Promises (19 page)

Nothing happened.

For a long time, as their unions had become fewer, less intense, and farther apart, he had feared a day when he might be impotent with Margaret. And he knew perfectly well, when that day should arrive, what the cost would be. He was already having as much sex every week as the average man was having. There was not much desire for more.

A sickening, shaming weakness drained through him, and he whispered, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She tried to kiss him. She tried.…

A few hours ago in that pool and afterward on the floor in front of the fireplace, he had done such things—and he whispered again, “I’m sorry. I’m just too tired.”

She drew away to lie on her back and, taking his hand, said quietly, “It’s all right. I understand.”

Oh, God, he said soundlessly, hear her. She wants to comfort me.

Neither one of them moved. They were both rigid in the bed. The room was absolutely still.

Margaret said then, “I think you should find out why you’re always so tired.”

“I’m not that tired. I’ll be all right.”

“No,” she insisted, “I want you to have a checkup. You haven’t had one for a long time.”

“I’m fine. It’s just been hell at the office. Everyone’s complaining. I’m not the only one.”

“Still, I want you to see Dr. Farley. Will you promise?”

“Okay. Okay, I will.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“I want you to go this week. You’ll put it off. I know you.”

No, he thought, you do not know me. Oh, Margaret, you don’t know me anymore.

“Please, Adam. Promise me.”

“All right. I promise.”

And now I do not even know myself, he thought.

A
t night for a week or more, Margaret lay with her head on Adam’s shoulder. Believing that she understood how he feared the loss of his potency, for he made no attempt to make love to her, she wanted to give him all the warmth of her loving reassurance. Glorious joy that it was, sex was, after all, not the entire purpose of everything. To be loved and trusted and not to be alone, these were what mattered most. Surely if these were nurtured, young as they both were, the rest would be returned to them. Just let Adam be well. He was simply worried and overworked. And he had never been a demonstrative man at best. She had known it almost from the beginning, even on their honeymoon. She had accepted it. People differed in their appetites; that was elementary. Adam was a brilliant, sensitive man, more complicated than most people are. She had always known that too. Just let him be well.

On the tenth day when she asked him what Dr. Farley had reported, he told her that the doctor had found nothing wrong.

“Nothing physical?”

“Nothing physical.”

“Then it must be psychological. Didn’t he tell you so?”

“No.”

“Didn’t he say anything, for heaven’s sake?”

“Not really.”

This puzzled Margaret, for Farley was an especially keen and thorough man, even a rather talkative, unhurried man.

“Didn’t he say that something should be done? What are you supposed to do, just go on this way?”

It seemed to her that Adam was looking especially uncomfortable. The thought came to her that the doctor had recommended a psychiatrist; wasn’t that the expected recommendation in these cases, as long as there were no discernible physical causes? Knowing Adam, she was suddenly sure that that must be what had happened and that he was having a typical resistance to the idea.

“I’ll bet he suggested a psychiatrist,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”

Wiggling like a caught fish, he admitted it. And then there followed another series of questions, urgings, and objections, until finally a promise was made.

“I’ll go! I’ll go!” Adam cried. “Although I don’t know where I’ll find the time, let alone the money.”

“You’ll make the time and we have money enough.”

“All right. Just let me alone. I’ll go.”

Two weeks passed. Still nothing happened in bed and nothing was said on the subject. So one afternoon Margaret went to see Dr. Farley herself. She was afraid when she took her seat on the other side of his desk.
Possessing vigorous health, she had had little occasion to visit a doctor. And so she associated her presence there with bad news.

“I’ve come because I’m so worried about Adam,” she began. “There’s such a change in him—but of course, you know all about it.”

“I don’t believe I do,” the doctor replied, looking puzzled.

“You mean he hasn’t told you?”

“Why, no. I haven’t seen him.”

“You haven’t seen him? He told me he saw you two weeks ago. He admitted to me that you said his trouble was psychological and that’s why I’m here, to ask you to refer him—”

“I haven’t seen your husband in at least two years, Mrs. Crane.”

Dumbfounded, she stammered, “I don’t know what’s going on. I just don’t know.”

“Suppose you tell me what you do know.”

So she told him as sensibly as she could, while blinking away the tears that persistently gathered in her smarting eyes.

“What shall I do now?” she concluded. “It’s not that I mind so much—I mean, it’s not the loss of—of natural pleasures so much as what they symbolize. I think Adam must be very unhappy, and I can’t imagine why. We’ve always been such a contented family. Oh, I don’t want to sound boastful, that would be stupid, but we’re often told that people point us out in the community; we’ve such wonderful children, we’re so lucky, and I’ve always been so grateful, but—there’s something wrong with Adam, Doctor. What shall I do?”

“From what you tell me, I’d say the first thing is to
quiet your fears. There can’t be anything so drastically wrong that it can’t be fixed. Next I’d say go home and tell him the truth about having been here seeing me. Tell him to lay all his cards on the table. You know how to do it. And then maybe it would be a good thing if you were both to come back here together.”

Dr. Farley was a kind man, and this advice was certainly reasonable, but even as she sat there hearing it, even as she thanked him and departed, Margaret knew that the situation with which she had to deal was not subject to such an easy solution.

And as she made her way down the bustling street, past shop windows filled with fall plaids, she went hot with a turmoil of many emotions, all fighting one another, humiliation, pity, and anger. Much, much anger.

Not more than half a mile away Adam, on his way back to the office after lunch, met Fred Davis on the street. Fred had been climbing into his van when he saw Adam and hailed him. Adam had been hoping that Fred wouldn’t see him because whenever he was into his stride and had a definite destination, he hated having to stop for a chat, however short.

“Adam. How’re you doing? It’s good to see you. I don’t get to see you much now that you work on Saturdays.”

