“Excuse me,” he said to the man with her, not looking at her at all.
“Yes?”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
Maybe I’ll say it ten more times.
“Excuse me.”
“Can I help you?” A little anger showing. The accent was not American.
“May I — I would like to talk to the person you are with.” His heart was driving so hard he could believe he was transmitting the beats like a time signal before the news.
The man granted permission by turning up the palm of his open hand.
“You’re beautiful, I think.”
“Thank you.”
She didn’t speak it, her mouth formed the words as she looked at her loosely clasped hands composed at the edge of the table like a schoolgirl’s.
Then he walked out of the room, grateful it was a cafeteria and he had already paid his bill. He didn’t know who she was or what she did but he had no doubt whatever that he would see her again and know her.
10
Shell took a lover at the end of her fifth year of marriage. It was shortly after she started her new job. She knew what she was doing.
Talking with Gordon had failed. He was only too eager to talk. She wanted them both to go to psychiatrists.
“Really, Shell.” He smiled at her paternally, as if she were an adolescent reciting the Rubaiyat with too much belief.
“I mean it. The insurance covers it.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he understated, meaning that it was the most outrageous thing he had ever heard of.
“I do.”
“I’ve read Simone de Beauvoir,” he said with gentle humour. “I know this world is not kind to women.”
“I’m talking about us. Please talk with me. Don’t let this night go by.”
“Just a second, darling.” He knew that at this precise moment she was challenging him to a solemn meeting. He suspected that it was the last time she would ever confront him like this. He also knew that there was nothing within himself that he could summon to meet her. “I really don’t think you can characterize our lives together as a catastrophe.”
“I don’t want to characterize anything, I want —”
“We’ve been pretty lucky.” His brand of humility took in the apartment, Shell’s closet of dresses, the plans for the second floor of the house, which were laid out on the desk and to which he was anxious to return.
“Do you want me to thank you?”
“That wasn’t becoming.” He allowed her to know he was angry by speaking with a slight British intonation. “Let’s try to understand the process of marriage.”
“Please!”
“Don’t get hysterical on me. Oh, come on, Shell, let’s grow up. A marriage changes. It can’t always be passion and promises.…”
It never was. But what was the use of shouting that? He fictionalized an early storm of flesh and wildness from which they had matured. He believed it or he wanted her to believe it. She would never forgive him for that dishonesty.
“… thing we have now is extremely valuable …”
Suddenly she didn’t want the doctors, didn’t want to save anything. She watched him speak with that terrible scrutinizing attention that can make a stranger of a bed-mate. He felt that he spoke to her from a far distance. She was a cub reporter in the audience. It was too late for easy married mumbling or intimate silence. He knew she was pretending to be convinced, was grateful to her for the pretence. What else could she do — weep, burn down the walls? She was in a room with him.
Later she said, “Well, where should we put the partition?” and they leaned over the house plans, playing house.
Breavman often reviews this scene. Shell told it to him a year later. He sees the two of them bending over the oiled desk, backs towards him, and he sees himself in the corner of the antique room, staring at the incredible hair, waiting for her to feel his gaze, turn, rise, come to him, while Gordon works with his sharp pencil, sketching in the bathroom, the insult of a nursery. She comes to him, they whisper, she looks back, they leave. And in some of the versions he says, “Shell, sit still, build the house, be ugly.” But her beauty makes him selfish. She has to come.
When she decided to change her job Gordon thought it was a good idea. She was glad to get back into the academic atmosphere. It was a tracking-back, Gordon said. She could re-establish her bearings. Shell simply couldn’t stand another day at Harper’s Bazaar. Watching the cold bodies, clothes.
A friend of hers was doing a couple of afternoons a week of voluntary work at World Student House, hostessing at teas for foreign students, hanging decorations, showing America at its smiling prettiest to the future ministers of black republics. She informed Shell that there was a job open in the Recreation Department. Since a friend of the family was a director and benefactor of the organization her application and interview were formalities. She moved into a pleasant green office decorated with UNESCO reproductions, which looked over Riverside Park, much the same view as Breavman’s, though less elevated.
She did her work well. The Guest Speakers Programme, the Sunday Dinner Programme, the Tours Programme were better run than they had ever been. She emerged as an expert organizer. People listened to her. Perhaps a creature that lovely wasn’t supposed to speak such sense. Nobody wanted to disappoint her. Success terrified her. Perhaps this was what she was meant to do, not love, not live close. Nevertheless, she liked working with students, meeting people her own age who were planning and beginning their careers. She walked into the spring atmosphere, she found herself making plans.
It was strange how friendly she felt to Gordon. The construction of the house was fascinating. Every detail interested her. They rented a truck to pick up panelling from an old country hotel which was being demolished. Gordon saw his study in oak. Shell suggested one
