Sue called Diane to suggest they go to lunch. Over bay-shrimp-and-avocado salads, she beat around the bush before coming forth with sympathy, encouragement, and the names and phone numbers of fertility specialists. Sue passed this information to Diane on a memo sheet with “From the desk of … Sue Strom” printed on top. She’d written the names and numbers in her large, looping, unslanted hand. Below she’d added the words “God Bless!” next to a smiley face.
Still Diane didn’t act. Jim, now desperately on the offensive, went to a specialist of his own, and “checked out,” as he put it, “all systems go.” Diane had the feeling he read his test results as a kind of report card on his value as a man—semen volume, sperm count, motility—and also that, by extension, he saw her as a failure. In response, she claimed to have seen a specialist, too, and to have heard that, for reasons unknown, she was “subfertile.” This, she added, meant that they should try harder, which, for the moment, was good enough for Jim. On Super Bowl Sunday, at his brother Will’s suburban castle, he jocularly described, to his smirking clan, his assignment “to work overtime with Diane.”
Extra exertions of course got Jim nowhere. Fecund as he was, and willing, and hard-charging, he couldn’t get the better of Diane’s “subfertility.” She kept hope alive, though, by pretending to be taking a hormone stimulator. She bought The Joy of Sex, which at first embarrassed Jim. Undaunted, she picked up a pornographic manual on positions that might improve their odds, and encouraged Jim to try them all. This he did with no lack of enthusiasm. He bought in wholeheartedly. He aimed for deep penetration. One night, he brought home a Xeroxed research paper establishing the relationship between the quality of a woman’s orgasm and her odds of pregnancy, built around the theory that—he read this to her—“strong female contractions are like powerful waves on which sperm ride toward the cervix.” Intrigued by the idea of focusing on his partner’s pleasure, Jim next brought home a vibrator and a dildo. Diane, who’d borne up under plenty of partners interested in accosting her with these and other tools, not only let him go at her with them but dutifully pretended to contract in more powerful waves.
Jim, ever clueless despite his wealth and privilege, had no idea what he was up against, and, despite his unplanted seed, enjoyed his expanded sex life. At the height of his powers, he was on a roll, and so was Long Alpine, which had become so successful that it was written up not only in the fawning The Oregonian but in Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. Soon, the Long plant was enlarged and streamlined, and the marketing department got imaginative and savvy under Jim’s energetic management. Long hosted contests at major ski resorts, gave away skis, vacations, and season lift tickets, bought out a rival, expanded research and development, and, at Jim’s insistence, started a line of “cutting-edge” winter wear. Soon a new company catalogue had been developed featuring bold and athletic models, expensive photographs, and clever product descriptions. Long sold not only clothes, skis, and poles, but goggles, helmets, travel bags, boots, sunglasses, and other top-of-the-line fashionable accessories. All of it carried Long’s updated logo, featuring the word long as if engraved inside an oval belt buckle. Jim closely monitored Long Alpine’s ad development and spent a lot of time thinking about storyboards. He told Diane that his interests had turned creative and that he felt himself expanding as a human being.
