The Husband

by Sol Stein

  “You’re talking to her lawyer right now. Nobody’s keeping you from getting a divorce. All you have to do is settle the property our way.”

  “Or else?”

  “No tickee, no washee.”

  Peter felt his forearms linked to his arms, linked to his shoulders once again; bones in operation. “Both of you listen. I’m going to marry Miss Kilter, and nothing’s going to stop me.”

  “Goddamnit,” said Jack, “I’m not interested in hearing about your next marriage until you pay the price of this one. You’re going to get squared away with Rose before that Miss Kilter’s lawyer gets after you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I know your kind. You never stop. What’ll you do after you marry Miss Kilter? Whose pants will you want to get into when you’re married to her? Who’ll be next?”

  “Don’t talk that way to me. You got rid of Amanda the easy way!”

  After a moment of staring at Jack’s crimson face, Peter said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” He turned to Rose. “When do I see the children?”

  “Hire a lawyer,” said Jack, the high color draining. “I’m through talking to you. Tell your lawyer to call me. He’ll tell you what you have to do to see the kids.”

  “Rose,” said Peter, “do you want it this way?”

  There was a moment’s silence. “You deserted me,” she said.

  “We deserted each other a long, time ago,” said Peter. “We’ve been playing marriage a long time. We made a mistake, Rose. I did. You did. Maybe somewhere in back of our minds we sensed that parting involved something like this. Maybe that kept us together. Or habit. That’s even worse. I don’t want to make love out of habit ever again in my life.”

  “Monday,” said Jack. “Domestic Relations Court. I’ll settle my personal account with you later.”

  “I suppose it had to end this way. I’m sorry.” He directed the words at Rose.

  “I’m sorry, too, Peter,” she said.

  “If you want to talk to Rose,” said Jack, “tell your lawyer to call me.”

  Rose took Jack’s arm. “Be sensible, Jack. He’s the father of my children.”

  Jack was steel. “The law says they’re both wards of the state unless you people reach a settlement.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Peter.

  “Hire a lawyer. Ask him. In the absence of a custody agreement,” said Jack, “children are wards of the state.”

  My God, thought Peter, looking at Iron Jack, at Rose near tears, and around at the objects in a room he had lived in for so long.

  He left quietly. In his mind there raced the engine of a car going too fast and suddenly the screech of brakes, the smash into the stone wall, the wild metal and the broken glass, and he was holding onto what was left of the wheel, waiting for the ambulance.

  He walked around the block, wondering whether he should go back in. A neighbor waved. He waved without thinking. If he waited till Jack left, would Rose let him back in? Could he reason with her, or would she try the bedroom scene again? If he staked himself out here on the block somewhere, invisible to passersby, would he see the kids come back home, if they were coming back home? Could he waylay them, would they come with him, and if so, for how long, an hour, a day, where would he keep them, what about school? What if they didn’t want to come with him?

  Chapter Twelve

  The drugstore was just one block down and one over. Peter thanked heaven no one was there except Elton, the owner.

  Peter always thought of Elton as a “nice Jewish boy,” though Elton must have been between thirty-five and forty. As the phrase occurred this time, Peter wondered if Negroes knew how many different kinds of “boys” there were in the warehouse of people’s prejudices. There were the white Anglo-Saxon sixty-five-year-old runners on Wall Street, who were always “boys.” There were the boys between sixteen and eighty who delivered Western Union telegrams. And here was Elton, proprietor of the local drugstore, confidant to the neighborhood, custodian of its small talk and its secret ills, doctor-in-waiting for the minor accidents of small boys, prescriber of reducing regimens for the local matrons, himself the father of two boys and a girl displayed in Polacolor near the cash register, and to Peter always a “nice Jewish boy.”

  “Surprised to see you, Mr. Carmody,” said Elton, extending a hand from behind the counter.

  Elton’s hand had liver spots. They didn’t go at all with his cherubic face and small boy’s waddle. “I thought…” he said, and thought the better of it.

