Family Happiness (20 page)

“That's all lovely, for three days. Look at you! When I teased you and said I'd come for the whole time, panic took you right over.”

Lincoln grabbed her by the elbows and pressed her against him.

“Then come for three days. Come for two. Come for the whole time,” he said.

“Lincoln,” said Polly. She shrugged herself out of his arms. Her face looked pinched and mournful.

“What is it that's wrong, Dot?”

“I'm ruining my life,” Polly said. “I'm ruining yours, too. It's all wrong for us to be having a love affair.”

“It isn't wrong,” Lincoln said. “It isn't a love affair. It's a romantic friendship of the highest order and not outside the moral law.”

“I don't care about the moral law,” Polly said. “I care about the logic of the thing. I prevent you from finding someone to love. I don't approve of your being a hermit and I aid and abet you in it. You ought to think about why you don't want to live with the person you love. You
know
you can't live with me. I don't think it's solitude you like so much as that something else scares you. You don't have to think about that so long as I'm around.”

“And what do I prevent you from doing?” Lincoln asked. He was sitting up, too. Their voices had softened, like the voices of a pair of frightened children in a forest.

“You made me see that I wasn't happy,” said Polly. “You made me see things about myself and my life. You gave me courage. But you and I don't have any future. You know that.”

Lincoln grabbed her wrist. “We could have,” he said fiercely.

“No, Linky,” said Polly. “We can't. Think of it. You and I run off, but it's not just the two of us. It's Pete and Dee-Dee, and me changing their schools and giving them their dinner, and arranging when they see Henry, and sitting up at night with them when they're sick or have bad dreams, and making their Halloween costumes and taking them to museums, and amusing them on a rainy weekend. And there's my family, too. It isn't just me. It's only just me down here with you. And then when it gets late, off I go to my household, and I leave you to the solitude you want.”

“I love you so much,” said Lincoln.

“I love you so much, too,” Polly said. “I want to have you in my life—I can't bear to think of life without you. But don't you see? If we can't bear to think of life without each other and we both know that we aren't destined to be together, then at bottom it's something we can't bear about our lives as they are. I do love you, and I know you love me, but that's not the only reason we're together.”

“All right,” said Lincoln. “All right.” He leaped out of bed, put on his shirt, and handed Polly her underwear. “All right. What do you want to do? Shall we not see each other?”

“I think that will have to happen,” said Polly.

“Can we wait until I go away?” Lincoln said. “Can we make that our natural break? We'll have more than a month to think things out. That's quite a long time, really.”

“We ought to stop now,” said Polly.

“Is that what you want?” said Lincoln. “Is it? To go home every night to Pete and Dee-Dee and have Henry be away, or late at work, or at home at work? Do you want to be alone and surrounded by that bunch of prigs you call your loving family who can't help you and don't care about you unless you're their perfect Polly? Do you want all that without me to sweeten the deal?”

“You do sweeten the deal,” said Polly. She put her slip on, but she was so upset she put it on backwards.

“Come here, you poor kid,” said Lincoln. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We'll figure something out. Maybe we can take this love affair by the neck and strangle it until it behaves itself and turns into a friendship. I do think of running off with you, Dot, and you're right. I only think of running off with you all by yourself. Come over here and let me fix your slip.”

Polly let herself be helped and managed to get the rest of her clothes on without mishap. She sat down at the table. Lincoln went to make her a cup of coffee.

“You know,” she said, “I used to be a really cheerful person. I wasn't optimistic: I didn't have to be. Real optimists take a stand on the side of hope but I didn't even have to do that. As Martha says, I had the big things aced. I don't think I was spoiled. I think I was afraid to think. Maybe I was just smug. I stumbled into you, but I always wonder if I was looking for you.”

“I never saw anyone looking for love as much as you,” said Lincoln.

“I want everyone to love me,” said Polly. “Now that the genie has been let out of the bottle, there will never be enough. I let down my guard for a second, and look what happened.”

“What happened?”

