XIII

Whatever it was, the thing had gone on for so long, now, that apparently it could be postponed indefinitely or even eventually dropped. It had often happened that way before. He felt no urge to inquire any further and Ethel herself seemed disposed to forget it. But as they were unpacking in the bedroom later, she began to clear her throat again in little nervous rasps and he saw that she was tense. Suddenly she said, “John, I want to talk to you,” and her eyes filled with tears.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. Unconsciously—by some instinctive reversion to an old habit, perhaps—he folded his hands meekly in his lap, as if expecting a scolding from his mother or teacher. Ethel was in a wicker chair by the bureau. They faced one another in the harsh glare of the unshaded light bulb in the ceiling. She breathed hard, thinking it out first; and though she looked directly at him, he knew she was afraid.

He was willing to have it out, whatever it was, but for her sake he would rather have put it off. He felt sorry for her; she expressed herself so inadequately at these times, always found she had nothing to say after all, and came off so badly in the end. With all his heart he wanted at that moment to take her in his arms.

“Just a moment, Ethel, before you begin.”

“I want to do the talking!”

“I want you to. But I also want you to remember . . .” He hesitated.

“What?”

“Well, never mind.”

“You’re just trying to throw me off!”

“I’m not. I merely want you to be careful. You’re not only spoiling my fun, but you’ll spoil your own as well.”

“Fun!” she said. “Do you think this is any fun for me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, of course. Now, what’s on your mind?”

She glared at him in silence. Then she began again. “This week at home I’ve thought a lot about us. A lot! And—well . . .”

“Well?”

She blurted it out in one breath: “I’m tired of this life I’m leading!”

“Go on.”

“What have I got ahead?”

“What has anybody got,” he said, “except what they make for themselves?”

“Oh, shit!”

He got up. He was so angry he couldn’t speak. He walked to the window to look out in order to calm himself, but the shade was down for the blackout. In the sudden stillness of the room he could hear, from the parlor directly below, the plink-­plunking of the harp. He was outraged that she should have chosen one of the two or three words which, for some forgotten reason, he was squeamish about and in fact couldn’t bring himself to say. Still more, he was shocked; not because of the word, now, but because a woman of Ethel’s fastidiousness should, in anger, automatically revert to vulgarity. It was something he had noticed often before, but each time it took him completely by surprise. After a moment he returned to the bed, sat down again, and said quietly:

“What I fail to see is why you pick a time like this—”

“No, that’s something you wouldn’t be able to see!”

“Why couldn’t you wait till later—till we got back to New York? Why should you want to spoil our whole vacation? Would you mind telling me that, please?”

“No I wouldn’t mind! I’ll tell you exactly! That’s exactly what I want to tell you!”

“You needn’t shout.”

“It’s a— It isn’t easy to explain—”

“I suppose,” he said recklessly, “it’s a moral question.”

Her look was filled with hate. “I see you know very well what I’m trying to say.”

“Then say it.”

“You’re right! Make fun of it, if you like, but it is a moral question. And I’m not coming to bed with you tonight.—That’s what you’ve been banking on for the past month, isn’t it?”

“Well, hardly. Not on your not coming to bed with me, that is.”

She ignored this and went on with a rush. “For the past month you’ve been telling yourself, ‘I’ll make it up to her when we get to Sconset.’ Isn’t that true? Isn’t it? Well, this time it won’t work! What do you think I am, anyway? Someone to go to bed with just when you happen to feel like it, maybe half a dozen times a year? What about me? How do you think I feel night after night? Don’t you suppose I have feelings?”

His stomach went weak because of all that was happening. Bitterly he was reminded of what he had been thinking on the train: how he genuinely meant to alter his habits, how he planned to move back to her room, how he wanted to be a better husband. . . . But to speak of it now—no, it was most certainly not the moment. What he said was:

“Lower your voice, please.”

“Night after night I lie in bed wondering what to do about it—”

Desperately in need of recapturing the initiative, he cut in quickly: “Not for long,” he said sarcastically. “You always fall asleep in five minutes. With the light on.”

But she had not heard. “I’ve finally come to my senses about a few things! You’re not going to put me in that position again, do you hear? Never meaning anything to you, never knowing whether you want me, never— If you knew the humiliation of getting fixed, and—and then later having to unfix myself because nothing happened! The times I’ve gotten ready and—”

“Ethel, good Christ!”

“—And I’ve only gotten ready then because you’d been extra nice at dinner and paid a lot of attention to me and I thought maybe this was going to be the time—”

“Stop! We’ve had enough of this!”

“I hate it just as much as you do, John Grandin, I hate every bit of it! It isn’t easy for a woman to admit these things. This isn’t the kind of vacation I’d planned, any more than you did. But it had to happen. All week I’ve been dreading it, because I knew you’d expect to go to bed with me tonight—because you thought I’d expect it—and it was something I couldn’t do. Not this time! Not tonight I couldn’t! . . . Don’t think I don’t want to. I do. But if I weakened and went to bed with you and forgot everything I’ve been telling myself this past week, we’d be right back where we were before—exactly nowhere!”

“Ethel! There are people in the next room!”

“Do you want to know something? Every time I menstruate I always manage to tell you in some way or other. Not that you’d ever know, but I always drop some hint by saying I have a backache or cramps or just plain having the curse. And do you know why I do that. I don’t do it just to relieve your mind of the obligation of coming to bed with me those few nights—”

“Be careful!”

“—No, that isn’t why I do it. I do it for myself! I do it because then I don’t have to lie in bed alone and know that you’re sitting in your study feeling sorry for me, thinking maybe you ought to do something about it, wondering if I’m expecting you, and would I mind it too much if you put it off one more—”

“For God’s sake, Ethel!”

“I— John, I—” She burst into sobs and ran from the room.

For some moments he heard the water running in the bathroom; she would be applying a cold towel to her eyes. He sat on the bed, unable to move, unstrung. After what seemed many minutes, she came back in and went to the bureau.

Watching her blowing her nose at the mirror, his mind went back several years to the time when, dining in a restaurant, she had suddenly got up from the table and walked out, crying audibly as she went and making a holy show of herself, leaving him in the most public humiliation to finish the meal alone. When he got home he had found her in bed with a bar of chocolate reading a mystery story. It had been their most serious quarrel, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it was about. . . .

“It’s no good,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I always cry. . . .”

“Then why do you start anything in the first place,” he thundered, seeing it was safely over. “You only get the worst of it!”

“Yes, I do,” she said, “I always get the worst of it—whether we’re quarreling or not . . .”

He stood up. “Look,” he said sharply. “Do you love me or don’t you?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Then all right!”

He slammed the door and went out.