The Outsider (25 page)

“What good will it do to talk? You'll become angry. You always do. I can't fight you, Lucy. You shred me to ribbons.”

“Not tonight. But that's it — the question of becoming angry.”

“We've been through that.”

“Not really, no. If we could both become angry enough to fight with each other, we'd be alive. No, I don't mean that. I'm trying to say that there's something missing in our marriage, something I need desperately, as much as I need air to breathe.”

“And what is that, Lucy?” he asked quietly.

“I'm not sure. Laughter, maybe. Joy. A kind of excitement. Maybe to be eager for tomorrow to come because you know there's something good tomorrow, but not to have tomorrow no less dreary than today.”

“And that's how you feel?”

“That's how I've felt for a long time, David. Didn't you know that?”

“No — not the way you put it.”

“It's not that I don't love you. You're so good and kind.”

“That's not enough, is it?”

“David, I have to get away. Otherwise, I shall go absolutely mad. I'm not talking about a divorce. But I want to take the kids and go to California for one school term. From now until February. I spoke to my mother on the telephone, and she discussed it with my Uncle Bert and Aunt Freda. He needs help desperately in the store, and he'll pay me a hundred dollars a week.”

“And that's what you're leaving me for,” he said unbelievingly, “to work in a saddle shop somewhere in California? Lucy, I don't even know where Santa Barbara is. And you're taking the children?”

“I'm not leaving you. Well, I am, but I'm not. I'm not asking for a divorce, only to save my — no, I'm not going to say my sanity. It's my life, David.”

“I don't understand. I just don't understand what you're saying.”

“Did you ever understand what I am saying?”

“That's not fair,” David protested. “I listen to you. I always listen to you, and I try to see your point of view.”

“Well, here it is, flat out, my point of view,” her voice rising. “My point of view is that if I don't get away from Leighton Ridge, I will go insane, I will kill myself, I will scream until my vocal cords part, I will become a mumbling idiot, I will divorce you — any and all of them. Oh, Jesus, I don't know. I don't want to end our marriage. I don't want a divorce, but I can't go on this way. So I worked out this separation. You won't have to send us money. Momma found a nice house with extra bedrooms, and we'll live there with her. She'll help with the children while I'm working — “ He was trying to control the pain he felt, and she broke off, trying desperately not to burst into tears.

“How can I explain it?” she asked hopelessly.

David didn't answer. He sat motionless, stiff, in his chair, looking at his wife, and perhaps a minute went by, and then he said to her, “When do you want to go?”

“In a few days, David, so that I can put the kids in school when their term begins.”

“Are there any Jews there, Lucy?” with childish innocence.

“Of course, and in Los Angeles, just sixty miles away, about the same distance that we are from New York, there's the second largest Jewish community in the world.”

“I could call you. That wouldn't cost too much. And suppose I came out there, say in a month or two, I'd be missing all of you so much,” plaintively, hopelessly.

“Sure. We have five thousand dollars put away. I think half of it should be used by you for fare or whatever.”

He shook his head. “This is crazy. What happened to us?”

“It happens to a great many people, David.”

“But I love you. I always thought you loved me.”

“I do — in a way. But it's not enough. It's simply not enough.”

“I just don't understand,” he said despairingly. “What do I do? Do I go on living here?”

“Mrs. Holtzman will move in and sleep in Sarah's room. I've made all the arrangements with her. I told her I'm taking the children out to California to see my mother and to stay with her for a while, and that's all she has to know or anyone in the congregation. You just tell them the same thing. It's perfectly natural.”

“And live alone?”

“For a while, David.”

“You spoke of a whole school term, five months. Or is that just to ease me over the hurdle before the divorce?”

“I'm not asking for a divorce, David. Not unless you want one?”

“Why would I want one? Lucy, for God's sake, don't do this. There's no reason to do it.”

“Only to save my own life, David.”

