But the enjoyment was brief, because Sonny did not understand her, or did not care to. He dropped to his knees and shook her violently so that her head whiplashed. “You don’t kick me out,” he said. “You started this, and for no goddamn reason in the world.”
As she was being shaken the sense of triumph dissolved and the words he had said earlier began to burn. “I . . . had my reasons,” she said. “You . . never give me any hope, you don’t know how I . . . hope for things.”
“Hope for things,” he said, his hands still on her shoulders. One of her shoulders hurt and she twisted, trying to make him ease his grip. “What do you need to hope for? You’ve got half the money in the world.”
“Oh, hell,” she said. “You goddamn child. Quit squeezing.”
“You fucking well better shut up,” he said flatly. She looked back at him, still furious.
“What will you do, throw me off the balcony?” she said. “That purse had a thousand dollars or more in it. What’s in me that you want?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I want you to shut up.”
“I won’t shut up,” she said. “You can’t make me, any more than you can take care of me . . . or give me what I hope for. You treat me like a teenager.”
“You act like one.”
“No,” she said. “I’m acting like a woman scorned. And I scorn you back, you callous son of a bitch. Turn me loose so I can leave. I never want you to touch me again.”
In desperation Sonny tried to kiss her. He wanted her to shut up and he had to kiss her or slug her. She strained back and butted his face with hers, then twisted her face aside. Eleanor’s hair was tangled in her face, they were both panting, and their breaths crossed.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want you to.”
He finally caught her head in the crook of his arm and kissed her, but she killed it by being passive. “I want to go,” she said when he took his mouth away.
“You’re not going nowhere,” he said.
“I am. We’ve done all this. Maybe I liked it when I was young. Maybe I thought it was the way women ought to be wooed. Maybe I was melodramatic.” She could not stop talking and he kissed her again. She met it passively, but it was not so easy. She wanted to do as she had always done—let go, meet him. But part of her refused. “I mean it,” she said. “I’ve changed. I don’t want you.”
Sonny had passed through violent anger into a state of complete exasperation. He tried to put his hand on her and she fought it, and he could not make her stop talking. They had passed the point where their anger usually turned to passion, and she was still talking. He lifted her and pitched her unceremoniously on the bed. Then, before she could move, he went to the lamp and the light switch and turned them off. The room was dark.
“Shut up, Eleanor,” he said. “You’re not going nowhere. I’m coming to bed.”
Eleanor sighed. She stayed where she was. In a moment he was in bed beside her. They were both out of breath. “Turning off those lights was a smart move,” she said in a minute. “I can’t stand the sight of you right now.”
“That’s the way I feel about you too,” he said. He reached for her leg and began to stroke it, but it was not really a caress, it was something he did automatically to calm himself. She scarcely felt it and he scarcely felt her. The tension and fury began to drain out of Eleanor and she lay quietly, feeling beaten but not so bitterly beaten, after all. She had just worn down, she was too tired to go anywhere, and anyway, she had stopped feeling such hatred of him. It might have been her fault—she had cut him terribly. She put her hand on his wrist to slow the stroking.
“Come on, relax,” she said. “I won’t dig at you any more tonight.”
But it was not to be quite that simple. Sonny’s anger was gone, but a tension and a restlessness remained. He was too keyed up to go to sleep. He was not finished with it—or with her. He too lay quietly, but angry statements welled up in him. He never said them, but they turned in his mind. He wanted to say something that would hurt her so badly she would have no strength to fight, no will to attack him again. But he knew her well enough to know that, with her, there was no certain kill. Worn down, beaten, half asleep, and she was still dangerous. So he held his words and when his restlessness did not subside, ceased stroking her leg automatically and began to caress her in earnest. The minute he did he felt fine, for he knew that in desire he was more stubborn than she was, particularly when she was tired. In that state she could be dealt with. When what he was doing reached her she tried to stop him. “No, please don’t,” she said. She felt too spent already, too tired in spirit, to either join him or fight him. And she was tired in body too. For a minute it seemed as if he might revive her, but he didn’t; in her protest she had been right, she was too spent. Sonny was the opposite; the fight had lifted him out of his boredom. He was a long time with her, and Eleanor became sad, tears streaking each of her cheeks, for she loved that strength and if she had not spent so much of hers in fighting they could have had much more from the night. She had wasted herself. When he did grow tired, when he had had enough, she felt tender toward him. She was wakeful in her fatigue and saw by his face in the dimness that so far as he was concerned all was well again. His face closed in some way when he was done. He became his own man again, without need of anyone, and she smiled at him. “Am I really worth the trouble?” she asked, and did not expect a flattering answer. He was getting out of bed to go to the bathroom.
