Something Happened

'Horseshit.'

'I swear.'

'People don't dream about other people. They only dream about themselves.'

'Something happened to you, and I couldn't stop it and was afraid.'

'You were dreaming about yourself.'

She must have been taught to dress and disrobe that way at summer camp, where males could peek between the bunk boards, or by her mother or divorced jealous-faced sister who got knocked up as a college kid before that became fashionable and grew up frigid and ill-natured. She lives by herself now with her liver-hued freckles in a small house nearby and advertises she would not have it otherwise. I believe her. (I also believe that nothing would please her more than for me or the husband of some other woman to fall in love with her. We would fail. She would spurn us. She would love that chance to.) I also believe she will always want to live nearby. I think she hates me, is envious of my wife, and contaminates my wife's trusting, abject nature with doses of guileful animosity. She spouts bigotry and reactionary political comment. She is childless. Her first husband has married again and has children. She has a store. There is much in the world of which she disapproves. She wishes my wife would be more like her and chides her because she is not. She criticizes our children and volunteers advice to my wife on how to turn me into a more submissive husband.

'I wouldn't let him get away with it. That's why I threw Don out.'

She is glad that John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were killed and that the girls in the family have crooked teeth. She wants my wife to agree with her. She wants me to put in a swimming pool. I feel rivalry between us. (I used to feel rivalry with her mother.) I didn't let my wife know how much it pained me to see her undress that way. (How often I cursed her and swore to get even. I do get even. We Slocums have our family honor.) It was a matter of high principle (as well as of low prurience. I cherished seeing her in ungraceful positions. Still do). She never guessed the effect it had on me (she is not mean), and I was too sensitive and proud to complain. (I did not want to beg. While she did not even know what was going on.)

'Don't you ever dream I'm dead?' she likes to ask.

'Did you dream I was dead?'

'I think so. I think that's what was happening.'

'Thanks.'

'I was sorry.'

'I don't remember. My dreams are about me, and you're not me.'

'I dream about you.'

'You're in my dreams. Do you want me to return the favor? To promise?'

'You couldn't keep it.'

'Then why bring it up?'

I'm grateful she doesn't ask me if:

I ever dream about her and another man, because I do, and that dream is about me also. (They are coming together in sexual union for the sole purpose of denigrating me.) And I don't like it. I don't want my wife to commit adultery. I don't think she wants to, either, ribald and vulgar as she sometimes gets at large parties now (although she may think she wants romance. I'd like some too. Where do you get it?); more likely, she is reacting against being the kind of old-fashioned person who doesn't want to (while so many other women we hear of do want to and are). She would have to be drunk and more stupefied than she's ever been (that I know of) and fall into very bad, greedy hands. She would have to be led away without knowing it to someplace remote and be overcome in silence by somebody wicked and unmerciful. (Conversation would eliminate his chances. She'd recognize he wasn't me.) I hate that man (all of them who've ever calculated their chances with her) and want to kill him, especially with this foreknowledge I have that she would probably enjoy it more with him than she ever has with me.

'Oh, darling,' she exclaims to him over and over again in sighing adoration. 'I never knew it could be this way. I will do everything you ask.'

She would have no real need for me after that except to pay certain bills. (She does not like to write checks for things like insurance premiums and mortgage payments.) I hang within earshot at parties (unless I am off on my own taking soundings of somebody else's drunken wife. I prefer them comelier and better-tempered than my own) to lead her away before an insult or assignation becomes inevitable.

('Come along, dear. Come on now. This way, dear. There's an elegant man here who wants to meet you.'

'Who?'

'Me.'

In these dreams of mine in which she abandons me for somebody else, I seem to dissolve while dreaming them and am left with nothing but my eyes and a puddle of tears.)

Divorce, however, is a different matter. We like to try each other on that.

'Do you want a divorce?' she will ask. 'Do you?'

(I've thought about it. What happily married man of any mettle hasn't?)

'What would I do?' she speculates with a long face. 'I couldn't find another man. Who would want me?'

'Don't be too sure.'

'I'm too old.'

'Nah. I'm older.'

'It's different for you.'

'Yes, you could.'

'It's too late.'

'No, it isn't.'

'You're eager, aren't you?'

'You're the one who brought it up.'

'You're the one who's always thinking about it. I can tell. You get so happy every time a marriage breaks up. Why don't you come right out and say so?'

'Why don't you?'

'You're the one who's unhappy.'

'Who says so?'

'I know how you feel.'

'Aren't you? You do a lot of complaining. You're complaining right now.'

'Don't you want a divorce? You can tell me if you do.'

'No, I can't.'

'You can.'

'I can't even tell you if I don't.' Almost from the first week of our marriage we have been jostling each other this way over divorce. (Almost from the first week of our marriage I have found these squabbles sexually arousing, and I am in haste to hump her and reconcile. She always gives in.

'Say you're sorry.'

'I'm sorry.')

She would like me to say: 'I love you.' I won't. I can't.

I shouldn't. This is a matter of principle (and manhood) too. (I can say it easily enough to other girls if I have to, when it does not mean I will have to give up anything. It means I will get, not give.) I couldn't even say Sure to Virginia when it would have gotten me a great deal; instead, I would twist away from her sideways, recoiling lamely with some face-saving wisecrack, and slink out of sight miserably like an exiled dog.

'Come outside,' I could say.

Or:

'Meet me downstairs,' I could propose like a carefree buccaneer (when I knew we would not have much time).

But never:

'Yes.'

When she said: