It was a strange time for the children, too. What exactly did going to France in the fall mean? And why did their mother keep insisting it was going to be fun, as if daring them to doubt it? For that matter, why was she so funny about a lot of things? In the afternoons she would hug them and ask them questions in a rush of ebullience that suggested Christmas Eve, and then her eyes would go out of focus during their replies, and a minute later she'd be saying "Yes, darling, but don't talk
quite
so much, okay? Give Mommy a break."
Nor did their father's homecoming do much to help: he might throw them high in the air and give them airplane rides around the house until they were dizzy, but only after having failed to see them altogether during the disturbingly long time it took him to greet their mother at the kitchen door. And the talking at dinner! It was hopeless for either child to try and get a word in edgewise. Michael found he could jiggle in his chair, repeat baby words over and over in a shrill idiot's monotone or stuff his mouth with mashed potato and hang his jaws open, all without any adult reproof; Jennifer would sit very straight at the table and refuse to look at him, feigning great interest in whatever her parents were saying, though afterwards, waiting for bedtime, she would sometimes go off quietly by herself and suck her thumb.
There was one consolation: they could go to sleep without any fear of being waked in an hour by the abrupt, thumping, hard-breathing, door-slamming sounds of a fight; all that, apparently, was a thing of the past. They could lie drowsing now under the sound of kindly voices in the living room, a sound whose intricately rhythmic rise and fall would slowly turn into the shape of their dreams. And if they came awake later to turn over and reach with their toes for new cool places in the sheets, they knew the sound would still be there—one voice very deep and the other soft and pretty, talking and talking, as substantial and soothing as a blue range of mountains seen from far away.
"This whole country's
rotten
with sentimentality," Frank said one night, turning ponderously from the window to walk the carpet. "It's been spreading like a disease for years, for generations, until now everything you touch is flabby with it."
"Exactly," she said, enraptured with him.
"I mean isn't that really what's the matter, when you get right down to it? I mean even more than the profit motive or the loss of spiritual values or the fear of the bomb or any of those things? Or maybe it's the result of those things; maybe it's what happens when all those things start working at once without any real cultural tradition to absorb them. Anyway, whatever it's the result of,
it's
what's killing the United States. I mean isn't it? This steady, insistent vulgarizing of every idea and every emotion into some kind of pre-digested intellectual baby food; this optimistic, smiling-through, easy-wayout sentimentality in everybody's view of life?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
"And I mean is it any wonder all the men end up emasculated? Because that
is
what happens; that
is
what's reflected in all this bleating about 'adjustment' and 'security' and 'togetherness'—and I mean Christ, you see it everywhere: all this television crap where every joke is built on the premise that daddy's an idiot and mother's always on to him; and these loathsome little signs people put up in their front yards—you ever notice those signs up on the Hill?"
"The 'The' signs, you mean; with the people's name in the plural? Like 'The Donaldsons'?"
"Right!" He turned and smiled down at her in triumphant congratulation for having seen exactly what he meant. "Never 'Donaldson' or 'John J. Donaldson' or whatever the hell his name is. Always 'The Donaldsons.' You picture the whole cozy little bunch of them sitting around all snug as bunnies in their pajamas, for God's sake, toasting marshmallows. I guess the Campbells haven't put up a sign like that yet, but give 'em time. The rate they're going now, they will." He paused here for a deep-throated laugh. "And my God, when you think how close
we
came to settling into that kind of an existence."
"But we didn't," she told him. "That's the important thing."
