Thy Neighbor's Wife (34 page)

After sitting awhile he heard someone behind him, and, turning, he saw the wife of a pharmacist named Bruce, an assertive woman with small firm breasts. He thought that she had come out to console him, but instead she asked, almost in a whisper, “How could you have said such things to John, after all he’s tried to do for us?”

Bullaro, suppressing his anger, did not reply. But he knew he could no longer remain among Williamson’s absurd idolaters. He got up, walked toward the closet, and began to dress. He noticed that Williamson’s bedroom door was closed, and he could hear voices in the room, but he did not call Judith to say that he was leaving; tonight she would have to get a ride home with someone else.

The children and the sitter were asleep when he arrived, and, feeling exhausted, he quickly went to bed. The next morning, a Friday, he awoke early and saw that Judith had still not returned. He was perturbed but not alarmed. At breakfast he told the children and the teenaged girl that Judith would be home later in the day, which they unquestioningly accepted. He drove to his office and remained preoccupied with business throughout the day; and at five o’clock he impulsively decided that
he
would spend the night away from home and let Judith sit wondering where he might be.

He drove down the curving canyon roads onto the Pacific Coast Highway, and turned right toward Malibu Beach. As he
paused at traffic lights he watched dark-tanned young men and women wearing bikinis and surfing suits walking across the highway in front of the cars—sun peasants balancing sleek colorful boards on their heads and smiling in a carefree manner at the long line of motorists. Continuing his drive along the beach, Bullaro passed hitchhiking hippies, and as he turned off the road into a motel parking lot and got out of his car, he saw standing near him a young woman with long blond hair, lovely but disheveled, dust-covered and seemingly fatigued. He approached her and asked if she would like to join him for something to eat in the motel coffee shop. She nodded and followed him.

He sat in a booth and ordered her a hamburger and Coke while she used the washroom, and, although she seemed more refreshed when she rejoined him, he could smell her rancid odor, as if she had not bathed in weeks, and he resisted the temptation to invite her to his motel room. He slept alone that night, thinking about Judith but enjoying his solitude and the independence in being away from Williamson’s retinue. Later in the morning, however, after he had returned home and saw that Judith still had not come back, he for the first time felt mildly panicked.

He was scheduled to take a scuba-diving lesson later that afternoon at the beach with David Schwind and Bruce the pharmacist; and since the sitter was off during the weekend he took the children with him, confident that Judith, eager to see them, would drive down with Bruce and David from Sandstone. Bullaro got there early, and, after taking his diving equipment out of the car, he played with the children along the surf.

Soon he saw David Schwind’s Cadillac pulling into the parking area; there were three people in the front, but Judith was not among them. In addition to David and Bruce there was the woman who had chided him on the sun deck two nights before, Bruce’s untimid wife. The two men nodded toward him as they joined the others in the class, but Bruce’s wife turned away when she saw him; and Bullaro could only assume, since she had never before attended the scuba class, that Williamson had sent her along to inhibit the men from socializing with him. She remained
close to David and her husband when they were not in the water, and as soon as the instruction was over she asked that they return directly to the car, which they did. Bullaro watched with intensified frustration as they drove away, and, not for the first time, he contemplated killing Williamson. It would be easy with a rifle, while hiding in the woods, to hit him as he drove the bulldozer up and down the hill.

After arriving home with the children, and still with no sign of Judith, he could not resist the urge to telephone her at Sandstone, even though he had no idea what to say; he felt embittered and betrayed by her, yet wanted to speak to her. As he listened to the buzz on the phone ringing at Sandstone, he was tempted to hang up, and then he heard Barbara’s voice. He asked to speak to Judith, but Barbara said, “I’ll see if she wants to talk to you.”

“You do that!” he said sharply.

After a short while Barbara returned to the phone.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Tell her I have to talk about the children.”

There was another pause, and Barbara said once more, “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

He wanted to scream and issue threats, but he knew that the children in the next room might become frightened, and so he hung up and tried to contain his fury.

