IT IS six-thirty; my wife returns home from work. I am shaving when I hear her key scratching at the lock. I keep the door of our apartment locked at all times. The building has been burgled twice since we moved in and I don’t like surprises. My caution annoys my wife; she sees it as proof of a reluctance to approach life with the open-armed camaraderie she expected in a spouse. I can tell that this bit of faithlessness on my part has made her unhappy. Her heels click down our uncarpeted hallway with a lively resonance. So I lock the door of the bathroom to forestall her.
I do this because the state of the bathroom (and my state) will only make her unhappier. I note that my dead cigarette butt has left a liverish stain of nicotine on the edge of the sink and that it has deposited droppings of ash in the basin. The glass of Scotch standing on the toilet tank is not empty. I have been oiling myself all afternoon in expectation of the New Year’s party that I would rather not attend. Since Scotch is regarded as a fine social lubricant, I have attempted, to the best of my ability, to get lubricated. Somehow I feel it hasn’t worked.
My wife is rattling the door now. “Ed, are you in there?”
“None other,” I reply, furiously slicing great swaths in the lather on my cheeks.
“Goddamn it, Ed,” Victoria says angrily. “I asked you. I asked you please to be done in there before I get home. I have to get ready for the party. I told Helen we’d be there by eight.”
“I didn’t realize it was so late,” I explain lamely. I can imagine the stance she has assumed on the other side of the door. My wife is a social worker and has to deal with people like me every day. Irresponsible people. By now she has crossed her arms across her breasts and inclined her head with its shining helmet of dark hair ever so slightly to one side. Her mouth has puckered like a drawstring purse, and she has planted her legs defiantly and solidly apart, signifying that she will not be moved.
“Ed, how long are you going to be in there?”
I know that tone of voice. Words can never mask its meaning. It is always interrogative, and it always implies that my grievous faults of character could be remedied. So why don’t I make the effort?
“Five minutes,” I call cheerfully.
Victoria goes away. Her heels are brisk on the hardwood.
My thoughts turn to the party and then naturally to civil servants, since almost all of Victoria’s friends are people with whom she works. Civil servants inevitably lead me to think of mandarins, and then Asiatics in general. I settle on Mongols and begin to carefully carve the lather off my face, intent on leaving myself with a shaving-cream Fu Manchu. I do quite a handsome job. I slit my eyes.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” I whisper. “Who’s the fiercest of them all?”
From the back of my throat I produce a sepulchral tone of reply. “You Genghis Ed, Terror of the World! You who raise cenotaphs of skulls! You who banquet off the backs of your enemies!” I imagine myself sweeping out of Central Asia on a shaggy pony, hard-bitten from years in the saddle, turning almond eyes to fabulous cities that lie pliant under my pitiless gaze.
Victoria is back at the bathroom door. “Ed!”
“Yes, dear?” I answer meekly.
“Ed, explain something to me,” she demands.
“Anything, lollipop,” I reply. This assures her that I have been alerted to danger. It is now a fair fight and she does not have to labour under the feeling that she has sprung upon her quarry from ambush.
“Don’t get sarcastic. It’s not called for.”
I drain my glass of Scotch, rinse it under the tap, and stick a toothbrush in it, rendering it innocuous. The butt is flicked into the toilet, and the nicotine stain scrubbed out with my thumb. “I apologize,” I say, hunting madly in the medicine cabinet for mouthwash to disguise my alcoholic breath.
“Ed, you have nothing to do all day. Absolutely nothing. Why couldn’t you be done in there before I got home?”
I rinse my mouth. Then I spot my full, white Fu Manchu and begin scraping. “Well, dear, it’s like this,” I say. “You know how I sweat. And I do get nervous about these little affairs. So I cut the time a little fine. I admit that. But one doesn’t want to appear at these affairs too damp. I like to think that my deodorant’s power is peaking at my entrance. I’m sure you see -”
“Shut up and get out of there,” Victoria says tiredly.
