Separate Flights (32 page)

‘That you don't love him. That it wasn't real. If I had taken you away for one of those trips you'd have thought you were heartbroken.'

‘I
did
love him.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Course I did.' She looked at Beth. ‘For God's sake, I slept with him.'

‘That doesn't mean anything.'

‘Then what
does?
'

‘I don't know.'

‘You don't.'

‘No.'

‘That's fine.'

‘Did you want me to lie to you? Tell you a love story?'

Peggy shook her head. Beth brought her plate and empty beer can to the kitchen.

‘Do you want a beer?' she called.

‘No.'

She opened one for herself. For a couple of minutes in the living room she sat quietly drinking, looking past Peggy's lowered head at the rain and dark outside. A car passed slowly up the street.

‘Why don't you just break up with him. Right now, baby.'

Peggy shook her head.

‘Really, baby. Him and his motels. You're right, he's a child. He's not good enough for you.'

‘He was good enough to get pills for.'

‘They weren't for him. They were for you.'

‘So I could
sleep
with him. So now I just can't stop, because—because then—'

She looked up at the high ceiling.

‘You've got it all wrong,' Beth said. ‘I wanted to make sure you
wouldn't
be stuck with him, that's why, so you'd be free. So you wouldn't have to take sex seriously.'

‘
Jeesus
.' She sat up, glaring at Beth. ‘It's the most important thing in my
life
right now, don't you see!' Now she stood, leaning forward, waving a hand. ‘Don't you see that? Because as soon as I break up with Bucky I'm a girl who
screws
. Don't you see!'

Beth was pushing herself upward to go hold Peggy, but then she stopped, for she knew Peggy would be stiff and captive in her arms, so she sank back into the chair and with one hand over her eyes softly cried.

‘Don't,' Peggy said. She was there now, crouched over Beth, squeezing one shoulder. ‘It's not your fault.'

‘It
is
.' Her hand still covered her eyes. ‘But I didn't mean it to be
this
way. I just didn't want you to end up like
me
.'

‘Like you?'

Peggy stepped back. Beth flicked tears from her eyes, wiped her cheeks, and looked up.

‘Wasted like me. Unhappy like me.
Married
like me.'

‘Oh—'

‘Don't you
know?
'

‘No.' Shaking her head. ‘I don't. I didn't.' Shaking it again.

‘Well, now you do. I wish it weren't true, but it is. Not just me, everyone. If you don't believe me, ask Helen. Drive out there and talk to her, she'll talk. Not now, the roads are muddy, but before you go to school. Or just look at her. Look at her face that used to be so
happy
, Peggy. Remember? Remember how happy she always was?'

Peggy was nodding, backing toward the couch; when her legs bumped it she sat down.

‘Look at her eyes now. It's not just tired, that's not just housework in her eyes. Oh my baby, save yourself—' She crossed the room and sat beside Peggy, hugging and rocking her with both arms. ‘You should hear Polly Fairchild, the stories, all these nice people. It's a farce, love, marriage, fidelity—' Peggy jerked tight in her arms.‘—No. No, baby, I've never done that. But it doesn't
mat
ter. None of it
mat
ters.'

‘But Daddy—'

‘Oh, he's all right, baby. He's a good man. It's just natural, that's all. It just happens, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.'

Peggy's face turned away and her body turned with it, pulling against Beth's arms. Beth let go.

‘Are you getting divorced?'

‘No, baby.' Beth held her again but still Peggy was turned stiffly away, so Beth went to the chair and picked up the beer and swallowed with her back turned. ‘No, we're not getting divorced. We can live together like anyone else. We don't hate each other. It's just that nothing's there, and this was supposed to be my life. Every woman's life. But it's not. You and Helen are, and now Wendy and Billy too. But you and Helen have to grow up and have your own lives and that's how it should be. But it shouldn't be this way for me. There should have been something else.'

‘For instance!'

Looking at the wall ahead of her, Beth shrugged; there were tears in her eyes.

