Regrets Only

by Sally Quinn

  After the hand had done some relatively good work between her legs, it pulled out and up around her abdomen once more, then moved over to the sheet on the other side of her, where it then rested while the body slid itself over and on top of her. The legs, bony knees as the aggressors, each pushed open one of her legs until she had both legs spread and she could feel him erect on top. Without a single word uttered between them, he entered her and began moving up and down, rhythmically. She could not see his face, but she could feel his breath on her shoulder. The mouth had not attempted to reach hers. This was a routine and pedestrian physical workout. No frills. It really was funny, and before she knew it she had begun to giggle out loud, then to laugh. She tried to stop herself, but she couldn’t. At first Des chuckled. Then, as she began to shake, he pulled himself up off her.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  She couldn’t stop laughing then. She was almost shrieking. The tears were welling up in her eyes, and she was nearly choking on her laughter. She tried to tell him, but she couldn’t. She was gasping for breath.

  Des pulled out of her and reached over behind him to turn on the light. She could see in the light, once she got accustomed to it, that he was bright red, with either fury or embarrassment. She knew there was no way she could begin to explain. She wondered if she should even try, then decided that at least it would be on the record if she did.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” she said. “It’s just that you…” She broke up again, putting her hand over her mouth as she collapsed in a fit of giggles.

  “Goddammit, Allison, I don’t think this is very funny. You have been acting like an asshole all weekend, but this really takes the prize. I don’t believe you. What are you trying to do?”

  She managed to control herself for a minute and sputtered out at him. “When we make love, did it ever occur to you to start at the top and work down? I mean it’s not that I’m not sexually attracted to you or anything. It’s just that sometimes I need a little work. You know. I think they call it foreplay in the sex manuals.”

  “Oh, shit. I don’t believe this. I tried, for Christ’s sake. It was like running a hand over a corpse.”

  “Shouldn’t that have told you something? Or did you take that to be your signal that the coast was clear and you should climb aboard?”

  “Jesus, you really fry my ass, you know?”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “What question?”

  “What did you think when I didn’t respond? Did you think that was my own special way of showing passion? Or was there somewhere in the farthest reaches of your mind the tiniest suspicion that I might actually not be in the mood or that I might have something on my mind other than fucking? Like maybe what we talked about this afternoon.”

  “Okay. All right. You have something on your mind. I listened practically all the way home in the car. As far as I was concerned you exhausted the subject. But apparently you didn’t. So now that I’m wide awake and we’re on the subject and I’ve achieved the limpest dick in the history of adult life, let’s hear it and be done with it.”

  “Well, let me see if I can clarify it for you, in language you will understand.”

  “I’m not crazy about your patronizing attitude, but do try to enlighten me.”

  “Okay. What I’m trying to say is this: No talkee, no fuckee. Translated: If you don’t communicate you don’t get laid.”

  With that, Allison smiled sweetly at Des, reached over him to his bedside lamp, turned it off, and rolled over to go to sleep. She hadn’t felt so good all day.

  But she awoke at dawn not so pleased with herself, worried that she had damaged their relationship. The night before was the first time she had allowed her problems to interfere with their sex life, which had been near perfect up until then and sacrosanct to both. She had humiliated him. She hadn’t intended that. She felt that something precious between them had been broken, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  She looked over at the clock. Five thirty. She had a lot of work to do. She couldn’t afford to lose this morning’s sleep. She shivered in the dawn chill and pulled the cashmere blanket up closer around her neck. It was still dark, so she couldn’t see him, only hear his breathing beside her. She was overcome with a wave of love for him so strong that she stopped breathing for a moment, unable to feel or do anything else but just be next to him. It was that feeling of love which overwhelmed her from time to time that terrified her and perhaps made her pull these scenes. This morning she was more afraid than she had ever been. Last night she had felt superior that he hadn’t really understood. Now she felt despair.

  She got up first, crept downstairs, turned up the heat, got the paper, fixed herself some tea, took it upstairs to the study, and lit a fire. She heard him clump around on the third floor, running the water in the bathroom, using his electric razor. She heard him come downstairs and debated whether or not to go to him, put her arms around him, tell him she was sorry. She couldn’t. Why should she always be the one? Still, she felt sick, listening to his feet as he kept going downstairs to the first floor. She could hear him down there opening the icebox. He hadn’t bothered to see where she was. Then she heard him open the front door and felt the coolness of the air coming up the stairs. He slammed the door shut after him. Now she was frightened. She didn’t really believe it was possible to fight and not break up. Yet she had done nothing wrong. He would have to make the first move. Despite her resolve, she began to shake, and her teeth chattered even as the fire crackled.

  * * *

  Much to her surprise, Des had called her for lunch as though nothing had happened. She had spent the morning screwing up her courage to apologize.

  Her Bloody Mary had come. She rarely drank at lunch.

  They were silent for a while.

