"Isn't it beautiful?" she would say.
Anyone could please her, and she left me in the warm weather for younger men in beach houses with less money who played volleyball in the sand but had more time to spend with her. I tried to get her back but failed. She jilted me. (I had to face the fact I bored her, too.) She outgrew me, saw through me. There was degradation — oh, boy — turned down by her. She had never seen men's garters before or noticed them in fashion ads, and she had never heard of Camus, Copernicus, or Soren Kierkegaard (the three big K's, ha, ha), either. She found my garters quaint and curious; she never actually ridiculed them, but her amusement was insult enough. I guess men's garters do look funny. I had to employ some technique, though, for keeping my socks up during important business meetings. I've switched to full-length stretch socks now — always dark, except in summer at the country or shore or on weekends at somebody's club. (I won't join a club until I've got the new job and know I can keep it.) They look funny too. Stretch socks choke. I shove them down around my ankles whenever I can in order to release my calves from their abrasive grip. With my dark socks down, my ankles remind me of shifty, slimy men I used to see in dirty movies, the kind of unshaven, evil sneak who'd sidle close and feel my wife or daughter up on crowded trains or come on Penny's pretty skirt and make a mental note (perhaps even jot it down industriously on a small record pad) that his day as a molester was off to a shooting start. I bet these people organize their work week around their sly, depraved perversions. (I've got them ghosting around inside the narrow passageways of my brain also, with this difference. They aren't ghosts. I feel it when they walk about.) They try to take what doesn't belong to them. What do they do on vacations? I wonder how the poor creatures got along before there were buses and subways. What effect will growing investments in mass transportation have upon their activities, particularly in respect to productivity and competition? Will the liberated woman feel back? Will the homosexual liberated woman on crowded buses and trains start feeling my wife and daughter up also? Maybe people will begin riding the subway trains just to be felt up. They could sell tickets, raise the fare. I see a panoramic mural. (My wife thinks I have a dirty mind.) Imagine the trainloads of smiling faces. No one would want a seat. Every hour a rush hour, every rush a crush hour. That could be a partial solution to the energy crisis. (A lot of energy would be discharged.) After all, the opportunities for being felt up in one's own automobile aren't that promising, unless you're my daughter or one of her teen-age friends, or a college kid, although I've done some hearty automobile groping myself from time to time, most recently while being driven home from a party by the heavyset wife of one of our millionaire corporation executives. She wore heavy perfume I didn't like and took me by surprise.
"Do you have to go right home?" she asked unexpectedly. "Or aren't you afraid of your big, mean wifey?"
"No to both," I responded with terse bravado. "What do you have in mind?"
"Lover's lane," she announced, then tittered a moment. "Do you know where lover's lane is?" she asked. "Right here," she answered with another laugh, and touched herself.
She was a millionaire's frolicsome wife with a double chin and acrid perfume I didn't like, and I had always had to respect her (because she was a millionaire's wife. I was afraid of her husband). She was four years older than I was and had a hearty, predatory vivaciousness about her. She made fun of my shy caution and was entertained by my ignorance and naпvete.
"I've got a reputation as big as this whole county, baby. Oh, have you got a lot to learn. Didn't you know that?"
I felt like a yokel. "Does Bill know?"
"A lot I care. I'm a free spirit, puddy poo. I do what I want."
"Will Bill know about me when he finds you dropped me off?"
"Don't be such a worry wart," she chided with a squeaky titter.
My skin prickled, and I thought for a moment she might pinch my cheek or tweak my nose. She tore her stockings at the knees on the floorboard of her car and stuffed them in her purse before she started driving again.
"I can't walk in with these, can I? I'll call you in the city. I come in every Wednesday to see my mother."
"I have an apartment."
"We own a co-op."
"Will Bill know?"
"Don't be such a worry wart."
"Don't use that phrase. It makes my skin prickle."
"Your skin prickles easily, I've noticed."
"It isn't fitting for a woman of your position."
"I'll show you some new ones. Bill and I have an understanding."
"What does that mean?"
"I do what I want. And he can go to hell if he doesn't like it."
"That's some way to talk about a millionaire."
"Puddy poo."
