The Husband (14 page)

“You’re not very diplomatic,” said Rose.

“I don’t like Jack,” said Peter.

“Well, don’t shout at me,” said Rose.

“I’m not shouting.”

“All I said was, you could be more diplomatic.”

Peter could feel the careening downhill, gears shredding, no traction, no control. “A diplomat,” he said, “is about as disconnected from reality as a man can get. You know me, Rose, don’t you? Can you imagine me stalling around for months pretending to be talking while somebody else makes up his mind about what I’m going to say? That’s what a diplomat does. Well, I think sometimes what you think and what you say ought to be closer together, like now!”

“And what do you mean by that?” Rose said, frightened.

Peter turned away.
Coward
, he thought. “Rose?” he said, the catch in his voice barely noticeable.

“Yes?”

“Sudden things build, and tonight’s capped it.”

Elizabeth tried to signal to him to stop. “Keep out of this,” he snapped to her. “I’m speaking to Rose. All the time Jack was talking—Rose, pay attention—all the time you weren’t thinking of Amanda dead, you were thinking of yourself dead.”

“That’s not true!”

“Well, I was thinking of myself dead, and regretting it! When death comes whoosh I don’t want to get caught where I am now. I want to be living when I die. Rose, I’m moving out of the house.”

“Peter!”

He started up the stairs, carried by the momentum of his words. “I’m going to pack a bag and leave tonight. I’m going to get a divorce as fast as I can get a divorce.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” said Rose.

“There may be a lot of things I’m going to lose, but not my mind.”

“You’re not being realistic,” said Rose to Peter, who had already disappeared from view at the head of the stairs.

She heard his reply loud and clear. “Maybe I’m being imaginative for the first time since I got into advertising.”

“Peter, what are you doing up there?”

“Putting some things in a suitcase. A shirt and underwear,” came his voice, “for tomorrow. Another tie. Want to check and see what I’m putting in?”

Rose looked at Elizabeth. “It’s the shock of Amanda’s death,” she said calmly.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth.

“He’ll get over it,” said Rose. “We’ve been married a very long time.”

“I know,” said Elizabeth.

“He’ll get over you,” said Rose.

“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth.

“Don’t you talk so casually to me. Don’t think I don’t realize what’s caused all this. I didn’t have any trouble, not any real trouble with Peter before he met you and your slimy—you heard me correctly, I said slimy—”

“I’ll wait outside,” said Elizabeth, heading for the door.

“Oh, no, you won’t!” said Rose, grabbing Elizabeth’s arm hard.

“Please,” said Elizabeth.

“No, I want to see what you threw in his face to make him want to leave me. What do you do when you come into his office and close the door? Do you grab for his pants right away?”

Elizabeth tried to struggle free. “You’re hurting my arm.”

“Do you kiss him, I mean, stick your tongue down his throat? Do you shove your tits in his mouth? Are they nice? Come on, let me see!” With a sudden fury, Rose tried to rip Elizabeth’s clothing. Elizabeth tried fending her off but couldn’t get the hand off her arm; she felt the nails and then heard the unmistakable sound of cloth tearing. Peter came bounding down the stairs.

“Rose!” he yelled.

Instantly Rose turned on him. “Does she kiss you? Show me where she kisses you. Is it all over, everywhere, is that how she got you?”

“Rose, what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing’s gotten into me for a long time,” shrieked Rose, “because you’ve been getting into her! How is it, better than me? Is that why you’re leaving, so you can go to bed with her every night? Is that it?”

Into the silence, Peter said the irretrievable. “I love her.”

“That slut? Don’t make me laugh!”

Elizabeth couldn’t stop Peter in time. He slapped Rose’s face.

“Oh, he can’t hurt me,” shrilled Rose, “not by getting into your pants, he can’t, not if you do—” She was stopped by Peter’s second slap.

“I’m going to marry Elizabeth,” said Peter.

