“Brunette,” he said, sugaring his coffee.
5
FOR A FEW DAYS Patsy felt exempt—exempt from hope, exempt from feeling, exempt from duty. She had no feeling of relief or satisfaction, no sense that she deserved any credit for having done a hard but necessary thing. She didn’t know whether it had been necessary or not, and anyway she had not done it. It had accomplished itself, or Hank had done it, or Jim, but she was not ready to applaud anyone for it. She felt flattened, generally flattened. She could not call the feeling hopelessness; she could think of things to hope for, she supposed. But she had no definite expectations. Worst of all, she had ceased to expect much of herself. She saw that Jim was patiently waiting for her to recover, that he expected her to straighten up and become the old Patsy, or perhaps a new and better Patsy, and it made her quietly contemptuous of him. It struck her as stupid, expecting things of her. Only Davey could expect good treatment at her hands, it seemed to her.
She didn’t mope, particularly. She went about her chores and read and sat and walked Davey and cooked dinners and watched television and chatted with Jim about school, about books, about Davey. Anything that could be chatted about they welcomed, for it relieved the silences that sometimes grew too long, and it meant they did not really have to talk, seriously talk. But nothing was moving inside her, and she made no real moves. Jim kept mentioning the house they had bought, talking about things they might do to it, obviously wishing she would throw herself into a frenzy of buying and planning. Patsy couldn’t. She accepted the house as a sort of permanent topic of conversation, second only to Davey for its convenience, but the thought of the house made nothing move inside her. She had no feeling about it, and, anyway, the Duffins were still in it and would be for a while.
Emma it was who wrought the first change in her. Flap was home from the hospital and back in school. It turned out that, quite as everyone but himself had expected, he had passed his prelims by an ample margin and, except for a general recommendation that he read more medieval literature, was only a dissertation away from his degree and a good job. If there were suspicions around school that he had done something unstable they were politely muffled, and he spent his short convalescence writing letters of inquiry to two hundred and fifty schools.
But Emma’s nerves had been scraped raw by the whole experience. She became for a time irritable and difficult, more direct even than usual and, so Flap and the boys thought, even less tolerant of their human shortcomings. She was no longer inclined to yawn and let things pass, let time take care of them. She came over one afternoon nervous but determined, looked Patsy in the eye, and made known her problem.
“Look, Jim’s driving us crazy,” she said. “Did you know it?”
Patsy was startled; she hadn’t. “No,” she said. “Jim? How?”
“He comes to see Flap every afternoon,” Emma said. “He usually stays two or three hours, drinking coffee and talking. Flap will let him, you see. Flap can’t say no to anybody. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to make you mad, and I don’t know what I’d do without you, but please do something about him. I don’t want him in my kitchen three hours a day. I don’t think he realizes he stays so long. He seems to be a writhing mass of insecurities these days.”
“Oh, dear,” Patsy said, stricken and ashamed. There was a silence.
“Are you mad?” Emma asked.
“Of course not. Thanks for telling me. I’ll make him quit bugging you, don’t worry. I guess I’m what’s the matter with him.”
“It’s not even me so much,” Emma said. “I just don’t want anyone aggravating Flap’s bad tendencies. I want him to get cheerful and get on that dissertation and get us out of here. If he sits around yakking with Jim he won’t get it done and he’ll get morbid and scared and it will start all over again. What is the matter with Jim?”
Patsy shook her head, wanting badly to cry. She was afraid to bring it out. Emma might quit her and then she would have no friend. She shook her head again.
“Hank went away again,” Emma said. “Nobody can figure that out. It was because of you, wasn’t it?”
She nodded miserably, unable to lie.
“I thought so,” Emma said. “You quiver when I mention his name.”
“Do you suppose anyone else has noticed?” Patsy asked fearfully.
“Flap has, but I won’t let him discuss you around me. He fancies himself a great analyzer of women and he doesn’t know a damn thing about them, basically. You fascinate him. He decided a year ago you were having an affair with Hank.”
