3 is not a Crowd

When I was in somewhat better shape, I decided to go to New York for a week and visit the two of them. I had to face them, I had to meet Grace. I didn’t know if she knew anything about me or not, the role Peter had played in my life and I in his. I also had to see how I felt about Peter now.

GRACE: Of course I knew everything about Wanda. Except that I didn’t know how Peter felt about her.

PETER: I didn’t know myself.

GRACE: As far as how I felt about her, in the first place I was terrified of her. Not that she would take Peter away. I didn’t think of that very much. But I was sure that she would hate me, and if she didn’t like me I felt it might affect how Peter felt about me. And also I knew how much Peter loved her and I wanted her to like me and approve of me because she was a part of Peter’s life and I wanted to share Peter’s life completely.

As far as how I felt about the two of them having sex together for so many years, I don’t think I thought there was anything wrong with it. I had never had any brothers or sisters and had never thought much about that kind of thing. As far as whether or not it was right or wrong, if Peter thought something was right, then it was right for me.

I must sound pretty simple-minded when I say something like that, but it was the way I felt. It’s mostly the way I feel now. I tend to take Peter’s word for things. I know I’m not his equal in most ways, or Wanda’s equal—

WANDA: Oh, come off it, honey. You still downgrade yourself all the time. You’ve got a good enough mind. Don’t keep putting yourself down.

GRACE: Well, I’m the only one around here who can cook worth a damn. That ought to count for something.

JWW: Wanda stayed for only a week on that first trip to New York. She had wanted to stay at a hotel but Peter and Grace were both adamant in insisting she stay with them.

The week seems to have gone rather well. Wanda was relieved to discover that she liked Grace very much and that the girl seemed to be perfect for Peter. She was also happy to find that she and Peter were still close and that the marriage did not seem to have changed his feelings for her, or hers for him.

Sex played no part whatsoever in the week’s entertainment. It was on everyone’s mind to a considerable extent, but no one considered saying or doing anything about it. Peter and Wanda seem to have wanted each other during the week, but in a somewhat remote fashion.

Grace liked Wanda at once and found herself more at ease with her than she had expected to be. She saw Wanda as a sort of female version of Peter and was attracted to the qualities she found so attractive in her husband.

The visit went very well, to the relief of all three. But they were also all somewhat relieved when the week ended and Wanda returned to Chicago.

PETER: It was about a year before we saw Wanda again. In the meantime, our life together went along magnificently. Grace and I never stopped being good together. If anything we improved in every respect, physically and emotionally, everything. The improvement would have been more noticeable if things hadn’t been so perfect from the beginning.

She began taking odd jobs of work from time to time. She was hesitant about this, not knowing how I would take it. She didn’t want to bring it up for that reason. God knows we didn’t need the money, but she felt she ought to be doing something now and then, contributing somehow.

But she needed a certain amount of life apart from me, however much we had going for us together. At first she tried the usual sort of housewife busy work. She took a couple of courses at the New School. This bored her to tears. She tried painting, then took some sculpting classes. She went to concerts while I was working. She enjoyed some of this and hated some of it, but what she really wanted was now and then to do what she had done — to pose for a photographer or act in a movie.

And I felt she ought to try it. I certainly wasn’t going to be jealous because she fucked some moron in a stag film. When we swung, which we did on the average of once every two weeks, I enjoyed watching her with other men. Jealousy is for insecure people.

WANDA: I guess I should have been jealous then, because I was certainly insecure. I went back to Chicago convinced that all I had to do was find a man who would be for me what Grace was for Peter. Suffice it to say that I didn’t find one, although God knows I auditioned enough candidates for the role. I wound up in a very messy affair with a married man and succeeded in breaking up his home, although by the time things got to that stage I had already realized that he and I couldn’t possibly work together. He left his wife and children and then I broke up with him, and ultimately he came to my apartment with a gun.

I don’t know if he intended to use it, or if he would have gone through with it, but who can say for sure? I went out through a window while he was banging on the door and used a neighbor’s phone to call the police.