Anger (19 page)

She called Teresa. “I think things are going to be better. We had an awful fight, the worst ever last night.”

Teresa laughed.

“I know it sounds crazy, Mama, but Ned had to let his anger out. It was poisoning him.”

“I never cease to marvel at your idea of what is good—a terrible fight apparently is.”

“It ended with laughter, Mama—that was what was good.” But Anna didn't tell her mother that they had barked like dogs. It seemed now as secret as describing a sexual act might have been.

“Well, bravo! At any rate you sound happy for a change.”

“I'm dying to get to work on the Dallas concert. It is going to be a difficult program—Mahler, Fauré and Brahms. I've got to stretch my range a bit, but I think I can do it. Hard work for the next two weeks.”

“Well, that's your element. Good luck. And have a happy weekend—I presume you are off to the country?”

“And what are you going to do?

“Putter around the house, do some cooking. Susan and Elizabeth are coming for dinner on Sunday. I may go for a walk. It's a beautiful day.”

“Ciao, darling.”

What would happen, Anna asked herself, if I became an easygoing, never angry, socially impeccable person with never a violent word or mood to shatter the amenities? Would Ned like that? I can't believe he would! But then would she like it if Ned screamed at her and burst into tears? She had to admit the answer was yes. Anger expressed had some life in it, whereas coldness and withdrawal shut life out. Ned was so afraid of violence, so outraged by anger because they threatened to crack him open. Anna felt very much alive when she was angry. It was a costly business though because afterward came remorse and, in relation to Ned, a sense of inferiority. That she could not deny. The world in general would be on his side, but was the world always right?

It was clear to her in the brilliant sunlight of that morning that neither of them was going to change. What then? And why do people in love want to change each other? What is the war really all about? If we could only go deeper, only get to
that
, to talking about
that!

But she had seen something in Ned she had never seen until last night and that was the pain, the vulnerability when he said that showing feeling was too dangerous. She had for a second seen so much pain in his eyes that she had had to lower hers.

It was time to walk Fonzi if she was not to be late for her lesson, but she simply had to find a passage in Rilke's letters that she had marked some time ago … where was the book? She searched in the bookcases, with no luck, and finally went off with Fonzi, trying to remember exactly what it was—and then it was there. It sprang up before her as she had read it on the left side of a page, near the bottom, “Perhaps everything terrible in us is at its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” Or was it, “deepest level”? Walking Fonzi in the jubilant autumn sunlight, past the flowing beds of chrysanthemums, and a jay screaming in a dogwood tree, Anna thought about this phrase that haunted her.

“What is the terrible thing in me that needs help?” she wondered. “What is the terrible thing in Ned that keeps him separated out into compartments? Shall we ever know? Can love do it?”

“Fonzi,” she asked aloud, “he said I was the most selfish person he had ever known? Can that be true?” Fonzi responded by barking and pulling her on.

“Soon you can run free, my little dog! But try to take it easy now.” And the obedient Fonzi trotted along, his nose to the ground, telling her with an occasional growl or bark that a squirrel or a Great Dane perhaps had passed by. Fonzi's soul appeared to be in his nose and his tongue. And where, she wondered, is ours? Perhaps where feeling and thinking come together. Well, Anna thought, I am certainly feeling alive this morning! Happiness like this was so rare and so poignant that she felt tears pricking her eyes.

For once they were going to the country in a mood of happy expectancy, so it did not even seem too hard that Mrs. Fraser was at her house next door and wanted them for Sunday lunch.

“We'll have Saturday anyway, plant bulbs, maybe have a walk on the beach with Fonzi—now at last it's October and we can let him off the leash.” Fonzi, sitting between them in the car, wagged his tail. Ned, driving through the Friday traffic, was silent. But Anna felt his silence as companionable. She was at peace.

She was willing to follow Ned's mood, not to try to talk seriously, just to be. They ended that good day in bed making love and laughing. What made them laugh was Fonzi's anxiety to get into the act and refusal to stay at the bottom of the bed. “Oh, you foolish little dog …” Anna reached out and stroked his ears.

