home.
With her husband, Laura took drives in the New England countryside on resplendent weekend afternoons, and they saw plays previewing in New Haven in advance of Broadway openings. Together they found small French and Italian restaurants in quiet corners of New Haven, and twice Stephen took Laura down to New York for the weekend.
They behaved both like newlyweds and newly-in-loves and Stephen even took her to the Yale-Harvard football game, which sold out the Yale Bowl in November. By midway through the fourth quarter she vaguely began to understand the rules. Harvard won thirteen to six, which to a girl from Wiltshire, sounded like a pretty wild game of football.
After Thanksgiving, Laura grew restless. Stephen was immersed in his studies and in the Christian Political Union at Yale, an extracurricular discussion and lecture group which sought, among other issues, to address a Christian response to fascism and Marxism. The Union met once a week at the outset. Then it was two evenings. Then four. Laura indulged her husband and thought it wise to find an outside activity of her own.
At Christmas, she found one. Upon the suggestion of a faculty wife who had become a friend, Laura went for an interview at the New Haven Board of Education and applied for a job. When the all-male board heard the tones of Wiltshire in her voice, they figured she was cultured. They asked her about Shakespeare. When Laura revealed that she knew all about not just Shakespeare, but also Milton, Chaucer, and Keats, they hired her to be the fourth- grade homeroom teacher at the city’s elementary schools. American men, Laura pondered upon accepting the appointment, had a strange way of maximizing a woman's abilities.
Meanwhile, Stephen rewrote the position papers that he had conceived for the Yale Political Union and he drafted them into magazine articles. The first one, entitled What is Christian Responsibility in 1937 he sold to Christianity Today, the prestigious publication funded by the United Lutheran Churches.
In Stephen's article he deftly argued that Christian responsibility was limited by the realities of the modern world. In Spain in particular, he postulated, there was little that American Christians could or should do. In light of the fact that much of the Christian establishment in Spain supported Franco, whose army had already begun to move northward toward Madrid, the views of the apparently conservative young theologian were not terribly surprising. It was, after all, atheistic Joe Stalin who was supporting the anti-Franco loyalists. But it was the eloquence of Stephen Fowler's argument that drew attention, eloquence combined with a thorough knowledge of history, political systems, and the scriptures. Other articles followed. Stephen Fowler was published in American Mercury and Harper's. Then, as he honed his conservative views more sharply, he wrote a two-part essay in The Atlantic. And at age thirty-one, Stephen Fowler was suddenly the lightning rod for a reasoned but unwavering conservative point of view within the United States.
The America First groups contacted him, as did wealthy conservatives and Republicans. Laura, in fact, was stunned by the number of people who contacted her husband. She lost track of who they were or how many there were. Equally, Stephen Fowler was stupefied by the attention. All he wanted to do, he said, was continue his studies.
Then something happened. Laura did not know what it was, because there had been nothing tangible that had caused Stephen to change. But suddenly her husband was strangely quiet and, worse, strangely remote. It lasted for weeks. Having never seen him in such a state previously, Laura did not know. Was her husband's mood a sort of concentration stemming from his work, or was it some inner turmoil? Were the demons personal or professional? When she asked him, he said nothing was wrong.
As the weeks passed, she knew one thing. His change of moods was starting to affect the marriage. He had lost interest in sex. He never initiated anything. She had to be the, well, the aggressor. And even then, there was a preoccupation on his part. He did not take the time with her that he used to. Sometimes she was convinced that he was simply going through the motions and his passions were elsewhere. It was as if, she almost felt, his orgasm was now enough for both of them.
All right then, Laura finally decided, we'll let it be like this for a while. When his mood changed, when the furor around his publications died away, then things would return to normal. Why wouldn't they? Stephen was still a decent man. And handsome.
But things did not change.
At the political union it was is if he were in mourning for some tragic bereavement of which he never spoke. He seemed to lose his voice, falling oddly mute. He offered no opinions and made only noncommittal responses. Friends-he had many-said that he was perhaps rethinking his previous positions, or maybe working on writings of a weightier sort. Laura, who knew that he had stopped writing at home, realized this was not the case. His mood continued through the spring term and into the summer. They went to Lakeside for only two weekends. 'It's really for single people, you know,' he said. And then in the fall he buried himself in his theological work and the Yale library. Friends spotted him roaming the stacks devouring anything that could be found on contemporary European political systems as well as twentieth-century Christian writings.
Laura was going crazy. She wanted back the passionate lover, the vigorous virile young male, whom she had married.
In the evening, she would undress in front of him. She would move to him in the middle of the night, letting a bare breast press snugly against him. Or in the early morning, when she felt his first stirrings, she would reach gently to him as he was half awake and take him delicately between her fingers. She would bring him to the hardness that she desired and would allow him no excuse whatsoever.
He would oblige, naturally. But he responded mechanically. She wanted him to come after her in the way he always had before they were married, or in the way he had on their honeymoon night in the Vermont guesthouse when he had barely been patient enough to allow her to remove her dress, and hadn't allowed her time to remove her stockings.
Something was seriously wrong. Laura did not know what it was. Nor did she have anyone she could confide in or whose opinion she could reasonably seek. Stephen had been her best friend in addition to being her husband.
One afternoon in April, midway through his final term in divinity school, Laura stood undressed before a full- length mirror and studied herself. Was she not as attractive as she had been when they married?
This question and darker ones darted through her mind. Then Stephen entered their bedroom and stopped short.
'What are you doing?' he asked.
For some reason, before her husband's malignant stare, she felt like grabbing a sheet and covering herself, as if this man whom she loved and with whom she shared a bed should not see her fully unclothed in daylight.
'Just looking,' she said.
'For what?'
There was a pause and next she heard herself saying things she hadn't planned. 'I'm trying to see why you don't find me attractive anymore.'
Stephen retrieved some papers that he had left on his night table. 'Who says I don't find you attractive?'
'You never want to make love anymore. I practically have to force you.' Now she did reach for a robe. She slid into it as he leafed through the papers.
Then her accusation registered. He swept an imaginary hair away from his face and answered, 'I'm not sure what you're talking about, Laura,' he said evenly. 'I've had a lot on my mind.' He paused, then: 'You know, Laura, I have exams coming. I can't be beholden to girlish moods and-'
'These are not moods!' she exploded. 'I'm talking about something seriously wrong between us! You are always preoccupied! And you act like..' Laura fought back a stream of tears as she shouted, 'You act like making love to me is a chore!'
'Laura, would you keep your voice down?'
'I will not!'
'Making love to you is not a chore.'
'You act as if it is. Eighteen months ago if you'd walked in and found me undressed, you would have grabbed me and thrown me into the bed.'
'Laura, it was new then. We've grown up a bit. We're both adults and we have professional obligations.'
