He traveled home thinking of her; putting her out of his mind when the train, its whistle like a sustained organ chord, approached the station where Kitty, sitting in her car, loyally awaited the bull's return. Dubin lifted his Panama, opened the car door; they kissed. As they drove home he had to restrain himself from talking about the girl, as if he were expecting his wife to appreciate Fanny's contribution to his well-being, good life. What “on balance” he owed his wife he would soon repay. He treated her tenderly.
These visits to Fanny sparked his work. Ideas swarmed in Dubin's mind. He was still writing of Lawrence and Frieda during their slow journey on the Continent after their elopement; their deepening love, celebrated in poems and letters written in Germany, Italy, Sicily, as they lived in a villino amid olive, almond, and lemon trees; or in a farmhouse on a mountainside.
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And at last I know my love for you is here;
I can see it all, it is like twilight â¦
Strange how we suffer in spite of this!
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Dubin worked in the barn study, writing securely and rapidly. Kitty said she would rather he was in the house but would settle for a phone in the barn, “just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case I need you in a hurry. One never knows.”
He had a telephone put in. She called rarelyâonce when the tree man wanted to see him: another elm was dying; once or twice when he had worked long past lunch and she was beginning to be worried.
He labored steadily. There were no serious distractions. Now and then he would put down his pen to pursue a thought of Fannyâusually to relive her looks or body; or simply enjoy the marvelous fact that William Dubin had, at his age, a vital vivid young friend. Sometimes he searched amid the papers in a folder on his desk for the picture she had recently given himâto contemplate Fanny. He kept it hidden in a box of photocopies of the Lawrence correspondence he had discovered in Eastwood, with her short affectionate letters beginning “Dearest William,” and closing with four x's in place of love. Her handwriting slanted downward. A triangle of bare paper was left at the bottom. Dubin thought he could write a whole letter in it.
“When are you coming?” she wrote. “I am waiting in bed.”
She mailed her typed letters without a return address, his name purposely mispelled; and varied the size and color of the envelope as if to indicate the letters were coming from different people in different places. Dubin remembered that Jonathan Swift had instructed Vanessa to have someone else address her letters to him; but the biographer wanted no part of that. He was surprised by Fanny's machinations; hadn't asked her to join the deceit; did not want to share it with her, nor be reminded or informed of her experience with other men.
“When are you coming? A lot is going to wasteâI mean not using what you have is wasting it.”
Once she wrote, “Suppose you got sick, how would I know? What could I do to see you? Sometimes I feel as though you aren't in my life.”
He wrote her an affectionate letter. In it he said: “I'm happier now than I've been in years. There ought to be a way of having other selves to be with those we love.”
Now was a new season, unfortunately without her. He would love to point out changes in nature, share them with her if only in Central Park; but he could not get off to the city. Kitty had insisted she'd go with him the next time roundâthey'd drive down together, as he had promised. She knew how thoroughly he had done his research; how trivial to voyage to New York to squeeze out a minor fact or two in the Public Library when there'd be many to check after he had completed a full draft. She knew he'd signed his contract for three long biographical articles. If he went to New York now it was mostly as a break; “for fun,” Kitty said. She could use a little herself.
When she asked when he might be going he said he wasn't sure. She could go by herself if she likedâshop, visit friends, take in a play; but Kitty said
she'd wait for him. It was more fun going together. Dubin waited: the work was flowing. And he was enjoying hoarfrost mornings before warm tangy autumn days; burning-leaf smell of trees yellowing in afternoon sun; a failing luminosity at twilightâmost beautiful time of year. Melancholy too: signs of winter's fingers in woods and fields. Landscape as metaphor. Nature repeating the same old tale, usually with same effect; it plays in memory: what dies is present, what's present dies.
Although he missed Fanny he sometimes thought that so long as they cared for each other, admitted the reality and importance of their relationship, he did not always have to be with her. She was his in principle; he had somehow earned the privilege of her. The mild sadness that went with itâdominant emotion of his life, he often thoughtâtouched but did not taint his desire for her. Unless it was the unyielding presence of Kitty in his thoughts that salted in the sadness.
Then Fanny drove up to Center Campobello one Saturday morning and called from her motel as he was working in the barn. There had been talk she might come up but Dubin had hoped he would be in the city before that.
“I'm here,” she announced, “to see the color and whoever wants to see me.” Her laughter was strained and he imagined her sober expression.
Dubin had called her at the beginning of the week to say once more why he was finding it hard to get away; told her Kitty had insisted on going with him. “I'll have to drive down once with her and not see you. After that I'll try to come back alone.”
“But couldn't we see each other for an hour after I get home from work? It's better than not at all.”
“I wouldn't want to leave you with the evening in your lap after we'd been to bed.”
“Let's take what we can get, William,” Fanny had said. “I feel very generous after I've been with someone who means a lot to me.”
He had said he'd tell Kitty they'd be coming down next week.
But Fanny hadn't waited. She had felt like driving up, she said. “Can't we meet tonight? I'd love to eat with you, then come back here. I have a nice room in this motel. They have cotton sheets on the bed. Some private people own it. It even has curtains and white window shades. I'll bet you like it.”
He said after a minute he would try to arrange it. “One way or the other.
But I won't be able to see you tomorrow, Fanny. Don't plan on that. I'm usually home all day Sunday.”
“Not even in the morning? I plan to leave by one o'clock. I'm having dinner with my friends in the Village who I told you about.”
