Beth, riding next to Charlie on the way up to Sierra Bella, put her head
back and pondered Vega’s offer with a smile.
“What’s up, honey?” Charlie said, seeing her expression in the red glow
of a stoplight.
“Nothing.”
_She wouldn’t tell me to save her own skin_, he thought resentfully, and
a wave of hatred for her secretiveness, her airs, came over him. He
tried to swallow it down. He didn’t want to ruin another evening, and
this one held promises. Just a few, but still, a few. She had been
receptive, pleasant with him, at the Everglades.
“Have fun?” he said, starting the car up again as the light changed.
“Um-hm.” _How can I tell him so he won’t say no?_ she wondered. For she
felt instinctively that he would object to her desire. It seemed to Beth
that all the things she truly wanted to do, he didn’t want her to do.
Travel—“You can’t leave me!” Work—“Your place is at home with the kids.”
Hire a nurse—“_You’re_ their mother!” Get a little tight—“Beth, you’re
turning into a damn souse.”
She thought he was staid, stuffy; he thought she was wild, or would be
if he didn’t keep a tight rein on her.
They undressed quietly by the light of one dresser lamp, and Charlie,
watching the clothes slip off her scented flesh, revealing the fluent
curves of her back and breasts, felt his body flush all over. He was
overcome with tenderness, with a desire for wordless communication.
_Just be gentle with me, yield to me this one night_, he thought, trying
to press the idea into her head with the sheer force of wishing. He
would never have spoken such a wish; it would have aroused her contempt,
or worse, her amusement.
Beth pulled open the wardrobe door, reaching around the corner for her
nightie. But he pulled her arm away. “You don’t need it,” he said. “Not
tonight.”
She let herself be held, submitting quietly to his kisses. When he
seemed all warm and loving and tractable she whispered, “Charlie, I’m
going to study modeling with Vega. Starting next week.”
He only half heard. “Let’s not talk. Let’s not spoil it,” he said.
But she felt that if he didn’t acquiesce now, in the mood he was in, he
never would. “If you don’t say yes I’m going to do it anyway,” she
whispered into his ear.
“Do what?” he murmured, pulling her closer.
“And we’ll have one hell of a fight over it.”
“We’re not going to fight, darling,” he told her with the confidence of
his passion. “Never again. We’re just going to make love twenty-four
hours a day.”
“Where? The toy factory? That’s where you spend most of your time.” Her
sarcasm cut through his euphoria and the words registered harshly in his
ears. He shut his eyes tight, shifting his weight a little. “Not
tonight, Beth,” he begged her. “Please, not tonight.”
The pleading in his voice irritated her. If she had been another kind of
woman she might have responded with a wealth of sweet reassurance; she
might have been _able_ to respond that way. But instead she felt disdain
for him, the sort of scorn most women reserve for a man who shows
himself a weakling. Charlie was not a weakling and Beth knew it. And yet
it seemed that over the years, as the ominous cracks developed in their
marriage, he had made most of the concessions to keep them together, and
that too aroused her scorn. It was true that she would have suffered
fits of guilt and loneliness if he hadn’t, and she was grateful to him
for his “tact.” But the very role she forced him to play and thanked him
for in her secret conscience, lessened him in her eyes.
Dimly, Charlie realized this too. But he was caught in the squirrel cage
and there was no way out.
Carefully Beth said, “I just want you to say it’s okay.”
With a weary sigh he loosened his embrace in order to look at her. “Say
what’s okay?”
“If I model with Vega a couple of days a week.”
His eyes widened then as he heard and understood, and he turned away
from her, picking up his pajamas and carrying them in front of him. His
unwanted love was too obvious and it embarrassed him. “Vega Purvis is a
Class-A bitch,” he said.
Beth’s cheeks went hot with indignation. She whipped her nightie out of
the closet and slipped it over her simmering head. If she threw her
anger in his face now he would never agree to it. But to call Vega a
bitch, when he hardly even knew her!
“I think she’s delightful,” she said haughtily, when the covering of the
nightie gave her some pretense to dignity.
“Sure. Delightful. What in hell do you want to learn _modeling_ for?
From that winesop?” He climbed under the covers and lighted a cigarette,
and there was a flood of misery in him at the sight of her drawn up
stiff and chilly in her resentment.
“You say modeling like you meant whoring!” she flashed.
“Well, what _does_ it mean?” he asked with elaborate courtesy. “You tell
me.”
“I’d probably go down there once or twice a week,” she said, suddenly
softening in an effort to bring him around. “It would be just for fun,
not for money. I’d never model professionally. But it would be something
to get me out of the house, something really interesting for a change.
Not that goddamn interminable _bowling_ Jean dotes on.”
“I can’t see that walking around with a book on your head is so damn
much more interesting than shoving a ball down an alley.”
Her fleeting softness vanished. “I _knew_ you’d be this way!” she cried.
