Separate Flights (10 page)

In that bar on the night she gripped my throat, really gripped it—and for how long would she have squeezed if I hadn't been able to push her away? she had right away shut off my windpipe—in that bar, I saw something: I saw her sitting with the
TV Guide
among those dishes, with that look of concentration which was real, yes, but it wasn't concentrating
on
something, it was concentrating away from her work. She was saying no. And I thought: Why, that's her word: No. It is what she said to the life that waited for her each morning, perched on the foot of the bed. She simply refused to live it, by avoiding work, by lying about it, and by—yes: I believed it: violence. It wasn't me she hated, me she wanted to kill: it was the questions I raised. Yet I couldn't really separate my questions from me any more than I could separate Terry from her house. She is what she does, I tell her; and I suppose, for her, I am what I ask. And that is why, I thought, our quarrels usually ended violently: because she could not or would not answer my questions about pots on the stairs and Sean lying in last night's piss. So she hit me.

And now tonight she was out with Hank and I remembered the day I found the pots and went up to the living room and told her and she went downstairs; I remembered how I stood at the window and watched the couple pushing their baby in a stroller; the girl was, as I have said, rather plain, and her breasts were a little too small, and her hips a little too wide, but I stood watching her, and that is what I wanted and what I have refused all the years to admit I wanted: a calm, peaceful life with that plain, clean girl pushing her stroller in the sunlight of that afternoon.

3

S
HE CAME HOME
long after midnight, an hour and twenty minutes into a new Monday, coming through the back door into the kitchen, where I sat drinking bourbon, having given up on Tolstoy, sitting and sipping now. She stood just inside the door, looking at me, shaking her head: ‘Not this way, Jack. Not after ten—' Then her eyes filled, her lips and cheeks began to contort, she bit off her voice and went to the refrigerator for ice. I stood, to go to her; but then I didn't move. I stood near the wall and watched her make the drink; her back was turned, her head lowered, the hair falling on both sides of her face, and I saw us as in a movie and all I had to do now was cross the room and take her shoulders and turn her and look into her eyes, then hold and kiss her.
We can try again
, I would say. And:
Yes, darling
, she would say:
Oh yes yes
. I stood watching her. When she turned, her eyes were dry, her cheeks firm.

‘I've been drinking alone in DiBurro's, for the first time in my life, alone in a bar—'

‘What happened?'

‘Never mind what happened. I've been thinking about love, and I want to tell you this, I want to tell you these things in my heart, but I don't want to see your face. Your cold, guilty face.' She sat at the table, facing the back door; I leaned against the wall, waiting. ‘All right then: I'll move.' She turned her chair so she was profiled to me. ‘Don't worry, you'll get rid of me some day, but not like this, not this sordid, drunken adultery, do you know—no, you wouldn't because you never look at me—do you know that I drink more than any woman we know? I'm the only one who gets drunk as the men at parties. I'm the only one who starts drinking before her husband comes home. So you'll get rid of me anyway: I'll become a statistic. Because, you see, I don't keep a Goddamn Howard Johnson's for you, because I read a lot and, you know, think a lot, and I read someplace that booze and suicide claim many of us, us housewives; did you know that? No other group in the country goes so often to the bottle and the sleeping pill. I guess that's how they do it, with pills. Although as a child I knew a woman who played bridge with my mother, she shot herself one afternoon, a tiny hole in the temple, they said—from a tiny pistol, Daddy said, a woman's gun—she had been in and out of hospitals like others were in and out of supermarkets—maybe there's not much difference, they're both either a bother or terminal—and she was convinced she had cancer. That's what the ladies said, my mother and her friends, but they weren't known for truth, on summer afternoons they had chocolate Oreos and Cokes and talked of little things, said trump and no-trump and I pass; I used to walk through and see their souls rising with the cigarette smoke above their heads. Oh yes, they would rather believe relentless old cancer was eating the bones or liver or lungs of their dead friend than to believe one of the zombies in their midst had chosen one sunny afternoon to rise from the dead. She's the only suicide I've known. And I've only known one alcoholic, unless I'm one, which I'm not. I drink a lot at parties and on nights like this one when my husband sends me off to fuck his friend. I don't drink at lunch or early afternoon, but at ten in the morning a real lush will talk to you smelling of booze, a nice, pleasant enough smell but awfully spooky when the sun's still low and the dew hasn't burned off the grass, like in high school Sue's mother was an alcoholic, she was rich and lovely so maybe it was all right, she didn't really need to function much anyway. She always smelled of booze, she was usually cheerful and friendly, and you never saw her glass until five o'clock, at the cocktail hour. So much for statistics.'

