Thirty - Jill Emerson [4]
“Is it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. But the thing is that it’s more than your marriage. It’s you. Do you know that it shows in your face?”
“What does?”
“The fact that you’re bored all the time. That you’re all drawn out, strained.”
“I know. I can’t stand to look in mirrors.”
“Well, they ought to pass a law against mirrors. That’s something else again.”
“But I find myself looking into them all the time.”
“Because you’ve forgotten who you are.”
“Oh, come on—”
“A little trite, I grant you—”
“More than a little. Pure soap opera.”
“—but no less true for a’ that. Jan? Have you ever?”
“Ever what?”
“Had an affair?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You . . . ?”
She smiled at a happy memory.
“You’re not having one now?”
“Be serious. The way I look?”
We sidestepped into the Oh, you don’t look so bad/Oh, I’m so damn fat and what I wouldn’t give for your figure routine. But I was so taken with all of this that I almost forgot my lines. And she wouldn’t say anything much about her affair, just that it had happened a couple of years ago, lasted a couple of months, and left her very happy about the whole thing.
“Was it with someone I know?”
“Now don’t ask, Jan.”
“That means it was. Did Edgar know the man?”
“Cut it out.”
“Well, did Edgar ever find out about it?”
“No.”
“What if he had?”
“Do you really think he would have minded all that much?” I must have stared incredulously, because she reacted to my expression. “Let’s face it, honey. Edgar plays around.”
“I didn’t know that.” This is not exactly true.
“Oh, of course. He’s like a little boy, for God’s sake. I think all men are. I’m positive he started fooling around before we were married two years.”
“Well, who does he—”
“Girls at the office, tramps he picks up. There was a time, in my younger days, when I made scenes and threatened to leave. I laugh to think of it. I mean, where would I go?”
“But—”
“But what it amounts to is that something inside him makes him want that variety, and I can understand it most of the time, except when I start thinking that he wouldn’t do it if I took off thirty pounds or got the ironing done or compensated for one or another of my many faults. But actually I don’t think that would make any difference at all. I think he’s simply the way he is. You know, he even makes passes at my friends. Has he ever made a play for you?”
“No.” This wasn’t exactly true, either. I can remember a couple of boozy kisses at a backyard barbecue, a tentative Grope for the Boobies while collecting the coats at another party. The bit at the barbecue had been merely annoying, but the other pass had come at a time when I felt myself slightly less attractive than Miss Hippopotamus, and while I might not welcome the grab, I welcomed the reassurance in the knowledge that Edgar Hillman thought I was still worth grabbing, an opinion that Howard Kurland had not at the moment appeared to share.
“You know,” she said, a little later, “if you think Howard takes his marital vows so seriously, you’re only kidding yourself.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Nothing specific, no.”
“Do you know something that I don’t know?”
“Just that he’s a man.”
“And all men run around? I’m not positive I believe that. I’ve heard it often enough, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Maybe not. But things haven’t been going too well lately, have they?”
“Things have been going badly on and off for probably six out of the last seven years. Our marriage is like the country’s foreign policy. We somehow muddle through.”
“The country’s foreign policy before Vietnam, you mean. Now we muddle, but not through.”
“Fair enough. I don’t see—”
“Okay.” She pointed a finger at me. “Not all men run around. Some men have perfect marriages. Other men are profoundly unattractive, and other men lack the opportunity for an affair. Farmers who never get off the farm, for instance. But if a man’s marriage is not the ranking love affair since Heloise and what’s-his-name, and if he’s got a certain amount of poise and looks and intelligence, and if he’s got room to operate