A last cursory inspection of the bathroom and I spring open the door and present my wife with my best I’m-a-harmless-idiot-don’t-hit-me smile. Since I’ve been unemployed I practise my smiles in the mirror whenever time hangs heavy on my hands. I have one for every occasion. This particular one is a faithful reproduction, Art imitating Life. The other day, while out taking a walk, I saw a large black Labrador taking a crap on somebody’s doorstep. We established instant rapport. He grinned hugely at me while his body trembled with exertion. His smile was a perfect blend of physical relief, mischievousness, and apology for his indiscretion. A perfectly suitable smile for my present situation.
“Squeaky, pretty-pink clean,” I announce to my wife.
“Being married to an adolescent is a bore,” Victoria says, pushing past me into the bathroom. “Make me a drink. I need it.”
I hurry to comply and return in time to see my wife lowering her delightful bottom into a tub of scalding hot, soapy water and ascending wreaths of steam. She lies back and her breasts flatten; she toys with the tap with delicate ivory toes.
“Christ,” she murmurs, stunned by the heat.
I sit down on the toilet seat and fondle my drink, rotating the transparent cylinder and its amber contents in my hand. Then I abruptly hand Victoria her glass and as an opening gambit ask, “How’s Howard?”
My wife does not flinch, but only sighs luxuriantly, steeping herself in the rich heat. I interpret this as hardness of heart. I read in her face the lineaments of a practised and practising adulteress. For some time now I’ve suspected that Howard, a grave and unctuously dignified psychologist who works for the provincial Department of Social Services, is her lover. My wife has taken to working late and several times when I have phoned her office, disguising my voice and playing the irate beneficiary of the government’s largesse, Howard has answered. When we meet socially, Howard treats me with the barely concealed contempt that is due an unsuspecting cuckold.
“Howard? Oh, he’s fine,” Victoria answers blandly, sipping at her drink. Her body seems to elongate under the water, and for a moment I feel justified in describing her as statuesque.
“I like Howard,” I say. “We should have him over for dinner some evening.”
My wife laughs. “Howard doesn’t like you,” she says.
“Oh?” I feign surprise. “Why?”
“You know why. Because you’re always pestering him to diagnose you. He’s not stupid, you know. He knows you’re laughing up your sleeve at him. You’re transparent, Ed. When you don’t like someone you belittle their work. I’ve seen you do it a thousand times.”
“I refuse,” I say, “to respond to innuendo.”
This conversation troubles my wife. She begins to splash around in the tub. She cannot go too far in her defence of Howard.
“He’s not a bad sort,” she says. “A little stuffy, I grant you, but sometimes stuffiness is preferable to complete irresponsibility. You, on the other hand, seem to have the greatest contempt for anyone whose behaviour even remotely approaches sanity.”
I know my wife is now angling the conversation toward the question of employment. There are two avenues open for examination. She may concentrate on the past, studded as it is with a series of unmitigated disasters, or on the future. On the whole I feel the past is safer ground, at least from my point of view. She knows that I lied about why I was fired from my last job, and six months later still hasn’t got the truth out of me.
Actually, I was shown the door because of “habitual unco-operativeness.” I was employed in an adult extension program. For the life of me I couldn’t master the terminology, and this created a rather unfavourable impression. All that talk about “terminal learners,” “life skills,” etc., completely unnerved me. Whenever I was sure I understood what a word meant, someone decided it had become charged with nasty connotations and invented a new “value-free term.” The place was a goddamn madhouse and I acted accordingly.
I have to admit, though, that there was one thing I liked about the job. That was answering the phone whenever the office was deserted, which it frequently was since everyone was always running out into the community “identifying needs.” I greeted every caller with a breezy “College of Knowledge, Mr. Know-It-All here!” Rather juvenile, I admit, but very satisfying. And I was rather sorry I got the boot before I got to meet a real, live, flesh-and-blood terminal learner. Evidently there were thousands of them out in the community and they were a bad thing. At one meeting in which we were trying to decide what should be done about them, I suggested, using a bit of Pentagon jargon I had picked up on the late-night news, that if we ever laid hands on any of them or their ilk, we should have them “terminated with extreme prejudice.”
