Elizabeth is sitting with her legs tucked under her, her flowered skirt (new, mauve tones, bought on impulse on a day of malaise) spread around her. She felt this position would create an effect of casual ease. She wishes to appear tranquil, serene, like her favorite stone Buddha in the Oriental collection. It will give her an advantage.
Not only does she wish to appear serene, she wishes to be serene. Sometimes she thinks she has achieved this; at other times she thinks it may only be immobility. Is the statue a Buddha or a chunk of stone? For instance: she does not appear, for the moment, to be interested in men. She still tries, examining strangers in the subway, picturing various members of the Museum staff in exotic postures, but nothing flickers. She’s stopped accepting invitations to dinner: she’s no longer willing to be that bored simply to eat. If she wants to devour the ground-up livers of deceased geese, the plucked carcasses of birds, wild or domestic, the pancreases of young cows, she can buy them herself.
She didn’t used to get bored. She used to guess what the next move would be and then try to manipulate it. But now she knows the moves and can’t be bothered going through the crude flatteries that will get her what, by popular consent, she is supposed to want. It takes two to tango and nobody waltzes anymore. Rather than a parody, knee-squeezing at the Courtyard Café, she’d prefer a greaser, someone with no vocabulary at all, a leather shadow, a direct question in a back alley. Yes or no.
(Like Chris. Yes or no. Yes, she said, and then, after a long time, no. It was the pause that got him. The real reason she doesn’t want Chris mentioned in the divorce proceedings has nothing to do with the law, with Nate or even with the children. She doesn’t want him involved. To have his name uttered in that ritual way might cause him to materialize in the witness box, pale and accusing or — worse — fragmented, his head watching her with a Cheshire grin, his body still contorted in agony. She’s got him safely buried, she wants no resurrection.)
She would like to sit here undisturbed in this quiet room, nibbling the biscuit that lies so far untouched on her saucer, thinking peaceful thoughts and letting events arrange themselves. Which isn’t so easy. Elizabeth knows, from long experience, that events need help. Also her effortless pose is cutting off the circulation in her legs. But she doesn’t want to change position, she doesn’t want to move. It might suggest to Nate the idea that he too can move, that he is free to get up and walk out at any time. She knows — who better? — that there is always that freedom, that exit. One way or another. Nate, on the contrary, has never discovered it.
• • •
They’ve begun to talk about money, to discuss the details of her list. Item by item she leads him down the page. She has left this till the end, till she’s certain he can see quite clearly that her cards are on the table. Her aces. If he wants a quickie, she’ll dictate the terms. If he wants to wait the three years, it will give her time to maneuver, and she can always change her mind about contesting and make him wait five. The main point for him to grasp is that she doesn’t care what he decides. In a way she really doesn’t. It’s not as though she’s in any hurry to dash off and marry someone else.
He’s telling her that, as she knows, he doesn’t have very much money, hardly any in fact, but that he’ll do everything possible. She indicates that his lack of money is no concern of hers. Whether he has a million dollars or ten, the children will continue to eat, wear clothes, go to the dentist, play with toys. They need allowances and lessons. Janet wishes to take dancing, Nancy has been skating for a year and Elizabeth doesn’t see why she should give it up.
“Of course I could support them entirely on my own salary,” she says. “Realistically I could do that, though we would have to cut down on certain things.” She thinks of saying, We’d have to send the cat to the Humane Society, but decides this would be going too far. For one thing the cat, although promised, has not yet been acquired, and a cat in the bush is no hostage. And if they already had it the children would never forgive her for disposing of it. Nate or no Nate. She’ll send him the bill, though, when it has to be fixed. “But I thought we’d agreed that you were going to participate as much as possible. The children need to know that both of their parents love them.”
Nate is angry. “You really think that because I don’t have any goddamned money I don’t love my kids?” he says. “That’s pretty crass.”
“The children will hear you,” Elizabeth says softly. “Maybe I’m a crass person. I guess I believe that if you really love someone you’re prepared to make certain sacrifices.” Sacrifices. This is straight out of the doctrine according to Auntie Muriel. She shifts her legs. She doesn’t like to hear herself using Auntie Muriel’s phrases, even when she believes in them. Though Auntie Muriel would have left out the word love.
She realizes the sentence is ambiguous: she could have meant the children or herself. Does she want Nate to love her and make sacrifices for her? Probably she does. It’s hard to renounce tribute from those who once willingly paid it; hard not to exact. She lies on a bed, not her own in any real sense then, while Nate strokes his hands over her, shoulders, breasts, belly, the stretch marks from the children, he likes to finger those, any trace of mutilation, thighs, again, again. He’s always considerate, he waits for her. Is this what she wants? All she could think of at the time was: Let’s get on with it.
She tries to remember whether she ever loved him and concludes that she did, though in ways that were not sufficient. Nate was a good man and she recognized goodness, though she could not withhold a slight contempt. On their wedding day, what had she felt? Safety, relief: at last she was out of danger. She would become a homemaker, she would make a home. This in itself seemed to her improbable, even at the time. What else had happened, besides the usual erosion, attrition, the death of cells? She’d made the home but she could not quite believe in it, make it solid. And safety was not all she wanted. Slumming, Auntie Muriel said when she’d married Nate, but that was wrong. Slumming was dangerous and Nate was not that. Or not in the usual way.
She hasn’t heard from Auntie Muriel lately; she expects never to hear from her again. This ought to make her feel victorious. Happy and glorious. Auntie Muriel either has to cut her out completely or pretend that last unthinkable scene, hairbreadth escape for her white velour potty hat, never happened. It’s quite possible that Elizabeth will receive a call in December, as usual, setting the date of the New Year’s visit. She can’t imagine going. She also can’t imagine not going. She will sit on the slippery pink chesterfield once more, surrounded by polished surfaces, the baby grand piano, the silver tray, Auntie Muriel squatting across from her with her pebble-colored eyes, and the past will yawn around her, a cavern filled with menacing echoes.
“Exactly what sacrifices do you want me to make?” Nate says, still angry. Meaning: You can’t get blood from a stone.
“Nate,” she says, “I know how difficult this is for you. Believe me, it’s difficult for me, too. But let’s try to be as calm about it as possible. I’m not trying to torture you,” she adds. “You have to take that on faith.”
This is more or less true. She isn’t trying to torture Nate: torture is a by-product. She’s merely trying to win. Looking at him, watching him subside back onto his chair, she knows she will win, there’s no way she can help winning. She’ll win, and she hopes it will make her feel better.