura' s love cutting deeply, wounding her as the clever and cutting evaluation of Christopher' s talent had not touched her. Yes, she thought, love has more pain than hate.
" I love him. I love him so much," Laura sobbed.
" I know. We' re all good at that."
" What do you mean? Do you know what I suffer?
" Yes, we' re good at that, too."
" Why do you sound so bitter?" Laura demanded. " Why are you angry that we love?"
" Because that' s all we know how to do and we do it so stupidly."
" We can do other things."
" What? What can we do? We can' t do the one important thing. We can' t let anybody love us."
" That' s not true. I pray that Christopher loves me."
" You fool." Gloria was enraged. " We' re all fools. We can' t accept love. Never. We want to be the victims, to be the worshippers. We want to be our master' s master and our slave' s slave. We' re falling all over each other racing to see who can fall lower. That' s what we want… to idolize… that' s what we call our love… never, never to be known."
" What does knowing have to do with it? You make no sense," Laura interrupted.
" The whole problem is one of knowing. To be loved we must be known, discovered. That' s the unforgivable intrusion… to let somebody in. We all cherish our sharp, ingrown secret weapons we use to fight off the invaders who dare to love us. We pick an impossible creature and we kneel prostrate at his kicking feet and implore him to love us while we hide our face and give him a distorted torture mask."
" We have a right to find that love," Laura whispered.
" But we' ll never find it," Gloria screamed. " That' s what' s so appallingly pathetic. We' ll never find it. It doesn' t exist. It' s a fantasy, a punished child' s dream."
" Why do you say that? We' ll find it. I know we' ll find it."
" Where? In your dead mother' s arms? You think this horse opera we carry on is love? To find one fighting, resistant man and try to devour him?"
" I just want to be near Christopher."
" You liar. Is near ever enough? We need to swallow them, to chew them into delicate chunks and swallow them. A foot apart is too terrible for us. I may never do it," Gloria continued, " but at least I know that the way to love a man is to let him be separate. To let him live, out there, in his private threatening world. To let him have a thought not manufactured in our own want- mad brains. I don' t know if I can ever do it," Gloria' s voice was a wail, " but that' s the way, I' m sure."