  Thought what? Peter wanted to say. “Tin of Excedrin,” is what he actually said.

  “Oh, headache?” said Elton, shuffling a tin onto the counter.

  “Premenstrual tension,” said Peter.

  Elton laughed too loud.

  “Can’t keep up with the handkerchiefs these days,” said Peter, taking a pocket pack of Kleenex from a counter display and putting it beside the Excedrin. Then he got to the point. “Elton, I have a Seconal prescription on file here for some time which I’d like to renew.”

  The cherubic face formed a question mark, the mouth a large pink dot. “Do you have the number or the date?”

  “Sorry,” said Peter.

  “I guess it’d be inconvenient to stop back when you look it up on the bottle.”

  He knew, damn him, he knew.

  “Probably threw the bottle away,” said Peter. “You know how it is. I’d say it was about a year ago.”

  “You know, we’re not allowed to renew barbiturates after six months now under the new law.”

  “I’m sure you can stretch a point for a regular customer.”

  Doctor Elton consulted his muse.

  “It’ll take a bit of time to look up.”

  “I sure appreciate it,” said Peter.

  While Elton busied himself with the old prescription books, Peter went to the phone booth in the rear and dialed Elizabeth’s number.

  He let it ring ten times. Impossible there was no answer. Probably misdialed. He tried again. Still no answer. Damn.

  “Found it,” said Elton, beaming as Peter came out of the booth. “It was more than a year ago. Fifty, hmmm.” Elton was counting out the red pills when Roberta Prinn came in the door. Mrs. Prinn was a prime source of information for Elton. Her twelve-year-old girl sometimes played with Margaret.

  Mrs. Prinn looked directly at him, waiting for him to speak first.

  “Hello, Mrs. Prinn,” said Peter.

  “Mr. Carmody,” she acknowledged without the “hello.” “In the neighborhood?”

  Peter cracked a cracked smile at her.

  “I’m sure Mr. Carmody wouldn’t mind,” said Elton, “if I wait on you first.”

  “I won’t be long,” said Mrs. Prinn, ordering six or seven things and then leaving a prescription with Elton for delivery later.

  “Sorry about that,” said Elton when Mrs. Prinn was gone, having good-byed Elton and flashing what Peter was sure was a reproach at him. “You see,” Elton said conspiratorially, “I didn’t want a witness to the Seconal. It’s a favor, not strictly legal, you know.” Elton smiled his smile; Peter could have crushed Elton’s head against the wall.

  Elton put the bottle of red pills next to the other items on the counter.

  “No label?” said Peter.

  “Better that way,” said Elton.

  “I thought,” said Peter, “the prescription was for fifty.”

  “You’ve got a good eye, Mr. Carmody. Not trying to short-count you. Charging half.”

  “What’s wrong with fifty?”

  “Well, this is kind of a joke of mine, Mr. Carmody, but twenty-five a stomach pump can handle; fifty is too much. Whenever a customer of mine is down in the dumps, I watch out for things like that. A friend of humanity.”

  It took all the reserves Peter could summon to refrain from picking up one of the bottles of egg shampoo directly in front of him and flinging it at the cherubic face.

  “Charge?”
said Elton. He always would have charged it automatically.

  “I guess so.”

  “Mrs. Carmody’s charge, or shall I open a new account for you?”

  “Never mind,” said Peter, putting a five-dollar bill down on the counter. He wanted out of there fast.

  Elton came around from behind the counter, holding on to the five-dollar bill. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mr. Carmody. You get to be a bit of a philosopher minding store here. In the old days before the pill, you’d see a high school kid come in for rubbers and order some toothpaste first, sort of to make the purchase ordinary, if you know what I mean. Like you order Kleenex to go with the Excedrin, or Excedrin to go with the Seconal, who knows?”

  Peter motioned to the five-dollar bill.

