Moving On (95 page)

And with Clara there were no difficulties. She was easy for him in every way. He was beginning, at moments, to feel that he loved her, and he had come to depend on her, not just for sex but for intimacy. He and Patsy had no intimacy any longer, only a kind of politeness. It dissatisfied them both, but it seemed the best they could do. Clara became both mistress and confidante. He began to talk of leaving Patsy. Clara said she thought it would be best for both of them, but she let him feel his way slowly toward the decision. She didn’t push, but she did tell him she wouldn’t see any other man until he made up his mind. She hadn’t been seeing other men, anyway, but the fact that she stated it made a difference. Jim was pleased; to have gained an exclusive purchase on someone as experienced as Clara made him feel better about himself.

He found at home that his sense of the impossibility of it going on was swelling inside him, just as his memory of their bad experiences had swelled. Every night he wanted to talk about it, have it out in the open; but he hated the thought of the night that would buy them, and so long as Patsy was quiet and nominally content he let it ride.

Once or twice Clara said quietly that she wished he were free. “You could drive me home for Christmas,” she said. “I could show you some of California.”

“I wish I were too,” he said.

That night he wished it more; the calm at home broke down. He had been supposed to see a man about some painting they were going to have done on the new house, and he had put it off. It was the third time he had put it off; having painting done had simply ceased to interest him. But it made Patsy furious: all she wanted him to do was to get an estimate on how much it would cost.

“Look,” she said, “if you don’t want to do that, I’ll do it. I would have done it already if you hadn’t told me three times you’d be glad to take care of it.
Why
don’t you take care of it? What have you got to do that’s so important you can’t take thirty minutes to go see a painter?”

“I was working on my term paper,” Jim said, but it was a miserable lie, the more miserable because he had done nothing at all about his term paper other than decide vaguely to write on Arthur Hugh Clough. He was well aware that the fact would soon come out and that he would have the task of explaining why he had collapsed academically in the course of one semester. Either that or he was going to have to work terribly hard for a month, and he knew he wasn’t going to do that. He had no good defense and sat silent while Patsy poured out her spleen. Finally she exhausted it and stopped, ashamed of herself. Such minor failings had been characteristic of Jim ever since she had known him and she didn’t like herself any better for blasting him so.

Jim felt hopeless. He was on the verge of confessing all and telling her they ought to call it quits. The idea of leaving, of driving Clara to California, seemed marvelous to him, a bold but on the whole rational way out. He had to make a break. He and Patsy would only go on until they broke each other down. And if he sent Clara to California alone she might find another man, she might not come back, she might conclude that he would never have the nerve to leave Patsy. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to let things cool between them. He had let things cool too long with Patsy and had discovered what a mistake it had been.

Yet he couldn’t quite come out of it. He quailed at the thought of what it might do to Patsy. He really didn’t know if it would crush her or make her murderous. He put it off a day and the next evening Patsy accidentally opened it all up.

She had been brooding about sex and had convinced herself that she had all but destroyed Jim, in that way. She felt she had to do something to reverse the trend and to make it up. What she had done the last time had been the wrong way to try. She hated talking about it, but he wasn’t doing anything about it and she felt it was entirely her fault that he wasn’t. That night she went to the bed and tried to tell him what she thought might help.

“Look,” she said, “I was wrong the last time. I sort of decided it in my head. I know I’ve been awful and I’m not mad at you now. You don’t have to wait for me to raise a flag or anything. I’m not going to knife you if you touch me.”

Jim looked up at her. He saw that she was trying to be nice, but it irritated him that she took the tone that she took. It annoyed him that she should think he needed telling what to do in regard to sex. It seemed to him that she was the one who needed telling.

“I should just let it come naturally, hum?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, not meaning it. There was an edge in his tone that cut her and she knew if he should want to let it come naturally right then it would affect her as badly as it had the last time. But she let the point stand and went to the kitchen to do the dishes. When she returned she felt okay again, but Jim didn’t. The more he thought about it the more presumptuous her remarks seemed, and the more he resented them. Not only did she imply that she needed help, but she had also implied that he had been leaving her alone because he was scared of her. He longed to point out that she was not necessarily the most wantable female in the world, that he knew another who was a great deal more fun in bed. But he controlled himself to the extent of being oblique.

