asked. But then he felt the little cautionary twinge that warned him it would probably end as all attempts at lovemaking with other women had ended over the past few years. They drew apart and faced each other from a distance that was heightened by their recent kiss.
“If things were different, if I wasn’t married …” he said lamely as they drew apart.
“You don’t have to say anything, Walter,” she said, turning away. It was the first time she had ever addressed him by his first name.
He had returned to his own small office and sat there twirling a pencil in a hand that soon began to shake with feeling. Through his doorway came the sound of Ivy turning over the sheets of galley proofs. He could not rid himself of the knowledge that for one brief moment she had been his if he had wanted her, and he derided himself for his cowardice.
The fidelity that Brenda had been unable to procure with love and affection she had succeeded in bringing about, he believed, through inducing in him a psychological block that one woman had called his “misplaced moral standards.” It wasn’t that; he wished it were.
After a few minutes Ivy passed his doorway, walking as far from it as the outer office allowed.
“Good night, Mr. Fowler,” she said. “See you Monday.”
“Good night, Ivy,” he answered.
It had been a mistake to mention it to Brenda, of course, for she had twisted it into a sordid excuse for her decision to leave him.
The real breakup of their marriage, however, began with a visit from Brenda’s mother in the late winter. Lillian Hornsby was the kind of woman who thought that the filial devotion of children for their female parent was a one-way street, a divine right of mothers who could grandly ignore all but the ostentations of reciprocity.
She was a short woman, shrunk in size by seventy years and by a natural inclination to camouflage herself against her background. Her voice, like everything else about her, was quiet, not through reticence or politeness but through guile. She had been taught early in life that a soft answer turneth away wrath, and since then had pitched her poisoned darts disguised as little jokes, accompanied by a short cackle of weary resignation.
During the weeks she stayed at Walter’s house they had observed an armed truce, greeting each other with tooth-hidden scowls, generally managing to keep as far apart as the size of the bungalow would allow. Mealtimes had brought them into uneasy proximity, and Walter had choked down his food while listening to the old woman jokingly criticize the boys’ eating habits, his wife’s “newfangled” cooking, and his smoking at the table. From the boys he had discovered that his mother-in-law turned off their television cowboy shows and substituted children’s programs that were aimed at toddlers half their age. He had remonstrated with Brenda about this, but had been met with a half-angry “Mother means well. Just don’t say anything about it.”
One afternoon, after returning home early from the office, he had sat in the living room with his sons and their grandmother and had watched a series of children’s cartoons and some nonsense involving a pair of animal-like hand puppets. Instead of concentrating on the screen he had watched the face of his mother-in-law become transformed with idiotic delight at the silliness of the cartoons. It was a sobering revelation: Lillian Hornsby was not a quiet, dignified old lady, but a simpleton to whom such television fare was high entertainment. From then on he could scarcely stand the sight of her, and he parried her purported jokes with a biting sarcasm that brought a meek lowering of her head, and shrill angry remarks from his wife.
During supper one evening he remarked that the boys needed haircuts, and said that he would take them to the barbershop the following day.
Brenda turned from the stove and said, “Why tomorrow? You’ll have to pay adult prices on Saturday. I’ll take them down after school on Monday.”
Normally this was as far as the incident would have gone, but Mrs. Hornsby had to say, “I don’t know why you don’t buy a pair of clippers and cut their hair yourself.” Then with her self-satisfied little giggle she added, “My husband always cut my boys’ hair himself. You know, Walter, a penny saved is a penny earned.”
The sudden anger he felt for her was out of all proportion to what she had said, but he felt it hot the muscles on his jaws and fill the backs of his eyeballs. “I don’t give a damn what Fred did!” he shouted. “This is my house and these are my kids. When I was a boy I didn’t like going out with an amateur haircut, and by God these boys aren’t going to either! And don’t give me any of your moronic pap about saving pennies!”
“Walter!” Brenda had cried, jumping away from the stove, her face ugly with pent-up hate and sudden anger.
“It’s all right, dear,” her mother whispered, in those tones of phony forgiveness and resignation he loathed. “I was only trying to help.” She covered her eyes with her hand as if crying, her mouth still working on her unswallowed food.
“I’m taking you two down to the barbershop in the morning!” he had shouted at the boys, who were pressed back against their chairs in fear. Then turning to his mother-in-law he said, “I make a fairly good living at my job. I can afford to squander an extra couple of dollars now and then, on haircuts or anything else. What did poor Fred get from saving his pennies while he was alive?” His voice rising to a shout. “He got nothing! Not a godammed thing but the knowledge that he had pissed away his manhood saving his money so that you —” leaning towards her — “so that you could outlive your usefulness, if you ever had any, and make life miserable for everybody else!”
Brenda was also shouting, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” in a long tearful monotone, but he wasn’t finished yet.
“You are everything I hate and despise in an old woman,” he said calmly, his voice strangely flat and even now. “You and your dried-up kind are responsible for half the divorces and nearly all of the fears and hatreds of my generation. Under the guise of mother love, or some other high-sounding piece of platitudinous crap, your kind have corrupted all your children. Well, you’re not going to corrupt my kids. From now on they watch their cowboy programs if they want to, and not the silly baby shows which are the only ones you understand.”
When he looked around him the children had run out of the kitchen, and Brenda rushed over and placed her arm around her mother’s shoulders. Both of them were crying.
“Come on, Mother,” his wife said, lifting the old woman to her feet and leading her from the room. He sat staring at his half-eaten plateful of food, still too choked with the things he hadn’t said to worry yet about the things he had.
That night and for the week following, his wife and mother-in-law slept together in one of the boys’ bedrooms. He ate his meals near the office and did not arrive home until late in the evening when all were in bed. The drinks he had had in downtown bars raised his spirits temporarily, but soured on his awakened anger as soon as he entered his house.
The following Friday he arrived home to find the house empty of occupants and in darkness. A curt note on the telephone table informed him that Brenda and the boys had gone West with Mrs. Hornsby. He picked it up and laughed; Brenda left more personal notes for the milkman. About three o’clock the next morning he awoke with a heavy feeling of loss and remorse, and it was only then that he began to see the emptiness that stretched before him.
Brenda had taken the TV set, her wedding gifts, and most of the kitchen gadgets, and even a new set of drapes from the picture window. He had laughed bitterly at her instinctive choice of these symbolic possessions.
Now,
