Separating - John Updike
The weather was fine, the sun was shining. All through June the sunny weather was working against Mr. and Mrs. Mapple's agonized state of mind. Their conversations squirmed like worms in the golden beams of light and under the cascading greenery, unnoticed. At this time their sad, whispering figures constituted the only blot on nature. Usually tanned by this time of year, they were now as pale as their eldest daughter, who had spent a year in England, when they went to fetch her airplane, except that Judith was too dazed by the chaos of her country's bustle in the sunlight to notice it. And they didn't tell her what it was all about right away, so as not to spoil it for their daughter, who had just arrived home. One of the options they offered in tedious conversation over coffee, cocktails, and orange-flavored white wine was to wait a few more days for her to recover from the fatigue brought on by jet lag. It was the conversations on these occasions that prompted them to form the idea of breaking up, without noticing that at that moment outside the closed window the earth was experiencing its annual renewal. Richard wanted to leave for Easter, but Joan insisted on waiting until all four children were home, when all the exams were over, the graduation ceremonies had been attended, and they had the comfort of the summer's novelties. So Richard slogged on, half in love, half in awe, repairing the window screens, sharpening the blades on the mower, and smoothing and rolling out the new tennis court.
The clay-paved tennis court had become pitted over the first winter, and the wind had blown away the red skin. Many years ago the Maples had learned from their friends that divorce often came with a major home repair project, that it was like the marriage was making a last-ditch effort to continue to survive. The worst marital crisis they encountered came under the dust in the kitchen they were renovating, in the midst of exposed lead pipes. But last summer they hadn't realized that the changeover didn't bode well, thinking instead that the hasty act would add to the festivities, and that their marriage could make the land more beautiful in a joking manner. The yellowish bulldozer drove merrily back and forth over a grassy hill dotted with daisies, shoveling it into a muddy plateau that a group of young men with dreadlocks would later rake and tamp down. The following spring, Richard's daily early morning walks out would produce a sensation of slipping downward, as if the prone end of a bed had been lifted. He found that the bare tennis court (the net and ropes still coiled up in the barn) created an atmosphere that coincided with his own sadness: a few dogs playing on the court during the thawing season, the streams of melting snowwater rushing down gullies and ravines, and so the handfuls of artificially matted clay being washed by the water into these gullies and holes must have been a logical continuation of the situation. In the depths of his closed mind, Richard secretly hoped that day would never come.
Now that day had come. It was a Friday, Judith was readjusting to life in her hometown again, and the four children were finally together before part-time jobs, summer camps, and visitors had sent them on their separate ways again. Joan thought they should be told individually, one by one, while Richard wanted to explain it to them all at once at the dinner table. Joan said, "I think just one explanation is a cop-out. They will argue and tease each other, but they won't be able to concentrate. Realize that they are separate individuals, not a collective obstacle in your quest for freedom."
"All right, all right. I agree." Joan planned well. That night they were going to have a long overdue dinner to welcome Judith, with lobster and champagne. After the dinner they were going to call her out, walk her over to the bridge over that brackish creek and talk to her, and ask her to swear to keep it a secret while at this very moment nineteen years ago they were both pushing her in a stroller down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square. Then to tell Little Richard. He was going straight from his part-time job to a rock concert in Boston, so the conversation was scheduled for after he caught the train back that night or before he went to work on Saturday morning. He was seventeen and a golf course maintenance man. Next could be suing
victimizing John and Margaret, the two younger ones, that morning.
"That messes it all up," Richard said.
"Do you have a better arrangement? That way you can spend the rest of Saturday answering any questions the kids might have, packing, and getting back on your wonderful trip."
"No." He meant he had nothing better to do and agreed with her program, though he felt the order was not quite right and there was an implied attempt to get a handle on the whole situation, like her long to-do list of chores and her lengthy class notes from when they first met. Her plan turned a fence erected in front of him into four razor-sharp walls, the other side of which was covered with a thin curtain.
