TEARS BEFORE BEDTIME

Eldon left for a business trip on Sunday afternoon, and got back on Thursday. He was supposed to come home early that night so he could see the girls before we went out to dinner, but something must have come up, and on Thursday afternoon he called to say he would be late. I wasn’t surprised.

I got home around six, and Flora, our housekeeper, gave me Eldon’s message. “Thank you, Flora,” I said. Flora is Filipino, small and slight, and her expression never changes. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks all American marriages are like this. I wonder if she feels sorry for me when she tells me, again, that my husband isn’t coming home. “Oh, that’s fine,” I say to Flora. I act very businesslike, to make it clear that it’s normal, that I don’t feel angry or abandoned, that this is what American marriages are like. For all I know, it is what Filipino marriages are like: the wife living her own life alone with her children, the husband absent.

I had spent the afternoon at a board meeting downtown, for the women’s shelter. We argued for three hours over how to spend the city money we had just received. Some people thought we should start to expand our program and hire more staff. I think the money should go straight into the shelter itself. We’ve just started it up, and the rooms are horrible. The paint is peeling, the floors are splintery, and there is no furniture. The women sit on mattresses on the floor, one light bulb in the ceiling overhead, little cooking rings plugged into the wall, with their silent children around them. It’s better than the street, but it’s still horrible. Staff expansion: it made me angry.

I told Flora that I would make supper for the girls, since I hadn’t seen them all day. Alice set the table. She is six, and looks just like her father, with his long chin and dark blue eyes. After she set the table she came back into the kitchen. Sarah, who is four, was kneeling on a chair, drying the lettuce with a paper towel. Alice leaned against Sarah, who ignored her.

“Alice,” I said, to distract her. “Did you finish with the table?”

“I couldn’t,” said Alice. “There aren’t any glasses.” She bumped Sarah’s arm, and Sarah pulled her arm away and glared at her sister.

“Stop that,” Sarah said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Alice said scornfully.

“You bumped my arm,” Sarah said.

“There aren’t any glasses,” I said. “Isn’t that strange. Do you think someone came into the kitchen and stole the glasses? Or what could have happened to them since lunch?” I looked at Alice.

“Well, there aren’t any,” Alice said.

“You mean there aren’t any in the cupboard,” I said. “Did you look in the dishwasher?” Alice glanced up at me and then back at Sarah. Sarah had covered the lettuce with the damp towel, and was gently patting it in circles. I knew what she was doing: she was putting the lettuce to sleep. This is how she sees the world. Her feet are named Jane and Mary, and when we put on her boots, first we put on Jane boot, then Mary boot. The next time we put on Mary boot first, to be fair.

Alice was standing on the outer edge of one foot, balancing her weight on it and tottering back and forth. Now she tipped into Sarah, hard, bumping her arm again, interrupting the slow incantatory motion.

Sarah gave a shrill cry. “Stop that, Alice! Now you’ve ruined everything.”

“Oh, I have not ruined everything,” Alice said, disgusted, but in a low voice, glancing up at me sideways to see if she was in trouble. She moved a step back from Sarah, to strengthen her position. I met her cautious eye with a hard one, and she made a scornful sound and yanked herself away, over to the dishwasher, to see if it held the disappearing glasses. They were there, miraculously enough, and clean. Alice reluctantly took out two, holding one in each hand sloppily, and began dragging herself across the floor.

“Don’t drop those,” I said warningly.

“I won’t,” said Alice, and as I turned back to the hamburgers she stuck her tongue out at Sarah, who had looked up to see what Alice was not to drop. Energetically and at once Sarah stuck out her own tongue, all the way to the roots, squeezing her eyes shut, and frowning wildly, her hands on her hips, enraged.

When Sarah had finished her dinner I declared the meal over. Alice’s plate was still full of mess—pale hamburger bloodied with ketchup, bits of lettuce, and lima beans that had been bloodied, too. In the kitchen I took her plate and scraped everything into the garbage, with quick, brisk strokes. I hate leftovers.

