Family Happiness (16 page)

At lunch Polly learned what sweet relief there was in talking about The Beloved Other. Martha was a wonderful listener. Polly talked about Henry, about Lincoln, about everything.

“Something happened to me,” she said. “I grew out of something—I don't know what, really. This, isn't my language. I don't
know
anything anymore. I'm not sure of anything. I used to be so sure of being sure. I walk down the street and see people who are really in trouble, who are sick or disabled, or poor or crazy, and here I am. I have a wonderful family. I don't have to worry very much about money. I have a job I like, my children really are marvelous, and I am married to a man I admire and love.”

“Maybe you just want the terms changed a little,” Martha offered.

“That's exactly it,” Polly said. She sat very straight in her chair with her hands gripping the table, as if she were making a point at the debating society. “I want the terms changed. I'm tired of my same old self. But it seems so selfish, so greedy, and so ungrateful when I have so much.”

“It isn't what you have,” Martha said. “It's how you feel about it. Just because you have a nice life doesn't mean you can't get in trouble.”

“It isn't
real
trouble,” Polly said.

“It isn't sickness or grief,” Martha said. “It isn't death or war. It's the sort of misery you have to have the luxury for, but that doesn't make it less miserable or serious.”

“I'd like to believe that,” said Polly. “Mostly I just feel shamed.”

“Listen,” said Martha as she leaned over the table for the sugar. “Once you have food and shelter, you start agonizing over how you want your life to be. Next to that, food and shelter is a snap.” She stirred her coffee.

“This is the first serious trouble I've ever been in,” Polly said.

“Yes?” said Martha. “Welcome to the club.”

As they walked toward the office, Polly reflected that Martha was light as a feather. Her life was not mired and entangled. When she said as much, Martha turned on her.

“That's what married people with children always think,” she said. “It's like phobics. The person scared of elevators thinks the person who's afraid of centipedes is ridiculous. You think your trouble is more serious than mine because you're married and have children. When you wake up at four o'clock in the morning you think your anxiety must be the worst kind and that if you were single life would be a snap. I wake up and think about how I'm too conflicted to get married and that you have it all. Tonight when I wake up at four in the morning I will say to myself: At least Polly has a husband and children. So there.”

Polly put her arm through Martha's. “I'm glad I know you,” she said. “I wish I had known you a long time ago.”

“I'm not so nice,” Martha said.

“You're clear,” said Polly. “Anyone can be nice.”

But at four o'clock in the morning, when Polly woke up, the thought of Martha's trouble did not console her. The notion that everyone gets into trouble at some point or other did not console her. She felt that she had been caught in a snare. Falling in love had not set her free—it had pushed her into an unfamiliar landscape in which everything was askew. Falling in love was like being inoculated with a virus that gave you a disease you could not shake. It dogged you and got in your way, and never for a moment could you forget that you were sick. You woke up with it in the morning, lived with it during the day, and took it to bed with you at night. There was no cure, no relief. Nothing made it better—nothing even made it less.

Nine

Happy marriages! How blatantly they flourished around Polly's distress. As the last of the winter spun on, Polly was surrounded by happy love affairs, the engagements produced by these love affairs, wedding plans, and weddings. Eventually she would see honeymoon photos and be invited to the first apartments of a squad of happy young couples. Two of her cousins became engaged. Her Philadelphia cousin got married. Another had fallen in love with someone perfectly suitable. And, of course, there were Paul and Beate.

At every family party Polly was aware of how well matched these couples looked. She and Henry looked well matched, too. Did this mean that trouble would come to all these matched sets? She regarded Paul and Beate. It was impossible to imagine them discussing their relationship or having an argument, or to think what trouble they might have. They moved with a grave, institutional dignity that precluded such things as spats, tiffs, and disagreements. Their relationship was like a monument or a war memorial and did not need to be discussed. Even Andreya and Henry, Jr., who resembled a pair of golden-retriever puppies more than anything else, seemed quite above the ordinary trouble of married people.