She went to the sink and poured another bourbon.

‘Don't you want to stop that?'

She turned with the ice tray in her hands.

‘Give me a reason, Jack.'

I looked at her for a moment, then I looked around the room and down into my glass. She poured the drink and sat at the table and I watched the side of her face.

‘A man must have done those statistics,' she said. ‘They sound like a fraud. Because he was treating housewife like a profession, like lawyer or doctor or something, and that's wrong, he's including too many of us; if he had done the same with men, just called them all husbands, you can bet they'd have the highest rate. Most of them I know are pretty much drunks anyway, and they commit suicide in all sorts of cowardly ways; sometimes in the bank I wait in line and watch the walking suicides there, the men on my side of the counter and on the other, those lowered eyes and turned-down lips and fidgety glances around like God might catch them dying without a fight. So they should classify us if they must classify us by our husbands' jobs: how many pharmacists' wives are too drunk to cook at night? How many teachers' wives slit their fucking throats? But that wouldn't be accurate either. We are an elusive sex, hard to pin down. Though everyone tries to. I know: I have red hair. She has that red-headed temper, Daddy used to say. I was thinking about him tonight. Once when I was ten he took me fishing. We stood barefoot on the sand and cast out into the surf for flounder. The fishing rod was very long; I had to hold it with two hands and I shuffled forward with my side to the sea, and the rod was behind me almost dragging in the sand, then I arced it high over my head and the line went out, not as far as his but better than I had done before, and he said it: ‘That's better.' I reeled in praying I'd hook one, please dear God for one sweet fish. Wasn't that absurd? To think the luck of catching a fish would make me somehow more lovable? Because then it'd follow that to be unlucky was to be unlovable, wouldn't it? And I must have believed that, as a child. And while I was drinking alone tonight I thought maybe I still believe that. But of course luck isn't an element in my life now. I don't fish or play cards; but there's always skill. So should I expect my cooking and screwing to make me more lovable? Maybe. I suppose a man can't be expected to love a woman who fails in the kitchen and the bed. I'll admit that—even though I believe conversation and companionship are more important—but I'll admit that first a man has to be well fed and fucked. ‘Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair.' What if I cooked badly? Or were paralyzed and couldn't screw? Because maybe then you do hate me for my house, because it's dirty sometimes—'

‘I don't hate you.' She looked at me: only for a moment, then she turned away and finished her drink and rose for another. ‘Terry—'

