—How still it is, Iris whispered.
A few moments later she was silently weeping. When I touched her shoulder the grief all at once poured out of her and she cried like a child, rocking back and forth on the deck. I put my arms around her and held her. It was like a summer shower, very sudden and intense. Then it was over. I asked her what that was all about.
—Oh who knows, she said, groping for a cigarette.
I suspected it wasn’t only her father’s decline that troubled her. There was a man in the city and her heart had been broken, this much I knew but no more. I told her she was too young for all this sorrow.
Late that night she came down to the kitchen and found me there. She said she couldn’t sleep either. She sat beside me on the old bench by the woodstove. I put my book down. She thanked me for being kind to her earlier. Her eyes were red and her mascara was smudged. Her feet were bare on the cold stone floor and that lovely heap of blonde hair was tumbled about her shoulders. She sat beside me and gazed at me with an expression of wry sad humor.
—Did she tell you about Eddie? she said.
I returned to the city in the morning. I encountered only light traffic but by the time I could see the George Washington Bridge I was going at a crawl. There were shrieking car horns and gas fumes and rage. I was tired. I thought of that senile old man and all he was accused of and I tried to organize it into some kind of a story. Those two women, each one damaged, each one desperate because of him, Iris no less than Constance. I couldn’t seem to do it. I felt the same frustration when I tried to see the city with any clarity now, for it too defied comprehension in its current state of entropic dissolution, by which I mean
decay. Breakdown.
An idea occurred to me. I glimpsed the title of my next book, the one I’d write once I’d laid aside the bloody albatross, my
Conservative Heart.
Why that book defied all my efforts to finish it I didn’t know. But this new one, it would be called
A Scream in the Night.
It would be a psychosocial study of urban breakdown, the collapse of a great American city. It would be a damn sight easier, I thought, to explain what was happening to New York City than to figure out what was going on in my wife’s psyche.
Hours later I turned onto West Sixty-ninth and parked the Jag. I went up in the elevator. I unlocked the door. The apartment was dark. I felt uneasy. I left my suitcase in the hall. The sitting room door was closed. Quietly I opened it. She was at the window, staring out, talking on the phone. The room was dark. No lamps had been lit. She didn’t hear me. She thought she was alone. I heard her tell someone she had just one question and then she’d never mention it again.
—Do you still love her?
I couldn’t of course hear the reply. I imagine he said, Who?
—You know who, you fool. My sister.
The response, perhaps: I’m with her now.
—Don’t torment me. When do you finish?
He didn’t answer. The line went dead. She must have thought somebody had come into the room he was speaking from. She turned from the window. But no, somebody had come into the room
she
was speaking from. She was visibly startled: I was sitting in an armchair, watching her.
—I didn’t hear you come in.
—Was that Eddie?
She walked to the table. She turned on the lamp. She’d changed. There was a kind of
poise
I’d never seen in her before, a practiced ease. She was acting. I’d surprised her. But how much had I overheard? She replayed the conversation in her head, I saw her doing it. How transparent she was. She heard herself say:
Don’t torment me.
—Constance?
—He’s Iris’s lover, or he was.
—So what was that about?
—I do have a life, you know.
—Why do you need to know when he finishes?
—She’s trying to get him back.
This made no sense.
—She never mentioned it to me, I said.
She went to the window. She picked up a book and opened it. Then she closed it and put it on the table. She may have been poised but she was nervous as a trapped bird. Her lips were moving.
—Constance.
—What is it now?
—Tell me something. Why are you mixed up in your sister’s love affair?
—It’s what sisters do. If you had one you’d know.
—If I had a sister I’d keep her in line.
—Like you keep me in line.
How to describe the tone here? Facetious. It wasn’t serious. She assumed I was worried about her. So my concern was paternal. She thought she was safe.
—Like I keep you in line? I said. As if!
She lifted her shoulders and opened her hands. The gesture was too theatrical. She asked me how it went with Daddy. She suggested we have a drink, but no, I had work to do. She poured herself a scotch and stood at the window as darkness fell and the streetlights came on.
