The Love Of A Good Woman

That did not seem the sort of thing that he would say. Then she realized he was quoting-maybe ironically-from the play. It was what Orphée says to Eurydice within a few moments of their first meeting in the station buffet.

So her life was falling forwards; she was becoming one of those people who ran away. A woman who shockingly and incomprehensibly gave everything up. For love, observers would say wryly. Meaning, for sex. None of this would happen if it wasn’t for sex.

And yet what’s the great difference there? It’s not such a variable procedure, in spite of what you’re told. Skins, motions, contact, results. Pauline isn’t a woman from whom it’s difficult to get results. Brian got them. Probably anybody would, who wasn’t wildly inept or morally disgusting.

But nothing’s the same, really. With Brian-especially with Brian, to whom she has dedicated a selfish sort of goodwill, with whom she’s lived in married complicity-there can never be this stripping away, the inevitable flight, the feelings she doesn’t have to strive for but only to give in to like breathing or dying. That she believes can only come when the skin is on Jeffrey, the motions made by Jeffrey, and the weight that bears down on her has Jeffrey’s heart in it, also his habits, thoughts, peculiarities, his ambition and loneliness (that for all she knows may have mostly to do with his youth).

For all she knows. There’s a lot she doesn’t know. She hardly knows anything about what he likes to eat or what music he likes to listen to or what role his mother plays in his life (no doubt a mysterious but important one, like the role of Brian’s parents). One thing she’s pretty sure of-whatever preferences or prohibitions he has will be definite.

She slides out from under Jeffrey’s hand and from under the top sheet which has a harsh smell of bleach, she slips down to the floor where the bedspread is lying and wraps herself quickly in that rag of greenish-yellow chenille. She doesn’t want him to open his eyes and see her from behind and note the droop of her buttocks. He’s seen her naked before, but generally in a more forgiving moment.

She rinses her mouth and washes herself, using the bar of soap that is about the size of two thin squares of chocolate and firm as stone. She’s hard-used between the legs, swollen and stinking. Urinating takes an effort, and it seems she’s constipated. Last night when they went out and got hamburgers she found she could not eat. Presumably she’ll learn to do all these things again, they’ll resume their natural importance in her life. At the moment it’s as if she can’t quite spare the attention.

She has some money in her purse. She has to go out and buy a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo. Also vaginal jelly. Last night they used condoms the first two times but nothing the third time.

She didn’t bring her watch and Jeffrey doesn’t wear one. There’s no clock in the room, of course. She thinks it’s early- there’s still an early look to the light in spite of the heat. The stores probably won’t be open, but there’ll be someplace where she can get coffee.

Jeffrey has turned onto his other side. She must have wakened him, just for a moment.

They’ll have a bedroom. A kitchen, an address. He’ll go to work. She’ll go to the Laundromat. Maybe she’ll go to work too. Selling things, waiting on tables, tutoring students. She knows French and Latin-do they teach French and Latin in American high schools? Can you get a job if you’re not an American? Jeffrey isn’t.

She leaves him the key. She’ll have to wake him to get back in. There’s nothing to write a note with, or on.

It is early. The motel is on the highway at the north end of town, beside the bridge. There’s no traffic yet. She scuffs along under the cottonwood trees for quite a while before a vehicle of any kind rumbles over the bridge-though the traffic on it shook their bed regularly late into the night.

Something is coming now. A truck. But not just a truck- there’s a large bleak fact coming at her. And it has not arrived out of nowhere-it’s been waiting, cruelly nudging at her ever since she woke up, or even all night.

Caitlin and Mara.

Last night on the phone, after speaking in such a flat and controlled and almost agreeable voice-as if he prided himself on not being shocked, not objecting or pleading-Brian cracked open. He said with contempt and fury and no concern for whoever might hear him, “Well then-what about the kids?”

The receiver began to shake against Pauline’s ear.

She said, “We’ll talk-” but he did not seem to hear her.

“The children,” he said, in this same shivering and vindictive voice. Changing the word “kids” to “children” was like slamming a board down on her-a heavy, formal, righteous threat.

“The children stay,” Brian said. “Pauline. Did you hear me?”

“No,” said Pauline. “Yes. I heard you but-”

“All right. You heard me. Remember. The children stay.”

It was all he could do. To make her see what she was doing, what she was ending, and to punish her if she did so. Nobody would blame him. There might be finagling, there might be bargaining, there would certainly be humbling of herself, but there it was like a round cold stone in her gullet, like a ca

Their car-hers and Brian’s-was still sitting in the motel parking lot. Brian would have to ask his father or his mother to drive him up here today to get it. She had the keys in her purse. There were spare keys-he would surely bring them. She unlocked the car door and threw her keys on the seat and locked the door on the inside and shut it.

Now she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t get into the car and drive back and say that she’d been insane. If she did that he would forgive her, but he’d never get over it and neither would she. They’d go on, though, as people did.

She walked out of the parking lot, she walked along the sidewalk, into town.

The weight of Mara on her hip, yesterday. The sight of Caitlin’s footprints on the floor.

Paw. Paw.

She doesn’t need the keys to get back to them, she doesn’t need the car. She could beg a ride on the highway. Give in, give in, get back to them any way at all, how can she not do that?

A sack over her head.

A fluid choice, the choice of fantasy, is poured out on the ground and instantly hardens; it has taken its undeniable shape.

This is acute pain. It will become chronic. Chronic means that it will be permanent but perhaps not constant. It may also mean that you won’t die of it. You won’t get free of it, but you won’t die of it. You won’t feel it every minute, but you won’t spend many days without it. And you’ll learn some tricks to dull it or banish it, trying not to end up destroying what you incurred this pain to get. It isn’t his fault. He’s still an i

And still, what pain. To carry along and get used to until it’s only the past she’s grieving for and not any possible present.

Her children have grown up. They don’t hate her. For going away or staying away. They don’t forgive her, either. Perhaps they wouldn’t have forgiven her anyway, but it would have been for something different.

Caitlin remembers a little about the summer at the lodge, Mara nothing. One day Caitlin mentions it to Pauline, calling it “that place Grandma and Grandpa stayed at.”

“The place we were at when you went away,” she says. “Only we didn’t know till later you went away with Orphée.”