James Salter - All That Is

“What are you driving a Volvo for, anyway?” Rochet asked her.

“It’s not my car,” she said.

“Whose is it?”

“That’s another story. Don’t ask me now.”

“It’s an old married couple’s car,” he said.

“Well, it started before. Do you know anything about cars?”

“I’m afraid I do,” he said.

It wasn’t much—the lead on the battery terminal was loose. He carefully scraped it clean with a penknife and worked it down.

“Try it now.”

It started, and she followed him driving out.

His house had a small porch and, like hers, was always unlocked. It was really a small summer house with two rooms upstairs and down. He had only a half bottle of wine, and she drank it with him feeling nineteen again.

“Take off your shoes, if you like,” he suggested.

He reached down and untied his. They sat barefoot, drinking in the dark. He kissed her throat, and she let him take off her blouse. They made love on the couch. The next time she came they went upstairs. It was supposed to be just for a look, but she turned to him at the top and slowly took off her earrings. He was on her like a beast. It was his house they went to but not always. He came walking up the driveway having prudently parked on the road. She was waiting. He followed her into the house. Who owns it? he asked her. It had a nice dry feeling. The walls needed painting. She got out of bed with a terrible thirst after hours of lovemaking.

Bowman knew nothing and never suspected. He saw himself as Eros and Christine as his. He lived in the pleasure of possessing her, unbelievable as it was, the simplicity and justice of it. As if he were part now of the secret world of the senses, he saw what he had not seen before. Walking to work he passed a florist’s and caught a glimpse of, in back among the dense greens, a girl bent forward at the waist and another figure, a man stepping in behind her. The girl changed her stance slightly. Was he really seeing this, Bowman thought, in the morning as the ordinary world went past? An older woman, about to walk by him, paused to look, too, as just in that moment it changed. The girl was merely bending over to arrange some flowers, and the man was beside, not behind her. It might have been an omen or part of one, but he was not open to omens.

The first that he learned was word being forwarded to him in Chicago, where he was attending the booksellers convention. A suit had been filed against him. It was seeking sole ownership of the house. He immediately called Christine and left a message. It was early evening, but she didn’t call back. He couldn’t reach her until the next day.

“Darling, what is all this?” he asked.

Her voice seemed cool.

“I can’t talk about it just now,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just not able to.”

“I don’t understand, Christine. You have to explain. What’s going on?”

He was experiencing a sudden, frightening confusion.

“What is it?” he said. “What’s the matter?”

She was silent.

“Christine!”

“Yes.”

“Tell me. What’s happened?”

“It’s about the house,” she said as if giving in.

“Yes, I know. What about it?”

“I can’t talk. I have to go.”

“For God’s sake!” he cried.

He had the sense of being reduced to nothing, a sickening sense of not knowing. When, back in New York, he had the full details, he insisted on meeting and talking, but she would not. But I love you, I loved you, he was thinking. And she was unperturbed. She was cold. How did it happen, that something no longer mattered, that it had been judged inessential? He wanted to take her by the arms and shake her back to life.

Her claim was that the house was hers and that it had been bought in both their names only because she was unable to qualify for a mortgage. She was suing for breach of an oral contract and for sole title to the house. Bowman’s lawyer was a man in Southampton, a former alcoholic with silvery hair. He had handled cases like this—she had almost no chance of prevailing.

“The Statute of Frauds,” he explained, “dating all the way back requires a written contract for transfer of ownership. That’s your defense. We’ll cite the lack of writing. There was nothing written, correct?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“She’s living in the house now?”

“Yes.”

“Does she have a lease?”

“No. She’s… we live together.”

“You have a current relationship.”

“It’s not current.”

Bowman saw her again for the first time at the trial. She avoided looking at him. Her lawyer argued that she was the equitable owner of the house and that the outward appearance of the sale had in fact been a transaction designed for her benefit.

The jury, which had only been listening idly, seemed attentive when she rose to testify. She was tastefully dressed. She described her long search and how at last she had found a small house that she and her daughter could live in, and the express oral agreement with Bowman that the house would be hers. She was living in the house and paying the mortgage. Bowman felt an inexpressible contempt at her lies. He indicated it in a look he exchanged with his lawyer, who seemed unconcerned.

In the end, however, it became her word against his, and the jury decided in her favor. She was awarded title. The house was gone. Only afterwards did he learn that there was another man.

He felt himself stupid for not knowing, a fool, but there was something that was worse, the jealousy. It was agonizing to think of her with someone else, of someone else having her, her presence, the availability of her. Suddenly everything had fallen away. He had felt himself above other people, knowing more than they did, even pitying them. He was not related to other people—his life was another kind of life. He had invented it. He had dreamt himself up, running heedless into the surf at night as if he were a poet or beach boy in California, as if he were a madman, but there were the very real mornings, the world still asleep and she asleep beside him. He could stroke her arm, he could wake her if he liked. He felt sick with the memory of it. He was sick with all the memories. They had done things together that would make her look back one day and see that he was the one who truly mattered. That was a sentimental idea, the stuff of a woman’s novel. She would never look back. He knew that. He amounted to a few brief pages. Not even. He hated her, but what could he do?

“This may sound crazy,” he would say, “but I still want her. I can’t help it. I’ve never thought about killing anyone, but in that courtroom I could have killed her. She knew all along what she was doing, I never would have believed it.”

He was humiliated. It was a wound that would not heal. He could not stop examining it. He tried to think of what he had done wrong. He shouldn’t have agreed to her living in the country—she would have never met the other man. He shouldn’t have been so trusting with her. He shouldn’t have been such a slave to the pleasure she gave, though that would have been impossible, and she had cared nothing for him. He knew there would not be another. It would be better never to have met her, but what sense did that make? It had been the luckiest day of his life.

Eddins and Irene lived in the house in Piermont for several years after they were married, but she was unhappy in the house where there had been a drawer still filled with his former wife’s things that she finally made him get rid of. They moved back to the city, to an ordinary apartment in the Twenties near Gramercy Park decorated with her furniture from New Jersey. When Bowman went there for dinner she had dressed carefully but was wearing no makeup. Eddins brought him in.