by Rona Jaffe
When he left, with his suitcases, unexpectedly he kissed her. It was a brief kiss, on the mouth, with his lips open. They had not kissed this way for months. There was a strength and confidence about Neil in that sudden kiss that startled her. But she knew it did not mean reconciliation. It meant only that now, for the first time, he was truly free of her. She did not know how she knew it, but she knew.
“I’ll call you,” he said. “And please, please call me, whenever you want something. If you feel lonely, if you only want to talk, please call. Any hour, Margie; I mean this. You have the number at my apartment, and at the office, of course.”
“If I call you at … home, she’ll be there.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“All right,” she said, biting her knuckle with sharp teeth she could hardly feel.
“You can use any money you want in our joint account. I’ll put in a deposit this week for your plane ticket.”
“All right.”
“I’m not going to say goodbye,” he said. “I’m still here. Remember that.”
“I guess I said goodbye to you a long time ago,” Margie said.
He was gone. She stood in the doorway after he had left and thought absurdly that he should not have gone out in the rain like that; he would be soaked to the skin. He should have waited another day or two until the rains stopped. He must be in a hurry, she thought dizzily, he must … because it’s raining so hard out and he’ll get so wet.
It continued to rain almost every day for two weeks, but Margie stayed inside the apartment the entire time even when it was not raining. She had always cared for her appearance, had gone to the hairdresser at least twice a week, but now she did not. Neil called her every afternoon. He sounded friendly on the phone, almost paternal. Now it was she who needed the care. He talked about money, he asked her plans, he told her amusing little anecdotes about the office. He was always in a hurry. “I called to say hello,” he would say, his voice light and kindly, pleasant, and she could never decide if it were a duty call or if he missed her. Then, after two weeks, he didn’t call any more.
She did not see anyone but Helen. Helen came over every day and tried to make Margie come out of the apartment, but it was useless. Several times Helen brought Julie and Roger, and Margie liked that. The children made her happy for a while. She wondered if she and Neil had had children if he would ever have left her then. They’re right, she thought bitterly, those women who have babies right away, get pregnant on their wedding night; then their husbands can’t leave them. The ones who have a lot of children are even smarter; then the husband can’t afford to leave. In a way she even resented Helen now, for having two lovely children and a husband who would stay with her. She knew this was distorted, that Helen was her best friend in Brazil, and if she began to resent Helen’s happiness she would have no one. But she could not help feeling jealous.
Then one morning she woke up and felt as if she had come out of an illness. She was neither unhappy nor happy. The sun was out, it was a good day, and she thought she might go to the beach. She looked in the mirror carefully for the first time since Neil had left and she was startled to see the thin wildness of her face. Suntans faded as quickly as they came in Rio, and her skin was a pale yellowish beige. There were circles under her eyes. Her hair looked frightful; it was the unkempt, unwashed mane of an invalid. She had not bothered to wear lipstick for so long that her lips had become as pale as her face.
“What a beast you are!” she told her reflection, and she took a shower and ate a large breakfast and then she telephoned the cabellereiro to have her hair and nails done. “A man wouldn’t look at me,” she said, not unhappily. “Not even a blind man.”
When she was finished at the beauty parlor she walked over to see Helen. The noontime sun in the streets felt good, like a new skin to cover exposed nerves. “I’m alive,” Margie said, when Helen followed her maid to the door.
“You look pretty,” Julie said, sounding rather surprised, because children get used to anything in several weeks and begin to think it was never any other way.
“Julie!” Helen said, and then added. “You do.”
“If you want to buy any of my furniture,” Margie said, trying to be casual, “you have first call. I’m going to make a list. Neil says he doesn’t want any of it.”
“Sit down and have some coffee first.”
“I want to keep busy,” Margie said, and for the first time that morning her voice was unsteady. She was alive, but none of this was going to be easy. She had changed twice, she realized, in a few short weeks. Once when she discovered you could not count on life to remain the same while you grew different, and again when she realized no one was going to take care of her any more. It was going to be strange, this new life alone. Stranger still because it was happening to her for the first time at twenty-five. She wondered if she was going to be able to manage.
CHAPTER 21
It was a month now since Helen had gone to the fazenda to begin a serious affair with Sergio Leite Braga and had left him before it had begun. In this month, for the first time since she had come to live in Rio, she did not feel that her life was suspended, or that she was apart from the daily things that happened to her. The guilty secret of what she had almost done to Bert was with her always. Although her routine went on almost as before, she felt everything very strongly: loneliness, a sense of uselessness, of waste, homesickness, and timid hope for a future that was several years away. She wondered if she and Bert could have another child. Somehow the idea of having a baby to care for made the idea of the next several years seem less mysterious and frightening; she had brought up two babies to the age of childhood and at least in that area she knew what to expect. For everything else in her life this moment she felt only fright, for the first time, because for the first time she had to admit to herself that she and Bert could not reach each other any more. She wanted to confess, she could not confess, they could not even speak together.
