‘I’m always right, aren’t I?’ Chris asked seriously.
‘You’re always right in your estimate of them. But you don’t understand me. I mean, sometimes there’s just nobody around who is up to one’s standards, but I, I get lonely, I want to make love. I want to talk to a man – much as I love women, I like some balance – so I bring home a limited creature. After all, everybody can’t be God’s gift to the human race …’
‘That’s all academic now,’ Tad said authoritatively. ‘You have me now.’
Val swung around to him with astonishment. He looked in her face with devotion, and reached out and took her hand. She let him take it, but she turned away looking thoughtful.
Ben frowned. ‘I don’t know. Mira just kept saying – crying – that it was disgusting. She said it over and over. I asked her if she thought it was disgusting that you lived with Tad – out here, at least – and she said that was different, Chris was just a baby when you got divorced, and that she was a girl and that was different – but then she burst out that she was shocked when she first realized Grant was your lover and stayed with you sometimes.’
‘Well,’ Val said wearily, ‘one thing is sure. She loves you.’
‘How do you make that out? Love is a blackboard eraser? When I’m inconvenient, she can wipe me out of her life?’
‘That’s another thing. But I don’t think she’d be so upset if her feelings for you were not so intense. You know, she hasn’t much of a relationship with her sons. It’s probably all the emotions around that are pulling her apart. She’s thinking about how they would feel, knowing the three of them aren’t that close, seeing her with you … You can understand that, can’t you?’
‘I guess.’
Val sat up and crossed her legs, lotus position. She leaned her head toward Ben. She was a little drunk, and her voice took on the childish tone that was common when she was in that state. ‘Well, now, Ben, I’m serious, and you’d better listen to me.’
He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘I’m listening.’
Tad’s arm jerked, and his head became very erect.
‘Oooookay!’ she pronounced, sitting back. ‘Who’s for a slam-bang game of …’ She peered around, counting them slowly. ‘One, two,
three … oh, well … oh! I’m four! How about a slam-bang game of bridge?’
4
Ben’s suggestion that they rent the cottage had so appalled Mira that for a time she could not think. It outraged her in some place she never before knew to exist, and was suddenly forced not only to recognize, but also to explore. She walked down toward the beach; the night was warm and the crickets were singing love songs. The sky was dark here, far from the neon-lighted city, and the stars stood out brilliantly against it. She asked herself question after question. Was it because her life had been so sheltered, so
normal
, so much what popular morality said it was supposed to be, that she had never been forced to make a moral choice, and so was helpless in this terrain? She could remember mentally castigating people who regarded adultery as mortal sin. But she also remembered her shock when she realized that Bliss was actually having an affair with Paul. At the time, she had told herself that what upset her was the betrayal of Adele, who considered Bliss her best friend. She reminded herself that she had not been horrified when Martha got involved with David. But of course, Martha and George were honest with each other, there was no deceit involved.
But what deceit was involved here? Her sons knew she was divorced, they lived in the same house with their father and his second wife whenever they visited. They would understand that she too … They would have to understand! Who were they to judge her? Was she not entitled to her own life, to
a
life, to friendship and love?
She reached the beach. The bay was still, only rippling under the moon. The sand was deserted, although there were some cars parked at its rim, cars with people in them. She averted her head stiffly, and walked down toward the water.
She could not come up with a single logical reason why she should be so upset by the idea of the boys staying with – no, it was not even that – just knowing about her and Ben. She prodded and poked this area of her mind, this newly discovered territory, and risked pain with each motion, but she could not find answers. She walked and walked. In time, weary and wanting to sleep, she decided to return to the cottage, but by this time, she felt like a walking toothache, and she blamed Ben for her pain. After all, she had lived all these years without ever having to feel
precisely this way, without ever having to ask such questions, all these years she had gone her happy calm way without having this dentist’s pick probe at her sore spots. Why couldn’t he understand her delicacy? He was insisting, pushing her, being unconscionable and insensitive.
Poisoning my existence, she thought.
