Kom paused, a range of emotions crossing his features. His face settled into an expression of sadness and resignation.
"You know, don't you?" he asked. "John told you?… About Tovah?"
"He-uh-he said you had a good talk."
Kom smiled, but his eyes remained sad. "He did tell you. God, that's terrific that you talk like that. That he feels he can tell you something like that. I envy him. I'd give anything to be able to talk to someone as freely as that. I sometimes I feel like I'm dying with all the things I want to say, all the feelings I want to share… We're not meant to live our lives alone, are we? Isn't sharing what makes it all worth-I'm sorry." He broke off, with emotion cracking his voice.
Kom turned away from her, hiding his face. Karen touched his shoulder and his head sagged.
"You're here to play tennis," he said, his back still turned to her.
"What is it?" she asked softly. "I don't really know what's going on."
"I didn't invite you here to burden you with my problems," he muttered, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Karen stepped around him and took his chin in her fingers as if he were a child. Slowly she raised his face until he was looking at her. His eyes were moist and he avoided her gaze in embarrassment.
"Now what is it?" she asked. She felt as if she were talking to her son, Jack, but she knew that the problem could not be so easily solved as it could with a child. "Tell me."
"Tovah has been-unfaithful. Several times, with different men. I should leave her. If I had any courage, any self-respect, I would just walk away from her… but I can't."
"No," said Karen softly, without meaning.
"You don't know what it's like," he said, lifting his eyes to hers for the first time. "I can't describe the pain. It kills me, it kills me every time. Do you know who she has her affairs with? My friends. Only my friends. So that it will ruin the friendship, I think… What else can I think? Does she do it to kill me, is that what she wants to do?"
"No, I'm sure not," said Karen, but she was sure of nothing. She had been taken completely by surprise by his sudden candid outpouring.
"Why else would she be doing it with my friends? My friendly! A woman wouldn't understand how hard it is for a man to make any real friends.
You do it so easily."
"I know it's hard for men."
"Do you? Not for John, He's the kind of man other men m like. The kind they want to be. But me-look at me. I'm not the kind of man other men want to go have a beer with. There's something about me, I've never known what it is exactly. I talk too much, maybe. I'm too emotional, I don't know, but there's something, they know it, men sense it. Do you know Yiddish? I'm a nebbish, I'm a softy. The way John plays tennis, my God, like he's made out of spring steel. That's what men want to be around, that's who they want to be. Me, I'm, well, I'm what their fathers prayed they wouldn't grow up to be. I'm not gay, I don't mean that, but I'm the kid you never chose to be on your team…"
"Stanley, you're a very successful man, you're bright you're doing extremely well, you've got a beautiful home. Professionally…"
Kom put his hand on her arm to silence her, smiling wanly. "Thank you, Karen. That's sweet, but you know what I mean. There are some things from your youth you never get over completely. I've certainly tried, I've had the therapy, I've had more therapy than Freud, I've made myself over as much as possible, but hell, you saw me on the tennis court. I'm ridiculous."
"Athletic ability has nothing to do with anyone's worth."
"It's not athletic ability. It's a quality, a toughness. It's something to do with character, too. It's-I don't have it, whatever it is. Look, that isn't the point. I can live with it, all I'm trying to say is that it's hard for me to make friends with other men, I mean close friends, and when I do, I don't want to lose them. She knows that, and yet she takes them away. She makes it impossible for the friendship to continue..
He walked away from her again, shaking his head, overcome with his frustration. "She kills me two ways when she does this," he said. "I feel-unmanned, the way any husband would. Castrated. I can't seem to please my wife, I can't keep her from wanting other men. And then she adds to it by taking away my friends. She leaves me with no one to talk to. No one. I should be able to talk to my wife. I love my wife, I do, despite everything. But I can't talk to her anymore. She's the one I need to talk to most and I can't talk to her, that's the irony. And then I can't talk to my friends, either, because she's made that impossible too."
"Stanley, why do you put up with it?"
"I wonder if you'd understand."
"I think so-if you want to trust me with it."
"I do trust you, Karen. I didn't realize that, but I guess I must trust you instinctively because I'm telling you all this. Is it all right with you? I don't want you to feel… I don't want to involve you if you don't want to get mixed up in all this."
"I think I already am mixed up-because of John."
"I guess that's true. I'm lucky it's you, though, aren't I? You're very sympathetic, you have a way of listening, I don't feel I'm being judged.
I feel I can talk to you like a friend. "
"Of course you can. I am your friend. So is John."
Kom smiled ruefully. "For the moment. I hope… I have to trust them together, you do understand that, don't you? I can't stand there and watch over her every minute. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If she betrays me, she betrays me. But I can't spend my life as a policeman-I don't mean that personally."
"I know. Ultimately, you have to trust the people you love, or you can't keep loving them."
"It doesn't bother you then, their being together, knowing that Tovah has a-well-a crush on John?"
"John's a big boy. He can take care of himself."
"But can he take care of Tovah?" Kom laughed bitterly "Why do you put up with it, Stanley?" Karen asked again. "I wonder if you can understand," he said again. They had moved to the front porch. Kom sat on the secondlowest step and took her hand in his. She was left with noplace to sit except the step below him. She sat looking up at him and he continued to hold her hand absently, as if he was not aware he had it.
"I keep thinking I can save it, the marriage," he said. "I keep thinking that if I stick with it just a little longer, if I try a little harder, if I make some more compromises, if I keep trying to make myself into what she wantsmaybe, finally, I can do it. Maybe we'll make it. We've been together for ten years. I was lucky to win her, so lucky to get her to marry me, I can't tell you. Looking the way she does, she could have had anybody, anybody. I think she chose me because I'm a doctor.
Because of what I do, not who I am."
" No, no…"
"I think so. I'm afraid so." He held Karen's hand and rubbed it gently but idly between thumb and finger, as if it were a stone or stick, a talisman to give him strength. "She thought I had power. A medical degree means that to some people, it's authority, it's power, it's position-but it's illusory. She wanted real power, masculine power. I have the power to cure-some things, some limited things. Mostly I have the power to pay the bills. What she wants is the kind of power that can kick down a door to get to her, then hold on to her as he swings through the jungle on a vine."
"There is no such person."
"John could do it.
Karen paused. "But he wouldn't. Anyway, that's not what a woman wants."
"That's not what you want, Karen. It's what Tovah wants. It's what I can't give her. But I'm not giving up. If this marriage fails, it will not be because I haven't given it every last ounce of my energy and my will and my love… But it's so hard… and it's so lonely."
Karen squeezed his hand for sympathy. He lifted it to his lips and kissed her palm. Instinctively, she reached up with her free hand to touch his face.