Sea Lovers (2 page)

But he growls again, turning his face toward her, and she sees that his teeth are bared and his threat is serious. “Spats,” she says firmly, but she backs away. His eyes glaze over with something deep and vicious, and she knows that he no longer hears her. She drops the bowl. The sound of the bowl hitting the linoleum and the sight of his food scattered before him brings Spats back to himself. He falls to eating off the floor. Gretta lifts her head to watch him, then returns to her hurried eating.

Lydia leans against the stove. Her legs are weak and her heart beats absurdly in her ears. In the midst of all this weakness a habitual ambivalence goes hard as stone. Gretta, she thinks, certainly deserves to eat in peace. She looks down at Spats. Now he is the big, awkward, playful, good fellow again.

“You just killed yourself,” Lydia says. Spats looks back at her, his expression friendly, affable. He no longer remembers his fit of bad temper.

Lydia smiles at him. “You just killed yourself and you don't even have the sense to know it,” she says.

It is nearly dawn. Lydia lies in her bed alone. She used to sleep on her back when Ivan was with her. Now she sleeps on her side, her legs drawn up to her chest. Or rather, she reminds herself, she lies awake in this position and waits for the sleep that doesn't come.

As far as she is concerned she is still married. Her husband is gone, but marriage, in her view, is not a condition that can be dissolved by external circumstances. She has always believed this; she told Ivan this when she married him, and he agreed or said he agreed. They were bound together for life. He said he wanted nothing more.

She still believes it. It is all she understands marriage to be. They must cling to each other and let the great nightmarish flood of time wash over them as it will; at the end they would be found wherever they were left, washed onto whatever alien shore, dead or alive, still together, their lives entwined as surely as their bodies, inseparably, eternally. How many times in that last year, in the midst of the interminable quarrels that constituted their life together, had she seen pass across his face an expression that filled her with rage, for she saw that he knew she was drowning and he feared she would pull him down with her. So even as she raged at him, she clung to him more tightly, and the lovemaking that followed their arguments was so intense, so filled with her need of him that, she told herself, he must know, wherever she was going, he was going with her.

Now, she confesses to herself, she is drowning. Alone, at night, in the moonless sea of her bed, where she is tossed from nightmare to nightmare so that she wakes gasping for air, throwing her arms out before her, she is drowning alone in the dark and there is nothing to hold on to.

Lydia sits on the floor in the veterinarian's office. Spats lies next to her; his head rests in her lap. He is unconscious but his heart is still beating feebly. Lydia can feel it beneath her palm, which she has pressed against his side. His mouth has gone dry and his dry tongue lolls out to one side. His black lips are slack and there is no sign of the sharp canine teeth that he used to bare so viciously at the slightest provocation. Lydia sits watching his closed eyes and she is afflicted with the horror of what she has done.

He is four years old; she has known him all his life. When Ivan brought him home he was barely weaned and he cried all that first night, a helpless baby whimpering for his lost mother. But he was a sturdy, healthy animal, greedy for life, and he transferred his affections to Ivan and to his food bowl in a matter of days. Before he was half her size he had terrorized Gretta into the role he and Ivan had worked out for her: dog-wife, mother to his children. She would never have a moment's freedom as long as he lived, no sleep that could not be destroyed by his sudden desire for play, no meal that he did not oversee and covet. She was more intelligent than he, and his brutishness wore her down. She became a nervous, quiet animal who would rather be patted than fed, who barricaded herself under desks, behind chairs, wherever she could find a space Spats couldn't occupy at the same time.

Spats was well trained; Ivan saw to that. He always came when he was called and he followed just at his master's heel when they went out for their walks every day. But it ran against his grain; every muscle in his body was tensed for that moment when Ivan would say “Go ahead,” and then he would spring forward and run as hard as he could for as long as he was allowed. He was a fine swimmer and loved to fetch sticks thrown into the water.

When he was a year old, his naturally territorial disposition began to show signs of something amiss. He attacked a neighbor who made the mistake of walking into his yard, and bit him twice, on the arm and on the hand. Lydia stood in the doorway screaming at him, and Ivan was there instantly, shouting at Spats and pulling him away from the startled neighbor, who kept muttering that it was his own fault; he shouldn't have come into the yard. Lydia had seen the attack from the start; she had, she realized, seen it coming and not known it. What disturbed her was that Spats had tried to bite the man's face or his throat, and that he had given his victim almost no notice of his intention. One moment he was wagging his tail and barking, she told Ivan; then, with a snarl, he was on the man.

