Ex-wifePart 10
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Part 10
“All right. I got a raise. How’s the newspaper business?”
“I got a raise, too. Have another Martini?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I felt cold and dry, like a Martini. I had sat across a narrow table from Pete hundreds of times before, and felt as close to him as if the lovely hardness of his arms were around me. Now there was a distance compounded of lies and quarrels and separate adventures. I had not known there would be such distance. Perhaps it could be bridged. (Do not hurry him—try to think. I cannot. I want to say, “Take me back; give me another chance, so I’ll come alive again.”)
I took out a handkerchief, so that I could look at myself in the mirror of my purse. My face was composed. That was good.
“Have you replaced me yet, Pat?” He grinned, a friendly enough grin.
“No.” (I have to do something about this. I do not know whether it will be right or stupid, but I have to do something.)
“Haven’t you missed me, really, Pete?”
“A person misses anyone that’s been around as long as you. I’m convalescing slowly.”
I grew a little angry, and knew that I should not. “How’s your Great Romance getting on, Pete?”
“Which one?”
The waiter took away the soup. Pete filled my wine glass.
“Hilda-with-the-pure-soul, I mean?”
“Oh, that’s all shot to hell; hadn’t you heard?” His voice was entirely casual. He ate fish with evident enjoyment. (“The sauces are good here, aren’t they, Pat?”)
“No—I hadn’t heard— What happened?”
“I don’t mind telling you. The little girl raised outstanding hell one night I was tight because I kissed someone whose name I don’t even remember, dancing. She put on a show next day because I kept her waiting ten minutes and came in smelling beery. Finally, all in one evening, she tried to get me to promise to stop smoking, kissing, and drinking. God, what a possessive woman! So I told her I couldn’t make the grade, and she told me you were about what I deserved. Does that please you?”
“Not unduly.”
I finished my glass of wine, and drew a long breath. Pete filled the glass again. “You are a grand-looking person, Pat.” But his voice was still casual.
(Well, over the top. Nothing to lose; might gain something.) “And where does the exit of Hilda leave me, Peter?”
“As you were.”
The waiter brought chicken.
“What does that mean, Pete?”
He smiled, gently, as if it were a matter of no importance.
He said, “Through.”
Neither of us said anything for a bit—just went on eating chicken. Pete spoke first.
“I thought it would be pleasant to see you, to dine with you. It is. I’m fond of you; think you’re charming looking, have a lovely voice and hands and all that. And I’m sorry I put you through such scenes. You can’t help being what you are, I suppose. Don’t worry about it; it was my mistake in the first place. Have some more wine. . . . And by the way, anytime you want a divorce, tell me and I’ll get things arranged. I’m in no hurry myself of course. In fact I begin to feel that the situation, as it is, affords me a certain protection. . . .”
I couldn’t talk for a minute. Then, “What do you mean by ‘being what I am?’”
“Oh come on, Pat. What’s the use of going into that?”
“Why not?”
“I refuse to call you a slut when I’m taking you to dinner.”
I was very angry. “No more of a slut than Judith!”
“You are well informed, aren’t you? Perhaps you are no more of one, but she never pretended to be anything else—to me.”
I was hopeless then. This distance seemed occupied by a tangible barricade between us. Could it be bridged? I could not think how. Two tears dropped down into my salad. I hoped Peter did not see them. One had one’s pride. No, that was silly. I did not have any pride, because I cared. I just felt I ought to have some.
His voice was elder-brotherly affectionate. “I didn’t mean to make you cry, Pat. Don’t think about it any more. Have a cognac and benedictine mixed for a liqueur? You used to like them?”
“Thank you.” I looked at him. I stretched my hand to where his hand lay on the table. Perhaps if he let me touch him . . .
He slipped his hand over mine, and then noticed the emerald ring. “Oh God, Pat,” he said, “do you remember?”
We talked about London; the first apartment we had had there; dinners for two I had managed to buy for a dollar; things far away and long ago.
When we went out, he tucked my arm under his, and we walked through the Spring evening, looking in shop windows, making each other laugh by remembering things we had done and jested at when we were awfully young.
He was twenty-five and I was twenty-four; and we talked about “when we were awfully young.” I asked him—I was shy about it—to come see my apartment. He said he would like to, so we took a cab, and found that we were hanging on to each other’s hands rather desperately.
There was no light in Lucia’s apartment when we passed. I went straight on up, and locked the door at the stair-head. I did not want Lucia and strange people coming in and talking about plays they had been to, when I could talk to Peter instead.
But I must think of something to talk about. I gave him cigarettes. He was looking at me as if he loved to look at me; and yet, as if it hurt him.
“Peter, I’ve been meeting playwrights and columnists and a painter who’s going to do my portrait, and more funny people . . .”
“Yes, I suppose you would go in for celebrity chasing.”
That stopped me. I wished we were somewhere other than this apartment that had nothing to do with Peter and me.
“Sorry, Pat. I didn’t mean to be disagreeable.”
“It’s all right.” (He had not kissed me, yet. Maybe, when he did, it might be really all right. It might bridge the distance.)
