All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 16
* * *
—
We had dinner once with Katie and her husband. This was, oh, a year or so before I disappeared. I remember it for two reasons. The first was that Dan made an ass of himself at dinner. We went through two bottles of wine, most of which Dan drank, since Katie and her husband, Stephen, were not big drinkers. But it was not just the wine that made Dan so obnoxious that night. By then, he was different from the boy I had married. Not in any shocking or unpredictable way—far from it; the Dan Larkin of 1973 or ’74 was a natural evolution of the boy I had met at Brookline High, who felt so free to spill his commas all over my letter to the editor of The Sagamore. He wore his hair and his sideburns longer, and his shirt open one or two more buttons, but the biggest difference was that, at thirty-eight, he had found the persona he would inhabit as an adult, the character he would play: arrogant, argumentative, pontificating, scrappy.
He and Katie were oil and water, always had been. Their tangling never seemed to bother either of them. Katie was serene in a conflict—she seemed to give Dan’s opinions no more weight than she would a teenager’s—and Dan was positively radiant when debating. But I always hated it. I wanted them to get along, if only because I needed to have my sister around and I was always afraid Dan’s occasional boorishness would keep her away, that sooner or later he would go too far even for her.
It was after the meal when the trouble started. The four of us around my dining room table, lethargic from a meal I had labored over from The Joy of Cooking. At the head of the table, Dan slouched in his chair. He had brought a bottle of Chivas to the table and insisted that Stephen join him in drinking a glass. Dan had slipped off his fancy two-tone silver-and-gold watch and was turning it idly in his hand.
The talk had turned to marriage. There had been a rash of divorces in our circle at the time, and the natural life span of marriage was on our minds.
After gossiping about a couple we knew—a man who had left his wife abruptly—Dan said, “I think all married men are a little unhappy, secretly, at least the ones who marry young.”
“Like you?” Kate said. “You married young.”
“Not me in particular. Just generally. I think it’s common. It makes perfect sense. We marry too young. All of us men. Before we’ve sown our oats. Don’t you think so, Stephen?”
“No, I do not.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-one.”
“And you don’t feel any…ambivalence?”
“About my marriage? About my wife? Of course not. I mean, I feel like—you know, I wish I was younger, but I don’t have any regrets about my marriage. It’s the one thing I’ve done right.”
Kate clasped her hands over her heart and pretended to swoon.
I said, “Aw.”
“You’re not being honest. I get it. Kate’s here; I understand.”
“Actually I’m being perfectly honest.”
“Well, let’s put it this way: I know lots of guys—not me, just guys like me, not old but not young anymore either—and they’re all feeling this way. Is this all there is? Is this all I get?”
Stephen: “ ‘Is this all I get?’ Around here? These people have everything—fancy cars, fancy watches, fancy houses, fancy schools. And they’re bitching about ‘Is this all I get?’ ”
“Maybe they shouldn’t feel that way, but they do. They’re unhappy.”
“Unhappy? Because they’re getting old? Tell them to grow up! This is life! Enjoy it, it’ll be over soon enough.”
“Okay, right, but isn’t that the point? Life is short. They’re starting to realize that. Time is starting to run out.”
“Time is short for everyone, Dan.”
“But not equally. We don’t feel it the same way, men and women. I’m just being honest here. The men I know— Okay, think of it like this: A young man is like a rising stock, like IBM or Coke. And the stock gets sold too soon, while it’s still going up. So what happens? The guy looks around, eight, ten, fifteen years later, and what does he say? He says, ‘I sold too low. I should have held out. I’m worth more than I got.’ ”
Kate: “So the woman, in your little metaphor, she’s a sinking stock. She’s worth less, eight or ten years in.”
“No, well—what she’s worth—well, yes. But look, this isn’t just me talking, this is society, this is what we’re taught. And let’s be honest, if we’re looking at men and women as a marketplace, as assets, in purely economic terms, then yes, our society assigns a higher value to a young, sexy woman than to a middle-aged mother.”
Me: “Middle-aged!”
“Not you, Jane! I’m not talking about you.”
Stephen laughed out loud. He was lanky, wry, soft-spoken, detached. “Dan,” he said, “I advise you to stop now.”
“Stop? Are you crazy? I’m just getting started.” A little grin. “No, the point is just—again, in purely economic terms—a woman is sold closer to her peak value than a man. Before she begins to depreciate. And her peak value comes earlier than a man’s does. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t know what there is to argue about. These are just facts.”
Me: “Oh, good Lord.”
Kate: “So does it matter that the reason for the woman’s depreciation is that she spent all those years giving birth and changing diapers and cleaning your house and washing your clothes, while you went off to work so you could…appreciate?”
