Now, in her mid-forties, Roberta was perceptibly past her bloom: wore no makeup, or very little; did nothing with her hair except to have it cut, cropped short; wore clothes Glynnis might describe, if she meant to be kind, as serviceable. She was the mother of two near-grown sons, of Bianca’s approximate age, boys Ian had liked, had perhaps even coveted, at least in theory; he had spied upon them once in the village, mother, sons, some years ago, by accident really, seeing the three of them in the parking lot behind the public library: Roberta Grinnell, Ronnie, Greg, in their mid-teens at the time, considerably taller than their mother but unmistakably her sons. Ian thought, My own boy is dead, but the statement was clear and factual and bare of all emotion, even the denial of emotion, for it was really the Grinnells in whom he was interested, so oddly, intensely, interested, for what were they talking about so earnestly? What made Ronnie laugh, and grin, and shake his head? Why did Roberta give him a little push with her hand, as Glynnis sometimes did to Ian, a gesture of mock-repulsion, mock-exasperation, a love so intimate it might have been one flesh, one single motion?—but this was not erotic love, not married love, but the love of a mother for her son. Ian, who spent out of necessity most of the hours of his days in an interior world of his own tyrannical devising, felt, watching the Grinnells, an inexplicable yearning, a wholly unarticulated, inchoate yearning: as if they were strangers to him, and not the wife and sons of his closest friend. He thought, There they are.
He had kept out of the way and had not greeted them.
From time to time Ian recalled the conversation he’d had with Denis, of some months ago, that startling and upsetting conversation when, for no reason Ian could guess, Denis had told him—had confessed to him?—about having been unfaithful to Roberta. And he had not known how to respond, simply had not known. So happily married were Roberta and Denis Grinnell, so much an ideal couple in the community—as, indeed, the McCulloughs had always been (or seemed)—Ian would have found the disclosure hard to believe, had not Denis told him directly. Who was the woman, no one Ian or Glynnis knew, no one in Hazelton, a professional contact, hadn’t Denis said? And Ian translated that to mean a young woman, a graduate student perhaps, an assistant professor perhaps; that was the usual story. (Ian had never told Glynnis about the revelation and wondered if she had known. Surely she had?—surely Roberta had told her?—but he had not told.)
He could not imagine how Roberta Grinnell, sensitive as she was, wholly undeserving as she was, had borne Denis’s revelation: the knowledge forced upon her; the fact, appalling in its simplicity, that infidelity is a physical event—two bodies joined together, in love or in love’s mimicry, joined together that the rest of the world might be excluded. Had she cried? Had she been angry? furious? Like Glynnis, had she lashed out against her husband with the intention to wound?
Ian stared at Roberta, thinking of these things. And thinking, as if peripherally, as one “thinks” of a physical discomfort or pain grown familiar with the passage of time, of Glynnis’s infidelity: a hurt lodged so deep it might have shaded into his very sense of life’s injustice, its willful and haphazard evil, as if the revelation, personal and private, had become a fact of brute nature itself.
He did not mean to, but surely he was, frightening his visitor, who sipped at her unwanted wine and crossed and uncrossed her legs, taking up a book on the coffee table before her and examining it, asking Ian about it—as if he’d read it, or remembered reading it—and putting it down, and picking up another, books of Glynnis’s in their smart colorful jackets; one of my vices is buying hardcover books, Glynnis said, apologetically yet with an air (for who could deny it, Glynnis had these airs) of supreme self-congratulation. She had liked novels—contemporary novels, by both well-known writers and unknown writers—if “like” was not too mild a term for the voracity with which she read them, and responded to them, a passion Ian could not imagine in himself . . . who read fiction, when he had time to read fiction, with the air of a scientist or an anthropologist—so this is how these people live? and this?—not believing for a moment that his own life, still less his own soul, might be examined by way of any book, held up to a moral scrutiny as intense and unremitting as his own.
So Ian smiled and said, “I miss Denis; I miss my old schedule, in the gym.”
And Roberta said, as if on cue, “Denis misses you, but he isn’t sure if he should call you or not; he knows how busy you are”—“Not busy exactly,” Ian said—“. . . how difficult it is for you, right now,” Roberta said. And that subject was exhausted.
