The Women's Room (72 page)

‘You act as if you could,’ Chris said, and Val wanted to slap her.

She fixed some breakfast for Chris and herself, and sent Chris into the living room to ask Tad if he wanted any. He did not. The women ate and read
The Times
in silence. By this time, both were awake and talking in brief snatches. Val was still angry with Chris, and gave her short answers.

‘I’m sorry,’ Chris said. ‘It’s just that he looked so miserable. When I came through the living room, I even thought he was crying. I guess I always think that you should be able to kiss every sore and make it well and if you don’t, it’s pure malice on your part.’

‘Yes,’ Val said bitterly. ‘And of course, I could have. All I had to do was deny my feelings. That’s what people expect
Mother
to do!’

‘I know, I know! I said I was sorry.’

‘Kids. Mothers,’ Val muttered. ‘You’re not supposed to feel your own feelings so that you can be a perpetual bandage to everybody else’s.’

Chris looked at her. ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you felt guilty.’

Val put her head in her hands. ‘I do. Anyway, I feel bad I hurt him.’ She lifted her head up. ‘And what’s more, I wanted to hurt him. I guess I’ve been feeling more hemmed in than I knew. I’ve wanted to slap out at him for a long time.’

Late in the afternoon, Val began to get over her anger at Tad. She smelled marijuana from the living room, and knew that he was smoking to dull his feelings. Her heart melted with pity for him: he seemed, in her eyes, so helpless. There was something unforgivable about hitting a helpless person. She went into the living room. She sat down near Tad, but in a different chair.

‘Tad, I’m sorry I was cruel,’ she said. ‘I was angry and I guess I’ve been angry for a while without really knowing it. It built up and came out that way. I do feel you are part of my life – if you care now.’

His head jerked up. ‘Have you had sex with anyone else?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me, Val! Have you been sleeping around?’

‘You bitch!’ she was astonished. ‘What the hell business is that of yours?’

‘You said it! You said if I thought you wouldn’t, I was crazy. I want to know if you have. I have to know,’ his voice cracked, and her blood pressure went down a little.

‘What difference would it make?’

‘All the difference. Do you think I’d stay with a whore?’

She gazed at him coolly now. ‘If that’s the way you see things, you might as well leave now. What do you think I’ve been doing the past twenty years?’

‘I don’t care about that. That was before you met me.’

‘I see. You’ve broadened yourself enough that you can accept someone who has not always been yours alone, but not enough to accept that once you enter the picture, she does not become your sole property.’

He did not seem to understand. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes,’ she answered.

‘Who?’ He was sitting back against the sofa cushions, his head dejected, his air despairing.

‘That is not for you to ask. I would tell you if I wanted to tell you.’

His face was suddenly intense. ‘Who? I have to know, Val, I have to know!’

‘Oh, for God’s sakes!’ She was disgusted. ‘Tim Ryan.’

Tim Ryan was a member of the peace group, an undergraduate at Tufts.

‘Val, he’s eighteen! Eighteen! Younger than Chris!’

‘So what? You’re only a few years older than Chris. Since when did that become important?’

‘I’ll kill him,’ Tad said between his teeth.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Val stood up. ‘Go ahead, play every stupid game in the book. But I am sure as hell not going to waste my time playing them with you.’ She left the room, and went into her bedroom, and sat down to work on the prison report. Hours passed. She heard Tad come into the kitchen a few times and pour drinks, but he said nothing to her, and returned to the living room. Around nine, Chris got hungry and prepared dinner. Chris asked Tad if he wanted to eat, but he refused her. But while she and Val were eating, he came into the kitchen twice to pour drinks. He was walking crooked, and almost slipped once. Each time, he said nothing, and returned to the living room.

Chris raised her eyebrow. ‘Mom, I wanted to go out tonight. Some friends are getting together. They said Bart might be there. I haven’t heard from him in months, and I’d really like to see him.’

‘Don’t worry about it, honey, I can handle Tad. What can happen? He’s falling down drunk already. He’ll probably pass out. If worse comes to worst, I can run and he can’t,’ Val laughed.