“By the way,” my wife asks nonchalantly, “were you out looking today?”
“Harry Wells called,” I lie. “He thinks he might have something for me in a couple of months.”
My wife stirs uneasily in the tub and creates little swells that radiate from her body like a disquieting aura.
“That’s funny,” she says tartly. “I called Harry today about finding work for you. He didn’t foresee anything in the future.”
“He must have meant the immediate future.”
“He didn’t mention talking to you.”
“That’s funny.”
Victoria suddenly stands up. Venus rising from the bath. Captive water sluices between her breasts, slides down her thighs.
“Damn it, Ed! When are you going to begin to tell the truth? I’m sick of all this.” She fumbles blindly for a towel as her eyes pin me. “Just remember,” she adds, “behave yourself tonight. Lay off my friends.”
I am rendered speechless by her fiery beauty, by this many-times-thwarted love that twists and turns in search of a worthy object. Meekly, I promise.
I drive to the party, my headlights rending the veil of thickly falling, shimmering snow. The city crews have not yet removed the Christmas decorations; strings of lights garland the street lamps, and rosy Santa Clauses salute with good cheer our wintry silence. My wife’s stubborn profile makes her disappointment in me palpable. She does not understand that I am a man descending. I can’t blame her because it took me years to realize that fact myself.
Revelation comes in so many guises. A couple of years ago I was paging through one of those gossipy newspapers that fill the news racks at supermarkets. They are designed to shock and titillate, but occasionally they run a factual space-filler. One of these was certainly designed to assure mothers that precocious children were no blessing, and since most women are the mothers of very ordinary children, it was a bit of comfort among gloomy predictions about San Francisco toppling into the sea or Martians making off with tots from parked baby carriages.
It seems that in eighteenth-century Germany there was an infant prodigy. At nine months he was constructing intelligible sentences; at a year and a half he was reading the Bible; at three he was teaching himself Greek and Latin. At four he was dead, likely crushed to death by expectations that he was destined to bear headier and more manifold fruits in the future.
This little news item terrified me. I admit it. It was not because this child’s brief passage was in any way extraordinary. On the contrary, it was because it followed such a familiar pattern, a pattern I hadn’t until then realized existed. Well, that’s not entirely true. I had sensed the pattern. I knew it was there, but I hadn’t really felt it.
His life, like every other life, could be graphed: an ascent that rises to a peak, pauses at a particular node, and then descends. Only the gradient changes in any particular case: this child’s was steeper than most, his descent swifter. We all ripen. We are all bound by the same ineluctable law, the same mathematical certainty.
I was twenty-five then; I could put this out of my mind. I am thirty now, still young I admit, but I sense my feet are on the down slope. I know now that I have begun the inevitable descent, the leisurely glissade which will finally topple me at the bottom of my own graph. A man descending is propelled by inertia; the only initiative left him is whether or not he decides to enjoy the passing scene.
Now, my wife is a hopeful woman. She looks forward to the future, but the same impulse that makes me lock our apartment door keeps me in fear of it. So we proceed in tandem, her shoulders tugging expectantly forward, my heels digging in, resisting. Victoria thinks I have ability; she expects me, like some arid desert plant that shows no promise, to suddenly blossom before her wondering eyes. She believes I can choose to be what she expects. I am intent only on maintaining my balance.
Helen and Everett’s house is a blaze of light, their windows sturdy squares of brightness. I park the car. My wife evidently decides we shall make our entry as a couple, atoms resolutely linked. She takes my arm. Our host and hostess greet us at the door. Helen and Victoria kiss, and Everett, who distrusts me, clasps my hand manfully and forgivingly, in a holiday mood. We are led into the living-room. I’m surprised that it is already full. There are people everywhere, sitting and drinking, even a few reclining on the carpet. I know almost no one. The unfamiliar faces swim unsteadily for a moment, and I begin to realize that I am quite drunk. Most of the people are young, and, like my wife, public servants.
