by John Updike
“If she says so. I forget how it was.”
“And I, on the other hand, though I’ve always sincerely admired your bride, have never—”
“Never. She’d never consent. She hates you.”
“She doesn’t hate me. She’s rather attracted to me.”
“She thinks you’re a jerk.”
“Watch it, Handlebar. This is my show and I’ve had enough of your lip. I want one night. That’s very modest. One night with Angela. Work it out, fella. Tell her what you have to. Tell her everything. Confession is good for the soul.”
Piet said, “You’re asking the impossible. And I’ll tell you why you are: you have nothing to deliver. You are a slimy worthless creep.”
With crooked forefingers Freddy made gay quick horns at his scalp. “You put ’em there, buddy. You’re the expert. I’m just a gullible middle-class grubber who as far as we know hasn’t made a career of screwing other men’s wives.” Freddy’s hairless face became very ugly, the underside of some soft eyeless sea creature whose mouth doubles as an anus. “You dug this grave by yourself, Dutch boy.”
Again Piet moved toward the door, and this time he was not prevented. He hauled it open, and hopped back, startled; Nancy, having disobeyed, was standing there listening. Her lips were pursed around the stem of a lollypop and her eyes, though she had no words, knew everything.
When over the phone Piet told Foxy of Freddy’s proposition, she said, “How funny. I had assumed he and Angela did sleep together, or at least had.”
“On what basis had you assumed this?”
“Oh, how they act together at parties. Very relaxed. Chummy.”
“As far as I know, she’s never been unfaithful.”
“Are you bragging or complaining?”
“You’re in a jolly mood. What do you suggest our next step should be?”
“Me. I don’t have a next step. It’s up to Angela, isn’t it?”
“You’re kidding. I can’t put this to her.”
“Why not?” Impatience surmounted fatigue in her voice. “It’s not such an enormous deal. Who knows, she might enjoy getting away from you for a night.”
He’ll hurt her, Piet wanted to explain. Freddy Thorne will hurt Angela. He said, “But it means telling her all about us.”
“I don’t see why. If she loves you, she’ll do it simply because you ask. If you do it right. She’s your wife, let her earn it. The rest of us have been keeping you entertained, let her do something for the cause.”
“You’re tough, aren’t you?”
“I’m getting there.”
“Please, Fox. Don’t make me ask her.”
“I’m not making you do anything. How can I? It’s between you and her. If you’re too chicken, or she’s too holy, we’ll have to work at Freddy some other way, or do without him. I could try throwing myself on the mercy of my Cambridge doctor. He’s not a Catholic. I could say I was going to have a nervous breakdown. It might not be a lie.”
“You honestly think it’s possible for me to ask her? Would you do it, to save Ken?”
“I’d do it to save me. In fact, I already offered.”
“You offered what? To sleep with Freddy?”
“Don’t let your voice get shrill like that. It’s unbecoming. Of course I did, more or less. I didn’t pull up my skirt; but what else do I have for him? What else do men and women ever talk about? He turned me down. Rather sweetly, I thought. He said I reminded him too much of his mother, and he was afraid of her. But it may have given him the idea of having Angela. I think what he really wants is to get at you.”
“Because of Georgene?”
“Because you’ve always scorned him.”
“You don’t think he just honestly wants her?”
“Please don’t try to squeeze compliments for your wife out of me. We all know she’s magnificent. I have no idea what Freddy honestly wants. All I know is what I honestly want. I want this damn thing to stop growing inside of me.”
“Don’t cry.”
“Nature is so stupid. It has all my maternal glands working, do you know what that means, Piet? You know what the great thing about being pregnant I found out was? It’s something I just couldn’t have imagined. You’re never alone. When you have a baby inside you you are not alone. It’s a person.”
He had already told her not to cry. “You really think … she might?”
“Oh for God’s sake, she’s human like everybody else, I don’t know what the hell she’ll do or won’t do. You still seem to think there’s a fate worse than death. She’s your divine wife, settle it between yourselves. Just let me know how it comes out, so I can work on something else. I thought I’d done pretty well to get Freddy Thorne for us.”