Another time, quite late, he walked up close to the sofa and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, facing her. "You know what this is like, April? Talking like this? The whole idea of taking off to Europe this way?" He felt tense and keyed up; the very act of sitting on a coffee table seemed an original and wonderful thing to do. "It's like coming out of a Cellophane bag. It's like having been encased in some kind of Cellophane for years without knowing it, and suddenly breaking out. It's a little like the way I felt going up to the line the first time, in the war. I remember acting very grim and scared because that was the fashionable way to act, but I couldn't really put my heart in it. I mean I was scared, of course, but that's not the point. What I really felt didn't have anything to do with being scared or not scared. I just felt this terrific sense of life. I felt full of blood. Everything looked realer than real; the snow on the fields, the road, the trees, the terrific blue sky all marked up with vapor trails—everything. And all the helmets and overcoats and rifles, and the way the guys were walking; I sort of loved them, even the guys I didn't like. And I remember being very conscious of the way my own body worked, and the sound of the breathing in my nose. I remember we went through this shelled-out town, all broken walls and rubble, and I thought it was beautiful. Hell, I was probably just as dumb and scared as anybody else, but inside I'd never felt better. I kept thinking: this is really true. This is the truth."
"I felt that way once too," she said, and in the shyness of her lips he saw that something overpoweringly tender was coming next.
"When?" He was as bashful as a schoolboy, unable to look her full in the face.
"The first time you made love to me."
The coffee table tipped absurdly and banged straight again, rattling its cups, as he moved from its edge to the edge of the sofa and took her in his arms; and the evening was over.
It wasn't until a good many such evenings had passed— until the time, in fact, when he had again begun to think in terms of time passing—that the first faint discordances crept into their talk.
Once he interrupted her to say, "Listen, why do we keep talking about Paris? Don't they have government agencies pretty much all over Europe? Why not Rome? Or Venice, or some place like Greece, even? I mean let's keep an open mind; Paris isn't the only place."
"Of course it isn't." She was impatiently brushing a fleck of ash off her lap. "But it does seem the most logical place to start, doesn't it? With the advantage of your knowing the language and everything?"
If he'd looked at the window at that moment he would have seen the picture of a frightened liar. The language! Had he ever really led her to believe he could speak French?
"Well," he said, chuckling and walking away from her, "I wouldn't be too sure about that. I've probably forgotten most of what little I knew, and I mean I never did know the language in the sense of—you know, being able to speak it fluently or anything; just barely enough to get by."
"That's all we'll need. You'll pick it up again in no time. We both will. And besides, at least you've been there. You know how the city's laid out and what the various neighborhoods are like; that's important."
And he silently assured himself that this, after all, was substantially true. He knew where most of the picturepostcard landmarks were, on the strength of his several three-day passes in the city long ago; he also knew how to go from any of those places to where the American PX and Red Cross Club had once been established, and how to go from those points to the Place Pigalle, and how to choose the better kind of prostitute there and what her room would probably smell like. He knew those things, and he knew too that the best part of Paris, the part where the people really knew how to live, began around St. Germain des Prés and extended southeast (or was it southwest?) as far as the Café Dome. But this latter knowledge was based more on his reading of
The Sun Also Rises
in high school than in his real-life venturings into the district, which had mostly been lonely and footsore. He had admired the ancient delicacy of the buildings and the way the street lamps made soft explosions of light green in the trees at night, and the way each long, bright café awning would prove to reveal a sea of intelligently walking faces as he passed; but the white wine gave him a headache and the talking faces all seemed, on closer inspection, to belong either to intimidating men with beards or to women whose eyes could sum him up and dismiss him in less than a second. The place had filled him with a sense of wisdom hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just around the corner, but he'd walked himself weak down its endless blue streets and all the people who knew how to live had kept their tantalizing secret to themselves, and time after time he had ended up drunk and puking over the tailgate of the truck that bore him jolting back into the army.
Je suis,
he practiced to himself while April went on talking;
tu es; nous sommes; vous êtes; ils sont.
". . . better once we get settled," she was saying, "don't you think? You're not listening."
"Sure I am. No, I'm sorry, I guess I wasn't." And he sat down on the coffee table, smiling with what he hoped was a disarming candor. "I was just thinking that none of this is going to be easy—taking off to a foreign country with the kids and all. I mean, we'll be running into a lot of problems we can't even begin to anticipate from this end."
