“Let me drop the jalousie. I don’t mind your entertaining the troops. But we have a radio that entertains the kitchen. They don’t need us.”
“Now,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Now remember everything I ever taught you.”
“Aren’t I?”
“Now and then.”
“Then,” he said. “Where did we know him?”
“We met him. Don’t you remember?”
“Look, let’s not remember anything and let’s not talk and let’s not talk and let’s not talk.”
Afterwards she said, “People used to get hungry even on the Normandie.”
“I’ll ring for the steward.”
“But this steward doesn’t know us.”
“He will.”
“No. Let’s go out and see the house. What have you painted?”
“What all nothing.”
“Don’t you have time?”
“What do you think?”
“But couldn’t you when you’re ashore?”
“What do you mean ashore?”
“Tom,” she said. They were in the living room now in the big old chairs and she had taken her shoes off to feel the matting on the floor. She sat curled in the chair and she had brushed her hair to please him, and because of what she knew it did to him, and she sat so it swung like a heavy silken load when her head moved.
“Damn you,” he said. “Darling,” he added.
“You damned me enough,” she said.
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“Why did you marry her, Tom?”
“Because you were in love.”
“It wasn’t a very good reason.”
“Nobody ever said it was. Especially not me. But I don’t have to make my errors and repent of them and then discuss them, do I?”
“If I want you to.”
The big black and white cat had come in and he rubbed against her leg.
“He’s got us mixed up,” Thomas Hudson said. “Or maybe he’s getting good sense.”
“It couldn’t be—?”
“Sure. Of course. Boy,” he called.
The cat came over to him and jumped into his lap. It did not matter which one it was.
“We might as well both love her, Boy. Take a good look at her. You’ll never see any more womens like that.”
“Is he the one you sleep with?”
“Yes. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“None. I like him better than the man I sleep with now and he’s just about as sad.”
“Do we have to talk about him?”
“No. And you don’t have to pretend you haven’t been at sea when your eyes are burned and there are white slit marks in the corners of them and your hair is as sun-streaked as though you used something on it—”
“And I walk with a rolling gait and carry a parrot on my shoulder and hit people with my wooden leg. Look, darling, I go to sea occasionally because I am a painter of marine life for the Museum of Natural History. Not even war must interfere with our studies.”
“They are sacred,” she said. “I’ll remember that lie and stick with it. Tom, you truly don’t care for her at all?”
“Not at all.”
“You still love me?”
“Didn’t I give any signs of it?”
“It could have been a role. The one of the always faithful lover no matter what whores I find you with. Thee hasn’t been faithful to me, Cynara, in thy fashion.”
“I always told you that you were too literate for your own good. I was through with that poem when I was nineteen.”
“Yes, and I always told you that if you would paint and work at it as you should, instead of making fantasies and falling in love with other people—”
“Marrying them, you mean.”
“No. Marrying them is bad enough. But you fall in love with them and then I don’t respect you.”
“That’s that old lovely one I remember. ‘And then I don’t respect you.’ I’ll buy that one at any price you put on it and take it out of circulation.”
“I respect you. And you don’t love her, do you?”
“I love you and respect you and I don’t love her.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad I’m so ill and that I missed the plane.”
“I really do respect you, you know, and I respect every damned fool thing you do or did.”
“And you treat me wonderfully and keep all your promises.”
“What was the last one?”
“I don’t know. If it was a promise you broke it.”
“Would you want to skip it, beauty?”
“I’d like to have skipped it.”
“Maybe we could. We skipped most things.”
“No. That’s untrue. There’s visible evidence on that. But you think making love to a woman is enough. You never think about her wanting to be proud of you. Nor about small tendernesses.”
“Nor about being a baby like the men you love and care for.”
“Couldn’t you be more needing and make me necessary and not be so damned give it and take it and take it away I’m not hungry.”
“What did we come out here for? Moral lectures?”
“We came out here because I love you and I want you to be worthy of yourself.”
“And of you and God and all other abstractions. I’m not even an abstract painter. You’d have asked Toulouse-Lautrec to keep away from brothels and Gauguin not to get the syphilis and Baudelaire to get home early. I’m not as good as they were but the hell with you.”
“I never was like that.”
“Sure you were. Along with your work. Your goddam hours of work.”
“I would have given it up.”
“Sure, I know you would. And sung in night clubs and I could be the bouncer. Do you remember when we planned that?”
“What have you heard from Tom?”
“He’s fine,” the man said and felt the strange prickling go over his skin.
“He hasn’t written me in three weeks. You’d think he’d write his mother. He always was so good about writing.”
“You know how it is with kids in a war. Or maybe they’re holding up all mail. Sometimes they do.”
“Do you remember when he couldn’t speak any English?”
“And he had his gang at Gstaad? And up in the Engadine and at Zug?”
“Do you have any new pictures of him?”
“Only that one you have.”
“Could we have a drink? What do you drink here?”
“Anything you want. I’ll go and find the boy. The wine is in the cellar.”
“Please don’t be gone long.”
“That’s a funny thing to say to each other.”
“Please don’t be gone long,” she repeated. “Did you hear it? And I never asked you to get in early. That wasn’t the trouble and you know it.”
“I know it,” he said. “And I won’t be gone long.”
“Maybe the boy could make something to eat, too.”
“Maybe he could,” Thomas Hudson said. Then to the cat, “You stay with her, Boise.”
Now, he thought. Why did I say that? Why did I lie? Why did I do that breaking it gently thing? Did I want to keep my grief for myself, as Willie said? Am I that sort of guy?
Well, you did it, he thought. How did you tell a mother that her boy is dead when you’ve just made love to her again? How do you tell yourself your boy is dead? You used to know all the answers. Answer me that.
There aren’t any answers. You should know that by now. There aren’t any answers at all.
“Tom,” her voice called. “I’m lonely and the cat isn’t you, even though he thinks he is.”
“Put him on the floor. The boy’s gone to the village and I’m getting ice.”
“I don’t care about the drink.”
“Neither do I,” he said and came back into the room walking on the tiled floor until he felt the matting. He looked at her and she was still there.