Nelson listened, then rather to Edith’s surprise stood up, arched his back in a stretch, sat and looked at Melanie attentively, as if he liked her voice. When they left the room, Nelson followed them. Downstairs, as they drank their tea, Edith told Melanie that Brett wanted a divorce.
‘What? Has he lost his mind?’
Melanie was genuinely surprised, Edith saw. ‘Well, no, because – he said when he left that it was a – He said he thought he wanted to marry Carol.’
‘How’s he going to support two households?’
‘Carol isn’t poor. I might take a job of some kind. Lots of shops in town, you know, where I could get a job selling.’ Edith couldn’t bring herself to say Cliffie would help, too, because she knew Melanie didn’t think him reliable.
‘Have you agreed to the divorce?’ Melanie asked.
‘What else can I do?’
‘Why, you’ve got everything on your —’
‘I think it’s awful, fighting these things,’ Edith interrupted. ‘After all, he’s known the girl more than a year now. He must know what he’s doing.’
‘Yes. And so do I. He’s indulging himself. He’s walking out on a situation – you and Cliffie, not to mention George! Leaving you with that, it seems!’ she put in, in her gentle, telling style, and continued, ‘We all know about temptations like this, women have them too, but one doesn’t give in to them,’ Melanie gave a laugh. ‘I’m sure I sound old-fashioned.’
She didn’t to Edith. It was good to talk with someone besides Gert Johnson, who however had said the same thing about Brett’s leaving her with George. But where did they go from here? ‘I don’t know,’ Edith said with difficulty, ‘if you expect me to fight – somehow. I just can’t. It’s too sordid.’
‘Lots of things in life are sordid. Having a baby is sordid, but necessary.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Edith said, and she did, and knew that of all people Melanie could make the sordid part of life less sordid. ‘But isn’t making a fuss about it more sordid? You don’t expect me to make a fuss, do you? I don’t even want to soak Brett financially.’
Melanie leaned back on the sofa. ‘I honestly don’t know. I know your character, and it’s not there – to fight in a case like this. I think I would, at your age. And does Brett think he’s a spring chicken? Just because he’s a man?’ Melanie laughed again, a tolerant laugh.
Edith said nothing.
‘How is Cliffie taking it? Does he know his father wants a divorce?’
‘Oh yes. I think he resents the fact his father’s simply run off. That more than the fact there’s another woman involved. Cliffie’s aware he’s supposed to be the man of the house now. Naturally I don’t —’ Edith was finding it harder and harder to talk. ‘I don’t push the role on him.’ Edith might have said, but didn’t, that Cliffie showed signs of being worried about their finances. He did like the house and certainly wouldn’t want her to have to sell it.
Edith glanced at her aunt’s handsome face – Melanie was looking toward the fireplace now – and wondered if Melanie was thinking that if Cliffie did push off, it would be the best thing for him and for her? ‘I do think Cliffie feels Brett is being selfish,’ Edith said.
‘In that respect, Cliffie is right.’
Melanie then said she would like a rest before the evening, and she would try again to say hello to George who had been sleeping a few minutes ago. Upstairs, Edith looked into George’s room and found that he was awake.
‘Oh, George! Aunt Melanie is here. Wants to say hello to you!’ Edith thought her own voice sounded insanely cheerful, but why not?
‘Oh! Oh, how nice! Tell her to come in.’
Edith made a vague gesture toward the glass that held his lower teeth, because George spoke and looked better with them. ‘Melanie?’ Edith said.
‘Coming, dear!’ Melanie came into the room. ‘How’re you, George?’ Melanie said heartily, bending over George. ‘You’re looking the same as ever and it’s been – oh, nearly another year, I do believe.’
‘Feeling about the same,’ George assured her. He was propped on one elbow. He had not put in his teeth.
‘What’re you reading?’ Melanie was speaking loudly, and she pointed to a closed book on George’s bed.
It was not a library book, but one from the house, a biography, Edith had forgotten of whom. Anyway George didn’t hear the question.
‘See Brett?’ George lifted his rheumy eyes to Melanie’s face.
‘No. No, I haven’t. Love to see him!’ Melanie shouted tactfully, and gave Edith an amused glance over her shoulder.
‘We’ll let you rest a while, George,’ Edith said. ‘Unless you’d like some tea? But it’ll be dinner time in about an hour.’
‘Tea? Tea, yes,’ George said.
Edith had been about to open a window to air the room. Only one window was open a little. George had somehow thought it worthwhile to get out of bed and close one window, or of course he might have done it on one of his trips to the bathroom. But just now Edith thought it more urgent to get his tea and have that over with.
Melanie said to Edith in the hall, ‘Poor dear!’ She squeezed Edith’s forearm and released it. ‘I do hope he’s still going to the bathroom by himself.’
‘Yes. That’s something,’ Edith replied. Edith was not going to mention that George had wet his bed two or three times, in his sleep, perhaps. Edith knew she must acquire a rubber sheet. It had been on her mind for at least three weeks now.
Edith prepared George’s tea tray and took it up.