"Well, certainly we will," she said. "And certainly it's not going to be easy. Do you know anything worth doing that is?"
"Of course not. You're right. I'm just kind of tired tonight, I guess. Would you like a drink?"
"No thanks."
He went to the kitchen and got one for himself, which brightened him; and there were no further difficulties until the next night, or the next, when she made a startling disclosure about how she'd spent her day.
He had assumed that she too would be lazy and absentminded in the daytime; he had pictured her taking long baths and devoting whole hours to the bedroom mirror, trying on different dresses and new ways of fixing her hair—perhaps leaving the mirror only to waltz lightly away on the strains of imaginary violins, whirling in a dream through the sunlit house and returning to smile over her shoulder at her own flushed image, and then having to hurry to get the beds made and the rooms in order in time for his homecoming. But it turned out that on this particular day she had driven to New York right after breakfast, had undergone an interview and filled out a lengthy job application with an overseas employment office, had gone from there to make the necessary arrangements for their passports, had obtained three travel brochures and the schedules of half a dozen steamship companies and airlines, had bought two new traveling bags, a French dictionary, a street guide to Paris, a copy of
Babar the Elephant
for the children and a book called
Brighter French
("For Bright People Who Already Know Some"), and had sped home and relieved the baby sitter just in time to get the dinner started and mix a pitcherful of martinis.
"Aren't you tired?"
"Not really. It was sort of invigorating. Do you realize how long it's been since I spent a day in town? I was going to pop into the office at lunchtime and surprise you, but there wasn't time. What's the matter?"
"Nothing. It just sort of throws me, that's all; the amount of stuff you can get done in one day. Pretty impressive."
"You're annoyed," she said, "aren't you. Oh, and I don't blame you." She puckered her face into what looked distressingly like the understanding simper of the wife in a television comedy. "It must seem as if I'm sort of taking over, doesn't it—taking charge of everything."
"No," he protested, "no, listen, don't be silly; I'm not annoyed. It doesn't matter."
"It does matter, though. It's like when I mow the lawn, or something. I
knew
I should've left the passports and the travel agent for you to handle, but I was right there in the neighborhood and it seemed silly not to stop in. Oh, but I
am
sorry."
"Look, will you cut it out? I'm going to start
getting
annoyed in a minute, if you keep on at this. Will you please forget it?"
"All right."
"This probably won't be much use to us," he said, fingering through the pages of
Brighter French.
"I mean, I think it's a little advanced."
"Oh, that. Yes, I guess it's sort of a supercilious little book; I just grabbed it in a hurry. That's another thing I should've left for you to do. You're always much better at things like that than I am."
It was the night after that when she told him, looking remorseful, that she had some bad news. "I mean not really bad, but annoying. First of all Mrs. Givings called up today and issued this very formal invitation to dinner tomorrow night, and naturally I said no; I said we couldn't get a baby sitter. Then she started trying to pin me down for a night next week and I kept begging off, until I realized we
are
going to have to see her soon anyway, about putting the house on the market, so I said why didn't they come
here
for dinner."
"Oh Jesus."
"No, don't worry, they're not coming—you know how she is. She kept babbling about not wanting to put us to any trouble—Lord, what a pain that woman can be—and I kept insisting we did want to see her anyway, on business, and this went on for half an hour until I finally worked her around to saying she'd come over alone tomorrow night. So it'll be after dinner, strictly business, and with any kind of luck we'll never have to see her again except to sell the house."
"Fine."
"Yes, but here's the trouble. I'd completely forgotten we were supposed to be going to the Campbells' tomorrow night. So I called Milly and tried using the same lie about the baby sitter, and she seemed—I don't know, really upset. You know how Milly is sometimes? It's like dealing with a child. And the first thing I knew she had me saying yes, we'd come tonight instead. So there goes the weekend—Campbells tonight, Givings tomorrow. I'm awfully sorry, Frank."