His Wife Leaves Him

hey still had the New York one then and would stay in it often — to their first house in Baltimore and from there to this one in the county. Before that it had gone from her parents’ apartment in the Bronx to the one on West 78th Street and then to her own apartment on Riverside Drive. Actually, to two of them in the same building: She moved from the rear to the front. Gwen tried to get back to the piano after that stroke but got frustrated and disgusted with herself for playing so clumsily, she called it, because she was using two fewer fingers, and stopped. “My instrumental soulmate, dead,” she said. “Not even Maureen plays it anymore after her last, what she thought disastrous recital so long ago. Oh, a run of tinkles every other Thursday when the cleaning woman wipes the keyboard down. You ought to take up the piano and give some life back to it. It might also calm you down.” Sharon and he talked for a while that first day. While they talked, or while she was talking, he thought something like, as he did with Gwen the night they first met, “Jesus, she’s beautiful and so refined and delicate and obviously smart. Can I pick that up in just a few minutes? You bet I can. My ideal woman; I’ve finally met her. Now if it can only work out.” He looked at her left hand when it was on the table — did the same with Gwen from a distance at Pati’s party — and there was no wedding band or any other kind of ring on it. One of the next times they met he said to her, holding the fingers of her left hand — so this had to be after they started sleeping together—“Been meaning to ask. How come no ring?” She said her engagement ring, which had been her husband’s grandmother’s and was a big gaudy diamond in a garish setting and always too big for her because her finger kept shrinking, so she was glad to be rid of it, she sold when they were down to their last nickel—“You know graduate-student couples.” And the wedding band she lost in a washing machine at a Laundromat and never got it replaced, maybe the one thing her husband really minded about her. “‘If I wear one,’ he said, ‘you should wear one too, even if we don’t exactly adhere to our marriage vows.’ But I like to have my fingers free, and without one it’s easier to pick up guys like you.” He also remembers the times — not as many times as she did it to him — he’d go into Gwen’s study or wherever she was working and say — the kids had to be out or napping or not yet born—“Like to take a break?” She usually said “Sure,” but if she felt she didn’t have the time right then she always said — he doesn’t recall her ever not using this expression—“I’d like to, but can I take a rain check?” Later, if he was still interested in making love or his interest, if he can call it that, had been renewed, he’d say to her — in her study or better if she was in the living room or kitchen or better yet if she had just lay down for a nap in their bedroom — no, if she had the odds are she would have said “I’m going to lie down for a nap. Care to join me?”—“Think I can take advantage now of that rain check I gave you?” and half the times, he’d say, she said something like “I don’t see why not.” He already remember this tonight? If he did, he forgets. But it’s a nice memory and it’s made him a little excited, which is okay, not that he’s going to do anything about it. He’ll save that for another day, when the kids aren’t here and maybe with a magazine with nude women in it, if he’d have the guts to buy one. Doesn’t see himself choosing one off a stand and going up to the salesperson — especially if it was a woman or there was somebody on line behind him, again especially if it was a woman — and paying for it, but he might have to. As far as playing with himself till completion, how many times would he say he’s done it since he first went to bed with Gwen? Twenty? Thirty? And he thinks mostly when he was on tour for a few days to a week with a new book — only happened twice — and another time teaching at an out-of-town summer writers’ conference for two weeks, something he hated doing but Maureen was on the way and they needed the extra money. Of course, also when he first started teaching down here and for two years she stayed in New York and taught — they weren’t married then, or were, at the end, when she was already pregnant with Rosalind — but he used to train up to be with her for three days almost every week. And he did, he now remembers, spend at least one night at Sharon’s when her husband was at a girlfriend’s house and it was understood between them that when he did that Sharon could have her lover over, but what he’s getting at here is did she play the piano for him? He thinks she just made dinner for them and they went to bed and he left before eight in the morning so he’d be gone — this was also the understanding between them — before her husband came home. “He’s an early riser,” she said, “and he likes to get at his desk before nine. That’s one reason I haven’t let you sleep here before. The other is, I never liked the idea of sharing his bed with you. Too peculiar, and I’d have to change the sheets twice.” He asked Sharon that first day if she was a graduate student at Berkeley. “I mean, you look young enough to pass as an undergrad, but by the way you speak and the subject matter, I suspect you’re not.” “Was,” she said. “I got my master’s there.” “Did you go further?” and she