“You did. You’re being very brave and resourceful.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
Piet told her, “I’ll try. You’re right. I don’t expect it to go. She may ask for a divorce instead, but if it does, Foxy, love—”
“Yes, love.”
“If we do get out of this, it has to be the end of our—of us.”
“Obviously,” Foxy said, and hung up.
A morning later, Nancy described her first dream, the first remembered dream of her life. She and Judy Thorne were on a screened porch, catching ladybugs. Judy caught one with one spot on its back and showed it to Nancy. Nancy caught one with two spots and showed it to Judy. Then Judy caught one with three spots, and Nancy one with four. Because (the child explained) the dots showed how old the ladybugs were!
She had told this dream to her mother, who had her repeat it to her father at breakfast. Piet was moved, beholding his daughter launched into another dimension of life, like school. He was touched by her tiny stock of imagery—the screened porch (neither they nor the Thornes had one; who?), the ladybugs (with turtles the most toylike of creatures), the mysterious power of numbers, that generates space and time. Piet saw down a long amplifying corridor of her dreams, and wanted to hear her tell them, to grow older with her, to shelter her forever. For her sake he must sell Angela.
“Angel?”
“Mm?” They were in the dark, in bed, nearly asleep. They had not made love; Piet had no intention of making love to anyone ever again.
“Would you believe it,” he asked, “if I told you I was in deep trouble?”
“Yes,” she answered.
Surprised, he asked, “What sort of trouble?”
“You and Gallagher aren’t getting along any more.”
“True. But that’s the least of it. I can work things out with Matt once I get myself straightened out.”
“Do you want to talk about it? I’m sleepy but can wake myself up.”
“I can’t talk about it. Can you accept that?”
“Yes.”
“Could you believe it if I told you you could help me greatly by doing a specific thing?”
“Like getting a divorce?”
“No, not that at all. Have you been thinking about that?”
“Off and on. Does that alarm you?”
“Quite. I love my house.”
“But that’s not the same as loving me.”
“I love you too. Obviously.” The word echoed dryly and he felt them drifting farther from the point, the question. Perhaps there was a way of making it also seem a drifting, a detail of fate. “No,” he said, “the thing you could do for me would only take one night.”
“Sleep with Freddy Thorne,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Isn’t that right?”
In the softness of the dark Piet could find no breath to make an answer; he lay on the bed like a man lying on water, only his eyes and nostrils not immersed. Finally he repeated, “Why do you say that?”
“Because he’s always told me he would get into bed with me some day. For years he’s been wanting to get a hold over you. Now does he have it?”
Piet answered, “Yes.”
“And is that what he wants?”
/>
His silent nodding made the bed slightly shudder.
“Don’t be shocked,” Angela went on, in a voice soft as the dark, “he’s been working on it for years, and would tell me, and I imagined I should laugh. What I always thought strange, was that he never just asked me, on his own merits, but assumed it had to be worked by bullying you. I don’t love him, of course, but he can be appealing sometimes, and I’ve been unhappy enough with you so that it might have happened by itself, if he’d just been direct. Do you want to know something sad?”
He nodded again, but this time the trembling of the bed was a theatrical effect, deliberately managed.
She told him, “He’s the only man in town who’s ever been attracted to me. Eddie Constantine took me for that ride on his Vespa and never followed it up. I’m just not attractive to men. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing.”
“Well something must be. I’m not on anybody’s wavelength. Not even the children’s, now that Nancy’s no longer a baby. I’m very alone, Piet. No. Don’t touch me. It sometimes helps but it wouldn’t now. I really don’t seem to be quite here; that’s why I meant it about psychiatry. I think I need a rather formal kind of help. I need to go to a school where the subject is myself.”
He sensed a bargain forming in the shadows. The far lamps along Nun’s Bay Road, the wavy-branched lilacs and vase-shaped elms, leafless, and the reflecting snow made patterns of light along the walls that would never occur in summer. He said, “Why not? If things straighten out.”
