Authors: Lawrence Block
Thirty (2 page)
So we went upstairs—why fight it?—and went to bed, and he kissed me boozily and felt my breast—felt one of them, anyway—and thus inspired he gave a great sigh and passed out.
Went to sleep?
No.
Passed out
sums it up fine.
Leaving me to feel guilty about feeling glad.
I don’t want a baby.
I guess I’ve never said that out loud. I guess most of the time I don’t really believe it myself, but I do now. God, yes. I mean God, no.
I don’t want a baby.
I wonder if he does, really. I don’t think so. Men are supposed to have these undeniable impulses. I have a feeling they’re as deniable as anything else. Mine certainly are.
You know what I think? I think it’s all part of the image. Being a few years married, and past the honeymoon (God in heaven, are we ever past the honeymoon!) and having moved out of the crowded evil city and into the fresh (?) air of sweet suburbia. The car we bought, for example, is a station wagon. We never owned a car in New York—that was one of the things I hated about New York, you had to go through a big production whenever you wanted to go somewhere—and here we finally have a car, one car for the two of us, and what kind of car is it? A cute little sportscar? A cunning and sensible compact? A big showy ostentatious ballsy sedan?
None of those things. A station wagon, a big klutzy station wagon with room for eighteen kids, none of which I want to have.
None of which I probably will have, having gone two years now without coming any closer to pregnancy than I don’t know what. (You have a way with words, Giddings.)
And if I were using this book as a way of keeping compulsive records, rather than a place to jot down the observations of the moments (I think I mean
the observation of the moment,
both singular, although how few moments are
truly
singular, Doctor?) I might in that case feel compelled to state here in blue-black and white that in this year, now eight days old, we have, if memory serves, fucked once, and then not very well.
It snowed today. The snow that we already had was just about gone. For the past week or so it’s been turning brown in the gutters, becoming slush, and bit by bit finding its way down the sewers. (You would almost think it was human.) So now it’s snowing, coming down in big wet sticky flakes. I sat at the window and watched it and thought how beautiful it was, and how depressing.
Why is my first reaction to everything to think how much damned trouble it will be? Why don’t I enjoy things?
Marcie Hillman thinks I should have an affair!
She came over this afternoon for the pause in the day’s occupation she calls the housewife’s hour, before her kids were due home from school. I made real coffee in honor of the occasion. The nice thing about instant coffee is that there is no way to screw it up. Not so with this afternoon’s pot. You would think that after seven years of marriage I would know how to make a simple thing like a pot of coffee. You
would
think that, wouldn’t you?
We sat in the kitchen and pretended the coffee was all right. And, like fighters warily circling one another in the opening round, we played
Who’s Depressed?
(That’s the first time I’ve named our game, but not the first time I’ve seen it as such. If there were a way to package it as a board game for two or more players, a way to introduce dice and spinners, I think it would outsell Scrabble.) We fence around, Marcie and I, alternately bubbly and sulking, until through some hard-to-follow process we mutually determine who will be patient and who will be therapist. The roles float back and forth from day to day and week to week. Her hangups are at least well defined, and I guess pretty standard. She keeps going on and off diets and forever weighs I guess twenty-five pounds more than she should. And she is periodically incapable of keeping her house as clean as she wants it, and never capable of keeping it as clean as Edgar wants it, Edgar being her husband. She is, for all of that, a tall and pretty blond with a pretty if ample body. She is also a year and a half older than I am, which is to say that she is thirty, has in fact been thirty for a half a year, and it hasn’t seemed to destroy her.
“You,” she said, “are in a bad way.”
“I suppose.”
“What’s the matter? The periodic distress of the female ilk?”
“Ilk? My periodic ilk isn’t due for a week.”
“And maybe you won’t have it.”
“Oh, I’ll have it.”
“You could be pregnant right now, kiddo. And then you’ll glow with motherhood, and all the doubts and fears—”
“Oh, sure. Anyway, I’m not pregnant.”
