“I don’t know,” she said, looking defeated. “I don’t know what’s usual and unusual. I’m still trying to figure marriage out. Excuse me — I don’t want to keep embarrassing you by being naïve. I didn’t mean to embarass you by saying Rachel resembled you either—”
“I don’t think that’s what’s embarrassing us.”
“I keep blushing tonight, Paul. And you’re my husband.”
“We’re just both excited about this whole week.”
“Yes … I’m not saying I’m not happy.”
“We’re just not used to things working out.” He wondered if that could be it. “It’s something we’ll have to become adjusted to.”
“I’m a little drunken, darling, but you’re sober, and you mean that, don’t you? I keep having the strange feeling that our troubles are over. That I’ve been being born and born for years and years, and now I’m out. That’s a weak statement from a woman who’s supposed to be somebody else’s mother, I know it probably makes me sound ill-equipped … What I mean is that if things will calm down for a while, I will be equipped. I’m embarrassed about the past. I keep saying ‘embarrassed’ only because it’s the only damn word I can think of. I really want to talk to you, Paul. The last few days I’ve thought and thought, because they seem so significant … Can’t we begin to talk a little?”
“Sure.”
“I want you to tell me sometimes what you’re thinking. That’ll make all the difference—”
“Yes, but, Libby, you understand—” He knew he had opened this floodgate himself; he had allowed himself the pleasure of optimism, and now he was paying. It would all wind up, tonight or tomorrow or next week, with Libby crying.
“I don’t expect to know everything. If I can know … If I don’t have to stay home all day imagining it. Everything else is all right now — now it’s simply you and me that needs working out.” She was trying to grin; he was trying to collect himself. But he couldn’t; some inroad had been made. “I tell people about what you think,” Libby said, “and I don’t even know what you do think. Are we religious or aren’t we?” With that question she looked quite beaten again. “There — that’s one simple little thing—”
“You see, we’re not one person. We’re two.”
“—because we have to communicate somehow.”
“Of course—”
“I don’t think every marriage has to be lustful. I understand that differently now. I’ve made myself understand it differently. But if it’s not that, then it’s going to have to be something else.”
“Libby — you’ve had a lot of patience …”
Near tears, she answered, “Thank you.”
“I can only ask for a little more.” Another woman would, at this moment, have struck him, or left him; knowing this made him feel no more noble about his plea.
“Everything seems to be changing,” said Libby, “but you.”
“Then I must be changing too, Lib. I have changed.”
“How?”
He did not ever think of such easy solutions as Marge Howells; he did not think of solutions. “I don’t know,” was all he said.
“You still don’t love me, do you?”
“That’s an unfair … an inexact way to put it, for both of us.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
His responses were not satisfying either of them; he might just as well be silent. Libby asked, “Am I ruining our evening? Oh hell—”
They finished up what food remained on their plates.
“If you did believe in God,” she said, sliding her fork on the empty plate, “I wouldn’t feel it was an important question at all. You know that?”
“Because you do?”
“I don’t. I can’t. I don’t even want to. But you’re different. I don’t even know what you are — but I love you, Paul. And I don’t care that you don’t love me. I know you’re a good man.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t love you,” he began.
“I don’t care. Let’s pay the bill — let’s take a walk. I feel chaotic inside. I’m sorry if I’ve ruined our ten-dollar dinner.”
“Please,” she said, as they walked west toward the theater, “I can’t keep one foot in each camp any longer.”
She waited, but did not hear him ask that she explain. It was difficult to tell whether he was not listening, or was thinking, or had chosen simply to ignore her.
“I can’t keep provoking other men, Paul. I’m just spilling out everything — and I’m sorry. How much was dinner, eleven dollars? I know I’m responsible for wasting it. When I was a child I always wound up crying on my birthday — there would always be an argument, somehow or other. I had a way, I have a way, of ruining significant days. I suppose I shouldn’t have had that drink what with these kidneys inside me. I was just edgy enough, and now I’m just drunk enough — and I want you to talk to me. Please, we’ll walk all the way to the movie, and please, you just talk. Up at Cornell you could persuade me of anything. Persuade me now.”
“About what?”
“About you. I keep thinking that either you believe in God or you love me. It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to, but it comes into my head, and I might as well say it. Weak as I am, Paul, I’ve always said things. Blurted them out. It’s our sixth anniversary,” she said after a moment. “Persuade me, will you? You just can’t cut me out of your life!”
The air was cold; they were walking directly into a light wind. Neither looked at the other. “I can’t give you positive answers,” he said. “I’m not sure either way, about either.”
“Stop sparing me too, all right?”
“Libby, since my father’s death, since that trip, it’s been me who’s felt as though he’s been being born. Perhaps you have, but so have I. And I’ve not come out yet.”
“When—?”
“I don’t know.” He raised his hands impatiently. “I’m trying to speak indirectly …”
“Why do you go to the synagogue then? Why do we stay married? I keep thinking, Well he believes—”
“Faith is private; why do you have to feel so impassioned about mine?”
“When you came back from New York I thought everything was going to change. I thought religion—”
“I’m not so sure any more about the religion I came back with from New York. Things have gotten better. That’s precisely it.”
“Don’t think,” she said gloomily, “they’ve gotten that much better.”
“And that’s why I still go to synagogue. They haven’t gotten that much better.”
“I don’t think I’m understanding everything you’re saying. Are you saying that if we were both perfectly happy, then you wouldn’t go at all?”
“I suppose, in a way, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, what do you do there — do you pray? Why do you even go there? Are you praying for things to get better, so you can just forget all about it?”
“Things won’t get ‘better,’ Libby.”
“That’s not so! They have gotten better. If you would just give yourself up to us!”
“First you told me not to spare you—”
“But you’re being unreasonable. You don’t try to make things better. You’re distracted from me!”
“I’m never not thinking of you, Libby; that’s not so.”
“I’m not talking about thinking about me.”
“Look, I don’t understand my actions any more than anybody else. I’m not going to try to defend myself for not having the feelings you want me to.”
“I don’t want you to have any feelings but the normal ones.”
“If I can’t feel what I have to, I do what I have to.”