Ivan made excuses for the animal, and Lydia admitted that it was freakish behavior. But in the years that followed, it happened again and again. Lydia had used this evidence against him, had convicted him on the grounds of it; in the last two years he had bitten five people. Between these attacks he was normal, friendly, playful, and he grew into such a beautiful animal, his big head was so noble, his carriage so powerful and impressive, that people were drawn to him and often stopped to ask about him. He enjoyed everything in his life; he did everything—eating, running, swimming—with such gusto that it was a pleasure to watch him. He was so full of energy, of such inexhaustible force, it was as if he embodied life, and death must stand back a little in awe at the sight of him.

Now Lydia strokes his head, which seems to be getting heavier every moment, and she says his name softly. It's odd, she thinks, that I would like to die but I have to live, and he would like to live but he has to die.

In the last weeks she has wept for herself, for her lost love, for her husband, for her empty life, but the tears that fill her eyes now are for the dying animal she holds in her arms. She is looking straight into the natural beauty that was his life and she sees resting over it, like a relentless cloud of doom, the empty lovelessness that is her own. His big heart has stopped; he is gone.

Why, on the eve of his sixtieth birthday, was Mr. William Bucks, owner and president of Bucks International, rushing down his own staircase on the arm of his employee Chester Melville? And why was Mrs. Bucks, the entrepreneur's young and beautiful wife, perched above them on the landing, screaming her contempt at the spectacle of her husband and her lover in full retreat? And why, especially why, did Mr. Chester Melville turn to his mistress and, in a voice trembling with rage, cry out, “You killed that cat yourself, Sylvia, as surely as if you had strangled him with your own hands.”

This story is difficult to tell; it has so little of what one might call “sensibility” in it. But it is possible to experience a certain morbid epiphany by the prolonged contemplation of the inadequate gestures others make at love, and in fact such an epiphany has of late been proved a fit subject for a tale. Chester Melville's failure to love was matched, was eclipsed, was finally rendered inconsequential by the calculated coldness of the woman he failed to love, though at the moment we see them here this observation would have been small comfort to Chester. He understood, at last, that there was something in Sylvia Bucks that no man could love, something not right; I hesitate to say evil, but perverse, organically amiss. He had felt something for her, nonetheless. Pity, at first, and a devilish curiosity. She had inspired in him a spirit of fierce possession, and he was touched to the heart by the smoothness of her skin and the soft anxious cries she uttered in her search for the orgasm she could never find, no, not, she had confided, since the day of her marriage.

Her husband, Mr. William Bucks, or Billy to his intimates, was an unprepossessing man, tall, balding, his large features crowded anxiously in the center of his face as if they intended to make a break for freedom. He had an eager, friendly, almost doglike manner that made you forget, when you spoke to him, that he was worth a fortune. His software company was one of the quiet superpowers of the computer industry. He had created it himself, by the power of his formidable will. His natural business acumen was extraordinary and no doubt accounted for some of his success, but it was this indomitable will that impressed Chester in their first interview. Billy Bucks liked Chester on sight and wanted him as an employee. He had persuaded him to leave his secure, uninteresting niche at IBM to join the Billy Bucks personal adventure.

Before Chester attended his first dinner party at the Buckses' home, he made subtle inquiries among his fellow workers as to what he might expect. He was told that the food would be bad, the drinks first-rate and plentiful, that his employer would be gracious and his wife unpleasant. She was twenty years younger than her husband, and their marriage, which had survived the pitiful storms of only one short year, was not a pleasure to watch. Mr. Bucks, he was told, adored his wife and would neither say nor hear a word against her. Mrs. Bucks was flamboyantly rude to her husband, and (this last was confided to him by a nervous young man who appeared miserable at finding himself in the possession of such damaging information) she was hopelessly addicted to cocaine.