‘How would you know if you hate me? You don't even know me. You say, “You are what you do.” But do you really believe that? Does that mean I'm a cook, an errand runner, a fucker, a bed maker, and on and on—a Goddamn
cleaning
woman, for Christ sake? If you—
you
, you bastard—' looking at me, then looking away ‘—lost all discipline, just folded up and turned drunk and was fired,
I'd
love you, and I'd get a job and support us too. Maybe no one else would love you. You'd be a different man, to them: your friends and your students. But not to me. I'd love you. I'd love you if you went about at night poisoning dogs. So what is it that I love? If action doesn't matter. I love you—' looking at me, then away ‘—I love Jack Linhart. And I say you're more than what you do. But if you love me for what I do instead of for what I am—there is a difference, I
know
there is—then what are you loving when I screw Hank? Because if you love me for what I do then you can't want me to be unfaithful because if I screw somebody else it's because I love him, so either you don't love me and so you don't care or you don't know me and you just love someone who looks like me, and what you like to do is add to my tricks. Screw Hank. Shake hands. Sit, roll over, play dead, fetch—loving me like a dog. Because I'm not like that, I simply love a dog, I had dogs, four of them, they all disappeared or died or got killed, like everything else around here, like me, and I just
loved
them: fed them and petted them and demanded no tricks. No fucking tricks! But not you.' She stood up and looked at me. ‘Am I right? You don't love me, you love the tricks? Is that true? My stupid spaghetti sauce, the martini waiting in the freezer when you come home in the afternoons, the way I for Christ's sweet sake look and walk and screw?'

‘I love Edith,' I said, and looked her full in the face; probably I didn't breathe. Her face jerked back, as if threatened by a blow; then she was shaking her head, slowly at first then faster back and forth, and I said: ‘Terry. Terry, yes: I love her. I don't love you. I haven't for a long time. I don't know why. Maybe no one ever knows why. I'm sorry, Terry, but I can't help it, I—'

‘Nooooo,' she wailed, and she was across the room, dropping her glass, tears now, shaking her head just below my face, pounding my chest, not rage but like a foiled child: she could have been striking a table or wall. ‘No,
Jack
. No,
Jack
—' Then she shoved me hard against the wall and I bounced off and pushed her with both hands: she fell loudly on her back, her head thumped the floor, and I crouched with clenched fists, looking down at her frightened face and its sudden pain. She rolled on one side and slowly got up.

‘Come on,' I said. ‘Come take it.'

She looked at my face and fists, then shook her head.

‘No. No, you're right: I've hit you too much. You're right to push me down. I've hit you too much.'

She went to the sink and stood with her back to me, bent over the counter with her head on her arms, one fist in a light rhythmic beat; after a while she turned. Tears were on her cheeks and she sniffed once and then again.

‘All right. I won't cry and I won't hit you. Edith. So Edith then. All right. Jesus.' She looked around for her glass. I moved to pick it up from the floor, but she said, ‘Oh fuck you,' and I straightened again. She took a glass from the cupboard and poured a long drink; the ice tray was empty. She went to the refrigerator and put the glass on top of it and opened the freezer compartment, then stood holding the door and looking in at the trays and vapor and frozen juice cans, and I thought then she would cry; but she didn't, and after a while she banged out an ice tray and went to the sink and ran water on the back of the tray and pulled the lever but the ice didn't come out; then she squeezed the dividers with her hands, then jerked back, dropping the tray and shaking a hand: ‘I hate these Goddamn cutting ice trays.' She ran hot water again and worked the lever and got some cubes. Then she stood leaning against the stove, facing me across the table.

‘That fucking bitch whore Edith. My fucking friend Edith. So up Terry. Alone then. I should have known. I did know. I knew all the time. I just wouldn't let myself know that I knew. How long have you been screwing her?'

‘May. Late May.'

‘Yes. I thought so. I thought so tonight going to meet Hank and I thought so while we high school screwed in the car, I saw you, the way you look at her like you haven't looked at me in years, and I saw you screwing her and when Hank finished I told him I wanted to be alone, just to take me back to DiBurro's where my car was. Did you love me until you fell in love with Edith?'

‘No.' I shook my head. ‘No. I guess that's why I lo—'

‘Don't say it! I don't have to keep hearing that. I—' She lowered her head, the hair covering her eyes, then she went to her purse on the table and got a cigarette and lit it at the stove, holding her hair back behind her neck. When she turned to face me she looked down at the gold wedding ring on her finger, then she twisted it as though to pull it off, but she didn't; she just kept turning it on her finger and looking at it.

