Evergreen (63 page)

He rose abruptly. “I’m going to go home and shower. By the way,” he said, addressing Iris directly for the first time since he had come in, “I made a reservation for dinner with some people at the club tonight. Seven-thirty.”

“All right,” she said and became aware of her mother’s eyes, examining her. She dropped her own eyes, feeling a blush prickle on her neck. Mama was too sharp; she saw too much.

*  *  *

She stood with the cold glass in her hand. There seemed to be no place to set it down. She was squeezed into a corner talking to an elderly lady, a Mrs. Reiss, who knew her mother. Always she seemed to end up talking to old people! Yet, she had to admit, it was more comfortable and easier to talk to them. But now her mouth ached from having smiled for the last hour, and she wished they would serve dinner so she could sit down and stop talking.

Gusts of perfume, smoke and whiskey poured on her as people squeezed by. She couldn’t move, couldn’t wriggle out of the corner where she was pinned against a topply vase of roses on a table at the small of her back.

“—seven hundreds in the Boards, he’s always been an outstanding student, but the competition is murderous, you never—”

“—offered them a hundred twenty-five thousand for the house without the adjoining lot and really I would consider it a mediocre neighborhood. Ray says—”

“—everybody admits the course at Shadyvale is far superior, if you want to put up with the class of people they’re taking in. We’re quite comfortable here at Rolling Hill.”

“I see they’ve got those little water chestnut things,” Mrs. Reiss remarked, raising her voice above the noise. “Shall we get some?”

“No, thanks,” Iris said.

“Well, I think I’ll just go try to find some. Will you excuse me?”

Even an old lady like that is bored with me. I’ve the personality of a clam. No poise. When Theo married me I began to have it. I know I did, because I never thought about it anymore and when you don’t think about it, that means you have it. I just
knew
I was somebody when we were married, and now I don’t know, I’ve lost it again.

She found Theo in the middle of a jovial group, almost all of them new to her. She had hoped they might be sitting with Jack and Lee, their neighbors, or with Dr. and Mrs. Jasper, good, solid people with whom there would be
things to talk about. These were all new people, his tennis friends probably, and she saw at once that they had sized her up and found her wanting.

They went in to dinner. She felt a frenetic activity in the room. Everyone seemed—she sought a word—feverish; yes, that was it; their alert eyes looked past and beyond to the next table; the people at the next table are always more important.
How can I get myself invited to sit with them next time?
That’s what they’re thinking.
How can I get to meet the So-and-so’s?
Not that there’s anything wrong about wanting to know people and be liked. But they’re so
intent
on it, using all their energies, like a runner sweating to the finish line. And then, the crafty cruelties that go with this sort of climbing! The flattery and snubs!

Only Theo doesn’t need to climb; he’s already there. He lures and captivates without even trying. He ought not to have a dull wife like me. He ought to have an equal.

He ought to have a wife like Liesel.

Theo leaned toward her. “You’re a thousand miles away,” he said.

“I? I’m just watching everyone, enjoying the scene.” Her lips were dry. Why can’t I say I’m uncomfortable and I want to go home? “Who’s that, that woman in red? I seem to know, but I can’t place her.”

“Oh, that’s Billie Stark. She’s a great tennis player. We played doubles today and I really had a workout.”

Oh, Lord, another of those vivacious types! The agitated red bird comes swooping in our direction. One heard her approach from the far end of the dining room, her little animated squeals and whoops and shrieking mirth. Her mouth stretches from an ellipse for a smile to a circle for astonishment.
“No, you can’t mean it!”
Eyes blinking, popping, batting, scrunched in a nest of fine dry wrinkles, or stretched in ingénue affectation. Tossing hair, flung arms, pelvic twists. Never quiet, never still for more than a second or two. Exhausting to watch her gyrations. No peace where such people are.

Lady in red, Billie Stark, why the hell don’t you shut up or go away?

“Of course I remember you, you’re Billie Stark. How are you?” Iris said, holding out her hand.

