Treason

by Sallie Bingham

  “I must get them to come down with me and watch Dan. They might possibly learn something.”

  “Don’t you want to eat first?”

  “No, I don’t—hardly!” He was pulling on a pair of black rubber boots, tucking up the legs of his trousers. Then he was gone; I heard him calling the children outside. I glanced at Flora. She had stopped what she was doing and was standing empty-handed at the sink, frowning at the paper towel roller. It was as though the light, which had been failing, had suddenly gone completely out of the room.

  Flora snapped on the light switch. “These country evenings when it’s always getting dark!” The bare bulb dangling from the ceiling was flooding us with hard light, and the night outside thickened. I heard the children yodeling away down the hill.

  “Edwin is such a child,” Flora said.

  We began the washing up. Flora moved slowly as though suddenly exhausted. She would not let me load the dishwasher, explaining succinctly that she had her own system. She began to loosen up after a while. “Sometimes I’m positively jealous of the children. Edwin spends so much time with them—his patients, who are children, and our children. He cares enormously about them. I used to feel … squeezed out.” She gave her shoulders a shake. “That was in the beginning when they were small. I used to watch him holding them in his arms … yes, it was jealousy,” she said firmly. “And then how can I teach them anything when he’s so impossible?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh—he likes the naughtiness in them.”

  “He encourages them?”

  “He certainly does.” She said it with pride. “I mean, of course we agree, basically,” she added. “But he lets them be little monkeys sometimes, and they love it. I’m the one who has to see to the discipline. He’d let them grow up anyhow.”

  A little later, we heard splashes from the direction of the pond. Flora looked at me. “You see? That’s the kind of thing I mean. They were supposed to be watching the plumber.”

  After a while, I went out to collect my children. The thick, soft country closed around me as I moved, feeling my way down the hill toward the pond. The children were all in the shallows. I caught sight of their naked white skin as they jumped and cavorted in the headlights from the car, which Edwin had driven to the edge of the pond. Edwin was standing in the water with Molly clinging to his back, her arms around his neck, her long legs wrapped around his waist. He’d taken off his clothes too. I called to my children from the darkness, and Edwin sank quickly into the water, releasing Molly, who floated away from him like a petal. My two boys came scuttling, but it was a long time before I could draw Molly out. Finally I went to stand and scold at the edge of the pond. Edwin was swimming at the deep end by that time, enthralled with his boys.

  I realized I would never be able to find the children’s clothes and shoes thrown down on the grass in the dark. They huddled against me shivering, subdued. Suddenly it seemed very late, later than we had ever been out before. “It’s miles past your bedtimes, and you’re going to catch colds,” I scolded, herding them toward the car. It seemed minor somehow to be worrying about pants and shoes when the night was so mild, and the other children were shouting with excitement and glee. My own life, and my children’s, looked shrunken by comparison. It would never have occurred either to me or to David to take them skinny-dipping.

  As we went to the car, Flora came hurrying behind us with an armload of towels. “Here, wrap them up in these—don’t worry about their clothes! Come by in the morning and pick them up.”

  I got them into the back seat, covered them with towels, and started the car. As I turned out of the gates, I nearly collided with the pump truck lumbering along. The driver shouted at me, “Watch where you’re going, can’t you?” Smiling, I apologized, pleased that the summer was taking shape.

  10

  It is almost ten o’clock, and the cars are arriving steadily. Jeff and Molly are outside directing parking. Molly flashes into the house. “Eleven cars and more coming! Should they park by the barn? They must!” she shouts. “The place by the shed is all full.” It is a feast, a festival—friendly strangers milling about on this warm, high-skied day. The shadows are short now, the grass has dried, and the sun is hot without the damp of August. This day is the culmination of my planning and perseverance; I am determined to enjoy it. Snatching at Molly as she flies by, I ask, “The Fields—where are they sitting?”

  She deflates suddenly, comes to a dead standstill. “At the back. Saul wouldn’t say hello to me.” She is off at once, wriggling out of my grip. I fight hard for a minute against the rage her rejection inspires, and then suddenly I can’t help myself. The Fields shouldn’t be making our children suffer. We have not spoken in public since Easter. The solid link between our two families, forged out of so many weekends and holidays spent together, broke in March when I asked Edwin to leave Flora. Edwin, hard-pressed at last by a devotion he didn’t want, was trying in any way he could find to reject me without words, and I was determined to hold on. My proposition revealed that I understood nothing about him. I was blinded by my own need. How could I have imagined that he would leave Flora for me? Flora knew what I’d done in a day, David in a week. No one mentioned it out loud, of course, but we all began at once to avoid each other. Meanwhile our children continued to telephone back and forth, arranging visits with one parent or another dropping them off at the gate.

  I began to telephone Edwin after he refused me. I called him at his office every day, every week, sweating with shame and anxiety. I had to change my clothes afterward to get rid of the stink. I gave businesslike messages to his receptionist or, on bad days, hung up in terror when the woman answered. Edwin did not return my calls, no matter how I worded the message. Finally I began to write him letters, which I hope I will never again have to read. So much pleading and explaining—he did not answer them either. I sometimes drove by their house and saw the smoke drifting out of the chimney and the dog nosing around the geraniums and the children’s bikes sprawled on the grass—the daily routine unaltered by my anguish. I would not descend to tracking him down in the supermarket in the presence of his wife and children. In the end, my frustration and rage became all I had to offer, and I wanted to force him to accept them—but he was afraid, he kept his distance.

