The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (66 page)

 

 

"Or share one husband," Anne interrupted. She grinned at Cynthia.

 

 

Yale blushed. "Well, I'm not an old-time Mormon, or a Hindu, as Cindar
seems to think. The sex aspects don't seem impossible to me. The important
thing is whether you and Anne could adjust temperamentally to each other.
Strangely, I think you are both very much alike. I read somewhere that
a man tends to love the same type of woman over and over again."

 

 

"If he gets the chance," Cynthia said. She was beginning to find the
situation amusing.

 

 

"Touché, Yale!" Anne said, laughing at him. "Your trouble is that your
knowledge is all out of books. Cynthia and I will give you something
really practical to think about. After a few weeks together you probably
won't want either of us."

 

 

 

 

Because there was no choice, Anne and Cynthia slept in Martha Weeks'
feather-bed. Before he left, Yale located Ralph Weeks in the barn. He
introduced him to Anne. Weeks made no comment, but later, when Yale was
gone he walked into the kitchen with an old-fashioned rocker crib. He
handed it to Anne. "This is for the kid. You can't keep him in a laundry
basket, Mrs. Marratt." Both Anne and Cynthia looked at him astonished.

 

 

Weeks chuckled happily. "Don't be alarmed: I know you're both
Mrs. Marratt. When that fellow Harrigan was here I just asked him what
he was doing for Yale. He said that he was looking for Yale Marratt's
wife. Since I knew Yale had just took himself a wife, I figured doggone
if the lad ain't got himself two wenches." He continued, his unshaved
face creased in a wide grin. "But it won't pass beyond me. Damned if I
don't think it's the best thing to happen at Langley Farm since Ezekiel
Langley built it. Dad-bust-it, it sure would have set the old geezer's
eyes a-poppin'." They watched astonished as Weeks poured them a drink
of corn liquor. He clicked glasses with them. "Here's to two of the
prettiest wenches I ever saw. That young Marratt has good taste."

 

 

Undressing later by a bulb that dangled from an open socket in the
center of the bedroom ceiling, Anne and Cynthia turned away from each
other. They hastily pulled nightgowns over themselves. "What do you
think of Weeks?" Cynthia asked her.

 

 

"Isn't he a character?" Anne said. "Boy, I tell you that old man still
feels his oats. Yale says he has agreed to work for nothing, if we feed
him. We'll have to work him to death to keep him out of our hair."

 

 

Cynthia grinned. She knew that she was beginning to like Anne. She was
attracted by her easy lack of concern. "If Weeks mentions this anywhere
around Midhaven, Yale will have no further worry. The top will blow off."

 

 

"He won't," Anne promised. "We'll take him apart tomorrow and put him
back together right on that score. I've got to pee-pee. Don't tell me
you have to walk out back to that awful contraption."

 

 

Laughing, Cynthia pointed at a chamberpot in the corner. "Don't watch me!"
Anne warned, squatting over it. "I'll never go if you do."

 

 

They were in bed about an hour when the baby awoke crying. Cynthia
knew that both of them had been lying awake, trying not to move or to
disturb each other. Somehow words wouldn't come. Silently, they had
considered each other. It wasn't a question of liking each other. Anne
felt that Cynthia was quiet . . . charming. Cynthia had found Anne gay
. . . unaffected. They both knew that somehow in the coming days they
would have to bare their innermost feelings to each other about every
facet of their life and their love for Yale. If it was going to work it
had to be, in a real sense, a marriage for Cynthia and Anne. A marriage
in many. ways so intimate, so against normal human impulses of jealousy
and fear, that it was frightening to contemplate.

 

 

"You know," Anne whispered, "I stopped nursing him a week ago. The little
devil has a tooth. I still can't get used to this bottle business."

 

 

Cynthia followed her into the kitchen. Huddled in coats worn over their
nightgowns, they waited, shivering, for the water to boil on the coal stove.

 

 

"I'm not much help, but I suppose I might as well learn," Cynthia said,
trying to fill the silence of the kitchen.

 

 

"Oh, there's nothing to it," Anne said, "just getting used to routine.
When is yours due?" Cynthia told her that it would be sometime in June.

