His Wife Leaves Him Page 11

  This is one of his favorite memories of her. He’d just got off the elevator on her floor, was going to ring her doorbell. He had a key to her apartment, which she’d given him a few weeks before—two months after they started seeing each other—but it still didn’t feel right using it if he knew she was home. She was playing the piano. Later, when he asked, she said it was the second Intermezzo for piano by Brahms. She had been taking lessons at the time from an Austrian piano teacher who’d also become a good friend of hers. The teacher played at their wedding in their apartment; the opening Preludes and Fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier, before the ceremony began, and a late Haydn sonata during the reception. The Intermezzo was one of the pieces her teacher had given her to learn. Standing behind the door, he thought It’s a beautiful piece and she’s playing it beautifully. Lying in bed now, he hums the most memorable and tender part of it. He thought he’d hold off ringing the bell till she was finished. He didn’t want to interrupt her and his listening to it. He’d wait a minute till after she stopped playing to make sure she was done. If she started again or another piece, he’d then ring the bell or quietly let himself in with the key. Probably the key. About a minute after she stopped playing, he rang the bell. She came to the door and said “Hiya, my darling,” and he said “Hi, my wonderful pianist,” and they kissed. “Have you been lurking behind my door listening to me play?” and he said “Just the last five minutes. I was entranced. I’ve never heard a piano piece played so exquisitely.” “Nonsense,” she said. “I’m only just learning it.” “What can I tell you? I was very much moved by it,” and she said “Maybe that comes from something that has nothing to do with my playing or the music. Which is not to say I don’t very much appreciate what you said.” “Do you think you could play it again for me? I’d love an interior hearing of it,” and she said “Wish I could, but I’ve played it three times already this afternoon and I’m a little tired of it and also of playing. Can we just have tea?”

  Another memory, also music. They’re sitting in one of the front rows in the orchestra of the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, but all the way to the left. He tried to get center seats but they were all sold. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is playing Respighi’s Pines of Rome. “There’s no other orchestral music I know of—maybe Firebird,” he said when they were choosing which six concerts to go to in their subscription series, “that has as great a buildup and a more powerful ending, and I’ve always wanted to hear it performed live.” “Anything you want,” she said, “except Bruckner. I’m not familiar with it, either on record or the radio, though I have liked his Fountains of Rome. During the last few minutes of the piece, when the music is building to the climax, he moves his right hand as if he’s conducting, and continues to, his motions getting increasingly more vigorous, till the end. Later, when it seems the entire audience around them is standing and applauding, he stays seated, grinning at her and crying a little, and says “Don’t mind me. And stand if you want. But what do you think? Did you like it?” and she says “No, no, I’ll sit with you, and I liked it a lot. I can see why one could get overcome by it.” “I didn’t embarrass you with my hand-waving?” and she says “Not whatsoever. You did a brilliant job of conducting. They never played better. Not a weak moment from any section in the orchestra. What I’d like to know, though, is how, in what I assume were the exact times they were supposed to come in, you got the birds to tweet.”

  Sibelius. He drives a poet and her husband to the train station after she gave a reading for his department. On the way home he turns on the Baltimore classical music station. It’s playing a piece he’s never heard before but which sounds like Sibelius. He parks, sits in the car in his carport till the piece is over so he can get the name of it. Nightride and Sunrise. Few days later he buys a CD of five Sibelius tone poems, listens to the whole CD that night and then just that one piece every night for around a week. He wants her to listen to it with him—not at dinner but in the living room where the CD player and speakers are—but she’s always busy in her study researching and writing a paper for an academic conference in a month and also things to do with her teaching. Finally, he knocks on her study door and says “May I come in?” He tells her “Really, I want you to listen to that new CD I got. Just one piece on it; it’s only fifteen minutes long. It’s so moving and evocative of the sea and sky—you’ll love it. And like the Firebird Suite and Pines of Rome, it has an incredible powerful ending.” She says “I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it. You’ve played nothing else the past week.” “But you heard it with your door shut. You’re not getting the full impact of it. Come on; you’re resisting too much. I’m going to have to insist,” and he takes her hand. “You don’t like it the first time, I’ll never ask you to listen to it again.” “All right,” she says. “Looks like I can’t stop you,” and they go into the living room. He says “Sit in the Morris chair; you’ll hear it best from there. Some wine?” and she says “Too early and I still have work to do, even after dinner.” “Fire?” and she says “Too warm and too much of a bother.” “Maybe I should shut off the lights. I know I listened to it twice that way, totally in the dark, and you really see the imagery Sibelius is trying to create,” and she says “Sweetheart, just play it.” The CD’s already in the player from last night. He turns the system on, gets to the third track, turns off all the lights in the room and sits at the end of the couch near her chair. After it’s over, Finlandia comes on. He turns on the floor lamp between them, turns off the CD player and says “So?” “It was lovely,” she says. “Sea, sky, sun rising, waves breaking…well, I don’t know if I’ll go that far, but I got, as you said, a full picture. Thanks for the experience of hearing it the way it should be heard. I love it when you get enthusiastic about something other than what you’re writing. Now, work calls,” and she gets up and kisses him. “One thing, though. Please don’t play it again right away, or when I’m home for the next few days. It could lead to my hating such a beautiful piece of music,” and she goes into her study and shuts the door.