She had never before realized how much she had depended on the outward signs of peace and security in her friends’ households to add stability to her own. When Mil Burns had left Phil and gone home to the States it had upset Helen out of proportion to the friendship she had felt for Mil and Phil. It had shocked and repelled her, as if in all other marriages she saw her own. And now Margie and Neil Davidow—the happiest marriage in the world—was all over.
She came every day to Margie’s apartment, smiling, comforting, often bringing one of her children, but the entire time she had to conceal from Margie her mounting panic. She saw the light go out of Margie’s face, the glow of a loved woman fading as visibly and quickly as the golden tan left her skin. Without being loved, Margie was no longer pretty. The change in her hurt Helen very much, not only for Margie herself, whom she loved, but because it seemed an omen. If Margie and Neil could separate, then anyone could. Helen knew now that whatever had been wrong between Margie and Neil had not been a sudden thing; it had been hidden from her and their friends for a long, long time, and that was even more frightening. From the look of paralyzed bewilderment in Margie’s eyes Helen knew that Margie Davidow had done such a good job of hiding her dissolving marriage from all her friends that she had ended deceiving even herself.
Although it was spring in the States and fall in Rio it was not much cooler yet. At night Helen had begun to dream again of home, and during the day she sometimes thought of it so longingly she felt as if she were a child again at camp crying secretly the first two nights, with her head under the khaki blanket of her cot so no one would discover what a baby she was. It was funny how quickly one could lose patience with all the little things that had seemed so enchanting: the casual uncaring, the tomorrow or next week attitude, the provincialism that had seemed cozy and now was so boring she wanted only to be alone. But to be alone for what? She wanted to confess; she could not confess. When she was alone with Bert she noticed now for the first time how he constantly occupied himself with things; readin
g a new book, an old American newspaper, a magazine, attending to work he had brought from the office, teaching the children how to play cards, complaining about the car. The car had been giving him trouble lately, and when he was alone with her he spoke about it all the time—how he had tried to obtain a new part, what might be wrong, what went wrong with automobiles in tropical countries, the unpleasant personality of his repairman, and so on. She had heard about other couples who were united during the dark hours of early evening by nothing more than a car or a washing machine, but now she knew it had happened to her.
She in turn spoke about Margie. What could she say about Margie? What was there to say? The only definite clue Margie had given her was the admission “Neil and I hadn’t slept together since Christmas Eve.” But even that was really not an answer, because Helen knew by now that sleeping together was not always a bond; it was sometimes only a habit. It had become only a habit between her and Bert since that night before she had gone away with Sergio. Perhaps it was more to Bert, but not to her, not now. Bert never mentioned the difference. Helen wondered if he cared.
She went to the club several times, and the women were very anxious to hear from her all the details of the Davidows’ separation. She said she knew nothing about it. Two or three of them said, “Of course you do!” and persisted. “Tell us! You know if anyone does. Is it that girl in Neil’s office?”
“Why don’t you mind your own business for a change?” Helen said. “Or is it too boring?” After she said that she was ashamed. The women probably thought she was a bitch. Well, she felt like a bitch. Of course their own business was too boring. If Margie hadn’t been her best friend, if she didn’t love Margie, she probably would have been asking those same nosy questions; the only thing that stopped her was not virtue or self-control but the fact that she knew now how real the pain of the answers was. It was not abstract gossip any more for her; she had come too close to it in her own life.
The only one she said any more to about it was Mort Baker. She met him on the street one day at the end of March, the same day Margie had come to visit her looking alive again. Mort’s new apartment had no telephone and he seemed to have disappeared from everyone’s life after Carnival. He looked very suntanned and good.
“Why don’t you go to see her?” Helen said. “It would cheer her up.”
He nodded without replying, just nodded slowly twice, still looking stunned from her news. At first she thought he was either just stunned or had many other plans which a visit to Margie would interfere with, but then she saw a secret, withdrawn look on his face and she recognized it as an expression she had sometimes seen on Roger’s. It was the elaborate casualness that masked excitement.
“Well, I’m going to split now,” he said, and gave her a half wave of his hand. He disappeared into a café on the corner. It was a sidewalk café and there were several people seated at tables drinking beer or waiting for people. But he went into the back room where the bar and telephone were, and Helen felt pleased. Mort was a good friend. He was slightly crazy, but he was a good friend.
That night Bert went out to dinner with some business people from São Paulo. He told her he would not be home late. At eight o’clock Margie telephoned.
“Can you come to the movies with me?” Margie asked.
“Didn’t Mort Baker call you? I met him on the street today. He said—”
“Yes,” Margie said. “He wanted me to have dinner with him but I was too tired. Please come to the movies. I don’t want to go alone.” Her voice sounded odd.
“All right. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.” She left a note for Bert saying, “Going to the movies with Margie. Love, H.,” kissed her children good night, and drove to Margie’s in the car which was temporarily in running order. She was glad to get out of the house herself.
There was no film that both of them had not seen except something in German with Portuguese subtitles about a beautiful blind girl who needed an operation. Neither of them cared, so they went to see that. When the film was over they drove to Bob’s and ate American ice cream at the counter on the sidewalk and they talked casually about things that did not matter.
“I’m going to have dinner with him tomorrow,” Margie said finally.