Rose, holding the back of her hand against her flushed cheek, said quietly, “Marry? What about me? You’re married to me.” The enormity of it must have reached her then, because she was suddenly at Peter with her fists. “I’ll kill you first!” It took all of Peter’s strength to hold her arms.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to Elizabeth.

“No, you won’t,” said Rose, and in full voice yelled, “Jonathan! Margaret!”

“Now stop that,” said Peter.

Louder now, Rose yelled, “Jon! Maggie! Come down right away!”

Peter pleaded with her for silence, but this only encouraged her to tear away from his grasp and bound up the stairs, yelling, “Jonathan! Margaret!” until the children heard and were sleepily, frightened, saying, “What is it, Mommy?” and Rose was dragging them, uncomprehending, down the stairs to the living room.

“Hold your daddy!” she screamed. “He’s leaving, he says he’s leaving forever!” The children seemed completely disbelieving. “Ask him, go ahead, ask him,” shouted Rose.

The children went to Peter, who took them in his arms.

“Well, why don’t you ask him?” said Rose.

“Where are you going?” said Jonathan.

Peter wished he had time to think, to prepare. “You don’t want to see me arguing with Mommy all the time, do you?” he asked Jonathan.

But it was Margaret who seemed to understand immediately. “Daddy, don’t go!” she pleaded.

“He’s going to divorce you,” said Rose. “He said he’s going to divorce you!”

“That’s not true,” said Peter to the children. “I’ll never divorce you. I can’t. I don’t want to. I love you. I’m just going to live somewhere else.”

“You liar!” Rose shrieked.

“Rose, please,” Peter said, “what are you doing to the children?”

“Have you asked yourself that? What are you doing, you—you and that—whore!”

Peter let go of the children. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Elizabeth.

“Please don’t go, Daddy,” said Margaret.

“He’s a monster!” shrieked Rose.

“If you don’t stop that this minute, Rose, I’m going to take the children with me, right in their nightclothes.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“Oh, no, Mommy, please don’t,” said Jonathan.

“Daddy, who is this lady?” asked Margaret.

“This is Miss Kilter,” said Peter.

“She is?” said Margaret, wide-eyed.

But Rose was now screaming, “Whore! Beast! I hate you, I hate you…” and Peter desperately tried to kiss the children, to love them and leave them at the same time, and they clutched at him and even at his suitcase, struggling to prevent him from leaving by their show of force, and they were left hopeless as Peter and Elizabeth closed the front door behind them.

Chapter Eight

The next week was the first that Peter and Elizabeth lived together.

They did one or two daring things.

They had their first quarrel.

They nearly got killed.

On Saturday, Peter rented a room from an ad in the
Times
. The ad called it “a small furnished apartment.” It was a furnished room with a pretense of a kitchen behind shutters on one wall. When he opened the shutters, two roaches scurried for cover. It didn’t seem to matter. Elizabeth’s apartment was only a short walk away.

Peter arranged with the superintendent to phone him at the office if any telegrams arrived. He sent Rose a note giving her the new address and saying to send a wire if the children got sick or something. He transferred some clothes from his suitcase to a shopping bag and took it over to Elizabeth’s. On Saturday afternoon they listened to every side of every Mozart record she had. Then they went out to a local record shop and bought three Mozart records she didn’t have—this was going to be an all-Mozart day—and picked up a bagful of Chinese food on the way back. In late afternoon they fell asleep listening to Mozart. When they woke up two hours later, they took a walk along the river. The wind was whipping up and there weren’t many walkers, but they didn’t notice either the other walkers or the wind or see much of the river. They talked in inconsequentials of lovers. They held hands in public. That was Saturday.

On Sunday morning Peter asked Elizabeth to hurry breakfast. They left immediately afterward and hailed a cab, which Peter directed to the Pan Am Building.

“On a Sunday?” Elizabeth questioned.

Peter stretched his legs, crossed them at the ankles, remained silent.

“Okay,” she said, too happy to question further.

The Pan Am Building, like any other office building on a Sunday, seemed a mausoleum until they came to the elevator taking people to the rooftop heliport.