“Yeah, once in a coon’s age,” he said without turning. “Before you go to sleep call the desk and tell them to look for that goddamn purse.”
6
“DON’T SAY THOSE THINGS, Emma,” Patsy said. “Please don’t. Don’t sound so hopeless.”
But Emma looked hopeless. She seldom cried, but she had just cried for twenty minutes. The crying had left her clear-headed, and she was not feeling particularly sorry for herself any longer. She was feeling realistic, and it was the things she said after she calmed down that had Patsy on the verge of tears. Crying was one thing, but dispassionate hopelessness was much worse. In her concern for Emma she didn’t even notice that Davey, on the floor at her feet, had found a Tinkertoy and was about to pop it into his mouth. Emma reached down and took it away from him and he began to fret. She got up and found him a toy truck in compensation. He gummed it and began to slobber.
“He’s teething,” Emma said. Patsy scarcely noticed.
“But I know he loves you,” she said, meaning Flap. “He’s bound to.”
“Oh, probably,” Emma said in a tone that wrung Patsy’s heart. “It doesn’t really seem to matter. Sometimes he’s good to me, but then there are times like this summer. I think I would be less upset if I thought he didn’t love me. We’ve loved one another for ten years now and it ought to have changed things more fundamentally, don’t you think?
“Damn it,” she added flatly and was silent awhile. “And it’s nothing, really. It’s just some deficiency in me, I guess. He’s working himself blind studying for those exams—why should he be bothered to cater to my whims?”
“What whims?” Patsy asked, looking down at her son, who was chewing the truck.
“Well, not whims exactly. I just have to have about fifteen minutes’ masculine attention a day or I get blue. If I’m not flattered every day I get sour, and Flap just doesn’t want to bother with flattering me any more, or fucking me any more, or doing anything with me any more. The only things we really enjoy together any more are things we do with the kids, like picnics, or taking walks. Hell, I like to do those things, anyway. You’d think we could think of something that he and I still like to do just together, privately, you know?”
“I bet it’s just the exams,” Patsy said. “They must be a terrible strain. Flap’s so good-natured I can’t believe he’d mistreat you if it wasn’t for some reason like that. After all, the exams sort of decide your life.”
Emma sighed. She stuck her foot out and waved her toes in front of Davey. He grabbed her big
toe and tried to get it in his mouth, but she grinned at him a little wanly and wiggled it so he couldn’t. He grinned too and held on to the toe. Patsy felt sad. From being messy but still content and still glowing, Emma had grown wan, and her sloppiness did not complement her wanness as it had complemented her glow. Her hair was dull; when her face was alive and changing it didn’t matter, it went with her. But her face had fallen. It didn’t dimple or change, and the only things alive in it were her sorrowful eyes.
“It isn’t just exams,” she said. “It’s always irked him that I need him. It doesn’t bother him that he needs me to cook for him and take care of the boys and get him clothes and be here when he wants me, but it strikes him as utterly irrational and weak that I should want to be flattered ten minutes a day.”
“Can’t you just tell him what you need?”
“I tell him all the time. ‘Quit pestering me, you know I think you’re great,’ he says. Sometimes he doesn’t even look up from whatever he’s reading.”