When she called on Wednesday, I didn't want to see her again and told her I had a meeting. (I was afraid of Bill, and I didn't think I ever wanted to see again someone who had called me puddy poo.)
"I'm at the hair dresser," she said on Thursday the week after.
"I was expecting you yesterday," I lied again.
"You'll have to take me when you can get me. Let's have lunch."
"It can't he done."
"I'll pay."
"It's not that."
"You think I'm homely?"
"No. I think you're sexy as hell."
"So does he, puddy poo."
"Who?"
"The guy I'll meet instead. You're not the only fish in the sea, baby. We'll talk about you."
"Does he know me?"
"We'll have a big laugh."
"Who is it?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out."
(I began to feel she had the whammy on me.) I began to believe she would come up to the office unannounced at any time just to make a fool of me in front of the others there.
"You're afraid of me, puddy poo, aren't you?" she taunted prankishly the next time we met at a party, and she did indeed — while my wife and her husband observed from different parts of the house — tweak my nose. "Isn't he, Mrs. Slocum?"
"I wish he were afraid of me," my wife yelled back.
"Call me Wednesday," I ordered her curtly. "And I'll show you how afraid I am."
"I'm at the Plaza," she said when she called.
"I think I've got the flu," I apologized with a snuffle.
"I thought you might, baby," she chirruped pleasantly, "so I brought along a list. And I do mean baby. You come on much better at parties. You're not the only fish in the sea."
I wish I had her on her knees again right here right now. Alongside Virginia. I've done it with my wife here in my study many times. My wife and I go on honeymoon sprees still, lashing all about the house and grounds in frothing spasms. We need liquor. We've done it in all the rooms by now except the children's and Derek's nurse's. We've done it in our attached garage at night when we did not want to risk waking up anybody inside, and we've done it outside in the darkness on soaking wet grass. (If we had a swimming pool, I'm sure we'd try it in there at least once.) We've done it on our redwood patio furniture. I whiff her dense perfume again (and turn around to look). Of course her husband knew. I wonder how he stood it. I know it vexes me almost beyond toleration — I could bang bricks against my head with both hands — to recall I was called puddy poo not long ago and tweaked on the nose in public by someone tasteless and vulgar like her and that my garters were the source of innane merriment to that uninteresting Ann Arbor dropout who wore denim jeans and jackets and never seemed clean. I do not want such people to enjoy even a moment's advantage over me. I wish I had them both magnetized on computer tape and could bring them back to start all over again. It would be the same. One would tweak my nose, the other would smile and quiz me presumptuously about my garters. I called her once two months later to make a date and had to call her again to break it. I did want to see her.
"This time it's true," I explained. "I have to be out of town. Let me call you when I get back."
She
sounded unexcited both times, as though all the tittering had run out of her. She didn't seem to care.
"It's all right," she said. "You're okay. My looks are gone. I lost them overnight."
She and her husband split up, and both have moved away. The children were all at college. The house stands empty and no one knows if it's for sale. I suppose my wife and I will have to split up finally too when the children are away at college. I hope it doesn't have to happen sooner while I'm changing jobs at the company or while my daughter is still mired indecisively in adolescence and high school and my boy stands rooted numbly in terror of Forgione and rope climbing and gives no sure indication yet of whether he will make his way up or down. She has nothing to do.
"I have nothing to do."
She has nothing to do but align herself unpassionately with the new women liberationists (although all that blatant discussion about orgasm, masturbation, and female homosexuality makes her uneasy).
"That's only because," I inform her, "you've been conditioned to react that way by a male-dominated society."
She is not certain whether I am siding with her or not.
"Why should you," she wonders dejectedly, "have all the advantages?"
"Do I seem to you," I answer mildly, "a person with all the advantages?"
"You've got a job."
"Get a job."
She shakes her head with a soft snicker. "I don't want to work." (She does have a sense of humor.)
"Do you want more money?"
"It's not money. You always think it's money. I've got nothing to do."
"Have love affairs. Commit adultery."
"Is that what you want?"
"It's not what I want. I can give you more money, if it will make you happier. I'll be able to."
"That's not what I want. There isn't anything I can do."