He walked up and down. He was just a little drunk. I was afraid I would say something stupid, so I said nothing. He began to talk. “Before I was in love with you, Pat, I was rather hard hit by that girl Natalie. Do you remember? I’ve mentioned her. Promtrotter and so on; I wrote verses to her and she ditched me for Gerard, because he had a hell of a lot of money. It was sensible of her—she was five years older than I anyway, and it was just a case of calf-love, as far as I was concerned. But I took it relatively hard. . . . Then I met you. . . .”
I felt tired. Where was this leading?
“You looked so clean, there was something—it’s an old-fashioned adjective, but I used to think of you as dewy, Patricia.”
He stood with his hands in his pockets staring at me; not angrily, not as if he hated me, and certainly not as if he loved me; just puzzled, and as if he were a little tired too.
“Pat, would you mind telling me . . . was I a very inadequate lover? Was that why you slept around?”
I felt as I imagine a man feels when he has been knocked out, and is just coming back to consciousness. What had I done to Peter?
“Peter, my dearest, no!—Could I try to explain just what happened, really?”
I would tell about Rickey—Rickey could go to hell, if it would wipe that look, that tired look, off Pete’s face.
He smiled a one-sided smile.
“No, honestly, Pat, I’d rather not hear a new version. I wouldn’t believe it. You’ve presented several, in the last eight or nine months; do you remember?”
“But this is the truth.”
“They all were at the moment.”
He would not believe me, anymore. What was the use?
“Peter, would you please kiss me at once?”
He came over instantly. We kissed. I felt at last as if the last year just had not happened.
Then he picked me up; put me on the new, decorative daybed; walked across the room; scrutinized a print he had seen before,—scrutinized his life and mine, and our generation that everyone had been yelling about since we had grown up, and before; scrutinized his opinions of immortality, for all I know. His expression was sufficiently remote.
He turned. He looked completely unhappy. He said, “Christ, once I thought you were a sort of miracle evolved for my special benefit.” He stood staring at me.
I said nothing.
“Well, you remain, the pleasantest woman I ever knew—in bed.”
Why protest? Let him say all the things he wanted; if they made him feel better. They did not mean anything—just words.
His voice was unsteady now.
“I want to kiss you again.”
“Yes,” I said.
Was this what I had wanted really, this Peter asleep with his head against my breast like a child—this passion that was supposed to lessen first of all things in marriage, but with us had outlasted everything else, so that it was now the only way we had of talking to each other? No, I did not want this, much. I wanted Peter as he used to be.
Still, perhaps this could be used in recovering the rest. In the morning, we would dress and go to breakfast somewhere, and I would be so gay and amusing at breakfast that Pete would hate to leave, and would come back, tomorrow, or certainly the next day, and then, gradually . . . I felt quite warm and happy. It would be lovely, going to breakfast with Peter.
Judith? Something in me hardened, as I lay with Peter’s tumbled head on my shoulder. . . . I survived Hilda, perhaps I could survive Judith too. . . . I went to sleep tranquilly.
But when I woke in the morning Peter was gone.
I did not believe it for a minute; I did not believe that Pete could leave without a word, as if I were some girl he had met in a speakeasy the night before; and not found very diverting. Peter would not do that to me. He had, though, done just that.
I had wanted to go to breakfast with him; I had wanted so to go to breakfast with him. I began to cry; and got up and hunted for a handkerchief. Then I saw a note marked “Patricia” on the mantel; and remembered I had left a note for Rickey, once, and cried harder; so that I could not see to read it, for a minute.
It said, “Thanks for hospitality. See you again sometime.” That was all.
I went stumbling downstairs to find Lucia. Maybe she could tell me what to do next. I did not know. I showed her the note. I said, “I hate him; I’m never going to see him again. I’m going to kiss so many other men I shan’t remember what he was like. He says I’m a slut; I’ll be a slut, but never with him, again. Lucia, why did he do this to me?”
“Pat, darling, pull yourself together for a minute. I’m sorry Pat. There isn’t anything you can do, you know. There . . . cry as much as you like . . . then we’ll talk.”
I sat and sobbed. Lucia dressed, saying, “You’ll feel better soon, darling” intermittently.
I did not feel any better, but after a while I stopped crying.
“I’ll telephone your office, Pat, and say you had to go to the dentist and will be in at noon. I’ll stay out myself, too. It’s a nice day, and I haven’t taken a morning off since the one after the Bordens’ sailed.”
“I’d like to take a car and drive too fast; race railroad trains to grade crossings, Lucia.”
“Yes. Dress, Pat, and we’ll go somewhere leisurely to eat.”
I dressed, in the new blue ensemble. We went to Mary Elizabeth’s restaurant. It was quiet, for late breakfast; and we could look out over the Avenue.
“Lucia, I let him stay, because I thought it was the way to get him back.”
“What do you want him back for?”
“Because we used to love each other so.”
“Do you love him now, really?”
“At this moment I wish he were dead. But generally I love him.”
“As he is or as he was?”
“As he was.”
“How are you going to manage to get him back as he was?”
She poured herself a second cup of coffee.
“In a minute Pat, I’ll be quoting the well-known source of copy for cigarette ads to you.”
“The Rubaiyat?”
“Exactly. ‘The moving figure writes and having writ’—what of it? Be like me. Watch people perform and don’t get involved yourself.”
“The Rubaiyat’s just an adolescent’s ideal of philosophy, except the parts about drinking.”
“Tell me some philosophy that’s not adolescent. Self-expression—the new freedom for women—Freud, that Great Excuse?”
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