Despite the rising fortunes of her marital community, Diane remained privately averse to the Longs and to their upbeat mercenary endeavors. She sat in judgment of them with growing severity. When she wrote to her half-brother Club to complain about her in-laws, she made what she knew were unfair exaggerations, subsuming them under the heading “Rich Americans” to make things clear. He wrote back to say that he’d never been to the States but that these monied in-laws sounded familiar from television. He wrote that he was “hod-carrying for shit money” and that this line of work was doing his back in. He had “a mate who does up gypsy caravans” and was thinking of making his way down to Dorset to help him with the painting. Maybe he was going to travel, he claimed; maybe he would visit her one day. All of that was refreshing to Diane, who otherwise had to put up with the band of philistines she’d married into. Her critique of her in-laws eventually extended to the way Isobel’s breath smelled (“tonsillar concretions” was the name of her malady) and to the make and model of Nelson’s tennis racket. The phrase “ruthless buggers” sat high in her head when the arrogant Longs complained about American proles on the dole, or the supposed laxity of the American justice system, which they felt favored criminals. Their ignorance repulsed her. Their politics were galling. They were not very happy with Jimmy Carter and on the Fourth of July, by the pool at Will’s house, bitched drunkenly and loudly about the peanut farmer from Georgia who’d so far done diddly-squat about inflation but had sure been busy on amnesty for draft evaders. Jim joined his brothers in this line of attack with what Diane thought was a surprising vehemence. He may have protested to her his midlife turn toward liberal sentiments and creative concerns, but by the pool he sounded just like his brothers—like a plutocrat with a crabbed pecuniary complaint. Bottom line, though: Jim still had a lot of money. And with time he seemed to accept the fact that Diane would never give him heirs. He told her that he’d decided to be thankful for his eleven nieces and fourteen nephews, most of whom lived in driving distance. He said he saw nothing wrong with being a good uncle. If indeed it was his fate not to have his own kids, he could—and did—accept that and see the bright side. Jim took pains to let Diane know that he didn’t blame her, which made her feel guilty. He wasn’t a bad person, after all, just well-heeled and dumb. Maybe, she told herself, she should have chosen a wanker, because then her exploitation could proceed guilt-free. But, anyway, there was no going back now. Guilt or no guilt, she still didn’t want children. After all, if Jim was finally getting used to her “sterility,” what would be the point in getting pregnant? “Nada” was the answer from her hairdresser, Steve, a diminutive and leathery Louisianan who looked like a cross between Mick Jagger and a rodeo rider—especially when he wore a torso-grabbing T-shirt—and who knew not only about her ruse of subfertility, but also, hilariously, about the vibrator and dildo. Good old Steve was wonderful as a confidant but nasty as a hair critic. At times he would hold Diane’s hair in his hands and say, “I can’t work with ignored raw material, you know,” or, “If you’re not going to use a good conditioner daily, there’s no point in coming in to see to me.” She put up with his barbs because her appointments with Steve always ended in triumph. When he finally swiveled her chair toward the mirror, Diane looked better, and because she looked better, she felt better, too.
The day came, though, when they were jointly disappointed. Steve refused to take money for his “disaster,” and tried, fruitlessly, to correct it with his shears. This way, things went from bad to worse until Steve, with tears in his eyes, asked Diane to join him outside for the cigarette he needed “to just come down from this … this … I don’t even want to say.” On the sidewalk, pacing in front of the salon and smoking furiously, he was silent for a long time. Then, with one of his zippered black boots on the salon’s windowsill, and with his anguished scrutiny of her bad hairdo distorting his face, he urged Diane to see “a specialist friend of mine about a light facial peel, just to touch up and rejuvenate a little, and I’m paying for it, because I feel so devastated.” Diane felt immediately drawn to the idea, and wondered why she she’d never thought of it.
Steve’s friend was a dermatologist named David Berg, whose results were so overwhelmingly good, and whose manner was so encouraging and soothing, that Diane became a fan of light facial peels. Always explaining everything as he went—“This is just a very gentle cleanser; now I’m applying our magic solution; now we’ll carefully and thoroughly rinse; I’m just finishing up with a little soothing lotion”—and doing it in a silky voice, Dr. Berg made a facial peel seem like a spa treatment. Each time, Diane was amazed and impressed by his ability to coax new vibrancy from her s
kin with a minimum of pain. Her peels were a private matter between her and Dr. Berg that Diane paid for with Walter Cousins’s money, taken from her secret safety-deposit box in Sullivan’s Gulch. When the time came for more elaborate work, though—targeting the fine wrinkles in her brow, around her mouth, and next to her eyes—Diane was forced to discuss it with Jim, because there wouldn’t be a way, said Dr. Berg, to pretend it hadn’t happened. A crust would form on the treated areas, and for a couple of weeks they would appear bright pink, before she could expect the end result of a smoother, tighter, more youthful appearance. “But you don’t need to do that,” Jim countered when she explained, “because I’m Billy Joel—I love you just the way you are.”
