The Loving Couple Page 2

  Together they deplored reactionaries, Hollywood and Miami, bright colors, communism and fascism, juke boxes, slums, child labor, strong labor unions, vulgarity, social climbers, snobs, comic books, tabloids, the Reader's Digest, Life and the Book-of-the-Month Club—although they solemnly agreed that anything that instilled the reading habit among those less fortunately endowed couldn't be entirely bad. You could hardly wonder that everybody loved the Martins.

  "Well, you're out bright and early," Whitney said, his tortoise shell glasses and splendid white teeth sparkling in the sunlight. Whitney's statement, while cordial, also managed to convey surprise, criticism and hope for reform. Both the Martins and the Marshalls had always felt—and said as much—that he and his wife did not enter enough into the abundant life which Riveredge provided. They had never, the Martins and the Marshall s thought, taken full advantage of the glories of the countryside, the Autumn colors, gardening, the Discussions of Foreign Affairs, the Sherry-and-Good-Conversation Parties so readily available to people who cared.

  "I—I've got to go into town. I—there's some work I have to do." John felt himself blushing.

  "Not coming over to watch the Notre Dame-Navy game this afternoon?" Whitney persisted. Although the Martins disapproved of television, they did turn it on to witness world events, major sporting attractions, discussion panels and Shakespeare. Most of the time, however, their set sat dark and deep within the bowels of their Sheraton breakfront while its neighboring high fidelity apparatus boomed Bach's Brandenburg Concerti much too loudly for cultivated conversation or comfort.

  "Afraid I can't," he said, "you see, there's this work I have to . . ."

  "You haven't forgotten that this is the Marshalls' anniversary?" Beth Martin said, drawing the good polo coat over her maternity blue jeans. The Martins made a big thing of blue jeans. They almost always wore them at Riveredge and said exhibitionistically that they cost less than two dollars, although Whit's socks cost ten dollars a pair.

  "Oh, no indeed not," he said, blushing again. Indeed he had quite forgotten. He'd never even cared whether the Marshalls were married or not.

  "Then, of course we'll be seeing you tonight." Beth made the statement in her usual quiet, assured ladylike way. All of her statements were delivered as he imagined the young Queen Victoria's pronouncements had been delivered. They put your back up.

  "Uh—well, I—that is, if I finish this . . ."

  "Daddy, what's that bird?" Deborah cried, showing a glittering mouthful of straightening bands.

  "Debby, dear, don't interrupt," Beth said with the calm air of firm but affectionate chastisement advised by her child psychologist.

  Whitney, however, was ardent about birds. "Why, Debby darling, surely you recognize that old friend. What bird is it that goes pee-weet, pee-weet? Now you . . ."

  "Whit, dear," Beth said a bit grimly, "I wish that when I'm trying to teach the children common courtesy, you wouldn't undermine . . ."

  "Well, so long," he said and almost ran from the Martins.

  He hurried on, grateful to be alone, anxious to be away. This fatuous encounter with the fatuous Martins would be just the first of a long, long series of embarrassing meetings—meetings with people he even cared about. At first they would ask genially after his wife, then they would be shocked to hear that the two of them had split up. The news would get around quickly—"Have you heard . . . Can you imagine . . . Of all the people in the world to have a thing like this happen . . . Why, they were always called the Loving Couple . . . If you can't believe in a marriage like that, what can you believe in?" Then there would be even more embarrassing meetings; meetings when any mention of Mary would be as elaborately avoided as the mention of a social disease. People would undoubtedly take sides. There would also be a series of dinner invitations for him to meet a series of unattached, females each described by his hostess as "a perfectly grand girl."

  Hurrying along the gravel drive, he thought of the few times in more than five years of marriage when he had yearned briefly to be a bachelor once again; like the time he met that Italian actress at one of Lisa Randall's cocktail parties or when two men he knew at the Bacchus Club asked him to chuck everything and spend a year sailing around the world on a big sloop. Now that he was, for all intents and purposes, a bachelor once again, he felt that he never had been single.

