“Martha, hang on. Try to hang on. Somehow Theresa Haug, the Herzes—”
“Oh Gabe,” she wept, “the hell with Theresa Haug. The hell with all that Armagnac. I want you to marry me or give me up. I’m too old to screw around like this.”
4
The first knowledge she had that day was that their room was swelling with a gleaming gray January light, but she kept her eyes closed to it and she waited. Eyes closed there was no crippled chest of drawers across the way, no half-painted dresser, no smelly rug rolled up in the corner, no curled paint petals flaking off the ceiling onto the pillow; there was only the knowledge that it was morning, a new day, and with it all the possibilities. Some mornings he touched her. Most mornings she touched him and then he touched her. This morning she was willing to wait. She would wait. She made a hmmm sound to let him know she was awake. But she sensed nothing new against her skin, nothing but sheets and blanket and the frail sun. She rolled over, making another sound, a slow moan of lust and comfort, a request for a simple pleasure. She continued to keep her eyes closed. Then she thought (after a decent interval): There are compromises to be made in life. One can’t expect everything. He is a faithful, hard-working, dear, terribly talented, intelligent, hard-luck man. It isn’t his fault … She moved her head an inch closer to his pillow, and then her whole body, but casually, as though she were only being tossed toward him by the oceanic process of awakening. The sun caught her full in the face. Good. She had to go all the way to the Near North Side and at least it wouldn’t be miserably cold. If, however, he touched her, if his mouth slid over her breasts, if his body pressed her down, then she would not have to go at all. She didn’t want to really, even if it was sunny. He need only reach out … But the compromises — she must compromise a little. One must begin to, certainly, at twenty-five. One couldn’t go through life whining and demanding, day in and day out. She knew certain things about herself that she did not like: she cried too much; she was envious, she was always sick — she was a hopeless hypochondriac, in fact. She knew she had the wrong values. She thought about money all the time. She thought about nice clothes. She thought about nice furniture. She had always imagined that when she was married she would have a dinner service for twelve of Spode china. Spode. The word, like sun on the skin, warmed her, had a dreamy happy glow about it — she would be married, and her husband would be tall (as he was), and he would be kind and soft-spoken and strong and full of integrity (as he was), and dark (as he was), and there would be a long dinner table with a white cloth and candles, and the Spode, and weekend guests to whom she would call out, “Extra bath towels are in the linen closet just outside your room,” and beyond the kitchen would be a garden of her own, with chrysanthemums and nasturtiums and petunias and fresh herbs, which she would cut with scissors for their salad. In the early evenings, when her husband had turned off the lamp in his study (and he did have a study, and in it he was writing a book), she would take him out through the kitchen door into the garden, and in the blending of the earth’s dusk and their contentment, they would hold hands and smell her flowers … But at the age of twenty-five one had to begin to understand about compromise. Though she was not proud of herself for very many things (she would have to admit that too when she went downtown: that she was not proud of herself, which made her feel terrible) still she might have reason to become proud were she able to learn to compromise, and to like it. Yes, the second half as well, for surely if one didn’t like it, if one couldn’t stand it … But one must stand it. And it was simple. She had only to take it upon herself to move an inch and another inch and then — her eyes still closed — another inch and one more, and now reach out with her fingers, and now lay her hand, softly, lovingly … He was not there. She opened her eyes. No Paul. Only his pajamas lying on the floor. She heard him making breakfast in the kitchen. Make me! Make love to me! I’ll make breakfast!
To the sun, filtering through the grimy windows, she said, “Why can’t he just kiss me on the lips?”
She got out of bed, thinking: I want everything.
Over her nightgown she put on a robe, the same blue flannel one her parents had given her when she’d gone off to Cornell ages ago. In the kitchen he was standing over the stove, waiting for the coffee; he was already dressed in his suit and tie, and his briefcase was on a chair. The table was set neatly for two, knife on the right, fork on the left. This morning he had cut her orange in quarters and there were two pills beside her bread plate. Dutiful man, he had even folded the paper napkins in half. She did not know of any other husband who so served his wife. He had always worked so hard — at first, before their marriage, for himself, to make money for school, to get good grades; then after their marriage for the two of them. But from the back she saw that his shoulders were still unbent. She came up behind him on her toes and put her arms around his spindly body, her face in the faintly odorous material of his jacket. For some reason their closets smelled the way closets might in which very old maids kept their belongings. And there was nothing to be done about it; she had already tried air-wick and cologne and moth spray, but apparently it was something in the very plaster of the house.
Paul jumped. “Oh Jesus — you scared me.”
“I’m sorry. Good morning. It’s me — sunshine.” She intended her merry words to be at once winning and self-critical, a reference to the night before.
“Honey, please put on slippers,” Paul said. “The floors are cold.”
That simple remark of his almost drove her mad. “Good morning, though … first.”
“Good morning, Libby.”
She looked up into his eyes and found nothing there to make her doubt that he was a generous man. And she loved him! He was so much more adult and genuine, more in contact with life’s realities, than she could ever hope to be.
“Please,” he said, kissing her above the eye, when she lingered beside him, “go put on slippers. I’ve got a class in half an hour.”
“Yes,” she said; she fled toward the hall on her toes, and then she turned, and with her face lifted, with her heart beating, she said, “Paul, isn’t it a wonderful day? It’s sunny for a change. It seems like a very significant day—” That was as much as she could manage to tell him.
She went into their bedroom and from beneath the dresser kicked out her slippers. While she was there she thought she would quickly make the bed. It will please him to see me peppy and active; it will make this dreary room orderly, if not beautiful. But the whole day was before her, no job to go to any longer, no night classes to prepare for, nothing she really had to read, so it might even be a good thing to save the bed for a little later in the morning. She could begin painting those chairs in the kitchen — then she remembered she hadn’t the whole day after all. She had to go downtown. She ran into the kitchen then to be near her husband. If anything significant was going to happen today, it was going to have to happen between them, and in less than thirty minutes. There was no time to waste making beds or worrying over painting chairs. Paint wouldn’t make them look any better anyway. There was no way of cheering this place up. Only Paul.