Eleven (13 page)

“I suspect, of course,” he began, “that your husband is rebuilding a damaged ego through his physical culture regime. His unconcious reasoning is that having failed in other things—his business, socially perhaps, losing his property in Kentucky, you say, not being as good
a provider as he would like to be—he can compensate by being strong physically.”

Mrs. Afton looked off and her eyes widened. Dr. Bauer had seen them widen before when he challenged her, when she tried to recollect something, and he had seen them narrow suddenly when something amused her, with a flirtatiousness of youth still sparkling through the curved brown lashes. Now the tilt of her head emphasized the wide cheekbones, the narrower forehead, the softly pointed chin—a motherly face, though she had no children. Finally, very dubiously, she replied, “I suppose that might be logical.”

“But you don’t agree?”

“Not entirely, at any rate.” She lifted her head again. “I don’t think my husband considers himself quite a failure. We still live very comfortably, you know.”

“Yes, of course.”

She looked at the electric clock whose second hand swept away silently at the precious forty-five minutes. Her knees parted a little as she leaned forward, and her calves, like an ornamental base, curved symmetrically down to her slender ankles that she kept close together. “You can’t suggest anything that would help me to moderate his—his routine, Dr. Bauer?”

“There’s not the remotest chance he might be persuaded to see me?”

“I’m afraid not. I told you how he felt about doctors. He says they can tinker with him once he’s dead, but he’s through with them for the rest of his life. Oh, I don’t think I told you that he sold his body to a medical school.” She smiled again, but he saw a twitch of
shame or of anger in the smile. “He did that about six months ago. I thought you might be interested.”

“Yes.”

She went on with the least increase of importunity, “I do think if you could simply see him for a moment—I mean, if he didn’t know who you were, I’m sure you’d be able to learn so much more than I could ever tell you.”

Dr. Bauer sighed. “You see, whatever I could tell you even then would be only guesswork. From you or even from seeing your husband for a few moments, I cannot learn the facts that in the first place caused his obsession with athletics. I might advise you to help him build back what he has lost, his social contacts, his hobbies and so on. But I’m sure you have tried already.”

Mrs. Afton conveyed with an uncertain nod that she had tried.

“And still, psychologically, that would be only correcting the surface.”

She said nothing. Her lips tightened at the corners, and she looked off at the four bright yellow echelons the venetian blinds made in a corner of the room. And despite the eagerness of her posture, there was an air of hopelessness now that made Dr. Bauer drop his eyes to the capped fountain pen that he rolled under one finger on his desk.

“Still, I’d be so grateful if you’d just try to see him, even if it’s only across the lobby of our hotel. Then I’d feel that whatever you said about him was more definite.”

Whatever I say is definite, he thought and abandoned it, his mind going on to what he must say next, that there was nothing for her to do but go to a domestic relations court. The court would probably advise that her husband be taken away for treatment, and Mrs.
Afton, he knew, would suffer a thousand times more than when he had suggested that her husband had been a failure. She still loved her husband, and divorce was not in her mind, she had said, or even a short separation. Not only still loved him, but was proud of him, Dr. Bauer realized. Then suddenly it occurred to him that seeing her husband, glimpsing him, might be the final gesture of courtesy he had been groping for. After he had seen him, he would feel that he had made all the effort possible for him to make.

“I can try it,” he said at last.

“Thank you. I’m sure it will help. I know it will.” She smiled and sat up taller. She shook her head at the cigarette that Dr. Bauer extended. “I’ll tell you something else that happened,” she began, and he felt her gratitude radiating toward him. “I was to see you at two-thirty Monday, you know, so to get away alone, I told Thomas I was to meet Mrs. Hatfield—my oldest friend at the hotel—at two-thirty at Lord and Taylor’s. Well, I was having lunch in the hotel dining-room by myself at two o’clock, when Thomas came in unexpectedly. We never lunch together, because he goes to a salad bar on Madison Avenue. And there I was having lobster Newburg, which Thomas thinks is the nearest thing to suicide, anyway. Lobster Newburg is a speciality of the hotel on Mondays, and I always order it for lunch. Well, I’d just told Thomas I was to meet Mrs. Hatfield at two-thirty, when Mrs. Hatfield herself came into the dining-room. She’s nearsighted and didn’t see us, but my husband saw her as well as I. She sat down at a table and ordered her lunch and obviously she was going to stay there an hour. Thomas just sat opposite me without a word, knowing I’d lied. He’s like that sometimes. Then it
all comes out at some other time when I’m least expecting it.” She stopped, breathing quickly.

