Dirk continued with his explanation that was not—for why should it be?—an apology. The day had been a long one, and not a very cheering one, for another of Dirk’s expert witnesses was reneging on his promise to delivery testimony for the plaintiff, and Dirk had been on the phone, cajoling, pleading, cursing, his throat raw in indignation; yet now he managed to speak matter-of-factly, calmly. Betraying no guilt for he felt no guilt. (Did he? No one would think so, seeing the man. For this midnight conversation with his wife he’d even shaved and smoothed lotion on his smarting jaws. He’d removed his camel’s hair sport coat. He’d removed his silk necktie. He’d removed his monogrammed gold cuff links and rolled up the sleeves of his starched white cotton shirt, in a gesture of husbandly frankness.) He was explaining that he’d never “deceived” Ariah in any way, no matter what Clarice had said. Ariah had given him reason to assume that she wasn’t interested in the Love Canal case, and he didn’t blame her. (“It’s a nightmare. You’re better not knowing.”) He had reason to assume from remarks Ariah had made over the years, that the details of his law practice weren’t of much concern to her; and in this case, which was demanding so much more effort than any other he’d undertaken, he’d particularly wanted to spare her.
“Did you!”
Ariah spoke in a breathy murmur that might have been intended as flirtatious.
How strangely Ariah was behaving. As if it were she, and not Dirk, who’d been “exposed” by Clarice. As if, having been informed of her husband’s deception, and having said nothing to him about it for months, Ariah was an accomplice to his crime.
Dirk said uneasily, “Ariah, darling? You aren’t upset, are you?”
“ ‘Upset.’ ”
The snail-mouth scarcely moved. Ariah murmured so without emphasis, her remark had no meaning.
“Darling.”
Dirk touched her arm, but Ariah shrank gracefully away. As a cat shrinks from the touch of one she doesn’t quite want to touch her just at this time, yet wishes not to offend for in the future this individual might be of use.
Barefoot Ariah moved swiftly. She brushed past Dirk without a word of explanation, and left the room and descended the stairs.
They’d been in their bedroom where a single bedside lamp was burning. Dirk had been speaking quietly. Ariah had slipped a pumpkin-colored satin robe over her nightgown as soon as Dirk entered the darkened room, apologized for waking her and switched on the light. Another time he apologized though Ariah indicated no, don’t be silly, she hadn’t been asleep. She’d been waiting for him. Playing Chopin mazurkas on her fingertips, as often she did in this bed. No need for any apology!
Downstairs, Ariah directly went to the liquor cabinet in the dining room. With the brisk aplomb of one wringing the neck of a chicken, who has wrung the neck of a chicken numerous times, she unscrewed the top of Dirk’s Black & White scotch whisky and poured herself a drink in a wine glass hurriedly snatched from a shelf.
“Ariah! Darling.”
Dirk was stricken, witnessing such a sight. That Ariah had grabbed a wine glass made the gesture somehow more poignant.
Ariah drank, shutting her eyes. Almost, Dirk could see a flame piercing her slender throat, lifting upward into her nostrils. Ariah drew a sharp shaky breath, but remained stoic and contained.
“Ariah, please don’t be upset. There’s no reason, truly!”
Still Ariah had avoided looking at him. Her eyes were shrunken and slanted in her face as if secret weeping had worn them out. And her freckles were gone, like Ariah’s youth. Shakily she lifted the wine glass and took another quick sip of scotch. Her eyelids shuddered shut.
Dirk said, “Ariah, I don’t know what my sister has told you. I can’t imagine what she has been saying. She has no grounds for the terrible accusations she’s made.” Dirk paused, uncertain what accusations Clarice might have made. He didn’t want to make a needless blunder here. “The relatives are angry with me on both sides of the family. Not just the Burnabys, but my mother’s people, too. Everywhere in l’Isle Grand. They’re saying that I’m a ‘traitor to my class’—like FDR. They never approved of him! Ariah, there’s nothing to Clarice’s charges about Mrs. Olshaker. Whatever she has been saying about Mrs. Olshaker. My relationship with Nina Olshaker is purely professional, I swear.”
How weak that sounded: I swear.
The claim of every liar.