Why don’t I like anybody; why do I feel they don’t like me? I used to have compassion, used to try to understand people. Maury always said I understood so well. At least, I used to try. I know I’ve helped Eric.

Somebody asked Billie Stark to dance. Then everyone got up to dance.

“Aren’t you having a good time?” Theo asked, as they circled the room. “You’re so quiet.”

“All right,” she said. It was on the tip of her tongue; she tried to hold the question back but could not. “You like that woman, Billie Stark?”

“Well, she’s lively. She certainly knows how to enjoy herself.”

Was that meant for me, I wonder? I could enjoy life too, if you were—

“Don’t you feel well, Iris? Are you coming down with something?”

He knew perfectly well she wasn’t. “I’m well. But I feel like a stranger here. I don’t belong with the Billie Starks. And I’m trying to figure out what makes you think you do.
Do
you belong? Which is you, Theo who plays in Ben’s quartet on Thursdays, or this one?” There was pleading in her voice. She could hear it.

“Which am I? Must I be either one or the other? Can’t I go wherever I choose whenever I want to?”

“But one has to fit somewhere, to
be
something.”

The music beat and stabbed. It was absurd to be jiggling there in the middle of the floor, feeling the way she did.

“You read too much junk popular psychology,” Theo said with annoyance.

She allowed herself to be annoyed in return. “Do you know what I really think of your new friends? They’re full of crap. Racing around outsmarting and outdoing each other. They have to see your Dun & Bradstreet report before
they decide whether it’s worth their while to say hello to you.”

Theo didn’t answer. She knew he didn’t entirely disagree with her. He had made similar comments often enough himself. But they drove home without speaking. He turned the radio on and they listened to the news as if it were the most important thing in their lives.

She knew that, while she was having her bath, he would go to the drawer in his dresser and take out the picture. Tonight she got quietly out of the bathtub and put on her robe. By opening the door very quickly, she was able to catch him holding the photograph up to the light. She caught a familiar glimpse of the Madonna pose, the long hair curving, the child on the lap, before he put it back in the drawer.

They stood there looking at each other. “You should never have married me, Theo,” Iris said at last.

“What are you saying?”

“You don’t love me. You never have. You’re still in love with her.”

“She’s dead.”

“Yes, and if she had lived you’d have been happier than you are with me.”

“At least she wouldn’t have nagged me!”

“There, you see? Well, it’s too bad, isn’t it? Perhaps I should accommodate you by dying. Except that that still wouldn’t bring
her
back, would it?”

He slapped his fist into the palm of his hand, making a loud crack in the room. “Of all the stupid, childish—Iris, how long is this going to go on? I shouldn’t have said that about nagging, I really didn’t mean it. But I don’t know why you’re so insecure. You value yourself so little! It’s pathetic.”

“Maybe I am insecure. If you think I am, why don’t you help me?”

“Tell me how. If I can, I will.”

She knew she was burning bridges and yet she couldn’t refrain.

“Tell me that if you had known she was alive you would still have chosen me. Tell me you love me more than you ever loved her.”

“I can’t say that. Don’t you know that every love is different? She was a person, you’re a different person. That’s not to say that either one was better or worse than the other.”

“That’s an evasion, Theo.”

“It’s the best I can do,” he said gently enough.

“All right, then. Answer the other half of my question. If you had known she was alive would you have left me and gone to her? Surely you can answer that.”

“Oh, my God,” Theo cried. “Why do you want to torture me?”

She knew she was beating him like a helpless dog on a leash. Once on the street she had seen a man doing just that and had been sickened by it. But she couldn’t stop.

“I ask you, Theo, because I have to know. Don’t you see it’s a matter of how I am to live, to exist?”

“But this is brutal! I simply cannot, I cannot answer these pointless questions.”

“So we get back to what I said in the beginning. You never wanted to marry me, really.”

“Why did I do it, then?”

“Because you knew my father half expected you to—”

“Iris, if I hadn’t wanted to, ten fathers couldn’t have made me.”