I spot Howard in a corner, propped against the wall. He sports a thick, rich beard. Physically he is totally unlike me, tall and thin. For this reason I cannot imagine Victoria in his arms. My powers of invention are stretched to the breaking-point by the attempt to believe that she might be unfaithful to my body type. I think of myself as bearish and cuddly. Sex with Howard, I surmise, would be athletic and vigorous.
Someone, I don’t know who, proffers a glass and I take it. This is a mistake. It is Everett’s party punch, a hot cider pungent with cloves. However, I dutifully drink it. Victoria leaves my side and I am free to hunt for some more acceptable libation. I find a bottle of Scotch in the kitchen and pour myself a stiff shot, which I sample. Appreciating its honest taste (it is obviously liquor; I hate intoxicants that disguise their purpose with palatability), I carry it back to the living-room.
A very pretty, matronly young woman sidles up to me. She is one of those kind people who move through parties like wraiths, intent on making late arrivals comfortable. We talk desultorily about the party, agreeing it is wonderful and expressing admiration for our host and hostess. The young woman, who is called Ann, admits to being a lawyer. I admit to being a naval architect. She asks me what I am doing on the prairies if I am a naval architect. This is a difficult question. I know nothing about naval architects and cannot even guess what they might be doing on the prairies.
“Perspectives,” I say darkly.
She looks at me curiously and then dips away, heading for an errant husband. Several minutes later I am sure they are talking about me, so I duck back to the kitchen and pour myself another Scotch.
Helen finds me in her kitchen. She is hunting for olives.
“Ed,” she asks, “have you seen a jar of olives?” She shows me how big with her hands. Someone has turned on the stereo and I sense a slight vibration in the floor, which means people are dancing in the living-room.
“No,” I reply. “I can’t see anything. I’m loaded,” I confess.
Helen looks at me doubtfully. Helen and Everett don’t really approve of drinking – that’s why they discourage consumption by serving hot cider at parties. She smiles weakly and gives up olives in favour of employment. “How’s the job search?” she asks politely while she rummages in the fridge.
“Nothing yet.”
“Everett and I have our ears cocked,” she says. “If we hear of anything you’ll be the first to know.” Then she hurries out of the kitchen carrying a jar of gherkins.
“Hey, you silly bitch,” I yell, “those aren’t olives, those are gherkins!”
I wander unsteadily back to the living-room. Someone has put a waltz on the stereo and my wife and Howard are revolving slowly and serenely in the limited available space. I notice that he has insinuated his leg between my wife’s thighs. I take a good belt and appraise them. They make a handsome couple. I salute them with my glass but they do not see, and so my world-weary and cavalier gesture is lost on them.
A man and a woman at my left shoulder are talking about Chile and Chilean refugees. It seems that she is in charge of some and is having problems with them. They’re divided by old political enmities; they won’t learn English; one of them insists on driving without a valid operator’s licence. Their voices, earnest and shrill, blend and separate, separate and blend. I watch my wife, skilfully led, glide and turn, turn and glide. Howard’s face floats above her head, an impassive mask of content.
The wall clock above the sofa tells me it is only ten o’clock. One year is separated from the next by two hours. However, they pass quickly because I have the great good fortune to get involved in a political argument. I know nothing about politics, but then neither do any of the people I am arguing with. I’ve always found that a really lively argument depends on the ignorance of the combatants. The more ignorant the disputants, the more heated the debate. This one warms nicely. In no time several people have denounced me as a neo-fascist. Their lack of objectivity pleases me no end. I stand beaming and swaying on my feet. Occasionally I retreat to the kitchen to fill my glass and they follow, hurling statistics and analogies at my back.
