The 158-Pound Marriage

by John Irving

  What melodrama.

  One night Edith said she was going to call Audrey Cannon. When she picked up the phone, Severin pushed the buttons down; Edith whacked him on the fingers with the receiver over and over, bloodied his nose and wrapped the phone cord around his neck. But you couldn't strangle Severin Winter, not that thick neck. He made no move to protect himself but he wouldn't let her make the call.

  'What were you going to do?' I asked him. 'If Edith hadn't caught you, where would it have ended?' Edith had saved him and he knew it. He must have wanted her to catch him all along. How strange it must have felt to him to be in a situation where he was completely passive.

  Audrey Cannon moved to the city and commuted to school for her classes; she announced that she would keep her position at the university only as long as it took her to find something else. Though I'm told she occasionally appears in town, no one has ever pointed her out to me. Both Edith and Severin say they have never seen her.

  A long time after Audrey Cannon last swam naked in the university pool and a short time before they met us, Edith and Severin made love together again. She beat him all over his back and pulled his hair and drummed him with her hard heels, but she loved him again. Afterward she lay crying and told him that she could never forgive him for all the time alone, lying awake, she had suffered, imagining the strength of the passion for this crippled dancer that had driven an honest man to lie.

  It was after they made love again that Edith told him she was going to pay him back. 'I'm going to get a lover,' she said, 'and I'm going to let you know about it. I want you to be embarrassed when you make love to me - wondering if I'm bored, if he does it better. I want you to imagine what I say that I can't say to you, and what he has to say that you don't know.'

  'Did you just think of this?' he asked.

  'No,' she said. 'I was waiting for you to really want me again. I was waiting to see if you'd ever enjoy making love to me again.'

  'Of course I do.'

  'Yes, I could tell,' she said. 'But now I've got this leverage on you. I can feel it, and you can too. And I don't like having it any better than you do, so I'm going to use it and then it will be gone and I won't have it anymore.'

  'Everything isn't equal,' Severin said.

  'Listen to who's talking,' she answered. Later in the night she woke up; the bed was empty. Severin Winter was crying in the kitchen. 'No, I won't ever do that,' she told him gently. 'Come back to bed. It's all over.' She hugged him. 'Don't worry, I love you,' she said. But later she whispered, 'But I should do that. But I won't.' Later still she said, 'Maybe I won't. You always say you like to know what I'm thinking.'

  She felt they both wore fresh scar tissue which each could see on the other. 'It made us self-conscious with each other,' Edith told me.

  And Severin told me, 'So, you see, you and Utch were inevitable. We'd talked about foursomes before, and I think we were each interested in the idea, but we each had our doubts. I think we both thought it was better than the clandestine affair, but that it could be terrible if you didn't find the right people. Well, I never felt that you and Utch were the right people for us - not for me, at least. But since there were other motives for Edith ... do you see?'

  'What are you trying to say?' I asked. Utch had gone to bed. He couldn't have said all this to her, I thought. 'If you're trying to tell me that Edith is having this relationship just to pay you back, I don't believe it.'

  He shrugged. 'Well, it's not just to pay me back. There are always other reasons ... for everything.'

  'Edith and I are genuinely attracted to each other,' I said.

  'You and Edith wouldn't ever have gotten together at all,' he said evenly, 'if there hadn't been this other thing. I just didn't quite have the right to ask her not to.'

  'And what about Utch?' I asked.

  'I'm fond of Utch,' Severin said, 'and I would never hurt her.' Fond of her! That ass! Such fondness I have rarely seen.

  'Do you mean that you don't have any reasons of your own to keep our relationship going?' I asked. 'Do you expect me to believe that you're just doing Edith a favor?'

  'I don't care what you believe,' he said, 'I'm simply telling you why the whole thing began. Things were not equal between Edith and me, do you see?'

  'I see that you're jealous,' I said. 'Never mind how anything began. I see how you are now.' But Severin just shook his head and said goodnight. I wondered if Edith would let him in.

  He persisted in this line about equality with Edith too. He made us feel as if we had nothing to do with it! He reduced us; he implied that the responsibility was all his.