Throughout the spring Richard was at times present and hidden, at times anonymous and sympathetic, navigating between the various barriers. He and Joan were the thin barrier erected between the children and the truth. Each moment separates the past from the future, and the future contains this incredible present. Beyond the four razor-sharp walls, an inscrutable new life awaited him. His head held a secret, and a fury of a face that was at once frightening yet reassuring, strange yet familiar; he did not want to moisten it with tears, but he felt them flooding himself like abundant sunlight. The thought haunted him, and made him tinker with the house as if by magic, replacing screens, hanging cords, strings and pins on doors, as if he were a Houdini maestro who had to make everything right before he disappeared.
And then there were the door locks, which he had to change on a door on a screened-in porch. As with many such things, the job wasn't as easy as he thought it would be. The old aluminum lock, rusted beyond opening, had been tampered with by the manufacturer and would not work for some time. Removing the old lock was remarkably easy, but he couldn't find one roughly the same size as the exposed hole at any of the three hardware stores, so he had to cut another hole, but his screw awl was too small, his saw was too big, and he had to plug the original hole with a piece of wood.
His chisel was dull, his saw was rusty, and his fingers were clumsy from too little sleep. The sun poured down on the untended land beyond the porch. The bushes were due for pruning, and the paint on the windward side of the house wall was beginning to flake off in patches; the rain would come in while he was gone, along with all sorts of bugs and rot and death. He soldiered on drilling holes, splitting small pieces of wood, listening to the inexplicable instructions of others, and fiddling with tiny metal parts, all the while vaguely sensing that his family, all the loved ones he was about to lose, were walking around him.
Judith sat on the porch like a princess returning from exile. She told stories in colorful detail: how gasoline was in short supply, how bombs at subway stations scared people to death, how Pakistani workers had seduced her in loud voices on the way to dance school when she had to pass them by. Joan walks around, in and out of the house. She played it cool and complimented Richard on a job well done fixing the locks, like it was just one in a long line of chores shared between the two of them and not the last. For a while the youngest son held up the rickety screen door, letting his father clumsily hammer and chisel at it, and to Richard it sounded like every click was a sob. The youngest daughter, who had attended a girl's all-night chat party last night, was sound asleep in her hammock in the porch at the moment, and the noise had no effect on her. She sleeps y, her face flushed, and she looks at ease. Time, like the sun, stretched relentlessly onward, and gradually it had reached the hour of sunset. To-day was one of the longest days of the year in terms of daylight. The pendulum was ticking away. The job was done. He poured a drink and sipped it right on the porch while listening to his daughter. She was saying, "The blackout was cozy, too, and at the worst of it all the butchers and bakeries had to light candles for business. Everyone was brave and cool. But from the papers here it looks like things are much worse: people shooting people in line for gas, everyone freezing."
Richard asked, "Do you still want to stay in England permanently?" Permanence, a concept that has now become a reality that closes in around him, pressing and clawing at his throat.
"Don't want to," Judith confessed, turning her googly-eyed face around. Her eyes were still childishly parted, but her mouth was moist and full and molded. "I was in a hurry to get home then, I'm an American." She had grown into a woman. They'd brought her up, and he and Joan had gone through a few trials and tribulations together to raise this one of their four children, and would have to work harder on the rest. But the thought of telling Judith about it was too much for him, and he couldn't help remembering what she had looked like as a child: her sandwiched between them, the three of them holding hands as they walked together towards the bridge. Richard couldn't hold back the tears that were coming to his face, and his throat tightened as he sat down at the dinner table to celebrate his daughter's homecoming. The champagne and lobster seemed to represent good times, and he gazed at them and savored them with tears in his eyes. He blinked and swallowed the contents of his mouth and mumbled a joke about pollen allergies causing eye irritation. Yet the tears continued to pour out, not from some orifice that could be plugged, but from an ooze in a membrane, a clear trickle that flowed in a continuous stream that would eventually converge into a large mass. His tears had become a barrier separating him from his family, and he could no longer see their faces or this last party where everyone pretended to be okay, where he was sitting at this table as a parent for the last time. As soon as he knocked on the back of the lobster teardrops rolled down the bridge of his nose, and a small sip of champagne had the salty taste of tears in it. His throat also ached, as if it were gripped by something. He could no longer hold himself.