“It's hard to be a dog,” Ned said. “He wants so much to be included. Here Fonzi, you can lie on my chest!” But Fonzi, entranced, had to lick Ned's throat and mouth a little too thoroughly for comfort and finally had to be forced back to his usual place where he was delighted to find Anna's bare foot to lick. “Ah,” Ned sighed, and reached over to take Anna's hand and lie there, then, beside her in the dark, hand in hand, until they fell asleep.

When Anna woke and looked out through the crimson leaves of a maple to a blue, blue sky she jumped out of bed. “Let's walk first!” Anna said at the window, breathing in the sharp morning air and shivering.

“We have to plant 100 bulbs,” Ned answered, yawning.

“No,” Anna turned and blew him a kiss. “Let's not work, I feel like a walk. It's low tide. I can smell the salt and seaweed from here.”

“Very well. If you will make blueberry pancakes first. It was rather an athletic night and I'm starving,” he said, smiling his secret smile.

“Athletic! What a typical word!” And Anna disappeared into the bathroom.

It took Ned quite a while to pull himself together. Clearly he felt so unknotted, so relaxed that he didn't really want to get up and lay there quite a while. When he went down finally the pancakes were ready.

“Hurry up, you lazy man! The first batch is waiting for you!”

“Yum!”

The breakfast room was filled with sunlight, sun dappling the blue and white china and the bunch of fading chrysanthemums from the last time.

“Ned, go and pick some fresh flowers … it's too beautiful here for those poor things!”

“Pancakes first. Then flowers,” he said, taking the vase off the table and throwing the flowers into the wastebasket.

“I love this house,” Anna said when they had settled down and were drinking a second cup of coffee and waiting for the second batch. “It's so warm … even on a cold October morning. How marvelous to have the whole day here, alone!”

“Fonzi hasn't had his pancake,” Ned said. “I'll get it.” When he came back he looked across at Anna who caught his look and felt observed.

“What's on your mind?”

“Oh, I was just wondering why it made you so happy when I said all those awful things?”

“You said I was marvelous!”

“Because in the midst of such a storm you made me laugh, made us laugh!”

“Yes,” Anna said, smiling, “it was rather wonderful.” Then she looked back at him, a long hard look. “I was happy because at last you let the storm
out
… can't you understand? I don't suppose I'll forget some of those ugly things, but at least they're not buried inside you.”

“Unburying is not necessarily exorcizing.”

“No, but you do feel better, don't you?”

“Do I?”

“Oh, Ned!”

“Well,” he gave a little cough, “I have to admit that I do.”

“Hurrah! Then let's go for a walk …”

“Come on, Fonzi!”

“I have to dress, but I won't be a minute.”

So Ned went out into the wet grass with Fonzi to pick a few late asters and chrysanthemums, and Anna ran upstairs. But, pulling on a turtleneck sweater, she realized that he was right about exorcizing. The glorious fight had left its detritus. And this she would have to deal with in any way she could. “My friends are not sycophants,” she whispered. “Damn it!”

But out on the beach, walking fast, while Fonzi chased gulls and picked up long pieces of seaweed and tossed them around, the sheer space and light, and the long waves coming in gently and shirring into foam, Anna felt that nothing mattered very much, except the hour, the exhilaration, the sharp October air.

“It's the dark blue sea again … October,” she murmured.

“A little bit of all right, eh?” Ned enjoyed using such expressions just to tease her.

“Nothing seems to matter on a day like this.”

“Even the war between the Frasers?”

Anna stopped for a moment and leaned down to pick up a broken sand dollar. “Too bad it's broken …” Then she stood for a moment looking out to sea, to the dark line at the horizon. “I know it will sound crazy because outdoors like this the beauty is so immense and tranquil nothing seems to matter, but I think that way down deep, personal relations may have in them the roots of war and peace. I don't know how to say this … but, Ned, there's so much anger and frustration everywhere. I think every time two people achieve communion, it helps.”

“Do you really?” Ned was interested and sceptical. “Why?”

