Moving On (94 page)

Her willingness, when he finally tested it, was one of the surprises of his life. Patsy had taken a good deal of winning, when he had won her years before. Eleanor had taken more than he could manage. Clara took practically none. She was a girl who liked to screw. They went to her apartment the next day on the feeble pretense of getting a book she needed. There was an awkward moment or two, and then they seduced each other.

“I’ve been keen on you for a year,” Clara said afterward, stretching. “I thought you were never going to get around to me. I was interested in you even before I had that thing with Hank. You’re just more my type.”

Jim had never been convinced that he was more anybody’s type than anyone, but Clara soon showed him she meant it. Not only did she like to screw, she liked very much to screw with him. Her enthusiasm more than counterbalanced his guilt feelings. After all, Patsy had had hers, he had a right to his and even if that had not been so he would have had a hard time relinquishing Clara. She quickly convinced him of what he had always suspected, that his sex life with Patsy had been absurdly inhibited and constrained and that Patsy either didn’t like sex or didn’t like it with him in the way that she should. Clara liked it and liked it. She seemed to Jim an incredible example of sanity and health—just what a well-adjusted female should be. She was not obsessed about anything but was just a girl who liked what there was to do in bed better than what there was to do in other places. They grew fond of each other, in a light and unfrantic way, and it seemed to him that was an ideal way to relate to another person.

Somewhat guiltily, he began to discuss Patsy with her, knowing full well that if Patsy ever found out he had she would never forgive him. He sketched out for Clara what seemed to him to be Patsy’s problems and Clara listened and said nice things about him. She was discreet and careful where Patsy was concerned. She never asked for more information than Jim was willing to give, and she never criticized Patsy sharply, though she sometimes made general criticisms that Jim thought very perceptive.

Clara had always had a fine touch for what would go with a certain man and what wouldn’t. She had known Hank was going to be short-term even before she slept with him, and she made the most of the term. Jim was something else. She wasn’t hot to marry, but she had decided he just might be long-term. It didn’t bother her that he wasn’t very sure of himself; she was sure of him. He wasn’t any more ambitious than she was. He just needed someone who liked him and who wouldn’t give a damn whether he ever did anything or not. He needed someone who would enjoy drifting with him and not make him feel like a failure for drifting. She could hardly wait to get him in bed. She didn’t want him all twisted up with romantic longing; she wanted them to make it while they were friends, and to make it nicely enough that he wouldn’t need to worry for a while about whether he loved her or not. And she disarmed his suspicions by telling him as much.

“I like friends who are attracted to me,” she said. “If I’m attracted to them, it’s great. I don’t know about marriage. Everyone who’s been married expects hang-ups. Like you. You expect hang-ups with me. But there doesn’t need to be any. Why should there be? This is a good way to spend time, isn’t it?”

Jim thought it was, but then of course Clara didn’t have a wife and son to go home to. When he left her she took a walk or a nap or watched television the rest of the day. She had no tensions to cope with, and the next day when he came in she would be just like he had left her, pleasant, lovely, and very touchable. She liked being naked, and her usual indoor costume was a sweater and an old pair of corduroy pants, both of which she shed readily and put on again when he went to the door to leave.

“I was made to live on a beach and not wear many clothes,” she said. “At least till I start having kids.”

She fully expected to begin desiring children someday; she would not have dreamed of not having them. She just had not come to that point yet. It worried Jim a little. If she should turn up pregnant, explaining it to Patsy would turn his hair white. But Clara told him to forget it; she didn’t look forward to an abortion but would certainly get one rather than make trouble.

Sometimes Jim grew paranoid. He had found out about Patsy through sheer accident. Mightn’t she find out about Clara the same way? Fortunately her apartment lay directly on his way to school. If surprised he could always be borrowing a book. He always carried a book for just such an emergency. But it didn’t allay his fears. He didn’t know what to do. He was not going to give up his afternoons with Clara, though; he knew that. He tried to put the thought of discovery out of his mind and he gave as little thought as possible to where it might all be leading. For a month he lived day by day and night by night.

