Another Marvelous Thing (2 page)

“Nothing but a kiss!” I said, rather frantically. My mistress was silent. “A friendly kiss,” I said.

My mistress gave me the sort of look that is supposed to make your blood freeze, and said: “Is this the way you habitually kiss your friends?”

“It won't happen again,” I said. “It was all a mistake.”

Billy gave me a stare so bleak and hard that I had no choice but to kiss her again and again.

After all this time it is still impossible for me to figure out what was and is going on in Billy's life that has let me in it. She once remarked that in her opinion there is frequently too little kissing in marriage, through which frail pinprick a microscopic dot of light was thrown on the subject of her marriage—or was it? She is like a Red Indian and says nothing at all, nor does she ever slip.

I, however, do slip, and I am made aware of this by the grim, sidelong glance I am given. I once told Billy that, until I met her, I had never given kissing much thought—she is an insatiable kisser for an unsentimental person—and I was rewarded for this utterance by a well-raised eyebrow and a rather frightening look of registration.

From time to time I feel it is wise to tell Billy how well Vera and I get along.

“Swell,” says Billy. “I'm thrilled for you.”

“Well, it's true,” I say.

“I'm sure it's true,” says Billy. “I'm sure there's no reason in the world why you come and see me all the time. It's probably just an involuntary action, like sneezing.”

“But you don't understand,” I say. “Vera has men friends. I have women friends. The first principle of a good marriage is freedom.”

“Oh, I see,” says Billy. “You sleep with your other women friends in the morning and come over here in the afternoon. What a lot of stamina you have, for an older person.”

One day this conversation had unexpected results. I said how well Vera and I got along, and Billy looked unadornedly hurt.

“God hates a mingy lover,” she said. “Why don't you just say that you're in love with me and that it frightens you and have done with it?”

A lump rose in my throat.

“Of course, maybe you're not in love with me,” said Billy in her flattest voice.

I said: “I
am
in love with you.”

“Well, there you are,” said Billy.

My curiosity about Grey is a huge, violent dog on a very tight leash. He is three years older than Billy, a somewhat sweet-looking boy with rumpled hair who looks as if he is working out problems in higher math as you talk to him. He wears wirerimmed glasses and his shirttail hangs out. He has the body of a young boy and the air of a genius or someone constantly preoccupied by the intense pressure of a rarefied mental life. Together he and Billy look not so much like husband and wife as co-conspirators.

What are her feelings about him? I begin preliminary queries by hemming and hawing. “Umm,” I say, “it's, um, it's a little hard for me to picture your life with Grey. I mean, it's hard to picture your everyday life.”

“What you want to know is how often we sleep together and how much do I like it,” says Billy.

Well, she has me there, because that is exactly what I want to know.

“Tell you what,” says my mistress. “Since you're so forthcoming about
your
marriage, we'll write down all about our home lives on little slips of paper and then we'll exchange them. How's that?”

Well, she has me there, too. What we are doing in each other's lives is a well-tended mystery.

I know how she contrasts to my wife: my wife is affable, full of conversation, loves a dinner party, and is interested in clothes, food, home decor, and the issues of the day. She loves to entertain, is sought out in times of crisis by her numerous friends, and has a kind or original word for everyone. She is methodical, hardworking, and does not fall asleep in restaurants. How I contrast to Grey is another matter, a matter about which I know nothing. I am considerably older and perhaps I appeal to some father longing in my mistress. Billy says Grey is a genius—a thrilling quality but not one that has any real relevance to life with another person. He wishes, according to his wife, that he were the conductor of a symphony orchestra and for this reason he is given musical scores, tickets, and batons for his birthday. He has studied Russian and can sing Russian songs. He is passionately interested in the natural sciences and also wishes he were a forest ranger.

“He sounds so charming,” I say, “that I can't imagine why you would want to know someone like me.” Billy's response to this is pure silence.

