by Irwin Shaw
This is just to tell you to please not call me. You can guess the reason why. I’ll call you when I can. It may not be for a week or two. It may be that they have called off the war in Paris permanently. I hope you are having a good time in Antibes and are prolonging your stay. The afternoons are dreary without you. If you wish to write me, do it through Poste Restante, Central Post Office, Nice. I hope I have spelled everything correctly.
Drive carefully,
Jeanne
He crumpled the letter and put it in his pocket, got out of the elevator, went over to the door of the suite, arranged his face, put the key in the lock and went in.
Jean was standing at the window, staring out to sea. She didn’t turn around when he came in. Against the fading light which came through the open window, her silhouette was slender and young in a linen summer dress. She reminded him of the girls he had gone to college with, girls who wore their boyfriends’ fraternity pins on their bosoms and went to the Saturday-afternoon football games in bulky fur coats and bright woolen stockings and to the proms at which he had played the trumpet in the band, to help pay his way through school. Standing at the door, looking at the illusion of vulnerable youthfulness which his wife created, he felt a pang of pity for her, unsought, unprofitable.
“Good evening, Jean,” he said, advancing toward her. Jean, Jeanne, he thought. What’s in a name?
She turned slowly. He saw that she had had her soft, shoulder-length hair done that day and that she had put on makeup. The old woman she would one day be had gone from her face.
“Good evening,” she said gravely. Her voice, too, had returned to normal, if normal for her meant not rasping with drink or fury or self-laceration.
“Here’s your passport,” he said, giving it to her. “The lawyer got it back today.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I have your ticket for the plane tomorrow. You can go back home now.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “And you?”
“I’ll have to stay at least a week more.”
She nodded, opened her passport, glanced at her photograph, shook her head sadly, threw the passport on the table.
My passport photo doesn’t flatter me either, Rudolph would have liked to say.
“At least a week …” Jean said. “You must be exhausted.”
“I’m all right.” He sank into an easy chair. Until she had said he must be exhausted he hadn’t realized how tired he really was. He had been sleeping badly, waking often in the middle of the night, with uneasy dreams. Last night he had had the most curious, disturbing dream. He had awakened with a start. The bed had seemed to be shaking and the first thought he had had was that there was an earthquake. In his dream, he had remembered, he seemed to have been pinched all over his legs by invisible, mischievous fingers. Poltergeists, he remembered thinking in his dream. Awake, he had thought, Now where did that word come from? He had read it, of course, but he had never spoken it or written it.
“How is Enid?” he asked.
“Fine,” Jean said. “I took her to Juan-les-Pins this afternoon and bought her a miniature striped sailor’s jersey. She looks charming in it and she’s been posing in front of the mirror in it ever since. She’s having her supper now with the nurse.”
“I’ll look in and say good night to her,” he said. “In a while.” He loosened his collar and tie. Unyoked for the day, he would put on an open-necked sports shirt for dinner. “Gretchen will be on the plane with you and Enid,” he said.
“She needn’t bother,” Jean said, but with no hint of resentment. “Perhaps she’d like to stay on. The weather’s glorious now and I saw her walking up from the sea with a handsome young man.”
“She’s anxious to get back to New York,” he said. “I’ve asked her to stay with you and Enid until Mrs. Johnson gets back from St. Louis.”
“That will be dull for her,” Jean said. “I can take care of Enid myself. I have nothing else to do.” But again calmly, without resentment or the tone of argument.
“I think it would be better if Gretchen was there to help out,” he said carefully.
“Whatever you say. Although I can stay sober for a week, you know.”
“I know,” he said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“I’ve been thinking, Rudy,” Jean said, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, her fingers interlaced, as though she were on a platform giving a prepared speech. “About what we’ve been through.”
“Why don’t you forget what we’ve been through?” Rudolph said. He was in no mood for prepared speeches.
“I’ve been thinking about us,” she said evenly, without hostility. “For your sake and for Enid’s, I think we ought to get a divorce.”
Finally, he thought. At least I wasn’t the one to say the word. “Why don’t we wait awhile to talk about things like that?” he said gently.
