The Husband (3 page)

Peter let himself slip down into his armchair.

“The children were perfectly adorable today,” said Rose. “They fixed up a tent with blankets in the basement, put up a sign saying ‘The Facts of Life’ on it, and called all their friends in. They charged a penny admission and let everyone into the tent at the same time.”

“What was on the inside?”

“Nothing,” said Rose. “Just another sign saying ‘The First Fact of Life Is: Know What You’re Paying For.’”

“What a dirty trick,” he said for Rose’s benefit. The children are a saving grace, he thought.

Jonathan, aping in his speech a cross between his mother’s attempt at an accent and a butler he must have seen on television, said three words as if they were three separate sentences. “It…was…fun.” In his hand was the martini, slopping ever so slightly over the side.

“Were the kids mad?” Peter asked him.

“They ran right home,” said Jonathan, “to try the same stunt on some other kids.”

That’s the way it is, thought Peter. When you’re conned, you learn how not to be conned exactly the same way next time, but what you relish is using your new-found knowledge to con someone else. How did childless couples ever learn about life? Oh, well, most couples who had children didn’t really observe the behavior of children closely either. Certainly he hadn’t until a few years back, when Rose’s speeches had become so predictable that he began to look to the children for surprise. They had become his university.

Jonathan handed over the martini, and Margaret set a cocktail napkin down on the table.

“Martooni,” said Jonathan.

“Houdini,” said Margaret.

Then both children together said, “Watch it disappear!”

Rose disliked these rituals. They were childish. So they were, thought Peter, but he and the kids liked them. Rose couldn’t be suffering as much as her expression pretended. He sipped the drink.

He sipped at it again, watching the children’s expression. He smiled. “It’s good.”

Immediately the children clustered to him, imperiling the drink, which Peter quickly set down, sensing—how do these feelings travel?—that Rose was about to make a short speech.

“Peter,” she said, “is it wise to make bartenders out of the children?”

In adolescence Peter hadn’t wanted to be the usual things—a doctor, a lawyer—engineering was a big and coming thing, but when he inquired as to what engineers do, he lost interest. He really wanted to be a king, as all boys probably do at one moment in time, though with Peter the idea became fixed, an interesting, unrealizable idea: to be in absolute charge. In high school—was it the first year or the second?—his class was given the assignment of writing an essay on a vocation, and it was then that Peter wrote his famous eight or ten pages on kingship which, when it became known, elicited snickers from some of the kids and surprise from the teacher, who gave it an “A” because it was well written and sparkled with quotations from Shakespeare and Shaw and some miscellaneous ones from Bartlett and seemed to have wit even in those parts he had composed himself. The essay was posted on the bulletin board along with the other “A’s,” which is where it earned its scorn from the other boys, though the girls in the class seemed to have a different view of it and, he later learned, talked about it a good deal among themselves during recess. One girl, a very pretty girl in fact, stayed after school to copy the essay out after asking his permission. He was flustered, of course, wondering why she had asked. Was it courtesy, or did she want to call his attention to the fact that she was copying it out?

Her name was Rose.

Actually Peter was annoyed at himself for suspecting Rose’s reason for copying his essay. She was paying attention—wasn’t that a good sign? A day or two later, she found her way to him during a recess and talked about his essay. She liked the idea of someone wanting to be a king, or something like a king.

Peter asked her to go to the movies on Saturday night mainly because of the way things were shaping up among his friends at the time. Two or three of them would have a date of sorts on Saturday, all going to the local movie, of course, and the rest would go to the same movie as a pack. There was a distinction in going to the picture with a girl, paying for her, buying popcorn for them both, nodding over at the stags, who had to act tough and restless whenever interest in the movie flagged.

When the boys were together they would talk about baseball mostly, but occasionally about a girl. For instance, there was a girl about their age—her name was B. (they never said her full name)—who was said to have actually had intercourse with three Italian boys on one night (the Italian boys seemed to go in for real sex, rather than just petting like the other kids). It was said of B. that on that night she and the three boys had all been in the room together, two of them watching while the other performed, switching until each had had his chance, and that then B. had actually done something—the descriptions varied wildly—with all three boys together.

The boys also talked about Verna, who was older and not very bright, who had left high school when her pregnancy showed and then afterward worked as a waitress in a place frequented by truck drivers. Verna was said to take one of the younger boys up to her one-room apartment occasionally, and things would go on with the baby right there in the crib.

Sex was beginning to be not only colorful anecdotes for the boys but a matter of economic interchange as well. There was quite a traffic in contraceptives in school. Peter was quite sure that most of the boys who bought them didn’t use them but resold them to other boys, even at a slight loss, in order to get hooked onto the bravado train.

Peter had taken a girl named Sally to the movies several times. She was two grades ahead at school, extremely witty and bright, which is the reason Peter gave for going with her; but when he was in the mood to tell himself the truth, his interest in Sally lay in the fact that her breasts were fully developed and she sometimes wore the kind of brassiere which let the nipples show through the dress. He sometimes held hands with Sally in the movies but couldn’t try anything else because it would shatter, he thought, the intellectual foundation of their friendship. Peter had a tentative date with Sally, but he was now convinced nothing would come of that, at least nothing to do with the sexual feeling that was preoccupying his days and sometimes exciting him beyond tolerance. So he called Sally and gave some tepid excuse about having a bad cold and then let his mind stray freely about Rose, who had agreed to go to the movies on Saturday night.

Suddenly Peter realized that Sally would probably be at the movies on Saturday also, would see him. Oh, well, if it made her jealous it might lead to something, and if it made her angry, it couldn’t be helped. Was that the beginning of duplicity?

