There was a message from Phoebe waiting for him at the hotel: "Contact me immediately. Your mother gravely ill."
When he phoned he learned that his eighty-year-old mother had had a stroke at five a.m. Monday, New York time, and was not expected to live.
He explained to Phoebe about the weather conditions and learned that Howie was already on his way east and that his father was keeping vigil beside his mother's bed. He wrote down the telephone number of his mother's room at the hospital, and Phoebe told him that as soon as she hung up, she would be heading over to Jersey2 herself, to be with his father at the hospital until Howie arrived. She had only been waiting for him to call her back. "I missed you by a few minutes this morning. The desk clerk told me, 'Madame and monsieur have just departed for the airport.'"
"Yes," he said, "I shared a cab with the photographer's rep."
"No, you shared a cab with the Danish twenty-four-year-old with whom you are having an affair. I'm sorry, but I can no longer look the other way I looked the other way with that secretary. But the humiliation3 has now gone too far. Paris," she said with disgust. "The planning. The premeditation. The tickets and the travel agent. Tell me, which of you romantic cornballs dreamed up Paris for your sneaky little undertaking4? Where did you two eat? What charming restaurants did you go to?"
"Phoebe, I don't know what you're talking about. You're not making any sense. I'll get the first plane back that I possibly can."
His mother died an hour before he was able to reach the hospital in Elizabeth. His father and his brother were sitting beside the body that lay beneath the covers of the bed. He had never before seen his mother in a hospital bed, though of course she had seen him there more than once. Like Howie, she had enjoyed perfect health all her life. It was she who would rush to the hospital to comfort others. Howie said, "We haven't told the staff she died. We waited. We wanted you to be able to see her before they took her away." What he saw was the high-relief contour of an elderly woman asleep. What he saw was a stone, the heavy, sepulchral5, stonelike weight that says, Death is just death — it's nothing more.
He hugged his father, who patted his hand and said, "It's best this way. You wouldn't have wanted her to live the way that thing left her."
When he took his mother's hand and held it to his lips, he realized that in a matter of hours he had lost the two women whose devotion had been the underpinning6 of his strength.
With Phoebe he lied and lied and lied, but to no avail. He told her that he had gone to Paris to break off the affair with Merete. He'd had to see her face to face to do it, and that's where she was working.
"But in the hotel, while you were breaking off the affair, didn't you sleep with her at night in the same bed?"
"We didn't sleep. She cried all night long."
"For four whole nights? That's a lot of crying for a twenty-four-year-old Dane. I don't think even Hamlet cried that much."
"Phoebe, I went to tell her it was over — and it is over."
"What did I do so wrong," Phoebe asked, "that you should want to humiliate7 me like this? Why should you want to unhinge everything? Has it all been so hideous8? I should get over being dumbstruck, but I can't. I, who never doubted you, to whom it rarely occurred even to question you, and now I can never believe another word you say. I can never trust you to be truthful9 again. Yes, you wounded me with the secretary, but I kept my mouth shut. You didn't even know I knew, did you? Well, did you?"
"I didn't, no."
"Because I hid my thoughts from you — unfortunately I couldn't hide them from myself. And now you wound me with the Dane and you humiliate me with the lying, and now I will not hide my thoughts and keep my mouth shut. A mature, intelligent woman comes along, a mate who understands what reciprocity is. She rids you of Cecilia, gives you a phenomenal daughter, changes your entire life, and you don't know what to do for her except to fuck the Dane. Every time I looked at my watch I kept figuring what time it was in Paris and what you two would be doing. That went on for the whole weekend. The basis of everything is trust, is it not? Is it not?"
She had only to say Cecilia's name to instantaneously recall the vindictive10 tirades11 visited on his mother and father by his first wife, who, fifteen years later, to his horror, turned out to have been not merely abandoned Cecilia but his Cassandra: "I pity this little Miss Muffet coming after me — I genuinely do pity the vile12 little Quaker slut!"
