Family Happiness (8 page)

Lincoln smoked while he worked—Polly loved to watch him. He smoked crooked little cheroots that made his clothes smell spicy. The thought of that smell sent a shiver through her. It was on his skin as well, especially on his neck. She often thought that she was in thrall to that combination of cigar smoke and the sweetness of Lincoln's flesh. Was it right only to want someone in the small doses Lincoln required? Every now and again he said he wanted to pry her loose, but if he did she would no longer be the Polly who made his present life possible for him. She and Lincoln were not, she knew, each other's destiny, but only their present destination. The apartment was quiet when Polly got home. She hung her coat in the hall closet. Her first thought was that Henry and the children had died as God's punishment on her for committing adultery with Lincoln. Her second thought was that Henry, who was so pressed, tired, and work obsessed, had decided that Polly was not much use and had taken the children and moved out—as just punishment from God for having a love affair with Lincoln.

Henry was working at the desk in his study. The children were on the floor playing Silent Cows and Hedgehogs. Henry had invented this form of the game so that the children could play near him while he worked. Whoever made one sound had to forfeit a cow or a hedgehog, while a person who made no sound got a fifty-cent piece.

Pete and Dee-Dee were fierce. They uttered not one peep, not even when Polly appeared. They presented themselves to her, their lips pressed firmly together.

“How did it go, Pol?” said Henry from his desk.

“All right,” said Polly. “May the children speak?”

“You may speak,” said Henry.

“Mommy, Uncle Henry said bad words in the park,” Pete said.

“You snitch,” said Dee-Dee. “You said bad words, too.”

“You may now not speak,” Polly said. At this the children pressed their lips together again. “Darlings, take the cows and hedgehogs out of here and go look over your homework and then get washed for dinner.”

The children trooped out.

“Henry,” Polly said, “are you going to turn around and kiss me hello?”

“I am. Just a sec.”

Polly wondered if other women were as familiar with the sight of their husbands' backs. When she thought of Henry these days she thought of him sitting at his desk late at night, hunched over a large pile of papers. She could see that he was making notes, and he did not turn around and kiss her. Instead, she put her arm around his shoulder and kissed his neck. He patted her absently.

“I'm so lonely,” she said.

“I am, too,” said Henry. “Come on. Let's go make the salad dressing.”

Henry's Sunday chores were to make the salad dressing and open the half-bottle of red wine he and Polly shared on Sunday night. On most nights Polly had dinner with the children in the kitchen, and dinner later with Henry in the dining room. Henry did not like eating at the kitchen table, except on Sundays.

The food Polly liked best was nursery food. She fed her children shepherd's pie, mashed potatoes, deviled chicken, vegetable fritters, hush puppies, Queen of Puddings, and apple crisp. Henry admired a more complicated cuisine. He liked fresh ham stuffed with pistachios, carpetbagger steak, and veal, ham and egg pie, all of which Polly was happy to provide. Polly loved to cook, and she loved a dinner party, but most of all she loved dinner in the kitchen with her children, especially when the weather was cold or messy, or when Henry was away. Then her children could be as silly as they liked, and Polly did not have to worry about preparing a second meal.

The family sat at the kitchen table eating veal stew. The events of the afternoon were recounted. Pete's kite had gone up very high, but Uncle Henry's kite had been a dud, which made him say any number of bad things.

“Should I say what they were?” Pete asked with a terrible gleam in his eye.

“Just because your uncle Henry behaves like a chimpanzee does not mean that you have to behave like a chimpanzee,” Polly said.

“Chimpanzees behave like beautiful animals,” said Dee-Dee. “Uncle Henry does not behave like a beautiful animal. It isn't fair to the chimpanzee to say that Uncle Henry behaves like one.”

“Aunt Andreya hit him on the head,” said Dee-Dee. “Then she hit Kirby on the head.”

“Kirby is like a chimpanzee,” Pete said.

“That isn't fair to the chimpanzee,” said Dee-Dee.

“It is so.”

“It is not.”

