Daphne left work to go home early. After all, it was Christmas holiday for the college, and although she and the other secretaries dutifully showed up as they were supposed to, not much needed doing. The wild scramble had been in the weeks just before Christmas, when several professors were desperate to get their papers ready for the conference on American history being held in San Francisco the last week in December. The new wild scramble wouldn’t start for another week, when the college opened for its month-long winter term and then again when second semester started at the beginning of February.
It was too bad she had had to come in today. She had hated leaving Cynthia alone. Cynthia would be leaving the third of January to go back to high school—and her father. Daphne would not see her again until … When? No one could say. Cynthia would leave for Europe at the beginning of the summer with Joe and Laura, and they would tour the Continent, and finally settle in London, where Joe had a visiting professorship and Cynthia would try to get into an acting school.
To make it as an actress, one had to start as young as possible; of course, London was the place for her, not this idle backwoods burg. Daphne understood all that. Besides, what a wonderful adventure for a young girl, a summer in Europe! And of course Laura, who spoke fluent French as well as German, and had friends and relatives everywhere, would provide deeper and more meaningful experiences than any ordinary tour.
Who would not want such things for her child?
At the base of the Vermont hill, where the paved road became dirt, Daphne pulled to the side and let the old Jeep idle. She leaned her forehead down onto the steering wheel. Would she ever in her life be free of pain? She was the Seven Sins Incarnate. Pride, Envy, Covetousness, Gluttony, Wrath—Wrath, Wrath. … Her mother’s words echoed in her mind: “Anger hurts you more than the person you’re angry at; it eats away at you and makes you bitter and mean, while the person you’re angry at lives most of his life unaware of that passion.” Yes, Daphne thought as the snake of bitterness flicked away inside. Her mother had been right. Joe, Laura, they could not be touched by her anger now, not in any way at all. They never could be. They had the power to hurt Daphne, through Cynthia, but although they were guilty, they were also free, unpunished, untouched. Right now they were in Idaho, spending their Christmas vacation skiing—oh, where was the justice in that? Where was the justice in anything? How could it be that Joe, who had given nothing to Cynthia for the first sixteen years of her life but the basic child support the courts ruled necessary, who had not remembered his daughter at Christmas or on her birthday, who had not written letters to her or telephoned her or visited her on his trips back east—how was it that he, with a snap of his fingers, a flick of his whim, could summon his daughter into his life? How could Cynthia have gone? Daphne understood it from an intellectual point of view—Cynthia’s need to know that her father loved her; her hope of being “discovered” if she lived on the West Coast; her desire to get out of the overly proper, stifling atmosphere of the small New England college town—yet Daphne would never understand in all her life how Cynthia could have left her, left her. She hated her daughter for her easy desertion. She loved Cynthia, and wanted her happiness, but still, there was that hate, born of betrayal.
Daphne lifted her head. All around her the countryside was deep in snow. The trees that lined the road dipped beneath the weight of snow that glossed their branches. It was not five yet, but the sun was almost gone and shadows laced the ground into a latticework of gray on white. No birds sang, but tiny rabbit tracks crisscrossed everywhere, and suddenly Daphne envisioned an entire colony of rabbits, white rabbits with pink noses and ears lined as if in pink silk, dancing in the snow, weaving in and out of the shadows, “Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing, As in their living in the living seasons …”
She was going mad. But there was something about rabbits that suggested family, and home and hearth and familial love. Peter Rabbit, and then the book by Margaret Wise Brown, The Runaway Bunny, in which the baby bunny says he’ll run away and the mother bunny tells the baby she will always find him and bring him back. The mother hopes to keep her child safe no matter how far he ventures into the world. This seemed to Daphne the truest book ever written. Cynthia had loved the book as a child. But of course Cynthia was not a child anymore. As Pauline had said, sooner or later all children left their parents. It was just that for Daphne it had happened sooner. And mother love might feel bigger than the world, but in truth it was never as strong.
Daphne put the Jeep in gear and started home. Always before she had thought of herself as a survivor, as a triumphant person, no matter what life threw her way. Even buying her tiny ramshackle cottage had been an act of courage and of spunk, she thought, but lately she had lost her energy. There were times, Daphne thought, when Life ought to give you something. When there ought to be something given, unexpected, free of charge, a gift not even thought of or wished for, a surprise. Now she couldn’t think what it would be for her, but still she wished it would happen. It was what she needed. She was working as hard as she could to make her life come out all right, but now it was time for Life to make a contribution. For it couldn’t be possible that, now that she was so old, forty-six, Life would do nothing but just take and take away?
The Jeep rattled and crashed down the lane, destroying the rural peace. Daphne parked and went into her house. Cynthia was lying on her stomach on the living-room floor, surrounded by photo albums.
“Hi, Mom, how are you, God, you should look at these!” Cynthia said, smiling up at Daphne.
Daphne hung her coat on the rack near the door, and pulling her red cardigan around her for warmth, sat down next to her daughter. “Listen,” she said, “a bunch of us are going into Greenfield to see that new slasher movie. And we’re going to a Chinese restaurant first. Want to come with us?”
“Oh, Mom, I can’t. I told you. I want to spend the night at Donna’s. She’s expecting me anytime. Can you drive me down?”
Daphne ran her hand through her thick hair. “Oh, Jack is going to take me to Greenfield so I don’t have to take the old clunker. But we can drop you on the way.” She looked at her watch. “He should be here any minute.”
