Away from Home (34 page)

Leila said she would be delighted to come, she was looking forward to it, she would certainly love to meet Helen’s interesting American friends. She never showed up; nor did she call to say that she could not come. At ten-thirty, when everyone was starving and making indignant remarks, Helen served dinner, and made up a lame lie that she had told Leila the wrong night. She felt like a fool. She knew this sort of thing sometimes happened, and her household was flexible enough so that one couple more or less never disturbed a party very much, but she could not bear Mil’s I-told-you-so look right next to Phil’s innocent smile. She felt that inadvertently she had made things even worse for Phil, when she had only wanted to help.

When the last guest had left at a quarter to one Helen was relieved. She had a headache but she was too nervous to go to bed. She carried a glass of brandy out to the balcony that led off her bedroom.

“Darling, don’t go to sleep. Come out and talk to me.”

“It was a nice party,” Bert said. He leaned on the balcony railing next to her and she knew that he was only making conversation because she wanted him to stay out here with her.

“It wasn’t a nice party and you know it, darling.”

“Why wasn’t it?”

“Leila doing that to me, and everyone being so pointed about it, and Mil getting ready to sneak out of her husband’s life for ever unless he comes trailing after her all repentant and house-broken.…”

Bert laughed. “What have you got there? Brandy?”

“Have some. Have it all.”

He sipped at the brandy thoughtfully. “Maybe she has another guy,” he said.

“Who has?
Mil Burns?
”

“What’s so unbelievable about that? She’s a little too fat, but she’s still an attractive woman. Some men like broad broads.”

“I don’t mean she can’t get a man,” Helen said. “I mean she wouldn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Well, she just wouldn’t. She’s … I mean, she wouldn’t think of it.”

“Helen!”

“What do you mean ‘
Hel-en
’ like that? What am I missing? Am I the only one around here who doesn’t know something?”

Bert ruffled her hair, looking amused. “I don’t know a thing, and if I did, I would tell you. It’s just that you’re very naïve for a woman who’s been married ten years.”

“Nine!”

“Nearly ten.”

“That’s like saying a woman’s nearly thirty when she’s only twenty-nine,” Helen said, putting her arms around him. “It’s just something that means different things to men and to women. We have been married exactly nine years and four months, and that is
not
nearly ten years. But I’m glad for every minute of it.”

“That’s because I’m away so much,” he said cheerfully. “You can’t get bored with me.”

She knew he didn’t mean it, so she only made a face at him. She wanted to say, I wish you didn’t go away so often, but she couldn’t, because she knew he had to go. It wasn’t that he
had
to go for business; she had discovered that a long time ago from some inadvertent comments one of his associates had made at a dinner she had given; but Bert wanted to go away because of some need inside himself, and therefore he had to go. It was the same thing. She didn’t really understand it: why he felt he had to leave her from time to time, why he never could discuss it with her, but she was afraid to mention it to him for fear of making something big out of it. Some men did much worse than simply take a semi-business trip for a while. They had affairs or, the worst thing of all, one big affair that meant more than their marriage. She was glad that she did not have to worry about other women, and she never considered it strange to be glad instead of merely confident. She knew those things happened too often for you to be confident and smug, but you could be confident and glad.

“What do you mean I’m naïve?” she said.

“Are you back at that?”

“Well, you said it.”

“All right. I guess this isn’t just you; it’s the difference between the way men and women think. And this has absolutely nothing to do with Mil and Phil; it’s an abstract. It’s just that when two people are having trouble, or, better example, when a man is seen very often in the company of an attractive girl not his wife—say, Neil and the pretty Brazilian secretary from his office—a woman
wonders
whether or not they might
possibly
be having an affair, and a man just assumes they are having an affair and waits for it to be over.”

“Neil
Davidow?
”

“I just used him as an innocent example.”

“Well, you must have meant him if you said him.”

“I don’t know,” Bert said calmly. “Theirs is a perfect marriage if anyone’s is. Actually, I guess to mention Neil and the secretary was the most farfetched example of all. But I meant anyone.”

“Even me?”

He looked at her, but with neither suspicion nor surprise. “You mean if you were seen going around with a man?”

“Just suppose.”

“I’d probably think it was just the interior decorator. Until you told me differently.”

“You keep contradicting your theories.”

“I suppose because the way I feel about them is contradictory. I don’t care what anyone else does.”

“But me?” Helen said. She was surprised to hear how pleading her own voice sounded in her ears. What she really wanted him to say, she knew, was that he would kill her if she ever slept with another man. She wanted her husband to make the decision for her, and she knew that if he did, at this moment on the balcony in the darkness, by three short words—
But not you
—then it would be the law, and she would obey it happily and lovingly for the rest of her life. “But me?” she said again, and she could not understand how he could not notice that her voice trembled.

“If you wanted to have an affair with someone I wouldn’t stop you,” Bert said.

“
Why?
” She was near to tears; she was so angry she almost hated him.

“I’d want you to be happy. If you felt happiness was with someone else, then I wouldn’t want to feel as though I kept you a prisoner.”

“Then you’d leave me?”

“I guess so. It would depend on the circumstances. Let’s get some more brandy.”

She took hold of his sleeve. “Please, not now. If you go into the living room and get more brandy well get off the subject. And we’ll never get on it again.”

“That would be all right with me,” he said.

“It … hurts … doesn’t it?” she whispered. She could feel the pain, in her own throat.

“No,” he said. “I just think it’s silly.”

She felt almost nauseated. She had already forgotten how the discussion had started. She only knew that she did not want it to end this way. “If you hadn’t met me when you did, if you had met me five or six years later, I probably would have had a lover. Maybe I would have had several. Would you have married me anyway?”

He smiled. “If you and I hadn’t gotten married and if you had met someone else five or six years later, then you would have had me for a lover.”

