Mary McCarthy

by Thomas Mallon

“Well, I was tight, of course,” she said now, watching her friend butter a muffin. Dolly gave a faint, embarrassed smile. “Oh, Martha!” she said. Martha laughed; she had always liked to shock Dolly. “I’ve slept with lots of men when I was tight,” she continued. “You’d die if I told you how many.” Dolly’s eyes widened in a question. “Not now, of course,” said Martha, quickly. “Years ago. Before I knew John.” Dolly nodded; she handed Martha the muffin and sought to change the subject slightly. “Miss Prentice,” she said, naming their favorite teacher, “always said you married Mr. Murphy for security. She had seen his picture once in the paper.” The two girls smiled. “Poor Miss Prentice,” murmured Martha. Dolly frowned. “But you never cared about security,” she pondered. Martha nodded gloomily. “I know,” she said. There was a silence. “He seemed so old, Dolly,” Martha exclaimed suddenly, setting down her cup and passing her hand across her brow, as if to calm herself. “He hasn’t changed a bit. I’d forgotten what he looked like. It gave me a turn to see him and remember myself yielding to his charms.” “I thought you were tight,” objected Dolly. “I was conscious,” cried Martha. “I wasn’t that tight. I remember everything about it, except one tiny little bit—the bit where he says I kissed him. I can’t remember that at all. The next thing I knew he was taking me into a motel, on the old Post Road. I was afraid we were going to get fleas. I remember thinking about that all the time. Do you suppose I really did kiss him, Dolly?” “I don’t know,” said Dolly. “If I did,” said Martha, “it wasn’t meant to be that kind of kiss. If it was, I don’t know myself at all, Dolly. All I can remember of my feelings is a sort of vague surprise, as if there were a big misunderstanding going on that ought to be cleared up, before it was too late, but I was too tight and tired to explain it to him. Up to the last minute, in the cabin, with all my clothes off, I was still trying to tell him that he was acting on a mistaken premise. I think I went through with it, as a sort of concession, to get him to listen to what I was trying to say.” She gave a little laugh. “Did you mind, Martha?” said Dolly, sympathetically. “Not specially,” said Martha. “It just seemed to me beside the point for him to be making love to me. I wasn’t either drawn or repelled—till the next morning, when I was horrorstruck. And then it happened again.” “In the morning, you mean?” said Dolly. Martha shook her head. “No. The next week. I thought it was all over and I could forget about it—treat it as an aberration. But then he turned up again, at the theater, and the same thing happened again, in practically every detail. . . .” Dolly scratched her head. “You must have been attracted to him,” she concluded. “But I wasn’t,” said Martha. “I had a man I was attracted to, more than one, in fact.” She shrugged and took another muffin.

  “It was an awful mistake to come back here,” she continued. “Don’t tell John I said so; he doesn’t like to hear it. He knows it too but he won’t say so. I can’t tell him what I feel any more. He wants us to be brave and indifferent.” “But why not?” said Dolly. “Why should you let Miles affect you?” “I don’t know,” acknowledged Martha, sighing. “But he does. I can’t help it. He casts a long shadow. I don’t want to live in it. I feel depreciated by him, like a worm, like a white grub in the ground.” She jumped up and began to gesture with the muffin, conscious of acting a part; yet what she said was quite true. Again, as with John, she found that she could not be herself and describe the feelings Miles aroused in her. “I don’t understand,” said Dolly. Martha nodded; communication seemed hopeless. “Look, Dolly,” she said. “Between Miles and me, there’s a permanent war of principle. He claims to know what I am, to interpret me according to his authorized version; I’m sure he pretends to know why John and I came back here and why we married and what we ‘get out of each other,’ as he’d put it in his nasty grasping vocabulary. And I claim to know about him; thanks to my experience, I have the ‘lowdown’ on Miles. Two claims like this can’t exist side by side, in balance. One has to crush the other. And I’m the one to be crushed, inevitably.” She waved the muffin. “Why do you think that?” murmured Dolly, knitting her brows. “Because I doubt,” said Martha, rather grandly. “It occurs to me that I may be wrong. Miles has never had that experience.” Dolly inclined her head. “I see what you mean,” she said, thoughtfully. “Meeting him the other day. . . .”