The children pretended not to see Richard's tears. Judith, sitting to his right, lit a cigarette and tilted her head back to gaze at the full-throated, overly seasoned smoke ring she exhaled.
And then past that, John was fully absorbed, head down, picking the meat out of what was left of the legs and tail on the crimson lobster and eating it. Joan, sitting at the other end of the table, glanced at him in surprise; she did not reproach him, but for a moment her face contorted with pain, as much to convey a sense of understanding as to express admiration for the masterful technique he had employed. Margaret, who sat between them, was thirteen years old, and appeared to be a little older than her peers, so that no one called her "Little Bean" any more. She stared at her father through a series of crystalline teardrops, as if she were looking at something in a store window that she longed to own, and he seemed to her now to be a pile of crystal shards and a series of memories.
But later, when everyone was in the kitchen washing dishes and cleaning lobster shells, it wasn't her but John who asked Joan questions. "Why is Daddy crying?"
Richard heard the child's question, but not Joan's lowered voice in reply. The next thing he heard was Little Bean crying "Oooo-no, noooo!" The cry was a bit contrived, as if the person crying had expected this situation.
John returned to the table with a pot of salad and nodded at his father, opening and closing his mouth mysteriously and wordlessly "She said it."
"Said what?" Richard asked aloud, almost frantically.
The child sat down first, as if to set a good example of composure to chastise his distraught father. He said softly, "The separation."
Jon and Margaret returned. The boy's body became as if shrunken in Richard's distorted vision, and was relieved that the demon had at last manifested itself.
The people sitting around the table had moved far away from each other. He yelled at Joan, "You knew, you knew ......" His throat tightened and he couldn't finish what he wanted to say.
He heard Joan speak as if from a great distance, in a calm, reasonable tone, and relate the words they had prepared long ago: that this was nothing more than a short separation this summer, an experiment. She and Dad agreed that it would be good for both of them, that they needed space and time to think, that they loved each other but somehow couldn't make each other happier.
Judith spoke in her mom's flat accent, though due to her youth her voice pitched up and down and sounded too calm. "I think that's silly. You should either live together or get a divorce."
Richard's cries, raging like a wave that has peaked and fallen, were now drowned out by another clamor. The figure of John, who had always been very subtle, grew taller at the table. Perhaps the fact that his sister had learned of it first upset him. "Why didn't you tell us?" He questioned in a loud voice that didn't sound like his. "You should have told us you weren't getting along."
Richard was taken aback and tried to squeeze the words out of his tears. "We get along fine. That's the problem, I can't believe we didn't see that-" We're no longer in love was what he wanted to say but didn't, and he couldn't say it again.
Joan finished for him in her own way, "But we always loved our children especially."
That didn't quell John's anger and he growled, "What do you care about ours? We're just a little trick you guys have." His sisters laughed out loud, causing him to laugh out loud as well, sounding both raw and hilarious: "Hahahahaha." Richard and Joan simultaneously comprehended that the boy was drunk, having had too much of the champagne that had been opened to celebrate Judith's homecoming. Feeling that he had to occupy a position of prominence, John took a cigarette out of Judith's cigarette case and stuffed it into his mouth, holding it diagonally with his lower lip and squinting like a gangster.
Richard yelled at him, "You're not the little playthings we have, you're everything we have. But you are grown up, or nearly so."
John was striking a match, and instead of bringing the flame to the cigarette, he held the lit match up to his mom, closer and closer, asking her to help blow it out. (He has never been seen smoking, and "being good" has always been his way of standing out.) Then he lit the whole box of matches, and with a snort a torch lit up and he held it up to his mom. Tears distorted Richard's vision like a prism, and he saw flames everywhere, and couldn't even figure out how they were put out. He heard Margaret say, "Okay, stop showing off," and saw John's reaction to the cigarette was to break it in two before shoving it into his mouth and chewing it. He also stuck out his tongue to show his sister the chewed tobacco.
