Ex-wifePart 4
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Part 4
She had not married, because her invalid aunt would not let her go about and meet any men. She was unpaid nurse, companion, secretary and housekeeper for this aunt. She had a boring life, and was extremely pleased with the idea of visiting us in New York for three months, when I asked her. (The aunt had been invited to Florida, and Hilda was not.)
Pete and I both had salary increases, and actually achieved an apartment with an extra bedroom. So I could ask her. She was our first and last house guest.
In the beginning she disapproved of us both somewhat—our cocktails, cigarettes and conversation—and Pete was a trifle bored with her attitude. But after we had taken her to a couple of amusing Italian restaurants, she had decided she was seeing life. Over two glasses of red wine she just bloomed. I thought it was rather sweet and a trifle pathetic—so revelatory of the very little gaiety she had ever had.
Pete discovered one evening that she read French poetry superbly, and was delighted. It was one of his passions. I could read French, but my teachers had been bad, and my pronunciation was awful. So they had a lovely time, beginning with François Villon, and going on from there, two or three evenings a week, while I worked. (I had taken a couple of free-lance advertising accounts that occupied evenings, temporarily, to make money for a beaver coat.)
Hilda fell in love with Pete, over the French poets. I thought that was understandable, and nothing to worry about. She had never seen as much of any man as she had of Pete, and he was utterly charming. He liked her by now—she was so placid and amiable and well-mannered.
I meant to do something dextrous about her—considered who among the men we knew would be likely to find her attractive and not too dull; and planned to have him about a good deal, and see if the transfer of affection from Pete could be effected with no damage anywhere.
But I was extremely busy, and tired all the time, and let the thing slide. I knew that she was growing increasingly absorbed in Pete, because she began to be definitely rude to me. She was always objecting to the amount of lipstick I used, or the lowness of my decolletage, or the shortness of my skirts. It irritated me somewhat, but I was too busy to bother.
One rainy Friday evening I had a choice of intruding on a poetry session of Peter and Hilda, or dining with Rickey, who was the only person at this era with whom Pete was willing to have me dine. That was logical enough. Rickey was his oldest friend, and the person he trusted most.
Rick and I had already adjusted any embarrassment there might have been between us. In ten minutes, when the occasion offered, he told me he was sorry that it had happened, because of Pete. He did not know what, if anything, I had told my husband; but, on the basis that what had happened was a regrettable accident, he and I were at ease with each other.
With a choice of being audience at a poetry evening, or dining with Rick, therefore, I decided on Rick. I telephoned Peter that I would be home at eleven or thereabouts. He took Hilda to dinner.
By eleven Hilda had pulled my life about my ears, and felt she had performed her Christian duty in so doing. Though I maintain that she used unscrupulously a weapon put into her hand at that dinner, to effect what she wanted.
Pete got drunk. He began to talk about me. Hilda grew patronizing about me, as an impulsive and unstable person. Peter, to be comforted by this stable and “good” girl for the terrific and unhealed hurt I had dealt him, grew confidential, understandably enough.
He told Hilda that I was impulsive and unstable; so much so that I had been unfaithful to him, with four or five different men.
Well—Peter had never met Hilda’s Aunt Genevieve.
He did not know that Hilda had been brought up to believe in good and bad women; black and white; right and wrong; vice and virtue; and that her life had contained no experience to modify her confidence in absolutes.
She said: “Poor Peter. She’s an utterly worthless and promiscuous woman. I’m pretty sure she had four or five affairs with men in Boston before she met you. Perhaps she can’t help it. But you—you understand honour and keeping faith. You should put her out of your heart before she lets you down again.”
(It might be labelled footnote to a life. Maybe Hilda believed what she said, since on Pete’s statement I was “bad.” But it was not until two years later, at one of our rare dinners together, that Pete explained what Hilda had told him.)
What she told him was not true. I had never had any affairs before I knew Peter.
I went home that Autumn evening in ’25, feeling tranquil, feeling gala, to a Peter who was through with me; and I was never to know why, while the knowledge could conceivably be useful.
I let myself in. The apartment was dark. Undressing, I said to Peter, who stirred restlessly, “Rick and I saw an awfully amusing show.”
He said, “I don’t care what you saw.”
I thought, “He’s very cross . . . probably fed up with evenings with Hilda. Must do something about that.” And went to sleep.
Next day when I came home, Peter asked me for a divorce.
Just like that, with no introduction.
I said, “This is rather surprising. Why?”
He said, “Because I want to marry Hilda.” (Hilda had absented herself for the evening.)
I thought one of us had gone mad, and did not believe it was I.
I said, “Why do you want to marry her, all of a sudden?”
Pete said, “Because she’s pure, and you haven’t the least idea what that means.”
All this was before I had taken off my hat or coat. I did not take them off. I walked out. I went for a long walk, along the docks, and tried to think.
I decided Pete had told Hilda about my infidelity and that somehow she had used it. I decided also that I would have left him months earlier, if he had wanted it; but that I would not leave him now because of any little girl from home who offered him aphorisms about virtue versus vice, and did not know what it was all about.
