It wasn’t a penthouse, and it wasn’t nearly as grand as she’d imagined. It was blue and brown and white and smelled of leather; it was almost ordinary, and its floor seemed to tilt at dangerous angles as he went about the courtly preliminaries: ‘… Can I get you a drink? Sit down over here…’ No sooner had he sat close beside her on the sofa than they were all over each other, and the sounds of the city nineteen floors below were overwhelmed by the greater sounds of their breathing; when he helped her into the bedroom it was like a long-awaited, well-deserved passage into light and air.
Howard Dunninger filled her life. He was as appealing as Jack Flanders, with none of Jack’s terrible dependency; he seemed to make as few demands on her as Michael Hogan; and when she sought comparisons for the way he made her feel in bed, night after night, she had to go all the way back to Lars Ericson.
After the first few weeks they stopped using his apartment – he said he didn’t want to be constantly reminded of his wife – and started using hers. That made it easier for her to get to work on time in the morning, and there was another, subtler advantage: when she was a guest in his place there seemed to be a tentative, temporary quality to the thing; when he came to hers it implied a greater commitment. Or did it? The more she thought about this the more she realized that the argument might easily be reversed: when he was the visitor he could always get up and go away.
In any case, her apartment became their home. He was shy at first about moving his things in, but soon one of her bureau drawers was packed with his laundered shirts, and there were three dark suits and a bright cluster of neckties hanging in the closet. She liked to run her hand down the length of those ties, as if they were a heavy silken rope.
Howard owned a Buick convertible, which he kept in a garage uptown, and in good weather they took drives into the country. Once, having started out for Vermont on a Friday afternoon, they drove all the way up to Quebec City, where they checked into the Château Frontenac as if it were a motel; and Sunday night, on the long trip home, they drank French champagne out of Styrofoam cups.
They went to the theater sometimes, and to small drinking places that she’d only read about before, but most evenings they stayed home, as quiet and gentle with each other as people who’d been peacefully married for years. As she often told him – and she knew it might have been wiser not to tell him at all – she had never enjoyed herself so much with anyone.
The trouble was that he was still in love with his wife.
‘There!’ he said once, when she hadn’t even known he was looking at her. ‘What you did just then – the way you held your hair back with one hand and bent over the coffee table to pick up that glass – that could have been Linda.’
‘I don’t see how I can possibly remind you of her,’ she said. ‘After all, she’s a young girl and I’m practically forty.’
‘I know; and you really don’t look anything alike, except that she’s small-breasted too and you have the same kind of legs, but just once in a while, some of your mannerisms – it’s uncanny.’
Another time, when he’d come home in a sour mood and drunk a lot of wine with dinner, he sat nursing a bourbon and water for a long time, silent, until he began to talk in a way that suggested he would never stop.
‘… No, but you have to understand about Linda,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t just that she was my wife; she was all I’d ever wanted in a woman. She was – how can I explain it?’
‘You don’t have to explain it.’
‘Yes I do. Have to get it straight in my own mind or I’ll never get over her. Listen. Let me tell you how I met her. Try to understand this, Emily. I was forty-two years old but I felt older. I’d been married and divorced, I’d had what seemed any number of girls; I guess I felt I’d pretty well exhausted my possibilities. I was out in East Hampton for a couple of weeks and somebody asked me to a party. A lighted swimming pool, Japanese lanterns in the trees, Sinatra records piped out from the house – that kind of thing. A mixed crowd: there were a lot of actors who made television commercials, a couple of children’s-book illustrators, a couple of writers, a few business types trying to look arty in their burgundy Bermuda shorts. And son of a bitch, Emily, I turned around and there was this creature lying on this white chaise longue. I’d never seen skin like that, or eyes like that, or lips like that. She was wearing—’
‘Are you really going to tell me what she was wearing?’
‘—wearing a simple, short black dress, and I took a big drink for courage and went over to her and said “Hi. Are you somebody’s wife?” And she looked up at me – she was too shy or I guess too reserved to smile – and she—’
‘Oh, Howard, this is silly,’ Emily said. ‘You’re just going to get yourself all worked up. You really are a terrible romantic.’
