The Marriage Bed

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  “Get on with that steak, love. It’s getting late.”

  He tossed a bit of seaweed at me. “I know what’s on your mind, you sex maniac.”

  “Too right.”

  “Well, hold on. Let’s eat first.”

  This was a perfectly acceptable arrangement. That cold, pure, salt-bright air stimulated all the appetites. We stayed on the beach eating till the sun was low and red. Martha fell asleep in her stroller as abruptly as a drunk passing out. The seagulls mewed and called with their greedy, yearning voices, their wings flashing over the green foam of an incoming tide. We finished a bottle of wine, hugging the thought that the motel was only ten minutes’ walk away, and that the grim white nights of Martha’s colic were far behind us. We walked back along the beach pushing the stroller, so close together we made one shadow.

  “I am so damn happy with you it isn’t decent,” I told him minutes later while taking off his shirt. I began to tickle his neck and jaws with small, teasing kisses. He groaned with pleasure as I pushed him onto the bed and rolled over him.

  “Mmm. Lovely. Oh God.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Wait a sec, Anne –”

  “What for?”

  “You sure your whatsit is in?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Okay, we just don’t want any little accidents, right?”

  “Oh, do stop. You’re such a worrywart.”

  “I know. Sorry. Only since they took you off the pill, I can’t help … I mean this diaphragm thing isn’t all that foolproof, is it.”

  “Well, next to total abstinence, I’m told it is. Now will you stop it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mmm. Now where were we …”

  A log in the fire broke, shooting up a bright lick of flame and wakening Mao, who uttered a querulous, sleepy yowl. I shifted Martha’s weight off my arm and sat up, glad of the interruption. Remembering past and gone joy was about as rewarding as pulling out your own hair in handfuls. It would be much more helpful, I told myself grimly, to recall past miseries. Like, perhaps, the day we got home from that same Gaspé holiday.

  I’d been having some discomfort and a little bleeding, so on our way through the city, Ross dropped me off at the doctor’s. There, to my consternation, he found me pregnant.

  “Oh Lord. So much for diaphragms.”

  “Well, you’ve got to put ’em in right side up, you know. Better talk this over with your husband, and if you decide …”

  The instant Ross got home I told him the news, blurting it out in a desperate hurry while I still had the courage.

  He pulled off his glasses and rubbed both eyes with the heels of his hands. “No – no – Anne, you said that next to total –”

  “I know. Only it turns out I’ve been putting the damn thing in upside-down or something. Miller says he’ll install an IUD next time. Please, please don’t be sore about it. I’m awfully sorry about the timing; but after all, you wouldn’t mind a son, would you? It just means we’re having our family early, that’s all. Lots of people say you might as well have another one right away when you’re tied down anyhow with the first one. Please, you’re not sore about it, are you?”

  He tried with minimal success to smile, and he put his arm around me, but a worry-frown dragged at his forehead, and he gave a sigh like a sad and weary old man. His goodness made the tears roll richly down my cheeks. He patted my back.

  “There now, honey, don’t cry. It’s all right. Come on, blow your nose. It’s all right, I tell you. When does Miller say you’re due?”

  “Early December. Martha will be eighteen months. It won’t be so bad. I can have her trained by then, and –”

  “Well, you’d better get some rest now. Lie down, why don’t you. I’ll cope with Martha.”

  “Our bed’s not made yet. Sheets and all that are down in the laundry room.”

  “I’ll go get them. You take it easy.”

  Five minutes later he was back from the basement. His face was dead white with fury.

  “Anne. Do you know where I found the laundry? In one great big wet lump. Covered with mould. In the drier. You forgot to switch it on. That whole horrible mess has been sitting there for two weeks!” His voice rose to a yell. “It’s absolutely, bloody TYPICAL! I’ve told you again and again, but you never listen. This place is chaos! Your junk is all over the place – you’re always making clothes in the kitchen or reading in the toilet, toys and pots and God knows what cluttering the stairs – it’s disgusting! It makes me physically sick!”