  'It wasn't all your decision!' Edith screamed at him.

  'It was all my indecision,' he said. 'And I'm never going to be less than equal to you again. It's all right now,' he told us all lightly. 'I feel I'm back to being even now.'

  'You do,' Edith said scornfully. 'It's always you. And I suppose you'll never sleep with someone else again?'

  'No, never,' he said. He was enough of a fanatic so that you could believe him - or at least believe that he believed himself.

  'I don't want to talk to you about this anymore,' Edith said coolly. 'I refuse to listen to you.'

  'Don't treat him like a child,' Utch said to her.

  'He is a child,' Edith said.

  'Look,' I said. 'There are four of us, and there are four versions of all of us, and there probably always will be. It's silly for us to try to make each other agree. All of us can't be expected to see what's happened in the same way.'

  There are probably five or six versions,' said Edith, 'or eight or nine.' But Severin could not keep quiet.

  'No,' he said. 'I see it better than any of you because I've never really been involved in it.' I could have killed him for saying that with Utch right there. He was a child. 'If I'm a child,' he said, 'that's OK with me.'

  'With you, yes!' said Edith harshly. 'It's always what's OK with you - you, you, you!'

  But this was later. That night she did let him in. They came by our house the next morning, after all the kids were in school. Edith would not look at me; she held Utch's hand and smiled at her. When I saw that Edith had a bruise on her face, I grabbed Severin's wrist and said, 'If you were pissed off last night, you could have hit me before you left. I'm not any match for you either, but I could have offered more resistance than Edith.' He looked at me as if he doubted this. A mark the color of a plum stretched Edith's skin tight over one cheek and tugged one eye half-closed; her bruise was the size of a good novel.

  'It was an accident,' Edith said. 'We were arguing, but I was just trying to get away from him. I twisted loose and ran into something.'

  'A wall,' Severin muttered.

  'Coffee?' Utch asked everyone.

  'I don't want to stay that long,' Edith said to Severin, but she sat down at the kitchen table. 'We want to stop it,' she told the sugar bowl.

  'Well, I want to stop it,' Severin said. 'It's not good for Edith and me.' Utch and I said nothing. 'I'm sorry,' Severin said, 'but it just isn't working out. I told you I've felt - well, pressured - to keep going on with it. It's not a pressure that Edith or either of you has put on me; it's all my own doing. I simply felt compelled to make something work which I never felt quite good about. I felt I owed it to Edith. But she really didn't make me feel that.'

  'Yes, she did,' Utch said. I was surprised. Edith sat, her lips together.

  'No, she really didn't,' Severin said quietly. 'It was just me. I thought it would seem more natural as it went on, but it hasn't. I thought that things between Edith and me would get better, but they haven't.'

  'What things?' I asked. 'What things were wrong before this started?'

  'This whole business made things between us worse,' Severin said. Edith still said nothing. 'It made me feel badly with Edith - it made me feel badly about her. I got to thinking that the only times I was behaving well were when I was with Utch. I haven't behaved very well with Edith, and I don't like to behave as I have. I'm v
ery embarrassed about it.'

  'Nothing's your fault,' Utch told him. 'Nothing is anybody's fault.'

  'I did hit Edith,' Severin said, 'and I've never done that before. I feel terrible about that. Before this whole thing began, I would never have lost that much control.'

  'That's my fault, too,' Edith said. 'He had to hit me.'

  'But I shouldn't have.'

  'Maybe you should have,' Utch said. What in hell was she saying, anyway!

  'Anyway,' Severin said, 'it's over. That's the best thing.'

  'Just like that?' I said.

  'Yes, just like that,' Edith said, looking directly at me. 'That is the best thing.'

  'May I talk to Edith alone?' I asked Severin.

  'Ask Edith.'

  'Later,' Edith told me. And again I felt that the more we knew each other, the less we actually knew. 'I want to talk to Utch now,' Edith said.

  'Ja, get out,' Utch said to us. 'Go sit outside, go take a trip around the block.'

  'Go to a movie,' Edith suggested. 'A double feature,' she added. Severin stared at his hands.