‘All right, I’ll keep it as brief as I can. I don’t want to bore you.’
‘You’re not “boring” me; it’s just that you’re—’
‘All right. The point is, the very next night she was in my bed, and every other night after that; when we got back to town she moved all her stuff into my apartment. She was still in college – she went to Barnard, same as you – and when her classes were over every day she’d hurry down to my place in order to be there when I got home. I can’t begin to tell you how sweet that was. I’d go home bracing myself, thinking No, it’s too good to be true; she won’t be there – and she always was. I look back on that time, that first year and a half, as the God damned happiest time of my life.’
He was up and walking the floor now with his drink in his hand, and Emily knew better than to interrupt him.
‘Then we got married, and I guess that did take the edge off it a little – for her, I think, more than for me. I was still – well, I hate to keep saying “happy,” but that’s the only word for it. Proud, too; enormously proud. I’d take her places, people would congratulate me, and I remember I’d say “I don’t believe her; I don’t believe any of this yet.” Then of course after a while I did start to believe her; I started taking her for granted in ways that nobody should ever take anybody for granted. In the early years she used to say I never bored her, and I took it as a great compliment, but I don’t remember her ever saying that toward the end. I’d probably begun to bore the hell out of her with my vanity and my posturings and my – I don’t know. My self-pity. And I think that’s when she started getting restless, along about the time I started boring her. God damn it, Emily, how can I make you understand how nice she was? It’s a thing that can’t be described. Tender, loving, and at the same time she was tough. I don’t mean “tough” in any pejorative sense, I mean resilient, courageous; she had a wholly unsentimental way of looking at the world. Intelligent! Jesus, it was almost frightening sometimes how she’d go straight to the heart of some elusive, complicated thing with an intuitive insight. She was funny, too – oh, she didn’t sit around getting off paralyzing one-liners, it’s just that she had a very sharp eye for the absurdity behind anything pretentious. She was a great companion. Why do I keep saying “was”? It’s not as if she were dead. She was a great companion for me and now she’ll be a great companion for some other man – or men. I imagine she’ll try out quite a few men before she settles down again.’
He sank heavily into an armchair, closing his eyes, and began massaging the thin bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘And sometimes now when I think of her in that particular context,’ he said in a flat, almost dead voice, ‘when I picture her out there with some other man, opening her – opening her legs for him and—’
‘Howard, I’m not going to let you do this,’ Emily said, standing up for emphasis. ‘It’s maudlin. You’re acting like a lovesick little boy, and it’s very unbecoming. Besides, it’s not very—’ She wasn’t at all sure if she should finish this sentence, but she did ‘—not very considerate of me.’
That brought his eyes open, but he closed them again. ‘I thought you and I were friends,’ he said. ‘I thought the idea wa
s, you were supposed to be able to talk freely with a friend.’
‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might be a little jealous?’
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘No, as a matter of fact that hadn’t occurred to me. I don’t get it. How can you be jealous of something that’s in the past?’
‘Oh, Howard. Come on, now. What if I spent whole evenings going over all the wonderful, wonderful qualities of different men I’ve known?’ But that question answered itself: she could tell Howard Dunninger anything about any of her men, or all of them, and he wouldn’t care.
In December of that year, National Carbon assigned him to California for two weeks.
‘And I suppose you’ll see Linda out there, won’t you?’ she said when he was getting ready to leave.
‘I don’t see how,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in Los Angeles; she’s ’way up north of San Francisco. It’s a big state. Besides, I—’
‘Besides you what?’
‘Besides I what nothing. I can’t seem to get this God damned suitcase shut.’
It was a bad two weeks – he called her only twice, toward the end – but she survived it; and he really did come home.
Then in February, late one night when they were about to go to bed, Sarah called.
‘Emmy? Are you alone?’