“Enough, you two,” Polly said. On Sunday evenings her children were tired and fretful. When their voices began to climb the scale, she knew it was time to give them a bath and put them to bed. Polly felt tired and fretful, too. Her heart was divided and she was only half present. Henry cleared the table while Polly gave the children their baths. They were so tired they did not demand their usual story, but neither would go to sleep until they had been kissed by both Polly and Henry.

“You look a little peaked, Polly,” Henry said.

“I'm terribly tired,” said Polly.

“Go take a bath,” Henry said. “Soak a while. Run it really hot. I'll be up late tonight: I've got a pile of work to go through.”

In her bath Polly felt so tired that she thought she might collapse and drown. Her bones hurt; the insides of her bones hurt. Polly had been trained to explain this sort of thing away by thinking that she was overtired, and then taking a very hot bath and going to bed early.

She did not have the luxury of getting sick—mothers of young children never did—but she was an excellent nursemaid when anyone else got sick. Wendy had trained her well. Her children were allowed extra pillows, given hot milk and honey or hot lemonade, were allowed to have breakfast on a tray and their toast cut up into pieces the size of postage stamps. These were the treats Polly had been given as a child. As a teen-ager she had been an excellent nursemaid to Wendy, who liked to go into an occasional decline and have her meals brought to her in bed. Now, when Henry had his yearly head cold, she waited on him as well. No one asked her to do this, but it cheered her. Polly liked to make order out of chaos, to tidy up the mess, to give the sick crisp fresh sheets and a nourishing and savory meal.

But she was not overtired. The fact that she was having a love affair was a clear message: she had been troubled for a long time and had never admitted it and it had worn her down. She had labored cheerfully and without complaint. She came from a legal family and knew as much about Henry's work as someone who was not a lawyer could. She had felt it right to understand his work. For years she had listened and discussed the very things that took Henry away from her, and she had done it without a thought. She had never felt justifiably angry about anything, and now that repression had come back to bite her. She did not know much about other people's marriages. She had instead the example of her parents, whom she had never heard quarrel, bicker or snap, or say a cross word about each other. Polly loved Henry with all her heart, but that seemed not to be enough to prevent her from feeling hurt and angry. She had lost her stamina. She had given in. She could not imagine either of her parents angry or hurt; thus she felt she had fallen from grace.

Henry's sister, Eva, had been Polly's roommate at college; she had introduced Polly and Henry. The first time she met him Polly had said to herself: I want to marry that man, or someone like him. A few years later they found themselves at the same party. Henry was a young associate at his firm, and Polly was teaching reading. Their courtship was open and uncomplicated: they knew without a doubt that they would marry, and they were thrilled to have found each other. Both felt that marriage was a step into the adult world. It made sense in every way. Their families were delighted. Her best friend would become her sister-in-law. All this gave Polly immense security in love.

She and Henry set about replicating the comfort and success of their parents' lives. Polly had never been so happy. She was madly in love with Henry, and if she felt that she never quite got enough of him, that was the consequence of being married to a rising young lawyer who sometimes had to work five nights a week, or was called away, or who was often so tired he did not care what he was being given for supper. A good wife's job was to create a haven in a heartless world, Polly knew, and to compensate men with understanding and love for the perils of their lives. Over the years the feeling that for all she gave she only came second to work and children grew within her until one morning she had woken up and pitched herself into Lincoln's arms. His attention, no matter how minimal, made her realize that her connection to Henry, no matter how profound, was not enough. She did not approve of the way she felt. After all, Henry's commitment to her was central, whereas Lincoln could only stand to have her around for several hours at a time. That she craved so much attention mortified her, but she could not fight it. She was too starved for it.

Once in bed, she was too tired to read, too tired to sleep. She left Henry's night-table lamp on, covered with a scarf. In the glowing darkness she let her eyes travel the room. It was massive and comfortable, a place in which a family might relax.

In that comfortable bed, under the blue-and-white Early American quilt that Henry's sister, Eva, had given them for a wedding present, Polly thought about Lincoln, about his kindness, his love for her, his ardor, his attractiveness. He was so lovable, so talented. He was becoming well known and would eventually be famous. Surely one day he would wake up and shake off his need for solitude as if it were an outgrown jacket. He would suddenly emerge; his love affair with Polly would have given him a taste for domestic and emotional life. Then some lovable, very talented, and beautiful girl would cross his line of vision and he would want to marry. He would marry that lovable, talented girl and Polly would never have access to him again.