“He may know more about women than you think,” Patsy said. “I wasn’t, a year ago, though. I’m not sure what I’ve had. Affair sounds too technical. I don’t like it.”
“So how’d Jim find out?”
“Oh, he just did. Now I feel like I ought to be stoned.”
Emma was silent. She had not believed it, quite, even after months of listening to Flap marshal the evidence. She could not imagine her friend being in two beds, with two different men. It was a shock, but a mild enough shock because she couldn’t imagine it. The distress in Patsy’s face was there and it was real.
“Come on,” Emma said. “Don’t look like that. I would only stone you out of jealousy. I always sort of fancied him myself.”
Patsy had begun to cry; Emma chewed a fingernail until she finally stopped.
“But you wouldn’t have done it,” Patsy said.
“How do you know?” Emma said thoughtfully. “I never was able to say no to anybody who really wanted me. It just turned out that Flap was about the only one who did. Maybe I’m lucky no one does. I don’t know all that much about it. I don’t know what I might do.”
“You wouldn’t,” Patsy insisted.
“Oh, shut up,” Emma said angrily. “I can’t stand being glorified. What it boils down to is that I haven’t had any good opportunities to stray, and you have. Frankly, I think you deserved Hank. Jim’s too wishy-washy about you. At least Flap isn’t wishy-washy.”
“Jim’s perfectly decent,” Patsy said meekly. “I have to straighten up and get him out of your hair.”
When they parted, Patsy felt better. Emma was still her friend, after all. She felt in a mood to straighten herself out. There was no excuse for moping or self-pity; her problems were hardly unsolvable. All she had to do was take herself and her husband in hand and behave sensibly about life.
She confronted Jim the minute he stepped in the door and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to spend any more afternoons at the Hortons’.
“Look, I’m the one that hurt you,” she said. “I’m the one you have the problems with. Talk to me about it. Even if Flap understood he couldn’t say anything that would really help.”
Jim was surprised and annoyed. He was mostly ticked off at Emma for not complaining directly to him, but he was also mad at Patsy.
“You haven’t been the easiest person in the world to talk to lately,” he said. “I do try to talk to you, you just don’t remember it. Some little door clicks shut in your brain every time I look at you, much less try to talk to you.”
“Keep knocking until it opens, then,” she said. “I’m not that formidable and Flap’s certainly no psychiatrist. What could he say that would help?”
“Nothing. He’s just easy to talk to.”
She dropped it, convinced he would stay clear of the Hortons. That night at the supper table she found herself in the pleasantest mood she had had for days, and while in it she took a close look at Jim. Her eyes had avoided him for weeks, and what she saw when she finally did look closely was enough to worry her very much. If she had come to wear a different skin because of Hank, so had Jim, and it was no improvement on the one he had had. He didn’t look aged, he looked younger, and uncertain, a scared and unhappy boy. And there was nothing he could be certain about—not himself, and not her. There was Davey, but he was little help.
It scared her, seeing how scared he was, but she was in a strong mood
and she tried to begin changing the look in his eyes. She was as pleasant and cheerful as she could be and was able to believe for a few hours that things might gradually right themselves. She was going to profit by her mistake and start considering Jim and being positive about him.
Jim was delighted that she was cheerful, delighted that she would look at him again. She seemed like the old Patsy, the one he had fallen in love with, the one he could handle. He took her cheerfulness to mean a change of heart. Though it was really only a change of mood, it was a mood he might have built on, had he known how to nurse it and encourage it. But he took it as something more dramatic, something that should be capitalized on, something he ought to match immediately. He took it to mean that she had returned to him and that their marriage was on again.
When bedtime came and she was still cheerful and was quietly reading Frazer he decided such amiability was as near to a sexual invitation as he was likely to get, and he pursued it as such. It destroyed the evening and such small purchase of each other as they had regained. Patsy’s mood had changed but her body hadn’t. She was relaxed in bed for the first time in almost a month and was hurt that Jim would take advantage of her first little bit of softening. He felt that if he didn’t she would feel he was neglecting her, and anyway, he wanted to. Patsy couldn’t deny him; for even as she felt betrayed she also felt that he had every right to take advantage of her and that she owed him what he wanted. But despite all debts and duties it left her clenched against him, and him angry at her.
