Indecent Proposal

by Jack Engelhard

  I was surprised. I mean she had never been Mrs. Homemaker and now all this, cooking, baking, cleaning, shopping. She--the lady so willing to try anything once--now said there were boundaries in life, a circle beyond which it was unsafe to venture. Her circle kept getting tighter.

  She turned down the annual Girls Wild Night in New York. Each year at this time they spent a day and a night at the Pierre, meaning her Main Line chums Duffy and Buffy and Bootsie and Cutsie, and there, to escape husbands and children, they let loose, got drunk and high and always tried One New Thing.

  I’d had broodings about the annual New Thing. This year’s promised to be the best ever, according to Buffy. Joan gave her a flat negatory. I tried to persuade her to go and it was no use. She showed a strange side, wanting to know why I wanted her out of the house. Was I expecting someone?

  She talked about building a hedge around our marriage.

  “Enough with hedges, circles and boundaries,” I said. “Go. Air out.”

  To ignite her, I said, “What happened to this woman of the eighties I married?”

  “She got older. Just like the eighties.”

  I began to spend my days in the library across from the shopping mall. I sat at a table overlooking an artificial lake and read the same books I had read as a child, about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams. Sometimes after a good fill of these books, I promenaded around the mall--the shops were always empty--accompanied by a roar of the crowd as I stepped up to the plate, seventh game World Series, bottom of the ninth, down three, bases loaded. Drive deep to left...

  The roar of the crowd, as always, turned into the thunder of tanks racing across Sinai. Once or twice in the past, I had tried to explain to her what it had all meant, and it came out so flat that the experience became diminished even for me. I realized that some things could not be told.

  This day when I got back the house was dim and I heard Nat King Cole on the stereo. She had lit candles and incense and was curled up on the couch in a pink negligee, strawberry nipples peeking through the scrim. Her right hand was dangling between her thighs, a remembrance of kinkiness past.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “A seduction, you big lug.”

  “Aha.”

  “Interested?”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Women do have sexuality,” she said.

  “That’s good news,” I said.

  “There has to be a reason? I’m horny. All right?”

  “You know I don’t like horny.”

  “I need you. All right?”

  “That’s a new one.”

  “Let’s pretend we’re not married. Remember how it was? The things we used to do?”

  “I forgot.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “You think sex will bring it back?”

  She dropped the baby talk. “Well, sex is what did this.”

  I turned on the lights and blew out the candles. “Sex and everything else.”

  “Josh, we have to get it back.”

  “I know.”

  “Otherwise--otherwise it’s a terrible defeat.”

  “I agree.”

  “I mean, it means there’s nothing.”

  “I’ve been feeling that way.”

  She said, “You’ve been feeling there’s nothing.”

  “Right. Nothing.”

  “That’s nice. Not that I haven’t noticed. It’s obvious you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. I feel nothing.”

  “Oh that’s very nice.”

  I said, “How can you feel anything?”

  “Maybe I don’t. But I’m trying. I’m trying.”

  “Believe it or not, I’m also trying,” I said.

  Her voice exploded in a gust of fury. “Start loving me again god damn it!”

  “I never stopped.”

  “That’s why you won’t come near me? You haven’t touched me since...”

  “Yeah, since.”

  “Well I’m not contaminated.”

  “No, you’re not contaminated.”

  “I’m the same.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I’m the same, Joshua, I’m the same. Honest, I’m the same!”

  Chapter 25

  I FOUND the solution. Sleep. I went on a rampage. I slept everywhere. In shopping malls, on barber chairs, in restaurants, movie theaters, trains, at the kitchen table, on the couch, sitting, even standing. A strange promiscuity. I could do it anytime, anywhere, in any position.

  What made me so tired was the knowledge that I had everything, a million dollars and the world’s most glorious blonde shiksa for a wife. There is nothing more to have, I thought.

  This is it! The American jackpot! Bingo!

  “See a doctor,” Joan said.

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Do you know how many hours you sleep a day?”

  “I’m catching up. Had a rough childhood.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  No, I was not funny.

  In one sense I was better off than ever. The jealousy was gone. Used to be when I caught a guy giving her the eye I’d steam. Now, nothing. Anyhow, the risk of her being unfaithful was nil. In that respect she was thoroughly cured. She was even depleted of the urge to have fun.

  This was not altogether terrific, the fun urge being the characteristic that had made her so triumphantly and endearingly American. Fun, after all, was America’s religion. Remove fun and we’re no different from the Russians. (Talk to a Russian about fun.)

  So this was finished. She even gave up tennis.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “You’re thinking of going back to Israel.”

  “That had been part of our plans.”

  “No, you’re thinking of going alone, back to the army.”

  “Fat chance they’d take me again.”

  “Oh they’d take you all right. You’re thinking of getting yourself killed.”

