Though at last I was willing to throw to the winds everything I had ever believed about right and wrong, I nevertheless still felt shy and oddly awkward. I think he recognized my state of mind, for he confined himself to easy, casual conversation while we cut the tree, loaded it, and drove home, allowing me to come to the idea gently and to get used to it He knew how I was torn and tried to make it as easy for me as possible. I recognized all too well my moral choice, the moral choice I had had to live with for so long, for I knew that even now I could say no to Rob and have things continue as they had. The point was, could I stand it? I didn’t think so or I would never have agreed with him when he asked if I knew what would happen, never have arranged for the children to be at Esperanza’s overnight, never have gone alone looking for Christmas trees with a man to whom I was, admit it, so strongly attracted. Everything had conspired to bring us to this day, and events began to take on the inevitability of fate, every clop of Nefertiti’s hooves bringing us closer to what now was a foregone conclusion.
We set up the tree and put the ornaments on it, laughing and self-consciously brushing against each other, little touches that excited as much as a kiss. Esperanza had left tamales and beans for us, which we wolfed down while peering into each other’s faces as if we hoped to discover the answer to some sphinxlike riddle. I did the few dishes in an agony of nerves while he dried. When I had finished, he untied my apron and turned me toward him.
“Relax, love. There’s nothing to be afraid of, believe me.”
I could only stare at him with frightened eyes. I knew he could have no idea of how many unknowns there were facing me. I was almost as much a virgin as I had been on my wedding night, and heaven knew that that occasion had been a disaster that seemed to set the stage for the rest of my married life. Of course I was afraid! I had no clue as to what to expect, no experience to help me — us — over any rough places. I shivered.
“My God, you’d think I was going to shoot you, not make love to you,” he commented only half humorously. “Was it that bad with you then?”
He took my hand and led me unresisting up the stairs to Double’s room, where he was to sleep. We never discussed it, of course, but I could see a number of reasons for going there, foremost, of course, not to cuckold my husband in his own bed. The candle he was holding he put down on the bedside table. It was only then I noticed the bottle of brandy and two glasses on the dresser. He must have put them there while I was steaming the tamales. With a smile he poured a glass for each of us. The liquor tasted very strong but felt warm on my stomach, and I actually did relax a little.
“Would you rather undress in private?” he asked right out, cutting neatly through my silent dithering.
“I — I don’t know. Should I?” We were suddenly talking to each other like polite strangers. How would I know what a mistress was supposed to do?
He walked over and taking my head in both his hands looked into my eyes. “You really don’t know, do you?” he said gently, and slowly began to undress me.
How can I describe it? I would have thought I would cringe in shame to be uncovered, made naked, like that, but there was something so natural about the way he did it that I gave myself willingly into his hands.
“You’re beautiful,” he said simply when I stood unclothed before him.
He was in his shirtsleeves, and I unbuttoned his shirt, drew his undershirt off over his head. He is a large man with a broad muscled chest and a V of curling hair that runs down to a line between his navel and his crotch. Even as I watched him take off his socks and underwear, one part of my mind was clamoring that this couldn’t be happening, that people did not behave so, did not stand before each other naked.
He broke mv trance. “Get in bed, love.”
When he followed me in, I got up my nerve enough to ask, “Aren’t you going to blow out the candle?”
“No,” he replied calmly, “I’m not. I want to be aware of you with every sense I have, and sight is hardly the last of them. I’ve waited a long time for this, my dear.”
He kissed me then and afterward bent his head to my breast just as I had dreamed it, but the sweet shock of the reality made the dream seem pallid. How should I describe what happened, what we did? It wasn’t the mechanics of what we did that formed the reality, it was the feeling of rightness, yes and on my part relief that at last I knew something of what lovemaking was all about. He was patient and gentle and led me along until I began to see the potential glory that there could be. But it was all so unfamiliar that I stumbled several times and would have withdrawn if he hadn’t easily, naturally put things right. When at last he climaxed with a joyful shout, I was pleased and glad to have given him such pleasure.
“The first time is never the best,” he reassured me when it was all over, “not for anybody. You’re a joy to make love to, Jan darling — I knew you would be.”
I must admit that I was terribly disconcerted then to see him fumble briefly under the covers and drop something down by the bed. When he saw my expression, he laughed. “You know where babies come from, don’t you? When you bear our child, I want it to be a joy, not a sorrow, a prideful event, not a shameful one. The next time I’ll show you what to do, but this first night I couldn’t put that burden on you.”
“Does — what you had to do lessen your pleasure?”
“A little, love, but only a little.”
“Then show me, the sooner the better.”
We made love again then and afterward slept in each other’s arms. I never thought to feel so warm and close to anyone. I cannot bring myself to think of what we did as a sin.
DECEMBER 25, 1900
Merry Christmas to everyone everywhere! Never have I had such a glorious yuletide. I can’t help thinking of the perfunctory ones I had with David and realizing that never before did I know what it was to be truly alive. Yesterday Rob slipped out while it was still dark, leaving me too excited to go back to sleep, and by the time I got to bed last night I was exhausted. This morning I woke wondering if it had all been only a dream after all.