Clara didn’t push. She wanted what was going on to continue. She didn’t want him forced into any choice between her and Patsy—not then. She didn’t want any crisis at all. She wanted good afternoons, if she could get them. And she was not jealous of Patsy; she was mildly curious about her and mildly contemptuous of her. Such a great-looking girl, and so unnecessarily hung up. So far as she was concerned Patsy was lucky someone hadn’t taken Jim away from her years before. It hadn’t taken her two weeks to convince him he was a prize, and Patsy had left him in doubt on that score for years. Clara was really dubious about what went on in marriage. It amazed her that someone who liked to screw as much as Jim did could go for months without screwing his wife. It made no sense to her.

It made no sense to Jim either, once he thought about it. Patsy had drawn into herself again—she had closed in some way. She seemed younger, demure, and girlish. Sometimes he sat in bed at night and watched her making a maidenly bed on the couch and felt sorry for her. It seemed a pity. She might not know what fun she was missing. But then it occurred to him that she had slept with Hank Malory and had kept on doing it. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t have kept on if she hadn’t liked it. So what did that mean? He didn’t know. Clara liked it with him. It occurred to him that perhaps
he
had changed, that the Jim Patsy was averse to was an earlier Jim. Perhaps with Clara he had learned something that Patsy didn’t know he knew. Often he was tempted to approach her, to try once more to make love to her. Perhaps the change would communicate itself; perhaps it was not too late for her to start liking him. But he put it off, not quite convinced that it could be. And the more he screwed Clara, the easier it became to put off.

And the more afternoons the two of them spent in bed, the less they gave a damn about Victorian poetry or the Ph.D. Bill Duffin and one or two of the other professors noted their slackening interest, but Bill Duffin was in the process of packing his books and had ceased to give a damn about Jim. Often in the afternoons, lying around, their hands on each other, Jim and Clara discussed in an idle, indefinite fashion what they might do if they both dropped out of school at the end of the semester.

7

O
NE AFTERNOON
, a week before Christmas holidays began, Hank called. It was an afternoon when Jim would normally have been in a seminar. So far as Patsy knew, he
was
in a seminar. Had she known he was at Clara’s she would have been extremely surprised, much more surprised than she was when she heard Hank’s voice. She had been expecting him to call, more or less, and had figured out that he would remember which afternoons were safe. Even so, the sound of his voice was a shock. It took her breath for a moment.

“Well, it’s my old pal,” she said. “Where are you, old pal?”

“Portales,” he said. “But not for long.”

“Why not?”

“No job.”

“You mean they got someone else at the filling station?” Patsy said. “How inconsiderate. If only you wouldn’t keep running off to Houston to try and be an intellectual. Not only do you get in trouble with people’s wives, but you lose your niche.”

“How are you?” he asked.

“As well as I deserve to be.”

“Jim?”

“Sort of distant. Okay.”

They both fell silent, struck by a feeling of helplessness. Neither of them wanted to talk about the present, and the past was unmanageable in the few minutes they felt they had. Both started at once to try and locate the future. It was easier for Hank. He had to get a job. He was thinking of working in Lubbock and enrolling at Texas Tech for the spring semester.

“Aha,” she said. “Still trying to be an intellectual. What innocent wife will you ruin there?”

“I’ll be too depressed to ruin anyone,” he said.

“I doubt it,” she said. “There must be innocents, even in Lubbock. One of them will entice you, probably.”

“You can’t see them for the sand,” he said. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” she said, unable to deny it. At the end of the conversation he told her he loved her. She didn’t doubt it, but both of them had trouble believing that the feeling would ever again do them any good. The feeling was genuine, but it was useless, and after Patsy hung up she grew deeply depressed. What good was it? What good had it been? Her depression went below tears. She had wanted him to call but couldn’t help wishing he hadn’t. The silence had been easier to handle. His voice was enough to stir her memory, to make her yearn for what she couldn’t have. Yearning was no fun. It was better simply to be blank.

