“Where would we go?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Upstate someplace?”
“Let’s go somewhere new,” she said. “Where neither of us has ever been.”
“All right.”
“We can pretend we’re married for a few days,” she said lightly.
And very seriously he answered. “Yes, we can pretend we’re married.”
They watched the children in silence. David sat morosely at the back of the boat, his arms folded stoically across his chest. Patrick handled the wheel with a yachtsman’s elegance, little realizing the boat would move in its prescribed circle no matter what steering feats he performed. Monotonously, the boats moved around and around. The children tugged at the wheels, wrenched at them, yanked at them, spun them, twisted them, but the metal bars connecting the boats to the center hub kept them moving in a regular, unbending circle, around and around.
He felt rather sad all at once. There was an artificiality to the revolving boats, a directed falseness which mocked reality. Watching the children and the boats, he felt a part of the fake, felt the sham spreading until it included him and Maggie. Wasn’t the course of their affair as predetermined as the course of the boats? What promise was there for them but a narrow orbit around a hub of deceit? Their universe was restricted by the four walls of a motel and now, expanding — this giant, expanding universe! — it would include a secret weekend perhaps, and then back again to the exile of the motel sign blinking vacancy, emptiness.
The boats moved around and around monotonously.
He had to believe there was more for them, but he could not build such faith on the meanderings of his own mind. There were things he had to know which only she could tell him. Was this all there would ever be for them, the world of the neon motels beckoning vacancy, VACANCY, vacancy, the quick, pretended weekends — was this to be the sum total of all they’d ever known together, would they remember this only as the spaced regularity of vacancy, VACANCY, vacancy?
He had to know where they were going.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said sharply. “Do you have the car with you?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised by the harshness in his voice.
“All right, let’s give them a few more rides and then clear out. What time do you have to be back?”
“I have to prepare dinner. Four-thirty? Five?”
“Good.”
The children protested but were led off to the car anyway, and Maggie drove out on the parkway to one of the county picnic areas. He watched her while she drove. Occasionally, she took one hand from the wheel to touch his hand where it rested on the seat. The three boys sat in the back. David wanted to sit by the window, but Patrick said it was his car and wouldn’t let him.
“Do you feel suburban?” she asked him. “With your wife driving and your three children on the back seat?”
“Yes,” he said, “I feel suburban as hell.”
“What’s wrong, Larry?”
“Nothing.”
The picnic grounds were swarming with city dwellers. He took one look at the crowd and said, “Maybe this isn’t so wise.”
“Mary Garandi again?” she asked. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got three wonderful alibis with us.”
They allowed the children to run free. Idly, they walked side by side behind them.
“I met Don on a picnic, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” he said absently. He was thinking there were only two types of memories they shared: those concerned with the lying necessary to protect their meetings; and those concerned with the passion they knew when they were together. Passion and Deceit, he thought. I’ll give it to Roger Altar. It’ll make a good title for a collection of short stories about jungle animals. That’s funny, all right. That’s hilarious. When did mankind stop crying and begin joking about the things that really mattered most?
“I was only sixteen,” Maggie said. “Eleven years ago — what a long time to know a person. I wish I’d met you instead, Larry. I wish you’d come eleven years ago.”
“Sure,” he said, “but I didn’t,” and there was the same curious harshness in his voice.
She turned to him. “Don’t you want to hold my hand?” she asked. He glanced at the crowd. “Oh, who gives a damn about them?” she said, tossing her pony tail in a defiant gesture which included the entire world.
He took her hand.
“Are you frightened?” she asked.
“Not of people.”
“They’re the only things to fear,” Maggie said. She paused. “Don took my hand on that picnic. He was very shy, but he took my hand. We were at Pelham Bay Park, and they were ready to start a three-legged race and I needed a partner. So I asked Don. He’d already graduated, you know. In fact, he’d just got out of the Army. He’d been a big wheel at the school, one of the girls said. Captain of the swimming team. We were city champs the year he was captain.”
“Is that why you asked him to be your partner?”
“Oh, no, don’t be silly.”
“Then why?” he said.
“He simply seemed nice. So I went over and said, ‘Will you race with me?’ And he looked at me for a few minutes without saying anything, and then he got up from where he was lying and just said, ‘Sure.’ I held out my hand, and he took it. We lost the race. But when it was over, he said, ‘My name’s Don Gault. What’s yours?’ I said, ‘Margaret Wagner,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we take a walk? So we did. And that was the start of it. It’s funny the way people start, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, it’s sidesplitting,” he said.
“Larry, what’s the matter with you? Is something wrong?”
“Was he your first boy friend?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go to bed with him?”
“No, oh no. He always treated me like a... a saint.” She looked puzzled for a moment. “Sometimes I think he’s afraid of me, afraid of my being a woman.” She shook her head. “This is silly. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Why’d you marry him, Maggie?”
“I don’t know. He was pleasant and good looking and... and considerate, I guess.”
“Did you love him?”
“Who knows what love is at that age? I was only eighteen when we got married.”
“But you married him. You must have had a reason.”
“I felt safe with him. I guess I needed someone to make me feel that way again.”
“Do you feel safe with me?”
“No.”
“No?” he said, surprised.
“Because I don’t really have you, Larry. I only borrow you.”
“And only when you need me.”
“I need you all the time. You know that.”
“Maybe you need us both,” he said slowly. “Maybe I’m no good without him there, too,” and there he was face to face with the unasked question. The conversation, it seemed, had followed the course of every talk they’d ever had since the very beginning. Without conscious will or direction from either of them, it had moved the issue to the point where the asking of the ultimate question was inescapable. And now, poised for interrogation, he wondered if the question should be voiced, and knew that he would voice it no matter what reasonable arguments his mind presented against it. And he felt, too, that nothing would be changed by her answer. Whatever she answered, the unretreating boundaries of their isolated universe would remain ever and always the same. There really was no sense in asking at all. And yet, he put the question.