  She says “We know we’re both very fertile—my abortions and your inseminating several girlfriends—so there’s no doubt we’re going to conceive. But the ‘how’ of it is something I’ve been looking in to. This article by a gynecologist I read says the best way is for me to get into the doggy position and for you to enter me from behind, penetrating as far as you can without hurting me when you’re about to come. And after you come, for you to stay in me like that for as long as you can till you fall out. But to try not to fall out. Even if you feel your penis has become soft, keep it in till there’s nothing you can do to stop it from leaving. That’s what the article said, and that our chances are increased in all this by about triple. Tonight’s as good a time to start as any. But to assure conception, we’ll do it every night—and we’re not supposed to do it more than once a day, to keep your sperm count high, and ideally at twenty-four hour intervals.” “Let’s do it now, then,” he says. “It’s been more than twenty-four hours,” and she says “Fine with me.” They go into the bedroom, undress and she gets on the bed. “Shouldn’t you take off your bra?” and she says “I didn’t think it necessary, but okay.” She takes off her bra and gets in the doggy position, rests her forehead on two pillows, and he gets on the bed. “Shouldn’t we play around with each other a little first?” and she says “If I know you, you’re already erect. Let’s not let any of your precious sperm dribble out.” He gets behind her and sticks his penis in. “Just remember, when you feel you’re about to come—” and he says “I know.” He comes and she says “Now stay in, as deep as you can get—you’re not hurting me.” He stays in for another minute, says “I think it’s had it and is about to flop out,” and she says “Let it do it on its own,” and a few seconds later it does. “Now I’m supposed to stay in this position for another five minutes,” and he says “Are you comfortable? I don’t know how your head could be,” and she says “I’m all right.” He’s sitting on the bed now and rubs her buttocks, then k
isses them. “You have such a sweet tush,” he says. “Sweet like ‘taste’?” and he says “Like ‘lovely, pleasing, adorable.’” “No, I don’t. Be honest. I have a large tush,” and he says “Sweet, too. I love your tush. I love everything about you. All this talk and my touching you is making me hot again. Can I try to stick it back in? There’s only a fifty-fifty chance I’ll be successful,” and she says “No, that might mess things up.” They get off the bed a few minutes later and dress. This was in New York. Their Riverside Drive apartment. When they were still using the bedroom for themselves. They were both on winter break. They were getting married in the apartment in a month. So it was around mid-December. They thought September or October would be a good time to have their first baby. Later in bed, after she turns off her light and they kiss goodnight, he says “So I guess we make love again tomorrow around seven,” and she says “That’s what the article said. As long as it’s twenty-four hours after the last time. It couldn’t have been very much fun for you, so technical and mechanical. At least you didn’t have to wait for me to put in my diaphragm and you could come anytime you wanted to.” “Not true,” he says; “I enjoyed it. I’ve always liked that position. It’s maybe the most exciting for me, although I wouldn’t have minded a little more warming up. It’s you whom it couldn’t have been much fun for,” and she says “The objective was more important than the pleasure. Once we know I’m pregnant, we’ll go back to doing it any way we want.” “And if you have your period?” and she says “If I do, and I tend to doubt that, we’ll still do it any way we want for about a week and then go back to doggy.”