A week after Lucy and the children went off to California, because he had to talk to someone, he told Martin Carter the truth about Lucy's visit to her mother, and quite understandably, since he was not sworn to secrecy, Martin told his wife. Millie promptly invited David to dinner, and then told her husband, “You be upstairs when he comes, and let me have a few words with him alone.”

Millie was in the kitchen when David arrived. He entered through the front door, which was never locked, and Millie called out to him, “Make yourself comfortable in the living room, David. Martin's upstairs, showering.” She came into the living room with two tall glasses of gin and tonic. “For the dog days — you do like gin and tonic?”

David accepted the glass and smiled bleakly. He had been studying the furniture in the room, the chintz-covered, overstuffed chairs and couch, the eighteenth-century sewing table, the mahogany desk, the sunburst mirror that had belonged to Millie's grandfather, the two old family oil portraits — studying them and trying, as he had a hundred times before, to understand Lucy's flight from all this, her statement that everything — certainly beautiful old things like these included — everything in Leighton Ridge was stifling her, killing her. Yet their lives had not been confined by Leighton Ridge. He and Martin had been in every good fight, walked in demonstrations, signed petitions, preached against war and injustice. But that was himself and Martin; where had Lucy been?

Here now was Millie, as good a friend as Lucy ever had — this according to Lucy — coming right to the point: “David, why did you let her leave?”

“I didn't let her.” He was taken aback, trying desperately to formulate his own attitude. “How could I stop her?”

“By telling her that you're her husband and she'd better damned well not run off to California.”

“I couldn't tell her that.”

“Why? For heaven's sake, why?”

“She's a human being. She's a person. In her place, if I felt the way she felt, I would have gone too.”

“No you wouldn't. Now you listen to me, David Hartman. I've been married to one of you for more years than I care to count, and I know what I'm talking about, and I've been watching you for ten years now. It has nothing to do with religion. People like you and Martin turn to religion sometimes and sometimes to other things, I don't know what, maybe revolutions, but whatever it is, you go into it because you're some kind of damned saint, and God help any one of us who is married to a saint. I know. I've been there, and I know every thought Lucy thought and every feeling she felt, and I had the same screaming desire to run away — not once, but half a dozen times. But I was not brought up to think and act as freely as Lucy, and I had no one in California to run to, and if I had run, Martin's family and my family would have cast me out into the dust. Not Martin, mind you. He would have exhibited that same lousy understanding that you saints are so expert with. Yes, I'm glad I stayed. Life is just as frustrating and meaningless in Santa Barbara or anywhere else as in Leighton Ridge, and underneath all his saintly denseness, Martin is a wonderful, beautiful man — just as you are. And my kids grew up with a mother and a father, which is the way it should be. It is not Leighton Ridge. It's this stinking planet we live on.”

“But if you felt that way, what kept you here?” David wondered.

“What kept me here? Closed doors, David. I was a minister's daughter married to a minister. That closes a lot of doors. I was not raised in a free-thinking, open household, as Lucy was, free to doubt and question, and do you know, I thank God for it — because I still have Martin.”

“If she still loved me, she wouldn't have gone away. What sense would it make to force her to live with a man she stopped loving?”

Millie sighed hopelessly. “I don't think I've ever known a man who didn't have the brains of a tadpole, not when it comes down to anything concerning emotions or feelings. The few hours you spent with Sarah Comstock, God rest her poor soul, were hours of love. Very wonderful, but hours, David, don't you understand that? In days it cools, in weeks it barely stirs, and in months it's either replaced with friendship and consideration and compassion, or the lovers are ready to destroy each other. And most of them do. And Lucy respects you, honors you, and trusts you, and that's a kind of love a lot better than what they sell us in the movies and on the tube.”

“Even if that's true, it's too late.”

“Why?”

“She's gone.”

“David, David, get on a plane and go out there.”

“I can't.”

“You must. I love Lucy, but she's crazy. She'll ruin her life and yours and your kids'.”

“I can't force her.”

“David, get on a plane and go out there. That's all I am going to say. We have meat loaf, poor parish meat loaf. Martin!” she called. “We're eating in five minutes.”

