Beth loved her kids the way she loved Charlie: at a distance. It was a
real love but it couldn’t be crowded. She had no patience with intimacy.
The hardest years of her life had been when the two babies arrived
within eleven months of each other. One was bad enough, but two! Both in
diapers, both screaming and streaming at both ends. Both colicky, both
finicky eaters.
Beth was completely unprepared, almost helpless with a screaming
nervousness that put both Charlie and the kids on edge. She never quite
recovered from her resentment. A few years later, when the worst was
over, she began to wonder if her quick awful temper and desperation had
made the children as nervous as they were. She blamed herself bitterly
sometimes. But then she wondered how it could have happened any other
way.
But when Polly shut herself in a closet and cried all afternoon, or
Skipper threw a tantrum and swore at her in her own words, or when
Charlie sulked in angry silence for days on end after a quarrel, she
began to wonder again, to accuse herself, to look wildly around her for
excuses, for escape.
Beth had just one friend that she saw with any regularity, and that was
the wife of Charlie’s business partner. Her name was Jean Purvis, and
she and Beth bowled together on a team. Beth had been searching for ways
to get out of it since she had started it. Bowling bored her and so did
Jean. But you couldn’t help liking the girl.
Jean Purvis was a good-hearted person, a natural blonde with a tendency
to plumpness against which she pitted a wavering will power. She had two
expressions: a little smile and a big smile. At first Beth envied her
sunny nature, but after a while it got on her nerves.
_She must have bad days like other people_, Beth thought. _She must get
mad at her husband once in a while._
But if Jean ever did it never showed and her eternal smile made Beth
feel guilty. It was like an unspoken reproach of Beth’s sudden wild
explosions and cloudy moods, and it made her resent Jean; it made her
jealous and contemptuous all at once.
Jean Purvis and her husband Cleve were the only people that Beth and
Charlie knew when they first moved to California. Cleve and Charlie were
business partners now, manufacturing toys, and it had been Cleve’s
drum-beating letters that encouraged Charlie to give up his law
apprenticeship and move to the West Coast.
Beth reacted angrily at first. “I like the East!” she had exclaimed.
“What do I know about California? Everybody in the country is headed for
California. It’ll be so crowded out there pretty soon they won’t have
room for the damn palm trees.”
“Cleve has a good start in business,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, what in God’s name do you know about making toys? I’d be glad
if you’d make one decent slingshot for Skipper and call it quits,” she
told him.
But his stubborn head was already full of ideas. “One craze, one big
hit—we’d strike it rich,” he said. “One Hula Hoop, one coonskin cap,
something like that.”
“You sit there like a grinning happy idiot ready to throw your whole
career, your whole education, out the window, because your old
fraternity buddy is making plastic popguns out in Pasadena and he says
to come on out,” Beth cried, furious. “I don’t trust that Cleve Purvis
anyway, from what I’ve heard about him. You always said he was a heavy
drinker.”
But he had made his mind up, and with Charlie that was the same as doing
a thing. He could not be moved.
* * * * *
Charlie left Beth and the two babies in Chicago with her uncle and aunt
while he went out to Pasadena to join Cleve and find a place to live.
Beth loved it. Her Uncle John was fond of spoiling her. Beth was his
daughter by proxy; he had no children of his own. She had been dumped in
his lap, sobbing and runny nosed and skinny at eight years, when her
parents were killed. Miraculously, she had learned to love him and he
returned her love. With Aunt Elsa it was all a matter of keeping up good
manners, and she was automatically friendly.
For four months Beth slept and ate and lazed around the house. It was
delicious to be waited on, to have civilized cocktails in the afternoon,
to let somebody else pick Polly up when the colic got her. To go out for
whole evenings of food and glittering entertainment and know there were
a dozen capable baby sitters at home. Beth refused to join her husband
in California until she threw him into a rage.
