The Dark Descends (14 page)

The second recommendation came from Margaret Weston. Her man, a specialist in internal disorders, had an office on Park Avenue, amid a maze of treatment rooms, recreation rooms, waiting rooms (one for those with children and one for those without), and rooms whose functions not even the most searching scrutiny (all the doors stood open, as though boasting that there was nothing to hide) could determine. The specialist himself, well-upholstered and well-polished from his fingernails down to his shoe tops, was as redolent of the good life as his surroundings. His manner was circumspect; except for a vague murmur of "hormones, perhaps" while he was making preliminary tests of Joyce's pulse, blood pressure, metabolism, reflexes, he committed himself to no diagnosis. It was only on her fifth visit, when he mentioned hormones again and made some references to the difficulties of being a woman alone, that she realized he thought her trouble was sex starvation.

Finally, in desperation, Joyce turned to Sheila. As expected, Sheila made a great fuss, and immediately telephoned Somebody or other at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where Joyce was dispatched to undergo a battery of tests, the daily rush-hour subway expeditions to get there enough in themselves to bring on exhaustion had she not been suffering from it already. But the tests were thorough. Every organ was subjected to the most rigorous examination; page after page was filled with notations on her insides; and when it was all over, the internist who had charge of her case, an Abe Lincoln type, glanced at the thick folder bearing her name, glanced at her, shrugged, and said, "Fly to Acapulco." Easier said than done. The sessions with the medical profession left her with a bank balance of just over three hundred dollars.

...

"Hello, darling."

"Oh, hi, Joyce." Eliot's voice sounded anything but enthusiastic. "What a nice surprise. I haven't heard from you in a long, long time."

"I don't see how you can expect to hear from anybody, except by telepathy. I've had the devil's own time reaching you. I've been calling for days and days, but you never seem to be—"

"Hey, hey[ What is this? Checking up on me?"

"No, of course not, darling. I was just trying—"

"For God's sake, Joyce, what do you think I'm doing here? Playing games? Taking in the sights? I'm at the library practically every day until—"

"Eliot, I wasn't asking you for an accounting. I was just exercising my wit. Maybe the repartee wasn't anything to write home about, but I
was
trying."

"Oh." He struck a match; his initial puff at his cigarette was audible. "I misunderstood, I guess. Sorry I flew off the handle."

"It's not important. You must be working very hard."

"I am, believe me. Harder than I've ever worked in my life. And there's no end in sight." He heaved a sigh. "What's on your mind, baby?"

"Eliot, I have to talk to you. It's important. Terribly important."

"Okay, shoot. I'm listening."

"I don't mean over the telephone. It's something that—" Her turn to light a cigarette. "I was thinking that it might not be a bad idea if I came up to Cambridge this weekend and we could talk about it then."

"This weekend?" Guarded. "Well, to tell the truth, Joyce, it wouldn't really be convenient. I'd more or less planned to—"

"I said it was important, Eliot."

"Like that, huh?" A pause, and then, "Okay, Joyce, come ahead." Reluctant, but resigned. "You can count on me, whatever the problem is. You know that. We'll talk it—Hey!"

A loud clunk, as though the receiver at the other end had made forceful contact with a solid object.

"For God's sake!" Muffled, not meant to carry over the wire. "Hang on a minute, Joyce." Louder, but it seemed to come from a long way off.

Now a colloquy of whispers, rapid and unintelligible. Impossible to distinguish the number and timbre of voices, yet Joyce had an impression of hearing feminine accents.

Suddenly: "I don't give a good goddamn if she is in a fix!" A woman's voice, strident with passion. "You don't owe her beans!"

"Shut up, Susan. Shut up, will you? She can hear every word you're—"

"Let her hear! Maybe it'll do her good to hear! What does she think you are anyhow? A yo-yo?"

"Susan, will you listen—"

"No, you do the listening for a change7 Now that you've got yourself free of her, she wants to walk right back into your life and fuck things up for you all over again. Tell her—"

"Shut up, Susan! Shut up, damn you!"