‘Well, no, actually, I’m—’
‘Oh, you’re not. I see. I was hoping you would be.’ The rhythm and texture of Sarah’s voice evoked a sharp sense of that terrible old house in St. Charles – the mildew, the chill, the ancestors staring from the walls, the smell of garbage in the kitchen.
‘What’s the matter, Sarah?’
‘Let’s put it this way. To quote John Steinbeck, this is the winter of our discontent.’
‘I don’t think that was original with Steinbeck, baby,’ Emily said. ‘Has Tony been —?’
‘That’s right. And I’ve made a decision, Emmy. I’m not staying here any more. I want to come and stay with you.’
‘Well, Sarah, the thing is – I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible.’ She glanced at Howard, who stood in his bathrobe a few feet away, listening and looking interested. She had told him about her sister. ‘The thing is, I’m not living alone now.’
‘Oh. You mean you have a – I see. Well, that does complicate things, but I don’t care. I’m leaving anyway. I’ll stay in an inexpensive hotel or something. Listen, though: do you think you could help me find a job? I can write advertising copy too. I’ve always been able to – you know – turn a phrase.’
‘There’s a little more to it than that,’ Emily said. ‘It takes quite a few years to get a job like mine. I really think you’d be better off looking for some other kind of work.’
‘What kind?’
‘Well, maybe working as a receptionist, or something like that.’ There was a pause. ‘Look, Sarah, are you absolutely sure you want to do this?’ Emily held the phone in both hands and chewed her lip, trying to figure out her motives. Not very long ago she had urged her sister to leave home; now she was urging her to stay.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Emmy,’ Sarah said. ‘I guess I’m not absolutely sure of anything. Everything’s so – so mixed up.’
‘Is Tony there?’ Emily asked. ‘Can I talk to him?’ And when Tony came on with a drunken-sounding grunt she felt a fine, swift return of the exhilaration she’d known that night in the hotel room. ‘Listen, Wilson,’ she began. ‘I want you to leave my sister alone, is that clear?’ As her voice rose and flattened out she understood why she was doing this: she was showing off for Howard. This would prove she wasn’t always tender and loving; she could be tough, resilient, courageous; she had a wholly unsentimental way of looking at the world. ‘… I want you to keep your big – your big fucking hands to yourself,’ she said, ‘and if I were a man I’d come out there tonight and make you wish you never had any hands. Is that clear? Put Sarah back on.’
There were muffled scraping sounds, as if heavy furniture had to be moved before Sarah could come back to the telephone. When she did, it was clear at once that she’d changed her mind.
‘I’m sorry to bother you with all this, Emmy,’ she said. ‘I probably shouldn’t have called in the first place. I’ll be all right.’
‘No, listen,’ Emily said, feeling greatly relieved. ‘Call me anytime. Please feel free to call me anytime, and meanwhile I’ll keep an eye on the “Help Wanted” ads in the Times, okay? It’s just that I don’t think you’d be very wise to come right now, is all.’
‘No; I don’t either. All right, Emmy. Thanks.’
When the phone was back in its cradle, Howard handed her a drink and said ‘That’s terrible. That must’ve been very hard on you.’
‘It’s just that there isn’t anything I can do, Howard,’ she said. She wanted him to take her in his arms, so she could cry against his shoulder, but he made no move toward her.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘actually, you could let her have this apartment for a while; we could stay up at my place.’
‘I know; that did occur to me; but the point is the apartment’s only the beginning. You have no idea how helpless she is – a funny little middle-aged woman with terrible clothes and bad teeth and without a skill to her name – she can’t even type except with two fingers.’
‘Oh, well, I imagine there are things she could do. I might even be able to help her find something at National Carbon.’
‘And she’d be around our necks,’ Emily said with more bitterness than she’d intended. ‘We’d never be free of her for a minute if she were here. I don’t want her, Howard. I know it may sound awful, but I don’t want her dragging down my life. If you can’t understand that I guess it’s just too – too complicated to explain.’
‘Okay,’ he said, smiling and frowning at the same time. ‘Okay. Just take it easy.’