She started to get up, but Cynthia said, “Wait a minute. I really want you to look at these. I’ve made a collage. I’m going to take it back with me.”
First Daphne saw only that the photo albums had been ransacked and rifled. Here and there pages had been stripped bare. She started to protest, then saw what Cynthia had done. On a large piece of construction paper she had attached pictures of almost every birthday cake she’d ever had. There was the famous Doll Cake: a Barbie doll in the center, the cake the doll’s tiered dress, covered with pink ruffles of icing. The famous Train Cake, when Cynthia had insisted on having ten friends to her party, and Daphne in a fit of creativity had taken small bread-loaf pans and made eleven little chocolate cakes, iced them, laid them on a track of red licorice, and given each boxcar its own special load of candy: root-beer logs, M&Ms, jujubes, jelly beans, chocolate balls. The wheels were Oreo cookies and the steam from the engine was made of marshmallows stuck together with colored toothpicks. All the children had gone crazy on seeing it. What a work of art it had been. And there were the horse cake, the flower cake, the balloon cake.
“These are all just so fabulous, Mom! You were so clever!”
“I know,” Daphne agreed. “They were wonderful. I always thought that if you ever went to a psychiatrist and said I had never loved you, I could take him the photographs of all these cakes to prove otherwise.”
“Oh, Mom,” Cynthia said impatiently, “I’d never think you didn’t love me. God.” With one quick fluid motion she pushed herself up off the floor. “I’ve got to get my overnight stuff packed.” She went out of the room.
Daphne sat looking at the mess on the floor, photo albums and magazines and nail polish and tissue boxes opened and piled every which way, a Diet Pepsi bottle under the coffee table, an apple core on the rug. She started to call Cynthia back, then thought: No. It wouldn’t take long to clean it up tonight, and why risk a confrontation when Cynthia was going to be here only a few more days?
She went into her bedroom and lay on the bed a moment, just resting. She was tired so often these days. She supposed she should change, but her gray flannels, white shirt, and red cardigan were so warm and cozy, and what would she change into anyway? It was a casual night, she didn’t have a date, they were all just going to a Chinese restaurant, which wasn’t formal at all, and a slasher movie. Oh, this is the way to become an old lady with ringworm curls and dried food on your bodice, she told herself, and heaved herself up. She put on a long, oversize, stylish black sweatshirt-dress and her high gray suede boots. No jewelry except for dangling gold earrings.
“Oh, wow, dude, sexy!” Cynthia said from the doorway. She came into the room, walked around Daphne, scrutinizing her. “You know, you don’t look thirty-two. All my friends say they can’t believe you’re thirty-two. Are you really that old?”
Cynthia’s affectionate teasing pleased Daphne. She put out her arms and drew her daughter next to her. Side by side, they stood looking at themselves in the full-length mirror on Daphne’s closet door, the black-haired mother, the honey-haired child.
“What can I say?” Daphne said. “We two Miller broads are lookin’ pretty good these days.”
Cynthia snaked her arm around her mother’s waist and pulled her closer. “It’s true,” she said. “We’re a pair of jewels.”
This time Jack got Carey Ann on the phone.
“Hi, sweetie pie,” she said, her voice little-girlish and light. “How are you?”
“All right, I guess. How are you?”
“Oh, Jack, I’m just having the time of my life! So’s Lexi! Everyone just adores her. All my friends say she’s just the prettiest baby they’ve ever seen, and everyone wants to run out right now and get pregnant! Everyone says if there are a lot of little baby bastards in Kansas City in nine months it’s going to be all my fault! And, Jack, Daddy and Mommy gave me so many fab presents for Christmas! Jack, Daddy gave me a white fox coat! Jack, wait till you see me in it, I look so beautiful you’ll just drool! ’Course they have loads of presents for me to bring back to you too, honey.”
“Well,” Jack said, trying to get some enthusiasm into his voice, “that’s very nice of them. What are you doing tonight?”
“Oh, just the greatest thing! A whole bunch of us are going out to the club for dinner. Beulah and Mommy and Daddy will take care of Alexandra, of course. She’s having so much fun she won’t even know I’m gone. I’m afraid she’s getting dreadfully spoiled here.”
“Who all’s going to the club?”
“Oh, you know, Sharon and Trish and Christie and Pattie, even though I don’t really like Pattie, I never did, you know, but she’s still part of the group, and some of their boyfriends, and, Jack, some of my old beaux will be there too, but promise me you won’t be jealous—I mean, you know I won’t flirt with them or anything. They’re all fellows I’ve known forever, and I just want to hear about what they’ve been doing with their lives and what’s going on. There will just be a pile of us out at the club.”
Jack was silent. “The club” sprang up before his eyes—he had been there many times, and he knew the private banquet room the group would probably be given. There would be one long table, or two, if there were enough people, and the room was done in a glittering Art Deco style that made you feel slightly time-warped and disoriented, free of responsibility, as if anything you did in that room had no connection with real life, as if once you walked out of that room, everything you had done there vanished from all memory. He bet the waiters there had seen some sights. Instead of candles on the table there were small lamps, the bases metal statues of naked ladies or naked men, their arms raised to hold up the light, with the shades in stained-glass patterns of grapes and leaves and flowers that threw crazy-quilt shadows on the tablecloth. Similar lamps hung against the walls, with fringed shades hanging down. The chairs were a decadent tarty red velvet on gilded wood, and the room was thick with Oriental carpets. The waiters, their long hair slicked straight back and greased down, wearing tuxes, all handsome and probably gay, stood at the doors with their hands crossed at crotch level, white towels hanging from their arms, always alert for an empty wineglass. It was at this club, in this room, that Jack had been served, for dessert, a concoction of chocolate and booze named “Satan’s Breakfast.” The club was about as midwestern-native as Al Capone.
