A New Life (44 page)

Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: A New Life

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“I’m not such good friends with it either,” Levin sighed.

“What I mean is that for years—this started in her twenties-she has been keeping track of her wrinkles and lamenting the passing of her youth, which, I take it, was from eighteen to twenty-five, and I can’t convince her otherwise. With me around she has the advantage of my forty-five years as a comparison to her thirty-two, but with you and your thirty or thirty-one, you can imagine what that might do to her morale.
She’ll be older with you than she is with me, older at every age and, believe me, you won’t find any advantage to it. Living with Pauline though it can be pleasant is generally no bed of roses.”

“I have never slept on flowers.”

“And then there are her health problems.”

“I’d rather not hear—”

“It won’t take a minute. I won’t call her health bad but she has her problems that you’d better know about. After thirty a woman doesn’t get any younger. She sometimes has constipation, which I won’t go into, but the real nuisance is her female troubles on and off. When you least expect it, she goes into her nine-day-or-so period that is caused by what they call anovulatory cycle or some such name. The doctor says that with her it’s more a nuisance than anything serious and could clear up on its own, which it sometimes does, but the result is that you never know where you stand when your instincts are up. No doubt she saved her best times for you but you’ll be making a mistake if you take her for a sexy babe. Once you’re married to her you can bet your boots that many times when you are looking forward to your satisfaction there is nothing doing that night. You might just as well beat your brains out then as argue with her to go to see a doctor. She’s afraid of them and resists till she gets so wound up from worry that when she finally does go, your bill is twice as high as it should have been. Think of that on your salary.”

“Excuse me,” Levin said. “What I came about is the children—”

“I was getting to that,” said Gilley. “They also have their troubles, as all kids do. Little Mary is generally healthy but has eczema all summer, and the pediatrician has warned Pauline she could go into asthma overnight—it’s some kind of strong allergic condition. She gets shots that are costing me over a hundred dollars a year. And Erik never stops having colds he can’t shake off, that either go into bronchitis or ear infections. One month this past winter his antibiotics bill
alone came to sixty dollars. He’s also had strep throat three times and the pediatrician is always testing for a possible low-grade rheumatic fever as a result of the streptococcus. He doesn’t think Erik is such a sick kid but Pauline has yet to stop worrying about him, and when she worries, brother, you worry.”

Levin, fanning himself with his good hand, continued to listen.

“I said before there are some wonderful things about Pauline —I wouldn’t in the least call her a flop. Though you mightn’t guess it she plays a good game of golf. She also began to learn how to ski a few years back, but I can’t, so we don’t go often. She’s also good around the garden. She reads a lot, listens to music—I built her a hi-fi—and she has knitted me some nice sweaters and socks. She has wanted to go to work but I’d rather have her at home because that’s what needs the most attention. It all boils down to what I said before, that she is dislocated by nature, and in the end there is a better than even chance she will tell you what she has told me, that maybe the cause of it is she didn’t really love me when she married me. I’ll tell you this,” Gerald said with bitterness, “I know love in a woman when I see it, and believe me, I saw it in her. I have her letters to prove it. Once she begins to question herself, nothing is sacred any more. And to top it all, at times she’ll get so low and unhappy that more than one night I’ve had to comfort her, as for instance after she had deceived me with Duffy. You may be doing the same with her some day over some other third party. Don’t think your situation will be much better than mine.” “It’s the chance you take—” “The odds are not in your favor.”

Levin again mentioned the children. “She’d be miserable without them. We could work out some sort of arrangement so that you could have them part of the year—maybe the summer.”

Gilley stared at him. “You expect to go on with this after what I’ve told you?”

Levin laughed badly.

Gilley snapped off the lamplight and rose. “In that case she can’t have them. When she deserts me, she deserts them.”

Levin sat humidly on the hard chair. “How can you hurt her if you say you love her?”

“The same way she hurts me. The way you do. The way I want to hurt you.”

His eyes were dark with distaste and anger. “If you want so much to have the kids, there’s only one way—”

Levin, in pain of anticipation, leaned forward.

“Are you willing to give me your promise you will give up college teaching?” Gerald said.

Levin jumped up in rage. “Are you crazy? That’s a fantastic blackmail.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“It’s unconstitutional,” Levin shouted. “Inhuman, barbaric, immoral.”

“And what is it when you steal a man’s wife and children from him?” Gilley thundered. “Is that so g.d. moral, since you use the word so much?”

“Pauline is a free agent.”

“Can you say the kids are, or that she deserves to have them, a woman who had two lovers?”

“Will you use them any better than you used her?”

“She used me. She played me for a sucker.”

“How am I supposed to support them if I can’t teach?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t teach. I said not in any college. You can go back to a high school. They generally pay better anyway.”

“What’s the difference whether I teach in a high school or college?”

“You’d do less harm in high school. You’re not fit to teach at the college level.”

“What a low form of revenge.”

“It’s your own fault. I want to get at least something out of this mess.”

“I won’t agree to it. We’ll fight for the kids in court.”

“You won’t get anything in court when I testify she engaged in adultery with Duffy, then with you–during which, as she has admitted to me—she sometimes left the kids unattended. She isn’t a fit mother.”

“You’re not in your right mind if you say that.”

“I’ll argue about it when the time comes.”

