Anger (11 page)

“Dug them up and started again.”

Anna went off, still amused, to go on setting in a square of
iris reticulata
. But Ned's story stuck in her mind as she turned one wrinkled flat bulb in her hand and could not decide which was right side up. “A little intelligence is necessary,” she reminded herself, glancing over at the totally absorbed Ned. What if?

“You're having trouble, old girl.”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, that rather ominous silence, I expect. Look for a tiny thread—that would be a root—that will tell you which side up.”

“But sometimes there is no tiny thread to be seen,” she protested.

“In that case, say a short prayer.”

Anna was kneeling, and before she had finished, her knees as well as her hands and face, were black. “I might as well be making mud pies,” she said, “and I can hardly move I'm so stiff.

Ned stood up then, his hands on his hips to stretch his back, took one look at her and burst out laughing.

“I know,” she said, laughing too, “it's not fair. You dig and dig and look perfectly clean after hours of it!”

“I wish your ardent public could see you now!”

“They would get a shock, wouldn't they? Oh Ned, I'm out of breath.”

He looked at his watch, “Well, in a half-hour we'll take a break. Did you put the beer in the fridge?”

“Natch.”

“We've got to get fifty in today, come hell or high water.”

“Well, what next?”

Next was a bag of peony tulips to be set in behind the iris and Ned suggested a few here and there in between them. Anna whistled an aria from Carmen while she worked. Why couldn't it always be like this? Companionable. Silent. Happy.

Now they were working side by side, but the trouble was that their real lives were so far apart there seemed to be no communication possible any longer. This was not their real life, after all, it was Marie Antoinette's imitation farm where she and her ladies could disport themselves and pretend to be peasants, could get their hands dirty and play at planting potatoes.

“Why isn't this real?” she asked aloud.

“It is.”

“Is it?” Anna stood up and stretched, “Ned, I'm exhausted. I've got to stop.”

“Just let me finish—just ten more and this lot will be in the ground.”

“I'm going in.”

Anna had learned not to go beyond a certain point in fatigue. She would need exceptional physical as well as psychic energy in the week ahead, to get ready for the
B-Minor Mass
in Pittsburgh. And as she showered and washed the earth from her hands and face and arms and legs she already felt the change in her, the change toward a performance that would demand all she had to give. Already she could feel her nerves tensing up, a little like an athlete getting ready for a race, that summoning of all her powers to a single end. She was shivering as she dried herself off, for exactly as though a cloud had moved across the sun, the poison of that review was moving across her, a dark shadow she had to contain, and push aside a thousand times, surmount.

When Ned came in, cheerful and relaxed, she had sandwiches ready and glasses on a tray. But she felt unrelated, out of touch.

“I'm hungry,” he announced, “I think I'll just wash my hands and shower later.” And in a few minutes he was sitting beside her, where she had stretched out on the chaise lounge.

“The leaves are falling—look Ned, they are like thin gold pieces falling.”

“Mmmm,” he said, munching his sandwich. “It's been too dry, an early fall, it looks like.” For a moment they ate in silence.

“That's a hell of a good sandwich, Anna.”

“I'm glad you approve.”

“But you've hardly touched yours.”

“Not hungry,” she said, taking a sip of beer.

“You worked too hard,” he sounded quite solicitous.

“I can't keep up with you, my friend, but I enjoyed myself. I felt like a good animal.”

“Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Oh I don't know, physically alive, comfortable in my body … you know, Ned. Surely you know.”

“Well, yes. I feel good, if that's what you mean,” and he added, “Do we have to analyze it?”

“No. Do you want some apple pie? Coffee?”

“I'll get it. You stay here and rest.”

On the surface he could be so gentle and polite, and that's what he wanted, a smooth untroubled, untroubling surface. He wanted to enjoy life without trying to probe. “Why analyze it?” Anna asked herself. Because for me living is finding out what is really happening to me, and that's the last thing Ned wants. He could never admit the shadow. It was too frightening, perhaps. He too in his way was like an athlete, one for whom everything could be measured in terms of achievement. So even love-making was a matter simply of orgasm, a purely physical release. As often happened when Anna had made a physical effort, the release for her, came with a rush of feelings and thoughts. He rested by not being. She rested by being.

Anna had gone for a little walk around the garden, picked a small bunch of dahlias and chrysanthemums, crimson and orange, a dissonance that pleased her, when Ned came out to the porch with a tray.

“Hey,” Ned said, “I call that a riot of color.”

“I like it,” Anna said, prickling as she always did when Ned punctured her balloons with irony.

“I would add a touch of white … there's that achillea somewhere.”

“No,” Anna said, “The whole point is that clash of primary color—not that it matters,” she added.

“But it does seem to matter,” Ned said, suddenly irritated himself. Anna couldn't take the slightest criticism, he was thinking, even about a bunch of flowers. And he was damned if he was to be a sycophant like most of her friends. “Come on, let's eat our pie while it's hot.”

“I suppose people could go to war about a matter of taste,” Anna said, trying to get away from her own irritation, and accepting her plate and a fork.

“No doubt about it. If I had known you would put crimson and orange together, I would never have married you,” he teased.

“That's almost too true,” Anna said, thinking of the hundred ways in which she irritated Ned these days, so no subject, not even a bunch of flowers was safe any longer. Leaving her pie half-eaten, she went in to find a vase …” or they will die, poor things, while we are discussing them.”

She had trouble finding the right one—Ned had such definite ideas about things in this house. But finally she decided on a small Venetian glass flecked with gold.

“There,” she said, setting it down beside Ned, “How is that?”

Then she saw that Ned had not been able to resist changing her bunch, had picked a spray of white anemone while she was making up her mind. Now he placed it deftly in the center of the Venetian glass, with her flowers.

“Perfect,” he announced. “I bought that vase in Venice, I've always liked it.”

And Anna, eager to make peace, said, “Let's take it home with us.” For she knew it was quite absurd to let a little thing like this bunch of flowers create tension between them.

“If you wish,” Ned said, and it was clear that he himself did
not
wish. “Finish your pie, Anna.”

“Do you think the apartment is the trouble?” she asked for she realized that she had herself hesitated as she used the word “home.”

“Whatever are you getting at now?” Ned asked. “Can't we even disagree about a bunch of flowers without its becoming an issue between us?”

But Anna couldn't stop now. “The apartment doesn't feel like home. It has become the place where we don't meet, the place where we wrangle and sleep. That's what I meant. You have to admit that you did hesitate when I suggested we take your precious Venetian glass there, didn't you?”

“Oh, come, Anna, you are making a mountain out of a molehill!” He would never admit it to Anna but with her x-ray mind for sensing things, she had sensed that he did not want to take the vase to the apartment. He sometimes felt that he could not stand being pin-pointed like this another day. It was like living with some sort of witch. “Can't we have a little peace, even here?”

“Only on the surface,” Anna said.

“Well, for God's sake, let's settle for the surface then.”

“Very well, you beast, you prehistoric animal, lumbering off for cover at the slightest whisper from a human being!”

“We are not going to have a scene, Anna, and spoil this day.” And once more she was being put down like an importunate child. How well she knew Ned's look, his mouth in a thin closed line, his whole face closed against her.

“You never give me credit for anything,” she said. “I didn't turn a hair when Paul insulted me and tried to get a rise out of me the other night. I behaved very well.”

“Yes, you did. For once. And now I suppose you have to make up for it by attacking me.”

Whatever happened it always had to be her fault. And perhaps, after all, it was her fault. That was what made Anna feel like a cripple or a mad person most of the time. It was she, true enough, who “made the scenes.”

“You talk about love,” Ned said, taking a cigar out of the box on the table and lighting it carefully, “but all I see is hatred and violence.”