“You’ll probably be there all night,” Jack said.
“Probably,” Carey Ann agreed. “I just can’t wait. It’s going to be so much fun to see everybody together again. ’Course, I’ll miss you, Jack, I wish you could be here too. But don’t worry, I’ll talk about you all the time. If you feel your ears burning tonight, you’ll know why. Listen, sweetie, I really want to talk to you forever, but I’ve got to go get ready. I haven’t showered or anything.”
“All right,” Jack said, not very graciously.
Carey Ann heard the tension in his voice. “What are you doing tonight, sweetie?” she asked.
At least she did that much, Jack thought. At least she had the sense to spend a little time paying attention to him, at least she had cared. He felt soothed. She did love him.
“A bunch of us are going down into Greenfield. To a Chinese restaurant and then to a slasher movie. Lady-Killer.”
“Oooh,” Carey Ann squealed. “I’m glad I’m not there! I hate that kind of movie. Imagine a bunch of college professors wanting to see a thing like that! Who all’s going?”
“The Whites. The Johannsens. The Petries.” Jack paused. “I’ll probably drive Daphne down and back.”
“Now I’m really glad I won’t be there. That old hen,” Carey Ann said. “Listen, Jack, I’ve really got to go.”
A tornado of fury boiled and spun inside Jack: he was jealous of her with her old friends, why wasn’t she jealous of him driving around at night with Daphne?
“Can I speak to Alexandra?” he asked.
“Well … she’s eating now.” There was silence while Carey Ann put down the phone and wandered off. “Here she is,” she said.
“Hi, Lexi!” Jack said.
“Lexi, this is Daddy!” Jack said.
“It’s Daddy!” Carey Ann whispered at the other end of the phone. “Say hi to Daddy, Lexi!” Then laughter, and Carey Ann’s voice came on. “Jack, she’s the cutest thing. When I said, ‘It’s Daddy,’ Lexi took the receiver and looked into the little holes!” She went back to her daughter. “Lexi, say hi to Daddy.”
“Hi, Daddy,” Lexi said. Her voice sounded far away, and dubious.
“Hi, Lexi. I love you, honey.” Jack felt as if he were calling out over the miles, trying to reach his small daughter with the drift of his voice. Over the phone the miles of air between them intersected and carried who he was away, he knew, before he could get to Lexi.
“Sorry, Jack, she ran off back to Beulah. Beulah was giving her cinnamon toast. You know it’s hard for her to understand how the phone works. Don’t worry, she won’t forget you. We’ll be back before you know it. I’ve got to go.”
“Wait!” Jack said. He was angry, lonely, desperate, he was spurned again by the two females he loved. He was so overwhelmed with emotions, but not one of them could he speak aloud now. If he said any of this to Carey Ann, she would laugh, or get mad and think he was trying to spoil her fun, or, worst of all, she would try to appease him in a voice that made it clear she thought he was being a real baby about all of this.
“Well, what?” Carey Ann was saying impatiently.
He couldn’t think of anything to say: Do you miss me? Do you love me? Do you think of me when you go to bed at night? Are you glad you married me? Do you wish you were back in Kansas City for good with all those dumb hunks your father approves of?
“What are you wearing tonight?” he asked. Carey Ann always liked to talk about her clothes. This would keep her on the phone a little longer.
Carey Ann broke into peals of laughter. “Imagine you asking me that!” she said. “You never know what I’m wearing! You never know what I’m wearing when you’re looking at me!”
“That’s not true!” Jack protested.
“Oh, honey, yes it is. You just don’t care about clothes, but that’s all right. Anyway, I’m wearing a new dress tonight. You haven’t seen it. An off-the-shoulder sequined, slinky sort of thing. A real drop-dead kind of dress, the kind I could certainly never wear at your old college ‘functions.’ Functions—don’t you just love it? That’s what I tell people here. Back east they don’t have parties, they have functions. Honey, I just have to go now!”
“All right. Call me tomorrow, why don’t you? I love you, Carey Ann.”
“I love you too. You know I do! ’Bye, now!”
The receiver was buzzing in his ear before he had a chance to hang up. The buzzing seemed to be the sound of all those miles of space mushrooming like a black cloud, expanding the distance between him and his wife.
Jack and Daphne were at ease with each other at the beginning of the evening. At first, leaving Plover for the drive down into Westhampton, Cynthia had been in the car with them, so full of high spirits that she leaned over from the back seat, looking from one to the other so fast her flying beaded earrings nearly hit Daphne in the face, snapping her gum with exuberance, saying, it seemed to Daphne, “like,” or “you know,” or “excellent,” with every breath. They dropped her at Donna’s, and as Jack pulled away, the car filled with silence. Jack and Daphne looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“You wait!” Daphne said. “You just wait!”
And talking about children—Cynthia, Alexandra, and then their own childhoods—kept them occupied until they reached the Chinese restaurant, where the Whites and the others were waiting. Then they were engulfed in the general noise and gossip of academics on holiday.
