That conversation with Lucia about ex-wives was a year and more past the
night Peter left me sitting in his Aunt Janet’s armchair.
I sat there four and a half hours. I know exactly, because when I heard
Pete’s taxi start, I looked at the banjo clock my grandfather gave us.
It was ten minutes past six.
There was an unopened package of cigarettes beside me. I tore two or
three of them in opening it; lighted one; and tried to realize that
there was no more Peter. But instead, I began to remember things we had
done. They slid through my head like moving pictures that were being run
off much too fast—except that these were vividly coloured, not black
and white and grey, and they had sounds of voices and fragrances of
things in them.
Winter in London. (We spent every penny of our wedding-present checks on
four months in England and a Springtime in Paris; because, after that,
Peter would have to work hard a long time and get to be a star reporter.
Or, I suggested, a dramatic critic, because I liked the theatre so
much.) After luncheon we used to rush to Brown-Shipley’s on Pall Mall to
get a check cashed; and then hurried down the Strand to Romano’s
American bar, so that we would get there before it stopped serving at
two-thirty. We usually reached the door, breathless, at two twenty-five.
Peter ordered enough double Scotch and soda all at once to last the
afternoon. A little of the fog filtered in. I could remember the smell
of the fog; the smoky fragrance of Scotch; the lights glancing off
little bottles of Schweppes, spread all across the table; Peter’s deep
voice saying gay things about how pretty I was, and what fun we would
have, and the strange places to which we would travel someday soon when
we had money—Moscow and Buenos Aires, and Budapest and China.
Or, over the third highball: “I’m teaching you how to drink properly,
Patty darling. Most men’s wives drink so badly. Good Scotch . . . it’ll
stand by you, Pat, in the days you have great sorrows. . . . But I’m not
ever going to let you have any great sorrows.
“No great sorrows . . . and no baby, at least no baby for years and
years. You are too young and nice-looking, and I don’t want you to be
hurt.”
We did have a baby though after we got home, when Peter was earning
forty-five dollars a week. He was so disturbed about it. When he was not
worrying as to how we’d ever support it, he wondered if it was going to
hurt me much, and whether I would ever be pretty again.
He was twenty-two years old, then. I was twenty-one.
Our families were letting us struggle, because that is supposed to give
young people a sense of life’s realities. They did think they were
letting us struggle on seventy-five dollars a week though: for we had
told them that was Peter’s salary.
After I got used to the idea of having a baby, I thought it might be
rather nice . . . a small son something like Pete.
He said: “Where in hell will we put it in a livingroom-bedroom-and-bath?
We’ll never be alone again. It’ll take all your time. They have to be
washed and rocked and fed incessantly.”
I said: “Maybe it can sleep in the kitchenette, and I’ll let it spend
long visits with my family, so you won’t get tired of it.”
“Oh, God,” he said, “they cry all the time, don’t they?”
“I don’t know. Pete, do I look very awful?”
“Of course not, and anyway I expect you’ll get over it.”
I went home to Boston for the baby to be born. I felt that whatever
happened to me would be more easily endured if I did not see Pete
looking miserable and trying hard to be helpful.
The baby was a boy. He had enormous dark blue eyes and a fuzz of light
hair like Peter’s, and weighed eight and a half pounds. I was crazy
about him; in intervals between feeling that I had neither energy nor
interest for anything, and never would any more.
Pete came up to look at him, of course; but was so delighted that I was
thin again, that he did not talk about the baby at all, except to say,
“Call him Patrick, because your name’s Patricia; and because, by the
time he grows up, Patrick will be such a rare name that it will be in
good standing again.” So I did. I thought it was entertaining to have a
baby called Patrick.
After I had stayed at home with Patrick for three months, I went alone
to visit Pete for a week, to find an apartment where we could have the
baby. The kitchenette solution did not seem adequate, now that he was
born.
The baby died, the second day I was in New York.
* * * * *
When I went back to Peter, we were frantically hard-up. He had borrowed
money to pay my hospital bill, for we had not wanted our families to
know we could not pay that. He expected to get ten dollars more a week,
and got only five.
