“Or never listened to anything else,” she laughed. “Of course! The Daniel Moynihans of the world.”
“I don’t know when things began to change. Maybe right away, maybe after a few years. It was all so gradual. It was years later that I was watching her—we were at some party and she was talking to someone else—and I noticed that she had this habit of smiling with only her lower lip and the corners of her mouth: she kept the upper lip stiff. And she hadn’t done that when I’d met her, and I didn’t know when it had begun, but there it was. She’d been doing it for years, by then.
“We had two kids and Edith was pretty busy with them in those years in Dallas. They were exciting years for me: moving up, power struggles, more difficult jobs. It was the game all over again, and by now I was an expert at it. But even experts get caught, trapped in infights. But it’s the infights that teach you who you are.
“I remember one in particular, it was probably the first serious one I’d been involved in at the Highland Company, I’d probably just hit near the top of middle management. There were two warring factions. I liked one group—I liked the people, I liked their … well, what you’d call their
values.
But they were losers, all of them, losers in the political arena if not in life. And they were losers because they believed that the world was divided into black and white and that if you had good values you always lost: good guys finish last. So they were always prepared to lose, and they were resigned. So they couldn’t think up decent strategies for winning: the best they could do was plan a holding action. They could defend, they couldn’t aggress.”
“Ouch.”
He ignored her. “The other group was the Reilly group—that’s how I thought of it. A pompous shit named Reilly was its leader, and he believed that he was a wheeler-dealer who knew exactly how much ass to kiss, and who drew the line at nothing. I knew he was incompetent and hollow, but I also thought he’d win just because he was so entirely unscrupulous.
“For a long time, I managed to stay unaligned, treading a fine line, not appearing to favor either side. But you know, you can’t keep that up indefinitely: the time comes when you’re forced to take sides. And I was obsessed with all this, watching daily developments very minutely, and trying to decide which side to join—trying to decide on what grounds to decide, even. And right in the middle of all this, Edith decides to get temperamental. She is sulky, I find her crying in her room, she won’t sleep with me. She hardly speaks to me in the mornings, at breakfast. I don’t know why she’s giving me grief, and I have no patience with it, I was caught up in a terribly important situation at work.
“Oh, we’d had little tiffs, I guess you could call them, before. Every once in a while I’d find her sulking, but if I asked what was wrong, she said, “Nothing.’ Or, ‘I have a headache,’ or, ‘I’m getting my period.’ She’d seem a little snippy, is all. And a couple of times—well, maybe more than a couple—I’d had late meetings and forgotten to call, and I’d come home at ten and there she’d be, a pursed mouth in a bathrobe sitting on the living-room couch watching TV and waiting for me. And then I’d realize I hadn’t called, and I’d apologize, and she’d say, very snippy: Your dinner’s in the oven if you want it.’ Of course it was always dried up, but of course I’d already eaten. And then she’d get up and switch off TV and go to bed.
“Normally, she went to bed when I did—whether I went early or late. But on nights when I didn’t call, she asserted herself. I never really cared. On those nights I really wanted to sit with a drink and think over what had happened that day. I enjoyed sitting there alone, quiet, not having to make perfunctory conversation about the kids or the house or the neighbors. That was my only time of solitude, those nights when Edith was angry with me.
“Anyway, the next day she’d always be herself again, smiling. She seemed to forget. I thought she had a sunny nature.
“But this time, it was a Monday morning, I remember, she got up in the morning with a frown on. I had no idea why. We’d spent a quiet weekend, I was exhausted and I’d sat out by the pool and read the papers and slept most of the time. I was getting ready to go to work, and she was tossing me dirty looks. I didn’t want to get into it then. I had a demanding day ahead. So I ignored them, her. And as I was about to leave, she suddenly burst into tears. All the shit I had to face at work, I didn’t need this. I yelled at her: ‘What is it
now!
