by Belva Plain
He felt at home with her friends; he really liked her friends. Considering the fact that she was a newcomer, Randi had gathered about her a good number of nice people: the women at the office and their group, the druggist and his family, and the nursery man who had planted the grounds. They were all so relaxed, so uncompetitive, compared with the people among whom he lived in the other part of his life, the men at the office, the neighbors, and even Margaret’s foolish cousins, Louise and Gil.…
And he reflected now: Every society has classes; it’s not democratic and it shouldn’t be, but that’s the way it is. The professor of Latin does not spend his free time with the cabdriver. So it was refreshing, it made him feel decent, to be among people whom he did not ordinarily meet. He smiled to himself. It was ridiculous, but some of them were really in awe of him and what they spoke of as his “big job.”
He wondered what they knew or thought about his personal life. Randi had assured him that they knew very little and wouldn’t give a damn if they did. Besides, it didn’t matter, because none of them would be likely to encounter the people who were acquainted with him back home.
No, it wasn’t likely. Yet one could never be absolutely sure of anything. This game that he was playing was a dangerous one. And he thought of the morning he had gotten up early to have breakfast with Randi, when he had recklessly overstayed his time and arrived late at the office for an important meeting. Indeed, this was a very dangerous game.… And yet, in a curious way, it was enlivening.
“We had a good time,” Margaret said. “It wasn’t anything like the Westminster Show that we saw in New York—how many years ago, Adam?—but I’ll tell you, I liked it better. We got to talk to people, especially the sheepdog people, so we could compare theirs with Rufus, and—you must be starved! Dinner will be on the table in five minutes. I’ve got your favorite corn soup.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“You will be once you sit down. It’s no wonder you’re feeling logy after spending a beautiful Saturday in that airtight office.” Margaret’s hands were busy with cups and plates as she talked. “Danny’s dying to tell you something.”
“Dad, I was thinking, Zack is getting old, you know. And I was thinking,” Danny said, looking very earnest, “that when he dies, Rufus will be so lonesome.”
“Well, don’t bury Zack yet. Poor Zack.”
“Dad, I didn’t mean that. I hope he’ll live for years and years. But the fact is, he probably won’t.”
“That’s true.”
“So what I mean is, can we get another dog pretty soon?”
“What do you mean by ‘soon’? While Zack is with us or not? You have to be specific.”
The boy looks more like his mother every day, Adam thought, meaning not the obvious red hair but, far more profoundly, the thoughtful forehead, the candid eyes presaging the man he would be. And thinking so, his heart seemed to move inside him, while shame crawled up his back.
Danny admitted that he would like to have a puppy now, to which Adam replied that he would have to ask his mother.
Margaret said, “Oh, I don’t mind. An extra dog only means buying another bed and bowl.”
“Gee, Mom, you mean it? Gee, Mom, thanks.”
“But I’ll tell you. The time to bring a puppy home is the summer. I’m home then when school’s out, and I can do the housebreaking. If we were to get him now, there’d be nobody home all day to train him.”
“Okay. Next summer. Is it a deal?”
“A deal,” Margaret promised solemnly.
That was another trait that Danny and she had in common: easy acceptance of reality. Neither of them was ever apt to coax or argue. And it occurred to Adam that he was feeling lately a sharpened new awareness of his children, as if he were examining them as a stranger might, at a distance.
This sense of removal persisted at the dinner table, as he observed them and listened to their chatter: Megan, who appeared to be so much older than fifteen; Julie’s tender little face with its fluid changes of expression, fleeting from anxiety to mirth and eagerness; then Danny, the ultra boy, who he himself had never been.
He looked at the tablecloth that his mother had embroidered in red and blue cross-stitch and over to Margaret as she served the salad. Old Zack slept in the corner, while Rufus looked back at Adam and thumped his tail, no doubt in expectation of his evening walk. Everyone and every object here belonged to Adam. All was as familiar as his own body. Yet he had such a terrible sensation of intrusion! It was as if he did not belong here or had been caught in some strange place, unclothed and ashamed of his nakedness.
Margaret reproved him. “You’re not eating a thing.”
“I guess I’m too tired to eat.”
“All right. Don’t force yourself. Why don’t you go in and lie back in your chair while Julie practices? Maybe you’ll be hungry later.”
He never wearied of hearing Julie at the piano, even when, correcting herself, she repeated the same passage twenty times. This evening she practiced a Liszt “Mephisto Waltz,” whose glide and sway were so well fitted to her young, sentimental temperament. From where he sat, Adam could watch her body move with the rhythm. She was smiling. May nothing ever hurt you, he thought. Nothing. And resting back in the chair, he let himself be soothed by the music’s charm and its secret sorrow.
When he awoke from a doze, Megan was speaking.
“Don’t you like Nina to send us presents?”
Margaret said vehemently, “Of course I do. I’m glad she’s staying close to all of you.”
“How can we be close if we’re never going to see her again? Is she ever going to come here?”
“That, as I have said many times, is up to her,” Margaret answered.
