by Irwin Shaw
“I talked to him last week. On the phone. You know, he refuses to see me. Even for lunch,” Susan said. “Even though we have so many matters we have to talk about. I know he wants to see me. And I know who keeps him from doing it.” A significant ex-wifely twitch of the soft, hurt mouth. “He sounded tense, Ben. Awfully tense. I’m worried about him. I think he ought to go to a psychiatrist. I have the name of a very good man. He should at least go and talk to the man. Don’t you think he ought to go to a psychiatrist?”
“Maybe we all ought to go to a psychiatrist,” Benjamin said. He finished his martini and reached for another off the waiter’s tray. As soon as people start thinking about a divorce, he thought, they invite each other to go to a psychiatrist.
“It’s your brother,” Susan said reproachfully. “It has nothing to do with me. Any more. But you ought to take an interest. He’s on the verge of cracking up.”
“Is he?” Benjamin said. “I’ll check.”
“I don’t like to say this, Ben,” Susan said, holding onto his arm, “but you’re a hard family. There’s something very cold about both of you. You’re both the same. Attractive. And cold. I suppose it’s your mother’s fault.”
“We’ve told her so,” Benjamin said. “Many times.”
“You’re just like him.” She looked as though she was going to cry before the next martini. “You’ll joke about anything.”
“We are awful, Sue,” Benjamin said. “We remind each other of it every day.” God, he thought, how brilliant it was of Louis to get rid of this one.
“I’m just happy I’m out of it, that’s all,” Susan said. “Oh—” She was looking past him, toward the door. “Here comes your Grand Passion.”
Benjamin took a sip of his martini, making himself do everything slowly, then turned to see what sort of man Leah was considering marrying. But it wasn’t Leah. It was a girl by the name of Joan Parkes, an extravagantly bronzed, extravagantly dark-haired, extravagantly curvy girl who dressed outlandishly, using African ornaments or dresses that looked like saris or tight-bodiced calico frocks with hippy skirts or Austrian dirndls. She was brainless, neurotic, and irresistible, at least for Benjamin, and he had pursued her for three months two years before, at a time when Leah had been away from the city. He had pursued her out of simple, straightforward, helpless lust, and he recognized from the way he felt as he saw her billow into the room that he hadn’t changed appreciably since then. He had never even kissed her. He had taken her to the theatre, he had taken her to dinner, he had taken her to art galleries and concerts, he had even taken her to Virginia for a weekend, and she had never even let him kiss her. She didn’t have affairs with married men, she said. This wasn’t even true. He knew of at least two married men with whom she had had affairs. What was true was that she wouldn’t have an affair with him.
“Never laid a hand on the lady,” he said to Sue, to keep the record straight.
“That isn’t what people say,” said Sue.
“People say the earth is flat, too,” Benjamin said. There was no hope of explaining his relations with Joan Parkes to his brother’s ex-wife. There wasn’t even much hope of explaining his relations with Joan Parkes to himself.
Still, he was pleased to see her. Almost automatically, knowing that Peggy was watching him and accumulating future points for debate, he drifted toward Joan. This evening she was dressed in yards of what looked like pink gauze to his untrained eye, and she was wearing something Mexican as jewelry in her hair. She was with an English movie actor whom Benjamin knew. The movie actor was an amusing man, full of all sorts of wild anecdotes, impossible to have a serious conversation with. As Benjamin approached the couple, making his way slowly, he decided that they were just the people to invite out to dinner with him and Peggy that night. His lack of success with Joan made him feel righteous and innocent about sitting down at the same table with her and his wife, and the movie actor could be counted upon to keep the conversation well away from domestic subjects.
He said hello to Joan, without touching her, and shook the actor’s hand. “What’s that in your hair?” he asked Joan.
“Don’t you like it?” she said. She had a childish voice and the remnant of a lisp.
“I like it very much,” Benjamin said. “I’m just curious to know what it is.”
