Beth said, “I just want you to say it’s okay.”
With a weary sigh he loosened his embrace in order to look at her. “Say what’s okay?”
“If I model with Vega a couple of days a week.”
His eyes widened then as he heard and understood, and he turned away from her, picking up his pajamas and carrying them in front of him. His unwanted love was too obvious and it embarrassed him. “Vega Purvis is a Class-A bitch,” he said.
Beth’s cheeks went hot with indignation. She whipped her nightie out of the closet and slipped it over her simmering head. If she threw her anger in his face now he would never agree to it. But to call Vega a bitch, when he hardly even knew her!
“I think she’s delightful,” she said haughtily, when the covering of the nightie gave her some pretense to dignity.
“Sure. Delightful. What in hell do you want to learn modeling for? From that winesop?” He climbed under the covers and lighted a cigarette, and there was a flood of misery in him at the sight of her drawn up stiff and chilly in her resentment.
“You say modeling like you meant whoring!” she flashed.
“Well, what does it mean?” he asked with elaborate courtesy. “You tell me.”
“I’d probably go down there once or twice a week,” she said, suddenly softening in an effort to bring him around. “It would be just for fun, not for money. I’d never model professionally. But it would be something to get me out of the house, something really interesting for a change. Not that goddamn interminable bowling Jean dotes on.”
“I can’t see that walking around with a book on your head is so damn much more interesting than shoving a ball down an alley.”
Her fleeting softness vanished. “I knew you’d be this way!” she cried. “Just because I want something, you don’t want it! When in doubt, say no. That’s your motto.” She continued to berate him for a moment until it became clear that he wasn’t listening. He was staring past her, beyond her, at nothing, thinking. And his eyes were dark and heavy. He held his cigarette in one hand, so close to his chest that she had a momentary fear the hair would catch fire and scorch him.
“Charlie?” she said, after a moment’s silence.
“Beth, tell me something,” he said seriously, and his eyes, still aimed at her, focused on her once again. “I want you explain to me what is the matter with our marriage.”
For a long minute neither of them spoke. And then Beth sat down on the bed, at his feet, biting her lower lip. “You explain it to me,” she said.
“I’ll gladly tell you all I know,” he said. “I know we have two lovely children. I know we have a pleasant house to live in, even if it is small. I know I love you.” There was a significant pause, in which she should have said, Of course I love you too. But she didn’t. He sighed. “I know we should be happy. There isn’t anything specific you can put your finger on that’s out-and-out wrong with us. So why do we argue all the time? Why, when we’re still together, we still have each other, and things are going along the right way—why aren’t we happy, Beth? Because we’re not. We sure as hell are not.”
Beth couldn’t look at him, at his frowning face. “If you’d pick up after yourself once in a while,” she said. “if you’d agree, just once, to let me do something I really want to do.” The spite in her voice piqued him.
“Oh! Now I understand. This would be a gloriously happy household if it weren’t for me, is that it? If the husband and father would just get the hell out, the family would be perfect. Right?”
“Cut the sarcasm, Charlie,” she said. She tried to sound firm but her chin trembled.
“I get it from you, dear. It’s catching,” he said. “Besides, I’m not convinced that you’ll swoon happily in my arms if I pick up my socks in the morning.”
She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “All right, Charlie, I’m at fault too. Is that what you want me to say? I fly off the handle, I’m cross with the kids. I—I—”
“You kick me out of bed three or four times a week.”
She turned a blazing face to him. “Charlie, goddamn it, I’m your wife. But that doesn’t mean that any time you feel like having me, I feel like being had. Three or four times a week is too much!”
“It didn’t used to be,” he said, his voice as soft as hers was loud. “What happened?”
Tears started to her eyes for the second time that evening and she turned away. “Nothing,” she exclaimed.
“Something must have happened, Beth. You just don’t want it anymore. Ever. You give in now and then to shut me up—not because you really want me.”
She covered her face with both hands and wept quickly with fear and confusion. “I don’t know what happened,” she admitted finally.
He leaned toward her, hating to hurt her. “Beth, I’d do anything for you,” he said earnestly. “I’d let you go model in Timbuktu if that would make you happy. But it won’t. All these things you think you want so badly—did you ever stop to examine them? What are they? So many escapes. You’re running away. The one thing you can’t stand, you can’t bear to face or live with or understand, is your relationship with me. Your home. Your kids. But mostly me. Are you sorry we got married, Beth? Tell the truth?”
There was a terrible, painful pause. It took all of her courage to admit, “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t know.”
He shut his eyes for a moment, as if to recover a little.
“Do you love me, then?”
She swallowed. “Yes,” she said. Her courage would not stretch so far as to let her hedge on that one. “Do you love the kids?”
She caught her breath and bit her lip. I will be truthful, I’ll be as truthful as I can, she told herself sharply.
“Do you love the kids, honey?” he prompted her.
“When they’re not around,” she blurted, and gave an awful sob, covering her wicked mouth with one hand. When she could talk a little she said, “I love them, I love them terribly, but I just can’t stand them. Does that make any sense?”
He lay back on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. The sight of Beth tore his heart. “Not to me, it doesn’t,” he said. And seeing her despair, he added, “But at least it’s the truth, Beth, Thank you for that much, anyway.” There was no sarcasm in his voice now.
Beth got up and walked back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I know I’m not the world’s greatest mother, Charlie. Far from it.” She wiped her eyes impatiently. “Or the best wife. I guess I hound you all the time because I’m ashamed of my own behavior. At least that’s part of it. You’re no dreamboat yourself sometimes.” She turned to look at him and he nodded without answering.
“The trouble is, I just don’t know what I would be good at,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know what I want to do. I wish I could want something, good and hard, and it would be the right thing. Sometimes I wish somebody would tell me what I want. Maybe my ideas about traveling and the rest of it are just daydreams. Escape, or whatever you said. But Charlie, that’s not criminal. I need an escape. I really do.” She felt a note of semi-hysteria pulling her voice higher and higher and she stopped talking for a minute to catch her breath.
“I wanted to go to Mexico last year. You said no. I want to get that MG we saw in Monrovia. You said no. I have a couple of cocktails by myself in the afternoon and you blow your top. You think I’m headed for Skid Row. I ask to go home and visit Uncle John. No again.”
“The last time you visited Uncle John,” Charlie pointed out with heat,