The World Below (28 page)

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They had planned a picnic for the third Saturday in July. They would go to the Saco River and spread a blanket along its banks. He was going to take fishing gear with him—this was the ostensible reason for the trip—but what he really looked forward to was driving up with Georgia beside him in the car. Was spreading the blanket between them, and watching her unpack their lunch. He imagined the way she would set the dishes out, her wrists turning, her hands opening. The way her arms would move, quick and graceful. He loved her! He loved her more now than he had when they married. Their sex was like an unspoken secret between them, a deep pleasure running underneath everything else that he wouldn’t have dared to hope for. He felt its promise in her every rushing, impatient step in the house, in the tilt of her head when she greeted him, in each gesture she made.

The house was silent when he entered it, which surprised him. She was not in the kitchen or the living room. The bedroom door was closed.

Was she sleeping? Was she ill? He knocked gently.

“Yes,” she said.

“Georgia?”

“Yes. Come in.”

She was sitting in the chair by the bed. Perhaps she’d been looking out the window, watching his approach. But her face, he saw as she turned to him now, was reddened, her eyes swollen.

“What is it?” he said.
Her father
, he was thinking. “My darling, what’s wrong?”

“Oh … don’t,” she said. She’d raised a hand to stop him. “John, it’s … I’m so sorry. It’s just my own—”

“Your father’s all right.”

A sad, startled little laugh emerged from her. “Yes,” she said, and shook her head no. “Yes, everyone at home is fine. It’s just—
acch!”
She gestured vaguely. “Ada and Daddy stopped by. She had a letter
that had come for me.” He saw it then where her hand had suggested, the torn—open envelope lying on the blue coverlet.

“It’s about my friend,” she said. And, when he didn’t respond, “The young man from the san. His death. It’s … it’s upset me.”

“I’m so sorry, my darling.”

“Oh, John, I’m sorry. I’m sorry too.”

He was kneeling by her now, holding her, but she was inert in his arms, unresponsive, and after a moment he let her go, confused. He sat back on his heels. He asked, “Which young man was this?”

“The young man I spoke to you about. You know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember this. When did you speak to me about him?”

“John, you must remember.” She frowned down at him. Seated in the chair, she was taller than he was.

“I don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“When I spoke to you … before we were married. I
told
you. I told you, of my relations with him.” He seemed puzzled still. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “When I told you I wasn’t … a virgin.”

He turned sharply away, as though she’d struck him. The word shocked him on her lips. It seemed crude. He got up, almost stumbling. He was stunned, and then also trying to recollect the moment she was speaking of.

He did, he did remember it-how she had looked in profile, her lips opened, and the fleeting mist of her breath on the clear glass. He remembered the smell of her hair, the bright sun, a sheen on the snow outside, and the horse tossing its head impatiently.

Damaged
, she had said.

No:
damaged goods
. Yes. The jargon of gossips, the ugly phrase that would be used of her, his wife, by others. Yes. Damaged goods. She had said that.

And he had heard it the way he wished to. He had thought—
because he was a fool
, because he was besotted—he had thought she meant her lungs.

Her lungs, which had probably healed themselves before she even entered the san. Before she met her lover. Her paramour. The man who had fucked her before he did. Who damaged her. Whom he had heard of before and understood nothing about.

She was speaking now. “You were so extremely generous and forgiving then. I hope … you can be now, too. For a moment, anyway. Because my grief—my sorrow—is temporary, I assure you.” Her voice was apologetic now, formal and apologetic. She thought he was hurt. Hurt by her sorrow for someone else. “It will pass, I know.”

He stood with his back to her, his elbows resting on the top of the tall bureau, his hands fisted together at his mouth. Around him on the dresser scarf were the odd things he’d left there: coins, a stack of folded handkerchiefs he hadn’t put away yet, pressed into neat squares by Georgia, his silver-backed brushes, a set that had been his father’s. He didn’t see them.

“John,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you and me.”

“I’m afraid it does.” His voice was priggish and chilly; he couldn’t help himself.