Francis and Elisabeth had long since hauled their filled stockings back to their room when I came downstairs, and had not, as Francis solemnly promised me last night, touched the packages beneath the tree. I went to the kitchen and began to boil water for the coffee and squeeze oranges as a start toward breakfast. I knew better than to think that the children would sit down to eat as long as the presents under the tree were in the offing, but at least I wouldn’t have it all to do afterward. Yet all the time I went through those simple daily chores, my heart soared When I walked, it was two feet off the floor. I heard a horse and buggy coming, and my heart gave a delighted lurch, threatening to burst out of my body entirely as I saw it was indeed Rob.
When I didn’t see him all day yesterday, dark thoughts came to me in my exhaustion, that he was sorry he had made love to me, that I was a loose woman, that he was already tired of me, that our night hadn’t been as marvelous for him as it was for me, and I don’t know what-all. When I wrote down last night what happened, it was to reassure myself. Even now that he was coming up the walk, I was almost afraid to open the door, to read the verdict in his expression.
Then he stood in the doorway looking at me with such gladness on his face that I almost wept, and he folded me in his arms and put his mouth on mine.
“Merry Christmas, my love,” he said as our lips finally parted. “I’d have been here yesterday but for the usual string of holiday disasters, plus delivering twin girls.”
“Look, Lissy,” Francis’s voice piped from the stairs, “Uncle Rob’s kissing Mama!”
Rob took several running steps and swung Francis up in the air. “Of course I’m kissing Mama, and I’m going to kiss you, too,” and he pressed his face against the boy’s. Francis giggled delightedly. Then Rob grabbed Elisabeth and kissed her as well. “Merry Christmas, Elisabeth, Merry Christmas to all of you! I see that Santa brought you some robes and slippers.”
“Lo
ok, Uncle Rob,” Elisabeth cried, “I have a rabbit on my robe and slippers both, and this is Also.” She shoved a large stuffed bear at him.
It wasn’t long before the presents under the tree were torn open, and paper and ribbon were everywhere. The most popular gifts were the snow scenes in glass bubbles that actually snowed when you shook them, and Esperanza’s presents of clever wooden toys carved in Old Town.
Mr. Bartoli had sent a crate of a new kind of oranges that have no seeds, and Alex Winters had sent his usual enormous box of candy.
When everything was opened, Rob gave me a wink and said to the children, “Look out in the yard — I think a Christmas elf left something out there.”
I ran out right along with the children, for I couldn’t think what he meant. He had set up two swings with bright-red seats hanging from the branches of two oak trees, and just outside Esperanza’s vegetable garden was a bright-red teeter-totter.
I turned to him as the children screamed in delight and ran to the swings. “When did you do it?” I asked him. I knew that I had seen him arrive this morning, and he had been in sight all the time he had been here.
He grinned. “Between twins last night,” he joked. “It was all I could do not to throw pebbles at your window and come up.”
“Oh, Rob!” There were tears in my eyes as I ran to him and threw my arms around him. “My cup runneth over.”
The turkey dinner we all had later was an anticlimax, but good all the same. I looked down the table at Rob and wondered how it would be to have him there always, generous, warm, steady as a rock. Somehow I will make it happen, I thought. This is the way things were meant to be.
After dinner the children went back to playing in the fading light, and Rob and I sat over our coffee and watched the sun going down behind the oak trees.
“Rob,” I said tentatively, “I have a present for you. It isn’t very grand, I’m afraid.” I had made him a flannel shirt of a blue that just matched his eyes and knitted wool socks to go with it.
He changed into his new clothes right there in the sitting room and then held me to him. “It must have been a lot of work making those,” he said with his mouth against my hair. “Thank you, love. I will, as the Jewish people say, wear them in good health.” He held me away from him. “My present for you is in the garden shed.”
“A live goat?” I laughed. “A donkey?”
“Come see,” and he took me by the hand.
Inside the shed I could just see in the dying light the gleam of something metallic, but as I touched it I realized what it was. “My stars,” I exclaimed, “it’s a bicycle! Rob, you fool, I don’t even know how to ride one.”
“Won’t take you long to learn,” he answered imperturbably. “You’ll be having more patients, you know, and you need something less cumbersome than a horse and buggy to get around on. And lest Nefertiti should feel left out, I also got you a saddle. You always said you wanted to ride astride now that you had seen many of these western ladies doing it, so it’s a ride-astride saddle.”
I turned to him in the dim light of the shed. His face was shadowed, but I could see that he was watching me as hungrily as I watched him. “Rob, I want you to know that whatever happens in the future, you have made me happier than anyone has any right to be. I will never ever forget this day and what it has meant to me.”
I am writing this now in an agony of longing. Tomorrow I am going to tell Esperanza that after my session with Mr. Bartoli I am going to an antiwar dinner meeting and may be home late. I am already beginning to see the tissue of deceit with which we shall have to buy our time together. Dear God, let David come home soon. I suddenly realize that I haven’t heard from him since September, and I am ashamed that his silence doesn’t matter more.
