Kitty had said the city was no place to bring up children. When Dubin received an advance for Short Lives she added to it from Nathanael’s insurance and they put down earnest money on the house in Center Campobello. She had for years wanted to go back to living in the country. Dubin hadn’t wanted to leave the city but afterward felt he ought to shake up his life—get out of New York and do differently with the self. Afterward he became a good husbandman: cleaned, painted, repaired. Once he kicked the dead furnace into life; Dubin Prometheus, bringer of heat in a cold house.
There were weekend drives with the kids into small towns in the Adirondacks, around sunlit dark forests. They crossed Lake Champlain by ferry, into Vermont, and rode through quiet country towns with slender white-spired churches. Dubin enjoyed the sight of white rocks scattered in the beds of swift-flowing mountain streams. On secondary roads they passed long grasslands, dairy farms, groves of sugar maples. Once they drove to the top of a lookout mountain and beheld around them clusters of ancient mountains boiled up all over the state. Present at the creation, said Dubin. I love to see these sights with you, Kitty said.
At home the children were into physical lives, she called it. Their schooling could be better but they read at home and didn’t seem to be missing much. Dubin’s work went well; he was earning a living. He was glad they had left the city, felt he had played it right: a marriage could start anywhere and grow into a marriage. They talked in bed in the winter dark, confiding to each their lives. They embraced in the house when they chanced up on one another. He was at peace in his mirror.
There were, on the other hand, serious differences of temperament, reaction, rhythm: Dubin’s wife could be overly intense, reserved, impatient under stress, punitive, too often anxious. He could be egoistic, time-bound, impulsive, defensive, too often anxious. Though they were alike in more ways than they had guessed; or grew to be alike; often the unmatched elements of their temperaments and tastes—disjunctions, he called them—caused tension, disagreements, quarrels. Her senses were highly charged conductors. She knew before she knew; he got the message more slowly.
Another self, a different self: unexpected noises irritated her. Kitty could hear water dripping in nearby rooms through locked doors and thick walls. In an unfamiliar house or hotel room she would lie awake listening to sounds that had waked her. Sometimes her restlessness woke Dubin and he joined her in the long trek to daylight. She shifted to the edge of the bed and lay still as he lamented his loss of precious sleep, then his fate. She sweated in mild heat and shivered in mild cold. An eyelash she could not quickly pick off her tongue would make her momentarily desperate. She was assailed by the smell of decaying things: food in the refrigerator, old shoes, old clothes, old closets. A close room compelled her, gasping, to throw open a window. A whiff of cheap perfume in a crowd set her teeth on edge. Kitty disliked body odors—abol—ished her own, kept Dubin informed of his. She passed gas immaculately; after an emission by him she sincerely asked what the smell was. Nathanael, he imagined, had never farted. She was touchy when her vitality was low, the biographer, when his biography was failing him. Her fears diffused her energy, scattered purpose. She regretted a lifetime of part-time jobs. Diligently she smelled the burners, complaining that the gas dried out her throat.
Don’t smell them, for Christ’s sake.
I can’t help it. Don’t humiliate me.
Her familiar insecurities made him impatient, preachy; Dubin’s incensed her. They argued about taste, habit, idiosyncrasy. Both guarded their defenses. There were differences concerning timing, efficiency, sex. Don’t explain sex to me, Kitty cried. Then explain it to me, Dubin shouted. Don’t be hysterical, she said. He felt confined by her limitations; she was diminished by his smallnesses.
You yell so you don’t have to reason.
You listen with your tongue.
You have a tin ear. You keep your mind in your pocket.
You talk like a bitch.
I’m glad, I always wanted to be a bitch.
When he nitpicked past the point of no return she smashed a dish on the kitchen counter and stalked out of the room. Dubin slammed doors. She repaid slow burn with cutting silence. Once she flung a small flower pot at him, a single geranium. It broke against the wall and the pink flower landed on his hat on a chair. Both laughed at the sight. After he had taught her the magic language Nathanael had failed to teach her, she stopped throwing things: they could swear at each other. Don’t give me that shit, Kitty cried. If he swore she stamped her foot. You’re alienating the children.
When she explained him to himself Dubin would yawp. Nor did Kitty want to hear who she was as he saw her. What may have begun as a disagreement became a quarrel. They sometimes tore into each other, going farther than they wanted. Each, then, suffered.
More or less, they educated one another concerning their natures. As a rule, not always, their arguments ended with apologies. He had a sense of not having been wise, of having stupidly got into a useless situation. Apology was a continent Dubin slowly explored. Kitty apologized more rarely: he made more mistakes.
As time went by he persuaded himself not to feel excessive guilt for not feeling total affection for her in every circumstance; and he taught himself, after an argument, to recover affection more quickly than he had in the past; she could be persuaded by a show of feeling. He had noticed she recovered evenness of temper faster than he: when Kitty had thought through a quarrel —understood cause and effect—she communicated by quietly asking what he wanted for supper. Or asked his opinion about something. Each learned to skirt the other’s more touchy sensitivities. Dubin studied what most upset her and gave up attempting to justify himself under certain circumstances. The key to a quick end to a quarrel was to cut out accusation. He taught himself to accept her as she was; she lived according to her construction. He grew better at making peace after he began writing his biographies. Kitty characterized their marriage as “fairly good.” He did not ask her to say how good it had been with Nathanael.