Angela repeated, “If. One question. I’m incredibly curious, but I’ll ask just one. Do you trust Freddy? To keep his end of this bargain.”
“I don’t know why, I do. He needs to impress me as a man of honor, maybe.”
“He wants me only once?”
“That’s what he said.”
She laughed a syllable and turned her back on him. “I don’t seem to arouse very strong passions in men.” Her words were muffled but her accent sounded ironical.
He lifted himself on an elbow to hear her better. Was she crying? Would she die?
She answered his lurch, “I’d rather not do it here in town. There are too many cars and children to keep track of. Aren’t the Thornes coming on the Washington’s Birthday ski weekend?”
“Sure. They never miss anything.”
“Well, the children will all be in the bunk rooms and we’ll probably be along the same hall. You’ve slept with Georgene?”
He hesitated, then saw that they had passed into another room of their life altogether, and admitted, “In the past.”
“Well then. It’s all very neat. No, Piet, don’t touch me. I really must go to sleep.”
The ski lodge still displayed on its bulletin board photographs of itself in summer, as if to say, This is me, this soft brown lake, these leafy birches, not the deathlike mask of ice and snow in which you find me. The defunct cuckoo clock still haunted the high corner misted with cobwebs, the television set crackled with ignored news, the elderly young proprietors came and went with ashtrays and ice trays, trailing an air of disapproval. The rates had been raised. The raisin sauce on the ham was less generous. A quartet of strangers played bridge, and the Tarbox couples played word games on the floor. Whiskey warmed their bodies with a triumphant languor—they were survivors, the fortunate, the employed, the healthy, the free. The slopes today had been brilliant, under the holiday sun that daily looped higher. The conditions had been icy at the top, powdery in the middle of the mountain and along the shaded trails, corny on the broad lower slopes, and slushy by the base lodge, where mud was beginning to wear through. The potent sun, the prickling scintillating showers of dry snow abruptly loosened from the pine branches overhanging the trails, the heavyish conditions, the massive moguls carved by two months of turning and edging all freighted the skiers’ bodies with a luxurious lassitude. They began to retire earlier than they had last year, when Freddy Thorne regaled the Applesmiths with his fantasies. Now Jonathan little-Smith, nearly thirteen, was livelier than his parents, and made Frankie Appleby, two years younger and cranky from drowsiness, play one losing game of chess after another. The only way to get him to bed was for Harold and Marcia to go themselves, out to the gas-heated cottage where Julia and Henrietta already were sleeping. The Applebys promptly followed. This year both couples were in cottages—at opposite ends, Janet had insisted, of the row. Then the Guerins, though Freddy huggingly begged Roger to stay for another drink, and Bea cast wise swarming glances of farewell to Piet, went out into the night, barren of a moon, to their hissing cottage. This left the Gallaghers, Hanemas, and Thornes. The Whitmans did not ski. Eddie Constantine, promoted to ever greater responsibilities, was piloting a wonderful new jet, three-engined and hot, the Boeing 727, to San Juan. The Saltzes, who had announced this as the winter when they would take up skiing, were now authoritatively rumored to have accepted the Cleveland offer, to be leaving Tarbox; and instantly they had become pariahs. After some constrained banter Matt Gallagher primly coughed and announced that he was going to bed. The emphasis of “he” implied that Terry had been formally given freedom. She, who under circumstances confided only to Carol Constantine had stopped taking pottery lessons, promptly stood and said that so was she. When the Hanemas and Thornes were alone, disposed as couples face to face on the two sofas opposed across a maple coffee table stacked with back copies of Ski and Vogue, Freddy said to Piet, “You and Matt don’t seem to have much to say to each other these days.”
Piet told him, “He does his end, and I do mine.”
Freddy smiled fishily. “Not much doing at your end these days, is there, Handball?”
“There will be soon. As soon as the frost breaks we’ll be going back to Indian Hill. Six houses this summer is the plan.” A year ago he would not have given Freddy the satisfaction of so full a response, almost an apology.
