Memories of a Marriage (10 page)

Feeling certain that I would hear more about Lucy without waiting for the dinner with Priscilla, I was all agog, but at that precise moment three wondrously thin clubman types, highball glasses of what looked like bullshots in hand, wandered into the room and scanned the table looking for a place to perch. Having spotted Alex, they made a beeline for him. Two sat down flanking him, the third next to Josiah. Introductions followed. Perfect timing, perfect timing, intoned Alex and, addressing the clubman on his right, said, Can you imagine anything so scandalous, Junius? Young Philip here, a distinguished novelist and my
Lampoon
protégé, isn’t a member! I intend to set that right. Turning to me, he explained: Junius is our president.

Josiah and I had been served our coffee, and shortly afterward we rose from the table.

Remember, don’t let her brainwash you, Alex called out. And mum’s the word. He put his finger to his lips.

·   ·   ·

Not long after I married Bella, needing income during a dry spell between two books, I did a series of articles on cultural subjects for
LIFE
, which then paid remarkably well, including profiles based on extensive interviews with Vladimir Horowitz, Pablo Casals, Yehudi Menuhin, Eugene Ionesco, and Kingsley Amis. Ultimately, these pieces became a book that paid for rewiring of the Sharon house, putting on a new roof that didn’t leak, and installing modern amenities such as central heating, a hot water boiler, and an efficient pump. Bella joked that we lived in a house that
Rhinoceros
built. I might have continued to do journalism if
LIFE
hadn’t changed or the plot of a new novel that went on to win important prizes hadn’t taken shape in my mind. My dormant interviewer’s instincts, developed and honed during that period, had become aroused. As I was walking across the park the next day to meet Lucy, I pretty much decided to try the shock-question technique and ask straight out whether, in spite of her long-standing dissatisfaction, it was true that, as she had hinted, it was actually Thomas who chose to leave. In that case, what had precipitated the crisis? As I waited in the restaurant, however, I began to have doubts. Certainly she was lonely and had a seemingly overpowering desire or need to justify herself and perhaps also to take revenge on the dead man. But unlike a celebrity who might play hard to get but has her eye on the end product, the big spread with flattering photos in a glossy magazine, Lucy couldn’t look forward to any reward for putting up with me. It would be
stupid to spook her. There was also something to be said for letting her talk at her pace and in her own way. She might say more than she had intended if I didn’t interfere with her stream of consciousness.

She arrived fifteen minutes late. I told her quite sincerely that I hadn’t minded. It was pleasant to sip a martini and eavesdrop on conversations at other tables. The way I lived now, I could go for days hearing no human speech other than that on the radio or when the doorman says, Have a nice day, sir.

And how do you think I live? she countered.

The hint of unprovoked aggression in that remark made me look at her more carefully. She was haggard, and I could see reddish blotches on her face, imperfectly covered by makeup. It could be an allergy to something in her garden; she had returned from the country only two days before. I offered her a glass of champagne, which she refused, and she asked for a martini like mine. There was a leak in her swimming pool, she told me, that couldn’t be fixed without emptying it and pouring some cement; in all probability she’d need a new heater; the pool man was a crook. She wouldn’t trust him with the repairs and wished she hadn’t quarreled with his predecessor, who was also dishonest but on a smaller scale and at least knew what he was doing. She’d called the trust company to say she’d need money for the repairs and the heater, and the trust officer’s assistant had been rude to her. When she complained to her brother John, he told her that the De Bourgh trusts were no longer among the trust company’s very important clients. He had the gall to tell her that it was her fault if the people at the trust company weren’t
nice to her. She had alienated—“alienated” was the word he’d actually used—everyone there by being a constant pain in the ass. Of course, she hung up on him, but that didn’t solve the problem. There was no way she could fire the trust company. It was written into the trust. And obviously no one was going to help her bring them to heel! That’s what her Friday had been like. On Saturday, there was a party at the McGregors’, the next house over. At least they had the decency to invite her. She couldn’t imagine why they had invited about half of the other guests. Her great-aunt Helen Goddard King, who had left her the Little Compton house in her will, wouldn’t have let them in the door. She couldn’t believe that any of them had gotten into the club, not even as summer members. Not that she cared. She hardly set foot in there anymore.