“In economic terms, no, it doesn’t matter, because the market doesn’t care. It looks at a woman and sees what it sees.”
“And of course by ‘the market,’ you mean ‘men.’ Men look at women and see what they see.”
“I didn’t invent the system, Kate, I’m just describing it.”
“Janie, I’m so sorry to hear about your depreciation. You must feel terribly depreciated right now.”
“Oh, believe me, I do.”
“And here you are with a husband whose value has skyrocketed! You lucky thing.”
“I’m a lucky gal.”
Stephen sat up, with a professorial, inquisitive expression. “So, Dan, if your market theory is right, then isn’t this an inefficiency that costs the woman more than the man? You seem to be assuming that, if this middle-aged couple were to divorce—”
Me: “Would you stop saying middle-aged!”
Stephen: “Yes, sorry, right. If this couple—of indeterminate age—were to divorce, you’re assuming the man would then reenter the market at a higher value than the woman, whose stock has fallen. But that’s not how markets work. In a real market, the woman bought low because there was some risk built into the price of her husband’s stock. The young man she married might have turned into a bum, his stock might have tanked. She took the risk, now she’s entitled to the upside. Why doesn’t she get to keep the profit?”
“Well”—Danny smirked—“I never said it was a perfect metaphor.”
There was laughter. This is as close as Dan could get to backing down.
Kate said, “The scary thing is I’m not completely sure you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Oh, Danny. Allow me to save my husband from himself—of course he’s kidding.”
Dan tried, finally, to gauge his audience’s reaction. “Of course I’m kidding,” he said, with a mischievous expression. He looked around the table at each of us. Three against one. “Of course I’m kidding.”
I told you this dinner was memorable because Dan made an ass of himself. That is true but it’s not the whole story. I did not care about Dan’s stupid theory of men and women as shares in a human stock exchange; I had heard him say similar things before. What really made the evening stick in memory was Katie and her husband’s reaction. Their forced smiles, the knowing glances they exchanged. I understood. I got a glimpse of Dan as they saw him. Not amusing; obnoxious. Not witty and bracingly honest, as Dan saw himself; just crude and unkind. It made me ashamed, as if I had let down my big sister. I could almost hear them talking in the car on the way home: “How does she stand it? How does she put up with him?” Earlier in my marriage, I might have been defensive, I might have tried to see my husband in a more generous light. But that night I knew—that is, I felt, deep in my bones—that they were right. My husband had turned into a man I did not like.
Worse—much worse—I understood, finally, that my husband did not love me.
We got to bed late that night, after Katie and I cleaned up the kitchen.
Sitting up, my back resting on the headboard, I watched as Dan got ready for bed. He strutted from the bathroom to his closet, folded his sweater-vest, and hung up his slacks carefully, all the while whistling under his breath, evidently unaware of how our guests had perceived his little performance that night.
“Do you really think I’m a sinking stock?”
“Hm? Oh, pfft.”
“Do you think I’ve lost value?”
“I think we’re all getting older, we’re all losing value. You and me both.”
“But that’s not what you said. You said men actually gain value as they get older. Their stock goes up.”
“Well, it does, generally. Men are the breadwinners, and at our age everyone knows which ones win the bread and which ones don’t. That’s all.”
“And my stock?”
“I like your stock, Jane. You’re reading too much into it. We were just talking.”
“I don’t know if I believe you. Let me ask you something. If we weren’t married, if we were both single and we met at a party or something, would you be interested in me? Am I a woman you’d go after?”
“Jane, of course I’d go after you. Every time I see you, I see the girl I met in high school. How could I not go for that?”
“No, but if we’d never met before, if you were just meeting me for the first time now, as we are. You wouldn’t, would you? Because your stock is higher than mine. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“It’s not the same thing. Because I did meet you a long time ago. I couldn’t meet you for the first time today.”
“I know, but if.”
“I don’t know, Jane. It’s a pointless discussion.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a pointless discussion.”
He smiled and shrugged. That was his answer.
It is hard to believe the night could actually get worse from here, but it did.
To my surprise, Danny reached for me in bed that night. I was hopeful enough, or dumb enough, to think he might be trying to make up for his comments or to make me feel better. When you have known a man as long as I’d known my husband, maybe you are slow to see changes, maybe you still see the boy rather than the man who has displaced him. Also, I was concerned about how little sex we were having. So I was glad he touched me, I did not want to say no, even if I was tired and not especially eager. I went along. I allowed him to maneuver me onto my knees so he could bash away at me from behind, a position I hated but Dan preferred. After a while, he began to poke himself into my rear end. We never did it that way, and I never wanted to. At first, I thought he had just lost his focus or was making a kind of invitation. I moved away, I said no. He whispered, “Let’s try it.” When he tried again, I pulled forward, away from him, lying flat. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you?” He said, “What’s wrong with you?” Then he got on top of me and he did it anyway. I did not scream because the kids were in the house, though when he first pushed his way in, I yelped—high-pitched, an animal sound—and he clamped his hand over my mouth but he did not stop.