After we had cleaned up from dinner I told the girls they could play for half an hour, until bedtime. They followed me into my bedroom while I started running the tub. Alice started whining about television.

“Why can’t I watch it?” she said, “Only for one show.”

“Because you can’t, that’s the rule,” I said. “Not during the week.”

“But whyyy?” asked Alice, her voice high, dragging out the word like a fingernail on the blackboard. I didn’t answer. “Why?” she said again, and again, and again. Sarah was sitting on my bed, dressing one of her dolls, and talking to it quietly.

Eldon thinks they should be allowed to watch television. All their friends do, he says. We’re cutting them off from the rest of the world, he says. I think letting children watch television is like feeding horses straw: you kill their appetites for real food by stuffing them with trash. I’d be happy if we didn’t even own a television, but Eldon likes to watch tennis matches and football games on it. Alice comes and hangs over his shoulder, leaning heavily against him.

“That was a good shot, wasn’t it, Daddy,” she says hopefully.

“It sure was,” Eldon says.

“I could see it was a good shot,” Alice says. “He’s going to cream Lendl, isn’t he?” If Eldon doesn’t answer she pushes at him, joggling at his shoulder until he responds.

“I guess so,” Eldon says, his eyes on the television.

“I hate Lendl, don’t you?” she says.

But this is wrong.

“No, I don’t hate Lendl,” Eldon says, turning to her. He reaches up over his shoulder and takes her by her plump arms. “Why do you hate Lendl, Alice?” His voice is careful and concerned. He waits for a moment and repeats, like a moderator, “Why do you hate Lendl, Alice? What makes you say that?”

But Alice retreats from him, slapping at his hands. She won’t answer. This was not what she had planned. She hangs away, behind her father, until he turns back again to the tennis match on television.

Now, Alice was exasperated by my silence. I had undressed and was just getting into the tub when she said, “Daddy would let us watch TV if he were here.” She said it sulkily, her head ducked, peering up at me beneath her bangs.

I turned around. “Out,” I said, pointing to the door of my room.

“All right,” said Alice, crossly taking it back, “I won’t watch TV.” But I had had enough.

“Out,” I said again, “I mean it.” When she didn’t move I slammed over to my closet and pulled on my bathrobe. I went out into the hall and called for Flora.

“Mommy, I won’t watch TV,” said Alice, alarmed. “I don’t even care about it,” she lied. But it was too late. Flora came and took her by the wrist, and they went off to the girls’ bedroom, Alice wailing. I won’t have this emotional blackmail.

Sarah sat on my bed, watching Alice being taken away, her eyes solemn. “You’re a bad girl,” she whispered to her doll, “a very bad girl to do that.”

When Eldon came home I was dressed and ready. He went in to say good night to the girls, and sat down on Alice’s bed. I was walking past the door and I heard Alice say to him, aggrieved, in a half-whisper, “Mommy wouldn’t let me watch TV.”

Eldon shook his head slowly. “Is that right, sweetie?” he said. “She won’t let you watch TV? Well, just remember that Mommy’s doing this for your own good. Mommy wants you to have a chaste and untouched mind. You’re uncontaminated! Don’t you feel superior?” Alice wasn’t quite sure what he was saying, but she was quite sure what he meant.

When we were ready to leave, and putting our coats on in the front hall, I gave Eldon Alice’s test scores, which had come that day in the mail. He read them at once, and started to frown.

“Wait a minute,” he said, as though I were trying to trick him, “What do these mean, Lydia? I can’t tell what they mean. What’s the bottom line here? How does she compare?”

“Her scores are average to slightly below average,” I said, opening the front door.

“Wait a minute, please,” said Eldon, anger in his voice. “Don’t turn your back on me, Lydia. Don’t walk out on this conversation. This is important. What do you mean, they’re below average?”

I sighed. “I’m not walking out on this conversation. We have to leave now or we’ll be late to the Laffertys’. I am assuming that you will be coming with me, and that we will continue the conversation on the way.” I went out into the hall and pushed the button for the elevator. Eldon followed me, slamming the door shut behind him.

