I sighed. “I think David invited me to go sailing so we could talk; I’m sure he didn’t have any other intentions, but somehow we both got carried away.”
“You had sex?”
“Not exactly, but it was pretty close. Oh, Norma, it was all my fault. David didn’t want to - I practically threw myself at him. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.”
“So now you think he’s changed his mind about you, lost his respect for you, or something like that?”
“One minute I’m this virginal teenager and the next one I’m pulling a box of contraceptives out of my pocket and begging him to spend the night with me. He’s probably in shock.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Just before he went home he said he was leaving the boat before I raped him – he was laughing, and I took his remark as a joke, but now I’m beginning to wonder.”
“You think he went to the meeting because he’s avoiding you?”
“He hasn’t phoned me, either. What else am I supposed to think?”
“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, but you’re too busy painting the Devil on the wall to see it. What if the meeting came up unexpectedly? Suppose someone was with him when he wrote the note? Is that all it said, that he was going to a meeting?”
“The second line said to inquire at the office for messages.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, he left the typing for me with the secretary.” I gestured toward the envelope on the bed.
“May I?”
“Help yourself”
Norma opened the package just as Frank had done a few hours earlier, and examined the contents page by page.
“What a bunch of gibberish. This is what he’s having published in Argentina?”
I nodded.
She smiled triumphantly. “Well, here’s one page that isn’t. It starts ‘My dearest Kate, I lay awake last night for hours…’” She broke off and handed me the letter.
“I’ll leave you to your ‘typing’ while I go search for a job as an advice columnist.”
I smiled my thanks and Norma closed the door behind her. Trembling, I sat at the desk and read David’s letter.
My dearest Kate,
I lay awake last night for hours reliving everything we said and did
on Sturmvogel, feeling both anxious and elated, wondering if we
reached any decisions, and whether I ever succeeded in making
clear to you the nature of my misgivings. I’ve tried to apply the
scientific method to our situation but, sad to say, logic is not applicable
to affairs of the heart, or perhaps it is, and I’m unwilling to accept
the conclusions. I made a mental list of the pros and cons, and
while the pros number three at the most, the cons run on for pages.
Seriously, dear, I decided to hold the meeting this afternoon rather
than see you, to give you more time for reflection. Please think
over everything we discussed. I’ll call you Saturday morning.
All my love,
David
P.S. Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas – Blaise Pascal
I finished the letter and laid my head down on the desk, suffused with relief. I knew I was foolish to have doubted David; with his letter in my hand I had trouble remembering the apprehensions which were worrying me a mere hour before. Suddenly I realized Frank had seen it when he was leafing through the manuscripts at the HUB. I read David’s note again, trying to imagine Frank’s reaction, and when I finished I knew what he meant by saying he didn’t understand.
A nightmare awakened me at two in the morning. David and I were together on Sturmvogel. I was leaning over the side of the boat, trying to run a line to a mooring buoy, but every time I was on the verge of success, Sturmvogel drifted away, and my body ached with exhaustion. I awakened with a start and sat up; I had fallen asleep with my head on the desk, and my neck was stiff. I tumbled into bed fully clothed and turned off the light.
I was still sore the following morning when the telephone rang.
“Hello, Kate? This is David,” he began as usual.
How funny, I thought – as if the caller could be anyone else.
He hesitated for a moment. “Did you get my note?”
“Yes, I found it.”
“After I left the papers with Iris I realized you might not open the envelope right away. I’m relieved.” I smiled and said nothing. “Are you free now?”
We agreed to meet after lunch outside the residence hall and David’s green DeSoto pulled up beside me on the driveway at one o’clock
“Are we going to the boat?” I asked as I opened the door. “I can dash upstairs and change to pants in a minute if we’re heading for the marina.”
“No, let’s go somewhere else. How about the zoo?”
“To see the fennecs?”
“I don’t care what we see. I just want to be alone with you. But not too alone.” David took his eyes off the road long enough to give me a quick smile.
Thursday’s clear sky had given way to a leaden overcast with more than a hint of rain in the air. Except for a couple of women pushing baby carriages and a few elderly men walking down the paths with their hands clasped behind them, Woodland Park was nearly deserted. David parked the car and we strolled past the rows of empty cages whose occupants had fled to the heated interiors. We sat on a bench facing the polar bears, the only animals that appeared to be enjoying the weather; across the moat, two cubs were playing tug-of-war with a huge piece of meat, romping and somersaulting from one end of the cage to the other, and we watched them, in silence, for several minutes.
An old man shuffled up the gravel path toward us holding a leather leash, at the end of which plodded a white-muzzled dog. Both dog and master walked stiff-legged, as though suffering from pain in the groin. As they passed, the dog turned off the gravel to sniff my ankle, and his owner said “Don’t be afraid, miss. Samson won’t hurt you.”
I smiled. The thought of that poor old creature’s biting me was the farthest thing from my mind. I leaned over to pat him and Samson lifted his head to peer at me through eyes bleary with cataracts. Samson was an appropriate name. I murmured a few words of Christmas greetings and the old couple continued their walk.
