He grimaced as if absorbing pain, and looked up gratefully as the waiter returned with our drinks. I watched him sipping the drink and figured that it probably did some good to have me conjure up a picture of his home and kids and Ellen, who was lovely and tender even though she possessed a quick temper that exploded over small annoyances and sent her into the prison of migraines.
He put down the glass and raised his hands, palms upward, in resignation. “I know what you’re thinking, Jerry. That I’m the villain of the thing. Fine, I admit it. But it’s never quite that simple.”
Oh, hell, I thought, who am I to act as judge and jury? Yet I thought of Ellen—“poor Ellen,” people would be saying now—and I looked around for a weapon.
“How did Ellen take the news?” I asked, knowing, of course, that he didn’t want to discuss her at all. And I knew I had found my weapon.
He frowned, shaking his head, avoiding my eyes. “Hard, Jerry, she took it hard. She didn’t have an inkling; she hadn’t suspected a thing. Oh, she knew I’d been acting different lately. But she thought I was worried about the job, working too hard on the new presentations.” His words came out helter-skelter, falling on top of each other, and I was surprised at the genuine pain in them.
“Anyway, I think she’s numb right now. She cried and my heart broke for her, but there was nothing I could do, Jerry. I had to tell her. I had to make the break …”
“Is it the model?” I asked.
“You’ve heard about her?”
“Rumors. Vague stuff. I figured it was just a lot of talk.”
“You figured it wasn’t possible, right?” he asked laconically. “Not good old Walter Crane. Old faithful. Captain of the bowling team at the office. Past treasurer of the PTA. But it happens, Jerry, to people like me. To people like you and me. We don’t go looking for it, but it happens. Or change that—maybe we are looking for it, maybe everybody is, but we don’t like to admit it …”
His accusation wasn’t sharp enough to cause me any pangs of conscience. I was safe, sitting across from him, thinking about the bonus that was scheduled later in the month at the office, wondering whether my latest sales figures would break a record for October, remembering suddenly the birthday party that night for Kathy, my teenaged daughter, who lived in a world of either brilliant laughter or desperate tears. And hadn’t Harriet asked me to bring home two gallons (two gallons?) of ice cream this afternoon?
“Ah, Jerry,” he was saying, his fingers steepled, his voice hushed as if he were in church, “she’s terrific. Wonderful. Her name is Jennifer West and she’s so beautiful it hurts.” He shook his head, his eyes reaching for distances, a poet trying to pin down the one word that would describe it all.
“How did all this happen?” I asked wearily. I didn’t really want to hear the details—how they had met, who had introduced them, the tentative advance, the first drink together, the looking deep into each other’s eyes, the first caress. He did not have to spell out those details because everyone has read or heard about those things a million times or more, and it is not new or exciting or meaningful except to the newest lovers who are discovering it all over again. And I was reluctant to have Walt recount the details because I had become too accustomed to him in another role—delicately pulling a splinter from little Tommy’s finger that time we all went on a fishing trip to Maine, or splashing Debbie mercilessly at the beach on the Cape to get her mind off her broken heart, or sitting on the sagging porch of a rented cottage after a day of sunshine and water, the kids sleeping inside, he and Ellen and Harriet and I sipping beer quietly, agreeing in one of those sudden profound moments of contentment that life was good, life was kind … I had seen him too often in the role of husband and father, and that was why I was reluctant now to hear him speak of a love affair that had nothing to do with splinters and splashing daughters.
“At first I thought it was ridiculous, Jerry,” he was saying, “that this girl could care for me, could see anything in me. I mean, here I am, an old married man, all settled down. And there she was, young, beautiful, and maybe a thousand guys waiting for her to give them a tumble …”
Again he shook his head at the wonder of it all. “Anyway, it happened accidentally. The heel came off her shoe as she walked into my office, and I was coming around the corner, and …”
“Like in the movies,” I said.
