by Damon Knight
There was a silence.
“John.”
“Yes,” he said.
“John, I want a divorce.”
“Yes, I know.”
“A legal divorce.”
“All right.”
“All right? Like that?”
“Like that.”
She stared, confused. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your term of service is over this month, isn’t it? Are you going to renew?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? Why not?” She sat on the bed now and he became aware of her body, her movements, and it began to hurt. He had held it off till then. “What are you going to do for money?”
“I have some.”
“But another four years and you’d have a pension. And by then Kevin would be through school. If you quit now you’re out on your ass.”
“I was thinking of writing a book.”
“About your mission?”
“Sort of. I was thinking of poetry.”
“Oh. Poetry.” She smiled fractionally and shook her head. “Lover, if you had the barest fraction of poetry in you, it would have come out long ago. If you had any concept of drama or history, you would have said something full of poetry when you first stepped onto the Moon. And what did you say? Well, I don’t have to remind you.”
“Those were their words, not mine.”
“So. And who’s going to tell you what to say in your book?”
“Me, dammit!”
She shook her head wearily. “John, can’t you see that it’s too late? It’s five years too late. You can’t change roads this far on. You’re a national monument, baby! As soon as you touched that rock up there you turned to stone yourself. I know, because I almost did too. I came so damned close to being caught in it…” She stopped herself.
“Go on.”
She looked up quickly. “You want me to?”
“Yes.”
She paused. She looked at her hands. “While you were on the Moon I seduced a newsman.”
“Say that again.”
“I seduced a newsman. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“No, Charlotte, I didn’t know that.” He felt a dull ache start, a sinking at the truth of it, or at her ability to lie that way. “I don’t know when to believe you anymore.”
“Believe me, lover. It was right after you’d stepped down. He was here to interview me, to ask me safe dull questions for his safe dull magazine. Do you realize how safe and dull it is to be part of NASA? Only our government could make a Moon landing dull. And there he was, talking, I wasn’t listening, until I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but I’ve been celibate for the past month and you’re quite attractive and would you like to fuck?’”
“You would put it that way, Charlotte.”
“I did. I figured it was the only way he’d understand. So: Kevin was at school, and you were a quarter million miles away; so we did it. It was the safest infidelity I ever had.”
“Meaning there were others.”
“Meaning whatever you like.”
Feeling was returning to him; he had tried to hold it off, but now there was a dull ache deep in his spine.
“And right after we finished the NASA phone rang. The newsman looked like it was the voice of God. I said, ‘Oh, that's just my husband calling from work,’ and I laughed! I felt so fine! Isn’t that funny, that I didn’t have to worry about you walking in on us because you were on the Moon?”
He got up and left the room. “John,” she called. He kept walking. He walked into the kitchen to get a beer, the feeling still in his spine. When he reached the refrigerator there was a roaring in his ears. Cold air blew out across his arms; he stared into the cluttered recess of milk, butter, eggs, foil-wrapped leftovers. His mind was blank. Finally he remembered about the beer and reached for it. He was shocked to see his hand shake as it lifted the bottle. He put the bottle carefully back and shut the door, stood braced against it. His back throbbed. When it subsided he walked back to the bedroom. “Why?” he said.
Charlotte watched him. “Because, John, I was somewhat drunk and terribly depressed because there was my husband on the Moon, and where was he? I never believed you were actually there. I waited and watched for something to show me it was true. I wanted so badly to share in your triumph, and I felt nothing. I was in that panicky drunken state where everything you ever wanted or thought of when you looked in a mirror is sliding off, and I was feeling like a goddamned piece of PR machinery for the goddamned mission and I had to do something human for Christ’s sake can you understand that?”
“That wasn’t human. That was sick and vindictive.”
“It was human! You and NASA—you know I always hated the program. I watched you on the Moon, John. There was never a moment when you were closer to becoming real. I wanted to share that moment you worked so hard for, and I couldn’t. It meant nothing. Because you said their words, and you followed their agenda, and you did nothing, nothing, to show that you were human, that this was my husband. I watched you become NASA. And I felt like I was dying. I was drowning and here was this reporter saying, ‘You must be awfully proud, Mrs. Edwards —Mrs. Edwards!—and I thought, no, no, that’s not me! nobody cared about me, only about the Astronaut’s Wife, even you, you were being the Astronaut, not the man I married. I felt trapped and I absolutely had to do something to break from damned, damned NASA, something unexpected, something human. If adultery is sick and vindictive, all right. But it was human, and I was desperate; I saw you move like a robot on the Moon and I did not want to be married to that. So I fucked him. I did it, and by Jesus, I made him think of me as a person!” And she laughed in triumph and looked at him quickly. The look caught at him and something seemed to break free from her eyes and fly and something twisted inside him, watching it go.
“Charlotte . . .” His mouth was dry and his voice came from far away. “Stay with me.”
“No.”
“Yes.” He was pleading. “Yes.”
“Why should I, John?”
“Because I need you. Kevin needs you.”
