by John Updike
‘I’m going to talk to her.’
‘Christ, why?’ Jerry shifted his napkin from one side of his plate to the other. ‘What will you say?’
‘No idea. I’ll think of something.’
‘There’s nothing you can tell Sally she hasn’t told herself already.’
‘Then it might please her to hear somebody else say it.’
‘Listen, you. I’ll protect that woman. If I have to marry her to do it, I will. Is that what you want to bring about?’
‘I don’t want you to marry her, no. You’re the one who wants that. True?’
He slowly answered, ‘True.’
His hesitation gave her leave to touch his hand. His hand submitted. The two fingers that held a pen had inky calluses. ‘Let me talk to her,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell Richard. I won’t shout and scream. It’s important. Women can say things to each other men can’t say for them. I know she’s not a bitch. I like her. I respect your loving her. I know you went to her because of – failings in me.’
Though his hand withdrew, she had felt him soften; she saw him sit back content with the possibility that she and Sally would settle it all between them and relieve him of a decision. The coffee had come. All around them, they noticed now, conversations were proceeding; the world proceeded through such conversations. Jerry and she, after years of living together like children with invisible parents, had begun to talk to each other like grown people. Before they rose, Jerry asked her with the gentleness of a formality: ‘Do you want me to leave tonight?’
The answer came to her lips so quickly, so instinctively, she felt no decision in it. ‘Of course not.’
‘Are you sure? It might be cleaner. I can’t promise you anything.’
‘Where would you go?’
‘That’s a point. Into town?’
‘You know you can’t sleep in hotels. Don’t be silly. You don’t want to leave me tonight, do you?’
He thought. ‘No. Apparently not.’
‘She’s probably off at a party with Richard and couldn’t come to you anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t ask her to. I have to leave you first.’
‘Well, you must explain it to the children. I don’t envy you that.’
He studied the checks of the tablecloth as if its threads would spell an answer. He kept tracing one square with the middle finger of his left hand. When they had married, Jerry had refused to wear a wedding ring, because he said he would fiddle with it. ‘Let’s take a walk on the beach.’
The Conants paid, smiled at the bored waitress, left, and got into his car, his Mercury convertible. Above the beach the sky was yellow after the rain. The stars showed faint, but a three-quarters moon laid a light on the sand so strong that shadows tagged along behind them. The Sound appeared pinned to the horizon by the lights of Grace Island and, in the opposite direction, of the cottages on Jacob’s Point. Ruth could hardly believe that not twelve hours ago she had lain here watching the sun stride towards her; tide had erased all the day’s footprints. Now in the night her bare feet made neat cold prints as the waves slapped and receded, phosphorescent. Jerry halted her and embraced her and kissed her neck, her cheeks, her eyelids. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘I can’t give either of you up.’
‘Don’t decide now,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘You’ll never be ready!’
‘You don’t know that. I can get ready. But promise not to do anything until the end of summer.’
‘All right,’ he said.
She felt guilty at having won so much so easily. ‘Can you bear it?’ Sally and Jerry: their thinking they were in love appeared pathetic. Ruth held their image in her mind and grew so big above them she wondered if she were going to faint. The polished night about her spun like the atmosphere of a Chagall; she held tight to Jerry, out of pity.
‘What’s to bear?’ he asked.
‘Giving up Sally’ she said.
‘Is that part of the promise?’
‘You must try with me,’ Ruth told him, ‘to the end of summer. Otherwise, what’s the use?’
‘The use of what?’
‘Of trying.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then decide.’
‘God,’ Jerry said, releasing her. ‘You’ve been such a lovely wife.’
Next day, Monday, she called Mrs O, then Sally.
‘Sally it’s Ruth.’
‘Hi. How are you?’ Sally had once been a secretary, and her voice had a controlled richness over the phone, a professionalism one forgot, seeing her shriek and flirt at parties.
‘Not so good.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m calling to ask, could I come over for a cup of coffee?’
Sally’s words spaced themselves carefully. ‘Su-ure. You wouldn’t rather come late this afternoon, for a drink? Aren’t you going to the beach? Yesterday was so dismal.’
