Stepping (38 page)

It got to be humorous, absurd. We would be together in Stockmann’s department store, looking at dolls and Lego sets for Santa to give Lucy and Adam for Christmas, and Charlie would look up from a battery-operated train and say, “You should go to him, Zelda. You really should. You should divorce me and go marry Stephen.”

And once on Bus 16, coming home, surrounded by grim housewives with fur hats and shopping bags, we got into an argument over the meaning of faithfulness: Charlie
argued that I was not faithful to him because I had
wanted
to sleep with Stephen; I argued that the important point was that I
hadn’t
. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered, tears coming into my eyes, “I wish I had slept with him, I really do. At least then I would have the experience to remember. I’m getting the same punishment, the same anger, whether I’ve done it or not.” Several Finnish women sat staring at me, impassive, as the tears rolled down my cheeks.

The crisis came just four days before Christmas, as we were walking along the Esplanade. It was a clear, painfully cold day, but pretty even so. There were seven grand tall evergreen trees along the center path of the Esplanade, all covered with lights and Scandinavian flags. Bright orange tents rimmed the circle around the tall central square statue, and fur-coated women from different charity groups huddled inside the warmth of the tents to sell handmade toys and hand-knit scarves and mittens to give as Christmas gifts. We had brought Adam and Lucy downtown with us to show them the Christmas window at Stockmann’s and Sokos and Elanto-Centrum. The large window at Stockmann’s was full of Snoopy dogs of all sizes, which made Adam squeal with delighted recognition. Lucy fell asleep in her stroller, and Adam walked along beside us, eating a fat sweet pretzel. As we came to the orange tents in the Esplanade, a handsome young man passed us and smiled, and I smiled back: it was Christmas. I suppose it was the young man’s smile that Charlie noticed.

“Now that there’s been one lover, how do I know there won’t be more?” he asked.

“How do I know you haven’t had hundreds of lovers on all your damned weeklong conferences?” I replied. It was an offhand comment, not a serious one. I was thinking of Christmas, enjoying myself.

Charlie was silent for a moment. “You’re right,” he said. “I see your point. Actually, I could have slept around at the conferences; certainly a lot of people do. And I’ve had plenty of offers.”

“Have you really?” I asked, stunned. I looked up at my husband. The Esplanade vanished, and I suddenly saw only Charlie’s face. He was older now, of course, with gray in his hair and a thick beard, but he was still monumentally attractive. He was large, virile, wise. “Graduate students, right?” I asked. “I’m sure. They hear you talk, they know about you. Why, they’re like academic groupies; they want to sleep with the great
Charles Campbell. Right?” For some reason I was excited.

Charlie smiled. “Right,” he said. He smiled almost foolishly, and I could tell he was remembering. “But I haven’t slept with anyone else but you, not since the day I met you,” he said. “And I won’t.”

“And I haven’t and won’t, either. Sleep with anyone else but
you
,” I said. “Oh, Charlie, I’ve trusted you, and trusting is a way of loving. Can’t you trust me? I’ve told you
everything
. And the important thing to me is not that Stephen wanted to sleep with me, but that he acted like a friend. He helped me get a job. He was my
friend
. The
job
is the important thing to me.”

“Mommy, can I have one of those little Santas?” Adam, oblivious to our discussion, pulled at my hand. He pointed to an orange stand where little red-hatted Santas made out of pinecones and wooden balls dangled from bright yarn strings.

I gave him a mark and said, “Be a big boy, go up and buy it yourself.” Adam walked off toward the tent. I took Charlie’s arm. “Please,” I said, “don’t be my enemy anymore. Be my friend.”

Charlie wrapped me in his arms and hugged me tightly to him. “Oh, God, Zelda,” he said, “it’s so painful to think of you in someone else’s arms.”

“Charlie,” I said, “believe me. He held me, but we never even had our clothes off. He never saw so much as my belly button.”

“Oh, Zelda,” Charlie said. “Oh, Zelda.”

