John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

“Oh honestly,” Bette said, when they broke.

Kit was sinking onto one knee, dizzy, awkward. People weren’t built to embrace when one was standing and the other was in a swivel chair.

“Silliness,” she said.

But they kissed again, more comfortably. It didn’t feel so much like sex — though there was some of that, hump against ripple even with their coats on — as like relief. For several seconds, Kit tumbled again within the balloon fabric of their marriage, at once nowhere certain and right at home. When the embrace broke off a second time he began telling her so, saying how glad he was she’d come, how much he needed her, how much …

“Kit,” Bette put in, “who was that young man who was here?”

Still on one knee, Kit shifted out of her lap. Even if he’d known how to hide his hurt, he wouldn’t have bothered.

“Oh, Kitty Chris.” That sounded better. “Isn’t my being here enough? Being here and kissing you and kissing you?”

“No way,” Kit said. “It’s not nearly enough.”

She smiled but kept him at arm’s length. Kit, despite the fog of his happiness, could see she was road-weary. Had she been back to Providence? Bette was saying she needed to understand. She needed him too, all right yes — but she didn’t understand. Kit’s testimony hadn’t mentioned anything about a Louie-Louie Rebes.

His testimony, check. Kit massaged his breastbone; the beehive within was dripping and humming at once. “He’s the brother, Bette. You can probably figure it out.”

“You hired him, Kit? You, you’re giving him work, you think that might help?”

He nodded.

“You hired him, well. And where did you expect to find the money for that?”

So here it came, three days’ worth of hard feelings. Didn’t Bette see his mud stains from the construction site? Couldn’t she tell she wasn’t the only one who was road-weary? And the first thing she wants to talk to him about is money. Kit got his hands busy, undoing his noisy coat. He stood and hoisted a chair over Zia’s halfwall.

“Kit, I’m sorry,” his wife was saying.

“Don’t be sorry.”

“You saw my — letter. You saw what I’ve been through.”

“And you saw mine.”

“Kit, I did chase them out. Your new man and Corinna, I chased them out, you see. So that you and I, well.”

They settled into facing chairs, their hands hanging over their knees, not quite touching.

“Kit, I knew you’d be here and I came here.”

“And I waited till you came. I gave you the space.”

“Oh, honestly.” Bette heaved a full-bore Aristocratic Sigh, lots of shoulder action. “You know Kit, loving you, well. It’s almost better but not quite. Almost, but not quite.”

“Almost better?” Kit wasn’t about to fall back into their stage business.

“Almost as good as, well. As good as the sort of new woman one sees in the magazines. I’m almost ‘liberated,’ don’t you know.” She’d gone lilting through that sentence, but the next was toneless, serious. “Almost unencumbered by history.”

She’d lowered her face, and seemed to study the glowing Catholic cards on Zia’s desktop.

“Sometimes I understand,” Bette said. “Sometimes I realize that my husband isn’t history. He isn’t that bust on the cornice.”

“I’m not smart enough to be history, Betts. I make a lot of mistakes.”

“Yes, yes. I suppose these past two weeks prove that.”

Patience, husband.

“Well. Kit, you see, mistakes and all, well. How could I hope to compete with you? Honestly. How could I ever match you, mistakes and all?”

“Aw, Betts.” Kit took hold of her dangling hands. “You don’t believe that.”

“Kit, how? How could I hope to come up to you? Could I outsmart you? Could I out-muscle you?”

“Come on, you’re the best. I’m the one who’s—”

“Honestly.” She wouldn’t let herself be drawn into an embrace. “Could I out-write you or out-work you? Could I out-integrity you? Could I? Really?”

“Bette, your integrity, it’s amazing. It’s in every word you say, total integrity. And what’s amazing is, at the same time, you’re playing. ”

“Certainly I could never out-dream you, Kit. Precious few people in this world dream so big as you.”

Kit fought an impulse to rise and pace. Insisting he was no hero, he mentioned again the past two weeks.

“These past two weeks, my husband, you’ve been a bigger hero than ever. A tragic hero, the best kind. One day Hamlet, the next Oedipus. And I could never hope to compete, Kit.” Her voice broke, a startling echo under the high ceilings. “I could never hope to come up to you. The only thing I could do was to keep you in love with me.”

Still she resisted an embrace, letting him hold no more than one hand. With the other she finger-combed her winter-roughened haystack.

“That was the only power I had.” Tearing up, blinking, she nonetheless held head and shoulders strictly squared. “My sole advantage, don’t you know. I had to keep you in love with me.”

“Bette, I am in love with you.”

“If I kept you in love, I had a chance, you see. I had that much over you at least.”

She pulled the other hand free, lifting a single fingertip to her wet cheek. Kit looked away. But what help was he going to find? What, in the rattling ceiling-high glass, in bleached and wounded walls going back to the American Empire?

“Bette,” he tried, “we have to work out some better version of love. You and me.”

She blinked but then — astonishing him — laughed. “Oh, indeed. A better version of love.”

She laughed again, thickly, her sobs not quite past. “Oh Kit. Big ambitions, ra-ther. That’s my hero.”

Bewildered, Kit nonetheless understood he could touch her again, take her hands again. He knew the woman: she loved to think. He persisted: love in their culture was a faulty model. “All based on dominance and subversion, authority and anti-authority. Everybody’s got to use whatever advantage they’ve got on everybody else.”

“Oh, are you speaking of ‘free love,’ Kit? No hang-ups, man.” Her voice was sardonic, but her grip remained warm. “No secrets, dig it.”

With that, another idea came to Kit, a missing connection — a notion so sudden and right that he wasn’t going to waste any time saying it out loud.

“Speaking of secrets,” he said, “there’s Forbes Croftall.”

She didn’t pull her hand away, another surprise. But she drew up into Academy-girl posture.

“Forbes Croftall,” Kit repeated. “He’s been calling you, right? He’s the one.”

Nor did Bette start crying again. She was no Louie-Louie Rebes, so unused to intimacy that once anything close to the heart got spoken, the floodgates burst.

“He’s been getting in touch,” Kit said, “because a few years back, during the Rampage, he was one of them.”

“He tells me he can’t live without me,” Bette said. “He tells me he has dreams about me.”

Kit nodded, this morning’s aches and pains hot with the force of his idea. Bette’s face revealed nothing — the hamper was closed — but she began to undo her long coat.

“The first call came, let me see.” She paused at a button. “It would have been about the time you and Mirini were working out the contract. Not long ago, really.”

Kit nodded, hot, still a step ahead of her explanations.

“A curious man, Forbes. Or in a curious marriage, perhaps. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Alice. At first he would only call in the mornings, when you wouldn’t be in.”

At first. Kit remembered the two calls last night.

“And last Thursday, well. While you were at Monsod, Kit? He came by the apartment.”