"Oh, you can come on like a tiger with me, can't you? But all she has to do is crook her little finger and you turn into a mouse!"

"You don't understand, Susan."

"The hell I don't! Now you get back on that telephone and tell her where to get off. Or would you like me to do it for you?"

"
Susan
—"

Joyce replaced the receiver in its cradle, very gently, set her cigarette in the ashtray beside the telephone, and clasped her hands on her knees. In a moment, the telephone rang; continued to ring and ring and ring and ring. She sat motionless, her eyes on the smoldering cigarette. At the instant the spark went out and the cigarette became a caterpillar of ashes, the tinging stopped.

Still she didn't move. How could she, when she felt as though she'd just been sandbagged? And yet, by any logical line of reasoning, she shouldn't have been feeling that way. It was predictable, entirely predictable, that Eliot should have latched on to some woman in Cambridge. Predictable? It was a foregone conclusion. He had always been a very sensual man, and there were no strings on him now. Then how explain so violent a reaction? Revulsion at his bad taste, perhaps. This Susan, whoever and whatever she might be, obviously had the makings of a harridan. Any woman would have felt it a blow to her vanity to be supplanted by material so inferior.

No, that wasn't good enough. Because Susan was no real replacement for herself. Because Susan wasn't going to last. Because probably, at this very moment, Eliot was having things out with Susan. An authoritative female. Too authoritative by far. In fact, downright bossy. No, Susan was nothing to worry about. What Susan had said was another matter. What Susan had said had definitely touched a nerve. For it was easy enough to deduce the terms Eliot had used to describe his marriage, to rationalize his breaking free. And "breaking free" was clearly the operative phrase. Galling to think of herself depicted as a clawing, clutching female whose tentacles threatened a man's very existence.

Still not good enough. Not by a long chalk. What did such a depiction prove, after all? Only that he felt guilty about having run out on the obligations he had undertaken. And for the actual running out, which had stripped her of hearth and home and catapulted her into the cold, she had nobody but herself to thank. Out of pride, out of a deep-seated reluctance to be a burden to anyone, she had released Eliot without a protest. More than that, she had bolstered his decision to backtrack and start over again. Would he have had the courage to make the move without her support? Doubtful.

Extremely doubtful. Who didn't, at some time or other, complain about having "sold out"? How often were such complaints acted upon? How often did they merit being acted upon? Getting down to brass tacks, wasn't the whole notion of "selling out" an adolescent shibboleth? People peddled whatever they had to sell wherever they found markets. Most women would have regarded Eliot's desire to resume an academic career as atmospheric castle-building and talked or laughed or even cried him out of it. Wasn't it all too likely that the academic world—always supposing he saw the dissertation through—would provide as much cause for complaint as a career in television publicity had? The difference, of course, would be that she wouldn't be around to serve as the focal point for the complaint.

But facing the fact that she had only herself to blame for being left high and dry, like a beached mariner, wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was facing the fact that she was on that beach to stay. Alone. Oh, she could—without too much difficulty, probably—latch on to Eliot again, in spite of any Susans or Janets or Carols. Latch on, and force him to take responsibility for her again. A few tears, a bit of stooping to the most elementary of feminine wiles, and she could have him back in a snap. Well, perhaps not in a snap. Perhaps it would take a campaign of preying on those all too apparent guilt feelings of his to get her hooks in tight. A crude way of putting it, but no refinement of the phraseology could camouflage the barbarity of the process. A while back, the mere thought of doing such a thing would have made her cringe. Now she could contemplate it with perfect equanimity, knowing that what applied the brake had nothing to do with conscience. Of course she could have Eliot back, if she wanted him. But back for what? It was over.

It was really and truly over. The marriage, the cozy, contented existence as make-believe pioneer woman puttering around in an unending parade of activity—all that had ended the day she was catapulted from the nest. There was no going back. Until now, though, she had succeeded in kidding herself about it. Until now, she hadn't ceased thinking of Eliot as her husband, the mainstay of her life. Until now, she had, deep down in the regions of consciousness unplumbed by reason or common sense, nurtured the hope that someday, somehow, the two of them would come together again, reassemble the pieces of the old life, and go on as before. Absurd. Relationships were like everything else—arising to answer a need, disintegrating when the need no longer existed. Obsolescence was a fact of modern life.