Adam came back then, radiant with delight that he had been able to communicate to the Finnish woman and buy his pinecone Santa. Lucy whimpered in her stroller, and Adam said, “I’m brrrr,” and Charlie and I unwrapped from each other enough to realize that it was time to get on a bus and go home, night was falling, our feet and fingers were cold. As we walked out of the circle on the Esplanade, we noticed several people staring at us, probably because we had been standing out in the open hugging each other, which is not comme il faut in Helsinki. Charlie walked ahead of me, holding Adam’s hand and talking to him, and I followed behind, pushing the stroller. My heart felt lighter, easier. There on the Esplanade something had happened between us, some sort of unspoken settlement had been made. It occurred to me to wonder if Charlie had had an affair during one of his conferences, or if he slept around; he had certainly backed down once I
brought the topic up. But I sensed that he had been telling me the truth, that he had been approached, but had never followed through, that he liked the approaches, the pleasure of desire, the sensations of longing and lust, but that he had, like me, not wanted or needed anything more. At any rate, I knew it would be crazy to start worrying about whether or not he had been unfaithful. I wanted him to trust me. I would have to trust him.
Trust
. In the next few months, I realized, we would have to trust each other as never before.

That night, after the children were in bed, we sat up late into the night again, but talking sensibly this time rather than arguing. That day an envelope had come in the mail for me from the little college where I was to teach; it contained a one-year teaching contract. There was a friendly accompanying letter from Jim Steele; he said he was eager to meet me and to have me join the department. Second-semester classes would not begin until the first of February, he wrote, but it would be good if I could come in before then, to learn about their system of teaching freshman comp, to get acquainted with the texts, and so on. I told Charlie that I wanted to go home after the first of the year, so that I would have time to get the children settled and into nursery schools, so that I would have time to get organized for my work.

“Zelda,” Charlie said, “are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you need to do it
now
?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’m absolutely sure.”

“We could go to Greece in January,” he said. “I have to lecture there. We could take the children and spend two weeks sitting in the sun on some warm island.”

“I don’t want the sun and some warm island,” I smiled. “I want a classroom full of pimply-faced kids who aren’t sure of the difference between a semicolon and a colon.”

“What will we do for sex?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know what you’ll do,” I said. “But I know what I’ll do. I’ll sublimate. I don’t want sex with anyone but you. And I’m craving work so much that it will be a real substitute for me until we’re together again. I feel very strongly about this. It will be hard working full-time and taking care of the children without you. I’ll be too tired for sex. I’ve discovered I don’t even want sex with anyone but you. And, Charlie, I promise you, I won’t see Stephen. I don’t want to see him. And in spite of all that’s happened, I think he is a good and honorable man. I know he won’t try to see me anymore. He’s my friend
now. But what about you? What will
you
do for sex?”

“I don’t know, Zelda,” Charlie said. “I really don’t know. I feel very committed to you, even now. Especially now. Perhaps I’ll see if the Fulbright people will let me finish early. I could be home in April. And I can always go back to the States once or twice to lecture somewhere. I could stop by in February or March for a quick screw.” We both laughed, and then he went on, his voice more serious, “What I don’t know how I’ll handle is missing the children. It will be awful not having Adam and Lucy around. It makes me want to weep to think about it.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, amazed, astonished, overjoyed. “You’ll miss those noisy, messy, troublesome little kids?”

“God, yes, of course I will,” he said. “They give me the happiest moments of my day.”

“Oh, Charlie, oh, Charlie,” I cried. “Thank you!”

“Thank you?” he echoed. “For loving my own children?
Zelda
.” He looked at me.

I looked at him, really looked at him, this man I had seen almost daily for thirteen years, and I saw him. He loved my noisy children; he loved me. He was doing the best he could, he was letting me go free while still admitting that we were dedicated to each other.

“God,” I said, “I love you so much. You’re so
good
!” I went into his arms and began to cry. “I don’t want to be away from you,” I said. “I don’t want the children to be away from you, and they’ll miss you terribly. But, Charlie, I feel this is my one big chance, to teach at a college near a place where you teach, to have it all, my career, my children, and you. I want it so much.”

“Then don’t cry,” Charlie said. “It looks like you’ve got it.”