It is only at twelve o’clock that I realize the extent of the animosity I have created by this performance. One woman genuinely hates me. She refuses a friendly New Year’s buss. I plead that politics should not stand in the way of fraternity.
“You must have learned all this stupid, egotistical individualism from Ayn Rand,” she blurts out.
“Who?”
“The writer, Ayn Rand.”
“I thought you were referring to the corporation,” I say.
She calls me an ass-hole and marches away. Even in my drunken stupor I perceive that her unfriendly judgement is shared by all people within hearing distance. I find myself talking loudly and violently, attempting to justify myself. Helen is wending her way across the living-room toward me. She takes me by the elbow.
“Ed,” she says, “you look a little the worse for wear. I have some coffee in the kitchen.”
Obediently I allow myself to be led away. Helen pours me a cup of coffee and sits me down in the breakfast nook. I am genuinely contrite and embarrassed.
“Look, Helen,” I say. “I apologize. I had too much to drink. I’d better go. Will you tell Victoria I’m ready to leave?”
“Victoria went out to get some ice,” she says uneasily.
“How the hell can she get ice? She doesn’t drive.”
“She went with Howard.”
“Oh… okay. I’ll wait.”
Helen leaves me alone to ponder my sins. But I don’t dwell on my sins; I dwell on Victoria’s and Howard’s. I feel my head, searching for the nascent bumps of cuckoldry. It is an unpleasant joke. Finally I get up, fortify myself with another drink, find my coat and boots, and go outside to wait for the young lovers. Snow is still falling in an unsettling blur. The New Year greets us with a storm.
I do not have long to wait. A car creeps cautiously up the street, its headlights gleaming. It stops at the far curb. I hear car doors slamming and then laughter. Howard and Victoria run lightly across the road. He seems to be chasing her, at least that is the impression I receive from her high-pitched squeals of delight. They start up the walk before they notice me. I stand, or imagine I stand, perfectly immobile and menacing.
“Hi, Howie,” I say. “How’s tricks?”
“Ed,” Howard says, pausing. He sends me a curt nod.
“We went for ice,” Victoria explains. She holds up the bag for proof.
“Is that right, Howie?” I ask, turning my attention to the home-breaker. I am uncertain whether I am creating this scene merely to discomfort Howard, whom I don’t like, or because I am jealous. Perhaps a bit of both.
“The name is Howard, Ed.”
“The name is Edward, Howard.”
Howard coughs and shuffles his feet. He is smiling faintly. “Well, Ed,” he says, “what’s the problem?”
“The problem, Howie, is my wife. The problem is cuckoldry. Likewise the incredible amount of hostility I feel toward you this minute. Now, you’re the psychologist, Howie, what’s the answer to my hostility?”
Howard shrugs. The smile which appears frozen on his face is wrenched askew with anger.
“No answer? Well, here’s my prescription. I’m sure I’d feel much better if I bopped your beanie, Bozo,” I say. Then I begin to do something very stupid. In this kind of weather I’m taking off my coat.
“Stop this,” Victoria says. “Ed, stop it right now!”
Under this threat of violence Howard puffs himself up. He seems to expand in the night; he becomes protective and paternal. Even his voice deepens; it plumbs the lower registers. “I’ll take care of this, Victoria,” he says gruffly.
“Quit acting like children,” she storms. “Stop it!”
Poor Victoria. Two wilful men, rutting stags in the stilly night.
Somehow my right arm seems to have got tangled in my coat sleeve. Since I’m drunk, my attempt to extricate myself occupies all my attention. Suddenly the left side of my face goes numb and I find myself flat on my back. Howie towers over me.
“You son of a bitch,” I mumble, “that is not cricket.” I try to kick him in the family jewels from where I lie. I am unsuccessful.
Howard is suddenly the perfect gentleman. He graciously allows me to get to my feet. Then he ungraciously knocks me down again. This time the force of his blow spins me around and I make a one-point landing on my nose. Howie is proving more than I bargained for. At this point I find myself wishing I had a pipe wrench in my pocket.