I hunt for signs of him on Billy—jewelry, marks, phrases. I know that he reads astronomy books for pleasure, enjoys crosscountry skiing, and likes to travel. Billy says she loves him, but she also says she loves to read the works of Cardinal Aidan Gasquet, the historian of monastic life.

“If you love him so much,” I say, taking a page from her book, “why are you hanging around with me?”

“Hanging around,” repeats Billy in a bored monotone.

“Well?”

“I am large and contain multitudes,” she says, quoting a line from Walt Whitman.

This particular conversation took place en route to a cottage in Vermont which I had rented for five days when both Grey and Vera happened to be out of town at the same time on business.

I remember clearly with what happy anticipation I presented the idea of this cottage to her.

“Guess what?” I said.

“You're pregnant,” said Billy.

“I have rented a little cottage for us, in Vermont. For a week when Grey and Vera are away on their long trips. We can go there and watch the leaves turn.”

“The leaves have already turned and fallen off,” said Billy faintly. She looked away and didn't speak for some time.

“We don't have to go, Billy,” I said. “I only sent the check yesterday. I can cancel it.”

There appeared to be tears in my mistress' eyes.

“No,” she said. “Don't do that. I'll split it with you.”

“You don't seem pleased,” I said.

“Being pleased doesn't strike me as the appropriate response to the idea of sneaking off to a love nest with your lover,” said Billy.

“What
is
the appropriate response?” I said.

“Oh,” Billy said, her voice now blithe, “sorrow, guilt, horror, anticipation.”

Well, she can run but she can't hide. My mistress is given away from time to time by her own expressions. No matter how hard she tries to suppress the visible evidence of what she feels, she is not always successful. Her eyes turn color, becoming dark and rather smoky. This is as good as a plain declaration of love. Billy's mental life, her grumpiness, her irritability, her crotchets are like static that, from time to time, give way to a clear signal, just as you often hit a pure band of music on a car radio after turning the dial through a lot of chaotic squawk.

In French movies of a certain period, the lovers are seen leaving the woman's apartment or house. His car is parked on an attractive side street. She is carrying a leather valise and is wearing a silk scarf around her neck. He is carrying the wicker basket she has packed with their picnic lunch. They will have the sort of food lovers have for lunch in these movies: a roasted chicken, a bottle of champagne, and a goat cheese wrapped up in leaves. Needless to say, when Billy and I finally left to go to bur love nest, no such sight presented itself to me. First of all, she met me around the corner from my garage after a number of squabbles about whose car to take. She was standing between a rent-a-car and an animal hospital, wearing an old skirt, her old jacket, and carrying a ratty canvas overnight bag. No lacy underwear would be drawn from it, I knew. My mistress buys her white cotton undergarments at the five-and-ten-cent store. She wears an old T-shirt of Grey's to sleep in, she tells me.

For lunch we had hamburgers—no romantic rural inn or picnic spot for us—at Hud's Burger Hut off the thruway.

As we drew closer to our destination, Billy began to fidget, reminding me that having her along was sometimes not unlike traveling with a small child.

In the town nearest our love nest we stopped and bought coffee, milk, sugar, and cornflakes. Because I am a domestic animal and not a mere savage, I remembered to buy bread, butter, cheese, salami, eggs, and a number of cans of tomato soup.

Billy surveyed these items with a raised eyebrow.

“This is the sort of stuff you buy when you intend to stay indoors and kick up a storm of passion,” she said.

It was an off-year Election Day—congressional and Senate races were being run. We had both voted, in fact, before taking off. Our love nest had a radio which I instantly switched on to hear if there were any early returns while we gave the place a cursory glance and put the groceries away. Then we flung ourselves onto the unmade bed, for which I had thoughtfully remembered to pack sheets.

When our storm of passion had subsided, my mistress stared impassively at the ceiling.

“In bed with Frank and Billy,” she intoned. “It was Election Day, and Frank and Billy were once again in bed. Election returns meant nothing to them. The future of their great nation was inconsequential, so busy were they flinging themselves at one another they could barely be expected to think for one second of any larger issues. The subjects to which these trained economists could have spoken, such as inflationary spirals or deficit budgeting, were as mere dust.”

