She had not told Warren off but had come close enough to feel some satisfaction. She had declared, as she had long wanted to, that Virgil was the man in her life. Her words may have been unkind, given his condition, but at least they were true. There had been another time, early in their marriage, when she had tried to have him know what was true, and he had refused to hear her then, too. Her mistake—her cowardice, she had always believed—was that she had failed to say outright that she was enamored of the Maine State Representative from the thirty-sixth district, that though both were married and he had three small children, they were together every day, at meetings, lunches, in cars, and on walks—that they had fallen in love and there were ever more crossings of the line, by him, by her, touches, looks, caresses, small kisses that had grown enchanting—a flowering intimacy she wouldn’t risk violating by attempting to explain, but which, she imagined, only a blind man could fail to see.
Warren’s perception had remained dim, however, and she still blamed herself for not having been more clear, notwithstanding Virgil urging her at the time not to rock the boat. The initial storm came to a head on a Sunday afternoon when they were at a cookout at her family’s place in Portsmouth, though Warren’s mother and an uncle from Casco Bay were also there. The time to leave had arrived, and Warren, young and more strapping than he would ever be again, had carried Marian, asleep in the baby carriage basket they used as a car crib, placed her in the backseat of the car, and returned to where Beatrice remained in conversation, caught up in talk having to do with her job, with excitements of life long since forgotten. Warren told her a second and third time to come on, the baby was in the car, and she raised a hand to say just a minute, to please let her finish what she was saying.
She had followed Warren’s lead in those days despite her growing infatuation for her boss. It had yet to become an affair—which word alone terrified her. At the same time she was also growing infatuated with her work, where deeper responsibility, small doses of authority, and even political leverage had begun to intoxicate her just as they intoxicated Virgil Pound of York Harbor. Still, she had taken into marriage a belief of women deferring to men, as had Warren, though she had begun—a certain embarrassment to them both, as her boss was not ungenerous with salary increases—to easily outearn her husband in his scrabbling enterprise as an independent lobsterman.
And, deep into that backyard cookout conversation, she once again raised a hand to him when he said “Beatrice!” and added, she would always remember, “Just a minute, Warren!” and wasn’t really irritated, nor was he when he said something of her becoming a state legislator herself, to the amusement of all.
It, was then that it happened, and while everyone laughed, her relatives included, and though several men applauded as if they were townsfolk in a movie starring Gary Cooper, the helplessness and humiliation, the anger she felt would change her life forever, and Warren’s, too, though neither had a clue of that at the time. Warren picked her up—physically—wrapped his arms around her waist and legs and carried her like a squirming child. She had been making a point about something, and all at once he lifted her away. She had always been a small woman, hardly broke a hundred pounds in those days, but wasn’t a child, of course, nor was her life part of a silly movie in which men won the West while women cooked and cleaned, and, going into shock as he carried her off, had madly ordered him to put her down, immediately. He ignored her demands and went on, though her anger had her in tears and thrashing so wildly, it became an embarrassment to all.
They reached the car in the driveway before he placed her on her feet. She half-froze, her situation impossible in every way. She could not return to the cookout and instruct them to think differently—if they needed to be so instructed—nor could she enter the car with any measure of self-respect yet in place. “How dare you—don’t you ever touch me like that again!” she said, and her outrage was such that the impulse rising in her was to fight back with such ferocity that she would injure him physically for what he had done to her.
She entered the car in silence. He made sounds of apology, then and later, but no matter, the damage had been done, and, in her heart, their marriage came to an end during the harsh moments of silence on the drive home. She sat there knowing he had given her the opportunity to sever herself from him once and for all, and so she would. In the car and in the moments of returning their sleeping infant to her railinged bed, her heart called to Virgil, and she decided to seize life as it was there to be seized, to forgo husband and marriage no matter the consequences, to convey to Virgil, tomorrow, that she was ready to enter into supreme intimacy with him, that she wanted his love in the way that love from a powerful man might give her the strength she needed to realize the person she believed in her heart she was destined to be. She might be breaking her vows in some eyes, while in her own mind she was being true to herself. She might live a lie, as a woman, but would do so with independence and courage.
She told Warren that the gap between them was irreparable, but, on Virgil’s advice, did not break from him, which may have been her crucial mistake. Virgil had cautioned against making themselves vulnerable—said his political life and all else would be up for grabs, as would her custody of her precious child, if the love they knew for each other should become known.