His lips pressed themselves into a grimace, and I could have sworn that I saw some terrible sadness cross his features, a sadness that had nothing to do with my gibe. Somehow he suddenly seemed vulnerable.
“Go ahead,” I said, softening the edge in my voice. “Tell me the rest.”
“There isn’t much to tell, Jerry,” he said, the eagerness returning, the sadness gone as swiftly as it had appeared, “because a lot of stuff you can’t put into words. Do you think I’m kidding myself? I know what you’re thinking, and it’s the same thing I’d be thinking if the shoe were on the other foot—that I’m a damned fool, that I’m throwing myself away, my whole life away, on a girl who …”
I realized then that my role of antagonist was ridiculous, that it would gain neither of us anything.
“Getting back to Ellen,” I said. “Did she agree to let you go?”
“I think she will eventually. She was too upset last night to settle anything. But she knows that I’m not just talking. I packed my clothes …”
“Where are you living?”
“In Jennifer’s apartment building,” he said. Then he held up his hand as if halting traffic. “But not in her apartment. Upstairs, directly over her place.” He had a look of self-righteousness on his face.
“Did you make any arrangements with Ellen?” I asked. “I mean finances, things like that. It’s going to be tough, Walt, juggling two households.”
He signaled for two more martinis, and the waiter caught his eye immediately. Previously he had resembled me—unable to capture a waiter’s attention, standing in the line that didn’t move at the bank, betting on the wrong ball team. Now, seeing his instant success with the waiter, I wondered if he had become endowed with a new quality, if the girl had brought him a certain assurance and an aura of success.
We were silent while the waiter served the second round. After his departure, Walt leaned forward, his knuckles white where he gripped the stem of the glass. “Jerry, Jerry,” he said, his voice oddly pained. “Don’t you think I’ve been through all this? You talk about finances, money … that’s only a small part of it, the smallest part. Jennifer earns enough to make up the difference so that I can take good care of Ellen and the kids. They’ll have nothing to worry about on that score. But it’s the other things …” He sipped the martini, looking away from me. “Like kissing the kids goodbye last night. They didn’t know I was kissing them goodbye, of course. Ellen was in the living room, huddled up, crying quietly, trying not to make a scene. Good old Ellen. And I went upstairs and looked in on the girls. They looked so innocent, as if they had no defenses against the world. I kissed them in their sleep, and I never loved them as much as at that moment. And then I felt sadness come over me, because I knew that I was committing myself. Up until that time I’d been carrying on an affair with Jennifer, and it all had been wild and wonderful in spite of knowing that I was the biggest heel in the world behind Ellen’s back. But it was still terrific, like being drunk on champagne and never getting a hangover. There in the bedroom with the girls, though, I realized that by telling Ellen, I’d committed myself, I’d burned my bridges …” His voice faltered.
“Anyway,” he continued, “that was the moment of truth, in the bedroom with the girls, kissing them on the cheek, and touching Sandra’s bruises—she fell off her bike the day before and hurt her chin—that was when I knew there was no turning back …”
“Did you want to turn back?” I asked gently, sensing the agony of his moment in the bedroom. “I mean, for one moment there did you wish that it hadn’t happened, that you hadn’t met her?”
He was sil
ent for a moment or two, and when he spoke his voice came out almost in a whisper.
“I didn’t go that far, Jerry. I couldn’t. I’d already told Ellen, and I’d known from the start that it would hurt, that we’d all be hurt in some way. Jerry, it’s easy for you to sit there judging me, thinking that I’m different, that I don’t feel things the way other people do and that that’s why I was able to walk out on my wife and kids last night. But that isn’t the way it is, not at all. I didn’t all of a sudden turn into somebody else. I’m still Walt Crane. I still love my kids.” He pushed the glass away. “Look, by the time I got to Tommy’s room last night I was wrung out. The girls were bad enough, but Tommy … well, I’d seen myself in him so many times. That’s what really hurt, kissing him goodnight, goodbye, knowing that when he woke up the world would be changed for him.”
