The Husband

by Sol Stein

  “All I said was, ‘hello.’”

  “Did she recognize your voice?”

  “How could she not recognize my voice?” Then, “She has a lot of nerve calling here.”

  “She has a lot of courage calling here,” said Elizabeth. “What excuse did you give for coming home late?”

  “The Advertising Council,” said Peter sheepishly.

  “They don’t meet tonight.”

  He hadn’t checked.

  It wasn’t in an unkind voice that she said, “It’s so easy for everyone to come up with a good excuse, everyone but you, I suppose.” She turned away from him, saying, “I’ll put dinner on,” and he knew that she loved him because she wasn’t turning away from him but from his dismay.

  Peter started dialing a number.

  “What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’ll leave a dime on the table,” was his response.

  “Stop that. Who are you calling?”

  The number was ringing at the other end.

  “Guess.”

  “What will you say?”

  “I don’t know.” It was an honest answer.

  “Then hang up.”

  He did just as the phone at the other end was being picked up.

  “Dinner’ll be ready in a minute,” she said.

  I’m going, he thought.

  “I’m going,” he said.

  “I think you’d better get there after she’s asleep. You’ll have a scene if you go home now.”

  Peter put his coat on.

  “Are you going,” asked Elizabeth, “because you still love her, or you’re afraid of her, or because you feel guilty, or all three?”

  “That’s not fair,” he said.

  “Who’s fair? Do you know how ungodly boring, boring, boring the evenings are when you’re not here?”

  “What did you do before me?” he blurted.

  “I’ve cut myself off from my friends, I don’t go out, I do practically nothing but work and wait here for you. Do you know what that’s like?”

  They stood ten feet apart, a chasm between them as if he were in a foreign country, and then, knowing what he was doing, he stepped across the border.

  He didn’t touch her.

  “I’m ashamed,” he said, “to have gotten this far into life without knowing what love is like.”

  She said nothing.

  She would not help him.

  “I want to live, elf,” he said, “now and with you.”

  She didn’t move.

  “The whole damn world can go to hell!” he declared.

  “To hell!” he repeated.

  “Do you mean Rose?” she said at last.

  “I don’t love her.”

  “You love the children.”

  “Look, elf,” he said, “I don’t have to divorce the children.” He was buying the myth.

  “They won’t understand.”

  “I’ll teach them.”

  “You won’t see them often enough to teach them.”

  “I will.”

  “Not if you leave.”

  He started to move toward her, and she put out a hand that stopped him before he committed himself.

  “I’ll teach them,” he said, suddenly in the grip of a wildness he had not felt for a long time, “that you can’t live on money things, which is what Rose is teaching them. I’ll teach them”—he felt like a fool saying it—“that love is the only damn thing you can—”

  Elizabeth interrupted him, her voice very quiet.

  “Can you teach them something you don’t know?”

  Peter looked at her face and thought how lovely it was. “I’m trying to learn,” he said.

  “You’re a slow learner,” she said, wanting to stop him from stepping over the two or three feet of carpet between them, then letting him take her in his arms and kiss her, first on the side of her face, then the side of her mouth, and then on the lips, abandoning herself against any judgment she had, when the telephone shrilled across their kiss and kept insisting it be listened to, even after they had pulled away from each other.

  They stared at the intruding telephone until finally it stopped. It could have been a wrong number. It could have been anybody.

  Chapter Four

  The key wouldn’t work in the front door of his house.

  It was almost three in the morning. The street was empty. The trees at the curb were a military escort leading nowhere. The other end of the street was barely perceptible in the mist.

  Peter tried his key again. It went in only part way. Of course it was his house, fake English Tudor, the phenomenal azalea in front, the brick steps.

  If a policeman came along, he’d show some identification, driver’s license, something with his address on it. He was not breaking in. It was his house.

  He went around to the back, careful to make as little noise as possible on the pebbles. Most peculiar if the neighbors saw. Rose asleep?