Adam had no wish to be involved in this painful subject. For the past three months, ever since Nina’s precipitate departure, he had tried to slough it off. It had been almost impossible to do. There had been first an exchange of letters, Nina accusing Margaret of having said “unforgivable” things, and Margaret responding that “unforgivable is a strong word. All I wanted to do was to advise you, because I felt, and I still feel, that you are making a grave mistake.” The subject had already consumed too many hours. Yet how else could it have been, in a family as close as this one, after such a sundering?
And Margaret, patiently, had explained to the children why Nina was staying away.
“My heart aches for her, and for all of us who miss her,” she said.
One day when they were alone, she had asked Adam why she herself sometimes had the impression that he did not agree with her.
“I don’t know. I guess I never talk that much about accomplished facts,” he had replied, quite aware that the reply was an inadequate one.
A moment later he had brought forth another thought. “Anyway, we shouldn’t talk so much about it in front of the children.”
To that Margaret had answered, “Why not, as long as they bring it up? We have never hidden the truth from them. I don’t want to sound like a tub-thumper, but I believe children of their age should know what is happening to our country.”
Now, lying back as though he were still asleep, he thought: I may not talk about Nina, but I am aware of her all the time. The thought was wry: It can surely be no mystery why I am. “Double life” is the expression, but it is more accurate to say it is an “inside out” life. Or maybe it is even better to call it “no life at all,” since it has been so mangled and cut in half. And I am the one who has cut it. When I am with Randi, I can never, in spite of all my longing to be there, forget that I have no right to be there. When I am here at home, I long to be back there.…
“Ah, you woke up. You needed that nap,” Margaret said. “Do you feel ready to eat something now? I can reheat the soup, or do you want the salad or some eggs? You tell me.”
She was so good to him. Even though, after a day spent eating and drinking, the idea of food repelled him, he was unable to resist that gentle, worried plea.
&nb
sp; “I’ll have the soup,” he said.
“Good. I’ll keep you company.”
At the kitchen table he ate the thick, good soup under Margaret’s loving gaze, and he felt like the dirt beneath her feet.
Later, upstairs, she came out of the bathroom wearing a new chiffon nightgown, fire-engine red with a bare back and a ruffled flounce at the hem. She stood in the doorway waiting for his comment.
“Going dancing tonight?” he said.
“Do you like it?”
“Very, very pretty.”
It was, and she was, with her milk-white skin and her bright hair.
“I felt extravagant. It was on sale at Danforth’s, so that helped.”
She began her nightly ritual with the hairbrush, picking things up with her free hand and putting them away in drawers and closets.
“I hardly ever wear red. People always say that redheads shouldn’t because it clashes, they say. But I think that’s nonsense, don’t you?”
Wondering why she was making such a fuss over the nightgown, he agreed that it was nonsense.
“I don’t think this clashes with my hair, do you?”
“Not at all,” he said, beginning to feel a strange apprehension of—of what?
“Well,” she said, laying the hairbrush on the dresser, “you’ve had a long day, and so have I. So let’s put the light out and turn in, shall we?” And to his astonishment she pushed down the shoulder straps and slid out of the gown.
Then it occurred to him that he should have shown more admiration for the picture she made as she stood there in her red silk draperies. He should have removed the gown himself and taken her into his arms. But to his sorrow he had not done so and, lovely as she was, had no impulse to do so now.
Yet impulse or not, he knew he must try. For the message in her eyes was unmistakable. So when she lay down, he opened his arms to draw her to him. And murmuring softly into his neck with eager response, she moved against him, curving her body into his.
Nothing happened.
For a long time, as their unions had become fewer, less intense, and farther apart, he had feared a day when he might be impotent with Margaret. And he knew perfectly well, when that day should arrive, what the cost would be. He was already having as much sex every week as the average man was having. There was not much desire for more.
A sickening, shaming weakness drained through him, and he whispered, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She tried to kiss him. She tried.…
A few hours ago in that pool and afterward on the floor in front of the fireplace, he had done such things—and he whispered again, “I’m sorry. I’m just too tired.”
She drew away to lie on her back and, taking his hand, said quietly, “It’s all right. I understand.”
Oh, God, he said soundlessly, hear her. She wants to comfort me.
Neither one of them moved. They were both rigid in the bed. The room was absolutely still.
Margaret said then, “I think you should find out why you’re always so tired.”
“I’m not that tired. I’ll be all right.”
“No,” she insisted, “I want you to have a checkup. You haven’t had one for a long time.”
“I’m fine. It’s just been hell at the office. Everyone’s complaining. I’m not the only one.”
“Still, I want you to see Dr. Farley. Will you promise?”
“Okay. Okay, I will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“I want you to go this week. You’ll put it off. I know you.”
No, he thought, you do not know me. Oh, Margaret, you don’t know me anymore.
“Please, Adam. Promise me.”
“All right. I promise.”
And now I do not even know myself, he thought.
