When Bob talks to his wife, he is thinking about Marguerite. When he looks at his wife’s reddish hair, pale skin, rounding body, he thinks of Marguerite’s hair, skin, body — but not to the disadvantage of either woman. It’s just that hair, anyone’s, reminds him of Marguerite’s hair; skin, if he happens to notice it, reminds him of Marguerite’s skin; and breasts, belly, thighs and so on, remind him of Marguerite’s. Which aspects, of course, he’s never actually seen and therefore must imagine, relying for components on the occasional Playboy and Penthouse black centerfold he’s seen.
Elaine tells her new friends at the trailer park and her sister-in-law Sarah that Bob is distracted, preoccupied, worried, and she adds that she’s concerned. But in fact she’s more than concerned. She’s frightened. She believes he doesn’t love her anymore. And to make matters worse, she believes that it’s because she is pregnant. The sad truth of the matter, however, is that Bob often forgets she is pregnant, and when he remembers, it’s as if he’s remembering something that was true long ago.
His obsession with Marguerite has become his sole companion. He talks to it, argues with it, admires and respects it, gives it all the attention and time he can steal from his family and job. He’s almost grateful that he has no friends here and that his job, where he’s often alone for hours at a time, blocks him off from the voices and needs of his wife and children. Though he is not aware of it, he has recently taken up humming a tuneless tune, hour after hour, whenever someone else is within hearing range. As soon as that person, George Dill or Elaine or one of the kids, leaves his proximity or closes the door between them, he ceases humming and lets his obsession loose, as if it were a dog wanting exercise, to leap and run about the room, dart out the door and gallop in wild circles in the parking lot and across the marshy fields, until it’s almost lost from sight, where it wheels about and comes racing happily back to him, leaps into his arms and licks his face with joy.
Months pass, and little changes. Elaine’s body has gone on swelling steadily, and Emma, knowing something threatening is going to happen, has become sullen and withdrawn, not exactly a behavior problem, but not pleasant to be around, either, and Ruthie has complained increasingly of school, even feigning sickness to stay home, until it turns out that she has what’s called a learning disability, which, the school nurse tells Elaine, and Elaine reports to Bob, may be merely emotional or she may be slightly dyslexic. Time will tell, but not to worry, many children pass through phases like this, especially when adjusting to a new environment. But if it persists into the second grade, when reading is essential for learning, special instruction will be necessary. Bob barely hears the report, for he’s suffering from a learning disability of his own, a disability fed and encouraged by his Monday, Wednesday and Friday visits from Marguerite, which have become part of her weekly routine too, possibly rationalized as, but nonetheless essential to, her caring for her father, a man who drifts through his days as lost in his private past as Bob is lost in his private future.
Bob and Marguerite have become close friends. They gossip together. She tells stories about the three doctors she works for, calls them Winkum, Blinkum and Nod, a lecher, a crook and a lazy man. He counters with complaints about his brother, his job, his boring family life, and then one morning remembers Ruthie’s learning disability and shoves it into the conversation so as to elicit Marguerite’s professional opinion, which turns out to confirm the school nurse’s opinion, a fact that impresses Bob with Marguerite’s intelligence and education.
Now, for the first time, Marguerite seems genuinely curious about Bob’s wife and children. They’ve talked of many things before this, often matters of considerable intimacy, at least for Bob, such as when and how his parents died, which parent he resembles more, and how he is both different from and very much like his brother Eddie. She even asked him once if he had played any sports in school, which Bob took as a clear indication of her interest in his body, and as a result, he went into elaborate detail about the kind of body you needed if you were going to excel as a defenseman in hockey. “Lots of endurance,” he told her. “You gotta have lots of endurance. And big bones, it’s good to have big bones and flat muscles. You can’t have one of those muscle-man bodies, you know the type, muscles like grapefruit glued to skinny bones. ’cause you really get banged around, playing hockey. You go into the corner, digging for the puck, some big guy’ll come at you full tilt and lay a body check on you that slams you into the boards, and it’s legal, all legal, so you gotta keep on playing. No time to lie there and clear your head and check for broken bones. I still skate,” he told her, lying. “Leastways I did till I left New Hampshire. Pickup games, you understand, nothing organized. I’m still in shape for it all right, but I don’t have the wind anymore. Cigarettes,” he said ruefully, lighting one up.
Marguerite asks him what his wife is like. She’s genuinely curious; his answer will help her understand what she herself is like. Her father is in the stockroom, cutting cartons and stacking them into neat bundles. He knows she’s here and it’s past quitting time, but he’s grown accustomed to her chats with his boss, which leave him standing in the background, pulling at his earlobe and waiting, like a bored child, for her to finish whatever obscure adult business she’s up to.
“Well, first off, Elaine’s a lovely lady,” Bob says. “Very much the mother,” he adds, leaning forward with both hands on the top of the cash register, as if it were a lecturn.
“And you, are you very much the father?”
Bob looks intently into her eyes, drops his gaze for a second and says in a low voice, “No. No, not really. And I got no excuses, either. It’s just … it’s just that I’m all the time too worried about myself. She’s not like that. Elaine. She doesn’t worry about herself all the time, like I do, so she’s free to think about other people, the kids, mainly, and me. It’s not selfishness, I don’t think. It’s different. I’m not really selfish. I’m just all the time worried about myself….”
“Why don’t you stop worrying about yourself so much, then?”
“It’s not like that. You can’t just decide and do it, or else you end up worrying about that too, and you’re right back where you started from. It just has to happen. You just have to be born a better person that I happen to be, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on, you’re not a bad person. You’re really not.”
“Not bad, maybe. But not good, either. See, you, you’re good. You think about your father and worry about him more than you worry about yourself. Like Elaine does. Me, I worry so much about whether I’m any good or not, or what I ought to do or shouldn’t ought to do, or whether I’m smart enough or work hard enough, all those things, that there’s never much room in my head for anyone else’s problems. Even somebody like my brother Eddie, for instance, who, even though he’s selfish, really selfish, and I’m not like that … still, he’s a good man, because in the end he doesn’t worry about himself too much. I don’t know, it’s a kind of vanity, you know? What I’ve got. I mean, Eddie’s free to be good. I’m not, almost. He’s more the father than I am, and more the husband too. More the brother, even. He sees somebody’s got a problem, and he tries to solve it, even though he’s selfish, which only means that he won’t solve it if the solution is going to hurt him somehow, and most solutions won’t do that, you know. Especially if you’ve got some money, like Eddie does. But me, I don’t even notice it that somebody’s got a problem, not even when it’s staring me in the face. I don’t know what makes me this way, but it’s the way I am, and I can’t stop being the way I am just by wanting to. Any more than Eddie can, or Elaine, or even you, can stop being the way you are just because you want to. If you want to.”