8

Henry was already in bed, lying with his hands behind his head, when Ceil came into their room. He watched her as she undressed and went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. She slipped under the covers, thinking about what her life might have been if she hadn’t married, hadn’t had children.

“Who else but Marge would liken a gallbladder attack to labor pains?” Henry said.

Ceil made noncommital noises from her side of the bed. She and Marge were oil and water. Always had been. Lucky they lived so far apart.

“I’m glad I called Dad. It’s been too long. I should call him more often.” I can’t afford to let that slide, he thought. Dad’s getting on. I must remember to check in with him once a week.

“What did he have to say?” Ceil was already half asleep.

“He sounded old, Ceil. His voice sounded old. At first, anyway. After we started talking, he pepped up and sounded like his old self. Like his young self, I should say.” He smiled over at her. She’d burrowed under the covers so that only the top of her head showed. He folded back her side of the blanket neatly so she’d have plenty of air. He liked doing things for her, taking care of her. He loved her profile, the clarity of her features, the quiet way she slept. Even in sleep she was composed. It was her profile, in fact, that had decided him. There’s always some one thing. In his case, she’d told him, it had been the nape of his neck. He’d never thought of the nape of the neck as a sexual thing, as the Japanese were said to do. But from there on, he’d seen to it the barber trimmed his hair very carefully.

He envied Ceil the ease with which she fell asleep. It sometimes took him as much as a couple of hours to drop off. He wouldn’t take sleeping pills, pills of any kind. They were anathema to him. Good health ran in his family. Except for his mother. She’d died in her sleep, without warning. Of a coronary occlusion. She hadn’t been ill. The family, his father especially, had been devastated, inconsolable. They’d had letters of condolence from total strangers. His father had answered each one by hand; the only glee in his life became the adding up of the vast numbers of letters that had poured in. He’d kept a notebook filled with the names and addresses of the people who’d cared enough to write, and he kept up a correspondence with some of them even after they moved away.

Once, after a late party and a lot to drink, his father had confided to him that Helen, his new wife, had forced him into marriage. “I know you think it’s ungentlemanly of me to say,” his father had said, “but it’s true. I wouldn’t be telling you this, of course, if I hadn’t had too much gin. Just wanted you to know. For the record, that is. Helen said she’d never be able to hold up her head in her family if I didn’t make an honest woman out of her. Maybe it’s just as well. She’s all right, Helen. I’m not entirely happy, but I’m better off than I’d be living alone. Helen tries hard. Cooks special things for me. She’s not your mother, but then, who is?”

It was the most intimate conversation they’d ever had.

After his mother’s death, his father had begun to drink rather heavily. Now he’d cut down. Helen was a Christian Scientist and didn’t touch a drop. A good thing, too. God knows she didn’t need any stimulants. She and her sisters were what he thought of as Southern California vivacious. Everything on them moved: hands, feet, eyes, lashes, mouths. They reminded him of battery-operated dolls. He was amazed at their fortitude. After all the energy they spent on golf, shopping, theatergoing, talking, it was a wonder to him they were still operating after five P.M. It boggled his mind to contemplate what they might’ve been up to if they’d been drinkers.

He got into bed and opened a library book, a tale of a disintegrating marriage, a dissatisfied thirty-three-year-old housewife, bored with her husband and children, her life, who decides to strike out and try life on her own. Have an affair. The affair, he’d discovered, was obligatory in these novels.

He put the book aside and looked over at Ceil. She’d thrown one arm outside the covers, her hand curved slightly, as if expecting something rare and beautiful to be placed in it. She had lovely arms, slender and rounded, her almost translucent skin golden even at this time of the year. Leslie had inherited her mother’s skin, for which she could be grateful. He leaned over and touched one of his wife’s fingers, the warmth of it reassuring. A running nightmare troubled him: that one day he would wake to find her cold beside him, rigor mortis having already set in. That was the way it had happened to his father.

After his mother’s funeral, when everyone had gone and there was nothing left to do but open some windows to rid the room of the overpowering scent of death, to get on with whatever was left, his father told him how it had been.

“I was stunned,” he’d said. “I thought it was a bad joke, that I was being punished for something I hadn’t done. She was gone, gone into the night, without warning. Something should have warned me. How can you love someone that long, share a bed, a life, and not know when the soul leaves the body? I should have known. We were like one being. How could I not know? Maybe I could have done something. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, anything. I lay next to her all night and I didn’t know she’d stopped breathing.” And his father had put his head in his hands and cried; long, shuddering sobs that went out to the corners of the room, filled his ears long after his father had sunk into a restless sleep. No one could have done anything to prevent his mother’s death. He eventually convinced his father of this, he and the doctor together. It happens this way sometimes, the doctor had said. And it was terrible beyond belief, for everyone except the person who has died. It was the way anyone would choose to die. Don’t cry for the dead, Ceil’s mother said. Cry for the living.

At last he turned off the light and stretched out full length, hands crossed on his chest. He thought, this is the way I will lie in my coffin. Not long ago, Ceil had surprised and amused him by saying, “I like the idea of cremation. It’s just that I can’t get over the thought that it might hurt.”

