Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

"I wouldn't let him get away with it. That's why I threw Don out."

She is glad that John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were killed and that the girls in the family have crooked teeth. She wants my wife to agree with her. She wants me to put in a swimming pool. I feel rivalry between us. (I used to feel rivalry with her mother.) I didn't let my wife know how much it pained me to see her undress that way. (How often I cursed her and swore to get even. I do get even. We Slocums have our family honor.) It was a matter of high principle (as well as of low prurience. I cherished seeing her in ungraceful positions. Still do). She never guessed the effect it had on me (she is not mean), and I was too sensitive and proud to complain. (I did not want to beg. While she did not even know what was going on.)

"Don't you ever dream I'm dead?" she likes to ask.

"Did you dream I was dead?"

"I think so. I think that's what was happening."

"Thanks."

"I was sorry."

"I don't remember. My dreams are about me, and you're not me."

"I dream about you."

"You're in my dreams. Do you want me to return the favor? To promise?"

"You couldn't keep it."

"Then why bring it up?"

I'm grateful she doesn't ask me if:

I ever dream about her and another man, because I do, and that dream is about me also. (They are coming together in sexual union for the sole purpose of denigrating me.) And I don't like it. I don't want my wife to commit adultery. I don't think she wants to, either, ribald and vulgar as she sometimes gets at large parties now (although she may think she wants romance. I'd like some too. Where do you get it?); more likely, she is reacting against being the kind of old-fashioned person who doesn't want to (while so many other women we hear of do want to and are). She would have to be drunk and more stupefied than she's ever been (that I know of) and fall into very bad, greedy hands. She would have to be led away without knowing it to someplace remote and be overcome in silence by somebody wicked and unmerciful. (Conversation would eliminate his chances. She'd recognize he wasn't me.) I hate that man (all of them who've ever calculated their chances with her) and want to kill him, especially with this foreknowledge I have that she would probably enjoy it more with him than she ever has with me.

"Oh, darling," she exclaims to him over and over again in sighing adoration. "I never knew it could be this way. I will do everything you ask."

She would have no real need for me after that except to pay certain bills. (She does not like to write checks for things like insurance premiums and mortgage payments.) I hang within earshot at parties (unless I am off on my own taking soundings of somebody else's drunken wife. I prefer them comelier and better-tempered than my own) to lead her away before an insult or assignation becomes inevitable.

("Come along, dear. Come on now. This way, dear. There's an elegant man here who wants to meet you."

"Who?"

"Me."

In these dreams of mine in which she abandons me for somebody else, I seem to dissolve while dreaming them and am left with nothing but my eyes and a puddle of tears.)

Divorce, however, is a different matter. We like to try each other on that.

"Do you want a divorce?" she will ask. "Do you?"

(I've thought about it. What happily married man of any mettle hasn't?)

"What would I do?" she speculates with a long face. "I couldn't find another man. Who would want me?"

"Don't be too sure."

"I'm too old."

"Nah. I'm older."

"It's different for you."

"Yes, you could."

"It's too late."

"No, it isn't."

"You're eager, aren't you?"

"You're the one who brought it up."

"You're the one who's always thinking about it. I can tell. You get so happy every time a marriage breaks up. Why don't you come right out and say so?"

"Why don't you?"

"You're the one who's unhappy."

"Who says so?"

"I know how you feel."

"Aren't you? You do a lot of complaining. You're complaining right now."

"Don't you want a divorce? You can tell me if you do."

"No, I can't."

"You can."

"I can't even tell you if I don't." Almost from the first week of our marriage we have been jostling each other this way over divorce. (Almost from the first week of our marriage I have found these squabbles sexually arousing, and I am in haste to hump her and reconcile. She always gives in.

"Say you're sorry."

"I'm sorry.")

She would like me to say: "I love you." I won't. I can't.

I shouldn't. This is a matter of principle (and manhood) too. (I can say it easily enough to other girls if I have to, when it does not mean I will have to give up anything. It means I will get, not give.) I couldn't even say Sure to Virginia when it would have gotten me a great deal; instead, I would twist away from her sideways, recoiling lamely with some face-saving wisecrack, and slink out of sight miserably like an exiled dog.

"Come outside," I could say.

Or:

"Meet me downstairs," I could propose like a carefree buccaneer (when I knew we would not have much time).

But never:

"Yes."

When she said:

"Get a room."

And always when I began inching back to her tremulously (that's the perfect word) I did not know if she would let me back into her voluptuous and smutty good graces. (I would have felt penniless without them.) She always did. She could have cut me off at the knees with a single, slicing sentence (she could have told people about me); and I might have remained like that forever, no legs, just stumps. (Somebody would have had to move me about, lift me up from one spot, like a chess piece or checker, and place me down in another.) She liked me. She was not impressed by Tom.

"You're better," she told me.

"Then why doesn't she do it to me?"

"Do it to me like you did to Marie on Saturday night, Saturday night."

Tom had no sense of humor. (What he did have was a handwriting I wanted and took from him.) He was getting laid, but I could make Virginia laugh. (Ha, ha.) I was pleased with myself when I did. (I told stories about her to teen-age friends back in my neighborhood.) We teased each other lubriciously all day long. I leaked (lubriciously. Lubricious is a lubricious word). Nobody teases me now. They say Yes if they come along at all and are out of their clothes before I can even get my shoelaces unknotted.

"That was good," they sigh afterward.

"I really needed that," they declare.

As if I believe them. Or even care. All I'm thinking about is when I ought to leave or how I'll be able to get them out of Red Parker's apartment in time to take a nap before returning to the office or catching my train. They're as obtuse as my wife in her naпve good moods, still trying to work out ground rules for a happier marriage, while I am wondering how much longer I will have to remain with her before I pack my bags and get my divorce. That sanguine stupidity of hers (that utter lack of connection with my deeper feelings) is maddening.

"I'd like to know," she'll sometimes say, "what you're really thinking."

(No, she wouldn't.) "About my speech."

"I mean all the time."

"My speech. I may have to make a much different one if I get the promotion."

"All of us think you're angry when you get so quiet. We try to guess what it is."

Virginia would tilt her head backwards and to the side, eyeing me lewdly with a knowing, taunting look, a festive leer, her powerful breasts (girls with big breasts sometimes wore very tight bras then too) elevated like artillery pieces on weapons carriers and thrust out brashly just for me. She knew what I was thinking.

"These," she'd announce proudly, "are what Mr. Lewis likes about me." The tip of her tongue would glide for an instant between the edges of her shiny teeth as she watched me stare. "You do, too."