Family Happiness (15 page)

“Fundevogel and Lina were so fond of each other that they could not bear to be out of each other's sight,” Polly read. Her eyes filled with tears and a lump rose up in her throat. She took a deep breath.

“Go on, Mommy,” said Dee-Dee.

Polly began to read again. One day Lina sees the wicked cook boiling a big pot of water. She asks the cook what the water is for and the cook says that she is going to catch Fundevogel, throw him into the pot, and boil him up. The next morning Lina wakes Fundevogel and tells him what the cook has in mind. The children run away, and when the cook discovers that they are missing, she flies into a rage and dispatches a party of hunters to bring them back.

In the woods, the children hear someone approaching.

“Lina said to Fundevogel, ‘Never forsake me, and I will never forsake you,'” Polly read. Her voice wavered, so she stopped and took another long breath.

“Go
on
, Mommy,” said Dee-Dee.

Polly read: “And Fundevogel answered, ‘I will never forsake you as long as I live.'”

Lina turns into a rosebush, and Fundevogel into a rosebud. The hunters pass them by and the cook tells them that they should have torn the rosebush to pieces and sends them out again. This time Lina turns into a church, and Fundevogel into a chandelier. Again the hunters pass by. The cook tells them they should have torn down the church and smashed the chandelier, and then she goes out with them herself. Lina turns into a pond, and Fundevogel turns into a duck. When the cook bends down to take a drink, the duck pulls her into the water by her hair and drowns her.

Polly read: “Then the children went home together as happy as possible, and if they are not dead yet, then they are still alive.”

She closed the book abruptly, collected her children, put them both to bed, and kissed them. Then she fled down the hallway to the bathroom, where she buried her head in a bath towel and cried until she hurt.

She sat at the kitchen table, drank a glass of water, and turned to the telephone. She dialed Lincoln, hung up, and dialed again.

“Hello, Doreen. I thought you would call,” Lincoln said.

“It's only me,” said Polly.

“I know it's only you, you sad little thing. Are you all right? You looked pretty far down the road when you left here.”

Polly began to cry. “I'm sorry, Linky. I'm not much fun. All I do is weep.”

“I don't care if you weep. What are you sorry for?”

“Just for feeling so awful. I love you, and it isn't making anyone happy.”

“It makes me happy,” said Lincoln. “Besides, it's not your job to go around spreading happiness like a fertilizer machine. The lawyer isn't coming home tonight, I assume. Do you want me to come and visit you, now that the grubs are asleep?”

There was nothing Polly would have loved more than a visit from Lincoln, but everything in New York conspires to keep life on the up and up. Polly would never have left her children alone for even five minutes, and what would the doorman think, letting a man up to the Demarests' at this time of night? What would the elevator man think? Surely they knew that Mr. Demarest was away. Supposing Lincoln spent the night? What would the morning elevator man say?

Lincoln had been to the apartment once, when Henry was out of town and the children were staying with their grandparents overnight. Polly had worked late, picked Lincoln up, and brought him home with her. Her heart had been in her throat the whole time. Lincoln had gone prowling: after all, she knew his studio, so why should he not know hers? She had made him an omelette, but was so nervous that Lincoln had wolfed his dinner and then taken Polly out to the movies.

“You could get into a cab and come down here,” Lincoln said.

“I don't have anyone to stay with the children,” Polly said.

“They're too old for crib death,” said Lincoln. “Can't you leave them alone for an hour?”

“It wouldn't be an hour and you know it,” said Polly. “I don't like to ask our sitter downstairs at the last minute. She's too precious. These teen-age baby-sitters have to be treated like rare porcelain. It's all so complicated.” And besides, when Henry was away he called late at night, and where could Polly say she had been? She was not the type to take off to the movies at the last minute. It was hopeless.