They were finishing dinner when Tad staggered into the kitchen again, but this time after he had poured his drink, he staggered past them into Val’s bedroom and fell on the bed. Then he started to speak. He called out, ritually, endlessly, a stream of imprecations. ‘Bitch, whore, slut, cunt, filthy cunt, I believed in you, I thought I loved you, but I tell you, Val, I don’t love you that much, not that much, I’ll never forgive you, you filthy slut, you whore, you bitch …’

He kept it up. Val stood up and went to the bedroom doorway. ‘Take your filthy perverted values and get out of here,’ she said. But he only yelled louder. She slammed the bedroom door. He rose unsteadily – they could hear him almost fall – and threw it open again, then lay back down in the bed and continued his litany.

Val shook her head. ‘Funny, the thing he seized on. I can understand his being hurt at my saying he wasn’t part of my life – I would have been hurt if he’d said that to me. But this!’

They sat looking at each other over coffee. He did not stop. ‘We could throw him out. The two of us,’ Val said. ‘In his condition, we could do it.’

They looked at each other. It was inconceivable. Throw out on the street a drunk who could not walk straight, who was hurt in the way he was hurt? No. It must be endured. They did not discuss it, they simply dismissed the possibility.

‘I could call the police,’ Val said, her eyes on her coffee. Chris did not answer.

They sat there for a while. Tad never stopped. ‘Whore, filthy whore, cunt, bitch,’ he went on, as if his language could destroy her.

Suddenly he started to cry. He sobbed for a while, then cried out weakly: ‘Chris! Chrissie!’

Her head came up and she glanced at her mother.

‘Chris, Chrissie, come talk to me, please, please, come to me, will you?’

Val frowned, puzzled, suspicious, but Chris stood up.

‘Chris, come here, please come here.’

Chris went, ignoring her mother’s vigorous negative shake of head.

She stood beside the bed, looking down at him. Val could look directly into the bedroom from where she sat.

‘Sit down, Chris.’ He patted the bed, and she sat. ‘Come to bed with me Chris, will you? You and me, Chris, don’t pay any attention to the slut in there, just close the door, come and screw me, Chris, I’ve wanted to screw you always, ever since I first saw you. We don’t have to worry about her, she can go find ten other people to screw, come on, Chris, lie down, kiss me.’

Val did not move. She could see Chris sitting there. Chris did not look angry or frightened. She was smoothing his forehead with her hand. He did not seem to notice that his words were not having effect. He kept repeating them, and he clutched her wrist a few times. She sat there calmly, gazing down at him with pity. After a long time, Chris rose. She bent over him and kissed his forehead. ‘I have to go out,’ she said softly.

She came into the kitchen. ‘Where are the car keys?’ she asked her mother, her face expressionless.

Val nodded at her purse. Tad struggled to his feet.

‘Okay, bitch, you want me to leave, I’ll leave, I’ll go with Chris, Chrissie and me’ll go out and have a drink.’

He caromed across the room and staggered out the door. Val stood and followed him. The thing she would get violent about was if he tried to drive the car with Chris in it. She was unsure about Chris, about how much pity she had, about where she would draw the line. She stood in the doorway, out of their sight, watching. Chris had already started the car; when she saw Tad, she rolled down her window. He wanted to drive. He was insisting. He was arguing with her, telling her to slide over. Val did not want to interfere: this was Chris’s scene. But she held her body in readiness, like a runner. If she saw Chris’s arm move to open the door, she would fly out and stop the thing. If she hesitated even a moment then, it might be too long. But she could not hear Chris, only Tad’s voice in tirade, not even what he was saying. It seemed to her that Chris moved, and Val put her hand on the knob and started to open the door. But Chris had rolled up the window. Tad would not let go of the door of the car. Then suddenly, he let go, but before she felt it safe to back up, he had staggered around to the other side and entered the car. Chris turned the motor off. They sat there in the dark car. They were still talking, Val guessed. They sat and sat. Val could not see well: the streetlight illuminated only the outside of the car. Chris’s face was a white blur inside it. Val had to pee, but she stood there watching. It seemed endless, and Val was muttering against Chris under her breath.

‘Damned kid. Why does she have to be so delicate?’

But then the car door opened, and Chris got out and walked up the steps and into the house. Val had by this time retreated inside, not wanting Chris to know how concerned she had been. Chris dropped the car keys on a table.

‘I’m going out the back way,’ she said, coldly. ‘I’ll walk.’