  I notice David standing in the shadow by the living room window, watching people arrive. “It looks like a big crowd,” I say to him, my anger elevating those colorless friendly exchanges which have taken up so much of our lives. His refusal to notice has kept us together for four or five years after our marriage was effectively dead. Now I need him, my fellow conspirator, my confrère peering through the window at the scene outside. I go on, “Molly says the Fields are sitting in the back. Saul wouldn’t say hello to her.”

  David inches his head forward. “Coming here takes some nerve.”

  “I suppose they want a souvenir, a plate, or something to show for all those Thanksgivings and Christmases and Saturday nights together.”

  “Maybe they just came, you know, on their way back from town.” He goes on hurriedly, “I see Mary Cassaday and Eddy and Parker have arrived.”

  “Good! I mentioned it to all of them, but I wasn’t sure they’d come. I thought embarrassment might hold them back.”

  “Embarrassment?”

  “Picking over the relics. Some people might be ashamed. I see Helena in front, but I don’t see Charles.”

  “You said you wanted them all to come.”

  “Yes, but there’s still the question of embarrassment.”

  “Yours?”

  “I’m trying to look past that.”

  The tent is open on our side, its flaps propped up, and I can see rows of rickety church-supper chairs. About half of them are occupied. Mrs. Pultz, the checker at the Grand Union, sits alone in the front row, as imposing as a duchess, an enormous pocketbook clasped in her lap. The Knoors, a tiny old couple who run the antique shop on the highway, are sitting tentatively on t
he edges of their chairs. They are worrying that I will assume they have come to buy things for their shop. I wish them good bargains. Our children used to drop by their little antique store and handle everything and ask for old horse paraphernalia or ancient cameras. Tom Goldsmith, who hayed our fields, is sitting in the middle wearing his gray sweat-stained fatigues next to his pretty wife and a row of squirming children. There’s George, the handsome kid from the gas station—I am surprised to see him. I didn’t think he even knew our name. He is looking across the aisle at Helena, in her best blue jean jacket with the daisies on the lapels. Parker and Eddy are further down, as discreet as a pair of mice, their hands folded on their laps. Winty has not come. Mary Cassaday’s face is strangely severe. I have never seen it before without its decoration of smiles.

  I am pleased by the size of the crowd. It seems to me that they have come here to honor me as well as pick over our possessions. Their presence means that there is something of mine they wish to keep after I am gone and the house is sold. The auction is oddly cheerful. I wonder what ornament or piece of furniture each of these people will choose and imagine them saying years from now, “Yes, that came from those city people who had to leave, the ones who had the house on Shultz Hill.” I hope they will choose well and go home satisfied.

  Tom has climbed onto the front steps and is holding up a pair of David’s prints—two views from West Point. The auctioneer’s rattle fills the room. “Five? Do I hear five? Five? Five? All right, we’ll start at three-fifty.”

  “I’m not going to lurk in here all morning,” I tell David. “I wish there were a mountain to climb or a sea to swim. I could have avoided all this, but I cannot hang indoors any longer. They’ll think that I’m afraid.”

  He looks at me sideways, dubiously. “I don’t think you ought to go out there.”

  “I need to go out there. I need to see what those people choose.”

  He shrugs. “Well, then, go.”

  I equivocate. “I’m curious to see what they think our things are worth.”

  He says heavily, “They probably won’t even bid.”

  “Oh, no, they’ll take something home. I’m sure of that.” Still, I hesitate. Fred barges in.

  “We need a few small things to get them started,” he says, a little feverish himself. Glancing around the room he notices the silver candlesticks on the mantel and reaches for them. David stretches out his hand. “Not those.”

  “She said—” Fred stops at the look on David’s face, a terrible look, as though he is guarding his only child.

  “Not your grandmother’s candlesticks,” David tells me, glaring.

  “I don’t want them anymore.”

  “For the children.”

  “They don’t care about those candlesticks. They never even knew her. They mean a lot to you—they’re very fine.” David in fact has looked them up in one of his silver-mark books. He is delighted by anything rare or old. “If you want them, you can bid on them when they come up.”

  Fred backs off hastily and snatches up an inoffensive blue pottery bowl on his way out.

  “I’m not going to bid for those candlesticks.” For the first time David is implacable.

  He reaches for them. He won’t descend to force, although he may be tempted. “I told you I wouldn’t let you take anything at the last minute. I need every penny I can get. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to Tom,” I explain.

  “I don’t care about Tom. You’re getting rid of the past.”

  “That’s what I want to do,” I remind him.

  “Adolescent,” he snaps.

  “You never wanted me, even at the start. You wanted what I stood for, and I put up with that: a pair of beautiful old Georgian silver candlesticks. Sterling at that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I love you. I always have. I am very proud of you.”

  “Yes, I made a good catch, trailing money, possessions, relatives.”

