Overload (44 page)

Nim nodded glumly. "I understand."

"By the way, don't take seriously any of that stuff about the commission

taking action. I talked to our legal department and it's just hot air.

There's nothing they can do."

"Yes," he told her, "I already figured that."

"But Eric did insist on a repudiation statement. He's also writing a

private letter of apology to the commission."

Nim sighed. He still did not regret having spoken out; be had thought about

that, too, since yesterday. But it was depressing to be treated like an

outcast by colleagues. It also seemed unfair that most press

reports-including that of the morning Chronicle-West and other California

papers-had focused on the sensational aspects of yesterday, glossing over

or ignoring the serious points which Nim had made. N~r had Davey Birdsong's

antics-the insults and provocation-been given more than the briefest

mention, and even then not critically. The press, it seemed to Nim,

operated on its own double standard. However, that was nothing new.

Van Buren glanced at the Examiner again. "Nancy made the most of it all,

and has given you the hardest time; she goes for the jugular as a babit.

You two don't seem to like each other."

Nim said feelingly, "I'd gladly cut that bitch's heart out. If she had

one."

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The p.r. director frowned. "That's pretty strong, Nim." "Maybe. But

it's how I feel." Nim thought: It was Nancy Molineaux's description,

"Nimrod Goldman . . . today stands in disgrace," which had really got

to him a moment ago, had really hurt. Not least, he admitted to

himself, because it was true.

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PART THREE

I

"Daddy," Leah said, addressing Nim across the dinner table, "will you get to

spend more nights at home now?"

There was a moment's silence in which Nim was aware that Benjy had put down

his knife and fork and was watching him intently, silently endorsing his

sister's question.

Ruth, too, who had been reaching for the pepper mill, changed her mind and

waited with the children for Nim's answer.

"I might," he said; the suddenness of the question, and having three pairs

of eyes focused on him, were disconcerting. "'nat is, if I'm not given a

lot of other work which could keep me at the office late."

Benjy, brightening, said, "And at weekends too-will you get more time with

us, Dad?"

"Maybe."

Ruth intervened. "I think you are being given a message."

She smiled as she said it, something she had done infrequently since her

return home several days ago. She was more serious than before, Nim was

aware, at times preoccupied. The two of them still had not had their

definitive, heart-to-heart talk; Ruth seemed to be avoiding it and Nim,

still depressed from his recent experiences, had not felt like making the

effort on his own.

Nim had wondered in advance: How did a husband and wife treat each other on

the wife's return after she had been away for two weeks, almost certainly

with another man? In their own case the answer seemed: Exactly as before

she left.

Ruth bad arrived back without fuss, had collected the children from her

parents, then picked up the threads of life at home as if she had never

dropped them. She and Nim continued to share a bedroom, as they always

had-though not a bed; it seemed a long time since Nim bad left his own twin

bed to join Ruth in hers. But in other respects their regular life resumed.

Of course, Nim reminded himself, in the past there had been similar

situations-in reverse-when he returned

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from extramarital excursions which, at the time, he believed Ruth had not

known about, but now suspected that she bad. And one final reason for the

quietus was, again, Nim's bruised ego-bruised elsewhere. He simply wasn't

ready for more emotion yet.

Now they were all at home, having a family evening meal, the third in

three days, which, in itself, was unusual.

"As you all know," Nim said, "there have been some changes at the office

but I don't know yet how everything is going to work out." He noticed

something about Bcnjy and leaned forward, inspecting him more closely.

"What happened to your face?"

Benjy hesitated, his small band going up to cover a bruise on his left

cheek and a cut beneath the lower lip. "Oh, it was just something at

school, Dad."

"What kind of something? Were you in a fight?"

Benjy appeared uncomfortable.

"Yes, he was," Leah said. "Todd Thornton said you're a fink, Daddy,

because you don't care about the environment and want to spoil it. So

Benjy bit him, but Todd's bigger."

Nim said severely to Benjy, "No matter what anyone says about anything,

it's wrong and stupid to go around hitting people."

His son looked crestfallen. "Yes, Dad."

"We bad a talk," Ruth said. "Benjy knows that now."

Beneath his outward reaction Nim was startled and shocked. It bad not

occurred to him until now that criticism directed at himself would find

a target in his family also. He said softly, "I'm truly sorry if anything

that happened to me has hurt any of you."

"Oh, that's all right," Leah assured him. "Mommy explained to us how what

you did was honorable."

Benjy added eagerly, "And Mom said you bad more guts, Dad, than all the

others put together." Benjy made clear, by the way he snapped his teeth

together, that he enjoyed the word "guts."

Nim had his eyes fixed on Ruth. "Your mother told you that?"

