The Husband

by Sol Stein

  Jack was convinced it was going to be a marvelous evening. When a stranger stopped him in the street and asked the time or directions, he enjoyed it. He loved being a father to the clients who asked endless questions, some of which were questions for a lawyer, some for a doctor, and some nobody ought to be asked. He felt best when he provided authoritative answers, or answers the client would believe to be the result of deep study and knowledge or vast personal experience. A client who asked a great many questions usually was treated more kindly at bill time than the occasional fellow who said to Jack, “Just tell me what the law says and what I can do about it.” The pleasure Jack took in magistrating was usually less in Peter’s presence; Peter was knowledgeable in so many ways Jack could get caught out on. It therefore heightened Jack’s enjoyment now to see Peter’s puzzled expression.

  Rose was asking how custody worked, and Jack said, “The wife always gets custody. It’s the big weapon, and she gets custody unless she’s a whore, I mean a real one for money, that you can prove, or a dope addict, and I don’t get that kind of trade. As far as my practice is concerned, the wife always gets the kids.”

  “Doesn’t that stop a lot of divorces?” Peter hadn’t intended to speak but there it was, out.

  “Look, Petey,” said Jack, “I’m talking firsthand experience. What the hell do you and I know about the people who never get to lawyers? Maybe kids stop ’em. Maybe religion. No one in Amanda’s family ever got a divorce. Maybe habit stops ’em. When they get as far as the law, I know if you can reconcile ’em it’s because they can’t stop sleeping together, and if you can’t it’s because they don’t, or they’re sleeping around, or they’d rather not, like Amanda.”

  Would Jack ever actually shoot Amanda? The thought would never occur to him. The weaponry of marriage, Peter thought, outdoes anything the Army comes up with. Would he set fire to her dress? Would he smother her with a pillow while she slept? Never.

  “Do I read you wrong?” said Jack to Amanda. “I’m sure these fine people would let us use their guest room for half an hour—”

  “Leave her alone, Jack,” said Peter.

  The words washed off Jack’s back. “Or we can go to a motel,” he continued, inches from Amanda’s face, “if you think having people in the house would bother you, or have you got cramps, dear?” He turned to Rose and Peter. “Some Februarys she has cramps for thirty-one days. She’ll go to her grave without ever having an orgasm and—”

  Amanda slapped his face hard.

  That was a wild train Jack had gotten onto, thought Peter. He looked at Rose for having brought up the subject that triggered Jack. Rose moved her shoulders helplessly.

  “I need a drink,” said Jack.

  “I think you’ve probably had enough,” said Rose.

  “Hey, Pete,” said Jack menacingly, “do I have to go to the bar down the street to get a drink when I’m your guest?” He looked like a kid burning ants.

  Peter touched his hand to Jack’s arm and said calmly, “We’ll have some wine with dinner, Jack.”

  Jack knocked Peter’s hand off. “What a cheap-jack host.”

  “Jack, you ought to be in the advertising business,” said Peter, determined to smooth things over. “In my business everybody tanks up at lunch. Drinks before dinner wouldn’t hit you so hard.”

  “The drinks didn’t hit me. She did,” he said, jabbing a thumb at Amanda.

  “Well, you’re even.”

  Amanda came across to Rose like a cartoon rabbit, walking on the balls of her feet in tiny steps.

  “Rose,” she said apologetically, shaking her head, “I feel nauseated.”

  “I heard you!” bellowed Jack.

  Mildly Amanda said, “All I said was, I was nauseated.”

  “You always use that as a goddamn excuse.”

  “You knew I had rheumatic fever,” said Amanda. “You didn’t buy a pig in a poke. How many times have I told you that?”

  “I didn’t see the poke,” said Jack.

  “Now let it go!” said Peter. He took Amanda by the arm in almost courtly fashion and walked her closer to Jack, smiling a smile he used with clients in serious situations, a smile that could crack at an instant if its bluff were called. “Hey, can’t I get you kids to shake hands?”

  The thing that helped the most was strained laughter coming from all of them at once.