Jon was talking and reasoning to him, spouting reason, but he couldn't understand.
"It's been talked about for years ...... our kids are going to help us ...... dad and I both
want ...... " John listened as he carefully stuffed a paper napkin into the leaves in his salad, made a ball out of the paper and lettuce leaves, then tossed it into his mouth before looking around and waiting for the crowd to laugh. No one laughed. Judith said, "It's about time you acted like a grown-up." With that she exhaled a plume of green smoke.
Richard stood up and left the dreary table and led John outside. The light had dimmed inside, but it was still very bright outside, on a bright day with long days and short nights in the middle of the summer season. Both father and son were laughing heartily, and Richard told John to spit the leaves, paper, and tobacco out of his mouth into the grass. He took John's hand, a square, rough hand, though soft still a man's hand, and it held Richard's tightly. Together they walked across the tennis court to the field, where clusters of daisies dotted the new ridges that had been bulldozed not long ago. They crossed the tennis court and a flat field where the family had played baseball, and there loomed a small, emerald green hill that stood out in the setting sun. Every blade of grass and tree was clearly recognizable, truly like a pattern drawn on parchment.
Richard cried, "I'm sorry, really sorry. You're the only one in the family who has helped me with all those damn chores."
Shedding tears and drinking champagne, John now sobbed without a care in the world, "And it's not just the fact that you're separated, I've had a bad year all year. I hate that school, I can't make a single friend there, and that history teacher is a scumbag."
They sat on top of a small hill, tears making them shiver with emotion, but their hearts were warm and their conversation flowed a little better. Richard tried to focus the conversation on this sad year of his child's life, things like homework-heavy Sundays and weekends spent in his room passing the time by making model airplanes on borrowed time, when his parents were downstairs gabbing and whispering about their separation. Richard thought about how selfish and slow-witted they were. Feeling a little more sensitive now, he said to his son, "We need to think about letting you change schools. Life is too short to live a life of misery."
They talked about everything they could think of, not wanting the conversation to end at this moment, and went back to talking about the school and this tennis court, speculating on whether or not it would ever become as good as it was that first summer again. They walked over to check it out, and pressed a couple of iron hooks with netting ropes attached toward the ground. Perhaps to deepen the impression of this moment in particular, Richard, not without a little artifice, took the children to the most scenic spot in the field, from which they could see the iron-blue river, the emerald-green marshes, the small islands scattered about and casting gentle shadows in the faint light, and the small patch of white sandy beach in the distance.
He said, "You see, it's still so beautiful, and the scenery will still be the same tomorrow."
"I know." John said impatiently. That moment was in the past.
By the time they returned to the house, the others had drained their champagne. They had opened another white wine and were still sitting around the table, the three women gossiping. The seat where Joan sat had become the parent's seat. She turned her head to look at him, her face unmarked by tears, and asked, "Is everything all right?"
"We're fine," Richard said. The fact that the family feast had gone on without him both upset and called some relief to his heart.
Lying in bed, Joan explained, "I can't cry, and I think that's because I cried so much this spring. It really isn't fair that way. It was your idea, but you made it sound like I was going to kick you out."
Richard said, "I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. I tried to hold it in, but I just couldn't."
"You don't want to hold back at all. You enjoyed it. You did what you willed, cathartic to all and sundry."
He admitted, "I was willing to get it out of the way early. God, these kids are amazing, with their courage and personalities." John went home and then fiddled with model airplanes in his room, and kept shouting downstairs, "I'm fine. No need to be nervous." Richard went on with a cozy sense of relief, "They never questioned the reasons we gave. No one thought there was a third party, not even Judith.
"That's touching," Joan said.
Richard gave her a hug. "You were marvelous, too, and called everyone a great relief. Thank you." With a sense of guilt, he realized that he wasn't about to separate from Joan.
She reminded him, "You still have to talk to Dickie." Her words were like a black mountain falling in front of him in the darkness, their coolness, their weight pressing down on his chest. Of the four children, his eldest son understood him best, shared his heart. So there was no need for Joan to add this, "I'm not going to do your dirty work for you."