The Chinese food was wonderful. In the way of good parties, everyone seemed terribly clever. But Lady-Killer was so trashy that after a whispered vote, which caused some of the others in the audience to yell, “Shut up!,” the group of eight filed out of the theater to the cries of the third doomed woman in thirty minutes.
The group stood around in the lobby, a regular committee, incapable of decision, until Hank and Ellie Petrie announced that they were all going to a local bar where there was dancing on weekend nights. It was a good place, dark but clean, and slow old rock-’n’-roll favorites pulsed through the room hypnotically. Daphne and Jack danced, but only once, and the rest of the time they sat at opposite ends of the table, separated by all the others.
It was only at the end of the evening, in the car on the way home, that a sense of awkwardness fell between them. Perhaps it was the silence in the car after the noise of the bar; and the air was so cold it seemed hostile after the bar’s smoky warmth. The moment she sat down on the icy car seat, Daphne had the strangest urge to slide across and snuggle against Jack for warmth. It was just a quick welling-up of animal need.
But of course she wouldn’t do that. Daphne could tell Jack was nervous now—she was older than he was, and had been a divorced woman long enough to notice the signs of a nervous man. Jack kept fiddling with things, the heat gauge, the radio, the backwindow defrost, and the bright lights: every now and then he switched the wrong thing and the windshield wipers, which were unnecessary, came flashing across their vision. “Sorry!” he said each time, almost yelling.
Oh, dear, Daphne thought, how am I going to make him comfortable? The drive back to Plover would take the better part of forty-five minutes, and most of it along dark country roads. The bright streetlights of Greenfield were a help; it made them feel as if other people were still around, but once they hit the long black stretch of Route 2, they were as stranded with each other as two astronauts on the moon. Or two teenagers on their first date.
Daphne had not forgotten his kiss during the fall. Well, how could she? It was the only real kiss she’d had in about two years. She said to herself: Jack is thirty-one. You are forty-six. You could truly be his mother. She said to herself: Jack is married. You know what you think of women who mess with married men.
Still. The mind by nature is made to fade when faced with the powers of the body, like the moon fading in the sky when the great sun rolls over the horizon. What has seemed rational and clear by silver light in a black sky suddenly is impossible even to find when the sun takes over so completely, blazing through the senses. This was what Daphne was feeling within her body now, a sunrise. Gently a heat came rolling up inside her body, spreading its rays to every part, so that her limbs and fingers and skin, which for a while had seemed numb to her, now tingled with life. Desire, quick and dense and pervasive, streaked through her abdomen and legs.
Men’s bodies. Women could talk all they wanted about liberation, but they would never be free of the love of men’s bodies, and no liberation could ever be as sweet as union with a man one loved. David had been older than Jack when he and Daphne became lovers, and although he played tennis and golf, he had developed an alcoholic softness around his chest and belly. Still, the hair on his chest and abdomen had pulled her gaze down his torso like a summons every time, another one of nature’s tricks, pointing the way to that magical package between the legs. The vulnerable balls. The cunning penis, shaped like the arrow that pierces the heart. When David had been drinking a lot, he was impotent, and they came to accept this and not attempt anything. Then his penis would hang, a tough useless weed in his crotch. But when he hadn’t been drinking, it swelled up like steel, and this was why Daphne loved David, why women loved men, because they were soft and hard at once, silk skin over brick muscles, rampant penis over fragile balls, rigid prick thick with cream.
Jack was so young. His body, she had noticed—she had thought of it often—was firm, from youth and from his running. His thighs were long and hard and hairy, bestial. His black hair, still thick, and his skin, still firm and taut, made Daphne remember young Joe, potent with youth. Even at his best, David had not come more than once a night, but when he had been in his twenties and early thirties, Joe had been able to rest and rise over and over again. Jack would be able to too. Daphne wondered about things: was Jack’s pubic hair wiry or straight and lank? His hair was dark, would his penis be purple or pink in tone? Men’s penises were different in spite of what magazines said, or so Daphne had found in her brief experience. Jack was fairly short. Would his penis be?
“Would you like some music?” Jack asked, breaking into her thoughts.
“That would be nice,” Daphne said, feeling her face go hot with guilt. How long had she been sitting there in silence, thinking of penises? Frantically she searched her mind for some topic of conversation that wouldn’t seem artificial at this moment, but she could think of nothing. She felt like a teenager on a date, as paralyzed by sex as a cobra by a flute, waiting, waiting, hanging in the air.
The car lights flashed on the road signs welcoming them to the state of Vermont.
“I find I like living in Plover,” Jack said. “I like leaving the college behind so completely, going into a different state in more meanings than one. Then, going up into a mountain, too, the wilderness, after all that civility, provides a great relief.”
“I know,” Daphne said, grateful for his easy tone. “You really feel that you’re getting away from it all, going into another world.”
And as they drove, the wilderness did enfold them, the wooden bridge thumping responsively under the car’s wheels, the road becoming dirt, the trees and bushes closing in above and next to them, narrowing the road, stretching out to scrape the sides of the car, nature closing in.
Daphne had left a light burning in her cottage. Jack stopped the car next to her old Jeep, turned off the engine, and looked at her expectantly. She knew he wanted her to invite him in for a drink. She wanted to invite him in for a drink, and more.
