Desert of the Heart: A Novel

by Jane Rule

  Evelyn walked on past one casino after another until she came to Frank’s Club. It was no different from the others, neither more glamorous nor more frightening. Evelyn could have walked right in, right through the Club, no more conspicuous than she would have been in a market or department store. If she felt dislocated, no one would ever know. Tempted only because she knew Ann Childs worked here, Evelyn did not go in. It would have seemed to her as intrusively curious as her investigating of Ann’s room while she was out. And now, no longer able to imagine what a gambling casino might be like, Evelyn found the fact of Ann’s working at Frank’s Club a dragging weight on her already uncertain mood. She turned away to look for a place where she could get a cup of coffee, but she had to get off the main street before she found one.

  Before eleven o’clock Evelyn had had several cups of coffee and had bought a cotton skirt and a bathing suit. She had not really enough money to buy anything, but she did not know how else to kill time. She had not been able to find a bookstore, and everywhere else, on the street and in shops and cafés, though she was inconspicuous, she felt vulnerable. Busy as she tried to keep herself, she arrived at the lawyer’s office fifteen minutes early.

  The secretary was middle-aged and solicitous. She offered to take Evelyn’s parcels, moved an ash tray already within her reach, and, after Evelyn had begun to read a magazine forced on her, the secretary continued to chatter like a bird in a cage. Evelyn looked up, making her face a mask of polite interest, while she let an inner voice answer, “If you don’t keep still, I’ll strangle you and put you in a pie.”

  “Here’s Mr. Williams now,” the secretary cried enthusiastically, as a small, gray-haired man in a gray suit came into the room. “Mrs. Hall’s been waiting for you for ten minutes.”

  Evelyn had prepared herself emotionally for an Arthur Williams who would be rather like her dentist, tall, matter-of-fact, and gentle. She had always been fortunate in the men who officially surrounded her. Arthur Williams was quite obviously a new breed, and, if he had given Evelyn time to think, she would have judged him a catastrophe. But his apology rode in over his secretary’s scolding with such a force of Southern oratory that Evelyn could only be amazed. He was a caricature of a Southern gentlemen. The manners of his background had become in this climate almost hysterical mannerisms. He flung open his office door for Evelyn, rushed past her as soon as she had stepped inside so that he could be in the proper position to offer her a chair and to bow with a final flourish at the end of his welcoming speech.

  But, once the stage was set and he had settled himself behind his desk, there was no trace of his recent, frantic activity. He smiled at Evelyn so pleasantly, so sanely, and spoke in so quiet a voice that her first impression of him took on for her the quality of an hallucination.

  “When did you arrive?” he asked. “Are you comfortably settled? Mrs. Packer is a nice woman, isn’t she?”

  By the time he asked to see the papers, Evelyn’s confidence in him was established. He made no apology for the silence that fell while he studied them, and, for the first time since Evelyn had arrived, she found herself able to relax in someone else’s presence. She did not even feel that it was necessary to smoke. Instead she looked about the office, which was quietly and handsomely furnished. There were no family pictures on Arthur Williams’ desk, but hanging on the wall behind him was the framed photograph of an elderly man in judge’s robes. He looked so like the man quietly reading that Evelyn decided he must be Arthur Williams’ father.

  “Yes,” Arthur Williams said without looking up, then, “Yes,” again. “Any court would question this settlement without an explanation.”

  Evelyn made no comment.

  “This is the settlement you agreed to?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You are at a disadvantage, of course, since you’re the one who wants the divorce, but it’s unusual for a woman not even to claim her share of the community property.”

  “My only concern,” Evelyn answered, “is to dissolve the marriage as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  “And your husband agrees to an uncontested divorce only on these conditions?”

  “He’s not well,” Evelyn said, conscious of her need to defend George even now. “He’s in debt.”

  Arthur Williams wrote something down. Then he looked up and smiled reassuringly.

  “The papers are in good order. I’ve already made tentative arrangements with another lawyer to represent Mr. Hall in court. I understand you will pay that fee?” Evelyn nodded. “You’ll need one witness who can testify to having seen you every day for the next six weeks. I’m sure Mrs. Packer would be glad to do that for you. Now all we need to do is to establish the grounds for divorce.”

  “Incompatibility,” Evelyn said at once. “There are no other grounds.”

  “Yes … that isn’t actually a legal term used in Nevada. Mental cruelty is the usual charge.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing, is it?” Evelyn asked.

  “It really amounts to the same thing,” he said and waited.

  A week ago, even a day ago, Evelyn had been certain that incompatibility was the only charge she would allow. Adultery, cruelty, even desertion were diseases a marriage suffered and could survive. The only incurable cancer was the inability of two people to live together. And, as a charge, incompatibility, if it laid blame at all, required the guilt of both partners. But legally incompatibility did not exist. And divorce was not a private symbolic act. Like marriage, it was a social institution. Though she wanted to protest, Evelyn recognized the irrelevance of her morality.

  “I see,” she said finally.