  Then Utch screamed some German at Severin; he mumbled, 'Es tut mir leid.' But Utch went on and on. I took Severin's arm and made him stand up while Edith steered Utch toward our bedroom. After a while, we heard both of them crying in there. The language they were speaking was stranger than English or German.

  Severin went and stood outside our bedroom door. 'Utch?' he called. 'It's better not to see each other for a while. Then it gets a lot easier.'

  It was Edith who opened the door. 'Forget what you're thinking,' she snapped at him. 'I wish you'd stop trying to make this like the Ullmans. It's not the same.' She slammed the door.

  'Who are the Ullmans?' I asked Severin, but he pushed past me and went outside.

  'I have to go to the wrestling room,' he told me. 'I don't suppose you want to come along.' It didn't sound like an invitation. I was struck that at least Edith and Utch could talk to each other.

  'Who were the fucking Ullmans?' I yelled at him.

  'The fucking who?' he asked.

  'Severin,' I said. 'Suppose what's wrong between you and Edith doesn't stop; suppose it's not us who are making things bad, but just you - or something else. Then what?'

  'Nothing's wrong between Edith and me,' he said walking away; he was leaving the car for Edith.

  'I can't stay here,' I said. 'They want to be alone. I'll come with you.'

  'Suit yourself.'

  For a short-legged, stumplike man, he walked fast. I was winded halfway to the gym; I thought of his lungs sucking up more than his share of air - air that other people could use.

  'What did you hit her with?' I asked. The mauve mark on Edith's face was almost a rectangle, too big to be covered by a fist. I didn't think that Severin Winter would slap anyone with his open hand.

  'It was just something lying around the bedroom,' he said.

  'What?'

  'A book,' he said. Of course; leave it to him to hit a writer with what hurts.

  'What book?' I asked.

  'Any old book,' he said. 'I just used it. I didn't stop to read it.'

  We were near the gym; I had no intention of actually going in there. Coming toward us were two of Severin's wrestlers. I recognized their hipless, assless, bowlegged walk, and their shoulders crouched awkwardly alongside their ears like yokes on oxen.

  'Did the Ullmans come before or after Audrey Cannon?' I asked.

  'You have no right to anything that's not freely offered,' he said to me.

  'For God's sake, Severin. This is going to upset Edith and Utch terribly!'

  'If we keep on with it, it could upset them more,' he said.

  The wrestlers merged with us. One of them - that dolt Bender - gave Severin Winter an apish blow on the back, a clout with his cat-quick paw. The grinning one with the baboon arms was Iacovelli. He was in my Introduction to European History course, and I'd once had to tell him that the Dordogne was a river in France; Iacovelli had thought it was the name of a king. Dordogne the First, I suppose.

  'Hi, Coach,' Iacovelli said. 'Hello, Doctor.' He was one of those who thought a PhD was rarer than admiralty, but it's odd that he didn't seem to know that Severin Winter had one too.

  'I'll call you,' I told Severin.

  'Ja,' he said. Watching him heading for the gym, flanked by his wrestlers, I couldn't resist yelling, 'I know whose book it was. It was mine!' I had just given Edith a copy of my first historical novel, the one about the French village being wiped out by plague; it was long out of print and the only one of mine that Edith hadn't read. We'd spoken of our early styles, and I'd wanted her to see my first effort. What a book to hit someone with! Over four hundred pages, a heavy weapon. (Later he would say to Edith, 'The presumptuousness of that bastard to think that it was his book. As if a 118-pound novel could leave any marks on a person at all, not to mention a bruise.' But it was my book; it must have been! No doubt they had been arguing about me when it happened, and what better symbol could he have found for his frustration?)

  But Severin ignored me. He never turned or broke his bearish gait. Only Bender looked back at me, as if he thought I might have been calling on him. His machine-steady gaze was as lifeless as the building he was entering: gray, concrete, steel and glass - its insides of chlorinated water, disinfected mats, ice frozen by cooling pipes, ointments and powders which dealt harshly with fungi of the feet and crotch, and countless bouncing balls pumped full of air. That was Severin Winter's world, and I knew I did not belong in it.

  So then it was over. Severin retreated to his wrestling room. I went to the library and waited until I thought Edith and Utch had talked all they needed to. But it was hard to imagine them talking at all.