  Martha’s face brightened. “You thought he was awful?” she demanded, sitting down with a thump. “Yes,” said Dolly, in decided tones. “In what way?” pressed Martha. “So heavy,” said Dolly. “Like a stone-crusher. He made me nervous too. He reminded me of everybody’s father.” “Good!” exclaimed Martha. “You want people to dislike him?” asked Dolly. “Of course,” said Martha. “I rejoice in it. What did you think of her?” Dolly screwed up her forehead. “Rather nice, I thought, really. Very sweet face. Attractive in her way.” Martha bit her lip. “More so than I am?” But before Dolly could answer, Martha withdrew the question. “No,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear, either way. Why should I care if she’s attractive?” “You’re jealous,” said Dolly, with a troubled countenance. “I must be,” admitted Martha. “But not in the way you would think. I stayed awake all last night, examining my conscience. I can’t bear to have such feelings. They’re unworthy. And I have no right to them. It isn’t as if I wanted him for myself. Perish the thought. I would die, I think, if he started after me again. That’s what I keep telling myself.” She closed her eyes and sat leaning back on the canvas-covered couch, looking all at once very pale and exhausted. “I always told him,” she said, slowly, “that he ought to let me leave him, for his own sake. I thought I meant it. I thought I had enough generosity to want him to be happy, apart from me.” She took a deep breath and set her lips. There was a silence while Martha brooded and Dolly watched her affectionately. “Don’t tell me if you don’t feel like it,” she murmured. It frightened her a little to see Martha like this, a waxen effigy of resolute misery; she had always considered her a gay, resilient person. Martha made a grimace. “I’ll try,” she said. “In a minute.” She closed her eyes again and reflected.

  She was the worst wife he could have married, she used to tell Miles. It would be best for both of them, if he would let her go. “You’re the one I want,” Miles always retorted, comfortably. “No,” she would answer, resting her head on his arm, in the big bed (this would be one of their “good” mornings, when Miles was on the wagon); another woman, in her place, she said, would submit to his moods and make him happy. But though she allowed for this contingency in theory, she really did not think it likely. A saint, she meant, would put up with him. Hence it had greatly dismayed her, the other day at the Coes’, to see that this hypothetical other woman actually existed, smiling and tender, obeying him gratefully, murmuring, “Yes, dearest,” when he gave the sign to go. The notion that Miles could be “dearest” to anyone struck Martha as preposterous. It was still more fantastic to hear from the vicomte that it was Helen who had sent for the portrait. Such abnegation seemed to Martha unnatural and almost wicked. She could not, as she said to John, get over it. Yet it had a certain ring of familiarity. That, she declared with a sigh, was exactly the crazy kind of thing Miles tried to exact from a woman who wanted to live with him in peace. There was method in his madness; he made his wives choose between him and common sense, between him and ordinary decency.

  He made his wives his accomplices; that was why they could not escape him. They had to stand by and watch him abuse the servants, hold back their wages, eat their food, accuse them of robbing him. He insisted that his wives lie for him, to his creditors, to the insurance company, to the tax people. He had no sense of limit or of other people’s rights. Nothing was safe from his meandering appetites: the maid’s time off, her dinner, her birthday box of candy, the cooking sherry, the vanilla. He slept in every bed and commandeered every bathroom. He even, Martha remembered, used to eat Barrett’s lollipops.

  There was method in it, Martha had reiterated, to John, only last night: mere lack of consi
deration could not have carried him so far. His outrageousness had a purpose; by a campaign of calculated “frightfulness” he broke his wives’ spirits. She herself could never live down, in her own mind, not what he had done to her, but what she had consented in—their treatment of her brother, the beatings he used to give Barrett. It was his child, she used to tell herself; she could not interfere every time; it would only goad Miles on, etc., etc. These arguments were sound; she was justified; she had done her utmost. There was only one thing—a thing she had never quite brought herself to confess to John. Hearing Barrett cry, she had sometimes experienced pleasure. For an instant, before she could stop herself by pressing her fingers to her ears, she gloated that Miles was revealing himself in his true colors to his son. And, to be honest, she often felt something of the same kind when he ate the servants’ food.