“Because we are all members of each other.”

“Tell that to a black in the ghetto!”

“He would say it doesn't look as if we believed that, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Ned, the deeper we go the more we are joined to everyone else …” but then she looked up and caught his expression of amused contempt. Contempt?

What he said was, “I can't follow your metaphysical flights, Anna.” He gave her a piercing look. “Do you think we have achieved communion as you call it? Is that what screaming at each other does?”

“Oh no, we haven't achieved anything yet,” Anna said passionately. “But can't you see, we can talk now and we haven't been able to talk for over a year!”

“Come on, Anna, let's run!” And Ned ran away with Fonzi, ears flapping in the wind, after him. Anna walked down to the edge of the waves alone.

After a mile or so, Ned turned back. “Come on, Fonzi, we'd better go back. We don't want her to be cross, not on a day like this.” He had enjoyed running, enjoyed the strength of his physical being, enjoyed getting a little out of breath. He could see that Anna was sitting now, looking out, her head in her hands. But he was not about to yield to a meditative mood, and when he and Fonzi got back to her, he said, “Come on, lazybones, we've got work to do,” and he pulled Anna up. “Wow,” he said, “you're a heavyweight, my fair lady!”

“I guess I am,” Anna answered brushing the sand off. Sometimes she wished she could be as light as air and stop thinking … but she couldn't and so she was wondering whether she was indeed a heavyweight for Ned to bear through all the tensions and anguish of their marriage, and she asked herself once more whether it was mostly her own fault, conflicted as she was and, she supposed, always would be.

“Poor Fonzi,” she said, “he's panting terribly …”

“Good for him,” Ned said, leaning down to give the dog a pat. “He doesn't get enough exercise—and neither do I.”

“But you have very long legs and he has very short ones.”

“He can run like the wind, though, on those short legs! He'll sleep all day while we are planting bulbs … for it's got to be done, Anna, you know.”

Done it was, for the rest of the morning, but after a short lunch of fruit and cheese, Anna pleaded for a rest and went upstairs to make the bed and then lie down on it while Ned went back to the garden with Fonzi. She must have fallen asleep, and when she woke thought she was dreaming for she heard Ferrier's voice singing the
Kindertoten lieder
… sat up, saw that the clock said four and ran downstairs, standing by the record player unable to decide whether to hear it through or take the record off. The poignance of that voice! Would she ever learn that ease, that perfect control, that depth? She stayed where she was, listening. She could handle the low notes, but that great crescendo in the upper register? It shouldn't be difficult, but it was. Oh, it was! Even Ferrier's voice showed the strain for a second. Anna was so concentrated that she didn't hear Ned behind her, took the record off and turned to find him there, grinning.

“Why did you do that?”

“You're going to sing it in Dallas, aren't you?”

“Yes.” Anna was trembling. It was like an attack.

“Well then? I thought you might like to hear it. Ferrier is rather marvelous, isn't she?”

“You did it on purpose! Gave me the perfect rendition like a slap in the face … it's not fair!”

“I did it to wake you. It's nearly four, Anna.” It had not occurred to Ned that she would find it offensive. But of course I can't win, he thought bitterly. Now she will make a scene.

“Let us say that you are not exactly the soul of tact. I can't possibly match that … and you know I can't.” But Anna had now to hear the other side and turned the record over and went and sat down on the sofa. “Come and sit beside me Ned, I need you.”

He sat down awkwardly beside her then, and they listened. Whatever else they could not share, Ned was thinking, they could share music. It was indeed a haunting sequence of songs. He slipped a hand into hers.

When it was over, they were silent. Ned knew that he ought to say something. He ought to say that of course Anna could sing this magnificently, that he knew she could. It was on the tip of his tongue, but somehow he couldn't utter the necessary words. A donkey in him, a stubborn donkey, balked.

And Anna reacted not with anger, but by moving away. This battle was with herself. And as it sometimes did, what might have been anger turned into exaggerated self-justification. “You may not think so, but I can do it as well as she did. I have the instrument, Ned. And I have a great teacher.”