ELEVEN
At night for a week or more, Margaret lay with her head on Adam’s shoulder. Believing that she understood how he feared the loss of his potency, for he made no attempt to make love to her, she wanted to give him all the warmth of her loving reassurance. Glorious joy that it was, sex was, after all, not the entire purpose of everything. To be loved and trusted and not to be alone, these were what mattered most. Surely if these were nurtured, young as they both were, the rest would be returned to them. Just let Adam be well. He was simply worried and overworked. And he had never been a demonstrative man at best. She had known it almost from the beginning, even on their honeymoon. She had accepted it. People differed in their appetites; that was elementary. Adam was a brilliant, sensitive man, more complicated than most people are. She had always known that too. Just let him be well.
On the tenth day when she asked him what Dr. Farley had reported, he told her that the doctor had found nothing wrong.
“Nothing physical?”
“Nothing physical.”
“Then it must be psychological. Didn’t he tell you so?”
“No.”
“Didn’t he say anything, for heaven’s sake?”
“Not really.”
This puzzled Margaret, for Farley was an especially keen and thorough man, even a rather talkative, unhurried man.
“Didn’t he say that something should be done? What are you supposed to do, just go on this way?”
It seemed to her that Adam was looking especially uncomfortable. The thought came to her that the doctor had recommended a psychiatrist; wasn’t that the expected recommendation in these cases, as long as there were no discernible physical causes? Knowing Adam, she was suddenly sure that that must be what had happened and that he was having a typical resistance to the idea.
“I’ll bet he suggested a psychiatrist,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
Wiggling like a caught fish, he admitted it. And then there followed another series of questions, urgings, and objections, until finally a promise was made.
“I’ll go! I’ll go!” Adam cried. “Although I don’t know where I’ll find the time, let alone the money.”
“You’ll make the time and we have money enough.”
“All right. Just let me alone. I’ll go.”
Two weeks passed. Still nothing happened in bed and nothing was said on the subject. So one afternoon Margaret went to see Dr. Farley herself. She was afraid when she took her seat on the other side of his desk. Possessing vigorous health, she had had little occasion to visit a doctor. And so she associated her presence there with bad news.
“I’ve come because I’m so worried about Adam,” she began. “There’s such a change in him—but of course, you know all about it.”
“I don’t believe I do,” the doctor replied, looking puzzled.
“You mean he hasn’t told you?”
“Why, no. I haven’t seen him.”
“You haven’t seen him? He told me he saw you two weeks ago. He admitted to me that you said his trouble was psychological and that’s why I’m here, to ask you to refer him—”
“I haven’t seen your husband in at least two years, Mrs. Crane.”
Dumbfounded, she stammered, “I don’t know what’s going on. I just don’t know.”
“Suppose you tell me what you do know.”
So she told him as sensibly as she could, while blinking away the tears that persistently gathered in her smarting eyes.
“What shall I do now?” she concluded. “It’s not that I mind so much—I mean, it’s not the loss of—of natural pleasures so much as what they symbolize. I think Adam must be very unhappy, and I can’t imagine why. We’ve always been such a contented family. Oh, I don’t want to sound boastful, that would be stupid, but we’re often told that people point us out in the community; we’ve such wonderful children, we’re so lucky, and I’ve always been so grateful, but—there’s something wrong with Adam, Doctor. What shall I do?”
“From what you tell me, I’d say the first thing is to quiet your fears. There can’t be anything so drastically wrong that it can’t be fixed. Next I’d say go home and tell him the truth about having been
here seeing me. Tell him to lay all his cards on the table. You know how to do it. And then maybe it would be a good thing if you were both to come back here together.”
Dr. Farley was a kind man, and this advice was certainly reasonable, but even as she sat there hearing it, even as she thanked him and departed, Margaret knew that the situation with which she had to deal was not subject to such an easy solution.
And as she made her way down the bustling street, past shop windows filled with fall plaids, she went hot with a turmoil of many emotions, all fighting one another, humiliation, pity, and anger. Much, much anger.
Not more than half a mile away Adam, on his way back to the office after lunch, met Fred Davis on the street. Fred had been climbing into his van when he saw Adam and hailed him. Adam had been hoping that Fred wouldn’t see him because whenever he was into his stride and had a definite destination, he hated having to stop for a chat, however short.
“Adam. How’re you doing? It’s good to see you. I don’t get to see you much now that you work on Saturdays.”
Adam said quickly, “Not every Saturday.”
“Well, sometimes anyway. Going back to the office? Want a lift?”
“Yes to the first, and no, thanks, to the second.” Adam smiled broadly because Fred was doing so. Fred was always smiling. He was so damn amiable. “I need the fresh air.”
“Oh, fresh air. In my business I sometimes get too much of it, especially when it goes below freezing. However, no use complaining.”
No, hardly any use, with his new van, tweed jacket, expensive boots, the whole bit, the rugged country look, out inspecting his properties on a fine fall morning. No use complaining!
Inside the van the dog barked. The tips of his small brown paws pressed the window glass.
“That Jimmy,” Fred said. “He loves the car. I took him along this morning up north of Randolph Crossing. Very pretty country. They’re starting to develop out among the hills. In fact, some fellow did build a community a few years back, but he was a little too far ahead of the market and didn’t do too well. The Grove, it’s called.”