Diane wanted to say, “It isn’t about you, Jim,” but by now she knew better. “I just feel fortunate to live in modern times,” she told him, “and to have the wherewithal for an intensive peel, and while it might be better, morally speaking, to give our money to charities, we can do that, too, can’t we?”
“We can,” answered Jim, “but that’s not the issue. I don’t know how else to say this, but the issue is vanity.”
He was sitting with his Docksiders crossed on the coffee table—not, Diane thought, the best posture for an attack on vanity. “What about your weight-lifting supplements?” she asked, even though he hadn’t used them for years. “What is it you take? For more defined muscles? Or that thing you ordered—what’s it called?—the Ab Blaster? Come on—don’t be self-righteous.”
Jim flexed his right biceps facetiously. “And now my abs are perfect,” he said.
So she went for the more intensive peel, which hurt a little, and ended with a coating of petroleum jelly, substantial adhesive tape, and pain meds. At home that night her eyes swelled shut, and in the morning she woke up sick to her stomach and suffering from a second-degree facial burn. She couldn’t say much, because talking hurt her face. Half blind, mute, and in considerable pain, she had to wait patiently for her appearance to improve. After two weeks, some stay-at-home weight gain, and a thousand-plus pages of Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins, her face, indeed, looked great.
At Mazatlán, the next month, she was scrupulous about staying out of the sun, for which Jim rebuked her, but this was an argument he couldn’t win, because the American Cancer Society was on Diane’s side, and because Nelson had recently had basal-cell carcinomas removed from his left cheek and temple. Diane passed hours in a breezy cabaña, playing games of Scrabble with Nelson and Isobel, drinking Evian water and piña coladas, and earning points for being charitable to the geriatrics. It was easy, mindless duty, and in every regard it would have been all right were she not made to feel so insecure by the many younger women passing by. They looked so good that Diane felt terrible and vowed to lose five pounds straightaway.
On Thanksgiving, she resisted the stuffing and potatoes and, avoiding the kitchen, focused on her nieces. Diane was popular with the teen-age Long girls, not only because of her vestigial English accent but because, out of earshot of other adults, she joined their adolescent criticism of the world. Before dinner, she’d leaned in the doorway of a bedroom where a density of Long darlings had congregated, and laughed when one of them pointed out that Uncle Trip had gross chest hair. Diane told her nieces that chest hair could be sexy, which they would understand when they were more experienced. This numbed all talk while they deciphered Aunt Diane and—she knew—grappled with discomfort. No matter. She let a beat pass before revealing to her confused audience that men who were feminine in gesture and aspect could be attractive as well. Diane looked theatrically up and down the hall to make certain no adults were in hearing distance, then urged her nieces not to count on condoms. They should take the pill, or get an IUD or a diaphragm—the pill, of course, was best. Again there was discomfited teen-age silence, which she ended by saying, “I suppose I should join the oldies for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in front of the television, and for chitchat about—whatever.”
Through the December holidays, Diane ate with greater-than-normal abandon, and the inevitable weight gain—some in her butt, some in her midriff—left her in need of a mood pick-me-up in the form of yet another facial peel. Jim, who was at this point well practiced as a husband, asked, “What weight gain are you talking about?” Nevertheless, when she weighed herself, four new pounds corroborated her position that a visit to David Berg was necessary.
Dr. Berg listened to Diane’s concerns, then referred her to a friend in body reshaping, a Dr. Green in Lake Oswego, who, Berg said, was “absolutely magnificent.” At her first appointment with Dr. Green, he wanted to know what she didn’t like about her body, and asked about her psychological, marital, health, and eating problems. At a second appointment, Diane had to take off her clothes and submit to being photographed by a nurse with a Polaroid instant camera, and to a tape measure and calipers. She and Dr. Green discussed her butt and midriff, and then he insisted that she take a week to think about the risks—including the risk, however slight, of death—and about the scars he would do his best to conceal, the possibility of less-than-perfect results, and the certainty that time would undo all his efforts. A month later, Diane had a combination tummy tuck and butt lift, supplemented by liposuction contouring. Other than some irritating itching around her stitches, and a little redness at the site of a surgical drain—remedied with an antibiotic—her recovery period, though boring, wasn’t painful. And the results, after three months, were good.
