And then one night, when you were about to leave for the island where you spend your weeks at Christmas, and your wife was already there but your children, the last of whom has now grown up, were not this year going with you, I said, I’m afraid I said, You know, we wouldn’t have to make love as much as this in a night, in a single night after a day of tiredness and errands, and before an early morning of more errands and long absence, we wouldn’t have to make love as much as this in a single night if someday we had a week. It was late. We were drunk, though not very. And then I said, You know. You said, What. I said, I guess we are never going to have a week. And then I’m afraid I wept. We were quiet then, as we usually are. But there are things you can say, I think, or suggest, or even contemplate aloud just once. And I had begun. So I said, because after all these years I had to say something, though it may be far too late to say it, When it’s time for me to go, do you want me to ask you or tell you or should I just quietly go. You said, But I don’t want you to go, I need you here. I said, No, and in a way you’ve wanted me to go for years, and I’ve known it, but I just couldn’t do it. Then you said, not speaking as to a child any longer, But you can’t go, everything will just disintegrate if you go. I was touched, and I said whatever I said, about how bored you are sometimes. You said, But you always have something new to tell me; and if you go I’ll just shrivel up, I’ll just shrivel up like a prune. We went to sleep. And by morning, of course, you had forgotten. Remembered by afternoon, I think, only that I had been unhappy, remembered a phrase or two, but remembered by then as though it were a childhood thing, one of your daughters homesick at school, perhaps, or briefly sentimental at parting when you and their mother went away, or, more recently, when they went away themselves, to their men or their jobs, abroad. So it was only as if I had said once again that while you were gone I would miss you. And we have said that so often, everyone says it, in such a formula way, it has almost no meaning. And to make me feel better, you said again that you loved me, and gave me, as a sort of Christmas present, that word about your having made love only with me in all these years. And I could not, how could I, turn away, so I just said, Not anyone? and then, Neither have I.
We had drinks and dinner early, because you had to get home, after your tiring day, in time to be picked up for your morning flight. And we talked, as we do, of the news, and our errands, and maybe something comic in them. Then, since I couldn’t stay with you, or you with me, on account of the driver in the morning, you took me home, and I gave you a chicken liver for your dog and a pill for the night, and you gave me some letters to mail. After which, I’m afraid, I cried again. You seemed bewildered by that. I said, You know, the thing is you build your life a bit. And you said, The thing is it’s built. After midnight, and this is very unusual for us, you called and said you loved me, and I said whatever I said, also Catch a lot of fish on your island, and that I would see you when you got back.
I only don’t know if I will see you when you get back. That is all that is wrong, or some of what’s wrong. That I shouldn’t be here when you get back, that I ought not to have been here many times before, that I know and knew that with anything I have of instinct or of wisdom. The Germans say no one can jump over his own shadow, and I used to rationalize, no, not rationalize, think, that I couldn’t ask you to jump outside your way. But what I’m afraid I’ve done is lost, lost you something, lost me something, lost us, by what I did not insist, a possibility. Because there is no reason in the world why, in eight years, we have never had, and we will never have, a week. And because I am not one of your daughters, nor one of your assistants, nor your wife, nor a dependent friend or colleague, nor a litigant clamoring for your attention, nor a politician who seeks your advice. Or even, as I once said, in the dark, with a smile, a secretary or a blonde in a chorus line with whom you are having an affair. You said you wouldn’t be having an affair with either of the last two, but the truth is, we would probably be better off if you were. If I were that secretary or that blonde, though as you say your life is built, you would have to find room, make some kind of room. The weeks on the north island in summer, the other island in winter, the hunting and walking weekends, even the occasional junket to the Riviera or to London. Somehow not with me, not with me. Not Christmas, of course, or birthdays, which I know don’t really matter. I just don’t know quite how I let it happen. Perhaps I had no choice, or perhaps you never loved me quite enough, and I didn’t want to know.
So here we are. Or rather, there you are and here I am. And maybe the thing is simply not to think about it, and grow old, older still, like this. What we have now, it is true, is that you come to see me almost every day, and you bolt your morning tea, or your evening Scotch, and when I said the phrase that occurred to me, for the first time, to characterize the way you sometimes leave as Making good your escape, you did laugh. And you often spend the nights. But I may as well confess that, though I love you and seeing you changes the character of my mood and day, I sometimes dread, I don’t know how else to put it, sometimes dread a kind of visit that you make to me. I long for you to be here, miss you when you are gone, but sometimes to wonder whether I can amuse you, or whether you will be bored, tired, called away for bridge, or work, or tennis, or because one of your daughters has had a whim, well, sometimes I dread what will follow such a visit, and so I’ve come to dread a bit the visit, too. And while that may be true of any couple, any marriage, we have reversed it somehow. In the scheme of things, the mistress has something of the island; some of the strain, routine, and sense of long, cold winter belongs with the wife.
When you are away, there are these traces: a few notes left on my front door, saying you’ll be late or asking where I am; a French pocket knife with a single all-purpose blade; two Liberty scarves bought with leftover currency at foreign airports; and, of course, the passage of the years, and the location of my house. You’ve moved the whole arsenal of the Other Woman, somehow, into your own house, and at my place, when you come, there’s only me. I wonder if you know at all what is happening in my heart, what a word. I suppose you don’t. You’ve so many females, wife, sisters, daughters, cousins, dog, in your life that you’ve probably confused me with them all. I guess I like to think that you love me more than you know, though I suppose the grounds are pretty slim for saying that. Well, a child’s thing. But you are, you know, you were, the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life. Also, look at it this way, just what is it that I, that we are going to have, to look forward to, to look back on, after all. I mean, here I am, for the first time and yet again, alone at last on Orcas Island. What are you going to do? What you’ve always done, I guess. But what am I going to do, what shall I do, now?