For a second she was moved, he saw it; her eyes softened and she seemed to tremble with the thought of going to him, there was that soft ghost of yesterdays between them for just an instant, so close they had been once— She seemed ready to cry, but with an effort she turned to him and forced her tears back to whatever pit they had been rising from; she fixed him with dry glittering eyes that said no; I am not that close to you.
“John, I have needs too,” she said.
o
In memory that scene has attained great significance for him, being one of the few in his life with any discernible sense of purpose, decision or climax. For as he replays it he becomes ever more convinced that that moment without tears was the turning point, the moment at which she finally cast him loose to live or die alone.
o
Numb, he followed her out to the car, helped her with her bags. She got in, started the engine, and stared straight ahead for a minute before turning to him.
“Do you want to come with me?” she asked.
There was a long, blowing silence. “No. I don’t think so. I’d better be alone.”
And she drove off and the structure of the family is—that abruptly—torn from him. That it was inevitable, that he saw it coming for months, that his every nerve was raw with the waiting for it made no difference to the boneless wretched man who now stands, weaves, and watches a woman who was his wife vanish down the road.
o
He has a dream that first night after she has finally left. It is one of many in the blurry confused time before waking. He is lying on his back with an erection while a woman pulls herself onto him. When he fucks his wife this way, as he often does at her prompting, he puts his hands to her breasts or around her hips or kneads up and down her abdomen, but in this dream somehow he can’t move. His arms stay limp at his sid
es. He is in that half-waking state where the real weight of the body hinders the movements of the dream-self. The woman is moving, though, sliding on him, and he remembers that in space his wet dreams were usually of women masturbating. This dream-woman seems to be doing that now; he feels like a machine, a good solid rubber device mail-ordered for her pleasure—and it’s good to feel that, to give himself over to her pleasure, to abandon his responsibilities. He feels serene in the knowledge that if she fails to come it will be her fault, not his. He lies very, very still.
Waking further, the dream fades and he realizes that the sheet is tented over him and the slightest move will bring him off. He lies still. Only the fractional pull of the sheet as he breathes can be felt, with almost unbearable friction. Finally he whips over onto his stomach and pumps himself into the sheet, reliving agonies of adolescence, twice this week I sinned father, it was that that drove him from the Church. He lies for some time, feeling himself pulse, and grow damp and cold.
o
lunar mistress, riding clouded, cloaked, waxing through gibbous imperfections, tempting full, and waning: heartless bitch. what drives us, to spend our days half silent between stars? we want our hands on everything we see; we are like children, breaking what we tire of. mistress, tempt us with your height, make us mad, lunatic to clamber up through air and void where gravity dies, walk in a great airless graveyard, where craters bear the names of men.
Atop the stack of his poems he clips a covering letter, hoping his name will make up for their defects, and takes the manila envelope out to mail.
o
He had begun to see his life as a series of bubbles, precise little scenes that went toward a biography, the way submodules went together into an Apollo system. But so much of his life was nonfunctional, inconclusive. There was no order to it, no logical progression to climax and resolution. His life would make poor drama. In fact, it would make poor biography.
The image of his book haunted him, the image of himself as author. He had a greater feeling of fame now than he had ever had in the frantic years following his flight. He wondered at that until he found a line in Yeats that pierced him with its truth: Man is in love, and loves what vanishes.
o
Alone, becalmed, it was fine, for he had books to read and silence in which to think and money enough to last the summer, a quiet season of the soul that he knew would pass but which seemed timeless because it was all so new. But it passed. His reenlistment forms came; Kevin was preparing for college; he had to grow used to the idea of divorce. The house took on a dull dead feel, as if his eyes in passing over objects too many times had burnt the life from them. He felt adrift, becalmed, beyond continuing.
Until one evening he called his wife at the number she had left. When he heard her voice he sickened and softened inside and was near tears when he asked to come up and see her and she said yes.
Start from scratch.
Is it true that most women reach their sexual maturity in their late thirties?
Is it true that most men undergo a depression of the sexual faculties at that age?
How may this relate to marital difficulties among couples in their late thirties?
Is it true that there is a correspondence between the cycle of lunar phases and some women’s menstrual cycles?
Is it true that more women encounter their menstrual cycles during full moons than can be accounted for by chance?
Is it true that intercourse is impossible, or at least unpleasant, during menstruation?
Is it true that Edwards’ aversion to the gibbous moon is due at least in part to his wife’s periodic denials of sexual access?
Is it true that a man’s potency is affected by altering gravitational environments?
Is it true that the Moon landing was the most significant event in human history?
Is it true that macroscopically the course of human history follows the same cycles manifest in tides and biological functions microscopically?
Is it true that periodicity or repetition is a recurring theme in human endeavor, manifesting itself as it does in history, biology, chemistry, physics, electronics, music, religion, literature, and art?
Discuss periodicity as it functions on a multitude of levels in time. Include etymologies of the terms “minute,”
“hour,”
“day,”
“month,”
“year,”
“century.”