She walked back slowly. The image of Ben in her mind was horrible. She never wanted to see him again. It gave her agony to think she was going to have to walk back into the cottage and face him and even sleep in the same bed with him – perforce. There were only three bedrooms. Perhaps she could sleep with Chris. Or on the living room couch. It would be horrible to have to put one’s body in the same bed with that creature.
In two days her sons were coming to visit. They would stay only two weeks. She saw them rarely. They were her children. They took up little enough of her time. Why did he have to intrude on that, why did he have to barge in as if he belonged there?
She stopped. Tears were streaming down her face. She tried to remember how she had felt yesterday, when she was so full of love for Ben. She tried to recall the first night they made love. It was useless. The memory was like a news story about a foreign place: full of facts with no texture. He did this, he did that; she felt this, she felt that. She had an orgasm. Yes. It had probably been good. But that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead. It would be tinged with bitterness forever in her memory because it had led up only to this, inevitably to this. She had not seen what he was. He was an intolerable pressure. He was a hulking darkness, trying to take over her life.
Her heart felt like a bruised prune. Miserably, she returned to the cottage. The lights were on, but everyone had gone to bed. When she opened the front door, Val came stumbling out of the bedroom, pulling a robe loosely about her.
‘You okay?’ she asked sleepily.
Mira nodded.
‘I’m sorry I can’t talk to you. I’m just so tired,’ Val apologized.
‘It’s okay.’
‘Well – it’s an old saw, but it’s true. Things do look different in the morning.’
Mira nodded stiffly. She was too timid to ask Val if she thought Chris would mind if she slept with her, and too timid to barge into Chris’s room, so she undressed in the bathroom and put on a nightgown and crept into the bed where Ben lay sleeping. She was quiet and stiff, trying
not to make the bed move. He was lying on his side, facing away from her. She lay stiffly on her side, facing away from him. She was aware, after a few moments, that he was not asleep. His breathing was awake breathing. But he did not, thankfully, speak. She lay stiffly, trying to keep her body from relaxing and filling up more space and possibly touching his. After a long time, his breathing became heavier and his body relaxed a bit and curled up. He can sleep, she thought bitterly. Because she could not. She dozed on and off in the course of the night, but in the morning felt as if her insides had taken poison and her outside showed it.
Nothing was better in the morning. Silently, Mira and Ben packed their things and loaded her car, said muted good-byes to Val and Chris and Tad, and silently they drove back the long quiet road along the Cape and back to Boston. Ben drove to his place and got out, and took his suitcase and casting rod out of the back seat. He stood beside the car for a moment, while she slid over to the driver’s seat, but she would not look at him. She was afraid her face would betray her true feelings, would reflect its hate for this huge intruder who was nothing to her, who was trying to jam himself into her life, to take it over, yes, that was it, a typical male, trying to run her life, to mold it into his image, to press into it the imprint of his huge thumb.
She drove off. He did not call. The boys arrived, and she tried to act happy. She took them to Walden and Salem and Gloucester and Rockport. Numb, she walked with them the paths and streets she had walked only in the last two months with Ben, feeling such joy. She took them to a Szechuan restaurant and they enjoyed it: their taste had broadened a bit. She took them to an Italian restaurant and they ordered something besides spaghetti. Numbly, she spoke to them; they answered from a distance. They had not brought the TV set up with them, but after two nights of watching them fiddle restlessly, she rented one for them. But they did not watch it as much as they had the last time. She even saw each of them with a book at one time or another.
One night, after they had been with her for a little over a week, Mira was sitting in the dark living room with her brandy and cigarette. The boys were in the bedroom watching TV, or so she thought. Because Clark idled in and sat down across from her. He did not speak, he only sat there, and Mira’s feelings reached across to him, thankful to him for sharing her isolation, her silence, the dark.
‘Thanks, Mom,’ he said suddenly.
‘Thanks? For what?’
‘For taking us around to all those places. You have a lot of other things to do. And you’ve been to them before. You must’ve been bored.’