“Thank you,” she said politely. “For driving.”
“Daphne,” Jack said. His voice was hoarse. He reached his hand out and pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips. One hand he kept on the back of her head, holding her to him, the other hand he put on her neck, running his thumb under her chin.
Daphne shivered under his touch. He smelled new and clean, as fresh as washed cotton drying in the sun, and his kiss filled her body with light. She pushed him away.
“No.”
“Let me come in. Let me spend the night with you.”
“No. It would be wrong. You know it would be wrong.”
“Please.”
It was growing cold in the car. They could scarcely see each other. But they could smell and hear each other, and it was like being drugged by the gods. Daphne’s body turned toward Jack’s as if he were the sun.
“Just come in for coffee, then.”
“All right.”
But once they were inside the house, enclosed in its warmth, Jack took Daphne in his arms and pulled her to him. He put his hands on her buttocks and pressed her hips against his. They were the same height and matched nicely all up and down. Jack was kissing Daphne, her mouth and eyes and neck, and nudging into her, and never in the world had she wanted anything more.
No. Several things in the world she had wanted more. Long ago, for example, she had wanted her husband not to be sleeping with her best friend.
“Jack,” she said suddenly, shoving him away, backing off, closing her coat over her breasts and holding it there. “Stop a minute. Listen to me. We can’t do this. We mustn’t do this. You love Carey Ann. You can’t do this to her. You can’t do this to your marriage.”
“I want you. I’ve wanted you for months.”
“I want you too. But human beings can’t go around just taking what they want. Listen, Jack, I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve been in this spot before—but on the other side, looking in. I’ve been where Carey Ann is, I’ve been a new wife with a little child, and my husband had an affair, and it ended our marriage, and it was awful, Jack. Jack, it was evil. And I can’t be a person who does the same thing.”
“Carey Ann wouldn’t know. She probably wouldn’t even care. She’s so preoccupied with everything else. Everything else matters but me.”
“Oh, I know that’s what you think!” Daphne began to move across the room, further away from the pull of Jack’s power. “But I know it’s not true. You do matter to her. She would die if you had an affair. She’s just so young, Jack, she’s got to get herself organized, she’s working on that. You have to stand by her. You can’t go off screwing around whenever you feel ignored.”
“I don’t go off screwing around. I’ve never screwed around on her. Why are we talking about Carey Ann? I want you. I want to go to bed with you.”
Oh, he does know how to say the right things, Daphne thought. How nice it was to hear that: Jack wanted to go to bed with her. She had imagined this, lying in her lonely bed on winter nights. She had imagined how it would be to have Jack, small, dark, intense, young, firm Jack lying on top of her, skin against skin, the feel of his muscles, and how he would sound, needing, and then being satisfied. She had imagined it all, and now she could have him, and she wanted him. Who, after all, would know? Who would care? No one at the college would suspect this—Daphne was so old, and a secretary. Gorgeous young Carey Ann would never think to wonder about her husband with Daphne—Daphne knew this, knew it every time she saw Carey Ann look her way. So it would be only she herself who would know, and couldn’t she finally devise her own consequences?
Jack was walking closer to her now. He had unzipped his parka and she could see the hollow of his neck, she could almost feel the sexual burn of his late-night whiskers against her throat.
She moved back, away from his pull. She shook her head. She was afraid she was going to cry. Oh, God, she thought, don’t let me be maudlin. If I’m not going to have any pleasure, let me at least have some dignity about this.
“Jack,” she said again, holding both hands out as if warding off a monster. “Please don’t come any closer. I want you to leave now. You know I’m attracted to you, but I just can’t go to bed with you. You’re married, and I can’t go to bed with you. I can’t do that to you.”
“But what do you care about my marriage?” Jack said. He looked so puzzled. “You’re not even Carey Ann’s friend!”
“No. I’m not. But I’m your friend, Jack. I’m your good friend.”
“I don’t need you as a friend,” Jack said angrily.
“Please. Go.”
He stared at her. Then, looking bitter, he turned and stalked across the living room and went out the door, shutting it so hard it shook the little cottage. Daphne stood paralyzed, her back nearly against the wall, listening to the sounds of his car starting up and murmuring away through the snow-covered bushes.
Victory, said her mind, but her body said, Defeat. And her body would make her pay. She would not sleep tonight. Her house was as quiet and now seemed as cold as a block of ice. Nothing moved, no sounds, only her body desiring, and all that heated sunrise in her loins and limbs had vanished with Jack, leaving in its stead the touch of the grave, moonshadows, cemetery streaks slipping against her skin. Sex was life and heat; loneliness was this: invisible sleet sliding just under her clothes, chilling her to the bone.
Daphne sank down onto the floor and cried, doubled over, cramps in her abdomen, pain like thirst in her mouth and breasts. It had been two years since she had been with a man. Why was she doing this to herself? Where was the sense of it all?
Dickens, who had been watching quietly from in front of the cold fireplace, waddled over now and stood next to her, staring intently at her, slowly wagging his tail. He seemed to think that Daphne, bent over on the floor as she was, was playing some kind of game.
“Oh, Dickens!” Daphne wailed, and looked up at him with tears streaking down her face.
Dickens pushed his head forward to smell her breath, then sneezed, and went back to lie down in front of the fireplace. He was getting old, after all, and besides, he had seen this before. Not exactly this, but this much agony.