  Rose was not likely to be waiting up for him. Sleep was as essential to Rose as a cigarette before morning coffee to some people. At late parties, along about midnight, a switch would go off in Rose’s head and she was for all practical purposes gone. Peter hoped the switch was working.

  The most awkward part of dating for Peter as a teenager was his mother and father’s insistence on waiting up for him. He’d see their heads out of the apartment window, searching the street in the direction from which he was to come. Once, at sixteen, Peter had exploded at the reception committee, as he called it. His mother had cried. Out of her crying came her confession, a fear she could never shake, that if she went to sleep Peter might not get home safely. His father kept her company, though he was perpetually tired from overwork. And so each minute after midnight was a rock on the cairn of Peter’s guilt. No amount of post-midnight fun made up for the sad, unspoken recriminations under his father’s eyes. Nor did his mother’s obvious relief at his homecoming give him reassurance of her love. It was her superstition, not love for him, that kept her up.

  Now, at the back door, an envelope Scotch-taped over the keyhole had his name on it, in Rose’s handwriting. Never darken my door again, he thought.

  He pulled the envelope away from the door.

  See my lawyer, he predicted.

  He opened the envelope.

  It said, “The lock man said it couldn’t be fixed and had to be replaced. If you didn’t find key under the front mat, don’t leave it there all night. Rose. P.S. I tried to call you about it.”

  His back-door key worked without fault. Peter let himself in, pawed his way across the kitchen, through the dining room darkness, then turned on a lamp in the living room, opened the front door, and retrieved the key from under the mat. He relocked the door, hung the new key in his case, dropped his old key in an ashtray, thought better of it and backtracked to the kitchen and dropped the old key in the garbage. He was halfway up the stairs when he remembered a light was burning in the living room. He went down, turned it off and climbed the stairs slowly.

  Upstairs, he looked into Margaret’s bedroom. The night light cast a cold blue-green glow across her sleeping face. You’d think a girl would pick a pink night light.

  He had always welcomed the fact that Margaret looked so little like Rose. He kissed her forehead gently.

  In the other small bedroom, Jonathan as usual was completely under the covers. His shirt was on the chair, but his flung pants had missed and lay crumpled on the floor next to the discarded socks and shoes. No underwear in sight. He must be sleeping in his underwear, against instructions. In the morning Rose would find Jon’s pajamas under his pillow, where they had rested all night long.

  Peter changed in the bathroom. Pajama-clad, he went into his bedroom for the first time, quietly. His side of the bed was turned down. Rose, asleep, was as far on her side as one could manage. On his pillow lay a penny.

  Peter put the penny in his night table drawer, where there were now hundreds of others. On his wedding night, he used to te
ll his friends, Rose offered him a penny for his thoughts. And many nights since, offered a penny, he had made up thoughts that would satisfy Rose. It was easier than refusing.

  He lay stiffly under the covers, wondering if Rose, out of habit, would at some point come snaking across the bed and entwine herself with him. She didn’t move. He raised his head slightly to make sure she was asleep. She was.

  If she was awake, or would now awaken, would he take her to absolve his guilt? Out of one bed, in another. Henry had boasted once about sleeping with three women in one day, his mistress in the morning, a matinee at lunch with a woman he had just met and never saw again, and his wife that night. Why was it called making love?

  He was falling asleep. Thank heaven.

  *

  Rose had heard Peter stumbling about downstairs and had been awake, ever so slightly, when Peter came to bed, but she pretended to be asleep because she knew they would argue. She must have dozed off because when she awoke, Peter was asleep in that straight facing-up position she couldn’t stand because it reminded her of a corpse in a coffin.

  It had been a successful day, Rose thought. She had avoided the temptation of daytime television. Margaret had skinned her knee. Rose had handled the wound washing, the Bactine application and the two large-sized Band-Aids expertly. She had baked a cake, creatively she thought because she had improvised on the ingredients. There was a good chunk left over for Peter if he was home for dinner tomorrow.