Later in the evening, after he had made their dinner, played with them, and put them to bed, he again dialed Sandstone, and when Barbara heard his voice she explained with irritation, “Look, John, Judy just doesn’t want to talk to you. She’s arranging for the children to be taken care of, but we’d all appreciate it if you’d stop calling. We’ve had a long day and we’re all very tired.”

Barbara hung up. Bullaro stood with the silent phone in his hand, shaken, incensed, feeling helpless. There was no one in the entire city that he could turn to—nobody from the insurance company, no family member or friend. Everyone he had come to know intimately in recent years was under Williamson’s influence, and they were reducing him to a cuckold, a caretaker
of children, a man robbed of dignity and confidence. But as John Williamson had declared on the sun deck, Bullaro could blame only himself for becoming trapped in this situation; he had enjoyed the bodies of many women and had become unhappy only after Judith had begun to assert her own independence.

Bullaro believed, however, that there was a difference between what he had done and what she was now doing; for him, sex with Barbara and Arlene, Gail and Oralia, was merely recreational, joyful, and uncomplicated, unthreatening to his marriage, whereas Judith was clearly becoming romantically attached to Williamson—she was more committed and loyal to this man than to her own husband, which she reaffirmed in the way she stood by Williamson during the confrontation on the porch, and also in her manner of almost clinging to Williamson ever since they first became lovers. While this did not appear to disturb Barbara, it had lately become increasingly irritating to Bullaro—in fact, the mere sight of the two of them lying nude together that evening on the sun deck, a couple savoring their intimacy, had pained Bullaro more than he cared to admit. What had begun as a group experiment to equalize the double standard had now become, for Judith, a serious love affair. Sexual intercourse with Williamson was obviously not enough for her; she had to embellish it with romance, to establish Williamson as the center of her life, to threaten her marriage and the welfare of her children.

This was so typical of traditional women like Judith, Bullaro thought bitterly; they simply could not enjoy extramarital sex without sooner or later becoming emotionally involved, which is what made such women different from men like himself. The average married man, if he had the energy, could have sex with several women without diminishing the affection and desire he felt for his wife. But women like Judith—unlike
truly
liberated females like Barbara and Arlene—could not simply accept a man as a temporary instrument of pleasure; they wanted soft lights and promises, not just a penis but the man attached to it.

Understanding this, however, was not going to get Judith back home; and Bullaro knew that unless he somehow made his peace
with Williamson and regained acceptance at Sandstone, he had little chance of even communicating with Judith. While he was not sure that he still loved her, not after all the anguish and humiliation she had caused him, he conceded after some reflection that he needed her and wanted not to lose her, particularly not to Williamson. Bullaro also missed being part of the group, which, with all its flaws, represented the only close human contact he now had—his boyhood fears of isolation and rejection were haunting him still; and so he decided that he
had
to suppress his pride and anger and go personally to Sandstone to plead forgiveness. It would signify total capitulation on his part but, short of violence, there seemed to be no alternative.

Bullaro telephoned his young unmarried sister and urgently asked if she would spend the night with the children. Shortly before 11
P.M.,
after she had arrived, he began the uphill drive toward Sandstone, pressing hard on the accelerator, feeling the big station wagon leaning heavily into the mountain curves. He still felt a bit ashamed at what he was doing, but on these narrow roads there was no turning back, and he continued without hesitation until he pulled into the courtyard behind the main house. Most of the exterior lights around the property were turned off, and the draperies were pulled tight across the large windows. He knocked on the front door for several moments before he heard footsteps and Barbara’s voice calling: “What do you want?”

“I want to speak to John,” Bullaro said.

There was a pause; then the door opened halfway. Bullaro saw John Williamson standing behind Barbara in the darkened living room, and, without waiting for any response, Bullaro said in a quiet voice: “John, I want to apologize for the other night.”

