—I didn’t want it to be like this, I said at last. We’ll pretend it hasn’t happened. You’re not ready.
I thought: I won’t try to move her. I’ll take a room in the motel and stay with her as long as I have to. I’ll watch over her. If she needs more time out here I’m offering it to her. I stood
up. She gripped my arms. We stood face to face and the current of feeling that passed between us was in equal parts frustration and impatience and distrust. Nothing apologetic or affectionate from her, she was beyond all that. She was frowning. Her lips were moving again. It was as though we were subject to some implacable code that demanded of us that we behave like this because there was no other choice.
We were silent in the car. I didn’t know what to say to her. I felt I’d acted foolishly. I’d hoped she’d be pleased to know she was wanted but there’d been little sign of that. It was my last gesture. I didn’t know what else I could offer her.
—How’s Howard? she said.
The storm broke as we left Montauk. We missed the worst of it.
—Howard’s fine. It was his idea I’d find you here.
—How’s his mother?
—No better.
Somewhere in Nassau County she wanted to stop for coffee. We sat in a diner watching the traffic and I saw she was becoming more anxious the closer we got to New York. The posture of lofty condescension was starting to disintegrate. When we were back in the car I told her Iris was having a bad time. Her father was becoming increasingly difficult to manage. I saw her lift an eyebrow a fraction, an expression of disinterest. The old hatred rising again, fresh and dark as ever. I marveled that anyone so much in the wrong as she was could behave like an injured party. I wouldn’t talk to her about that now. All I wanted was to get her back to New York.
We were slow coming into Manhattan. It had started to snow, large damp flakes. In the dusk, in the glare of the oncoming
headlights, as the windshield wipers slapped back and forth, I was eager only for this interminable journey to end.
I parked on the street close to the building and we ran down the sidewalk with our coats over our heads. In the elevator she gazed at me with steady eyes and I heard some faint humor in her voice.
—Back in captivity, she said.
Her reunion with Howard was tender. When I opened the front door the boy ran out of the kitchen into the hallway, where he stood dead still with his shoulders up and his fists clenched and stared at Constance as she entered the apartment. I was behind her with her suitcase. She gave me her wet coat, then sat down on the chair by the low table and pulled off her gloves finger by finger.
—Howard, come here.
He approached her warily. She wasn’t smiling. She held out her hands and he took them. She gazed into his solemn face with deep seriousness.
—You discovered my hiding place.
—I guessed it.
—That was very clever of you. Are you some kind of a detective?
—No!
—I think you must be.
—I’m not!
—Then give me a hug.
That was what he wanted. I looked on as they clung to each other. Howard had a way of burying his head in the hollow between her breast and her arm and clutching her tight around the waist. Eventually I’d have to detach him.
After dinner he said good night to each of us in turn. It was an important good night for him. I knew what he wanted to say but I also knew that he couldn’t find the words. But his intentions were plain enough. He was profoundly relieved to have her back, for he wanted more than anything that we three be a family again. He knew he wouldn’t have Barb for much longer. Constance glanced at me and for the briefest moment we exchanged mutual recognition of his predicament.
Again she reached out her hands to him. When he was standing by her chair she asked him quietly if he was glad she was home.
—Yes I am, he said.
He stared at the floor. He couldn’t look at her.
—I don’t think you are.
Now his eyes came up, hot with injury and outrage.
—Constance, I am!
She folded him in her arms and stroked his head, laughing a little and telling him that yes, she knew he was. Then she let him go. He stopped at the kitchen door and took a last look at us, I guess just to confirm that it wasn’t all a dream.
—Such a great kid, she murmured a little later. She was smoking a cigarette as we finished our coffee.
—I’ll clear up in here, I said.
—I’m going to bed. Are you coming?
The question hung in the air for what seemed a small eternity. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d suggest it.
—Yes of course.
—Why the hesitation?
—I’m surprised.
—Did you sleep with Iris?
—No.
She leaned forward and peered at me, smiling.
—I’d understand if you did.
—I didn’t.
