Marry Me: A Romance

by John Updike

  ‘A middle-aged Bohemian with wrinkles and varicose veins and a belly that sticks out.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re young. You’re better-looking now than when I first met you.’

  ‘Aren’t you nice to say so?’

  ‘You could take Charlie. The boys should be separated, and I’d need Joanna to help me keep house.’

  ‘They need each other, and I need them. All of them. And we all need you.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You don’t need me. You don’t. I’m not giving you enough of a life, I’m not the man for you. I never was. I was just an amusing fellow-student. You need another man. You need to get out of Greenwood.’ She hated it when his voice got high in pitch.

  ‘So you’d take the town, too. You’d stick me in a loft and keep the house for yourself. No thanks. You work in town, you live in town.’

  ‘Don’t try to be tough. You’re not tough. You’re not even listening. Don’t you want to be free? Ask yourself honestly. I look at you boring yourself stupid around this house and feel I caught a bird in art school and put her in a cage. All I’m saying is, the door is open.’

  ‘You’re not saying that. You’re saying you want me out.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m saying I want you to live. It’s too easy for both of us. We’re protecting each other from living.’

  ‘You don’t say. What is it, Jerry? What’s the real reason behind all this? Am I so bad suddenly?’

  ‘You’re not bad. You’re good.’ He touched her arm. ‘You’re great.’

  She flinched from his touch; she still wanted to hit him. This time he interposed no obstacle. Her blow, guilty in flight, fell on the side of his head weakly. The tears burned back into her voice. ‘How dare you say that of me! Get out! Get out now!’

  The rain had intensified and the children, theirs and the two Cantinellis, crowded in from outdoors. ‘I’ll take them bowling,’ Jerry volunteered. He seemed pleased she had struck him; he became all efficiency, telling her rapidly, ‘Listen. We won’t talk any more. Don’t think about any of this. Get a sitter for tonight and I’ll take you out to dinner at the seafood place. Please don’t cry or worry.’ He turned to the children and called, ‘Whooo wants to go bowling?’

  Their chorus of ‘me’s battered at her. Behind her, rain tapped sharply at the cold panes. Jerry seemed to exult in her helplessness; ‘Joanna and Charlie, Rose and Frankie,’ he shouted, ‘get into the car.’ He helped young Frankie, who was between Charlie and Geoffrey in age, back into his sneakers. It was as if she were already gone, and Jerry had the children and the house. She felt her head tearing before she connected it with an external sound: Geoffrey had come downstairs, still clutching his blanket, crying. He wanted to go too.

  ‘Sweetie,’ Ruth said, and her voice hurt her throat, ‘you can’t. You have a broken collarbone and can’t throw the ball.’

  His sob slammed her eyelids shut; the other children, one by one, banged the screen door going out, until she had counted four. ‘You can’t go, you can’t,’ Jerry was saying, inside her head; an acoustic strangeness opened her eyes. He had knelt on the floor and was holding the child tight against him. ‘My angel boy, my poor little angel boy’ he was saying. His face above Geoffrey’s shoulder was contorted by what seemed to Ruth exaggerated grief. He tried to stand upright, cradling the child like an infant. Insulted, pained, Geoffrey writhed free and clumped to Ruth; the tears on his cheeks wet her thighs. She was wearing the old black one-piece bathing suit from Bloomingdale’s; because she thought it had made her breasts too pointy, she had years ago removed the wire from the bra.

  Jerry, smiling, brushed the spaces around his eyes. ‘God, this is awful,’ he said cheerfully, gave her a peck of a kiss, and left her in the house with the sound of the downpour.