“I don’t like to keep harping at it, but this one particular doctor is supposed to be fantastic. Every woman who goes to his office comes home pregnant.”
“From his office?”
“I didn’t say that exactly right.”
“It sounded as if he screwed them himself.”
“Well, whatever works, doll. American pragmatism in action. Better things for better living.”
“Uh-huh. Who wants to be knocked up, anyway?”
“I thought you did.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe I’m getting a little old for that sort of thing.”
So we tossed the age pillow around for a little while, and other things, and then Marcie cocked her head—I think that’s the word for it, set her head at an angle and swung her eyes at me—and told me I ought to have an affair.
“You know what?” she said. “You ought to have an affair.”
“Just what I need.”
“You think I’m kidding, don’t you?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Oh, for Christ’s—”
“For your own sake, kiddo. Not J.C.’s. You’re letting yourself go stale. Your whole marriage—do you mind home truths?”
“Go ahead.”
“Right where the angels fear to tread. All right. I get the impression that you and what’s-his-name are running out of each other. That it’s all turning sour.”
“That could be an exaggeration.”
“Is it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. But the thing is that it’s more than your marriage. It’s you. Do you know that it shows in your face?”
“What does?”
“The fact that you’re bored all the time. That you’re all drawn out, strained.”
“I know. I can’t stand to look in mirrors.”
“Well, they ought to pass a law against mirrors. That’s something else again.”
“But I find myself looking into them all the time.”
“Because you’ve forgotten who you are.”
“Oh, come
on
—”
“A little trite, I grant you—”
“More than a little. Pure soap opera.”
“—but no less true for a’ that. Jan? Have you ever?”
“Ever what?”
“Had an affair?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You . . . ?”
She smiled at a happy memory.
“You’re not having one now?”
“Be serious. The way I look?”
We sidestepped into the
Oh, you don’t look so bad/Oh, I’m so damn fat and what I wouldn’t give for your figure
routine. But I was so taken with all of this that I almost forgot my lines. And she wouldn’t say anything much about her affair, just that it had happened a couple of years ago, lasted a couple of months, and left her very happy about the whole thing.
“Was it with someone I know?”
“Now don’t ask, Jan.”
“That means it was. Did Edgar know the man?”
“Cut it out.”
“Well, did Edgar ever find out about it?”
“No.”
“What if he had?”
“Do you really think he would have minded all that much?” I must have stared incredulously, because she reacted to my expression. “Let’s face it, honey. Edgar plays around.”
“I didn’t know that.” This is not exactly true.
“Oh, of course. He’s like a little boy, for God’s sake. I think all men are. I’m positive he started fooling around before we were married two years.”
“Well, who does he—”
“Girls at the office, tramps he picks up. There was a time, in my younger days, when I made scenes and threatened to leave. I laugh to think of it. I mean, where would I go?”
“But—”
“But what it amounts to is that something inside him makes him want that variety, and I can understand it most of the time, except when I start thinking that he wouldn’t do it if I took off thirty pounds or got the ironing done or compensated for one or another of my many faults. But actually I don’t think that would make any difference at all. I think he’s simply the way he is. You know, he even makes passes at my friends. Has he ever made a play for you?”
“No.” This wasn’t exactly true, either. I can remember a couple of boozy kisses at a backyard barbecue, a tentative Grope for the Boobies while collecting the coats at another party. The bit at the barbecue had been merely annoying, but the other pass had come at a time when I felt myself slightly less attractive than Miss Hippopotamus, and while I might not welcome the grab, I welcomed the reassurance in the knowledge that Edgar Hillman thought I was still worth grabbing, an opinion that Howard Kurland had not at the moment appeared to share.
“You know,” she said, a little later, “if you think Howard takes his marital vows so seriously, you’re only kidding yourself.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Nothing specific, no.”
“Do you know something that I don’t know?”
“Just that he’s a man.”
