Heart Troubles (7 page)

“Justin!” she had said, seizing his arm. “Look! A backgammon table—a
marble
backgammon table! And
pink
marble!” They had gone inside for a closer look.

It was like a number of other pieces they had bought for the house: They had seen it, decided instantly that they couldn't live without it, and so they had paid a ridiculously high price for it. Irene was sure that the minute the shopkeeper had seen them—the minute the sleighbells above his door had jingled to announce their entrance—he had seen the predatory gleam in their eyes, heard an excited, acquisitive note in the jingling bells, and doubled the price of the backgammon table. At least this was what she thought at first. Later, as she discovered more things about the table, she changed her mind and decided it had been a bargain. The table had so many surprises in it. The raised gallery, which ran around the edge, and the raised center bar were not—as she had first thought—separate pieces of marble that had been glued to the horizontal surface. The entire table-top had been carved from a single piece of pink stone. The twenty-four points of the backgammon game were not painted on, as she had assumed, but were cut of alternately darker and lighter stone and carefully inlaid.

On the day the table was delivered Justin picked up the marble top and carried it to the window. He held it up against the light. “Look, Irene,” he said. “It's almost translucent. The light shines
through.
”

It was then she had noticed the hieroglyphics on the rough bottom surface—letters or numerals—and, after studying them for a long time, they had decided that part of the inscription was a date—1802.

“Just think of it,” Irene said. “It's over a hundred and fifty years old.”

He held it to the light again and she had begun to have the illusion of a hidden surface beneath the actual surface, of a canyoned land bathed in pink, clear sunshine that lay submerged in transparent stone.

“The color is like—like an antique pigeon's blood!” she had said, and laughed.

He lifted the marble top to replace it on its pedestal. “Be careful, Justin!” she cried. “Don't drop it!”

They had put the table between two gold chairs so that, when it was not set up for a game, it could be used to hold a cigarette dish and an ashtray. “How have we been able to live without it this long?” Irene asked. “It looks as if it had grown there!”

“It certainly ought to be a conversation piece,” Justin said.

It was. Placed so prominently in the room, it called attention to itself immediately. When Irene's friends came for lunch or tea, the table provided, almost invariably, a subject for a few minutes' admiring talk. When her friends asked her, Irene said, “I'm sure there's no other in the world like it.”

Neither Irene nor Justin had ever played backgammon. But, once they had the table, Irene decided they should learn. She bought a copy of a book called
Hoyle Up-To-Date,
a handsome set of black and white backgammon pieces, two pairs of dice, and two leather dice cups. As they sipped their evening coffee over the backgammon table, they studied the rules and strategy of the game. They learned that the pieces were called “stones” and that certain rolls of the dice had odd and charming names. (An opening roll of six and five allowed the player to make a move called “Lover's Leap,” and a roll of six and one permitted him to make what was called his “bar point.”) Irene delightedly learned that backgammon was one of the oldest games, with its origins lost in pre-Roman antiquity, and she decided that backgammon was good for them.

It was pleasant, she thought, to sit this way, on a quiet winter evening—with a fire going in the fireplace, perhaps, on snowy nights—with Justin wearing the brown velvet smoking jacket she had given him for his birthday, his feet in slippers, his pipe lighted, as they sipped her hot espresso coffee. It was a peaceful scene as she saw it—the kind of scene their lives could have used more of. They sat together, husband and wife, calmly concentrating on a single area, equally matched, with only a pair of dice to determine who would win. She was sure that Justin was as happy as she was.

When he rolled the dice for his turn, she heard the almost musical chink of the dice against the marble, and she looked deeply into the buried country. Backgammon, and the backgammon table, had, she decided, opened up a new and reassuring world to them both. For some time Irene Silton had been quietly wondering what was wrong with her marriage.

When he had finished making his move she said to him, “I learned something else from
Hoyle Up-To-Date
today.”

“Did you? What?”

“There are quite a few variations on the standard game. Did you know that?”

“No,” he said, “I didn't.”

“Well, there are. One is called Dutch Backgammon. Then there's a game called Snake, and one called Acey-Deucey.”

“Really?” he said. “That's very interesting.”

“Yes. I thought, if we ever get tired of this form of the game there are all the others to try.”

“Yes, that's right.”

She rolled the dice for her turn. “Oh!” she said. “Lover's Leap!”

A little later she said, “Isn't this fun?”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed.

“I like it because it brings us together,” she said. “It gives us something to do when we're together.” She smiled at him and reached for his hand across the backgammon table.

The Siltons had no children. Perhaps that was Irene's fault; perhaps it wasn't. At first, in the first years, she hadn't wanted any. She had been frightened, really, of having children. She was a small woman—a size eight—and her mother had once told her that she was not built for childbearing. On the other hand, after a while she had decided that she and Justin ought to become parents. But then nothing had happened and then, for a long time, she had urgently, wildly, wanted children. Now, she felt, they had passed a point—a critical point in marriage—where children would help, in any way, to bring them together. Though they were still young, still in their thirties, she was certain that the addition of a child now would only shatter what remained of their relationship; that, if she had a baby, Justin would leave her. Their marriage consisted now of two perilously balanced ingredients—herself and Justin—and the entrance of any third being would disrupt the balance.