“You know, I think you gave up on psychiatry too soon,” he said. “There must be more intelligent psychiatrists than Dr. Fuller. It wouldn’t hurt you to try one more.”

Patsy was at her dresser. She turned and looked at him. She caught the drift of the insinuation. They were both so honed by tension that obliquities were seldom missed. Patsy could have caught his meaning if she had had to lip read.

“What did I say to make you think that?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just don’t think you understand yourself.”

“You mean sexually?”

“That way and other ways.”

“But you’re not talking about the other ways,” she said, facing him. “Why don’t you quit hinting? Do you think I’m Lesbian, or what?”

Jim was silent. He had said all he wanted to say.

“After all,” she said, “you’re the one who saw fifty-two vaginas. Why don’t you go to another psychiatrist? I saw perfectly normal things.”

“You didn’t see any penises, did you?” he asked.

The hostility between them was so great for a moment that if they had been armed with guns one or both would have fired. But they had only words to fire.

“No, but so what?” she said, shrugging. “I never particularly liked to look at them. If looking at vaginas is what you really like to do you can look at mine any time.”

Jim got up without another word and went to the closet and got his suitcase. He opened it across the bed and began to pack. He was too angry to talk.

“Okay, go,” Patsy said. She hadn’t moved.

“I didn’t ask your permission to sleep with you and I don’t need your permission to go,” he said.

“Where are you planning on going?”

“To a friend’s place.”

“You’re not going to the Hortons’,” she said. “I won’t have that.”

“I wasn’t planning on going to the Hortons’,” he said. “Just shut up.”

“Well, that leaves Kenny. Shall I call and tell him you’re coming?”

Even in his anger he had some inclination to spare her, but it vanished. “I’m going to a
girl
friend’s,” he said. “Someone who knows I like to do more than look.”

It was a bolt quite from the blue. She had had no suspicion at all. Her first thought was Lee Duffin. She had the awful certainty that Lee had silently fulfilled her old prophecy, and just as she was getting to like her for a friend. She waited for Jim to say, “I’m sleeping with Lee.”

“I’m probably going to go away with Clara,” he said instead.

Patsy was stunned. If he had said Lee she might have screamed. As it was she looked at him and sat down in the rocking chair, her mouth trembling. Clara. She had had them both.

“You’re right,” she said. “I better see some more doctors. I must have a lot to learn.”

“If you hadn’t been so goddamned sure all along that you didn’t, it would never have happened,” he said.

“When was I ever sure of anything?” she asked, beginning to cry.

“Look, I’m going,” he said. “There’s no point in us trying any longer. Don’t sit there crying and looking tragic all night. I’ll probably come by tomorrow and get some of the books.”

She looked at the bookshelves rather than at him. “You better get them tonight,” she said. “Take the car full. Anything you leave here may be ashes in the morning.”

“Oh, Patsy, stop talking that way,” he said. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“You don’t want to talk to me,” she said. “Go on. If you hear a fire engine in the next few minutes you can chalk it all up to melodrama. Is
she
unmelodramatic?”

“I’ll be by tomorrow,” he said and left, just ahead of Patsy’s rage. When it ended most of his books were in a great pile on the floor and Davey was awake and crying. Patsy was so choked with tears that she couldn’t comfort him very well; she rocked him and rocked him and finally he went back to sleep and she sat down on the floor and straightened out the books she had thrown in a pile. There was no point in ruining them. Then she got in bed, knowing she couldn’t sleep, that she had no recourse but to lie alone thinking about it. She couldn’t call Hank; she would only get his aunt. Emma was the only possible person, and she wasn’t ready to call Emma.