“Just because _I_ want something, you _don’t_ want it! When in doubt,
say no. That’s your motto.” She continued to berate him for a moment
until it became clear that he wasn’t listening. He was staring past her,
beyond her, at nothing, thinking. And his eyes were dark and heavy. He
held his cigarette in one hand, so close to his chest that she had a
momentary fear the hair would catch fire and scorch him.
“Charlie?” she said, after a moment’s silence.
“Beth, tell me something,” he said seriously, and his eyes, still aimed
at her, focused on her once again. “I want you to explain to me what is
the matter with our marriage.”
For a long minute neither of them spoke. And then Beth sat down on the
bed, at his feet, biting her lower lip. “You explain it to _me_,” she
said.
“I’ll gladly tell you all I know,” he said. “I know we have two lovely
children. I know we have a pleasant house to live in, even if it is
small. I know _I_ love _you_.” There was a significant pause, in which
she should have said, _Of course I love you too_. But she didn’t. He
sighed. “I know we _should_ be happy. There isn’t anything specific you
can put your finger on that’s out-and-out wrong with us. So why do we
argue all the time? Why, when we’re still together, we still have each
other, and things are going along the right way—_why_ aren’t we happy,
Beth? Because we’re not. We sure as hell are not.”
Beth couldn’t look at him, at his frowning face. “If you’d pick up after
yourself once in a while,” she said. “If you’d agree, just once, to let
me do something I really want to do.” The spite in her voice piqued him.
“Oh! Now I understand. This would be a gloriously happy household if it
weren’t for me, is that it? If the husband and father would just get the
hell out, the family would be perfect. Right?”
“Cut the sarcasm, Charlie,” she said. She tried to sound firm but her
chin trembled.
“I get it from you, dear. It’s catching,” he said. “Besides, I’m not
convinced that you’ll swoon happily in my arms if I pick up my socks in
the morning.”
She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “All right, Charlie, I’m at
fault too. Is that what you want me to say? I fly off the handle, I’m
cross with the kids. I—I—”
“You kick me out of bed three or four times a week.”
She turned a blazing face to him. “Charlie, goddamn it, I’m your wife.
But that doesn’t mean that any time you feel like having me, I feel like
being _had_. Three or four times a week is _too much_!”
“It didn’t use to be,” he said, his voice as soft as hers was loud.
“What happened?”
Tears started to her eyes for the second time that evening and she
turned away. “Nothing,” she exclaimed.
“Something must have happened, Beth. You just don’t want it any more.
Ever. You give in now and then to shut me up—not because you really want
me.”
She covered her face with both hands and wept quickly with fear and
confusion. “I don’t _know_ what happened,” she admitted finally.
He leaned toward her, hating to hurt her. “Beth, I’d do anything for
you,” he said earnestly. “I’d let you go model in Timbuktu if that would
make you happy. But it won’t. All these things you think you want so
badly—did you ever stop to examine them? What are they? So many escapes.
You’re running away. The one thing you can’t stand, you can’t bear to
face or live with or understand, is your relationship with me. Your
home. Your kids. But mostly me. Are you sorry we got married, Beth? Tell
the truth.”
There was a terrible, painful pause. It took all of her courage to
admit, “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t know.”
He shut his eyes for a moment, as if to recover a little.
“Do you love me, then?”
She swallowed. “Yes,” she said. Her courage would not stretch so far as
to let her hedge on that one.
“Do you love the kids?”
She caught her breath and bit her lip. _I will be truthful, I’ll be as
truthful as I can_, she told herself sharply.
“Do you love the kids, honey?” he prompted her.
“When they’re not around,” she blurted, and gave an awful sob, covering
her wicked mouth with one hand. When she could talk a little she said,
“I love them, I love them terribly, but I just can’t _stand_ them. Does
that make any sense?”
He lay back on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. The sight of Beth tore
his heart. “Not to me, it doesn’t,” he said. And seeing her despair, he
added, “But at least it’s the truth, Beth. Thank you for that much,
anyway.” There was no sarcasm in his voice now.
Beth got up and walked back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I know
I’m not the world’s greatest mother, Charlie. Far from it.” She wiped
her eyes impatiently. “Or the best wife. I guess I hound you all the
time because I’m ashamed of my own behavior. At least that’s part of it.
You’re no dreamboat yourself sometimes.” She turned to look at him and
he nodded without answering.
“The trouble is, I just don’t know what I _would_ be good at,” she said
helplessly. “I don’t know what I want to do. I wish I could want
something, good and hard, and it would be the right thing. Sometimes I
wish somebody would _tell_ me what I want. Maybe my ideas about
traveling and the rest of it are just daydreams. Escape, or whatever you
said. But Charlie, that’s not criminal. I _need_ an escape. I really
do.” She felt a note of semi-hysteria pulling her voice higher and
higher and she stopped talking for a minute to catch her breath.