‘Yes it was. I won’t stay long.’
‘Would you like to bring your children?’
‘Well I’ve gone’ – Ruth startled herself with an apologetic laugh – ‘and arranged for a sitter.’
‘Richard’s taken Bobby off somewhere, to look at some land or something, but I have Peter and the baby. Do you want – do you mind their being here?’
‘Of course not. I suppose I was silly to get a sitter.’
‘It depends,’ Sally ventured. ‘You could bring Geoffrey to keep mine company.’
Ruth felt she was being manoeuvred, and the other woman was still in the dark. ‘I suppose I could do that.’ Geoffrey hated Peter, who he said pushed him around. ‘I’ll see.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ Sally said, and sang, ‘We’ll be here,’ and hung up. Ruth was furious at having to squeeze Geoffrey’s feet into sneakers. When Mrs O arrived, he cried at being taken away, and Joanna and Charlie complained at not being taken along.
On winter weekends when there was snow, people would take their children sledding on the Mathiases’ hill; Richard and Sally would serve cookies and hot chocolate to the children and tea and rum to the grown-ups. Their driveway curved upwards and Ruth, though full of irritation and indignation and fear, was reminded, by the familiar swaying of the Falcon now this way and that, of the seasonal hospitalities that had awaited her at the top: winter sledding, summer lawn parties, dinner parties, word games, poster-making, a class in weaving, meetings of little committees to render Greenwood even more of a Paradise.
Sally was waiting at the side door. The sun was in the east and the soft fret of tree-shadow that fell on the red clapboards fell on Sally as well, accenting her animal muteness, mottling her like a deer. She wore white pants, tight-hipped and low-waisted in the St Tropez style, and a boatneck jersey with broad amber stripes. Her long feet were bare and her toenail polish needed redoing; her ash-blonde hair hung down with a witchy severity. Her sharp-chinned face looked pale, as if she had lost a pint of blood, or just had a baby. ‘Jerry just called,’ she announced.
‘Did he?’ Ruth was holding open the car door so Geoffrey, fussing and gingerly, could climb out.
‘He wanted to warn me.’ Sally grinned, and as always Ruth found it impossible not to smile with her. Peter Mathias and the baby, a tiny girl with a ridiculous name, had gathered around their mother’s legs. What was her name, something barbaric, an empress, not Cleopatra – Theodora. ‘Go show Geoffrey the swing!’ Sally cried, in her voice of violent melody, and though the children hung back timidly, Caesar, the Mathiases’ big-headed Golden, bounded through their legs and led the way into the back yard, where the swing set stood in the shadow of the woods.
Sally turned; Ruth followed her into the house, seeing the familiar furnishings afresh, with Jerry’s eyes – the square-armed sofas, the nubbly abstract rugs, the glass tables, the Arp-shape lamps, the framed prints by mediocrities like Buffet and Wyeth. He would love it, it would speak money and light to him. Sally did have a gift of light, of inviting, with white paint and potted plants, t
he sun to enter the windows and stay. The kitchen was the brightest room of all; light splintered on the sills and lay in long shards on every wood surface Sally’s energy had polished. Last night, as Ruth and Jerry talked and tossed in bed, sleepless like children under the threat of Christmas, growing actually silly, he had complained what a better housekeeper than she Sally was. Ruth had answered that Sally had Josie, but knew this was a weak truth: she could have a Josie too, if she had cared. She didn’t care; she thought housekeeping a second-rate passion.
‘I put the coffee on but I don’t think it’s dripped yet,’ Sally said.
Ruth sat down at the breakfast table. It was a heavy walnut antique Richard had recently bought in Toronto: she remembered his pride of acquisition. ‘Where’s Josie?’ she asked.
‘Upstairs. Don’t be nervous. She won’t bother us.’
‘I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t want you to be embarrassed.’
‘That’s very sweet of you.’ Sally by the stove flicked her hair back with a toss of her head; it was a little head, the head of a mannikin. ‘I’m sorry Jerry told you. I think it’s too soon.’
‘Too soon for what?’ When Sally didn’t answer, Ruth told her, ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s better for me to know where I am. I’ve been unhappy all summer without knowing why.’