He had picked up her mood, and interpreted it as boredom. ‘I wasn’t bored,’ she said.
‘Well, anyway, thanks,’ he said.
It was no good. He had picked up her mood and if she didn’t explain, would assume she had been bored, and now was merely being polite. She did not know what to do. ‘It was the least I could do,’ she heard a prissy voice saying. ‘I haven’t much to offer you boys. Your father …’
‘He never spends any time with us.,’ Clark cut her off in a new, sharp voice. ‘We were there all summer. He took us out on the boat three times, with his wife and a whole bunch of friends. He doesn’t ever talk to us. He sends us out of the room when the conversation starts to get … well, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Well …’
‘You mean when they start to talk about sex?’
‘Oh, no! No, Mom,’ he exclaimed, and his voice was full of disgust. ‘Those people never talk about sex. I mean – well, when somebody talks about someone who got divorced, or a guy who cheated on his income tax … you know. Whenever they talk about anything
real,’
he concluded, ‘anything beside politenesses.’
‘Oh.’
They were silent together.
Clark tried again. ‘Anyway, it was nice of you, especially when we don’t act very – well, interested, you know.’
‘You were better this time than last. At least,’ she added sarcastically, ‘you gave signs of life this time.’
She thought: he handed me a weapon and I used it. She wondered why. She wondered what she was really saying. It came to her that she was profoundly reproaching him, her son, reproaching him for existing, for being her son, for being, over the years, so much trouble and so little reward, for having needed to have his diapers changed, for waking her in the middle of the night, for chaining her to a kitchen and bathroom and house, for being her life as well as his own and not being worth it. What would be worth it? If he were a Picasso, a Roosevelt, would that repay her? But he was sixteen, and untalented. Above all she was blaming him and Normie for her misery. She had to face it: she felt it was them or Ben. She’d chosen them but she’d never forgive them for that.
Clark stood up finally. He would, she knew, sidle out of the room. She had to say something, but her mind whirred. She did not know what she should say.
‘Clark.’
He took a step toward her. She stretched out her arm, and he moved forward and took her hand.
‘Thank you for thanking me.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said generously.
‘Would you like to have dinner with some of my friends?’ she said nervously.
He shrugged slightly. ‘Sure. I guess.’
‘I’ll invite them for dinner. I don’t know who’s in town, but I’ll call them. I have the most wonderful friends here, Clark – well, you’ve met Iso – they’re all really interesting people.’ She heard herself babbling.
They were still holding hands, and he raised and lowered his arm, so they were shaking hands, arms, gently, slowly.
‘The reason,’ she began in the same almost hysterical babble, ‘the reason you thought I was bored was because I have been very unhappy.’
He let go her hand. Her heart stopped. He must, of course, be sick of hearing about her unhappiness. He sat down at her feet and looked at her. In the darkness, the streetlight shone in right on his young, clear face. He was looking at her, his eyes like blotters.
‘Why?’ he asked gently.
Norm’s rangy form appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the lights in the hall. He moved into the room and switched on (just like his father, she thought) the overhead lamp.
‘In or out!’ she announced, and heard Val’s voice. ‘In either case, no light!’
He switched it off.
‘You’re welcome to come in, Norm. If you want. We’ve just been talking.’
He edged in and sat on the arm of the couch, near the door.
‘The reason,’ she recapitulated for Norm’s sake, ‘I may have seemed bored to you this past week is that I have been unhappy. I’ve been unhappy because,’ she paused, trying to figure out what the reason was, ‘I think I made a mistake.’
They said nothing, but Norm slid off the arm and onto the seat of the couch.
‘I have a boyfriend,’ she began, then paused.
‘Yeah?’ Norm’s new deep voice – for it had deepened further this year – came from the corner.
‘I have a lover,’ she amended. ‘At least I did. And he wanted the four of us to take a cottage at Cape Cod for these two weeks. And I got very upset with him for that. I was too embarrassed. I was afraid of what you might think or feel.’
There was a heavy silence. All I have done, she thought, is to shift the burden to them.