  If Peter was home for dinner tomorrow had not been a problem until recently. During the day, when the insurance man had come about the missing camera and stayed to talk, obviously interested in her, she had thought of seducing him. It could have been easy, but in her heart she knew she couldn’t sew shirts for a stranger or go to bed with one even if she felt it would somehow stop for a moment the gnawing she felt about Miss Kilter.

  She knew that Peter and Miss Kilter seemed to have some kind of professional bond. She had felt that way ever since she had dropped into Peter’s office unexpectedly while shopping downtown one day and found Miss Kilter there, and Peter and Miss Kilter, after acknowledging her presence, had gone on talking as if Rose were not there.

  Rose felt pretty realistic about the whole thing. She knew most men had affairs sometime or other, and she knew no reason why Peter should be exempted from that affliction, but she just couldn’t picture Peter going to bed with anyone. That is, she just couldn’t conjure up the visual image of Peter nude and a woman nude and going at it together.

  She didn’t think Miss Kilter was all that attractive, certainly not in that way, and she didn’t think Peter liked that type at all. He had said so many times, hadn’t he?

  Now she felt her nerves going, as she thought of it all, and remembered Peter’s suggestion that if she ever felt that way at night she should turn on the pinpoint bed lamp and read, but the truth was that she hated reading because it left her so alone, as a child and now. She preferred the theater to reading because in the theater there were people around you enjoying the same thing at the same time, but Peter hadn’t taken her to the theater all season, and she just couldn’t bring herself to join Amanda’s Wednesday matinee excursions with those other ladies. The strained babble of women at a Wednesday matinee was so different from the comforting, convivial noise made by men and women at an evening performance.

  She wished magazines weren’t so full of articles about satisfying your husband sexually. There must be interest in the subject or the magazines wouldn’t keep running the articles. Those letters-to-the-editor from women brazen enough to put their initials to thoughts about their marriages.

  She reached over for Peter.

  For as long as possible, Peter tried to ignore Rose’s hands, to feign deep sleep.

  But it wasn’t possible and finally, with sadness, he turned to pay an installment on his wedlock bargain.

  Chapter Five

  Peter let himself into Elizabeth’s office and closed the door behind him. He was leaning against it when she looked up.

  “Paul’s taking me to Chicago with him,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  Couldn’t she give him more than that? Yet there was a fascination in her giving so little. He gave too much. Talking, he put all the details on the line. Better her way. Left a touch of mystery.

  “When?”

  Good, she had spoken again; he hadn’t been forced to fill the void. Man, you’re grabbing at straws.

  “Now. Paul says we’ll be stuck through tomorrow, and I don’t have a thing with me. I’ll have to buy a pair of pajamas in Chicago. Look, will you call Rose for me and tell her?”

  She looked at him as if he were insane. “I think your secretary’d better phone.”

  Elizabeth call Rose? What was going on in his head?

  He felt the door in back of him moving and eased away from it just as Big Susan poked her head in.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, interrupting.

  Peter was rather fond of Big Susan. She was five feet ten or so, which wasn’t so gargantuan, just that her method of attack, her presence, was so formidable. No one called Big Susan that to her face, partly out of courtesy and partly because of her position. She had been Paul’s right hand as long as anyone in the agency could remember. She had once been his secretary, but hardly anyone remembered that. Big Susan had a secretary of her own, as had Paul, and if you wanted to get the word on anything to Paul, you didn’t drop it to Paul’s secretary but to Big Susan’s. That was the line of communication to the top.

  Big Susan lived well. It was said her salary was higher than most of the account executives, though no one knew exactly because her check, like Paul’s, was made out by the comptroller himself, not by the bookkeeping department. When Peter came to the agency, his first impulse was to dislike Big Susan, but he was won over by her wit and charm. Naturally he had wondered if she was a dike, but had decided not, mainly because he found her attractive despite her size and couldn’t imagine being attracted to a girl who wasn’t straight. “Girl” was a term one had to stretch these days when thinking of Big Susan because she was surely forty, maybe forty-five. One sometimes had the sense that she governed the agency, though her suggestions were always transmitted in Paul’s name.