Polly, of course, did not actually know what ordinary trouble might be. Her family, as far as she could tell, were immune to these things.

“Darling, I just don't understand these books about marriage,” Wendy had said to Polly more than once. “There's almost nothing else in the bookshops! How to live with your mate. How to live without your mate. How not to live through your mate. How to mate. How not to mate. And the people who buy them! I suppose it's no accident, poor things. That's what modern life has come to. No one knows what anything is supposed to be
for
. People simply don't have much sense, after all.”

It was clear to Polly that human relationships, in the modern psychological sense, struck Wendy as rather silly. There had been one divorce in the family—poor Ellen Hendricks. She had married a very unsuitable man, divorced him a year later. Then she married a very suitable man, to everyone's relief, and produced a family; her divorce was entirely forgotten about.

Struggle was not admired by the Solo-Millers. Unlike Martha Nathan, they did not believe in change and growth and enlightenment. They believed that nice people were born so perfectly formed that change and growth were quite unnecessary. All really nice people
were
enlightened. How grateful they were that they were spared those dreary, ordinary struggles that got in the way of life and work—the sort of struggle that fell to the upwardly mobile, the social climber, the striver, the unworthy.

In her present state of mind, her family did not console Polly. She knew she had fallen from grace. She knew that in her family setting she was a liar—a person with a horrible secret. She wished that she could emulate her family's posture fully and truly: so firm, so unwavering, so strong in purpose. On this subject Lincoln had but one sentence. “How clever of them,” he said to her, “not to have taught you the word ‘smug.'”

What had been expected of Polly when she got married was simply that she be perfect and that her life run smoothly—a simple task for which most Solo-Millers seemed equipped. She was looked up to by her cousins, who came to her for advice on all domestic subjects or when their friends' children—this of course never happened to them—had reading problems. Henry Demarest was the most available, the nicest man in the family. He was not intimidating and formidable like Henry, Sr., or unintelligible like Henry, Jr., or a stone wall like Paul, and the younger cousins could confide in him their law-school problems, their feelings about their firms or the judges they clerked for.

In modern life, people either knew more than they ought or less than they should. The family knew a great deal about Polly and Henry, and, of course, they knew absolutely nothing at all.

There had been no break in Henry's bad year. He had had to cope with a long trial, an incompetent judge, a great deal of travel, and an expert witness who had died before giving testimony. It looked unlikely that this case could be won, which meant a lengthy and enervating appeal. He already had a case on appeal—another unrewarding job. He felt caught in a massive flood of paper. The result of this was that his appetite for the law left him. The joy and pride he was used to taking in his work had disappeared. Henry's trouble was easy to see. It had a real cause. Under such conditions, a woman cannot expect a man to console her in her formless, inexpressible distress, and she cannot accuse him of being distant and hurting her feelings.

It was Polly's job to cheer Henry on, to make his life sweet, but nowadays he radiated a nervous concentration she was frightened to interrupt, or was it that she had never interrupted him before? Was the fierce look he often wore familiar to her?

He was going away for a week and Polly sat on the chaise and watched him pack. His shirts were stacked on the bed. His suits were laid out over a chair.

“Take some wool socks,” Polly said.

“They have holes in them,” Henry said.

“They don't,” said Polly. “I darned them all. Are you going to take something to kick around in?”

“There's not going to be very much kicking around for me,” Henry said. “This trip is fairly grueling.”

Polly's heart sank. How awful for Henry to have to have a grueling trip. He was going from Geneva to London and stopping in Boston on the way home. It frightened her to see how tired he looked. What if it was too much for him and he got sick? Tears came into her eyes.

“I wish you didn't have to go,” she said, quavering.

“Polly, this is the worst time,” Henry said.

“I didn't say, please don't go,” Polly said. Even to herself her voice sounded frantic. She was instantly ashamed. She made everything worse, and Henry was violently touchy these days.

“I'm sorry I snapped at you,” Henry said. “Come help me figure out what ties to take.”