We were not very happy. Sometimes, when he was tired, he grew
exasperated because I cried so much about the baby, and I was always
vaguely resentful that he did not seem to be sorry about the baby at
all.
Things grew better, after a time. Our families, who had begun to realize
that we were very poor, sent us checks for our birthdays, and those paid
our debts. We moved to an apartment toward the western border of
Greenwich village. It had a roof, where we sat, hot August nights, and
talked again about places we would go and things we would do, fairly
soon (but not so soon as it had seemed the year before).
A man across the street played Chopin gloriously. I used to sit with my
head against Pete’s shoulder, listening; feeling tranquil.
One day: “Patty, we have to adjust the budget to include one pair of
shoes for me. These split at the side and wore through a sole
simultaneously.”
“It’s a major tragedy, Pete. I haven’t had the iceman and the laundryman
placated at the same time for a month. How much do men’s shoes cost?”
“Darling, what I used to pay for mine, and what I can get a pair for
now, are things altogether different.”
Next day: “I saw a pair for six dollars that don’t look too hellish. Can
we hold out three dollars this week and three next, my child?” He was
cutting out cardboard to put in the sole of the one that was worn
through, and being very cheerful about it.
I felt altogether sad. Poor Peter. He had always been so
well-if-casually dressed.
The new shoes became the event of those two weeks.
The night before the second pay day, he came home gaily. “Uncle Harrison
wired me at the office, he’ll be at the Brevoort at seven, to take us to
an enormous dinner, Pat. Hurry and dress. I wish it were tomorrow and I
had the handsome shoes.” They had grown from “not too hellish” to
“handsome” in a fortnight of anticipation.
I dressed. I had one or two things left over from my trousseau that were
quite possible. But, “Pete, which do you prefer, a stocking with a large
run down the inside, or a medium-sized one down the back?”
“My God, dearest, are all your stockings worn out?”
“Seem to be.”
We chose the pair with the run on the inside, and had a most beautiful
meal with his uncle.
Next day, he came in looking rather self-conscious. I looked for the
lovely shoes, but he was not wearing them. He was carrying a small
package. “I bought you a present, Patty,” he said. He had bought me
three pairs of stockings.
* * * * *
The next week he got a ten dollar increase in salary; and the month
after that I answered an ad in the Times for a copy-writer, and lied
about previous experience, and got it for forty dollars a week. At first
Pete wrote my next day’s ads for me the night before, until I learned to
do it myself.
We had, suddenly, money for a maid; and for Pete to stop for drinks on
his way home; and for us both to go out to dinner every night; and money
for gin for parties.
We lasted just a year after that.
Peter and I both drank well; that is to say, he did not get raucous and
I did not get giggly; and neither of us was to be found at an evening’s
end, pale and dizzy on the nearest bed; but that is not to say he did
not hold more closely any girl with whom he danced on eight drinks than
on three, or that I did not take pretty speeches from almost anyone with
increasing interest in the same ratio.
We were still in love, and acutely jealous of each other; but we never
admitted the jealousy: it was too outrageously old-fashioned. He
encouraged me to go about to dinners and places to dance, places he
could not afford, with the occasional old-friends-from-out-of-town who
turned up; because he wanted me to have a nice time. And he acquired two
or three slightly misunderstood pretty wives, who called him to make a
fourth at bridge, or a second at tea. I thought all of that was pleasant
for him.
But we were jealous. When I came upon him, once, kissing a pair of
charming shoulders at a party, I said nothing but resented it. And, on a
night that I was in a trivial automobile accident in New Jersey, and
turned up, very rumpled, at five in the morning, he was the calm and
amused modern husband in manner, but his eyes were raging.
There is a progression in things of that sort.
While I was at the shore for a week-end, Peter spent a night with one of
the not quite happy wives. He told me. He and I were very definitely
committed to the honesty policy. I made no scene about it—and I never
felt about Peter, after, quite as I had before.
It would have seemed to me incredible that I should ever be unfaithful
to him. But I was, two or three months after that episode.
Pete had gone to Philadelphia over Sunday. Rickey telephoned, asking if
he could join us for the usual Saturday night drinking, dinner
somewhere. I told him that Pete was away, and he said he would take me
places and amuse me. That sort of thing had happened dozens of times
before—a good many of them with Rickey.
