Sylvia adds some dots and dashes to her pad. “What was the City Hall wedding like?”
“What was it like? We sat on benches in a courtroom full of poor couples. The young men looked like they hadn’t even shaved yet. Most of them were going off to the war. Jake had a deferment while he was in law school. My heart went out to the girls. They looked scared and tired. Some, a little hopeful. I had a large bouquet of freesias that my sister had given me. None of the other girls had flowers. It occurred to me that I should divide my bouquet so that every bride in the courtroom had a flower, but I held on to it. I didn’t want to seem as if I was gloating. Each couple was escorted, one by one, back to the judge’s chambers. It’s funny, how I can still see the judge’s chambers. Small and high-ceilinged.” The violinist smiles, beguiled by her memory. “The room smelled oddly of mint, and there were cobwebs collecting above the photographs of FDR and Mayor Rossi. The judge, a gaunt fellow in his black robes, seemed in greater need of a benediction than either Jake or me. But, somehow, he managed to give the moment a quiet dignity.”
Inez, strangely girlish, folds her hands together, like a student, embarrassed after answering a query with more candor than was called for.
“And the second wedding?”
“It was in a redwood grove in Muir Woods. Jake found a young rabbi from Berkeley. We stood under a chuppah. Four of his Berkeley buddies held up the poles that supported the fabric. The chuppah had an inscription embroidered on the cloth, in both Hebrew and English, that I kept reading to myself. The voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. A line from Jeremiah. I remember standing there, wondering whether our marriage would be filled with mirth and gladness. Could we be that fortunate? Jake surely seemed like a man of mirth; could I become a woman of gladness? Even back then, I had my doubts.
“After Jake stepped on the ceremonial glass, our family and friends cheered a little. Jake and his mirth were off to a flying start. I closed my eyes and tried to make a picture of gladness in my head. All I could come up with was a basket of fruit. I don’t know, bunches of fat red grapes drooping over brown pears. Was that enough to build a marriage on?”
Sylvia stares for a moment into the black of her cup and then drinks down her coffee. She pushes aside the reporter’s pad. “Tell me about your wedding night.”
“My wedding night?!”
“It’s off the record.” Sylvia smiles. It is an anxious moment, teetering somewhere between titillation and fright. She lifts her right hand to her mouth and starts chewing on a nail. She thinks of Hy Myerson and what he’s taught her about the supple power of the mind, the way it can insinuate itself into forbidden places and make itself at home. “Women so rarely talk about their wedding nights,” she says.
“Why should they?”
“I don’t know. Misery loves company.”
“Was yours miserable?”
“Yes.” Sylvia looks straight ahead, expecting that at any moment she’ll either be asked for particulars or to leave. She tries again. “What was your wedding night like?”
“You should get a job with Dr. Kinsey.”
Sylvia laughs, “I’ve thought of that.”
“You have not.”
“You’re right, but now that you mention it . . .”
Amused despite herself, Inez has difficulty suppressing a chuckle.
“Pretend I am,” says Sylvia.
“Pretend you are what?”
“Working for Dr. Kinsey.”
“Why should I?”
Sylvia tries to establish a formal tone. “Would you please tell me about your wedding night.”
“No.”
Sylvia nods. She picks up her pad and makes like she’s reading a prepared statement. “You understand that your name will never be attached to your responses, not even in our files. We have a code that nobody can crack. What you tell us is invaluable to our research and may provide genuine solace to others.”
Inez sips at her coffee. “You have a lot of nerve.”
Sylvia pushes her chair back from the table, but doesn’t stand. She and Inez trade glances. There is no honor in backing off now. She enjoys her host’s discomfiture.
Inez lifts her chin curiously, as if, despite having no violin, she were about to play her instrument. Sylvia studies the marbled bruise under the violinist’s chin.
“We spent our wedding night at the Sir Francis Drake.”
“The big hotel on Powell?”
“Yes; I remember walking across the red carpet into the hotel, my arms full of freesias. We ended up in this large, mannish room with Tudor furnishings and a four-poster bed. The wallpaper featured a hunting scene. It was a helluva spot for a girl to find herself on her wedding night.”