That night I slept in the spare room behind the kitchen. When I went into the bedroom the next morning she was gone. I found a note on her pillow. It said she had to get away from me for a few days.
I don’t want to tell you where I’ve gone
.
I know you’ll understand. Please don’t worry about me. Kiss Howard for me.
Then her signature in black ink in that neat editorial hand. No kisses for me, only for Howard. She had to get away from me, and why? Because I’d overheard her talking like a lover to a man called Eddie Castrol who’d broken her sister’s heart. Was I to assume she was with him now?
For two days I tried to suppress my suspicions. I tried to sustain the idea that she wanted to be alone to think through what she’d learned from Mildred Knapp. I’d tried to help her. I didn’t know what more I could have done, other than ignore Howard’s mother, who was dying. I was forced yet again to
confront the fact that
I didn’t know my wife. I didn’t understand her.
I’d never experienced the kind of shock she’d had, and I’d never felt my identity threatened as hers had apparently been threatened. But I’d made a commitment to see it through no matter what it took, and why? I was her husband. If marriage meant anything I had to do this, for here was the crisis and now it was upon us. She’d asked me to respect her need for solitude and I knew I must allow her that.
I was driving east on the Old Montauk Highway. There were no other cars on the road and I was traveling fast. It was a cold day in late winter. The ocean was to my right, loud and violent, big breakers in a high fresh wind. White clouds chased across a blue Atlantic sky. My idea was simple. I’d start with the Windward Motel. After that I didn’t know what I’d do. I’d gone to Atlantic City again and Howard told me where she was. I had no idea how he knew it but I couldn’t be still any longer for I’d seen her in my mind’s eye in the arms of another man, this barroom piano player, this Eddie—
—Should I leave her there?
—No, Papa. Go and fetch her.
I drove into the parking lot of the motel and took a few moments to compose myself. I was apprehensive. I got out of the car. I could feel the wind now and it was strong. I went into reception and the little bell tinkled as I closed the door. There were two chairs upholstered in red vinyl. There was peeling green linoleum on the floor. There was a counter, and behind it a board where the room keys were hung on hooks, and on the wall a calendar showing a Caribbean beach with a palm tree
and a girl in a bikini. The wind was howling now, and spitting snow. The quiet young man we’d met before, when we were there in the fall, emerged silently through the curtained doorway at the back. He shivered and rubbed his hands together, hearing the wind, and smiled shyly at me. He had an absent manner that made me think he’d been disturbed while writing poetry. He recognized me. He greeted me by name.
—Your wife’s with us, Professor, he said.
He turned toward his board. He touched the empty hook of room 6.
—She’s here now.
Alone? I didn’t ask. I thanked him. It was oddly dreamlike, to find her with such ease. I’d anticipated difficulty but there was none. I walked down the row of modest white clapboard cabins to number 6. I stood a moment at the door before I knocked. I could hear her voice. She opened the door. She was wearing a white sweater and her hair was damp. She was holding a towel. She was in white slacks and tennis shoes. She looked windblown and wholesome and at that moment she was intensely attractive to me. She seemed to be alone and I wanted to take her to bed at once. I recognized again the recent change in her, it was as though a subtle but unmistakable shift into a new phase of her womanhood had occurred. She was surprised.
—How did you find me?
—Can I come in?
—I guess so.
—Who were you talking to?
—Nobody.
The room was a mess. She was never a tidy woman. The bathroom door was open and from it issued warm air that
smelled of soap. She told me to sit down so I shifted some underwear from a chair onto the unmade bed as she stood toweling her hair. I could see no evidence that a man was staying with her other than a comb I didn’t recognize. Also she was wearing a thin silver ring I’d never seen before. But her guilt was everywhere apparent to me. It was in her every gesture, her every word.
All false.
Was I right?
It couldn’t be true.
This was my state of mind. This is the hell of sexual suspicion. This is what they put you through.
—How are you?
She paused in her toweling.
—Why have you come here, Sidney?