Ian, dry-mouthed yet smiling, was reminded of those taxing interviews he had with prospective junior fellows at the Institute, in which apprehension yielded to paralysis, and in the face of another’s timidity Ian McCullough found himself obliged to be bold. He smiled again, and hooked his fingers about the knee of his crossed leg, and said, with a jauntiness that rang horribly false. “Well. What news have you brought me, Roberta, that you couldn’t have told me in front of Denis?”
“Not news exactly,” Roberta said shyly. “More along the lines of . . . something you should know. Information.”
“Yes? About . . . ?”
“. . . a conversation I had, with Glynnis. Just before . . . I mean, earlier on the day of . . . when it happened. The accident.”
Ian nodded, as if, knowing nothing, he knew everything. His heart had begun almost literally to hammer, in an instant he was flooded with dread, cold, fear.
He thought, I don’t want to hear this, I cannot bear to hear this, I will get up and walk away; but of course he remained where he was, seated, smiling his ghastly smile, as if in encouragement. (For Roberta was as tense as Ian had ever seen her, in their many years of friendship; her hands so shook, she clasped them together, and her face, drained of blood, had taken on the stiffness of a mask.)
“First of all, Ian, I want you to know that I haven’t told Denis . . . or anyone. If the police . . . I mean, I’ve heard that . . . there is a possibility . . . but . . . I have not told anyone, not even Denis, out of a respect for . . . you and Glynnis . . . for you both. Because I really don’t know how to interpret what she told me, and I don’t think it is my prerogative or my right to interpret it. . . . I mean,” Roberta said, confused, not meeting Ian’s eye, “I don’t really want to interpret it. There is a sense in which, now Glynnis is dead and I miss her so, that I don’t want to think about it. . . . I simply don’t want to think about any of it.”
Ian nodded, transfixed. He was listening with enormous concentration but had heard only part of what Roberta said.
“It happened really by chance, I mean the conversation, at that time. . . . At about two in the afternoon . . . I called Glynnis because she was supposed to have dropped something off at the house that morning, and she hadn’t, and it wasn’t like her to forget, you know, even such minor, trivial things . . . so I called her, and when she picked up the phone she seemed very upset; I’d never heard her quite so . . . upset . . . as if,” Roberta said hesitantly, “she’d been drinking . . . I mean quite heavily drinking . . . as Glynnis never did. She asked me point-blank what I knew of you and . . . a young woman, Sigrid Hunt. Did I remember Sigrid Hunt? she asked; did I know whether you and Sigrid Hunt were having an affair; had I ever seen the two of you together; was Denis in on the secret . . . ?
“I was astonished; I’d never heard of such a thing, and I told her so; but it was difficult to talk to her; she was so enormously upset. ‘Don’t lie to me, please, Roberta,’ she said, ‘don’t lie to me,’ she said several times, and I told her I wasn’t lying; why on earth would I lie? ‘To protect him,’ she said, ‘to humor me,’ she said, and I insisted that I’d not only never heard of you and Sigrid Hunt having an affair but I found it impossible to believe . . . and she said, ‘I find it impossible to believe but it happens to be true.’ She asked about Denis, certainly Denis knew, why hadn’t Denis told her if he knew, why was she being shielded, did all of Hazelton know, was she being talked about, laughed at,
pitied, behind her back? She couldn’t bear it, she said, she wasn’t the kind of wife who could bear it. . . .”
Ian thought calmly, I can still walk away; I can get up and walk away. He said, “I see.”
“In any case I told Glynnis I knew nothing about any affair. I told her several times. But she didn’t seem to believe me, hardly listened to me. She had proof, she said; something about a canceled check, money you had given the girl . . . I think it was a thousand dollars. I mean, I think that’s the sum Glynnis mentioned. I told her I knew nothing, and I was certain that Denis knew nothing, and she got rather nasty at that point, for the life of me I don’t know why; she said, ‘Your husband, do you think he has been faithful to you?’ and I asked what did she mean, I was getting upset myself now, I couldn’t believe the turn this had taken, or Glynnis’s anger . . . really a kind of rage . . . I’d never seen in her before. I knew she had a quick temper, of course, we all did, but this was really quite . . . alarming. So I said I was going to hang up, and Glynnis said, ‘Yes, do, goodbye, the hell with you all,’ and slammed down the receiver. And I . . . I was so shocked . . . I sat there with the phone in my hand and could scarcely believe what had happened. . . .
