Her gasped-back sobs sounded over the shutter-muted clamor of the Zócalo.
“Ahh, what’s the use? It always ends up the same. You the bawling, wronged, saintly wife, and me the bastard.” Gerry stamped through the darkened bedroom.
She heard a door close, a shower running. She sat on the couch, whose prickly blood-colored plush gave off a faint peppery aroma. After a minute her tears lessened. Gripping her wadded Kleenex, she went to the other room. Far smaller than the sitting room, it was dominated by the high bed with ornately carved head- and footboards.
As she stared at the bed where her husband made love to another woman, Roy’s mind worked with sudden incongruous lucidity. She had heard vets say that in the heart of fray there comes a moment when the fear and the battle hype both recede and you comprehend without emotion whether or not you’re going to make it. So it was with her.
I’ve lost him, she thought with a clarity unconnected to her passionate grief. Lost him. . . .
She stood for a long time in the doorway.
The shower ceased. Gerry emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, his wet hair hanging in his eyes.
“Wasn’t the message clear enough?” he said. “I’ve had it up to here.”
“We have to talk,” she said.
“Talk? Talk means first you pry everything out of me, then you shriek and wail about it!”
“Gerry, I promise to behave.”
He gave her a wary glance, then padded over to the bureau, leaving wet footmarks on the polished floor, scattering socks as he fished out Jockey shorts. Facing away from her, he stepped into them.
“You and Althea are having an affair. See, I said it quite rationally.”
He moved to a big wardrobe for a clean shirt and clean Levi’s.
Roy said, “It’s not a fly-by-night thing, you and Althea, not a one-night stand. I accept that.”
He tilted his head at her. “You’re really on the level, aren’t you? You really do want to hash it out reasonably?”
“We have to.”
He did up a shirt button, not looking at her. “The truth is, Roy, it’s never worked, you and me. It’s my fault. I’ve felt trapped, so I’ve made life shitty for you. The best thing for both of us is to split up. Get a divorce.”
A divorce.
The word echoed and reechoed through Roy’s head, and she saw the dimness of the room as black. Divorce. Stifling an impulse to throw herself screaming on the flowered carpeting at his feet, she gripped the doorjamb.
Gerry was watching her with a peculiar begging expression.
All at once she understood that just as her soul and body were being stretched on the rack of love, so were Gerry’s. For years he had been crazy in love with Althea, just as she, Roy, had been in love with him.
This fellowship with Gerry’s torment elicited from Roy a bewildering flood of emotions: barren hopelessness, a vindictive jealousy toward her rival, and—most heavily—an inanely adoring loyalty that made her yearn to help Gerry, to be his ally in winning a victory. Win a victory even though she was his unhappy opponent.
“A divorce . . .” she said weakly. “Gerry, I just don’t know . . . I don’t think I’ll ever get over how I feel about you.”
“You can’t be enjoying this fouled-up marriage any more than I am.”
She sighed miserably. “Not now. . . .”
Gerry asked, “Then at least you’ll think about splitting?”
“I care so much, darling.”
“But you just said you were at rocky bottom.”
That pleading hope in his eyes wrenched her. “. . . maybe I could handle it if I went for some sort of professional help.”
“You’d do that? Try a shrink?”
“I think I need one.”
His blazing, grateful smile sent icy needles into her skin. “You’re a terrific kid, Roy, you always were.”
“But you have to give me time.”
“No sweat. Take as long as you need.”
She tottered down the long, cool corridor, and when she came to a door marked “Baño,” she went inside. Here the shutters were not drawn, and blazing subtropical sunlight slanted across the tub. She sat on the hot porcelain ledge, the sun glaring onto her, unable to control her shivers.
What have I promised?
A divorce?
Oh, God, God.
51
Althea shifted around to face the hotel, an empty glass in front of her. The Café Manuela waiters, who knew the handsome blond American señora always lunched with her esposo, left her politely alone. The sweat-drenched mariachis gave way to the band that rattled out waltzes, the well-barbered businessmen drove home for their large, slow midday meals, while shabby workers came to sprawl with their tortillas in the dark shade cast by the Zócalo’s trees. Brightly clad tourists crowded under every available café umbrella.
