The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (63 page)

 

 

Monday night, Yale made Cynthia lie down in the guest room. "You're acting
crazy," he told her, "as if you had a mission that must be accomplished.
If you keep going this way you'll end up catching pneumonia yourself.
I'm not helpless, you know. I can watch Barbara. What's eating you, anyway?"

 

 

"A long time ago I asked you never to bring me to this house again."
Cynthia sighed. "Now, I have come of my own volition. Some day, you can
tell your father that Jews aren't so bad."

 

 

When Doctor Starkey looked at Barbara on Wednesday, he smiled. "Chalk it
up to penicillin and Mrs. Chilling. We caught it in time. She'll be on
her feet in a few days."

 

 

After bringing a tray for Barbara, Cynthia made supper for herself and
Yale in the kitchen. Yale sat at the table and watched her while she
prepared the meal. A deep feeling of tenderness flowed through him. How
was he going to talk with her . . . how make her confess what had happened
to their love? An idea occurred to him. "I think we both need a drink,"
he said. "We'll help ourselves to some of Pat's liquor."

 

 

"Oh, I don't think I want a drink, Yale. It's been a long time since
I've had anything except a glass of beer. Mat never drank."

 

 

Yale ignored her. He went behind Pat's bar just off the living room.
Something powerful, he thought with a grin. Something that went down
easily and worked like dynamite. Tonight, whether she knew it or not,
Mrs. Chilling was going to get good and tight.

 

 

He came back to the kitchen with a pitcher full of Manhattans. Cynthia
was putting a steak on his plate and hers. "You wouldn't refuse to have
a Manhattan with me for old times' sake, would you?"

 

 

Cynthia smiled. Sipping the drink he had poured, she murmured,
"It's very good. Just right. Not too strong."

 

 

Yale agreed. He had used one hundred proof bourbon with just enough
vermouth and cherry juice to conceal the strength. They ate their steaks
. . . at first in silence. "You're a good cook," Yale said. He watched
for the effect of the liquor.

 

 

"Oh, any dope can cook a steak and brown a few potatoes."

 

 

Yale refilled her glass. "Remember the night we played strip-poker with
Sonny Thompson and Bee Middleton?"

 

 

"That was awful!" Cynthia laughed. "Sonny was so darned eager. You can't
be eager like that with a girl."

 

 

"They got married," Yale said. "Sonny was in the Navy. I guess he had to
marry her to get it."

 

 

Cynthia giggled. She held a piece of steak aloft on her fork, and looked
at it seriously. "Those days were fun."

 

 

"Did you think about us very much in the past few years?"

 

 

Cynthia looked at him. "You know I did, Yale. After all, we were quite
involved once. The talk of the campus."

 

 

They had finished eating. "Cindar, would you play the piano for me?"

 

 

"Gosh, I don't know whether I can any more. I haven't been near a piano
for five years."

 

 

Yale led her into the living room. He brought the pitcher of Manhattans
and their glasses. He filled hers. As she sat down at the piano, she
took another sip. "These are nice drinks. They warm you up. I'm glad
the lights came back on. You don't know how dependent you are on the
thousands of other people until you see how pitifully incapable you are
without something like electricity." Cynthia finished her drink.

 

 

Three, Yale thought. He could feel the drinks making him a little giddy.
Could Cindar drink another? He would have to be careful or he would get
so high himself; he would lose control.

 

 

"What'll I play?"

 

 

"Anything you want to, Cindar."

 

 

"Need to practice a little first." She ran a few scales, and odd pieces
that Yale recognized as intricate finger exercises.

 

 

"Feels good to play again. Okay, I'll see if I remember some of Chopin's
nocturnes. Used to know 'em all." Cynthia smiled at him and the warm,
searching melodies of Chopin filled the room. She played unerringly
for fifteen minutes. Yale watched her, astonished both at her ability
to play with such feeling after three drinks, and his own feeling of
love for her. He wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her sweetly
serious face.

 

 

When she stopped Yale filled her glass and led her over to a sofa. She
sat down, holding her glass, looking at him with brown eyes that were
liquid with tears.