She could yield but she couldn’t respond; it was not something she could call forth to anneal a wound or pay a debt. Later she felt that if only he had waited, come closer to her gradually, through several more cheerful moods, he might have succeeded in calling it forth again, little by little. As it was she felt abused; she couldn’t help it. And Jim felt cheated. He couldn’t help it either. It had been no fun.
They didn’t talk that night; they were both, in their separate ways, too bitter, dissatisfied with themselves and with each other. They knew better than to talk—that much at least they had learned.
The next day Jim had a new perspective on it all. He was convinced that sex was their whole problem. He brooded about it all day and that night insisted they discuss it. Patsy had a cold and didn’t really feel like discussing anything, much less sex, but Jim was not to be put off. He was convinced the cold was psychosomatic, merely a means of avoiding sex, and he insisted on talking about it. He had convinced himself that not only the otherwise inexplicable affair with Hank but all their previous marital difficulties stemmed from Patsy’s irrational attitudes about sex. She saw it coming and grew sullen.
“Look, if you’re going to tell me I’m frigid again, don’t” she said. “I don’t want to be told I’m frigid. It might make it come true.”
“I don’t think you’re frigid,” he said judiciously. “You just aren’t reasonable about it. You’re too emotional. You can’t be emotional about it year in and year out. It’s like being emotional about what you’re going to have for dinner.”
“That’s an awful analogy. I’m emotional about what I have for dinner. Year in and year out I’m emotional. I’m an emotional girl. If you don’t like that, I don’t see how you can ever like me.”
Jim made a face. “I don’t mind that you’re emotional,” he said. “I just don’t see why you have to be in a high emotional state to enjoy sex. You know, you do it with your body. You don’t have to work yourself up and throw yourself over a precipice emotionally just to enjoy it.”
Patsy felt the more sullen. “I don’t like the way you talk about it,” she said. “I don’t throw myself over a precipice—I just need to feel a little warm.”
“And you never feel warm toward me?”
She sighed, not knowing what to say. She did and she didn’t, but how could that be said nicely? While she was brooding he flew into one of his rare rages and accused her of never liking him in their whole married life. She denied it, but when he tried to pin her down as to when she had liked him she couldn’t remember and began to cry. He was doubly annoyed and issued an edict on conjugal rights, to the effect that she owed them to him and he wanted them and she would just have to adjust. Patsy agreed that she owed them to him but when he told her she would have to adjust she said, “I don’t know how.”
“Well, you’ll never adjust if we don’t ever do it,” Jim said. “If we avoid it, it just gets worse. It’s silly. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s probably nothing wrong with us that a lot of good sex wouldn’t cure.”
Patsy could only pass. She neither agreed nor disagreed, but she went to bed from then on in deep apprehension and too often her apprehensions were justified. Jim determinedly put his edict into effect. He wanted her and saw nothing to be gained by postponement. He had waited before, and lost through it. He made love to her considerately and knew she was not liking it, but he thought that once she accepted the fact that he really wanted her she would begin to want him in return. Patsy had ceased to doubt that he wanted her, but it didn’t make her want him at all. The nights quickly grew worse; her days were mostly spent in dreading them. They stopped talking about it but it hung in the air all day. Patsy wanted to tell him to please stop—not only was it not making her like him better, it was making her hate him—but she simply couldn’t bring it up. Her only tactic was to ignore it, while it was happening and while it wasn’t, and hope that Jim could catch on and let her alone for a while. Had she said as much, Jim would have let her alone. He had convinced himself by his own arguments, but he was aware it wasn’t working. Patsy could have unconvinced him had she spoken, but her silent reluctance was more difficult for him to interpret. It made him feel defensive about his own feelings and he felt that he had to keep demonstrating that he wanted her if she was ever to accept it.
