Family Happiness (28 page)

Once upon a time it had filled Polly with delight to get into bed early of an evening after the children were asleep and read next to Henry. The sense of comfort, of domestic ease, of loving availability had filled her heart. But Polly knew in advance what their horizontal evening would be like. Henry would bring some papers to bed, or he would pick up a mystery and fall almost instantly to sleep, leaving Polly alone and wakeful, in the grip of the sort of physical desire you feel will claw you to death.

Polly and Henry sat down to dinner in the kitchen. It was like an uncomfortable second date: what an effort they were making!

“Lovely spaghetti, Polly,” said Henry.

“I hope it's buttery enough,” Polly said.

“It's perfect,” Henry said. “Is there a little grated cheese?”

Polly leapt from the table. “I forgot. Isn't that silly? I left it out with the grater and I never grated it.” She sat back down and handed Henry the grater and the cheese. Henry was looking at her with real concern. She realized that she was visibly frantic. It was very much not like her to forget the grated cheese. But she was so very upset. A cloud of misery and potential despair hung between herself and Henry. Talking to him had exhausted them. How was she supposed to talk to him more? Was it his fault that he was the way he was? Hadn't she spoon-fed him into the way he was? With all her blessings, did she deserve to be angry?

The idea of a dinner without dinner-table conversation was the end of the world to Polly. It meant that everything was irredeemably wrong, but she did not know what to begin to say. Henry thought a silent dinner was the end of the world, too.

“What does Wendy say is going on in Priory?” he said.

“Ronnie from Ronnie's Clam Box's wife left him,” said Polly. “He was open when they got up. Dee-Dee found a horseshoe crab. That was about all. Then Mother and I had a fight about the children's spring break.”

“So you said. But they're up in Maine for the week, aren't they?”

“I didn't arrange it,” Polly said. “I forgot all about it. I packed them for a weekend and completely forgot about their break. I hadn't made any arrangements at all.”

“Well, then,” said Henry good-naturedly as he tossed the salad, “you'll understand when your mother sends the police over to arrest you.”

“Don't tease me!” Polly cried. “You don't have to arrange their holidays and you don't get a lot of flak when you make a mistake. I do.” Tears ran down her face. Henry got up, pulled his chair next to hers, and sat close to her. He took her hands in his.

“Oh, my poor Polly. Is everything making you so miserable?” He put her hands on his shoulders and pulled her close, but Polly broke away.

“I am miserable,” she said.

“On the subject of your mother,” Henry said, “I've told you a dozen times and you never listen. She's a lovable monster and she likes to make you feel bad.”

“I do listen,” said Polly. “But I have to put up with her. She's the only mother I've got.”

“You're her only daughter,” Henry said.

“I'd like to kill her,” Polly said. “I'd like to strangle her. She doesn't hector Henry and Andreya. She wouldn't dare lay a glove on Paul. Why do I have to suffer?” She turned to Henry. “I know, I know. Because I make myself available to her. But why do I have to be reasonable and understand when I'd still like to strangle her.”

“And me?” said Henry. He stood up, gathered the plates, and took them to the sink. “Do you want to strangle me, too?”

“Yes,” said Polly. “I'm dying of loneliness. I know it's my fault. I should have stopped pretending everything was fine a long time ago. Now that I have, I feel that everyone is against me—you, too.”

Henry stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Please, Polly,” he said. “Come here to me.”

“You come to me,” said Polly.

Henry knelt by her chair. “Whatever it is, Polly, can it be fixed?” he said. “Do you not love me anymore? Please tell me.”

“I don't want anyone to stop loving me,” said Polly. “I'm so furious at everyone. Pretty soon everyone will start hating me.”

“No one could ever hate you,” said Henry. “You're the best there is.”

“I don't want to be the best anymore,” said Polly.

“You can't help it,” Henry said. “It isn't something you do. It's something you are.”

“That's what I mean,” said Polly. “If I stop being that way, I'll lose you. I feel I have to be faultless, and the rest of you get to be loved in spite of your faults.”