“And it came out—when?” Dr. Bauer prompted.

“Yesterday afternoon. He knew positively then that I’d gone to lunch with Mrs. Hatfield, because she came upstairs to fetch me. We had lunch with a couple of our friends at the Algonquin. When I came home at about three, Thomas was in a temper and accused me of having gone to see a picture both afternoons, though clearly there hadn’t been time to go to a picture after lunch yesterday afternoon.”

“He doesn’t like you to go to films?”

She shook her head, laughing, a tolerant laugh that was almost gay. “The bad air, you know. He thinks all theaters should be torn down. Oh, dear, he is funny sometimes! And he thinks the pictures I like are the lowest form of entertainment. I like a good musical comedy now and then, I must say, and I go when I please.”

Dr. Bauer was sure she did not. “And what else did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t say much more, but he threw his gold watch down. It was such a petulant gesture for him, I could hardly believe my eyes.”

She looked at him as if expecting some reaction, then opened her handbag and brought up a gold watch, wrapped its chain once around her forefinger as if to display it to best advantage. As the watch turned, Dr. Bauer saw a monogram of interlocked initials on its back.

“It’s the watch I gave him the first year we were married. I’m old-fashioned, I suppose, but I like a man to carry a big pocket-watch. By a miracle, it’s still running. I’m just taking it now to have a new crystal put in. I simply picked up the watch without saying anything
to him, and he put on his coat and went out for his usual afternoon walk. He walks from three till five-thirty or so every day, then comes home and showers—a cold shower—before we go out to dinner together, unless it’s one of his evenings with Major Sterns. I told you Major Sterns was Thomas’s best friend. They play pinochle or chess together several evenings a week.—Could you possibly see my husband this week, Dr. Bauer?”

“I think I can arrange it for Friday noon, Mrs. Afton,” he said. He worked at a clinic Friday afternoons, and he could stop by the hotel just before. “Shall I call you Friday morning? We’ll make our plans then. They’re always better made quickly.”

She got up when he did, smiling, erect. “All right. I’ll expect your call then. Good day, Dr. Bauer. I feel ever so much better. But I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my time by two minutes.”

He waved his hand protestingly, and held the door open for her. In a moment, she was gone, all but the scent of her cologne that faintly lingered as he stood by his closed door, facing the dusk that had come at the window.

When Dr. Bauer arrived at his office the next morning at nine, Mrs. Afton had already called twice. She wanted him to call her immediately, his secretary told him, and he meant to as soon as he had hung up his hat, but his telephone buzzed first.

“Can you come this morning?” Mrs. Afton asked.

The tremor of fear in her voice alerted him. “I’m sure I can, Mrs. Afton. What has happened?”

“He knows I’ve been seeing you about him. Seeing someone I mean. He accused me of it outright this morning, just after he came
back from his morning walk—as if he’d discovered it out of thin air. He accused me of being disloyal to him and packed his suitcases and said he was leaving. He’s out now—not with the suitcases, they’re still here, so I know he’s just walking. He’ll probably be back by ten or so. Could you possibly come now?”

“Is he in a violent temper? Has he struck you?”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that. But I know it’s the end. I know it can’t go on after this.”

Dr. Bauer calculated how many appointments he would have to cancel. His ten-fifteen appointment, and possibly his eleven. “Can you be in the lobby at ten-fifteen?”

“Oh, certainly, Dr. Bauer!”

He found it hard to concentrate in his nine-fifteen consultation, and remembering Mrs. Afton’s voice, he wished he had started off immediately for her hotel. Whatever the circumstances, Mrs. Afton had engaged his services, and he was therefore responsible for her.