Angela sat up and parted an invisible drape with her hands. “Well. Is this the night?” Her face looked fevered from sun and windburn, and her eyes had been so steeped in unaccustomed exercise and the beauty of the day that the irises and pupils were indistinguishable. She had changed her ski costume for a looseknit mauve sweater and white pants flared at the ankles; she was barefoot. She had become Janet Appleby.
Georgene stood and said, “I’m not going to listen to this. I’m going to go to bed and lock the door and take a sleeping pill. You three do whatever you want. Don’t involve me.” She stood as if waiting to be argued with.
Freddy said, “But Georgie-pie, you started everything. This is just my tit for your tat. What’s sauce for the goose, et cetera.”
“You’re contemptible. All of you.” Her long chin flinty, she crossed through the light of several lamps to the stairs. The day’s sun had already become on her face the start of a tan.
While she was still within earshot, Freddy said, “Oh hell. Let’s call it off. I was just curious to see your reactions.”
Angela said, “No, sir. There’s some kind of a bargain and we’re going to keep our side. We better go up now because all that fresh air is getting to me and I’ll soon fall asleep.”
Piet found he could not look at either of them: he felt their faces, blurs in his upper vision, as deformed, so deformed that if he dared to lift his eyes to them he might involuntarily whimper or laugh. He told his stockinged feet, “Let’s give Georgene a minute to get into her room. Freddy, should you get your toothbrush or anything?”
Freddy asked, “She’s on the pill, isn’t she?”
“Of course. Welcome to paradise.” Piet stayed sitting on the sofa as they went up. Angela kissed him good night on his cheek; his head refused to move. Her lips had felt weirdly distinct, the parted carved lips of a statue, but a statue warmed by fire. He dared look at her only as she disappeared up the stairs, gazing straight ahead, her gentle hair unbound from the scarlet ear-warmer she wore skiing. Freddy followed, his white hands held lamely at his chest, his mouth open as if to form a bubble.
The
upstairs hall was hushed. A single light bulb burned. Georgene’s door looked tight shut. The Gallaghers in the room adjacent could be heard murmuring. On silent bare feet Angela led Freddy into her room, and then without their touching excused herself to go back into the hall, to the lavatory. When Freddy in turn returned from the lavatory, she was in her nightie, simple cotton such as a child might wear, a green flower stitched at the neckline. The room’s single window overlooked a shallow deck that in summer would be a sunporch; the banister supported baroque shapes of snow sculpted by the melting of the day and the night’s refreezing. Within the room there was a double bed with a brass-pipe headboard, a porcelain washstand stained by the hot-water faucet’s tears, a five-and-dime mirror, an old rocking chair painted Chinese red, a pine bureau painted bile green, a black bedside table nicked by alarm-clock legs and holding a paperbound copy of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and a gay small lamp whose shade was orange. When Angela, who had been brushing down her hair amid serene explosions of static, bent to turn out this lamp, the light pierced the simple cloth and displayed her silhouetted bulk, the pucker of her belly; her big breasts swayed in the poppy glow like sluggish fish in an aquarium of rosewater. The light snapped off and a ghost replaced her. Her voice out of a frame of fluffed hair asked Freddy, “Don’t you want to take off your clothes?”
Snowlight from the window picked out along the rim of her hair those tendrils looped outwards by the vigor of the brushing. She had expanded expectantly. Freddy felt the near presence of her blood-filled body as an animal feels the nearness of water, of prey, or of a predator. He said, “Love to, but how would you feel about a drink first? You haven’t anything in the suitcase, a little Jack Daniel’s, say?”
“We brought some bourbon but it’s downstairs. Shall I go down and take it from Piet?”
“Jesus, no. Don’t go near him.”
“Do you really need a drink? I think you’ve had plenty.”
The lining of his mouth felt scratchy, as if he had chewed and swallowed a number of square blocks. This ungainly squareness had descended, still abrasive, to his stomach. Her long-awaited nearness had crystallized his poisons. He said, “I see you’re still reading Freud.”