 

 

While Anne impatiently tested the water, murmuring that this was really
primitive, Cynthia hummed a tuneless song.

 

 

"How come the piano, and no other furniture?" Anne asked.

 

 

"That's Yale's idea," Cynthia said nervously. "It was a wedding present."
When she said it she realized that Anne had probably received no wedding
present in India. Cynthia was embarrassed.

 

 

"Good heavens!" Anne said, choking with laughter, "if that isn't typically
Yale Marratt to buy a piano when there's nothing but a hundred-year-old
stove in the house. You know, I suspect that he hasn't any real reason
for spending two months in New York. He was so darned embarrassed with
the idea of two wives that he just lit out."

 

 

"And he's hoping that if he leaves us alone," Cynthia agreed, "we'll solve
the problem for him of how we could all live together." She wanted to ask
Anne if she thought it could be solved, but she was afraid. It seemed
impossible to her. Even the problem of money would plague them. Yale
admitted he had none. He certainly couldn't ask Pat's help. Pat wouldn't
hire a man with two wives . . . and one Jewish. It was so silly as to
be almost ridiculous.

 

 

Feeling her way along the dark corridor and stairway, Anne held the
warm bottle in her hand. "We've got to get to work tomorrow and make
this place livable. You must be awfully easygoing to let Yale talk you
into buying a place like this."

 

 

"You're living here, too!" Cynthia said sarcastically. How could Anne know
how much Langley Farm meant to her already? "Yale is a convincing talker."

 

 

"I know it," Anne said, giggling as they fumbled for the light cord.
"I'm just as simple as you are. Yale was smart. He found two simple women.
If he had got mixed up with some of the sophisticated dames I've known,
he'd have been told off . . . but good. Wasn't he funny? He wouldn't
even take off his overcoat. He was so anxious to get to New York. Like
a bad kid who has created a real mess and can't wait to beat it. I could
have hugged him."

 

 

Cynthia smiled. "I could have too." She sighed. "And that's the problem
. . . What do we do when we both want to hug him at the same time?
We will be afraid because one of us might feel that the other doesn't feel
the same way, and the one hugging him would make the other jealous.
Oh, gosh, Anne, it could be awfully complicated."

 

 

"If we felt that way," Anne said thoughtfully, "Yale would get less
attention from two women than one." She put the baby on the bed, and
gave him his bottle. "We might as well start by being frank. I can't
sleep with this nightgown on. I haven't worn any night clothes to bed
since I was ten."

 

 

She pulled her nightgown over her head, wondering if Cynthia would follow
suit. Blushing a little, Cynthia took her nightgown off. "I never wore
one until Mat and I were married. Funny . . . unconventional as Mat was
in some ways, he always wore pajamas. I think he was embarrassed because
he was so thin."

 

 

"Yale used to go around nude in India," Anne said, shivering a little as
she snuggled under the bedclothes. "Said he got the idea from a woman
named Sarah Cohen. I remember I was jealous when he said it. I wanted
to ask him who Sarah Cohen was but I was afraid she might turn out to
be an old girl friend." She looked at Cynthia's body with interest. "You
have lovely breasts."

 

 

Cynthia smiled. "Yale has good taste. You have the kind of shape men
ogle at."

 

 

Anne repositioned the bottle in the baby's mouth. "It's funny," she said,
"that it is only among humans that the shape of the female body is the
source of sexual stimulation. Female birds and female animals are usually
very drab. The male human body really has possibilities of being very
much more beautiful than the female body."

 

 

"You mean if it was developed like those muscle-man pictures?"

 

 

"Ugh. No thanks," Anne said, getting out of bed. She put the baby in the
crib. "I just couldn't see snuggling with a man built like that. I just
mean a clean, male, youthful body."

 

 

"Like Yale's?" Cynthia asked, a tinge of jealousy in her voice.

 

 

Anne looked at her seriously. "Yes, like Yale's. Cynthia, do you think
it would be possible for either of us to share Yale's love? Or would
we just spend all our time trying to prove to him that one of us was
better or loved him more than the other?" She pulled the light cord and
the room was dark.

