Love Among the Ruins

by Robert Clark

  But Virginia might wonder what Emily truly knows of her mother’s life, for it is a life of parts, not one thing, but many. There is the cleaning and shopping and cooking and paying the bills and the maintenance of the house and yard, and at some amorphous boundary this realm leaches out into the street and the block (the Neighborhood Association and Historical Preservation Society) and down to the church (Altar Guild, Holy Names, and Rosary Societies) and the school (parents association, plus fairs, pageants, and other events too numerous to count). And in the midst of all these activities Virginia somehow finds time to cut flowers for the hall table.

  Yet to see her life only in relation to these things—which are less things than themselves relations, congeries, the sum of what her net hauls in each week—would be to miss its point, its great labor, which is no more than to bear her family, and, in her small way, every life that touches her life in body or mind, safely across the waters of this world.

  Virginia, of course, would make no such claims for herself; it is not given to us to see the pattern of our lives save, perhaps, in retrospect, and even when we think we grasp it, we are likely to get it wrong. Jane Lowry, for example, would describe herself as every bit as busy as Virginia, and might even regard Virginia’s life as the epitome of middle-class indolence. In fact, to her own mind, Jane is not merely busy but, as she perpetually puts it to her friend Frances, “swamped.” Her life is a skiff whose bilge is never dry, and she is too busy bailing to ever set the sails.

  This is how it feels, and it has always felt this way to some degree, but especially so since, ten years ago, Billy’s father left. That term, “Billy’s father,” expresses well enough his condition (absent) and hers on account of it (alone and thus “swamped”). True, his check arrives from California every month, though she is aware of feeling more diminished than enriched each time she deposits it. And at Christmas and birthdays, and sometimes on random occasions, gifts arrive for Billy, generally things related to camping and woodcraft; things Billy’s father would do with Billy if he were here, which he is not.

  Now if the vessel Jane commands has a bridge it is the kitchen, and the round American oak kitchen table is its helm. And it is here that Jane feels her responsibilities most gravely. Yet it is also here, where she is most conscious of all that must be done, that she most feels that nothing is in fact getting done; that she is adrift. The evidence the table supplies can imply both action and stasis. There is, for example, the phone on its specially installed twenty-foot cord, ringing or its receiver scrunched between Jane’s shoulder and jawbone as she chops, stirs, writes, smokes, drinks, rifles in the drawer for a pen, matches, her address book, the scrap of paper, receipt, or card that contains the vital thing this instant requires. But you might equally regard the towering slag heap that is the ashtray, the three or four coffee mugs—all launched solely by Jane during separate trips to the percolator just this morning—or the copies of Ramparts, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and I. F. Stone’s Weekly, either manifestly unread or cocked open at points that suggest half-read articles that will never be returned to.

  Of course, Jane has a job, which Virginia does not, and curiously it is with Catholic Social Services, where she works part-time as a counselor/caseworker. Jane—no Catholic herself but resolutely agnostic—majored in psychology in college and after the divorce she got a master’s in social work at the university, having resigned herself to the fact that a Ph.D. was not in the cards for a mother raising a child alone, nor, that aside, for a personality, a character formation, that, truth to be told, has felt itself “swamped” since perhaps the age of four—no, longer still, since before she seemingly alone rowed herself ashore and landed in this life.

  It is, Jane must admit, a curious thing to be so overwhelmed by obligations and duties—to have unfinished chores tugging at her hem while lined up behind them is the impending sense that some fundamental necessity has been completely overlooked—but also to experience moments of terrible clarity in which she sees that she is not busy, that in fact she is doing nothing. And that “nothing” is perhaps the substance which swamps her, the flood that threatens to sink her altogether. For it is not merely nothing in the sense of a moment of inactivity, of respite or pause. Nor is it the nothing of “nothing in particular,” neither this nor that. It is, Jane sees when she looks up to see it hovering just above and in front of her, her thumb holding a place in a magazine article whose subject she has already forgotten, the index finger of the other hand clawing in the near-spent cigarette pack, “nothing at all.” It is the kind of nothing that is a force in its own right, that precludes all the possible somethings one might try to put in its place; that marks the fact of everything one is not doing and, looming stupidly, heavily like humidity, renders starting impossible.

  It hovers, and were Jane of Virginia’s temperament, she might call it the Angel of Despair, perhaps the Angel of Death. But Jane’s divinities, spirits, and emanations are of an older order, buried deep in the earth with the dead gods, Saturn and Cronus. She has come to this place alone, bone-weary with the rowing, and attended, if at all, by the dead gods’ shades, by the ghosts of futility.

  But now Virginia herself is about to begin “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”—a McCall’s column she approaches each month with pity and, she has to admit, lurid fascination. Each story—each “case history,” as they are called—is presented in the same format: the wife’s version, the husband’s, and then the counselor’s, the marriage a sickly infant, colicky, sleepless, and failing, over whose wasting body they fight and fret and pray.

  Virginia cannot imagine her own marriage ending. That is not to say she would rationally deny that it could end through some circumstance, but that she cannot see or picture what those circumstances could be or how life would go forward afterward, so much is her marriage, with her faith and her children and her ministrations to all of them, the ground of her being. So she reads “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” with a feeling of terrible dread, but dread at one remove—this is not going to happen to her—and it is thus bearable.