“It’s an Aztec abacus, old chap,” the actor said. “Surprised at your ignorance. What else does a girl wear to a cocktail party? Where on earth did you go to school?”
Both men laughed. Joan touched the decoration in her hair with dignity. “You’re all the same,” she said. “You want me to look like everybody else.”
“You couldn’t look like anybody else if you tried for a hundred years,” Benjamin said.
“I don’t know whether you mean that as a compliment or not,” Joan said. “You’ve been so hostile recently.”
“When Joan uses the word ‘hostile,’” Benjamin said to the actor, “she means you haven’t called her at least three times a day for the last two months.”
“You’ve changed,” Joan said accusingly. “You don’t court me any more. You’ve become distant.” She was joking, he knew, but only half-joking. She didn’t want him, but she didn’t want him to quit, either.
“Imagine being distant with Joan,” the actor said. “In Britain it would be against the law.”
“All right,” Benjamin said, “I’ll be less distant. You’re both invited to dinner after this is over.”
“You are dear,” Joan said, touching his arm, everything in order again, the invitations steady and dependable. They arranged to signal each other when they thought they could politely leave.
Benjamin started toward the window, where Peggy was still standing, still talking animatedly to the same people. Then he saw Leah come in, accompanied by a tall, slender man with a gentle Yankee face. Every hair was in place on Leah’s head, her makeup was flawless but unobtrusive, the body, naked and warm on the bed in the gold-flecked room only an hour before, now shaped coolly into a black silk dress that showed a wide oval of creamy skin at the shoulder. There was just the faintest quick hint of a smile in her eyes as they met his. He examined the man as the couple approached. Stafford, unfortunately, was one of the handsomest men alive, as Leah had promised, and the pain was compounded by the obvious air of goodness and humor on the long, thoughtful face. As Benjamin watched Stafford coming across the room toward him, lightly holding Leah’s elbow, Benjamin knew that Leah had meant what she said when she had told him she was going to marry the man—if.
One week.
She introduced them to each other. Stafford’s hand was dry and hard, the hand of an athlete.
“Leah tells me you’re a tennis player,” Stafford said. His voice went with his face and figure, mannerly, quiet, pleasant.
“I stumble around the court,” Benjamin said.
“Don’t believe him, John,” Leah said. “He’s wildly vain about his game.”
Stafford laughed. “Leah’s seen me play, too,” he said. “She says we’d make a good match.”
Benjamin glanced quickly at Leah. The glint of malice and amusement he had expected to see in her eyes was there, as expected.
“We ought to get together and play,” Stafford said. “Are you free on Tuesday? Around five?”
Benjamin looked at Leah again. Tuesday, somehow, had become one of the days on which they usually made love. “I’m sure you can play on Tuesday,” Leah said. “Every time I call your office on Tuesday they tell me you’re out for the afternoon.”
“Yes,” Benjamin said. “Tuesday’s fine for me.”
“I’ll call you Tuesday morning,” Stafford said. “See what the weather’s like. Leah has your number, I imagine.”
“I imagine,” Benjamin said. “Speak to you on Tuesday.”
Finally he went over to the window. Susan was talking to Peggy now. Giving a bad rap, Benjamin thought, to all the male members of the Federov family, plus whatever relevant rancor she had left over fr
om her divorce from Louis. As Benjamin approached his wife, he saw that Peggy was looking off to where Joan and her actor were chatting with Leah and Stafford. Peggy’s face was even more firmly shut than when she first saw Benjamin enter the room.
“Good evening, dear.” He kissed Peggy’s cheek. Her hair smelled fresh and springlike. He loved the smell of her hair and he was surprised to realize that he could notice things like that, even when he was annoyed with her, as he was that evening.
“Did you have a good lunch?” Peggy asked.
“Uhuh.”
“How was the tennis?”
“It rained,” Benjamin said. “Didn’t you see?”
“I was home all day,” Peggy said. Her tone was as closed-in as her face.