 

 

"I talked with Barbara today. Her husband, Tom, met another woman.
He told her he didn't love this woman, but he wanted to keep seeing
her occasionally. Barbara is going to divorce him. She says she hates
him. But when she says it you can see she still loves him. She would
forgive him, I guess, except that he doesn't see anything wrong with
it. He wants to keep right on having two women. All their friends do
it." Cynthia shivered. "What's wrong with marriage today, Yale? People
get married and everything is all right the first years -- the years
when they are struggling together to make a living. Then, when things
get easier, they start to play around. Mat and I met the problem over
and over again when he was preaching."

 

 

"What did Mat think about it?" Yale asked.

 

 

"He had a one-track mind on the subject. The carryover of ancient
taboos, working like any prohibition, making people so sex conscious
that they rebelled and then were involved in a morass of desire versus
duty." Cynthia sipped at her drink. "You know somethin'? I'm getting a
little tight."

 

 

"Relax," Yale said. "You've been working hard. I feel kind of sorry
for Bobby. I'd have thought she might be sophisticated enough to handle
that situation."

 

 

Cynthia looked at him querulously. "You think it's a sign of sophistication
to play around when you're married?"

 

 

Yale shook his head. "No. Not particularly. I mean Barbara had a lot of
dates before she was married. She should know men pretty well."

 

 

"You mean that's the way men are. Are you like that now, Yale?" Cynthia
whispered. "I guess you've probably had a lot of women."

 

 

Yale smiled. He picked up her hand and looked at her strong, unpolished
nails. "I've 'had,' as you put it -- you, Anne, and two other girls whom
I remember only because I felt kind of sorry afterwards."

 

 

"Sorry --?" Cynthia asked, feeling a little tinge of jealousy.

 

 

"Oh, I just mean that I like women as much as any man, but the few
times I have tried intercourse with them without anything but sexual
urge I haven't felt it was worth it. I like to wake up with a woman
and be glad she's there. Still, I haven't been married to one woman as
a day-in day-out proposition. Maybe if I had," Yale said, teasing her,
"I'd try and knock off a stray piece, now and then. What about Mat?
Did he ever play around?"

 

 

"I told you Mat was so dedicated to his ideas that at times I think he
looked upon his love for me as an attempt to prove them in reality. He
was too busy to be anything but monogamous." Cynthia stood up. "I should
look in on Barbara. Oooh . . . Yale . . I feel so dizzy."

 

 

Yale grabbed her around her waist and pulled her back on the couch.
"I love you, Cindar." He kissed her.

 

 

Slowly, she put her arms around him, and then wildly kissed his mouth,
his cheeks, his eyes. "Yale, it can never be." She pulled away from
him. "You can take me tonight, but only the way you'd take a whore."

 

 

Yale kissed her and pulled her gently across his lap into his arms.
"You're drunk, my little sweetheart."

 

 

"Mmmm, Cynthia is very, very drunk," she murmured, and relaxed with a sigh.
She closed her eyes while Yale caressed her legs. He brushed his hands
under her dress to the edge of her buttocks. She didn't stop him. His hand
caressed the roundness of her stomach, and nestled between her legs. "Oh,
God, Yale," she sighed. "What a mess our life has been . . . If only
your father could have understood."

 

 

"Could have understood what?" Yale whispered.

 

 

She didn't answer.

 

 

"Could have understood what, darling?"

 

 

"Could have understood that I always loved you so much. That being Jewish
only meant that I could love you even more . . . with all the fierce love
of Jews for what is theirs . . ."

 

 

"What did Pat say to you?" Yale demanded, looking at her, startled.
That was it! Why hadn't he guessed? Pat had done some intensive meddling
on his own, Yale thought bitterly.

 

 

Cynthia's voice was far-away when she spoke . . . "Oh, God . . . oh, God
. . ." she shuddered, "I'll never forget the way he looked at me. . . ."