‘I don't know, and it's too late for it to matter even if I found out. But it's not too late for you. You're young. It's all ahead of you.'

Then Peggy was moving fast, to the kitchen door, stopping there, turning to Beth.

‘Oh
why
did you come in that night! Why! Why! Why didn't you just stay upstairs and mind your own ugly
bus
iness!'

Then crying, her head lifted, her clenched fists at her sides, she strode out of the room and pounded up the stairs.

6

O
N THE TRIP
from Iowa to Massachusetts Peggy sat in the back seat with her transistor radio. The college had sent her a summer reading list; she was not going to be tested; it was simply a list of books they wanted her to read. She started the first one,
The Great Gatsby
, as soon as they left Iowa City. During most of the trip Lee spoke very little; he did not even object when Beth put an ice chest of beer on the floor behind the front seat, or when three or four times a day she drank one as they drove. He had been sulking since coming home that rainy day nearly three weeks ago. He had come into the living room where Beth was watching Merv Griffin (before that she had watched a movie; Peggy stayed upstairs and did not come down until dinner); Lee had said hello, looked quickly but closely at her face, then her gin and tonic, then the filled ash tray.

‘What happened to five o'clock?'

‘Just be quiet. I'm not in the mood for that.'

‘Mood hell—'

‘I mean it.' Watching the screen she motioned at him to be quiet. ‘Besides, Peggy's upstairs.'

He started to speak, then shook his head and went upstairs to change clothes. At dinner there was little talk. Peggy and Lee commented on the rain, and Vic's having been in Vietnam for nearly a month now, and Lee said Bucky had better work for grades and stay in school. They knew she was drunk, and she knew they did, but she acted sober anyway. She ate quietly and slowly and carefully. After dinner Peggy went out with Bucky. Then Lee wanted to talk.

‘Was it because you had to? You couldn't stop?'

‘No.'

‘You just wanted to.'

‘That's right. I just wanted to.'

That was all she ever told him. Several times he tried to talk again, but she would not. Finally he gave up. It was a problem he could forget most of the time, because she was not drunk again. She simply drank as she had before. Usually she had one before taking the cleaning woman home; by the time Lee got home she was having her third or fourth. But she was all right: her mind and tongue functioned, she cooked, she cleaned the kitchen after dinner, she paid the bills, she kept track of their engagements, and once a week she drove the Volkswagen to a service station and had it washed. Most nights she drank through dinner and on until she went to bed, but she sipped and spaced them and always appeared sober.

Luckily the shopping for Peggy was done, so they had no reason to be together. Peggy spent most of her time out of the house; during the day she swam or played tennis or rode at the stables or just drove about town with the girls she would leave in September. At night she went out with Bucky. When Beth walked them to the door or told them goodnight from her chair, Peggy looked at her with eyes that were at times coldly curious, at others bitterly defiant, at others mirthful and proud. Each day there were times when they had to talk, and they did this in the hollow courteous tones of lovers after a rending quarrel. Beth waited.

Then in early September, Peggy began to mellow. She spent more time with Beth. She did not truly talk to her; instead they did things together. After dinner Peggy helped in the kitchen. One night they went to a movie. On several afternoons they played badminton or croquet. These periods were obviously planned, some of them even timed: if Marsha were picking up Peggy for tennis, she would be ready an hour early and set up the wickets and stakes and ask Beth to play. At first Beth was hopeful. When she realized Peggy was acting from pity she knew she had lost her.

The college was north of Boston. It was a school for girls, it was a hundred and fifty-eight years old, and so was the four-storied red brick building where, on the front steps among suitcases and trunks, daughters and parents, and maintenance men serving as porters, they kissed and hugged Peggy, spoke of Thanksgiving, and told her goodbye. She stood watching as they drove out of the U-shaped driveway; when they stopped at the street for a final look, she waved. Then Lee drove into the street, toward the low autumn sun. With one finger he wiped his eyes, reached across the seat, and took Beth's hand.