Polly sat up in bed. The nice full life she had led had not prepared her for this sort of pain. When she breathed, her ribs hurt. She was suddenly glad that Henry was so absorbed in his work that he forgot to come and kiss her good night. She felt like someone shot full of arrows.

In a few hours Henry would come to bed, smelling of toothpaste and wearing his English pajamas. He would be careful not to disturb her. He might or might not read a few pages of one of the English mysteries he read for relaxation. He was her husband and he loved her. And even if he was so buried in the difficulties of his work that she could not get to him, their marriage was safe. Perhaps that gave Lincoln a pang or two. She loved Henry—Lincoln knew that.

She got out of bed, went into the bathroom, pressed her face into a large bath towel, and cried so that no one could hear her.

PART TWO

Five

Paul Solo-Miller, who people in the know said would one day be appointed to the federal bench and then to the Supreme Court, had never married. He was a tall, stern, handsome man whose hair was clipped short enough so that the shape of his elegant skull could be admired. Within that skull resided his venerated brain. Paul was not easy to get along with. As a child and an adult, he had, with his silence, his indifference, his high-mindedness, made life difficult for the chatty, the passionate, and the lower-brow—Polly considered herself all these things. It seemed to her that Paul had never known childhood. As a little girl she had thought of him more as an uncle than as a brother, and had often gotten him a little confused in her mind with her father, whom he resembled. The tiny Polly was restrained from making noise when her father was thinking in his study, or when Paul was doing his homework. At the age of four Polly had thought that her nine-year-old brother, Paul, was a lawyer, too.

Wendy dithered over Paul. Polly tried to be sunny and open toward him. Henry, Jr., succeeded in not paying very much attention to him. No one, except for Henry, Sr., who had his son's admiration, quite knew what to do with him. He treated his mother with the tender but essentially distant courtesy you might give to a mildly insane but well-meaning relative. Polly he accepted as if she were a piece of pleasing wallpaper, and Henry, Jr., he ignored as if he were a mess on the rug. His place in the family was absolutely firm and no one expected anything of him. They were thrilled to see him when he showed up.

The apartment he lived in was devoid of everything except what he considered essential—in these matters he was very like his mother. He had a piano, a large dining-room table, some Persian rugs, a bed with an extra-firm mattress, and very good lamps. All the Solo-Millers were fanatic on the subject of proper reading lights.

Besides the law, Paul's passion was music, especially symphonic music. He loved the early-twentieth-century German composers and he spent a considerable amount of time and money on stereophonic equipment. His most lavish conversations with people not in his firm or family were held with a bunch of young dope heads at Sid's Stereo Hut who counseled him as he upgraded his sound system. Paul was also a strong supporter of the symphony, which he attended in the company of the person Wendy referred to as “this woman,” a very attractive divorcée named Mary Rensberg. The fact that Paul did not marry Mary Rensberg or bring her into the family circle clearly indicated to Wendy that there was something wrong with her. She was divorced; Wendy did not approve of divorce and she assumed that Paul did not approve of it either.

Wendy had long ago despaired of Paul's ever marrying. Once she had assured herself that he was entirely heterosexual in purpose—she assured herself of this by simply believing it and by observing that he did not attend the theater or the opera more than socially necessary—she took it into her mind that Paul was not entirely of this world, and that for very brilliant people, Nietzsche's aphorism that a married philosopher is a joke held true.

Paul was in constant professional demand. He was lent out to foreign governments by his firm and asked to teach seminars at our nation's most esteemed law schools, and he lectured on panels to other lawyers. His energies were channeled into these ennobling works. His public and private manner were identical, but he was constantly invited to dinner parties. On his nights home he made notes for a book on the organic nature of the law in which he argued that the coherence of the human body had as its corollary a desire for order and an appreciation of structure. Thus man's perception of himself as individual territory was the basis of property law.