"Cure cancer. Money isn't shit, you know."
"Please don't get mad at me tonight."
"Money is love, baby, and that's no shit. I'm not getting mad."
"I'm feeling so bad."
"Don't drink whiskey after wine, and maybe you won't feel so bad."
"I may be getting my period. You even look younger than I do. And that's not fair."
"You'll live longer. Women do."
"But I'll look older."
"What do you expect, if you live longer? At least you're alive."
"I was kidding," she says. "You don't even know when I'm kidding. It's getting harder and harder to talk to you."
My own good joke about Freud, money, and excrement went right by her, and I suppose I will have to leave her for something like that someday (she has never heard of Copernicus or Kierkegaard either, although she may have heard of Camus because he was killed in an expensive sports car), although I would not want to do it while my little boy still appears in such precarious need of me. (I am not sure he needs me at all.) I do not feel he'd last if I died suddenly or moved out. (He would not know what hit him if I were gone. My daughter's wish to steal our automobile may be a wholesome development: it gives her a goal to work toward.) When he grows up and gets away from me, I will get away from him. My daughter will be away too and there'll be only Derek, if we still have him. I wouldn't want to move away and stick my wife with a retarded child. Actually, I would like to stick her with Derek. She stuck me with him. (And he won't even be a child then.) But everyone would be on her side, unless I left her for another woman, which would change everything, because that would be romantic. I think I'd elope. There'd be lots of:
"Why did he leave his wife? They have a retarded child, don't they?"
"He fell in love with another girl and ran off with her."
"Oh."
But change that to:
"Why did he leave his wife with a retarded child?"
"He didn't want to be married anymore."
And there'd be plenty of:
"He was only thinking of himself, wasn't he?"
And:
"How selfish. That poor woman. He left her alone with a retarded child just because he didn't want to be married to her. What will the poor woman do?"
I can hear those choruses of opprobrium reverberating to the four comers of the company. Not that I'm much help to her now when it comes to him. I don't have the strength. I'd rather slink off or look away. Someone will have to make the decision for me: she will, without even realizing she is doing it, or a doctor will have to aid us with an unambiguous recommendation based on anything but our own selfishness. (Our conscience must be clear.)
"He'll be much better off there, safer. They have good ones now. It's best for all of you, the other children too. It hasn't been fair to them. You deserve a rest. You've both been marvelous. I know it will be hard to give him up."
Or an illness or accident will have to occur.
Till then, I'm powerless. (I don't have the guts even to want to talk about it. I've got no answers to the unspoken criticism I imagine I'll hear. I do not want to listen for the rest of my life to my wife's second thoughts. I could forgive myself in a second for putting him away. She would not forgive either of us.) I am not the pillar of support she wants. I keep my mouth shut and my sentiments suppressed, and I adamantly refuse to merge my feelings with hers. (I won't share my sorrows. I don't want her to have a part in them. They're all mine.) I wish I had no dependents. It does not make me feel important to know that people are dependent on me for many things. It's such a steady burden, and my resentment is larger each time I have to wait for her to stop crying and clinging to me and resume placing the silverware in the dishwasher or doing her isometric hip and thigh exercises. (I can't stand a woman who cries at anything but funerals. I feel used.)
"For God sakes, what do you want from me of all people, Jesus Christ?" I roar at her. "They're my children, too. Do you really expect me to feel sorry for you?"
"I need someone to talk to. I wasn't asking you to feel sorry for me. Can't I even say how I feel?"
"Call your sister. You know damn well I can't stand crying anymore." I don't want to hear how she feels. I don't want to have to talk to anyone about Derek. I don't want to have to hear anyone talk about his own troubles. (I find it harder and harder to feel sorry for anyone but myself.) "I can't help you with this. I don't know how. I didn't order it this way and I don't know what to do, either."