  “Getting your change,” said Elton, not making a move toward the cash register. “I get birth announcements in the form of someone coming in for a case of Similac before the baby’s out of the hospital. Steady prescriptions of codeine means arthritis; if it’s for an old person, it means worse. People know how much I know. Otherwise, mothers wouldn’t come in asking me if their daughters have a prescription for pills. I always tell them that kind of thing gets filled at Walgreen’s. More anonymous. Mrs. Carmody’s been in with dark glasses in the mornings. I filled a prescription for sedatives for her. I asked your son.”

  “You what?”

  “It’s only natural to ask about a neighbor, a friend, a customer. I’m not a dispensing machine, I’m a human being. You see, I learned a long time ago that a hole is a hole. I figure this way: when a guy gets married, the hole has got a lot of glamor around it, especially at first, and then sentiment. A lot of husbands feel sentimental about their wives, you know. Then, after some time, they still feel special about the wife’s convenience to reassure themselves they didn’t make a bad deal in the marriage. It’s not bad to feel that way about the wife, even if sex gets a bit monotonous, I say, because if you pick up something on the side, there are always problems.”

  He made as if to go for change again, but halted.

  “If you take up with a young girl on the side, it’s good for the ego. I don’t mean a virgin. They all get rid of that in high school. I mean a girl in her early twenties and you’re in—well, my age or yours. It’s new, so it’s good, and she treats you like a wise father for a while, but if she likes sex—and a lot of these young girls do these days—it gets a little tiring keeping up with them, especially if you have a go at the wife once in a while on the side to keep things quiet at home. Sometimes there’s the humiliation of her finding someone her age, and you’re no competition for a seventeen or a twenty. With a middle-aged girl, it’s a problem too, because if she’s got some money—and a lot of the unmarried ones seem to these days, not like in the Depression—they think you’re interested in their money instead of the sex novelty. The not-so- good-looking ones are worse because they’re sure it’s the money and they won’t relax enough to have fun at it, so they drop you. If she’s your own age without money—I mean a girl who’s unsuccessful in getting a husband and money, like at Grossinger’s—it’s tough because before you say hello, she’s got you divorced and married back to her, and every time you get her in the sack, it’s like negotiating another clause in the contract. Takes most of the fun out of it. My own inclination—I’m speaking of my personal preference—is to change around with the local married women, because you get all types and ages for variety, and the convenience is perfect. I’ve been helped a lot by the pill. The married ones all get theirs here, and if you refill the prescription when there’s no one else in the store, except the delivery boy maybe in back, it gives you real leads. You don’t have to offend anybody or get into trouble. You just say, ‘I can see these work,’ and you look at her belly. They all laugh. You’d be surprised the kind of conversations you get into. I’m averaging about two new ones a month, which isn’t bad for a fellow who isn’t exactly a movie star. Never in back of the store. That’s for kids. I never did see how kids could have fun in the back of a car, even a Nash. I’m a great believer in relaxed circumstances. They just say ‘Deliver,’ and I say, ‘In person, why should I send the delivery boy?’ and if they don’t say anything, I go. If they ask you to stay for a cup of coffee, three out of four times you can count on getting into the saddle. I’ve left more coffee standing in kitchens— Don’t get me wrong, some of the timider ones take several visits before they get around to what they had in mind in the first place. That Mrs. Prinn, you wouldn’t think it of her, would you? That’s what I mean, the surprises. Her face looks like the Legion of Decency, and her legs and knees and thighs are thin, real thin, but that bag of bones is like drag racing, she comes so fast.”

  Elton at last gave Peter his change. Peter shoved it into his pocket without counting it. He wanted to try Elizabeth’s number again, but another phone booth anywhere would be better than another moment in Elton’s store. As he left, Elton actually waved bye-bye the way a child does. Could Rose possibly be on his itinerary? It was too ridiculous to imagine.

  He had walked three blocks before he realized he had left the package sitting on Elton’s counter.

  “Forget something?” asked Elton, handing him the package.

  If there hadn’t been two customers at the counter, Peter would have said something.