“I bet.”
“I was afraid that if I closed my eyes the hounds might gain on me.”
Sylvia laughs and nods at Inez in hopes of keeping her going.
“The bellboy asked Jake if he’d like the curtains pulled back. Jake looked at me—what did I want? Open them, I said. My first command as a wife. I must have thought that Jake was going to ravish me as soon as the bellboy left. I filled all the containers in the room with flowers. Freesias floated in the drinking glasses, in the ice bucket.”
“What surprised you most on your wedding night?”
The violinist appears angry. Beautiful and mad, she inhales deeply through her nostrils, then hangs her head. “I was surprised by our nakedness. That surprised me. That could have been enough for a while. Even though I’d been touched before, I was surprised by the sensation of the simplest touch. That would have been enough. I was surprised by how quickly the rest came. Did that surprise you, Sylvia?”
Sylvia nods. She feels a sadness swoop over the room. In the silence that follows, Sylvia forces herself to look at Inez. Her full lips are open, her nostrils slightly flared.
“I think I’d prefer not to do this. I’m afraid your story’s gone kaput,” Inez says. “Maybe you should interview a man; you’ll have better luck. You seem like a nice young woman.”
Sylvia stands. Patronized, at last. Should she be hurt? Inez offers her a wistful smile. Sylvia would like to hold the older woman in her arms. She’d like to walk over to Inez and put a hand on her cheek, caress the marbled bruise under her chin.
“I’m afraid you got more than you bargained for,” Inez says.
“Not at all.”
Sylvia steps toward the lady of the house and, pretending that she’s initiating some vaguely European form of affection, places each of her open palms on Inez’s smooth cheeks. It is not quite a brazen gesture, though the violinist is caught off guard by the touch and gives a little start. Her skin is warm to the touch. A strange look comes into her eyes, wary at first, but not frightened. Sylvia wonders how long she can leave her hands on Inez’s cheeks before causing a scandal. Inez inhales, not without pleasure, and slowly backs away.
god of the sea
THE weekend after the reporter’s second visit, Inez finds herself alone with Jake in Carmel. The idea is both to give her a relaxing break away from the kids in advance of her solo concert and to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, which passed without fanfare a few months ago.
Mafalda, Inez’s friend and colleague, happily took the kids. A twice-divorced violist who’d never had children, Mafalda was always clamoring to have the kids for a weekend. She’d known them both since they were babies, having helped Inez in the weeks and months after the birth of each of her children. Anna and Joey loved Mafalda for what Joey called her kookiness. As soon as she got away from the symphony, Mafalda slipped on fake fingernails and long, dangly earings. She knew a hundred card games and told the kids in detail about her gambling trips to Reno. Her large apartment was filled with fashion magazines, caged canaries, and an astonishing assortment of tchotchkes: hand-carved gargoyles and fertility gods, as well as clocks that performed all sorts of tricks on the hour. Still, Inez expected Joey to be sullen a
bout being left for a weekend. Perhaps, she thought, he’d beg her not to go. But Joey burst into Mafalda’s Pacific Avenue flat and said, “You still got that cuckoo clock? You still got that windup woodpecker?” He hardly turned to wave good-bye as Inez walked down the stairs to the street.
Inez enjoys the long quiet drive down the coast and is grateful to Jake for giving up on conversation when she shows little interest in it. Once in town, he leads them on a weaving tour through the sandy lanes. As they drive past the arty homes and blooming yards, Inez tries to imagine herself transplanted to Carmel. Would she be a happier soul here?
After a picnic on the beach, they stroll through shops in the village and Jake insists on buying her gifts: long silver earrings she’ll never wear; an expensive pen and pencil set; a silk scarf that features watering cans, hand trowels, and potted red geraniums. Periodically, Jake is afflicted with a fever of affection for his wife that she has trouble receiving. She likens the numb, dog days of a marriage gone sour to the after-math of a war and views her husband’s odd awakenings as a form of reparation.
The first night, Inez has difficulty sleeping. Through the open windows, the sound of the waves keeps waking her. Jake had wanted to make love but she’d put him off. Why does she have no desire, not want to be touched, never want to be touched?