What, precisely, was their marriage's illness Irene did not know. She had long since stopped trying to diagnose it and, instead, bent every effort toward preventing it from failing further. She knew—or at least she was fairly sure—that Justin still loved their house in Seventieth Street, and the furniture, each piece lovingly chosen, that the house contained. She knew there was no other woman. She knew that Justin—a successful lawyer—was doing well, and was happy, in his business. Beyond that, the reasons for their troubles were obscure and intangible. Sometimes she thought, If he would only shout at me! If he would only yell at me, abuse me, or do
something
that would define his position. But, instead of shouting, he withdrew into the silence of his smoking jacket and slippers and pipe. Instead of abuse he offered her painful considerateness and politeness. He had changed. It was hard to say how—after twelve years of marriage—but he had removed himself from her somehow. A bright, plum-colored runner ran up the stairs of their house and, for years, she had insisted that they walk up and down the stairs at the edges of the carpet, to avoid stepping on the centers of the treads where signs of wear were likeliest to show. This way they had preserved the carpet. With Justin, it seemed to her, it had come to be like that. He had developed the habit of walking up and down her edges, stepping delicately and cautiously away from the center area, as if he were trying to leave unbruised her heart's nap.

“Do you still love me?” she had asked him once, impulsively, and the instant she said the words she had known that his answer—even if it was “Yes”—would not comfort her.

“Yes, I do,” he said, and Irene felt her spirit die within her, feeling his footsteps moving in their slippered way gingerly up and down her borders.

She had held herself in, fighting the hysterical urge to cry out. “Well,” she said, trying to make her voice sound bright, “I love you!”

“That's good,” he said.

A trifle more shrilly, she said, “I've never nagged at you, have I, the way some women do? I'm not a fuss, am I? Do I scold or criticize?”

“No,” he said.

This exchange—short though it was—had exhausted her. She sat back in the sofa, limp, and closed her eyes, her head full of whirring, hopeless thoughts.

Irene believed in marriage; this was why she was determined to save her own. For years, even when she was in college, she had argued about the importance of marriage, of a man and woman in a partnership, of a mutual sharing and giving and accepting. It seemed ironic, and unfair, that her own marriage—which had begun with so much promise—should end sourly. It seemed cruel. Because, in addition to believing in marriage, she was also frightened of returning to singleness. The word “divorce” terrified her. To Irene, being unmarried meant days of waiting for invitations, hours of waiting for the telephone to ring. It meant a life of artful lies and careful pretense, of guile and insincerity, of double motives. To her, the life unmarried people lived was a dark and doubtful battleground and she, she knew, had none of the weapons, nor the courage, for the battle. She was not beautiful—she knew it. She had been called “pretty,” and “pretty” in her case meant a dark-haired, small-faced, beady sort of prettiness. Alert, bright, interesting—those were the words to describe her looks. To make up for a lack of beauty she had other qualities, of course. She was efficient, tidy, an excellent housekeeper and cook, an expert financial manager, a clever hostess—but these were virtues that were useful in a married woman, not in one who was looking for a husband. One reason she wanted to keep her marriage from collapse was that she was afraid she would never have another; inside her there lurked a small, tight knot of knowledge that, if Justin had not come along when he had, she might never have married at all.

When she exploded, as she sometimes did, she screamed at him and said, “Justin, talk to me! At least talk to me! Tell me what you're thinking. Don't just sit there
trying
to look peaceful. Tell me what the trouble is! Is it me? Is there something wrong with me? Have you stopped loving me?”

He only said, “It's nothing, Irene. Please. Let me finish my paper.” And she had reached a point where each vicissitude of life, each encounter with him, seemed to appear as an insurmountable wall; the future seemed to stretch ahead of her like a series of tall cliffs, each unconquerable and stern. Then, unexpectedly, walking on a Saturday morning on Lexington Avenue, she had seen something shining in the window of a dusty shop, and said, “Look, Justin—” and had taken his arm. From that moment everything began to change.

Across the backgammon table, sipping coffee one night, she said to him, “Do you remember how we used to quarrel, Justin? Just a few months ago? Do you remember how I used to scold you and accuse you of making mistakes?”

“Oh, I remember,” he said.

“I admit it,” she said eagerly. “I do admit it now! I was in the wrong, I know, because I suppose I
am
too fussy.”

“You're very meticulous,” he said.

“Thank you, but—but perhaps I was wrong to be,” she said. “Anyway, have you noticed that it's different now? That we don't quarrel that way any more?”

“You're right. We don't,” he said and smiled at her.

She rolled her dice out, across the tabletop, hearing their deep ring. Then she reached across and covered his hand with hers. “I love you,” she said.

“And I you.”

“I was thinking,” she said. “About—oh, about things like the stair carpet. I've been wrong to insist that you walk up the edges of the stairs. I admit that now. I'm sorry for making you do it.”

“I sometimes forget, I know,” he said.

“But my point is, it's all
right
if you forget, Justin. After all, it's only a piece of carpet. It's not as important as—us, for instance.”

“I agree,” he said.

“And—about making you put on your slippers the minute you come in the door. You don't have to do that, either, if you don't want to.”

“It's easier on the rugs with slippers.”

“But I don't care! And you can smoke in the dining room, darling, from now on!”

He smiled still. “You
have
changed,” he said.

“Yes,” she laughed, “I know!”

It was the happiest conversation they had had in months.

“It's your turn,” she said.

They returned to the game.

A little later she said, “Justin, what was it that first made you think you loved me?”

He held the dice cup in his hand, gently rattling the dice, and frowned, as he tried to think of the answer. “Do you mean what quality in you I admired most?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, I guess it would be your executive ability,” he said.

She very briefly closed her eyes. “Is that all?”

“Well, let's see—let me think.”

“In the beginning, I mean,” she said.

“Well—”

“Never mind. It was a silly question,” she said.

“No. Wait,” he said eagerly. “Remember, before we were married? We were at the Colsons' party in Englewood? I'd never danced with you before, and that night I did—I danced with you—and I thought, Irene is one of the best dancers in the world! I thought you were a wonderful dancer, considering you were such a little thing.”

“Oh. Well, thank you, Justin.”

“And what about you?” he asked.

“Me?”

“Yes—you, Irene.”