“And Nina Olshaker isn’t a Tuscarora Indian. And even if she were…” Dirk’s voice trailed off, defensive and wavering. What exactly was he telling Ariah?
Ariah seemed hardly to be listening to these protestations. She might have had her question prepared for some time. Quietly she asked, “A house in Mt. Lucas? Why?”
Dirk said quickly, “For reasons of health. The children’s mainly. The nine-year-old Billy Olshaker has asthma and an extreme allergic reaction to the school site, which is on this Love Canal waste dump we’ve exposed. And the younger child, a little girl, has a low white-blood-cell count, and respiratory problems. I’ve hired expert witnesses to report on certain of the chemicals, benzene and dioxin for instance, that are among as many as two hundred chemicals in Love Canal, dumped since 1936, and these specifically cause leukemia in young—”
Ariah shook her head lightly as if dispelling an unpleasant dream-fragment. “Yes, but where is the husband? Is Mr. Olshaker in Mt. Lucas with his family?”
“Sometimes, weekends.”
Dirk wasn’t certain if this was true. But it sounded plausible.
He said, “Sam Olshaker works at Parish Plastics, it’s a ten-minute commute from their home in Colvin Heights. If he stayed in Mt. Lucas, it would be a much longer drive.”
“Why didn’t you arrange for a more convenient house, then?”
How shrewd a litigator Ariah might have been. Cross-examining a witness who doesn’t quite comprehend how he is incriminating himself. And her voice so maddeningly small, constrained.
Dirk said, confused, “A—more convenient house? Conveniently located? Well, we wanted—I mean, I wanted—a place in the country, to remove Nina and the children from the air of east Niagara Falls.” Dirk spoke rapidly now, and convincingly. “East Niagara Falls is very different from Luna Park, Ariah. You can’t imagine. I don’t think you’ve driven out in that direction for years. We live so near the river here, the Gorge, and Canada, the air is nearly always fresh. But a few miles to the east—”
“Are the Olshakers formally separated?”
“They are not separated. No.”
“Yet they don’t live together.”
“Some of the time—much of the time—they do. They do live together. Except—for reasons of health—”
“Yes, you’ve said. Are you in love with Nina Olshaker?”
“Ariah.” Dirk was shocked at the question, and the calmness with which it was uttered. “How can you think such a thing, of me. Your husband! You know me.”
Ariah’s veiled eyes lifted fleetingly to his. She seemed bemused, not angry. “Oh yes, do I?”
Dirk said, hurt, “Ariah, certainly you know me. No one knows my heart as you do.” Moving his big shoulders uneasily, as if his shirt was too tight. Tugging at his already opened, unbuttoned collar that irritated his neck. “I’ve always believed, darling, that you know me better than I know myself. That I’m naked before you, exposed.”
Ariah laughed thinly. “That cliché! ‘Know me better than I know myself.’ Marriage is a sustained folie à deux. Like crossing a tightrope without a safety net beneath, and not looking down. So the more we know of each other, the less it signifies. You’re a lawyer, Mr. Burnaby, one of the best. So you know.”
Dirk was dismayed by Ariah’s cold little speech. He’d begun to think she might be sympathetic with him. But now she was accusing him. And of what, exactly, was she accusing him?
“Ariah, I don’t understand. What do I know?”
“Is it the individual words you don’t understand, or their overall meaning.”
“Their meani
ng.”
“You do know what a folie à deux is?”
“Ariah, our marriage is not a folie à deux! That’s ridiculous. It’s crude and cruel. We’ve known each other almost twelve years.”
Ariah said stubbornly, “All marriage—all love—must be a folie à deux. Otherwise, there would exist neither marriage nor love.”
Dirk’s cheeks smarted. He wanted to take hold of his wife’s narrow shoulders and give her a good, hard shake. Never once in their marriage had he touched her in anger, or even impatience; rarely had he lifted his voice to her, though provoked beyond endurance at times. At such times. There was a fatal smugness in Ariah’s self-damning pronouncements. There was a fatal smugness in self-damnation. “Never mind if I’m deluded, for the moment! Say I am. Fine. I happen to think that I love you, and I am not in love with—” Dirk hesitated, suddenly reluctant to use Nina Olshaker’s name in this way, to shore up a case with his exasperating wife. “—this other woman. Whatever Clarice has told you. She and Sylvia have always been resentful of us, you must know. They’d like very much to undermine our marriage.”