Althea’s oval face was harmoniously composed, her hands clasped easily on the checked tablecloth; she gave no sign of the maximum effort she was using to control her alarms. But as the slow minutes stretched she thought that if Gerry didn’t come out soon, she might let out a scream.
Had Gerry and Roy reconciled? Or was reconciliation necessary? Had urbane Althea Wimborne fallen for the oldest line of all, the man in need of tenderness because his wife doesn’t understand him? Was she—as Roy had hissed at her—simply one in a high-kicking chorus line of lays to Gerry Horak? Had he, the Pittsburgh slum kid, taken malicious pleasure in bedding a woman with her classy list of patronyms? The questions churned in her guts.
The waiter with the wispy mustache came over to remove her glass. Would the señora care to order?
She hated the waiter for his silly little mustache, she hated him for his smell of oily sweat and garlic, most of all she hated him for his soft brown eyes which spied on her interminable waiting. “I’m not ready,” she said. “Of course, if you must have the table?”
“No, señora, of course not. The señora knows she is always most welcome at the Café Manuela.”
He backed between crowded tables to the service window.
Her fingers began tapping on the tabletop, not keeping the beat of the bandstand waltz, “Mi Corazón.” How could she have permitted herself to slide right back into the insignificant hole from which she had so painfully raised herself? How could she have left her son—her adolescent knight nonpareil—and her carefully selected coterie of friends and admirers? Why had she prized herself open like a vulnerable oyster? She was the world’s idiot!
At that moment Gerry emerged from the hotel.
Relief jolted her, and she surveyed him as she would a stranger, noticing the curving breadth of his shoulders, his skin tanned the deep, reddish brown of Oaxaca’s roof tiles, the thick, curly mop which grew low on his forehead and was in need of a trim. With the deep lines cut between his nose and the corners of his grimacing mouth, he resembled an aging, unhappy Pan—or a weary laborer leaving the factory.
He sank into the chair next to hers.
“I’d just about given up,” she said with a wide smile.
“A drink for me, that’s all,” he said. Heavy brown bristles shadowed his jaw: he had not followed his custom of shaving when he took his prelunch shower.
“Me, I’m ravenous.”
When the waiter came over, she smiled again, waving away the familiar gold-tasseled, food-spotted menu, turning to Gerry, listing her choices to him—an avocado salad, the tamales, tortillas, a Dos Équises.
Gerry did not repeat her order. After the waiter had ambulated in his heavy, duckfooted way to hand over the order to the kitchen, she said, “What a ferocious day! It makes Marrakesh seem absolutely polar. Being a gringa, though—can you imagine this?—I walked all the way home from Oaxaca Courts.”
He reached for her hand, and there was something almost frantic in the tightness of his grip. “Cut it out, Althea, just cut it out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can take ev
erything but you playing with me.”
“Playing?”
He looked at her intently, a tiny muscle jumping in the lid of his left eye. “Quit pretending she’s not here.”
“Ahh, yes. Your wife.” Althea’s irony was light; none of her imperilment sounded in her voice. “Where is she?”
“Didn’t she come out?”
“No.”
“She left the room a long time ago.”
“Possibly she’s arranging for quarters next to ours. She seemed quite crackers enough to poke holes in the wall and spy.”
“I told you. She goes off the deep end when she thinks there’s another woman.” He raised his palms helplessly. “The funny thing is that this time, when it’s for real, she wasn’t so bad. After a while she became almost herself, sane and level.”
A shrill bubble of voices burst as the three middle-aged American women rose from the next table.
“Wouldn’t it solve matters,” Althea asked with carefully flat tones, “if you simply told her to bug off?”
“She said she’d think about a divorce.”
“What married woman hasn’t?”
“She’s going to find a shrink.”
“Oh? In my circle, we seek an attorney to dissolve our marriages.”
“Althea, cut out the bitchiness. She needs help with this.”
“How long is the average term of a psychoanalysis? Five years? Ten?”
“I’d rather take my chances at Salerno all over again than be back in Ward Four.” He looked down at his hands, which were tattooed with Grumbacher paints. “How can I condemn her to that?”