  If she had not felt this, she might have managed him better. She had seen this suddenly last night, in bed, clear as a vision or an unexpected refraction of her face from a street mirror. Miles had been right. It had satisfied her, in some part of her soul, whenever he behaved badly to herself or anyone else. It had proved, so to speak, a point. “You see?” she had felt like exclaiming, to Barrett, to the servants, to her doubting self. “That’s the way he is!” Martha was too fair-minded to incite him to any of his crimes, and indeed she had done her best to protect other people from him and to cover up his traces, so that the world would not know. But if despite all her efforts he demonstrated what he was, some part of her was well content and nodded to itself, as though a prediction had been verified. He would not let her love him, she used to tell herself, in gloomy triumph; he would not let anybody love him, including his own child. Now it dashed her to recognize that somebody else had succeeded in doing what she had always defined as the impossible. “She loves him,” she had said aloud to herself, wonderingly, sitting up in bed and feeling a strange pang of jealousy.

  Her own love, beside this, seemed a paltry, commonplace thing—why should she not love John? It took no special virtue; he was a lovable person. She had turned on the light softly and looked down at him, a coil of limbs in the bed; he slept like a child, his lashes quivering gently on his cheek, his curly hair disarrayed picturesquely. He was beautiful and good, and yet as she looked down on him, curiously, she had a hollow sense, as though those very qualities had deprived her of an opportunity, the opportunity of loving against the grain.

  “I’m envious of their marriage, isn’t that ridiculous?” she said to Dolly, now, with a light, forced laugh and a grimace. “I can’t bear the idea that anybody might think that it was happier than mine.” Dolly poked the dying fire. The pine wood was green; Martha and John had told her that she ought to have locust. She felt a little shocked, as usual, by Martha and wondered whether Martha was different from herself or simply more honest—a question Martha had often provoked among her college circle. “You mean,” said Dolly thoughtfully, trying to understand, “that if he’s happy, it casts a reflection on you?” Martha nodded. “But why should it, Martha?” pleaded Dolly. “You weren’t the right person for him.” Martha laughed. “Dear Dolly,” she said, “you sound so sensible. But I’m not. I’m an absolutist. I want to be a paragon uniting all the virtues. You remember that speech of Iago’s about Cassio? ‘He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.’ Well, I feel that in reverse. I’d like to say to Miles: ‘I have a daily beauty in my life that makes yours ugly.’ In fact, I’d like to say it to every single person here in New Leeds, except you. All these tawdry people. That’s why we came back here—to show them how tawdry they are in comparison to us.” “Why, Martha, that’s horrible,” said Dolly, with her hand to her cheek. “I told you,” said Martha. “No wonder I feel like a worm. I hate this in myself and I can’t cast it out. And once I’ve discovered it I find it everywhere—all over me, even in my best actions. I suddenly feel that that’s why John and I got married: to show the rest of the world how to do it right, a sort of star turn, calculated to excite envy.” “I don’t believe it,” said Dolly, resolutely, shaking her head. “I know you both better than that. John was always a bit of a show-off, in his reserved way, and so were you, Martha. But you both admire lots of people—your friends. I’ve heard you. You’re both tremendous enthusiasts.” Martha reflected. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. In a way. I always prided myself”—she laughed—“on the notion that I knew when to be humble. It must be this place that’s brought out the latent worst in me. Because of Miles. I feel I’m living in a showcase. Everybody is looking up to Digby and making comparisons. Or is it my imagination? It seems to me that it’s inevitable, that the human mind, given two similars, weighs them against each other. The principle of balance.” Dolly inclined her head. “I see,” she murmured. “But can’t you stop thinking about it?”