I interrupted and got her to tell the waiter what she wanted for dinner and ordered my own meal and a bottle of wine. It didn’t seem impossible, unless I put her on another track, that this particular jeremiad would stop only after I’d paid the check and told her I’d walk her home.

Look, I said, I’ve been thinking a great deal about those terrible months in Geneva and the remarkable new start you made in Cambridge, and there is something I obviously haven’t gotten right. I think you told me that before you went to Geneva you had decided that you and Thomas were through, that it wasn’t going to work. Indeed, you joined Hubert without any thought for Thomas. And then you and Thomas get married anyway! Why? The other question that has been rattling in my head is why you didn’t continue your career in publishing. It seems like such a perfect fit.

The second question is easy, she replied. I liked Emily Calhoun, my boss at Houghton Mifflin; I liked the publishing house in Boston. I liked the nice fuddy-duddy men who worked there. They’d all gone to St. Mark’s and served in the navy, and it was nice to go with them to the Ritz for lunch in the café. They liked martinis, and so did I, and I knew they would have given their left testicle to take me upstairs and get me undressed. I’m not sure they even wanted more than that, but whatever it was they wanted, they never dared to make a move. In New York, I was too sick, and I had Jamie. When he started kindergarten I had a couple of interviews. It wasn’t for me, even if I had felt better and Thomas hadn’t made me feel completely worthless. Those men in New York publishing houses, those second-raters with bad manners and egos like trailer trucks, were sexist pigs. The expression must have been invented for them. There was one, you won’t believe it, who was busy ordering a pair of chinos from L.L. Bean while I was there, sitting at his table, right across from him, and he asked me to measure the length of his pant leg from the crotch down so he’d be sure he got the right size! I walked out.

But getting back together with Thomas: you’re right to ask about that. Probably it wouldn’t have happened if my dunderhead brother John and Alex had kept their big fat mouths shut. Thomas was in the second year of business school. He went to the Harvard Club in New York for some sort of reception for business school students and important younger graduates, and saw Alex there. Alex asked him about me, and Thomas told him the truth: I’d stopped answering
his letters, and he didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. What he didn’t tell Alex was that at the time he was himself seeing a Radcliffe junior, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn with a big nose and big tits, who’d take him in her mouth and tell him he was a great lover. If he had, perhaps Alex wouldn’t have felt so sorry for Thomas. Instead, your
Lampoon
buddy said, That’s terrible, we’ve got to do something about it. I’ll ask old John De Bourgh what’s going on and let you know. Your letters must have gone astray! Thomas says, Thank you very much, that’s so good of you, Alex calls John, who gives him my address and telephone number, of course without bothering to ask whether I mind, and Alex gets on the phone to Thomas and says, You’re in luck! I don’t know whether it slipped John’s mind or whether it was an attack of belated discretion: he didn’t tell Alex about McLean or Dr. Reiner. I know John knew about McLean, because it was necessary to make arrangements with the trust company for paying the bills; I’m not sure he knew I was still in treatment. Next thing, there is Thomas waiting for me when I come home from Houghton Mifflin, right there in Louisburg Square, sitting on the stoop and reading some awful business-school book. He was so absorbed I could have walked on and hidden somewhere. Anywhere! As it was, I said hello. I have to admit, he was very clever. He didn’t complain about my not writing, he didn’t ask where I had been or even what I was doing, he just kept on repeating how glad he was to see me, how beautiful I was and how chic. It’s a fact that I’d lost weight and had a very good haircut. Then he asked if he could take me out for tea or a drink. I think he said, Let’s go to the Ritz. It was
a five—ten—minute walk, and I was tired, so instead I asked him in. I offered him tea, although I really wanted a whiskey, because I didn’t want to drink with him. Liquor seemed to go to my head more quickly, perhaps because of the medication I’d been on at McLean, and I wanted to remain self-possessed. I was also careful to tell him to sit down on the sofa and to sit down myself in the Queen Anne wing chair that had belonged to the same great-aunt who later left me the house in Little Compton. We drank the tea. I’d also put out some Pepperidge Farm cookies. It was all very peaceful until I put my teacup down. Right away he was on his knees before me, caressing my legs. I let him, although I hadn’t shaved my legs, and there was bristle on the insides of my thighs. I hadn’t been with anyone since Hubert walked out, and he got me very excited. I wasn’t wearing stockings. He worked his hands under my skirt up to my waist, pulled off my panties and shoes, and pushed my legs apart. I thought it would be the old Harvard-boy routine. All those clubmen who’d stick a finger into you and churn and come in their pants, leaving you humiliated and furious. But he’d learned about female anatomy and actually made me come. Was he ever pleased! Lord knows from the very start I had tried to explain to him how it worked, but he just couldn’t get it. Later he told me it was the girl from Brooklyn who’d taught him. When we finally made it to bed, he made me come the first time with him inside, and I remember telling him, Yes, this is the way. This is how you should always do it. Break me, break me like a mare.