I held her eye. I was level, steady, serious. I thought: She couldn’t know for sure. But she’d seen me hesitate and she trusted her intuition.
—You both had good reason.
—We didn’t, Constance. Don’t judge the rest of us by your own—
—My own what? I don’t care where you sleep.
She was in a rage now. She stood up and went to the door. She turned and said:
Or who with.
That was it. Something snapped. I couldn’t let it go now. We would have to have it out. We had so much work to do, she and I.
The next morning she went back to Cooper Wilder. I knew I’d been a fool to go to Montauk. I said this to Ed Kaplan when I saw him for lunch. He disagreed. He said she’d gone to Montauk for one reason only, because she wanted me to come after her. If she’d wanted to hide she’d have gone someplace else.
Why did she go there if she thought I’d come and get her?
Because the game wasn’t over.
What game?
You hadn’t suffered enough. You had to be punished for loving her. When you’d paid in full for that she’d stop mistreating you.
You think she was conscious of any of this?
I doubt it.
This conversation I conducted not with Ed Kaplan but myself.
The next day she came in around five. I followed her into the sitting room and closed the door. I asked her how her day had been.
—Fine.
—You want to talk about it?
—I don’t think so.
Once we’d talked about everything, or she had. She told me I was more selective, that I concealed things from her. She said that was how spontaneity went out the back door while suspicion came in the front.
—You’re nervous.
She turned from the window. Why this intrusiveness suddenly? She felt alarmed, I saw it.
—You know the problems I’m having. Maybe you don’t.
—I think you better tell me.
The question seemed to hang in the air like a gas. She went on the offensive.
—Why are you looking at me like that?
—You’re having an affair.
I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t so, not any longer, not after what she’d said the night before.
—No, Sidney, I’m not. That’s the last thing I need right now.
—So he finished it? Or did you?
—Don’t do this again. I’m sick of you doing this.
She left the room at once and I followed her. She took her coat and walked out of the apartment. I followed her. We descended in the elevator in silence. I gazed at her steadily and she stared at the numbers in the illuminated panel above the elevator doors.
She left the building and walked east along the block in the direction of Central Park. I followed her.
Still in silence we entered the park. It wasn’t a safe thing to do, this time of the day. Any time of the day. It was March and snow still lay drifted on the balustrades and stonework. The high buildings on the East Side stood stark in outline against the late-afternoon sky. She refused to answer my questions. She demanded to know why I was harassing her like this. We walked beside the lake. It was still frozen. A cold breeze came up. We saw nobody and it felt sinister to me, the emptiness. The ice on the lake was pocked and striated with here and there animal prints, dead sticks and leaves, small heaps of earth: Nature’s detritus that in another season would have sunk to the bottom. But all the muck was on the surface now, exposed in plain view.
I saw the sun, a pale, diffuse orb of light low in the sky over Central Park South. I saw moving figures in the distance but I heard only the faintest roar of the city beyond. Here by the ice it was still. But the afternoon was far advanced and the light was fading fast. Dead leaves began to rustle and shift in the wind. At last she turned to face me. She was angry. Again she demanded to know why I was behaving like this. I made an impatient gesture as though to brush away her protestations like so much chaff.
—It doesn’t matter how I know and it doesn’t matter how I feel, what matters is that it stops.
—What are you talking about?
I became impatient. She was treating me like a fool.
—It’s no good, what you’re doing. It’ll hurt Howard and I won’t allow you to do that. I’m protecting my son.
—I’m not Howard’s mother.
—You will be. His mother’s dying.
I was as angry as she’d ever seen me but I kept it in check so I could make her understand what I wanted. I hadn’t told her that Barb was dying, nor had I consulted her on being her replacement. But I’d heard her talking to a man on the phone. The daylight was nearly gone now. We weren’t supposed to be there, it was asking for trouble, it was way too dangerous. She sank onto a bench. Her hair was coming loose and spilling about her face. She looked older, there was a kind of fullness to her now, she seemed sexually replete. I couldn’t bear to think there was another man. It made me crazy. She lit a cigarette. A chill, damp mist was rising from the ice. Nobody about, we were alone. She later told me she thought I might murder her there. She said she didn’t care so long as it didn’t hurt.