He turned on his side and thought of his children. I am too tough on John, he thought. Ceil’s right. I’m not that way with Leslie. But she’s different. Les will work things out to her satisfaction, make a success of her life, whatever she chooses to do. And make some man, men, maybe, very happy. He knew he had to fight smugness where Leslie was concerned. John was the one who troubled him. Tonight, when he’d called off their talk, John’s face had been transfigured and joyful, so joyful it had cut to his heart and he’d thought, God, how he must hate me. How he must dread our encounters. I must let up on him. Then, immediately, he’d thought, no, I must not. He will be a man soon, and a man has a tough row to hoe. He was old-fashioned enough to think a man’s lot was tougher than a woman’s, even though he knew it made Ceil angry.

“Women are supposed to hold the family together,” Ceil had said once when they argued about the new roles of women. “The whole climate of the house is supposed to hang on the woman. That’s man’s way of getting off the hook, if you ask me. Men can do any damn thing they please, but as long as they bring home the bacon, that absolves them of further responsibility.”

“Dad’s not like that,” John had cut in, defending him.

“No, he’s not, and it’s a good thing,” Ceil went on, impatient at being interrupted. “With all the marvelous things they do in the medical profession these days—in vitro babies, heart implants, all that—it is my fervent wish they get it together enough to enable a man to become pregnant and have a child. Not,” she’d said, her voice dry and sardonic, “not that I envision men lining up to be the first one to try. Men know when they’ve got a good thing going. They see pregnant women, they know all about labor pains and water breaking and all that inelegant part of childbirth. They wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.” He’d laughed at her then to alleviate the tension, but he knew she felt very strongly on the subject. She’d been a little cool to him afterwards, for a while.

“Let him know you love him, Henry,” she’d said earlier that evening. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Is there?”

“He knows I do,” he’d said.

“No, I don’t think he does. Show him. Put your arms around him. Kiss him, even.” At the look on his face, she laughed, a short, clipped sound, without humor.

“There’s nothing wrong with kissing your son. You used to. Just because your father doesn’t go in for kissing doesn’t mean it’s bad. European men kiss one another. No one thinks any less of them. Try it some time.”

“He’d think I’d gone crazy,” he’d answered, imagining John’s face if, out of the blue, he kissed him. But now, lying in the dark, he wasn’t so sure. My father wasn’t affectionate, he thought, and I didn’t suffer feelings of rejection. I don’t think I did. People didn’t dwell on things like rejection when I was a boy. My father was reserved. There’s too damn much dissection today, too much pulling apart and examining of relationships. Even the word “relationship” had turned into a buzzword. Nothing is simple anymore. If it ever was. Take those fool how-to books. How To Make Love. How To Make Your Kid A Winner. How To Get Pregnant. It was ludicrous. Only this morning he’d read a story about a woman who was suing her lover because he refused to impregnate her. She agreed to drop the suit if he agreed to artificial insemination, using his sperm. If that didn’t say something about the world today, he didn’t know what did. Diamonds used to be a girl’s best friend. Now it appeared sperm was.

Next to him, Ceil murmured in her sleep.

“No,” she said, her voice gutteral, unfamiliar. “No, no.” He tugged at one corner of her pillow. She shifted position and breathed deeply once more. When they’d first married, he’d been frightened at the intensity of Ceil’s cries as she lay sleeping. When he spoke to her about them, seeking the cause, she’d said simply, “I have nightmares, Henry, I always have had. I can’t stop just because I married you,” and he’d said, “Why not? I’m here to watch over you. You don’t have to worry anymore.” She’d just given him a look. Her nightmares had continued and when he asked what they were about, although he knew she thought his questions unnecessary, she felt he was prying, she always said she couldn’t remember.

“How about you?” she’d demanded. “How come you don’t ever tell me about your dreams?” Startled, he’d said, “I don’t ever dream,” which was true. And she’d said, “That’s because you have no conscience.” Maybe that was true. He didn’t think it was, but maybe she’d hit on something vital in his character.

Just before he’d asked Ceil to marry him, he and his father had lunch together. It seemed a proper formality. That and asking Ceil’s father for her hand. He believed in going through the motions. His father had taken the news by saying, “It’s a tremendous responsibility, Henry. A wife and family. Hard work, too. A lot of forgiveness is involved. And pain, as well as joy. Families inflict wounds. A family is the most complex entity I know of. Very complex. Can’t even begin to tell you. It’s something you have to learn for yourself. If the family’s strong, there’s nothing stronger. I advise you to think long and hard before you settle into the role of a family man.” And he had. Two whole weeks he’d thought over what his father had said. In the end, Ceil’s golden arms, her walk, the way she held her head, had ensnared him. Theirs had been, still was, a splendid love affair. Those were the words he gave to it in the deep night. A splendid love affair. He would want as much for his children, for each of them to know a marriage like his and Ceil’s.

Sleet and freezing rain slapped and tickled the windowpanes. Tomorrow would be a mess getting to the station. As he began the long slide into sleep, he thought with satisfaction that the back of February was almost broken. March heralded spring.