“WELL,” I SAID to C., “that ought to make things more ‘significant.’ ” We were in my library on the ground floor. C. had finished his bath and dressed, and we had adjourned to the library where he could drink a little wine, an excellent California burgundy that C. had not yet tried, and warm ourselves by the fireplace. It was a chilly evening, not yet cold enough, of course, to turn the furnace on, but quite cold enough to welcome a room’s being heated by an open fire. C. was seated in his favorite armchair, resting from the exhilaration of his bath, as was his wont, and I had taken my accustomed place by the fireplace, standing with one elbow resting on the mantel.
C. was wheezing slightly. “Ah, yes. Yes, that’s fine, fine.” He uncrossed and recrossed his feet at the ankles on the ottoman. “Tell me, if you don’t mind giving things away, tell me,” he wheezed, “do you personally agree with Hamilton’s rationalization for his … behavior toward his mother in particular … and women in general? After all, it implies an attitude toward women that’s not exactly fashionable, you know.” He almost chuckled. “You may get yourself into deep trouble with your female readers, heh-heh.”
Letting himself sink back into the chair, he went on. “Two questions. Did you indeed have ‘trouble with women’ later on? And did the understanding of women that you gained, apparently through Hamilton Stark, help you out of your trouble? Obviously the two questions become one, and obviously, again, that single question is an attempt to determine if your novel can be used as a pragmatic guide. For we all, if we are men, have ‘trouble with women’ from time to time and wish, especially at such times, that we understood them better.” C. smiled benevolently and nipped off the end of his cigar with his front teeth. I don’t think the burgundy suited him.
“Yes, yes, of course. But that was just a personal aside there, that business about my intimations. It really refers to nothing that should concern my readers.* Probably, because it does intrude on the narrator’s locus of attention, and therefore the reader’s locus of attention as well, I’ll revise it out of the final version of my manuscript. I will say this much, however: If you want to use this novel as a guidebook, then you’ll have to accept Hamilton Stark as your guide. That’s the only rule for reading it, the only condition I’ll attach — except of course that you know the language well enough to recognize a persona when you hear one.”
“Ho, ho!” C. laughed.
I refilled his glass. That should quiet him, I thought. I had expected him to respond, not to my slip of a reference to my own, later, personal difficulties (which are well outside the scope of this book), but rather to the peculiar juxtaposition of Hamilton’s confession regarding his mother in particular and women in general, and the sudden appearance in the narrative of his third wife, Jenny, the nurse. After all, if it’s specifically the custodial compulsion of some women that you find most disturbing, one would expect you to be especially wary of women who are custodial by profession — nurses, housekeepers, babysitters, prison guards, and so on, professions that have no product as issue. It certainly surprised me — Hamilton’s speedy courtship and marriage to Jenny, I mean, and, that night at the Bonnie Aire, his quick switch from the painful (to him) description of his relationship with his mother to his moves on Jenny. For, no sooner had she sat down at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic than Hamilton arose from our booth and joined her at the bar. He opened his conversation with a discussion of the weather, the evening’s dominant fact, and moved quickly to questions about her — where she was from, her job, her impressions of the town and its people, what she did with her earnings — to a suggestion that they dance (Hamilton is well known as a dancer, an excellent dancer), whereupon he played “On the Road to Mandalay” by Frank Sinatra on the juke box in the corner, and the two of them danced, slowly at first, in the oppressive heat, then in large, graceful circles around the small room, between tables, from the door in front to the bar at the back. They played “Moonlight in Vermont” by Andy Williams, and danced again, serious-faced, athletic, the two of them, a pleasure to watch, certainly, but somehow embarrassing, for, in this heat in the all-but-deserted tavern, with their somber yet intent expressions, it was a rather intimate dance they were doing. Then they played the theme from the movie Picnic, and I think we all, the bartender, the idle waitress, and I, became extremely self-conscious and turned away from the dancers, the bartender to a chore in the kitchen in back, the waitress to painting her fingernails pink, and I to a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to North American Birds that I happened to have in the pocket of my sports jacket, which I had removed some time earlier.
It was several minutes later, when, as I was committing to memory the call of the brown creeper (Certhia familiaris), whispering to myself “see-ti-wee-tu-wee,” that Hamilton interrupted and informed me that he and Jenny were going for a walk to the top of Blue Job, where it would be cooler, and if I wanted a lift back to his house, where I had parked my own car, he would provide it. I smiled hello politely to Jenny, who was sweating profusely, and said no, that I’d stay here awhile and would catch a ride out for my car later in the evening.
Hamilton seemed relieved, or at least he did not scowl as he usually did when I abridged or altered one of his suggestions with a plan of my own, and the two of them left together, as silently and intently as they had been dancing.
The next time I saw Hamilton, not three weeks later, he had married her. “Well, I married her,” he said.
“Who?”
“Jenny, the school nurse,” he said, as if I should have expected it. I did not, of course. Quite the opposite.
C., HOWEVER, WAS not surprised.
“Well, let me tell you, it surprised me!” I fairly shouted, startling him back into his chair.
“Goodness!”
Certainly it surprised me. Hamilton had but barely shed his second wife Annie, and he had only just met this new one. Also, because of her profession, as I have mentioned, and because of her rather ordinary life so far, which, I assumed, gave her a rather ordinary mind, and because of her appearance, this new one did not, to me, seem to be Hamilton’s “type.” She was a handsome woman, in an athletic way, but her overall appearance was Prussian, almost manly. Both of Hamilton’s previous wives had been physically delicate by comparison, even Annie, who did not start to gain weight until after she had married him. This woman seemed invulnerable, which surely only reinforced what I assumed (from her profession) was a custodial temperament. How could Hamilton have thought he would be happy with such a woman, especially so soon after the dissolution of his second marriage and that final encounter with his mother and the insights into what he called “smotherhood” gained there?
It wasn’t difficult to understand or to predict, my large friend assured me. According to him, though my even larger friend, Hamilton, might well be conscious of a particular image dominating his relationship with his mother, he might even be conscious that the same image had dominated his relationships with his other wives, and possibly his relationships with all women (an awareness, C. pointed out, that so far I had not granted Hamilton); in spite of this awareness, this self-consciousness, the man might still be compelled to go on living in its dominion.