Marry Me (16 page)

‘You can’t build a marriage on children.’

‘I didn’t think we had. You talk,’ Ruth said, ‘you talk as if Jerry wants only you. Are you sure? He told me last night he wants us both. I don’t doubt he thinks he loves you. But he loves me too.’

Sally, gazing down, let fall a sad, off-centre, infinitely superior smile. Ruth stubbornly continued: ‘He’s deceived me about you, maybe he’s deceived you about me. Last night we made love.’

Sally lifted her gaze. ‘After everything?’

‘After talking. Yes. It seemed natural and right.’

‘You’re killing him, Ruth. You’re smothering that man to death.’

‘No. It’s not me. Since spring, his asthma has been
worse, he wakes up every night. I thought it was the pollen count; but it was you. You’re killing him by asking him to rescue you and three children he’s not the father of from the bad marriage you made. It’s too much for him to do. Find somebody else. Find a tougher man.’

‘Why must you keep harping on
my
marriage?’

‘You are married, aren’t you? And rather well, if you ask me. Why
don’t
you give Richard shit? If you tried more with
him
, you wouldn’t be doing this to
us.’

‘I’m not doing anything to you. All I’ve ever asked from Jerry is that he make up his mind.’

‘In favour of you. He needs me. He needs his own children. Children are very important to Jerry. He was an unhappy only child and he loves being able to have three of his own and support them and raise them the way he wasn’t.’

‘They’d still be his children.’

‘They would
not,’
Ruth said. Her vehemence embarrassed her. She said, ‘Let’s be rational. Would you be poor with him? I was, and I’d gladly be poor again. I hate our money, the way he has to make it. I’m not afraid of doing without. You are.’

‘I don’t think you can say what I’m afraid of.’

The primmer Sally became, the hotter Ruth felt. Her cheeks burned. ‘You’re afraid of everything,’ she said, ‘of not
having
everything. It’s your charm, this greed. It’s why we all love you.’

‘How can you love me?’ Sally asked. As if attacked, she stood; Ruth found herself standing also, and in the mood of a desperate child, of a mother in a dream who is also the child, embraced the other woman at the
corner of the table where the coffee cups made circles within circles. Sally’s body was strange, hard, broad. They let each other go, having discovered, in their embrace, that they were enemies.

The varnish and white paint and metal and sun of Sally’s kitchen surrounded Ruth with uplifted daggers as she tried to explain: ‘You need more than the rest of us. You need your new furniture, your clothes, your trips to the Caribbean and Mont Tremblant. I don’t think you understand how precarious Jerry’s living is. He hates what he’s doing. I keep telling him to quit. He’s not like Richard. No matter how many mistakes Richard makes, money will still be there.’

Standing by the table, Sally followed a whorl of walnut grain with her finger, retraced it, and traced it again. She said levelly ‘I don’t think you know us very well.’

‘I know you better than you think. I know that Richard isn’t going to be generous.’

Sally’s eyelids were still pink; she seemed a big perfect child about to cry. ‘I’ve told Jerry,’ Sally said, ‘he’d kill himself, trying to support two women.’

‘That would just challenge him. Everything you say like that makes him wild to prove himself.’

‘You know, you’re very condescending to Jerry.’

‘I’ve known him more than a few months.’

‘Look, Ruth, there’s no point in our quarrelling. What we think about each other doesn’t matter. Jerry must decide.’

‘He won’t. As long as he has us both, he won’t.
We
must decide.’

‘How can we?’

And Sally’s question seemed so sincere, so helpless
and hopeful, that Ruth told her the answer, as smoothly as the end of a sermon. ‘Give him up for now. Don’t see him, for God’s sake stop telephoning. What’s left of the summer, give him some privacy. In September, if he still wants you, he can have you. The hell with it.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Why not? None of us is going to live forever; I’m not so pathetic as you and Jerry seem to think. In fact I think getting a divorce is something I’d be rather good at, once I got started.’ And both women laughed, as if a conspiracy had been disclosed.

But Sally’s hands, the sunlight made clear, were trembling again. She smoothed back her hair. ‘Why should I give you anything? This summer may be all I’ll ever have of Jerry, why should I give it away?’

‘I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for my children. And yours, for that matter. Richard is their father.’

‘He doesn’t care about them.’

‘Every man cares.’