“I went from being an upright matron to a woman having a love affair. I went from being a faithful wife to an unfaithful wife. What else am I capable of? What will some other false move make happen to me?”

“Hush,” said Lincoln. “You're a brainwashed creature. What's so wonderful about being upright? I've told you over and over again, any jerk can tread the straight and narrow. Is it so terrible to have things get out of hand? Is it so awful to have to see things? Or to feel them? Or to have them really strike you instead of you being either completely used to them or having them right where they're supposed to be?”

“Yes,” said Polly. “It's so terrible.”

“Well, your over-analyzed little chum Martha would be the first to tell you that what you get after you've been through this is your authentic self.”

At this Polly burst into tears. “I don't even know what that means. If it means that I have to fall in love, cheat on my husband, find myself loathing my family, the people dearest to me—I don't mean that, Lincoln, but they make me so angry these days—I don't want to feel these things, I don't want my authentic self. I just want my old self.”

“You don't have any old self anymore,” Lincoln said. “You're a fallen woman. Now come over here and make it worth your while by kissing me.”

She threw her arms around his neck and rubbed her cheek against his face the way cats rub an object to mark it as their own.

“Dot,” said Lincoln, “don't deprive me of you. Let's make Paris the official break. Okay?”

“I'm a fallen woman,” said Polly. “I can't hardly help myself.”

“Come drink this cup of coffee and say you'll be my girl friend.”

“I am your girl friend, Lincoln,” said Polly. “I love you.”

For the next month Polly crowded her days. She took the children shopping for spring and summer clothes, took Martha out to lunch, had the rugs and curtains cleaned, sent a chair to be slipcovered, rearranged the bookshelves, made curtains for the children's rooms, and baked five cakes for the annual book and cake sale at Pete and Dee-Dee's school. She saw Lincoln as often as ever. At night she was glad to bring work home with her—something she had rarely done before. Polly was responsible for coordinating, supervising, and editing the spring report to the Board of Education. Usually she worked rigorously at her office so that she would never have to bring her briefcase home at night, but these days, after dinner, she sat at her desk and Henry sat in his study and they both worked.

Henry had come back from his trip worn out. He looked so exhausted that Polly's anger melted. She gave him dinner in bed on a tray. She fluffed up the pillows. She brought his coffee to him in bed every morning. She felt that the two of them were delicately balanced and she did not want to tip anything over. They were both so frazzled that a cross word might bring everything down.

Surely a less absorbed husband might have paid closer attention to his wife, and the strain of constant lying might have worn her down. But Henry was too tired and preoccupied to ask much. Over dinner they discussed the children, Henry's case, the spring report. This, Polly said to herself grimly, is what is called “making dinner conversation.” When she saw Henry at work in his study, she realized how ardently she always strove to please him, to exempt herself from his criticism, to enable his work to go smoothly. No one had ever asked her to be efficient, enterprising, to set such a good table or run such an attractive household. It always surprised Polly that other women, who were not so good at making things sweet, whose households were not so sparkling and comfortable, whose children were not so well turned out, behaved as if they, too, deserved love. Paula Peckham's house was usually in some state of mess. Before a dinner party she agonized on the telephone to Polly, who usually helped her with the dinner: Paula was a hopeless cook. She could not quite keep track of her children. Little Joe Peckham had not said a word till the age of four, and his brother Billy, who was now ten, was a hitter. For all this, Paula seemed a happy enough woman, and her husband, Frederick, appeared to adore her. When dinner at a Peckham dinner party was actually edible, everyone was thrilled.

No one had ever asked Polly to be excellent, or to do excellent things. Rather, she had been encouraged in that direction by Wendy and now everyone was used to her. They were all used to getting a splendid dinner. The children knew—unlike Gwen Stern's children, for example—that their mother would never go out and leave them with a baby-sitter when they were sick—even when they had mere colds. Polly believed that one wrong move and people ceased to love you. Other people—her parents, her brothers, Gwen Stern, Paula Peckham—had some magic charm that allowed them to live any way they wanted. These effortless beings existed on some higher plane. Next to them, Polly was a drudge, the one who could be counted on to do the donkey work without complaint.