  The medium in which Ruth sank seemed to be something other than space, for the furniture continued to float on the wide pine boards, the inverted blur in the side table silently upheld the empty flower vase, and the books in the bookcase maintained against all her doubts of her own existence the certain fortress of their own, a compacted solidity more sickening than a city’s, for each book was a city, if opened. Geoffrey, placed on the sailcloth sofa with a slippery stack of children’s books, fretted and puzzled and fumbled himself back to sleep. Crooked and heavy he lay in his sad little shoulder truss, one fat square hand twisted so the palm lay up; it looked all thumbs, like a Picasso hand. She straightened his body; he winced without waking. Then the rain talked to her, talked in a metallic tapping voice near the windows, in a softer voice as she moved to the centre of the room, in no voice at all when she covered her face with her hands. Each passing car made a comet-shaped swish and splash on the road. Upstairs in the bathroom, the windows were misted, and the rain-gutter at the eaves, dammed with maple wings and seedlings, joked at her, gurgling, burlesquing the fall of her urine into the oval of water beneath her. As she moved about making beds, the rain whispered attic secrets – mice, shingles, dry wrapping paper, Christmas excelsior. She thought of her parents’ house in Vermont, of the pine woods, of the soft lane that was a double path of dirt between blackberry bushes, of the blackberries’ scratching, of the hidden pebble that would bite her bare foot, of the baggy pants her father put on day after day all summer, of the pantry her mother kept there, so impeccably and thriftily stocked she and her sister never hungered, and never overate. Ruth thought of turning to her parents now and they vanished in her mind. Face things. They had overlooked her, it would take too much explaining, for them to see her now. She went downstairs, poured a tumbler of vermouth, and took it to the piano. Lacking time to paint, she had lately rediscovered satisfaction in her clumsy access to Bach. The gentle liquor and her spreading hands found a green floor from which music rose in chords; her heart moved upward in the arabesque currents, and her ankles ached from pedalling. By the time Jerry and the children loudly returned from bowling, she had reached, skipping all the pieces with more than four sharps or flats, the middle of her Well-Tempered Clavier; when she stood to welcome them, she lurched backwards against the bench, as if the motion of music, continuing, had pushed the room against her halted body. The vermouth bottle was half empty. Jerry stepped forward with an expression of wonder and conceit and touched her cheeks; there was water on them.

  ‘You’re still in your bathing suit,’ he said.

  His returning, his opening the door, drained the house of the liquid sounds she had conjured to keep herself company. Geoffrey awoke in pain; the children scraped around her. She made them supper, and called their favourite baby-sitter, Mrs O, O for O’Brien, a heavy-set widow with a bosom like a bolster and the tranquil triangular face of a dutiful child. She lived down the road with her ancient, undying mother. Ruth took a bath and dressed to go out. She rejected the staid colours in her closet and chose a yellow dress she had bought the summer after Geoffrey’s birth, to celebrate her return to normal size. The dress afterwards seemed too young for her, too decolleté. Not now, she had nothing to lose. She even dabbed at herself with perfume. Turning from her bureau, she saw Jerry standing before his closet in his underwear, one hand on his hip and the other scratching his head as he too pondered what to put on for this undefined occasion. She saw him, in this rare moment, as beautiful, a statue out of reach, not a furiously beautiful Renaissance David but a medieval Adam, naked on a tympanum, his head bent to fit the triangular space, the bones of his body expressing innocence and alarm. Awkward and transparent – a Christian body, she supposed.

  The seafood place Jerry liked was a restaurant in the old heart of town, near some rotting docks, a made-over captain’s house whose several little dining rooms had each a fireplace; in this season the ashes had been swept out and sprays of peonies had been arranged between the andirons. The tablecloths were red-checkered and small low candle-lamps illumined the diners’ faces as in a de La Tour. Jerry hedged and gossiped through the gin-and-tonics; she let him. Their clam chowder arrived; his voice changed timbre, going graver, so
fter. ‘That’s a nice dress,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you wear it more often?’

  ‘I bought it too soon after Geoffrey. It’s too big in the waist.’

  ‘Poor Geoffrey.’

  ‘He can’t understand about his collarbone.’

  ‘Of the three, he seems least like us. Why is that?’

  ‘He’s a younger sibling. You were an only child, and I was an older sister. Are you ready to tell me?’

  ‘Are you ready to hear it?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘Well, I think I’m in love.’

  ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’

  ‘You must know. You must have guessed.’

  ‘Maybe. But tell me.’

  He wanted to, but couldn’t say it; Jerry lowered his eyes, and sipped soup. This couldn’t be serious.

