“Ask me anything, Molly darling.”
She watched him closely and said, “Will you divorce Cathy and marry me?”
It looked to her as if he stopped breathing. His eyes became very watchful, and he sucked his lips thin and bloodless. “As a condition for what?”
She shrugged. “Just for the sake of having me as a wife.”
“I have a wife.”
“Wouldn’t I make you a good wife?”
“Molly, I don’t know what you’re trying to do to me. I don’t know what kind of game this is. What would be the point in our marrying each other? It would be an ugly mess. Two sets of kids involved. And it would just about kill Cathy.”
“Divorcing Tom wouldn’t kill me?”
“It’s not the same thing, and you know it, Molly. Her whole life is built around me. She gives everything to the marriage.”
“Is that such a good bargain for her? To give everything and not even get fidelity?”
“She’ll never know about us.”
“And what she doesn’t know will keep her happy?”
“That’s one way to put it. Yes.”
“So you would absolutely refuse to divorce her?”
“Put it this way,” he said cautiously. “I would be — very reluctant to divorce her.”
“Suppose I made it a condition of this partnership Hamilton wants to set up for us? Suppose I said to you that it will be done my way, all the way, or not at all?”
For a moment, his mouth looked soft and afraid. He looked beyond her, and finally sighed and said, “The question is hypothetical, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.”
“Why are you being so rough?”
“I’m just learning things by asking questions, Johnny.”
“Let me put it this way. If you should insist, if you should force me to make such a — stupid bargain with you, yes. I would cut Cathy loose and feel like a heel for the rest of my life, probably.”
“But you would cut her loose, dear. Would I be such a bad bargain?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t put much effort into marriage, Molly, but I’m more interested in what you’d contribute to Quinn-Murdock.” He stared at her. “Do you really want to make that kind of deal with me?”
“No. No, thanks.”
He looked greatly relieved, and then he was suddenly angry. “Then why did you pull such a miserable stunt on me?”
“Perhaps it wasn’t fair.”
“Fair? Don’t you know you’ve taken something away from me I didn’t want to lose? Do you have any idea how I feel right now?”
“Don’t try to touch my heart, Johnny. If you’re capable of selling Cathy, it’s just as well you should know about it. You didn’t suddenly become capable of it, you know.”
“What are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m trying to do something for myself, Johnny. Something overdue.”
“This kind of talk doesn’t pay the bills. And it makes me uncomfortable. Let’s get this show on the road, Molly. We’ve got to have something specific to show Ross Hamilton.”
As he signed the check, she finished her coffee and stood up. In the lobby, the bell captain came up to them and said, “Your cab is waiting, Mrs. Murdock, and your bags are in the cab. If you leave now, you should make it comfortably.”
She thanked him and gave him the money she had ready for him.
“Where are you going?” John Quinn asked vacantly.
“Vermont, my dear,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss the cheek of his empty face. “Please thank Mr. Hamilton for everything. He flattered me, and so have you, Johnny. Make a strenuous pitch, and I think he might fix everything for you just the way you want it.” She hurried to her cab. As it pulled out, she heard Johnny calling to her. The cab slowed. “No. Please drive on. It’s nothing important,” she said.
On Saturday night, after the children were asleep, Tom and Molly Murdock walked, once again, through the orchard to the stone wall near the brook. It was a chill, still night, with most of a moon pasted high, dimming the stars. She wore wool slacks and a bulky old cardigan.
Tom worked each day with such total concentration that it took him a perceptible time, after he was through, to return to full awareness of the present. And these evening talks had become a ritualistic part of their rediscovery of each other. There was, Molly knew, no need for haste. There was enough time for them, enough time for her to learn more about this odd, withdrawn, durable, gifted man she loved.
She hitched to a comfortable place on the stone wall. “I hate to break this tempo by going back tomorrow, Tom, but I did promise them two more weeks — win, lose, or draw — and then I’m free of all of it.” She waited, but he made no response. She looked at him and saw slivers of moonlight on the lenses of his glasses. She wondered if this was the time to bring up the thing that most puzzled her. “Darling,” she said, “why is it that you never express an opinion at all about what you want me to do? You could tell me not to go back. I wouldn’t.”
“I suppose it’s a question of emotional ethics, Molly. I believe every human being is unique, valuable, and, in some deep essence, unknowable. So what sort of arrogance, what sort of selfishness would it be were I to demand that you order your life to suit my needs, comfort, and convenience?”
“But how can I know what you want unless you let me know?”
“What I want? But I want you to be happy. That’s what one wants for the woman he loves.”
“So I just have to guess the ways to make you happy?”
“It has to be a balance, Molly dear. It can’t be a marriage just for my benefit, or just for yours.”
She took his hand. “But you could have told me to stop working. You could have told me that my working was actually keeping you from accepting one of those grants Ben told me about. Darling, I think you have leaned way over backward on this. Doesn’t it occur to you that a woman requires a certain amount of domination?”
“I don’t think you do. I think you would have obeyed and put on a smiling face to hide a lot of resentment. Don’t you see, you had to put an end to it on your own terms. You had to make a deliberate shift in the direction in which you want to seek your satisfactions. That’s what every life is, you know, merely the balancing of satisfactions, weighing the long-term ones against the immediate ones, the meaningful ones against the silly ones that merely boost the ego or give sensory pleasure.”
“But, Tom, how about the terrible risk you took in letting me work things out my own way? I have developed a superficial part of my ability to such an extent I’ve got rusty on using the part of my mind that can comprehend the — the wonderful things you are doing.”
“Please don’t you dare get into that great-man routine again. It sets my teeth on edge and makes me feel like a pretentious idiot.”
“All right, darling. And how about the risk of my getting into cheap emotional things with another man, just because I wasn’t giving enough to marriage — and of course not getting enough from it? And what about the risk of losing me altogether in that business world I was in?”
“Max Andro and I talked about you one evening. I explained to him what I have told you. He called me a fool. I told him there was more to you than he realized and that you’d come to the end of it all by yourself, simply because it would leave too much of you unnourished and barren and restless.” He jumped down from the stone wall and stood facing her, his hands on her waist, looking up into her face. In a husky voice, he said, “I hide more than I should. I can’t help it. I sound so confident, don’t I? I sounded confident talking to Max, too. I wasn’t at all sure. Believe me, I can be happier with you being a part-time wife than I could be with all the devoted attentions of any other woman in the world. Now you’ve come back. I didn’t know you would. I could hope, that’s all. And you’re back because you want to be back. That’s what makes it such a glorious thing, Molly, such a miraculous thing.”