‘You only know Jerry.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Excuse me, I forgot. You did have this little lover. That seems so unreal.’

‘You know, Sally,’ Ruth said, ‘you’re gorgeous, but you have one fault.’

Sally said carelessly, ‘Only one?’

‘You don’t listen. You strike a pose and hold it and don’t pay any attention to what anybody is saying. I’m trying to be generous. I’m trying to give you Jerry, if that’s the way it has to be, and keep some honour for both of us. How much better
you’d
feel, in the end, if you let go now. I came here determined not to be angry,
or weepy, or preachy; and you haven’t given an inch. You haven’t listened at all.’

Sally shrugged. ‘What can I say? That I’ll give him up? I’ve tried. He won’t let me. I love him. I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to hurt you and your children. And Richard and my children.’

‘You weren’t trying very hard when you went to Washington.’

‘Jerry asked me. He
took
me.’

‘The second time. The time you forced yourself on him.’

Sally’s gaze lost focus, remembering. ‘It didn’t seem so wrong. I can’t justify myself to you. It’s not up to us, Ruth. Jerry’s the man. I’m his if he wants me. But he has to be man enough to come for me.’

‘That’s your idea of a man, isn’t it? Somebody who leaves his children.’

Sally lifted her cup and put it to her lips but set it down without drinking. It was cold. ‘I learned very early’ she said, ‘to put a face on things. I may not show it, but I’ve been in hell over this.’

‘No doubt,’ Ruth said. ‘But it’s a hell you made.’

‘All by myself? You’ve been talking about faults as if you don’t have any. You and Jerry have been living too long up on that little arty cloud of yours. You have so much conceit, behind that gracious-lady manner of yours, you’ve never learned how to take care of a man. I’ve had to work at my marriage, you never have. You’ve turned Jerry loose, and you’re too conceited to take the consequences.’

‘I’ll take them when they come. But –’

‘I don’t think you will at all. I know damn well you
can keep him if you pull out all the stops and use the children. But do you want him at such a price? I know I wouldn’t want Richard that way.’

‘I haven’t meant to scold and don’t expect to be scolded. I’m asking you, I think very nicely to keep your hands off my husband for a few weeks.’

Sally’s pale face went pink. ‘You and Jerry do whatever you Goddamn please. You’re both, in my opinion, extremely immature.’

‘I’ll tell him you said that. Thank you for the coffee.’ In returning through the living room, Ruth saw that the square arms of the white sofa were worn and the Wyeth print was askew. Outdoors, on a lawn that needed mowing, Caesar had just knocked Geoffrey down. The child screamed, less in pain, Ruth judged, than in fear that his collarbone would be reinjured.
‘Caesar!’
Sally shouted, and Ruth said to her, ‘It’s all right. Geoffrey’s had a hard week.’

‘I heard,’ Sally said.

Ruth glanced at Sally for confirmation that the scene in the kitchen had not happened; the other woman grinned back. But when Ruth was in her car, Geoffrey whining behind her, Sally in her white slacks kneeled on the grass, her long hair flowing, and classically put her arms about her children, one on each side, the dog standing as additional guard on Theodora’s other side. The Invader Repelled: this was Ruth’s impression of their pose as the spark ignited, and a mixture of gasoline and gravity flung her down the drive.

Home, she paid Mrs O, who had fed Joanna and Charlie and seen them vanish into the neighbourhood, then
settled herself in the wing chair for a nap. Ruth poured some vermouth into an orange juice glass and called Jerry’s office. His line was busy. She tried four more times in twenty minutes, before the busy signal lifted, and she heard his voice.

‘Who were you talking to so long?’ she asked.

‘Sally She called me.’

‘Really I think that’s treacherous.’

‘Why? She was upset. Who else could she call?’

‘But I had just got done asking her not to.’

‘And did she promise not to?’

‘Not exactly. She said she thought we were both very immature.’

‘Yeah, she said you’d tell me she said that.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘She said you said I still loved you.’

‘What did you say to that?’

‘I forget. I said I supposed I did, in a way. I don’t know why this should upset her, she more or less assumed it was the case anyway. Obviously.’

‘Why should it be obvious to her? You’ve told her you love her, you made love to her, you’ve led her to think I don’t matter to you.’

‘You think?’