“If you want. But I’m no good for you. Or for her. You don’t want me anymore.…” Jean put up her hand, although he hadn’t begun to say anything. “You haven’t come near me in over a year. And you’ve found somebody down here, I’m sure. Please don’t deny it.”
“I won’t deny it,” he said.
“I don’t blame you, dear,” she said. “I’ve been poison for you for a long time. Another man would have left me long ago. And the crowd would have cheered.” She smiled crookedly.
“I wish you’d wait until we were both home in America …” he started to say, although he felt that a great weight was being lifted from his shoulders.
“I feel like talking this evening,” she said, without insistence. “I’ve been thinking about us all day and I haven’t had a drink in more than a week and I’m as sane and sensible as I’m ever going to be for the rest of my life. Don’t you want to hear what I’ve been thinking about?”
“I don’t want you to say anything that you’re going to regret later.”
“Regret.” She made a little awkward movement, as though she were jerking away from a wasp. “I regret everything I say. And just about everything I’ve done. Listen carefully, my dear. I am a drunk. I am disappointed with myself and I am a drunk. I will be disappointed with myself and remain a drunk all my life. And I won’t get over it.”
“We haven’t tried hard enough up to now,” he said. “The places you’ve gone to weren’t thorough enough. There are other clinics that …”
“You can send me to every clinic in America,” she said. “Every psychiatrist in America can poke among my dreams. They can give me antabuse and I can vomit my guts out. And I will still be a drunk. And I will scream at you like a shrew and disgrace you.… Remember, I did it before and not only once … and I can ask for forgiveness and I can do it again and I can risk my child’s life driving her around drunkenly in a car and I can forget everything and go looking for a bottle over and over again until the day I die and I wish it was going to be soon only I don’t have the courage to kill myself, which is another disappointment.…”
“Please don’t talk like that, Jean,” he said. He stood up and went toward her, but she pulled away, as though she feared his touch.
“I’m sober now,” she said, “and I’ve dried out for more than a week and let’s take advantage of this lovely, unexpected moment and look things in the face and make sober, world-shaking decisions. I will retire to myself somewhere, out of sight—is Mexico far enough away? Spain? I speak Spanish, did you know that? Switzerland? The clinics are excellent there, I am told, and for two or three months at a time you can expect great results.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s live two or three months at a time then. Divorce or no divorce.”
“There’s no use pretending I can hold down a job anymore.” Nothing could stop the chanting, obsessed voice. “But thanks to my dear, dead father I can live more than comfortably—extravagantly. You must help me draw up a trust fund for Enid because when I’m drunk there’s a chance I’ll meet some scheming, dazzling young Italian who will conspire to rob
me of my fortune and I wouldn’t like that. I’ve even figured out a way of making you not feel guilty for neglecting me and letting me wander unprotected around this dark and dangerous world. I’ll hire a nice, strong young woman, probably a lesbian, who will keep me company and make sure I come to no harm when I am steeped in drink … and if necessary will supply me with innocent and undangerous sex.…”
“You must stop,” he cried. “Enough, enough.”
“Don’t sound so shocked, my dear Puritan Rudolph,” she said. “I’ve done it before and haven’t disliked it and I’m sure I can do it again, especially after a bottle or two, and not dislike it again. The truth is, darling, I can’t struggle anymore. Even the Confederate Army finally surrendered. I’ve had enough dead. I’m out of room to maneuver. I have come to Appomattox. You see, my education has not been wasted on me. You can return my sword, General Grant. No, that sounds mocking. I don’t mean to mock. I’m in despair. I can’t fight anymore, I can’t fight you or the drink or guilt or marriage, whatever that word means to you and me at this time. Occasionally, when I’m in a calm period, I’ll appear, with my lesbian companion, I’ll make sure she’s not too obvious, I’ll have her dressed girlishly, as will I, and visit Enid. You need not be present. Don’t say anything tonight, please, but remember what I’ve offered in the morning when you put me on the plane, and admire me for my renunciation. Take it before I change my mind and hang for the rest of my life around your neck like a corpse.”