 

 

Slowly, Yale pieced the story together. Cynthia had passed almost
into an alcoholic hypnosis. As he prodded her, repeating questions,
patiently repeating again, she would answer as if she were in a trance
and then relapse into drunken silence. Yale managed to reconstruct a
vivid picture of the meeting in Pat's office. Finally, he could pry no
more out of her. She collapsed, a dead weight in his arms.

 

 

What kind of a man was Pat? Yale wondered. Pat had deliberately forced
Cynthia to break up with him. Pat had moved him and Cindar around just as
unconcernedly as he would pawns in a game of chess; more calculating even
because he had a shrewd understanding of motivations. He knew exactly
how Cynthia would react. He knew that without Cynthia his son would be
temporarily directionless and that he could steer him to Harvard. Given
time he could engulf him with his own values. Yale could only feel a
dull anger. Not hatred. For some reason he could no longer hate Pat.
It was pitiful really, he thought, to build a life out of the fabric of
your children's lives. For Pat, success without a son to emulate him, to
build on the foundations he had started, was a hollow thing. For Pat the
act of love was an act of possession whether it be his wife or his child.

 

 

Yale picked Cynthia up and carried her upstairs to his room. I never want
to possess you, dearest, he thought. I simply want to share the fun and
sorrow of living with a woman who cares for me. Strike domination out
of the world! Strike down those who would master others for desire and
profit! To this I will devote my life! He dropped Cynthia lightly on his
bed. For the first time he had a glimmering sensation of purpose in his
life, and Cynthia was a part of the tenuous dream.

 

 

As he undressed her, he smiled. The second time in a week. He was getting
pretty adept at undressing women. When he had wrestled Cynthia out of her
clothes and tumbled her under the covers he walked through the bathroom
to see Barbara.

 

 

She was sitting up in bed, evidently feeling much better. She asked him
where Cynthia was. "She is your Cynthia, isn't she?" Barbara accented the
"your."

 

 

"If you mean is she the Cynthia I knew in college," Yale said, "the answer
is yes. I just finished getting her very drunk . . . to find out why she
did something crazy a few years ago."

 

 

"You mean why she broke up with you?"

 

 

Yale nodded grimly. "And you found out what Pat did?" Barbara asked.

 

 

"So you knew all about it."

 

 

"Not until it was too late. Pat told Liz. Liz told me. She was shocked,
but then she thought it was for the best. Jews aren't popular in Midhaven
society, you know." Barbara fidgeted with the cover of her quilt. "Don't
you think you should leave well enough alone? She's pregnant, or don't
you know?"

 

 

"My, my! You girls had a real talk-fest today, didn't you?" Yale said
mockingly. "I know one thing . . . that you would enjoy castrating your
husband. . . ." He shrugged. "So Pat will have a Jewish daughter-in-law,
and a gay divorcee to entertain him in his old age." He started back to
his room. "I'll leave the doors open. If you need me, yell. I'm sleeping
with Mrs. Chilling, but don't listen for the springs to squeak, I never
make love to drunken women."

 

 

Laughing, he ducked the pillow she threw at him. But he did make love to
Cynthia. Quietly in the first grey hours of the morning, she turned into
his arms and whispered, "I love you, Yale." He kissed the fullness of
her breasts, and felt the firm roundness of her belly against I him. As
he entered the warmth of her and felt the clutching of her vagina, he
smiled happily. "You are going to be a very pretty mother, Cindar," he
whispered. "We'll love this kid of Mat's, and then we'll have a brother
for him . . . to keep him company."

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

Two weeks later, Cynthia and Yale were married. Even as she listened to
the justice of the peace pronouncing the words that sealed the marriage
Cynthia kept wondering whether it was the right thing to do. Barbara's
reaction had not been enthusiastic.

 

 

"Yale's always wanted you," Barbara said. "If he can accept another
man's kid without being jealous, it'll probably work out all right.
Of course being Jewish in the Marratt family is not going to be any pink
tea. If you can stand Pat and his inevitable reaction . . ." She paused
and patted Cynthia on the shoulder. "What the hell . . . no marriage is
a picnic. After a few years the romance goes. Then you spend your time
wondering what some other woman has got that you haven't. Yale will be
no different -- you wait and see."