to spoil it.”
“Beth,” Charlie said, grasping her shoulders. His voice was stern and calm. “Nothing can spoil it, darling. Get a grip on yourself.”
Polly’s angry little voice rose over Charlie’s and Beth screamed, “One of these days I’ll croak her! I will! I will!”
And suddenly Charlie, who adored his children, got mad himself. “Beth, can’t you go for a whole hour without losing your temper at those kids!” he demanded. “What do you expect of them? Skipper isn’t even two years old. Polly’s a babe in arms. Good God, how do you want them to act? Like a pair of old ladies? Would that make you happy?”
“Now you’re angry!” she screamed.
He clasped his arms against his sides in an expression of exasperation. “You were in love with me five minutes ago,” he said.
Beth didn’t know quite what had gotten into her. She was tired, worn out from the trip and the emotions, fed up with the kids. She had wanted him, coming home in the car. Now all she wanted was a hot bath and sleep.
She walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. But Charlie swung it open at once and followed her, turning her roughly around at the door to the bathroom.
“What’s that little act supposed to mean?” he said.
She stared at him and the kids continued to chorus their sorrows in screechy little voices. Charlie’s big hands hurt her tender arms and his eyes and voice had gone flat.
“I won’t argue,” she said, her voice high and shaky. “I won’t argue with you. You don’t understand anything about me. You never have understood me!”
He looked into her flushed face and answered coolly, “You never have understood yourself, Beth. If you knew who you really were it wouldn’t be so hard for me to know you. Or anybody else.”
That infuriated her. She hated to be told that she didn’t know herself and it was one of the things Charlie always told her when he was mad at her. She hated it the worse because it was true.
“You lie!” she cried. “You bastard!”
Charlie pushed her back against the wall, so hard that her head snapped and hit the plaster with a stuffy thump. He kissed her. He was not very nice about it.
“If you think you’re going to make love to me, tonight, after the way you’ve just been acting—” she panted furiously at him, struggling to free herself— “if you think I’ve come two thousand miles just to let you rape me—”
“You shut up,” he said harshly, and kissed her again. He nearly crushed her mouth and she would have screamed again if she had been able. When he released her she slashed at him with her nails and he pulled her by her wrists back into the bedroom.
Beth tried all the old favored tricks of crossed women. She kicked, and flailed with her dangerous nails; she tried to bite him; she whacked him with a knife-heeled pump, thrilled to see a slightly bloody scratch bloom on his shoulder.
But Charlie smothered her with his big body. He just rolled on top of her and told her, “Shut up. You’re noisier than those poor kids you complain about all the time.” The sheer weight of him overwhelmed her. Struggle was futile, arguments were useless.
While he fumbled with her underthings she said, “You’re a brute. You bring me home to this miserable little cracker-box, you drag me all the way to California for this. This!” She tried to gesture at the four walls, to make him feel her disdain. “At least in Chicago I’m treated like a human being.”
He kissed her angrily.
“I am a human being, in case you didn’t know.”
He kissed her again, and his hands found her breasts.
“If you touch me I’ll be sick. I’ll throw up every goddamn thing I ate on that plane. Including the biscuits.”
But he touched her. He touched her all over, shivering all through his large frame and groaning. Beth began to sob with hurt and confusion and rebellion. And most dreadful of all, most humiliating, with desire. She wanted him. He was wonderful like this, the live weight of him on her yielding flesh, the thrust, the warmth, the sweat, the sweet moaning. When he took her like this, like a master claiming a right, she submitted, and she experienced relief. She did not know who she was, but for a little while he made her think she knew. He made her feel her womanhood.
And when he had forced her to surrender once, she gave in again without fighting. He kept her busy for a long time. If the kids kept up the noise their parents didn’t know it and didn’t care. Charlie wouldn’t let her out of his arms. He wanted her there where he could fill his nostrils with the scent of her, his arms with the smooth round feel of her. Four months is a damn long time for a husband in love with his wife to make love to a pillow.
It had not been quite like that between them since their college days and it was not like that again very often.
THEY FELL INTO THE ROUTINE THEN WHICH BECAME SO DULL and empty to Beth over the next few years. At first she was too busy getting settled in her new home to be bored. She inspected the holly, the palms, the poppies, the bamboo that grew, rare and exotic, in her own backyard. She breathed in the mountains in back and the sparkling valley in front. But little by little she grew used to them. You can’t live with the marvelous every day and keep your marvel quotient very high.
Charlie and Cleve worked hard on the toys, and Charlie loved it. He liked keeping his own hours, being the boss, running the show. Almost imperceptibly he began to take on the lion’s share of the work and, with it, the lion’s share of the decisions. He was willing to spend nights in the office working out new plans or briefing new men. It made Beth cranky with him. And the crankier she got the more he stayed away. It was the start of a vicious circle.
“It must be my fault. I must bore you to death!” she cried. “No, Beth, you don’t bore me,” he said, climbing into his pajamas while she watched him from her place in the bed. “You scare me a little, but you don’t bore me.”
“I scare you! Ha!” She said it acidly, but only to cover her chagrin. She didn’t dare to ask exactly what he meant, and he didn’t bother to tell her. But her fits with the children, her depressions, her lack of interest in the love that should have sparked between them, had something to do with it.
Charlie reached the point where he couldn’t tell if Beth ever wanted him or not. She got him, because he didn’t have the strength or the patience to turn monk. But there was none of the old smoldering response that had used to thrill his senses and reassure him of her answering passion. She was quiet and she made the minimum gestures mechanically. As he had blurted unintentionally, it scared him. Dismayed, he had tried once or twice to talk to her about it. Not knowing how to be subtle, he simply exclaimed that something was wrong and she had damn well better tell him what it was before it got worse. But Beth had given him a smirk of half amusement and half contempt that had withered his pride and driven him to silence.
So things rolled along. The business was never quite good enough to get them a bigger house