“So every time it looks like you might walk out, she goes into her Ophelia act—” Althea broke off as the waiter came, remaining silent while a starch-scented darned white linen square was unfolded over the checkered tablecloth and large, heavy silverplate arranged. Gerry’s bourbon and soda chaser was set down with a flourish. When the waiter left, Althea leaned forward. “She knows how to play you.”
Gerry jerked down his drink, the muscles convulsing in his strong throat. He wiped his mouth with his knuckles. “You know Roy’s not like that.”
“About this one little item, she’s obviously pretty shrewd.”
“I’m giving it to you straight, Althea. You’re the only woman I care about, the only woman for me, but I couldn’t stand it if Roy went nuts.”
Althea picked up a fork, staring at him. “How will you avoid that?”
“What I have in mind is to give her time to work it through.”
“Sounds lovely. But what’s in it for her? The minute she ‘works it through,’ as you put it, she loses you.”
“She’s the one who brought up seeing the shrink.”
The cathedral’s wooden clock chimed the quarter-hour.
“And where do you see me in all this?” Althea inquired.
“I know this is a hell of a lot to ask, but could you come back to Beverly Hills, live there? She’ll be my wife in name only.”
“What a quaint expression.”
The waiter served her meal. Gerry ordered two more drinks while she toyed with tamales which, she said, had been revoltingly overspiced today, and sliced avocados, which today were absolutely tasteless. She punctuated her complaints with maliciously witty comments about the other patrons of the Café Manuela. The shade of the umbrella had shifted and half of Gerry’s face was in the sun. The hard light showed his sweat-glossed unhappiness.
“You’re a bitch,” he said finally.
“Do tell.” Her tone was as icy as the Dos Équises.
“That’s part of your charm, the hardness. With the others I always felt I was putting up with a lot of menstrual cramps and whining because it was part of the bargain when I needed a piece of tail.”
“Delicately put.”
“Did I ever pretend to be anything but a foul-mouthed Hunkie bastard?”
She set down her fork. “You’re not a bastard at all,” she said slowly.
His eyebrows raised evocatively, and she felt a respite from the hurt that he was putting Roy’s needs above hers.
“The truth is,” she went on, “you’ve always been too buried in your painting to understand what’s what. You’ve never learned the techniques and arts people use to prey on one another.”
He grinned. “Is that a fancy way of telling me we’re okay?”
She bit her lip. From now on his concern for Roy would always cast a blight on their relationship. She would never again have that complete, uncomplicated spontaneity with him. Even in their most profound intimacies there would always be a trace of wariness.
Yet she had no choice. She loved Gerry Horak—worse, she needed him.
“I can’t come to Beverly Hills,” she said, thinking of Charles’s long, handsome face, the features growing and edging toward manhood. “I need to be near my son. But what about coming back to New York?”
In an atypical, loverlike gesture, he kissed the palm of her hand. “You’re on,” he said.
“What about Roy?” she asked.
“She’s meant to be washing me out of her hair,” he said, avoiding Althea’s eyes.
52
Roy peeled another Kleenex from the box, blowing her nose—she had just stopped crying. “He’s not staying in her apartment.”
“You’ve mentioned that four times in this session,” said Dr. Buchmann.
“Well, it’s important, isn’t it?”
“What do you think?”
She shifted in her easy chair. Dr. Buchmann sat facing her in its twin. At her first appointment he had explained that he did not go in for the couch routine but preferred to talk in the comfortable atmosphere of a living room. The psychiatrist was in his fifties, a slow-moving, lanky Jungian with thinning brown hair and a minor speech impediment with R’s, a trifling problem that roused Roy’s (Woy’s) easy sympathies, lowering her guard. His office was on Bedford Drive a few blocks from Patricia’s, in the same white-painted brick building as the gynecologist that she and Marylin used—indeed, Dr. Dash had recommended Dr. Buchmann.