Chester went to the party with only mild trepidation. He did not expect to have his own fate altered by passing an evening in the same room with Sylvia Bucks. He considered himself invulnerable to attacks of lust, for he had recently recovered from a long love affair in which he had been driven to the limits of his resources by a selfish, obstinate woman who had made him swear more than once that he would not love her. She had destroyed some small desperate part of his natural self-consciousness, so that he thought he deserved a better fate than loving her would ever bring him. There are disasters in love that serve finally to increase one's own self-esteem; this failure was of that order. But Chester was bitter, overconfident, and unaware that his senses were wide open. Mrs. Bucks seemed to look directly into this odd mixture of indifference and vulnerability in the first moment they met. Superficially she was gay, charming; her voice was a little husky. She was, perhaps, too solicitous, but her eyes couldn't keep up the pretense. Like her husband, she was tall; her skin and eyes were as pale as her hair, so that she gave an impression of fading into the very light she seemed to emanate. Chester saw that she was sad, and a glance at his employer, who stood effusing cheerfully at her side, told him why. Though it had been very high, she had had her price, and it was her peculiar tragedy to be, while not sufficiently intelligent to follow the simple and honest dictates of her conscience, not stupid enough to be unaware of the moral implications of her choice. It was not until much later that he understood this and realized that the eloquent and pleading looks she directed at him several times on that first evening were not, as he thought, intended to evoke some response, but were meant to express her awareness of the acute ironies that constituted her situation.

The servants operated as slightly inferior guests in the Bucks household, and by the time they bothered themselves to get dinner on the table, the party was too raucous to care. It was just as well, for the hostess, who had disappeared into the bedroom at several points and whose teeth were chattering audibly from cocaine, could not decide where everyone should sit, though she was unshakable in her conviction that this choice was hers to make. The food, when at last the guests seated themselves before it, was cold and tasteless. The chef, Chester observed, specialized in a sauce created from ground chalk and cheddar cheese that congealed upon meat and vegetable alike. Mrs. Bucks paddled her fork contentedly in this mess. He watched her closely and observed that she never actually brought a bite to her lips. When dinner was over, the party adjourned to the living room for more alcohol. Mrs. Bucks disappeared again into her bedroom.

Why did Chester follow her?

He didn't actually follow her. The bathroom door was near her bedroom door, and after he had availed himself of the former, he found himself pausing outside the latter. How long did he pause? It was not a very long time, but as it was unnecessary to pause at all, it was clearly longer than he should have. After a moment the door opened and Mrs. Bucks stood facing him.

“Mrs. Bucks,” he said.

She sank against the doorframe. “You scared me to death, Mr. Melville.”

“I wish you'd call me Chet,” he replied.

She looked up at him, but her eyes hardly focused. She was wearing a strapless top, and from the smooth skin of her shoulders the scent of the perfume she wore rose and overpowered the air. It was a wonder to him that a woman of such wealth would choose such an oppressive scent; it didn't smell expensive. Perhaps it was some unwanted memory of another woman, a woman one would expect to wear too much cheap perfume, that caused Chester to move a little closer. Mrs. Bucks continued her unsuccessful effort to see him. He leaned over her, brought his lips to her shoulder, and left there several soft impressions. She didn't resist, or even speak, and for a moment he was terrified that she would push him away, screaming for her husband, his employer. Instead she sighed and said his name, “Mr. Melville,” very softly, nor did he correct her again.

“May I call you?” he asked as she turned away from him and took a few wobbly steps toward the dining room.

“Yes,” she replied, without looking back. “I wish you would.”

So because of a momentary lapse in his usually sound judgment, Chester Melville entered into a clandestine affair with his employer's wife. He knew she would be a difficult woman, and that he would not be able to trust her for a moment. He knew as well that she would never be content with him, for she was committed to her need, not for love, but for some distraction from what must have been a dreadfully empty and insensitive consciousness. But it was partly this insensitivity that attracted Chester, for it made him want to give her a good shaking. He was also, after that first awkward kiss in the hall, mesmerized by her physical presence. She had a feline quality about her, especially in the way she moved, that made him feel as one does when watching a cat, that the cool saunter strings the beast together somehow, that it is the sister to the spring.

Chester was gratified to find that Sylvia had no desire to speak ill of her husband. In fact, she rarely mentioned him. There was, however, someone who competed with Chester for his mistress's affections. Though Sylvia had not been wealthy long, she had adopted the absurd custom many wealthy people have of making a great fuss about small matters. The smaller they were, the more they might appear as vital cogs in the great machine of her life. One of these manias was her cat, Gino, who was a constant consideration in all her plans. It was as if, should she disappear in the next moment, there wouldn't be enough servants left behind to care for his needs or understand his temperament. In her imagination Gino was always longing for her company, always disappointed, even disapproving, when he got it.

