The Towers of Love (17 page)

“I hadn't guessed,” he said quietly. “You mean you've left Bob?”

“In a sense, yes. When I say ‘in a sense,' I mean that we haven't discussed anything, and he thinks I've just come home for a little visit with my family. But I really came here to think things over, to try to decide.”

“I'm sorry to hear this,” he said.

“So we're sort of in the same boat, aren't we? Oh, of course my thing is different. You've had—you've done things you wanted. The Army, your job, things like that. But I've had Chicago. And the pickle business. Lunches in a paper bag. Things I'm not at all sure I ever wanted. So I feel more foolish—more wasted.”

She turned away from him now and looked out the window. “So here we are,” she said, as she had said to him on the telephone. “Here we both are. Isn't it queer that it should have happened to us both at the same time? Anyway, here we are.” And suddenly she was crying. “Oh,” she said, “life is such a cheat, isn't it? It's such a damn' cheat!”

“Edrita,” he said. “Don't cry, Edrita, please.”

She turned away from the window, her hands clenched at her sides in little balled fists. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, oh, oh!” And she walked quickly to the bed and sank down across it, burying her face in the coverlet, sobbing, her shoulders shaking. “If they'd only
tell
you,” she said. “But they never tell you! They never tell you what a stupid waste and cheat it's going to be.”

He went to the bed and sat down beside her. “Edrita—”

She turned her face half-way towards him. “The trouble is,” she said. “Do you want to know what the real trouble is? They brought us up—both of us—to think that life was going to be so damned peachy! They didn't tell us the truth about anything. They didn't tell us about cruelty—and selfishness—and—”

“Edrita, please. Don't do this.”

“And here we both are. There's no one in the world to pity us.”

“We can pity ourselves.”

She sat up straight and she was not crying any more. “No,” she said. “No, I don't pity myself. I don't pity myself at all. Sometimes I think that if only—if only somebody
else
pitied me that would be nice. But I don't pity myself. I admire myself.”

“Good,” he said, smiling. “I admire myself, too.”

“Do you? Do you, Hugh? Oh, I'm glad you do! It's so important that we each admire ourselves.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “Hugh,” she said, “that's good—but I'm so scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

“Don't you know?”

“No.”

“I'm scared of this. Right now. Of what's going to happen. Of being here with you like this, loving you the way I do.”

“Don't say that,” he said. “You mustn't say that, Edrita.”

“But I do,” she said. She looked deep into his eyes. “Hugh,” she said. “Lie down beside me, Hugh. Hold my hand.”

“No,” he said. “I—I'm not ready for that. I'm not ready for anything else—not yet.”

“Please,” she said. “Just lie down beside me. Hold my hand.”

And so he did. He lay down stiffly beside her on the bed, looking up at the white ceiling, at the network of fine cracks that spread across it like canals or roadways drawn upon a map, and took her hand. For several minutes they said nothing, and only their hands touched.

“Tell me what went wrong,” she said at last.

“Wrong?”

“With you and Anne.”

“Oh, it was a lot of things,” he said. “The final thing was selling the business. I never knew she cared much about the business, but when it came to my selling it, she was dead set against it. That was when we finally had the showdown, and she left me.”

“And you came here …”

“Finally, yes, I came here.”

“We return to the warm womb of home,” she said. “What were some of the other things?”

“Oh, don't make me remember them all,” he said. “It was all right for a while, while we were in California, while I was in the Army. But when we came back to New York—well, she liked to go to a lot of parties, and she liked committees, and the Junior League, and—but well, those were only little things. Those weren't important things.”

“What were some of the bigger things?”

“Well, she wanted children, for one thing, and we couldn't seem to have any.”

“Did you try?”

“Of course we tried—for a while.”

“Well,” she said, “lots of people don't have children. Why was she so set on having children?”

“She wanted two children,” he said. “Her mother had had two children, and she wanted two children, too. She thought it looked funny that we didn't have any children.”

“You can adopt children.”

“And sully the blood line? No, that was—well, that thought was just disgusting to her.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

“I had a test,” he said, “to see if it was me. She had a theory that perhaps—you know—the polio had done something to me. And so she wanted me to have a test.”

“What sort of a test?”

“Well, it's called a motility test or something. A perfectly simple sort of thing.”

“How do they do it?”

“You have to do something in a little jar. And from that, they can tell.”

“How humiliating!” she said.

“Well, look, it's done in a hospital—a perfectly routine sort of thing.”

“I know, but still—”

“Anyway, there was nothing wrong with me.”

“It was her fault, then.”

“Oh, what difference does it make whose fault it was? It doesn't make any difference now.”

“Was she unfaithful to you, Hugh?”

“No,” he said, “at least I don't think so. Oh, towards the end it got so that other men would take her out now and then—to dinner and the theatre and that sort of thing. I don't think I'd have cared, at that point, if she was or not. But there's just something about Anne—I don't know—I just don't think she cares enough about that sort of thing to get that deeply involved with anyone. I have no way of knowing, but I know that I wasn't unfaithful to her, and I just have a feeling that she wasn't to me.”

“Do you know something? I like that,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I like it, somehow, that you weren't unfaithful to her. I admire you for that. I know for you it was for different reasons. She always had the reputation, you know, of being a tease.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. That was the story that used to go around, the story I used to hear.”

“Well, sometimes I wish she had been unfaithful to me. At least that would have been something specific. Instead of—just the other. Of course I've never understood—” He stopped himself abruptly.

“Understood what, Hugh?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Tell me. Understood what?”

“Well, understood how a woman could want children so badly—and not really like sex.”

“She didn't?”