Everything was hopeless. At night she lay in bed next to a man she loved, and craved the love of another man. Her husband did not come back from business trips when he said he would—she had never gotten used to it, although she thought she had. The sight of the tray she had set for him, with his big cup, and teapot, and the glass he liked to drink his brandy and soda from, and the plate for his sandwiches, and the linen napkin, made her realize that for years she had simply turned away and told herself that these were the things of life, plain and simple, and they did not matter one bit.

But she could not deny it: the fact that Lincoln actually loved her kept her going. If Henry was working late, if he was away, if he was distracted, so much the better. It gave her more time with Lincoln; it gave her justification to be with Lincoln; and it would never be noticed that she had been with Lincoln.

Lincoln was angelic, but only in context. He hated noise, the company of most people, ordinary life. He did not go to the movies or to the theater, although he once in a while went to a dinner party. He said, rather proudly, that he had missed almost every major event of the past decade. He was scarcely interested in other painters. His society consisted of his brother, a few old friends from college, and a painter friend or two from art school. Once in a while, he bestirred himself from his studio and went kite-flying with Henry and Andreya. And he saw Polly. He could have done without almost anyone except her. Late at night it pained Polly that she contributed to his hermitage. She believed that all people unless impeded wanted family, needed family, that family was what life was for. In her secret heart she felt that there must be something wrong in Lincoln's anti-family feelings, and that his stance was useful to her made her feel immoral. She sometimes hoped that one day she might be her old self again, a happy wife and mother, and Lincoln, woken up to the joys of love, would seek a mate and build a nest. This rosy vision filled her with longing and dread, and she did not believe it for a second.

At first it made no difference to Polly that their love affair had no future. She had simply been in love. The early stages of romantic love are like the world before the Fall: sweet, innocent, full of pure, unadorned feeling. The sweetness of that feeling flavored everything. But now alone in her household, her children asleep and Lincoln in his studio, she saw the futility of their situation. She could not go to a tropical island with him, or to Paris. They would never spend a night together. His desires in the world were few. Polly's were many. She loved him; would never have him; and didn't want him.

“I wish you could come up,” Polly said.

“Well, I would,” said Lincoln, “if you weren't so afraid of what the elevator man might say.”

“Don't be mad at me because I'm afraid of the elevator man,” said Polly. “I
am
afraid of the elevator man. It's my nature.”

“I'm not mad, Doe. I'm sad because I'd like to come up and be with you and I can't.”

“Think of me, Linky,” said Polly.

“I always think of you,” Lincoln said.

The next day she sat at her desk in her office trying to work but she was exhausted, distracted, and tense. She had not slept well, and when she had finally fallen off to sleep, she had had two terrible dreams. The first was that her whole family had gone off to Maine without her—they had simply forgotten all about her. Then she dreamed that Pete and Dee-Dee were lost and she had run to Lincoln's studio to find them. When she got there, the door was open and the room was empty. It looked as if no one had lived there for a very long time. The windows were thick with dust and the walls were covered with cobwebs. Wind blew through a broken window in the back across the bare, dirty floor. These dreams had upset her so terribly that she had gone to check her children. She found them as she always found them. Pete was curled up at the foot of his bed with all his bedclothes on the floor. Dee-Dee slept like a medieval knight on a coffin, with her hands folded on her chest, neat as a pin. She was so still that it was not unusual for Polly to bend down to make sure that she was breathing.

Polly had not been able to get back to sleep and now she could not start to work. She felt as if she were the only person in the world in trouble, and that her trouble was herself.

When she looked up from the papers she could not make herself concentrate on, Martha Nathan was standing in the doorway.

“You look pretty tired,” Martha said.

“Didn't sleep,” said Polly.

“That's consoling,” said Martha. “I always thought you slept the sleep of the right and just.”

“I think only the right and just get to do that,” said Polly.

“If you're not right and just,” said Martha, sitting down, “then there is no hope in this world. I
never
sleep. I am a bat. I think I've gotten about four hours of sleep in the last six months. As soon as I lie down, my life flashes by me and causes me to sit up faint with dread.”