"It's true, isn't it?" Benjy asked.

"Of course it's true," Ruth said; she had flushed slightly. "But your

father can't say it about himself, can he? Which is why I told you."

"So that's what we tell the other kids when they say anything," Leah

added.

For an instant Nim felt a surge of emotion. The thought of Benjy fighting

with his small fists to defend his father's reputation, then Ruth, rising

above the differences between the two of them, to protect his lionor with

the children, left Nim with a choked-up feeling close to tears. He was

saved from more embarrassment by Ruth's exhortation, "All right, now

let's everyone get on with dinner."

Later, -while Nimand Ruth were still at the dining table sipping coffee,

and the children had left to watch TV, he said, "I'd like you to know

that I appreciate what you told Leah and Benjy."

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Ruth made a dismissing gesture. "If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have

told them. just because you and I aren't Romeo and Juliet any more, doesn't

mean I've stopped reading and thinking objectively about outside things."

"I've offered to resign," he told her. "Eric says it isn't necessary, but

I may still." He went on to speak of the various possibilities he was con-

sidering, including a move to another power company, perhaps in the

Midwest. If that happened, Nim asked, how would Ruth feel about moving

there with the children?

Her answer was quick and definite. "I wouldn't do it."

"Do you mind telling me why?"

"I should think it's obvious. Why should three members of our family-Leah,

Ben)y, me-be uprooted, go to live in a strange place, and mostly for your

convenience, when you and I haven't yet discussed our own future

together-if we have one, which seems unlikely."

So there it was, out in the open, and he supposed the signal for their

serious talk bad come. How strange, he thought, that it should happen at a

moment when briefly they had seemed closer than in a long time!

He said, with the sadness that he felt, "What the hell happened to us?"

Ruth answered sharply, "You should be the one best able to answer that. I'm

curious about one thing, though-just how many other women have there been

in our fifteen years of marriage?" He was aware of the recent hardness he

had observed in Ruth as she continued. "Or maybe you've lost count, the way

I did. For a while I could always tell when you had something new going-or

should I say 'someone' new? Then later on I wasn't so sure, and I guessed

that you were overlapping, playing the field, with two or even more at

once. Was I right?"

Having trouble in meeting Ruth's eyes directly, he answered, "Sometimes."

"Well, that's one point settled anyway. So my guess was right. But you

haven't answered the first question. flow many women altogether?"

He said unhappily, "I'll be damned if I know."

"If that's true," Ruth pointed out, "it isn't exactly complimentary to

those other females you must have felt something for, however briefly.

Whoever they were, I'd say they deserved better from you than not even to

be remembered."

He protested, "It was never serious. None of it. Not with any of them."

"That I do believe." Ruth's cbeeks were flushed with anger. "For that

matter, you were never serious about me.

"That isn't true!"

"How can you possibly say that? After what you've just admitted Oh, I could

understand one other woman; maybe two. Any wife with

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sense knows that happens sometimes in the best of marriages. But not scores

of women, the way it's been with you."

He argued, "Now you're talking nonsense. It was never scores."

"One score then. At least."

Nim was silent.

Ruth said thoughtfully, "Maybe that was Freudian-my saying 4scores' just

now. Because that's what you like to do, isn't it?-score with as many women

as you can."

He admitted, "There's probably some truth in that."

"I know there's truth." She added quietly, "But it doesn't make a woman-a

wife-feel any better, or less belittled, dirty, cheated, to hear it from

the man she loved, or thought she did."

"If you've felt that way so long," he asked her, "why did you wait until

now to bring it up? Why have we never had this kind of talk before?"

"That's a fair question." Ruth stopped, weighing her answer, then went on,

"I suppose it was because I kept on hoping you would change; that you'd

grow out of wanting to fornicate with every attractive woman you set eyes

on, grow out of it the way a child learns to stop being greedy about candy.

But I was wrong; you haven't changed. And, oh yes, since we're being honest

with each other, there was another reason. I was a coward. I was afraid of

what being on my own might mean, of what it could do to Leah and Benjy, and

afraid-or maybe too proud-to admit that my marriage, like so many others,

wasn't working." Ruth stopped, her voice breaking for the first time.

"Well, I'm not afraid, or proud, or anything any more. I just want out."

"Do you mean that?"

Twin tears coursed down Ruth's cheeks. "What else is there?"

A spark of resistance flared in Nim. Did he need to be so totally de-

fensive? Weren't there two sides to everything, including this?

"How about your own love affair?" be asked. "If you and I go separate ways,

does your man friend move in as soon as I step out?"

"What man?"

"The one you've been seeing. The one you went away with."