When, much later, Joyce felt up to answering the telephone, she listened with detachment to Eliot's explanation of Susan (a combination of his loneliness and her proximity and definitely nothing serious); to his assurances that whatever the problem, Joyce could count on him, she could always count on him; to his warm invitation to her to make the visit he had shied away from earlier. She told him, in a voice that echoed the detachment she felt, that the problem that had seemed so urgent before didn't seem quite so urgent anymore and she wouldn't be coming to Cambridge this weekend; that no, what she had heard over the wire had not been the reason for changing her mind; that yes, she would be happy to come another time. He refused to leave it at that. Now, all at once, he seemed desperately eager to do something for her. What could he do for her? He begged her to say the word. But there was no word to say. She promised that, should she think of any at any time, she would not hesitate to say it, and at last he let her go.

For a long time she sat beside the telephone without moving, without being able to summon enough energy to light a cigarette. But then, little by little, the ticking of the clock brought her up to the here and now. It was late. Very late. If she didn't bestir herself, get herself tucked into bed for the night, she would never be able to face the
Yardstick
copy room in the morning.

By sheer will power, she got her numb body up from the sofa and over to the closet. She stripped, dropping her clothes on the closet floor, and put on an ivory kaftan. Barefoot, she trudged to the bathroom, bent over the sink, and splashed water on her face. As she straightened up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. The drawn, frozen face with the dark and staring eyes looked like no one she knew.

...

And then poor Aspen wretch, neglected thou

Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lye

A better ghost than I

...

The lines came unbidden, and on their heels came the thought that their author had once preached a sermon in his shroud.

With a shudder, Joyce turned away from her reflection, peeled off the kaftan, and snatched the crimson terry-cloth robe from the door. Damned if she would give way to morbidity. She wasn't the first person to see her bridges ablaze behind her; she wouldn't be the last. If there was no going back, she would have to go forward.

But where was forward?

...

"I'd like to have a little talk with you, Joyce, if you can spare me a few minutes."

Joyce looked up from her copy (an article on the pros and cons of baseball's designated hitter rule) into Margaret Weston's face, at its sternest and horsiest under the green eye-shade.

"Of course, Margaret."

A bony hand beckoned from the sleeve of the man-tailored shirt, and obediently Joyce rose and followed Margaret out of the office, through the typesetting room, and into the corridor. As they marched side by side, in step, over the electric-blue carpeting, Joyce felt the stirrings of alarm. These little talks, always held in private, were an office legend, and so lengthy a trek in quest of privacy could only mean bad news.

It was very bad. Some changes made by a researcher in an article on a Caribbean island—an emendation of a population figure, an addition of a rainfall statistic, and a deletion from the list of flora—had failed to get transferred to the copy destined for the printer. Margaret delivered this information staccato, paused, and went on, slowly, "I consulted the chart, Joyce." Another pause, and, with a slowness that was almost sepulchral, "I discovered that the transfer of those changes from researcher's copy to printer's copy was assigned to you. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

Margaret sighed profoundly and shook her head: it was as though all hope had vanished from the world and nothing could prevent the deluge. "I was afraid of that. The chart is usually accurate. I try very hard to keep it that way. I suppose you know that."

"Yes, of course, Margaret. We all know it."

"I'm glad to hear that." For an instant, the stern face softened. Only for an instant. "Now, Joyce, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that this is a serious matter. You know how important accuracy is around here in general, and when it comes to transferring changes to printer's copy—"

"I do know. I'm sorry, Margaret. I'll try to be more careful."

Margaret frowned. "That's not good enough, Joyce. That's not nearly good enough."

"Well, I'm sorry, Margaret, but what do you expect me to do? Swear on scout's honor that it won't happen again?"