“This may come as a shock,” Henry said, “but you aren't flawless.”

“I try so hard!” cried Polly.

“Poor us,” said Henry. “You want us to love you because you try to be good, and when you are good, you're angry because we love you for it. What is it you want?”

I am greedy and spoiled, Polly thought to herself. I want my husband and my love affair and my nice safe life. I want to stop feeling as if I were a stranger to myself. I want to be happy with Henry again.

She looked at Henry with a mixture of longing and dread. Even if you truly loved your mate, Polly thought, you were spared nothing.

“I just want to be myself,” said Polly.

“You are yourself,” Henry said.

“If I am, it's the first time I ever have been,” said Polly. “I feel so awful. I feel as if I've been wearing clothes that don't fit me for the longest time, and now that I've taken them off, I feel worse.”

“You don't trust anyone to love you any old way you are?” Henry said.

“No,” said Polly, bursting into tears. “I don't.”

“I do love you any old way,” said Henry. “Now listen. Pour yourself a cup of coffee. You can drink it in bed with all the pillows fluffed up. You need to be more rested and less upset.”

He walked her down the hallway, and while Polly put on her nightdress he turned back the bedclothes and fluffed up the pillows. When she got into bed, he arranged the covers over her.

“I'm going to spend five minutes going over some papers,” Henry said. “For tomorrow. Then I'll be in.”

Couldn't he love her enough to look at his papers in the morning? Polly thought. Did he think one talk was all she needed? Was he hiding from her in his work because he was frightened? Was it not a display of his true feelings that work came before love so prominently?

Lincoln's desire for her was unconditional. His life was arranged so that he could freely desire her, pure and simple. In marriage nothing was pure and simple, Polly thought. That she could not be purely angry at Henry, that she
believed
in his work problems, that she felt they had priority over her always, seemed to her the beginning, the middle, and the end of her unhappiness. It wore her down; it made her exhausted.

She was half asleep when Henry came in. He got carefully into bed and took Polly in his arms.

“Are you still upset?” he whispered.

“Yes,” said Polly.

“About everything, or about us?”

“About you,” said Polly.

“What about me?”

Polly slid from his arms. “Why couldn't you just come to bed and get up early to go over your papers? Don't I mean anything?”

“I'm very pressed,” Henry said. “It's worse than ever.”

Polly sat up. “I'd help you,” she said. “I'd bring you trays and snacks, and rub your back and listen to you talk things out. I'd do all those things, if you'd only notice them. If they made any difference to you.”

Henry reached up and pulled her down next to him. “I do notice,” he said. “They do make a difference. I would die without you.” He kissed her lips, her hair, her ears. She pressed herself close to him, and buried her face in his neck.

“Oh, Polly,” he said. “You make my life so sweet.”

He took her into his arms and they were together again.

PART FOUR

Fourteen

Suddenly, everyone was back. Pete and Dee-Dee blew into the house with pink-and-gold cheeks. Henry, Sr., and Wendy, not quite so golden, were home as well.

Henry had won his case on appeal, and the grueling part of his schedule came to an end. The cloud over his work lifted. He came home early for dinner and he turned the intensity of his focus from his work to his domestic life. With his attention concentrated on Polly, he was very hard to resist. He behaved like a man courting, but he was not so obvious as to bring home flowers. Instead he brought himself and his charm. The family ate dinner in the kitchen. They had horizontal evenings in the bedroom. Some nights, after the children were in bed, Henry and Polly took themselves off to the movies, where they sat holding hands.

Henry, when he wanted to be, was an indomitable force, and although Polly was generally grateful for the love she got, she was wary. She let herself be courted, and Henry's ardor was persuasive, but even though she was often quite melted away, there were also times when she felt that she was being made a project of.

“For goodness' sake, Polly,” said Henry. “I
am
making a project of you. First you say I neglect you, then you say I pay too much court.”

