The HAB Theory, page 56
Still on the grass, Grant veered to cut her off and easily closed the distance, catching her a few steps before she reached the turf. His arm swept around her waist, pulling her off her feet, and the opposing momentums so badly threw them off balance that now they did fall, but he retained his hold on her. She had lost the bow of yarn which had tied back her hair and now the blond tresses were in wild disarray. She was very nearly hysterical, the eerie moaning continuing but broken by choking, gasping sobs. They were quite a distance away from the onlookers near the water’s edge, all but one of whom were rooted in place. The single exception was a broad-chested, very hairy man coming toward them.
Marie lay very limply where she had fallen and Grant sat up, pulling her to him, supporting her back with his arm and leaning her head onto his chest. His chin was atop her head and he put his other arm around her and held her closer yet.
“What the hell you think you’re doin’ to this woman, Mac?”
Grant looked up and saw that the man with the broad hirsute torso was standing spraddle-legged just to the right front of him, meaty hands curled into fists at his sides. He wore swimming trunks and the upper part of his body did not seem to go with the lower. On his chest, stomach and shoulders, and down his arms and onto the backs of his hands the hair was dense and black, often forming little matted curls. Below the bathing suit his legs were thin and practically hairless, weak-looking.
“You’re not needed, bud. This is my wife.”
“In a cat’s ass she’s your wife, you bastard!”
The fist thudded to Grant’s right temple and he went over sideways onto the sand, pulling Marie with him. He struggled to get upright but was so dazed his limbs wouldn’t seem to function properly. Marie was more successful. Sobbing still not checked, she came onto her knees and shrieked at her would-be protector.
“Go away! He is my husband. Go away!”
“You don’t really need no help, lady?”
“No! Leave us alone. Please. Go away!”
For an instant longer the man stood there and then he glanced down at Grant who had propped himself up on one elbow, his eyes properly in focus again. The hairy bather shook his head reproachfully.
“You sure got one hell of a queer family life, pal.”
As the man walked off toward the water, Grant came to his feet a little unsteadily. He helped Marie up and, with his arm around her, they walked back in the direction from which they had come. At the point where he estimated that she had first run onto the sand he stopped and unsuccessfully cast an eye around for her shoes.
“I guess it’s pointless to try to find them,” he said. When she didn’t object, he began walking her through the grass again toward where the car was parked. Halfway there he steered her toward a park bench and sat her on it, then took a seat beside her. The sobbing was nearly ended now and she was in much better control of herself. He took both of her hands in his and turned so he was facing her. Her chest still rose and fell heavily from the exertion of the run, and the moderate breeze that had come up kept blowing her hair into her face. Her white blouse had a small rip in the right shoulder from her collision with the tree, and it had pulled out of the butter-yellow slacks she wore. Her bare feet were a little bit grass-stained.
Grant was not quite so disheveled, but his hair was mussed. On the left side of his face the upper cheek, temple and front portion of his ear were red from where Marie had struck him, and a large, angry-looking lump was forming high on the cheekbone and temple where the hairy bather had hit him. He started to shake his head, winced, and then gave a rueful little laugh.
“We’re quite a pair, Marie.”
“We always were,” she said simply. “Until this year. What’s happened to us, John?”
The levity left him as abruptly as it had come. “I wish I knew. My fault, whatever it is, but I’m really not sure myself. It seems that things just started happening and once they did, there was no turning back.” He glanced down at her hands, still being held by his, then looked into her eyes again. “I told you that I love her, and that I love you, too. It’s a fact. It’s also a hell of a dilemma, Marie. I don’t want to hurt either of you, yet I’m constantly hurting both. I don’t want to lose either of you, yet I’m faced with making a choice, and I don’t know how.”
Marie’s eyes were becoming glassy again and she bit her lip. “Considering the situation, I can’t offer much sympathy. John, how can you do this thing? How can you even contemplate the possibility of turning your back on your own wife and children and way of life? We’ve had seventeen wonderful years together, with far more happy times than unhappy. Does all that mean nothing?”
“All that means a very great deal. That’s the crux of the problem.”
She was quiet a moment. “What can she offer you that I can’t, John?” She looked away. “Is the fact that she’s so much younger that important?”
He shook his head as she looked back at him. “No, not really.”
“But it is a factor, isn’t it? Her youth and her beauty? She’s extremely beautiful, John. That’s part of it, isn’t it?”
He hesitated. “Partly, I suppose.”
“I’ve always tried to be attractive for you, John. I haven’t gotten fat or sloppy. I keep myself clean and well groomed and neatly dressed. I’m forty-four, but I can still pass for being in my thirties. But it’s unfair to make me compete in physical looks with a girl who’s very beautiful and only twenty-eight.”
Grant nodded. She was right, of course. He had rarely, if ever, encountered any woman who looked so attractive at forty-four as Marie. A thought struck him and he frowned.
“I know you saw her at the airport with me, but how could you know she was twenty-eight? Another thing, it seems to me that one of the first things you’d want to know is who the other woman is — her name and background and such, and how we met. Yet, you haven’t even mentioned it. Why not?”
