Dubin's Lives

by Bernard Malamud

  Her complexion reddened. “I wouldn’t say so. He’s about your age and has been married thirty-five years.”

  Dubin broke into a sweat. “My age?”

  “Sixty.”

  “My God, he’s older than I.”

  “I’ve often told myself that.”

  “How in Christ did you ever get involved with an old man at your age?”

  He had trouble with the question, thought of himself as hypocrite, except that Fanny, when they had met, was an experienced woman.

  “I don’t think of him as old.”

  That drew a mist to her father’s eyes.

  “Sixty is the age he happens to be,” Maud said, rubbing her cigarette out. “For a while I was frightened about the difference in years—that he was three times my age. Then it became a sort of mythic thing in my mind that he was more than lover—he was father, friend, and lover—that there was something extraordinary in our relationship, that it had been happening since man appeared on earth. I stopped being afraid. His age made little difference to me—although it did to him—because in his heart he was young, because he loved me. He seemed to know everything I wanted to know. I valued myself better when I was with him.”

  “I always valued you highly.”

  “Too highly, I bet?”

  “I never thought so. I thought you valued yourself?”

  “I do but with doubt. He was my Spanish teacher in my sophomore year. In class he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. When we talked I could see his love. Once he poured a paper cup of water for me in the hall and his hand shook. We began to sleep together. He never asked, it happened when I realized I was in love with him.”

  She said they saw each other seriously from then on. “Finally his wife found out and had a breakdown. I felt I had to leave college. I joined the Zen commune in South San Francisco but still missed him. When he wrote to me we got back together for a few days and when I woke up in the motel room the morning he left, I knew I was pregnant.”

  “Didn’t he ask if you were protected? What sort of ass is he?”

  “If I had slept with a fifteen-year-old boy I still would have got pregnant,” Maud said. “I was stupid about my diaphragm. He had no reason to think I didn’t know what I was doing. He’s a gentle and courteous man. He taught me an awful lot about poetry. We read the classic Spanish poets together. I was happy with him. What’s wrong with happiness?”

  Dubin didn’t say.

  “Was he the man you went to Venice with?”

  “I don’t know how you know that. I never told you or Mother I went to Venice with anyone. We weren’t there when you were, without Mother.”

  “How did you know I was there without Mother?”

  “You all but confessed it the winter I was here for a week.”

  Dubin got up as she rose, kissed her hair, drew her to him. He could feel her pregnant frame trembling. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “I suppose you feel betrayed?”

  “I feel a lot but not betrayed. You’re the one who’s betrayed.”

  “I don’t think of it that way.”

  She went to the window, raised it, breathed deeply. “I need a breath of air.”

  “You won’t get any air through the storm window. My God, you’ve forgotten you ever lived here.” He opened a window with a ventilating slot at the bottom of the outer frame.

  Maud was sitting again, smoking. He advised her not to if she was pregnant but she continued to smoke.

  “Maud,” Dubin asked, “what is your life trying to prove?”

  “Why do you ask me that kind of question?”

  “I wouldn’t if you asked yourself.”

  “I’m trying to live my life without you.”

  He said he desperately wanted her to.

  “Pay attention to your wife,” said Maud, rising. “She’s not a happy woman.” She left the study.

  At supper when they glanced at one another they looked away. Kitty served Maud’s vegetable casserole. Maud ate poorly, diddled the baby carrots to the side of her plate. Dubin ate hungrily.

  “It’s not the world’s greatest tragedy,” Kitty said, looking out of the window.

  Maud stared at her.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” her mother said. “But I can’t help wishing it hadn’t happened.”

  They talked about Gerald. Maud said they had to do more than just write letters to make contact with him.

  “Your father has promised to go to Moscow with me,” Kitty said to her.

  “We’d better know what we’re doing,” Dubin said. “We can’t just pitch a tent in the middle of Red Square.”

  Chewing listlessly, Kitty asked Maud her plans.

  “To have my baby. To support myself with her/him. To make the least do. To live a simple decent life.”