Adam said quickly, “Not every Saturday.”

“Well, sometimes anyway. Going back to the office? Want a lift?”

“Yes to the first, and no, thanks, to the second.” Adam smiled broadly because Fred was doing so. Fred was always smiling. He was so damn amiable. “I need the fresh air.”

“Oh, fresh air. In my business I sometimes get too much of it, especially when it goes below freezing. However, no use complaining.”

No, hardly any use, with his new van, tweed jacket, expensive boots, the whole bit, the rugged country look, out inspecting his properties on a fine fall morning.
No use complaining!

Inside the van the dog barked. The tips of his small brown paws pressed the window glass.

“That Jimmy,” Fred said. “He loves the car. I took him along this morning up north of Randolph Crossing. Very pretty country. They’re starting to develop out among the hills. In fact, some fellow did build a community a few years back, but he was a little too far ahead of the market and didn’t do too well. The Grove, it’s called.”

Adam wouldn’t have believed how quickly sweat can start, if someone had told him so. Within the space of seconds he was so wet, he might have been wearing a rubber suit. And he grunted something, words without meaning, merely for the sake of a response.

“You ever been up that way?” Fred asked.

The pale eyes and the placid face were innocent. The question was careless. And Adam answered in the same vein.

“I’ve passed through. It’s nice country.”

Fred nodded. “Funny thing, I thought I saw you a couple of weeks ago coming out of that place I just mentioned, The Grove.”

Adam shook his head. “Me? No, I’m afraid not.”

“Funny. Fellow looked like you. Had sandy hair like yours. The car was a green Ford like yours too.” And
suddenly, from behind the innocent eyes, there shot a gleam.

Cold now in his damp rubber suit, Adam shook his head again. “Coincidence! They say everybody in the world has a double, and it makes sense when you think about it.” He was talking too much. Voluble denials were suspicious. Yet he kept on. “Undoubtedly, we all have more than a double. There are probably a couple of hundred people in the world who look like you. Or me.”

“You’re right,” Fred agreed. “Of course, there was the car. You don’t see many that shade of green. But after I saw the lady in the car, I knew it couldn’t be you.”

“No, not me.”

He knows. The nice cheerful bastard knows and wants to warn me. For my sake? Hell, no. For her sake.

The dog whined, drawing attention away from Adam. Good dog, he thought. “Good dog,” he said. “Patient little guy. And my Margaret rescued him. Sometimes I think her heart is big enough to take in the world.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

For a moment Fred’s vision and Adam’s collided. Margaret said Fred’s eyes were always “thoughtful.” You didn’t have to wonder too much about what Fred’s thoughts were right now.…

“Well,” Adam said, “I’d better move along. Nice seeing you, Fred. And you, too, Jimmy.”

Damn, he thought, hurrying away. I hope to God my face didn’t show anything. What the hell was he doing poking around up there? Randolph Crossing. The Grove. Nobody goes up there except real estate bastards.
Christ Almighty. Fred. Of course, he’ll never tell Margaret, he’d never hurt her. But I have to tell Randi. We’ll have to hole up in the house like bank robbers on the run. God damn! All you want is a little peace and freedom in your life. Am I harming anybody? No! I’m taking care of the home, and it’s a peaceful, good home, no fighting, hardly ever an argument, the best environment a child can have and I intend to keep it that way. If only the world would let Randi and me have each other now and then in peace! God damn.

Back at his desk he tried to piece things together. Perhaps he should have acknowledged that it had been he in the car, that he had been—well, for instance, driving one of the employees home; she had been taken sick at work, maybe. Given time, you could embroider a believable story. The trouble was that there never was enough time when you were handed a shock like that. Anyway, it was too late now.…

He made a halfhearted attempt to get through an afternoon’s work, did it poorly, knew he had done it poorly, and arrived at home in a state of frustrated rage.

Margaret was alone in the kitchen when Adam came home. As she stood at the window watching him walk from the garage with his tie loosened and his jacket flung over his arm, she had an immediate sense of impending trouble. Whatever it is, she thought grimly, I am in just the right mood for it.

She went straight to the offensive, inquiring with saccharine sweetness, “So you saw Dr. Farley, did you?”

“What do you mean?” he questioned back.

“Oh, stop it, Adam! Don’t hedge. Don’t fence. You didn’t see him. You lied to me. Why?”

“I don’t have to explain anything I don’t want to explain.”

“Adam, I’m your wife. I want an answer.”

“You’re not talking to one of your sophomore students, so don’t you tell me what you want or don’t want.”

“My sophomore students would be amused to see a grown man acting like a damn fool. If you didn’t want to see the doctor, you could have said so. You didn’t have to lie.”

“I lied to stop you from pestering me. It’s that simple.”

“Does it perhaps occur to you that I pester because I’m worried? What are you hiding? Have you got cancer or something that you’re afraid to talk about, even to me?”

“No, I haven’t got cancer or anything else,” he retorted.

He was still standing with the jacket over his arm. Angry as she was, he seemed pathetic to her, like someone standing on a street in a strange city, looking around for help. And this flashing picture began to soften her anger.

“Sit down here for a minute,” she said quietly now, “before the gang comes downstairs. I have to know what’s wrong. It isn’t fair to me this way.”

His response then was equally quiet. “It’s a phase, Margaret, one of life’s phases, and I suppose it’s unexplainable. I have pressures at work and they spill over at home. You know that.”

Of course he meant the sex business. Poor man. It
was a far greater blow to a man than to a woman when that business went out of order. And she thought she understood that he was afraid to talk about it, to
delve
, for fear that delving might make it worse. She thought she remembered having read something to that effect; the papers and magazines were so filled with pop psychology these days.