Once she calmed down a little she regretted bitterly that she had let Jim leave so abruptly. She
knew
nothing really, and it was a time when knowing particulars might have helped. As it was, she had a statement in a void: “I’m probably going to go away with Clara.” Going away where? How long had it been going on? Had he been sleeping with her ever since Hank stopped? Or had she driven him to it recently by her own resistance? Could she blame him or must it be all her fault?

She was not aware that she slept at all, but she was aware, time after time, of jerking awake with it all on her mind, of turning one way and then another, trying to quit thinking about it. But the one fact she knew was that he was with Clara, and that probably they were talking about her, and it was not a fact that would let her sleep. If he had stayed, fought with her, wanted to forgive and be forgiven, that would have been one thing. But he left and let her know where he was going and that was different. It hurt all night.

Next morning, feeding Davey, it occurred to her that the night had paid her back for the one he spent when she had stopped at Hank’s. He had been deliberate and she hadn’t, but it amounted to the same quality of pain. Her hand was shaky with the spoon. The fact that they were even did not strike her as a cause for optimism. They were even, but they were also quits.

After breakfast she went in and put his books back in the bookcases, leaving no evidence of her blind fit except a few wrinkled pages and a copy of
On the Road
that she had ripped in two. She put on a white blouse and a skirt and sat in the rocking chair for the rest of the morning, watching Davey play. Her stomach was unsettled, but otherwise she was very quiet. No tides of emotion swept through her. A strange, formal feeling came. The only time she felt like weeping was when Davey dragged one of Jim’s house shoes out from under the bed. What would he do for a father, their little boy? But Davey soon left the house shoe and Patsy left the question, for a time. Her mind was too blank to deal with it.

Jim came about noon. Patsy had feared she would fly into a rage at the sight of him, but she didn’t. The formal feeling prevailed. He seemed to have it too. She gave him coffee and asked him politely about the things that had troubled her during the night. And when he revealed that it had not been going on quite a month she felt a small, cautious relief. Perhaps it was not quite the bitter end. And in their polite conversation they were awkwardly circumlocutory in their efforts to avoid flat statements that would make it the bitter end.

“Would you mind if I leave most of the stuff here?” he asked. “I really don’t know yet what I’m going to do.” But when he said a little later that he was going to drive Clara to California for Christmas, Patsy frowned. She didn’t like it and couldn’t hide it. Jim quickly tried to put a good therapeutic face on it.

“Look, we’ve got to get away from one another for a while and look things over,” he said. “We’ll kill one another if we go on like this.”

“You don’t have to get away from me with her,” she said. “You could just get away by yourself. You don’t have to go all the way to California, either.”

Jim looked discouraged. He was very ambivalent about it. He had convinced himself he wanted nothing more than to drive Clara to California, but since he had committed himself to doing it he had not been so sure. Leaving Patsy and Davey at Christmastime did not seem very fair. When he left he had felt savage toward her. But seeing her again, sad and familiar, made him feel different. He did not feel savage toward her at all. He felt troubled. Everything looked dim. But he had told Clara he would take her. She considered it settled and was looking forward to it happily. He could not imagine how he could get out of it, and he was only half sure he wanted to.

“I’ve promised, I guess,” he said. “I don’t know. I think it might be better if we were far apart for a while. If I stay here we’ll keep on fighting even if we aren’t living in the same house.”

When he said he had promised, Patsy’s spirits dropped a notch, and they had been low enough to begin with. If he had given Clara such a promise, so soon, there was really no hope. She did not even feel angry, just low.

“I guess you two will go to Dallas, won’t you?” Jim said.

“Oh, I guess.” Christmas was unimaginable.

“So is it okay if I leave my stuff awhile?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?” Then it occurred to her: they had bought a house. They were to move in mid-January.

“But what about the house?” she said. “We bought it, you know. We have to move next month.”

Jim shrugged. It seemed to him the least of their worries. “Well, maybe you and Davey could live there and I should live here,” he said half jokingly. “I don’t know that we have to decide about it today. Maybe things will be clearer next month.”