  Aloud, he totaled up his assets; "White, American, male. Thirty-three years old. Five feet, eleven and a half inches—practically six feet. Tonsils out, appendix in. College graduate, honorable discharge from the Army. Full head of hair, high arches, sound teeth, 20-20 vision. Said to be quite good looking. Gainfully employed as advertising manager of a major watch company. Salary in five figures. Christ, I'm practically a catch," He supposed he ought to do something fairly drastic to celebrate the severance of his marriage—set off on a binge, go to a whore house, seduce his secretary, get tattooed—but somehow he didn't feel like much of anything but escape.

  A Buick station wagon filled with children passed him with a maximum of honking and waving. The Kennedys, he believed—distant cousins or close friends of the Martins. Since most of the people in Riveredge looked exactly alike to him, he could never quite be certain.

  He thrust his hand into the jacket pocket of his good English suit and immediately withdrew it with a howl of pain. His hand had been badly cut and severely burned just three hours ago. That; in fact, had set off their quarrel—quarrel, hell; World War III!

  One of those damned birds indigenous to Riveredge had awakened him on the tick of seven. He'd got out of bed with a God awful headache and a hangover. (It seemed to him, that they drank more out in the pure open spaces than they had in New York. At least the liquor bills and hangovers were about double.) He had felt just like hell but, seeing her still sound asleep in the big double bed, he had been ostentatiously considerate about not making any noise. He had put on his robe and slippers with the softest whisper of silk. He had tiptoed cautiously into the bathroom and had engineered the opening and closing of the medicine chest, the brushing of teeth and flushing of the toilet with an almost inhuman silence. He had even tried to still the Alka-Seltzer as it hissed and bubbled in his tremulous hand. All that for her!

  And through it all he had looked forward to just one thing—that first cup of black coffee. Heavenly Rest was an indifferent maid, a negligent cleaner, an inventive transmitter of telephone messages, an abominable cook and a religious fanatic. But one thing Heavenly Rest could do was brew ambrosial coffee. Quivering with anticipation, he had crept unsteadily down the Regency staircase to Heavenly Rest and her strong black coffee. The house was silent.

  The sun, pouring into the formal, white living room was blinding. The shafts of light darting from the minors, the crystal vases, the pendants and spikes of the Regency chandelier had assaulted his eyeballs mercilessly. Blindly, he had groped his way into the dim little den. Nothing had been touched there since late last night. The room had reeked acridly of snubbed out cigarettes. The ashtrays had been full to overflowing. Two glasses, gummy with fingerprints, and an empty Scotch bottle had borne testimony to a depressing evening in front of the television set.

  Yes, last night he had watched Pulse Beat, the prestige show for which he was solely responsible. And it had been a perfect little stinker. The orchestra had flatted. The leading man not only blew his lines twice, but his fly had remained wide open after his quick change in the last scene. The star, an untalented grue from Hollywood, had appeared to be under the influence of either drugs or alcohol—possibly both. The commercials had been unendurable. And the show had run thirty seconds overtime—a cardinal sin considering that Pulse Beat was sponsored by one of the world's leading clockmakers. The whole show had looked more like an Elks' Frolic than a prestige program with a weekly budget of fifty G's.

  The only thing on the whole show that hadn't been downright third rate had been the president's wife's daughter, a torrid brunette from Bennington whose name really was Besame Bes-samer. Miss B
essamer had been shot onto the program through the family entrance and almost over his dead body. But her performance, while not likely to win a Peabody Award, had at least been adequate, unlike the rest of the show.

  Well, he'd been so depressed by Pulse Beat, that he'd simply sat morosely in front of the set drinking and drinking until after the Late Late Show. All the other programs had stunk, too, but none as highly as his.

  Looking around the den that morning he had shuddered. Glasses, ashes, his silver tennis cups tarnished. Heavenly Rest was slatternly beyond belief. Right after he had had some coffee, he'd speak to her about it. But the dining room had been empty and so had the kitchen. Then it had dawned on him that Heavenly Rest had been given the weekend off to attend a big Mother Immaculate Peace outing. Grimly he had set about making his own coffee. When they had lived in New York they had been the happy owners of a plain granite coffee pot retailing at forty cents, and producing eight cups of perfect coffee per time. Even a child could work it.