These days, if Henry called from out of town and asked Polly to pick up the shoes he had taken to the shoemaker, or to take a folder off his desk, slip it in an envelope, and call his secretary to send a messenger up for it, she was glad to do it, furious that he had asked, alarmed that she was angry, and relieved that she was there to do it. Without me these things could not go forward, she said to herself. Then she said: What do I care if these things do go forward? What does it profit me? This confusion of voices, this recent tendency to have four reactions to any one thing, caused Polly sorrow and despair. She often felt that her true nature had been revealed. Once she stopped striving so hard to be good, the armor fell away and she was simply the cranky, dissatisfied, and not very nice person all the rigid specifications that had been drilled into her had prevented her from being. And worst of all, the one step she took away from being amenable made her resent those she was closest to.

But at night, when Henry slipped into bed beside her, she often woke up from a half sleep and, before the complexities of her present life could crowd it out, all she felt was her love for him. She yearned for her husband. They lay side by side, or pressed together; their physical connection was very strong. But what did it matter? What did a smoothly run house, good meals, sweet children, and an admirable husband matter if you felt your heart being torn to pieces? When these thoughts woke Polly up in the middle of the night and gave her the first insomnia she had ever had, she told herself that she was a bad, spoiled, selfish woman who wanted everything. Where had she gone wrong? The things she wanted, the things she had, the things she worked for didn't fit her somehow. She felt a stranger to her own life, an outsider to the things she had created, and an outcast from her own heart.

The awful day came. It was Polly and Lincoln's last afternoon together. This was to be a real separation. The rules were clear: no writing, no cables, no phone calls. Their separate missions were to reflect and meditate on what they were doing together, to see clearly that they had no future, and to figure out what they ought to do. Even if Lincoln had not had a one-man show to go to, Polly said, they would still have had to part.

Polly fretted while Lincoln packed.

“You ought to take more clothes, Linky,” she said. “You hardly have enough for a week.”

“Stop fussing, Dot. I hate clothes.”

“At least take the other blue sweater.”

“I hate sweaters. I hate blue.”

“Lincoln, you can't have just one pair of shoes. Take your boots.”

“I hate those boots.”

They were both distraught. Polly had cried so much that she felt bleached. Youthful weeping and adult crying are two entirely different things. Tears in youth are cleansing, like naps or bracing showers. A good weep makes the youthful sufferer feel that something has been accomplished. Tears in adulthood leave the victim drained and exhausted. They dry up the eyes. They leave behind a pain under the ribs and forehead. Polly had cried that morning in the shower, behind the closed door of her office, in the taxi, and all over Lincoln's shirt. Lincoln had tears in his eyes, too.

“You're crying,” said Polly.

“No, I'm not,” said Lincoln. “I didn't sleep last night. I'm overtired. That was a physiological tear, not a tear of emotion.”

“You dog,” said Polly. “Admit how bad you feel.”

“Will that make you happy to know?” Lincoln said. “I'm sad enough to die.”

While Lincoln packed, Polly paced. She paced and poked at things: this was most unlike her. She was the least snoopy person Lincoln had ever known. She picked off the table an announcement of an opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

“This looks familiar,” she said. “Why do I know the name Fred Train?”

“Because your parents own a Fred Train, and so does your brother Paul.”

“You know, I think I've lost my mind. Of course I know who Fred Train is. My parents have that little oil of six blue bottles, and Paul has a lithograph of three babies, three knives, and three hearts. Do you know him?”

“Fred Train,” said Lincoln, “is a small, bald, expensively dressed painter in great demand amongst rich people, but only the nicest sort of rich people. Your mother would doubtless think him a social climber, but then your mother thinks that anyone who wants to know her is a social climber. Two bits your parents will be at that opening, and so will all their friends.”