Ariah considered this. Of course, Ariah knew this was so.
Dirk touched Ariah’s wrist. It was a gentle, tentative gesture, neither repudiated by Ariah nor accepted. He said, “I love you and my family, darling. My truest life is my family.”
“Is it!”
“Of course it is.” Dirk wondered if he might take the bottle of Black & White scotch whisky from Ariah’s hand. There was something in the way she gripped it that worried him. And he would not have minded a small drink of his own. He’d had one or two at Mario’s before driving home but that seemed a very long time ago now.
Dirk said humbly, “I realize I’ve been distracted by work. And it won’t—can’t—quiet down for a while. If we lose at the preliminary hearing, I’m certainly going to appeal. But if we win, let’s say by early summer, of course the other side will appeal, and—”
“How lawyers make work for one another! You’re all priests, worshipping the same god. No wonder you adore one another.”
“At the moment, in Niagara Falls, no one much adores me.”
Dirk spoke lightly, not bitterly. Did he give a damn that he was becoming a pariah among his colleagues, God damn he did not. But he wanted the love and support of his wife, at least. He deserved that, at least. He said, as if he’d been derailed from a crucial argument, “When we finally do win the case, Ariah, which I believe we will, by next fall at least—”
“Fall of which year? This year?”
Ariah’s question stunned him. It was meant as thinly veiled sarcasm, he knew; yet, which year? It was possible that Love Canal would not be resolved for a long, long time.
“Ariah, the case is complicated. It’s very complicated. I’ve been consulting expert witnesses, I’ve hired doctors, scientists to help me with the preparation. We’re trying to assemble data to rebuff the Board of Health’s claim that there is ‘no problem’ at Love Canal; or, if there was a problem, they’ve solved it. But I’ve been running into resistance because there are local doctors, even in Buffalo and Amherst, who are afraid of testifying against their colleagues in the AMA. And an organic chemist at the University of Buffalo, I thought I’d hired, decided suddenly he couldn’t risk testifying for the Love Canal residents, his laboratory is dependent upon grants from the State of New York. And I can’t get the State of New York Health Department involved in this, the bastards won’t cooperate.” As Dirk spoke with increasing emotion Ariah stood silently, curling her bare white toes into the carpet.
Dirk continued, urgently: “It’s a question of faith, Ariah. You must know, darling, that I love you and the children more than anything else in the world, and—”
Ariah opened her eyes, and for the first time regarded Dirk, unblinking. “And yet you’re endangering us. You’re endangering our marriage. Our family.”
“Ariah, I am not.”
“You’re going outside the family for—I’m not sure what it is: something you want, and need. We aren’t enough for you.”
Ariah drifted away, gripping the bottle of Black & White firmly. She was sylph-like, floating. Dirk had no choice but to follow. Wanting to seize her arm, to make her stop, listen to him. Ariah made her unerring way barefoot along a darkened corridor toward the front of the house. The house at 22 Luna Place was large, and this corridor was lengthy. Through the leaded mullion windows of the vestibule there was a glaring pale moon, and there was a surprisingly rough, muscular wind in the trees. The perpetual wind off the Gorge! Dirk was thinking how it wore out all resistance. You might become as stone, smooth-worn, impersonal and beyond hurt.
Outside, the beautiful old elms of Luna Park were being buffeted by this wind. Centuries of elms and centuries of wind and yet in this new decade the elms were beginning to falter, just perceptibly. Their stately limbs beginning to dry out, fracture.
Ariah said, now with an air of pleading, “Dirk. I want you to drop this ‘Love Canal.’ Just now, tonight, I—I think you should.”
Dirk protested, “Ariah, no! What are you asking? Darling, I can’t.”
“ ‘Can’t.’ ”
“I can’t, and I won’t. These poor people require my help. They deserve justice. Everyone lies to them, and I’m not going to lie to them. I’m not going to abandon them.”
“ ‘Can’t.’ ‘Won’t.’ I see.”
“No lawyer with any integrity drops a case like this. Not when the circumstances are so grim, and the plaintiffs so helpless.”
“And who is paying legal costs? Not these ‘helpless’ plaintiffs, I suppose.”