All the times Hudson had driven Daphne home, or stopped by for a drink, or come to help with something heavy, and stood talking in his gentle blink-eyed giraffe way, his need for Daphne steaming from him like a scent, filling her with equal need … and then Hudson would leave, and Daphne would sit on the sofa, clutching herself, like a diver who has started down into great depths, then been forced to surface too fast.
Yes. She had been here before. At least one gained this much with age and experience, one gained the memory of coping and thus knew the first steps to take in going on.
She would not sleep tonight, or not easily. She would be restless and unable to read, and—Daphne looked at her watch; it was only a little before midnight!—it was too late to call Pauline for a helpful talk. Not too late to call Jack, though, who, Daphne imagined, was at this moment fixing himself a strong drink. She would have to wrestle with herself as with a devil to keep from calling him or going there; he was so close, and no one would see.
A drink. A strong drink to numb. Music? No. Too sensual. TV? No, it would not be powerful enough tonight. Action: build a fire, find some mending, get out some knitting—now Daphne knew why women all over the world knit away like psychotics. If she had knit every time she yearned for a particular or general man’s body, she could have knit a house by now. “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.” Did she have that right? It sounded vaguely obscene.
Daphne went through the kitchen and shed and out the back door to the cold night to get some wood she had piled against the wall. She left the door open as she carried in three loads. The hell with her oil bill, she was such a wild and reckless thing. Finally slamming the door against the bitter night, she knelt at her fireplace and built an extravaganza of a blaze. Dickens jumped up at the “whoosh!” the fire made as it caught, then turned around several times and lay back down to sleep. Daphne made herself a big Scotch with ice and dug out her knitting—she was working on an afghan for the sofa. She’d be through with it in no time at all.
What if the phone rang? What if Jack came back and knocked on the door? As she settled down with her feet up on the sofa and the fire blazing, her imagination tugged at her senses. But she would resist even that, in case she weakened. Oh, how would she fight this desire?
Well, there was always memory.
Joe had thought Daphne was unreasonable to be so furious because he was leaving her for Laura. He had to do it—why wouldn’t she understand? Laura had been hurt that Daphne was so upset.
She had come over to Daphne’s that first day, her eyes swollen with tears. Daphne didn’t want to let her in the house, but Laura had Hanno by the hand, and Daphne had Cynthia on her shoulder and was afraid of frightening the children.
So the two mothers of small children, the two women Joe Miller was sleeping with, put Hanno in front of the TV and Cynthia in her playpen. Then they went into the dining room and shut the door. This final deed they did with accord.
“What are you doing?” Laura had sobbed. “Joe came to my house last night. He says you are violently angry. I don’t understand. How can you do this to me?”
“What am I doing?” Daphne had asked. She had had no love left in her for Laura. She wanted to kick her friend.
“You’re ruining everything!” Laura had said. “How can you be so selfish? You of all people should understand. I am so lonely! You are my friend, you love me. Don’t you want me to be happy? Why can’t you let go of Joe nicely? You have Cynthia. You have your teaching. You love your teaching! You don’t need Joe, and I do.”
“You’re crazy,” Daphne had said. “You’re a crazy, selfish bitch!”
“No, I’m not!” Laura had said. “I’m your friend—”
“Laura! You betrayed me. You manipulated me. You are taking my husband, my daughter’s father. Don’t you know I hate you? I hate you. I’ll never forgive you!”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this things!” Laura had said, her English giving way under her emotion. “Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you understand?”
“Laura, just get out. Get out or … I’ll hit you. I swear to God I will.”
“You’ll calm down,” Laura had said. “You will get over your anger. I know you will.”
What still made Daphne angry, and always would, was how Laura saw herself as the injured party, because Daphne had not loved her enough to want her to have happiness with Joe. Even after all these years it was painful for Daphne to remember that spring, when she and Joe had met only for legal purposes, to sign divorce papers, to sign at the closing of the sale of their house. Joe married Laura as soon as the divorce was final, and they moved to California, where Joe took a job with a university. Daphne told the community college she wanted to teach full-time there, but their enrollment dropped that year and they said regretfully that they didn’t know if they could offer her even a part-time job. When Fred Van Lieu offered her the job as secretary in the history department, she had taken it, glad for some way to make money, for some way to order her jagged life.
Her life was still jagged. She was still jagged, and torn.
What could make her whole? Could anything make her whole?
Not an affair with a young married man, that much was certain.
In the middle of the night, in the midst of sipping Scotch and knitting, Daphne fell asleep. She awoke in the morning, her entire body aching from its cramped bed, and from cold, for the fire had gone out in the night and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was the ashy-gray hearth. The afghan she had been working on had slipped to the floor. Besides, it was far too small to cover her yet. She would need many more nights to knit. And she knew she would have them, these long nights alone.
Jack had been awakened this morning by a call from Carey Ann. The weather in Kansas City had taken an unseasonably mild turn, as it sometimes did in the Midwest, and today and tomorrow would be warm and sunny. She was going to leave Alexandra with her parents and Beulah and spend a few days at Christie’s farm just outside Kansas City, riding her old horse, Jelly Roll, which she had sold to Christie when she married Jack. In order not to upset her parents, she had promised to extend her stay in Missouri by several days. Jack understood, didn’t he? Oh, Carey Ann said, she was so happy to be back home.
“Home,” Jack had said. Just that one word.