David stayed awake half the night, thinking, planning, talking to himself, arguing with himself, sleeping finally out of sheer exhaustion. He didn't get to his office at the synagogue until after ten, and when Mrs. Shapiro came into his office with a list of his calls, he brushed them aside and said, “I'm flying out to California this afternoon, Mrs. Shapiro. My suitcase is packed at home. Reserve a ticket as close to two o'clock as possible. That will give me time to get to Idlewild. Can you drive?”

“Of course I can drive. I drive here every day. I think it's wonderful you should go see your wife and children, but what about Friday night service?”

“Call Mel Klein. He'll lead the service. I'll drive my car to Idlewild. You come with me and drive the car back.”

“I'll get lost. I'll never find my way back.”

“You'll find your way back. Grown people who get lost in cars are always found. Meanwhile, reserve the tickets. Round trip for me, one way from California to Idlewild for my wife and the children.” He tried to say it casually and to feel casual about it, but inside he was sick with doubt and fear. He had split himself in two, and the part in motion and action was shredding every fiber of the part that was David Hartman.

He felt that all the way out to Idlewild, with Mrs. Shapiro reminding him, “You have the Kaplin
Bar Mitzvah.
That's a week from Saturday, which is ten days. Will you be back in ten days, Rabbi Hartman? Do you know, you didn't even give me a forwarding address or a telephone number. You know where your mother-in-law lives, but I don't. Maybe you don't. What should I tell Mikey Kaplin? Or his mother? She gets hysterical.”

“Santa Barbara.”

“Where is Santa Barbara? I can't just say Santa Barbara. What do I do, call Information and ask for Santa Barbara?”

“Please, Mrs. Shapiro, don't panic,” thinking that he was sufficiently panicked for both of them. “My mother-in-law's name is Sally Spendler. You could get that from Information. In fact, when we get to the airport, I'll write it all down for you.”

“Oh, my God!”

“What's that, Mrs. Shapiro?”

“You got a wedding. The Silverman wedding. I forgot. God help me, I'm getting like you, Rabbi.”

“The wedding is a week from Sunday. I'll be back. If not, call Rabbi Bert Sager in Norwalk, and he'll do it.”

“Suppose Rabbi Sager has a wedding from his own congregation?”

“In September?”

When they reached the airport, David was so involved with Mrs. Shapiro's problems that he momentarily forgot his own. After the airplane took off, he began to reconstruct his miseries, and he brooded and worried over them the whole seven hours to Los Angeles.

However, by the time he reached Los Angeles, his doubts and worries faded into the excitement of knowing that he would see Lucy and the children in a few hours. It was only ten days since they had left Connecticut, but it seemed like an eternity. Mrs. Shapiro had booked him onto a one o'clock flight, which meant that he had no time to do anything but make a mad rush for the airport, and the plane landed at five o'clock Los Angeles time.By six o'clock, David was in a rented car, driving north to Santa Barbara, guiding himself by frequent consultations with his road map. At eight-fifteen, he drove slowly up Acacia Road, looking for Number 432, the house Lucy's mother had rented. When he found it, 432 reminded him of nothing so much as the big beach houses in Far Rockaway, where he and his mother had occasionally visited some obscure relative. It was covered with shingles stained dark brown; it had a porch around two sides; and the door had a stained glass panel.

The last glimmer of twilight had faded. Lights twinkled through the stained glass panel. David rang the bell, and Sally Spendler opened the door, looked at him, cried out in surprise, and then folded him against her ample bosom, whispering, “Thank God you've come. She's lonely and miserable, which she deserves. Why, why, why did you let her do it?”

Against this, Lucy's voice, “Mother, who is it?”

Sarah saw him and screeched, “It's Daddy!”

Sally let go of him, and the two children came running. He dropped onto his knees and embraced both of them. Never an embrace like this before. He looked up, and Lucy was standing in the hallway, staring at him. Then he let go of the children and stood up and walked to her and kissed her. “David, are you hungry?” her mother said quickly. Lucy continued to stare at him without saying a word.