“Well, no.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Olshaker?”
Dirk said impatiently, “Sam Olshaker works shifts at Parish Plastics. He supports a wife and two children. He makes less in a year than I make in—” Dirk paused, uncertain. (He hadn’t meant to boast, exactly. But was this a boast? Lately, Dirk Burnaby hadn’t been bringing in any income at all. The cash flow in his office account was in one direction only.) “They have no money saved. They have to pay medical costs that go beyond Parish’s benefits. And those benefits don’t go far. They bought a house on a thirty-year mortgage and like their neighbors in Colvin Heights they’re trapped there, unless Swann Chemicals, or the county, or the state, can be forced to pay reparations. Unless somebody buys out their mortgage for them. And in the meantime, their health is being affected. Try to have pity on these people, Ariah. If you met them, and their children—”
Ariah said hurriedly, “But I haven’t. And I won’t. I have nothing to do with them, and they have nothing to do with me. There are starving people in China, in India, in Africa! I have to care for my own children, I have to protect my own children. They come first, and—nothing comes second!”
“Ariah, what a despicable thing to say. That isn’t worthy of you.”
“It isn’t worthy of your wife, maybe. But it’s worthy of me.”
But Ariah spoke hesitantly, as if she repented her harsh words. She lifted her wine glass another time and drank greedily. Dirk knew he shouldn’t challenge her. It was a mistake to excite her further, at this time. Now she was becoming emotional, he must be cautious. Since her father’s death she’d become less predictable, less stable; though seeming hardly to have mourned the man, and airily dismissing Dirk’s commiseration, yet Ariah had been deeply affected, Dirk knew. And her mother’s widowhood and loneliness must have weighed upon her, too. Dirk knew he should retreat, cautiously. Or stand wordless beside her. As consolation. Whatever a husband was, is. Whatever that mute mysterious bond between them.
Somewhere close by, overhead, a floorboard creaked. Or seemed to creak. Sharply Ariah called out, “Chandler! Go back to bed immediately.”
But there was silence at the top of the stairs. Even the solemn sonorous ticking of a grandfather clock in the hall seemed to pause for a dramatic moment before continuing.
Dirk touched Ariah’s stiff trembling back, and tried to take her i
n his arms. In a startled reflex she jammed an elbow against him. She broke free of him, breathing quickly. Dirk said, pained, “Ariah, I can’t give up Love Canal. Don’t ask me. I’ve promised so many people. They’re depending upon me. This isn’t ordinary litigation, making rich people richer, this is life. Their lives. If I quit now—”
“The pride of Dirk Burnaby would be hurt? I see.”
“—I’d be letting them down. Betraying them. And our adversaries deserve to be exposed. Punished. The only way that hurts them, by paying out money. I’d love to bankrupt Swann and his associates! Those bastards. And the city, and the county, the Board of Education and the Board of Health, these agencies have been in collusion for years. The D.A., the judges. I’m the only attorney it seems who will take on this case, to the bitter end. I couldn’t live with myself if—”
“Then who will you live with? Her?”
Ariah turned a white, pinched face to Dirk. A face that disconcerted Dirk, it was so contorted by fury.
“Ariah, I’ve told you. I am not in love with Nina Olshaker.”
“But she’s in love with you.”
“No! Certainly she isn’t in love with me.”
Dirk spoke so vehemently, with such disgust, you could see he had to be telling the truth.
Ariah turned away. She, who had not drunk even wine for years, so far as Dirk knew, now poured more scotch into her wine glass, and drank in a desperate, swaggering gesture. The powerful alcohol was having an effect upon her judgment, her motor coordination, Dirk could see. Yet he hesitated to take the bottle from her. How like a willful child she was, capricious as Royall. But the air of self-hurt, and of revelling in self-hurt, was Ariah’s own. That lethal swerve to the woman’s otherwise lucid intelligence. Dirk recalled how, years ago, at l’Isle Grand Country Club, Ariah had drifted away from their dinner with friends and found a piano in a vacant ballroom and when she was discovered, and her playing applauded, she’d fled the scene like a kicked dog. Dirk’s friends had genuinely admired Ariah’s piano playing, yet Ariah had seemed to hear, or had wished to hear, mockery in their applause. And no amount of explanation or apology could make things right.
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