I’d be in bed with the covers up to my chin and I’d say in a tiny voice, “Here she is, David.”
He’d come over to me and sit down on the edge of the bed, and look at me so tenderly that sometimes I’d start to cry. I’d start to cry just like a little girl. He’d be so kind to me and would sit me up and take me in his arms and kiss me so sweetly that I thought I would just dissolve—he was so sweet. And he’d say, “I love you, Camille.”
“Oh God, David,” I’d say, “I love you so much.” And then he’d get undressed and we’d make love for hours.
But it wasn’t just the making love that was so wonderful; I don’t want you to think that. And it wasn’t only that we’d just gotten married. Sometimes we acted like people who’d been married fifty years. I imagine that it was mostly that we understood each other so well—at least David understood me, and I trusted him and so didn’t really have to understand him.
Anyway, THAT was how it was when we first got married. We were living in New Marsails then and David was working for the A-T, that’s the New Marsails Evening Almanac-Telegraph.
I had met him at a party on the Northside. My father had sent me away to a school in Atlanta, where they were supposed to teach me to be a lady, and where I was supposed to meet a nice, young southern gentleman. But I had managed to survive it, and came back to New Marsails without a husband.
When I got back, I discovered some of my friends had fallen in with a kind of Bohemian group who were studying art at the museum or writing and who sat on the floor talking about Marx. So they took me to one of their parties. I wanted very much to go because it would be such a relief from my exile in Atlanta. And I met David there.
We started to go out a lot, only it wasn’t exactly what my Mama would’ve called COURTING, because we didn’t really have dates; I just went with David when he had an assignment. But I didn’t care where he took me just as long as I was with him.
But there’d be times when we were supposed to see each other that he’d call and say, “Camille, I can’t come for you; you can’t meet me. I can’t see you tonight. I have to finish something.” Of course, I’d wonder what was so special and why he seemed so hard. I knew he loved me; I knew I wasn’t just fooling myself about that. And he knew I loved him. But still there were those times and the strange tone he’d get in his voice, faraway and evasive and short. He wouldn’t even let me come and sit with him.
You can guess what I’d think: it was another girl, and I’d get sad and convince myself, even though I knew better, that he was just playing with me. But really, way down deep that wasn’t it at all. It started to come out a little when I met his father.
One Sunday he picked me up for a ride and we started north up toward Sutton. He didn’t say very much; he was thinking seriously about something. When we got to the Square in Sutton, instead of going straight he turned left, and before I realized I should have been a little nervous, I was standing in front of his father, Demetrius, who was a thin, hard-looking man with white hair. David went for some drinks. Mister Willson looked at me for a long time. “You love him, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“He loves you too. Apt to want to marry you soon. You want to marry him?”
“Yes, Mister Willson,” I answered.
“That’s fine with me. But you got to know what you’re getting into. You won’t ever be able to leave him. He’ll need you one of these days, more than you imagine he does. He’s bit off a good deal more than he can chew. He doesn’t know I really know about it. But I do.” David came then, and Mister Willson stopped, but I don’t think he would have said any more anyway.
I don’t know if what David’s father said made me feel any better about those nights David acted so strange; I don’t know if what anyone said would’ve made any real difference in how I felt about him, because I was very much in love with him, and if someone had told me something bad about him, I wouldn’t have believed it, and if someone had told me something good, I would’ve felt that of course he was wonderful.
At any rate, it wasn’t long before he asked me to marry him. I married him and we were very happy. We lived in New Marsails and went to the parties on the Northside, and I went with David on his assignments. And when we came home to our place, we made love and laughed and really enjoyed being with each other. But still, there were those nights he didn’t want me around, when he’d ship me off to the movies. Those evenings didn’t worry me as much as they had before we were married, and even if I had worried, I wouldn’t have said anything because I trusted him and didn’t want to nag him. And sometimes he would say to me, “Camille, thank you for not asking me about what I’m doing. The less you know about it, the better.”
Then I got pregnant with Dewey, and David got fired and everything came out into the open.
Besides writing for the A-T, David had been sending pieces to some communistic magazines in New York. He’d used a pen name, but the A-T had found out and they’d fired him, mainly because he had been taking a very radical stand on race issues. I didn’t understand much more than that, but if he thought he was doing the right thing, it didn’t matter to me what he was doing. I tried to tell him it was all right and if he wanted to go to New York and work full time on those magazines, we would go to New York. But when I told him about the baby coming—and I couldn’t very well keep it from him—he said No, we couldn’t go to New York because newspaper work was too unsteady and we might get stranded there. He tried and tried to get a job, and couldn’t, and he started to get panicky and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Each day he’d change more and more.
