Separate Flights (6 page)

In a marriage there are all sorts of lies whose malignancy slowly kills everything, and that day I was running the gamut from the outright lie of adultery to the careful selectivity which comes when there are things that two people can no longer talk about. It is hard to say which kills faster but I would guess selectivity, because it is a surrender: you avoid touching wounds and therefore avoid touching the heart. If I told her the story, she would see it as a devious way of getting at her: the man's cooking would be the part of me she smothered; Hank's buying the seafood platter would be my rebellion. And she would be right. So I treated our disease with aspirins, I weaved my conversation around us, and all the time I knew with a taste of despair that I was stuck forever with this easy, lying pose; that with the decay of years I had slipped gradually into it, as into death, and that now at the end of those years and the beginning of all the years to come I had lost all dedication to honesty between us. Yet sometimes when I was alone and away from the house, always for this to happen I had to be away from the house, driving perhaps on a day of sunlight and green trees and rolling meadows, I would hear a song from another time and I could weep (but did not) for the time when I loved her every day and came up the walk in the afternoons happy to see her, days when I never had to think before I spoke. As we ate lobsters and drank wine we listened to the ball game.

And later, after the spaghetti dinner that wasn't eaten, we made love. We had watched the children, who were impatient for banana splits and so ate only a little and that quickly, sucking spaghetti, spearing meatballs, their eyes returning again and again to the door of the freezer compartment, to Terry slicing bananas, punching open the can of chocolate syrup. They were like men late for work eyeing the clock behind a lunch counter. They loved the banana splits, ate till I feared for their stomachs, then I went with a book to the living room couch, and Terry put the meatballs and spaghetti sauce in the refrigerator to be warmed again another day.

When she got into bed I pretended to be asleep but she touched my chest and spoke my name until I looked at her.

‘I went a little crazy last night,' she said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Okay.'

‘I shouldn't have got drunk.' She found my hand and held it.

‘Forget it,' I said.

‘I've got to grow up.'

‘Who ever told you grown-ups weren't violent?'

‘Not with their husbands.'

‘Read the papers. Women murder their husbands.'

‘Not people like us.'

‘Sailors' wives, is that it? Construction workers?'

‘I don't mean that.'

‘Maybe some people have enough money so they don't have to kill each other. You can have separate lives then, when things go bad. You don't have to sweat over your beer in the same hot kitchen: watching her fat ass under wilted blue cotton, her dripping face and damp straight hair. Pretty soon somebody picks up a hammer and goes to it. Did Hank make a pass?'

‘Yes.'

‘He did?'

‘I said yes.'

‘Well?'

‘Well what.'

‘What did he do?'

‘None of your business.'

‘All right, then: what did
you
do?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Come on.'

‘He tried to kiss me on the porch, so I went inside.'

‘Where?' Grinning at her. ‘Here?'

‘To the
kitchen
. To get a beer.'

‘And he followed you in and—'

‘Said he loved me and kissed me and said he didn't love Edith. Then I felt dirty and we went outside and sat on the front steps.'

‘Dirty. Because he said that about Edith?'

‘Yes. She's a sweet girl and she doesn't deserve that, and I don't want any part of it.'

‘But until he said that, you felt all right.'

‘We can stop this now. Or do you want to know whether his nose was to the left or right of mine?'

‘Do you remember?'

‘We were lying on the floor and he was on my right, so I'd say his nose was to the left of mine.'

‘Lying on the floor, huh? Goodness.'

‘I'd squatted down to get a beer from—Oh shut up.'

‘I was only teasing.'

‘You were doing more than that. You're glad he kissed me.'

‘Let's say I'm not disturbed.'

‘Well I am.'