Two months earlier in Oaxaca, on that sickeningly hot January day with the faraway band insinuating waltzes into the dark bedroom, it had been Gerry’s misery that had elicited Roy’s promise to seek professional help. Now she clung with desperation to her three hours a week. She budgeted herself strictly to pay Dr. Buchmann’s fees and left Patricia’s an hour early, at five, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to walk over. How could she survive without Dr. Buchmann? To whom else could she confess the nights she lay in her bed kept awake by the frightful scratching (she knew it was hallucinatory) that emanated from Gerry’s empty garage studio? Who else could she tell that she had no memory of what foods she shoved into her mouth at mealtimes, or of the blank-minded choking sensation that overtook her when it was time to connect the names that went with her customers’ faces? She had once screwed up her courage to blurt out that she was drinking alone in the evenings. The nonjudgmental sympathy on Dr. Buchmann’s fine-skinned face had ameliorated his cautionary warnings.
“Of course it’s important whether he moves in with her!” Roy leaned forward impatiently. “How can you even ask? I’m the only woman he’s ever lived with.”
“He’s told you he wants to marry Mrs. Wimborne, Roy.”
“That bitch is tremendously attractive! But she tires of her men—two divorces already. Dr. Buchmann, remember, I told you about Oaxaca, when I felt so sorry for him that I said I’d think about a divorce. Well, now I see it wasn’t so dumb. Eventually she’ll throw him out. I’ll ride out the separation. I’ll wait however long I must to have a chance to get him back—I’ll do anything to get him back.”
“Roy, listen to what you’re saying.”
“I know I’m crawling after a man who wants out. But I can’t help it. Never, not once in my life, have I come first with anyone!”
“You’re a fine, attractive person. You’re generous, loyal, bright, you’ve made yourself an excellent career.
Your employers like you and trust you. Your family is devoted. You have a great many friends. To function properly, you have to learn to see yourself in perspective. That’s why you’re here.”
Roy sat back. “Talking to you has saved my life, but if Gerry called tomorrow and told me to quit, I would.”
“I’d hoped we had come further than this,” said the psychiatrist quietly.
“Dr. Buchmann, learning about myself has no connection with how I feel about Gerry.” Roy’s throat ached as if a silk cord were tightening around her neck. “I love him totally. He’s my whole life.”
“Roy, Roy.”
“She’s always stolen my guys! Maybe it’s connected to some kind of lesbian tendencies she has, who knows.”
“That high-school story you told me is another situation entirely. This is an adult problem that you have to resolve.”
“What does resolution have to do with wanting somebody until every nerve in your body is frantic? Weren’t you ever in love? Can’t you understand? Without him, I’m nothing. I don’t exist!” Roy raised her hands to her face, and the sound of hopeless sobs filled the beige office.
* * *
Later, Roy drove the long blocks southward. It was misty and the oncoming headlights frayed at her vision. Across Pico Boulevard, streetlamps glowed on neatly spaced, uniform little bungalows, this one gussied up with French Provincial shutters, that one with modern flanks of timber. Windows were lit in every house, and where the curtains were not drawn, Roy would see a man, a woman, children around a table or in front of a television set. Homes, families, she thought, the loneliness twisting within her.
She turned into her driveway, braking at the porte cochere which had been added on with the conversion of the garage into Gerry’s studio. In better times, homecoming had inevitably brought her a volatile quiver of pride for her wisdom at using Marylin’s wedding present as a down payment on this house. Now, though, the house was a bleak, traitorous reminder that Gerry, uncaring of his abode, had itchy feet.
In the prim yellow kitchen she went straight to the cabinet where the liquor was stored, pouring herself a stiff, neat Gilbey’s. Numbing her dark, dark wretchedness with booze was a new thing to Roy: until January she had been drunk only once in her life—and that was after a fight with Gerry. With these gaping wounds, though, she could not make it through the long, aching nights without some kind of anesthesia. Downing the gin, she poured another and went into the living room. She was still paying for the chintz sofa and chairs, the maple television, the cobbler’s-bench coffee table, the dining ell’s Early American suite. The somewhat gorged coziness was undermined by three immense featureless oils from Gerry’s Paris period—to Roy they resembled massive blue scars rather than abstractions of the Seine in its embankment.
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