“I was telling Peggy,” Susan said, “that I thought Louis ought to go to an analyst.”
That wasn’t all you were telling her, dear, Benjamin thought, looking at his wife’s face.
“She agrees,” Susan said.
“Peggy’s a fanatic believer in Freud,” Benjamin said. “In reaction to her father, you know.”
“You don’t take me seriously,” Susan said bitterly. “You never did. Don’t think I don’t know. And don’t think part of what happened isn’t your fault.” She walked away, ready for tears.
“Why don’t you leave that poor girl alone?” Peggy said. “She has enough to cope with as it is.”
“She’s a fool,” Benjamin said. “And why did you tell her you agreed that Louis ought to go to an analyst?”
“Because I think he should.”
“Oh, God.”
“Am I supposed to ask you each time I open my mouth whether I have your approval or not?” Peggy spoke in a low voice that only he could hear, but the tone was furious. “Leave your telephone number at all times, so I can check. The number of the Oak Room, for example.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. I called. The Winstons telephoned to see if we could have dinner with them and I wanted to see if it was all right with you. You weren’t there, the headwaiter said.”
Benjamin sighed. He could say that the headwaiter hadn’t found him, that he had lunched there, but he felt perverse enough not to use the saving fib that evening. He felt put upon and unjustly treated. After all, it hadn’t been his fault that he hadn’t gone to the Oak Room. Foynes hadn’t come into town and Peggy had been on the phone all morning, as he now remembered it, so he hadn’t been able to invite her to lunch as he had wanted to. He looked away from his wife’s closed face at the crowded party. Joan and her actor were moving toward him and Peggy. They were passing Leah. Stafford was at Leah’s side, and so were several men in dark suits. Rooms in New York, Benjamin thought, are too damn complicated. He heard Leah’s laugh, low, disturbing, cool, inviting. The invitation, he somehow felt, was aimed at him, although there were twenty other men in the room. Maybe, he thought, I’ll call her tomorrow and tell her I’ll marry her and move out of town and never go to another cocktail party again in all my life.
“Foynes’s office called and said he couldn’t make it,” Benjamin said, annoyed with himself for feeling he had to explain. “I tried to get you, if you want to know the truth, to ask you for lunch, but the phone was busy.”
“I bet,” Peggy said.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not.” He felt holy and honest at being able to tell the truth and not be believed. Later on he would smile to himself ruefully at this oblique satisfaction, but right now, confronted with Peggy’s blind mistrust, he gave full rein to the unaccustomed pleasure of being a misunderstood husband.
“Where did you have lunch?” she asked.
“Some people came in from out of town and I took them to—”
“What people?”
“You don’t know them.” Leah would never ask questions like this in a million years, he thought. The husband would do the interrogating in that family.
“I don’t know anybody,” Peggy said. “Little old wifey-pie, staying home, bent over the stove, day and night, never gets to know anybody.”
From a foot away, Benjamin marveled, they’d look like a perfectly happy couple, the beautiful young woman, dazzlingly turned out, lovingly discussing the affairs of the day with her adoring husband. I wish I was a foot away, Benjamin thought. Or a mile away. Or in Madagascar.
“I invited Joan and her actor friend to have dinner with us,” Benjamin said. In another moment the couple would have made their way through the crowd of guests and Benjamin wanted no surprises.
“Coward,” Peggy said.
She knows me too damn well, Benjamin thought. Maybe it really is time to move on. He sighed again.
“One more sigh,” Peggy said, “and you’re out. And don’t blind yourself with those martinis. That’s your fourth.”
“Third,” he said.
“Fourth,” she said. “I’ve been watching.”
Gentlemen don’t count, Benjamin remembered, from the warm bedroom that afternoon. Ladies shouldn’t count, either. Peggy was only drinking vermouth over ice. Her abstinence gave her a moral edge over him that also served to irritate him. With deliberation, he finished his martini and took another off a waiter’s tray.
“Susan had some interesting information,” Peggy said, “about your friend Joan Parkes.”