David sighed. “There I go in twenty years, thirty if I’m lucky.”
“You don’t own a dog.”
“That can be remedied.”
We looked at each other and laughed.
“What have you decided?” I asked.
“The decision isn’t mine, it’s yours. Kate, dear, I love you very much. That’s what makes everything so hard; what right do I have to put you in this position? Our situation is simply tearing me apart.”
“With guilt?”
“No, not guilt. With frustration. And apprehension. Thursday night was the epitome of both. It all comes down to this: do we keep on seeing each other, with everything that implies, or do we just walk away from each other, right now?”
“Isn’t there another alternative? Can’t we go back to being the way we were?”
“Before Thursday night?”
“Yes.”
“You know that’s impossible, Kate,” he said softly. “If Thursday night hadn’t happened I’d say we had a chance of keeping our innocence a little while longer, but not now. We’re on a one-way street, and there’s no u-turn.”
David’s was no if-you-don’t-give-me-what-I-want-I’m-going-to-leave-you speech. I knew he was right.
“I understand the frustration, but why are you apprehensive?”
“I’m afraid for you.”
“Because I can become pregnant?”
“That’s part of it, though pregnancy is preventable. I worry how the guilt is going to affect you.”
“But I don’t feel guilty. I know I should, but I just don’t. Maybe I’m amoral.”
“That’s what you think; I know you better
. You carry guilt around with you like Sinbad carried the Old Man of the Sea. You can’t even put your books aside for half an hour without feeling guilty. If you’re that way about something trivial, what’s having an affair with me going to do to you?”
“Don’t say ‘an affair.’ That’s an ugly, tawdry word. “
“Kate, you need to go into this with your eyes open. No matter what you call our relationship, ‘a love affair,’ a ‘romance,’ other people won’t be so charitable; you’re going to be criticized and you’re going to be hurt.”
“I don’t care what other people think.”
David sighed. “It’s not only you. I worry about myself as well, how I’ll feel when all this is over. Yes, you will leave me, it’s inevitable,” he said in rebuttal to my look of reproach. “Then what? These past three months I’ve been happier, more alive, than at any time in my life and I can’t face the thought of losing you. I want to marry you, but that’s impossible. Our whole relationship is impossible. What do I have to offer you?”
“I told you on the boat Thursday night. Your love, your friendship.” I looked at David’s face, tortured and unsmiling, and put my arms around him.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“I hardly know how to tell you this,” he began. “When Arlene and I… when we’re in bed together…”
“No!” I shouted. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Please listen to me. If I don’t tell you, then the rest of what I’m going to say won’t make any sense.”
I stared at the ground again and began to shiver.
“My wife and I sleep in different beds; we share the same room, but our beds are separated by a large hooked rug – and a good deal more. When I want sexual intercourse – I won’t call it making love – I go over to Arlene’s bed and call her name as abjectly as a little boy begging his teacher for a better grade. Sometimes she pretends to be asleep; sometimes she turns me down flatly or with an excuse; and other times she’ll give a martyred sigh and say yes. You must have noticed Thursday night that I have a fair amount of body hair…”
“David, please, I don’t want to hear any of this.”
“I have to tell you. Arlene has always been repelled by my body, or at least she has been ever since we were married. Apparently she finds me too bestial or too something. Anyway, to keep from contacting my disgusting person she exposes just enough of herself to make the act possible and, it goes without saying, I’m completely clothed myself.”
David’s voice broke. “The other night, on Sturmvogel, when you pulled me to you and I felt the warmth of your body against me … I wanted to cry, Kate. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I was on the verge of tears. After all these years it didn’t seem possible anyone could respond to me the way you did.” He smiled and looked at me. “What would you have done if I’d burst into tears then. Me, a grown man?”
“I would have cried, too.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, to continue. Arlene won’t let me touch her, of course. A thief could penetrate Fort Knox more easily than I could slip my hand inside her nightgown. I don’t even try. She complains I take too long. I can hear her querulous voice now saying ‘can’t you hurry up; I’ve got the alarm set for six tomorrow morning to bake cookies for a meeting.’ Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”
David was sitting bent over, with his elbows resting against his thighs; he covered his face with his hands.
“How … often …?”
“Before … maybe once every two weeks, once a month.”
“What do you mean by ‘before’? Before what?”
“Before you.” He removed his hands from his face and turned toward me. “Yes, that’s right. I spend the evening with you, I go home, go to bed, and I’m so full of the thought of you I can’t sleep. Do you remember what I said on the boat, how I felt watching you sleeping on the bunk the first time we sailed together alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anything then?”
“Only that you were on the other bunk, reading.”
“Nothing else?”
“What else was there?”
“Ah my innocent Kate. Yes, I had a book in my hand, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept looking at you and I wanted you so badly my whole body ached. When you awakened I was, to put it politely, aroused. Highly aroused. I covered myself with the book to keep you from noticing. Fortunately, just then, you bent down to put on your shoes; I took advantage of your distraction to escape to the stove, and I stayed in the galley until I could get a grip on myself.