  Bravely Rose said, “I think I’ll have another screwdriver.”

  “Isn’t Petey enough?” said Jack, ho-hoing, hoping now with the rest of them that things would calm down, that he would calm down, because he had felt that angina squeeze in his chest that the doctor said wasn’t angina and he himself was sure wasn’t angina, only God or Death or Somebody saying, take it easy, bud.

  “Petey,” Jack said, “what’s wrong with women? You make a little joke, let loose, have some fun after a goddamn day full of making-a-living crap, and they go straight, square, and simpleminded.”

  The cheese stood still in the middle of the room.

  “I’ll make my own,” said Rose, gladly adding the sin of bartending to that of having a second drink voluntarily.

  “I’ll get it for you,” said Peter, feeling kindly toward Rose, toward Amanda, toward all women at that moment. All women: Elizabeth? Rub the mind blank. Quick.

  Peter took Jack’s glass, gave Rose her drink, took Amanda’s glass, and when everyone, including himself, was armed, raised his drink: “To alcohol.”

  “Crap!” said Jack. “It makes strong men weak, weak men strong, all men weep, and nobody ought to be without it. The way the deck is stacked, it takes a strong man or woman to get a divorce. I don’t mean just think about it—everybody thinks about it—I mean, go—all the way! Amanda, baby, you’re lucky I’m a weak man.” Jack toasted her. “Skoal!”

  Amanda managed a weak smile.

  “Dinner will be ready in less than ten minutes,” said Rose out of nowhere, not being sure whether it would really be ready in ten or twenty but feeling compelled to say something.

  Jack sidled up to her. “Rosie, how come you’re so curious tonight?”

  Rose seemed to think about her answer for a long time. She wanted it to sound adult and thoughtful, even abstract, to establish the nature of her inquiry as something less than personal.

  “Every young girl is interested in marriage,” she said. “I guess every married woman is curious about divorce.”

  “Hey Petey,” said Jack, “your wife has turned into a philosopher.” Jack suddenly felt the platform disappearing from under his feet, his chance at building a spell gone. How to retrieve it? His gaze caught Amanda’s, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “Oh, come on now, baby,” he said to her, “I’ve just been having some fun. Too much inkohol. Baby, let me get you another drink, okay?”

  “All right,” said Amanda.

  “How about a little kiss for Uncle Jack?”

  Amanda shook her head.

  “How about a little old handshake? All right?” Amanda had no choice. Peter watched Jack and Amanda shaking hands. It was the kind of moment you wanted a camera for.

  Jack mixed Amanda’s drink. “Peter,” he said, “tears always get me. Don’t they get you?”

  “Another word out of you and I’m turning on the television set,” said Peter.

  “Dinner’ll be ready in a few minutes,” chimed in Rose.

  The exuberance was coming back into Jack’s voice. “You know what keeps marriages going these days? Those Connecticut parties. Everybody needs to switch around once in a while. Amanda, why don’t you go sit down in old Peter’s lap?”

  Amanda, to everyone’s astonishment, perhaps to her own as well, finished off her drink, set down the glass and said, “I think I will.”

  She sat down in Peter’s lap. It was a very strange feeling for Peter, as if his mother or his sister had suddenly made a sexual approach. He remembered the time he first saw Amanda in a bathing suit—at a beach party it was—and how astonished he had been that she
had breasts and hips. He suddenly realized that Amanda had settled in his lap, not the way a stranger sits on the edge of a chair but in a way that brought a maximum part of her body in touch with his.

  “Is this the way you mean?” said Amanda, and she kissed Peter, not on the mouth, thank heaven, but softly on the cheek.

  “Wow!” said Jack, startled and somehow pleased. “Rose, my hostess, under the circumstances you’ve just got to reciprocate.” He took Rose by the hand and led her to a chair at the other side of the room, plunked himself down in it without letting go of Rose’s hand and said, “Now you sit right down on Jack’s plentiful lap.”

  Rose looked at Peter. Peter looked away.

