The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [30]
Lydia brought flowers, and there was nowhere to put them except in a jar on the floor by the bed. She brought presents from her trips to Toronto: records, books, cheese. She learned pathways around the apartment and found places where she could sit. She discouraged old friends, or any friends, from phoning or coming to see her, because there was too much she couldn’t explain. They saw Duncan’s friends sometimes, and she was nervous with them, thinking they were adding her to a list, speculating. She didn’t like to see how much he gave them of that store of presents—anecdotes, parodies, flattering wit—which were also used to delight her. He could not bear dullness. She felt that he despised people who were not witty. You needed to be quick to keep up with him, in conversation, you needed energy. Lydia saw herself as a dancer on her toes, trembling delicately all over, afraid of letting him down on the next turn.
“Do you mean you think I don’t love him?” she said to the doctor. “How do you know you do?”
“Because I suffer so when he’s fed up with me. I want to be wiped off the earth. It’s true. I want to hide. I go out on the streets and every face I look at seems to despise me for my failure.”
“Your failure to make him love you.”
Now Lydia must accuse herself. Her self-absorption equals Duncan’s, but is more artfully concealed. She is in competition with him, as to who can love best. She is in competition with all other women, even when it is ludicrous for her to be so. She cannot stand to hear them praised or know they are well remembered. Like many women of her generation she has an idea of love which is ruinous but not serious in some way, not respectful. She is greedy. She talks intelligently and ironically and in this way covers up her indefensible expectations. The sacrifices she made with Duncan—in living arrangements, in the matter of friends, as well as in the rhythm of sex and the tone of conversations—were violations, committed not seriously but flagrantly. That is what was not respectful, that was what was indecent. She made him a present of such power, then complained relentlessly to herself and finally to him, that he had got it. She was out to defeat him.
That is what she says to the doctor. But is it the truth?
“The worst thing is not knowing what is true about any of this. I spend all my waking hours trying to figure out about him and me and I get nowhere. I make wishes. I even pray. I throw money into those wishing wells. I think that there’s something in him that’s an absolute holdout. There’s something in him that has to get rid of me, so he’ll find reasons. But he says that’s rubbish, he says if I could stop over-reacting we’d be happy. I have to think maybe he’s right, maybe it is all me.”
“When are you happy?”
“When he’s pleased with me. When he’s joking and enjoying himself. No. No. I’m never happy. What I am is relieved, it’s as if I’d overcome a challenge, it’s more triumphant than happy. But he can always pull the rug out.”
“So, why are you with somebody who can always pull the rug out?”
“Isn’t there always somebody? When I was married it was me. Do you think it helps to ask these questions? Suppose it’s just pride? I don’t want to be alone, I want everybody to think I’ve got such a desirable man? Suppose it’s the humiliation,