  It’s three years later. Again, mid-December, Riverside Drive apartment, both on winter break. No, she’s on break; he’s on leave for a year because of a writing fellowship he got. She’ll be on leave the following fall, when they plan to have their second child: not too soon after the first one, they think, and where the two kids will still be close in age. The Hollywood bed’s now in the bedroom for Rosalind; the double bed in the living room for them. They wait till they normally go to bed, around eleven-thirty. She says “I’ll get in the same position I did to conceive Rosalind. I think it worked with her the first time we did it. You remember the article I told you about then,” and he says “Vaguely. By a dermatologist?” and she says “Always a joke. Always funny. Should we start? Don’t want to make it too late.” She gets undressed, sits on the bed and wraps part of the blanket around her. He checks to see that Rosalind’s covered, shuts the bedroom door and the door to the living room, undresses and puts a record on. “Why music?” and he says “We won’t if you don’t want. But it’s beautiful—maybe the most beautiful—and I think sexy. The Chaconne from the second partita. I probably would have put it on the first time with Rosalind, but we made love in the bedroom and the record player was here.” No, we did it in the living room, on the bed Rosalind’s now using, when it was in here. I suppose because it was early evening and we didn’t want to mess up the double bed and the other bed was wide enough for the position we wanted to do it in,” and he says “I could have sworn we did it in the bedroom on this double bed. But the music’s all right?” and she says “Fine.” She gets in the doggy position, pillows under her head, and he gets behind her. “You know what?” she says. “I think I’ll need the lubricant. I’m too dry down there,” and he says “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to deal with that goop, but I’ll get it,” and goes into the bathroom for it, squeezes some on his fingers, applies it to her, wipes his hand with a paper towel, starts the Chaconne from the beginning—“It’s only seventeen minutes long on this recording,” he says. “Gidon Kremer; a terrific performance, though we’ll probably be done by then, or maybe not.” “Don’t forget,” she says, getting in the doggy position again. “Go deep when you’re about to come, keep it in for as long as you can, and let it drop out on its own.” “Got you,” he says. He gets behind her and plays with himself a little. “What are you waiting for, sweetie?” and he says “For me to get a bit more excited. There, that should do it,” and he sticks it in. After, and she’s brushed and flossed her teeth and turned off the record player and all the lights and got back into bed, she says “So, we did everything right and the timing couldn’t be better. And if depth and length of time you stayed in me are the final keys to success, then I think it’s quite possible we have a winner,” and he says “I hope so. Meet you here tomorrow around midnight?” and she says “You see? You do remember me telling you about that article.”

  The time he blew up at her for taking the wrong entrance onto the Massachusetts Turnpike. Everything was going well till then. They got an early start. So far, not too much traffic and no tie-ups. It was the middle of June and a beautiful mild day. They had two months before they had to be back in Baltimore to await the birth of their first baby and he had almost three months till the new semester began. They were going to stop overnight at a motel in Kennebunk, first time they’d be breaking up the trip. She thought that nine to ten hours on the road in one day would be too hard on her. He liked that they wouldn’t be exhausted by the end of the trip and also wouldn’t be getting to the cottage after dark when they’d still have a lot of things to do. They were going to have dinner at the Breakwater, which a friend recommended, and breakfast, also in Kennebunkport, at the Green Heron Inn, which a recent article in the travel section of the Times said was the best place for breakfast in Maine. She’d made reservations at both places, to make sure they wouldn’t have to wait long for a table. He said he wouldn’t mind the wait at The Breakwater—“I’ll have a drink and we can watch the sunset from their porch”—but that he understood: it might tire her. Next day they’d stop at Farmer Jones’ or Brown’s shed along the Belfast road for pound-bags of cashews and roasted peanuts in their shells, and a quart of strawberries from a stand on the same road, if they were still in season. Then, about an hour later, lunch at a very simple café they liked on Main Street in Bucksport. He already knew what he’d get there—same thing he got last year: a haddock fishburger and cole slaw and onion rings. She hadn’t decided what she’d get, when he asked. “I think last year you just got clam chowder and blueberry pie a la mode from the previous summer’s blueberries