"I know. I'll do it. You sleep."
After a few minutes her breathing slowed and she drifted off into a deep sleep forgetting about it all. It was now a quarter to twelve, and the train that Dickie had taken after the concert would arrive at one-fourteen, so Richard set his alarm for one o'clock. For weeks he had slept badly. But as soon as he closed his eyes some of the scenes that had appeared in the last few hours flashed burningly before his eyes-Judith spitting smoke rings at the ceiling with no small amount of disgust, Little Bean glaring at him in silence, and the sun-wilted vegetation in the field where he and John had rested. The mountain in front of him moved toward him, closer, becoming one with him, and he became large and important, and the pain in his throat was no longer so obvious. His wife slept as if she had been slain beside him. The fiery eyelids and tumultuous thoughts annoyed him, so he got up and dressed, at which time Joan awoke and later rolled over to go back to sleep. That's when he told her, "Joan, if I could write off what I've done, I would."
Joan asked, "Where do you start?" There is no starting point. Speaking of courage, she had been giving him courage. He put on his shoes barefoot in the dark. The children were snoring in their own room, and there was no one downstairs. In his panic they had forgotten to turn off the lights, and he turned them off one by one, leaving only the chandelier in the kitchen. The car started, and he had hoped it would be better if it didn't. He met no one on the moonlit road, which seemed like an innocent traveling companion, as it shimmered in the grass by the side of the road, flickered in and out of the rearview mirror like a tracker following a trail, and finally disappeared into the dome light of his car. The center of the town, where there were still people walking around, seemed a little odd at the moment. A young policeman in a uniform sat on the steps of a bank with a group of kids in short-sleeved shirts. Across the street from the train station there were a few bars still open, and most of the people who went there were young people, enjoying the fresh summer air as they moved in and out of the warm night air. Shouting came from the cars that drove by beside them, and there seemed to be countless people talking. Richard pulled up here, tired of letting his head fall back on the seat next to him, hiding from the noise and the blinding lights. The scene was like an assassin in some movie coldly making his way through a crowd that was partying to get the job done, only the movie couldn't show the steep, palpable incline that you were picking up so tightly inside. You can't climb any further, you'd just fall. The car's chemical-fiber cushions were warmed by his face, and he caught a whiff of old, vaguely recognizable vanilla.
The train whistle blew and he looked up. The car had arrived right on time, and he wished it was late. The narrow security gates fell, and the bell that reported the train was pulling into the station tinkled merrily. A huge body like a flattened flute swung to a halt and down came a group of sleepy-eyed teenagers, his son among them. Dickie showed no consternation at seeing his father come to fetch him at this fateful hour. He and his two friends walked toward the car in faith, both of the boys taller than him. He said hello to his father and sat down in the front seat, making his own tired, agile movements as a gesture of gratitude. His friends sat in the back. Richard welcomed them very much so that he would have to take them home and so that he could postpone this conversation for a few minutes.
He asked, "How was the concert?"
"Awesome," said one of the kids sitting in the back seat.
"It was exciting, said another.
"It was okay, said Dickie. He was not a bigot by nature and was very reasonable, so the irrationality of the human world gave him headaches, stomach aches and nausea when he was still young. After dropping his second friend off at the door of his darkened house, Dickey said abruptly, "The hay fever is killing my eyes. I've been cutting that soft-looking grass all day today!"
"Do you have any more of those eye drops in the house?"
"I used them last summer and they didn't help at all."
"It might work this year." Richard made a sharp U-turn on the empty street. The trip home was only a few minutes. The mountain was here, in his throat. "Richard," he spoke, and sensed that the child lying in his seat, rubbing his eyes, tensed immediately when he heard his tone. "I didn't come to fetch you to make you comfortable, but because your mother and I have something to say to you, but it's not easy to catch you these days. It is sad news to call."
"All right." The words to get his father to go on were soft, but they came out of his mouth as if they had sprung from the top of a spring.