In fact, that spring she looked “incredible”—Jim’s word—in a French-cut bikini on the beach at Puerto Vallarta, where Jim’s clan was a bit desultory, because, just two days before their departure, in a surprise to all, Sue had reported that her trucking-magnate husband had been philandering with a much younger woman. The Longs were livid and ready for a war. Jim told Diane that he hoped his sister would “take that jerk for all he’s worth and drive him into the ground.” Before the summer was over, she had.
In September, Walter Cousins stopped sending money. At this stage his faltering was financially meaningless, but, still, Diane wasn’t going to let him get away with it. If Walter thought time had let him off the hook, he definitely had another thing coming. Feeling vindictive, victorious, and gleeful, Diane wrote a letter to Walter’s wife. “Dear Mrs. Cousins,” she began. “This is rather hard. This is far from pretty.” She paused for a moment at this early stage of composition, imagining Mrs. Cousins at the reading end of this, then added:
I have to tell you that, in the summer of 1962, when I was employed as an au pair in your home, your husband repeatedly took advantage of me. He took advantage of my youth and insecurity. He took advantage of a young woman who was a visitor to America. For years I’ve lived with the disturbing memory of the summer of 1962. I’ve also lived with a considerable burden, because I’m the mother of your husband’s child. I have a boy, age sixteen and a half, who until this month your husband supported with monthly payments of $250. Unfortunately, those payments stopped coming recently. This is most regrettable, because I’m dependent on those payments to meet my son’s needs. Perhaps you could remind Mr. Cousins of his obligations to his son born out of wedlock.
I write to you about this only with the greatest pain. That you now know of your husband’s past behavior gives me no pleasure. Forgive me. I have no wish to add to whatever sadness permeates your life. I remember that in the summer of 1962 you were receiving treatment for mental illness and hope and pray that since then you have been free from more of same. I also remember your children, Tina and Barry, and hope that their lives are happy and in order. They were a pleasure to spend time with, and I enjoyed their company. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for your husband. He has brought much pain into my life and, as a traumatized rape victim, I have experienced considerable hardship and misery.
Please consider my request. I hope you can impress on Mr. Cousins the moral imperative he is under to continue to provide support for his son.
With prayers and best wishes,
r /> Diane Burroughs
Lydia Cousins’s response arrived four days later, in a white business envelope, typed, with no letterhead. “Ms. Burroughs,” it began. “Walter is dead.”
He died in an automobile accident five and a half weeks ago. I’ve been assured that no alcohol was involved. It was a single-car accident on a road in eastern Washington. Walter was returning from a visit with our son, Barry, who is now a student at Washington State University. Since Walter’s death Barry has had difficulty with his studies and I am worried that this will be for him a lost semester.
Tina, my daughter, is closer to home, studying at the University of Washington. She, too, is devastated by Walter’s passing. They did not always get along too well and poor Tina is now suffering, naturally, from guilt. I worry about her mental health, frankly. You may remember how she was as a child, so emotionally delicate and sensitive. These things remain big challenges for Tina, and have all been intensified by her father’s sudden death. All of that said, I think she’ll pull through. She is very dedicated to her studies.
But I don’t write merely to update you on the children. My true purpose is to respond to your revelation regarding the summer of 1962. Let me preface my response to that by pointing out that Walter went outside our marriage in 1973. He was discovered and we confronted it via marriage counseling. With the years we came to grips with what had happened, and we went on together, not without some happiness. That said, it’s disheartening to now know that Walter lied when he insisted to me that the philandering he was discovered at was the only philandering he’d engaged in throughout our marriage. It hurts to know that our subsequent life together had as its foundation this deceitfulness on his part. I have to wonder now what else he never told me about, and this is compounding my grief at the moment and making it even more difficult for me to get on with life. But get on I must. And I will tell you that despite my sadness I am in many ways looking forward. What’s done is done.