‘Our baby,' he said.

‘I lost her long before now,' she said, and withdrew her hand.

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘She hates me.'

‘Beth!'

‘It's true.'

‘Beth look—that's crazy. Look—'

‘Sure.'

He was not angry. He was chewing his lip, and the car was slowing.

‘How can you say that about Peggy? What's
wrong
, Beth—'

‘Oh, you don't know anything. You know that? You don't know anything.'

She kneeled on the seat to get a beer, pausing first to watch his face. ‘Have you ever been unfaithful?'

‘My God.'

She leaned over the seat and reached into the ice chest.

‘I have,' she said.

‘That's a lie.'

She sat down and popped open the beer. They were on the highway now. She looked out the rear window, then took a long swallow.

‘Ah, that's good.'

She pushed in the lighter on the dashboard.

‘Drink as many as you want,' he said. ‘I mean it.'

‘I know you do.'

‘You need it. Something's happening to you, and we've got to—'

‘His name is Robert Carini.'

‘Stop it.'

She lit her cigarette.

‘He's a silversmith and he lives in New York. He promised to send me a bracelet but he didn't. What's the name of yours? Or is it more than one. It probably is.'

‘Beth, stop.'

‘You don't believe me, do you?'

‘Course not.'

‘That's so funny. Because you had everything worked out so we wouldn't die on the same plane. You see? There's all sorts of things out there—' She waved her beer can in front of her, toward the horizon—‘
impulses
, chances, surprises, things nobody understands. But you don't see them, Lee.'

They were driving through rolling wooded hills; the trees were gold and red and yellow, and looking at them with one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun she felt a sadness like nostalgia.

‘Are you telling me that something happened in San Francisco?'

‘No. On the plane back.'

‘That's silly.'

‘Well, you're right about that, I didn't sleep with him. But I would have, so it's the same.'

‘Since when is it the same?'

‘Since always. And I talked about you.'

‘Oh, you did.'

‘I couldn't have been more unfaithful. Think about that, Lee: one afternoon last summer your wife was unfaithful.'

‘I wouldn't call it that.'

‘Call it what you want, but that's what it was.'

She leaned over the seat again, put the empty can in the chest, and brought a full one up through the ice.

‘So what about you,' she said.

He didn't answer; with one hand he was filling a pipe from his tobacco pouch.

‘All right,' she said. ‘We can talk about scenery and traffic.'

He drove quietly. She finished the beer and started another.

There were nine left. Tomorrow she would buy more and she would drink from Massachusetts to Iowa. That amused her: how many people had drunk beer from the Atlantic—or ten miles from it anyway—right into the heart of the country? Now off the highway there were stores and shopping centers and the traffic was heavier. When they got into the country again, Beth looked out her window at colored leaves and green pines and spruce; the sun was setting, and the sky was rose and orange above the trees; she saw stone fences and sometimes a large house built far back from the road; twice she saw a single white boulder in meadows that were light green in the sun and dark green in the reaching shadows of the woods. When the sun went down she said: ‘Can you keep driving? Or are you tired?'

‘I'm not tired.'

‘Good. Cars are nice at night.'

It was dusk now, so she could not see colors anymore, and she wanted dusk to change quickly to night so she could ride in the dark car with only the faint green light of the dashboard and red tail lights far ahead and pale headlights well on the other side of the divided highway.

‘Are you hungry?' he said.

‘No. Are you?'

‘Not yet.'

‘We can eat later, then drive some more.'

‘All right,' he said.

‘I'm going to do it differently now, since Peggy's gone. I'm not going to bed anymore until I'm really sleepy. Then I'll get up and give you breakfast and then I'll go back to bed and sleep till noon or so. I can do that now.'

‘I guess you can.'

‘It's what I'll do.I'll read a lot.'

‘Yes.'

‘You were right not to tell me, though. About other women. Because it doesn't matter. That's what no one admits, that it doesn't matter. Course when you didn't answer, that means you have, doesn't it?'