  “You ought to finish college,” Dubin said.

  “In time she will,” said Kitty. “The baby comes first.”

  He pictured his daughter as a young widow with a child. What else were you with a fatherless child? They had tipped her life in some odd way.

  Maud’s eyes would still not meet his.

  “What will you do with a little baby to take care of?” Kitty uneasily asked.

  “What I have to do. Many women do it nowadays. There are ways of getting together for everyone’s benefit.”

  “Living alone with a child can be trying,” her mother said. “I won’t deny its pleasures, but it can be quite sad putting a baby to sleep without a father there. It’s a double loneliness though the child won’t know for a while, a fate I would gladly have spared you. Maybe you ought to consider abortion?”

  “You’ve taught me to value life. I value life. How can I have an abortion?”

  If she marries someone to be a father for her child, Dubin was thinking, he will someday hunger for a lover.

  “What kind of work do you think you can get?” he asked Maud.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Would you want to consult a psychiatrist?” Dubin then said to his daughter.

  “What for?”

  “To loosen your fate a little.”

  “My illegitimate baby isn’t my fate.”

  “Insight may come faster with some help.”

  “I want it to come slow.”

  “Leave her alone,” Kitty told him.

  “Leave me alone.”

  Maud said she’d live in New York City with her baby.

  “Why there?” Kitty asked.

  “There are more opportunities for a single mother.”

  “You could live here. I’d help with the baby. You’d be a lot freer.”

  “I don’t want to live here.”

  “What kind of opportunities?” Dubin wanted to know. “Welfare? Food stamps?”

  “That isn’t what she means,” Kitty said with irritation.

  Maud said she would take welfare if she had to. Dubin said she was not being wise.

  “Maybe I will be someday, who can tell?”

  “I’d expect to help you,” he offered. “But things are tight with us now. Inflation isn’t helping. I’m worried about money.”

  “I don’t want to be helped,” Maud said.

  “You ought to notify the baby’s father about your situation. He has some obligation to you.”

  “I will when I feel like it.”

  “Maud, be reasonable,” Kitty said.

  “I am reasonable, Mother.” She flung her napkin on the table and ran upstairs.

  “Be careful with her,” Kitty said to Dubin. “Don’t be insensitive.”

  “Tell her not to be. An unwanted pregnancy is no privilege.”

  They had raised their voices, began to quarrel. Above their heads Maud thumped on the floor with her boot.

  They stopped shouting.

  The next afternoon Dubin and his daughter walked in the snow to the covered bridge. Maud took his arm. Usually he asked her to walk with him; today she had suggested it. Dubin thought he would say
she could rely on his support. She was wearing the antique gold earrings he had bought her in Stockholm. He was moved by them, by her.

  He pointed out how many blue jays were around that winter. They counted eight in the snow at one spot.

  At the bridge she nervously said, “Papa, my lover was a black man. I may have a black child.”

  Dubin, even as he was touched by her, groaned aloud.

  “Jesus, how you mess up your life, Maud.”

  “Be gentle, please.” The girl looked as if she were drowning. He felt he must keep her afloat, yet could not restrain his anger. “Not only an old man but black in the bargain. Not only a single mother but white with a black baby. What kind of simple life can you have when you complicate yours so incredibly?”

  “I happened to love a certain man.”

  “There are times when love is impossible.”

  “I never thought of it as impossible.”

  “Now I understand why you came home that winter with your hair dyed black.”

  “You understand nothing.” Her face was stiff, eyes motionless.

  “I understand the misery you’re heading into. You’d be better off aborting.”

  “No one’s going to make me abort my baby,” she wept.

  When they had returned to the house she packed her suitcase and duffel bag and ordered a cab to take her to the bus station.

  Kitty canceled the cab. “If you insist on going I’ll take you.”

  Dubin asked Maud not to leave. “I’m sorry I lost my cool. Stay, let’s talk it over calmly.”

  Kitty said stay for her sake.

  “I can’t, Mother, I’m miserable here.”

