“He was writing to you?” Charlie said, turning where he sat to look at her, surprised.
She nodded, her eyes on the floor. “I asked him to,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t write, and I had to know how you were.”
He seemed touched. After a moment he reached for her hand and she let him have it, dreading to argue with him.
“Beth,” he said quietly. “Have you had enough now? Enough of this running around and trying to ‘find yourself,’ or whatever it is you think you’re doing?”
He meant to be kind but he sounded condescending, and it wounded her. “You mustn’t laugh at me, Charlie,” she said.
“No, darling, I’m not laughing. I know it’s serious. God knows I have nothing to laugh about,” he said quickly.
Beth made herself look at him and for a brief moment she saw him the way he had been nine years ago in college when she had loved him so romantically. Or thought she had. The tenderness was reflected on her face and he brightened a little to see it. “Charlie, darling, I’m so grateful to you for so much,” she said. “I owe you a lot and I wish there were some way to repay it.”
“There is. Come home with me.”
She almost bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to give him an opening like that. She wanted to steer him out of the idea without inflicting pain on him. He had come a long way and put up with a lot.
“I—I wish to God I could,” she said.
“You can. Oh, Beth, I’ve been so damned miserably lonesome—”
“I know, so have I,” she broke in swiftly, afraid to let him start telling her what he had been through. It would be very bad, it would hurt them both, and it would make her feel more obligated than ever to him.
She stood up, walking away from him a few steps, as if that would help her to think clearly. “I’ll never be proud of what I’ve done to you, Charlie,” she said. “I’ve failed as a wife to you and as a mother to my children. For a woman that’s the ultimate disgrace. I suppose it sounds pretty hollow to say that I couldn’t help it. But I was as much a failure to myself as a human being as I was to you. When you fail yourself how can you be any good to anyone else?”
She turned a supplicating face to him.
“I don’t understand it,” he said. “You were all I ever wanted. The only thing wrong with my life now is that you’re not in it.”
“The only thing wrong with your life when I am in it is me. I had to leave,” she said, feeling that old needling desperation that plagued her when she tried to explain her private self to Charlie. He felt it too, as he tried to grasp it all, and came away with a head full of her words and no meanings to hang them on.
“I thought when I found Laura it would all come clear, all be explained to me,” she said, speaking as though explaining it to a child. “But when I found her, it was more like the beginning of the search than the end of it. I guess I’ll never know the answer to who I am. Or why. I guess the answer is that there is no answer.” She gave a shy hopeless little laugh. “Does that make things any clearer?”
“No,” he said and shook his head, an earnest sweat of concentration on his face. “I hope you aren’t telling me you won’t come back with me. That’s the only thing that matters.”
“But Charlie, darling, we’re right back where we started. That isn’t enough. Not for me. If we could only be friends and—”
“Friends!” he flared, and she knew she was in for it now. “How can a husband and wife be just friends? Do you want to live like Cleve and Jean lived all these years? A pitiful farce of a marriage? It may fool their friends but it doesn’t fool them.”
“Charlie, let’s face it, ours wasn’t much better.”
“It was till you got a bunch of goddamn half-baked ideas in your head!”
“I don’t think I could go back to you now, even loving you,” she said.
“You mean you don’t love me enough? Beth, Beth, I’ve always known that. In a marriage, one always loves more than the other. I’m willing to be that one.” He had risen and come toward her and now he stood behind her with his big warm hands on her shoulders, feeling her sobs and aching to stop them with kisses.
“Oh, don’t!” she cried, shaking him away from her. “Don’t talk that way. You’ll break my heart.”
“Come home with me then.”
“I can’t!” she cried, moving still further away from him.
“I need you.”
“I can’t, Charlie.”
“The children need you. Think of them if you can’t think of me, for God’s sake.”
“I have, I have, I’ve almost lost my mind over them. I wish somebody had cared that much about me when I was a child! I can’t go home!”
“You can, goddamn you! You will!” he exclaimed.
She whirled and faced him and shrieked with desperate determination, “No!”
There was a trembling silence for several moments while they stared at each other, both shaking with the intensity of their love, their hate, their helplessness.
“Beth, not once since I found you and got you out of that jail and brought you here have I said anything about what you’ve done to me. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I haven’t told you about the nights I’ve spent alone and the restaurant dinners I’ve eaten and the stories I’ve had to make up for the kids about