  “I’m trying to understand how you feel, to see your point of view,” she said finally. “I think I have become more aware of the real differences between us, between men and women. I think I understand how pointless it is to expect you to feel the same way I feel, and vice versa. I think it’s important for us to respect each other’s differences and to try to hear what the other one is saying. I think, for the first time, that maybe men are more tolerant than women. Maybe men love more easily than women. They certainly aren’t as critical. I don’t know what I think. It’s hard when you are so uncommunicative. We make our livings communicating. We’re pros. It bugs me that we can’t make ourselves understandable to each other.”

  “It’s not as if I haven’t been thinking about it myself, you know.”

  “What can we do?” Her voice was plaintive.

  “I know you’re trying to understand, and I appreciate that. But there really is a lot of stuff that you don’t get. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t get either.”

  She fingered her Bloody Mary, playing with the swizzle stick.

  “You want total honesty. I’m going to try and be totally honest with you. I think as a man I am probably not investing the same amount of feelings in this relationship as you are right at this moment. I am getting out of a twenty-three-year marriage. The other thing you have to understand is that yes, I am a typical male. It is not traditionally masculine to whine and complain all the time about hurt feelings. Also, it is not in my nature to do that.

  “The more you complain about my not talking to you or understanding your feelings, the more superior I feel. It makes me feel as if I am in control, and when you’re living with someone as tough as you are, that’s no small deal, baby.”

  She didn’t say a word. She felt the way she did when she had a hot source, and the source was spilling a lot of good stuff, and a wrong word might turn it off.

  “This is hard for me to say, or even explain, and I have been trying to explore this and get a grasp on it. I think that being with you, a woman who does not really need me in the most primitive sense, makes me less inclined to make an emotional investment.”

  “But that
’s—”

  “Outrageous? Maybe. You asked me to tell you my honest feelings. This ain’t easy, kid. I’m admitting things to you now that I have never even admitted to myself. You have to understand that it’s not as if I don’t love you. And I like your independence. I have felt tired in my life, dragged down by women who were dependent. Other people’s helplessness renders me helpless. So when you start making those kinds of demands on me, I feel a little ripped off and I want to pull away. You’re sending me different signals. Do you see what I’m saying? On the one hand you’re this tough, ambitious, hard-nosed career woman and then you turn around on me, after I’ve bought your act, and go helpless and emotional. I’m not prepared for it. And I sort of think you can’t have it both ways.”

  “But that’s not true. I mean how can you think…”

  Allison wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. Before she had a chance to go on, he interrupted her.

  “Listen. Turn the whole thing around. I assume the same thing is true with you. You are a woman who has chosen a role other than being a wife and mother. You don’t have the same nurturing inclinations because of that. God knows you’ve said enough times how hateful the idea of marriage and children is to you, how you detest the idea, and how you see so many women turn into boring old sows. You don’t want that to happen to you. I can understand that, baby. But don’t then expect me to turn around and demand a major emotional investment from you. From us. And don’t be angry at me. Maybe your investment in this relationship is larger than mine. But it’s not as great as if you were my wife and had three of my children.”

  “And I can thank God for that,” she said. “If my commitment is greater than yours and we’re not married and don’t have three children and I’m working, what in God’s name would it be like for me under those circumstances? You would be all I had.”

  She was almost thinking out loud.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked, repeating the question he had asked her earlier.

  “I want to eat,” he said finally with a grin. “And then I want to go home and get laid.”

  It was a perfect October day, warm and sunny, the falling leaves rushing in the soft wind. They decided to walk home to Georgetown. It was Monday afternoon. She didn’t have a story for the next day. She had finished her profile of the Vice President.

  Des usually didn’t work long on Mondays. He had gone into the magazine early that morning to check on his mail. They had had Bloody Marys at lunch, and then wine. They were feeling mellow.

  There was something anxious about their lovemaking that afternoon, breaking the mellow feeling they had shared on the walk home. It was as if Des were trying to find something in Allison, were asking for something, searching for some answer. It was the same for her. Her passion was urgent. When they finished, neither spoke. If Allison had felt uneasy during lunch, she was even more unquiet now. Des was visibly agitated. Rather than lie in bed chatting or napping the way they normally did, he had got up suddenly and announced that he really had to get down to the office. Allison didn’t want to stay alone. She got dressed as quickly as he did and in a quarter of an hour they were in a taxi. She dropped him off on Pennsylvania Avenue. “I don’t know what time I’ll be through,” he said without looking at her. “Maybe we can get a bite at the Class Reunion later. I’ll give you a call.”

  There was something almost embarrassed about the way he tossed it off as he got out and slammed the door. Allison felt more uneasy than she had in a long time. It was not a comfortable feeling. The only thing she could do, she decided, was simply not think about it.

  * * *

  It was Saturday morning, and Aunt Molly had invited her to come over to the White House for tea that afternoon.