Discuss how the Sanskrit word sandhyas, meaning “region of change,” applies to the quarters of the day.
How many orders of magnitude are there between the smallest and largest levels of periodicity in time? Is this enough?
Is periodicity an inherent characteristic of time, or an imposed structure?
Is repetition a valid form for a construction that intends to elude time by using time?
Is it true that all good art is timeless?
Are dreams works of art?
Are events of history, of themselves, works of art?
Is it true that Edwards’ attempts at poetry are primitive attempts to see his actions in the context of history as a work of art?
Is art necessary?
Where do we go from here?
o
He carries a knot of anticipation in his stomach as he drives. It is a sinking, scrotum-tightening feeling compounded of fear and anxiety and simple adrenalin. His pulse is up and this makes his chest light and there is the heaviness in his gut and the tearing knotted anticipation centered squarely between.
An odd feeling now: he has lost his biographical sense, that way of looking on things happening as already past. He feels now, driving into an alien situation, of his own volition (there’s the difference between this journey and his history-making jaunt to the Moon), the course of his future is in doubt.
But why is he afraid? Simply as a preliminary to confrontation, yes, he sees it as that, the old order against the new; he is afraid of this great symbolical enemy Youth, their attitudes and mores exposed to him by Time magazine. He sees teen-aged girls drifting through the Teaneck summer. To find himself at that age he would have to go back to Waco, 1953—and all the driving and adrenalin makes that for an instant seem possible, exit 12 for the McCarthy hearings, 13 for the Korean War; it seems he can travel back those roads to his youth as easily as he now takes the Thruway. The thought is repellent; he was an ugly boy. So in his fear he sees envy of these new children, no, not children, but manifestations of a graceful adolescence he would have thought impossible. This generation seems astute, mature, beyond their years, beyond perhaps even his.
The commune is not at all what he expected. Instead of a rambling farmhouse, wide furrowed fields, cows, sheep grazing, it is a modest two-story home surrounded by neatly pruned shrubs. In a small garden he sees a man almost his own age shade his eyes to watch the car lurch up the dirt drive. This is the author, no doubt. The man sets down his hoe and approaches.
“Hello, I’m Eric Byrne. You must be Colonel Edwards. Charlotte told us to expect you.”
He is weak and drained from the trip; the sun hits him another blow as he climbs out of the air-conditioning. He shakes hands, feeling the man’s grip, feeling it as if it were on his wife.
“Come inside and I’ll introduce you around. We’re glad you decided to come up.”
He already dislikes Byrne, his bluff cordiality, the veneer of sexuality that seems to lie on his skin like a deep tan.
The only person inside, though, is Charlotte, cross-legged on the sofa, reading; she looks up when he enters—she has heard the car and arranged herself purposely into that neutral position, and stays seated, realizing that a hug would be too intimate, a handshake too cold. In his consideration of adolescence, in his high pitch of sexual awareness, all he can think of is how much he has missed her physically.
Charlotte rises. “I’ll show John around until dinner.”
They go out; they speak little as they walk. She tells him there are half a dozen teenagers,
sometimes more, living here, working and paying what they can. Eric bears most of the expense. There is a small barn behind the house, hens, a couple of pigs, some turkeys and ducks. Charlotte says hello to a couple, Robert and Barbara, as they emerge from the barn, smiling with slight embarrassment. Edwards looks at Charlotte, squeezes her hand. And soon enough they end up back in her bedroom.
o
He sees this scene in crystal, he steps outside himself and observes them both there in the waning light. Charlotte unbuttons her soft blue shirt and the sun is gold and shadow on her. The room is vivid in oranges and browns. Even Edwards’ large body, going quickly to fat from lack of training, training that was always more abuse than development, is handsome in the twilight. He lies naked on the bed, the sheets cool, the air gentle, Charlotte sliding silken over him. He sighs. She massages him gently as the sun sets and her breasts glow pale against her tan, twin globes rising over him. She moves onto him as in his dream: he is still as death, as in the dream: and suddenly suffocating, he thrusts against her—she slows him, pressing—he moves again, frantic now to break the spell of shadowed timeless dream that seems to hover close—she presses harder—and furious, he grabs her shoulders and wrenches her down with a small gasp under him, pumping desperate mad for assertion, starting a rhythm, a continuity, feeling that in these seconds, these thrusts, he can vindicate all their time passed and gone.
Perhaps she understands then, or perhaps her body betrays her, or perhaps she has secret reasons of her own, but she moves in sympathy; she gives Edwards his dominance. Gives it—
And Edwards deliquesces, his determination melts and flows from him, sugar water semen flowing back into him, he slows—
Charlotte sighs—
He comes up off her and rolls away and she knows from past experience he will not cry or show anger like some, he will just lie very, very still, hardly breathing, dying small deaths— “John, it doesn’t matter. It’s all right.”
“No. No, it isn’t.”
“Shh. Yes. It is. I don’t care.”