One evening, while Billy Bucks was inspecting a new plant in Colorado, Chester Melville sat on an uncomfortable bar stool at the Bucks establishment, drinking a glass of white wine and talking affably with his cantankerous mistress. Gino appeared suddenly in the doorway, as if to present himself for inspection. Sylvia squealed at the sight of him, pushed roughly past Chester, and scooped the cat up into her arms, repeating his name in a sensuous voice she reserved for him alone. Chester noticed that he was very large for a cat, and that his shoulders had the meatiness of an athlete's. He allowed himself to be squeezed and fussed over, turning his strong body slowly, sinuously, against his mistress's straining, perfumed bosom, but he kept his cold green eyes on Chester.

He seemed to size up the competition. “So you're here too,” his eyes informed Chester. He had a wonderful deep frown, as if nothing could be more distasteful than what he contemplated. When he was released and set upon the counter, he walked quickly to Chester and, standing before him, considered his face, feature by feature.

“Oh, he's looking at you,” Sylvia cried.

Chester was not moved to respond, and Gino, for his part, did not so much as turn an ear in her direction. After a few moments he strode away, not toward his anxious mistress, who stretched out her arms invitingly, but to the end of the counter, where he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and cast Chester one more penetrating, almost friendly look before he leaped soundlessly to the floor.

“That's an interesting cat you have,” Chester observed.

“Oh, Gino,” Sylvia replied. “Gino is wonderful. Gino is my love.”

Chester was to see Gino many times. Each time he was so impressed with the animal, with his cool manner and athletic beauty, that he found himself looking at other cats only to see how poorly they compared with Gino. But he was to remember him always as he was that last afternoon, a few months after their first encounter, stretched out on Sylvia's bed, one heavy paw resting on a silken negligee, his long tail moving listlessly back and forth across the arm of a sweater. The bed was strewn with Sylvia's clothes; a suitcase lay open, half packed, at the foot; and Sylvia herself stood, half clad, nearby. She was fumbling helplessly with a silver cocaine vial, a gift from her husband, but she could scarcely see it through her tears. Chester stood leaning against the dresser. “It's not going to do you any good to run away if you take two bags of cocaine with you,” he was saying. “You need to think things through, you need to be alone, and you need to leave the coke behind.”

“I need to get away from you,” she said. “Not cocaine.”

“Sylvia.” He sighed.

The vial gave way and she tapped a thin line of the white powder across her forearm.

“Sylvia,” he said again. “I love you.”

At this moment Gino stood up and began to stretch his back legs. Sylvia gathered him up. “No one loves me but Gino,” she crooned to the indifferent animal. “Gino's going with me. I promised him a yard, I always promised him a yard, and now he'll have one.”

The “yard” was, in fact, one thousand acres of Virginia pine forest. Sylvia was running away, but her destination was her husband's summer place, a building designed to house nine or ten male aristocrats intent on a return to nature. It looked rough, but it wasn't. There were servants, a wine cellar, a kitchen created to serve banquets. Here Sylvia proposed to spend a week alone, because, as she told her sympathetic spouse, the chatter and confusion of city life were wearing her down. She told Chester Melville that on her return she would give him the answer to his proposal that she leave her husband. At that moment in the bedroom, she determined to take Gino with her, nor could she be dissuaded from this resolution by any appeal, not about the impracticality of the plan or the unnecessary strain to the animal's health. No, Gino must go, and so he went. He was tranquilized, shoved into a box, and loaded into the airplane with Mrs. Bucks's suitcases. One can only imagine the horrors of the three hours spent in the howling blackness of the airplane, the strange ride along the conveyor belts to his impatient mistress, who pulled him out of the box at once and, cooing and chattering, carried him to the car. When they arrived at the estate, Gino was given an enormous meal, which he could scarcely eat, and then Sylvia carried him to the back terrace, overlooking a wilderness of breathtaking beauty, and set him free. “Here's your yard,” she said.

In the week that followed, Gino took advantage of the outdoors, but Sylvia did not. She moved about restlessly from room to room, annoying whomever she encountered. She made a particular enemy of Tom Mann, the caretaker of the estate. Most of the year he lived alone on the property; he had a small cottage a hundred yards from the house, and he exhibited the silent humorlessness that comes of too much solitude. He loved the property and probably knew it better than its owner ever would. Sylvia's unexpected presence was an annoyance to him, and he couldn't disguise his personal distaste for her. She made the great mistake of offering him some cocaine, and the expression on his face as he declined to join her told her clearly what he thought of her.