  When I went home, the kids were playing in the kitchen and Utch was cooking. She was making a complicated meal, though I doubted she felt like celebrating.

  'Get out of here and find something to do,' I told the kids. 'Don't get in your mother's way.' But Utch said she wanted them around; she liked the feeling that she was in a busy place. I sliced radishes, and Jack read to us from an old edition of Europe on Five Dollars a Day. He read all the parts about what to do with children in various cities, then told us which city he wanted to visit. Bart ate radishes as fast as I could cut them up; occasionally, he spat one at Jack.

  All through dinner Utch chattered with Jack, and Bart pushed his uneaten food in my direction. I remembered that it had been a long time since we'd eaten with the children. After dinner, while Jack was promising to fix Bart a bath without pushing his head under, Utch said, 'When the children go to bed, I think I'm going to die. We've got to keep them with us. Can't we all go to a movie?'

  I took a bath with Bart and Jack; their small bodies were as sleek as wet puppies. Afterward the first pair of underpants I tried to put on was the pair Severin had redesigned with a razor. As I threw them away I wondered why Utch had kept them. Now she was splashing in the tub with Bart and Jack; it seemed she would never stop talking to them. The second pair of underpants I tried on also had the crotch slit through, and so did the third and the fourth. All my underpants were uncrotched with a single slash.

  I slipped on my old corduroys without underwear and we went to the movies. It was one of those films without sex and full of simple violence, and therefore all right to take your children to. Someone named Robert is a kind of rookie in the wilderness; he meets various savages, white, Indian and animal, all of whom teach him how to survive. The film is about survival, I guess. Robert learns how to make mittens out of skinned squirrels; he wears rabbits on his feet; he keeps his head warm with an Indian's head of hair. He meets lots of weaker people who are crazy or cowardly or about to become one or the other; they haven't learned all of Mother Nature's harsh little tricks as well as he has. Robert enters the wilderness blond, clean-shaven, boyish and wearing clothes that fit him. He emerges bearded, wrinkled and bundled in animal hides, looking like the animal which grew the hides and somehow shrank insi
de its own skin. He learns not to be afraid and not to feel anything. Apparently a part of survival is getting over things. By the end of the movie, Robert has adapted to the wilderness and is very good at getting over, for example, the rape, mutilation and murder of his wife and children.

  The film was absolutely humorless about this crap, which the audience took very seriously - all except Utch. She knew a little bit about survival, and she started laughing at the very first scene of meaningful slaughter.

  Jack whispered, 'Why is that funny?'

  'Because it's not truthful,' Utch told him.

  Pretty soon Jack started laughing every time his mother did, and Bart, who was used to cartoons, laughed with them. I felt badly, but I laughed more than any of them. We were at odds with the audience; a certain hostility came through to us, particularly during the film's funniest scene. I had to take Bart to the bathroom and so missed some of it but in the part I saw, Robert is about to open a door to an old woodshed. This takes a long time so that the audience can absorb the increasing tension. We know that behind the woodshed door is a crazed mother who's been hiding there for days with her dead children all stashed around her like groceries. There's been an Indian massacre and the mother hides in the woodshed and kills everyone who peeks in the door, then drags the bodies inside with her to wait for more Indians. It's unclear whether she or the Indians have massacred her children. Robert is about to open that terrible door, and we're supposed to hope that by this time he has learned enough from Mother Nature to be smart about it. Of course, it would be smartest not to open the door at all, but it appears he is going to.

  Some rows in front of us several young girls in the theater tried to warn Robert. He puts his squirrel-skinned hand on the latch. 'No, no,' the young girls moaned. But from some other part of the house, another voice hollered, 'Go on! Open it, you simple son-of-a-bitch!' Utch and the kids burst out laughing, and so did I, though I recognized that crazy voice. It was Severin Winter, of course.

  When the movie was over, I hurried Utch and the kids to the car. It was not that I felt we had to avoid the Winters at that moment; it was just that it was raining. 'Stop pulling me,' Utch said. 'I like the rain.' But we were in our car and driving away when they came out with their children.