Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

My wife sat straight up on the edge of the couch. In the end, as we were leaving and after I had phoned for a cab, she asked in her own abrupt way a personal question.

"Are you married?" she said.

Our host smiled his crooked, courteous smile.

"I was," he said. "I was until a few weeks ago."

My wife looked from him to me. He told us what had happened. His wife had fallen from a ladder in the garage, had hurt her leg and died of a blood clot. A freak accident.

‘Thirty-five years," he said. "Just like that. It’s a lifetime," he said, still with the smile in the manner of the quiet host who says he’s glad you were able to make it.

"Damn," he said; "damn, damn, damn."

He raised his hand, and, unsteady on his feet for a moment, he snapped his hand to one side — an idiosyncrasy of his that brushed away irritation or that said, Well, that’s over with.

A door shut heavily, the impact came through the air as if that room, wherever it was, was sealed with carpets and drapes. But passing out through what might have been a waiting room in this wing of the house, we found an extraordinarily fat woman sitting on the couch smoking, staring straight ahead. And I remember a new car was parked in the driveway. Then our cab came.

I had wanted to see him again, I mean at once. I wanted to know what he had thought of us.

My wife said, "He didn’t like me, I could see that."

I had smelled the spring and, as we passed a green golf course that rose like a meadow away from the road, my wife leaned on me and kissed me on the cheek.

She wondered if he had children. Of course, he must, she said. I said, Oh yes. She thought he’d had a quick drink, probably a stiff one, while we were waiting for him to come back. She made an observation or two on the constant threat of immaturity and on the need to keep the parts of one’s life distinct. "But I didn’t think he liked me; I came between you," she said, and she clasped her hands in her lap. "He’s really quite a charming man," she said. "I’m terribly hungry, how about you?" I remember her words.

I didn’t ask him about himself. We kept it at a different level. I was in the middle of my life, if I could stay in. I mentioned a friend I had had who had let me know I held back too much; I should open with him more about my life. That is, our friendship depended on it. Naturally I came to find this view precious, not to say a pain. He wanted to know what my relationship was with a woman whom we both knew. As if what my revered friend did not know about my life waited secretly between us — call it misdemeanors accumulating interest unspeakable into my life whose integrity needed him. I have said too much too fast, as if I were short of time. My host once observed that I had a somewhat formal style of speaking.

Other friends I spoke of not so much as of my wife and of my two children, now at their different levels nearly grown. My wife, I said. The words are said less easily nowadays. I think my wife has found a spark in me. I had come to know my family better through my conversations with this semi-retired doctor. Not that he said much. But my family became so comforting to me in his presence that I would see my daughters with a distinctness that hurt, at the same time that I saw them stand up strong, truthful, unharmed, and independent, while I saw the finest brushmarks in my wife’s hair after she had drawn it back so tightly it shone like a reflection.

Which is the journey, which the destination? The train I had so often taken recalled such things. The woman across the aisle did not look up when I put on my overcoat.

I left the train, crossed the platform, and passed down an icy ramp. Like a resident I carried the shopping bag with my wife’s Christmas present. I gave the strange cab driver the address, and he named the person I was going to see.

The driver was big and fat and, below his thick, gray hair, his skin had a powdery softness infinitesimally wrinkled. We passed the golf-course sign and we passed a white lawn with colored figures on it. Again I saw what I wanted to see. I had been irritated with the driver because in speaking the name of the person I was going to see he seemed to pry. I made conversation. I asked if he had his snows on. He said that on bad days he used chains too; you could waste two hours spinning your wheels in driveways, and he said something else which went right out of my head because we had approached the house and I wondered why the hell I had come, and I believe that instead of responding to whatever the man had said I said perfunctorily that I didn’t know.

Behind me were the subway train and the railroad train, throw in some angry bicyclist with his bicycle, and now a taxi. I could not check my thoughts. I wondered if my wife was seeing someone and was reluctant to tell me. And would she if I asked? Or would she only if I didn’t ask? Because my host understood often without asking. I would tell him a joke, I would tell him he was not going to like what I was about to say, I would tell him the truth that I had almost not come and I would ask if he thought Christmas upset your biorhythms and if there were such things, and I would throw in the Jesus kids Saturday night; I would tell why I’d be damned if I’d answer the kid with the Bhagavad-Gita in Grand Central, and I would reiterate my notion that there are many gods who preside in the things that touch us and move us, gods we look up and down to, gods we enlist the support of, and I recalled the gambler in Anchorage who staked what he didn’t possess, lucky as a god and driven like a god. And I would add that — to quote one of the old polymaths — Pascal, Emerson, my daughter would know what I was recalling — when we most fly those gods, then they are most our fuel, or something to that effect — it had gods in it.

One of them drove too close to me on a three-lane northbound artery looking for trouble and when I yelled at him he shook his head deafly and grinned, and another came up behind him and they two took off around the next curve and must have vanished at the next exit in pursuit of each other or some such nonsense. I would tell my host all this and more and would tell how in the train I’d suddenly known I would see what I wanted to see; and I would talk about my wife as if she were there with us.

All right, I was bringing him some pretty good stuff today; I saw him smile inwardly at this. I felt better, and, as if experiencing difficulty in getting out of the cab, I could not for a moment get my hands on the right money to give the driver. I left him and he left me at the entrance to the driveway. Two cars were parked in the driveway; one had a Maryland plate and one, I half-noted from its color, was from further away.

The glass panes in the double doors of the garage were frosted over as if with Halloween soap. The sound of the cab receding rose and fell. I felt in my pockets and found a glove in each. I didn’t put them on but bunched one in each hand inside each pocket. My wife was home. I saw her in bed. I didn’t see her face but I heard her voice. She reached one fine hand toward her bed table.

I went across the snowy flagstones to the square flagstone porch, which was like a large doorstep. Two front doors faced at right angles to each other and were adjacent. The left one was locked, so I rang. I rubbed my hands together and heard myself way inside my heavy coat and muffler go, "Ho ho ho," and I dug my hands down into my pockets. Fir trees set the lawn off from the road. A car passed and then another in the same direction. I waited and rang again and wasn’t sure how many times I’d rung. He was on the phone or someone was with him and the door had gotten locked. The winter silence was of Christmas morning or of Sunday. What was missing was in me. I wondered if someday I might heal someone. I rang again.