Tony and Susan, page 31
The novel as revenge is preposterous, but the idea won’t go away. In what sense is it revenge, how is its punishment supposed to work? Figure that out. An allegory? She denies the charges. She has not blinded him, hurt him, destroyed his life, has done no damage whatever—as the novel’s own achievement proves. At the kitchen sink with the dishes, she can resent too, resentment bites her lips demanding gesture and breakage, requiring her strongest efforts for self-control.
Her anger depends on how she phrases it, feeding on the language by which she defines Edward’s affront, like this: his novel as hate. His favor as trap. Her right to read censored. It gets away from her, what she’s angry about, proving to be other than she thought. It comes down to this: the strain, the sheer strain. The strain of maintaining fairness through the humiliation of being wrong. The strain of ignoring love and hate so as to read dispassionately for three sittings. The strain of entering his imagination, of being Tony, only to be kicked out as impertinent. The strain of ignoring the strain, and then to be snubbed.
Irked. Of course, the message may not have been delivered. At 9:30 she calls the hotel again. Edward is still out. She leaves another message. After eleven, she hears the car turn into the garage, Arnold returning late. The thought of what he brings is too horrible to think, and she hurries upstairs, preparing quickly while he eats his bowl of Wheaties in the kitchen, to be in bed and asleep before he comes up so she won’t have to talk to him. The necessity for this makes her fume. As she gets into bed (closing out for good the possibility of meeting Edward) there’s a conflagration of shame all through her mind. A vast image of the world moving, tectonic plates shifting, spreads out like solitude.
Susan as idiot, such a ninny. She lies in bed wide awake, no trapdoor down tonight—it’s shut tight—the floor solid and bitter, thoughts racing and raging. Scolding herself for what she was imagining a few hours ago. She sees herself, fatuous gullible Susan, Arnold’s healthy-faced skier, sentimental as a puppy-dog, leaving messages for Edward like an abandoned lover, like a groupie, begging for the right to talk, about what? His book, or was it to complain about Arnold? How could she be so foolish? How could she complain about Arnold to a stranger like Edward after all those years when she has scarcely dared complain to herself? Where could she begin? What would she tell him? What would Edward care? How understand? What is there to understand?
She hears Arnold in the room, in the dark. Shuffling, bumping, grunting, snuffling. The bed sags under him. She smells him. He thumps, snorts, turns heavily over, bumps her as he turns again, making no concessions. She holds still, refusing to be waked, holding her breath to tell him: if not asleep, she’s not there either, nowhere to be found.
He has been with Marilyn Linwood. She decides it is true, she thinks it deliberately, lets her mind dwell, turns her imagination to it, visualizing everywhere, New York, Chicago, her apartment, the patient couch in his office, Washington, Chickwash. Does this in direct violation of the mental discipline she adopted three years ago that would enable her to accept the status quo. Enough of that. If she can’t tolerate the imagining, she has no right to the status quo.
The absolutely terrifying question has returned to her mind, and again she can’t face it. She wonders why he is thrashing and sweating so enormously like a guilty conscience, what’s on his mind? She can’t think about it. She thinks of those two snuffling together. Talking about her. Protecting her, poor Susan. Let Susan protect herself. She thinks of Arnold’s pension plan and annuities, which will start paying off some fifteen-plus years from now, for which she is still the sole beneficiary, the children following after. She plans to remain the sole beneficiary, she intends that. She’ll insist on that.
She turns in the dark to face Arnold, opens her eyes, looks at the big empty shadow where he is, to think it like a murder weapon, an arrow, a dart. Arnold the bigamist. He’ll move them to Washington or he’ll commute on weekends, or worse. Must I take this? Susan asks Susan. You have no choice, they say. You’re past the time of revolt or denial. Your husband’s career, they say.
What if she refuses? What if she says, I won’t do it. I won’t move to Washington, nor will I be left behind. I refuse to let you run away from us. I assert myself, your wife. I assert myself selfishly, Susan the bitch.
She sees Marilyn Linwood advising Arnold what to do, just as Susan advised him about mad Selena twenty-five years ago. Using the moral authority she had over him, his natural dependency upon her. She sees how little authority she has now. What happened to it, where did it go? How galling, if she has forfeited it to Linwood. She sees herself in a long vista over years surrendering everything to the project of pleasing him, as if that were her job. Her feminist friends would be surprised how far she’s defected from her own politics, defender of all women’s rights except her own. What authority could she exert if she dared? She pays the household bills, will Linwood take that over too? Abjectly she waits for Linwood’s message, Arnold’s gift, held back for as long as she keeps quiet and makes no wrong move. Censored, blackmailed, contained and jailed by the danger of saying a wrong word, a small complaint that would give Linwood the right to take charge.
So she tries a strange word on her silent lips, the word hate. She’s afraid to use it, lest it commit her to a drastic revolutionary life. Is she strong enough for that? Among her vows when she split with Edward was never to split again. A foolish vow. But it’s no mere vow that holds her now. It’s the institution, departments and physical plant, an institution no less real than Chickwash: Mommy, Daddy, and the Kids, Inc. If Susan torched the corporation, where would she go? How could she escape blame for arson at this time of life?
