“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Mrs. Haven.”
“Fine with me,” you said blithely, making an elaborate dusting-off gesture with your hands. You were used to men not wanting to talk about their fathers, apparently. I racked my brain for some new topic, anything at all, but I needn’t have bothered. You had an announcement to make.
“I talked to the Husband this morning. I told him about our arrangement.”
I counted down from ten before I spoke.
“Our arrangement?”
You nodded. “I decided it was time.”
Images of the Husband overran my frontal lobe: photographs culled from magazines, mostly, of him shaking the hands of movie stars and hedge-fund managers and minor heads of state. Any temptation I might have felt to come clean — to tell you why I’d concealed my identity, or what I knew about the man whose name you bore — withered when I considered his position in the world. The walls of the apartment seemed to be vibrating faintly, as though a subway train were passing underneath us. You waited patiently for me to answer.
“What was his reaction, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“He laughed.”
The tremors grew stronger. “Why would he do that?”
“He laughs when he’s angry. He’s conflict-averse.”
“I think you need to tell me what he said, Mrs. Haven.”
“He said he’d deal with you in time. Those were his words exactly. ‘I’ll deal with Mr. Tompkins, dear — he calls me “dear”—in time.’”
I said nothing to that. The vibrations had stopped.
“It’s not worth worrying about, Walter. Really. He’s said this kind of thing before.”
“And what’s happened before? When he’s said that, I mean. Did he actually—”
“He doesn’t know you, Walter. He couldn’t hurt you if he wanted to.”
“What else did he say? I’d like the exact phrasing, if possible.”
This seemed to amuse you: you sat up and worked your face into a frown. “‘I appreciate your candor, oh woman, destroyer of worlds,’” you declaimed in a mock baritone. “‘Thanks for telling me about this pal of yours.’”
By now my throat and tongue were dry as chalk. “There’s not much to tell, when you get right down to it. Is there?”
Your eyes went flat instantly. “Not much to tell?”
“I only mean—”
“I thought you were in love with me, Walter. That was my understanding.”
“Mrs. Haven, if you’ll just—”
“You did say that at some point, didn’t you?”
I tried and failed to find the voice to speak. You returned my glassy stare without a flinch.
“I’ll bet I can guess the reason for your hesitation, Walter. Would you like me to guess?”
“Hold on. Hold on just a second—”
“You think it was premature to tell the Husband, because I haven’t let you fuck me yet. And that’s by no means unreasonable. That makes excellent sense.” You nodded to yourself. “We’re basically strangers, after all.”
You sat upright now, your back unnaturally straight, like a typist or a judge behind the bench. Your lips were compressed into a tight and bloodless crimp: Fielding’s “cupid’s bow” was gone without a trace. I saw you suddenly as you might have looked at age six or seven, struggling to control your temper, sitting by yourself in some neglected corner. But when I tried to imagine the rest of that faraway room, or the house you’d grown up in, or the people who’d lived in it with you, the picture went dark. You were right, I realized. The two of us were strangers to each other.
“Mrs. Haven,” I said quietly, “you haven’t even told me your first name.”
You gave a slight start, as though I’d just spoken Latin, or barked like a terrier, or whispered to you that your breasts were showing. One of them was, in fact, which didn’t help matters. You took a long time to answer, staring off into space — or into spacetime, possibly — and when you spoke again your voice was soft and slow.
“Hildegard.”
“Excuse me?”
“My mother, God rest her, was obsessed with her Bavarian heritage.” You smiled crookedly. “That’s just one of the things the Husband saved me from.”
“What else?”
“Hmm?”
“Tell me what else he saved you from. I’d like to know.”
“Do you really want an answer, Mr. Tompkins? Are you sure you want to hear my sordid tale?”
I was anything but sure, in fact, especially when I noticed your expression. “Just play down the romantic bits, if you don’t mind.”
You shook your head. “That won’t be hard at all.”
* * *
It took you the better part of an hour to perform the vivisection of your marriage, and I paid close attention, painful though it was, because it taught me just how wrong I’d been about you. Your glib, easy air fell away as you spoke, and without it you were awkward and unsure. You weren’t the coddled debutante that I’d imagined: you’d been a lonely, angry child, your girlhood shadowed by your parents’ failures. Haven had discovered you in a secondhand-record store — Rox in Your Head Vinyl in Middletown, Connecticut — on the day you’d finally given up on college. He was a boyish thirty-four at the time, already famous, already rich, getting ready to distance himself (in public, at least) from the cut-rate religion he’d founded. You were ready to distance yourself from everything.
Your father had been kicked out of Wesleyan’s German Department two years earlier for preaching (and/or practicing) die freie Liebe with his students; he now spent his time drinking lager and writing fascist screeds against the state of Israel, which your mother — devoted spouse, Germanophile, and quiet anti-Semite that she was — mailed to The Boston Globe in semiweekly packets. Your job kept the family in bagels and six-packs; occasionally your mother took in boarders. Haven came into your life, as you put it, “like a Martian abduction,” bearing offerings from faraway, exotic worlds. Your previous boyfriend had been a video store clerk and part-time pot dealer; your new boyfriend was the leader of a cult, with disciples in the NFL and Hollywood and the House of Representatives. Your parents hated him, which expedited things. You were married in a courthouse in Poughkeepsie.
From that relative high point, things went rapidly downhill, in such an effortless, frictionless, self-understood way that it barely seemed a topic for discussion. A full year into your marriage, you still had only the haziest sense of what the man you’d married liked and what he didn’t, let alone what he cared for or believed. He met your every word and gesture with a warm, attentive smile, and gave answers to your questions that evaporated when exposed to sunlight. You had no interest in the “church” he represented, and he seemed to have no interest in it either. He left for work each morning like any other husband, and in the evenings he talked sports and investments and music and cars — even fashion, when you introduced the subject — but never religion. He seemed to regard theology and science with the same blank-eyed indifference. In time you realized that he despised them.
You found your new life unusual — freakish, really — but you were still too dazed and grateful to ask questions. Haven cheerfully supported you in breaking with your parents. Your every worldly whim was gratified. Each night he came to you and told you what he wanted: in this regard, at least, his preferences were clear. He referred to the act as “synchrony” or “junction”: the only cult-speak he used in your company. He seemed less in search of pleasure than of information, or possibly — you sometimes thought — some form of proof. And he always left your bedroom disappointed.