’ As if she was always giving me grief. But truthfully, Dolores, that’s how it
felt:
she didn’t, of course, but it
felt
as if she did. I’d come home and the house would
feel
electric, on the brink of some hysterical outburst. But when I yelled, she just stood there blubbering, and I said, ‘For God’s sake, Edith, can’t it wait until tonight?’ And she opened her mouth and she screamed at me! What a shock! She shouted: ‘You want to go, go! Go to your beloved office, go, go, go! But don’t come back!’
“Well, of course, that was sheer idiocy. I grabbed my briefcase and stormed out the door. I didn’t get back until very late that night, and I hadn’t called. That was purposeful, though, to teach her a lesson. Except when I got home, the house was dark, and Edith and the kids were gone. There was a note, written in her”—he looked appealingly at Dolores—“don’t get mad, now, huh? I’m trying to tell you how I felt then.”
She nodded.
“Written in her large stupid female script, flowing and careful, with a long swing up at the end of each word. On perfumed stationery with little flowers in the corners. You know? Well, I just picked it up and felt such contempt for her, such disgust…. I didn’t know where it came from, what she’d done to deserve my feeling that way about her, and I hadn’t even known I
had
felt that way about her until that moment….
“She wrote that it was clear I didn’t love her anymore, so she had taken the children and gone to her father’s, in Scarsdale. I threw the letter down, I poured myself a nice big Scotch, and sat down in my chair. I tried to go over in my mind what could have caused this, but I couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t screwing around, I didn’t drink too much, I provided for her and the kids very well. So there was no excuse, none at all. It was a power play: she wanted to get me under her thumb.
“She knew I was in a bad spot at work, that I was worried. She also knew that in those days corporation executives did
not
get divorced. So she was smart, she chose that moment to undermine me. I had to hand it to her for cleverness, whatever else I felt. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted, though, except to get an upper hand over me, to—well, what I told myself was—castrate me. Make
me
the deferential one, like her friend Phyllis’s husband Harvey. Well, I was damned if she was going to win
that
one, and double damned if I’d give in to
her
.”
He started another cigarette, leaned back, put his hand over his eyes.
“I had it figured pretty well. She had two babies and not much money. I never left a great deal in the checking’ account, and she couldn’t have touched the bank accounts because I kept the books in my office safe. Now that her daddy had retired, her parents lived in a five-room apartment—a
lush
five-room apartment, to be sure, but too small for two screaming kids and three adults. She had majored in art in college, but had never worked. She’d gone to Europe after graduation—her parents’ gift to her—for a couple of months, and when she got back, we began to make arrangements for our wedding. So she’d never worked, and couldn’t do anything—which is to say, she couldn’t type. Even so, with two babies …
“The only thing would be if her daddy decided to subsidize her. But I knew the old man pretty well, knew how he thought about women—well, about what he would have called the
family
—although he really meant the place of women. And I thought there was little chance he’d support her in her flight from me, especially since I didn’t believe Edith would lie, would say I abused her or ran around. Edith, I thought in those days, was strictly honest. I have to confess, I didn’t even give her credit for that. I thought she was honest, not out of principle, but because she was naive and childlike and too simple to lie. Hah!
“Anyway, I thought she was in a weak bargaining position, and that every day she spent at her parents’ house was going to make it weaker. I never even considered hopping a plane and chasing her to Scarsdale, where I would get down on one knee and beg her to come back. Not only because I wouldn’t have done it for her, but also because I wouldn’t, couldn’t run out on the hassle at work, where such an act would have been interpreted as a failure of nerve. On the other hand, I couldn’t just sit there and wait for her to come back, make no move at all. Even her old man would have found that pretty cheeky. So I telephoned, and he answered. I played it well, asking how she was and then, as if I were bewildered and bothered—well, hell, maybe I was, but I didn’t know it at the time—asked him if he had any idea why she had left.
“It was a good ploy, made me sound innocent. Which, anyway, I was. He said: ‘Don’t you?’ and I said
not an idea in hell.
And he said well, you know how women are and maybe I’d better talk to her, and she got on and we chitchatted for a couple of minutes about her flight and the kids, and then I said, ‘Edith, why did you do this?’ And she burst into tears and said, ‘You don’t love me anymore!’ and hung up. Good Christ. I tell you, I was convinced all women were nuts. You couldn’t understand them.