“I thought, There must be some mistake, some terrible misunderstanding. I dialed Glynnis back but the phone was busy . . . I tried a number of times before giving up, but she must have had the receiver off the hook. In retrospect I see that I should have driven over here immediately, but at the time I suppose I was rather hurt, and upset, and a little frightened of her . . . of her recklessness . . . of things she might say that could not be unsaid. I wasn’t a very good or loyal friend, was I, Ian?—letting it go like that, assuming it would be cleared up in a few days. And in the morning Malcolm called us with the news about Glynnis’s accident, and the emergency operation, and . . . the rest.”
Ian said again, blankly, stupidly, “I see.”
Roberta said, “Oh, Ian, I wasn’t a good friend to Glynnis, was I? When she needed me? I keep thinking that I might have prevented it, somehow; I might have saved her. Calmed her down, stopped her from drinking more, talked to her. I knew, I simply knew, that her suspicions were unfounded . . . I knew it was all a terrible misunderstanding. . . .”
Roberta’s eyes were suddenly brimming with tears; her voice had gone hoarse. Ian stared at her helplessly, in dread of what she would say next.
“I told her I knew nothing, and she would not believe me. Would not hear me. As if she wanted to think the worst, wanted to torture herself. She spoke of asking you to leave, demanding a divorce. . . . It was all so sudden, so intemperate. I told her, and she would not listen. . . . This Sigrid Hunt, this girl, red-haired, a dancer or former dancer, teaching at Vassar, I think; Glynnis was the one who’d introduced me to her . . . introduced several of us to her . . . at a luncheon last fall . . . a women’s luncheon at the tennis club. And then she was at a party in this house, wasn’t she? I didn’t speak with her that night but I seem to remember her. A striking face, but there was something strange about it, about her, something sickly, like a pre-Raphaelite painting she was, those obsessive portraits of the young red-haired woman Rossetti was in love with, the woman he eventually married, and she committed suicide, and didn’t he bury a packet of his poems with her corpse, and afterward exhume it to retrieve them . . . ? Those dreadful people and their dreadful deathly loves! Well, Sigrid Hunt made me think of such things. She was Glynnis’s friend, of course, for a while, a short intense while, one of Glynnis’s new young ‘interesting’ friends; she had these . . . passionate friendships, as you know . . . taking people up, inviting them into her life, and then, for no very clear reason, dropping them. I always thought it might be that we, Glynnis’s closest friends, her ‘real’ friends, were not enough for her, not enough for her imagination to seize upon. Did it seem to you that way? Did you think about it at all?” She was speaking rapidly now, her eyes dangerously bright with tears. “Of course, I realize I’m probably jealous . . . I was probably jealous . . . though Glynnis always came back to us in the end, never left us, really, of course, at all. After I’d hung up the phone I was frightened that our friendship might be endangered; I was fearful of losing her . . . but also of the things she might say to me, lashing out against me, and Denis, things she hadn’t any right to speak of or even to know, I really don’t know how she knew, because it is true that Denis and I . . . that Denis . . . some years ago . . . but that had nothing to do with . . . with Glynnis, or with anyone in Hazelton. So I thought, I can’t face her! She’s drunk, she isn’t herself! I can’t face her! I had the terrifying idea I didn’t even know her. . . .”
She broke down suddenly, hid her face in her hands, began to cry. Ian thought, So Glynnis spilled her guts after all.
“You must not blame yourself, Roberta. Of course you must not blame yourself. . . .” He remained sitting, stiffly, his legs crossed, fingers hooked about a knee, in a posture of paralysis, speaking in a slow dull stunned voice. “Please, Roberta. You must not blame . . .” I will not defend myself, he thought. He had heard clearly enough but could not believe: Sigrid Hunt’s name known, Glynnis’s mad accusation known, their unspeakable quarrel made public.
His eyes too brimmed with tears. Not of grief or even of regret but of hurt, humiliation, outrage! For Glynnis had betrayed him doubly: had betrayed their marriage and had in effect willed her own death, for which he was not to blame yet would be blamed. I will not defend myself, he thought.
The hell with you all.