She had to smile too, remembering, and she felt better. She put her arms around him again. “We were practically married then. I felt as if we were married. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“
That
won’t change for us ever, will it? Making love? Everything else changes but that won’t change?”

“Of course it will,” Bert said calmly. “Everything changes. Do you think we’re the same as we were the first year we were married, or even the first few years? Everything changes a little every year and neither of us is really very aware of it.”

“I don’t like that,” Helen said softly. “I know you’re right, but aren’t there
some
people whose marriages never change?”

“No. Of course not. There are only the people who waste time regretting it and the people who are sensible enough not to.”

“I see,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” she said lightly. “I see. You’re right. I’m just one of the nonsensible people. But then, as you told me before, I’m terribly naïve for a woman who’s been married ten years.”

“And sentimental,” he said. But he looked at her as if he were remarking on a featherheaded little flaw and not something that might be rather rare and good. He left the balcony with the brandy glass in his hand, and even though Helen knew he was going to be in the same apartment with her and then the same room and then the same bed for the rest of the night, she felt as if he had deserted her.

She felt ugly. Not just ugly inside but ugly outside as well, as if her face had changed in these few minutes to something drab and unlovable. Something compelled her to trail Bert into the bedroom to continue their discussion, to flog it on until it came to some sort of conclusion. She did not know what she meant to prove. She was aware that she would be annoying him if she brought up the subject again, and that if she did, eventually he would fight with her. In a way, she wanted him to fight with her. At this moment, when caution and secrecy and prudence were essential to keep everything in her marriage as unspoiled as ever, she felt reckless, leading herself into danger and not knowing either why she did or how to stop herself. It was as if she wanted him to see how ugly she was, how she had been planning to deceive him, so that he would make some strong gesture to prove to her that he loved her too much to allow her to destroy herself and their love. If he could have done that, right now, she could escape from her love affair while there was still time.

“Bert …”

“What?” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes.

“Do you think we have a good marriage?”

“Don’t you?”

There was a flicker of warning. It ignited her. “I asked you.”

“Yes, when you don’t keep me up in the middle of the night having philosophical discussions about it.”

“Well, I don’t see you during the day.”

“What do you expect me to do? Stay home from the office?” He dropped his shoes to the floor and began to unbutton his shirt.

“Very funny.”

He didn’t answer for a minute and she thought she really had made him angry and she circled him warily, looking into his face. She waited. “That’s part of a good marriage,” he said finally. “Loving my work. If I didn’t love my work I couldn’t have a good marriage either. You’re touchy because I’m going away again, aren’t you?”

“No. I know you have to go.”

“Then what is it?”

“I just started to think about things.”

“At one o’clock in the morning?”

“Maybe I’d better set aside special hours for thinking. Say, four-thirty in the afternoon? Four-thirty to four-forty-five. Can I make an appointment with you?”

“You’re pretty funny yourself.”

“That’s nice. I always think there has to be humor in a marriage.”

He had taken off his clothes and now he put on his pajamas. Somehow, for no reason, it annoyed her that he was standing there naked and then putting on his pajamas as if she were invisible, as if the fact of taking off his clothes in her presence had lost all its romantic significance. She might as well have been a salesman in a men’s shop. Because, even to this day, whenever she dressed or undressed in front of him she was aware of how she must look to him, of her body before his accidental gaze; none of this had lost its significance. Perhaps it was because as a girl she had been brought up to be more modest than he was, so that nudity in the presence of a man, even for the functional purpose of changing clothes, was meaningful to her.

“Good night,” he said, and got into bed.

“Good night,” she answered. She said it coldly. She waited for him to say something or even glance at her in response to her tone. He said nothing and appeared to be almost asleep. She suddenly wanted very much to kiss him and ran to the edge of the bed and sat down beside where he was lying. “Kiss me,” she whispered, almost pleadingly.

He opened his eyes and looked at her and then he raised himself on one elbow. Helen put her hand on the back of his neck and kissed him on the lips, not just a casual kiss good night but a longer one. She held the kiss, waiting for him to respond and feeling herself respond, and finally, what seemed a long time later although it could not have been very long, he reached up and pulled her down on top of him, over the sheet, and kissed her deeply, as if he really meant it, as if he really wanted to kiss her, not because it was a formality more informal than a pat on the head.

She did not really think at first of making love right now; she had only thought of kissing him good night. She knew he was tired. But once she had begun to kiss him she did not want to draw away, and then when she did not draw away Bert’s arms tightened around her and she knew that he was thinking of it. There was a moment when she still could have stopped without having stopped anything, but she could not bear to lose him to sleep when they were so close at last to each other, and so when he began to feel for the hooks at the back of her dress she helped him.

She dropped her dress, inside out, on the floor, and he peeled off his pajamas with as much desperation and distaste as if they had been a badly fastened strait jacket. “Wait,” she whispered. “I’ll close the door. Wait …”

She closed and locked the door, remembering the presence of the children, and walked back to the bed quickly on bare feet, smiling with love and excitement, conscious as always of how she must look to him walking naked toward him this way, hoping he still thought she was beautiful. He took her into his arms immediately and kissed her again very hard twice and then entered her so quickly that she was startled. He was not looking at her; he seemed to be looking over her shoulder at some vision of pain that made his face so grim, and then he closed his eyes.

“Darling …” Helen whispered, but suddenly it seemed only a word, uttered after the fact, for no real reason except to mask disappointment and to pretend that something had happened to her too, because it was over. She did not know what to do. He tried to leave her but she shook her head. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t go away. Stay here just a minute.”

“I didn’t want to do that,” Bert said grimly. “Why did you make me do it?”

“
Make
you do it?” Her hands slid limply off his back and she stared into his face, not quite believing what he had said.