When cocktail time arrived, a little past 7, Cliffie was still not home. Was he funking the whole evening, because he knew Melanie was here? Edith told Melanie that Cliffie sometimes had to work the dinner shift, and didn’t always ring her when he had to.
Melanie was sipping a gin and tonic. The big front window was open. It was not yet warm enough for air-conditioning in the daytime, and the evening was bringing a most welcome breeze from the north.
‘You know, it occurred to me just now as I was sitting in my delicious cool bath,’ Melanie said, ‘that if you don’t fight now, you may regret it. A little later will be too late and too late forever, you know.’ Her voice was gentle.
‘Fight how?’
‘Telephone him. Tell him you love him. – You’ve got his telephone number, haven’t you?’
Was she supposed to do that, when Carol might pick up the telephone first, be in the apartment when she spoke with Brett?
‘Well, you do love him, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Oh yes,’ Edith said.
‘It’s up to you, my dear, of course, but I say only that if you let the divorce go through – it’s going to be so much more difficult, if Brett ever wants to come back. It seems to me you’re not lifting a finger. Maybe you think it’s more noble —’
‘I don’t feel in the least noble,’ Edith said.
‘It’s not the time for nobleness. Brett isn’t behaving nobly. All I’m saying is that if you don’t act now —’ Melanie let her voice trail off, then she lit one of her infrequent filtered cigarettes. She smoked perhaps three a day.
In the seconds of silence, Edith felt for the first time an abyss beneath her, around her, black and dangerous. She had a sense of empty time, lots of time, years, months, days, evenings. She was reminded more strongly, she felt more strongly than when she had written the sentence maybe twenty years ago, that life really had no meaning, for anyone, not merely herself. But if she herself were alone, was going to be alone, then the meaninglessness was going to be that much more terrifying. That was it. She felt terrified for a few seconds, as if she had had a glimpse of destiny, fate, the essence of life and even death. It had been her destiny to meet Brett Howland, for instance, to become his wife and have a son by him, and if that were taken away – Brett was obviously already taken away, and as for a son, was Cliffie of much substance? He worried her more than he comforted her.
Edith got up for no purpose except that she had
grown faint and thought it best to move, to go nearer the window. Her legs felt weak, and she realized she was stooped.
‘Edie, sit down!’ said Melanie. Now Melanie was on her feet, extending a hand to Edith.
Edith took her hand and sat down, realized the coldness of her own hand from the warmth of Melanie’s. I have just had a vision, Edith wanted to say, a vision of a valley, an abyss, worse than a cliff you walk over. It represented the rest of her life, Edith felt, and it represented the present also. And the tragedy would not be solved by another person, not another husband, not even by Brett really, because Edith’s vision had to do with her existence, quite apart from other people.
‘I am not going to faint,’ Edith said to her great-aunt, as if Melanie had said she was going to, and Edith sat up straighter.
‘Of course you’re not. I know it’s a difficult time for you, darling, and I’m glad I’m here. – What does Julia say? And Bill?’
These were Edith’s parents who lived in the country near Richmond. Though Edith was an only child, she and her parents were not close. Her parents were more interested in growing prize roses than in politics, and thought Edith might have married ‘better’, one of the bores from a better family than Brett’s who populated their district and their world. Sometimes Melanie telephoned her parents, Edith’s mother being Melanie’s niece, and Edith wondered if Melanie had in the past months. ‘I wrote them that Brett was going to work in New York for a while and take an apartment,’ Edith said, ‘and that he was working also on his book, you know. I can’t tell my parents everything, Aunt Melanie, I don’t want to.’
Melanie patted her hand. ‘All right, m’dear. Let’s talk about something else.’
So they did. And Cliffie did not come home for dinner or even to sleep that night.
13
The next morning Edith shopped and was home by 10, then she and Melanie spent a pleasant hour weeding sweet peas and making an edge in the grass with the spade. Nelson followed them about, collapsing in patches of sunlight, watching them. Melanie called him their white overseer. Even at her vast age, Melanie didn’t mind kneeling with a trowel, bare-legged in her longish summer skirt. The Quickmans (a name Cliffie thought hilarious, and he called them the Quickmen) were coming for drinks. They liked Melanie. And the Johnsons had invited them, including Cliffie, for dinner tomorrow night. With drives into the country, visits to antique shops, Melanie’s five-day stay would be pleasantly filled. But Edith knew Melanie was going to say something more in regard to Brett before she left.
Cliffie came in before 3 that afternoon, his beard miraculously gone, his face pale, his manner chastened. Edith and Melanie were having after-lunch coffee in the living room.
‘Well, Cliffie,’ Melanie said. ‘How are you? Give us a kiss. Um – smack!’ Melanie laughed. ‘I thought you had a beard!’
‘Just got it shorn,’ Cliffie replied. He carried a magazine rolled tightly in one nervous hand.
‘You were at Mel’s?’ Edith asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You might give me a buzz next time, Cliffie. How do I know what’s happened to you, if you stay out all night? You could have been in an accident somewhere.’ Edith felt false, as if she was saying what she thought she should be saying.