‘Of course, baby. Don’t be so dumb, or sadistic, or whatever you’re being. You’ve led her to think you love her.’

‘Well, sure; but clearly it isn’t a case of my feelings for her cancelling out my feelings for everybody else.’

‘Oh, clearly.’

‘Now
you’re
mad. This is hopeless. Why don’t you both just shoot me and marry each other?’

‘We don’t want each other. We tried a sisterly embrace and recoiled like a pair of wet cats.’

‘She said you told her to stay away from me.’

‘Till the end of summer. That’s what you and I agreed on.’

‘Did we?’

‘Didn’t we?’

‘Well, I didn’t think you’d go over and ram it down her throat.’

‘I didn’t ram anything down her throat. I was so amiable I sickened myself.’

‘She said you were very cool and arrogant.’

‘Not true.
Not.
If there was any arrogance it was hers. I thought she acted like a pretty tough cookie.’

‘She feels betrayed,’ Jerry pleaded. ‘She says she’s in love with me and I’m just playing with it.’

‘Well. In a way you did confess to me as an experiment. You wanted to see what would happen. If I blew up, it would relieve you of a decision.’

‘That’s not quite fair. For one thing, you were on the verge of guessing. For another, she’s been pushing me to do
some
thing.’

‘I do think “betrayed” is an exaggeration.
I’m
the one who should feel betrayed. But nobody seems inclined to let me feel anything. All the time I was talking to her, I had to keep telling myself I wasn’t the one in the wrong. You both seem to think it’s terribly unkind of me not to drop dead.’

‘Neither of us thinks that. Now don’t start crying. You’re heroic. Sally said so.’

‘What else did she say about me?’

‘She said you talked very well.’

‘She did? How funny. I didn’t at all. I talked in tight little spurts that went in all directions.’

‘Did she talk about Richard?’

‘Hardly a word.’

‘What did she say about the children?’

‘She doesn’t seem to think the children part of it is very significant. She thinks they’re just an excuse we’re using.’

‘She said that?’

‘She implied it.’

‘Anything else?’ His hunger for Sally’s words seemed something bottomless she must forever feed.

‘Let me think,’ Ruth said. ‘Yes. She was very interested in my lover and asked if it had been David.’

‘Sweetie, forgive me for telling her. But I thought it somehow evened things up for her to know.’

Ruth had to laugh, through the tears and vermouth, at the image of Jerry the judicious handicapper of this little horse race he had arranged.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You are.’

‘I’m
not,’
he said. ‘I’m a perfectly reasonable decent human being trying to do right by everybody and at the same time participate in umpteen dumb conferences on the exact shade of grey to make your average third-worlder in this fucking dumb series of thirty-second spots!’ When she failed to respond to this outcry, he asked,
‘Was
it David?’

‘No it was not David Collins. I have never been attracted to David Collins. I can’t even dance with him. I don’t like the way my old affair is turning into comic relief for everybody.’

‘It’s
not
, sweetie. Everybody takes it very seriously. Actually, I think your affair is the clue we all need.’

‘I think it’s the clue your little friend needs for some friendly blackmail.’

‘Why are you so Machiavellian? What else did Sally say? Did she sign this hands-off contract you offered her?’

‘Not at all. She just kept saying, you must decide.’

‘You meaning you, or me?’

‘You. The man. God, the way that woman says “man”, like it’s the holiest word in the language, I wanted to throw up.’

‘How
can
I decide? I don’t know enough. I don’t know if you love me or not; you say you do, but I don’t feel it. Maybe a divorce from me is what you really want, and you’re just too polite to tell me. Maybe it would be the best thing that ever happened to you.’

‘I doubt it,’ Ruth said slowly, trying to picture herself divorced, single, barefoot, greying. But Jerry was hurrying on.

‘I don’t know if the children would have nervous breakdowns or not. I don’t know if Sally, once she had me in the bag, wouldn’t find me pretty boring. Sometimes I think my charm for her is that I’m
not
in the bag. Maybe she only likes things she can’t have. Maybe we’re all like that.’

‘Could be,’ Ruth said, not following.

‘Well, if so,’ Jerry pointed out, as if she were arguing to the contrary, ‘it’s ridiculous to smash up two households that more or less function and screw up half a dozen children. On the other hand, there
is
something about Sally and me. Something very solid, in a way.’