“I have an interesting plan,” Benjamin said, working on his fourth or fifth martini, according to who was keeping score. “From now on, let’s not talk to anybody who ever got divorced from anybody in my family.”
“Ready to go, old boy?” the actor said, as he and Joan came up to them. “Peggy, you look smashing.” He smiled at Peggy, who he knew liked him and she smiled back, hiding everything. She also smiled at Joan.
“Let’s go to a nice, chic little French place,” Joan said. “Just the cozy four of us. Oh, my God!”
“Watch it!” Benjamin said, but it was too late. Somehow, Peggy’s hand had slipped and the whole big glass of vermouth had spilled all down the front of Joan’s ruffled pink skirt, and Joan was dancing back unhappily, making small moaning sounds as the stain spread.
“I’m terribly sorry, Joan,” Peggy said. She bent over helpfully with a small handkerchief to try to repair some of the damage.
“Don’t touch it!” Joan wailed. “Oh, it’s ruined. And it’s the first time I’ve worn this dress.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Peggy said. There was very little apology in her voice. “But don’t worry, Joan, you go right back to where you got that dress…”
“Mainbocher’s,” Joan wept, dabbing hopelessly at the dress.
“You go right back to Mainbocher’s tomorrow,” Peggy said, sounding like a schoolteacher instructing a backward child, “and get exactly the same dress and send the bill to Ben’s office. You don’t mind, do you, Ben?”
“Delighted,” Benjamin said.
“Now, shall we go to dinner?” Peggy asked, briskly.
“I’m not going out to dinner looking like this,” Joan said, her emotion making her say thith. “I’m not going out anywhere. Eric, take me home.”
“Yes, dear girl,” the actor said. “Wise decision.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Peggy said in the same tone she had used before.
“I don’t think you really are,” Joan said. She rushed across the room, trying to hide the stain on her skirt, which now had assumed the shape of the map of South America on the frail pink cloth. The actor looked briefly at Peggy, who was standing serenely in front of the window, beautifully framed by the lights of the river and the bridge and Queens in the gathering dusk behind her. Then the actor gave Benjamin a small, masculine, secret-language, understanding smile, shrugged, and went off to escort Joan home.
“Isn’t it awful?” Peggy said. “You and I will just have to eat alone tonight. Mr. and Mrs. Federov in a cozy little twosome.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Benjamin said. He had never hit a woman in his life and he didn’t
want to start now, with his wife, in front of forty of his best friends.
“I’d like another drink,” Peggy said, like a little girl asking for another ice-cream soda. “Something happened to mine.”
“In the restaurant,” Benjamin said, and grabbed her arm hard and propelled her through the room. Peggy smiled graciously at everybody, the little girl who had had just the most wonderful time, ma’am, at the party, and they reached the door without Benjamin’s having to introduce Peggy to Leah.
They walked in silence, or almost silence, through the dusk toward the restaurant. Peggy was humming a happy little almost-tune under her breath as she walked at Benjamin’s side.
“Mainbocher’s,” she said calmly. “I bet that’ll cost you at least three hundred and fifty dollars.”
“That was a miserable, childish thing to do,” Benjamin said.
“Accidents happen, darling,” Peggy said. Her face wasn’t closed any more, but open like a happy tulip on a spring morning.
“Accidents!” Benjamin said. “Whom’re you kidding?”
“You, darling.” Peggy squeezed his arm affectionately. “I’m kidding you.”
“Disgraceful,” Benjamin said.
“Wasn’t it?” Peggy said cheerfully. “Would you have preferred it if I’d challenged her to a duel?”
“I never touched her.”
“That isn’t what I heard,” Peggy said.
“That damn fool Susan,” Benjamin said.
“It’s not nice to talk like that about members of your own family,” Peggy said.
“I never touched her,” Benjamin said. “Believe it or not.”
“Oh, the poor girl.”
“Do you want to know why I never touched her?” he demanded.