“But you did it, Walt. All that didn’t stop you,” I said, trying to understand what kind of love could make a fellow take a step like this, planning a life with his children left out of it.
“That’s right, I did it,” he said. “But Jennifer’s worth it all. It’s like”—he groped for the word—“like being born again.”
I thought: He’ll be quoting poetry next.
“So there it is, Jerry. I wanted to tell you myself, before you heard it from somebody else.”
“Well, I appreciate that, Walt. We’ve been through a lot together, the good times and the bad.”
“And I want you to meet her, Jerry,” he said.
“Fine, Walt, fine,” I replied automatically, preparing to pay the check, knowing that the conversation was over, that a certain way of life was over.
“She’s supposed to meet us here,” he said. “She should be here any minute.”
His words did not carry their meaning to me immediately because I was thinking of that bedroom where Walt had kissed his daughters goodbye while they lay sleeping, thinking that their world was still bright and safe and secure. I thought of my own children, Kathy and Joey and little Carol, and how much I loved them. But I knew that I didn’t love them any more than Walt loved his. And through the sadness that accompanied these thoughts I realized what Walt had said.
“She’s coming here? To meet us?” I asked.
“I want you to know her, Jerry, to find out how wonderful she is,” Walt explained. “I know what everyone thinks of someone like Jennifer. What do they call her—the other woman, the homewrecker? All those clichés. But when you see her face to face, you’ll know what I mean …”
He looked beyond my shoulder toward the door, and I saw the flashing in his eyes, the youth that suddenly raced across his features like a sunrise, the way he half-raised himself from his chair —I knew that Jennifer West had entered the place and drawn him to her like a magnet.
She was heart-wrenchingly beautiful. A brunette, with violets for eyes, pale skin, young. So young, achingly young. Walt seemed to be drinking in her loveliness as she approached, forgetting me, forgetting the bar’s clatter and everything else as he looked at her. My own eyes were on her. Old Walt, with a girl like that to love.
He stumbled through the introductions as he went around the table and pulled out a chair for her. “My best friend,” he said, nodding toward me. And inclining his head toward her, he said to me, “My best girl.”
If she hadn’t been so beautiful and if he hadn’t looked so happy, the little introductions would have seemed ludicrous. Jennifer West acknowledged her introduction with a radiant smile that revealed perfect teeth and a sudden dimple in her cheek. I could see the thing she had in her smile—she could look at one person as if there were nobody else alive in the world. She looked at me that way for a moment, and when she turned away there was a sense of loss because I knew she looked at other people in that manner for only an instant or two, while she gazed at Walt continually that way. But before she turned away, she said, “I’m glad to meet you, Mr.—”
“Please call me Jerry.”
“—Jerry, because Walt’s spoken so much about you that I feel we’ve known each other for a long time.”
Where do I go from here? I asked myself. Stay or leave? I didn’t want to betray Ellen and the old life that all of us—Walt and Ellen, Harriet and I and the children—had shared, by sitting there pretending to condone what Walt was doing, by pretending that this girl Jennifer West was a welcome arrival. But I have always been a coward in small gestures, betraying myself in a million ways—laughing at a dirty joke that isn’t really funny, remaining silent when someone makes a nasty crack about somebody who’s left the room, never wanting to make a fuss, avoiding embarrassing situations. And so I decided to paste a polite smile on my face and stick it out awhile, noncommittal, until I could leave after a decent interval.
Jennifer West disarmed me by saying, “I’m sorry to make you so uncomfortable, Jerry, but please don’t blame me. Walt insisted that I meet you, even though I told him from the beginning that you had every right to resent me.”
She was probably twenty-two years old, but she spoke and held herself with a dignity beyond her years. Her poise perhaps stemmed from her training as a model, although I felt that she had been born with that regal manner. I could see why Walt did not speak of her as “Jenny” or “Jen,” but referred to her always as “Jennifer.” When she was seven years old and little boys in the second grade were fighting over her at recess, she’d probably been called Jennifer. And she must have had that warmth, that intimacy, in her eyes even then.