‘I wasn’t thinking so much,’ Sally studiously said, setting a cup of coffee before her, ‘of you.’
Ruth shrugged. ‘It was bound to come out. Jerry’s just bursting with pride.’
‘He told me you promised not to tell Richard.’
‘He said if I did, he’d run off with you.’
‘He also said, Ruth, that you’d had an affair.’
Sally’s back was turned as she poured coffee for herself and Ruth studied her body, looking for traces of Jerry’s touch, wondering if he really adored those high broad hips, that curved, fattening back. ‘He shouldn’t have told you that.’
Sally turned. Her stare was exquisite, in the shape of the eyes and the arch of the slightly frowning brows. ‘He tells me everything.’
Ruth lowered her own gaze. ‘I’m sure.’ She was sliding backwards; she halted herself. ‘No, I’m not sure. I’m not sure he’s been entirely honest with either of us.’
‘You don’t know him. He’s painfully honest.’
‘I don’t know my own husband?’
‘In ways, no.’ Sally sounded blithe saying this, but after she set the coffee on the table, with an excessive care, she sat down heavily and her voice continued husky. ‘Let’s not be so cold. He told me so I wouldn’t feel like a whore with you. He wouldn’t tell me the man.’
‘He doesn’t know the man.’
‘Was it David Collins?’
‘No. It happened long ago, and there was never any idea of my leaving Jerry. I ended it, and the man was very nice. Surprisingly nice. I don’t think it had been very deep for him either.’
‘You’re so lucky,’ Sally said.
‘How?’
‘You didn’t fall in love with your lover.’
‘I did a little. My stomach was upset for months. I lost ten pounds.’ She lifted her cup to her lips, found it too hot, replaced it into its saucer, where it looked like a cup in a Bonnard, seen from an upper perspective, blurred by light. Sally moved her hands on the bare table as if shakily smoothing a cloth. Ruth touched her own cup, and, whenever she tried to recall this conversation, the image that first came to her was of their four white hands trembling and fidgeting on the sun-struck, polished walnut.
‘You know,’ Sally said, ‘you’ve rejected Jerry.’
‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. Perhaps he’s rejected me.’
‘You and he have a problem.’
‘Do we?’
‘Don’t do that, Ruth. Take that tone. For years Richard and I admired you two as an ideally married couple. We’ve never had an easy time of it, and we envied you, I guess – you seemed so sure of each other, so close. Then, this last year, you and Jerry, something was happening, I could feel him venturing out, towards me, towards other women. I figured it was going to be somebody and it might as well be me.’ Sally’s chin had reddened in this telling and abruptly she grinned to hide the trembling of her lips.
It would be so easy, Ruth thought, to lie down and die, to sacrifice herself to this other woman’s vitality. Sally had no doubts of her right to live. Ruth asked her, ‘Have you had a feeling for Jerry for a long time?’
Sally nodded, yes yes yes, and tried to sip her coffee, found it too hot, and untangled her hair from her mouth, her wet cheeks. She said, ‘Always.’
‘Really?’ Ruth was affronted by what must be an exaggeration. ‘Would you have, if you hadn’t been unhappy with Richard?’
The words felt clumsy; Sally stiffened at the intrusion. ‘I wasn’t that unhappy with Richard until Jerry. Now, it’s terrible. I hear my voice going on and on at him and I can’t stop it. I want to destroy him.’ Her tears renewed themselves. ‘I don’t give that man shit.’
Ruth laughed, hearing Richard in that expression.
Sally, just as Ruth was relaxing, became hard and angry. ‘You mustn’t just sit there and be amused. You must take responsibility for your actions, Ruth. You can’t starve a man emotionally and then when he turns to somebody else pull a string and have him back. Jerry needs to be loved; I can do it. I do do it. He’s told me himself, I’ve earned him. I have. I’ve earned him and he’s earned me.’
Ruth felt in Sally’s speech a disconnection, as if she were linking together things she had prepared to say, that made her answerable only in part. She said, ‘Listen, Sally. Don’t think I relish my role in this. If it wasn’t for those three children I wouldn’t be here. It’s too humiliating.’
