Overload

"I've offered to resign," he told her. "Eric says it isn't necessary, but I may still." He went on to speak of the various possibilities he was considering, including a move to another power company, perhaps in the Midwest. If that happened, Nim asked, how would Ruth feel about moving there with the children?

Her answer was quick and definite. "I wouldn't do it."

"Do you mind telling me why?"

"I should think it's obvious. Why should three members of our family-Leah, Benjy, me-be uprooted, go to live in a strange place, and mostly for your convenience, when you and I haven't yet discussed our own future together-if we have one, which seems unlikely."

So there it was, out in the open, and he supposed the signal for their serious talk had come. How strange, he thought, that it should happen at a moment when briefly they had seemed closer than in a long time!

He said, with the sadness that he felt, "What the hell happened to us?"

Ruth answered sharply, "You should be the one best able to answer that. I'm curious about one thing, though-just how many other women have there been in our fifteen years of marriage?" He was aware of the recent hardness he had observed in Ruth as she continued. "Or maybe you've lost count, the way I did. For a while I could always tell when you had something new going-or should I say 'someone' new? then later on I wasn't so sure, and I guessed that you were overlapping, playing the field, with two or even more at once. Was I right?"

Having trouble in meeting Ruth's eyes directly, he answered, "Sometimes."

"Well, that's one point settled anyway. So my guess was right. But you haven't answered the first question. flow many women altogether?"

He said unhappily, "I'll be damned if I know."

"If that's true," Ruth pointed out, "it isn't exactly complimentary to those other females you must have felt something for, however briefly.

Whoever they were, I'd say they deserved better from you than not even to be remembered."

He protested, "It was never serious. None of it. Not with any of them."

"That I do believe." Ruth's cheeks were flushed with anger. "For that matter, you were never serious about me.

"That isn't true!"

"How can you possibly say that? After what you've just admitted Oh, I could understand one other woman; maybe two. Any wife with 1sense knows that happens sometimes in the best of marriages. But not scores of women, the way it's been with you."

He argued, "Now you're talking nonsense. It was never scores."

"One score then. At least."

Nim was silent.

Ruth said thoughtfully, "Maybe that was Freudian-my saying scores' just now. Because that's what you like to do, isn't it?-score with as many women as you can."

He admitted, “There's probably some truth in that."

"I know there's truth." She added quietly, "But it doesn't make a woman-a wife-feel any better, or less belittled, dirty, cheated, to hear it from the man she loved, or thought she did."

"If you've felt that way so long," he asked her, "why did you wait until now to bring it up? Why have we never had this kind of talk before?"

"That's a fair question." Ruth stopped, weighing her answer, then went on,

"I suppose it was because I kept on hoping you would change; that you'd grow out of wanting to fornicate with every attractive woman you set eyes on, grow out of it the way a child learns to stop being greedy about candy.

But I was wrong; you haven't changed. And, oh yes, since we're being honest with each other, there was another reason. I was a coward. I was afraid of what being on my own might mean, of what it could do to Leah and Benjy, and afraid-or maybe too proud-to admit that my marriage, like so many others, wasn't working." Ruth stopped, her voice breaking for the first time.

"Well, I'm not afraid, or proud, or anything anymore. I just want out."

"Do you mean that?"

Twin tears coursed down Ruth's cheeks. "What else is there?"

A spark of resistance flared in Nim. Did he need to be so totally defensive? Weren't there two sides to everything, including this?

"How about your own love affair?" he asked. "If you and I go separate ways, does your man friend move in as soon as I step out?"

"What man?"

“The one you've been seeing. The one you went away with."

Ruth had dried her eyes. She regarded him now with an expression which seemed part amused, part sorrowing. "You really believe that. That I went away with a man."

"Well, didn't you?"

She shook her head slowly. "No."

"But I thought . . ."

"I know you did. And I let you go on thinking it, which probably wasn't a good idea. I decided-spitefully, I suppose-that it would do no harm, and might even achieve some good, if you had a taste of what I'd been feeling."

“Then how about those other times? Where were you?"

Ruth said, with a trace of her earlier anger, “There is no other man. Can't you get that through your thick head? there never has been. I came to you a virgin-you know that, unless you've forgotten or have me confused with one of your other girlfriends. And there hasn't been anyone else but you since."

Nim winced because he did remember, but persisted, “Then what were you doing . . . ?"

"That's my private business. But I'm telling you again: it wasn't a man."

He believed her. Absolutely.

"Oh Christ!" he said, and thought: Everything was coming apart at once; most of what he had done and said recently had turned out to be wrong. As to their marriage, he wasn't sure if he wanted it to go on or not. Maybe Ruth was right, and getting out would be the best thing for them both. The idea of personal freedom was attractive. On the other hand, there was a good deal he would miss-the children, home, a sense of stability, even Ruth, despite their having grown apart. Not wanting to be forced to a decision, wishing that what was happening could have been postponed, be asked almost plaintively, "So where do we go from here?"

"According to what I've heard from friends who traveled this route" -Ruth's voice had gone cold again-"we each get a lawyer and begin staking out positions."

He pleaded, "But do we have to do it now?"

"Give me one single, valid reason for waiting any longer."

"It's a selfish one, I'll admit. But I've just been through one difficult time..." He let the sentence trail off, realizing it sounded like self pity.

"I know that. And I'm sorry the two things have come together. But nothing is going to change between us, not after all this time. We both know that, don't we?"

He said bleakly, "I suppose so." there was no point in promising to revise his own attitudes when he wasn't sure he could, or even wanted to.

"Well, then..."

"Look . . . would you wait a month? Maybe two? If for no other reason than that we'll have to break the news to Leah and Benjy, and it will give them time to get used to the idea." He was not sure that the argument made sense; it probably didn't. Nor did it seem plausible that a delay would achieve anything. But instinct told him that Ruth, too, was reluctant to take the final, irrevocable step to end their marriage.

"Well . . ." She hesitated, then conceded, "All right. Because of what's happening to you just now, I’ll wait- a little while. But I won't say two months, or one. If I decide to make it less, I will."

"Thank you." He had a sense of relief that there would be an interval, however brief.

"Hey!" It was Benjy, appearing at the dining room door. "I just got a new cassette from the Merediths. It's a play. Wanna watch?"

The Merediths were next door neighbors. Nim glanced at Ruth. "Why not?"

In the basement recreation room Ruth and Nim sat side by side on a sofa, with Leah sprawled on a rug, while Benjy deftly inserted a video cassette into their Betamax tape deck, connected to a color TV. A group of residents in the area had an agreement which was becoming widespread: One family recorded a television program-usually the children of the house, or a baby-sitter, took care of it-hitting the "stop" button whenever commercials appeared. The result was a high quality recording, sans commercials, which the adults and other families watched later at their leisure, the cassettes being rotated among a dozen or so households.