A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion (12 page)

“We argued.”

“About?”

Ruth told him they’d discussed heading down to Elkton, Maryland, where lax marriage regulations meant they could have gotten hitched.

“And what did I say?”

“Well, actually you couldn’t get the words right, but I think you thought that would be bigamy.”

Judd was untying his shoes. “Even drunk I’m law-abiding,” he said.

“Oh yeah. To a fault.”

“Meaning?”

Ruth told him she’d confessed she wanted Albert out of her life, gone, buried, dead, and Judd had yelled that she was insane. Raged that she could go to jail for that. Asked if she had any idea what a homicide meant in the eyes of God.

Stripping off his stockings, Judd asked, “And what did you say?”

Ruth focused her stunning blue eyes on him and said, “I don’t believe in a heaven or hell and anything like that.”

“Well, that makes all this easy for you then.”

“And ‘all this’ makes you a hypocrite.”

“That’s true,” he said, and he went to the bathroom in his skivvies.

“Oh, let’s not fight,” she said.

But he was sulking. “I have to get to the office.”

That evening Judd journeyed home to East Orange by trolley instead of the train, not because it was cheaper, but because he felt he needed the extra hour to find his role and rehearse his lines. He recalled his freshman year in high school when he first looked up the word: “adultery,” from the Latin
adulterare,
to defile. The generality of the definition had called up a host of fantasies, and Ruth was doing the same: calling out his vices, torturing him with affection, exhausting him with liquor and schemes and secrecy and shocking sexual practices until he felt dirtied and defiled. She’d seduced and dominated him, he thought, held his yearning heart in her hands, fondly and expertly played his frailties and hankerings as if he were her pet, her toy.

And yet he found it impossible to stop desiring her, and if there was any infidelity, he thought, it was in his grim and loveless marriage to Isabel, a wedding of unequals that was now not just defiled but dead. All he could offer his wife in the future were the leftover scraps of an old friendship. And all she could offer him was his daughter. But that was enough. Jane was the glue.

Walking up Wayne Avenue to his house, he was still inventing a night in which he told Isabel all about his affair and of his plans to end it, acknowledging that he would have to endure his wife’s wretched tears and full-throated screaming, Mrs. K’s interference and scorn, little Jane’s worries and pain.

But when he got to number 37, he found the front sidewalk and driveway had not been shoveled, just shuffled through by overboots
during the week, and he went back to the garage with his heavy luggage, his shoes crunching in the snow, his ears and nose smarting in the near-zero cold as he hauled down the snow shovel from its nail on a wall. And then he saw all three females skeptically watching him through the kitchen window, without gratitude or even welcome, as if whatever slavish job he carried out was a job long overdue. Judd demonstrated his insolence by hanging the wide shovel back on its nail and trudging through snow to the kitchen and the scandal of his Scotch whisky.

There were, finally, some pleasantries after that, some journalism at dinner about the past week’s doings, Jane’s joyless acceptance of the gift of a jeweled barrette, and Isabel’s quiet accommodation of his imaginary lust that night. It all seemed unreal, like the alliances of hotel guests sharing a restaurant table or some radio voice in the club room. Waking in the middle of the night, Judd saw his luggage on the floor, the hinged jaws opened, his blue canvas laundry bag now gone to the basement but his toiletries still there and much of his clothing still neatly folded, as if this were just another stay-over and he’d soon be ready to journey onward.

In the morning, Judd took Jane to Sunday school but let Isabel and Mrs. Kallenbach go to the church service without him, as shame caused him to lie that his mother wanted him sooner than noon.

Mrs. Margaret Gray was surprised by his earliness and not yet fully dressed, but she gave him fresh coffee and a slice of hot apple pie that she’d made from a jar of preserves. And then, as always, she just watched him eat. She said she didn’t know if she’d be putting up fruits and vegetables next summer. It was so hard on her hands and arms. She wondered if he was getting enough sleep. Was he losing weight? Bud seemed kind of mopey to her; he seemed to have something on his mind. She didn’t see the point of his visiting if he wasn’t going to chat. Oh no, she didn’t have errands for him
or anything else that needed doing. “You go have a nice afternoon with that little girl of yours,” Margaret Gray said. “She’s been missing her daddy, I’ll bet.”

As a state senator, Jimmy Walker got legislation passed that allowed attendance at movies, plays, and public sporting events on Sunday afternoons. So Judd could take his daughter to the Orpheum theater and a matinee showing of
The Lost World.
He asked her as he bought the nickel tickets, “Have you heard of the famous English sleuth Sherlock Holmes?”

Jane nodded uncertainly.

“Well, this movie we’re going to see is based on an original novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” She seemed mystified.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes.”

“Oh.” Jane seemed downcast. “Is this a mystery?”

“No, it’s science fiction.”

“I hate science.”

“Don’t say ‘hate.’” Judd guided his daughter inside the theater and found she disliked the seats he chose, so they moved. Seeking to get her to smile, he asked, “Where does the general keep his armies?”

She sighed.

“Have I told you that one?”

Improbably bored, Jane asked, “Up his
sleevies
?”

She’s been poisoned,
he thought, and ran out of things to say to her. But for more than half an hour he just watched her watch the movie, loving how flashes of on-screen light flared in her widened eyes and how the raging dinosaurs scared Jane enough that she once clutched his hand and cowered into him so that half her face hid in his overcoat sleeve. But the scene ended too soon and she sat up again and she coolly extricated her hand from his, just as Isabel would have.

