And, finally, there was Rebecca.
Her sudden outburst Thursday evening at dinner had upset him considerably. He loved her deeply, and yet it was a kind of reverent, detached love: the love of an art connoisseur for a masterpiece which he alone possesses. From the moment he had met her, Hughes had never been able to think of her in sexual terms; the act of physically entering her body had never given him pleasure or satisfaction-just as fondling the fragile surfaces of his masterpiece would give the art connoisseur no pleasure and no satisfaction. Sex for Matt Hughes was a savage, primitive urge totally disassociated from love. It was sweating flesh and moaning frenzy and animalistic release with women like Peggy Tyler, women who instilled no reverence in him, women who dazzled his senses and sated completely his carnal hunger.
He wanted only to have Rebecca near him, to know that she was there and that she was his; he wanted only to believe in her and worship her in some of the same way he believed in and worshiped God. He wished desperately that he could explain this to her, but of course he had never tried; she would not have understood. And he lived in constant fear that she would find out about his continual affairs-as she had found out about the Soda Grove waitress several years ago-and that she would, instead of once again forgiving him, decide to leave him. He couldn’t bear that. But still he yielded each time the primitive forces inside him demanded it, as if he were two different men, as if he were a kind of sensually emotional schizophrenic.
Did she suspect the current affair with Peggy? Or had her outburst Thursday only been the result of neglect and some of those same base desires which were present in all beings? The latter, of course; he refused to think otherwise. After he had recovered from his initial shock, he had tried to make himself go upstairs and take Rebecca into his arms and make love to her, but he had not been able to do it. He had never been able to correlate the primitive with the reverent; it was one or the other, and he simply could not touch or devote himself to his wife during those times when he was pouring out his lust into the bodies of other females.
The situation had grown worse over the past two days. Rebecca had not spoken a word to him since Thursday, and the atmosphere at home was strained and uncomfortable. The careful juxtaposition of his two lives had been momentarily and maddeningly imbalanced; he needed both Rebecca and Peggy now, he needed the status quo, and he did not have any of them. There had to be an answer, a way to restabilize things, but he had not as yet been able to figure out what it was.
Maude Fredericks had already opened the Mercantile, as she did on most mornings, when Hughes arrived. He went into his office and put through a call to Soda Grove. The slide status, at least, was still quo: progress slow but steady, no fresh snow slides to complicate matters. He came out into the store again, built a fire in the potbellied stove, and went to work.
The day seemed to drag on interminably. Rebecca and Peggy, Peggy and Rebecca-first one and then the other, endlessly cycling in his thoughts. He found himself wishing Peggy would come in and was both relieved and disappointed when she did not. He thought of calling Rebecca but didn’t; there would have been no point in it, there was nothing he could say to her yet. Depression formed inside him like a thick, damp mist.
At four o’clock Hughes stopped trying to find things to do to occupy himself, left Maude to close up, and drove home through the same light, steady snow which had fallen all day. When he entered the house, it seemed filled with a tangible emptiness, and he knew immediately that Rebecca was not there. Gone into the village, he thought; probably to visit with Ann Tribucci. He listened to the empty silence and felt his depression deeper. In the kitchen he made a light scotch and water and took it into his study and sat tipped back in his leather recliner, sipping the drink and brooding.
And after a time he began to think about Peggy again, about Tuesday night in the Whitewater motel room. His scrotum tightened painfully, and sitting there, he had a full and pulsing erection: the primitive in him screaming for her-now, today, tonight. But there was no way, not until the pass was cleared. Too dangerous for them to meet in Hidden Valley and no place to meet even if they dared to risk it. She couldn’t come here to his house, and he couldn’t go to hers, and the Mercantile was no good because of its central village location. No other place Mule Deer Lake, he thought suddenly. The Taggart cabin.
Hughes leaned forward in the recliner, pulling it into its upright position. The Taggart cabin. Yes-and it wasn’t all that dangerous if they were very, very careful. But did they dare? Would Peggy be willing? Some of the depression had evaporated now, and an almost boyish recklessness throbbed inside him. They could get away with it, and he needed her, he needed her. Call Peggy, call her right now, take the chance…
Impulsively he stood up and started across the study to the extension phone on his old rolltop desk. And stopped halfway there, touched by abrupt fear. No; it was utter foolishness. They could be seen, they could be recognized, and what then? The affair would become public knowledge, and Rebecca would leave him for certain then; she would have no alternative. Public disgrace, his position in the valley irreparably damaged-he could lose everything that mattered in his life. Besides, it would only be another few days until the pass was open again. They could resume their Whitewater meetings in a week or so, perhaps next Friday or Saturday night. He could wait that long, couldn’t he?
He felt the burning, demanding ache in his genitals and was not sure that he could.
Rebecca, he thought with a kind of desperation, if only I could make love to Rebecca tonight. It would solve both his immediate problems; it would make things all right again. But the savagery of his need made it impossible; it was Peggy his body craved, Peggy, Peggy, and he would be completely and unquestionably impotent if he Impotent.
Impotence!
That was the answer to his marital dilemma; it had been the answer all along. Of course: impotence, it was so obvious he had never even thought of it before. All he had to do was to tell Rebecca that certainly he wanted to make love to her, but that it was; at the moment, physically impracticable-he had for some time been suffering from sexual incapacity. He had wanted to tell her long before now, he would say, but had been too ashamed to admit it; he was seeing a doctor in Soda Grove, taking hormone treatments to rectify the problem-although to date they had been frustratingly ineffective. She would believe him; there was no reason why she shouldn’t believe him. She would be sympathetic and understanding, and there would be no more outbursts, no more periods of uncomfortable silence between them. Then, when the affair with Peggy came to its inevitable conclusion in another few weeks and he was once again able to bring himself to make love to his wife, he would tell Rebecca that the treatments had finally produced positive results. It would be just as simple as that.
Hughes felt immediate relief-one problem taken care of, he was sure of it-but the mitigation was tempered by his urgent desire for Peggy. He thought again of the Taggart cabin, of how easy it would be for them to use it as a meeting place. Nothing could go wrong, nothing would go wrong; the gamble was no greater than any of the others he had taken during the past seven years, and in that time no one in Hidden Valley had suspected a thing, they would have no reason to suspect anything now. A cautious hour or two, that was all, and just tonight, never again in the valley. After tonight he would be able to wait until next Friday with no difficulty at all. If he went through with it, there would be no more immediate quandaries with his personal life; he could have Rebecca and Peggy and the status quo, all his again and all tonight.