“I wanted to go to Mexico last year. You said no. I wanted to get that
MG we saw in Monrovia. You said no. I have a couple of cocktails by
myself in the afternoon and you blow your top. You think I’m headed for
Skid Row. I ask to go home and visit Uncle John. No again.”
“The last time you visited Uncle John,” Charlie pointed out with heat,
“I didn’t see you for four whole months.”
“And those four months saved my sanity!” she cried, thrusting her angry
chin toward him.
He lighted another cigarette in offended silence.
After a moment she resumed, trying to keep her voice level, “Now I want
to model a couple of days a week. Is that so very awful? Am I really a
case for the bughouse because I want to _escape_ once in a while?” She
tried, with her voice, to make it seem ridiculous.
“If it were only once in a while,” he said sadly. They were silent
again. Beth had stopped her pacing and he looked at her lovely figure,
shadowy beneath the nylon film of nightie. He wanted her so much ... so
much. At last he said, quietly, “Well, I guess it’s better than losing
you to Uncle John for half a year.”
She turned around slowly and her face was grateful. “Thanks, Charlie,”
she said. “I would have done it anyway, but—” She was sorry she had said
it. He looked so despondent, utterly stripped of his husbandly
influence, almost a stranger to her. “But I wanted you to approve,” she
went on hastily. “I wanted to be able to tell you about it and
everything.” He refused to look at her. “She—she’s doing it for
nothing,” Beth added, hoping to make it more acceptable to him.
He laughed unpleasantly. “She’s doing it for _something_, Beth. Not
money, maybe, but _something_. Vega’s not the kind of girl who does
things for nothing.”
She went around the bed and sat down beside him. “Look at me, honey,”
she said. “I want to thank you.”
“I know,” he answered, but the thought of her kiss suddenly made him
weak and a little sick. He sat up, turning to give her his back and was
suddenly mortified to feel her lips on it in a brief shy salute. He
froze.
“Beth,” he said sternly. “Vega is a strange girl. You should know....”
“Know what?” she said eagerly.
“Cleve has told me,” he said reluctantly. “She’s been married a couple
of times.”
“To whom?” Beth interrupted, astonished. Vega? _Married?_
“Well, I didn’t know them. The first marriage was ideal, by your lights:
she lived in Chicago and he lived in Boston. For eight years. Cleve said
she never let him in her bed. His name was Ray something. She calls him
ex-Ray.”
Beth had to grin at his back. It began to sound more like the elegant
enigma she knew. “Who was the other one?” she asked.
“Some good-timer, backslapping sort of guy. A roommate of Cleve’s once,
before I knew him. Younger than Vega. It’s only been two years since she
divorced that one. I guess he didn’t get past the bedroom door either,
but he did get into her bank account. Spent all her money and then
disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. She never talks about him.”
“Well,” Beth said cautiously, “that’s not so strange. I mean, she
obviously wasn’t a good marriage risk, but lots of women have behaved
that way. Maybe the men she picked weren’t such prizes either.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.” He turned to look at her. “She lives alone with
her mother and her grandfather. Cleve says they’re a trio of cuckoo
birds. You can’t get him over there. Except Christmas and birthdays, and
he only goes because he feels he has to.”
“Do they really hate each other—Cleve and Vega?” Beth asked.
“Only on the bad days,” he said. “Now and then they quit speaking to
each other. But then their mother breaks a leg or Gramp poisons the stew
and they get back together. Takes a family calamity, though. Right now
they’re as friendly as they ever are, according to Cleve. I don’t know
why it should be that way. Doesn’t seem natural.”
“They’re both such nice people. It’s a shame,” she said.
Charlie couldn’t stand to look at her any longer and not touch her. He
put his arms around her and felt her nestle against him with a
shattering relief. After a few minutes he heaved himself over her to
turn out the dresser lamp, returning fearfully to her arms, only to find
them open.
“Is this my thanks for giving in?” he said. It was flat and ironical. He
couldn’t help the dig. But she took it in stride by simply refusing to
answer him. He made up for several weeks of involuntary virtue that
night.
Before they slept, Charlie had to say one last thing. He saved it until
he knew they were both too tired to stay awake and argue. He didn’t want
to ruin things. She lay very close to him, in his arms, too worn out for
her usual tears of frustration, and he whispered to her, “Beth?”
“Hm?”
“Darling, I have to know this. Don’t be angry with me, just tell the
truth like you did earlier. Beth, I—” It was so hard to say, so awkward.
He was afraid of humiliating her, rousing her temper again. “I keep
thinking of Laura,” he said at last.
“Laura?” Beth woke up a little, opening her eyes.
“Yes. I mean, I can’t help but wonder if you—you know how you felt about
her—if it’s the modeling that interests you or if it’s—Vega.”
In the blank dark he couldn’t see her face and he waited, fearful, for
her answer. _God, don’t let her explode_, he prayed.
Beth turned away from him, her face dissolved in tears. “It’s the
modeling!” she said in a fierce whisper. And they said no more to each
other that night.