—What time is it? she said.
—Six.
—I want to go back.
—Constance, don’t ever see him again, do you understand me? If you do I’ll divorce you and you won’t see Howard anymore.
She didn’t want to think about that.
—It’s he who decides when I see him, she said quietly.
—What are you saying? I shouted.
She seemed to wake up. What was going on? She laughed a little.
—You heard me talking to Eddie on the phone, she said. You jumped to conclusions.
—I knew already.
She didn’t know how I’d found out. I hadn’t, of course. She
wondered if Iris had told me. Did Iris know? Was it possible? Wasn’t there
anyone
she could trust? This was her thought, I saw her thinking it. She rose from the bench and at once felt dizzy. She reached out and I held her. She wasn’t thinking straight anymore.
—You shouldn’t smoke, I said. I wish you’d tell me how I’ve failed you.
—Don’t start that again. What happens this time?
—We go on.
We walked back across the park, our hands in our pockets and our collars turned up, side by side and a thousand miles apart. I think she was impressed with me. There was none of the eagerness for the lurid details of the thing that men are supposed to display on discovering they’ve been betrayed. It came later. Did she remember what I’d said to her in London an eternity ago, when I decided we were going to be married:
I’m a fascinating thinker and I love you. What’s not to love back?
I was fascinating then, it was true. When did I stop being fascinating to her? Was it my fault? Or had she failed to sustain a willingness to be fascinated? I feared at that moment she might be lost to me. She seemed not to have whatever it is that guides us across deserts, the pole star. She had no moral pole star. It was a function of her mother’s promiscuity and her father’s neglect. I also realized she wanted this crisis. She wasn’t aware of it yet, but she wanted it all to fall apart. That was also her mother’s fault. The responsibility of marriage was too much for either of them. I would have to carry it for both of us.
She allowed me to take her home. Later, when Howard was in bed, she sat at the kitchen table exhausted. I’d been calm and sensible in the park earlier, I hadn’t raged at her as another man
would have done. I knew she was frail. She liked me for that. She was weak and I was wise. I understood why she’d done it. She felt as if she was drowning and had clung to the first warm body that came her way. But it should have been mine.
—Sidney.
I was clearing the table.
—I’m sorry, she said. If that helps.
I nodded my head. It was the best she could do. She was thinking about what I’d said earlier:
We go on.
—Are we all right now? she said.
I was astonished. I sat down. I put my hands on the table and stared at her.
—Do you know what you’ve done? I said at last.
—What?
—You’ve smashed it to bits. It’s gone, Constance. You’ve destroyed it.
—What have I destroyed?
—Whatever you want to call it. Our covenant. Didn’t you realize there’d be consequences?
—I haven’t destroyed anything! Can’t we go on as we were?
She heard the desperation in her voice and wondered if it helped her cause or hurt it. I saw her thinking this. I could read her thoughts. I remained clinical.
—Then no, we can’t go on, not as we were before. I’ll say it again, there are consequences. I don’t want to talk to you right now. I’m going out.
—Oh please don’t leave me—
I was very angry. I untied my apron and threw it on a chair and left the kitchen, then I left the apartment. I hadn’t finished clearing the table but I had to talk to someone.
She told me later she lay in the silent darkness unable to sleep. She said she tried to control the anxiety rising in waves and flooding her, and felt as though she were flattened and gasping on some shoreline with her mouth full of weeds and salt. There were scraps and fragments of content involving scenarios of abandonment, but the real force of it was an overwhelming visceral sensation of loss and despair and
aloneness.
Of course she felt alone, I told her, she’d driven away the one person in the world who only wanted to help her. When I got home sometime after eleven I didn’t go to the bedroom. She waited for me, then she couldn’t wait any longer. She came looking for me. Howard’s door was open a crack and the night-light glowed inside. From force of habit she looked in on him and he was asleep. At times it stabbed her to the heart to see this child safe and warm because we kept him so. He was about to lose his mother. The light was on in my study. The door was closed. She tapped at it.