  Her father carried her things out to the car. His breath misted as he kissed her cheek. “We’ll be in touch, my child. Things will be better.”

  When Kitty came back from the bus she accused him of having driven the girl out of the house.

  Dubin got into the car and drove quickly to the bus station. A bus had just left and he followed it to Winslow until it occurred to him that wasn’t the way to New York.

  One night as the telephone rang while Kitty and Dubin sat in the living room, each looked tensely at the other; neither moved to answer. The ringing went on and ceased. They watched it ring and listened to an aftermath of ringing silence.

  “Why didn’t you answer it?” he asked.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It might have been Maud. I thought you would. You usually answer the phone.”

  “You’d have been embarrassed if it was your girl calling long-distance.”

  “I have no girl calling long-distance. It might have been Maud.”

  “She wouldn’t hang up after five rings.”

  “Has she called?”

  Kitty shook her head.

  “Do you have her address?”

  “She said she would write.”

  “I asked her to stay in touch,” he said.

  The next day when the phone rang he picked up the receiver and heard it click off after he and Kitty simultaneously said hello. Dubin wondered if it was Fanny signaling him to get in touch with her but when he rang her up from the barn she said she hadn’t called.

  “Why would I if I promised not to call you at your house any more?”

  “Something might have come up so that we couldn’t meet.”

  “I’d leave a note for you on the table inside my front door.”

  He would rather have her do that than call, Dubin agreed. He hadn’t yet told Kitty Fanny had bought the Wilson farm. She’d find it out soon enough herself, but whatever time he had before that he wanted to have. Sooner or later time would evolve a course of action. He wanted it to be the right one; he wanted time on his side.

  The next day when the phone rang Kitty answered it in her husband’s presence. After listening a minute she seemed puzzled. “You must have the wrong number.” She hung up slowly.

  “Have you noticed all the wrong numbers?”

  “Sometimes the circuits get screwed up.”

  “It puts me on edge. I mean when there are so many.”

  “I noticed it a couple of weeks ago but not lately.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Kitty said.

  She was sleeping better, gaining weight. She complained that flesh was hitting her on the hips and belly. She was having trouble getting into her best dresses, would have to diet. Knowing how intensely she worried about Maud, not to speak of Gerald, Dubin thought that all in all she was in good control. Seeing Ondyk obviously helped her. So did her work in the Youth Opportunity Center; there she could do for others what she couldn’t do for her elusive children. At night Kitty carefully creamed her face and hands. She had got a short haircut and looked pretty.

  “Do you want to go to bed?” Dubin asked her one evening.

  “Let’s give it a little longer,” she hesitantly said. Her dark eyes were sober.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  He said they could wait a while longer; he felt bad saying it.

  She hadn’t complained lately about his problem. She seemed calm about it, objective, patient. She treated him, Dubin thought, as if he was someone convalescing; or she hoped convalescing. Kitty would glance into his study or wherever he happened to be when she was on her way out, and ask him how he felt. “Fine,” Dubin said. “How’s the work going?” “Fine,” he said. She smiled and left quickly, returning to smell the burners casually, as though she had really returned to look at the clock. She reminded him a little of the woman she had been when they first met. She seemed more independent lately, able to get along without consulting him. He put her out of his thoughts, yet found himself thinking of her. He sensed her secretly eluding him. He felt some regret, but did not worry about it—wanted her to be on her own, free of him.

  Dubin could not recall when he began thinking of her diary. It seemed to him he had lately become curious to have a look at it. It had been around so often he was surprised when it was no longer in sight. When Kitty left the house one morning, he stopped work to search for it. Dubin went from room to room, looking in dresser drawers, amidst her underwear, on closet shelves, behind books in her bookcase, for the worn hardbound blue spiral notebook she wrote in every so often, sometimes late at night—her intense outpourings in thoughtful passages. The tone of the book was self-critical, but often she said things about life that made him reflect on life. He had guessed she might be writing in the diary lately and searched for it continually, half disgusted with what he was doing; yet he felt there had been a change in her he had to understand.