Whatever concessions she made about the quality of their relationship she went on defending “the real”—said she had to, as though a false fact was a poisonous snake in the living room. She still had to define, delineate, measure, weigh the truth of idea, issue, experience. She pointed at inexactness as though unmasking an illusion—a monster—seemed at times the undying foe of metaphor: I can’t help it, have to say a thing’s a thing. For her Dubin learned to count accurately, tell the time right, recall a number nearly correctly. If he slipped—if he said, Today I saw an eight-foot sailor, she nervously countered: I never saw one—as though her statement eliminated a threat to existence. Now the stars would not fall. From time to time she defined the true nature of their relationship, still regretting—five, ten, or more years after their marriage—that she hadn’t been in love with him when they were first married—not truly in love. If they had been in love, certain things would have been easier, might have gone better. There would have been fewer spats—bad for the children. We would have been gayer, certainly less tense. I was gayer with Nathanael. And more carefree in sex.
Dubin doubted it: Love, once you have it, whether it comes with intensity and stays, or in slow building and stays, is love. He said he hadn’t much use for the kind of honesty that crapped on experience because it had occurred one way and not another.
Kitty’s color deepened. I say how I see things. Nathanael appreciated my honesty.
I wish to hell he’d stay in his grave.
She strode out of the room.
Later she returned, distraught. Forgive me, Kitty said, slipping her arms around him—I love only you. Do you love me?
Q. You felt it was love?
A. I loved her, or thought I did. In any case I felt I had become the kind of man who could love her.
Q. A self-flagellating type?
A. I’m speaking of love.
Q. That you can’t swear was there?
A. Nothing is ever always or entirely there
.
Q. You sound like Kitty.
A. She taught me.
In her middle age, when the children had departed the house, Kitty Dubin was an attractive woman with good features, a slender slightly heavy body, the flesh on her belly striated by three pregnancies. Her slim legs were veined, the long feet still elegant. She painted her toenails. Her dark hair was lightened by strands of gray. After wearing a topknot for years she cut her hair short, often talked of touching it up but never did. That seemed pretense to her. Her voice had dropped an octave. Her eyes were spirited, the left more reflective; the right more uncertain. She drank more freely than she had as a young woman, and was less concerned about the use of four-letter words. He had hoped she would kick smelling the gas burners, but she hadn’t. She doubted she would. Kitty regretted growing older, and though she was not unreasonably pessimistic about life, seemed not unhappy. She would touch a handkerchief to her eyes when she looked at old snapshots of the children. Apropos of nothing, or seemingly so, she said to Dubin, I’ll never forget how unhappy I was as a widow. Do you consider yourself happily married? he asked. More so than many; not as happy as some, was her judgment. She predicted she would die before him and Dubin vehemently denied it.
He swallowed a brandy and left the bar. Sickened by his fall, he wanted nothing to eat. This is not my night. Dubin thought he would go to the hotel, smear ointment on his knees, get into bed. No taxis were visible as he limped down the dark street. Approaching the alley where Gerry lived, Dubin saw a man in a long army coat emerge in the rain; he wore a flat-topped wide-brimmed hat and heavy shoes. The biographer thought he recognized the stride but couldn’t believe the hat and long hair tied in a ponytail. The man stepped into a darkened shop doorway to light a cigarette and Dubin was at once moved by him: it was Gerald. His face uneven, eyes deep-set, dampened by life. The back of his neck had been scarred by boils when he was a boy. Kitty said Gerald resembled her, but Dubin couldn’t see it. Whoever he looked like it wasn’t William Dubin. They had drifted apart. I wasn’t as attentive as I should have been.
At twelve, as though he’d had a prevision of the complexity of life, Gerald had become quiet and secretive. He had grown up a loner, not much responding to those who tried to tempt him into sociability. What have I done to that child? Kitty wanted to know. What have I done to him? I wanted him to be a man before he was out of diapers. Because of me too much of his childhood was a time of mourning. I dealt with him with a self I had little sense of. How selfish I was, how inconsiderate.
She blamed fate that she and Dubin were both without parents, relatives —a family to be part of. The children had no grandparents to visit, confide in, learn from; no cousins to play with, or remember. My grandmother meant the world to me. She made the difference.
They had no religion in common. Dubin said they had. I don’t mean humanism, Kitty answered. That’s not enough for kids. God is for those who find him, Dubin said. No, he has to be taught. Some people have to be helped to religious discovery. Gerald is one.