said “All the way.” “What was your thesis on?” and she said “If you mean the dissertation for my doctorate, I’m still writing it. My master’s thesis was on Boris Pasternak and cats.” “Seriously?” and she said “Animals in Pasternak’s poetry but mostly cats. I was lucky to get away with it. My thesis advisor was a young new hire who had a crush on me. I led him on a little till my thesis was approved.” “Where’d you get the idea?” and she said “If you mean for my thesis topic, it was inspired by a visit my boyfriend and I made to Pasternak’s dacha at Peredelkino.” “So that’s how you pronounce it,” he said, “accent on the second syllable? You must speak Russian, then,” and she said “Just Russian poetry. But you’ve heard of Peredelkino,” and he said “Sure; I love Russian poetry. All poetry, but twentieth-century Russian poetry the most. No, that’s not true. I love early twentieth-century French poetry better, or as much, and some post-World War I and II German poetry, particularly when it’s written by a Czech or Romanian.” “I won’t ask who they are because I think I know. But not English poetry?” and he said “English, American, Whitman, Housman, Berryman, all the men, but I was talking about poetry in languages I don’t fully understand or understand at all, and excuse me for that stupid joke about men. I really didn’t mean it the way it could be interpreted. Could you recite a Pasternak poem for me? Any Russian poem. I’d love to hear one in the original. Pushkin. Mayakovsky. Ahkmatova and Mandelstam. They were good friends, no?” “I’m able to recite lots of them. I studied with a teacher of Russian poetry who had us memorize fifty Russian poems. She said it’d come in handy if for some reason we didn’t have a book on us to read and were waiting a long time to go aboard something or for it to arrive. In other words, we’d have this whole anthology in our heads — but I don’t want to. It’d draw attention, and Russian poetry can’t be recited quietly.” “Could you whisper the translation of one to me?” “Please, no more of that. I’ve already expressed my disinterest.” “Tell me about your visit to Pasternak’s dacha. You met him?” Wait a minute. If she got her master’s from the Russian department, why would she then go for her doctorate in English literature? He must have it wrong. Is he thinking about some other woman he knew? No, he’s sure he’s not. It’ll come back to him. That’s it: she went to Stanford for her doctorate because her mentor at Berkeley switched to there and she wanted to stick with him and he helped get her a good financial arrangement, or was it U-Cal at Davis or one of the other U-Cals, and her connection to Dickens was his influence on the nineteenth-century Russian novel, or the reverse. It was so long ago. Forty years. She must be around sixty-five by now, if she’s still alive. She developed a serious kidney disorder he learned from a mutual acquaintance of theirs, and something was also wrong with her blood. He thinks those are the two things. She had two children with her husband, got her Ph.D. and taught awhile, he doesn’t know what or where or if it was a tenure-track appointment, and then had to cut back her teaching to two courses a year and then one because of her illness. He was told all this around twenty years ago, in a letter, and it was the last he heard about her. The mutual acquaintance died in a motorcycle accident a year or two later, his wife wrote him, or sent him without comment, as she must have done to a number of long-time acquaintances and friends who didn’t live near them, a photocopy of his obituary in their local newspaper, and her husband was the only person he knew who knew Sharon. He can’t recall the name of the guy or how he came to know him, though he knows it was in California. Sharon should have had his child. That’s what he wanted then: for her to get pregnant by him and leave her husband and marry him. Of course it was a stupid idea. He had no money saved and just a temporary department-store salesman job and was making nothing from his writing. But she took him seriously and said — what did she say? — she said for any of that to happen, Bill, his name was — her husband’s — would have to leave her first and start a divorce, something he said he was never going to do. He liked things as they were, she said, and deep down, “in spite of our crazy errant marriage, I know he loves me more than a little and he knows I love him enough to stay with him. Surprisingly and perhaps unbecomingly traditional as this might sound to you, although I don’t think it would if you were my husband and Bill were you, a vow is a vow and sacred to me, the one about till death do you part.” This was when Sharon and he were still sleeping together and seeing each other about twice a week. “But tell me about your visit to Pasternak’s dacha. You met him? He was still alive?” “He died in 1960,” she said. “We were there in ’61. We were both seniors at Michigan State, part of a very select group of American college students studying Russian language and culture in Moscow for a month. It wasn’t my idea to go to Peredelkino, it was my boyfriend’s. He was also interested in Pasternak, but his prose. I was reluctant to even get off the train there. I thought it too pushy — too American — to just barge in like that, and pleaded with him to turn back right up till the time he knocked on the door.” “What you were on must have