“A couple of days later, I wrote her a letter. I told her I loved her and didn’t understand why she said I didn’t I swore there’d never been anyone else. Strange,” he said, moving, letting his hand rest limply on the couch arm, “how that was the way you proved love: by claiming sexual fidelity. Anyway, I said I needed her and missed her. And in fact, you know, that was true. It surprised me. So often I found her presence … irritating. But when she wasn’t there … it was unpleasant, coming home to a dark house, no child noises, no food cooking, nothing. I’d eat out and come home late, but it felt … empty. And then I thought maybe this is what she’d been trying to tell me—that I did need and miss her, or would if she weren’t there. Maybe she’d been trying to get me to value her more. And that’s what I wrote.
“She never answered. But a couple of weeks later, when I came in late, I saw Vickie’s tricycle in the driveway and Leslie’s wagon near the front door. The house was quiet, the kids were asleep. Edith was sitting in the living room, but she wasn’t reading and she wasn’t watching TV. She looked sour. And I felt—
shit!
I was very tired that night, not up for a ringding battle. And then I thought:
women.
You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. I missed her when she was gone, but I wasn’t especially thrilled to have her back. But it never occurred to me that had anything to do with
me:
I thought—
women.
“The three weeks she’d been gone had been hellish, but fascinating and exciting, really. I had discovered a lot about myself. I found I was good at maneuvering and I also found my inclinations were to act on principle. It was a good discovery, it made me feel strong. Reilly and his crew had won the battle, as I’d suspected they would. I’d backed the other side, who found themselves out in the cold. But without our knowing it then, Highland was being sold to a conglomerate and new management was coming in. What would happen—of course we didn’t know it then—was that Reilly would end up with his little division, stuck there for the rest of his life, while the other group would move on, move away. Not all of them, but the leaders—including me.
“I felt strong. I felt… pure, I guess. I’d backed a side I expected would lose but which was essentially right, and made up of decent human beings. I didn’t then know what was going to happen to the losing side, except that Reilly got the division instead of Dawes. But I felt I’d discovered my real strength—not the fake superiorities I’d been parading around all my life—well, since I was fifteen—but real ones, strengths you can grow from. And I knew nobody could hold me back now. I’d discovered you never know yourself until you’re tested and that you don’t even know you’re being tested until afterwards, and that in fact there isn’t anyone giving the test except yourself. Unconsciously, you test yourself against your own standards. And I also found that it felt good to be among people you respected, even if you lost. And that I had some courage, some principle. I felt damned proud of myself. So proud that, I think, I never pulled the superior act again.
“Except on Edith. Anyway, all this had happened while she was away, and I felt changed and felt she was a stranger to the ‘new’ me. And I guess she’d gone through something, too, although I wasn’t thinking much about
her
, then. But we seemed strangers to each other.
“She was sitting there with a drink, which was unusual, so I poured one for myself, and sat down opposite her, heavily, sighing, telling her how tired I was. She just looked at me. She hadn’t even smiled when I came in. I told her, rather bitterly, direly, that the Reilly faction had won. She didn’t blink. I talked about it for a while, managing to suggest by my tone as much as anything else that it was largely her fault I was so tired, that she had been reprehensible in going off and leaving me during such a trying period of my life.”
Victor broke off and put his head in his hands. “Oh god,” he said, in anguish, deep in his throat. He lifted his head up again, and breathed in deeply. “I went on, full of gloom and doom, saying that I might be out of a job soon. And during all of it, she sat unblinking, without the little smiles and frowns and expressions of concern she usually showed when I spoke. Sat there like an iceberg.
“So then I launched into a little speech about love. I’d never even said I was glad she was back, but I knew all about love. Looking back, it must have been pretty terrible, pompous and blind, but at the time I was full of a sense of my own Tightness. I was telling her that love understands, love tolerates, love does not get impatient, love does not get angry and hold grudges.