“I would like your attention for one minute on this matter,” he said.

I turned to face him. “My attention is all yours,” I said. The light was on, the elevator was coming.

“What do you mean, Alice’s scores are below average?”

“They’re not much below it,” I said, “I called the school. Very slightly below average, two points, to be exact. And anyway that’s only in the coordination part, manual dexterity and things like that. She’s one point above average in one of the reasoning tests.”

The elevator doors opened and I walked in. There were two other people in it, whom we didn’t know. We all nodded at each other, polite but not friendly, and we rode down in silence: it was not the moment to discuss below-average test scores.

In the taxi Eldon started up again, his voice angry, as though the scores were my fault and I were a junior partner. “But why is she below average? Isn’t there something we can do to improve her scores? Some program we can get her into?”

I looked straight ahead. “Not that I know of,” I said. “She doesn’t like doing the things that would help manual dexterity. She won’t do the things that Sarah and I do—making collages, weaving, sewing, things like that. She gets impatient.”

“Of course she gets impatient,” Eldon said, “if she can’t do it. Why wouldn’t she get impatient? Can’t you help her? Can’t you do things with her that will improve her?”

I turned to Eldon. “Can’t you do things with her that will improve her? Can’t you do anything with Alice besides watch television with her?”

“That is completely unfair,” said Eldon, furious. I said nothing, and sat back on the seat, looking straight ahead again.

“Why didn’t you take her to the museum last weekend, for example?” I said.

“She didn’t want to go. And, if you recall, I wanted everyone to come to the museum, not just Alice.”

“Since Sarah was sick, and Flora was off, it made much more sense for you to take Alice alone. Instead of which you sat and watched television all afternoon, and Alice whined.”

“That is completely unfair,” he said again, but it wasn’t, and I didn’t answer him.

At the dinner party we kissed the Laffertys hello, and told them that we loved their new Irish walnut hall table. We gave our coats to the maid and ordered drinks and went into the long, rich-patterned living room where everyone was sitting, smiling and talking. Eldon and I split up and went to different groups, and didn’t have to talk to each other or even look at each other again until dinner. Then we were seated catty-cornered across from each other, and during dessert we became part of the same conversation.

My dinner partner was Michael Darlington, a large, conservative blond man who loves gossip. He had told me with pleasurable surprise that the oil company responsible had discovered that the environment had not been damaged, as the environmentalists claimed, by an oil spill in Alaska, but had actually been improved. We marveled over this, and then moved on to the plight of the farmers who have to leave their inherited land and move to cities and become computer programmers.

I don’t know why it is but farmers touch me. Just the thought of them, getting up early, early, in the dark, moving out through the quiet, cold air in their grimy jackets, turning on the lights in the barn, speaking to the waiting cows. Working slowly. It breaks my heart when I hear about them losing their land, it’s as simple as that. Eldon thinks I’m a fool.

“But what do you think the government should do for the farmers?” Michael asked me, smiling around his dessert spoon as he slipped it into his mouth. I could see he thought I was a fool, too.

“Why shouldn’t the government take some responsibility?” I said. “It was government farm programs that persuaded the farmers to borrow money and buy more land on credit, and buy expensive machinery and start using chemicals.”

“And the farmers listened to the government?” Michael asked, his eyebrows raised in mock disbelief, his shoulders shaking with mirth. “They should have known better than that! My God! They deserve whatever they get!”

I had been keeping my voice down, trying to keep our conversation private, but Eldon must have been bored, or else he was waiting for a chance. He leaned over his dessert bowl toward me, and I knew I was in trouble.

“Why should the government subsidize the farmers?” asked Eldon loudly, his voice scornful. “There are lots of people out of work, Lydia. Why are the farmers so special?”

“Because farmers are different,” I said. I tried to sound steady and balanced. “They represent something, they mean something. Farmers are a national resource,” I said, pleased with the phrase. “And what they do is different from what other workers do.”

“How is it different?” Eldon asked, insultingly.

“A farmer is making things grow, he’s dealing with living things. He’s dealing with life. He’s creating it. It’s important,” I said.