  Martha lifted a shoulder. “You might as well tell me to stop thinking about myself. I can’t. If I think about him or her, I think about myself. If I think about myself, they pop into my mind. It’s degrading. Do you think about yourself a lot, Dolly?” “Constantly,” smiled Dolly. “In terms of reprimand.” “I know,” said Martha. “I wonder if these other people do. I can’t make out. If they did, you’d presume they’d make some effort to improve their messy lives. So probably they don’t. I like your shells,” she added, examining an arrangement of graduated seashells that Dolly had picked up on the beach. “You did it for pleasure, I imagine. If it were I, I would do it to make somebody admire my ingenuity.” She sighed and got up. “And the irony is, Dolly, that nobody here cares. They don’t know the difference. All my silly efforts are wasted on them. You should have seen the vicomte yesterday: the soul of phlegm. And I was hurt. Imagine. I wanted him to like our furniture.” “Why shouldn’t he?” said Dolly indignantly. Martha laughed. “I love you, Dolly,” she murmured. “You’re so loyal.” She hesitated. “Thank you for coming up here,” she said quickly. “I know you did it for us. Forgive us for bullying you.” “All my friends bully me,” said Dolly cheerfully. “Anyway, Martha, I admire you. You don’t have to force me to, either of you. But you do make me feel inferior. You always have. When you’re here, I burn the muffins.” She pointed with the fork to the charred remains on the hearth. Martha’s fair skin colored. “I didn’t will that to happen,” she said. “Honestly. I’d much rather you didn’t burn them. I love perfection in my friends. I don’t grudge you the seashells or having a better character than I have. It makes me happy.” She pondered. “Isn’t there such a thing, any more, as a healthy rivalry, a noble emulation, like the Olympic Games or a contest of bards? Does it all have to be poisoned, nowadays? This horrible bohemian life you see up here, with lily cups and beards and plastics—it’s real leveling, worse than suburbia, where there’s a frank competition with your neighbors, to have the newest car or bake the best cakes. I can understand that. I’m like that myself. But here nobody competes, unless there’s a secret contest as to who can have the most squalid house and give the worst parties. It gives me the strangest feeling, as if I were the only one left in the world with the desire to excel, as if I were competing, all alone, on an empty stage, without judges or rivals, just myself—a solipsistic nightmare. ‘That way lies madness,’ as old Dr. Hendricks used to say, remember, in freshman philosophy. In Juneau, Dolly, there used to be a madwoman who rode up and down the streets on a bicycle, wearing a sort of circus costume, tights and a red jacket, and white paint and rouge. I feel just like her when I walk down the main street here, in a dress and stockings; everybody stares—I’m anti-social. The other day, in the First National, one of the local beldames actually plucked at my arm and asked me why I wore stockings. ‘Nobody does up here,’ she informed me.”

  “You always were a rebel,” said Dolly. “You’d be the same if you lived in Scarsdale.” “No,” said Martha. “If I lived in Scarsdale, I wouldn’t care what the neighbors thought. And I wouldn’t want to reform them.” “You want to reform these people?” asked Dolly, with a quizzical smile. M
artha nodded. “Of course. I’m trying to set an example. It’s not only vanity; there’s also a corrective impulse. ‘Let your light so shine before all men.’ That’s the very height of my folly. John and I are making ourselves ludicrous with our high-toned ways. I know it but I won’t desist. It becomes a form of fanaticism. They can kill me, I say to myself, grandly, but they can’t make me be like them.”

  Dolly remained seated on her stool by the fireplace, watching Martha arrange her gray cloak. “You won’t believe it,” said Martha, “but I don’t want to have a selfish life. I hate this obsession with myself, these odious comparisons. I want to live for somebody else, for ‘humanity.’ ” She gave a droll smile. “You have John,” pointed out Dolly. Martha frowned. “That’s just the trouble,” she said. “He won’t let me live for him. He wants to live for me. It leaves us at a peculiar deadlock. I keep telling myself that if we could only have a baby, everything would be changed. I felt certain that when we came up here, I would ‘conceive.’ ” The habit of speaking in quotation marks was one the two young women had acquired in college; Martha had trained herself out of it, professionally, but when she was with Dolly the mannerism reasserted itself.

  “Maybe you will, Martha.” Martha shook her head. “I’m thirty-three. A little too old really, for a first baby. And years ago I had an abortion. It may have done something to my insides. Anyway, it’s probably wrong to have a baby as a ‘solution.’ One ought to have it for no reason, just for itself.” Her hand was on the doorknob, but she still lingered. “Come to dinner tomorrow. I’ll cook something vainglorious for you. Maybe we’ll go mushrooming first. John has found a new kind. And we have some beautiful poisonous ones, waxy yellows and exotic carmines, that we thought you might like to paint. The poisonous ones, naturally, are the prettiest.” She was speaking, all at once, very rapidly, in a disjointed manner. Dolly looked at her wonderingly. “Thank you for the tea,” added Martha. “Thank you for the tarragon,” said Dolly, slowly getting up. “I really must go,” said Martha, still not moving. “John will worry. That’s the disadvantage of your not having a telephone. Dolly, are you lonely here?” “I like it,” said Dolly.