  Ruth said playfully, ‘If I guess wrong, you’ll think I’m rude.’

  He said, ‘It’s Sally.’

  When she failed to respond, he asked urgently, ‘Who else could it be?’

  A fly alighted on her lips and its tingling imposition startled her; she saw herself as she was to the fly – a living mountain, a volcano breathing the stench of shellfish.

  ‘That’s who it would be, isn’t it?’ she responded, wanting to be delicate, to share with Jerry his justifying faith that Sally was the obvious, the inevitable woman.

  ‘I’ve always liked Sally’ he pleaded.

  ‘And how does she feel towards you?’

  ‘Loves me.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am, Ruth.’

  ‘Have you been to bed with her?’

  ‘Well of course.’

  ‘Pardon me. Often?’

  ‘A couple dozen times.’

  ‘A couple dozen! When?’

  Her surprise, at last, at something, reassured him. He dared smile at her. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. It’s not real to me yet.’

  ‘Ruth, I’m in love with her. It’s not something to gossip about. We meet here and there. At beaches. Her house. In the city once in a while. This spring she was with me in Washington.’

  It was becoming real. ‘Oh God, Jerry. Washington?’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t make me feel it was wrong to tell you. I couldn’t bear to keep on with your not knowing.’

  ‘And last week? When you came back late and I met you at LaGuardia, was she with you then? Was she on the plane? She was.’

  ‘No. No more. I’m in love with Sally. That’s all you need to know. Sally Mathias. Just saying her name makes me happy.’

  ‘Was she with you on that aeroplane I met?’

  ‘Ruth, that’s not the point.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘O.K. Yes. She was. She was.’

  She smiled now. ‘All right then. Don’t make such a thing of it. When you came up and kissed me and seemed so happy to see me, you had just come from her. You had just kissed her good-bye in the plane.’

  ‘I don’t think I even kissed her, I was in such a panic. I was happy to see you, strange to say.’

  ‘Strange to say.’

  ‘I hadn’t wanted her to come this time, she just came on her own. I had to call the hotel and lie, I had to leave the State Department in a hurry, it was really quite inconvenient. Then the planes back didn’t take off, or rather they kept taking off without us in them. Richard thought she was in town for the night. She had called up and said her Saab had broken down. The lies from her that idiot swallows are fantastic.’

  ‘Richard doesn’t know?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Jerry stared at her, discovering an ally, a consultant. ‘I’m not sure. Why would he know and not do anything?’

  The waitress took away their chowder bowls and gave Ruth her broiled scallops, Jerry his fried sole. Ruth was surprised to discover herself able, even eager, to eat. Perhaps she believed that eating as if things were normal made them normal. Jerry’s news felt like an enemy that had broken through the lines but had not had time to occupy more than a small sector of her yet.

  ‘Maybe I should talk to Richard,’ she offered, ‘and get his reaction.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t. If you tell him, and he divorces her because of me, I’d be obliged to marry her, wouldn’t you say?’

  She looked at him, his features gaunt and glittering in the candlelight, and realized he was enjoying this. Not for a long time had they gone out, just the two of them, to dinner, and in its air of danger, of searching each other out, it was like a tryst, and exciting. Ruth was pleased that she could manage her end of this adventure; the loss of a sector of herself had liberated the rest into a new mobility.

  ‘I wouldn’t say’ she said. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t divorce her. He’s had affairs, and probably she has. Maybe they’ve agreed to let this be a part of their marriage.’

  He ignored her certainty that Richard had had affairs. He could talk only of Sally. ‘She has slept with other men before, but she hasn’t been in love before.’

  ‘Who has she slept with?’

  ‘Guys. During their separation. I’ve never asked her if she’s slept with anybody I know around here. Isn’t that odd? I guess I’m afraid to know.’

  ‘You should ask her.’

  ‘I’ll manage my own conversations with Sally, thank you.’

  Ruth asked, ‘Do you want a confession from me?’

  ‘Confession of what?’

  ‘Don’t look down your nose that way. I’m sure I can’t equal your gorgeous romantic affair. But I had one too.’