  “Frankly, there are eight hundred places around the world where it’s even easier to get yourself killed. You don’t have to go to Israel. In fact you can stay right here. Try riding a subway. You can get just as lucky.”

  “Yes, but you want to go down a hero. I thought you already did the hero thing in sixty-seven?”

  “The hero thing.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “I do understand.”

  “No you don’t. You never did. You never will.”

  “Because I’m a shiksa?”

  “That has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Because I’m a woman? Because I’m a broad? Because I’m a cunt? Come on. Come on. Let’s have it out!”

  “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “You hate women. Why, you’re no better than Ibrahim!”

  “You had to mention that name?”

  “You’re all the same.”

  “There’s a universe between me and that other guy.”

  “Not when it comes to women.”

  We began to taste the bread of affliction every day. Every single day we got into another ugly flare-up, and these began to make her physically ill. She lost weight. She learned migraines. Her hands vibrated. Spasms under her eye, over her lip.

  People, I thought, do not die from lack of love. Only dogs do.

  I tried to fake it but she was no dummy. She could separate pity from love.

  Still, she was undaunted. She had made up her mind. She had decided we were going to be as before, when life between us had been pure and sweet and sensational. That was it! Nothing else. Nothing less.

  Maybe I didn’t love her anymore, but I began to respect the hell out of her. One thing really got me. I did buy a ticket to Israel and she tore it up. “You’re staying here,” she said. She pushed me into a chair, “Here!”

  I should
have been furious except that I wasn’t. I liked it, in fact.

  She insisted, one day, that I take her out on a date. I managed to get us box seats at Vet Stadium and there, under the big lights, I turned to her to say something trivial and found myself staring. Her looks had gone. This caught me by surprise, how vacant she was! Now, her most prominent feature--at this bad moment--was a mustache. I had noticed it in the past and it had been ever so slight, given her natural blonde hair, and even now there wasn’t much to it--just enough, though, to be repulsive.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  We had the best seats in the park, down along the rail on the first base side. Foul balls whizzed above our heads inning after inning and she said she always wanted to catch one. The other team’s Andre Dawson obliged, except that it wasn’t foul.

  The ball skipped over the first base bag and zoomed in at us, low, ready to ricochet into the glove of the Philadelphia outfielder. Joan reached down and gobbled up the ball. A terrific catch, except that on account of it the runner was awarded second base. He may have been thrown out had the outfielder been given a chance. The umpire declared fan interference.

  The crowd--some thirty-six thousand--went berserk. Joan flashed her smile and held up the ball as a trophy. She thought they were cheering her. I said, “Joan, they’re booing.” She said, “No they’re not.” I said, “Yes they are.”

  She caught on when hot dog wrappers and beer cans came showering down and all those wrathful faces were turned on us. The jeers grew louder and louder. This was an inflamed mob.

  I feared a riot. The stands were throbbing. Men in tee-shirts shook their fists directly at Joan and bellowed, “Whore! Bitch!” From the sound of it the entire world was in an uproar.

  A stadium guard rushed to our side. At this, the crowd erupted again.

  “You’re gone,” he said.

  “What?” said Joan.

  He grabbed her arm.

  “Don’t grab her arm,” I said.

  “You too, mister. You’re both gone. Compliments of the management.”

  “All right, but don’t grab her arm.”

  “Just follow me,” he said. “Just follow me.”

  As we got up, the crowd cheered.

  “But people do this every day,” said Joan as the guard escorted us to the tunnel.

  “The ball was fair,” I said.

  “How was I to know it was fair?”

  “Let’s go,” said the guard. “You’re losers.”

  “All right,” I said. “Just don’t be grabbing my wife.”

  “You’re losers,” he said.

  The crowd kept cheering as we neared the exit. It was a long walk.

  “I didn’t know the ball was fair,” said Joan.

  “Let’s just get out of here alive,” I said.

  “Is this the grand old game of baseball?” she said.

  In the car, on the ride home, she was quite giddy. “We’re not losers,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “They’re losers,” she said.

  “That’s right,” I said. But it’s amazing, I thought, how it happens to people. When the magic goes, it goes. As if you’re allotted so much grace--and, until recently, Joan had never known a moment without heaven’s charm--and once it’s used up, boy does it go!

  This lady who had always been everybody’s Miss Congeniality had just been booed by thirty-six thousand people.

  But she was defiant.

  She said, “They’re a sixth place team, aren’t they?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They’ve only lost eight straight.”

  “Nine, counting today, most probably.”

  “We didn’t lose the game for them.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “We’re winners, aren’t we, Josh?”

  “I think so.”

  I liked the fact that she was defending herself and not giving in. This was the Joan of old. But I did not care for the urgency in her voice, something approaching panic. She was being altogether too smug, which usually meant she was wide open.

