The Chimera
WHEN I WAS young and used to go to the circus, there was an act called the Treviso Twins—Maria and Rosita. Rosita used to balance herself on the head of Maria, skulltop to skulltop, and be carried around the ring. Maria, as a result of this strenuous exercise, had developed short, muscular legs and a comical walk, and whenever I see my wife walking away from me I remember Maria Treviso. My wife is a big woman. She is one of the five daughters of Colonel Boysen, a Georgia politician, who was a friend of Calvin Coolidge. He went to the White House seven times, and my wife has a heart-shaped pillow embroidered with the word LOVE that was either the work of Mrs. Coolidge or was at one time in her possession. My wife and I are terribly unhappy together, but we have three beautiful children, and we try to keep things going. I do what I have to do, like everyone else, and one of the things I have to do is to serve my wife breakfast in bed. I try to fix her a nice breakfast, because this sometimes improves her disposition, which is generally terrible. One morning not long ago, when I brought her a tray she clapped her hands to her face and began to cry. I looked at the tray to see if there was anything wrong. It was a nice breakfast—two hard-boiled eggs, a piece of Danish, and a Coca-Cola spiked with gin. That’s what she likes. I’ve never learned to cook bacon. The eggs looked all right and the dishes were clean, so I asked her what was the matter. She lifted her hands from her eyes—her face was wet with tears and her eyes were haggard—and said, in the Boysen-family accent, “I cannot any longer endure being served breakfast in bed by a hairy man in his underwear.”
I took a shower and dressed and went to work, but when I came home that night I could see that things were no better; she was still offended by my appearance that morning.
I cook most of the dinners on a charcoal grill in the back yard. Zena doesn’t like to cook and neither do I, but it’s pleasant being out of doors, and I like tending the fire. Our neighbors, Mr. Livermore and Mr. Kovacs, also do a lot of cooking outside. Mr. Livermore wears a chef’s hat and an apron that says “Name Your Pizen,” and he also has a sign that says DANGER. MEN COOKING. Mr. Kovacs and I don’t wear costumes, but I think we’re more serious-minded. Mr. Kovacs once cooked a leg of lamb and another time a little turkey. We had hamburger that night, and I noticed that Zena didn’t seem to have any appetite. The children ate heartily, but as soon as they were through—perhaps they sensed a quarrel—slipped off into the television room to watch the quarrels there. They were right about the quarrel. Zena began it.
“You’re so inconsiderate,” she thundered. “You never think of me.”
“I’m sorry, darling,” I said. “Wasn’t the hamburger done?” She was drinking straight gin, and I didn’t want a quarrel.
“It wasn’t the hamburger—I’m used to the garbage you cook. What I have for dinner is no longer of any importance to me. I’ve learned to get along with what I’m served. It’s just that your whole attitude is so inconsiderate.”
“What have I done, darling?” I always call her darling, hoping that she may come around.
“What have you done? What have you done?” Her voice rose, and her face got red, and she got to her feet and, standing above me, she screamed, “You’ve ruined my life, that’s what you’ve done.”
“I don’t see how I’ve ruined your life,” I said. “I guess you’re disappointed—lots of people are—but I don’t think it’s fair to blame it all on your marriage. There are lots of things I wanted to do—I wanted to climb the Matterhorn—but I wouldn’t blame the fact that I haven’t on anyone else.”
“You. Climb the Matterhorn. Ha. You couldn’t even climb the Washington Monument. At least I’ve done that. I had important ambitions. I might have been a businesswoman, a TV writer, a politician, an actress. I might have been a congresswoman!”
“I didn’t know you wanted to be a congresswoman,” I said.
“That’s the trouble with you. You never think of me. You never think of what I might have done. You’ve ruined my life!” Then she went upstairs to her bedroom and locked the door.
Her disappointment was painfully real, I knew, although I thought I had given her everything I had promised. The false promises, the ones whose unfulfillment made her so miserable, must have been made by Colonel Boysen, but he was dead. None of her sisters was happily married, and how disastrously unhappy they had been never struck me until that night. I mean, I had never put it together. Lila, the oldest, had lost her husband while they were taking a stroll on a high cliff above the Hudson. The police had questioned her, and the whole family, including me, had been indignant about their suspiciousness, but mightn’t she have given him a little push? Stella, the next oldest, had married an alcoholic, who systematically drank himself out of the picture. But Stella had been capricious and unfaithful, and mightn’t her conduct have hastened his death? Jessica’s husband had been drowned mysteriously in Lake George when they had stopped at a motel and gone for a night swim. And Laura’s husband had been killed in a freak automobile accident while Laura was at the wheel. Were they murderesses, I wondered—had I married into a family of incorrigible murderesses? Was Zena’s disappointment at not being a congresswoman powerful enough to bring her to plot my death? I didn’t think so. I seemed much less afraid for my life than to need tenderness, love, loving, good cheer—all the splendid and decent things I knew to be possible in the world.
The next day at lunch, a man from the office told me that he had met a girl named Lyle Smythe at a party and that she was a tart. This was not exactly what I wanted, but my need to reacquaint myself with the tenderer members of the sex was excruciating. We said goodbye in front of the restaurant, and then I went back in to look up Lyle Smythe’s number in the telephone book and see if I could make a date. One of the light bulbs in the lamp that illuminated the directory was dead and the print seemed faint and blurred to me. I found her name, but it was on the darkest part of the page, where the binding and the clasp drew the book together, and I had trouble reading the number. Was I losing my sight? Did I need glasses or was it only because the light was dim? Was there some irony in the idea of a man who could no longer read a telephone book trying to find a mistress? By moving my head up and down like a duck I found that I could read the exchange, and I struck a match to read the number. The lighted match fell out of my fingers and set fire to the page. I blew on the fire to extinguish it, but this only raised the flames, and I had to beat out the fire with my hands. My first instinct was to turn my head around to see if I had been watched, and I had been, by a tall, thin man wearing a plastic hat cover and a blue transparent raincoat. His figure startled me. He seemed to represent something—conscience, or evil—and I went back to the office and never made the call.
That night, when I was washing the dishes, I heard Zena speak to me from the kitchen door. I turned and saw her standing there, holding my straight razor. (I have a heavy beard and shave with a straight-edged razor.) “You’d better not leave things like this lying around,” she shouted. “If you know what’s good for you, you’d better not leave things like this lying around. There are plenty of women in the world who would cut you to ribbons for what I’ve endured …” I wasn’t afraid. What did I feel? I don’t know. Bewilderment, crushing bewilderment, and some strange tenderness for poor Zena.