Arnold is asleep at last. Deep, oblivious, stupid. Though she’s afraid to think hate, she does let herself think him stupid. The thought allows her to relax, dim some of her anger, feel a little sleepy herself. How corrupt I am, she thinks. That thought startles her too, she didn’t intend to think it. How surprising to think that what Arnold always required of her might be considered corrupt. Yet she must have known it before, considering how automatically the thought calls to mind a catalogue of cases. Her argument with Mrs. Givens, a memory symbol, emblem, token of discomfort: Mrs. Givens over coffee daring to tell Susan the Macomber rumor, that it wasn’t the nurse’s fault but the doctor’s, too fast, smug, cocksure, etcetera. And Susan reflexively scolding her, blaming the hospital, condemning the lawyer, relying on Arnold’s version of what had happened. How surprising that Susan’s integrity could be compromised by the noble virtue of loyalty, or whatever it is she has.
The sleep door opening, as she begins to slide she’s vaguely aware of Tony in the vicinity. Her temper has cooled. Once again she has forgotten the question that terrified her. She sleeps tentatively and then deeply, and in the morning her anger is an empty space, a mold like the holes made by bodies in the ash at Pompeii. She no longer imagines that Edward deliberately snubbed her, and she’s surprised how wrought up she was about Arnold. In the cold daylight it’s easy to persuade herself that if she keeps her peace, he’ll stand by her, and to dismiss her pain as a flare of selfishness. Easy, too easy. She knows it’s too easy, she knows there’s something not to be dismissed in what she has seen, but that’s for another time, for quiet reflection and deep thought, which can wait. As for Edward, she should have sent her message earlier. She never knew the purpose of his visit nor his obligations nor his schedule. At nine she makes one more call to the hotel. The clerk says Edward Sheffield checked out at seven. Maybe she’s disappointed, maybe relieved. She refuses to resent it. She’ll assume he didn’t call because he came back too late last night and didn’t want to disturb her family at an uncivilized hour.
Yet it seems as if something has happened that could change everything, if she’s not careful. Through Tony, through Edward, she’s had a glimpse. Never mind, not now. For civilization’s sake, she’ll write Edward a letter. She’ll gather her critique together, trim it into tight clear sentences and send it. She writes through the day. The desk is at the window by the bird feeder, devastated by a flock of English sparrows. The snow on the lawn, so clean and white yesterday, has begun to melt, and chunky patches of brown earth show through the holes. The walk to the garage is muddy. The sidewalks glisten with moisture. She hardly notices any of this, so busy is her mind clearing the way to Edward.
She says all the things she planned to say. She praises the book’s good qualities and criticizes its flaws. She tells how it made her think of the precariousness of her sheltered life. She confesses her kinship to Tony, writing as if that were a problem solved. She rhapsodizes: While civilization oblivious to him roars in the distance, Tony lies dying, hiding from the police who should be his friends, as he hid earlier from his enemies. Dies, joyfully believing a story which is not true. It gives him comfort, but it’s not true, while death and evil rage around.
Edward says, So tell me, what’s missing in my book? She replies, Don’t you know, Edward, can’t you see? The thought sidetracks her into irrelevance. What’s missing in her life? She wonders if she’ll ever see Arnold in the old way again, even if it’s not hate. She feels the power of habit pulling her back, as it has for so many years. Looking out at the emerging dirt-brown winter lawn, believing she’s still thinking about the letter of forgiving praise and criticism she’ll write, or else about how to make herself stronger with Arnold, with more self-respect, Susan Morrow begins to dream. The rowboat in the harbor, she has the oars, Edward lolls in the stern, dangling a hand in the water. The house with screens is behind him, over his head. Behind her and around are the pine islands and cottages. He says, “The tide is taking us.”
She sees that. She sees the shore behind him moving sideways to the left.
He says, “If we drift much further it will be hard to get back.”
She knows that. She knows how much further they have to drift and how hard they will have to row.
“If we fell in do you think we’d drown?” he asks.
The question surprises her, the shore doesn’t look that far away. But the water is cold in Maine, and they are not good swimmers.
“I don’t know if I could reach the shore or not,” she says.
“I know I couldn’t. You’re a better swimmer than I.”
“You must learn to relax, let your head go under. Being tense makes you carry your head too high and that wears you out.”
“If I fell in could you rescue me?” he asks.
“I’m not that good a swimmer.”
“We’d have to call them.”
“What could they do? We have the boat.”
“They’d stand on shore and watch us drown.”
“How terrible. Imagine them standing on the shore and watching us drown.”
Dreamily she sealed her critique in an envelope. Then, remembering his failure to call on his visit, and all the things she had been unable to ask, such as why he had sent her the manuscript and what made him write such a book, and what was the real reason for their divorce, she snapped out of it and tore the letter up. Instead, she dashed off, without thought, the following note, which she later went out to mail, also without thought.
Dear Edward,
I finally finished your novel. Sorry it took so long. Drop me a line if you want my opinion.
Love, Susan
She wanted to punish Arnold too, but the only thing she could think of was to make him read the book. He would do that if she insisted, but she doubted he would see anything.
Table of Contents
FRONT COVER IMAGE
WELCOME
BEFORE
THE FIRST SITTING
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
FIRST INTERLUDE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
THE SECOND SITTING
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
SECOND INTERLUDE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
THE THIRD SITTING
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
AFTER
ONE
TWO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Austin Wright was born in New York in 1922. He was a novelist and academic, for many years Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He lived with his wife and daughters in Cincinnati, and died in 2003 at the age of eighty.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Austin Wright
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Austin Wright, Tony and Susan