  “I’m sorry –”

  But he flung out of the room, still furious, and I thought, if we were being typical, how like him it was to make such an uproar about a few sheets. Just the same, I began to suspect for the first time that the trivial conflicts between us might be the ones, in the end, to prove true destroyers.

  The red eye of the fire winked at me cynically, as if to remind me of the value of hindsight. Wide awake now, as it always was in the small hours, the unborn one flexed its spider limbs. In stages, like an old buffalo, I heaved to my feet and, one after the other, lugged the children up to their beds. As I climbed the stairs with Martha slung over my shoulder, I heard the faint echo of those gulls wistfully calling on the Gaspé beach.

  A little later, when all of us had for some time been in our beds, I woke sharply to a noise like the coughing of some large, hoarse goat. Shivering, I groped along the creaking hall floor to the children’s room. A big white moon like a face with toothache looked in at the window, and by its light I found Hugh wheezing and choking with croup. I lifted him out of the cot, wrapped his sweat-damp body in a blanket, and carried him to the phone.

  “Next time, don’t take him to Emergency,” our pediatrician had told me. “Traumatizes the poor kid too much. Call me and I’ll bring over our cold steamer.” Luckily Jeff Reilly lived only a few blocks away.

  “Anne Graham here. Sorry to bother you so late, Lynne, but is Jeff there?”

  “Yes, he is. Hold on a minute.”

  “Jeff, our boy’s having another bad go of croup.”

  “Argh. Well, bundle him up and take him out on the porch or somewhere – the cold air will help. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I struggled into a coat and swaddled Hugh in everything I could lay hands on before propping him up in the stroller and shoving it out onto the gritty little ornamental balcony that led off our bedroom. After a few minutes, Hugh’s hoarse struggle for breath eased, and I then seized the opportunity to blunder downstairs, turn on a light, and open the front door. (Poor old Junie: if the late movie had ended, she would miss this little drama.) Then I hurried back to peer at Hugh in the moonlight. He was still labouring to breathe, but the panic had died out of his eyes. “That’s right, old man,” I said, patting him. “You’re all right now.”

  He gave me a quick, sweet look, and for a second I saw Ross there – vulnerable, loving, strong, and weak. For a second, the illusion that he was literally there, and needing me, was so sharp that I turned around, as if he might be standing behind me. With it went an uncanny impression of being outside my own body and somehow in his, wherever it might chance at the moment to be. I could feel his confusion, a sort of clashing gloom and distress, as if they were lodgers in my own mind. This kind of transference was not uncommon between us, but only once before had it been as powerful as this – one evening soon after we moved into this house.

  With my hair bound up in a scarf, and wearing one of Ross’s torn old shirts, I was painting the kitchen walls, working hard to have it done to surprise him when he came home. It was deeply satisfying to be working in my own house; the colour was an attractive plum blue; I should have been happy, but for some reason I was not. Some kind of uneasiness dragged at me, nagging and persistent; a kind of spiritual indigestion. I switched on the radio and found some lively music, but it didn’t help. Vigorously I wielded the roller, smoothing on the fresh colour and expertly catching the drips; but still the mala
ise persisted. It grew so keen I almost called Ross at the office; but then I remembered the senior partner, old Mr. Fraser, might still be there – a tall old man with bleak eyes cynically hooded like the eyes of an aged turtle. Ross, I knew, was afraid of him.

  The bad feeling was so pervasive that I told myself with great firmness its origin was simply the smell of paint. After all, I was six months pregnant and entitled to occasional qualms. The fact was, though, that I’d never had a moment’s nausea and glowed with rude health from the very start.

