Why did you go to all this trouble? he asked.
I guess I'm just the motherly type. I take in lost kittens, tattered dogs, birds with broken wings-
You're fishing.
and half-crippled men with bloody chests, she finished, blushing. I'm sorry. You don't want to talk about it, and I don't want to force you. You know, of course, my curiosity is eating me alive, malting up stories far worse than the truth, most likely. But in your own good time.
She was a magnificent woman, far more lovely with her crooked front tooth (which he had just noticed) than a hundred starlets with plasticized lips and artificial mouths behind them. She radiated an earthy sensuality that almost had an odor, a taste, a touch. She carried herself so casually yet coolly. He found that he liked her far more than he had realized; maybe it went beyond a mere liking.
How is Henry these days? he asked.
The question had the effect of a pile driver coming down on top of her head. Her face grew depressed, then savage. She fisted her little hands, then seemed to grow calmer. Why do you ask that?
He felt instantly crude. It was not the thing to do, dredge up old pains and make a friend relive them. He realized he was beginning to feel possessive towards her and that the question had been spawned by jealousy. I heard Dr. West mention him just before he put me to sleep.
Let's say I'll tell you later, Vic. That makes us even.
I'm sorry, he said. I should have known that was restricted grounds for conversation.
Oh, hell, now it sounds like a 'dark mysterious mess,' which it really isn't at all.
Nice weather we've been having, huh?
I want to tell you, she said. Does that make me an emotional bore?
Do you spill your woes to everyone?
You're the first.
Which doesn't mean you're working in an emotional bore pattern.
Why should I want to tell you, though? I mean, I don't really know you. In fact, I disliked you at first. You were cold and uncommunicative. Even when you started being friendly, I thought you seemed sort of-
Yes?
Well, hollow. Like you were pretending to be someone you really weren't.
The response shook him considerably, though he thought maybe he concealed his surprise. Now?
Well, there's still something odd about you. But you seem fuller, more of a person than before.
Perhaps, Salsbury thought, that was because he had recently gone through hell and come back alive. Trials made any man a more solid individual.
They looked at each other, felt their gazes click and mesh. They each held a new understanding of their friendship, one that either would make it strained or help it grow into more than friendship. Slowly, haltingly, she told him about Henry.
Henry March was brutishly handsome, rugged, with a muscular body he preened as a cat preened. Dimples in his cheeks. Slightly conceited, not boringly so. From a well-to-do family. Himself a graduate of Princeton. A social figure. To an eighteen-year-old girl who had been reading Hemingway since she was thirteen, he seemed almost perfect. At first, the marriage was good: the joy of taking meals together, of finding his dark hairs on the brush, the smell of his cologne, the sound of electric razors at early hours, the touch of warm flesh in the middle of the night, both waking with surprise at their separate but similar needs Then something happened.
At first, he began complaining of her coffee. Then her meals. Then the acts of their most private sanctums. She began to wonder why she was no good in bed. Or at anything else. Under his tongue, she lost weight, began mixing herself extra drinks to be able to face him when he came home from his graduate classes.
There is a sort of man who can never face his own inadequacies, who must find a scapegoat. In America, where success is considered the only essential commodity of life, this man abounds. He drives his women to despair, eventually breaks them. The woman is his child-raiser, his maid, cook, and sex machine. No thought is given to her, for she is merely a thing, a necessary acquisition on the road to success. These are the most despicable criminals of contemporary society. They kill human dignity. But first they torture it.
Henry was one of these.
Relatively few women escape them. The ones who do are usually shocked into awareness when they take an outside job out of desperation to prove they are worth something. They find they are good workers, earn promotions and praise. Suddenly they see through their
Henry and seek a quick divorce or enter into a knock-down, drag-out, teeth and nail, fist and feet fight to bring reality back into their marriage. Or maybe they have an affair and find out they are good in bed. Or finally something happens to show that hubby isn't perfect either.
She came home from work early because the Dean of Instruction (her boss) was ill and closed his office. She found Henry in bed with the girl. A student. Sophomore. In Henry's class. Buying her grade, apparently. When Henry, confused, almost incoherent, took the girl away, Lynda went into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet.
God, Vic, Lynda said, taking a sip of his coffee, replacing the cup on his bed tray, what was so bad was that when he returned he tried to act like he was still on top. He bullied me, told me she was better in bed than me. And she was a scrawny nothing! Her face wasn't even pretty. Tiny eyes, close-set. No chin. And he was trying to make me think she was more desirable than me. He almost succeeded. He almost really did. He had me so twisted up that-
Still sitting yoga fashion, she lowered her head onto her breasts, balled her fists at her side, and cried softly. He sat the tray aside, brought her to him, stroked her yellow hair, murmured comforting things to her. She had bottled this up, thinking it was over. She had only wanted out of the marriage, time to find herself as a human being. The quickest way to do that was to deny that she had been-almost-turned into an egoless, self-pitying wretch by a man unworthy of her pity, unworthy of her. Now she had been forced to pull the cork and taste what was in the bottle. The fumes had made her nauseous.
He caressed her, trying to think how to calm a woman. When her crying softened, he raised her head and kissed her. He found her lips were parted. There was a moment when the world was nothing more than a tongue. Then they pulled apart, breathless, and engaged their eyes again. She came back after a moment, more demanding now. His hand found the light, flicked it off. Somehow, he had a strength he was unaware of.
CHAPTER 8
Was it all very sordid? she asked.
If you want to make it like that.
Ouch. I guess I asked for that. Maybe he made me into a masochist.
And I'm not going to lay here and build your confidence by ranting and raving about how good it was, what a beautiful thing we have together.
Because that's not necessary? she asked. Ummm. I guess then what I'm feeling is maybe not so silly.
And what are you feeling?
She turned on her side, brought the long clean lines of her body against him. What he felt now was not desire so much as a warm contentment at the touch of her, an appreciation of her line and form and loveliness.
I'm feeling that this somehow pieced us together. I can tell a difference in you. In the way you treat me. You are human, warm, open now. You were an enigma before. And I feel more complete than I have since the divorce. It isn't just sex. I could have plenty of that any time. We're like two pieces of a dollar bill that has been torn in half somewhere along the line. One piece ends up in the wallet of an old man in New Jersey, the other in the wallet of a young man in Milwaukee. One day both turn up in Miami in a restaurant. The old man's half falls out of his wallet when he pays the cashier. The young man sees it, takes out his own half, finds they match. Its so impossible you want to hold your breath for fear of blowing the halves apart.