Q. Tell me, Dubin, what did the boy really mean to you?
A. I saw myself, in his eyes—a fatherly type. He seemed to trust me. I taught him to play chess. We walked together. He fed me mathematics, I described the new astronomy, as much as I knew it. He listened to every sentence. I told him jokes. I sometimes thought I had taught him to laugh. He was a tall boy with a well-formed head and uneasy thoughtful eyes. One day he asked me to adopt him and we kissed. His name was legally changed to Gerald Dubin. Kitty approved but I worried about it. He was so much his father it may have seemed like betrayal.
Will the earth explode, William?
We won’t be around if it does.
I’m afraid to die, aren’t you?
Dubin said he wanted his allotted time.
Do you love me? the boy asked.
Yes. You must know that.
As much as Maud?
Yes.
He seemed to doubt it.
Does Mother love me as much as Maud?
Yes.
He seemed to doubt it.
One day when he was fifteen Gerald accused them of not understanding him: I’m different than you think.
Why don’t you explain yourself to us?
I try but can’t.
You can’t explain?
You don’t understand.
He seemed fearful after he had said it, ran up to his room; stayed there much of the time. When Dubin came up to talk with him, he listened in silence, staring out of the window, then formally thanked him for coming.
He needed a lot more time than I gave him.
Q. Dedication makes displacement?
A. Important things to do, especially in work, reduce or nullify others. I tried to balance things off—father with children, my needs with Kitty’s, not always well done. You think you have three balls in the air but when you count there’s one.
Kitty criticized him for withholding himself from them. Every time I suggest something to do you resent breaking away from work. I’m not so sure you want a family.
He swore he wanted a family.
Maybe you oughtn’t to have got married, so you could give your life to your biographies.
Marriage was his constitutional right.
We hardly talk any more.
They talked at long length in the dead of night.
Don’t be sarcastic. You’re obsessed with work.
Better than with alcohol.
When will you take time to live?
Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
Hemingway at least fished after he wrote.
I walk.
Why can’t we all walk together?
We can on Sundays.
You don’t have to work so hard or long, Kitty argued. I doubt you really enjoy being with people. I have needs other than solitude, certainly the kids have. You’re either reading or writing biographies, or thinking your biographical thoughts.
The kids know their father loves them.
Love is being there; it means giving affection.
Much of his past had been badly used, Dubin often had to explain. Don’t begrudge my taking time to do difficult work. To do it well one has to do it many times. You have to make time or steal it.
You steal it from us all.
He read her a note about Thomas Carlyle from a biography he was reading. His wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, wrote to a friend: “All he asked, was, simply, that his wishes come first, his comfort be put before all else, the household so arranged that his sleeping, walks, hours of work or reverie should be when and how he wanted them.” Think of that when you criticize me.
What a disgusting man, said Kitty.
Then there was Gustav Mahler.
She covered her ears with her hands: I don’t want to hear.
She complained there was little conversation at the table unless she initiated it. You can listen to us speak and hear nothing. I can tell from your eyes you’ve gone for a walk in your book.
He mistreated holidays, she said. After Christmas-morning exchange of presents—Christmas was for Gerald and Channukah for Maud; Kitty said she wanted her to be a Jewish child out of respect for her father—Dubin went back to his desk to work.
He wrote a note to himself: I do few things perhaps to do one thing well.
Gerald kept a loose-leaf diary whose pages he occasionally tore out and burned in the fireplace. Once he handed Kitty a poem and she wept to be given the gift. He never gave her another.
He fed his words into the fire, telling his parents little or nothing of what he was thinking or doing; as though, if he did, he had betrayed himself.
But he talked to Maud, who kept his secrets. When they were talking together they stopped at Dubin’s approach. Maud, he wanted to say, don’t be corrupted by him. I am your loving father.
Yet there were times when Gerry seemed to want an adult to talk to. He would appear in Dubin’s study before going to school, his book bag strapped to his shoul
ders, to say why last night’s TV news had sickened him. Not why his flight had begun and where it was taking him.
If Dubin spoke about himself as a boy Gerry would listen and leave without comment. One lonely youth was all he could abide.
Dubin asked him to say what was troubling him. He wouldn’t say why he didn’t say.
We were once close—tell me what happened?
The boy stood stiffly silent, the back of his neck inflamed. With impassioned silence he answered nothing.
If we don’t talk I can’t tell you what I know, Dubin said. What good is my experience if you won’t let me share it with you?
That’s your problem. I don’t have any interest in autobiography.
That’s your problem.
If Dubin extended his hand, Gerald stepped back.
He had unwillingly become distant to the boy, matching a distance equal to his own from Dubin; as if he had held up a mirror to a mile and made it two between them.
I overdid mourning, Kitty lamented. He backed away from me. And from you because of me. I know he loves you, William, but I can’t explain the change in him, except that at a certain point the person I was—I am—weighed too heavily on him. You’re your screwy self a day too long and one or another of your kids takes off without telling you why or waving goodbye. Once he began to change he changed as though he was pursued by change.
Dubin, standing silent on the stairs, overheard her talking to Gerald in his room when he was home from college at Thanksgiving, during his freshman year.
Dubin's Lives Page 13