The call echoed through her mind that evening and all the next day. She was very troubled, could not think, could not assemble herself. Her mind was either entirely vacant or else distant from the rest of her. But that evening the depression lifted. It lifted as she was putting Davey to bed. At bedtime they played a little game of peekaboo, with Davey holding on to the headboard of his bed and bobbing up and down. Patsy began playing rather mechanically—it was simply part of the bedtime ritual—but Davey was full of zest and looked particularly impish, and his merriment reached her. It lifted her out of her gloom and she began to play for real. They played too long, overexciting Davey. He was a long time going to sleep.

Patsy went in and washed her hair. She had been as conscious of her depression as if it had been a headache, and she was just as conscious that it was gone. Things seemed very clear, and much simpler than they had. It had been real, whatever she had had with Hank, absolutely real. As she massaged her scalp she thought of it without regret for the first time. It was something she would not have wanted to miss—it had been too good. But still, it was over. He was far away and would never be more than an occasional voice again. She had somehow made a decision, and it had been to stay with Jim and Davey. So it was time she stopped mooning, stopped feeling sorry for herself, stopped being childish. If she was going to stay she might as well really play, as she had with Davey. It had worked with him and it might work with Jim, if she forced herself to go through the mechanics.

Later, watching Jim, who was reading in bed, she began to feel sympathetic to him and forgave him for the misuse of a few weeks before. How could he have been expected to know better? He had probably been desperate. It had been a long time since she had really been accommodating, and he had known she had accommodated someone else. How could he have been blamed? Since then he had been kind and patient. He hadn’t even asked her to come back to bed. She had really been selfish long enough. If she was going to stay married it was time she started thinking of him. They had a new house to move into, and Christmas was coming. They couldn’t sleep separately at her parents’ house; such a clear hint that something was wrong would spoil her mother’s whole Christmas. It was time to start trying again.

She sat in her rocking chair until her hair was dry. Jim had quit reading and was watching the
Tonight
show. She went over and sat on the bed and, when he looked up, asked if he wanted to make love. It sounded strange to her. She had never asked in that way before, but she was afraid that after what she had said the other night he would ignore any other kind of invitation.

Jim was startled. He had been contentedly watching the show, but it didn’t occur to him to say no to Patsy’s question. He was disconcerted, though. He had made love to Clara that afternoon and for a moment, absurd though he knew it was, he was fearful that the fact would somehow reveal itself. Patsy lifted her gown off over her head and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, thoughtful. He was struck by how much slimmer she was than Clara; Clara was a strongly built girl. “Seen enough?” she asked, nodding toward the TV, and when he nodded she went over and bent to turn it off. He saw the hang of her breasts before the TV darkened.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so silly,” she said, coming back to the bed.

“Oh, it’s okay,” Jim said, hugging her rather awkwardly, her cool breasts against his arms.

But it proved far from okay. Patsy had made a decision and acted on it in good faith, but her decision had caught them both cold. It was, in its way, the equivalent of Jim’s earlier efforts to make them work through sheer will, and it failed as miserably. They tried to make love on sympathy—neither of them had any hunger. They moved together, but mechanically; they went nowhere. Neither came or even came close to coming. After a while they simply stopped and lay side by side.

“Well, I guess it’s back to the couch,” she said finally.

“The living-room couch or the psychiatrist’s couch?” he asked, very glum.

“Either one,” she said. “Both, maybe. Hell. I guess I am frigid. It’s finally come true.”

Jim didn’t say anything. He had no answers, but he was more tired than she was and soon went to sleep. After a while Patsy got up and put on her gown and went back to the couch.

The memory of that attempt stayed in Jim’s mind for days and gradually began to swell. It began to seem a worse failure than it had been, more awkward, more awful, more final. He could conceive of no way to come back from it, and for the first time began to entertain the notion that he and Patsy could not go on living together. The idea, like most of his ideas, soon ran away with him, and he quickly came to think of his marriage as something impossible. It was not that he had stopped caring for Patsy. He knew that he cared about her. He still wanted her sexually, for that matter. She still turned him on. But she was simply too difficult and he didn’t want the difficulties any longer. He didn’t know why she had slept with Hank. Probably in time she would start sleeping with someone else. He could not handle her emotions. They were either so vague as to be undetectable or so violent that they unnerved him. He didn’t know what to do about her sexually. There seemed to be no meeting ground. For him she was virtually all difficulty.