  But in Riveredge no such pot remained. It had been replaced by a complex structure made up of electric hot plates, glowing coils, pyrex hour glasses, filter papers and pull-chains. There was a kind of instrument panel involving electric switches, two regulators, a red light, a yellow light, a green light, an automatic timer and a warning bell. He had had the feeling that postgraduate work at M.I.T. was essential before even turning on such a contraption. He had very little mechanical aptitude and even less confidence. Still, he was barely human without his morning coffee.

  Gamely he had plugged in the infernal machine, poured water and coffee into the places he felt they should go and stood back to watch. There had been a humming and whirring. The green light had flashed. A bell had tinkled. The timer had begun clicking. He had stood back to admire his handiwork as the electric coil turned from gray to mauve to scarlet. So far so good. Then he had recalled something about a watched pot never boiling and had gone virtuously into the den to tidy up the ruins surrounding the television set.

  He hadn't really meant to do quite so thorough a job on the silver trophies, but one brightened cup had led to another. The last cup had just been placed next to its radiant neighbor when he had become conscious of a strong odor. From the kitchen a bell had rang furiously. He had sniffed the air like an old bloodhound, had said "Oh oh," had grabbed up the bottle and glasses and raced out to the kitchen.

  And he had arrived just in time. The bell had pealed incessantly. The red light had flashed on, off, on, off—faster and faster. The glass coffee urn had hopped and jumped hysterically on the hot plate. Inside, an insidious brew, the color and consistency of lava, had bubbled and spat furiously.

  "Jesus," he had breathed and advanced cautiously toward the mechanism. At just the moment he had reached out a tentative hand to shut off the switch, the whole thing had blown up. Like a porcupine, it had shot shafts of glass across the kitchen. A tidal wave of scalding black coffee had burst over him. He had howled with surprise and anger and pain. "Goddamned, son-of-a-bitch!" His right arm had shot out to dash the whole contraption to the kitchen floor. He had managed to do that, all right, but not without impaling his hand on a jagged shard of glass.

  In a blind fury he had crashed out of the kitchen. Burned and bleeding, he had gone Godding and damning up the stairs to where Mary—of all the lazy, good-for-nothing parasites ever born—lay sleeping. Sleeping, if you please!

  The scalding coffee had seeped through his dressing gown and his pajamas and had begun trickling painfully down his chest, his stomach, his groin and down the insides of his thighs. Good God, he could have been rendered sterile! Blood flowed steadily from his right hand. But the pain was nothing to the wild fury he felt at seeing her there asleep, as soft and tawny as a leopard kitten.

  "What have you done with the coffee pot?" he had shouted.

  "Glmph, gliph?" she had muttered, shaking her tousled curls and burying her head under the pillow.

  He had grabbed the pillow and flung it across the room. "Answer me! Where's the coffee pot?"

  "In kitchen," she had groaned.

  "Not that Goddamned cyclotron. My coffee pot. The one we had in New York."

  "Gave to cleaning woman," she had moaned and pulled the sheet above her head.

  "Gave it away? That coffee pot was priceless!"

  "Oh, don't be stupid," she had gasped.

  Well that had really set him off. "Stupid?" he had howled. "Stupid, hell, if you ever did anything around here except loaf and run up bills, I wouldn't have to be up making coffee!"

  She had raised her head and squinted first at the bedside clock and then at him. "Honestly, darling, you're acting like a naughty child and at seven o'clock on a Saturday morning—really!"

  "Yes, really! Cut and scalded and damned near killed by that lousy steam calliope down in the kitchen. Just look at my Goddamned hand!" He thrust his bleeding hand out over her, as his blood poured down onto the new satin comforter.

  She had stared, horror-stricken. But he had felt that her concern was for the comforter and not for him. "Good!" she shouted. "If you don't know how to run a simple gadget that even a half-witted religious fanatic like Heavenly Rest can work, you deserve it!" (True, she had never been at her best before coffee, either.)