“I’ve never been on a helicopter,” she said.

“Neither have I.”

Peter made the ticket arrangements in less than two minutes, while Elizabeth stood to one side, trying to deal with the whisper of fear coiling inside her.

“Will they take us without luggage?” she asked.

“It’s not a hotel. Cash in advance, no questions asked.”

The loudspeaker announced the next flight to Kennedy International Airport. Behind glass, they saw the arriving helicopter settle down, its idling rotors stirring up a whirlwind of dust and pebbles. The arriving passengers held onto their hats, instinctively ducking, though the rotors turned safely above their heads. To Elizabeth, the helicopter looked like an up-angled bus with attachments. The limp, flexible rotor blades certainly didn’t look strong enough to lift the huge, awkward machine off the ground.

“It’s something out of Dr. Seuss,” said Elizabeth as they clambered aboard. “Does it work?”

Peter himself was quite unprepared for the takeoff, the sudden increase of noise, the whirlwind of dust again, and then the roof and all of New York slipping away underneath them with an unexpected suddenness. He remembered the first time, as a boy, he had been up on top of the Empire State Building and how fearful he had been that the building might move. Now it was moving.

He looked at Elizabeth. She seemed really apprehensive. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“You can’t get out and walk,” she said.

He laughed.

“You’re a fatalist,” she said. “I don’t like taking unnecessary risks.”

“How do you know which risks to avoid?”

“Well, the ones that make me nervous, like this.”

“You smoke cigarettes.”

She nodded.

“You cross New York City streets dozen of times a day.”

She nodded again.

“You breathe our immeasurably polluted air.”

“I was about to say those were necessary risks—”

“But you thought better of it, clever girl. This helicopter ride is a necessary risk in two senses,” he lectured, making it up as he went along. “If our object is to go somewhere, getting there becomes a necessary risk. But in another sense, it is a necessary risk for some part of every generation to expose itself to the hazards of new things until they become old things. In the nineteenth century—listen to the professor, elf, you can look out of the window later—those cross-continental trains were hazardous. If an accident didn’t get you, the Indians might. Well, the Indians and accidents got some people, not most, and today nobody’s scared much of trains or Indians But at the beginning of the century, nearly everybody was leery of those put-put automobiles. People reacted just as the horses did to the horseless carriage. Nowadays we kill fifty thousand or more people every year in those horseless carriages, but you don’t panic if I ask you to step inside a car, do you? You get used to the hazard, so you think the hazard disappears. We barely got used to traveling in airplanes and they come up with these freak helicopters, which don’t move the way we expect planes to move, and go so damn slow, and land on top of buildings. Well, somebody’s got to get our generation used to it. You can look now. That’s Brooklyn.”

“We’ve crossed the East River?” she said, astonished.

“We’ll be coming down in a couple of minutes. The trip only takes seven.”

They spotted the racetrack, a large oval in the midst of the long rows of toy houses, which began to thin out, and then the helicopter was lowering itself in among the hangars and terminals of Kennedy. The airship seemed to squat rather than land in its yellow-rimmed target. Out the window Elizabeth could see the dust and stones swirling as, its front end raised, the monstrous metal praying mantis they were in taxied to the discharge point.

Peter’s firm grip on her arm signaled they were to sit still as the other passengers got off. When the stewardess drew alongside, he flashed his ticket and they sat still while several passengers boarded, and off they went to the yellow circle, where the noise overwhelmed them as they lifted off.

Elizabeth found herself relaxing. Peter let her enjoy the startling experience of approaching the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan from an angle that seemed neither up in the sky nor down on the ground but midway, and equal to the grand edifices. They landed at the Wall Street Heliport and then in a few minutes were off again, across New York harbor to New Jersey and Newark Airport, where everybody except them disembarked, some newcomers arrived, and they were up and off again, approaching Manhattan from the west, catching an instant’s fantastic view up the Hudson River, and then they were settling with finality atop the Pan Am Building, where their journey had begun.