Джил Эмерсон - A Week as Andrea Benstock

“I don’t know, but I can. Can’t you?”

“I suppose so. I just like being here with you, and I guess married makes it even nicer.”

“Give me a kiss.”

“Ah, that’s much nicer than kissing all those people at the club. Much nicer. But it wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“The wedding or the reception?”

“Both. I’m glad we kept the wedding small. I would have loved to pass up the reception, but I suppose that was out of the question.”

“No, they had a right to that much.”

“Our parents? Or the guests?”

“I meant the parents, but in a way the guests too. By the way, do you know what your father did?”

“What?”

“I thought he might have told you. You know, I think he’s as fine a man as I’ve ever met. I thinka lot of your mother, as far as that goes, but your dad’s really remarkable. He’s the kind of man I’d like to be when I grow up.”

“I like that, when you grow up.”

“Well, I mean it. In a funny way he reminds me of a professor I had at Cornell. A good many years older than your father, and very much the academic type, but there was something similar about them. I had a course in Contemporary European History with him, Europe since 1815, and it was the best course I ever took in my life. I think it was his influence that made me consider teaching. In fact I know it was. Hiram Carruthers, the first and only person I ever met named Hiram. You’d expect a hayseed with a name like that, but he was very much the Ivy League cosmopolitan.”

“You still didn’t say what my father did.”

“I didn’t, did I? Hiram Carruthers led me off the track. Well, your father slipped me an envelope at the reception, and did it with a lot more grace than I slipped the envelope to Rabbi Farber.”

“And there was more in this envelope, I take it.”

“There was a check for five thousand dollars in this envelope. I was sure he would have mentioned it to you. I looked at it and thought at first it was five hundred, which would have been damned generous, but it was five thousand.”

“That’s too much.”

“That was precisely my reaction, and it was just what I said to him. He told me he’d figured on spending that much on your wedding, and that he thought it was sensible of us to keep the wedding small, but that there was no reason why our decision should let him off the hook cheap. He put it better than I am, but that was the gist of it. It’s far too much. I wanted to return it—”

“No, I don’t think you can do that.”

“Neither do I. Five thousand dollars. If we were younger, just out of school, that would make the difference between scraping by and living decently for the first few years. But I make enough money for us to live on, and I like the idea of us living on what I make.”

“So do I. Very definitely.”

“I’ve been trying to think what to do with the money. If we were going to buy a house we could use it for the down payment, but I wouldn’t want a house now, not for just the two of us, and by the time we’re ready for a house I’ll be able to afford the down payment myself. I think I know what I’m going to do with the money.”

“I bet I know, but I want you to tell me.”

“I’m going to put it away for our kids’ education. That’s if you approve, of course.”

“I win my bet. I just knew you were going to say that. And of course I approve.”

“Five thousand dollars will just about see a kid through a decent college. Well, it’ll cover tuition, anyway. Of course college costs are going to go up, but by the time we have children ready for college that five thousand will have grown a great deal. I’ll have to talk to somebody when we get back to Buffalo. I don’t know what’s the best way to invest it, stocks or mutual funds or some sort of insurance plan. I do know I’m not going to let it sit in a savings bank, but I’m not going to gamble it away, either. I’ll talk to Hal Ginzburg at Bache, and I’ll also talk to a fellow I met for the first time this afternoon. A friend of your dad’s, very tall and thin with a droopy moustache. Arthur something, but I don’t remember his last name.”

“Vogel. Uncle Art Vogel.”

“Oh, he’s your uncle?”

“No, it’s an honorary title. Did you have to call all your parents’ friends Aunt and Uncle? There must be a point where it’s time to stop, but I still feel uncomfortable calling them by their first names.”

“No, we didn’t have that. But I knew a fellow at Cornell who grew up thinking that an honorary aunt and uncle from another city were his real aunt and uncle. He didn’t know just how they were related, but it never occurred to him that they weren’t, and it caused a problem.”

“How would it cause a problem?”

“Well, he thought their daughter was really his cousin. And one summer they were all at the same resort together, and his little cousin seemed to be very available, but he knew it would be incestuous so he never even considered it. He was sorely tempted, as they say, but he kept his hands to himself. Then a few months later he found out Aunt Whozit and Uncle Whatsit were just his parents’ very good friends, but by that time Cousin Hepzibah was miles and miles away.”

“I hope her name wasn’t really Hepzibah. Does the story have a happy ending?”

“If it does, I never heard it. He tried to salve his wounds by screwing his way through Sigma Delta Tau. A heroic ambition, and better than drinking yourself to death. I don’t seem to want this cigarette after all. Want to finish it for me?”

“Sure. It’s good we smoke the same brand.”

“It’s one of the reasons I married you.”

“Tell me the other reasons.”

“Because I hate my mother’s cooking.”

“Not because I’m sensational in bed?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I know you’re sensational on a couch.”

“I’ll miss that old brown couch.”

“Well, it’ll miss you. It’s permanently imprinted with the impression of your very nice little ass.”

“Ha! I married a crude man.”

“That can’t be a surprise to you.” He yawned. “Would it be terribly unromantic if I took a little nap?”

“I wish you would. You’ve looked tired all afternoon.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Then close your eyes and put your seat back. Go ahead.”

“It does seem unromantic, though.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Nonsense,” she said. “It sounds like a very married thing to do. I like the idea of us doing married things. I like that very much.”

He fell asleep almost immediately. She sat for a few minutes watching him sleep. When the stewardess came by she asked for a magazine and a cup of coffee, but she abandoned the magazine after leafing through it very briefly. It was more pleasant to sit sipping coffee and watch her husband sleep. He looked very vulnerable now, his honest face open in repose. She could see no weakness in his face, not when he was awake and not now while he slept, but she felt stronger herself now. This was her man, sleeping beside her, and she realized that this was a sight she would be seeing for the rest of her life. This was the man who would share that life with her.

There were so many things she did not know about him. She would be sleeping next to him for the rest of her life, yet now she did not know whether he slept nude or in pajamas, whether he shaved at night or in the morning. In a week’s time she would be making his breakfast, but at the moment she did not know what he liked for breakfast, or if he was talkative in the morning.

She realized with some surprise that she knew less about him, knew him less thoroughly, than she had known several other men in her lifetime. She and Mark had never spent more than a couple of hours at a time in lovemaking. They had never spent a night together or been in a real bed together. There were men she had slept with, men she had spent weekends with.