Contrary Pleasure (24 page)

She had wept later. Not from any idea that the chance had passed her by.
She knew she would marry. But the gifts were less. They had been lessened by
the morose naval officer and by Mike and by the years. And so the bargain she
could make would be less good and someone as yet unknown had been cheated in a
way in which she had not intended to cheat him.

Remembering the tears, with Robbie asleep there beside her on this sunny
morning, she smiled in a rueful way at the Susan of those first weeks in Mexico
City. Because not long after that she had met Robbie. To walk hand in hand with
him down Juarez and into the park across from the Del Prado. To drive in that
brisk little MG that belonged to his Chief of Mission out to the Plaza de
Toros
on Sunday afternoons at four for the drinking of
manzanilla
, the whistles when the torero danced fearfully
away. To have dinner at Jena, or El
Parador
, or Las
Casuelas
with its raucous music on the absurdly tiny
balcony over the tables. To eat, with a sense of danger and daring, the freshly
opened oysters from Vera Cruz at the little restaurant in the public market. To
walk and talk about everything under the sun. And they rode the hills in the
little car and picnicked at high places and smelled the wood smoke made by the charcoal
men and were in love. She could not tire of looking at him. The good brow and
the good jaw and the darkness. His apartment was next to that of his Chief of
Mission so they could not go there. And they could not use her apartment. And a
Mike-born caution made her squelch so firmly his first tentative suggestion
about a weekend at the Hotel Victoria in Taxco that he made no such suggestion
again. Yet she felt that even had she accepted, they would still have been
married. But it was a point that she was glad that she had not tested, even if
it did seem to give marriage the flavor of an asking price.

They exchanged confidences. She knew he was not such a fool as to think
her a virginal twenty-five. He told her of a silly-sounding affair in New York,
and a rather grotesque-sounding intrigue of long ago. She suspected more but
rested content with that. And told him of Mike, making it longer ago as it had
been too recent, changing his name, leaving his character relatively intact,
and killing him off in a satisfactorily heroic way in the war. Even watered
down, it turned him pale with physical jealousy.

He told her of his family. She told him of hers, and told him the entire
truth of it, so that he wept at the vision of the quick, pale, light-stepping
girl in that Cleveland house of acid things, because more than she meant to
tell of it had gotten into her voice, more than she had ever told anyone.

Now warmly, safely, and excitedly married. More than the bald word.
Married to Robbie—which gave a different impact to the word. Made it more than
that goal so long sought. More than what had either been bargained for or,
perhaps, deserved.

Tomorrow she would meet the family and that would be a serious and
important thing.

She turned in a stealthy way so that she could watch him asleep. It gave
her a vague feeling of guilt to watch him sleeping, and gave her pleasure.

Yes, this was the giving up of the crisp and brisk Miss Walton. And she
was realist enough to know that many aspects of that life would be missed. Yet,
as she had begun to understand Robbie, begun to see what he was, the sort of
person he was, she detected that taint of weakness in him. It did not make her
love him less. Rather love him more because she knew that only through his
weakness could there be for her an outlet for her own executive and
administrative talents, her efficiency, her subtlety, her knack of gentle
guidance. Were he a strong and determined and self-sufficient man, marriage
would be less satisfying. To be so objective as to be almost cruel to Robbie,
she could characterize him as a large and amiable and decorative man who had
been reasonably successful in his chosen field merely because of his impeccable
background, knack of light conversation, willingness to take orders, and lack
of any dangerously observable ambition. He was a good aide.

Perhaps, as she had been looking for him, he had been looking for her.
Looking in foreign places. And now, having found her, wished to carry her back
proudly to the place from whence he had come. It would, she knew, be a good
life for them. He was confident that his older brother, his half-brother, would
take him into the family firm. There would be a house to build, his career to
guide, a social stature to attain, children to have. A good warm safe life, and
in this home there would be laughter and there would be love and the ready
evidence of love. It would be the home she had made believe about those times
when they used to lock her in her room.

His weakness was not in any way offensive, because he was not aware of
it. He believed in his own strength of purpose because he had nothing to
measure it against. Ruthless people and ruthless actions puzzled and annoyed
him. He was sure of his place in the world and thus was not easy to hurt or
disconcert. She knew that she would maintain his own illusions for him so long
as they both should live. She seemed to amuse him when she seemed slightly
vague. And he obviously liked to have her ask him questions. Very well. The
role she accepted was the role he wanted.

She lay watching him and marveled at the length of his eyelashes. His
night-grown beard bristled in delightful maleness. There was a little scar at
the corner of his mouth. She had never noticed it before. She would ask him
what caused it. There was a nostril hair which fluttered at each exhalation. A
pockmark over his right brow. Several enlarged pores at the base of his nose.
All the mysteries of maleness here sleeping beside her while she watched and
thought of many things. And smiled at him. And now stopped thinking of things
with that alert and ready mind and began to think with the tissues and fibers
of her body. Began the thoughts of his hands and of the breadth of his smooth
back and of the strength of his long thighs, and felt then the good tingling of
herself, the tiny
glowings
, the muted
throat-tightening inner
shiftings
. And leaned over
and pressed her lips against his sleeping ones, her eyes open so that she saw
his eyes flash wide open and then his lips came alive under hers, and his eyes
narrowed from their surprise, crinkling a bit, and she whispered good morning
against his mouth as his hands found her and were good against her.

When George
Furmon
awoke on Friday morning, he was immediately aware that something important had happened
the night before, and before he remembered what it had been, he knew that it
had been important and troublesome and not flattering. He remembered then and
rolled over heavily in his bed and saw that she was not yet up, was in fact
sleeping. She faced him, her mouth grave and still and her eyes shadowed in
sleep, looking younger than she had any right to look, and looking like a
stranger, which he felt was obscurely unfair. Her arm was bare, elbow bent, the
hand made into a loose fist, which rested near her chin.

