Anne Tyler - The Amateur Marriage

His mother was relating a recent run-in with Leo Kazmerow. “He takes his duties too seriously,” she said. “An air raid warden’s not God. Leave one little light on during a drill and ‘Mrs. Anton,’ he says, ‘how would you feel if Baltimore got bombed clear off the map and you were the household responsible?’”

“It’s all because he’s 4-F,” Pauline told her. “He thinks he has to make up for it.”

Her tone was relaxed and pleasant. She and Michael’s mother were cozy friends, and Michael was the outsider pressing his nose to the window glass. He sighed and offered Lindy a spoon. “Don’t you plan to dine with us?” he asked when she didn’t take it. As if he had convinced her, she reached out and grasped the spoon and pulled it from his hand with surprising strength. He lowered his face to the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair. Underneath the talcum he caught a hint of fresh sweat, which he found endearing and faintly comical.

Pauline ladled out the soup — cream of tomato. She sat down and unfolded her napkin. Michael wrested his spoon from Lindy’s fist and started eating, and his mother picked up her own spoon, but Pauline just sat there, staring into her bowl.

“Hon?” Michael said finally. “Can’t you manage even a little?”

“Not unless I want it all to come back up again,” she said.

“Mrs. Piazy says to try saltine crackers.”

There was a box of saltines on the table, but she didn’t reach for it. Instead she said, “Will you all please excuse me?” and she laid her napkin next to her bowl and stood up and left the kitchen.

Michael and his mother looked at each other. The bedroom door closed quietly.

“She’s going to waste away to nothing,” his mother said after a moment.

Perversely, Michael felt a pang of almost brotherly jealousy. Didn’t he deserve a little sympathy too? This wasn’t much fun for him!

When they had finished eating (the clinks of their spoons too loud, guiltily healthy-sounding, and their remarks to the baby too chirpy), Michael told his mother that he thought he’d go check on Pauline. “Yes, why don’t you do that,” she said. “I’ll see to the dishes.” He hoisted Lindy out of her high chair and took her with him.

Playing it extra safe, he knocked on the bedroom door first. Nobody said, “Come in,” but after a brief pause, he went in anyway.

Pauline was not lying in bed, as he had expected, but standing near the window at the foot of Lindy’s crib. She had lifted one lace panel to gaze out, and she didn’t look around when Michael entered. “Pauline,” he said.

“What.”

“I wish you’d try and eat a little something.”

She went on staring out the window, although the view was just the flat faces of the houses across the side street.

This room, which had once belonged to Michael’s parents, had developed a kind of dual personality since his marriage. His parents’ white iron bed and glass-knobbed mahogany nightstand kept company now with Pauline’s autograph quilt from her girlhood, and her senior-prom corsage all faded and hardened on the bureau, and snapshots of her high-school friends tucked in the frame of the mirror. Her decorating style was so personal. Even the few pieces of furniture that she’d introduced — a child’s rocker, a hope chest — had their intimate associations, their long-winded, confidential histories.

He went over to stand next to her. “See Mommy?” he asked Lindy. “ Poor Mommy. She’s not feeling well.”

Sadly, Pauline said, “You don’t even know what’s wrong, do you.”

“Actually, I believe I do know,” Michael said. He kept his voice very even, so as not to upset her further. “Or I know what you think is wrong. You think I should have made more of a fuss about your birthday.”

Pauline started to say something, but he held up the flat of his free hand. “Now, I’m sorry that you feel that way,” he said. “I certainly never meant to disappoint you. But what I suspect is that you’re under a little strain these days. You’re pregnant, you’re morning sick, and you’re none too pleased anyhow — neither one of us is — about having a second baby so soon. That’s what’s really bothering you.”

“How do you know what’s bothering me?” Pauline asked, wheeling around.

Lindy whimpered, and Michael patted the small of her back. He said, “Now, Pauline. Now, hon. Calm yourself, hon.”

“Don’t you ‘hon’ me! Don’t you tell me to calm myself! So all-knowing and superior. I’m the only one who can say what bothers me and what doesn’t!”

Anyone could have heard her — his mother, for sure, and maybe even Eustace and whatever customers might be down in the store. Her voice had risen at least an octave and turned thin and wiry, nothing like her usual appealing croak. And she was so physical in her fury, putting her whole body into emphasizing each word, that her curls stood out from her head in an electric, exaggerated way. (Like a dandelion clock, Michael suddenly fancied.) When things reached this state, he felt helpless. He had no means of controlling her. However he tried to quiet her only made her louder. “Sweetheart,” he tried, and “Poll, hon,” and “Be reasonable, Pauline.” But she advanced, both fists clenched tight. She grabbed the baby, who was crying now, and she hugged her to her breast and shouted, “Go away! Just go! Just take your stuffy pompous boring self-righteous self away and leave us in peace!”

He turned without another word. Now was when he most hated limping, because instead of striding out he had to leave the room in a halting and victimlike manner. Still, he did his best. In the kitchen he passed his mother, who stared at him from the sink with a dish towel gripped in both hands.

“Guess I’ll get back to work,” he told her, and he smiled at her, or tried to smile, and lurched past her and out the door.

Was it possible to dislike your own wife?

Well, no, of course not. This was just one of those ups-and-downs that every couple experienced. He’d seen the topic referred to on the covers of those magazines that Pauline was always buying: “How to Stop Marital Fights Before They Start” and “Inside: ‘Why Do We Argue So Often?’”

But surely most other wives were not so baffling as Pauline. So changeable, so illogical.

He transferred three onions from the scale to a brown paper bag and set them on the counter for Mrs. Golka. She was considering a pound of sugar but she hated to use all her points up. The twins had a terrible sweet tooth, she said. Michael said, “Sweet tooth, yes…” and then fell to studying the scoop of the scale, which bore a dent from when Pauline had slung it down too hard during a quarrel.

Oh, there had been any number of quarrels. Quarrels about money: she spent money on what seemed to him unnecessary, household knickknacks and baby things and decorative objects of no earthly practical use, while Michael was more prudent. (Stingy, she called it.) Quarrels about the apartment: she swore that she was going mad, stuck in those airless, dark rooms cheek to jowl with his mother, and she wanted them to move to the county as soon as the war was over — someplace with yards and trees and side yards, too, not one of those row-house developments that were starting to sprout here and there. When Michael pointed out that they couldn’t afford the county, she said her father would help; he’d already offered. (Already offered! Michael had felt his face grow hot with shame.) When he said they would be too far from the store, she’d told him to move the store as well. “And what will St. Cassian people do for groceries, then?” he’d asked her, but she’d said, “St. Cassian people! Who cares? I’m tired to my bones of St. Cassian people! Everyone knowing everyone’s business from three generations back. It’s time we broadened our horizons!”