Thy Neighbor's Wife (25 page)

While Bullaro listened cynically, imagining that Williamson had made this speech many times before, Judith seemed impressed with Williamson’s comments, and she interrupted him to say that she
did
feel changed by what had transpired tonight. For one thing, she said, she felt personally vindicated in knowing that her past suspicions about her husband had been well founded and were not merely the hallucinations of the crazy housewife that he had portrayed her as being. She said she also now realized that she had degraded herself by becoming so possessive, by snooping at windows and magnifying her own insecurity, and feeling often like a shrew; this was not her true nature, she asserted, and Williamson nodded in agreement, saying that she had become a victim of “ownership problems,” a common condition in marriage. Judith admitted that for most of her life she had clung too tightly to those around her, possibly because her mother had died when Judith was ten, and she felt threatened by the women her father later dated. But now, with her husband, Judith wanted to overcome this problem, and William
son said that he and his group could help her if she were willing to deal with it openly; and then he made a suggestion: She should return to the Williamsons’ home and actually watch her husband walk off to a bedroom with another woman to make love, and perhaps in this way she would realize that an open act of physical infidelity was less threatening than one that she might suspect and embellish with emotion.

While Judith contemplated Williamson’s suggestion, her husband, who was appalled by it, quickly looked up and said: “We’re not ready for
that!
”

“Speak for yourself!” Barbara abruptly replied.

Finally, after looking somewhat timidly at her husband, Judith said to Williamson: “I’d like to try it.”

Bullaro sat almost stupefied in the chair, amazed by what was happening. He could not believe that this woman to whom he had been married for nearly a decade and thought he understood could suddenly become so sporting and reckless with their private life.

D
URING THE
next few weeks, accompanied by Judith, John Bullaro visited the Williamsons’ home on several occasions, and it was surely the most bizarre period of his life. Even years later, when he reflected upon these erotic adventures, it was difficult for him to believe that they had actually happened, and that he had allowed them to happen, even though he had remained throughout a reluctant participant, or so he preferred to think.

Judith, however, was anything but reluctant, for it had been she who insisted that they accept Williamson’s challenging test of open infidelity, hoping that it just might be the therapy she needed to overcome her lifelong feelings of dependence. She knew she did not like the woman she had become, the suspicious wife in the suburbs, but until the fortunate meeting with Williamson’s group she had never met anyone who seemed willing or able to help her change. While she did not express it in quite this way to her husband, she saw the group as a catalyst in her own self-liberation, and just as her husband had been forced to admit his deceptions, she, too, hoped to unburden herself of certain personal secrets that had caused her much anxiety and guilt. She would like to reveal, for example, that she had also been unfaithful during her marriage; and in the car on the way home from the Williamsons’ that first night she had been strongly tempted to tell
her husband about it. But she had lacked the courage, possibly because her sexual affair was somewhat unusual, involving as it did a young man who was black.

His name was Meadows, and he had been an orderly at the veterans’ hospital in Los Angeles where Judith had worked during her final year in nursing school. Since all the patients were male, the student nurses were accompanied at all times by orderlies, and Meadows, who was tall and attractive, was the first black man Judith had ever become acquainted with. During recreational periods, after the patients had been escorted out to the hospital lawns to play ball, Judith and Meadows would sit on the grass watching and talking; and one day, after their conversations had gradually become more intimate, Meadows suggested that they meet privately after work.

Although Judith at this time had been married for only a year, her sex life with Bullaro had become an uninspired weekend routine, for which she felt largely responsible but could in no way alter; she simply had not enjoyed sex after marriage as she had when she and Bullaro—and her earlier lovers at college—had been surreptitious about it, had sneaked in and out of motels and borrowed apartments, and had cavorted in bedrooms at home while parents and guardians were away or unaware. Sly sex for Judith had been exciting, wondrously wicked, a challenge to her strict religious upbringing; but once sex had become legal with her marriage in February 1958, she gradually began to regard it as just another household chore, like cooking and shopping, and she continued to feel this way about it throughout the years that followed, except for the brief fling she had with Meadows between the winter of 1959 and the spring of 1960.

She and Meadows would go from the hospital to the nearby apartment of another black orderly, usually on days when her husband was working late; and for hours they would indulge in uninhibited lovemaking that gratified and thrilled her—it was absolute pleasure, uncomplicated by the possibility of an emotional commitment, for she knew that she could never marry Meadows; he was to be forever associated with her most unacceptable self,
a dark fantasy that was fulfilled and then, just as impetuously, terminated. Her affair had reached the point where she could no longer face her husband at night, nor pretend she was asleep when he entered the bedroom, nor justify her resistance to his infrequent advances. As Judith recognized her duplicity, she also realized she wanted children, believing that they would bring joy and purpose to her life, and eventually they did.

