The War of the Roses

He had spent long hours locked in this room. She had been curious about what he did there, and once she had listened at the door. There was no television set. Few books. It struck her as more of an animal's lair than a man's room. Among the odors she picked out was Benny's doggy smell, noting that he had somehow followed them into the room and now lay sprawled on an Art Deco rug beside the bed. Its beige background was stained, dirty.

She went to the bathroom, complete with bidet, which she used, mirrored walls, marble floors, and gold-plated plumbing fixtures. This room, too, was a mess. .

'I'm not much of a housekeeper,' he said when Ann came out. 'I haven't had much practice. My generation depended too much on women.'

'What about the maid?'

'I won't even let her in here. Barbara's ally.' He looked at her strangely. 'You think I'm paranoid?'

The question seemed aggressive and she ignored it, sitting on the high bed.

'So what are you going to do with your life, Ann?' he asked suddenly, as if dismissing his own gloomy thoughts.

'Jefferson is my life for the present,' she mumbled. I'd like to be included m yours, she told him silently.

He looked at her kindly and touched her bare shoulder.

'You're a gift, Ann. A gift to the children. A special gift to me.'

Barbara had offered gratitude as well and it pained her now. She felt a sense of her inferiority, but dared not ask him for comparisons.

'I'm not just giving, Oliver. I'm taking, also.'

He stopped caressing her. 'Now you sound like her.'

She felt a wave of panic. She had acquired a sense of independence and a posture of equality. It did not seem queer to voice her affection in those terms. She saw the gap now. He was of a different generation, with a different way of looking at women. So that's it, she decided, feeling odd waves of insight, as well as a sense of alliance with Barbara.

'Nobody wants to be dependent anymore,' he said gloomily. 'Whatever happened to man the hunter, man the protector?'

'Some people just don't accept the idea of males being lord and master anymore.'

'I wasn't, really. We were a team. I was supportive of all her attempts at independence. How could I have known that the bitch was lying to me all those years? It was an act.' His features became rigid. 'Maybe this is an act as well.' He pouted.

'It's no act,' she said, determined to overlook his anger.

'I'm a little wary of the sincerity of women.' He sighed.

'Now you're generalizing,' she replied sensibly, scolding} yet trying to keep an air of lightness between them.

'Maybe so,' he agreed. 'I haven't known too many women. And the one woman I thought I knew I didn't know at all. That's what bugs me the most, the imprecision of my understanding of her, of what she was feeling and thinking all those years.' He looked at Ann, then gave a sigh of resignation. 'I don't think I'll ever again be able to believe what a woman tells me, or shows me.'

'I can understand that,' Ann said. 'We're a clandestine gender. Lots of dirty little secrets that we've been conditioned to suppress.'

'So have men,' he replied quickly.

'Well, then, now that we understand each other . ..' She reached out to him and drew him to her. They made love slowly, tenderly, with less greed and transience than before. This time he did not preempt the act. Finally, he rolled over and lay beside her, their fingers locked together. Turning toward him, she watched his eyelids flutter.

'There is one thing,' she whispered. 'Why the house? Why? Considering that the family has already been split apart. It's only a thing. And all the possessions inside it are things. Why all the pain over the house?'

His eyelids fluttered open.

'A thing? You don't understand. It's the whole world. Why should I let her take the whole world with her?'

'But it's also part of her world,' Ann said gently.

'It can't be shared any longer. Not like this.'

'Then why don't you simply sell it and split the value?'

'I'm willing to give her half the value. I paid for it. My brains. My sweat. Christ'

He was frowning and she had the impression he was talking by rote, like an actor going over his lines in rehearsal. Suddenly he stopped talking and was staring at something on top of the bed canopy.

'What is it, Oliver?' she asked. He moved leisurely from the bed and crossed the room. Slowly, with quiet deliberation, he moved a chair to a corner of the room and stood on it. He was naked and the act seemed odd and incongruous. She lifted herself on one elbow to observe him, but before she could speak he shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Stretching, he peered over the canopy's side, then stepped down again. He took a robe from the closet.