  She said, “We’ve never lost eight in a row.”

  “Nine.”

  “We’re winners.”

  Chapter 26

  THE BASEBALL THING became a topic for weeks. She spoke of it in terms of delight. She was so proud of herself. They should sign her up, she said. She could play the game better than those people on the field. Did you see, she said, how I caught the ball?

  Yes, I said. Everybody saw.

  Bare-handed catch, she said. They needed gloves!

  Fair ball my eye, she said. That ball was foul. Those umpires were losers. Those Phillies were losers. Everybody was a loser. The whole rotten stinking world. Big deal. Why do people care about a lousy stinking game of baseball anyway? That wasn’t real life. Why do people care about anything? It’s all the same. Everything’s the same. We all die in the end. Huh! Even MacArthur died. He didn’t fade away.

  The way they carried on, she said, you’d have thought she had done something really harmful.

  “Whatever happened to perspective?” she asked.

  At the same time she was going on about these things she was reading a book in secret that had something like this for a title...How to Win Back Love.

  The book was full of sound advice, as was another book she’d been reading in the bathroom.

  We used to joke about all the books that were published. Name anything, we agreed, and there was a book on the subject, even a biography of Julio Iglesias, tops on our list of un-required reading until I saw a title in a Sansom Street window--The History of Mouth Sounds.

  But this book she was reading in the bathroom was something else again--How to End it When It’s Over.

  I confronted her. “A book on suicide?”

  “I’m allowed to read whatever I want. It’s a free country.

  I ripped the book page by page.

  “I thought we don’t believe in book burning,” she said.

  “This is not a book.”

  “I wasn’t going to do anything.”

  “Then why read?”

  “I like to read.”

  “This is reading?”

  She said, “If I wanted to do something I would just do it and be done.”

  “Why even think about these things? I thought you were so pleased with yourself.”

  “I am.” Then she said, “Did you see how those people booed me? Me!”

  “It’s over.”

  “I’m booing back.”

  “Stop it, Joan. I thought we were winners.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Well?”

  “We’re all losers, Josh. Don’t you know that? Nobody wins.”

  It wasn’t much of a thing, this blemish that blossomed on her face alongside her left nostril.

  I insisted it was next to invisible, this pimple.

  “Don’t say pimple,” she said. “I hate that word.”

  No wonder. She had never had a pimple, even in her teenage years. In her silken days she had never known this type of imperfection. These, to her mind, were omens.

  She said, “I have no idea why I should be breaking out now.”

  “One pimple is not breaking out.”

  “Don’t say pimple!”

  She became quite busy about this pimple.

  “I know you’re staring at it,” she said.

  She thought the entire world was staring at it, and it was true that it got worse from day to day. Soon, I said, it would be ready to pop. “Disgusting,” she said.

  We tried another date. “Let’s go to Antonio’s,” she said.

  “It’s very expensive.”

  “So?”

  When we entered the place I understood why she had chosen this over another. The lights were low.

  “You’re staring at it again,” she said.

  “In a place like this you need Braille.”

 
“Stop staring at it, please!”

  “At what?”

  “Please stop.”

  “Your pimple?”

  “Stop!”

  We sat there, ordered and ate. I watched the couple in the other booth, a glum middle-aged man and wife, not a word between them, trained, from twenty years of marriage, in the subtle skills of apartness. I had seen such couples before and was thrilled to think that it would never be this way with us--and now it was. We were that couple.

  Finally, she said, “You’re going to leave me over this. Over a pimple.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You don’t find me attractive anymore. I saw how you looked at me in the ballpark.”

  “You saw nothing.”

  “We mustn’t go to bright places anymore.”

  “Come on, Joan.”

  “Now this. A pimple. A fucking pimple.”

  “I never heard you use that word.”

  “Pimple or fuck?”

  “This is not you, Joan.”

  “You’re right. There is retribution. He gets even, this God of yours.”

  “You got religion?”

  “I wouldn’t quite call it that,” she said.

  She saw a doctor. He lanced that stupid thing and it was gone. But not in her mind. In her mind it was still there, mountainous. She spread ointments on that spot--on that spot where nothing was--and hid that side of her face by keeping to profiles. Most mornings, now, she was reluctant to rise from bed. She was afraid to leave the house lest she be seen.

  I tried to reason and in time I knew, it would not work. Something had happened.

  She had persuaded herself that the world had come to an end.

  I had once taught her the mysticism of balances. The world was divided equally between good and evil. Therefore, the single individual held absolute power. By going one way or the other, the individual could tip the earthly scales either way. We had tipped it the wrong way.

  No, not by what we had done in Atlantic City, but by what we had done in Philadelphia. We had stopped loving. This she saw as universally destructive. We had destroyed not only ourselves, but the entire world.