 

 

For a long time Cynthia didn't answer. Then she said, "Jealousy is a funny
thing. Just a minute ago you mentioned that Yale used to go around nude
in India. Even before you finished I felt a second of jealousy that you
must know Yale better than I. I could see a picture of Yale naked, and you
looking at him . . . as he came to you, excited. I was jealous. Then you
mentioned Sarah Cohen and the jealousy vanished. Sarah is a lovely plump
housewife with three children. Maybe more, now." Cynthia chuckled. "She
would mother Yale to death but never be interested in him sexually."

 

 

"But if I hadn't mentioned Sarah Cohen," Anne said, "you would have just
been jealous without the idea to compensate that you knew something about
Yale that I didn't."

 

 

Cynthia knew Anne was right. "I guess so, Anne. You know, the only way you
and I could prevent being jealous of each other and having the jealousy
become cancerous, would be to talk it out with each other each time it
happened as unemotionally as possible. We would have to recognize when
we were motivated by jealousy and admit it. A pretty tall order! And
the discussion would have to be between us and not for Yale's ears in
most cases."

 

 

What am I saying, Cynthia wondered? Am I giving tacit agreement to the
idea of all of us living together? She had to admit that she enjoyed
Anne's perceptive mind and uninhibited friendliness. But no! It was
impossible. Not in the United States. People didn't do such things.

 

 

"I'd agree to that, Cynthia," Anne said, "but no matter how you slice
it we would have to be pretty remarkable women."

 

 

Anne wanted to say just how do you develop a ménage à trois, on a sexual
basis, so the lady in bed alone on a particular night doesn't get jealous.
How could she say to Cynthia or Cynthia say to her, "I was jealous last
night when you were sleeping . . . hell, why use the euphemism, she thought
. . . having intercourse with Yale. She said aloud, "Oh, boy, Yale doesn't
know what he is letting himself in for."

 

 

Cynthia held her breath and whispered, "I was jealous of you last night.
I couldn't help thinking of you and Yale together."

 

 

Anne squeezed her hand. "Yale spent the night at a motel. He picked me up
this morning. I told him I wouldn't sleep with him again until we had all
come to a decision.

 

 

"Oh, gosh. . . ." Cynthia said. She suddenly realized that she felt
genuinely sorry. How could she tell Anne? Yale should have stayed with
Anne, she thought. Why should I have been jealous? It was suddenly
apparent to Cynthia that being jealous of some unknown girl named Anne
was possible. It was more difficult to be jealous of someone you really
knew and, she thought, liked.

 

 

"You know," Anne said, "I've been wondering why you haven't asked me
why I never tried to find Yale? Why I never wrote him?"

 

 

"You've explained to Yale, already. I guessed that eventually either
you or Yale would tell me."

 

 

Anne was silent. Cynthia listened to her slow breathing. Finally, she said
quietly, "I guess I don't really know my-self. You knew I was married
before I knew Yale?"

 

 

In the darkness, tears in the corner of her eyes, Anne told her about
Ricky. How they had grown up together. How she had always planned to
marry him. Then the few wonderful months of married life they had before
he went into the Army.

 

 

"He was a very gentle person, Cynthia. His drives were different from most
men. He would have been happy in a life of discovery and learning. One day
he would have made a great teacher. You know the kind of teacher like
William Lyon Phelps. The kind of person that would have had all the
kids taking his courses just so they could enjoy the wonderful breadth
of the man's thinking."

 

 

Anne paused. Her voice trailed off, "If he had lived. . . ." She was
silent again and Cynthia could feel her loneliness. "Well," she continued,
"I guess I thought life was over. No man could measure up to Ricky. Funny,
if there's some power over the lives of humans, I guess it wanted to
prove me wrong. I met Yale. You know something, Cynthia, if I hadn't
known Mat Chilling, I wouldn't have come here today . . . no matter
what Yale said. You see, I figured that if you married Mat and loved
him . . . and loved Yale and married him, then somehow or other we were
sisters in our choice of men."

 

 

Anne told her about Mat and their final conversation in India and how she
had kissed Mat. "Your first love, Yale, was a dreamer; you married Mat,
a militant dreamer. I was married to Ricky, an impractical dreamer. We
both married Yale. Of course you may not feel that our Hindu marriage
amounts to much. . . ." Anne's voice was sad.