Harriet Daimler - Darling

" I just want to be near Christopher."

" You liar. Is near ever enough? We need to swallow them, to chew them into delicate chunks and swallow them. A foot apart is too terrible for us. I may never do it," Gloria continued, " but at least I know that the way to love a man is to let him be separate. To let him live, out there, in his private threatening world. To let him have a thought not manufactured in our own want- mad brains. I don' t know if I can ever do it," Gloria' s voice was a wail, " but that' s the way, I' m sure."

Laura was upset. " If Christopher loved me, if I was sure he loved me, I' d let him be separate."

" My God," repeated Gloria, " how hopeless. The more closed in we are, the more skillful we are at picking the prisoner to love. The locked- up men, the sentenced men. Sentenced to find women like us, women who can fall lower than they, women the convicts can never love."

" My adoration is making me ugly," Laura mused. " Christopher can do anything he wants with me, and when this happens to a woman she is hideous. Look at me; I' m a shadow. I' m one of Christopher' s mediocre statues, waiting patiently for him to chip an expression onto my face. Oh God, I know I bore him."

" Don' t torture yourself," Gloria begged. " In many ways your love for Christopher makes you more beautiful. You have sacrifice on your face, and that is a kind of beauty."

" Sacrifice!" Laura snapped with contempt. " Sacrifice to whom and for what? To Christopher, the modern girl' s surest lay? What do I sacrifice? My sanity? My pride? To be fucked by my husband when he comes home for a rest from fucking somebody else?"

" Pride has nothing to do with it," Gloria said. " And you know it' s not for the fuck. You' d live with Christopher in absolute celibacy for twenty years, if he' d just stay with you."

" That' s cruel, Gloria."

" No, no, no. Listen to me. I don' t mean it to be cruel. Don' t hear in my words some lousy pat definition of married love. It' s not the fuck. We tell ourselves it' s the fuck because it justifies us. It' s a simple little test that everybody understands… but it' s not true. Does Christopher have some magic in his prick? Or is the magic in you? Why can the other women give him up so easily? Christopher' s been given up by more women than they have birth control pills. It' s something else Christopher does to you. He enters a secret chasm in your heart, or psyche, I don' t know. But once he enters, he lives there. Christopher walks about in you as if you were a house without doors."

" But why can' t I walk about in Christopher? Do you realize, Gloria, what he is? Yes, I say he' s beautiful, because when I say he' s not, the suffering is worse. That makes me not only insane, but a fool. But Christopher is so weak, so inexcusably, fragilely, stupidly weak. He needs me to be accused of the things he can' t do. Christopher wouldn' t want so many women without me sitting at home suffering his infidelities. He runs to me the way he would to a mother, proudly singing, ' Momma, I had a good fuck.' And I' m suppose to sign the report card and promote him into another class."

" You' re right, Laura, and you know it. Are they just going to sit in your head like stinking Chinese eggs? Or are they going to change your life with Christopher?"

Laura sat quietly for a full minute. She lit another cigarette, striking five matches before the tobacco flamed, and released the smoke in her mouth.

" My knowledge of Christopher has been putrefying in my head for a long time."

" Please," Gloria said, as the tears rolled wet on Laura' s face. " Please, please, please…" and she could not say, " Don' t weep. Free yourself." Because the freedom was not in Laura.

" A few times when Christopher left me, I felt, well, that I was finally finished with him. When he flew to California with that idiot starlet, then called me from Los Angeles to tell me that he felt with pleasure every inch of the three thousand miles that separated us, I almost didn' t care. I mean, it just passed endurance, and I didn' t feel anything. I thought it was over."

" You had an affair with Carl then, didn' t you?" Gloria said.

" Yes. It was the first and only affair I' ve had since I' ve been married. And it really was quite nice. Carl is warm and sweet and attentive."

Gloria winced. " Quite nice. How you must have hated it."

" No. I wasn' t hating it. I wasn' t feeling it. I wasn' t feeling anything. That' s what terrifies me. That my life without Christopher will be a long, painless nothing."

" But then you weren' t really over Christopher."

" Who knows. I don' t know. I didn' t think of him. I didn' t dream of him. I didn' t rush to the movies to see his starlet perform. It was the only time since I' ve known Christopher that I' ve let him out of my head. But nothing came in to take his place. I was stupefied for six months."

" Another six months might have done it. Another six months and you might have loved somebody else."

" I don' t know. You see, Christopher came back. When he knocked at the door, and I opened it, I knew that I had been waiting for him for six months."

" We have more stamina than that," Gloria said. " You wouldn' t have waited forever. A few more months and you might have opened the door to a stranger."

" The day I stopped waiting, I would start decaying. Yes, I can see my skin growing moldy. I can feel the tissues of my flesh turning to water."

" But, my God," Gloria cried, " why are we talking? Why do we bother to repeat our third rate, monstrous tragedies to each other? Look at me. I' m beaten up, bleeding and black and blue. Is this my statement? Is this the total of my expression? What right do you have to say you' d decay? Why do we find the words if we want to stay in the cave? You have no right not to live more happily. You have no right to give your intelligence and will and body and goals and yesterday and tomorrow and now to Christopher."

" Rights," mocked Laura. " As if there were any rights. You had no right to be beaten, and the man had no right to beat you. But you were both fit only for the cave."

" Then what are we waiting for?" Gloria lamented. " Why don' t we die now, kill ourselves? Group suicides. If we lurk in the cave, we' re not living. We died three million years ago."

" But," said Laura, " we' ve seen a bit of light."

" What are you talking about?"

" We' ve seen the light of victory. I' m waiting, yes. I' m waiting for Christopher. I want him to look at me and see that I' m beautiful and valuable. And that day I' llbe beautiful and valuable. And maybe that day I' ll leave him, or that day we' ll really get married. But I want that day. I can live for it."

" When will Christopher see that you' re beautiful?"

" When I am."

" I tell you you' re beautiful now."

" And I don' t hear you."

Gloria leaned back on the pillows. " I hate your waiting," she said. " It disgusts me."

Laura pushed her boyish hair behind her ears. " I have given so much pain and love and hate to Christopher. More than to anyone in the world in my life. And I want one day for him to feel it. It will make my wait not a wait, but a process. A dawning of love."

" Can Christopher feel you?"

" Not now."

" I live in the now. Tomorrow is just too much of a chance for me."

" If I felt that," Laura paused and spoke slowly, " I would kill Christopher."

" Kill him?" said Gloria with interest.

" Yes. If Christopher will never come to me, I want him to die."

" It would be better," said Gloria, " if you just decided to live. That might be the same as Christopher' s dying. He might even come to you then, and you' d find out he was dead!"

" That' s why I' d kill him," said Laura. She laughed foolishly. " I don' t want to be disappointed."