Chapter V
MARCH 30, 1901
The whole country is excited over the feat of capturing poor Aguinaldo. Rob brought me a newspaper and watched my face as I read hastily through an account of the capture and finally came to the list of the Americans on the expedition. It was like a blow to see David’s name there. Not only was he pursuing the war, but he had lent himself to this shameful device to capture the trusting leader of the insurgent forces that had fought so valiantly against their would-be conquerors.
“How could he!” I gasped.
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Rob said gently. “There are many who say that to prolong the war would only mean more agony for the Philippine people. Be thankful that it looks as if it is finally over.”
I haven’t written in this journal for all these months because I could share everything with Rob and there was no need. Why chronicle that Double has set herself up successfully in business as a part-time bookkeeper and adviser to a number of small firms that could not afford the services of a full-time accountant? Or that she and her cohorts chained themselves to the hitching rail outside the courthouse one day last month, much to Rob’s amusement and my irritation.
“She and those blasted friends of hers are making a parody of the movement against the war,” I steamed.
“Come now, Jan, where’s your sense of humor?” he coaxed me. “You have to admit she got more publicity for that one stunt than the Third Dove has gotten in three years. You admired her halting the train — why not this?”
Was my irritation a form of jealousy — admire her indeed! — or envy that it was not in me to perform such spectacular deeds? Obviously I cannot talk this over with Rob. He would only laugh and hug me, tease a little and change the subject. In the months since December I have become greedy. At first I was so grateful for what time together we could safely manage that I never thought to demand more. But now I have come to resent the sneaking and the lying, and to resent as well all the time we shall never recover that we have had to be apart. I cannot talk to Rob about this; things are hard enough on him as it is, and all my fault. It is I who am married, my reputation that must be protected. I don’t know what he feels about it, because he never says.
Now I could write a book about why an illicit love carries its own punishment with it. Romantic as it sounds, star-crossed lovers and the like, there is nothing romantic about having to hide one’s bicycle in the rhododendron bushes around the vacant house down the street and sneak in through the back way to Rob’s kitchen porch, to start and fear discovery every time someone knocks wanting him to see a patient, never being able to spend the whole night with him except rarely when Esperanza takes the children to her house for the night as a lark. I’ve come to hate it, all of it, and I only hope that if it has to go on long enough, I won’t come to hate it enough to spoil it for both of us. As it is, I have to bite my tongue sometimes not to whine about the circumstances that my position alone as wife and mother has dictated. God give me strength.
APRIL 4, 1901
If the war is all over but the shouting, as the newspapers would have us believe, then David will surely be coming home soon unless that cryptic sentence of his meant more than I thought. I expect to hear from him any day now. At least his being in on that wild capture scheme explains why he hasn’t written for so long. As more and more details are chronicled in the press, I can’t help seeing that the plan to take Aguinaldo was a bold and ingenious one that must have involved much hardship on the part of its perpetrators. The Sun published a map of their journey, and it looks like a long way to me through unknown territory. I’m afraid I became testy with some ladies on the Third Dove who felt that the spurious expedition’s asking Aguinaldo for food at the end so that they could travel the last few miles to Palinan was a dishonorable thing to do.
All right, I may as well admit here what I would never say to Rob, who has been so patient and steady. Even though at first I was outraged that David was on the expedition, now that I have read of the hardships involved, I can’t help being proud of him. Having no opinion but the military’s to go by, of course he would see the war differently, and I must admit that if it weren’t for Rob I might see it differently myself. I don’t know why I am te
aring myself apart like this except that I am now dreading more than I can say having to tell David that I want to leave him.
What if he refuses to let me go? He is so cool and calculating he would know, I think, that such a move would destroy Rob and me. Of course if he did so, he would only be protecting his precious naval career. Now that I have some idea of what the relationship between a man and a woman can be, I realize that the parody of it enjoyed by David and me must have been as meaningless to him as to me. I think I am desperate enough that if David tried to hang on to me, I would take the children and flee with Rob to some part of the country where we were unknown, for there isn’t a judge alive who would allow me to keep the children if David wanted them.
I am nearly out of my mind with anxiety and fear.
APRIL 10, 1901
I have still heard nothing from David, and I don’t know how long I can go on this way. I have written to Admiral Dewey asking him if he would be so good as to find out for me where he is and what his plans are for coming back.
According to David, the admiral has always liked him and even offered to make him his aide.
The Third Dove has disbanded, and just as well for me, since they all know now that my husband was on that expedition, and almost all of them have been self-righteously disapproving.
APRIL 25, 1901
I received a kind letter from the admiral today telling me that David is ill in the hospital in Manila but should be fit to start for home in a few weeks. He must have been ill indeed to have been in there so long. I hope he is well when he comes home, for desperate as I am, how can I tell a sick man that I am leaving him and taking away his children as well?
Rob also is looking drawn and tired. He pretends to laugh and shrug it off, saying that busy doctors should never try to carry on love affairs, but I know that he is as worried as I am. We pathetically make believe to each other that all is as it was in the beginning, but it’s not and we both know it. Each time we make love it is as if it is our last, and the constant uncertainty about David’s reaction and our own fear of discovery is slowly eroding love and desire both. I wonder how much we can stand?
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