A Week as Andrea Benstock
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс
- Год: 1975
- Язык: английский
- Год: Arbor House
- ISBN: 978-0-87795-100-1
- Жанр: Романы для взрослых
Электронная книга - «A Week as Andrea Benstock». Краткое содержание книги:
“And that scared you?”
“Forget it.”
“I’m sorry, Andrea.”
“I woke up alone. And I tried to remember the previous night, and it had been a usual kind of night, this bar and that bar and then my memory began getting patchy, and the last thing I could remember was being by myself and on my way from one bar to another, I had this flash of throwing up on the street. I used to throw up occasionally. I never do that any more. But in those days I never had a hangover, I never knew what a hangover was, and nowadays, God...”
“Don’t remind me.”
“But that morning. No hangover, but this rush of guilt and fear because of the holes in my memory. And then I discovered that I had come home with somebody, I’d brought someone home with me.”
“I thought you said you were alone.”
“Yes, I was. But someone had been with me and had left. I didn’t remember any of it but I’d brought someone home and I had had sex with him and I didn’t know who it was.”
“How could you be sure?”
She stared at him. “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Let’s just say there was evidence. Oh, hell. I had dried come in my pubic hair, does that clear it up for you? If you laugh I swear I’ll throw an ashtray at you.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“It was the thought of some man walking around and he’d fucked me and I might have enjoyed it, who could say, and I didn’t even know who it was. I could meet him on the street and not recognize him and he’d have fucked me and he could give me a big hello and he might be a total stranger to me. Or maybe it was someone I knew, an old friend, and he’d say, hey, last night was terrific, and I’d have to pretend I knew what he was talking about. Or — oh, hell, it was terrible. I’m sure there was nothing I could have done that would have been as bad as not remembering what I did do, and I knew that at the time, but it seemed to sum up everything that was wrong with the life I was living.”
“So you came home.”
“Not that day and not that week, but I think that I was what decided me. If any single thing decided me.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “I wasn’t going to tell you because I was ashamed, you know, and it wasn’t anything to be all that ashamed about, was it?”
“Not really.”
“The shame was because I didn’t remember.”
“And that’s why you’re in Buffalo, and that’s why you’re married to Mark. One thing, though.”
“What?”
“Something I’ve been thinking. It wouldn’t be hard for you to start hating him for the same reasons you married him. Buffalo is safe but it’s also dull, and you might decide that Mark’s both of those things and that it’s dull being his wife. Now hold on. I’m not saying he’s a dull man. He’s not. But you can take him for I granted, or at least you think you can, and you might wind up resenting him for all of that. I don’t know if I’m putting this correctly.”
“And I don’t know that I care for what you’re saying.”
“Well, maybe we’ll just let it go at that.”
“Yes, maybe we will. Making such a big thing about how we’ll always be friends, but this conversation could end a beautiful friendship right off the bat.”
“Oh, I doubt it, but we’ll let it go.”
But she couldn’t let it go. “I wonder how much you project,” she said. “If you think about who you married.”
“Oh, there’s a little truth in that.”
“And maybe you only wanted to screw me so that you could get even with her.”
“No, that’s not how it works with me. I don’t like to look for complicated motives, you know.”
“Not when it comes to you, you mean.”
“You got it, kid. Why look for complicated answers for the simple Polack? Every boy needs a hobby and adultery’s more interesting than stamp collecting. I’m a runner-arounder, that’s all. I’d screw a snake if somebody would hold its head.”
“Well, I like that,” she said.
When her mother returned to the car neither of them said anything. Andrea started the engine and turned the car around, and she was able to find her way back out of the cemetery the way she had come.
Halfway home Andrea braked for a traffic light. Her mother said, “I wonder how often I’ll do that. Go to the cemetery.”
“How do you mean that?”
“Well, I went to my parents’ graves. They’re buried in Pine Hill, of course. I always went a couple of times a year, and I’m only beginning to realize it now, Andrea, but I went because I thought I had to. That it was something I was supposed to do, the duties of a daughter. Not that I thought anyone was looking down from heaven and watching me, because that’s nonsense, but as though I acted as if somebody was watching. Oh, it was a way of remaining close to them, or trying to feel close to them, but it was also a duty, it was something to do a certain number of times a year. I’m out of cigarettes. Do you have one?”
“In my bag.”
“Thank you. With your father, it’s different. Just now while I was standing there alone I was thinking that this was as close as I could get to him. But is that true? I don’t think that it is true. I think that I am always close to him, wherever I am, and at the same time I’m never close to him. He’s a part of me, and at the same time he’s gone, and both of those facts will always be true. And they are just as true whether I’m standing in a cemetery or saying kaddish in temple or sitting home watching television. Does it make sense to you, what I just said?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I wasn’t sure. I know what I meant but I wasn’t sure I made it clear. I suppose I’ll go to the cemetery as often as I feel like it but I don’t know how often that will be. One thing, I don’t think I’ll ever go because I think I’m supposed to go. All the things we do because we think we’re supposed to do them, and who on earth cares what we do? Nobody does.”
When she pulled the car into the driveway on Admiral Road her mother told her not to bother coming in. “You’ll want to get home. Robin must be home from nursery school now, isn’t she? I think I’ll just lie down for a rest before I fix myself some dinner.”
“Why don’t you come out and have dinner with us?”
“Oh, that’s nice of you, but not tonight. Tonight I think I’d rather be by myself.” She reached for the door handle, “Thanks for going out with me, darling. I appreciate it.”
“Mark’s having an affair.”
“What did you say?”
She looked straight ahead, focusing her eyes upon her hands as they rested on the steering wheel. She found that she was staring at her wedding ring and thought that it might dissolve symbolically before her eyes.
“I didn’t think I was going to say that.”
“Well, I didn’t hear anything,” Sylvia Kleinman said.
“He’s seeing someone.”
“You can talk to me, Andrea, but only if you’re sure you want to. Otherwise I never heard a word you said just now. If you’d rather.”
She turned, looked at her mother. “No, I have to talk about it,” she said. “Oh, God, it’s been going on for months. I have to talk about it.”
“Well, come inside,” her mother said, after a moment. “Come on in the house. I’ll put up a pot of coffee.”
She had thought it would be very hard to talk about it with her mother, yet once she started it turned out to be very easy. The words flowed. Then there were no more words to say and she sat waiting for her mother to say something.
“He knows that you know.”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t had a confrontation. It hasn’t come out into the open.”