  She had put on a pair of wool pants, a turtleneck, and a tweed jacket and walked down to the office. She still had to put a few finishing touches on her Grey story, which would run Sunday and which she was afraid was rather more a puff piece than she would have liked. The problem was she just couldn’t pin anything on Rosey Grey. He was good at his job, smart about the President, liked by the White House staff, popular with the Democrats around the country. Not to mention that she had really come to like him a lot herself. The only thing she could think of to do to get an edge into the story was to contrast Grey with some of the less efficient members of the President’s Administration. That would get her off the hook and give the appearance of fairness.

  Aunt Molly was in an agitated state when Allison arrived, about three thirty, at the White House. Allison had learned not to bring up Uncle Roger’s health. Aunt Molly always insisted he was fine.

  “Oh, this damned place,” she said. “Everything is wrong. I don’t know why we ever wanted this job in the first place. I tell you, Sonny, I’d be the happiest woman in the world if Roger and I could just pack up and go back home to Colorado. Let some other pool soul who thinks he can do it come in here and handle this job. And I’m afraid of what it’s doing to Roger. He’s aged a hundred years. Just look at him. I tell you I’m going to do everything I can to talk him out of a second term. That is off the record, just to be safe. Let the Greys have it. He’s younger and has more stamina and he seems really to want it. They’d be good at it. I’m not, and neither is Roger, for that matter. I hate even to admit it.”

  Allison had never heard Molly talk like that. She could be feisty and funny and tough and even downbeat, but she had never heard her so discouraged, so sad. And she had never heard her in any way question Uncle Roger’s ability. Allison felt relieved. It had always made her uncomfortable to hear Molly talk about what a great President Roger was, how nobody gave him credit.

  “Roger is going to join us for tea,” she said. “He’s so upset about this Hooker thing. He needs a diversion. You always brighten his day. Will you join me in a drop of rum for your tea?” It was the first time she had smiled since Allison got there.

  Allison hadn’t seen the President up close for several months. She had seen him at a press conference several weeks before, but she had been in the middle row and he was well made up.

  Now he looked pale.

  “Goddamn John T. Hooker. Off the record,” he said as he walked in the door. It was automatic now with Allison. “I have a good mind to fire the bastard. He’s caused me more trouble than anybody in my entire Administration. I should have listened to the press when they said he would make a lousy Secretary of State. I should have left him in the Foreign Relations Committee to pontificate on his own time. I think the son-of-a-bitch has lost his mind.”

  “And greetings to you too, Uncle Roger,” said Allison, smiling, as she got up to give him a kiss.

  “Sorry, honey.” He kissed her absentmindedly. “How rude of me. It’s just that I have never been so exasperated in my life. The last thing I need is for my Secretary of State to be provoking the Russians. I almost believe he would like some kind of confrontation. He’s already managed to stall the arms-control negotiations this time around, for thoroughly petty reasons as far as I can see.”

  “He’s been doing that since he got the job,” she said.

  “This is strictly off the record, understood?” This time he looked grim. “I can’t afford to have this getting out, though I wouldn’t put it past John T. to leak it his way. He’s decided to link release of several of his favorite dissidents to the outcome of the negotiations. But now the Russians are balking and he’s threatening to shut down negotiations. I won’t let him, of course, but I may lose a National Security Adviser over this one. That’s what I’m really wound up about. Henry Peterson is so mad he’s about to resign, and I don’t blame him. He thinks Hooker is demented, that he’s overcome with megalomania. I know Henry has turned against John T. And I’m not sure he is wrong on this one.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The Soviets have given me no choice. If we pursue this course they’ve threatened to accelerate production of nuclear weapons, claim we lack interest in the negotiations, deploy more w
eapons in Eastern Europe, which will screw me with NATO, and refuse to go back to the table. They’re playing hardball on this one. I called Hooker in this morning and told him if he didn’t drop this whole nonsensical business I’d fire him.”

  “Will you?”

  “I don’t think he thinks I will. I think he’s going to make this a test of wills. If that wasn’t enough, Peterson has threatened to quit if I don’t fire John T. I can’t afford to lose Peterson. He’s one of the most valuable people on my staff. I don’t know what I’ll do even if John T. backs down—about Henry, I mean. I think he’ll go if John T. stays. What a hell of a mess.”

  “If I know John T., he’s not going to go happily,” said Molly. “He’ll battle it out in the press by getting some stooge to take up his cause.”

  “How did you leave it?” asked Allison.

  “He seemed disgruntled, but I got the impression that he was not sure how far I would go with him,” said Roger. “It’s my own damn fault. It’s just that he’s such a grandstander I thought it better to let him posture and not spend my life in confrontations with him. Now I’m sorry, because he doesn’t know whether or not I’m crying wolf.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I told him I wanted to talk to him first thing in the morning. If he hasn’t backed down then, I’ll just have to fire him.”

  “Then can I have the story?”

  “Here we are locked in a major international incident which could jeopardize world peace and all she cares about is a scoop.” He was only half-teasing.

  “There’s nothing I can do about the situation. There is something I can do about getting the story and getting it right.”