“Look,” he said, “when you get away from here, away from this morbid atmosphere, you’ll …”
“Between us, we’ve made shit out of your life, too,” she intoned. “And you’re not getting any younger, you can’t just sit in a corner staring at the fire for another fifty years, you’ve got to do something. Be thankful for today. Grab the offer. Who knows how long the merchandise is going to be on the market? And now, I know you’ve had a long hard day, and want to shave and take a nice hot shower and put on fresh clothes and have a martini and go to dinner. While you’re in the shower, I’ll order you the drink. Never fear, I won’t touch a drop between now and New York—I have spurts of superhuman willpower. And then, if you’ll be so kind, you’ll take me to dinner, just you and I alone—and we’ll talk of other things—like the rest of your life and what schools Enid should go to and what kind of woman you might finally consider marrying and whom you’ve been screwing on the Côte d’Azur and then when it’s late and we’re both tired, we’ll come back here to our lovely, insanely expensive hotel suite and you’ll let me sleep in your bed with you because tomorrow I’m taking a plane to America and you’re staying on for the rest of the summer weather to tie up all the loose ends that I have loosened.”
He stood up and went over and put his arms around her. She was trembling violently. Her face was flushed and she felt feverishly hot to his touch.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, trembling in his arms, her head against his chest, her arms gripping him. “I suppose I should have made this speech long ago—before we were married, maybe, except I don’t think I was like this before I was married.”
“Sssh, sssh,” he said, helplessly. “When you get home things will look different.”
“When I get home,” she said, “the only difference will be that I’ll be one day older.” She pulled away, smiled wanly at him. “It’s hard to think of that as any great improvement. Now go take your shower. I’ll be less eloquent when you come out and there’ll be a martini here for you to remind you that all is not lost. I’ll join you for the cocktail hour. With another Coca-Cola.”
In the shower he allowed himself to weep. Somewhere along the years there must have been a moment when she could have been saved. He had been too busy, too preoccupied, to recognize the moment, make the necessary gesture toward her, before all avenues of escape finally closed to her.
He couldn’t seem to regulate the temperature of the water. It seemed to come out too hot and burn his skin like a thousand needles or when he turned the knob it spurted out icy cold, freezing him, making him shiver, as though he were standing naked in a sleet storm.
He got out, dried himself with a big rough towel, looking at himself in the long mirror, ashamed of his trim, adulterous body, the muscles all neat, strong, useless in the life he lived, his sex an impediment to charity. Chair, he thought. Flesh, in French. Close enough, at least in spelling, to charity. Save that, he thought bitterly, for the afternoons in Nice.
He dressed slowly, the expensive, well-fitting clothing agreeable against his skin. The body’s small, restorative pleasures. He put on a light wool shirt, soft cashmere socks, pressed flannel trousers, snug polished moccasins (the Communists in the corridors at night), a crisp seersucker jacket. Gretchen would not say tonight that he looked as though he had just been laid.
The martini was on the table near the couch when he went back into the salon, and Jean was standing in front of the window staring out at the fragrant darkness pierced by bright points of color as the lights of the coast that swept away west from the peninsula of Antibes went on. Jean had lit a single lamp and had a glass of Coca-Cola in her hand. She turned when she heard him come in. “Gretchen called while you were in the shower,” she said. “I told her we were having dinner alone. Is that all right with you?”
“Of course.”
“She’s having dinner in Golfe Juan with a friend, anyway, she said.”
“I met him,” Rudolph said.
“I often wonder how she gets along with men. She doesn’t confide in me.”
“She confides in me too much,” Rudolph said.
“As does all the world,” Jean said lightly. “Poor Rudolph.” She wandered aimlessly around the room, touching the back of a chair absently, opening a drawer in the desk. “Tell me, Rudy—I don’t quite remember,” she said. “Is this the room we had when we came here just after we were married?”
“I don’t remember, either,” he said and picked up the martini.