‘We must have had a lot of people fooled. A lot of people will be surprised. My boyfriend.' She let her ring hand fall. ‘I'm thirty years old, I've lost my figure—'

‘No, you haven't.'

‘Don't, Jack. I've lost my figure, I'm not young anymore, I don't even want to be young anymore, I've become just about what I'll become—' I could not look at her: I went to the refrigerator needing motion more than I needed ale, and got a bottle and opened it and went to the door and stood half-turned, so my back wasn't to her but my face wasn't either. ‘But there was a time when I wanted to be young again, I never told you that, I didn't see any reason to load you down with it. I remember once nursing Sean when he woke in the night in Ann Arbor, I had the radio on in the kitchen turned down low and listening to music and watching Sean, and of course I loved him but I was almost halfway through my twenties and I'd been married all that time. Then
La Mer
came on the radio and all at once I was back five years, the year before I met you, the summer I was nineteen and all of us used to go to Carolyn Shea's house because it was the biggest and her parents were the best, her mother and father would come and talk to us in the den where the record player was, she was just a little patronizing to the girls but not to the boys, only because she was a woman; but he wasn't patronizing to anyone at all. The boys would come over: Raymond Harper and Tommy Zuern and Warren Huebler and Joe Fleming, and sometimes they'd bring cherrystones, or steamers, and Mr. Shea would help them open the cherrystones and if they brought steamers Mrs. Shea would steam them and we'd sit in the kitchen with beer or wine. We were there all the time, all that summer, and no one was in love with anyone, we all danced and went to movies and the beach, and all that summer we played
La Mer
.When it came on the radio that night in Ann Arbor I thought of Raymond getting knocked off a destroyer at night and they never found him, and Tommy got fat and serious, and Joe became an undertaker like his father, and Warren just went away; and Leslie had an abortion, then married someone else and went to live in Nebraska, and Carolyn married a rich jerk from Harvard Law, and Jo Ann married a peddler and turned dumb to survive, and then there was me nursing my baby in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I started to cry, loud and shaking, and I thought you'd hear and think Sean had died and I clamped my teeth shut but I couldn't stop crying because I knew my life was gone away because you didn't have a rubber with you because we'd never made love before—and isn't that tender and sweet to think of now?—and I was foolish enough to believe you when you said you wouldn't come inside me, then foolish enough not to care when I knew you were about to and I went to bed that night with Natasha alive in me and next morning when I woke I knew it. Then you got rubbers but every time I knew it didn't matter; I gave up hope, but I thought if I was lucky anyway, I'd start dating others. I would make love with you but I would date others. I was twenty years old. So now you say you don't love me. You love Edith.' Her lower lip trembled, then she spun around, her back to me, and slapped the counter with both hands. ‘I won't cry. You bastard, you won't make me cry. I've given you my
liiife
.' She wiped her eyes once, quickly, with the back of a hand and faced me again. ‘Oh, how I
hate
your Goddamn little girl students you bring in here to babysit, those naïve, helpless little shits, what I'd
give
for their chance, to be young and able to finish college and
do
something, I could be in New
York
now, I could be anywhere but
no
. I had to get
married
. I should have aborted—' Her voice lowered to almost a whisper, and she stopped glaring at me and looked somewhere to my side, her eyes fixed on nothing, just staring: ‘I thought of it. I didn't get the name of an abortionist but I did get the name of a girl who'd had one, just by manipulating a conversation I got that done, but I didn't go on. Not because I was scared either. What I was scared of was being knocked up and getting married to my boyfriend. That's what you were: my boyfriend. But no, not Terry, she wanted to do the right thing. So I did. And now Natasha's here and so of course I'm glad I didn't kill her. After you see a child and give it a name you can never think about abortion. But I've wasted my life. I knew it all the time but I didn't let myself, I was going to make the best of it, I was going to keep on being a girl in love. All right, then. You're having an affair with Edith and you love her and you don't love me. All right. I won't cry and I won't hit you. When are you leaving? '