“Sounds like Jim,” Patsy said and grew confused. It was the first time Jim had crossed her mind in days. It reminded her that she too had a marriage that was far from ideal. Hank had been back three weeks and she had almost ceased to think about Jim or worry about her marriage. Jim was apparently not worrying about it either, for he had taken to calling only once or twice a week.
“If you and Flap aren’t happy I guess nobody is,” she said.
“Oh, don’t look so blue,” Emma said, smiling, for it was obvious to her that despite a temporary melancholy her friend was happy. When she had come in that morning, in sneakers and shorts, with Davey in his carriage, she looked as lovely, as blooming, and as full of happiness as Emma had ever known her to look.
“You don’t look so bad,” Emma said.
Patsy felt even more confused. Emma did not know that for more than two weeks she had been an adulteress. Several times she had wanted to speak of it, but the words never came to her lips. The Hortons knew Hank was back, and whenever his name came up Patsy felt deeply uncomfortable. She knew within herself that she was not going to speak, that she had not the courage to expose what she was doing, even to Emma, and yet she could not master her confusion. She reached down and swooped Davey up in her lap to cover what she was feeling.
“Who knows?” Emma said, yawning. “I don’t care any more. I can’t think of any way to change anything. I’m not going to change and he’s not going to change. I want what I want, by god, and I don’t think it’s fair that I should have to want any less. I can’t help my deficiencies. I get as twitchy as a teenager when I’m ignored for days. We just have temperamental differences, that’s all—nothing’s going to make them go away. I just don’t know what to do that would be worth doing. I can’t leave him—I don’t even want to. What would the boys do without him? I couldn’t even do without him.”
Patsy tried to imagine Emma and Flap living apart and couldn’t. Emma had always had Flap. They had been engaged when she and Patsy met. Emma too tried to imagine separation—as she had several times—and couldn’t. The best she could do was to imagine herself in a posh job, or the sort she would be very unlikely to get.
“Maybe I’ll just have to train myself not to want what I want,” she said. “He never trains himself. All he does is study. God help us if he fails those exams.”
“He won’t fail them. Jim always said he was the sharpest graduate student here.”
“He better be. I’m not going to put up with any failures from him. If he failed the exams and tried to use me for an excuse I think I’d kill him.”
“Im glad I’m not in school,” Patsy said. “I hate artificial pressures like that. Essential pressures are bad enough.”
“Flap used to be so enthusiastic,” Emma said wistfully. “That was what I loved about him first. Now he isn’t enthusiastic about anything and lack of enthusiasm about life just kills me. I have to have someone who’s enthusiastic or I can’t operate.”
Just then there was a howl from the driveway, where the boys were playing. They both listened, hoping the howl would diminish, but instead it rose higher and higher. The cry was from the throat of Teddy, and in a minute the door slammed below and they heard the boys on the stairs. Teddy burst in, howling and weeping, and flung himself into Emma’s lap. Tommy came in behind him, trying to appear calm but betraying a certain nervousness.
“Oh, baby,” Emma said, hugging Teddy. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing really serious,” Tommy said. “I just ran over his toe with my tractor.”
At that Teddy made an effort to choke off his sobs, and he fought clear of Emma’s lap. He plopped himself down on the floor and held up one foot mournfully. One of his toes was bleeding slightly and another was a little skinned.
“Oh, poor toes,” Emma said. “That’s not so bad, though. You can have a Band-Aid.”
But Teddy’s temper was up. He shook his head and pushed out his lower lip. He contemplated his injured toes unhappily, and clearly felt he deserved more sympathy than he was getting.
“Was this an accident, Tommy?” Emma asked. “Did you tell Teddy you were sorry?”
“Oh, sure,” Tommy said. “I told him I was sorry.”
But Teddy shook his head in vigorous denial and gave Tommy a dark look. Davey was staring at the boys with his usual solemn amazement.
“He says you didn’t tell him you were sorry. Who am I going to believe?”
Tommy came over, keeping a judicious distance from Teddy, whose sorrow seemed about to turn to violent rage. “I didn’t really tell him I was sorry at the time,” he said. “I wasn’t really sorry at the time. But later I told him I was sorry.”