He happened to be Pete’s very oldest friend. The same class at prep
school, and so on. Rickey was an altogether charming person. He liked
me; we danced well together; he usually kissed me once or twice in the
course of an evening, and Pete knew it. I do not believe that Rickey had
any more definite ambitions about me on this occasion than on any other.
We felt like slumming, and went to Harlem; but it was a warm evening and
Harlem was crowded and sticky. So Rickey said: “Come down to my place,
and I’ll make something cool to drink, and we’ll do a symphony on the
phonograph. It’ll be calmer.”
There seemed to be no reason against this. It was fairly early, and I
was not sleepy, anyway.
Rickey mixed gin fizzes, and we sat on his window seat admiring
Washington Square for a while, and put on some records, and had some
more fizzes. We talked about Galsworthy and Wells and Bennett, as I
remember. I wandered into his bedroom to put on fresh lipstick; and he
came in, and felt impelled to kiss me. I kissed him, too. I liked Rickey
very much.
And then—whether it is put down to a summer night or physical
attraction or fizzes is not very important—Rickey went caveman. At
first, I was just startled. Then I was angry, and said: “Rickey, stop
this instant.” The instant, specifically, was when he had stopped
kissing my mouth and begun to kiss my throat.
He stopped, and stood for a minute with his arm around my shoulders. I
looked up at him—he was about a foot taller than I—a pleasant
brown-haired young man.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t have such a tragic face, Rickey de-ah. I don’t feel complimented
by making anyone look like that.” He laughed then, and kissed me again;
and in a moment, it was all to do over.
But in that moment I had lost the wish to do much about it. Curiosity?
Desire? The feeling that Pete experimented and why should not I? The
thought that it would be an adventure? I cannot remember now. So many
things have intervened.
I woke at six. Rickey, sleeping, looked very peaceful. From whatever
angle I regarded that personable head, I could not make it look much
like a villain’s.
I thought about Peter, and I thought I was going to be sick. So I got up
very quietly, and took a shower, and dressed. Rickey was still asleep. I
left him a note. I remember it.
It read: “Rickey: I’m not having hysterics, but I know I could not think
of anything to say at breakfast. Call us up soon.”
As soon as I got home I did have hysterics. All the ghosts of my
ancestors who had been good women sat about and damned me. Then I
considered the Peter problem. I had more hysterics. I was very hungry,
so I went to Alice McCollister’s Coffee Shop and had a large breakfast.
Peter was to get home at six in the evening. It was about four when I
discovered that I was afraid to tell him—that to confront a
theoretically modern young husband with the actual fact of his wife’s
infidelity was just beyond me.
So, what I did about Peter was to bathe again. Then I made up my face
carefully, and greeted him with tea and muffins instead of a confession.
We dined out, and met Rickey by accident; and he and Pete had one of
their when-we-played-on-the-same-team reminiscent evenings. I listened
and thought that life was not very simple. It was probably the first
time that had ever occurred to me.
Also, I realized, that if I did tell Peter, I could not tell him that it
was Rickey. The wife-and-the-best-friend pattern was so particularly
dreadful. Besides, Peter might feel that the man who had led his wife
astray should be beaten, in the conventional manner; and he probably
could not beat Rickey, who was so much bigger. That would just add to
Pete’s humiliation.
I know it all sounds absurd—as if I thought then the thing should be
played as a farce. I did not. There was anguish and regret and
bewilderment. But they have faded. I only remember my surprise that all
the theories about the right to experiment and the desirability of
varied experience—theories that had seemed so entirely adequate in
discussing the sexual adventures of acquaintances—were no help at all
when the decision concerned Peter and me.
Also surprise that, though I had been married to Pete for more than two
years, I did not have the faintest idea how he would take this. I
thought it conceivable he would shoot me—more likely that he would not,
but would leave me for ever—and just possible that he would understand
how fortuitous the whole thing was.
A week went by. I bought a hat Pete admired; wrote copy in the daytime;
danced about evenings; tried being “good” to him, having things he liked
for breakfast, and suggesting the restaurants he preferred for dinner.