  Rose sat down on Jack’s lap.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” said Jack, his voice having gained the platform again. “Now strike up the band. I want a girl, just like—”

  “Stop wiggling, Jack,” said Peter. “Rose’ll fake an orgasm, and it’ll go to your head.”

  “Peter!” exclaimed Rose, genuinely shocked because she hadn’t been aware at all that Jack was wiggling.

  “Oh come on now, everybody, we’re having fun!” said Jack. “Let’s sing! I want a girl, just like…”

  Slowly, hesitantly, they all joined in, and throughout the house there now resounded the voices of Jack, Rose, Amanda and Peter, singing.

  “I want a girl, just like the girl that married dear old dad. A sweet old-fashioned girl with heart so true, a girl who loved nobody else but you…”

  It was Rose who first noticed the children on the staircase in their nightclothes.

  “Jon!” she said.

  “Maggie!” said Peter.

  “Ahem, did we wake you?” said Jack.

  The adults started to disentangle themselves. Amanda got out of Peter’s lap, straightening her dress, and Rose was already up and away from Jack, floundering in dreadful embarrassment.

  Peter, softly to the children, said, “It was just a little joke.”

  Chapter Three

  On the way to Elizabeth’s apartment, Peter found himself ten steps behind a blond girl whose hips moved in a rhythm that excited him. He walked rapidly, despite his heavy briefcase. As he overtook the girl, the anonymous and interesting blondness changed; in profile she had a rather ordinary face. What was all the excitement about?

  He knew, of course. Elizabeth had brought a sense of spring and sexuality back into his life. Now he found himself looking at women as women, not in the fraudulent manner of ogling and whistling—the male way of pretending maleness to other men—but looking at individual women he had never seen before, as if each was someone one might indeed go to bed with. He gave each credit to start with, then took the credit away if he found them unattractive in voice or walk or manner or holding onto some other man in a declarative way. The surprise to him was how many kept the credit, including older women who, he noticed, were likely to have a quick sense of their own sexuality, or the frisky younger ones whose youthful assertiveness was more stimulating than their overkempt bodies, or even women he knew but had never before thought of as possible bedmates. How much fair game there was in the world!

  The legend in America was that the women castrated the men, but Peter now knew that to be inaccurate. A good deal of that overt dominance was the result of dismay, the woman in effect saying to the man: if you’re not cock-of-the-walk, I will be; there has got to be a cock somewhere.

  Since the advent of Elizabeth, Peter found that in the community of females there was a sense of his cockiness. Some women, he was beginning to find out, had an immediate response to the electricity a man felt inside himself. Where had his been so long?

  Peter swung the glass door to Elizabeth’s apartment building forward with more energy than called for and just made the self-service elevator in which a fortyish woman, armed with groceries, was already pushing a button.

  They looked at each other. Does she know I am going up here to get laid?

  Would she like to get laid? She probably hadn’t thought about it. Was she thinking about it now that she and he were in the elevator alone?

  Peter looked her full in the face and was immediately convinced that she hadn’t thought about getting laid for a long time. She wasn’t unattractive.

  The woman got out of the elevator, flicking a look at him, and he suddenly realized why: he hadn’t pushed a floor button. He did, and the light went out. He got the light back on. He pushed the right button. Man, get ahold of yourself!

  He let himself in with a key kept not with his other keys but in his wallet, in a small envelope on which he had taken the precaution of writing a fictitious masculine name. To avoid getting caught. Why avoid getting caught?

  Elizabeth was lying on the floor, six or seven open books around her. She turned away from the one in her hand as she heard the door open. Her smile had a virtue no other had ever had for Peter.

  Some people have a ready smile, which they flick on to say, “I’m smiling, don’t worry.” It usually was a cause for worry, like a salesman’s “Let me be candid with you.” Peter remembered the school librarian with the perpetual smile—not for him, or over anything, or to anybody at all, just a permanent, frozen expression of pretended happiness. Peter knew an art director who, at age forty-five or thereabouts, had been told that he looked younger when he smiled, and that smiler was now impossible to look at with a straight face. It was indeed rare when a smile was an expression out of the ordinary, showing pleasure short of joy. Elizabeth smiled when she meant it and could not bring herself to smile otherwise. It was a liability in business; it put some people off but never anyone that mattered. Hers was the league of people who felt that a smile was an expression one should not cheat with.