Warren came apologizing every day, and she turned a deaf ear. A week, ten days passed, during which time she refused to speak to him, took comfort in her work, her child, and found fulfillment beyond her wildest dreams in a motel room, a locked office, in the rear seat of a state limousine with shaded windows, went fully into a relationship of passion and heightened political power, of glorious consummation. She became a true woman, and love and passion of an exalted kind rose into place within her breast and mind. She had never felt so alive and, in her impassioned state, did not care what Warren did or said, or if he lived or died.
He came apologizing still, trying to joke, to understand, begged forgiveness, and begged at last that she at least speak that they might proceed through meals, daycare needs, paying of bills, and shopping with minimum confusion and duplication. She spoke, agreed to speak to that degree. He smiled some, and his eyes glossed up as if the war had ended and she would love him still, or again, though she assured him her speaking was only for the convenience of daily life. Privately, she disdained the tail-between-the-legs puppy-dog love she knew he retained for her and welcomed the power over him her curious victory had gained her. She also vowed in her heart to give herself ever more deeply to the man she loved, to further nurture and bolster him as he was nurturing and bolstering her.
Hardly a week passed before Warren confronted her again, demanding an account of what was happening, and it was then that she tried to give it to him straight—but for the illicit love which was making her strong. “You took me for granted, treated me as a doormat, and I can’t forgive you for that,” she told him. “You assumed you would lead in all ways, and I would follow, and my earning power is already nearly double yours. You treated me like that in front of my family, and the humiliation was an assault on my person I will never get over. I may not think of it every day, but you should believe me when I tell you I will never get over it, not as long as I live.”
She reduced him to tears. He tried not to cry, but was unable to help himself. He said he had done it only as a joke, like something in a movie. He said he’d had several beers, in case she had forgotten, was feeling frisky, in fact. Far from wanting to humiliate her, he had wanted to have her in his arms, to love her. He hadn’t meant to humiliate her. Could she never forgive him?
She paused, and decided to wield the blow she believed would gain her her freedom. “Not even if I wanted to,” she told him, and the words issued as if from a larger power. “I hope you hear what I’m saying. Not even if I wanted to. It’s not in me to be anyone’s possession.”
He did not hear, however, and confronted her another time, though when he’d been drinking, asking if she no longer wanted him in any way as a husband—and she spoke the truth then, too, though he did nothing about it. She said to him: “Warren, the best favor you could do for yourself would be to walk out that door right now, sleep in your smelly boat, and see an attorney about filing for divorce. That’s what I’d like you to do. I’ll help with the attorney’s retainer, in case you don’t know about attorney’s retainers. I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want to be married to you anymore either.”
What she had neglected each time to mention was that she wanted him to save her the difficulty of initiating a separation, that she had given herself to another, and that it was more attraction to Virgil than repulsion from him that was guiding her. What she couldn’t say was that the elected official with whom she had fallen in love had yet again warned of his vulnerability should it come out that he was having an affair with a married or even a divorced aide. A scandal would destroy him and, ultimately, would destroy them both.
Warren took no steps to change his life, and time slipped by. He fished most days, leaving before daylight, picked up Marian after school when it was raining, and fixed evening meals, while Beatrice worked late, then spent a night away for the first time, in Augusta, began spending added nights away now and then, and more than a few people in Maine—and occasionally in New York, Boston, Washington—assumed, as they almost did themselves, that they were state representative, then state senator, and his wife, Virgil and Beatrice Pound of the thirty-sixth district of New England’s rugged Pine Tree State.
At the same time, her love for Warren did not die entirely, no matter her words and actions. There came another summer evening, when she and Virgil were on a pleasure craft in Portsmouth Harbor with a party of ten or so from out of state, and the guests were waxing sentimental over the integrity of Maine lobstermen, and for a moment she was stricken with guilt and her heart went out to Warren—he whose life had only slid more deeply into failure as the years had gone by. Virgil, drinking, had made an unkind aside to her, near the railing there in the twilight. “Hope we don’t see a boat with ‘Cuckold’ on the back,” he tittered, stepping to the bar for a refill, and Beatrice could not help recalling Warren taking her to Narrow Cove in high school to show her Lady Bee painted along the bow of his Jonesporter, and, finding herself stricken with guilt there among Virgil’s guests, could not help breaking and trying to conceal the emotion overtaking her, was unable to escape notice even as she leaned toward the water, and as Virgil tried to console her, told him she’d thought of something, it was okay, she’d thought of something that had made her feel terribly sad. She drank too much then herself, and strove to push her guilt as far away as boats disappearing among lights and music rippling from shore.