Her own story had aroused her. I was certain it had. For
the first time that evening, there was color in her cheeks, and I am ashamed to admit to having felt myself a degree of unwholesome excitement. Before I could learn whether that incident had marked the resumption of their relationship and its progression toward marriage, the waiter brought the first course.

I shouldn’t be telling you these things, she continued after a while, putting down her fork. They’re so embarrassing. But otherwise you won’t understand how it happened. They all work hard at the business school. Thomas had always been a good student. Perhaps he didn’t have to work as hard as most others. Anyway he was constantly after me. Mostly wanting to fuck. Very soon after the first time he said very proudly that he’d told the Brooklyn girl about me, and that ended that. Perhaps he should have kept her; his performance stopped improving. It was the old story. One night I was so mad I got up and sat in the Queen Anne chair with a knit coverlet over my shoulders, shivering from cold. I was crying. He got out of bed too and said, Please stop, I’m going to make it all right. And he did. It was another useful trick the girl from Brooklyn taught him. A couple of men in France had showed me, and Hubert used to do it before he decided it was too much trouble, but I didn’t think Thomas knew about such things. It drove me wild. Later we did variations on that theme that he really liked and I didn’t. All I knew was that he was no Hubert. He wasn’t a real man. It didn’t help that when he came over in the evening—which was most evenings because he’d get his work done by the late afternoon—he wanted to spend the night and leave early enough to get to class on
the MBTA. I couldn’t allow that. The house belonged to the Mathers. Peter Mather taught Greek and ancient history at the college; both he and his wife were very stiff and agreed to rent the apartment to me only because they knew my family. I was sure that if they saw Thomas going out the door in the morning and hanging around on weekends all hell would break loose. They’d want me to leave. The argument over this went on and on. He’d insist, and apart from him and Dr. Reiner and my work with Emily, I had no one, nothing. I asked Dr. Reiner what I should do, and he said, You should do exactly as you wish. I thought about that advice and told Thomas I didn’t think it was right to go on having an affair that tied me down and led to nowhere. All you and I do, I said, when we’re not in bed is to go to your classmates’ parties on football weekends, and all that happens there is they drink martinis and get smashed.

I knew his friends didn’t know what to make of me. I was older and different from the girls they invited. At some point I asked Dr. Reiner whether he thought I could get married and have children. He said, You certainly are able to get married if that is what you really want to do, although normally it is best to avoid long-term commitments when one is in therapy, and he asked whether I had told Thomas I was in analysis. Because if you haven’t, you might consider doing so. Thomas was a born snoop, and it was difficult to speak about my breakdown in Geneva and Dr. Reiner and leave out Hubert altogether, but I managed it by being vague. Anyway, I’m sure the last thing Thomas wanted was to understand. When I told Dr. Reiner I’d done what he’d said I should, I
expected some sort of praise, a pat on the head, but it was just the usual
umm
. A short time afterward, Thomas refused to leave after we’d finished; I couldn’t get him out of the apartment until the morning, and when I looked out the window I saw him and Professor Mather literally walking out of the house together. The next day when Thomas came over I yelled at him and told him we were through. If he wanted me he would have to marry me. I couldn’t go on being his slut. He looked at me coldly, it was the first time I’d seen that, and asked, How can I marry you when you need to see your psychiatrist every day? I told him to get out. He didn’t. Instead he practically raped me. If I hadn’t let him do it, he’d have strangled me. When it was over he said he couldn’t give me up, but before we talked about marriage he wanted to see Dr. Reiner.