She got out of bed for a cigarette and when she came back I pretended to be asleep and listened to her smoking deeply beside me. Then she put out the cigarette and started touching me, the old lust on quiet signal, and I mounted her, thrusting the sound of bedsprings into the still summer night, not a word between us, only breath and the other sound: and I remembered newly married one morning she was holding a can of frozen orange juice over a pitcher and the sound of its slow descent out of the can drove us back to bed. I could feel her getting close but I still was far away, and I opened my eyes: hers were closed. I shut mine and saw Edith this afternoon
oh love
; then I thought
she is thinking of Hank, behind those closed eyes her skull is an adulterous room
, and now he was here too and he had given me the forty dollars and it was Hank, not I, Hank who was juggling us all, who would save us, and now we came, Hank and Terry and Edith and me, and I said, ‘Goodnight, love,' and rolled over and slept.

2

O
N A MOONLIT SUMMER NIGHT
, in a cemetery six blocks from my house, lying perhaps among the bones of old whaling men, in the shadow of a pedestaled eight-foot bronze angel, Hank made love to my red-haired wife.

At midnight I had left them on the front porch. Edith had the flu, and Hank had come over late for a nightcap; it was the day after payday and I gave him ten dollars which he didn't want to take. We drank on the front porch, but I was tired and I watched them talking about books and movies, then I went to bed, their voices coming like an electric train around the corner of the house, through the screen of my open window. I slept. When I woke my heart was fast before I knew what it knew. I lay in silence louder than their voices had been, and listened for the creak of floor under a step, the click of her Zippo, a whisper before it died in the air. But there was only silence touching my flesh, so they weren't in the house; unless making love in the den or living room they had heard my heart when I woke and now they were locked in sculpted love waiting for me to go back to sleep. Or perhaps they were in the yard and if I went outside I would turn a corner of the house and smack into the sight of her splayed white legs under the moon and the white circle of his wedging ass.

The clock's luminous dial was too moonlit to work: with taut stealth I moved across the bed, onto Terry's side, and took the clock from the bedside table: two-twenty. I waited another ten minutes, each pale gray moonlit moment edged with expectancy, until I was certain it was emptiness I heard, not their silence. And if indeed they were listening, I would cast the burden of cunning on them: I rolled over and dropped my feet thumping to the floor, and walked to the bathroom next to my room and turned on the light. I flushed the toilet, then went out through the other door, into the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and stepped onto the front porch. The night was cool and I shivered, standing in my T-shirt so white if they were watching. His car was parked in front. Their glasses were on the steps. I picked them up: lime and gin-smelling water. Then I went to bed and waited, and I saw them under the willow tree in the backyard, the branches hanging almost to the grass, and I asked myself and yes, I said, I want the horns; plant them, Hank, plant them. I wanted lovely Edith now there with me and twice I picked up the phone and once dialed three numbers, but she would be asleep with her fever and there was nothing really to tell yet, I didn't really know yet, and after that I lay in bed, quick-hearted and alert, and waited and smoked.

At ten minutes after three he started his car. I ran tiptoeing to the living room window as his car slowly left the curb and Terry stood on the sidewalk, smoking; she lifted a hand, waving as Hank drove down the street. He blinked his interior light, but I couldn't see him, then his car was dark, just tail lights again, and then he was gone and the street was quiet. She stood smoking. When she flicked the cigarette in the street and started up the walk, I ran back to the bedroom. She came in and crossed the living room, into the dining room and bathroom. She stayed there a while: water ran, the toilet flushed, water ran again. Then in the kitchen she popped open a beer and went to the living room; her lighter clicked, scraped, clicked shut. When she finished the beer she plunked it down on the coffee table and came into the bedroom.

‘Where've you been?'

She got out of her clothes and dropped them on the floor, and lies cracked her voice: ‘I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep so I went out for a walk.'

She went naked to the living room and came back shaking a cigarette from her pack and lit it and got into bed.

‘Terry.'

‘What.'

‘You don't have to tell me that. I woke up at two-twenty.'

She drew on her cigarette. Still she had not looked at me.

‘You bastard. Did you ever go to sleep?'

‘Yes.'

‘I wish I could believe that.'

‘I was tired.'

‘You could've brought me to bed.'

‘You could've come with me.'

