He had learned early in life that there were the weak and the strong, the poverty-stricken and the rich, the outsiders and the insiders, the loved and the unloved, the chaste and the unchaste, all excellent paperback titles, he surmised, but all nonetheless direct opposites in a world of conflict and contrast. He had carried this a step further and theorized that every human relationship was based upon a principle of greater or lesser possession or involvement. One party had more money, or loved more, or hated more, or was more ambitious or more cruel or more passionate than the party who was his opposite number. And the other person, by simple inversion, did all these things, or was all these things, or owned all these things, to a lesser extent, the More-or-Less Principle of Matthew Anson Bridges. The remarkable thing about his theory was that it could be applied to a personal relationship as well as a business relationship, and it worked exceptionally well when applied to the institution known as marriage.
On his wedding night, Matthew learned that Amanda loved him more than he loved her. He also learned that he was more passionate, more skilled, and infinitely more interested in sex than was his new bride. He felt it was a good thing that she loved him more because he could not visualize the reverse situation, a situation that could make life intolerable for the person on the short end of the stick. Oh, he loved her, all right. He loved her the way any red-blooded boy would love a girl who was beautiful and desirable and witty and talented and provocative. He certainly loved her. He loved her even after he learned that her early-morning beauty was sometimes a bit faded, and her desirability was simply an accident of the flesh, and her wit was sometimes hopelessly rural, and her talent sometimes included the playing of Mozart, Mozart, Mozart all damn day long, and her provocation was all too often unconscious and led absolutely nowhere; he loved her. What the hell, these were two people living together, and she probably didn’t like the way he tied his pajama bottoms or brushed his teeth. There were bound to be little frictions that would arise when two separate and distinct personalities moved into the same house and began sharing the same bathroom. He expected this, and was not surprised by it. There certainly was nothing about Amanda that would send him running into the streets shrieking for a divorce, and he did love her. But he was very happy that she loved him more than he loved her.
He was also happy about his secret. The secret gave him strength somehow. He never alluded to it, never by the slightest hint of word or expression gave any clue to its existence. But it was there inside him, and he often thought of that Christmas Eve, and how he had saved Amanda on the big brass bed, and the secret and his memories of the secret always made him smile a little. He would look at Amanda his wife, a little naïve, a little unknowing, his beautiful Amanda, and smile. Her innocence sometimes amazed him. He often wished he could have at every jury trial four witnesses for the defense who looked like Amanda and talked like Amanda. He would have her sit in the witness chair and answer questions in her unaffected, honest, Midwestern voice, smiling slightly perhaps, her blue eyes wide, her long blond hair framing an angelic face. He would not coach her beforehand, but he knew she would unconsciously cross her legs at some point during the questioning, and every man on the jury would desire her and then feel an enormous sense of embarrassment and guilt for his lecherous notions. Amanda would continue answering the questions sweetly, totally unaware of the conflict she was causing. But they would believe her if she told them the earth was flat. He was certainly glad she loved him more than he loved her.
And yet, sometimes, he wondered if her innocence wasn’t a pose. He never wondered whether he was seeing her accurately, whether Amanda at twenty-five and fast approaching twenty-six was the same Amanda he had rescued in Gillian’s apartment. No, he never wondered that, and never concluded that he was cherishing his secret, nourishing his secret, in an attempt to keep Amanda the constant college girl in tweed skirt and loafers, the inviolate female, pure and virtuous, the symbol of some half-forgotten youth. He never wondered about her as a woman, never thought to ask how she felt about herself, never imagined her as anything but a rather beautiful creature who put on lipstick and brassière, who rustled in silk, an amazing young girl who was somehow his wife to watch, to hold, to love — but not as much as she loved him. He only wondered if she affected naïveté because she knew it was appealing. And yet, it seemed genuine enough. She seemed to have an enormous faith in her fellow man, believing everyone was as honest and as trustworthy as she knew herself to be, believing Talmadge was a real town with real people. Matthew himself had recognized Talmadge for the phony town it was the moment they attended their first cocktail party. He decided then and there that he did not want to become even slightly involved with this bunch of bogus small-towners whose hearts and roots were still in New York. He tried to understand what had attracted them to Talmadge at all. The town was picturesque, true, with some of the most spectacular countryside he had ever seen in his life, especially during the fall when the woods lining the roads became unimaginably beautiful. And the first view of the town as you came around the bend in the road, with the church sitting off to the right on the hill, and the university spires in the distance, and the shaded leafy main street, was undoubtedly worth a great deal to the picture-postcard industry.
But what was there about the town itself, other than its scenic worth, that attracted families from New York and New Haven, depositing them in a no man’s land that was halfway between both and close to neither? Was it indeed the university and the shadow of its subtle beauty, its intimations of a scholarly citizenry, a town of knowledgeable, lively, inquiring people? Perhaps so, but its presence seemed only a deterrent to Matthew. Nor had the prices of houses and acreage been designed to encourage impetuous spending. So what was it? He pondered it for a long time, and when he thought he knew, when he thought he’d figured out what brought people to this fake-front town with its fake ideals and fake morality and fake standards, he tried the theory on Amanda, and she sat and looked at him in shocked wonder, as if he were suggesting they walk over to the Talmadge graveyard and disinter a few bodies. Her innocence stared out at him in disbelief. No, this was wrong. No, Matthew, you are doing the town an injustice.
“I’m reading it correctly, Amanda dear,” he said, “and if you didn’t look at the world through those rose-colored glasses of yours, you’d realize that this town and the people in this town are as phony as that exhibit they’re holding at the library this week.”
“And what’s so phony about the exhibit?” Amanda asked.
“If you can’t see it, Amanda...”
“No, I can’t, and I wish you’d explain it to me. We’re having a showing of old kitchen utensils and things. Now, what’s so phony about that?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just thought your postcards were very funny.” He grinned, remembering the cards she had mailed just the day before. He had picked them up from the hall table and leafed through them, smiling when he read the first one, and then bursting into laughter by the time he reached the fifth.
DEAR LOIS,