  Well, if she'd thought he was going to take that lying down, she had another think coming. He had opened up on her rotten-spoiled childhood in Santa Barbara with that nitwit of a mother. That had routed her out of the hay. She had got right up and poked a finger painfully into his hot, wet chest. "Just you keep a civil tongue in your head!" she had yelled. "And another thing. . . !"

  Well, that other thing had led to still another thing and that had brought to mind two or three further failings. They had aired their grievances loudly and extravagantly. He had been so mad that he ignored the bleeding and the scalding. They had shouted at one another for a full hour before his big opening came. Then she had said something that left her wide open and his reply—oh, but didn't he wish he could remember just how he had phrased it now—had got her right between the eyes. She had been so stunned that she just stood there in her nightgown, her mouth hanging open. Well, he always knew a good exit line. He had marched into the bathroom, locking the door behind him with a click of finality.

  There he had peeled off his pajama coat. His whole chest had been red, but he had felt that skin grafting wouldn't be necessary. By now he had developed a sort of controlled fury. He had, hung up his pajama coat with elaborate care. Then he had begun lathering his face with the deliberate concentration of a pastry chef decorating a wedding cake.

  It had been quiet in the bathroom—an unhealthy silence broken only by the trickle of the hot water into the basin. Then the storm had broken. She had been mustering her forces on the other side of the door and suddenly the barrage began.

  I’ll just ignore her, he had thought, scrutinizing his soapy face in the mirror. No matter what she says, I won't answer. She had begun raving. He had begun shaving.

  He had tried not to listen, to concentrate on his shaving. Let the hurricane blow herself out, he had thought. Conscientiously he had drawn the razor down over his jaw, trying not to hear her words, grimly concentrating on his reflection and the soft, rasping noise of the razor against his beard. It had worked pretty well, for a while, but her epithets had begun coming faster, louder and with a more deadly aim through the locked door.

  Then she had said something that really made his blood stop running. He had caught just a glimpse of his face reflected in the mirror—it had gone so white with fury that it matched the lather. He dropped his razor with a clatter and had pulled open the bathroom door with a force that had nearly ripped off its hinges. Towering above her he had bellowed down into her face. He had been so angry that the torrent of words—the gist of which had been "Silence"—tumbled out in one great incoherent roar. The force alone had stunned her into momentary silence. It had stunned him, too. Then he had slammed the door once more and resumed his shaving, but his hand had
shaken so that his face and throat were now a mass of nicks. She had regained her breath, picked up the continuity and went right on screaming, but he had been unable to listen. That one thing she had said about him had been too much. Of all the dirty, vile, bitchy, female accusations! And not a vestige of truth in it, either. That was what had been so grossly, villainously unfair. Nothing she could have said could ever erase those words.

  He had doused his face in cold water and dabbed himself with a styptic pencil to stem the flow of blood. And then, while she had vilified him through the door, he put a Band-aid awkwardly on his wounded hand, stepped out of his pajama bottoms, hung them up with great care, opened the bathroom door and stalked silent, naked and haughty into their bedroom.

  She had gone right on screaming at him, but by now it had become perfectly obvious to him that he could never again live beneath the same roof, speak to her, even look at her.

  In majestic silence, he had dressed—a little too carefully. With each garment he had grown more aloof, more dignified. By the time he had got into his London suit—with buttons on the cuffs that really undid—he had begun almost to enjoy his haughty calm.

  "Where are you going?" she had shouted.

  "Out," he had said with a frosty grandeur. What a splendid monosyllable that had been; an epigram almost—written by Oscar Wilde, delivered by Noel Coward, directed by Max Reinhardt, produced by J. Arthur Rank. He had been so pleased with his rendition of that deathless line that he had allowed himself a certain cavalier jauntiness as he clapped his new homburg onto his head. Then he had caught just the briefest glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. He'd put the damned hat on backward! All control had left him. He had torn the hat off his head and dashed it to the floor—and it had bounced; twice. "I'm not coming back! I'm not coming back to you or this goddamned house or this stinking little suburb, ever!" He said it—roared it—with such force that it had nearly torn his throat out.