She threw back the sheet and blanket and got out of bed and went fast, pale skin and flopping hair, out of the room. She came back with a beer and got into bed and covered up and bent the pillow under her head so she could drink.

‘I'm lonely, that's why. I'm a woman, I'm sorry, I can't be anything else, and I need to be told that and I need to be made love to, you don't make love with me anymore, you fuck me; I sat on the steps with him and he held my hand and listened to me talk about this shitty marriage because all you ever see is the house, you don't see me, and he said let's go see the bronze angel, we've never seen it in the dark, and I was happy when he said that and I was happy making love—'

So she had really done it, and I lay there feeling her wash down me, from my throat, down my chest, my legs, then gone like surf from the sea, cold like the sea.

‘—and I lay afterward looking up at her wings and for the first time since leaving the porch I thought of you and for a moment under her wings I hated you for bringing me to this. Then that went away. I wanted to go home and seal up the split between us, like gluing this shitty old furniture, I wanted to clap my hands for Tinker Bell, do something profound and magic that would bring us back the way we used to be, when we were happy. When you loved me and when I never would have made love with someone else. And all the way walking home I wanted to hurry and be with you, here in this bed in this house with my husband and children where I belong. And right now I love you I think more than I have for years but I'm angry, Jack, way down in my blood I'm angry because you set this up in all kinds of ways, you wanted it to happen and now it has and now I don't know what else will happen, because it's not ended, making love is never ended—'

‘Are you seeing him again?'

‘No.'

‘Then it's ended.'

‘Do you thrink making love is like
smo
king, for Christ sake? That if you quit it's
ov
er? It's not just the act. What's wrong with you—it's feeling, it's—'

She drank, then sat up and drank again, head back for a long swallow, then she lit a cigarette from the one she was smoking.

‘It's what,' I said.

‘Promises.'

‘You promised to see him again?'

‘I didn't say anything. Opening my legs is a promise.'

‘But he must have said something.'

‘I wish you could hear your voice right now, the way it was just then, I wish I had it taped and I'd play it for you till you went to a shrink to find out why your voice just now was so Goddamn oily. You
like
this. You
like
it. Well hear: it took us a long time to get to the cemetery because we kept stopping to kiss and when we did walk it was slow because we had our arms around each other and his hand was on my tit all the time and when we got to the angel we didn't look at her, not once, we undressed and got down on the ground and we fucked, Jack, we fucked like mad, and I was so hot I came before he did; the second time I was on top and it was long and slow and I told him I loved him and you, you poor man, you sick cuckold, look at your face—Jesus Christ, what am I married to?'

‘Will you stop?'

‘Why should I? You ought to be knocking my teeth out now. But not you. You want to watch us. Is that it? Is that what you want, Jack?'

I sat up and was swinging at her but stopped even before she saw it coming, and my hand opened and I pointed at her eyes, the finger close, so close, and I wanted to gouge with it, to hit, to strangle, the finger quivering now as I tried not to shout beneath the children's rooms, my voice hoarse and constricted in my throat: ‘Terry, you fuck who you want and when you want and where you want but do not do
not
give me any of your half-ass insights into the soul of a man you've never understood.'

Then she was laughing, a true laugh at first or at least a smile, but she lay with her head back on the pillow, throat arched, her shoulders and breasts shaking, and prolonged it, forced it cracking into the air, withering my tense arm, and I got out of bed so I would not even touch the sheet she lay on.

‘Oh God: half-ass insights into the—what? The soul of a man I've never understood? Oh my. You poor baby, and it's so simple. You think you're a swinger, free love, I can fuck whoever I want, oh my how you talk and talk and talk and it all comes down to that one little flaw you won't admit: you're a pervert, Jack. You need help. And I'm sorry, I really am, but there's nothing I can do about it. I made love with Hank tonight and he wants to see me tomorrow—or this afternoon really—and when I finish this beer I'm going to sleep because the kids'll be up soon and you're not known for getting them breakfast—'