Several weeks went by before the next call, at about the same time of night, and this time it was Tony who called. He sounded drunk again, and she could hardly hear him because of other slurred male voices in the background, which she realized after a second were the sound of television turned up too loud.
‘… Your sister’s in the hospital,’ Tony’s voice said, trying for as neutral a tone as that of a gruff policeman reporting to the victim’s next of kin.
‘The hospital? What hospital?’
‘Central Islip,’ the voice said; then it added ‘where she belongs,’ and the silence was filled only with the muffled boom and rumble of the television voices.
‘Oh my God, Howard,’ Emily said when she’d hung up the phone. ‘She’s in Central Islip.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s where my mother is. The state hospital. The insane asylum.’
‘Well, Emily, listen,’ Howard said gently. ‘Her husband couldn’t have just put her there. If she’s been committed there it can only be because some doctor decided to send her in for treatment. This isn’t the nineteenth century; nobody says “insane asylum” any more. It’s a modern psychiatric hospital, and it’s—’
‘You don’t know what it is, Howard. I do. I’ve been out there to see my mother. It’s twenty or maybe fifty enormous brick buildings; even when you’re out there you can’t comprehend how big it is because there are so many trees. You walk along those paths thinking This isn’t so bad, and then two more buildings come up at you through the trees, and two more, and two more. And they have bars on the windows, and sometimes you can hear a person screaming in there.’
‘Don’t make a melodrama out of it, Emily,’ Howard said. ‘The first thing to do is call the hospital and find out what she was admitted for.’
‘It’s eleven o’clock at night. Besides, they’d never tell me – a strange voice on the phone. They must have rules about that. You’d have to be a doctor to—’
‘Or a lawyer, maybe,’ he said. ‘Sometimes being a lawyer comes in handy. I’ll find out what her diagnosis is tomorrow, and I’ll tell you tomorrow night. Okay? Now come on to bed and stop acting like an actress.’
When he came home the following night he said ‘ “Acute alcoholism.”’ Then he said ‘Oh, come on, Emily, that’s not so bad. All she has to do is dry out and they’ll let her go. It isn’t as if it were “paranoid schizophrenia,” or something like that.’
That was a Monday. It was Saturday before Emily was free to ride the train out to Central Islip bringing two cartons of cigarettes (one for her sister and one for her mother); on the platform she nodded to one of the scruffy-looking cab drivers who clamored around her – they seemed to make a nice business out of one-dollar fares to the hospital and back – and then she was in that bewildering maze of trees and buildings.
Sarah’s building was one of the older ones – it had a turn-of-the-century look – and Emily found her on a heavily screened upstairs verandah, sitting deep in conversation with another woman of about her own age. They both wore printed housecoats and cotton slippers, and the whole of Sarah’s scalp was wrapped in something white that looked at first like a turban – the kind that had been stylish in the early forties – but proved to be a bandage.
‘Emmy!’ she cried. ‘Mary Ann, I want you to meet my brilliant sister – the one I was just telling you about. Emmy, this is my very best friend, Mary Ann Polchek.’
And Emily smiled at a faded, frightened little face.
‘Let’s sit over here where we can talk,’ Sarah said, moving slowly as she led Emily to a couple of vacant chairs in the afternoon shadows. ‘Gee, it’s nice of you to come all the way out here. Oh, and you’ve brought cigarettes, too; aren’t you sweet.’
‘You mean that lady’s your best friend from home?’ Emily asked when they were settled. ‘Or just here?’
‘Just here. She’s a wonderful person. You really shouldn’t have made this long trip, dear; I’ll be getting out of here in a couple of weeks.’
‘You will?’
‘Well, three weeks at the most, my doctor says. I just needed a little rest. Actually, all I care about is getting out before the first, when Tony Junior comes home. Did I tell you his medical discharge came through?’ Tony Junior had injured his hip in a jeep accident, which kept him away from Vietnam; the other recent news about him was that he was married to a California girl. ‘I can’t wait to see him,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s decided to settle in St. Charles with his family.’