“I want love, not compensation,” Polly said. “I don't want to get used to having you around and then have you snatched away by work.”

“I can't control the pressure,” Henry said.

“I want you to find some way not to be so distant,” said Polly. “That's all I ask.” She made herself confront Henry. The more they talked, the closer to him she felt.

She forced herself to say these things: it was not natural to her. It was traditional in the Demarest and Solo-Miller families to live things through. Mutual, silent understanding was their method, which seemed to Polly excellent when things were going well, but very bad when they were not. She made herself and Henry talk, and she steeled herself not to be afraid of squabbles or fights. More than anything else she wanted her old life restored to her. She wanted the weight lifted from her heart; she wanted never to feel despairing again. She wanted to be her old self: she thought she
was
her old self. She was so very glad to feel cheerful, to feel encouraged, to have Henry come home early, to have her children near her. She knew that the more good feeling you generated, the more good feeling prevailed. In her heart she was an old-fashioned do-gooder—surely if you did good, it came back to you. She gave herself wholeheartedly back to her family, who clustered around her, as if to show her how smooth life was when you were not having a love affair.

The one thing she did not want to think about was Lincoln. The thought of him made her remember how bleak and exhausted she had been, how very different her life had felt to her. She was used to him being gone, and now, he was finally receding. She no longer felt those sharp pains of missing him. Of course, she did not have time to miss him. She had Henry, the children, the printing of the spring report to supervise. What bliss it was to come home to a happy family supper, to an attentive husband, to a feeling that things were as they should be, that she was working hard to put her life on course once more and that the problems before her were only ordinary ones. Polly looked back on the winter and saw it as one low stormy afternoon with Lincoln next to her. Lincoln was the thorn in her path, the shadow in her golden light, the keeper of the secret of her fall from grace.

The days lightened. The late-afternoon sky was lilac, not gray. Of course, she was not quite her old self. She found herself reluctant to see her parents.

“Darling,” said Wendy on the telephone, “where are you hiding? It's been ages since we've seen you. You can't be
that
busy.”

“I am that busy,” Polly said. “The spring report is at the printer's and I have to oversee it.”

“Well, I'm having lunch with Beate tomorrow. She's going to have those babies any day and I feel we ought to be a little close to her. Why don't I book a table for three instead of two?”

“I can't go,” Polly said. “I'll be in a meeting this morning and at the printer's this afternoon.”

There was a long silence.

“Well, Polly,” Wendy said, “I'm very disappointed in you. Beate is far away from her own family, and this is certainly more important than some report or meeting.”

“Look,” said Polly. “I've had quite enough of Beate and Paul. I've had lunch with her six times. I know she's far away but I will not sit back and let Beate tell me that
my
birth experience was improper, which she has told me over and over again, or that she knows more about having children than I do, and that since I am not as pure and high-minded as she is, Pete and Dee-Dee are going to turn out to be little war criminals and convicted felons. It hurts my feelings.”

“She doesn't mean it,” Wendy said. “It's just nerves.”

“I had a first baby, too,” Polly said. “And I wasn't that way. I'll be very happy to bring the little twins matching baby blankets but I'm not going to lunch and that's final. Beate has you and Paul. Furthermore, my meeting this morning is
very
important and if I am not at the printer's today the report will be delayed.” A firm, clear voice—it amazed Polly to find it was her own—issued from her lips. She heard herself say, “And on the subject of children, Mother …” She could almost see Wendy flinch. This was not a tone of voice Wendy had ever heard from her before. She continued: “There are a few conversations I don't think we ought to have anymore about the children. I don't think you know how critical of me you are on this score. One subject is the school holidays. The other is my job and who I leave the children with. I take excellent care of Pete and Dee-Dee. Concita is a very fine, kind, and intelligent person. Nancy Jewell is a wonderful babysitter, and one of the nicest people on earth. Those children are arranged for and coddled and loved. I am almost always home at night. I don't want to be hectored on the subject of them anymore.”