“You’ll have no evidence. She won’t testify against herself.”

“I have all the evidence I need—on tape.”

Levin groaned from his shoes up. “You mean you took a tape of her talking, without her knowledge?”

Gilley blanched. “So would you.”

“These goddamn gadgets will destroy you. I’ll testify as to the kind of pictures you took of her.”

“Picture, damn it, and
she
was naked in it with a man, not I. I wish now I had had the sense to print more than one copy. As for whatever evidence you have to give, I’d advise you not to or the judge might be interested in hearing a lot more about you. I don’t want to bring this up just yet because I haven’t finished investigating it, but one of the boys at the Alpha Zeta fraternity, which I am the faculty adviser to, recently became engaged to a girl who told him one night in his car that she had had intimate relations with one of her English profs, who she didn’t name. Out of curiosity I looked up her record and found that three people in the department had taught her, Avis this spring, Leopold Kuck last winter, and you back in the fall. Both of them gave her C’s. You gave her a C first, then petitioned to change it to a B. I remember that business very well and was suspicious when you wanted to raise her grade. Her name’s Nadalee Hammerstad.”

Levin felt as though Gilley had broken a lead pipe on his head; but the bleeding was internal.

“The grade she got was the grade she earned,” he muttered.

“You are now shown up for the first-class scum you are.” What else could I expect, Levin thought, given who I am? “Well, take it or leave it,” Gilley said.

“I’ll speak to Pauline.”

“Tell her how goddamn moral you are.”

He descended three flights of stairs in a stupefying daze. Pauline was sitting on the lobby couch, Mary on her lap, Erik by her side, turning the pages of a picture book.

She looked at Levin in fright. “What happened?”

He told her Gilley’s terms and she was furious. “Oh, that’s awful. We’ll see my lawyer. I’ll sue for the children.”

“You may not get them,” Levin said. “Why did you tell him you had left them alone while you were with me?”

“It slipped out as we were arguing. I was afraid to tell you I had told him.”

“Suppose his lawyer asks on the stand if you had slept with Duffy. What would you say?”

“Please lower your voice,” she said, lowering hers.

“Would you deny it?”

“No.”

“And with me?”

“I lie so badly.”

“You’d never get the kids.”

She hugged the baby.

“Under the circumstances are you willing to give them up?”

“No.”

Erik, still looking at the pictures, began to cry.

“Don’t cry, Erik,” Pauline said. “Lev wants me to have you and Mary.”

“Suppose the court doesn’t?”

“I’d die.”

Erik continued to cry and the baby began.

“Then we have no choice,” Levin said.

“I can’t ask you to give up your career for us. The whole thing’s mad. It’s Gerald’s revenge against me. Isn’t there some other way?”

“Not that he offers.”

“What will this get him? When he’s himself again I don’t believe he’ll hold you to it.”

“When he’s himself will he let you have the kids?”

“I’m afraid to take the chance. But I don’t want you to hate me all my life for bringing this on you.”

“I brought it on myself.”

She opened her purse.

“Don’t cry.”

“I have to.”

Levin climbed up the stairs to Gilley’s room.

“I agree to your terms.”

“You’re batty,” said Gilley. “You’re cutting your throat.”

“You’re cutting it. Do you want me to sign anything?”

“I’ll take your word, you’re a fanatical type.”

“Isn’t there some better way?”

“Yes, go away and leave my wife and family alone.”

Levin opened the door.

“Goodbye to your sweet dreams,” Gilley called after him.

“I hope yours are sweet.”

“An older woman than yourself and not dependable, plus two adopted kids, no choice of yours, no job or promise of one, and other assorted headaches. Why take that load on yourself?”

“Because I can, you son of a bitch.”

They drove to the house. Levin went unwillingly in, the signs of the husband still around. Pauline fed the kids, then put them down for naps. She made sandwiches and they sat in the kitchen. Levin ate, looking at the stump of the leaning birch tree in the back yard; Pauline said Gerald had chopped it down in the spring.

After coffee she said, “He gets the house and car and I get a cash settlement. All I’ll take are my clothes and the children’s things. I’ll send the crib and Erik’s bed, my two trunks, some books and records, to my uncle’s, and we’ll have three bags for the trip, plus yours.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Two days without rushing. Three if we want to look at things along the way. Don’t worry about the driving. I’ll spell you.”

“Let’s make it two days. I want to get there and look around.”

“You’ll have weeks while I’m in Nevada.”

“I want to get started.”

“How do you feel now?”

“The same.”

“Please take my hand. My feeling for you is an ache.”

He took her cold hand across the table.

“It makes me sad that you’re still this way,” she said, “but now that you’re with me I feel you’ll want me again. Maybe not so intensely but so long as it’s love I’ll have no kick.”

He said nothing.

“My maiden name was Josephson,” Pauline said. “Think of me as Pauline Josephson. Joseph was my father’s name and he wanted a son but I was his best-beloved daughter.”

She was looking out of the window. “Imagine, we’ve never been for a walk together.”

Afterwards Levin asked her why she had picked his application out of the pile Gilley had discarded.

“You had attached a photograph,” Pauline said, “although you weren’t asked to.”

“It was an old picture. I wanted them to know what I looked like.”

“You looked as though you needed a friend.”

“Was that the reason?”