  “Now,” Arthur Williams said, relaxing. “I need only a few details, enough to establish the charge. Did your husband’s behavior ever cause you to suffer any nervous strain?” Evelyn looked doubtful. “Have you ever had ulcers, Mrs. Hall?”

  “No,” Evelyn answered. “But my husband has.”

  Arthur Williams smiled. “How about insomnia?”

  “No,” she answered and did not add that George never slept without pills.

  “Have you ever been under a doctor’s care for any kind of nervous ailment?”

  “No.” She thought of George’s psychiatrist.

  “Has your husband’s behavior ever embarrassed you in public?” Arthur Williams asked, a quiz master moving to a new category, determined to give the sponsor’s money away.

  Evelyn frowned. Her immediate response would have been negative, but she censored it, already feeling herself a willfully uncooperative child. But how could she answer? She and George had not been in public together for over five years.

  “Has your husband’s criticism of you ever undermined your self-confidence or your sense of security?”

  Surely it was her criticism of him, never spoken, never even consciously indicated in a look or gesture, but so deep a silence in her it must have shouted at him every day of their lives together, that had undermined his confidence and security. Oh, he had been critical of her, but it was never anything more than a defensive attack when he was feeling critical of himself.

  “Has your husband ever stopped speaking to you for any length of time?”

  “Well …” Evelyn was beginning to feel really desperate. “Not actually stopped speaking.”

  “Mrs. Hall, these are only suggestions,” Arthur Williams said gently, “Perhaps it would be easier if you told me just one or two things that have caused trouble between you.”

  “Yes,” Evelyn said. “I am sorry to seem so uncooperative. It’s just that my husband and I never have fought. I suppose most people, getting a divorce, do.”

  “Not always. Sometimes that’s one of the troubles.”

  “My husband and I …” Evelyn began, sounding to herself like the Queen of England in her Christmas message, “simply don’t share any of the same interests.” She was immediately aware of how lame, legally and humanly, this statement was. And it wasn’t really true. “We don’t
share the same values.”

  “Could you give me an example?”

  How could she possibly say that she wanted to divorce George because he cheated book clubs, took advantage of the G.I. Bill and unemployment insurance, and had once sold a defective lawn mower to her mother? If there was some private validity in these complaints, publicly they were absurd. What was the fact, the event significant enough in itself to express the principle?

  “I support my husband, Mr. Williams. He won’t—or can’t—work, but he has to spend money, more money than I can make. The sound of the unpaid-for power saw and stereophonic tape recorder do threaten my sense of security.”

  “You said before, Mrs. Hall, that your husband was not well. Does his poor health prevent him from working?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “What is wrong with him?”

  “We don’t really know,” Evelyn said.

  “We?”

  “My husband, the doctors … or perhaps names have been put to it, psychiatric names. He suffers from a sense of inadequacy, a sense of failure. But then the world for him is meaningless. It has no purpose. So there isn’t any value, and we have no identity. All we have is a wish, or a need, that can’t be answered.”

  “And that is what you mean when you say that you don’t share the same values.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Evelyn agreed, but she felt uncertain. “I could believe in despair if it weren’t hungry, if it didn’t feed on life with such an awful greediness. …”

  “Let me see if I can’t translate this into more practical terms. I think what you’re saying, Mrs. Hall, is that your husband’s emotional instability, his despair, has caused you deep distress, has, in fact, undermined your own living.” Evelyn nodded. “Now, he refuses to support you and, furthermore, incurs debts you cannot meet. Are there other things he’s done, intangible things? How does he behave toward you? Is he affectionate? Is he thoughtful?”

  “No, I don’t suppose so. I suppose he’s indifferent, and yet he’s dependent. He doesn’t really want my company, but he doesn’t like to be alone. He won’t go out. He won’t see people who come in. He sleeps a great deal—and reads and eats and buys machinery.”

  “Has he always been like this, Mrs. Hall?”

  “No, no, it’s been a gradual thing. You see, for a while after the war he was working on his Ph.D. Trying to. I already had mine; so I taught. But it didn’t go very well, and we began to have debts. He took jobs then, part-time jobs in stores and garages. Then he said he couldn’t do both; so we tried to get along on my salary again. I don’t know just when it was that we stopped pretending he was working on his thesis. It’s years ago now, at least five.” Evelyn paused to think back. Still, she couldn’t offer details, but she felt she was getting nearer the difficulty, nearer an acceptable way of saying it.

  “I think that’s all we need then,” Arthur Williams said cheerfully. “We can go to court six weeks from today. That’s September 8th.” He checked his calendar. “So I should see you the Friday before. Then we can just go over the questions I’ll ask you. It will be very simple. You’ll just have to answer yes or no.”

  “That’s all you need?” Evelyn asked, bewildered.

  “That’s all,” and, as he rose from his desk, he began again his frantic, courtly ballet that was to accomplish Evelyn’s exit.

  Out on the street, Evelyn tried to recall exactly what questions she had been asked, what answers she had given. It did not seem possible that Arthur Williams had enough information to establish any charge. What could he say in court?