Williamson remained silent and dour, resistant to Bullaro’s appeal. Finally, Barbara asked, “Do you really mean it?”

“Yes,” Bullaro said.

Then Williamson spoke, his voice soft but resolute.

“Are you sure you’re not just saying this to reach Judy?”

“Yes, “Bullaro replied, “I really
am
sorry for what happened…and I want to be a part of you again.”

Bullaro waited at the door with his head lowered, starting to believe what he was saying. Then he felt Williamson’s hand on his shoulder, and Barbara opened the door wide to admit him. Behind him, in the middle of the darkened living room, gathered around and listening, stood the others, all except Judith. As they stepped forward and embraced him, Bullaro heard Williamson’s warning: “Judy does not want to live with your hostility anymore.”

“I don’t blame her,” Bullaro replied.

Soon the attractive blond figure of Judith appeared, seeming both familiar and distant, and she tentatively approached with arms outstretched to receive him. They remained with their arms around one another for several minutes, and Bullaro felt her kisses and his own desire, and one by one the other people departed and left them by themselves in the middle of the large room. Judith then took him by the hand and escorted him toward a bedroom; slowly she helped him remove his clothes, and that night she made love to him with a passion and emotion that he had not felt from her in years.

The next morning they awakened late and had breakfast together—it was like a holiday; everybody was relaxed and cheerful, and when Bullaro saw John Williamson it was as if no ill-feeling had ever grown between them. It was remarkable, Bullaro thought, this style of Williamson’s—he could seem sinister one day, saintlike the next, and with no apparent effort his mood altered the atmosphere of the entire house and influenced everyone within it. On this morning Williamson was his most munificent self and did not make Bullaro feel like a penitent, a renegade who would have to slowly regain the group’s trust and acceptance. Bullaro felt amazingly at ease with all of them—with Barbara, Oralia, even the pharmacist’s wife—and in the days that followed, with no sense of obligation, he spent more time at Sandstone and began to work around the property.

He spent less time at his office at New York Life, confident that the many salesmen that he had personally hired and trained no longer required his constant supervision, and he decided, too,
that he would hereafter exercise more independence over his life. The company could survive without him, and he without it; he had perhaps been a company man too long, and now he arbitrarily decided to devote more time to his internal self and to fully test his compatibility with this unusual place.

Being at Sandstone during the daylight hours allowed him to see more clearly the remarkable improvements that had been made throughout the estate. Not only the main house but the smaller ones up the hill were freshly painted and comfortably furnished. The landscaping was nearly done, the roads were smooth, if not yet entirely blacktopped, and the electrical wiring and water pipes had been repaired or replaced. The large glass-doored pool house, in which the water was heated to body temperature, was a favorite gathering place of the group on cool evenings, as was the high hill behind the main house that offered at twilight a magnificent view of the Pacific. The nights were quiet and serene—Sandstone’s closest neighbor was two miles away—and the only nocturnal intruders were a couple of rummaging raccoons that climbed the western fence of the property and clawed futilely atop the securely covered metal garbage cans that were clustered outside the staircase leading up to the kitchen.

One evening when the group was gathered in the living room after dinner, Bullaro felt compelled to describe the positive effect being back at Sandstone was having on him; and he announced with satisfaction that he had overcome his defensiveness, was now liberated from the confining forces that had bound him in the city below. Williamson listened silently, then suggested that Bullaro test his emotions by driving off into the desert and spending time in absolute solitude.

“Oh, I could do that,” Bullaro quickly replied, almost boastfully.

“Then
do
it,” Williamson said firmly.

“I’ll do it this weekend,” Bullaro said.

“Why not
now?
” Williamson asked. Bullaro was stunned by
Williamson’s challenge, and looking around the room he saw that everyone was watching, him and waiting to see how he would react. It was close to 11
P.M.,
a ridiculous time to be driving into the desert; but Bullaro saw no way to avoid it. Attempting to seem casual, he said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”