  Finally, to comfort myself, I put down the roller and wandered through the hall and into the living-room. Here we’d opened a wide archway to provide space, and in the dining-room, builders had made French doors onto a pleasant little brick patio brightened with tubs of geranium, lobelia, and ivy. The whole house was almost comically narrow, and it had been a real test of ingenuity to find ways of giving it charm. Yet with one accord we’d chosen this downtown, terraced house with its skylight and steep stairs in preference to a prim Leaside bungalow or a sterile suburban condominium like the one Max and Billie owned. They both seemed perfectly happy in a twentieth-floor flat furnished and decorated throughout by Interiors, Inc., who chose the very china for the table. But Ross built bookshelves (though he nearly sawed off his own thumb in the process), and I made curtains on a second-hand sewing-machine. Together we white-painted the downstairs rooms and pasted enormous brilliant flowers cut out of fabric on the walls – in short, we had the best fun of our lives. Ross worked late into every evening, attempting to ingratiate himself with Mr. Fraser; but the instant he got home, he changed into paint-speckled clothes and happily joined me in scraping floors or painting woodwork. He was due now; in fact, overdue, and uneasiness squirmed in me more insistently than ever as I waited for him.

  By the time he actually arrived, I was so relieved to see him, apparently perfectly all right, that I hurried to the kitchen to make coffee. He did look extra tired.

  “Here, love, have some of this, it will pick you up. Want something to eat?”

  “No, no.”

  There was a dragging note in his voice. I looked at him sharply. “What’s the matter, love? I’ve had this bad feeling for hours. Something’s wrong, isn’t it.”

  “No, there isn’t. I’m just pooped, that’s all.”

  “It’s more than that. Tell me.”

  “Leave it, Anne. Just leave it. You’ve got enough on your mind, with baby coming and all.… Good God, what have you done to the kitchen?”

  “What, don’t you like it?”

  “Oh, sure – sure – only that purply blue is a bit overpowering, don’t you think?”

  “Well, we could change it if you like. Maybe wallpaper would be better –”

  “No, honey, actually it looks quite nice. Different, anyway. I’ll get used to it.” He put his arm around me, but when I leaned back against him, he was so tense it was like touching a high-tension wire.

  “Ross, what’s wrong?”

  He jerked away from me and clapped down the mug of coffee, which he’d barely tasted. Hunching his shoulders irritably, he headed for the sitting-room. I followed him there and, cornered, he threw himself into a chair, only to leap out of it again as if it were on fire. He stood at the window staring out at the autumn sky in which great clusters of stars swarmed.

  “Tell me,” I said gently.

  “Oh, it’s nothing – I just get uptight about things, as you know. Only it’s perfectly obvious that old man Fraser hates my guts, that’s all. He only took me in because he knew my father. He despises me. Every day he finds some way to put me down, every single day. It’s got so I dread going in to the office. He’s completely different with Randy, but nothing I do is ever right. And I’m ashamed of being so scared of the old bugger. So it’s a vicious circle.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I made up my mind today that I’d step right up to him. You know, man not mouse.” His voice wobbled briefly and I longed to touch him, but didn’t.

  “Anyhow, I asked if I could see him, and he waved me into that office of his with the glass bookcase and the picture of Wilfrid Laurier, and I screwed myself up to ask him why Randy gets to help him with the Bennington case, instead of me. It’s true we came into the firm at the same time, but I graduated with a damn sight better degree than Randy, and I stay late every night working my ass off while he puts his feet up at home. The old bastard knows all this perfectly well. It’s time I was given more responsibility; he knows that too. It’s so bloody unfair.”

  “What did he say to all that?”

  “Well, he said – he said – ‘Graham, the fact is that young Randall has more flair than you. Certainly he has more aptitude for corporate law. Frankly, I have more confidence in him. Perhaps in time …’ and he waffled on a bit about giving me time to mature and all that crap. And I went back to my desk and just sat there. How about that, being told you’re in the wrong profession, after all those years hitting the books. Well, it’s not the first time I’ve thought of it. Law attracts the failures – the guys not much good for anything.”

  “Ross, you know better than that. You have more perception and a better brain than Randy will ever have, and you know it. Fraser knows it too. He’s simply jealous of both of you because you’re young and bright – he feels inferior, don’t you see; that’s why he’s trying to set the two of you against each other.”