  “Is it true that your husband sleeps a great deal, Mrs. Hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say that he is often indifferent to your company?”

  “Yes.”

  “He refuses to be entertaining to your guests?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he will not work.”

  “No.”

  Yes. No. Of course not. But it isn’t his fault. Why shouldn’t he sleep? Why should he be entertaining? How can he work? The man is suffering. The man is dying.

  “Divorce granted.”

  Was that, then, all that was necessary to cancel the impossible vows she and George had taken and tried to live by for sixteen years? George had promised to keep her, but she had promised to keep him, too, and that was, anyway, the least of their promises. So little of their failure was willful. George could not comfort her. She could not honor him. What did she want of divorce proceedings then; a systematic cancellation, vow by vow, of the marriage service? She did not know. But it should be something more or other than this.

  As Evelyn walked along the street, Arthur Williams’ actual voice came back to her, the accent, the almost lazy legality of the phrasing. “Have you ever had …?” “No.” “Have you ever been …?” “No.” “Has you husband ever …?” “No.” She had not been able to answer one of the questions he put to her in such a way as to make the divorce seem necessary or even reasonable. But, if George had been asked, his answers would have persuaded any judge to set him free. George was the real victim of their marriage, so much the victim that he hadn’t the courage left to want a divorce. “Your honor, I charge this man with what I have done to him. I charge this man with being a victim to my circumstance. I charge this man with ulcers, insomnia, psychosis, insecurity, isolation, and despair. I charge him with my guilt which I cannot hear anymore.” Was there no legal term for this? Was there no social convention that could relieve the torturer’s suffering? None. If this mock hearing did, in fact, set her free, she would still carry the mark of a strong, intelligent woman like the brand of Cain on her forehead.

  Evelyn looked up to find herself already approaching the house. She must have all but run those eight blocks back, absorbed first in bewilderment, then in fury. She walked into the house and up to her room, which she confronted with indignation and defiance. “Well?” she wanted to demand. “Well?” Well what? There was nothing here to confront but the indifferent furniture. She looked around her desperately to find some place to put her fury down. Nothing here could receive it. Nothing but herself. “I must do something.” There was nothing to do. At once, and for the first time, Evelyn realized precisely what that meant. She had done all there was to do. Arthur Williams did not want to see her again until the Friday before the hearing. “But I must do something.” Evelyn sat down in the chair and stared. Gradually the rage died away, and she was quiet and a little sick.

  There was work to do. She had one volume of Yeats with her. She would begin with that. Tomorrow she would go to the public library. Wednesday she would go to the University. With the books she needed, she would set up a schedule. Already she was conscious of measuring out the vital supply, rationing the hours that would keep her alive. Why did she feel so trapped? At any other time, six weeks would have seemed a gift. Now, because she had no choice, they were a sentence. “Nonsense!” She got up to get her book and felt again the sudden dizziness. It was the heat, the altitude. How lovely it would be to lie down on the bed, to sleep awhile, but she mustn’t do that. She had already discovered how long an evening could be. Sleep was too precious an escape to be squandered.

  When Evelyn met Virginia Ritchie on the stairs going down for dinner, she felt much less critical of her than she had just twenty-four hours before. Younger, with children at home, with fewer of her own resources, she had already lived through three weeks of an isolation Evelyn found terrible in one day. She had no desire to make friends with Virginia, but she greeted her with some real gentleness and sympathy.

  “Dr. Hall, I do want to apologize …”

  “Please,” Evelyn said, “call me Evelyn, and don’t apologize for anything. There isn’t any need.”

  “I know I behave very badly,” Virginia said, “but I find this waiting around with nothing to do just impossible. Everyone said it was best to go to Reno and get a quick divorce, but they don’t know. They haven’t any idea what it’s like just to sit and
wait. And this awful town. Even if I had to wait a year at home, at least I’d be busy. I’d be with the children. …” Her voice broke a little.

  “But it’s only three more weeks,” Evelyn said.

  “Only three weeks,” Virginia cried softly, “I’ve been here only three weeks. For only three weeks I’ve sat in that room and thought. It’s a lifetime.”

  “Haven’t you books to read?”

  “Books? No, but I’ve read every magazine in the house. You know what they’re like, all about young couples who …” Again her voice failed her.

  “You’re reading the wrong stories,” Evelyn said, smiling.

  “That’s why I’ve stopped.”

  Dinner that night was not as unfortunate as it had been the night before. Virginia was, as Frances Packer had promised, calmer and less self-consciously tragic. Walter did not have to carve and so divided his attention between his appetite and his role as host with some ease, while Frances tended the table and the gaps in the conversation. Only Ann was noticeably quiet and seemed grateful to have the meal done with, to be able to leave the house. Virginia, who had decided to go to an early movie, went with Ann and Walter, leaving Frances and Evelyn alone with their coffee.

  “Another cup?” Frances asked.

  “Thanks.”

  “I am glad you’re a coffee drinker. Walt and Ann never take the time. It is nice to have company. Now tell me, have you everything you need? Did you see the lawyer?”