PEGGY: You wanted to go into the city and pick up a whore and bring her out here and have us both make love to her.
JERRY: Oh, I was joking.
PEGGY: You pretended you were joking, and I pretended that I knew you were joking, and you were like hell joking. You were trying it on, love.
JERRY: Well, if you had gone along with it, I certainly would have had no objection.
PEGGY: That’s not joking, then.
JERRY: Maybe not.
PEGGY: You also told me that if I ever wanted to see a girl on my own you would have no objection.
JERRY: Well, I was just being decent.
PEGGY: I’m not sure that’s the word for it.
JERRY: Oh, cut the shit. That was altruistic, as a matter of fact. I just wanted you to know that if you ever got the yen you shouldn’t hold yourself back out of concern for how I might feel about it, that you didn’t have to tell me and could do what you wanted with a clear conscience. You can’t make me the heavy for that.
PEGGY: I know. It’s just that something like that, some idiot Village pickup or some orgy with a hired whore, I mean that was the last thing I could possibly want and I was a little disgusted that you thought I might want it.
JERRY: Didn’t you ever want it?
PEGGY: No.
JERRY: You never wanted a girl after we were married?
PEGGY: No.
JERRY: You must have thought about it.
PEGGY: Of course I thought about it. When we went to a party and some men made a pass at me I thought about that, too, but that didn’t mean I had the slightest interest in having an affair. I didn’t, whether with a man or a woman. I was perfectly happy with just you, hard as it may be for you to believe it.
KAY: My second marriage made my first marriage look peachy by comparison. I don’t really see any point in talking about it now. If you were a psychiatrist instead of a writer, or if we were into some version of group therapy, maybe. But let’s just say that it was rotten, and he screwed around, and I screwed around, and for a while I became something of a pillhead, Dexedrine in the morning and Preludin around noon and Librium at martini time and Seconal before bed.
I don’t want to talk about that part.
After I got the second divorce I didn’t know just where to go or who to see or what to do. I was done with the pills and beginning to put myself together. I had spent some time with a shrink, and maybe if I had stayed with him it might have done me some good, but it seemed to me that he was just screwing me up more. I know I always felt worse after I saw him than before, so I really couldn’t see the point in it.
I called Ken, which couldn’t have thrilled him too much. He had remarried and has a kid, and I said something about coming to stay with him and his wife, as if they would welcome me with open arms while I got myself back together. At first he seemed to think I was putting him on and then he decided I was out of my mind, which wasn’t that far from the truth, and finally he lost his patience, a commodity he never had in abundant supply, and told me to fuck off. And then he hung up on me. I called him right back and as soon as he picked up the phone I said something along the lines of “I’m sorry, honey, we were disconnected, and I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to take your advice and fuck off, and thanks very much,” and I hung up on him this time.
JERRY: And then she went and fucked off.
KAY: Shut up.
PEGGY: Then you called us.
KAY: Then I got drunk, actually, and then the next day I called you.
PEGGY: She said, “Two marriages and two divorces. I’m the kid who batted a thousand.”
KAY: I hadn’t planned on inviting myself for a visit. Not consciously. Unconsciously I must have, because it would seem to be consistent enough. I was obviously looking for a home, which was the one thing I obviously didn’t have. And I was somehow obsessed with the idea of visiting a married couple. I mean, I had even invited myself to visit Ken and his second wife, and while that notion was perhaps not the notion of a tremendously sane person, it seems to fit the pattern, no?
PEGGY: I’ve always thought you attach too much significance to that.
KAY: Perhaps. I don’t know.
At any rate, I called and delivered my line, and said I just wanted to keep them up to date on me, and Peggy asked what I was going to do next. I said I didn’t know, which was nothing if it wasn’t the truth. Well, was I going to stay out on the Coast? No, I said, the vibrations were not all that good for me there, and the memories were even worse, and I thought I would probably come back East, but I didn’t know where or when, and I didn’t really have any place to go or anything to do, and I might just sign myself into a sanitarium and let the good doctors and nurses try to make the pieces fit again.
Peggy told me I was crazy — which I already knew — and to come and stay with them for a while, which I’m sure I wanted all along because I felt this overwhelming feeling of relief flood over me when she said it.
PEGGY: Then why the hell did you make me talk you into it?
KAY: Misplaced pride, maybe. Or maybe I wanted to be assured that you really wanted me. I guess at the time I really felt a need to be wanted.
JERRY: You were wanted all right. Once you got here, you were about as wanted as it’s possible to be.
KAY: Uh-huh. By both of you.
JERRY: There was a certain amount of awkwardness when Kay first arrived. I was glad she was coming, and I don’t think this had anything to do with the idea that something might happen sexually. This may even have been in the back of my mind somewhere but I never honestly expected anything to occur. But I did know that Peggy had been pretty lonely out here. This is country out here, and country people are the salt of earth, but we don’t generally have a whole lot to say to them or them to us. The few close friends we had were people we knew in New York and as the years went by we tended to get into town less and less frequently. I would go in now and then to see editors and publishers, but we were getting out of the habit of driving in for a social evening. Also, most of our friends had moved into suburbs or country places of their own, and New York in general, the whole scene, has had progressively less appeal for us. You can’t breathe the air, you can drink the water, and frankly the whole town gives me a pain in the ass.
So I was glad Peggy would have company, and glad I would have the opportunity to know Kay better, since l had liked her when we met and she wouldn’t have that bore of a husband along this time.
At the same time, I think Peggy and I were both a little apprehensive. Ever since the confession number, I had been teasing Peggy off and on about her notorious lesbian past. This was just a game, but it wasn’t one she always enjoyed. I think she was worried that Kay’s presence might increase the tension in our own relationship.
For my part, I was a little concerned that Kay might drive the two of us farther apart. l don’t know if anybody mentioned it, but Peggy and I were not exactly in the throes of the honeymoon any longer. It was more a case of seven-year itch. I had had a girl in New York for a while, I would see her when I was in town, and Peggy more or less realized this, and she and I were by no means going on the rocks, but at the same time the whole relationship was cooling slightly and going quietly stale, and we didn’t seem to know what to do about it. It was still good for the most part, but we were having more and more days that were less than terrific.
There was the further complication that I knew about Kay and Peggy, and Peggy knew that I knew obviously, but Kay didn’t know, and we had decided it would be foolish to tell her.
When she got here, though, all the worries we might have felt took a back seat to the immediate problem at hand, which was to help Kay put her head together again.