“A factory owner is making his company grow. And he’s dealing with living things—his workers.”

“It’s not the same,” I persisted, but I was beginning to lose heart, not because I didn’t believe what I was saying, but because Eldon was so angry. “A worker on an assembly line can learn his job in two weeks. It takes a lifetime to learn how to farm. And it’s a commitment that this country needs. We need people who are dedicated to nourishing, and committed to their community. We need fewer people who are uncommitted, rootless, who don’t care what they produce or where they live.”

“Oh, my God. I wish Harvard Business School could hear this speech. Sweetheart, this is pure sentimentalism,” said Eldon. Sweetheart is what he calls me when he hates me. And you would have thought, from his voice, that I had accused him of stealing. “Mom and apple pie. You want the government to set up programs to protect sentimentalism.” There was such scorn in his voice.

I can argue with Eldon in private; if I get angry I will take him on dead center, but I can’t do it when he attacks me in public. I shrivel inside, it makes me feel sickened, listening to Eldon talk as though he has nothing invested in this marriage, as though he takes pleasure in showing the world how pitiful I am, how worthless, and how intelligent and articulate he is. I lose heart, I can’t argue back. I stop.

“You’re talking nonsense,” said Eldon. “You know nothing about economics, Lydia, nothing. Until you do, I suggest you stay out of conversations that concern them.” He put down his glass with an air of great and elegant finality.

But for once I didn’t stop. It seemed to me that something was wrong here. There seemed to be two levels we were talking on, two things we were dealing with, only one of which was acknowledged.

“Eldon,” I said. “You are very quick to ridicule this point of view.”

“Yes,” said Eldon, and laughed. “Yes. I am. It’s ridiculous.”

“But you benefit from it,” I said, “and so do you, Michael. Every man with a wife depends on her to take this point of view.” They both looked at me, waiting. “If you came home, Eldon, and told me you’d lost your job, would you expect me to say, ‘Well, dear, that’s the capitalist system at work. You can’t expect them to make exceptions for you. You must not be very good at your job, or else you haven’t been working hard enough, and you should have been fired: that’s how things work. You can’t expect special treatment. Meanwhile, I’m leaving you. I want a husband who’s more successful. Economic Darwinism, you know—someone has to support me and my children’? Is that what you would expect me to say, Eldon?”

Michael had ignored me at first, eating his dessert discreetly and pretending not to hear us, because this had seemed to be a family squabble. Now he raised his head and looked at Eldon. He had a little grin on his face: he liked what he was hearing—it was so juicy—and he was changing sides. Eldon made a disgusted noise. He set his fork down and shook his head.

“Sweetheart, you’re confused,” he said. “These things have nothing to do with each other.”

“They do,” I said. Michael’s grin had given me confidence. “At home, you expect me to be all warm and fuzzy. You expect me to be all heart in the private arena, where you benefit. You want me pure humanitarian, warm and sympathetic and loving to you. But the minute I bring those same responses, the ones you rely on, out into the public arena, you ridicule them. You ridicule them and you try to humiliate me for having them.” My voice grew stronger. “You’re standing on my shoulders, and pretending you’re tall. And you’re making fun of me for being short!”

Michael started to laugh, looking at Eldon, his shoulders shaking again.

“She’s got you, Winthrop,” he said, but Eldon just shook his head again and laughed loftily, as though what I had said was so idiotic as to be beyond discussion.

“You’re in trouble, Winthrop.” And, of course, being Michael, he couldn’t resist going further, into private, gossipy, painfully intimate territory. He leaned forward toward Eldon and lowered his voice, delighted. “What’s going to happen when you get home tonight? I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, I’m afraid,” Michael said, shaking his head at Eldon, and still laughing.

Eldon now spoke to Michael, excluding me, laughing. “You may be right, Darlington.” He sounded as though he were an adult discussing a child. “There’ll be tears before bedtime, I’m afraid,” he said, shaking his head, jocular.

I didn’t go on. I was pleased with what I had said.