In the afternoon Dubin went for a drive and called Kitty to say the car had broken down. He was at a garage in Glens Falls and would have to wait until they got the part they needed from a neighboring town. “Don't wait for me. I'll pick up a sandwich across the street.”
“I hate to eat alone,” Kitty said.
Dubin felt shame; he said nothing.
“Maybe it's time to trade in this lousy car for a new one?”
He said they ought to consider it.
He met Fanny at the motel. They ate an early dinner in a nearby inn and returned to her room. She pulled down the shades and asked to be undressed. They made love impetuously, sensuously. She loved lavishly. He was excited by the aromas of her hair and flesh. She liked him to kiss the dark aureoles of her nipples. “William!” she cried as she came. Dubin fell through the sensuous sky into a mountain of leaves, bounced once, and fell peacefully asleep.
“Won't you see me for a little bit tomorrow?” Fanny asked. “Even an hour would be all right.”
He promised he would.
She held up her hands to show him she was growing back her fingernails. He kissed both hands.
On Sunday Dubin rose early, left Kitty sleeping heavily and drove to the motel to have breakfast with Fanny. He had scribbled his wife a note saying he had written something that had come apart during the night and he had to puzzle out why. He was taking an early drive and would be back in time for lunch. He disliked what the note said but left it anyway.
After they had made love, as she was sitting cross-legged in bed, Fanny remarked, “I don't know exactly what we're doing, or what you're doing, but whatever it is hits me right. I felt this one today way up my ass.”
“Bingo.”
Fanny laughed. “We're good together.”
“Is that what it is? Hasn't this happened to you before?”
“Not often. Only once or twice I can remember.”
“I'm glad it happens when you're with me but I marvel a little.”
“Maybe it's because of the way you want it. I dig the hungry way you go after me.”
“You make me feel hungry. I have a long pleasure with you, on the edge of pain. Is it simply that we physically suit each other?”
“It has to be more than that,” Fanny replied. “I think I come the way I do because I like myself better when I am with you.”
Dubin kissed her knees.
“If we have it this good,” Fanny said, “don't you think it's crazy not to see each other a lot more than we do?”
He said they would. She placed her warm palm on his.
He did not have to lie to Kitty when he arrived home shortly before noon. She hadn't seen the note and he tore it up. She had taken a sleeping pill in the middle of the night and was awakening as he came into the bedroom and raised the shades.
“Why didn't you wake me to eat with you?” Kitty said drowsily after glancing at the clock.
He said he had wanted her to sleep.
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She shook him out of solid slumber. He woke with a long-drawn groan. She had had a mad dreamâcould not remember worse: She was a young woman with a baby in a crib. The crib was in flames. It had taken her an endless time to find the burning child's room. She had heard it shrieking and raced up the stairs. Kitty grabbed up the baby, its bedclothes afire, and ran to the bathroom to hold it in the shower, but the door was locked. William, let me in! She hastened from room to room, trying to find him, sick with fright. It occurred to her the child was Nathanael's and she ran to the telephone to call him but Nathanael was in his grave. Kitty had wakened, trying to remember whether she had fainted in the dream.
Dubin held her till she stopped shuddering.
He asked her what was worrying her.
“I don't know,” Kitty said, “except a confusing lot of ongoing things. Neither of the kids is nearby or settled. I worry about them. I also worry about Vietnam. I hate the goddamn war. I think I will stop watching the news at nightâthose burning children running across the road. No wonder I have nightmares.”
Dubin told Kitty in their austere high-ceilinged room at the Gansevoort that he would meet her for dinner at half past seven, or eight. Would she want to see a movie afterward?
“Make it half past seven,” Kitty said, “I'm famished by eight. We'll see about the movie. We might want to do something else.”
He told her he was having a drink with a biographer of Frieda Lawrence.
“Anyone I know?”
“Have you met Fritz Halsman?” He knew no Fritz Halsman and was surprised and irritated by the sincerity of his question.
“No. Why don't you invite him to dinner with us if he's free?”
“Maybe next time. He's not that interesting. I'm only checking a point with him.”
Kitty was wearing a new fall dress with a cloche hat. She looked good in hats that framed the face. She had enjoyed the drive and said they ought to come into the city more often.
“Why bother living in the country?”
“New York was no decent place to bring up children. We both thought so years ago.”
Dubin left quickly to say nothing else. When he lied he talked too much. In the cab he sat silent as the driver talked.
Dubin got to Fanny's as she was arriving in a taxi. They kissed in the street. “How much time do we have?” she asked.
“About two hours.”
“Then we don't have to hurry.”
She had her diaphragm on, had been wearing it since that morning. Upstairs she showed him a pair of lace-edged underpants she had bought during her lunch hour. “Let's get into bed,” said Dubin. “I knew you'd like them,” Fanny said.
Dubin was back at the hotel at 7:40, going on about the war ending soon. Then he warned himself to shut up. He had showered at Fanny's and was about to change his underwear when it occurred to him the shorts he kept in her dresser drawer were striped, whereas the pair he had been wearing were a solid blue. When he got back to the hotel he changed his underclothes and shirt in the bathroom to be sure Fanny's scent wasn't detectable on him. He used Kitty's soap.
Their dinner was excellent. He enjoyed his wife's wit and flushed good looks. She wanted to return to their room after dinner but he talked her into going to a movie that had just opened.