“I must have got home that night around one. I went into the den, lit a fire in the fireplace and poured myself a drink. I just sat in my armchair, staring at the flames and thinking about us for a long time. I wasn’t any too pleased with myself, Kate. I realized my feelings for you were inappropriate and that I should put a stop to things before it was too late – but I didn’t want to. I hadn’t even told you I was married, and I despised myself for the deception. What had we done? Nothing – we’d held hands; it was enough. I knew. You were like a flower, opening to me petal by petal, and I was coming at you like a threshing machine. Well, I went upstairs. Arlene was asleep, really asleep this time, and when she refused me I lost my head and the whole time – God help me – I kept thinking of you. Arlene was furious. She accused me of being drunk, and I didn’t contradict her.” He gave a rueful laugh. “Arlene is the safety valve that keeps me on my best behavior with you. She says I’ve turned into a sex fiend; she even asked if I’ve been taking some kind of drug. I told her she should be glad I’m coming to her rather than going elsewhere, and can you guess what she replied? That she didn’t give a damn.”
“Did you ever suggest marriage counseling?”
David snorted. “What good would counseling do? Arlene doesn’t think she has a problem. She thinks I’ve got a problem, that I’m some kind of sex-crazed maniac. Arlene regards the whole business of sex as unspeakably distasteful, and she’s not going to change after all these years. Anyway, I’m beyond caring.”
David took a deep breath. “I realize you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this garbage. It’s because … well, frankly, I doubt that I’m capable of being the kind of lover you deserve or expect.”
“With my vast experience? What do you think I’m expecting?”
“Kate, you don’t understand.”
“Apparently not. Can you say that after what happened Thursday night?”
“Especially after Thursday night; that’s my whole point. For one thing, you were a lot more … willing … than I thought you’d be. Not that I thought you’d scream or slap my face, and I wasn’t expecting you to be another Arlene – God forbid. But I was surprised, maybe even a bit intimidated by you. Your reaction made me realize, rather forcefully, that you’re going to be dissatisfied with the little I give Arlene. Now do you see what I’m getting at, the truth I keep skirting? Thursday night I couldn’t make love to you, Kate. I tried, but I came too quickly. After 23 years of instant, loveless sex, I’m simply not programmed to do any better. Now do you understand?”
“I’m not sure. After you explained what happened I thought … you did what you did because you were afraid I’d get pregnant.”
“That’s what I wanted you to think, because I was too ashamed to tell you the truth. Erase any image you have of altruistic David sacrificing his pleasure on the altar of your virginity. Thursday night on the boat I had every intention … you can visualize the scenario, can’t you?” he asked almost savagely. “We’ll be in bed together, full of desire, and I’ll finish in twenty seconds, that’s if I’m lucky and haven’t botched the job before I even touch you. Then you’ll turn your back to me, wondering if that’s the way love-making is supposed to be, wondering why you’re so unsatisfied, and feeling guilty because you’re so naïve you’ll think it’s your fault. And you’ll lie to me, out of kindness, and I’ll know you’re lying, and I’ll
be consumed with guilt because I’ll know it’s my fault. Oh hell, Kate, we’re going to exchange one set of frustrations for something else ten times worse.”
“It’s not going to be that way; I just know it’s not. You’ve told me your fears, now let me tell you mine. If I confess to you all the things I worry about, you’ll die laughing. Here I am 19 years old and you’re the first man I’ve even kissed. I haven’t had the sexual apprenticeship of other girls my age. David, I don’t know anything, and I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed with me. This is so hard to say … am I supposed to touch you below the waist and if so, where and how? Am I supposed to keep my legs flat on the bed … or what? Am I supposed to lie still or move? Am I supposed to part my lips when we kiss? I’m scared stiff … I’ll do something accidentally which violates some sexual taboo that everyone in the world but me knows instinctively.”
David couldn’t repress a smile. “Dearest, you’re worrying over nothing. Whatever you do to give pleasure to me or to yourself will be right. There aren’t any rules.” He squeezed my hand. “After everything I’ve said, do you still want to continue seeing me … and all that implies?”
“You know I do. You said the decision is mine, but what about you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t already made up my mind. If I thought otherwise I’d have written you an entirely different kind of letter. I would have said something like what a sweet girl you are, but I’m a married man, the difference in our ages, blah, blah, blah. That’s the letter I should have written … but I didn’t.”
“Speaking of your letter, I never saw it until Norma found it when she was looking through the manuscripts. When you weren’t in the office and you didn’t call I was afraid … you’d changed your mind about me. I can laugh about my fears now, but I was in a sorry state yesterday afternoon.”
David shook his head in disbelief. ”What a little ninny you are. I’m sorry I worried you, but how could you possibly have thought such a thing?”
“I don’t know; in retrospect my worries do seem rather silly, even to me. I guess I was afraid you thought I was immoral or too easy or something like that. I should have more faith in you.”
Letters To My Mother Page 14