Into the Night

“I rounded my mouth, drew in my breath, clapped my hand over it, glanced over at the cigar butt, then quickly away from it, and tried to look confused. I thought I did a pretty good job. It wasn’t an easy multiple play to make, all more or less at one time.

“He’d noticed the direction my eyes had taken, and he looked there himself, and finally spotted the debris of the rendezvous.

“I’m giving it to you just as it happened, blow by blow. If I had any pride I guess I’d lie a little, try to dress it up. But I didn’t then and I don’t now, not where he’s concerned.

“He grinned at me. Not sarcastically, even. Not maliciously. Nothing like that. Grinned good-naturedly, amiably, almost the way he would have grinned at another man whom he’d caught in an embarrassing moment.

“‘Who’s your new friend?’ he said. And then, starting to unfasten his necktie, he went on into the bedroom without wasting any more time on it.

“I heard him exclaim ‘Wow!’ in there. And there was laughter in his voice.

“‘Glad you’re happy,’ he called out to me. ’Cause I’m happy too. This way we’re all happy, the whole four of us.’

“And with that he started running the shower and taking a quick shave, so he could go right back to her again.

“I just stood there rooted; wilted and ashamed. And the blush that might have helped out when I did that bit of playacting a few moments before was all over my face now when I didn’t need it anymore. I could feel myself burning up with it.

“When he came out into the bedroom again and was changing over to a new shirt and necktie, he started to whistle. It wasn’t bravado, it wasn’t making fun of me, wasn’t derision. It was completely natural. I could tell, I could tell by the sound of it. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it at all. He’d already forgotten what he’d seen, it didn’t mean anything to him, didn’t exist.

“He was whistling his own happiness.

“He shrugged into his jacket, and he walked with a lilt and a bounce over to the door, and not a word passed between us, not a look, not a care. And the door closed after him.

“My head just went over, a notch at a time, lower, and lower, and lower, like something with a run-down spring.

“I was no good as a faithful wife. And I was no good even as an unfaithful wife.”

She threw her arms wide apart, and there was indescribable pathos in her voice. “What the hell was I good for, anyway?

“He came back real late again, and got in next to me. I kept my face pressed to the pillow. He snapped on the bedside lamp for just a second, I guess to see what time it was. And that cold cigar butt was still there in the tray, where I’d put it.

“He put the light right out again, but in the dark I heard him give a chuckle, deep down in his throat.”

“I could tell when he’d been with her. A wife always can. The little signs, telltale little signs that give a man away, if you know what to look for. Tired, indolent, exhausted, all vitality spent; lying there like a log beside me, not even knowing I existed. A certain peaked expression, a hollowness in the cheeks and at the temples, that was gone again inside twenty-four hours. To come back once more inside forty-eight. Circles under the eyes, which I knew he hadn’t gotten from me.”

She smiled in retrospect. It was a sad smile, remembering a sad thing.

“What was the good of saying anything? Would that have stopped it? Has it ever stopped it yet? But I knew, I knew. Oh, how I knew. He might just as well have brought me photographs.

“First it was hit or miss, haphazard, like at the beginning of any affair. Then it went into a regular rhythm, almost like a married couple. Three times a week. Never missed. They were the married couple, and I was the outsider, living under his name.

“Why does it matter so much,” she asked Madeline rhetorically, “that your husband is sleeping with another woman? I wondered then and I wonder now. He slept with other women before you met him, and you know he did, and that doesn’t bother you. I guess because she’s taking away something that is yours now, belongs to you. Before that, he was nobody’s, it hurt nobody. And there’s so much more than just the physical that you’re being robbed of. The intimate, confidential things that are said at those times, and not at any other time. She’s the recipient of them now, not you. The plans that are made at those times, the innermost thoughts that are revealed, the love names and love words that are spoken, all of them go to her now, not to you.

“You just stand there. A door has closed between you now. He’s on one side, you’re on the other. You can’t get through. Not all the keys, not all the pounding with your hands, not all the hammers, not all the axes, can make it open or break it open.

“So what do you do? I’ll tell you what you do. You live with it. Live with it as best you can. A few of us do away with ourselves. Not most of us, though. That’s for high-strung young girls that are just beginning the game, have no inner resources yet to fall back on.