The War of the Roses

'And what's God's, God's. You bastard.' 'I'm not kidding about the food, Barbara. I'm not counting the water.' 'The water?'

'Water costs,' he mumbled, but Ann could tell that his heart wasn't in the argument on that issue. 'All I'm asking for is a reasonable estimate.'

'You toss around that word "reasonable" as if it were from the beatitudes.'

'Now you're getting biblical. Are you going "born again"?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact. You forced it on me.'

'Well, you're not rid of me yet.'

The matter, as Ann soon discovered, was resolved by an injunction. Barbara had charged harassment and violation of their maintenance agreement. Goldstein had gone to court and won, and an injunction forced Barbara to keep her business expenses separate.

'You've only run up our legal bills,' Oliver told her in still another confrontation.

'I don't care.'

'You can't just run to the court every time we have a dispute. It's bad enough we have to wait such a long time to resolve the main matter. But what's the point of these interim decisions?'

'I'm not going to let you harass me, that's all.'

'I'm not harassing you.'

For a long time after that they did not speak at all, and things appeared to settle down into an armed truce. Oliver's routine was unvarying, and Ann noted that he had greatly curtailed his out-of-town travel, as if leaving the house meant giving Barbara a special advantage.

He would come home around midnight. After dinner at a restaurant he would go to the movies. Any movie. He carried around with him programs offered by the various repertory film theaters. He had shown them to her with all the dates checked off so that his secretary could record them in his calendar. For breakfast his secretary provided coffee and a doughnut, and a business lunch took care of his midday meal.

He had explained the routine to Ann on those evenings when, with Barbara out on a catering job, she mustered the courage to accost him on his way up to his room. For some reason, she had noted, he was nervous in her presence, a condition that she greeted with even greater curiosity.

'It's no life, Ann,' he told her one evening as they stood in the foyer. 'But the movies are a fantastic escape. Something about the darkened theater and all those strangers sitting beside you. Not like television. It's a damned lonely life.'

In the privacy of her thoughts, she could be outrageously blatant in her efforts to seduce him, and, more than once, these fantasies had become quite aggressive. But, near him, she could not bring herself to make a single untoward move, although she watched him carefully for any sign of interest. It was a struggle to put those thoughts aside. Besides, she dared not hope. Her fear of rejection was gnawing at her, and its actuality might have sent her skulking into the street, never to return.

At times even their armed truce erupted into near-violent confrontations. Once, when Ann was out, he had broken into their old room to get a bottle of Maalox he had left on the shelf of their once jointly shared medicine chest.

The household was awakened by Barbara's frantic pounding on his door. The fury of her attack frightened the children and they huddled beside Ann on the third-floor landing, like spectators at a bullfight.

'You broke into my room, you bastard,' she had screamed. She had been supervising a late buffet and had discovered the break-in when she returned. He had opened the door and confronted her, bleary-eyed with sleep.

'I needed a damned Maalox. I had a hiatus-hernia attack.'

'You have no right to break into my room.'

'All I took was the damned Maalox. It was too late -'

'There are all-night drugstores.'

'I needed it immediately. I had no choice. I had run out. Really, Barbara, I was in pain.'

'You had absolutely no right. That was violation of our agreement. A legal violation.'

'Bullshit.'

'Breaking and entering. I have every intention of calling the police.'

'There's the damned phone.' He had pointed to the phone in his room and in her anger she stormed in and picked it up, dialing 911.

'I would like to report a robbery,' she said. 'Barbara Rose, sixty-eight Kalorama Circle.' There was a long pause. 'I'm not certain what else was stolen. But I do know that 'a bottle of Maalox was taken. My husband broke into my bedroom. No. He did not rape me.' She took the phone away from her ear and looked into its mouthpiece. 'God damn it. We pay you to protect people. Not to ask silly questions.' She banged the phone in its cradle. He had rarely seen her so agitated and he was amused.

'Feel better?' Oliver had asked smugly. He leaned against the doorjamb, smiling.

'You had no right,' she sputtered, storming across the corridor, slamming the door behind her.

'Don't talk to me about rights,' he called to her through the door.

'This house has become a loony bin,' Eve had whispered.

'It's like a television show,' Josh said. 'I wonder how it's going to come out.'