“With whom?”
“Mort. It’s funny, we know him so well, but I feel funny about going out with him alone. It’s sort of like a … date.”
“That’s why you didn’t go with him tonight, isn’t it? But you can’t go into mourning, Margie. You have to see your good friends.”
“I know,” Margie said softly. “But it’s different now. I don’t know why. All of a sudden I’m scared of him.”
“Of Mort? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Margie said. Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s drive around,” Helen said.
They drove along Copacabana Beach with the windows lowered to the warm air and the sound of the surf. There were lovers on the beach, dark humps that sometimes moved a great deal and sometimes did not move at all. “I was sick all evening,” Margie said. “I couldn’t eat dinner and I kept shaking. Feel how cold my hand is.”
Her palm on Helen’s arm was damp and cold. “If it makes you that sick you really shouldn’t go out with him,” Helen said.
“But I want to,” Margie said. She looked out the window as she spoke and the breeze almost blew her words away because they were so quiet. “I was so happy when he called. We haven’t seen him for such a long time. I realized how much I missed him. I almost said, ‘Come right over this minute if you have nothing to do.’ But then he beat me to it; he said, ‘Can you have dinner with me tonight?’ And I started to feel sick.”
“Why, Margie? Why? Think about it. Why? There must be a reason.”
“I don’t know,” Margie said again, her head back against the back of the car seat, her eyes closed, tears showing at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know. Stay with me for a while. Come up and have some coffee. I don’t want to go to sleep.”
When Helen arrived home it was a quarter past twelve. All the lamps in the living room were out but one, glowing dimly at the entrance. The room was shadowy, the curtains drawn against the windows for the night. It was very still. She felt rather than heard the presence of someone in the room, although she saw no one; it was as if the waves of air that crossed invisibly from wall to wall had stopped and flowed around a vibrating human body rather than an inanimate piece of furniture. She felt a tension that stiffened her and crept up the back of her neck like breath. Then she heard a breath, from the corner next to the curtained windows, the intake of breath from between clenched teeth. Bert was standing there and he was holding on to the wall with one hand.
“You’re home,” he said.
“Why are you standing there in the dark?”
He took two steps to the table, pulled the cord that lighted the large lamp, and flooded the room with light. He was still leaning on the table with one hand and he had accidentally pushed a bottle which had been on the edge of the table ever farther toward the edge, so now she watched with frozen surprize as the bottle tilted and then fell to the floor. It did not break or spill because it was empty. She realized then that Bert was very drunk.
“Did you have a nice time at the movies with your friend?” he asked, trying to enunciate very clearly to cover his slurring speech. The effect this gave was one of enormous held-in rage and sarcasm.
“Not very. She was upset. And the picture was dreadful.”
“What did you see?”
“It … I forgot the name. It was German.”
“Oh, really?”
“It was about a girl who was blind, and a doctor said he could cure her but her mother didn’t want her to have the operation.” She ended the description limply, realizing suddenly that he either did not believe her or was no longer listening. He had been holding a glass in his other hand and now he held it up to the light, saw that it was nearly empty, and drank the re
st in one gulp. “I know it sounds silly,” she said.
He walked toward her, slowly. He was wearing the trousers to his dark silk suit and the same wrinkled, damp white shirt he had worn all day at the office and then out to dinner. He had removed his tie and shoes. It upset her to see him so drunk and quietly menacing, and instinctively she drew away a little.
He smiled, a tight smile utterly without humor, and walked closer. With that thin-lipped, slit-eyed grimace, he looked like a giant tiger or cheetah. “What did you do in four hours and five minutes?” he said. “How many movies did you see?”
“Did you get this drunk at dinner?” she accused weakly, backing away. He reached out and took her wrist. His fingers did not close tightly enough to hurt her; they were simply an unbreakable band. She smelled the whisky.
“I didn’t go to any dinner. I came home at eight-thirty. I just wanted to give you time to get out. I knew you’d go. You haven’t had a night alone with Sergio Leite Braga for a long time, have you!”
She was drowning. She felt blood in her eardrums like the sound of the sea thundering over the head of a struggling swimmer, her heart pounded until it strained and hurt her, and she could not speak. Bert said something else but she did not hear him and then he put his fingers around her neck. She hardly felt them and waited in panic for them to close out the air from her throat entirely, and then she realized that the reason she could not feel Bert’s fingers was that they were cupped very loosely around her throat. He looked at her.
“I could kill you,” he said.
The pounding of her heart turned from shock and terror to excitement. His eyes were very close to hers, completely open and filled with grief, his lips were closed and very white. Helen sagged against his cupped hands, allowing him to hold her up, feeling at that moment as if he might strangle her accidentally and for one mad instant not caring at all. She had never felt so weak, nor that Bert was so strong. Unreasoning physical love filled her, weakened her, made her feel faint. His fingers were no longer steel bands around her throat but human flesh, and she could feel his pulse through his fingertips. He had known for a long time, perhaps even weeks, and all these nights that they had sat together in this living room pretending to talk about the car and dull household things he had known. He had known, and he had felt this agony she saw now, and he had not known what to say to her.