As for Rose, Peter didn’t see why he should have any reservations about seeing how he could make out. She had made the first approach, she wasn’t a tramp like B. and Verna, and they didn’t have an intellectual rapport to spoil. He thought about Rose on and off for the rest of the week, and by Saturday he was quite prepared to see how far he could go with her.

It went as far as marriage, though it took seven years.

From the beginning, Rose was quite a feather in his cap. She was pretty enough to be stared at. She knew how to dress in a way which attracted a great deal of attention at dances and parties. She admired his ambitions, which were very large. And there was one other thing.

One evening after they had been seeing each other for several weeks, Peter had promised to keep Rose company while she baby-sat for the Burkes. The evening got off to a brilliant start when Peter picked up Rose at her home. He greeted her mother in the kitchen and then her father in the living room. Rose’s father was snoozily reading the
Daily Mirror
, a New York tabloid which contained very little news of more than local interest, pictures of car accidents, and publicity stills of Hollywood starlets, a newspaper held in contempt by Peter’s family for as long as he could remember. Peter shook Rose’s father’s hand, then took the tabloid from him, which surprised her father, and ripped it in two, which surprised everyone including himself. Rose’s father was livid, Rose’s mother, who hurriedly came in from the kitchen when voices were raised, was amused, and Rose—well, she was overjoyed. Her fellow had taught her father a lesson.

They left the house hurriedly, happily, and got to the Burkes just in time. As soon as the Burkes had left for their bridge game and Rose and Peter were alone with the sleeping baby, she kissed him, a long, slow, exploratory kiss which he broke away from only because he had an erection, which embarrassed him.

Rose put on a record and Peter, mainly to calm himself, made a big do about investigating the Burkes’ library, which didn’t help because in the course of his explorations he found behind some other books a copy of a paperbound and poorly printed book which Mr. Burke had probably brought back from a business trip abroad. Rose and Peter read the book together, glancing at the clock once in a while because the Burkes were due home at eleven. He didn’t know at the time if Rose was being aroused by the book, as he was, or was aroused by his excitement, but they did kiss again, and Peter had to exert every restraint to keep from touching her—until it happened. Rose—he never knew whether it was by chance or will—let her hand come to rest, it was only for a second or two, on his pants at a critical point. He looked at her face, expecting anger, though he had had nothing to do with it, and instead found a beatific expression, or was it admiration again?

It was half past ten. With so little time left, Rose helped him uncover her breasts, which were lovely, but as he touched them he thought he was going to have an orgasm right then and pulled away. She took this as an affront, so he had to explain, his breath coming hard, and she was so sympathetic and understanding, he was overwhelmed. They were kissing each other in a head-long rush to Peter knew not where, when he suddenly felt her hand moving in a way which alarmed him because it seemed so experienced and yet he was certain she couldn’t have had this kind of experience, and before his troubled thought could lead him anywhere, his reservoir of youth exploded.

There was a lot of fixing up to do before eleven but they made it, and when the Burkes returned, the book was back in place and the two of them were sitting on opposite ends of the couch listening to records.

Peter and Rose said very little on the way home, holding hands all the way. Peter was a little leery of going in because of the incident with the newspaper, but Rose assured him that her parents would be asleep. Which wasn’t quite true. Her mother did come out in her bathrobe just long enough to say, “Glad you’re home. Don’t stay up too late,” which Peter took to mean he might stay a while. When her mother went back and closed their bedroom door on the father’s snoring, Peter kissed Rose gently and learned something he was to know much better as the years went on, that to Rose a kiss was never a kiss but an introduction. Their bodies were very close when they kissed again. All Peter’s fears came bounding back, including that of her father’s wrath, but Rose assured him with what seemed like serene confidence that in her bedroom they couldn’t be heard. For a second Peter felt she was rushing and wasn’t it the man’s job to take the lead, but all this was brushed away by a fierce appetite, whetted and now seemingly uncontrollable.

Rose excused herself and came out of the bathroom moments later, wearing a nightdress through which he could see not just the outlines of her body but the shape of her breasts, the nipples, the dark hair where her legs met and, when she turned, her bottom.

“What if they come in?” he made his voice say in a whisper.

Rose simply put a finger on his lips to silence him. She withdrew her fingers in favor of her lips, which brushed rather than touched his, but enough for him to taste the toothpaste she must have used in those seconds away.

When they were both on the bed, he found himself kissing the edges of her mouth and then her lips full on, and finally her now slightly open mouth. He felt an impetus that would not subside.

He raised her gown as if it were a curtain. She turned away, as if in shyness, but in turning revealed more, and soon he found himself kissing her body, and when her gown interfered, she let him take it off. She gestured at his clothes. It seemed to take him forever to get everything off, except his socks, which he didn’t think of as curious or amusing until afterward.

Peter felt embarrassed about his erection and wanted to turn the light off, but she took his hand away from the switch. He had a great deal of difficulty at first, though thinking at the same time how automatic it was, how you didn’t have to learn. He was kissing her deeply, exploring her mouth as if to focus attention there, when in fact it was the thrust and thrust of his lower body that held his attention and hers, and suddenly the delicious agony couldn’t be kept back.

The thought of it broke into fragments in his mind: he had done it, it was wrong, it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to him, they had taken no precautions, and finally, as he slipped out, he saw in a wave of fright and triumph the slight stain that said it had been first for her, too.

Terrified now that her father would rip him as Peter had ripped the newspaper, he dressed quickly and impolitely left Rose as soon as he could, flooded with guilt, shame, and exhilaration….

All of this went through Peter’s mind like the shapes of a kaleidoscope as he watched Rose’s adult face intent on a question he had not answered.

“Peter,” she said, “I’m asking you if it’s wise to make bartenders out of the children?”