“You mean after he began to howl,” Emma said. “Maybe he didn’t hear you. Couldn’t you tell him again? It might help matters.”
There was a silence. Tommy pondered; Teddy waited.
“Well?” Emma said.
“I asked him to move,” Tommy said. “He was standing in my beanfield and I needed to plow. I asked him several times to move.”
“Couldn’t you have plowed around him?”
“It was my field,” Tommy said, frowning. “Teddy could have stood somewhere else. I was going to grow a beanstalk and he was standing right where the stalk was going to come up. I needed to plow right there so it could come up.”
“They’re big on farming just now,” Emma said. She tried to smooth her hair back from her face. “I gave them some seeds, but it’s not working out very well. If he asked you to move, why didn’t you move a little, Teddy?”
Teddy’s vocabulary was filling out. “No,” he said, looking sullenly at his bloody toe.
“Look,” Emma said, reaching down and shaking his foot. “You do not need to be stubborn. When Tommy asks you nicely to move off his beanstalk, move off it. Then your toes won’t get tractored.”
“No,” Teddy repeated, giving her a dark look.
“So it wasn’t my fault, was it?” Tommy asked. “I had to plow, so the beanstalk could grow. Teddy even said he was going to pull it up when it did grow.”
“Me beanstalk,” Teddy said, getting up. He gave Emma an all-right-for-you look and meandered over to Patsy. “Me toe,” he said mournfully. Tommy had begun to edge toward the door, with a view in mind of going down to plow, but Teddy saw him. “Me beanstalk,” he yelled, red in the face with fury.
“It’s my beanstalk!” Tommy yelled back, even louder.
“All right, hold it a minute, Tommy,” Emma said. “I think farming’s out for now.” She suggested they play jungle; the suggestion diverted them and they pattered back down the stairs.
“I’ve got to take this one home,” Patsy said, standing up and lifting Davey to her hip.
“I’m ashamed of all that crying,” Emma said. “Flap’s not as bad as I make him sound. Maybe I need a girl. All these males get me feeling outnumbered.”
“What would a little girl be like?” They were silent—neither knew.
“I??
?d just have another boy,” Emma said, and she laughed like her old self and followed Patsy down the stairs.
Davey was inserted into his carriage with some effort.
“Come back to see us,” Emma said, yawning. She looked sleepy and relaxed and no longer nearly so blue. “Next time you need to cry about the miseries of marriage let me know and I’ll listen.”
“Okay, perk up now,” Patsy said, but she wished Emma had not made the last remark. She didn’t think she would be crying about the miseries of marriage with Emma any more, because Emma, unhappy or not, was still a good wife. Come good or bad, Emma was true to Flap. She herself, with much less reason to stray, had strayed anyway, and whatever miseries came her way as a result she would have to cry about alone. She couldn’t tell Emma.
As they were walking home they met Flap pedaling home for lunch. He waved and said, “Howdy, y’all,” but his look was almost hostile, as if he suspected Patsy of having just listened sympathetically to lies about him. He looked despondent and paranoid, his hair needed cutting, and he didn’t stop, as he normally would have, to stall her in the broiling sun for ten minutes while he chattered and admired her legs or her looks in general. He didn’t even glance at her legs, though she wore shorts. He kept pedaling. It made her almost angry with him, for he had established a kind of lecherous ritual with her, involving unserious flirtatious remarks, and it seemed rude that he should pass her so curtly. But that too was bad for her, for it was Emma who needed Flap’s flirtatious remarks and his attentions. She felt it was sad that Emma had got herself in such a hole with a fickle, inattentive man—Emma of all people, practically the one person she knew who was steadfast in her affections.
The carriage was unshaded and Davey was hot. By the time she got him home Davey was yelling as loudly as he could yell. Juanita heard them and came down the stairs and gathered him up, and Patsy, still sad, followed them up to the apartment, bringing the baby gear.