But during the ensuing years of monogamy, her sexual passion remained subdued, and while she occasionally longed for the kind of illicit romance she had enjoyed with Meadows, she feared that it would jeopardize the security of her marriage and family life, and the mere thought of it accentuated within her the rising insecurity she had begun to feel about her husband’s possible infidelities.

She had never been able to quell her suspicions, and so she had welcomed John Williamson’s suggestion that such feelings were unnecessary and should be eliminated. She was surprised that she had not been more upset by her husband’s confessions during the first evening at the Williamsons’ and she looked forward to this second visit as she sat in the car next to her husband, who seemed rigid and almost haunted behind the wheel.

When the Bullaros arrived, they joined the group in the living room, and Judith recognized each of them from before, with one exception. An attractive, shapely young woman named Gail, who had red hair and dimples, was introduced to the Bullaros, but she avoided looking directly at Judith, causing Judith to wonder if she had been selected as her husband’s bed partner later that evening. Quickly, Judith felt her confidence wane. And at the same time she noticed her husband perk up as Gail smiled at him, and made room for him next to her on the rug and devoted her attention completely to him.

Judith sat on the sofa next to David Schwind and Arlene Gough, sipping wine but inattentive to the conversations around her because of her own anxiety; and then John Williamson walked over and kneeled at her feet. He was tender and solicitous, making her feel that he knew exactly what she was thinking, and when he placed his hand on her ankle and began his pe
culiar massage, she did not resist his touch, but in fact welcomed it. While she was not physically attracted to him she felt drawn to those unusual qualities that made him seem special, mysterious, even indiscreet; and she was also impressed by the influence he obviously had over the people in this room. Without apparent effort he had interlaced their lives with his own; and instead of feeling threatened by him, Judith sensed from the way he spoke that he was sincerely concerned with her welfare and personal growth. When he asked if she now felt strong enough to test the overpossessiveness that she had talked about the last time, she hesitated for a moment, and then, wanting his approval, replied firmly that she was.

Soon Williamson waved for silence in the room, and, after explaining to the group that Judith Bullaro now sought their cooperation in coping with her ownership problems, he turned toward Gail and asked if she would escort John Bullaro into one of the bedrooms. Gail immediately stood and extended her hand to Bullaro, who became self-conscious as everyone turned toward him, including Judith. Although Judith nodded her head, reaffirming her approval, he felt his heart flutter and knees weaken as he climbed to his feet. But as he followed Gail toward the bedroom, watching her hips move, he eagerly anticipated being in bed with her.

She led him into a room that Bullaro had not seen before, faintly lighted by a small lamp on the bureau. After she had closed the door, she stood motionless at the side of the bed for a moment as if suddenly undecided and reluctant, and Bullaro feared that this visit to the bedroom might merely be Williamson’s way of testing Judith’s jealousy without actual sex taking place. But then Gail pulled back the bedspread and began to unbutton her blouse, remarking at the same time on how strange she felt: Until a few years ago, she said, she had been a twenty-seven-year-old virgin in the Midwest, a victim of her Irish-Catholic background; but now, as she unhinged her brassiere, she remarked on the fact that she was not only about to go to bed for the first time with a married man, but his wife was sitting no more than forty feet away in the next room!

Bullaro smiled and tried to think of an appropriate comment, but as he undressed he remained silent, watching with feverish desire as she climbed nude into the bed. Soon he was lying next to her, kissing her softly, stroking her large breasts and red pubic hair, and gradually becoming aware that though she remained motionless on the bed she was beginning to glisten with perspiration. All at once she seemed shy, nervous, and unknowing; yielding but unresponsive. Her eyes were closed, as if not wanting to witness what was happening. Though she lightly returned his kisses, she did not touch him with her hands. He wondered how a woman so unaggressive could become involved with Williamson’s group, and then it occurred to him that perhaps she, like Judith, was now undergoing some private test—Williamson, the sexual problem-solver, might be helping Gail to overcome frigidity, and Bullaro was her surrogate. He whispered in her ear, asking if she was all right, and she nodded with her eyes still closed. But when after considerable difficulty he finally penetrated her, Gail suddenly came alive under him, bolted forward to meet him, wrapped her legs around him and began to cry out, softly at first and then louder and louder as he accelerated his thrusting until she was almost screaming, and Bullaro wished that he could somehow silence her. Having never before made love to a noisy woman, he did not know how to react, what to say, what to do except to continue his thrusting and try not to think about the people gathered in the living room who surely could hear.