  Dubin wanted to know how she defined herself now; and what her degree of feeling or non-feeling for him was. Maybe he had become curious to read the diary when he realized she was no longer leaving it around like yesterday’s newspaper. He had often seen it on her dresser or his; or downstairs on a kitchen chair; or in the bathroom. Sometimes it annoyed him to come across it if he thought she had placed it where it would be at hand, his hand. He hadn’t wanted to read what she feared or was bored with; or how William Dubin had once more failed her. Why bother reading it when she would sooner or later say openly what she had written? On the whole he knew how she measured him. Too bad he hadn’t kept a journal of his own for her to read, though she would never read it without asking if she might. Tolstoy and his wife let each other read their diaries and were both wounded. Total confession was not necessarily pure honesty. There were mean ways to confess whatever one was confessing. However, in Kitty’s present mood, whatever it was, Dubin felt he wanted a glimpse of her mind. He had to know what he could freely do next. He wanted to do it the way it would hurt least.

  He searched under their bed; through a pile of unanswered correspondence on her desk; in her desk drawers. Nor was there a letter from a lover, if she had one. Dubin had been incredulously wondering if she might be having an affair. With whom? This would be tricky terrain for Kitty. She had more than once remarked she had no objection to extramarital aff
airs “for some women,” those, Dubin gathered, who could find little relief from meager marriages. “But I doubt I’d want to get into that act,” she said. “I’m not made for it.” Kitty laughed breathily as though she had confessed a serious lack.

  “How would you know till you had tried?”

  “I know myself,” she had said. She spoke with doubt, looking at him as though expecting him to deny the doubt, which he did not do.

  She said then with more certainty, “I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to try an affair. I’ve thought about it, frankly, though I don’t know who’d be interested in me at my age. I’m not a young woman any more.”

  He said again, hesitating to say it, that she was, nevertheless, attractive. “Stop remembering when you were born.”

  “I wish I had been more adventurous when I was young—more daring. I wish I could have let go—I’m a passionate woman—but I wouldn’t have been comfortable with an affair while Nathanael was walking the dog, or you were picking flowers. And I don’t think I’d care for the concealment and dishonesty that goes with an affair, though my grandmother told me my mother was very good at it, could do it all without blinking an eyelash. But I am not my mother. Somewhere along the line I think I bored her.”

  Dubin gave her credit: Kitty knew herself not badly, and lived with it, not badly. He thought of her as comparatively untried. Life had fallen on her once like a tree that had cracked and been blown over in a storm. She had crawled out from under a ton of broken branches, shocked, bleeding, traumatized; but after that, life had more or less let her be. A little crippled was fine with life. So long as you’re wounded you know you’re alive. Yet he felt the more experienced he became, the less she seemed to be. Though Kitty called herself passionate there were areas of sensual experience she had made no attempt to know. She did not play with what might explode in her face. One tree falling on you in a lifetime was enough forever. She seemed always self-protective; had a quality of that kind, therefore that kind of innocence. Besides she couldn’t lie. Perhaps he could teach her?

  Was she changing—might she have changed? Had she thought it over, decided, at her age, because of her age, to take a chance—in protest of his neglect of her? If she were into an affair now had he forced it on her? But an affair with whom in Center Campobello? Oscar—perhaps evening the score for Flora and Dubin? Not likely: if he’d allowed himself to be attracted by Kitty he’d have gone after her years ago. Only once had he persuaded her to play the harp to his flute. Evan Ondyk? She had said he would not appeal to her as a lover. Roger Foster?—the desire for a young lover revived? Given the failure of their former attraction, Dubin doubted her interest in Roger now. Still, he couldn’t say for sure. Women of Kitty’s age could be desirable to younger men. She might be willing if he was. But Dubin thought if she was into an affair it would probably be with a stranger to him, possibly one of the psychiatric social-worker types she met at the Youth Center. Kitty admired people who advised others about their lives.