—To take you home.
—I’m not ready.
Why had I imagined I’d be greeted with relief? She was irritated I was there. She still mistrusted me. She was cold and distant. I went into the bathroom. The shower curtain was drawn across the tub but there was nobody behind it and there was no window.
—I thought you understood I need time to myself.
—We miss you.
She sat down on the bed and tied up her hair in a loose knot. She leaned forward and with her elbows on her knees briefly buried her head in her hands. She was talking into her fingers. Then she sat up again and turned to me, smiling.
—It’s all right, Sidney, she said. I’ve had a revelation.
—Another revelation.
—I don’t know how else to explain it.
—We have time.
Perhaps Montauk did this to people. I remembered how sweet and loving she’d been when we were here with Howard. Now she wanted to explain why she’d left New York. She was sorry if she’d caused me any anxiety—
—Of course you caused me anxiety, there’s no
if—
—Please let me talk.
There was still that curious quality of calm as she moved around that untidy motel room but at the same time she was hard and brittle. It disturbed me. She was very sorry she’d made me anxious but she had to be near the ocean again. Then she was telling me there was some sort of spiritual contagion at work in Ravenswood. She couldn’t go there anymore. It was haunted, she said, but not in a good way—
—Oh for Christ’s sake!
—Sidney,
will you shut up!
I’m telling you something. You never listen to me.
She stood over me, frowning at me where I sat on the one chair in the room, recently divested of her underwear. There was a kind of fierceness I’d only felt from her when she expressed her hatred of her father. I told her to please go on. I wouldn’t interrupt her again.
—It was spur of the moment but it was where I was meant to come. Here, I mean.
I let this pass. I didn’t ask her what cosmic agency organized her itinerary. She was meant to come back here to Montauk, to the Windward Motel in Ditch Plains. She said she hadn’t seen her father’s ghost if that’s what I was thinking because that’s not how it works.
I was thinking no such thing.
—How does it work, Constance?
—I don’t think you’d understand. I know I caused you pain but I learned something important.
—What did you learn?
—There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s Daddy.
—What’s wrong with him?
I don’t know why I asked, I knew what she’d say. I felt tired to death. I wished she’d just let him go! And instead think about
me!
She was at the window now. She was looking out across the road to the beach beyond and the angry black Atlantic crashing hugely onto the sand. It occurred to me that the man was out there, Eddie, but he’d been warned off, he’d seen the car, he’d watched me come to her cabin. He was somewhere in the dunes, skulking about. Dense gray clouds hung low threatening rain. There was a faint grumble of thunder out at sea. She turned her head and flung a glance at me, then looked back out the window. That glance was charged not with scorn but pity. She spoke with her back to me. I couldn’t see her face.
—You still don’t believe me.
I felt a surge of impatience. In her tranquil assurance I heard condescension. It made me angry but I bit down on it. There would be no cross words, not yet, not until we were home. Quietly I asked her what it was she wanted me to believe.
—Don’t use that tone with me. I’m trying to explain something.
—Then please do so.
Another glance over her shoulder. Reproach and pity this time.
—I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Daddy.
Now she turned and stared at me. Her back was against the window. She was gripping the sill.
—When he murdered Walter it made him sick and I got it. I can’t explain it any better than that.
—What did you get?
—The dead feeling. You’ve seen it.
I was at the end of my tether. I didn’t know what to think anymore. I had to talk to Iris again. She was the only one who saw any of this with clarity.
—You want me to leave you here? I said.
She sat down on the bed. She sighed, and shook her head.
—No. I’ll come.
—Constance—
—I’ll come!
And then a peculiar thing happened. It was as though she were again being addressed by somebody but this time her head came up and her mouth fell open. I asked her who was talking to her. She didn’t reply. She remained distracted. Her lips moved. This lasted for more than a minute and I watched with astonishment as she communicated with this unseen being. It had never been so clear before what was happening to her. Then without a glance in my direction she stood up and pulled a suitcase out of the closet and began to throw clothes into it. A boom of thunder, closer now.