She thinks about her conversation with the reporter. It was less a conversation than a confession. The girl had a curious effect on her. As Sylvia was leaving, she reached out her hands and touched Inez, as gently as a feather might fall, and Inez’s cheeks had flushed with heat. Inez wanted to tell Sylvia more but backed away instead. Inez felt desperate after the reporter left.
With Jake soundly asleep, Inez climbs out of bed and curls her body like a nautilus on the Danish area rug across the room. She thinks as much about the reporter as she thinks about Jake. When she falls asleep, it’s in short, satisfying bursts. The night is like a full moon, the known, lit half spent with Jake, the shadow half spent with the reporter. Inez wakes, as she does every morning, heavy and listless. By the time Jake opens his eyes, she’s beside him in bed, the divided night just one more of her secrets.
On their last evening, they drive down to Big Sur and run into Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, of all people, standing larger than life on the terrace at Nepenthe. Or at least cutout versions of the movie stars, mounted on cardboard—stills from a yet-to-be-released movie, which was filmed in part at Nepenthe.
Jake whispers: “I prefer your beauty to hers.”
“Pardon me?”
“I find you more beautiful than Elizabeth Taylor.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Absolutely.”
It is a lovely September evening with stars and a tolerable breeze. They sit at a choice table on the terrace, Jake offering her the seat with the widest view of the ocean. They drink martinis and champagne and eat grilled salmon. A piano trio plays cha-cha music, as Joey describes it, and couples lead each other, in a stylized swooning, around the wide granite terrace. Tipsy, Inez turns to watch the pianist, a wiry fellow in a pin-striped suit. After he announces “Stardust,” Jake gets out of his chair and comes around behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’d like to have this dance.”
Although she isn’t much of a dancer—it comes more naturally to Jake—she lets herself go while they’re out on the floor, the sky bright with stars, the waves splattering a hundred yards down the cliffs.
When the music stops, Jake holds her by both hands and looks her up and down, not in a salacious way, but as a middle-aged man appraising the toll twenty years of an unhappy marriage has taken on his wife. Perhaps she is crediting Jake with more perception than he has. Standing amid such majesty, awash in alcohol, he says: “You’re absolutely stunning tonight, Inez, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman on the floor. Elizabeth Taylor can’t hold a candle.”
Shamelessly, she stands listening to this. She’s taken a gander at the other middle-aged darlings and likes to think that she’s above comparing herself to them. But now, as Inez considers it, she imagines that these women are able to experience something difficult for her: simple happiness. Instead of glancing around the floor, Inez looks directly at Jake, dashing in his gray suit, his red silk tie. He shakes a cigarette out of his pack and takes his time lighting it, as if the cigarette were attached to an idea that he’s not sure he cares to pursue. Once he lights the cigarette, he blows a Herculean stream of tobacco vapor toward the night sky.
Back at their table, they sit quietly, breathing in the salt air. His cigarette snuffed out, Jake takes deep breaths in the manner of fitness maven Jack La Lanne. It seems as good a time as any to let him know what she’s been thinking about. That it’s been going on for quite a while now. That her nights are filled with imaginings that have begun to creep into her days, and the chambers of the nautilus are more comforting than human touch. Why tell him her plans? Does she want to frighten him? To have him try to talk her out of it? Or is this simply part of the ritual—to offer the fabled cry for help? She doesn’t need help. She can do it herself. Then why tell? As a courtesy, or to sharpen her nerve?
Breathing normally, his face flushed with good old tobacco and alcohol Jack La Lanne fitness, Jake smiles at her. “What you thinking about?”
“I don’t know.”
He pitches her a perfect question and she balks. If she can’t even mention the thing, how does she expect to carry it out? She certainly spends enough time thinking about it. Driving in the car. Her foot on the gas. She pictures the way the calf of her right leg will flex when she presses the pedal to the floor. There’s a large parking lot at the ocean, just above The Cliff House and Seal Rock. It’s often empty at night. She could get a good head of steam going in the Studebaker and drive from the far end of the lot straight off the cliff.
