Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Frank,” his wife said, “you sound like a fucking sexist pig!”

“I do? Forgive me, darling. I’m only saying that there really isn’t much danger in the menopausal male’s fantasies or even his acting- out of those fantasies with an occasional partner — usually younger than he is, I might add — provided the relationship doesn’t take.”

“Take?” Connie said.

“Take,” Lipscombe repeated. “As with an inoculation for smallpox. We inquire whether or not it has taken, whether or not the toxin-antitoxin has been effective. In the same way, a middle-aged man’s philandering can mean everything or nothing at all. If the romance takes, it will oftentimes result in the dissolution of a marriage of many years’ duration. End of lecture, and I would like another martini.”

“Jamie?”

“Mmm.”

“Are you asleep?”

“Mmm.”

“What did you think of Frank?”

“Frank?”

“Lipscombe.”

“What about him?”

“What he said.”

“What’d he say?”

“Always talking about male menopause and middle-aged men running around after...”

“He’s boring and he’s full of shit.”

“Always the same stuff, isn’t it?”

“Always. But tonight he had a new audience.”

“Do you believe any of the things he says?”

“Not a word,” Jamie said.

“Not any of it?”

“None of it. Why? Do you?”

“Well, maybe it’s just that he keeps saying it over and over again. After a while...”

“Connie, I’ve got a nineteen-year-old daughter. When I hear Frank talking about teeny-bopper tits...”

“What’s she got to do with it?”

“Lissie? Well, if you can’t see what she would have to do with... with... with... with whatever it was Frank was implying...”

“He was implying, he was stating, actually, that men past the age of forty...”

“Well, I certainly would qualify for that, I guess.”

“Yes, you would, Jamie. Are prone was what he said. To having affairs.”

“Mm. Well, I’m sleepy, honey, so if you don’t mind...”

“But you don’t think so, huh? That middle-aged men are susceptible to having affairs.”

“I guess some middle-aged men are susceptible and others aren’t.”

“How about you, Jamie? Are you susceptible?”

“I told you...”

“Do you find younger women attractive?”

“Younger than whom?”

“Than meem, for example.”

“No. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. If you’re asking me...”

“Yes, whether you’d be susceptible.”

“The answer is no.”

“Because your nineteen-year-old daughter in Boston would magically prevent...”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What did you say?”

“That it wouldn’t be seemly for a man with a nineteen-year-old daughter...”

“Ah, seemly .”

“Yes, what’s wrong with seemly?”

“It’s just that it’s such an old-fashioned word.”

“Well, maybe I’m an old-fashioned person.”

“Do you find Diana Blair attractive?”

“Diana?”

“Yes, Diana Blair. Remember Diana? She’s the one with the big tits who said women don’t fuck around when their kids go off to school. When Frank was explaining how middle-aged men...”

“Connie...”

“Yes?”

“I’m not sure I like being pounded over the head with all this middle-aged shit. I’m forty-four years old...”

“Yes, I know how old you are.”

“I’ll be forty-five in July, and I’m not sure I really enjoy being reminded of it so vigorously. I mean, if there’s some reason you’re harping on that asshole’s dissertation...”

“No reason.”

“Then if you don’t mind...”

“But you haven’t answered my question.”

“What was the question?”

“Do you find Diana attractive?”

“Yes, all right? In a cheap sort of way.”

“What does that mean, a cheap sort of way? Does that mean you’d like to screw her?”

“No.”

“I think you are,” Connie said. “Screwing her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Then who are you screwing?”

“Nobody.”

“Because it sure as hell isn’t me,” Connie said.

“Connie, I’d like to go to sleep now,” he said. “Really. If that fucking dope Lipscombe can provoke this kind of discussion between a man and his wife...”

“Jamie?”

“Mm?”

“You are having an affair with someone, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Because if you are, you can tell me. Really. It won’t be the end of the world.”

“I am not having an affair.”

“Okay, Jamie.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“Good night, Jamie.”

“Good night.”

They were silent for several moments.

“I’m not,” he said again.

She did not answer.

Lying in the dark beside her, listening to her breathing, he wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth. She suspected the truth, she obviously suspected it, so why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t he been able to find the courage to tell her he was in love with another woman? How long could he continue living the lie?

“Connie?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Connie,” he said, and hesitated. “I love you,” he said.

She was silent for a moment.

Then she asked, “Why are you telling me this now, Jamie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why now?” she asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“All right,” she said, “go to sleep.”

“I love you,” he said.

“All right,” she said.

He could not fall asleep. He lay in bed beside her, thinking of what Lipscombe had said at the party, thinking of the conversation he had just had with Connie.

He had known her almost half his life.

She was his history.

She was bonfires in the streets of New York on election night, and Alf Landon buttons, and Mayor La Guardia reading the comics during the newspaper strike. She was the Lindbergh baby being kidnapped, and the Dionne quintuplets, and the Duke of Windsor abdicating his throne for Wally Simpson. She was radio, lines like “Who’s Yehudi?” and “One of these days I’ll have to clean out that hall closet,” shows like “Grand Central Station” and “The Green Hornet,” she was Woody Herman coming from the roof of the New Yorker Hotel, she was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the conquest of polio, the McCarthy hearings on television when Lissie wasn’t born and Joanna was only six. She was his past, she was himself, so how could he leave her? He loved her. How could he possibly leave her?

Ah, but he loved Joanna more.

Ah.

He got out of bed, went into the bathroom to take a robe from the hook behind the door, and then tiptoed back to Connie’s side of the bed and turned off the burglar alarm. He did not put on any outside lights. In the dark, he made his way barefoot over the flagstone path to the barn, and unlocked the studio door, and then turned on only the light over his desk. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. He dialed her number and waited.

“Hello?” she said.

“Joanna?”

“Jamie?” she said, surprised, instantly awake. “What is it?”

“Honey,” he said, “I had to call, I don’t know what to do. I want to tell her about us, but...”