“No, John. I swear to you, it doesn’t.” There was a little fear in her voice now. She was startled by his response. She had thought he would be more understanding. He, who by her lights had understood so much.

She stood up. “I will put it behind me, John. Of course, you’re right. You’re right. I have no right to such grief.”

Still he didn’t answer, lost as he was in his own amazement and pain.

“We’ll … we’ll go on our picnic, John.” She had come to stand next to him. Her hand moved up his back tentatively and lightly gripped his shoulder. “John, look at me. I’ve put it behind me. I’ve forgotten it already.”

He shrugged her away. “Don’t say that. You don’t need to say that.”

She stood there a moment before she said, “But what am I to do, John? You’re angry, I can tell.”

“If I’m angry …I
am
angry, you’re right. But only with myself.” She had been honest, after all. She had made no excuses. She had used those ugly words about herself.
Damaged goods
. It was not her fault he had misunderstood her.

“John,” she began. He could see her hands rising again. To touch him.

“Georgia, you must let me
be
!” he burst out.

She stepped back from him. She was white. “Of course,” she said. “I only meant—”

“I just need to think this through.” He put his head in his hands for a moment.

“Of course. Only—”

“No. Georgia.” He turned to face her. “You misunderstand me. It’s not you I’m angry with. I’ve been stupid. I’ve … heard only what I wanted to hear. I—I didn’t take in what you were trying to tell me the day you spoke of this young man.”

“But I said—”

“I know what you said. I remember it well. And I misheard it. This is what I’m telling you. I misheard it then. I misunderstood you. I didn’t realize until just now that you had had … a lover, before me. Before we were married.”

She sat down now on the edge of the bed. “But I
said
so, John,” she whispered. “I was at pains to tell you.”

“Georgia, I know. It was my own wish to … believe something else that kept me from hearing you correctly.”

“But you were so … wonderful. So forgiving. What did you think I was speaking of?”

“Your illness. Your lungs. Your damaged lungs. Which of course are hardly damaged at all.”

“You thought I spoke of my tuberculosis?”

“Yes.”

She laughed suddenly, a single harsh cry. “Yes,” he said.

Her eyes were unfocused for a moment. Then she looked sharply at him again. “So it wasn’t your … you didn’t understand me then. You didn’t forgive me.”

“I don’t know. No. Not then. I didn’t. I need to think this through, Georgia.”

There was a long silence in the room. Outside someone walked by, cheerfully whistling off key. Georgia felt lost in herself, in confusion. She felt dizzy. She remembered him that day, how she had begun to love him at that moment—when he forgave her.

Finally she spoke. “Did you know how lovely I found you then, John?” she said. “How … wise and lovely?”

After a moment, still not looking at her, he said, “I know what you’re saying. You’re saying I wasn’t. That that wasn’t me. And you’re right. I understand that. I am not lovely. I’ve never been wise.”

His face was so full of despair that she turned away from him. For a while she watched her own fingers, opening and closing on the blue bedspread, on its bumps and ridges. Finally she said, “Do you want another chance, John?”

“Another chance?”

“Yes.” She sat up straighten “Another chance to say whether or not you find my being damaged goods of importance to you.”

“You are my wife, Georgia. Whether it’s of importance or not no longer counts for anything.”

She stared at him. “How foolish you sound,” she whispered.

“I feel foolish.”

They remained in miserable silence for perhaps two minutes, looking fiercely away from each other. The breeze lifted the curtain at the window.
I wish I could die
, Georgia thought.
I wish I had died in the san. I wish I had been consumed by TB.

And then she said, “What did you mean, John, that my lungs are scarcely damaged at all?”

He sighed. He was leaning against the wall now, his arms folded over his chest. He said, “Just that you’re well, really.”

“Now.”

“Yes, now. Probably then too.”

“Then. When you sent me into the san.”

“Probably. You probably had tidily encapsulated lesions even before you arrived.”

“But you’re not saying I needn’t have been there?”

“In strictly physical terms, probably not. But you did have the disease. And it seemed, given the strains on you at home, the wisest course. You needed a rest, or you might have gotten truly ill. The san provided it.”