  ‘You did? Ruth, that’s wonderful! Who with?’

  She had intended to tell him, but knew now he would laugh. His contempt for Richard washed over her, and she blushed. ‘I won’t tell you. It happened a while ago, and I ended it when I realized I loved you and not the man. There was never any question of his loving me.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure.’

  ‘This man wouldn’t come for you, if you were divorced?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ This may have been the truth, but her blood raced as if it were a lie.

  ‘Why won’t you tell me his name?’

  ‘You might use it against me.’

  ‘What if I promise I won’t?’

  ‘What does a promise to me mean if you’re in love with another woman?’

  He paused to chew and swallow. ‘You women certainly see this as war, don’t you?’

  ‘How do you see it?’

  ‘I see it as a mess. I love the children, and did love you. I suppose in ways I still do. This man – was the sex good with him?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  Jerry grunted, comically. ‘There’s a blow to the gut. Better than with me?’

  ‘It was different. He was my lover, Jerry. It’s harder to be a husband than a lover.’

  ‘He was better, then. Shit. People are surprising, aren’t they? You’re surprising. I wish you weren’t. It confuses me.’

  She measured the space between them, to judge if the time were ripe to touch his hand. She judged not yet. ‘Don’t let it confuse you,’ she said. ‘It was a silly little affair, and I’m glad it’s over. I was unhappy at the time, and I’m still grateful to the man, so don’t ask me to betray him. It doesn’t affect you and Sally.’

  ‘But it does. It makes me jealous. Why won’t you tell me the man?’

  ‘If I did, maybe you wouldn’t be jealous.’

  He laughed admiringly. ‘It was Skip, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it must have been David.’

  ‘I won’t play guessing games.’

  ‘It was David. That’s why you’re so hostile to Harriet. It was.’

  ‘I won’t tell you now. Maybe later. I need to think about it. I told you I had an affair because I got over it. You do get over them, Jerry. It’s great, it’s exquisite, it’s the nicest thing there is, but it doesn’t last, and in fairness to Sally – forget about me if it makes it easier �
�� in fairness to Sally and your children and her children and even Richard, you should give it time.’

  ‘It’s had time. It began early this spring, and before that there were years when I loved her. I didn’t have to screw her to love her. Though it helped. Ruth, listen. Don’t try to shrug this woman off. She’s not stupid, and she’s not unkind. She’s never said anything unkind about you; she’s very worried about you. When it showed that we were getting in too deep, she tried to break it off, but I wouldn’t let her. It’s been me, not her, who’s insisted. She’s mine. She belongs to me in a way you never have. I can hardly describe it, but when I’m with her, I’m on top. When I’m with you, it’s side by side.’ He illustrated ‘side by side’ with two long fingers in the air.

  Why must he put her through this? Why didn’t he just go? Why must he try to force her to tell him to go? She refused. Her silence refused him. Act like a man, be a man then. Face things.

  ‘Would you folks like some coffee and dessert?’

  Ruth wondered how long the waitress had been standing there. A stringy woman leaning as if to minimize pain in her feet, she looked down upon them like a bored mother. Nothing about their conversation had been exceptional, her stance implied.

  ‘Just coffee, please,’ Jerry said, and took his napkin from his lap and folded it by his glass with a strange affectionate legerity; he was unburdened. In the burden he had shifted to her, certain awkward points protruded.

  ‘She came to Washington the second time without your asking her?’

  ‘Yep.’ His face betrayed how much he had been flattered. ‘I begged her not to. For her own safety.’

  ‘That bitch.’

  Now he looked alert, hopeful. ‘Why say that?’

  ‘She is a bitch. I’ve always thought so. No other woman would pursue you that way when you have three children.’

  ‘It wasn’t pursuit, somehow. It was flight. She’s not a bitch, sweetie, she’s a good woman who doesn’t understand why she has to be unhappy. She’s like you. In many ways she’s very like you.’

  ‘Thanks. I suppose in your mind that’s a compliment.’

  ‘If it is, accept it, is my advice.’