And disappeared before Val could stop her. She worried about Chris walking alone at night in Cambridge, but Chris never understood why she should not. Her friends all did, she said. Val talked about the dangers. Chris shrugged. She believed that if you did not want anything untoward to happen to you, it would not happen. She felt safe, inviolate. In any case, she was gone. Val picked up the keys and hid them, hoping she would remember tomorrow where she hid them tonight. Then she cleaned up the table and began to wash the dinner dishes. In a while, Tad staggered back in, headed for the counter and poured himself a drink, spilling Scotch on counter and floor.

‘You’ve had enough Tad,’ Val said curtly. ‘You’ll be sick.’

‘Just shut up, you fucking whore,’ Tad managed, but was too exhausted to continue. He aimed his body toward the living room, but it would not turn, and so he followed it, staggering toward the bedroom. He fell on Val’s bed, and lay there with the light on. She finished in the kitchen, locked the doors, leaving the front light on for Chris, and went into the living room. She planned to sit up until Chris was safely in. But she drifted off to sleep in the chair. She was wakened by a bang, and leaped up and ran down the hall. Tad was in the bathroom, vomiting, and there was vomit on the hall floor. She went back to the living room and lighted a cigarette. Tad came out of the bathroom and slipped on his own vomit, cursed, then staggered back to bed. She thought: he’s going to lie down in my bed with vomit all over his clothes; she cursed him, cursed herself, cursed all men. About five, Chris came in softly. Val opened her eyes as Chris came through the living room to her own room, but Chris did not even glance at her.

‘Next day, he felt rotten, of course. At first he apologized just for the mess, as if that were all he’d done. I told him the rest. He was very upset. He cried. But truthfully, Mira, I felt nothing at all. Or rather, I felt I had to get him in shape before I threw him out. Chris slept most of the day. It was Easter Sunday. The three of us were supposed to go to Brad’s for dinner. He was having a crowd to celebrate, as he put it, the birth of the New Year, reminding us that it used to open on Lady Day, March 25, which was in the vicinity of Easter. Anyway, I had to settle with Tad some way. He cried, he mourned, he grieved, he apologized. He wrote notes to Chris, then tore them up.

‘The thing he did not do was listen to what I was saying. Because he kept apologizing for trying to seduce Chris. I couldn’t make him understand that that wasn’t what I was outraged about. He never had the slightest chance of seducing Chris.’

‘But, Val, that was terrible! Terrible! To treat her that way!’

‘Yes. It was terrible,’ she said in a low voice, her face full of softness and tragedy, a terrible face on its own. ‘But not for the reasons he thought. I mean, he thought it was terrible because he broke rules, because he offended Chris’s honour, or her morality, or some stupid thing like that. I mean he’s all fucked up.’

Mira looked confused.

‘Look, he’s angry with me, right? He has a right to be, I hurt him, I’m not knocking him for that, I’m not expecting he should sit there like a
fucking saint and turn the other cheek. I expect he will get angry. But, how he does that is important. And the way he chooses is to figure – what can I do that will hurt Val most? I can screw her kid. Or else he figures the thing that will hurt me most is to hurt my kid’s feelings. It doesn’t matter which it was: he thinks he can get to me most painfully through Chris. Which on its own is rotten and cowardly. But if you add to that that Tad and Chris had a relationship, they loved each other, it takes on another dimension. I mean, they really loved each other. Chris didn’t love him in the same way she did me – it was more sexual than that, and less personal. She didn’t always want to talk to him, she didn’t always want him around when she was talking to me. But they cared about each other. And he never thought twice about that. It never occurred to him while he was busy getting even with me that he was sacrificing his relationship to Chris, that he was treating her feelings for him as if they were just so much expendable matter.

‘And she understood everything. She felt sorry for him, for the way I’d treated him. She felt – I suppose she always feels – that a guy involved with me is at a disadvantage. I won’t say she’s fair in that, but because she is my child and feels that way herself, she has sympathy for anybody – well, any young guy I get involved with. At least those she doesn’t hate on sight. In such cases, she is quite capable herself of being cruel in exactly the way she felt I had been cruel to Tad. But when she came in with the car keys – I could see it on her face – there was something numb and furious in her. She didn’t know how to direct it. She felt, I guess, just general disgust – with both Tad and me. And a desire to get away. Understandable.’