Then, astonishingly, Bullaro heard high, hysterical howling coming from the living room, and he recognized the voice as Judith’s. He tried to block out her cries and drive himself on to orgasm, but he was unnerved by this conflicting counterpoint: Gail’s ecstatic sighs and moans, and Judith’s desolate wailing and shrieking; and quickly he lost his erection.

Gail opened her eyes, saying nothing. He lowered himself to his elbows and buried his perspiring face into the pillow. For several moments they both lay motionless and listened as the crying in the living room eventually subsided, and Judith was comforted by other voices. Then the bedroom door slowly opened. It was
Arlene Gough, whispering that everything was all right. After briefly watching them lying in bed, Arlene came in and sat next to them and, with a smile, asked if they wanted a threesome. Bullaro thanked her, but shook his head, saying that a twosome was all he could handle tonight.

When Arlene had gone, Bullaro was able to revive his erection and complete the lovemaking with Gail, though it was not nearly so vigorous as it had been. They both felt the inhibiting presence, if no longer the anguished sounds, of Judith; and while they were getting dressed, Bullaro again heard Judith’s voice, though now she clearly was no longer distraught—she was laughing; and when Bullaro opened the door he saw her sitting on a chair close to Williamson seeming very comfortable and contented.

Just Judith and John Williamson were in the room, the others having apparently gone off to other bedrooms, and Judith appeared to be so interested in Williamson that she did not notice her husband until he leaned down to kiss her. She smiled but did not get up; and while she assured him that everything was fine, she gave the impression that she wished to be alone with Williamson. As Bullaro moved away and rejoined Gail, he felt for the first time in his marriage that Judith was no longer his.

This feeling persisted in the car as they drove home, and it continued for the rest of the week. Though she was cheerful and dutiful around the house, and kindly toward the children, she seemed preoccupied with her private thoughts, and at night instead of going to bed with him she stayed up late reading the books Williamson had loaned her by Alan Watts, Philip Wylie, and J. Krishnamurti. One night she insisted on going alone to the Williamsons’, and when she returned at three o’clock in the morning she seemed charged with energy and a sense of self-discovery, and though he had waited up for her, wanting to talk, she pleaded that she be left alone so that she could sit at the desk and compose the poetry she felt stirring within her.

Having overcome her possessiveness, Judith now seemed unpossessible; and the more distant she became, the more desperate he was to reclaim her. Suddenly and ironically, she was becoming the kind of woman he had long idealized in his fantasies
—the daring, carefree woman he had searched for while bicycling through Venice Beach; the impulsive, sexually liberated woman best personified by the art teacher who had once occupied the rear apartment on La Peer.

Since it was apparent that Judith now envisioned Williamson’s group as a source of her stability and enlightenment, Bullaro knew that he, too, had to remain closely involved with the group; and when on the following day she suggested that they join the Williamsons for a weekend at Big Bear Lake, he reluctantly agreed, fearing that if he did not she would go with them anyway, perhaps accompanied by another man.

During the eighty-mile ride in the Williamsons’ car on Friday night, Bullaro sat in the back holding Judith’s hand and hoping that a leisurely weekend would restore some harmony and unity to their relationship. The conversation between the four of them in the car was relaxed and friendly, and after dinner the Williamsons brought wine back to the cabin, and, until midnight, they all sat in front of the fireplace exchanging stories about their youth.

Bullaro did most of the talking because the Williamsons, who seemed very interested in what he was saying, asked several questions; and as he continued to reminisce and drink wine, he gradually began to describe things he had never discussed before. He spoke of his anti-Semitic neighborhood in Chicago and how he had feared being exposed as half-Jewish, and he remembered the many injuries he had sustained on the football field while trying to escape the unathletic image often associated with being, Jewish. He remembered his conflicts with his Jewish mother, his uncomfortable visits to Christian churches, and the many lies he told around the neighborhood in the hope of gaining greater social acceptance, most of which now caused him to cringe with embarrassment and self-loathing; but he also felt much pity and compassion for the lonely boy he had been—and suddenly, as the Williamsons and Judith waited for him to continue, he began to tremble. He then stood and walked into the bedroom.

Barbara followed him, closing the bedroom door behind her. She saw tears in his eyes and offered him a handkerchief and put
her arms around him. As he sat silently on the bed, his head lowered, she kissed him and soothed him with soft words, and began unbuttoning his shirt.