"You can weather anything," Phoebe was telling him, "even if the trust is violated, if it's owned up to. Then you become life partners in a different way, but it's still possible to remain partners. But lying — lying is cheap, contemptible13 control over the other person. It's watching the other person acting14 on incomplete information — in other words, humiliating herself. Lying is so commonplace and yet, if you're on the receiving end, it's such an astonishing thing. The people you liars15 are betraying put up with a growing list of insults until you really can't help but think less of them, can you? I'm sure that liars as skillful and persistent16 and devious17 as you reach the point where it's the one you're lying to, and not you, who seems like the one with the serious limitations. You probably don't even think you're lying — you think of it as an act of kindness to spare the feelings of your poor sexless mate. You probably think your lying is in the nature of a virtue18, an act of generosity19 toward the dumb cluck who loves you. Or maybe it's just what it is — a fucking lie, one fucking lie after another. Oh, why go on — all these episodes are so well known," she said. "The man loses the passion for the marriage and he cannot live without. The wife is pragmatic. The wife is realistic. Yes, passion is gone, she's older and not what she was, but to her it's enough to have the physical affection, just being there with him in the bed, she holding him, he holding her. The physical affection, the tenderness, the comradery, the closeness… But he cannot accept that. Because he is a man who cannot live without. Well, you're going to live without now, mister. You're going to live without plenty. You're going to find out what living without is all about! Oh, go away from me, please. I can't bear the role you've reduced me to. The pitiful middle-aged20 wife, embittered21 by rejection22, consumed by rotten jealousy23! Raging! Repugnant! Oh, I hate you for that more than anything. Go away, leave this house. I can't bear the sight of you with that satyr-on-his-good-behavior look on your face! You'll get no absolution from me — never! I will not be trifled with any longer! Go, please! Leave me alone!"
"Phoebe—"
"No! Don't you dare call me by my name!"
But these episodes are indeed well known and require no further elaboration. Phoebe threw him out the night after his mother's burial, they were divorced after negotiating a financial settlement, and because he did not know what else to do to make sense of what had happened or how else to appear responsible — and to rehabilitate24 himself particularly in Nancy's eyes — a few months later he married Merete. Since he had broken everything up because of this person half his age, it seemed only logical to go ahead and tidy everything up again by making her his third wife — never was he clever enough as a married man to fall into adultery or to fall in love with a woman who was not free.
It was not long afterward25 that he discovered that Merete was something more than that little hole, or perhaps something less. He discovered her inability to think anything through without all her uncertainties26 intruding27 and skewing her thought. He discovered the true dimensions of her vanity and, though she was only in her twenties, her morbid28 fear of aging. He discovered her green card problems and her long-standing tax mess with the IRS, the result of years of failing to file a return. And when he required emergency coronary artery29 surgery, he discovered her terror of illness and her uselessness in the face of danger. Altogether he was a little late in learning that all her boldness was encompassed30 in her eroticism and that her carrying everything erotic between them to the limit was their only overpowering affinity31. He had replaced the most helpful wife imaginable with a wife who went to pieces under the slightest pressure. But in the immediate1 aftermath, marrying her had seemed the simplest way to cover up the crime.
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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sepulchral
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| adj.坟墓的，阴深的 | |
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underpinning
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| n.基础材料；基础结构；（学说、理论等的）基础；（人的）腿v.用砖石结构等从下面支撑（墙等）( underpin的现在分词 )；加固（墙等）的基础；为（论据、主张等）打下基础；加强 | |
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humiliate
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| v.使羞辱，使丢脸[同]disgrace | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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tirades
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| 激烈的长篇指责或演说( tirade的名词复数 ) | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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liars
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| 说谎者( liar的名词复数 ) | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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devious
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| adj.不坦率的，狡猾的；迂回的，曲折的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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rehabilitate
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| vt.改造(罪犯)，修复；vi.复兴，(罪犯)经受改造 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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uncertainties
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| 无把握( uncertainty的名词复数 )； 不确定； 变化不定； 无把握、不确定的事物 | |
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intruding
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| v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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encompassed
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| v.围绕( encompass的过去式和过去分词 )；包围；包含；包括 | |
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affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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