“But that isn’t what you said to me.” Her voice was fraying. “You said I had TB. You said I
was
truly ill.”

“And so you did. You weren’t truly ill, but you did have TB. You had had it.”

“But I didn’t need to go, really.”

He felt, in his grief and shock, that she was off on a tangent, belaboring an entirely irrelevant point. “This is of no importance now, Georgia. Why harp on it?” He sounded impatient. “You rested at the san, and you gained some strength. It did you no harm, and I suspect it did you a lot of real good.”

“But it changed my
life
!” she cried.

He thought she was referring to her young man, to her affair. That she was blaming him—him!—for that. He looked at her coldly, and she answered his look.

“You had no right to do that,” she said slowly.

He turned away.

“John. You had no right.”

“I was your
doctor
, Georgia.” His fists hit the bureau at the word. “I needed to do what was best for you.”

“But surely I should have had some say in the matter.”

“If you had had your say, you would have stayed at home with your father and worked yourself to the bone.”

“Yes! and what’s wrong with that? That was my
job.”

“Ah, Georgia.”

“I would have stayed home, and my father wouldn’t have married, and I would never have met Seward or married you, and I would have my life back.” She thought of it now; she yearned for it, the way it had been, her solitary, queer life in her father’s house, the long nights alone reading, just sitting, the melancholic striking of the old clock every quarter hour, the strong sense of herself as at the center of everything.

“And is that what you want? Your old life back?”

She was weeping now. “It is,” she wailed. “It’s what I want!”

She wept, on and off, for nearly two days, sometimes not sure what she was weeping over. Everything. Everything that was lost to her forever. Her home, her family. Seward, and his terrible solitary dying. John, who was not who she’d thought he was. Herself: the person she’d felt herself to be before all this started—this muddle that was her life now.

John stayed away the whole first afternoon, driving around the countryside. When he came home, it was after dark and the bedroom door was shut. He undressed and slept on the divan, under the afghan his mother had crocheted for their wedding present. In the night, he opened his eyes to the strange light, the unfamiliar shapes. What had waked him? Then he heard it: the high animal keening, small and pathetic, from behind the door. He didn’t go to her.

The next morning, when he went in to dress for church, she was huddled under the covers with the pillow thrust over her head. She didn’t move or speak to him the whole time he was in the room, though he didn’t try in any way to muffle his noise.

He sat in the last pew, alone, the red hymnals set out evenly next to him on the unoccupied spots. The service was boring, the sermon vague and useless. He left quickly afterward, barely greeting
Dr. Scott. He drove to Empson’s Hotel in Ellsworth, as he had often done before he was married, and had a long slow lunch: pea soup with Parker House rolls, roast chicken and potatoes with giblet gravy and string beans, vanilla ice cream for dessert. He tried to tell himself he was enjoying this, but every now and then he would stop chewing and stare into some middle distance, stunned at his bad luck. His and Georgia’s, he reminded himself—for she had been mistaken in him too, after all.

Afterward he sat in the hotel lobby smoking a cigar and trying to read the paper, some long article about Sacco and Vanzetti. In the late afternoon he drove back to his office for a while and sat thinking, his feet up on his desk. Once or twice, he fell asleep briefly and had miserable and confused dreams. In the last one, he saw Georgia as she’d been as a girl, standing in the meadow in the sun when he went in to her mother—so sturdy and brave and pure—and he woke feeling as empty as if she’d died.

And then he swung his legs down and slammed his fist on his desk in a rage at himself. She
was
brave and pure. She’d been utterly truthful, scrupulously so. It was he who’d been the liar—about her illness, and then about his own magnanimity. It didn’t matter that it was unintentional. And if she’d lost her virtue in the san, well, who had sent her there? Who had thought he knew what was best for her? Who had behaved as though he were God in His heaven, pushing mere mortals around, rearranging their lives to suit His whim?

Georgia. He thought of how she had looked the day he had examined her here in his office, her shoulders curved forward to hide her breasts, her long strands of hair straying over her back. The way her flesh had felt, dry and hot with fever under his fingertips.