  “Believe what you want to believe. It has nothing to do with those candlesticks.”

  I grab one candlestick and reach for the other. “I used to think you married me for my money, but now I know it was pure snobbery. Great-Grandfather’s letters from the Battle of Bull Run, Grandfather’s Legion of Honor, Grandmother’s stories of the old days—all so laughable, so desirable.”

  “I want Molly and Jeff,” he says suddenly.

  I do not understand him; I look charming and baffled.

  “I want Molly and Jeff,” he repeats.

  I laugh and push the candlesticks in his direction. “Here. You can have them.”

  “I don’t really want those,” he says, his voice level. “I have plenty of that kind of thing. I want Molly and Jeff.”

  “You have Keith—we agreed on that. You can’t have Molly and Jeff. It’s just not possible—you know that.”

  “I believe they would be better off with me.”

  “I won’t permit it, David. It’s unthinkable.”

  “My lawyer says I have a fairly strong case,” he says flatly.

  “You’ve been gathering evidence—that yellow pad. Shit, you bastard. Here in my own house, under my own roof.”

  “It is our house,” he says.

  “Was it ever? Did you ever make a fire here, or cook a meal, or get up in the night with a child?”

  “I paid the mortgage installments,” he says dryly. “The other things I might have done as well.”

  “If what—?”

  “You never made it easy for me, Ann. You jumped to do everything yourself. With the children especially. You never made me feel it mattered what I did or didn’t do. The children sensed that too. You erased me.”

  “‘Erase you?’ You un-erasable you?” I sing, my inappropriate humor spreading like a sail.

  “And then, with Edwin. Even the children knew what was going on. Locking yourself in the guest room with him the day after Thanksgiving, with the kids in the next room. You haven’t been very careful.”

  “No court is going to declare me an unfit mother.”

  “That isn’t necessary anymore. They may ask the children what they want. Their opinions at least will be taken into account. And I can support them.”

  “All the money you saved from the years when I was shelling it out.”

  “I don’t mean money,” he says with dignity.

  “But the money will mean something to a judge. The money you saved will buy them what I can’t afford to buy them now—vacations, a handsome apartment, all the lovely little extras.”

  “The only thing that really matters is what the children want,” he says with lofty assurance.

  I think of Molly’s perpetual whining, Jeff’s small frown. “You’ll destroy them. Why don’t you beat me instead, tear me limb from limb—”

  “I don’t want to hurt you. I never have. I’ve never been angry at you. I know you simply couldn’t help yourself. I just believe the children will be happier with me. They’re going to need stability, routine. You said yourself you were going to change your life. You said you might want to travel.”

  “What has that got to do with it?”

  David waits while Fred comes in and goes out with a carton of books. “It has a lot to do with it. They need security. I want them to live in one place, quietly, with a good housekeeper, friends, school, a calm emotional atmosphere.”

  “And you can provide all that?”

  “I can try.”

  “You’re talking like a daddy at last.”

  “Your emotional swings were hard enough for them to take before, when I was around. Now they’ll be entirely exposed to your bad temper, your depressions. Think of them, Ann, not just yourself.”

  “I’m not crazy, David. You’ll never convince anyone of that.”

  “No one is thinking that. No one is trying to prove anything.” Yet the word “crazy” is out there, vigorous, with a life of its own.

  “That’s a lie, and you know it. You are going to try to prove that I’m incompetent. That was always you
r way of dealing with me—explain my feelings away as some kind of aberration.” I do not add that over the years he has half convinced me.

  “All that is in the past now,” he says.

  “Yes, but it’s because of the past, or your version of the past, that you’re trying this. It won’t do, David. What’s more, it won’t work. You can’t have Molly and Jeff.”

  “You never should have told me about Edwin,” he says calmly. “You exposed yourself.”

  “You and I were trying to work things out then! We were trying to be honest and humane—to understand. We weren’t enemies; we weren’t storing up ammunition—”

  “Still, you exposed yourself.”

  “But you condoned it.”

  “Not legally. And besides, that has nothing to do with the welfare of the children.”

  Molly runs in. “Eric from riding school is here. Can I take out some peanut butter cookies?”

  “Go ahead,” I tell her, my mouth dry.

  Stalling for time, I turn my back on David and watch my daughter dart into the kitchen. All my little ones. Surely the months I carried them in my belly must count for something—the months I spent nursing them, the interminable procession of interrupted sleep.

  “Eric might want something to drink,” Molly says, flying by with the cookies.

  David goes on, “Ann, believe it or not, I’m trying to spare you. I’m not telling you things I feel you can’t tolerate. Just the broad outlines. I know how hard this is for you. But believe me, it will be best for everyone in the long run. You’ll be able to have your own life—”

  “I have my own life. My life is not something you can give me, or take away.”

  “You’ll have your independence. I know how much that has always meant to you.”

  “Go to hell. Go to hell, you bastard, you stinking shit.”

  “If you wanted to keep the children, you should have behaved differently. You should have been more careful. You could have avoided allowing them to see you with Edwin—”

  “They never saw me!”

  “I don’t mean actually in bed,” he says. “They were certainly parties to your intimacy.”