In ten days his attempts to join them through sex ended by severing them more terribly than her adultery had severed them. One night Patsy had almost succeeded in getting to sleep unscrewed, when Jim decided he wanted her. He was angry with her because she wouldn’t speak to him or make any move to be near him at all. Any token of affection would have made him wait, or would have made him tender, but Patsy’s affections were frozen. As a result he felt brutal and she felt brutalized. Afterward she couldn’t sleep. She began to tremble. Finally she got up, took her pillow to the couch, got sheets and a blanket, and huddled there.
“Why are you doing that?”
“So I won’t get sick. I’m going to sleep here from now on, so I won’t get sick.”
He saw that his plan had come to ruin, and he felt a failure. He felt he had treated her badly and would have apologized if he had not sensed that she was too alienated to be touched by apology.
“How do you feel?” he asked finally.
“Animal,” Patsy said. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Animal?”
She raised up and looked at him. “I feel like a domestic animal. Domestic animals are used without their consent. I was used without my consent. Don’t you touch me any more. You don’t have that kind of rights over me.”
Jim let it go. He knew from the way her voice trembled that arguing would only make things worse. The next day they tried to assess the extent of the disaster and it seemed incalculable.
“Well, at least forgive me,” Jim said. “You know I didn’t mean to be that awful. I was just trying to get you back.”
Patsy could not look at him. “You never wait for anything,” she said. “If you had waited and been kind I might have come back by myself.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” he said. “You would just have thought I was neglectful.”
She chuckled bitterly. “You get full points for not being neglectful,” she said. “Boy, are you not neglectful!”
They talked around in circles for several days. Sometimes they had the illusion that they were getting somewhere, in talking; other times it just made them feel the more hopeless. Patsy slept on the couch. They gr
adually worked back to a condition of politeness, but there they stopped. Nothing he said could bring Patsy back to the bed. A week passed and their nerves were in terrible states. Patsy had begun to fly off the handle at Davey. Jim stayed away from home as much as possible. At night she slept poorly, half afraid he would come to the couch and touch her, and he slept fitfully, felt wronged, and didn’t know whether she would ever sleep with him again.
One morning at breakfast psychiatry occurred to them. For some reason it had never entered their minds that they should go to psychiatrists, and the idea struck them like a revelation. It was the only hopeful idea they had had in weeks. They spent the day asking around, rather fruitlessly. The Hortons knew no psychiatrists. Flap had meant to go to one after his trouble, but once he got his spirits back he became too busy to bother. Finally Jim asked Bill Duffin, who knew one. Lee had gone to him for two weeks, after they moved to Houston. Patsy called to ask her about him. She and Lee had developed a sort of cynical compatibility. Lee had not asked about Hank, but Patsy took it for granted that she had figured it out.
“The man’s absurd,” Lee said of the psychiatrist. “He’ll do to talk at but don’t expect much feedback. I wouldn’t let you go to him except that I expect you need some laughs.”
It was not an encouraging report, but the two of them were too cheered by the idea of psychiatry to look further. They called the doctor, whose name was Fuller, and intimated that they had a problem.
Dr. Fuller suggested that they come in singly, but both on the same day, for what he termed exploratory conversations. Jim went first and told Dr. Fuller that his wife had had an affair and didn’t like to sleep with him, and that he didn’t know what to do. Jim talked rapidly for fifty-five minutes. Patsy went in an hour later and found it difficult to talk at all. Dr. Fuller looked more like a pediatrician than a psychiatrist, and, moreover, he had copies of The Ford Times in his waiting room, which prejudiced Patsy against him to begin with. He looked robust and healthy and so completely Protestant and trustworthy that it seemed unlikely he had ever committed a sin. Patsy felt guilty just being near him. She managed, rather haltingly, to get out the chronology of her marriage and her affair and he maintained such a determined silence when she spoke of the latter that she felt even guiltier.
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