Kitty Spencer - Three-way weekend

Elaine's hands were damp. She was exhausted, almost shaking, the turmoil inside her a mixture of rage and fear. She wanted a cigarette badly, but she was not able to open her handbag and take one out of the pack. The tense rigidity of the moment had gone; the immobility remained.

How long had it been since the last time she had suffered the illusion of seeing him? A week at least – perhaps longer.

Warren's "appearance" had been one of the most distressing symptoms to follow the divorce. Wherever she went, Elaine kept seeing her ex-husband. The "divorce syndrome", she had called it in a painful attempt to laugh it off.

She felt the color returning to her face. Her flushed cheeks and over-brilliant eyes were the only outward signs of the reaction setting in. The same reaction that always followed, as night follows day. Every time Elaine "saw" him, she drowned in angry humiliation all over again.

She remembered that afternoon, not so very many months ago, when she had picked up the telephone in her brand-new home in Connecticut. Looking back, Elaine could recognize that time as having been her last moment of innocence.

She also remembered her surprise at finding it was the police who were telephoning her.

"Mrs. Craig? This is Sergeant Reiley. We have your husband here at the station. We'd like to talk to you…"

The memory blur had started there – the blur created in self-defense against too many unpalatable facts, too many truths stripped of their covering, too much reality rushing in until it seemed she would choke…

The police had been very considerate toward her. They tried to break the news gently. A policewoman sat beside Elaine in the office, smiling encouragingly from time to time. None of it helped! Outside, the New England countryside blazed with bright autumn color. She remembered thinking about that even as she heard her life explode.

After the routine questions, Elaine was told that her husband had been apprehended while engaged in committing an indecent act. The words jumbled together for Elaine as fact and emotion grated within the blur. But, through it all, came clarity. Elaine was given all the facts. Warren Craig, her husband, had stood on a quiet suburban street near the local school and exposed his penis to a group of little girls. He had tried to entice them closer to him, but after whispering among themselves, the children had run off. Warren had followed them a short way, his trousers still open and his penis out.

He had remained in the area for almost an hour, eventually working his way to the school's then-deserted playground. By that time one of the children had run home, told her mother what had happened, and the tearful mother had called the police.

When the patrol car arrived at the playground, Warren was sitting on one of the swings. Two ten-year-old girls watched him, giggling, while he pulled his penis out of his open fly and then stuffed it back inside his pants again. The girls had come to the station as witnesses when the police brought him in.

For Elaine, ordeal followed upon ordeal. Talking to the psychiatrist had been worse than being told what had happened by the police. "If there's anything you can tell me, anything at all, Mrs. Craig, that might help…"

What was she supposed to tell him? That she'd always suspected her husband… that she'd known he had a desire to expose himself to little girls?

"Were your sexual relations with your husband quite normal, Mrs. Craig?" The doctor's voice was firm and decisive. There was no escape for Elaine then, no way out into tears of rage or self-pity. "It's important that you cooperate with us as fully as possible."

The tone had become gentler, but the questions continued.

"Now tell me… did your husband ever ask you to engage in any sexual perverted acts?"

God in heaven, Elaine thought, when they phrase things so clinically, they somehow manage to make everything sound dirty.

"What kind of thing?" Elaine asked. "If you ask me questions, I suppose I can try to answer them." She could not hide the petulance in her voice, nor did she even try to do so. She felt tired and ill-used. She was the real victim of the situation, she thought, yet no one seemed concerned about what she might be suffering.

"Fine," the psychiatrist said encouragingly. "Well, now, would you describe your husband as impotent?"

It was the first time Elaine had openly admitted the truth, even to herself. She nodded.

"Was he always impotent?"

"Nearly always," she said in a low voice. "We slept… I mean, we had sexual relations only a few times during the whole of our marriage."

"How long have you and your husband been married?"

"Just over a year."

"Is it possible for you to tell me what you thought was your husband's difficulty? In other words, on the occasions when you did engage in sexual activity, can you pinpoint the factor that made it possible for your husband to do so?"

Elaine felt herself growing almost hysterical under the questioning. She wanted to giggle and say, "That's a fancy way of asking me how Warren managed to get an erection," but she suppressed the desire. Already stripped of her dignity, she struggled determinedly to retain a few shreds of composure.

Elaine knew what she must tell the psychiatrist, but some innate reticence held her back momentarily. Reticence… and pride. From the beginning, she'd had to battle for her marriage to Warren. It had begun with her parents' opposition. Elaine had won, as she had known all along that she would, but from the first she had found herself forced into a stubbornly defensive position where her husband, was concerned. After the wedding, she had hidden her disillusionment out of false, nineteen-year-old pride. And, having successfully hidden her humiliation for so long, she could hardly bear having it uncovered and pried apart then.

"Where did you and your husband meet?" prompted the psychiatrist, noticing Elaine's withdrawal and trying to ease her out of it.

"At a friend's house in Vermont. I'd gone for a skiing weekend and Warren was there, too. We fell in love right away. It sounds strange to say it but, at the time, we seemed so right for each other."

"How long was it before you married?"

"A year. I was only eighteen when I first met him. My parents were upset about the whole thing. I'm their only child and… they didn't want me to leave college – all the usual stuff. But I got my way in the end, and we were married. My mother and dad gave us a house as a wedding present."

There was a pause. At that moment, the telephone shrilled on the desk and the psychiatrist murmured, "Excuse me," as he reached to answer it. Elaine sat and wondered how she could find the right words to explain her marriage. It would be best to start at the beginning, she supposed. With the wedding night… Well, first she'd have to tell the psychiatrist about Warren's fetish for physical fitness, about his muscle-making routines, his frequent workouts at the gym. He had believed in body-building exercises… morning and night.

That was how she had come to spend part of her wedding night standing naked, lifting bar bells in front of an open window. Warren wanted her to exercise with him. Afterwards, aching and exhausted, Elaine had stretched out on the huge bed in the hotel's luxurious honeymoon suite. He had moved quickly to the bed where he had lain on top of her, without preliminary love-making of any kind. He just lay there, kissing her face lightly with closed lips and balancing his body on hers as if he were performing yet another muscle-control exercise.

Finally, he had rolled over onto the sheet saying, "You must be tired, honey. I won't bother you tonight." After that, he'd fallen asleep almost immediately. Tired though she was, Elaine could not ignore her growing uneasiness. She had lain awake for hours, staring into the dark. It had been the first of many such vigils.