“Well,” she said, lifting her glass, “here’s to … to what?” She smiled. She looked beautiful and young in the shadowed room. “To divorce, say?” She sipped at her Coca-Cola.
Rudolph put his glass down. “I’ll have my drink later,” he said. “I want to go in and say good night to Enid.”
“Go ahead,” Jean said. “I believe you ought to give the French girl a nice little bonus. She’s been very good with Enid. Very gentle and patient. She’s almost a child herself, but somehow she always seems to have been able to invent games to amuse Enid. It’s a talent I don’t have.”
“Nor do I,” Rudolph said. “Don’t you want to come with me?”
“Not tonight,” Jean said. “Anyway, I have to make some repairs on my face.”
“I won’t be long.”
“No hurry,” she said. “We have the whole night ahead of us.”
Enid was just finishing her supper, dressed in the striped seaman’s jersey. She was laughing when Rudolph came into the room. Somehow, although the nurse couldn’t speak English, the two of them seemed to understand each other perfectly. Education, Rudolph thought, with a pang, will wipe out that particular shared gift. He kissed the top of Enid’s head, said, “Bon soir” to the girl. The girl said in French, “I’m sorry about the shirt. She has had her bath all right, but she wouldn’t put on pajamas; she insists she wants to sleep tonight in the shirt. I hope you don’t mind? I didn’t think it was worth a struggle.…”
“Of course not.” Sensible, flexible Frenchwoman. “She’ll sleep all the better for it.” Then he told her to please have the child’s things packed in the morning, as they were leaving for New York. By the time I’m through here, he thought, I’ll be able to speak enough French even to talk to a Corsican policeman. One for the plus side.
The girl said, “Bien, monsieur.”
Rudolph took a long look at his daughter. She looked healthy and happy, with a light bloom on her cheeks from the sun. Well, he thought, another plus; at least someone’s getting some good
out of this trip. Seeing her sitting there, contentedly playing with her food, and suddenly reaching out to hold the girl’s hand, he thought, when I get back to New York I’m going to fire Mrs. Johnson. Mrs. Johnson was in her fifties, efficient and quiet, but she wasn’t one for games.
He kissed the top of Enid’s head again and bent down farther as she said, “Good night, Daddy,” and planted a wet, oatmeally kiss inaccurately on his cheek. She smelled of soap and talcum powder and if the girl hadn’t been there he would have picked her up from the chair on which she was sitting, propped up on pillows, and hugged her, hard.
But he merely said, “Good night, little sailor, sleep well,” and went out of the room.
The dinner was excellent, the moon shone over the sea, the restaurant was uncrowded and the waiters buzzed devotedly around their table. Jean insisted that he order a bottle of wine for himself and he allowed himself to be persuaded. They found they had a great deal to say to each other, none of it important or troubling, and there were no uncomfortable lapses in the conversation. We are all made out of rubber, Rudolph thought, admiring Jean’s soft hair as she bent slightly over her food; we stretch all out of shape and then, at least to all appearances, snap back again, back to the original form, or almost back to the original form.
They lingered a long time over coffee, looking, he was sure, content with themselves, with each other, in front of the big window that gave on the dark sea, with its silver path of moonlight shimmering away toward the distant islands.
They walked slowly up to the hotel and when they came into the suite, Jean said, “Get into bed, darling. I’ll be in in a little while.”
Naked, he lay in the bed in the dark room, waiting. The door opened softly; there was a rustling as Jean took off her robe and then she was in bed with him. He put his arm around her, her body not trembling, warm, but without the blaze of fever. They didn’t move and in a little while they both were asleep. This night he didn’t dream that the hotel was rocking in an earthquake or that he was visited by poltergeists.
Farther down the hall, Gretchen slept uneasily, alone. The dinner had been delicious, the wine had flowed freely, the young man had been almost the handsomest man in the room and had been attentive, then importunate: she had nearly said yes. But finally, she was sleeping alone. Before she dropped off, she thought, If only my goddamn brother hadn’t said, “You certainly know how to pick them, don’t you?” she wouldn’t have been sleeping alone that night.