The clock was on the night table between their beds. It faced her. He
reached out and turned it around and saw that the alarm would go off in another
ten minutes. He reached out cautiously a second time and turned the alarm off.
And frowned at her.

It had been a damn funny evening. She had acted a bit strange when he had
come home. He kept catching her staring at him. Fourteen years of marriage had
generated considerable caution and he made a brief survey of his conscience and
began to feel a bit indignant because his conscience was quite clear. After
Mrs. Bailey had been taken down to the village and after Sandy was asleep,
Alice began to make frequent trips to the kitchen, coming back each time with
an alarmingly potent-looking highball. That was totally unlike her. By nine
o’clock she had definitely started to come apart. Her face had fallen into a
new pattern, a looseness.

He threw his magazine aside and said, “What the hell are you trying to do
to yourself?”

“Courage. That’s what. Courage out of a bottle, dear.”

“Courage for what?”

“Con… confession.”

Sharp alarm pierced him and faded quickly as he quieted his own
unreasonable fear and managed a smile. “What have you been up to, girl?”

She laughed and it was a laugh that was not like her. “It’s what I
haven’t been up to. Isn’t that funny. A sin of
omiss
…
omission.”

“Okay,” he said patiently. “What haven’t you done?”

“Don’t look at me. Look other way, dear. Then let me talk and talk.”

She rambled on for a long time. Her voice was blurred, and sometimes the
sentences didn’t end at all. He looked rigidly at the wall. Though her words
were blurred, there was no mistaking her meaning. Frigidity. Pretense. All
these years. And the feeling that he had gone away from her somehow. Not
sharing any significant part of his life with her. Restlessness. Walks. And
today something confused about seeing a young farmer and his wife. He couldn’t
quite get that part of it. But whatever it was she saw, or hadn’t seen, had
given her a new look at herself, or something like that, and now maybe for the
first time she was ready to be a part of the physical side of marriage, but she
couldn’t be if she didn’t have his help and his patience, and please help her,
and please let her share more of his life. Rambling and rambling into a lot of
incoherence that ended in tears. It wasn’t a damn bit like Alice. My God, she
even looked sort of messy. And it was an awful blow to a man’s pride to find
out that all these years, all these fourteen lousy years she had just been
enduring him and pretending to like it just to make him feel okay about doing
it. A hell of a blow to your pride. Like being told you were impotent or
something.

And so he had taken her up to bed, and it had been the damnedest situation
imaginable. Such a long drawn-out business. And her crying again and saying it
was no use, she couldn’t, she couldn’t and it was a mistake to tell him and
all. But him persisting, almost out of some sort of dull and obstinate anger,
fraying his own nerves, exhausting himself, but being gentle and patient and
not letting her quit until finally, to his enormous relief, all the rising
shuddering tension went out of her unmistakably, and she made a strange cry
that he had never heard from her before. And thanked him and thanked him in a
dull, blurred voice making him feel embarrassed and strange, and then cried
softly for a short time, crying her way into sleep.

The damnedest night he’d ever spent. A man didn’t know where the hell he
was. Stranger still when you thought that after fourteen years of marriage this
was the first actual sexual experience she had had. Ridiculous. And he wished
he didn’t feel like such a damned fool about it.

Now there was this other stuff, about shutting her out of his life. He
wondered why he should have the crazy feeling that he’d shut both of them out
of his life. Man couldn’t shut himself out of his own life, could he?

He got up with bearlike stealth and lumbered into the bathroom. He patted
his belly disapprovingly. Got to get some of this lard off. Three months over
forty. Too young for all this slob. Tough on the heart. Shortens your life. And
can’t be so damn appetizing for her to have to look at all this fat gut. That
was an entirely new thought and it shocked him a little. My God, George,
instead of just talking about it to yourself every morning, why don’t you
do
something about it. Get along without all those calories that come in a bottle
for a while. Why spend your evenings in a fat stupor? That can’t be much fun for
her either. God knows she was no prize after the sixth drink last night. You
any different? Any better?

It was hard to realize that it was Alice in there still sleeping. You
adjust to one woman and then find out you have a different one to deal with. Had
her all sized up. Good-looking girl you could take anywhere. [Don’t take her
out much, though.] Not a hell of a lot of sparkle to her but nice manners. A
little on the cool-acting side. Never thought of her as frigid. Just not too
eager for a romp. Sure she disapproved of a lot of things, but you were doing
all right by her and the kids. Where’s the complaint?

You know damn well where it is, George.

Funny that it should seem like it was the first time, last night, that
either of them had really talked for years and years.

And that wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. To either of them. They used to
talk. Good talk. Lots of it. Fun, too.

After his shower, when he went back into the bedroom, she was in her robe
and sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair. She gave him a quick
guilty glance and her face turned pink and she got up quickly and came to him
and hid her face against his chest.

“Oh, George, I’m so ashamed.”

“No need to be.”

“I got awful messy, I know. But… I had to or I couldn’t say what I had to
say.”

“I’m glad you said it. You should have said it a long time ago.”

“I’ve cheated both of us, George. I… love you.”

“I love you too, Alice.”

“I’m saying the word a different way. I really love you.”

“Fourteen years married and we start the morning like this?”

She looked up at him, her face still red. “One day married, George. If
you want to help me pretend.”

“I want to. It’s a hell of a lot of time wasted, though.”

“Not wasted, really. Maybe it couldn’t have happened before. But…” She
hid her face against him again. “… easier next time. I feel… well, like
Christmas morning and looking under the tree.”

“For gosh sakes!”

“Don’t you
dare
laugh at me, George. Don’t you
dare!”