  He shook his head. “Even if there’s some truth in that, how can I go back to that office after today? How can I possibly, after what he said to me? But of course there’s no way I can quit, either, not with you like this and the house to pay for … of course I’ll just have to hack it the best way I can.”

  I went over and laid my arms around him, resting my face against his back between the shoulder-blades.

  “Ross, you’re not going to stay there and take any more. Not for long, anyhow. What’s the point of heading for a nervous breakdown, even if Randy’s in line for one next? There’s got to be some way – move to another firm or something.”

  “No … word gets around Bay Street you’re difficult or whatever, and … no, I’m stuck there for the next year, at the very least.”

  “Well, but after that –”

  “After that what. It isn’t as if I could dream of setting up on my own, not for ten years or so yet. If then. Me having no flair, and all that.”

  I rubbed my cheek on his back. “Now then. You know that’s a lot of balls. Why shouldn’t you set up on your own, as soon as your time with Fraser is up? You said yourself the other day that Tim Brian’s looking around for partners – he was in your class, wasn’t he? He’s got access to his dad’s money, and pots of it – you might not have to put that much in. I’m sure your mother would help, especially when she knows the story. Anything’s better than dragging on there a minute longer than you have to.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he muttered; but he turned around and we held each other, the bulge that would soon be Martha pressed between us so firmly we could both feel her stir.

  “We haven’t done this room yet,” I murmured. The reference was not to decoration. We had promised each other to make love in every room in the house, as a way of making it really ours, and by some inexplicable oversight hadn’t yet used the sitting-room.

  “Oh honey, I’m too tired.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He turned out to be almost right, just the same, and he fell asleep the instant we were finished, sprawled awkwardly half over me. I lay there for a long time buzzing here and there with pins and needles under his weight, because I couldn’t bear to wake him.

  A bang of the downstairs door announced the arrival of Jeff Reilly, M.D., a duffle coat slung on over worn jeans, and a Leafs hockey tuque jammed over his curly hair. There was something ridiculously boyish about Jeff – until he switched professional concentration like a bright light on his patient. He touched Hugh’s face, peered at him closely, and listened critically to his hoarse cough. Th
e moon looked over his shoulder as he shone a tiny flashlight into each of Hugh’s ears.

  “Yes; well, he’s not too bad,” he said, packing away the stethoscope after giving Hugh’s cheek a friendly pinch. “Why don’t we just keep him out here for a little while? He’s over the worst already. I’ll go plug in the steamer so we can put him to bed in a few minutes.”

  He was back shortly with a couple of chairs for us, which he placed cosily close together. “Now then, Annie, put your boots up and prepare for a small snort of medication. I have here a little of this wonder drug called Scotch.”

  With a wink he produced a flask and tiny cups from his duffle pocket.

  “God, Jeff, I’d better not – what with one thing and another, I’ve had three martinis today, and my heartburn –”

  “Do it the world of good,” he said firmly. And to my surprise, it did just that. The first sip went down like a mouthful of sweet fire, warming my cold hands and feet and heart. Hugh’s breathing was almost easy now, as if he felt comforted too.

  “Oh, bless you, Jeff; that’s so good.”

  He looked at me quickly and put his arm around me by way of answer. I relaxed against him gratefully. It was such a luxury to feel cherished for a rare and welcome change. Jeff and I had been warm friends ever since the days when Martha’s five-month colic had driven us nearly mad together. I’d never dared tell po-faced old Dr. Marshall how her hours of nightly screaming drove me so nearly berserk that I was afraid of what I might do to her; but I could and did tell Jeff.

  “Two good ounces of rye in a hot toddy,” he said.

  “What?”

  “For you, dummy, not the baby. She’ll scream on, but you’ll feel a lot better.”

  From that moment I trusted as well as liked our Dr. Reilly. Hugh’s many maladies had kept us in close touch since then, though socially as couples after the first year we hadn’t seen much of each other. His wife, Lynne, was an intense girl, deeply into ecology. Unfortunately, like most people deeply into anything, she had a tendency to bore the pants off me.