  At this moment, Peter and Elizabeth were looking at each other, and he thought how rare that was, too, men and women who already knew each other taking the other in.

  He put his briefcase down and flung his coat over a chair.

  She was on her back now and slowly raised her legs until they were perpendicular. Then she slowly lowered them. Peter watched her as she repeated the exercise. Was it that her body showed through her clothes more than with other women? Was it perfectly proportioned, or was this another exaggeration, a way of his describing his feeling for her to himself? Ah, the old myth-making machine: my girl is the most beautiful girl in the world.

  Still, he thought as her legs moved up, then down, what a body.

  “You are a remarkable woman,” he said.

  It was superfluous to compliment a woman like Elizabeth.

  It was not superfluous to compliment any woman ever.

  When the kids were crawling and toddling around, Peter used to get down on the carpet with them, playing at their level. But as Jonathan learned to walk, and then Margaret, getting down on the carpet seemed undignified. Yet here he was, lowering himself to the carpet next to Elizabeth, and as he put his arms around her, his self-consciousness vanished. He was aware of the warm musk of her lips and mouth, her breasts against his chest, her pelvis thrust forward to fix the body-length bond between them. It was incredible how the whole of him, embracing the whole of her, was instantly and fully engorged. As he kissed her again, he had the definite sense that his organ was reaching out for her as if it had a life of its own, hurrying him along.

  His fingers raced to undress her, and himself. He felt the need of more hands, preferably nontrembling hands. How beautiful she was in her nakedness, small and perfect. He pulled her perfection against the bearishness of himself. Why did male desire demand the ultimate at once, and the female, like a soufflé, require gentling and patience?

  He kissed the echelons of her body. He stroked her, hoping for gentleness, barely controlling the impulse to grab and fuck. How like the Saxon thump was male desire, how like the curlicues of French was femaleness, the light multiple syllables taking their own sweet time. His tongue moved over the recesses of her neck—he could feel the wild pulse in her body now—and he checked the rush and im
pulse to force his thrust inside her, and then, quite unexpectedly, her hand was stroking his member as she spread her thighs apart, and the opening was entered.

  He raised himself above her as high as possible so that they were joined now only in the one place, and he moved as slowly as possible until her own rhythm forced him faster, plunging with fierceness, anger, love, until finally both of them flooded in communion.

  *

  They had been lying quietly in each other’s arms for a long time, and he had dozed off for a while.

  She was up on an elbow, looking at him.

  Smiling.

  “Good morning,” she said, and his heart thumped until his eyes found the wristwatch on his naked arm and verified that he had slept only minutes.

  Elizabeth was now slipping back into her clothes, and he watched her. Why did he not like to watch Rose dressing? Why was he fascinated by Elizabeth’s slow covering up of her body, first the brassiere, the cups to the back and the clasp in front, then pulling the whole thing around, then the panties which seemed so fragile to him, and then the outer clothes and last, stepping into her shoes. Why was he searching for significant differences as if there were a need to assemble bits of evidence for himself? Wasn’t the overriding evidence in the joy of it? Was he making a case? For what?

  “What’d you do today, elf?”

  “Do?”

  “Every time I went by your office, it was empty.”

  Elizabeth lit a cigarette. “Drink?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re skipping the subject nimbly.”

  “I started out,” she said, “by having a wolf for breakfast.”

  “That was yesterday morning. Wasn’t that a brilliant idea, showing up here at the crack of dawn?”

  “No.”

  He had thought she welcomed his unexpected appearance yesterday, letting himself in with the key, with light just beginning to show through the Venetian blinds, startling her awake with a kiss, then seeing the glow of her recognition. Love in the morning was not something he liked, but it had been especially good that morning. It was almost always good with her. When would it not be any longer? Only a creep would think that, he thought. Or a man old enough to know that commercials interrupted life, too.