“Not really. You can sense those things. She could—she could fake, at times, but she didn't really. But it was funny—she liked to talk about it a lot, especially in front of other people. She was always saying things like, ‘Hugh is so ardent,' and ‘Whenever we're alone together, Hugh just can't keep his hands off me'—things like that.”

“The bitch,” she said. “Well, there are plenty of women who like sex and don't want children, and there are plenty of the opposite variety. Listen to me! How tough and hard I sound since I've become a Midwestern suburban matron!”

“Well, let's not talk about her any more.”

“‘Two lovers whose hearts were as cold as stone …'” she said.

“What's that?” he asked her.

“Don't you remember that? That little poem?”

“No,” he said.

“Don't you? I suddenly remembered it the other day—down by the brook, by the rocks. We wrote it together:

Two lovers whose hearts were as cold as stones

Were chafing each other's brittle bones
;

And when, with a sputter, they struck a spark
,

They scuttled in terror away in the dark
.

“Did we write that?”

“Yes. Don't you remember?”

“It seems like a strange poem for us to write. I don't even quite understand it. How old were we then?”

“About fifteen,” she said. “Just fifteen. Don't you remember?”

“Vaguely,” he said. “Very vaguely.”

“But that wasn't us, was it?” she said. “We wrote it thinking about other people—who weren't like us at all. Our hearts weren't as cold as stones, were they? And we didn't scuttle away in the dark, in terror. Remember? Down by the rocks?”

He remembered. Down by the rocks. Down in the moss and the ferns and the tiger lilies in the middle of a steamy-hot summer afternoon. Had they been only fifteen? He had remembered it too when she had leaped to him, in her tight skirt, across the rocks.

“We were pretty adventuresome once, weren't we?” he said.

“Once? Oh, Hugh! Do you remember only once? We'd never do a thing like that just
once
! It was too much fun to do just once.”

“I meant once or twice,” he said.

“Yes, it was only twice,” she said. “But at least it wasn't just once.”

“And the second time—”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, the second time. It was right here, wasn't it, Hugh? Right here in this room.”

“God, but we were little fools at fifteen!”

“Foolish and brave,” she said. “Very foolish, very brave. We lived as if there were no to-morrow.”

“Why did we stop?”

“The summer ended,” she said. “We went away to school.”

“Yes.”

They were silent for a long time.

Then she said, “Why did you stay with her for so long, Hugh?”

“I guess I just wanted to make a success of it if I possibly could. I didn't want to admit I'd failed.”

“Admit to your mother?”

“No, admit to myself. To myself.”

“Oh.”

“I could ask you the same question,” he said. “Why did you stick it out for ten years?”

“The way we were brought up,” she said. “We were brought up never to make mistakes—especially never to make mistakes in public. It wasn't a sin to tell a lie. It wasn't a sin to make love to someone. The only sin was—to make a mistake.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I tell you another secret?” she asked him.

“All right.”

“Except for you, there was never anyone else—until Bob. That's all there's ever been.”

“I have the same secret,” he said.

“You mean—never anyone but me, until Anne?”

“That's right.”

“Oh, Hugh. How nice. How nice that is.” And she raised herself on one elbow and bent her face very close to him and kissed him very softly on the lips. “I love you,” she said.

His body stiffened and he turned quickly from her. “Edrita,” he said.

“What?”

“Edrita, this isn't going to get us anywhere—either of us. It just isn't. I've got to tell you that, because it isn't. It's useless for us to stay here like this because—”

“Because what?”

“Because something's happened to me, Edrita. That's the real trouble—me. I don't know what it is, but about a year ago—maybe a little more—something happened to me. I don't even know how to describe it because I don't understand it myself. But suddenly—about a year ago—there was nothing. Do you understand? Do you know what I'm saying? It was as though something in me had—had just disappeared, or gone away, and ever since there's been absolutely nothing. Just a kind of emptiness and—nothing.” And as she lay silently beside him on the bed, he said, “So that's the way things are with me, Edrita. And it's useless for me—even to try.”

They lay there for a while in the quiet room with the sun stirring dust motes in the air.

“Life is a cheat,” she said finally. Then she sat up in the bed and said, “Well, I'd better be going.”

“You're angry with me, aren't you? You think I'm—that I'm trying to spurn you or something. Don't you see—that isn't it, Edrita?”

“I understand.”

“Don't be angry, Edrita, please.”

“I'm not angry,” she said. “As I said before, life is a cheat.”

“If only I could—don't go yet, Edrita.”

“There's no point in my staying.”

“Yes, there is. Please don't go yet.” He reached for her hand again. “Just don't go yet. Please don't go yet,” and he kissed her. “Edrita,” he said.

“Oh, Hugh!”

“Just stay here a minute or two.”

After a moment she pulled herself very gently away from him. “I'll be right back,” she said, and she slid off the bed and went into the bathroom. When she came back, she was naked.

“Edrita—”

She was smiling at him. “Have I changed?” she asked him. “Have I changed very much?”

“Edrita.”

Quickly she crossed the room, walking gingerly on her bare toes. She drew the curtains of both windows closed, shutting out the sunlight. In the gloom she crossed to the bed again to him.

“There's nothing I can give you.”

“I don't want what you can't give me,” she said. “Only what you can. Whatever it is, I don't care.”

Her hand was on his stomach now and she was unbuttoning his shirt, smiling, saying, “Hush, hush. Don't say anything.”

He lay very still, letting her undress him, and in the half-darkness her face and body and moving fingers were blurred. He reached up for her and said, “Edrita,” bringing her face so close to his own that her eyes dissolved into a single smoky shadow over him.