The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [231]
Once or twice there is some tension between them. Joey, they decide, is very virile and the knowledge that she wants him less often than he needs her is bitter and sometimes ugly. This is not to say that their matings always fail or that they even talk or brood about it a good deal. But still he is a little balked at times. He cannot understand her unpredictable coldness; during their engagement she had been so passionate in her petting.
After the boy is born there are other concerns. He is making forty dollars a week, and working as a soda jerk in the corner drug store on weekends. He is tired, often worried; her delivery is a Caesarean, and they go into debt to pay the doctor. Her scar troubles him; despite himself he looks at it with distaste and she notices that. She is completely involved with the child, content to stay at home for week after week. In the long evenings, he wants her very often and contains himself, sleeping irritably. One night their coupling ends in a quarrel.
He has a bad habit in the middle. Always, despite his injunctions, he must ask, are you warm? Her smile is so noncommittal; he is vaguely angered.
A little, she will say.
He slows himself, rests his head on her shoulder, relaxing, breathing deeply. Then he moves again.
How are you now? Are you close, Natalie?
Her smile again. I'm all right, Joey. Don't worry about me.
He glides through the passage of several neutral minutes, his mind far away, imagining another child. They had the last one after discussing it and agreeing that they wanted a baby, but now he cannot afford another one, and he is wondering if her diaphragm has been set properly. He thinks he can feel it, which worries him. Abruptly, he is conscious of the pressure in his loins, the perspiration on his back, and he halts roughly, relaxing again.
How close are you?
Don't worry about me, Joey.
He is angry suddenly. Tell me, how close are you?
Oh, darling, I won't be able to tonight, it's not important, go ahead, don't mind me, it's not important.
The bickering offends both of them, makes them cold. He dreads his tasteless isolated throe, knows suddenly that he cannot do it, cannot lie afterwards on his bed depressed with failure.
For once he swears. To hell with it. And he leaves her on the bed, and walks over to the window, staring at the drab parchment of the shade. He is trembling, partially from cold.
She comes up beside him, nuzzling her body against his to warm him. The caress is tentative, uncertain, and it offends him. He feels her maternalness. Go away, I don't want a. . . a mother, he blurts, feeling doubt and then dread at the awfulness of what he has said.
Her mouth forms in the blank smile, wrinkles suddenly into weeping. She cries on the bed like a little girl. He realizes abruptly after two and a half years of marriage that when she forms that smile she is close to hysteria and terror and perhaps even loathing. The knowledge freezes in his chest.
After a moment he flops down beside her, cushions her head, and tries to comfort her weeping, his numb hand moving over her forehead and face.
In the morning none of it seems so awful, and by the end of a week he has nearly forgotten it. But on his side it marks the end or almost the end of one expectation from marriage, and for Natalie it means she must pretend excitement in order to avoid hurting him. Their marriage settles again like a foundation seeking bedrock. For them, that species of failure is not acute, not really dangerous. They ensconce themselves in their child, in adding and replacing furniture, in discussing insurance and finally buying some. There are the problems of his work, his slow advances, the personalities of the men in the shop. He takes to bowling with a few of them, and Natalie joins the sisterhood at the local temple, induces them finally to give courses in the dance. The rabbi is a young man, quite liked because he is modern. On Wednesday nights they have a baby sitter, and listen to his lectures on bestsellers in the social room.
They expand, put on weight, and give money to charitable organizations to help refugees. They are sincere and friendly and happy, and nearly everyone likes them. As their son grows older, begins to talk, there are any number of pleasures they draw from him. They are content and the habits of marriage lap about them like a warm bath. They never feel great joy but they are rarely depressed, and nothing immediate is ever excessive or cruel.