“Your life isn't dreadful, is it?”

“Well, not my life per se,” Martha said. “It's my head. It isn't life. It's what's inside that counts.”

“What's inside?” asked Polly.

“I am the world's most neurotic woman,” said Martha grandly. “See how cheerful I am about it? My years of expensive psychotherapy have made me positively sunny on this depressing subject. Yes, at least half a dozen well-known shrinks have peered inside my alleged mind.”

“And what do they discover?”

“Oh, this and that,” said Martha. “For instance, why do I like to learn a thing and then hate to do it? Why is it that I have hung around with the same person for seven years and have never once thought of getting married?”

“Not once?” Polly said.

“Well, what I mean is that when I think of it I sort of recoil as from a snake,” Martha said. “It isn't really nice to feel that way with such a nice saintly boyfriend as Spud, but of course even though he is nice and saintly, I sort of can't stand him.”

Spud Sawyer was Martha's longtime beau. He was a mathematical genius, and Polly had met him when he came to pick Martha up at the office. He had silvery-blond hair and looked almost as young as Martha did.

“You're my model of the way things ought to be,” Martha said. “I mean, you have it aced. You know how you feel about all the things that cause me anxiety. Husbands. Children. Family.”

It occurred to Polly to set Martha straight, but she could not. The notion was too distressing.

“Oh, Martha,” she said instead. “You have everything in front of you. You haven't made any mistakes yet. You haven't done anything irrevocable. You don't have to marry Spud, you know.”

Martha yawned. “Gee, this makes me sleepy,” she said. “I compare myself with you. I really do. I wish I
wanted
a life like yours. Don't take that the wrong way. I think the way you live is right. You love your family. I love mine but I can't stand to be in the same room with them. You got married. You have Pete and Dee-Dee. What do I have? I have my neurosis and a nice boyfriend I can't bring myself to marry. Sometimes I say to myself: Martha—that's what I call myself when I'm talking to myself—Martha, I say, why don't you marry Spud? Spud always says to me: Martha, why don't you
try
to shut up? Why don't I? Why don't I try to shut up and get married? Besides, how will I ever experience adultery if I don't get married? After all, I say to myself, I don't live in a country under Islamic law. I could get married and then if it got too intense I could have a little affair to make me feel better and I wouldn't even run the risk of being stoned to death, although in the case of someone as neurotic as me, maybe being stoned to death might be a reasonable solution.”

Polly was silent.

“I ought to try to shut up,” Martha said. “I just blab along. Did I say something awful?”

“No,” said Polly, who was staring at her hands. “It hurts me that I'm a model for you. I'm not a model of anything. If I lived in an Islamic country I would be stoned to death because I am having a love affair.”

“Oh,” said Martha. “The painter at lunch. Lincoln.”

At the sound of his name, tears came into Polly's eyes.

“Was it so obvious?” she said. “I was afraid it was.”

“I guessed. And if I hadn't, it certainly would make sense now that I think of it,” said Martha. “You looked awfully related to each other, and he called you Dottie. I figured he might be an old friend.”

“I love him,” Polly said. “I believe it's ruining my life.”

“What do your pals think of this?” asked Martha.

“You're the only person who knows.”

“I am? That's not right. Why doesn't anyone know?”

“I don't have anyone to tell,” Polly said. “I can't tell my family.” She looked down at her desk because she was about to cry.

“But I'm safe,” Martha said. “Because we don't know anyone in common.”

“I suppose that's right,” Polly said. “You are safe.”

Martha considered this.

“I'm glad you told me,” she said. “It cheers me up. It's nice to know that other people who you think have perfect lives have trouble, too. It must be awful not to have anyone to tell.”

“I never thought of it until recently,” Polly said. “In my family, we have family. I used to tell my mother things, but I never had anything like this to tell.”

“My family is always on the outs,” Martha said. “We're forced to have pals. Come on. Let's go out to lunch.”