‘You can’t build a marriage on children.’
‘I didn’t think we had. You talk,’ Ruth said, ‘you talk as if Jerry wants only you. Are you sure? He told me last night he wants us both. I don’t doubt he thinks he loves you. But he loves me too.’
Sally, gazing down, let fall a sad, off-centre, infinitely superior smile. Ruth stubbornly continued: ‘He’s deceived me about you, maybe he’s deceived you about me. Last night we made love.’
Sally lifted her gaze. ‘After everything?’
‘After talking. Yes. It seemed natural and right.’
‘You’re killing him, Ruth. You’re smothering that man to death.’
‘No. It’s not me. Since spring, his asthma has been worse, he wakes up every night. I thought it was the pollen count; but it was you. You’re killing him by asking him to rescue you and three children he’s not the father of from the bad marriage you made. It’s too much for him to do. Find somebody else. Find a tougher man.’
‘Why must you keep harping on my marriage?’
‘You are married, aren’t you? And rather well, if you ask me. Why don’t you give Richard shit? If you tried more with him, you wouldn’t be doing this to us.’
‘I’m not doing anything to you. All I’ve ever asked from Jerry is that he make up his mind.’
‘In favour of you. He needs me. He needs his own children. Children are very important to Jerry. He was an unhappy only child and he loves being able to have three of his own and support them and raise them the way he wasn’t.’
‘They’d still be his children.’
‘They would not,’ Ruth said. Her vehemence embarrassed her. She said, ‘Let’s be rational. Would you be poor with him? I was, and I’d gladly be poor again. I hate our money, the way he has to make it. I’m not afraid of doing without. You are.’
‘I don’t think you can say what I’m afraid of.’
The primmer Sally became, the hotter Ruth felt. Her cheeks burned. ‘You’re afraid of everything,’ she said, ‘of not having everything. It’s your charm, this greed. It’s why we all love you.’
‘How can you love me?’ Sally asked. As if attacked, she stood; Ruth found herself standing also, and in the mood of a desperate child, of a mother in a dream
who is also the child, embraced the other woman at the corner of the table where the coffee cups made circles within circles. Sally’s body was strange, hard, broad. They let each other go, having discovered, in their embrace, that they were enemies.
The varnish and white paint and metal and sun of Sally’s kitchen surrounded Ruth with uplifted daggers as she tried to explain: ‘You need more than the rest of us. You need your new furniture, your clothes, your trips to the Caribbean and Mont Tremblant. I don’t think you understand how precarious Jerry’s living is. He hates what he’s doing. I keep telling him to quit. He’s not like Richard. No matter how many mistakes Richard makes, money will still be there.’
Standing by the table, Sally followed a whorl of walnut grain with her finger, retraced it, and traced it again. She said levelly ‘I don’t think you know us very well.’
‘I know you better than you think. I know that Richard isn’t going to be generous.’
Sally’s eyelids were still pink; she seemed a big perfect child about to cry. ‘I’ve told Jerry,’ Sally said, ‘he’d kill himself, trying to support two women.’
‘That would just challenge him. Everything you say like that makes him wild to prove himself.’
‘You know, you’re very condescending to Jerry.’
‘I’ve known him more than a few months.’
‘Look, Ruth, there’s no point in our quarrelling. What we think about each other doesn’t matter. Jerry must decide.’
‘He won’t. As long as he has us both, he won’t. We must decide.’
‘How can we?’
And Sally’s question seemed so sincere, so helpless and hopeful, that Ruth told her the answer, as smoothly as the end of a sermon. ‘Give him up for now. Don’t see him, for God’s sake stop telephoning. What’s left of the summer, give him some privacy. In September, if he still wants you, he can have you. The hell with it.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Why not? None of us is going to live forever; I’m not so pathetic as you and Jerry seem to think. In fact I think getting a divorce is something I’d be rather good at, once I got started.’ And both women laughed, as if a conspiracy had been disclosed.
But Sally’s hands, the sunlight made clear, were trembling again. She smoothed back her hair. ‘Why should I give you anything? This summer may be all I’ll ever have of Jerry, why should I give it away?’