“We have to consummate our marriage,” she said, her eyes a-twinkle. “If we don’t, you could get an annulment. I don’t want you to get an annulment, Harvey.”
“But our marriage is bigamous to begin with.”
“Still,” she said, “I don’t want us to get an annulment. So let’s make sure we can’t.”
We made doubly sure.
We made very doubly sure. We knocked ourselves out, and we had a wonderful time.
And afterward she said: “That was wonderful, Harvey.”
“Which?”
“Both. This what every woman should have. This is just what a wedding night ought to be.”
Which put me in mind of my own wedding night, which in turn was not all that a wedding night should be. Not by a long shot, and not by a damn sight, and not by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t feel like being put in mind of my wedding night with Helen, but Jodi was sleeping the sleep of the just, or the just-laid, and I was somehow not sleepy. I closed my eyes, and that didn’t work either.
Now if you’ve been following this little narrative closely, and if you’ve also duly taken note of my reference to Helen Christopher, the frigid witch of the Ramapos, you may have come up with a jim-dandy question. You just may be wondering, as you sit or stand or lie there, just what in the world made me to do a stupid thing like getting married.
A good question.
It started, I suppose, after Saundra and I came to a parting of ways. Saundra, tasteful though she was in bed (and tasty though she was, and willing though she was to do tasting of her own) was too much a product of Doughboy, Nebraska and too much a case-study in belligerent bohemianism to be a lasting thing in my life.
She ran out on me, she did, ran off to Provincetown with a lunatic bearded painter who drew watercolors of ax handles and similarly startling items. They didn’t even look like ax handles, either. And, while I was a bit pained at being jilted, I was also a bit thrilled at being Saundraless. Harv Boy was free again, footloose and fancy-free.
And, although I didn’t know it, I was on the road to Helen.
There were other girls between Saundra and Helen. Their names and faces have faded from memory, but I know one thing about them all. Each was not so delightful as Saundra, and each was better than Helen. I can be very sure of the final part of that sentence. If any woman were ever worse than Helen, I am sure I would not forget her so easily.
I was living the fine life of a bachelor, and I was secure at MGSR&S, having proved my dedication to the advertising profession by planting a stiletto in Faggy Fehringer’s gray flannel back. I was living Riley’s proverbial life, and do you know what I did?
I decided I was making a mistake.
It was the old Mad-Ave hard sell, I suppose. All my colleagues were married men, most of them with children. Most of my colleagues lived in Fairfield County or Westchester county or Rockland County, and all of that group chatted amiably about crabgrass and commuting and the club car of the old 8:02.
And I was left out.
The others were also married, only they lived in cooperative apartments in Manhattan, and they chatted amiably about bomb shelters and maintenance fees and such.
So again I was left out. I was there, snug in my Barrow Street bunghole, sleeping with every passable woman who crossed my path, and envying the married ones their security and stability and stodginess. I looked out at Barrow Street and wished I had crabgrass to mow. I looked at my current paramour and wished she would have children so that we could go to PTA meetings.
The beginning of the end—
When a man shops for a car, he determines just how much money he is going to spend, and he determines where he can get the best car for his money, and then he goes out and test-drives that car. If he likes what he’s driving, he buys. If not, he keeps looking.
You would think that a man would be just as careful when choosing a wife. If nothing else, there’s the fact that you can’t trade in your wife every two years. If you do, the expense is overpowering. Your wife is most usually a lifetime acquisition, for either your lifetime or hers, and such an acquisition should be acquired intelligently. A man should be careful, finding out first just what he wants, and then finding the girl to fill those requirements to the nth degree.
I was a poor shopper. In the first place, I selected a girl whom, I thought, I had much in common with. I based this guess on the fact that she, too, was in advertising. I ignored her personality, and I ignored her background, and in short I ignored everything other than the fact that she was a minor copywriter at Stafford & Bean, a competing firm a few doors down the Avenue. She was a copywriter, a rising star with a college diploma and a pretty face. Obviously, I would always love to look at that face across the crabgrass.
Ah, indeed.
Her name, as you may well have guessed by now, was Helen. Helen Wall, to be exact, and there was never a harder wall to climb, including Hadrian’s and the Great one of China. I courted her like a goofy gallant. I took her to dinners and shows and hip cocktail lounges. I even, God save me, sent her flowers. She was asthmatic, as it turned out, and the roses I plied her with made her break out with a horrid rash. There’s something symbolic there, I’d say.
Helen Wall, an insurmountable wall, and a wall I simply could not mount. I committed a cardinal error here. I bought a car without test-driving it, and few men are so foolish. But at the time it was easy to delude myself. Every thin-blooded American male has been told from the cradle that he wants a virginal bride, and in weak moments some of us believe this pap. I managed to con myself into thinking thusly. Helen was virginal as the driven snow, I would say in odd moments to myself. She shall be a perfect helpmate, a wife I can truly respect. Why a square inch of traditionness tissue should make her worthy of respect is now outside my ken, but at the time it seemed flawlessly logical.
I proposed, on bended knee.
She accepted, with tears in her eyes. We were married, she in a white gown and I in a rented tuxedo, and we cruised Bermudaward on our honeymoon. We spent our wedding night on the ship, and quite a night it was...
But I digress. To Hell, for the moment, with Helen. Let us get back to Jodi, my newer bride.
We awoke the next morning, arm in arm, and we greeted the day as days should be greeted. Then, an hour or so later, we got out of our big double bed, took a big double shower together, dressed, and drove to New York. I dropped her at the hotel and told her to call Al for the cargo and the airlines office for reservations to Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, I hurried for my passport. It was in a safe deposit box at a Fifth Avenue bank along with such invaluable documents as my life insurance policies and a few old savings bonds. I took it back to the hotel and rushed upward in the elevator to Jodi.
She had a strange light in her eyes.
“Al was already here,” she said. “He came and went, sort of.”
“Great! He leave the cargo?”
“He left the cargo,” Jodi said. “Harvey, I didn’t know about this. I honestly didn’t. If I had, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
She opened the door wider and stepped inside. I walked inside. “Our cargo,” she said, pointing.
On the bed, smiling, was a five-year old boy.
“I didn’t know about this,” Jodi was saying. “We have to take him, and I think it’s too late to back out, and I’m sorry I got you into this, Harvey. I’m awfully sorry.”
I looked at Jodi, and at the moppet. He was a cute kid, tow-headed and blue-eyed. The eyes were wide now.