  It might seem that Virginia is a bit overconfident in this belief, even a bit of a fool, although she is the great realist of her household; the one who sees with clear eyes where others are blind. It is she, for example, who sometimes feels that this world is going to hell in a handbasket and that it may even be her daughter that is this very moment carrying that selfsame basket through the woods and into Virginia’s house. Maybe what is in the basket, ticking like a bomb, is this boy, William Lowry.

  But it is more than complacency—however well founded—that allows Virginia to feel secure in her home with her husband and her daughter. Their mutual affection is as established as the constitution, and it is the perhaps unwitting genius of their relation that it weathers crisis so well. Not that they resolve their differences with complete dignity. Virginia and Edward have fought over wallpaper, for heaven’s sake, over Edward’s bringing home a black convertible with red upholstery that he thought would delight her, over a single occasion when Virginia turned away from Edward’s bedtime tendernesses (aggravated, to be sure, by what Edward sees as Virginia’s Jesuitical dithering about the problematics of rhythm versus her scarcely used diaphragm, which snickers at them from her lingerie drawer). And in the wake of these conflicts, misapprehensions, and eruptions of sheer cussedness, they have mutually inflicted and endured implacable bouts of silence, flaying one another with disregard, rowing their marriage onward like a slave ship to whose oars both of them are chained.

  These stalemates do not so much resolve themselves as dissipate like weather. Usually, someone tires of the impasse and through a set of diplomatic signals standardized through years of a kind of cable traffic, back-channel mediation, and treaty-making, yields or agrees to a cease-fire. Sometimes it is Edward who yields and sometimes it is Virginia, and Edward yields because he wants to be steady and wise, like Solomon, and Virginia because she wants to yield as Mary yielded, not in pas
sivity but in affirmation of what is great and good. But essentially, harmony is restored because on balance, it is better to be together than apart, and that impulse—which may be a fair definition of married love—triumphs over anger and pain and injustice.

  The marriage of Jane and William’s father –of which Virginia knows virtually nothing—seems to bear this out. For it was not fighting but the moment at which they at last, after over five years, stopped fighting that signaled the end; that revealed the truth that they had both concluded that there was nothing in their being together that was worth fighting for. That is not to say that the anger was instantly gone or that they did not in fact hate each other for a very long time. But they hated each other for having made fools of each other, for having wasted each other’s time, for having depleted each other’s limited store of hopes and aspirations, of innocent credulousness and goodwill. Now Jane has only William to fight with, and sometimes those fights are uncannily reminiscent of fights she had with William’s father. But Jane should not worry, just as Virginia does not. What William takes away from their fights, in which sometimes it is he that yields and sometimes she, is the conclusion that it is better to be together than not; and in this she has taught him a little of what she feels she has never learned to do, which is to love beyond justice or reason.

  2

  AFTER CHICAGO, AFTER EVERYTHING, IT WAS Virginia who first understood what had happened. She and Edward had watched the ten-o’clock news, which featured a report from the State Fair and the concert Emily was supposed to be attending as it had broken up, an hour before. These things took a long time to empty out, of course; and that much longer to find your car and drive home. Edward suggested they go upstairs and go to bed. Perhaps, he implied, they might make love. And they did, although Virginia seemed distracted; seemed to be gazing at some mark or sign in the distance. When they were done, Edward said he would go downstairs and wait for Emily. Virginia waited in the bed with the light out, wide awake, still looking deeply at whatever it was she thought she was trying to make out, that was trying to speak to her.

  A little after midnight, Edward came back upstairs. He said, “I just don’t know where—”

  Virginia interrupted him. “You call that woman, and ask her what her son’s done with Emily.”

  Jane had been in bed a little while, reading something—everything she read might be one thing, so little of it did she seem to retain for more than an instant—when the angel of agony came and stood in her doorway; came and stood and looked upon her with an air that suggested she would be here some while.

  Or in any case, the telephone rang. She noted that it was half past midnight, and answered.

  “Mrs. Lowry? Jane, it’s Edward Byrne. Emily’s father. I’m sorry to call so late, but Emily hasn’t come home and she was supposed to be with Bill, so we wondered . . .”

  “They’re not here. They’re supposed to be at the fair, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yes. But we figure they should have been finished there by ten.”

  “I suppose it’s crowded—that the buses are slow.”

  “They were taking the bus?”

  “Oh, yes. I needed the car today. And Billy said he didn’t want it anyway. They were going very early.”

  “I know. So I suppose they could still be on the bus, riding home.”

  “They might have had to wait a very long time, what with the crowds, and the night schedule and so forth.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I don’t think I’d begin to worry just yet. Billy’s very reliable about coming home. I don’t think he even likes being out late. So they’ll probably be turning up any minute.”

  “It still seems a bit late,” Edward said. “Even allowing for the bus and so forth.”

  “Well, it’s not unheard of for teenagers to get . . . diverted. To run into friends and decide to wander off with them. No sense of time at all. But I’m sure they’re fine.”