“Shut up, Billy,” I said.

She did shut up. She put on my shirt and went off to the kitchen. When she returned she had two cups of coffee and a plate of toasted cheese on a tray. With the exception of her dinner party, this was the first meal I had ever had at her hands.

“I'm starving,” she said, getting under the covers. We polished off our snack, propped up with pillows. I asked Billy if she might like a second cup of coffee and she gave me a look of remorse and desire that made my head spin.

“Maybe you wanted to go out to dinner,” she said. “You like a proper dinner.” Then she burst into tears. “I'm sorry,” she said. These were words I had never heard her speak before.

“Sorry?” I said. “Sorry for what?”

“I didn't ask you what you wanted to do,” my mistress said. “You might have wanted to take a walk, or go for a drive or look around the house or make the bed.”

I stared at her.

“I don't want a second cup of coffee,” Billy said. “Do you?”

I got her drift and did not get out of bed. The forthrightness of her desire for me melted my heart.

During this excursion, none of my expectations came to pass. We did not, for example, have long talks about our respective marriages or our future together or apart. We did not discover what our domestic life might be like. We lived like graduate students or mice and not like normal people at all. We kept odd hours and lived off sandwiches. We stayed in bed and were both glad when it rained. When the sun came out, we went for a walk and observed the bare and almost bare trees. From time to time I would switch on the radio to hear the latest election results and commentary.

“Because of this historic time,” Billy said, “you will never be able to forget me. It is a rule of life that care must be taken in choosing whom one will be in bed with during Great Moments in History. You are now stuck, with me and this week of important congressional elections twined in your mind forever.”

It was in the car on the way home that the subject of what we were doing together came up. It was twilight and we had both been silent.

“This is the end of the line,” said Billy.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Do you mean you want to break this up?”

“No,” said Billy. “It would be nice, though, wouldn't it?”

“No, it would not be nice,” I said.

“I think it would,” said Billy. “Then I wouldn't spend all my time wondering what we are doing together when I could be thinking about other things, like my dissertation.”

“What do you think we are doing together?” I said.

“It's simple,” said Billy. “Some people have dogs or kitty cats. You're my pet.”

“Come on.”

“Okay, you're right. Those are only child substitutes. You're my child substitute until I can make up my mind about having a child.”

At this, my blood freezes. Whose child does she want to have?

Every now and then when overcome with tenderness—on those occasions naked, carried away, and looking at one another with sweetness in our eyes—my mistress and I smile dreamily and realize that if we dwelt together for more than a few days, in the real world and not in some love nest, we would soon learn to hate each other. It would never work. We both know it. She is too relentlessly dour, and too fond of silence. I prefer false cheer to no cheer and I like conversation over dinner no matter what. Furthermore we would never have proper meals and, although I cannot cook, I like to dine. I would soon resent her lack of interest in domestic arrangements and she would resent me for resenting her. Furthermore, Billy is a slob. She does not leave towels lying on the bathroom floor, but she throws them over the shower curtain rod any old way instead of folding them or hanging them properly so they can dry. It is things like this that squash out romance over a period of time.

As for Billy, she often sneers at me. She finds many of my opinions quaint. She thinks I am an old-time domestic fascist. She refers to me as “an old-style heterosexual throwback” or “old hetero” because I like to pay for dinner, open car doors, and often call her at night when Grey is out of town to make sure she is safe. The day the plumber came to fix a leak in her sink, I called several times.

“He's gone,” Billy said. “And he left big, greasy paw prints all over me.” She found this funny, I did not.

After a while, were we to cohabit, I believe I would be driven nuts and she would come to loathe me. My household is well run and well regulated. I like routine and I like things to go along smoothly. We employ a flawless person by the name of Mrs. Ivy Castle who has been flawlessly running our house for years. She is an excellent housekeeper and a marvelous cook. Our relations with her are formal.