I decided to make a fight for Peter. But I did not know what I was fighting.
I bought myself some dinner in a Coffee Pot, where a couple of dock-workers tried to talk to me. I did not realize that they were there until an hour or so later, when I remembered it.
Hilda was at home when I got there looking pure, and like a cat gorged on cream, and asking me if I had a pleasant walk. Peter looked uncomfortable.
How badly I managed it!
I was brief. I said, “Hilda, you are going home tomorrow. It’s not convenient to have you any more. Pete’s had three weeks of your life, and some three years of mine.
“You and he seem to have developed a great love for each other. All right. I won’t keep you apart for ever. You go home. Pete stays here. If, after six months, during which I’ll try to convince Peter that he’s quite insane, you and he feel about each other as you do now, I’ll divorce him with no further protest. If you don’t give me six months, I’ll never divorce him. Whatever my faults, and I’m not admitting any to you, he’s condoned them and he cannot divorce me. Take it or leave it. Good evening.”
I went to bed. Pete spent the night in Hilda’s room.
I lay in bed, and said, “I’ll fight this. I offered to pay the check for what I did, and was told I need not. That’s that. I won’t give up Pete to this woman. I know her better than he. First time he’s drunk and comes in saying, ‘Everything spins, my dearest, but it spins so felicitously if you let me put my head against your shoulder,’ and puts his head there like a tired child, she’ll speak to him severely about the evils of drink. She doesn’t know what he’s like, or what any complicated person is like. And I want Peter, and won’t lose him to a stupid woman like her.”
Next day she went home, after making the speech to me about my lack of moral sense. Pete said to me, “You get your six months. Much good may they do you. I’m taking a chance that you are telling the truth, for once, about divorcing me at the end of them. It seems to be my best chance to get rid of you, relatively swiftly.”
I said to myself, “This is incredible. But I must keep my head, and not get angry. After all, he finds me desirable; he’s used to me; there are things on my side. And I have six months.”
I worked; I bought pretty clothes; I kept my temper. And I found soon, that Peter was never going to kiss me again—when he was sober.
I said to myself, “That too may go past,” and kept my head.
He never joined me for dinner. He never told me where he went. If I asked, he laughed at me. Sometimes for days he did not speak to me—read a newspaper at the breakfast table, and stayed out until after I had gone to bed. Occasionally, I tried having guests. Usually then, he did not come home; although I had told him they were coming. If he came, he was polite to them and never spoke to me, through long evenings.
She had got him to promise to have nothing to do with me.
He forgot about that though, when he came home drunk. He would sit on the edge of my bed, and say, “Patty the complete slut. So pretty, too bad you are a slut. But you are a lovely one.”
I would think, “I shall scream, I shall go mad, I can’t bear this.” And he would sit there, cool from a shower, smiling, strange. And I would put my arms about his neck.
I would pretend that everything was as it had been, once. Next morning, he would not speak to me.
Peter had always been an angel about money. Now, he stopped giving me any, at all. I was faced with paying rent, the maid, the iceman, and the telephone and electric light bill, and Pete’s tailor and my cleaner, on fifty-five dollars a week.
We fought then—incredibly sordid and stupid fights about money. One morning the iceman came, wanting two dollars. Pete was shaving in the bathroom. The maid had not come.
I found twenty dollars in my purse, and nothing else. So I took two dollars out of Peter’s wallet, and paid the iceman. Pete came out of the bath. He had a hangover. He said, “I’ll teach you to go through my pockets for money or anything, you bitch.” He struck me across the mouth. It bled.
I thought, “This is a bad dream. Things like this just don’t happen to people like Peter and me. He has gone crazy, and I have to stand by until he gets better. He would do that, if I went crazy.”
He used to go to see Hilda week-ends. When he came back, he was always much worse. He sat and read. I sat and read. I thought for half an hour of something amusing to say. When I said it he sometimes threw his book at me.
She wrote him every day. He took her letters out at night, and read and re-read them in front of me.
Rickey gathered, as all our friends did, easily, that Peter and I were coming to an end. Rickey struggled, through some weeks, to decide on the correct attitude. Apparently, he weighed his fifteen years’ intimacy against one night . . . and the decision was easy. He never came to see us, any more, but dined with Pete at the Yale Club, two or three times a week. That was logical, too.
Hilda had gone two months, when Peter asked her to New York for a week-end. She stayed at a hotel for women on Gramercy Park. She and Pete went to a party together.
I guessed she was in New York—he was so especially mysterious about his goings and comings through those two days, and so much more sullen than usual afterward. But I knew nothing specifically until Rick telephoned me on Tuesday at the office.
He said, “Pat, I’m trusting you not to repeat this conversation. I’m crazy about Pete, but I think that Hilda wench is awful. This may be useful to you. On Saturday at the Hilles’ party, she made a minor scene because Pete danced three times with another girl, and because he was tight. It’s too soon for her to try the managing-him-for-his-own-good attitude, but she hasn’t brains enough to know that. Sit tight. You may pull through. Good luck.”
So I had a little hope.
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