The way he acted may have had something to do with the letters he was getting from up North. I never read them; he never told me what they said, but each time one came he’d get more distant. They all came in unmarked envelopes; they all had New York post marks. I got so I could recognize the typewriter, an elite with a broken “I.” Every time the “I” was punched, the typewriter would skip automatically, so that Willson was spelled w-i-space-l-l-s-o-n. I’d fetch the mail from the box and scan the fronts and I’d come to a letter addressed: “Mr. Davi d Wi llson”—and I’d know that whatever was inside would make David more unhappy, more unfriendly than he already was. It got so I’d take a letter from the box and see that typewriter and hope that one day I would meet the person who was using it and kill him with my bare hands. Well, of course that was just a daydream and nothing ever happened, but whoever was writing the letters, whoever David would sit up late trying to answer, whoever it was never came and I never saw him. Even when the letters stopped, it was too late. The damage had all been done.
The last letter was delivered one morning after David had left for the day. It was longer than any letter before it; I knew this because it came in a business envelope instead of a personal one like the others, and it seemed to weigh more. But it was the same person; I recognized the typewriter. I carried it up from the mailbox, up to our apartment, and thought for a long time about opening it. But I didn’t. I just sat on the bed for half the morning weighing it in my hands, feeling how heavy it was, and wondering whether or not, because it was so long, it would be even worse than the others before it. And then I decided if David wanted to tell me about it, he would, and if I could help him, I would, but if I couldn’t help him, I’d love him just the same. Then I put the letter on top of the dresser and left the room.
David came home very late. I was already undressed, in bed reading, when he came in and closed the door behind him. He smiled at me, then saw the letter on the dresser; he knew who it was from as well as I did. He looked down at me for a long time. Then he went to the dresser, opened it, neatly at one end, rather than across the top, sat down on the edge of the bed and read it. It seemed to take him hours. I sat and watched him as he read one page after another, putting each page at the back. When he was done, he sat and stared at the floor, holding it between his k
nees. Then he folded it and slid it back in the envelope and said, “Well, that’s the last one. He’s promised. Perhaps I’ll have some peace now.”
For a second I felt very warm and good inside because I was listening to his words, and not the way he’d said them.
I watched him, saying nothing as he undressed. I put out the light and we lay awake not touching each other for a long time. I knew he was awake because he was on his back; he can’t fall asleep on his back. Finally he sighed and although I knew he might think I was prying, I said, “David, isn’t there anything at all I can do? Anything at all?”
He was quiet for a long time, then sighed again. “You have a great deal of faith in me, don’t you.”
“Yes, David.”
“How did you ever come to have faith in me?” He didn’t ask that like he felt I shouldn’t have faith in him; it was rather like he wanted a factual answer. He always wanted me to put some feeling I had into words, and I always found it hard to do, but I tried.
“I don’t know. I just did. You never did anything to me that ever made me not want to. I liked you and then I loved you, and I always had faith you would never hurt me on purpose.”
“But suppose I did something to hurt you? Suppose I went out of here one morning, supposedly looking for a job, and that night you read in the paper that David Willson and some married woman, both naked and in bed, had been shot to death by the woman’s husband? Suppose this article said I’d been seeing this woman for two or three years? Would you still have faith in me; would you still love me then?”
While he was talking a sick feeling traveled up my spine. But then I realized he was only giving me a for-instance, that nothing like that was really going on, that he was trying to find out something else altogether. “David, don’t say things like that.”
“Why?” He shot up to a sitting position. “You wouldn’t have faith in me then, would you?”
“It isn’t that, David.” I reached out my hand and put it on his arm; he didn’t move away. “It isn’t that. I’d want you alive, no matter what. But it isn’t that I wouldn’t have faith in you. You may be doing those things, but the reason I’d have faith in you is that I don’t think you are. And if what you say did happen, I guess, after I’d been hurt, I’d think you had a good reason. Maybe I’d hate you, too. But then I’d say to myself that maybe you had to do it because of something I didn’t know about or couldn’t help you with or maybe even because you’d found something with her that you couldn’t find with me. I guess I’d still have faith that you did the best thing as you saw it.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
“Well then, what if I did something like that and then found out I was wrong and felt guilty about it, and felt I’d betrayed you and, most of all, myself? Who could get me to have faith in MYSELF again?” He stopped. “Could you do it? Could you say anything to me that would make any difference in how I felt about myself?”
“I don’t know, David. I’d try. I’d accept the fact that you’d done it and try to make you accept it.” I could see him better now, sitting up in bed, his body leaning slightly forward, his fists clenched.
“What if I hadn’t done something that perhaps I should have done? Suppose I was a coward when I should have, when I could have been brave? Because, Camille, that’s what I am. I’m a coward when I don’t have to be. And that’s even worse than being a coward when you have to be, when you can’t be anything else.”
I wanted so much for him to tell me. “What about?”
“That isn’t even important now.”
“But it is!”
“Not the particular thing. Just that I was supposed to have believed very strongly in something and when the time came to stand up for it, I didn’t. I retreated.”
I should have thought more carefully about what I said then. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have believed in it at all. Maybe it wasn’t any good to start with.”
He turned to me; I’d hurt him. “But it was good! It still is!”