When it was over, I was too shocked to be angry. I was not sure what it meant, how to think about it. I went downstairs to get away from him.
Danny came down, puzzled at first that I was so upset, then annoyed that he would have to stay up to comfort me, then insulted that I did not want him near me—that I was being ungrateful for his gallantry in coming to console me. So he went back upstairs.
I tried to convince myself it was not a big deal. Just a bad night, he’d been drinking, things went too far, it happens between husbands and wives. But a few days later, when I could not stand the secret anymore, I told Katie what he had done. She said it was rape; I said it was not. Neither of us even considered reporting it to the police. She said I should leave him, that’s what she would have done.
I did not leave him, of course. I stayed. As time went by, the incident sort of felt like a dream, you know? Like I might have imagined the whole thing, and I was glad I had told Katie just so I had someone to confirm my own memory of it, to tell me I wasn’t crazy. Anyway, I decided it was best forgotten. I had three children, so I stayed. I never talked about it again, and I swore Katie to secrecy too.
But everything was broken after that. I thought I could put it back together again somehow. I was wrong.
* * *
—
A hundred years after she was shut out of the Bowers home—or maybe only a few weeks; Miranda lost track of time for a while—my little girl trudged to the lake, a block from the house. It was August now, end of summer, always a mournful season for her. The day was so thick with humid heat, you could hear the air ticking like a hot oven.
At the lake there were some older kids, teenagers lounging in the grass in their bathing suits. The braver girls wore bikinis. The boys eyed them like predators.
Miranda took a seat on a bench in the shade, as far from the sunbathers as possible. She wished she’d brought a book, not to read it but to wall these people out. Her sadness made the sight of happy people infuriating, isolating, as if the world were a big, rollicking party that she was not invited to. Yet she still wanted to be near them, to spy on the party.
A policeman came to stand by her bench. He wore a short-sleeve navy blue summer uniform and Ray-Ban aviators.
Miranda looked up. There was no mistaking him, the blot on his forehead. “It’s you,” she said.
“It’s me. You mind if I sit here?”
“It’s a free country.”
Tom Glover sat down at the very end of the bench, leaving a wide space between them. He took off his glasses, folded them, put them in his shirt pocket.
Miranda: “What are you doing here?”
“Working.”
“Here? Doing what?”
“Watching the lake.”
“In case someone tries to steal it?”
He smiled. “In case someone tries to jump in.”
“They’re not supposed to jump in?”
“They’re supposed to go over to the swimming area, where the lifeguards are. It’s safer. They’re not supposed to jump in here.”
“Everybody jumps in here.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you stop them?”
“It’s too hot. I’m not gonna hassle a bunch of kids for swimming.”
“But you just said it’s against the law.”
“True.” He folded his arms, stretched out his legs in the direction of the lake, and slid down on the bench a little. “You think I should arrest ’em all? Or just shoot ’em?”
“I just figured, if it’s a rule…”
“Well, I don’t think we’ll descend into anarchy if a few kids jump in the lake.”
She turned to look at him. His uniform with the Newton Police shoulder patch, polished black shoes. He looked handsome in it.
He said, “How come you’re not swimming?”
“Don’t feel like it.”
“You don’t like swimming?”
“No, I just don’t feel like it right now.”
A beat.
“You doing okay, Miranda?”
“No.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“No. I don’t really feel like talking.”
“Okay.”
They sat awhile, watching the party. Laughter, chatter, splashing.
“You’re not going to find her, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not what you said before.”
He grunted. “I’m still looking.”
“I know you won’t find her. It’s okay. You don’t have to lie.”
“Why do you think we won’t find her?”
“I just don’t believe him anymore.”
“Your father, you mean.”
No response.
“Why don’t you believe him?”
“I just don’t.”
“Did something happen?”
Miranda thought of her dad standing in the doorway of the Bowers home and their reaction to him. But she did not want to tell Glover about this because she did not want to get anyone in trouble; and she did not want to admit to Glover that she had betrayed her own mother by falling in love with Mrs. Bowers; and, most important, she did not want to confess that when she saw how frankly terrified the Bowerses were of her father—how they hated him, how they were sure what he had done and what he was—she had seen him as they did and she knew they were right. All of it was literally unspeakable. So she said simply:
“Everybody thinks he did it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
He turned his head toward her but said nothing.
“I didn’t used to think it, but now I do. I changed my mind.”
He stretched his arm across the back of the bench and contacted her shoulder briefly, cautiously, then pulled it back and refolded his arms.