Richard had been worried that he would burst into tears and sob again, but now the boy's display of manhood set an example, and when he spoke the tone of his voice was flat and unemotional. "It is sad news to call for, but it is not necessarily news that will bring misfortune, at least not to you. It won't have a real impact on your life, but it's destined to involve your love life. You still work your job and go back to school come September. Your mother and I are sincerely proud of you for being able to be so positive about life. We don't want that to change."
"Uh-huh." The child breathed in and whispered, trying hard to hold herself together. They had turned the corner now, and the church they usually went to loomed up like a fortress that had been leveled on the inside. The home of the woman Richard wanted to marry was at the other end of the lawn, and the light in her bedroom was still on.
He said, "Your mother and I decided to separate, just this summer. It's not legally binding and it's not a divorce yet. We wanted to see how it felt that way. It's been years since we did enough for each other, since we couldn't do all we could to make each other happy. Do you perceive that?"
"No," the boy said. His answer was sincere and unemotional, like a question on a test to determine truthfulness.
Setting the stage with the facts, Richard gratefully continued to state details, practically rapping. He talked about the apartment he'd rented just across town and how he could be reached at any time, about split vacation plans, the benefits the separation would bring to the children, the flexibility it would add, and the colorful activities of the summer. Dickey stayed to hear him out and then asked, "Do the others know?"
"Yes."
"How did they react?"
"The girls were calm. John was a little out of control of himself; he yelled, ate a cigarette, made a salad out of a napkin, and told us how much he disliked school."
Dicky giggled, "Really?"
"Yes, school upset him more than mom and me. He seems to feel better when he yells it all out."
"Really?" He repeated, the first sign that he was stunned.
"It is, Dickie. I want to tell you something. That hour I just spent waiting for the car you took to come in was probably the saddest moment of my life. I hated doing it, I hated it. My father would rather die than do that to me." With those words he felt much lighter, he had pushed that big mountain onto the boy. They arrived home and Dickie moved swiftly getting out of the car and walking into the bright kitchen like a shadow. Richard called out behind him, "Want a glass of milk or something?"
"No, thanks."
"Shall we call the stadium tomorrow and say you're too sick to work?"
"No, I don't have anything." This was said in the doorway of his room, in a low voice. Richard kept his eyes peeled waiting to hear him lose his temper and slam the door, but it closed softly as it usually did. The sound of that slamming door sounded chilling.
Jon had fallen into her first round of sound sleep and was not easy to wake. Richard only had to say it again, "I told him."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing. Can you go say goodnight to him? Please."
She went out, not even putting on her bathrobe. Richard slowly changed into his pajamas again and walked down the hall. Dickie was already in bed and Joan was sitting beside him, the alarm clock radio by the boy's bed playing music softly. When Joan stood up, a bright light from nowhere, perhaps the moonlight, outlined her body under the nightgown. Richard was sitting in the same warm spot she had just sat in, the child's narrow mattress pressed into a crater by her.
He asked the child, "Are you going to leave the radio on like that?"
"It's always been just like that."
"It won't keep you awake? I'll be unable to sleep."
"No."
"Are you sleepy?"
"Uh-huh."
"Good. You still want to get up and go to work on time? You slept too late tonight."
"I want to."
Living at the school in the winter, the boy he came to realize that less sleep wouldn't kill him. As a child he fell asleep rippling and sweating, often alarming his caretakers. As a teenager, he was often the first of four children to go to bed. Today he would still fall asleep right in the middle of watching TV, stretching out his hairy brown legs. "Good. Good boy. Listen, Dickie, I love you so much, and I didn't realize how much I loved you until now. No matter how this thing turns out, I'll always be with you. Truly."
Richard leaned down to kiss the face he had expected to avoid, but unexpectedly his robust son turned and pressed his wet face against him, kissing him on the lips as if he were a passionate woman. In his father's ear he groaned and spat out the words, the all-important, heartfelt question, "Why?"
Why. It was the sudden sound of a sloughing wind, a sharp blade that struck out, a window pushed open in the midst of the lingering void. The frazzled face was gone, and the darkness was featureless. Richard had forgotten exactly why.