‘Oh, if I’m in an accident, the police or the hospital always telephone home. No need to worry about that!’
‘Working tonight?’ Edith asked. If he worked the evening shift at the Chop House, he had to be there by 5:15 p.m.
‘No,’ Cliffie said. ‘Well – I dunno. I can work if I want to, they said.’
‘Because the Quickmans are coming for a drink at six.’
‘The Quickmen,’ Cliffie said, with a glance at Melanie, who was observing him with a friendly attention.
Cliffie might have slept in his shirt and trousers, Edith thought, from their look. ‘Have you had lunch?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Cliffie was walking toward the rear door of the living room, the direction of the kitchen and his own room. ‘And I’m hungry.’ He disappeared.
Edith said softly, ‘I think he shaved his beard off for you.’
‘He needn’t have done,’ Melanie said. ‘Didn’t he have one last year? Does he think I’d be shocked by a beard?’
Edith shook her head. ‘I never know what’s in his mind.’
‘He really should get out of the house,’ Melanie said gently, not for the first time. ‘He’s such a silly boy sometimes. He needs a few hard knocks to grow up.’
They’d been over this before. ‘If you have any ideas, I’d be grateful if you told him – talked to him. One of my friends – probably Gert – said I’d be taking care of him when he was forty. I don’t know what’ll happen when he’s forty, except maybe I’ll be dead by then myself.’ Edith laughed.
They were both almost whispering. Edith knew that Cliffie eavesdropped when he could, like some insane self-prisoner wondering how to escape a place from which his captors would be delighted if he did escape, or like a paranoid who thought everyone was plotting against him.
The Quickmans came, Frances pink-faced from gardening in the sun. She had red hair. Her grown-up daughter had married two years ago, and now lived in Philadelphia. Her husband Ben was manager of a car sales office in Flemington, a sturdy good-natured man with brown curly hair, balding on top. Edith had never seen Ben in other than a cheerful mood, and Edith supposed it helped to sell cars. Or was he cracked like everyone else? The Quickmans were determined Republicans, and had voted for Goldwater. They did useful favors such as cat-feeding. Now they were tactful enough not to mention Brett at all, and they hadn’t asked questions even in the days after Brett’s departure. Edith knew they had heard the news, not to mention that Brett’s absence must have been noticed by them since they lived next door. Cliffie was not present. Was he working tonight? He had slipped out with his usual vagueness, not saying where he was going when Edith had asked him.
‘We’ll miss Brett,’ said Ben, blinking behind his glasses at Edith. ‘Hope he comes back to the homestead weekends now and then.’
Everyone was polite.
The Johnsons on the following evening were equally discreet, and Brett’s name wasn’t uttered. Cliffie did not come with Edith and Melanie, though he had not been working that evening. The Johnsons talked about their son Derek, who was due home for a three-week leave in August. Gert and Norm were thrilled.
‘I’m gonna make shur-r,’ Norm said, ‘he breaks a knee in a car accident or something while he’s here, so he won’t have to go back.’
Derek had another five months to serve in Viet Nam.
On the fourth day of her visit, Melanie asked, ‘Does Brett write to you?’
‘Oh yes. I must’ve had – at least three letters. I can’t expect him to write every week! And once in a while he phones. It just happens he hasn’t phoned while you’ve been here.’
‘And do you write him?’
‘No. I don’t want my letters crashing in where they’re living – together.’
‘But you could write him at the Post marked personal. You know, Edith, I think you should have a face to face talk with him in New York before the final papers are signed. Wouldn’t he agree to meet you somewhere?’
They were sitting in the living room, and Cliffie’s transistor again jangled Edith’s nerves, but she was afraid to ask him to cut it off, lest he be sullen at dinner on Melanie’s last evening.
‘I can’t seem to explain to you, Aunt Melanie, that Brett and I have been over this. He spoke to me – very plainly. Seven months he knew Carol before he – sprang this thing. I think he had to wrestle with himself – though you may think that’s —’ Edith broke off. ‘If you want me to appeal to his conscience or sense of duty, I simply don’t care to. I don’t think it would be right.’
‘There are things in people’s relationships that you can’t put into words,’ Melanie said. ‘I don’t mean to tell you do this and do that, but there’s such a thing as human contact, a r
eminder to him that you exist. It’s the years past that you’ve had – and it’s Cliffie too. It hasn’t much to do with going to bed with a younger woman, if you know what I mean.’
Edith knew. As for Cliffie, going on twenty-two, Edith knew that Brett thought Cliffie should have been on his own a couple of years ago, and if Cliffie wasn’t by now, then to hell with him. Brett’s given Cliffie up as a bad job, Edith wanted to say and couldn’t. Aunt Melanie knew, anyway.
‘You said Carol’s twenty-six,’ Melanie went on. ‘More than twenty years’ difference in their ages. How long will it be till she tells him good-bye, I wonder. Two years? I wouldn’t give it that. – She’s not pregnant, is she?’