  “I hate to break this up,” she said, “but Paul’s almost ready.” She passed an overnight bag around the edge of the door. “I’ll brief you on the plane. Between drinks.” Winking, she said, “You’ve got thirty seconds,” and left.

  Peter put the overnight bag up onto Elizabeth’s desk. Inside were a pair of size “C” pajamas, a pair of stretch socks, two white shirts, one size 15-34 and the second size 16-35, undershorts sizes 34, 36 and 38, one medium undershirt, a toothpaste, toothbrush, and razor kit. Inside the top bag was a Scotch-taped note scrawled with a felt marker in green: YOU LOOK LIKE A 15-34 AND A 34 WAIST TO ME, BUT I’M ENCLOSING OTHER SIZES IN CASE I’VE GUESSED WRONG. KEEP WHAT YOU WEAR, LEAVE THE OTHERS ON YOUR DESK. MY GIRL’LL PICK UP. RETURN THE CASE WHEN WE GET BACK. CHEERS. SUSAN.

  “That’s what I call a perfect office wife,” said Peter.

  “Paul’s. Be careful.”

  “I’ll call you tonight from Chicago.”

  He left without a further word, hurried to his office, took out the bigger shirt and the two pair of larger shorts, thought they looked awfully silly on his desk and stuffed them on top of the out box, slipped a paperback off the shelf into his briefcase and there was Susan at the door, saying, “Time.”

  He followed seven or eight steps behind her toward Paul’s office, and as they passed Elizabeth’s she was at the door and whispered to him, “Don’t fight with Paul. Unnecessarily.” Big Susan turned around and said cheerfully in what Peter thought was much too loud a voice, “He’ll only be gone one night!”

  The elevator behind Paul’s office dropped all three of them nonstop to the basement garage, where Paul’s chauffeur took their bags, and in seconds they were limousining through New York traffic toward Kennedy Air
port. The Chrysler Imperial rode beautifully, which had one disadvantage: the silence inside was excruciating. Somehow Peter had gotten between Susan and Paul, and for a moment he wanted to shift to one of the jump seats, then thought the better of it; let it pass.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Chicago must be the Bermar account.”

  “Right,” said Paul. And nothing else.

  Peter wished he could turn and look at Paul, but that would have been impossibly awkward, so he tried to reconstruct Paul from memory. How little one remembers the specific features of someone known for years. A craggy face, visible cheekbones, a larger than average face, conspicuous ears, eyebrows thick like wild black weeds, a strong face. Did the skin sag at the jawline? Paul was past fifty now.

  “Yes?” Paul was saying.

  Idiot, he had actually turned to look at Paul. Make up something quick.

  “What about Bermar?”

  Susan put her hand on his arm. “I’ll brief you on the plane.”

  It was unlike Paul to be so silent. The Bermar account was in trouble, but why was Peter going along instead of Coolidge? Coolidge was probably in Chicago already; maybe Coolidge had sent for Big Daddy to help. Big Daddy took Big Susan. Why Peter? He knew about Bermar mainly from a few quick words at meetings and from the ads themselves, which weren’t the agency’s best, but what could you do with a car rental system that was third when the number one and number two were playing cutsy with each other in the public prints and had five or six times the money to spend?

  Why was Paul so damn silent?

  While they were checking in at the airport, Paul went off to the men’s room for a moment, and Peter quickly asked Susan what the hell was up with Paul.

  “He takes two Marazines,” she said, “which he shouldn’t, and two Miltowns, which he shouldn’t, but flying still frightens him, and the combination turns him off long enough to get there.”

  So pills accounted for Paul’s silence! Peter had thought Paul was angry at him, that Paul was worried about the Bermar account or some mysterious agony. The answer was so simple, reasonable, and yet—he looked at Susan. She was lying. There was something else on Paul’s mind.