“And all men run around? I’m not positive I believe that. I’ve heard it often enough, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Maybe not. But things haven’t been going too well lately, have they?”
“Things have been going badly on and off for probably six out of the last seven years. Our marriage is like the country’s foreign policy. We somehow muddle through.”
“The country’s foreign policy before Vietnam, you mean. Now we muddle, but not through.”
“Fair enough. I don’t see—”
“Okay.” She pointed a finger at me. “Not all men run around. Some men have perfect marriages. Other men are profoundly unattractive, and other men lack the opportunity for an affair. Farmers who never get off the farm, for instance. But if a man’s marriage is not the ranking love affair since Heloise and what’s-his-name, and if he’s got a certain amount of poise and looks and intelligence, and if he’s got room to operate—”
“Uh-huh.”
“And if, like most men, he tends to think with his penis—”
“You are describing Howard.”
There was more, but that will do. My hand hurts. He called around dinner to say he was catching a late train. I had trouble not laughing until I put the phone down, and then for no particular reason I started crying instead. Real tears. My goodness, I hadn’t cried in, oh, perhaps a day and a half.
The funny thing is that I have to admit I don’t care if he’s fucking Elizabeth Taylor, as far as that goes. I really don’t care, and I suppose that was part of Marcie’s point.
I don’t know.
What do I want with an affair?
More snow.
The kid who carried the groceries out to the car at Pathmark yesterday said something fresh. I can’t remember exactly how it went, just some inane sort of
double entendre
which gave me the impression he wouldn’t mind taking me to bed.
I’m sure I am at least ten years older than him. Than he.
Last night was an odd, disjointed evening. Howie came home on his usual train. If he’s having an affair it can’t be a very intense one because he’s usually home on time. Maybe he’s screwing away his lunch hours.
If nothing else, I suppose that’s probably healthy. Good for the muscle tone and all.
During and after dinner, we talked more than usual. He talked mostly about the office. There’s some sort of minor crisis coming up and different people are positioning themselves on different sides and some of them may find themselves fired if things don’t go right. Not Howie, however. Or if his situation is risky, he’s not saying so.
Frankly, I had trouble following the whole thing. I didn’t even try very hard. But at least we were talking to each other. I talked about something I had read and some household things, and he nodded at the right times.
Now that I think about it, it was our first togetherness evening in a while, and neither of us was listening to a word the other was saying.
Are all marriages like that?
At eleven-thirty we went to bed and started necking. At first I was just going through the motions (Pardon, m’sieu, I thought she was English!) but all at once I was turned on as suddenly and completely as if someone had thrown a switch. It was like a rebirth. I was alive in all my more interesting organs. More than alive.
He spent some time nuzzling my breasts while he worked a finger into me and diddled me. (It is frighteningly embarrassing just putting the words down. I’ve enjoyed putting down occasional conversations here. I wanted to be a writer in college, and there is a certain pleasure in structuring scenes, and all without the need to invent. But sex writing!)
Does it matter who did what and with which and to whom? I don’t know. I got sopping wet immediately, hot and wet, and he went from breast to breast like a bee from flower to flower, which I do not suppose is an original image, but I couldn’t get it out of my head at the time, so it must have meant something to me. He buzzed from nipple to nipple while he fingered me very diligently, and I thrashed and panted and did other ladylike things until he took his finger back and climbed aboard and stuck it right on in. Look, Ma, no hands! He got the target on the first try and sank it all the way home, and he was hard as a bar of steel. I couldn’t remember the last time he had been so firm.
(I have been sitting here staring at the page. I have to stop now. I don’t know why. A woman ought to be able to write about her husband’s cock. It is, after all, something with which she is hopefully more familiar than anyone else on earth, himself excepted. But something is stopping me. More tomorrow, perhaps.)
I was going to mention some things that have happened over the last couple days but they aren’t important. And the whole point of this is not to write a record, a day book.