“—and because you were lonely and worn out and came to rest in my family. And yes, because, after all, I’m intelligent enough for you, and have your tastes, or had. Your cultured European friends can come to our house and I know how to talk to them. But that’s not love.”

Theo considered a moment. Then he asked, “What do you mean by love? Can you define it?”

“Semantics! Of course I can’t. Nobody can, but everybody knows what he means when he uses the word.”

“Exactly. Everyone knows what ‘he’ means. So it’s a different thing for everyone.”

“Oh, this calm, philosophical trickery! Putting me on the defensive! When all the time you know what I’m talking about.”

“Very well, let’s define it then, let’s try. Would you say that being unselfish, thinking of the other person’s welfare and good, is a part of love?”

“Yes, and one could do that for one’s aged grandfather.”

“Iris, you’re twisting my meaning. You’re making unnecessary grief for yourself. If I only knew what you want!”

Her lips began to quiver. She put her hand to her mouth to hide it. “I want … I want … something like Romeo and Juliet. I want to be loved exclusively. Do you understand?”

“Iris. Again I have to say—that’s childish, my dear.”

“Childish? All the world is enthralled with it! It’s the most intense, deep, marvelous thing that can happen to a human being. It’s what the world’s art and music and poetry are all about. And you call it childish!”

Theo sighed. “Maybe I used the wrong word again. Not childish.
Unreal
. You’re talking about emotional peaks, high moments. How long do you think they can last? That’s why I say
unreal.”

“I’m not stupid. I know life isn’t a poem or an operatic drama. But still I would just like to experience some of those ‘high moments,’ as you call them.”

“And you don’t think you have?”

“No. I’ve been sharing you with a dead woman. And now with a lot of cold and silly featherheads as well.”

“Iris, I’m sorry for you. Sorry for us both. Did the photograph bring all this on tonight? All right, I won’t look at it anymore. Time would have brought that to a stop anyway,” he said bitterly. “But if that won’t satisfy you—It seems there’s something in you that doesn’t want to be satisfied, that wants to suffer.”

“Ah, so now we are going in for psychoanalysis!”

“You don’t have to be an analyst to see things. You
want
to be hurt, otherwise you would listen to my reasoning.”

“Reason has nothing to do with it. This is something I
feel. And you can’t reason yourself out of something you feel. Or else you would reason yourself out of remembering Liesel, wouldn’t you?”

Theo passed his hand over his forehead. “Can we continue this in the morning? It’s past midnight and I’m exhausted.”

“As you wish,” she answered.

They lay down in the wide bed. Her heart began to pound. Her hands were clenched and her arms held straight at her sides. She wondered whether sleep would come to relieve her. And she knew by the sound of Theo’s breathing that he was not sleeping, either.

After a while she felt his hand upon her, sliding over her shoulder, touching it softly in a gesture meant to comfort. Then his hand went to her breast.

“No,” she said. “I can’t. I don’t feel anything. It’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone? Gone for always?”

“Yes. It’s dead. It died in me.” She began to weep. Cold tears slid down her temples into her hair. She made no sound, but she knew he was aware. He put his hand out again, trying to reach her hand, but she drew away. Then she heard him turn, heard the swishing of the sheets, and knew that he had turned his back to move as far apart as he could.

Early in the morning, after a night with only an hour or two of sleep, Theo got up and went downstairs. He had no trouble finding the number he wanted in the New York City telephone book. He paused a moment.

A week or two ago, coming out of his dentist’s office—he went to a dentist in the city—he’d had to wait at the threshold for the slackening of a sudden downpour. And this girl, a dental technician in the next office, had come out and stood there waiting with him. She was about thirty-two, he guessed, a Scandinavian with all the frank, healthy grace of her kind. They had stayed there talking until the rain stopped, talking about skiing and New York and where she’d come from in Norway.

Then he’d told her how he had enjoyed talking to her and she’d said, “Call me up if you ever want to talk some more. I’m in the book.”

So here he was. His finger moved the dial.

“Hello, Ingrid?” he said softly, when he heard her voice. “It’s Theo Stern. Remember me?”