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Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

The pleasures of love had soon turned into the solider pleasures of marriage. About sex she had known nothing. Even in college, when the girls in the dormitory talked of such matters, she had left the room—priggishly, perhaps, but she couldn’t have helped herself. Whatever she knew now she had learned from her husband; and once the step was taken, there had been so much to learn. Perhaps it was an immature or a childish thought, but with a man who loved her, a husband of one’s very own, it was for the first time wonderful to be a grownup, free to abandon oneself to love without fear of parental disapproval, without their even knowing. And she had been good for him; she knew she had always been good for him. To deny this now, or to reproach herself because it had been otherwise, would have been to deny all that had been between them in the past. Because of this, what had been happening lately had confused and humiliated her, so that she was fast losing the belief in herself which she had found only in her marriage.

Where had she failed? For somewhere in their marriage there was failure. How otherwise could she have reached such a state of uncertainty? Her husband seemed to be going from her, a fact she had only fully realized this week. Had he lost interest? Didn’t their love mean to him what it did to her? Fatigue of marriage was a deadly thing, but others had weathered it before and they could weather it too—provided they knew what the matter was beyond mere fatigue, restlessness, boredom. She had as much to give him as ever but he seemed to have forgotten it was there. In what way was the failure hers? She had no means of knowing because she had no clue. She only knew that this week—this week in Maine away from the husband whose presence (because she loved him) prevented her so often from speaking her mind—she had been able to review the past few years of their marriage as if in a new light, and the conclusions she had arrived at were frightening and upsetting. In spite of the dreadful uncertainty of many many nights alone in her bed while her husband sat up in his study, she had still thought—because it had become her habit to think so—that she was happily married. Now she had discovered bitterly that her role in his life was little more than that of housekeeper.

VII

VII

In the chair behind him, someone was talking about swing. “You ought to study the new forms,” the voice said, “you really ought. Why, Lionel Hampton’s recording of Central Avenue Breakdown is as complicated and intricate as anything in Bach, père or fils. People don’t realize!” John Grandin picked up his copy of Life magazine.