“Because the important thing to me, John, is where we stand, you and I, and what lies ahead for us. What is it you want that I can’t provide and she can? Is she sexually that much better?”
Grant looked at her steadily and then slowly nodded, choosing his words carefully. “I suppose that’s part of it. I’ve never found you to be an inadequate sex partner, Marie, but I have to say, too, that I’ve never experienced sex in a more satisfying way than with her.”
Marie’s eyes began smoldering again. Her nostrils flared and the words were heavy with bitterness. “Most whores perform better in bed than wives do. They’ve had a lot more practice.”
“Don’t, Marie. That’s not necessary.” He squeezed her hands. “You’ll just get us both upset.”
She jerked her hands away from him. “Not necessary? I`ll get us both upset? Let me tell you something, John Grant, whatever upset we’re experiencing has not been of my doing. And as for your precious fucking Anne, she’s nothing more than a scheming, home-wrecking whore!”
“Damn it, Marie, stop! Name-calling isn’t going to help. We’ve got to—” He broke off and stared at her. “You said ‘Anne.’ How do you know her name?”
“I know a great deal more than you think I know. Do you think I live in a complete vacuum? Of course I know her name is Anne. I know when you met her and I know how long you’ve been screwing around with her. I know that you go from me to her, and I wonder how you can live with yourself, doing that.”
“When did you find out? How?”
“A thousand years ago, that’s when! At least that’s how long it seems. Why are you doing this to me, John? Why? What have I ever done to make you want to hurt me like this?”
“Marie, I want to know. How did you find out?”
“How? I’ll tell you how. I found out because my brilliant, intelligent, thoughtful and considerate husband had the inconceivable gall to put it all down in black and white, that’s how!”
He was thunderstruck. “My diaries! Damn it, Marie, you’ve been reading my diaries!” He came to his feet and took a few steps away, then whirled back to face her angrily. “How could you dare to invade my privacy like that? It was even in code! By what right do you go picking around through the innermost private thoughts a man has?” He felt sick inside at the realization that she had read his personal writings.
Now she stood, feet apart, facing him and no less angry than he. “How could I? Jesus Christ Almighty, John, you’re actually asking how could I? Well, God damn it, I’ll tell you how! Because suddenly the man I loved was becoming a stranger to me. Because a man who had always loved his wife and children and his way of life was suddenly moping around in a mucky wallow of self-pity, for God knows what reason. Because a man who is a fine writer was suddenly unable to write. Because he was depressed and unhappy and because his wife was concerned and wanted to help him. Because his wife was sick with what was happening to them and yearned for the happy days they used to have. And because she found that her man — her honest, candid, trustworthy husband of seventeen years — was suddenly writing more in a childish code than he was writing in English. And because in her naïve way she thought maybe if she knew what was troubling her husband, depressing him, making him unhappy and unable to work or enjoy life, she could somehow help him. Help him, John, not look for some sort of evidence to club him with!”
His voice was strained. “Doesn’t it stand to reason, Marie, that since the writing was in code it was private? The fact that the books themselves are diaries should have underlined their privacy. For you not only to open them at all in the first place, but to then figure out the code and decipher the most private thoughts written…” he flung out his arms in a helpless gesture and then let them fall back to his sides. “…I just don’t understand how you could do that. I never would have believed it.”
“No,” she said, a bit more calmly. “I wouldn’t have believed it either. I was ashamed and sick. I still am. But this shame and sickness was the result of my concern for you. For you! I wanted to help. The only problem was, I started too late. Your sweet little Anne already had her hooks deeply embedded before I began to read what you’d written.”
“I didn’t go out looking for love, Marie. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want it. But suddenly it was there. How do I explain how it happened when you can’t possibly understand the reality of it without experiencing it?” He moved closer to her and she turned her back to him. He stopped behind her and raised a hand to touch her, to take her shoulder and turn her around to face him, but then he dropped it without contact.
“The fact of the matter,” he went on grimly, “is that I met Anne and abruptly was in love with her. It grew too fast to put it aside. It became as important to me as the love that you and I shared all these years. That’s my problem. You think I don’t love you anymore, but you’re wrong. I do. Do you think — really believe — that I’d be going through the worst form of hell I’ve ever gone through in my life if there was any doubt of that? Don’t you think I’ve wished — damn it, actually wished! — that I loved one or the other of you less than the other?”
Now he did reach out and turn her around and he saw that there were tear tracks running down her cheeks. She jerked her head away, and there was an unspeakable sadness in his voice as he continued.
“Marie, you contend that a person can’t love two people to the same degree. What about our children? Do you love Carol more than you love Billy? Or vice versa?”
“That’s a different kind of love entirely, and you know it!” she flared. “That’s not the love of lifetime sharing, the love of a man and a woman for one another. And since you’ve brought it up, what about our children, John? Don’t they figure in here somewhere? Aren’t they important to you? Don’t they represent something very special?”