We made love that night for the first time in a long time, and it was rich and warm and affectionate, and touched with a bit of new strange exhilaration, as if we were making love with someone slightly new. After that we mentioned Stephen less and less and discussed our future more and more. And Christmas came, and Lucy had the chicken pox, and I felt better deep inside; I realized that life would never be perfect, there would always be trouble and trials, and that, in my superstitious point of view, was right. Perfection is cold and clear and unmoving. Life is warm and muddled and complicated.
And good.

* * *

It is January 4, 1978, and these things have happened:

Lucy has completely recovered from her chicken pox. A few scabs spot her body here and there, but she doesn’t mind them, nor do I. We all laugh at the patch of blond hair that has turned green from the medicine I had to dab on a pox in her scalp. She will look a bit odd, but she will be able to make the trip home. And Adam is healthy; we all are.

Cathy, who is now twenty, has dropped out of university in the middle of a semester and run off to California with a handsome boy who plays the guitar.

Caroline has been accepted by the biology department at the graduate school where Charlie teaches. She said she is sick of New Haven and feels she needs to get back into contact with the “real” world. She wants to know if she can come live with us on the farm in January.

Adelaide has remarried. Her new husband is vice president of a bank and apparently has lots of money, but Adelaide has decided to keep working; she is proud of her position at the university now, and feels that she is rather indispensable, and intends to work there until retirement. She and her new husband, whose name is Bob, have bought a smart town house, and alternate cooking gourmet meals there in the evenings when they come home from work. They were married over the Christmas vacation, and honeymooned in Bermuda. Adelaide is happy, and calm.

We know these things have happened because in the past few days we have been bombarded with letters and telegrams and telephone calls. We know that Adelaide is calm because of the way in which she handled Cathy’s disappearance with the guitar player.

“She’s
ruining
her life,” Adelaide said to Charlie on the phone during a transatlantic phone call. The call had been placed at eleven o’clock Massachusetts time; Adelaide had waited up that late so that we would not be awakened before six Finnish time. There was only a slight hint of hysteria in her voice. “Do you suppose there is
anything you could do about it?” she asked Charlie. “She always did want to please you.”

“Perhaps this is the right thing for her to do,” Charlie said.

“Oh, Charlie, you always were so exasperating,” Adelaide wailed. “You’re a
college professor
. How can you believe that dropping out of college is the right thing for your daughter to do! I wish to God I had had a college education; then my life wouldn’t have been such a nasty grind when you left me.”

“Maybe she’ll finish college later,” Charlie said. “I can’t say I’m pleased that she’s dropped out after the tuition’s been paid, but Cathy’s not a dumb girl, and this must have been what she needed to do.”

“Oh, Charlie,” Adelaide sighed.

“Well, I’ll write to her. I’ll call her and find out what’s going on. Do you have her address or phone number?”

“No,” Adelaide said. “All I know is California.”

“California is a pretty big place,” Charlie said. “Why don’t you just relax? And when she gets in touch with you again, ask her to get in touch with me.”

“She’s only twenty,” Adelaide said. “My baby. But I suppose you’re right. There isn’t much we can do until she lets us know where she is.”

“Caroline wrote us that you’re married now, Adelaide,” Charlie said. “Congratulations. I hope you’re happy.”

“I am. I am happy, Charlie.
Very
happy. Although this Cathy business does get me down. I was hoping that I’d never have to talk to you about anything again, but this worries me, not knowing where she is or what she’s doing.”

“I’ll do what I can to help,” Charlie said. “I promise. As soon as she gets in touch with you—or Caroline or me—I’ll try to find out what’s going on. In the meantime, relax. Okay?”

“Okay,” Adelaide said. Then she said, “Charlie? Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Charlie said.

The children were still sleeping when Adelaide’s phone call came, and I sat in my nightgown and robe, drinking hot tea, fighting down irrational jealousy and trying to be glad that at least Adelaide and Charlie could talk pleasantly to each other.

“As the world turns,” I said to Charlie.

“When you get home,” Charlie said, “perhaps you can talk to Caroline and find out more about what Cathy’s up to. There might be some friends who would know where she’s gone, or what her plans are.”