“Had enough?” Howie asks. The rooster crowing on the dunghill.
I hear Victoria. “Of course he’s had enough. What’s the matter with you? He’s drunk. Do you want to kill him?”
“The thought had entered my mind.”
“Just you let me get my arm loose, you son of a bitch,” I say. “We’ll see who kills who.” I have had enough, but of course I can’t admit it.
“Be my guest.”
Somehow I tear off my coat. Howard is standing waiting, bouncing up on his toes, weaving his head. I feel slightly dizzy trying to focus on his frenetic motion. “Come on,” Howard urges me. “Come on.”
I lower my head and charge at his midriff. A punch on the back of the neck pops my tongue out of my mouth like a released spring. I pitch head first into the snow. A knee digs into my back, pinning me, and punches begin to rain down on the back of my head. The best I can hope for in a moment of lucidity is that Howard will break a hand on my skull.
My wife saves me. I hear her screaming and, resourceful girl that she is, she hauls Howie off my back by the hair. He curses her; she shouts; they argue. I lie on the snow and pant.
I hear the front door open, and I see my host silhouetted in the door-frame.
“Jesus Christ,” Everett yells, “what’s going on out here?”
I roll on my back in time to see Howard beating a retreat to his car. My tigress has put him on the run. He is definitely piqued. The car roars into life and swerves into the street. I get to my feet and yell insults at his tail-lights.
“Victoria, is that you?” Everett asks uncertainly.
She sobs a yes.
“Come on in. You’re upset.”
She shakes her head no.
“Do you want to talk to Helen?”
“No.”
Everett goes back into the house nonplussed. It strikes me what a remarkable couple we are.
“Thank you,” I say, trying to shake the snow off my sweater. “In five years of marriage you’ve never done anything nicer. I appreciate it.”
“Shut up.”
“Have you seen my coat?” I begin to stumble around searching for my traitorous garment.
“Here.” She helps me into it. I check my pockets. “I suspect I’ve lost the car keys,” I say.
“I’m not surprised.” Victoria has calmed down and is drying her eyes on her coat sleeves. “A good thing too, you’re too drunk to drive. We’ll walk to Albert Street. They run buses late on New Year’s Eve for drunks like you.”
I fall into step with her. I’m shivering with cold but I know better than to complain. I light a cigarette and wince when the smoke sears a cut on the inside of my mouth. I gingerly test a loosened tooth with my tongue.
“You were very brave,” I say. I am so touched by her act of loyalty, I take her hand. She does not refuse it.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It seems to me you made some kind of decision back there.”
“A perfect stranger might have done the same.”
I allow that this is true.
“I don’t regret anything,” Victoria says. “I don’t regret what happened between Howard and me; I don’t regret helping you.”
“Tibetan women often have two husbands,” I say.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asks, stopping under a street-light.
“I won’t interfere any more.”
“I don’t think you understand,” she says, resuming walking. We enter a deserted street, silent and white. No cars have passed here in hours, the snow is untracked.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I say hopefully, “a night for resolutions.”
“You can’t change, Ed.” Her loss of faith in me shocks me.
I recover my balance. “I could,” I maintain. “I feel ready now. I think I’ve learned something. Honestly.”
“Ed,” she says, shaking her head.
“I resolve,” I say solemnly, “to find a job.”
“Ed, no.”
“I resolve to tell the truth.”
Victoria actually reaches up and attempts to stifle my words with her mittened hands. I struggle. I realize that, unaccountably, I am crying. “I resolve to treat you differently,” I manage to say. But as I say it, I know that I am not capable of any of this. I am a man descending and I should not make promises that I cannot keep, not to her – of all people.
“Ed,” she says firmly, “I think that’s enough. There’s no point any more.”
She is right. We walk on silently. Injuries so old could likely not be healed. Not by me. The snow seems to fall faster and faster.