been part of the rapprochement between the two countries, and when there were various cultural and people-to-people exchanges. I remember. I was a reporter in Washington in ’59, when it all started.” “Right. So, he sort of forced me — grabbed my hand and practically dragged me to the house — and I’m glad he did.” But he’s confused again. If she was a college senior in ’61, then the earliest she could have got her master’s at Berkeley was ’62, so it’s unlikely she could have been writing her dissertation in ’65, isn’t it? Doesn’t it take at least three years to get through all the coursework, especially in literature? It took Gwen even longer than that before she started writing her dissertation. She got her B.A. in ’68, her M.A. in ’69, and he thinks she completed and defended her dissertation the year before they met in late ’78, or maybe that same year but at the beginning of it. Maybe Sharon was only sketching it out while she was still doing her coursework, hadn’t even got a word down, just ideas. Though maybe it is possible to finish the coursework in less than three years — it might depend on the program — and writing the dissertation could take, if you work on it day and night, a year or two, but not if you teach, as Gwen did, lower-level literature and humanities courses for two or three years after you finish your coursework and spend a year on fellowship doing research abroad. You’d think he’d know more about it, having taught at a university for twenty-five years, though mostly undergraduate writing courses, and being married to a Ph.D. Just, the subject never came up with Sharon, or not that he can remember, and up till now he thought he knew. As for Gwen taking so long to complete her Ph.D., she said it was pointless rushing through it. The dissertation, which she wanted to be a book for the common reader as well as academics, would suffer, and the prospects were slim there’d be a teaching job in New York or the surrounding area when she finished it, and New York was where she was determined to stay. Besides, she said, she had other things to do: writing essays and poetry and traveling and just lots of fun living. Of course, getting married and divorced when she was a grad student and having an abortion and the emotional toll that took slowed things down too. “My husband thought having a kid so early would bring our studies to a standstill and I just didn’t think he’d be a good father.” But Sharon: “The old servant of Pasternak’s opened the door,” she said. “His two sons were there, Boris and Leonid, and they graciously asked us to come in. They served us tea and cookies. After a long conversation about art and music and literature, all connected to their father — are you really interested in this?” and he said “You bet. I love personal accounts and anecdotes about serious writers. Go on.” “They invited us to stay for dinner, but we had to be back in our Moscow dorm by nine or we could be thrown out of the country the next day.” She said she first got the idea for her thesis topic when Pasternak’s old cat — his favorite — ripped one of her stockings with his paw and knocked her cookie off her plate. “They told me he wanted us to be talking only about him and his contribution to Pasternak’s poetry. Later I learned the cat used to follow Pasternak when he visited his mistress in this same community, and was the principal muse to him, even more so than his mistress and wife.” After about an hour, she stood up and said “This has been very nice and you’ve been patient in listening to my blather.” “I told you,” he said, “I love such blather. Like to meet again? I sure would, in other words. Can I call you sometime?” She said she was married, so it wouldn’t be a good idea. “It would if you were interested in me,” he said. “But you’re married? I’m surprised that didn’t come up.” “It did, but you must have chosen not to listen, or you’re not being entirely honest with me.” “Honestly, I’m being honest, and we’d only meet for some more literary talk,” and she said “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, but I really have to get home. My husband expects me and he worries. And he’s doing the cooking tonight and I’ve got the tofu.” “One big chunk will do for the two of you?” and she said “He’s probably already diced and sliced the other ingredients that he’ll cook with it, sort of a stew.” “You both vegetarians?” and she said “Please,” and they went outside, she put out her hand and he shook it and she got on her bike and he headed for his car. He forgets how they paid for the pastry they shared and coffees, or she, tea. And their names? Surely they must have given them. What a waste, he thought, watching her ride off, admiring her body from behind — her rear end looked plump on the bicycle seat, which it didn’t when she stood — and which he would later tell her he thought, after they’d begun sleeping together: “Not of my time, a waste, but, because I was so quickly attracted to you, that you were married and wanted to stay faithful.” “I did want to,” she said. “I’d already had too many affairs since I got married. Not many by your standards, perhaps: just two, but one too many. The first was partly to try it out, because everyone, including my husband, was doing it. And by telling Bill I loved the man, which I didn’t, to see how much I could hurt him after some real dirty things he did to me. I found out I couldn’t