It seemed coincidental but significant to Larry that the only two fist fights he’d had since he was twelve years old had both taken place in or around a phone booth and had both been in defense of a woman’s honor. When he was a boy, his mother had drummed her own peculiar brand of chivalry into him with the oft-repeated advice: “Never get into a fight over a girl.”
He had, in the past several months, got into two fights over two separate girls. One of those girls had been his wife. The concept was somehow amusing. Trudging back through the rain on the night of the beating, he had wanted to laugh aloud with the thought. He’d felt primitively, fiercely, instinctively protective of Eve when he’d left the house twenty minutes earlier. Now with his knuckles aching, with his clothes soaked, with the rain beating on his head in cold frenzy, he wanted to laugh to the skies. What the hell was so strange about defending your own wife? Wasn’t that what husbands were for? And yet it was strange and puzzling and amusing. Wanting to laugh, he walked through the rain feeling very heroic and very content and very baffled.
When he got back to the house, Eve was waiting for him. He was going to spare her the details of the fight, but she saw his swollen hands and torn knuckles, and she began to cry instantly. She went to the bathroom for boric acid and hot water and then, gently bathing his hands, she listened to the story. When he was finished, she took his hands from the water and kissed them. Her eyes were glowing. They made love that night the way they had not made love in a very long while.
It was not until the next day that he began to think of the possible repercussions. Would Felix attempt reprisal? He considered the problem for a long time, and then decided he was safe. Felix would never reveal anything to Don because his own position was too vulnerable. Nonetheless, Maggie had to know of the incident if only to put her on guard should Felix behave unexpectedly. He called her that afternoon, and she became the fifth person to know about the beating.
As she put the phone back onto its cradle, she thought, He loves his wife.
The thought was not new to her, and so she could not understand why it was causing so much pain. Surely she should have been used to it by this time. Certainly she had gone to bed with the thought often enough, awakened with it just as often.
He loves his wife.
It was a very simple thought, a very simple concept. And yet it hurt, it ached, it hurt like hell. Wearily, she sat at the pine-topped kitchen table, looking out at the bright August sunshine.
Well, Margaret, where do we go from here?
That was the same question Larry had asked, and now she was asking it too, and her answer was still the same: I want it to stay the way it is. Even though he loves his wife. That’s all right. You knew he loved her all along. Maybe he didn’t know it, but you certainly did, so let’s not pretend this is a new thought. He beat up Felix, and Felix deserved it. He should have killed him. So be proud of him instead of getting foolish and jealous and depressed. You knew he loved his wife all along, so you’ve no reason to let it affect you this way.
Yes, he loves his wife.
Yes, well he does. Yes, but it hurts. I don’t want him to love anyone but me; it hurts like hell that he should rush out to defend her pure white virgin clean pure damn honor. I wish Felix had got her. I wish to hell he had.
STOP IT!
She sat with her hands clasped tightly on the kitchen table.
Stop it.
Please.
Stop it.
Yes.
Nothing has changed. Everything is still the way it was, the way it will always be. Just this way just the way I want it, and I don’t care if he loves his wife. Let him love her, but let him belong to me without belonging. I will never never never again be left alone! And you will never leave me, Larry, because I’ll give you what you want, not all, never that, never that again as long as I live, but enough, enough and you’ll never leave me no matter how much you love her, you’ll be mine always, I’ll never lose again, it will stay the way it is, it will stay the way it is, I don’t want it to be over!
She put her head on the table and began to weep.
Her grandfather had owned a shock of brilliant white hair. He was sixty-three years old, but he walked with his shoulders back and his head erect, and she always felt as if he were a very tall tall gentleman when she walked with him, even though he was only five-eight. Her grandfather had a mild German accent, and sometimes he used German words with her, words like “Liebchen” and “Maggie-lein.”
He told her the most marvelous stories about Germany and Austria and skiing in the Alps. Sometimes he yodeled for her, just to prove he’d been to Switzerland. He had brown hands. His hands were always brown, with big veins that puffed out. She would sometimes push at the soft cushion of his veins and he would say, “Gott, Maggie, you will cut off der blood!”
She had loved her grandfather very much. She would always tell him so. “Papa,” she would say, “I love you.” He was really the warmest man in the entire world. She loved to walk with him, or talk to him, or just sit on his lap and say nothing or maybe push at his fat hand veins. He was retired, and so he was always there when she needed him. Sometimes he read to her. There were a lot of words he pronounced wrong, and when she laughed at him he would become furious, but she loved him even when his face was all red with anger.
They played a lot of games together, and whenever they played he would laugh with this very loud, ringing laugh. Whenever he laughed she would remember the stories he told her about sitting in a brauhaus and drinking good black beer, and she could see him sitting with the big stein in his hands, laughing and laughing. She loved his laugh, and she loved her grandfather with a special unreserved love she gave to no one else in the world.
She called him “Papa” because that was what her mother called him. She supposed in a way, with her father being a salesman and on the road so much, that Papa was almost like another father to her. And, of course, she loved her father too but not the way she loved Papa, not in that special way. He was always there with his gentle brown hands and his booming laugh and his warm voice and eyes. He was always there when she wanted him.
And then, right after Papa gave her the topaz earrings, everything changed.
In the apartment where they lived in the city, her bedroom was right next door to her parents’, and she always slept with the door open because she was afraid of a completely dark room. She awoke in the middle of a weekend night, when her father was home. She heard loud voices, and she sleepily realized the voices were her mother’s and father’s, and she lay saucer-eyed in bed with the blankets pulled to her throat, a little frightened, not yet quite awake, listening to them.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” her father said. “This is the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“It’s not stupid at all,” her mother answered. “You’re stupid! For the first time in two years I’m telling you the truth, and you’re too stupid to understand it.”
“What truth? Do you call this truth? Is this what I come home to hear?”
“I’m in love with another man!” her mother shouted. “Learn it! Understand it!”
“I’ll understand nothing of the sort.”
“I love him, and he loves me. I’ve been going to bed with him for two years. Does that penetrate? To bed! For two years! I love him, and I want to go away with him.”
“Stop it, Elizabeth. You’ll wake the child.”
“I don’t care about the child. I want to settle this with you.”