“What?” Carey Ann asked. She waited, letting the space between them flutter. Then, “Oh, Jack, come on, you’re not sulking again, are you? Jack, look. Why do you get so upset when I say I love it here, around my friends and family and the places I’m familiar with? I love you too. I love you best. I’m coming back to you soon.”
The same old argument. The same old thing. Jack was so angry at Daphne for not sleeping with him and so angry at himself for trying to get Daphne to sleep with him that he couldn’t be very civil to Carey Ann. Which did make a kind of sense: if she hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t be wanting to sleep with Daphne. Here he was, teaching a specialty he didn’t like in a department with a chairman he didn’t like, and where was his loving supportive wife? Halfway across the continent.
Still, he didn’t really want to be unfaithful to Carey Ann. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted … What? Some affection he wasn’t getting. That was all. Something warm and embracing in this hard world.
“Have a good time, Carey Ann,” he said, defeated, and hung up.
It was too cold to run outside today, and the dirt road was rutted and slick with ice. He’d run in the gym track, and then work like a fiend on his lesson plans for next semester’s courses. Jack pulled on his jeans and a wool sweater, stuffed his running gear into a canvas bag and his papers into his briefcase, and headed his car away from Plover. He felt both regret and relief as he drove down the mountain, farther and farther away from Daphne’s home, as if he were leaving the scene of an almost-committed crime.
On his way to the college he stopped in the local bookstore to check on his textbook orders. He decided to buy himself a thick new novel to read that night, a treat for himself, whatever he wanted, but as he looked through the fiction section, he found himself growing crankier and sadder, as if the books exuded a poisonous gas. All these damned writers writing! Where did they get the time to write, the money to survive and support their families while they wrote? Half of them no doubt were gorgeous young women who slept with their writing instructors or editors or both, who had fathers or boyfriends to support them. But the other half, the men, how did they do it? There weren’t enough hours in the day for Jack to do his courses well and spend some time with his family and still have the mental stamina to write a novel. Would there ever be a time when he could write? Standing in the sunny bookstore, Jack felt Time touch its icy skeletal finger to the back of his neck, a kind of gleeful poke. And he knew that years would go by, years and years and years, and he would be gray and withered and his thoughts would be gray and withered, before he would have time to write his novel.
He left the bookstore without buying anything. Cold air whacked him in the face and lungs; it was a hostile day, and he leaned forward against the wind, holding his muffler over his mouth, thinking of Carey Ann wearing a sweatshirt, riding her horse over the rolling Missouri hills.
Peabody Hall was warm and well-lit, and as he climbed the stairs to his cell, laughter and voices and the hum of machines drifted out to him. Once settled at his desk, he leafed through his books, comparing approaches for next semester. He stopped a while to take an ironic and sly pleasure from Lord Chesterfield’s famous letter to his illegitimate son, Philip:
Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good sense, I never knew in my life one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together. … A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters; though he often makes them believe that he does both.…
Right on, Chesty, Jack thought. Women. Then he went back to his saner self. This essay would provoke discussion; and then they could go back to Defoe’s essay on the education of women, which was advanced and liberated for that day and age, and would make his class more tolerant of and disposed toward reading Robinson Crusoe.
Jack kept hard at work all day. Perhaps his anger and his frustration were fueling him, but ideas for his classes came fast and easily now, so that he scribbled and typed and forgot to eat lunch. When he finally leaned back in his chair and rubbed his neck, he saw that already the sun was setting in the sky—but they had just passed the winter solstice; it was only about four o’clock. He grabbed up his papers and went down the hall to see if any secretary was around. Someday everyone in the department would have word processors to work on; this much had been promised, but until then, it would be a secretary who would have to transmit his scribbles into crisp Xerox-copied order.
Now, as he walked through the warren of offices, he heard very little. These days, with no students here, everyone went home early, eager to snuggle up with a spouse or at least a hot video and forget the dreary life-denying day. Jack’s stomach rumbled inside him and his shoulders cramped. He’d have a good workout in the gym, buy a feast at the local deli, then hide out in his house like a teenager, drinking beer, eating, watching anything and everything on the tube.
He passed the history-department offices, Daphne’s realm, which already were dark and empty. He crossed the hall and entered the main office of the English department. Through the windows the sky stretched out forever, gravestone gray. The golden points of lights that glimmered in the distance seemed worlds away. Daphne was at the main desk, working at a computer, wearing a dress in cherry-red wool. She turned and looked up at him and smiled, no embarrassment, a purely friendly smile.
“Hi, Jack. If you’re looking for Hudson, I’m afraid you’ve missed him. He’s just left. Everyone’s left but me, I think. It’s that kind of day. Half the office has flu and the other half is coming down with it. I have to finish a paper for Fred Van Lieu, and my computer’s down, wouldn’t you know it. Hudson said I could use this one. His secretary’s not in today.”
Jack looked at Daphne. “I need a draft of this syllabus typed up,” he said. “Just one copy. But it can wait. No hurry.”
“Sure? I could type it up for you after I finish Fred’s.”
“No, no. I can wait.” Was it his imagination or did Daphne feel as awkward as he did?
“Is that it?” Daphne asked, leaning over the desk to look at the sheaf of scribbled papers in his hand. “Listen, I’ll leave a note for someone to type it up tomorrow. Otherwise it will get lost in the shuffle. Let me get a folder for it.”