The other day, after the reporter left, Inez put on a jacket and walked toward the ocean. She didn’t understand it at first. All that talking about herself. The reporter more curious about her than anybody has been in years, and the way Inez had yakked and yakked. The shame washed over her—a quick, unexpected tide.
It was breezy that afternoon as she walked, and she wished she’d brought a scarf. There was a blimp in the sky above Geary Boulevard. It seemed portentous—blimps have always struck her that way. A giant balloon with an idea in it. An idea for her life. The only idea she had was to end it. Inez strolled around the parking lot above The Cliff House. The lot was filled with cars. People were sitting in their cars, the windows open, pop music spilling from the radios. A man in a T-shirt, oblivious to the chill, was waxing his sharp, red Impala. She tried to picture the lot at night. Sitting in the Studebaker, at the farthest distance from the cliff. Her foot on the pedal, the real tension in the Achilles tendon rather than the calf, as she arched her heel, slammed down the pedal, the rattling Studebaker Scotsman swaying from side to side as it squealed forward and, finally, lurched into oblivion.
In the crowded parking lot, a sharp breeze blew through her hair and the salt air made her realize that she was hungry. She walked behind a row of cars, past the man waxing his Impala. She could tell that his eyes were following her. Was this all she really wanted: a witness?
Jake leans forward on his elbows, his handsome face balanced like a trophy in his hands. The man is proud of himself for choosing the beautiful terrace restaurant, for giving her the seat with the best view. Yesterday they’d driven to Pacific Grove and walked along the tide pools. As they climbed over craggy rocks, shiny with damp anemones and sea wrack, Jake said something so absurd that she’d laughed out loud. He had a stick in his hand and poked at a fat anemone. Its mouth withered to a close around the base of the stick. “Sometimes when I’m feeling down,” Jake said, “I try to remind myself that I too am part of nature.” She figured that Jake had read the line in a book somewhere. Jake, who’d always seemed so much more a city creature than a nature boy. But then it occurred to Inez that Ja
ke, sensing her abstraction, her distance, her desolation, was offering his nature line as a tonic, a motto to live by. The truth was, she’d never been particularly keen on nature. She looked across the heaving mounds and clefts of ocean rock, at the pools of snails and heaps of anemones of every imaginable size, walls of opened-mouth anemones, clinging en masse to boulders and slabs of granite, waiting, like infants, for their feed. If this was nature, she didn’t want any.
NOW Jake smiles at her; she needs to tell him something. She takes a deep breath and focuses on the swell of white water over his left shoulder. “Jake, I want a divorce.”
“What?” he says, and immediately goes into a convulsive coughing fit. He takes out a handkerchief and blows his nose and pats his eyes, which are damp. He looks at her as if she is a person with whom he once had business but can’t now place. She has the urge to wave at him. She’s surprised that anything she’s said can affect him so. What if she’d revealed her actual intentions?
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jake practically spits the words at her. He looks to be hyperventilating.
“Are you okay?”
Jake nods and looks away.
She watches him rearrange himself in his chair. He slips off his sport coat and hangs it on the back of his chair. Recovered now, he lights a cigarette and narrows his eyes on her. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“For some time.”
“You’ve never mentioned it.”
Inez wonders whether she’d be any happier as a divorced woman. Jake no longer in the house. His soiled laundry gone, his crossword puzzles, his box scores, his pencil stubs. Although she often finds it irritating, she’d miss his whistling. The jazz, like having a foreign language in the house. She’d miss his good cheer, his sweet morsels of affection.
He cheats on her, she knows; he’s cheated on her for years. Can she blame him for that? She’s been less than available. Certainly, he’s a good father, a man concerned about his community, a good man. She watched his curiosity grow in the last years as he invited the opinion of others and tried to understand their concerns. She saw him act—protesting the crazed tactics of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, standing outside the hearings at City Hall when the police were hosing Berkeley students down the marble stairway. How he grabbed a megaphone and stood a moment not knowing what he’d say, and then spoke against the madness of the committee and the police. If not exactly an element of nature, he stood up in front of a troubled crowd, a citizen, growing suddenly into an angel of reason. She’s seen how easily people have come to adore Jake as a genuine and caring human being, which she believes he is.
Beautiful Inez Page 6