And I saw it happening before anyone. Someone cursed us. I am ashes and stale air inside when it comes to him, have the fortitude and fiber of dried mushrooms and wet fallen leaves. I am cold. I could have prophesied. When pediatricians said he was slow, I saw he was clumsy. His knees and feet and fingers seemed angled slightly out of kilter. I discerned he could not seem to hold his head up straight for long. I had a feeling of disaster about him even before he was born (but I had that anxious feeling about the others too). I expected a Mongoloid. I would have settled readily beforehand for a harelip or cleft palate and trusted to surgery — with all three — although I can't visualize either my boy or my daughter wading through life even this far with any kind of serious birth defect. They've had trouble enough without it. I can't see how my wife really expects me to feel sorry for her when I have so many good reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Among them, her.
I want to get free of her before her health fails. I see an ailing wife in my future. There are eloquent forerunners now of chronic invalidism. (She's sure she has, is getting, will get cancer, and maybe she will.) I know her health will degenerate before mine does. She's better at it. I don't want to be tied to her by sickness (hers, that is). I will. I'll get battered by continuing hurricane warnings of bursitis, arthritis, rheumatism, diabetes, varicose veins, dizziness, nausea, tumors, cysts, angina, polyps, the whole fucking shebang of physical dissolution. (I can do without everyone else's but my own.) I'll be caught on that barb. And my grown-up children will keep me there.
"Dad, how can you even think of leaving her, when she's feeling so bad?" they'll say to me in reproof.
"But how can I ever leave her, when
she never feels better?"
They'll get away from it all quickly enough (the self-centered fuckers).
"I don't feel well," my wife wakes up whimpering some mornings in a little girl's voice (when she feels someone wants something from her).
As if I care.
("I was watching you sleep," a girl will tell you while she's still in love with you. "You were snoring."
When she's not in love with you, it's revolting, and she will not want to see you again unless she's lonely or needs your money.)
My wife snores now sometimes, and occasionally her breath is bad in the morning. But, so is mine, and so do I, so we are already in a headlong race toward decrepitude. The children join in with sniveling complaints of their own.
My daughter gets sore throats and stomach pains. My boy pleads tiredness and nausea and will sleep past noon some days if we let him. I use headaches. So does my wife. I've got chest pains I can draw upon, for everybody has great respect for a heart attack, and a liver up my sleeve I can play in a clutch. My wife can counter with cancer scares, and it's even-Stephen down to the wire in the shadow of the valley of Blue Cross major medical benefits. Wouldn't it be a laugh if my wife died of chest pains and I was the one who got cancer? When my wife is depressed and my daughter drops innuendoes of suicide, I can plunge into thick, sepulchral silences for days and feign such absorbed distraction that every remark to me has to be repeated — I can out-ail any of them at anything but hysterectomies if I want to make the effort, any of them but Derek, who begins with certain congenital handicaps that are impossible for me to overcome. (Ha, ha.) All of us boast of insomnia, not always truthfully. Were we taken at our word, not one member of the family has ever enjoyed a good night's sleep. Except, perhaps, Derek, who just can't bring himself to complain. (Ha, ha.) I wonder what's done with them in homes when they reach sexual maturity and discover they might just as well masturbate as do anything else. I'm glad he's not a girl. Castration's inhuman. So they cut off their arms. I wonder how they control attendants. How do they keep them away from the idiot boys and girls? My thoughts go haywire when I try to think of him. Tell me he'll not progress to a mental age past five: and I find myself thinking again if people at five know how to clean themselves properly after defecating. Of course not. My boy of nine still leaves stains on his undershorts, and so do I. (So does everyone, probably, so why must I single out us?) I see him now so lovely, touching, and pitiful I can't bear to look. I see him next at thirty moving toward sixty, and he is appalling. I am dazed, horrified, stricken dumb. Dark hair is growing on his face and on the backs of his hands, and his eyebrows are bushy. Will he look like me? He'll be balding. His suit won't fit. No one will groom him. His dandruff falls like fish scales. I color his sweaters and jackets dark and his face pale. He is slack-jawed and flabby as they steer him about, he is repulsive, lame, and monstrous. He still won't be able to speak. He will not know how to diet or play tennis, squash, or golf, and his build and muscle tone will be sickly. He'll be ungainly. People would stare with hostility if he were anywhere else. They'll forget to clip his fingernails. People will want to kill him. They'll call him Benjy. I will not want to visit him. I hope I can't remember him. I hope I don't find out my wife is committing adultery, even though she probably should.
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