Daphne rose from her desk and crossed the room to take a file folder from the supplies shelf. She moved through Jack’s field of vision like a cardinal flashing its colors, its signal of intense bird-bright heat in a cold world. Daphne stretched her arms, reaching for the file folder, and the red wool dress rose too, holding to her form. Cherries, roses, apples, wine: health and heat against the grave. Jack went to her and put his arms around her. In response, she dropped her arms to her sides and lowered her head slightly, as if in surrender, and he kissed the back of her neck many times, nuzzling kisses, breathing in her scent as he kissed her. Daphne stood there, seeming passive, but he could feel her response against his body, he could feel how she was melting against him, and he pressed his torso against her back, and she leaned back into him, still holding her arms quietly at her sides.
Jack moved one hand down to press against her crotch. With his other hand he slowly stroked the front of her neck and then her shoulders and then finally, slowly, he moved his hand and arm down to the shelf of her breasts. Through the layers of wool and brassiere he felt her nipples harden. He hardened in response. Her breasts were as soft as pillows, but heavy, bulky. He held them in his hands and was surprised at their warm mass. He thought of her white flesh beneath the red dress. He moved his hands from her breasts to raise her skirt.
Such good luck. Daphne was wearing high boots with knee-high cotton socks, and a long slip and underpants, but no panty hose. So when Jack had slid the dress up in a bunch around her hips, he could feel the warm bare skin of her thighs, and her cushiony buttocks, intersected by the triangle of silky underwear. Her skin was as smooth and as white as milk. He slid his hand around to her belly and Daphne shuddered against him and caught her breath. She was leaning against him, still passive, letting him do what he wanted, sighing. Jack slid his hand down so that his finger slipped into her pubic hairs, which were wiry and coarse to feel in contrast to her smooth skin. He raised one hand to fondle a breast, with the other deftly crept between her legs and discovered that what he guessed was true: white luxuriant Daphne was made of cream. She cried out, a low-caught cry, and tried to turn in his arms.
There was a noise from somewhere behind them. Someone was strangling? Jack turned slightly and saw Hudson Jennings standing there, clearing his throat wildly. The suddenness of it—his superior there, the embodiment of propriety—sent alarm zinging through Jack’s body, which was still, even now, pressing for sexual satisfaction. A strange clanging of feelings set off within Jack’s body, and he wanted to laugh and at the same time slug someone. God damn Hudson Jennings!
Daphne was struggling to get her dress down. Her face was as red as her dress. Jack backed away from her, taking deep breaths. He leaned against the office wall, not looking directly at Hudson.
“This would be a fine scene for our students to come upon,” Hudson said coldly.
“It’s vacation,” Jack said, his voice embarrassingly husky.
“And that excuses this display?” Hudson said, not really asking a question.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hudson,” Daphne said. “You could at least have had the dignity and kindness simply to shut the door and go away and leave us alone.”
Jack felt his eyes bulge from his head like a cartoon character’s. How did Daphne dare talk to Hudson that way? He looked sideways at Hudson to see how he was taking it. Hudson was nearly vibrating with anger.
“Mr. Hamilton, I’ll see you in my office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” Hudson said, looking at Jack. Hudson turned to Daphne. “And you, Mrs. Miller, may consider yourself dismissed. I’ll have Paula deal with the paperwork; I believe you have some sick leave and vacation time coming to you.”
“Hudson,” Daphne said, moving toward him. “What are you saying?” She was still smiling, as if this were a joke.
“Mrs. Miller,” Hudson said. “I’ll put it to you quite clearly. You are fired.” He drew himself up haughtily. “And don’t think that our past friendship will be of aid in making me change my mind. The college’s policies on moral turpitude are and always have been firm. I’m sure Fred Van Lieu will concur.”
“Hudson!” Daphne said, her smile leaving her face. “You’re kidding.”
Jack looked from Hudson to Daphne and back again. What was the matter with Hudson? The man looked as if he were about to die of pain. Was he going to have a heart attack? Jack almost wished he would.
“I think the two of you should leave now,” Hudson said. “Mrs. Miller, you may come back tomorrow when there are other secretaries here, to get whatever personal things you have in the office.”
“Hudson,” Daphne said, angry now, “don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re punishing us for doing what you want to do and won’t!”
Hudson turned red, then did an about-face and walked off down the hall. For a moment Daphne and Jack stood in silence, letting it all settle about them.
“Do you think he meant what he said?” Jack asked.
Daphne was white-faced. “Yes,” she said. “I think he meant what he said.” She moved around the room quickly, gathering up her coat and purse.
“Let me …” Jack began, but didn’t know how to finish. Let him help? How? “Are you going home? At least we can have dinner together, a drink—discuss what to do?”
Daphne looked at Jack. Her eyes glittered; her face was flushed. She was shaking. “There’s nothing to discuss,” she said. “I’m fired. You’ll have to deal with Hudson, but at least you can be sure he won’t spread this around. He’s many things but not a gossip. So you won’t have to worry that Carey Ann will find out. You’ll be okay, Jack.”
Jack moved toward Daphne, reached out his hand to touch her shoulder. “But you—” he began.
“I’ve got to keep away from you, that’s the first thing,” Daphne said, smiling. Then her facade crumbled and she burst into tears, her face a terrifying sight of raw emotions: fear and anger and grief.
She hurried from the room, down the hall, down all the flights of stairs.