For the first time she reached out to him, touching his arm. “John, Billy and Carol are our children. They need two parents, not just one. It goes far beyond a matter of financial security for them. We know they’ll have that, but they need a father and they need a mother. They need the full-time love and training that two full-time parents can give. They need understanding and guidance from both. They need love — mine and yours. I don’t want to raise them alone. They’re our children, John, not mine. They’re our responsibility and it’s a responsibility we have to share equally. You tell me that you love Anne and me the same. I can’t really accept that, but let’s say for the sake of argument that you do. Don’t the children add some weight of consideration on this side? John, you’re just not thinking clearly. Consider this: on the one side there is your wife, your two children, your home, your established way of life, your conveniences, your friends, our mutual friends, our relatives, our adjustment to one another over nearly eighteen years, our mutual memories of shared happiness and sorrow, a lifetime of being together with still many years to go. On the other hand, there is this slut, this whore with whom you’ve shared clandestine love and experiences for only half a year. What else does she have to offer beside a good screwing? What else? The promise of future happiness? Hah! That’s a laugh and you know it. You’re a man of sensitivity, John. You always have been. She’s pulled the wool over your eyes, for God’s sake, can’t you see that? You could never be happy under such circumstances, knowing what you’d done to the children and me in order to be with her. Isn’t it in order to question how and where she became so skilled in bed? Doesn’t the sort of past that suggests give you some sort of pause? You’ve written about her great conversational ability. Am I, then, that much of a drag to converse with? Am I so much more stupid than she?”
She turned and started to walk slowly through the grass, her shadow stretching out far behind her in the rays of the rapidly setting sun. Hands in pockets, Grant fell in beside her, thoughtful. She was looking at her own bare feet moving in the grass as she spoke again.
“You say you can’t make a decision between us. For the life of me, John, I can’t see why not. Virtually everything is weighted in my direction if, as you say, you really love me. We’ve talked of a lot of things, a lot of factors which must influence your decision. There are a few others. Can you so easily turn your back on your responsibilities? Can you so conveniently overlook your obligations? I asked before, what happened to the man I married? That man had moral uprightness, honesty, a strong sense of ethics, a vast degree of consideration, a revulsion for deceit. Have you abrogated these virtues? Do they mean nothing to you anymore? Can you abdicate your own responsibilities and obligations?” She looked at him, her chin beginning to tremble again. “Maybe you can, but the man I married could not.”
Their car was not far away now and they moved toward it, not speaking for twenty or thirty steps. Then Grant spoke again and his voice seemed to be coming from a long way off.
“I’ve argued those very points in my own mind for months, Marie. I’ve tried to consider everything which should be considered. If it were possible for me to set the calendar back to a time before meeting Anne, I would gladly do so. But I can’t. It has happened and I love her.”
He took her arm and held it as they approached the car, then continued to hold it as they stopped beside the car on the passenger side.
“I don’t really know what more to say at this point, Marie. Obviously, we’re going to have to talk more — much more — but at the moment I think we’re both pretty well talked out and emotionally drained. I guess we’d better go on home. I have to repack my things. I’m catching a flight to New York in the morning. The HAB Symposium starts tomorrow and before it begins I have to get in touch with the President. I’ll be in the Waldorf Astoria.”
She was unresisting, almost puppetlike as he helped her into the car, shut the door, and went around and climbed in behind the wheel. Although he slid the key into the ignition switch, he didn’t turn it on. Instead, he turned to face her and was abruptly appalled at how she looked. The faint lines of her face had become more deeply etched and harsher. What little color had been in her cheeks had drained away, leaving them ashen, and the normally warm eyes had taken on a lackluster coldness that Grant had never seen before. The full lips had thinned into a straight, colorless line and she looked years older. The whole physical aspect of her was so altered that it was suddenly as if he were seated beside a strange woman he had never seen before and he experienced a repellence toward her that was shocking in its strength. She didn’t raise her voice when she spoke, but there was a grating harshness in what she said and the words were flat and cold.
“You’re going with that whore-bitch, aren’t you?”
His jaw muscles clenched and he shook his head. “I’m going alone.”
“Lying bastard! Lying, cheating, heartless son of a bitch!”
“Marie!” He was stunned.
“You son of a bitch!” she repeated. “Miserable fucking son of a bitch!”
“Damn it, Marie, stop!” He reached out a hand to grip her arm but jerked it back as her nails dug into the flesh. She raised both hands, the fingers curved into claws, poised to strike.
“Touch me again and I’ll dig your eyes out,” she hissed.
They stared at one another for a long frozen period and then gradually her hands lowered to her lap and rested there as clenched fists, colorless bony extensions of her arms. She averted her eyes from him and sat stiffly, staring straight ahead, saying nothing.
He exhaled heavily, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot onto Dempster heading west. No further words passed between them on the way to the house. For now, there was nothing left to say. But as startling as the change had been in Marie, so too, on this drive back to Bobolink Terrace, there was a change in John Grant. It was not as outwardly apparent a change as Marie’s, but it was no less significant. Something had just gelled for him. Something that had been in the back of his mind ever since listening to a couple of Anne’s comments this morning in her apartment.