  “I’m sure you’re absolutely right. But Ginny’s terribly wound up. I don’t think Emily’s been out past eleven in her life. Maybe for a prom or something. But not really.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re fine.”

  “Of course,” said Edward. “But just the same, could you give us a call when Bill comes in? And of course we’ll do the same when Emily turns up.”

  “I’d be happy to do that. But I’m sure they’re fine. I mean, it’s not unheard of for teenagers to stay out all night. To watch the sun come up. And to be oblivious to the fact that the whole world is going mad with worry.”

  “I know. I know,” said Edward, and he could not decide whether he ought to be irritated with Jane for her insouciance or with Virginia for her anxieties. “But call us all the same when he comes in, okay?”

  “Of course. But you mustn’t worry. Really, you mustn’t, Ted.”

  No one had ever called him Ted. But there it was. He was not going to argue about it under the circumstances. He was not sure he didn’t rather like it; didn’t rather imagine that this “Ted” Jane had conjured up could bear up under the present situation better than could plain old ordinary Edward.

  He said, “I won’t. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “Of course it’s nothing,” said Jane. “Trust me.”

  “All right. Sorry to have disturbed you. But do call, okay?”

  “Of course,” Jane said. “Now go and get some sleep, Ted.”

  “Okay. Good night. Thanks.”

  Jane returned to her reading, but had no appetite for it. She could not say she was worried. It was thirty-five minutes after midnight. She had been quite emphatic with Edward Byrne that there was nothing to it, and she supposed that, probably, this was the case. Her intent had been to ease his mind, but nothing is more readily misunderstood than a good intention, and perhaps what had been impressed upon Edward’s mind was not comfort, but a notion that Jane was indifferent to their children, that she was not a good mother.

  As she turned out the light, as she tried to sleep, it was this that lay upon and over her mind: that she ought indeed to be worried, not only about the world’s estimation of her as a parent, but, as the minute hand of her alarm clock scoured the circuit of the dial, about William.

  Jane is, of course, no stranger to anxiety—the Age of Anxiety, dating from around August 1945, is twenty-three years old this very month—and her daily life is in essence a sandbagging operation against its seas and their tides. But this is worry, and it is a little different from anxiety: Particular rather than pervasive, it arrives unannounced, without anxiety’s harbingers, dread and foreboding, the fearful tea in which we steep awaiting oblivion. Instead, worry simply turns up on the doorstep, the overbearing, passive-aggressive out-of-town relative who insists he “won’t be any trouble” even as he displaces every known routine and custom of the house for days and weeks on end; as he expropriates the sofa, the bathroom, the contents of the liquor cabinet and cigarette carton, and monopolizes the telephone and the ear of anyone within shouting distance. Worry displaces the entire mood, the entire ethos of the house—even if that mood hitherto consisted largely of anxiety—and replaces it with something more substantive, more real than a mere mood. You would be mightily pleased to have ordinary anxiety back in residence, for under worry there is no peace whatsoever, not even the peace of cynicism, pessimism, or despair. Even when all the rest of the world is abed, worry is awake, plundering the kitchen cupboards, raiding the refrigerator, playing the hi-fi, watching the late show until the national anthem closes the broadcast day; then noisily treading the halls, standing in your bedroom door, wondering if by chance you are still up (knowing that of course you are), breathing and casting its shadow upon you, the silhouette of its slope-shouldered hulk and its towering black wings.

  From sheer exhaustion, Edward and Virginia drifted off to sleep a few times that night, but never for long. Every stirring and creak and yawn in the bones of the house hurled them out of the tangle of their unformed dreams to sit bolt uprig
ht in bed to wonder if this might be Emily’s footfall. Edward went downstairs four or five times. Finally, around five-thirty, he settled in the living room, overlooking the street, and having transited irritation and anger at Emily, simply wept for want of his little girl.

  Virginia heard him, or rather heard yet another unaccustomed sound, and called out to him. He told her it was nothing, for it was nothing indeed; the empty street, the icy light of the moon, the distant scatter of chirps from the earliest-rising birds. He watched the dawn come like a great reproach: Everything is rising, coming, coming into itself—everything there is—except your own heart’s desire.

  At seven, he went up to Virginia and told her he supposed they should call the police now. He would call William’s mother first, and then he would get on with it. Virginia nodded and went downstairs to brew coffee.

  Jane answered on the first ring, and Edward said, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “I’ve scarcely slept. I suppose I was too casual last night when you called. Then I woke up around three, and I thought, this is all wrong.”

  “So he hasn’t come back? Called or anything?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Well, we think we ought to call the police now.”

  “I suppose you—we—should. For all the good it’ll do.”

  “I don’t see what else there is. To do. Do you?” Edward was aware that an edge had risen in his voice; that he was chafing a little, caught between these two women, the one sitting in his kitchen dull and mute as stone, the other now muttering sullenly at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Jane said. “Of course we should. This is very hard. Will you tell me right away what they say? What we ought to do?”

  It was understood that Edward would call, and that he would call on Jane’s behalf as well as his and Virginia’s, although how this arrangement had been effected you could not say, save that he was the male on the scene, and since Jane lacked such an agent, Edward would act for her.