“And all you give me is coldness and withdrawal when I try to reach you, try to make you understand. If only you would listen, once, Ned, really listen, not rush to close the door on me whenever I try to talk honestly with you!”

“Am I allowed to smoke out here on the porch?” he asked with cold courtesy.

“Yes, if you blow the smoke out of my way. Oh Ned, what is the matter with us?” It was an attempt to break the spiral of anger which over and over again in the past year wound itself tighter and tighter but it was too late. “Do you think I enjoy being angry? Do you think it's a pleasure?”

“I sometimes think you are an addict—as some people take to the bottle, you take to anger.”

“But why should I?”

“From what you tell me you have always been an angry person. You had tantrums as a child. How many times you come back from a concert furious at someone or something! I suppose it breaks all that tension you talk about, but it never occurs to you apparently, that other people bear the brunt of it. You may feel better as a result but I feel real resentment at being your whipping boy.”

“Yes,” Anna said, “I know you do.” Then she added half to herself, “It's like a maze. You can't break your way out of a maze … you have to discover the pattern, find your way through … only I don't know how to do that. Does anyone ever criticize you, Ned? Are you so powerful at the bank that you are above criticism? Has it never occurred to you that you are not always right? And that other people are not always wrong?”

“There's no point in this,” Ned said icily. “We aren't getting anywhere.”

“I wish I knew how you regard me, what you really think I am.”

“Do you really want to know?” He was looking straight at her, but with a look so cold, of such distaste that Anna hesitated, but after all she had to say “yes.”

Ned took a puff of his cigar. “I think you are two people, Jekyll and Hyde. One is a great personality, a lovable, beautiful woman, with a touch of genius.”

“And the other?”

“The other is a screaming peacock—you call me arrogant!—a wilful witch who cannot be criticized without an outburst, totally self-indulgent. You asked for it,” he added. He might as well have slapped her hard on the face. And for a long moment Anna was silent, while her heart thumped like an animal inside her.

“I'm whole,” she said then, “I cannot compartmentalize myself. I'm not two people, one good and beautiful, the other bad and ugly. I'm one whole person, Ned.” Where was the clue to this dreadful maze? How would they ever find the way out? “You have to take the whole person.”

“I can't do that. I do not find what you call the whole person acceptable.”

“You ask me to censor myself all the time—I am becoming the prisoner of your ethos, and it is making me ill. I have an awfully scary performance ahead. How can I sing when I have to censor myself all the time?” The words tumbled out.

“Well, concentrate on your performance then and leave me out of it, leave the prehistoric animal out of it!”

“Oh Ned, I can't. I can't compartmentalize as you can. You can apparently go off to the office perfectly calm and do your work after one of these awful fights. I feel it in my throat, in my voice itself, like a dreadful crack. Can't you see?” She was crying now and got up, rushed out to the kitchen to find a Kleenex and try to pull herself together. When she came back she asked through her tears, hating the tears, the weakness of it. “Have you never cried, Ned?”

“No.”

“Not when your father died?”

“No. I hated my mother's endless tears too much. I hate your tears.”

“You have made that abundantly clear.”

“Where's Fonzi?” Ned asked, suddenly aware that though Fonzi had been with them in the garden, he had not been seen for an hour. He ran out into the garden calling, “Come dog! Fonzi, come!”

There was total silence. Then after what seemed an eternity they heard a short bark from somewhere in the bushes behind the house.

“It's all right,” Ned called back. Fonzi, it appeared, had found a chipmunk hole and had been digging furiously and made himself absolutely filthy. Even his ears were covered with dirt and his nose was black. Ned carried him into the house. Anna followed.

“We'll just put him in the tub,” she said, “right now,” and she turned the water on while Ned held him.

“It's lucky I didn't shower … I'm filthy, too.”

Fonzi couldn't lead them out of the maze, Anna was thinking, as she lathered him with a cake of soap, but he could give them a respite.