Alison Lurie - Last Resort

Jenny’s guilt was wholly irrational, Lee had declared when her friend paused for breath. It wasn’t her fault that Barbie Mumpson had been there and she hadn’t. After all, hadn’t she said that Wilkie had continually told her to get out of the house and meet people? Evidently he hadn’t wanted her around.

Yes; it felt like that, Jenny said miserably.

And while she was out of the house, presumably, Lee went on, Wilkie Walker must have been sleeping with Barbie Mumpson. He didn’t care who knew it, either, or he wouldn’t have kissed her right out on the street where anyone, including Jenny, could see. Wilkie was the one who should feel guilty, Lee said. And it could be that he was already being punished, too. His attack, gallstone or heart or whatever it was, might have been the result of what was sometimes called “overexertion” with Barbie; you often read of such things in the newspapers.

As Lee spoke, angry, hopeless tears rose behind Jenny’s eyes, and overflowed into her bowl of lime sherbet. Lee rose and came round the table: she held her, kissed her gently, and stroked her hair. It was hard, she said. She knew that. But it was best to face these things. Jenny had to accept that her marriage was probably over.

“But that’s—” Jenny sobbed. “But I tried so hard. I did everything I should, for so many years.”

“Of course you did,” Lee agreed. “It’s not your fault, not in any way. Here, have some more wine.”

“But I’ve always done everything for him. Not just keeping house, but typing and researching his books, and writing parts of them, and the articles, and the lectures—I mean, that’s my job,” Jenny continued between bursts of sobbing. “If I’m not working with Wilkie, what am I supposed to do? I won’t know what to do. I won’t even know who I am.”

“Sure you will,” Lee told her, stroking her back and shoulders as she began crying again. “It just takes time. It’s hard to break these old habit patterns, these old guilt patterns, after so many years.”

In the end, Jenny hadn’t gone home till nearly midnight, and then only because she was afraid that Wilkie or a doctor or a nurse might call. When she proposed leaving after supper, Lee had pointed out, quite correctly, that she was in no shape to drive. Then, somehow, she had ended up, exhausted and blurred with wine and tears, in Lee’s bedroom.

Wilkie had probably not slept much last night either, Jenny thought now, coming to the lumpy end of a row of knitting and starting back. But while he was lying uncomfortably awake on a hard hospital bed, his sleep broken by noises and interruptions, she had been on another wider and softer bed, under an orange Indian spread patterned with huge pink and red flowers, fading in and out of tears and sleep, letting Lee hold her and stroke her and kiss her.

It had felt familiar and comfortable, but strange too, because the things Lee began to do after a while were things Wilkie had never done—or if they were the same, Lee did them so much slower and softer that Jenny, when she wasn’t drifted away into unconsciousness, felt as if she were dreaming.

But she wasn’t always dreaming, Jenny thought. Sometimes, now and then, she had been aware of everything: the way the wind pushed the leaves against the screen outside Lee’s window, pressing them together, and the colored-glass chimes on the porch glittering and tinkling in the porch light. The softness of Lee’s sun-browned skin, and her dark, springy hair thick on the sheets, like raveled raw silk—She had wanted everything that happened, because Lee was so kind, because Lee loved her, and she loved Lee. And because Wilkie had turned into a person she wasn’t sure she even liked, who didn’t like her.

It was true what Lee had said: she had to get used to the idea that her marriage was over, and that probably, as soon as he was well again, Wilkie would tell her so. She had to get used to the idea that he loved Barbie Mumpson, absurd as that seemed, because how could anyone love someone as silly as that?

But those things weren’t logical; Lee had said that last night. “After all,” she had said, “when you look at it rationally, it’s improbable that any two people in the world should care so much for each other. Only sometimes it happens.”

“But isn’t it sometimes, I don’t know, sort of ridiculous?” Jenny had asked. “I mean, take us. Two middle-aged women.”

“Love is sort of ridiculous, sure,” Lee said, “but also it’s not ridiculous. The way I see it, anyone has the right to be in love. It’s just a dumb convention that they have to be the same age and race and religion and class, and they can’t be the same sex. You’re just goddamn lucky if you love anyone and they love you back.”

Jenny turned her knitting again and saw that the last dozen rows were distorted and uneven, as if she had been alternately pulling the yarn too tight and letting it fall slack. Now the sweater looked the way she felt, full of lumps and no use to anybody.

“Jenny!” a voice called from above.

“Coming!” She dropped her work to the tile floor and began to climb the stairs.

Wilkie did not smile as she came in. He lay there with a pale, inward expression, under a painting of a sunset with pink flamingoes flying across it. “Did you get the Times?” he asked.

“Yes, here it is.”

“You might read some of it to me. Just run through the headlines, I’ll tell you what I want to hear.”

“All right,” Jenny said. It wasn’t a new request—Wilkie had made it sometimes in the past when his eyes were tired—but not for many months. “DEMOCRATS TEST STRENGTH,” she read in a flat voice. “U.S.-CANADA RIFTS GROW OVER TRADE. NEW PLAN FOR AILING BANKS. DOLPHIN COURTSHIP.”

“Yes, read that one.”

“‘As much as puppies or pandas or even children, dolphins are universally beloved,’” Jenny read. “‘They seem to cavort and frolic at the least provocation.’” It’s like when the children were small and he was working so hard on Whispers in the Dark, she thought, up all night so many nights watching the creatures that never come out till the sun goes down, straining his eyes through special binoculars. At dawn he’d come home and I’d have his breakfast ready, oatmeal with cream and brown sugar, or bacon and scrambled eggs, and after he’d told me how the night had gone I’d read to him from the Times. We were happy then.

“‘... Their mouths are fixed in what looks like a state of perpetual merriment,’” she continued in a monotone, not trying to take in any meaning, but noticing that Wilkie too was smiling very slightly. We’re doing the same things, she thought, but we’re not the same. It’s over between us: all that has to happen is for you to say so. From now on Barbie Mumpson will read the Times to you.

Wilkie’s eyes were half-shut. “‘Their behavior and enormous brains suggest an intelligence approaching that of humans—’” Jenny continued, lowering her voice to a hum. “‘—or even, some might argue, surpassing it.’”

“The usual guff,” Wilkie muttered. “Thanks, that’s enough. Think I’ll try to sleep a bit more now.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Gerry Grass stopped by a while ago.”

“Mrh,” Wilkie said, without interest.

“He asked me to say he was very sorry you’d been sick, and hoped you’d be better soon,” Jenny said, reporting Gerry’s words but not his gestures or the subtext of his message.

Gerry had held her hand in both his large warm hands, stared into her eyes with his large warm eyes, and assured her that if she needed him for anything at all, he was right there. Even in her preoccupied condition, it had been clear to Jenny that he was repeating his offer. Well, she had thought dimly and rather dismally, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do with my life next.