We kissed everyone good night, smiling and laughing, but once in the elevator we stopped speaking and our smiles died. At home we hung up our coats in the hall closet without touching each other. I went in to check on the girls, so Eldon didn’t. In the bedroom we undressed without looking at each other. Once I brushed against Eldon as I was pulling my dress over my head and I apologized, as though the touch of my flesh would grieve him.

I was in bed before he was, propped on my elbow, reading. He climbed in next to me and turned off his light. He lay on his back and clasped his hands beneath his head, expansive with hatred.

“I suppose you think that was very clever of you,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. I did think it was clever, but I knew better than to admit it. I didn’t want any more argument. I had said what I had to say. I wanted to read my book and then turn off the light and go to sleep. I didn’t want anything to do with Eldon.

“Well?” he said.

I sighed. “You suppose I think what was very clever?”

“What you said at the Laffertys’.”

I shook my head without answering.

“Lydia,” he said, turning on his side toward me. I said nothing, willing him not to touch me. “Answer me,” he said. His voice was deadly.

“What is it?” I said, finally.

“How dare you say something like what you said?”

“How dare I?” I said, at once enraged. I was now so angry I turned over to face him. “What do you mean ‘How dare I’? You do nothing but belittle me. Anything I say in public makes you smile. You get this little smile on your face, for ‘the things that Lydia says.’ You smile that way when you talk to Alice about me. ‘Oh, did Mommy say that?’ you say, as though ‘Mommy’ is another word for moron, and you and Alice know better. You treat me like a servant, like a whore,” I said, and then my body betrayed me, and I could feel the tears starting, but I kept going. “Night after night after night you’re away, traveling, or at business dinners. You’re never around. You’re not here. Then you come in late and want to screw. You treat me like your whore, as though the only thing that I do that can be of any use to you is fucking, and I hate it.”

“Is that what you think?” Eldon cried, his voice raised. He was leaning over me as though he would kill me, his body a threat to mine. “Is that what you think?”

“Yes, that’s what I think,” I said, hissing it into his face. I was beside myself now, with rage and with disappointment. I waited for him to hit me, and there was something in me that wanted him to hit me.

“How dare you talk to me like that,” he said. He got up out of bed and went out of the room. I heard the water run in the bathroom. He came back and stood in the doorway in his boxer shorts, his hands on his hips.

“How dare you pretend that you’re warm and sympathetic to me at home, as though your face lights up when I come into our hall. How dare you say that in public, as though that’s what you’re really like. All you have for me is silence and anger,” he said, his voice rising. “You give me nothing. Nothing! Do you think I want to travel all the time? Do you think I wanted a wife who treats me with scorn and sarcasm, who hardly looks up when I come home?”

Of course I was angry when he came home, how could I not be?

“Don’t you think I would give anything to have you—have you—” but he couldn’t finish that sentence. His voice chopped at the words, and then stopped, and I could hear something hard rise up in his chest.

This was a terrible moment. The fact that he couldn’t go on was terrible. It broke me down, and my anger stopped. Something inside me broke down. I was frightened by the fact that he couldn’t go on. I’d never known Eldon to stop in the middle of a sentence, for his body to betray him, and it was terrifying to see him break down in a way that I thought was female, was mine. But I was also frightened of what he would say if he did go on, it seemed as if I couldn’t bear what would come next.

I’d never seen him desperate, and I could see now that he was. Seeing him trying to speak, trying to get the words out, hearing something rise up in his chest, cutting off his words, was a horror. It was as though he were having a heart attack. It was a kind of heart attack, and I had caused it. I could see then that I could destroy him. That I was destroying him, and that I had thought he was destroying me. And in the middle of this I thought of Alice: of how much I loved her. I thought of her being carried off by Flora, calling desperately to me.

And all these thoughts swirled inside my head, and held me still, my heart pounding as though I myself were having a heart attack. I felt that same feeling of horror and peril and urgency. It held me motionless, half-turned toward Eldon, while he stood in the doorway, those terrible words still caught in his throat: what I had to do was to reach him before they came out. Neither of us could bear to hear them.