“But maybe not for you. Maybe it isn’t the right thing at all for you.” I shouldn’t have pressed him.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you don’t understand at all.” He fell back onto his pillow, staring at the ceiling.
“I try, David. I want to. I’m sorry if I don’t.” Oh…and I didn’t want to, I tried to stop and felt very ashamed of myself, but I could feel myself starting to cry. Not much, just small drops off the sides of my cheeks.
“Camille? Camille, don’t. It’s not your fault; it isn’t, any of it, your fault.” He reached out his hand to me under the covers and held my arm. And I turned toward him and he put his arms around me and kissed my eyes.
“David, I wish I could help you. I wish I could do something, but I’m not…I’m so…stupid.” He kissed me again and I could feel his body and mine start to want each other and I held him to me as tight as I could and he reached down and started to pull up the hem of my nightgown. Then he stopped kissing me and I tried to pull him closer to me because making love was the only thing I could do really well, and all at once I felt on my cheek what at first I thought were my own tears, but they were his. He rolled away from me. “It’s no use. I don’t even feel human any more.”
That was the last time we were ever really romantic; after that things never got any better between us; after that we moved to Sutton, and David started working with his father on the family businesses. His family was very nice to us, but I knew David hated being there; I knew it was the last thing he ever wanted to do because he hated the idea of people making money just because they happened to own land that other, poorer people needed to live on. He hated the idea of collecting rents and all the other things landlords do. Because he was so unhappy, we had less and less to say to each other and we never went into New Marsails to the people on the Northside. Sometimes I’d ask him about it and he’d say that we had to grow up; we couldn’t do those childish things any more. We made love, from time to time, and I got pregnant again, with Dymphna, and David seemed very happy about it, but I think mainly he was happy because he didn’t have to make love any more.
When we moved to Sutton I saw Tucker for the first time. He was just a baby then, about two years old, thin and very dark with a bloated stomach and a huge head. He’d sit in his playpen, surrounded by blocks. He’d stack them one by one into giant shapes. I remember once he’d built something even bigger than himself and had only one block left. He placed it on the very top and leaned back against the bars of the pen, looking at what he’d built, long and hard. Then he crawled back to it, balled up his fist and punched at it just once and destroyed it completely. He cut his hand doing it, but didn’t cry at all. You had the idea, the way he did it, that he wasn’t playing.
The war started and David was sent out to the West Coast. He never even left the United States. I know this must sound strange, but I was sorry about that. I wish he’d been sent somewhere into the real war, because it might have been better if he had been able to fire a gun and do something he thought was useful. He worked in an office in San Diego; it was like going to work, collecting rents, every day.
I hoped that maybe being away from home and me and the children would do him some good, but when he came back to us, he was even worse. When he was in the house he usually stayed in his study.
That’s when the loneliness started to get me. It wasn’t only that I was just realizing that my marriage was turning cold. I imagine I had known and accepted that. It was being in Sutton and feeling like an outsider. There wasn’t anyone I could talk to. I felt that everyone I turned to was a stranger, a Willson, and I was the only non-Willson. My children were Willsons, and besides I wanted to keep the situation from them as long as possible. They learned soon enough as it was. Even the Calibans were Willsons because they had been with the family so long. And I was a stranger in a house which was supposed to be my home.
So
I did something I have been quite ashamed of until just recently.
When Dewey was young, he loved Tucker so very much that he insisted that Tucker sleep in his room. We moved a cot into the room and Tucker slept there every night. I would always tell them a story at bedtime.
This one time I had come through a very depressing day and after I’d tucked them in, I started my story: “Once there was a princess who—”
“Was she beautiful, Mama?” Dewey said. He was lying on his back.
“Sure she was beautiful. All princesses is beautiful.” Tucker looked at him and scowled. He was sitting up.
“Well, I don’t know. That isn’t important, really. She met a prince charming one day at a ball…for the painters. These people were picture-painting painters.” I can remember thinking that I was just taking a writer’s license, using an autobiographical basis.
“What kind of pictures they paint, Mama?”
“Oh, of people and the countryside and such things.”
It was dark, except for the moon, and I could see the outline of Tucker sitting up in bed. Dewey’s covers were up to his chin.
“Well, the princess fell in love with prince charming and pretty soon they got married.”
“Mama, is that the end, al-ready?” Dewey was disappointed.
“No, dear, there’s more to it. This is a story that goes on after the ending.” That’s when I realized what I was doing. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“How come?” Dewey didn’t understand.
Tucker shifted a bit, and the moonlight caught his tiny glasses. “Dewey, listen at the story and she’ll tell you how come.”
“But how can a story go on past the end?”
“It’s your mama’s story. She can tell it like she wants it.”
“Oh,” Dewey said.
I went on. “Pretty soon they got married and the prince took her to the nicest castle you ever saw, high on a hill. They were very happy for a while until one day the prince went out to a war and came back hurt very badly.”
A Different Drummer Page 14