The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [255]
Goldstein and Stanley were talking, and Brown turned to them. "Keep it down. We don't want to get him stirred up again."
"Yeah," Stanley agreed softly, without rancor at the reprimand. He and Goldstein had been talking about their children, eagerly, companionably, welded by the darkness.
"You know," Stanley went on, "we're really missing the best part of them. Here they are growing up, getting to understand things, and we're not even there."
"It's hard," Goldstein agreed. "When I left, Davy could hardly talk, and now my wife tells me he carries on a conversation on the telephone just like an adult. It's a little difficult to believe it."
Stanley clucked his tongue. "Sure. I'm telling you, we're missing the best part of them. When they get older, it'll probably never be the same. I remember when I started growing up, there wasn't a thing my old man could tell me. What a damn fool I was." He said this modestly, almost sincerely. Stanley had discovered that people liked him when he made confessions like that.
"We're all like that," Goldstein agreed. "I should think it's a process of growing up. But when you get older you see things more clearly."
Stanley was silent for a minute. "You know I don't care what they say, you can't beat it, being married." His body was stiff, and he turned over carefully in his blanket. "Marriage can't be beat."
Goldstein nodded in the dark. "It's very different from the way you think it's going to be, but personally I'd be a lost soul without Natalie. It steadies you down, makes you realize your responsibilities."
"Yeah." Stanley pawed the ground for a moment with his hand. "Being overseas is no way to have a marriage, though."
"Oh, no, of course not."
This was not quite the answer Stanley had wanted. He deliberated a moment, seeking a way to phrase it. "Do you ever get. . . well, you know, jealous?" He spoke very softly so that Brown could not hear them.
"Jealous? No, I can't say I ever do," Goldstein said with finality. He had an inkling of what was bothering Stanley, and automatically he tried to soothe him. "Listen," he said, "I've never had the pleasure of meeting your wife, but you don't have to worry about her. These fellows that are always talking about women that way, they don't know any better. They've fooled around so much. . ." Goldstein had a perception. "Listen, if you ever notice, it's always the ones who go around with a lot of, well, loose women who get so jealous. It's because they don't trust themselves."
"I guess so." But this didn't satisfy Stanley. "I don't know, I guess it's just being stuck out here in the Pacific with nothing to do."
"Certainly. Listen, you've got nothing to worry about. Your wife loves you, doesn't she? Well, that's all you got to think about. A decent woman who loves a man doesn't do anything she shouldn't do."
"After all. she's got a kid," Stanley agreed. "A mother wouldn't fool around." His wife seemed very abstract to him at the moment. He thought of her as "she," as "x." Still he was relieved by what Goldstein had said. "She's young, but you know she made a good wife, she was serious. And it was. . . cute the way she took up responsibilities." He chuckled, deciding instinctively to salve all the sore spots of his mind. "You know we had a lot of trouble on our marriage night. Of course we worked it out later but things weren't so good that first night."
"Oh, everybody has that problem."
"Sure, Listen, I'll tell ya, all these guys who are always braggin', even a guy like Wilson here." He lowered his voice. "Listen, you can't tell me they didn't have the same troubles."
"Absolutely. It's always hard to get adjusted."
He liked Goldstein. The amalgam of the night, the rustling of the leaves in the wood, worked subtly on him, opening the door to all his uncertainties. "Look," he said abruptly, "what do you think of me?" He was still young enough to make this question the climax of any confidential talk.
"Oh." Goldstein always answered a question like this by telling people what they wanted to hear. He was not being consciously dishonest; he always generated warmth for the person who asked him even if he had never been a friend. "Mmm, I'd say that you're an intelligent fellow with your feet on the ground. And you're kind of ambitious, which is a good thing. I'd say you'll probably go places." And until this moment he had never quite liked Stanley for exactly these reasons, although he had not admitted it to himself. Goldstein had a formal respect for success. But once Stanley had exposed his weaknesses, Goldstein was ready to make virtues of all his other qualities. "You're mature for your age, very mature," Goldstein finished.