Beth began, but Vega interrupted her.
“It’s free, darling,” she said, with an injured air, and Beth, transfixed, felt the “darling” echo through her head with a dangerous delight. She hardly heard Vega add, “Charlie won’t mind. You have a housewife pallor, anyway. You need to get out. Come on down next week and we’ll make you over. Not that you need much remodeling.” Vega glanced again at Beth’s trim torso and smiled. Beth smiled back and there was a single brief electric pause before Vega said quickly, “Everyone all set? Let’s go.” And turned to leave.
The three of them filed out, Beth so close behind Vega that she stumbled against her once.
BETH, RIDING NEXT TO CHARLIE ON THE WAY UP TO SIERRA Bella, put her head back and pondered Vega’s offer with a smile.
“What’s up, honey?” Charlie said, seeing her expression in the red glow of a stoplight.
“Nothing.”
She wouldn’t tell me to save her own skin, he thought resentfully, and a wave of hatred for her secretiveness, her airs, came over him. He tried to swallow it down. He didn’t want to ruin another evening, and this one held promises. Just a few, but still, a few. She had been receptive, pleasant with him, at the Everglades.
“Have fun?” he said, starting the car up again as the light changed.
“Um-hm.” How can I tell him so he won’t say no? she wondered. For she felt instinctively that he would object to her desire. It seemed to Beth that all the things she truly wanted to do, he didn’t want her to do. Travel— “You can’t leave me!” Work— “Your place is at home with the kids.” Hire a nurse— “You’re their mother!” Get a little tight— “Beth, you’re turning into a damn souse.”
She thought he was staid, stuffy; he thought she was wild, or would be if he didn’t keep a tight rein on her.
They undressed quietly by the light of one dresser lamp, and Charlie, watching the clothes slip off her scented flesh, revealing the fluent curves of her back and breasts, felt his body flush all over. He was overcome with tenderness, with a desire for wordless communication.
Just be gentle with me, yield to me this one night, he thought, trying to press the idea into her head with the sheer force of wishing. He would never have spoken such a wish; it would have aroused her contempt, or worse, her amusement.
Beth pulled open the wardrobe door, reaching around the corner for her nightie. But he pulled her arm away. “You don’t need it,” he said. “Not tonight.”
She let herself be held, submitting quietly to his kisses. When he seemed all warm and loving and tractable she whispered, “Charlie, I’m going to study modeling with Vega. Starting next week.”
He only half heard. “Let’s not talk. Let’s not spoil it,” he said.
But she felt that if he didn’t acquiesce now, in the mood he was in, he never would. “If you don’t say yes I’m going to do it anyway,” she whispered into his ear.
“Do what?” he murmured, pulling her closer.
“And we’ll have one hell of a fight over it.”
“We’re not going to fight, darling,” he told her with the confidence of his passion. “Never again. We’re just going make love twenty-four hours a day.”
“Where? The toy factory? That’s where you spend most your time.” Her sarcasm cut through his euphoria and the words registered harshly in his ears. He shut his eyes tight, shifting his weight a little. “Not tonight, Beth,” he begged her. “Please, not tonight.”
The pleading in his voice irritated her. If she had been another kind of woman she might have responded with a wealth of sweet reassurance; she might have been able to respond that way. But instead she felt disdain for him, the sort of scorn most women reserve for a man who shows himself a weakling. Charlie was not a weakling and Beth knew it. And yet it seemed that over the years, as the ominous cracks developed in their marriage, he had made most of the concessions to keep them together, and that too aroused her scorn. It was true that she would have suffered fits of guilt and loneliness if he hadn’t, and she was grateful to him for his “tact.” But the very role she forced him to play and thanked him for in her secret conscience, lessened him in her eyes.
Dimly, Charlie realized this too. But he was caught in the squirrel cage and there was no way out.
Carefully Beth said, “I just want you to say it’s okay.”
With a weary sigh he loosened his embrace in order to look at her. “Say what’s okay?”
“If I model with Vega a couple of days a week.”
His eyes widened then as he heard and understood, and he turned away from her, picking up his pajamas and carrying them in front of him. His unwanted love was too obvious and it embarrassed him. “Vega Purvis is a Class-A bitch,” he said.
Beth’s cheeks went hot with indignation. She whipped her nightie out of the closet and slipped it over her simmering head. If she threw her anger in his face now he would never agree to it. But to call Vega a bitch, when he hardly even knew her!
“I think she’s delightful,” she said haughtily, when the covering of the nightie gave her some pretense to dignity.
“Sure. Delightful. What in hell do you want to learn modeling for? From that winesop?” He climbed under the covers and lighted a cigarette, and there was a flood of misery in him at the sight of her drawn up stiff and chilly in her resentment.
“You say modeling like you meant whoring!” she flashed.
“Well, what does it mean?” he asked with elaborate courtesy. “You tell me.”
“I’d probably go down there once or twice a week,” she said, suddenly softening in an effort to bring him around. “It would be just for fun, not for money. I’d never model professionally. But it would be something to get me out of the house, something really interesting for a change. Not that goddamn interminable bowling Jean dotes on.”
“I can’t see that walking around with a book on your head is so damn much more interesting than shoving a ball down an alley.”
Her fleeting softness vanished. “I knew you’d be this way!” she cried. “Just because I want something, you don’t want it! When in doubt, say no. That’s your motto.” She continued to berate him for a moment until it became clear that he wasn’t listening. He was staring past her, beyond her, at nothing, thinking. And his eyes were dark and heavy. He held his cigarette in one hand, so close to his chest that she had a momentary fear the hair would catch fire and scorch him.
“Charlie?” she said, after a moment’s silence.
“Beth, tell me something,” he said seriously, and his eyes, still aimed at her, focused on her once again. “I want you explain to me what is the matter with our marriage.”
For