She realized with something like a shock that she didn’t miss Charlie’s
love-making at all. She missed _Charlie_, in a sort of pleasant blurry
way, and she loved to talk about him over a cold whiskey and water,
laughing gently at the faults that drove her frantic when they were
together. But when she heard his anger and hurt on the telephone it came
to her as a surprise, as if she would never learn it once and for all,
that a man’s feelings are urgent, even painful. She remembered feeling
it like that once, long ago, in college. Was it Charlie, was it really
Charlie that did it to her? Or was it somebody else, somebody tall and
slight and blonde with soft blue eyes, who used to sit on the studio
couch in their room at the sorority house and gaze at her?
Charlie was in a sweat of bad-tempered impatience when she finally,
reluctantly, agreed to come out and resume their marriage.
_Marriages would all be perfect if the husband and wife could live two
thousand miles apart_, she thought. _For the wife, anyway._
And Charlie missed the kids. “He misses them!” she cried aloud,
sardonically. But she knew if they were far away she would miss them
too. She would love them at her leisure. They would begin to seem
beautiful and perfect and she would forgive them their dirty diapers and
midnight squalling sessions.
It scared her sometimes to think of this streak in herself; this quirk
that made her want to love at a distance. The only person she had ever
loved up close, with an abandoned delight in the contact, was ... Laura.
Laura Landon. A girl.
Charlie drove her home from the International Airport in Los Angeles. He
was bursting with excitement, with things to say, with kisses and relief
and swallowed resentments.
“How’s business?” she asked him when they were all safely in the car.
“Honey, it’s great. It’s everything I told you on the phone, only
better. We did the right thing. You’ll love California. And I have a
great idea, it’ll sell in the millions, it’s—oh, Beth, Jesus, you’re so
beautiful I can’t stand it.” And he pulled over to the side of the road,
to the noisy alarm of the car behind him, and kissed her while Skipper
punched him in the stomach. He laughed and kept on kissing her and they
were both suddenly filled with a hot need for each other that left them
breathless. Beth felt a whole year’s worth of little defeats and
frustrations fade and she wished powerfully that the children would both
fall providentially asleep for five minutes. She was amazed at herself.
They got home after an hour’s driving on and off the freeways. It was a
small town just east of Pasadena: Sierra Bella. It was cozy and old and
very pretty, skidding down from the mountains, with props and stilts
under the oldest houses.
It was quite dark when they drove into their own garage and Beth
couldn’t see the house very well. But the great purple presence behind
them was a mountain and it awed and pleased her. She was used to the
flat plains and cornfields of the Midwest. Below them were visible the
lights of the San Gabriel Valley: a whole carpet of sparklers winking
through the night from San Bernardino to the shores of the Pacific.
“Like it?” Charlie said, putting an arm around her.
“It’s gorgeous. Is it this pretty in the daytime?”
“Depends on the smog.” He grinned.
Inside the house she was less impressed. It was clean. But so small, so
cramped! He sensed her feelings.
“Well, it’s not like Lake Shore Drive. Uncle John could have done
better, no doubt,” he said.
“It’s—lovely,” she managed, with a smile.
“It’s just till we get a little ahead, honey,” he said quickly.
Beth fed the children and put them to bed with Charlie’s help. And then
he pulled her down on their own bed, without even giving her time to
take her clothes off. For fifteen minutes, in their quiet room, they
talked intimately and Charlie stroked her and began to kiss her, sighing
with relief and pleasure.
Suddenly Skipper yelled. Bellyache. Too much excitement on the plane.
Beth jumped up in a spitting anger and Charlie had to calm the little
boy as best he could.
Beth was surprised at herself. She was tired and she had had an overdose
of children that day. And still she responded to Charlie with a sort of
wondering happiness. She didn’t want anything to intrude on it or spoil
it. Maybe this was the beginning of a new understanding between them, a
better life, even a really happy one.
A half hour later Skipper woke again. Scared. New room, new bed, new
house. And when Beth, nervous and impatient, finally got him down again,
Polly woke up.
Beth’s temper broke, hard. “Damn them!” she cried. “Oh, damn them!
They’ve practically ruined my life. They’re driving me nuts, Charlie,
they’ll end up killing me. The one night we get back together after all
these months—” she began to cry, choking on her self-pity and
outrage—“those miserable kids have to spoil it.”
“Beth,” Charlie said, grasping her shoulders. His voice was stern and
calm. “Nothing can spoil it, darling. Get a grip on yourself.”
Polly’s angry little voice rose over Charlie’s and Beth screamed, “One
of these days I’ll croak her! I will! I will!”
And suddenly Charlie, who adored his children, got mad himself. “Beth,
can’t you go for a whole hour without losing your temper at those kids!”
he demanded. “What do you expect of them? Skipper isn’t even two years
old. Polly’s a babe in arms. Good God, how do you want them to act? Like
a pair of old ladies? Would that make you happy?”
“Now _you’re_ angry!” she screamed.
He clasped his arms against his sides in an expression of exasperation.
“You were in love with me five minutes ago,” he said.
Beth didn’t know quite what had gotten into her. She was tired, worn out
from the trip and the emotions, fed up with the kids. She had wanted
him, coming home in the car. Now all she wanted was a hot bath and
sleep.
She walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. But
Charlie swung it open at once and followed her, turning her roughly
around at the door to the bathroom.
“What’s that little act supposed to mean?” he said.
She stared at him and the kids continued to chorus their sorrows in
screechy little voices. Charlie’s big hands hurt her tender arms and his
eyes and voice had gone flat.
“I won’t argue,” she said, her voice high and shaky. “I won’t argue with
you. You don’t understand anything about me. You never have understood
me!”
He looked into her flushed face and answered coolly, “You never have
understood yourself, Beth. If you knew who you really were it wouldn’t
be so hard for me to know you. Or anybody else.”
That infuriated her. She hated to be told that she didn’t know herself
and it was one of the things Charlie always told her when he was mad at
her. She hated it the worse because it was true.
“You lie!” she cried. “You bastard!”
Charlie pushed her back against the wall, so hard that her head snapped
and hit the plaster with a stuffy thump. He kissed her. He was not very
nice about it.
“If you think you’re going to make love to me, tonight, after the way
you’ve just been acting—” she panted furiously at him, struggling to
free herself—“if you think I’ve come two thousand miles just to let you
_rape_ me—”
“You shut up,” he said harshly, and kissed her again. He nearly crushed
her mouth and she would have screamed again if she had been able. When
he released her she slashed at him with her nails and he pulled her by
her wrists back into the bedroom.
Beth tried all the old favored tricks of crossed women. She kicked, and
flailed with her dangerous nails; she tried to bite him; she whacked him
with a knife-heeled pump, thrilled to see a slightly bloody scratch
bloom on his shoulder.
But Charlie smothered her with his big body. He just rolled on top of
her and told her, “Shut up. You’re noisier than those poor kids you
complain about all the time.” The sheer weight of him overwhelmed her.
Struggle was futile, arguments were useless.
While he fumbled with her underthings she said, “You’re a brute. You
bring me home to this miserable little cracker-box, you drag me all the
way to California for this. _This!_” She tried to gesture at the four
walls, to make him feel her disdain. “At least in Chicago I’m treated
like a human being.”
He kissed her angrily.
“I _am_ a human being, in case you didn’t know.”
He kissed her again, and his hands found her breasts.
“If you touch me I’ll be sick. I’ll throw up every goddamn thing I ate
on that plane. Including the biscuits.”
But he touched her. He touched her all over, shivering all through his
large frame and groaning. Beth began to sob with hurt and confusion and
rebellion. And most dreadful of all, most humiliating, with desire. She
wanted him. He was wonderful like this, the live weight of him on her
yielding flesh, the thrust, the warmth, the sweat, the sweet moaning.
When he took her like this, like a master claiming a right, she
submitted, and she experienced relief. She did not know who she was, but
for a little while he made her think she knew. He made her feel her
womanhood.
And when he had forced her to surrender once, she gave in again without
fighting. He kept her busy for a long time. If the kids kept up the
noise their parents didn’t know it and didn’t care. Charlie wouldn’t let
her out of his arms. He wanted her there where he could fill his
nostrils with the scent of her, his arms with the smooth round feel of
her. Four months is a damn long time for a husband in love with his wife
to make love to a pillow.
It had not been quite like that between them since their college days
and it was not like that again very often.