I remembered suddenly that she had addressed me directly, something about resenting her.
“Look, Jennifer, I’m not a judge or jury,” I said, knowing the contempt I would fling at myself later for not taking a stand here and now, for not showing how I really felt about it all. “Walt’s not a kid anymore …”
She reached out and closed her hand over his, a small act of defiance—more than defiance, possession. And I felt left out, as if I were sitting at another table.
The waiter hovered nearby, awaiting her order. “Martinis all around,” Walt said.
“He’s corrupting me,” she said to me. “My speed used to be weak daiquiris.”
Speaking of corruption, I should have said, you haven’t done too badly with him, either. But I didn’t, of course. Instead I said, “Do you like modeling?” and listened intently to her answer, noticing the small, lovely hint of down on one ear, and her eyes which, incredibly, changed color as you looked at them, violet to gray and back again. The third martini is always the one that softens the edges of everything, and it tasted wonderfully dry and stinging; the jukebox, or whatever they had in the bar, played softly in the background, some old song I couldn’t quite remember but that reminded me of dances after football games at school. As we sat there I studied her surreptitiously, including Walt in my scrutiny. He still wore a crew cut, but when he inclined his head the pink scalp was visible through the thinning hair. His face had been slashed by time, the erosions of the years. Jennifer’s skin was without blemish, her ebony hair was luxuriant, her eyes were sparkling. They seemed an unlikely couple, certainly, the young and the old. But Walt’s evidence of age didn’t seem to matter. He sat alertly beside her, like a small boy preening, immersed in her words, basking in her presence, responding to every nuance of her tone or gesture. Once in a while he’d look at me, pride stamped on his face, as if to say, What do you think of her, Jerry? Isn’t she worth it all? And I would smile at him, a small, stingy smile that hid what I really was beginning to think: that she was one of the loveliest girls I’d ever seen, so lovely that it caused a pain in my chest.
“I want to know everything about Walt,” she was saying. “Tell me about him, Jerry, all the things he likes and dislikes, so that I can make him happy.”
“Well, let me see, now,” I said, falling in with the game, carried on the waves of the third martini and feeling a warmth for Walt, my old buddy. “He’s not really a martini man but a beer drinker. Don’t ask him about his war experiences, because he tries to loo
k modest but finally he’ll tell you how he lost his Good Conduct Medal in a barroom in Naples on a wild weekend. He’ll tell you that he can’t stand television, but he sits up till two o’clock watching ‘The Late Late Show.’ ”
My words sounded cleverer than they really were, and Jennifer was caught up in them because of her love for Walt; and Walt pretended embarrassment but seemed actually to be enjoying himself.
“And, let’s see,” I continued, sipping the drink, savoring the taste, “He likes Hemingway and Steinbeck who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, and Brubeck and Ellington. And his prized possession is an original recording of ‘I Can’t Get Started’ by Bunny Berigan.”
A frown scrawled itself across her forehead. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re getting ahead of me. Bunny Berigan?” The dimple asserted itself as she wrinkled her nose in concentration. “Bunny Berigan,” she mused, turning to Walt. “Wasn’t he a musician or something?”
“That’s right,” he said. “He played a great trumpet, and that song Jerry mentioned, ‘I Can’t Get Started,’ broke all our hearts back in those days.” He closed his eyes for a moment, as if he could hear that tortured horn reaching for the high one even now. And those old echoes, if that is what he could hear, brought a sadness to his face.
“Well,” she said, briskly businesslike, “I’ll have to add Bunny Berigan to my list of things to catch up on.”
Walt looked at me, pride in his eyes. “She learns fast,” he said, but I still detected the sadness there. I wondered if he was hearing somehow, that sorrowful song that poor tragic Bunny Berigan had played so long ago. Or was there another reason?
“Jennifer,” I said, a small excitement in my voice, “ever hear of bank night?”
She shook her head.
“Winterset? With Burgess Meredith as Mio?”