Marry Me Read Free Page A

had hardly found it in her scattered wits to praise him. Poor child, he had been standing there for ten minutes waiting for his mother to get through talking; waiting and listening, waiting and watching with that wary glimmering expression on his face – she began to cry. It came upon her like a gentle fit of retching; with clenched teeth she tried to keep her sobs from carrying into the telephone.
    ‘Hey? Don’t.’ Jerry laughed in embarrassment, faintly and far away. ‘It’s just for two days.’
    ‘Don’t say it, damn you. I don’t care what you mean, don’t say it.’ I’m crazy, she thought; I’m a crazy woman and he’ll start to hate me. At the thought of his hating her after she had given so much of herself to him, she became indignant. ‘If all you can do is laugh at me maybe we should say good-bye for good.’
    ‘Oh, Christ. I’m not laughing at you. I love you. I hate it that I can’t be there to comfort you.’
    Peter nudged closer, to have the other strap buttoned, and she smelled a Life Saver on his breath. ‘Where did you get that candy?’ she asked. ‘We mustn’t eat candy in the morning.’
    Jerry asked, ‘Who’s there?’
    ‘Nobody Just Peter.’
    ‘Bobby gave me,’ Peter said, and now his glimmering expression seemed about to resolve into fear.
    ‘You go find Bobby and tell him I want to talk to him. Go, sweetie. Go find Bobby and tell him. Mommy will be off the phone in just a minute.’
    ‘Poor Peter,’ Jerry said in her ear. ‘Don’t send him away.’
    How could he say this, he who had robbed her of all joy in her children? Yet of course it was just that he could say it that enlarged her love so helplessly; he refused to remain fixed in the role of her lover as she imagined it should be played. A needless kindness kept shattering his shell. Tears burned her cheeks; she held silent to keep her soaked voice from him. Her abdomen and arms physically ached. God, could he be doing it on purpose?
    ‘Hey? Hi?’
    ‘Hi,’ she answered.
    ‘You O.K.?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You can go to the Garden Club while I’m away, and take the children to the beach, and read Moravia –’
    ‘I’m reading Camus now.’
    ‘You’re so intelligent.’
    ‘Won’t you miss your plane?’
    ‘Take Peter to the beach, and play with the baby, and lie in the sun, and be nice to Richard…’
    ‘I can’t. I can’t be nice to Richard. You’ve ruined him for me.’
    ‘I didn’t mean to.’
    ‘I know, I know.’ Jerry’s fault as a lover, his cruel fault, was that he acted like a husband. She had never had a husband before. It seemed to Sally now in the light of Jerry that she had been married ten years to a man who wanted only to be her lover, keeping between them the distance that lovers must cross. Richard was always criticizing her, analysing her. When she was young it had been flattering; now it just seemed mean. Out of bed he must always try to strip her down to some twisted core, some mistaken motive. Whereas Jerry kept trying to dress her, flinging her sad little scarves of comfort and advice. He saw her as pathetically exposed.
    ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I love you. I wish you could come to Washington with me. But it can’t be. We were very lucky to get away with it once. Richard knows something. Ruth knows.’
    ‘She does?’
    ‘Her glands do.’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘Know. Now don’t worry about it. It wouldn’t have been so lovely the second time anyway. I’ll miss you constantly and won’t sleep at all in the bed by myself. The air conditioner going whoosh, whoosh.’
    ‘You’ll miss Ruth too.’
    ‘Not so much.’
    ‘No? Hey I love you for saying, “Not so much.” A real lover would have said, “Not at all.” ’
    He laughed. ‘That’s what I am. An unreal lover.’
    ‘Then why can’t I shut you out? Jerry I hurt, physically hurt. Even Richard feels sorry for me and gives me sleeping pills from his own prescription.’
    ‘Greater love hath no man than to give