And I thought, every time that he kissed me, that I should cry.
That was why, at the end of the week, I told him. I did not wait for a
suitable moment. It never would have arrived, of course. I told him
while we were finishing an amiable leisurely Sunday breakfast. At the
point where anything that might happen seemed no worse than to go on as
if nothing had, I was even relatively cheerful.
I finished my waffle. (I’d made waffles because Pete loved them.) I
thought, “I bet I never eat another waffle in my life.” (I never have,
either.)
Pouring Pete a second cup of coffee, I thought, “My hands are cold, but
they don’t shake.” Lighting a cigarette, I thought, “It is nice to have
a breakfast room.”
And, looking at Pete and myself in the wall mirror—Pete, blond and lean
and fit and comfortable in an aged purple silk dressing gown, myself
small and dark-haired and white skinned, relatively decorative in a
turquoise satin negligee—I thought that we both were definitely
charming looking.
I can see us sitting there now, but not as if it were Peter and myself.
As if, through a dusty windowpane, I regarded two strangers in a doorway
across a wide street.
I managed flippancy. “Peter, I want to put on a wife-confesses-all
show.”
He looked unworried. “My God, darling, have you bought a fur coat and
charged it?”
“Worse than that.”
“You’ve lost your job, and we’ll have to go back to honest poverty?”
“Don’t be funny, Pete.”
His voice changed. “Sorry, Patty, what is it? . . . Don’t look so
worried. I won’t beat you, you know.”
I drew a long breath. “I’ve been unfaithful to you.” (“Unfaithful” . . .
what an odd word it was.)
I could not look at him, and then I had to look at him. I always had
admired Pete’s poise. Now he was sitting absolutely expressionless . . .
but how dreadfully still.
“Patty . . . is this a joke by any chance?”
“No.” What had I loosed . . . what was he thinking?
“How did it happen?” His voice was very quiet.
I could not tell him about Rickey. I had not planned what to tell or not
to tell; had not thought what he would ask. Well . . .
“I was drunk, Peter.” That was thin; he knew I did not get as drunk as
that.
He let it go. “Who was the man, Patty?”
(Play for time. Maybe someone will telephone or something and I’ll get
time to think.)
“I didn’t ask you the name of the woman you stayed with.” I had known
anyway, of course.
“That has nothing to do with it.”
And it did not, if he did not feel that it did.
(Must not say “Rickey.” . . . Is there anyone who has just gone away?
. . . No, must not name anybody.)
“Tell me who it was Patty.” He had known Rickey fifteen years . . . he
cared more about Rickey than anyone, except me. I did not care about
Rickey. I did not care if he went and died somewhere really, but I could
not humiliate Pete so dreadfully.
He took my hand: “Don’t look so frightened. I’m going to try to
understand about it, darling.” What an _old_ voice.
“But you must tell me who it was. I shall have something to say to him.”
(Get time . . . get time to think.)
“You’ve gone conventional, Pete.”
No good, that.
“I expect I have. Will you please not be evasive?”
I lost my head. Like the traditional tabloid murderess, I then heard a
shot fired, it seemed.
I heard myself saying, “There’s no use in that. You see . . . it was
more than one man.”
He knocked his coffee cup off the table.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was awkward of me. Go on. . . . What were you
saying?”
“Peter, you don’t know, but sometimes on parties when I’ve had too much
to drink I just get pretty vague . . . and I don’t seem to have much
control, and this has been going on for some time” . . . (I can’t have
him checking up dates) “and I’ve wanted to tell you but I haven’t dared
. . . and of course I’ll go home or give you a divorce or anything you
like.” (Oh, let him believe me, no, let him not believe me.)
He moved his mouth as if it hurt him. “Don’t talk so fast, Patty.”
I stopped talking altogether. He was going to believe me, all right. He
always had. I had never lied to him before.
He stood up. He said, in a completely impersonal voice, “And I always
thought you were the cleanest person in the world.”
I began to cry, not because it would do any good—because I could not
help it.
“Don’t do that, Patty,” he said, again very gently. “Listen, will you do
something to please me?”