  “Don’t forget what I told you,” said Elton as Peter left the second time. “See you soon.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was a time of nightmares.

  Not just every once in a while, but every night, and sometimes several times a night, Peter would bolt awake, his pajamas drenched in sweat. He’d change, and then, getting back to bed, he’d marvel at Elizabeth, appreciating the fact that his nightmares didn’t wake her and at the same time annoyed at her tranquil affection for her pillow, which she clasped to herself as if it were a lover.

  His jealousy of her pillow was as ridiculous as his dreams: trying to get home, the buses and subways not running, taxi after taxi refusing to take him, slamming the door in his face and then taking someone else half a block away; or his mother standing over him, chiding him, warning him, lecturing him, while he wanted to get off to school, knowing he’d be late, wishing his mother would stop talking and let him go, and finally when she did, finding in place of the school an empty lot; or the recurrent riot, with one group in white helmets and another in black helmets and he, helmetless, ducking the stones from both sides, avoiding the broken glass, and finally the billy club smashing down on his head as he awoke.

  He didn’t try to make sense of his dreams. He just wanted to sleep. He kept negotiating with God for just one good night. And then he got it.

  For the first time in weeks he had slept the whole night through without waking. He recalled no dream and felt miraculously rested.

  He tested his body by stretching, careful to let his heels lead. He tried a few sit-ups, eased himself out of bed, windmilled around a bit, then turned the shower on, brushed his teeth while the shower warmed up, and then let himself under the needle spray, which felt delightful. He was bathing in euphoria when he saw Elizabeth on the other side of the translucent door. Turning the water off just enough, he was able to hear.

  She said, “What are you doing in the shower with your pajamas on?”

  He felt like a lunatic but handled the situation with style.

  “It feels different,” he said, stripping the wet top off, opening the door, and throwing the top at her, his bottoms following a moment later. He closed the door, soaped himself, and sang Oklahoma! and World War II songs, not caring that all those rousing words filtered through a voice which his mother had warned “should never sound a note out loud.”

  At his breakfast place were perched the usual coffee and orange juice, and because he seemed to be feeling so good, Elizabeth asked if he wanted waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, and he stopped the list at that point by saying yes, and she, enjoying it as much as he did, made waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs an
d sausages, putting them down on his greedy plate as each came off the stove, and he ate them all.

  “Well!” she said when he had finished.

  “Moderately well,” he said, smiling.

  In front of the mirror he admired the way his light blue cotton shirt looked with his black, soft-finish suit, his best, both the shirt and the suit, chosen to complement the day.

  “How would you like to walk all the way to work?” he asked. Elizabeth was quick to agree. A fine idea.

  Peter didn’t use his usual brisk, near-trot way of getting to the next place fast; he sauntered, casually looking up at tall buildings he hadn’t noticed before, pointing out stray leaves tenacious on a wintered tree, quickening to a remembered story out of childhood he had not told Elizabeth before, aware but not greatly concerned about the fact that they were taking in the city at a country pace and that they were already late for work.

  It was a few minutes past ten when they got out of the elevator. There were a few glances as they walked together, not separately as they might have on a more usual day, down the aisle, past the secretarial pool to Elizabeth’s office, where he wished her a good day, and then to his own.

  He was startled: Paul was sitting at Peter’s desk.

  “Tried to get you twice on the intercom,” he said, “then thought I’d come by to see what was up. It’s ten fifteen.”

  “So it is,” said Peter, trying to sound casual, but the first note of fear struck. Paul had never made a fuss about the time. His executives frequently worked late into the evenings and on weekends when necessary, and came in early if there was reason, never in fact stopped thinking about the job really, and normal working hours had never been an issue as long as Peter could remember.

  His secretary, Nancy, handed him some incoming mail, mainly interoffice memos.

  When she left, Paul said, “Maybe we’d better talk in my office.”

  Peter noticed the telephone message slip stuck on his pen, where he would be sure to notice it. In Nancy’s handwriting it said, “Jonathan called.”