Ruth finished the Sunday-night dishes thinking of Judd, and she was thinking of Judd as she wiped the kitchen stove’s white enamel, the humming Frigidaire, the soft suede of the kitchen’s maple countertops, then tossed the damp dish towel down the laundry chute. She felt addicted to Judd and desperate for him, and when she heard Albert whistling in his basement workshop she hated the noise so much she held her hands to her ears as she hurried to the foyer. She failed in the effort to calm herself as she called in Swedish,
“Moder?”

Josephine Brown was upstairs helping Lora with her multiplication tables. She walked out to the hallway and quizzically looked down.

“How about a luncheon here tomorrow?”

“You mean with a guest?”

Ruth was queasy with urgency, but she fashioned a smile. “Winter’s gotten so dreary.”

With solemnity, her mother said, “But, May, it’s wash day!”

Ruth felt herself getting faint and held on to the staircase banister. She was lovesick and afraid she’d either scream or whine. She shook as she said, “We can finish that in the morning. There’s not much. I’ll cook.”

Josephine fell into Swedish.
“Vilken?”
Who?

“My friend, Mr. Gray? The Bien Jolie salesman? The baby’s met him.”

Lorraine heard her mother and called out, “Yes. He’s nice.”

“Another one of your men?” Josephine asked.

Hinting broadly, Ruth said, “Mama, he sells
lingerie
.”

Josephine shrugged and said,
“Fint
.” Okay.

Worried about seeming impatient, Ruth slowed her walk as she went to the kitchen telephone.

Mrs. Kallenbach answered. Judd was reading
The Saturday
Evening Post
and heard his mother-in-law say, “Hello,” and “Yes, he is.” And he was getting up from his purple mohair armchair when his mother-in-law called, “Bud? Your secretary?”

He hesitated with the intimation that it was Ruth. She’d never called him at home. Rarely did so at work. Judd took the earpiece from Mrs. K with a “Thank you” that he hoped would dismiss her, but she stayed in the kitchen, busying herself with tidying up in order to overhear. Tilting into the wall phone’s mouthpiece, he said, “Hello, Rachel. What’s up?”

Ruth asked, “Will you come to lunch at my house tomorrow?”

Judd framed his answer with Mrs. K in mind. “Who’s going to be there?”

“Just my mother and me. Oh please, won’t you?”

Watchful of his tone, he said, “I could.”

“Oh, I’m so excited! One o’clock. Was that Isabel who answered?”

“No. My mother-in-law.”

“Is she listening now?”

“Yes.”

“Because I wanted you to say how much you love me.”

Without inflection he said, “I do.”

“Shall I give you instructions on how to get here?”

“I’ll handle it. See you tomorrow.”

She softly whispered, “I’m so horny for you.”

Judd blushed as he hung up the earpiece. Mrs. K was scowling. “We have buyers in town now because of the spring line,” he said. “I have to see some clients for lunch.”

“She sounds pretty.” She knew Rachel was not.

“Oh, that wasn’t Rachel. She has someone filling in for her.”

“But you called her that.”

“She corrected me.” And then he sneered. “Women do that.”

On Monday, Josephine Brown lifted the lid on the basement washing machine, and Ruth plunged a broomstick into the hot water to heave out a heavy weight of towels that her mother fed into the electric wringer so that sheets of soapy water slid back into the drum for the next load. They did not speak. It was far too cold to hang things in the yard, so Ruth collected the wringings and hung them on the white rope clotheslines that Albert had strung from the ceiling joists. She’d already clothespinned on the lines his dress shirts and what Mrs. Brown called his “unmentionables.” Albert’s whites were always the first wash. Then Josephine’s and Lora’s colors. And new piping-hot water and Fels-Naptha soap for the household sheets and towels. Ruth took her own clothing to the Chinese dry cleaners on Springfield Boulevard or laundered them by hand in the upstairs bathroom sink and rinsed them with vinegar and boiling water from a kettle.

With the hamper things drying, she went upstairs and waxed the furniture, vacuumed, and put out Tiffany ashtrays for Judd’s cigarettes wherever he was likely to sit. She was as persnickety a housekeeper as Isabel was, she took pride in her cooking, she even put up preserves each summer, but she knew Judd had never seen her that way. She was just a flapper he partied with, his sex partner in the Waldorf. And he was born to be a husband.

She hadn’t yet learned how to drive, so although Albert’s Buick was still in his garage she phoned for a Yellow Cab that took her to Jamaica Avenue and waited as she bought a pound of lump crabmeat at the Fishmongery. She had the taxi idle in front of Paper & Pens while she hunted through the bootlegged wines in the storeroom and found a pricey bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Bordeaux. She then got cash from the secret “Ruth M. Brown” account at the Queens-Bellaire bank and hand-delivered to Leroy Ashfield the weekly payment for the Prudential insurance policies on Albert’s life.

At home, she pinched shell fragments from the crabmeat and
mixed it with an egg white, flour, chives, cayenne pepper, and kosher salt, and formed it into eight patties that she chilled with the wine in the Frigidaire. She went up to the bedroom to change as Mrs. Brown set the dining room table.

Judd took the Long Island Rail Road from Pennsylvania Station to Jamaica and a taxi to a cream-yellow house with green trim on the corner of 222nd Street and 93rd Road. And he was just getting out when he saw Ruth dashing from the front door to him in just her shoes and navy blue housedress, though it was stingingly cold. She grinned as she called out, “Oh, I’m so happy!” She hugged him, saying she regretted she could do no more because of the neighbors. She linked a forearm inside his as they headed toward the white Colonial front door. She pointed to the one-car garage to the right. “We used to have a bigger side yard,” she said, “but Albert wanted a hospital for his automobile, so he built that one from a Sears, Roebuck kit. He likes to use his hands, and not just for hitting me.”