ROBERTA GAVE HERSELF up to the luxury of grief: a specifically female luxury, Ian thought it, in envy. And then she rose to leave, wiping her face with a tissue, clumsy, apologetic, deeply embarrassed, and, yes, fearful of him—for it was so very explicit, his failure or refusal to speak: to deny Sigrid Hunt, and Glynnis; to proclaim, like any guilty man, his innocence.
He walked with her to the door, clumsily too, tall and stork-legged and blundering, walked with her into the courtyard, which was fragrant with the heavy scent of wisteria, that scent, Ian thought it, of desire: of utterly inchoate, undifferentiated, unnamed desire. She was wiping her face with a tissue, her eyes, which were bloodshot, and her cheeks, which looked tender, even chafed, streaked with tears. How close to the surface of our lives are tears, Ian thought, recalling his daughter’s childhood, her babyhood in particular, when Bianca wept so easily, and stopped weeping so easily, and a while later wept again, a depthless reservoir of tears, it seemed; and you must endure another’s pain, attempt to alleviate another’s pain, protect, embrace, caress, shield with love or love’s mimicry—so he found himself touching Roberta, his dear friend’s wife, his arm about her shoulders, his face against her hair, murmuring words of comfort that were in truth words of desperation: Please don’t blame yourself, don’t blame yourself in any of this, it was a dreadful thing an unspeakable thing an accident that might have been prevented had we only known. . . .
She stood very still, did not turn to him, yet did not step away from him or push his arms away; did not repulse him. Ian felt a wave of sheerly sexual desire that hit him like a blow; a concentration of blood, yearning, need; a crisis as of a sudden terrible density. . . .
He said, “Don’t go,” begged, “Don’t go,” now weeping himself, hoarse and guttural, yet childlike, helpless. “Roberta, don’t leave me, don’t go, I’m so afraid.”
They were in the courtyard, in the open air, stumbling together like drunken lovers, Ian’s arms around Roberta as if he were drowning and she might save him, the very buoyancy, warmth, and life of her body might save him, and Roberta, so much shorter than he, shorter than Glynnis, was swaying on her feet, taken by surprise yet not resisting him; nor acquiescing. What words she managed to say, what confused comfort she proffered, what gestures of womanly, motherly, spontaneous, and unwilled solicitude, he would not afterward recall, any more than he would recall his own anxious words: only that, knowing Ian’s desire for her, knowing his ravenous need, she nonetheless detached
herself from it and refused it. “I can’t stay. You know I can’t stay. Don’t ask me. Let me go. Please. I can’t stay. I must leave—” And Ian, suddenly repentant and deeply ashamed, let her go.
At her car he heard himself speak in a nearly normal voice, and Roberta, a former psychiatric nurse after all, replied in a nearly normal voice. “Of course,” Ian was saying, and, for some reason, “I know, I understand”; and Roberta was saying, “Please come to dinner with us soon, now that Bianca is gone,” and squeezed his hand. “It isn’t good for you to be alone.” Ian opened her car door for her, and shut it; stood back, smiling at her, dazed, stricken with desire, something beating behind his eyes, yet—and how astonishing this was, how his pride would batten on it!—speaking calmly, even affably: would she say hello to Denis, and would she tell Denis he’d like very much to resume their squash games soon, perhaps next Monday; by then things should be more under control; he’d been going over to the Institute for a few hours a day and bringing work home with him; the correspondence was piling up, “It’s this time of year, God knows why everything comes to a crisis now.” They made a tentative date for dinner, Thursday evening: day after tomorrow.
As Roberta backed her car carefully out of the drive, Ian thought again how easy it would be for him to say, You know of course that I am not that young woman’s lover, I have never been that young woman’s lover; how easy for him to follow after her, to defend himself, to say, In that, Glynnis was mistaken, poor Glynnis whom I loved so much but who did not trust me—how easy, yet how impossible; something bitter and resolute in him would not allow it. He might have said, Glynnis died out of pride; he might have said, Please forgive me: I allowed my wife to die out of pride; but of course he said nothing, simply stood in the driveway, like any host seeing off a visitor, waving goodbye, farewell, come again soon please, a man observing the rudiments of social protocol though disheveled, flush-faced, sweaty, absurd as any rejected suitor.