and shared my onion rings.” He was sleeping in the front passenger seat when she took the wrong entrance. They’d had lunch a half-hour before at a restaurant right off 84 in Holland or Tolland, Connecticut, same one they always stopped at for lunch and gas. She had a hamburger and he a cup of lentil soup, and they shared a garden salad. And coffee, always coffee, and she asked for hot water for the herbal teabag she brought in. Before he closed his eyes to nap, he said “If I do conk out, wake me when you pull into the first rest stop on the Pike—it’ll be just two or three miles after you get on it—and I’ll take over and you can nap.” Once she got the ticket at the tollbooth, she said, she was confused as to which entrance to take—“The signs were unclear. They didn’t say New Hampshire and Boston one way and Springfield and Albany the other, as I remember them. Just ‘East’ and ‘West,’ and I wasn’t sure which direction I should go.” “You must have missed the other set of signs that said Springfield and Boston,” and she said “I could have. Maybe the tree branches were blocking them. That can happen up here. But by the time I realized that ‘West’ was the wrong direction, it was too late to correct it—I was boxed in by other cars and had to keep going.” “Let me see the toll ticket,” and she gave it to him and he said “Damnit; twenty-three miles to the next exit. That means forty-six miles to get back to where you made your mistake, plus getting off this road, paying the toll, getting a new ticket and getting back to going in the right direction. We’re talking about losing more than an hour,” and she said “it shouldn’t take that long. Speed limit’s sixty-five on the Pike.” “Believe me,” he said, “it’ll take, altogether, at least an hour. I wanted to get to the motel by four so I could get our stuff into the room and the cats fed and settled, and still have time to go to Kennebunkport for a run on the beach and maybe a snac
k. But that whole plan has been screwed up. You screwed it up. If you were so confused at the tollbooth, why didn’t you ask me which direction to take?” and she said “Because you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. You seemed tired this morning, when we had to get up so early, and also at the restaurant. That’s why I was driving.” “You were driving because we were sharing the driving. What a mistake that was,” and she said “Please don’t be mean. I don’t know how you can talk to me like this, especially when I’m carrying our child.” “Oh, don’t lay that one on me. You’re pregnant with our future daughter and I’m not supposed to get angry at you for making a dumb, costly mistake,” and she said “It was a simple mistake, resulting in the loss of an hour. Big deal. Instead of a run on the beach, which you can do tomorrow morning, you can take a shorter run around Kennebunk and maybe even have time for a snack. But why would you want a snack, other than the trail mix we brought with us, if we’re going to Kennebunkport for dinner at 6:30?” and he said “I also wanted to have time to shower and have a drink in the room while I read the newspaper. Most of that’s off,” and she said “It doesn’t have to be. You just make things shorter.” He squeezed his eyes shut. She’s right, of course, he thought, but now he doesn’t have it in him to admit it and apologize. He kept his eyes shut. “You giving me the silent treatment because of my so-called dumb mistake?” “Yes,” he said “and I don’t want to talk about it. And right now that’s all there is to talk about, so I’m going to stay silent, all right? Better for both of us, considering what could come out.” She said “I’ve never seen you be so mean to me. You’ve been harsh and rude sometimes and angry, but never like this, saying things expressly to hurt me. So selfish. And so foolish. I feel like crying but I’m driving and I don’t want my tears to affect my vision. I feel now, though, that I almost wish I wasn’t carrying your baby. Three months to term. I can’t believe you could be so insensitive and destructive. Good, let’s not talk. And when I get us off this dismal road, you take over. I want to sit in back with the cats and try to sleep so I won’t have to think how awful you’ve been.” “Fine,” he said, “I’ll take over. But again, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Wake me up when you’re approaching the next exit. I don’t want you making another wrong driving move.” “Drop dead,” she said. “Go fuck yourself. You’re disgusting to me; repulsive. Did that sink in?” and he said “Yes,” put the toll ticket in the storage space in front of her and turned to his side window and shut his eyes. He thought: How stupid could you be? Even you didn’t know how much. What do you say to make things better? Because you have to say something. He faced front and, eyes still shut, said “Sleep is stupid. We’ll be at the turnaround exit in ten minutes. And look, if it helps any, you were absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong and I apologize for what I said,” and she said “It doesn’t help one bit. You’re just saying that to get out of it. Typical of you: to quickly get past the harm you’ve done and I’m supposed to get past it too. But you’re dead to me now and will be till I don’t know when. No more talk. I mean it. Just leave me alone.” They made it to the motel in plenty of time to get set up there and still go to the Kennebunkport beach for an hour. When he suggested it, she said “Last place I want to be with you,” though at lunch she said she was thinking how nice it’d be to sit by the shore there and get some late afternoon sun and maybe walk out a ways on the long breakwater they have there. Now, she said she’s going to stay in the room and read and maybe see what’s on television. He said he’ll take a short run around here and she said “What you end up doing doesn’t interest me.” “Okay, but are you hungry for something other than trail mix, or thirsty? I can get you a juice and snack while I’m out, or make you tea here—there’s a coffeemaker, so I can heat up water in it for you,” and she went into the bathroom with a book and locked the door. He drove to Kennebunkport, thought of getting her a lobster roll, which she loved, but knew she’d refuse it; ran barefoot on the beach a little, walked out about twenty feet on the breakwater, then thought he didn’t feel like doing anything when she was so hurt and mad at him, and drove back to the motel. She didn’t want to have dinner but he convinced her to—“For the baby,” and she said “Yeah, a lot you showed you care.” At the restaurant the only words she said to him were “No,” when he said “Do you want a couple of my scallops? They’re the best I’ve ever had and they gave me plenty,” and “No” again, when he asked her if she wanted dessert; “Let’s just go.” That night she wouldn’t let him hold her in bed from behind. “Please, Martin, don’t touch me. And try to sleep as far away from me as you can. I appreciate, though, that you replaced their sheets with our cotton ones,” and he said “Anything for you,” but she didn’t say anything after that. Next morning she dressed in the bathroom with the door closed and didn’t want to go for breakfast. “I’m just not hungry.” “You got to eat,” and she said “I will later on at the rest stop. You go, if you want, but don’t bring me back anything.” “Boy, are you making me pay for my mistake,” and she said “You deserve worse, believe me, if I only knew how to be as mean as you.” She ordered a hamburger at a clam shack along the way. “Sure you don’t want a lobster roll? It’ll be your first of the summer,” and she shook her head. He had a crab roll, and a fishburger for later, since he’d skipped breakfast too. “You know,” he said, when they were sitting at a picnic table eating, “we didn’t call the Green Heron to cancel our reservation,” and she said “Interesting how concerned you are about others.” “I’m concerned about you,” and she pretended she didn’t hear him. He drove the entire way from Kennebunk to the cottage they rented every summer in Brooklin. She sat in the back seat, her head on a bed pillow, mostly sleeping or looking like she was. She let him hold her from behind two nights after they got there, but said, when he started stroking her breasts, that she wasn’t ready yet to let him make love to her and didn’t know when she would be. “Sometime, of course, but not now for sure.” They walked along the road to the point the next morning. He grabbed her hand and held it as they walked. “Did I ever tell you there used to be a sardine canning factory on the point?” and he said “No, you never did. Before you first started renting the cottage?” and she said “Long before.” He picked a wildflower and said “Do you know what this is called?” and she said “There’s a Maine wildflower book at the cottage, if you want to identify it.” “I do. I’m going to look it up and all the others I find that I don’t know. That’ll be my non-writing project this summer,” and tucked the flower carefully into his back pants pocket. “Maybe you should take two or three of them, in case the one you have falls apart in your pocket.” “Good idea.” Then he said “Will you let me kiss you? A little or big kiss?” and she said “Whichever you want. I’m okay with you now but will never forget what you did. Did you ever figure out why you acted to me like that?” and he said “No. Or I must have been temporarily crazy. But that doesn’t answer it and is too facile an excuse. I guess I was too intent on getting to the motel in time because I wanted to take advantage of the beach. No, none of that explains it. Can’t a person, for no fathomable reason, lose his head like that once?” “What frightens me is that it might not have been an isolated incident. But let’s not get into an argument over it. That’s all we need.” “My kiss?…you said you were willing,” and she let him—he thought it best to make it a quick light one—and he took her hand again and they continued their walk.