“With what suits?”

“Those,” said Henry, nodding toward the chair.

Polly contemplated the suits. She looked at Henry. He was absorbed in his packing. Of course he had a great deal to figure out—what to take, how to schedule his appointments, how to arrange time to think. Men's clothes were so heavy. Henry would have to carry his briefcase and a suitpress as well as a suitcase. She imagined him at the Geneva airport, strained and tired, carrying his suitpress and wishing he were home asleep.

It was almost midnight. Tomorrow night Polly would sleep in their bed alone. She would have the week to herself. If she wanted, she could see Lincoln every night—but of course she would not allow herself that luxury. Henry and Andreya had asked her to dinner at their loft. She felt she owed it to them as the only member of the family who ever went to see them. She had planned dinner with Paul and Beate a week ago, and that she knew was an unbreakable obligation. And she had to spend time with the children, who deserved her attention. And Martha wanted her to come for supper. How was she going to fit all this in, when her one desire was to be with Lincoln? Henry's leaving made this possible. She watched him pack. How she longed for him to stay home with her, to be close to her, to save her. How she longed for him to be away. The air between them was full of strain. Often the sight of him remote and preoccupied produced in her a piercing loneliness she had never felt before.

Henry was packed. His suitcase lay open on the luggage holder. His suitpress was zipped, and his briefcase was lying on the chair with a neat stack of papers on top of it.

Polly wanted to say, “Henry, will you come to bed, or must you stay up?” but she could not bear to. It made her too angry and hurt. Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Henry,” she said, “it's your last night home. Please come to bed with me.” Why did she have to beg her husband to want her?

“I'm beat,” said Henry. “Turn the covers back. I'm half asleep on my feet.”

He came out of the bathroom in his English pajamas, smelling of toothpaste. Polly sat staring at the two bedposts. Henry slid in next to her.

“Turn the light off,” said Henry.

“I don't want to,” Polly said. Henry also smelled of shaving cream. She looked closely at him. He had shaved. She rubbed her cheek next to his.

“Oh, Henry,” she sobbed. “I'm so lonely for you.”

“I'm lonely for me, too, Polly.” He kissed the top of her head.

“Kiss me for real,” Polly said. “Oh, please, kiss me for real.” He kissed her for real and she felt as she had always felt. “Henry,” she whispered, “you don't ever want me anymore.”

“I sometimes feel I hardly have myself,” Henry said softly. “I do want you, Polly.” She looked at him longingly, and in an instant they were in each other's arms.

Polly sat on her side of the bed and watched Henry sleep. How tender and handsome he looked. How odd it seemed to her to feel so far away, so angry, so troubled, when Henry could make her feel so overwhelmed, so profoundly moved, so deeply satisfied. How odd that this did not make her feel any different. He stirred next to her and Polly covered his shoulder with the quilt. He shrugged it off and held out his arm. She crept beside him and he enfolded her. They fit perfectly, but, then, they always had.

He left the next morning, after breakfast, with the same haggard, preoccupied look on his face. Nothing made any difference, Polly thought—not love, not comfort, not the idea of a safe haven. Henry kissed her good-bye and patted her absently. He was already on the plane before he even set foot out the door. She waited with him until the elevator came, and when the doors closed she was too tired to bother pretending that she was not relieved. As soon as the children had left for school, she dialed Lincoln. This is what I have come to, Polly said to herself. My husband goes out the door and I am instantly on the telephone to my lover.

“Hi, Dot,” said Lincoln. “All alone at last, huh?”

“Hi, Linky,” Polly said. “I've only got a second before I fly out of here to the office. I've got to go in today.”

“Well,” said Lincoln, “have you managed to book yourself solid with Solo-Millers so that you can't come down and pass the evenings with your devoted friend?”

“I have to have dinner at Henry and Andreya's,” Polly said. “That's always an early night. They get sleepy and I usually leave around nine-thirty. I could come to you after that, if I get the baby-sitter until midnight.”