In a taxi at ten o’clock, he lighted a cigarette and sat motionless, unable to look at the newspaper he had brought with him. Mid-morning of a day in mid-June, he thought, and while he was borne passively in a taxi that continually turned corners and met red lights, Mrs. Thomas Bainbridge Afton was at the crisis of more than twenty-five years of marriage. And of what use would he be? To call for help in case of violence, and to utter the usual phrases of comfort, of advice, if her husband had come and gone with his suitcases. It was the end of the gracious, pleasant life of Mrs. Afton, who without her husband would never be quite so happy again with her friends. He could hear the remarks she would have made to them: “Thomas has his peculiarities . . . He has his little fads.” And finally, after
embarrassments, compromises, to herself: “He is impossible.” Yet through pride or breeding or duty, she had maintained, along with her sense of humor, the look of being happily married. “Thomas is an ideal husband—
was
. . .”

A swerve of the taxi interrupted his thoughts. They had stopped in the middle of a block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Forties, at a hotel smaller and shabbier than he had anticipated, a narrow, tucked-away building that he supposed was filled with middle-aged people like the Aftons, residents of a decade and more.

Mrs. Afton walked quickly toward him across the black and white tile floor, and her tense face broke into a smile of welcome. She wiped a handkerchief across her palm and extended her hand. “How good of you to come, Dr. Bauer! He’s come back and he’s upstairs now. I thought I might introduce you as a friend of a friend of mine—Mr. Lanuxe of Charleston. I could say you’ve just stopped by for a moment before you have to catch a train.”

“As you like.” He followed her toward the elevator, relieved to find her in command of herself.

They entered a tiny, rattling elevator manned by an aged Negro, and were silent as the elevator climbed slowly. Close to her now, Dr. Bauer could see traces of grey in her light brown hair, and could hear her overfast breathing. The handkerchief was tightly clenched in one hand.

“It’s this way.”

They went along a darkish corridor, down a couple of steps to a different level, and stopped at a tall door.

“I’m sure he’s in his own room, but I always knock,” she whispered. Then she opened the door. “This is the living-room.”

Dr. Bauer had unconsciously stuffed his newspaper into his jacket pocket so his hands would be free. Now he found himself in an empty, rather depressing room containing hotel furniture, a few books, a brass chandelier that was a spray of former gas pipes, and an undersized black fireplace.

“He’s in here,” she said, going toward another door. “Thomas?” She opened the door cautiously.

There was no answer.

“He isn’t in?” Dr. Bauer asked.

Mrs. Afton seemed embarrassed for a moment. “He must have stepped out again. But you can come in meanwhile and see what I’ve been talking to you about. This is his gymnasium, as he calls it.”

Dr. Bauer entered a room about half the size of the living-room, and much dimmer, since it had only one fire-escape window. It took him a moment to make out the odd shapes lying on the floor and hanging from the ceiling. There was an ordinary punching bag, a large cylindrical sandbag for tackling or punching, an exercise horse with handgrips, and a couple of basketballs on the floor. He picked up a boxing glove from the floor and the other came with it, fastened by its laces.

“And he has another machine for rowing. It’s in the closet there,” Mrs. Afton said.

“Can we have more light?”

“Oh, of course.” She pulled a cord and a bare lightbulb came on at the ceiling. “Any other day, he’d be right here now. I’m so sorry. I’m sure he’ll be back any minute.”

The laces of the boxing gloves, Dr. Bauer saw, were crisp and white, threading only the first eyelets, as if they had never been
undone. Under the light now, all the equipment looked brand-new. The exercise horse was dusty, but its leather bore no sign of wear. He frowned at the tan-colored sandbag only a few inches from his eyes. On the side nearest him, a diamond-shaped paper label was still pasted. Certainly none of the equipment had been used. It was such a surprise to him, he could not at first realize what it meant.

“And there’s the mirror.” She pointed to a tall mirror resting on the floor but quite upright against a wall. She chuckled. “He’s eternally in front of that.”

Dr. Bauer nodded. Despite her smile, he saw more anxiety in her face than on the afternoon of their first interview, an anxiety that made ugly, tortured ridges of her thin eyebrows. Her hands shook as she picked up a measuring tape and began to roll it neatly around two fingers, awaiting trustfully some comment from him.

“Perhaps I should wait in the lobby,” Dr. Bauer murmured.

“All right. I’ll call down and have you paged when he comes in. He always uses the stairs. I suppose that’s how we missed him when he went out.”