The 158-Pound Marriage by John Irving

  'See?' I said. 'What did I tell you?'

  'Shut up,' she said; her temper was quicker than I'd ever seen it. 'If you want to hear the story, shut up.'

  'OK.'

  'You're going to love this story,' Utch said; there was a meanness in her voice I'd never heard. 'It's just your kind of story.'

  'Just tell it, Utch.'

  'Edith was angry that he didn't trust her, angry that he wouldn't leave her here for three nights and three days because of you. He said he trusted Edith but not you; that's why he wanted her to go.'

  'What's the difference?' I said. 'If he really trusted her, it wouldn't matter whether he trusted me or not, right?'

  'Shut up,' Utch said. She was wound up and seemed on the verge of hysteria. 'Edith resented what Severin had made of her independence - or so she said,' Utch went on. '"I wanted to teach him that he couldn't cram his life down my throat and not leave me free to live mine," was the way she put it. "Within reason of course; I'd always accepted the limits that he set up," she told me. "Therefore, when he said the whole thing had to stop, we all stopped." That's what she went on and on about,' Utch said.

  'Go on.'

  'Well, he wouldn't even let her do what she wanted when they got to Stillwater,' Utch said. 'She wanted to fly to Denver for a day and a night; she'd never been to Denver. But Severin made her stay. Finally, she just wanted to amuse herself in her own way in Stillwater, instead of going to the wrestling every day.'

  'And he wouldn't let her?'

  'Edith says he wouldn't.'

  'Jesus.'

  'So,' Utch said, 'she decided to show him that if he wouldn't trust her, she wouldn't be trustworthy. She hit him close to home.'

  '"Close to home!"' I yelled. 'Would you stop that language, those horrible sportscaster phrases!'

  'Bender was exhausted after Friday's semifinal,' Utch said. 'Severin told Edith to drive Bender back to the motel; Severin said he'd meet her there after the rest of the semis were over. They had a rented car, and Bender doesn't know how to drive.'

  'He doesn't know how to drive?'

  'He doesn't know how to do a lot, apparently,' Utch said.

  I stared at her. 'Oh, no,' I said, 'Oh, no you don't. You're lying.'

  'I haven't told you yet,' she said.

  'You're lying anyway!'

  'Then Edith was lying,' Utch said. 'She took Bender back to the motel.'

  'No.'

  'And she put him to bed.'

  'No, no ...'

  'Apparently,' Utch said, her voice - mocking - imitating Edith's voice, 'he couldn't get up for it, he never rose to the occasion.'

  'I don't believe any of this,' I said. 'Edith seduced Bender? It couldn't have happened!'

  'Maybe she told him it was the coach's orders,' Utch said. 'Maybe she said it would relax him. Anyway, she told me he was unable to.'

  'She's lying,' I said.

  'Maybe she is,' Utch said. 'I don't know.'

  'Yes, you do,' I said. 'Go on.'

  'So Severin came back to the motel and found them together.'

  'I don't believe--'

  'And Bender was very hangdog about the whole thing.'

  '"Hangdog!"' I cried. 'Good Christ ...'

  'I mean, he'd been unable to do it with Edith, and he'd let his coach down ... I suppose that's what he thought.'

  'Bullshit!' I screamed.

  'And the next night just before the match, Severin told Bender, "I hope you get your ass knocked off." And Severin sat in the coach's chair and watched the match in an absolutely emotionless way. So Bender lost, of course.'

  'And I suppose Edith sat in the balcony and waved a pennant and cheered her heart out!' I hollered. 'Oh, come on!'

  'Do you know what Edith said to Severin?' Utch asked. 'She said, "Now we're even, if you still think being even matters."'

  'And I suppose Severin decided that he'd had enough of wrestling and resigned?'

  'Right.'

  'Wrong,' I said. 'Edith's a lousy storyteller, or you are.'

  'Edith thinks you're a lousy writer,' Utch said. 'She doesn't believe you can teach her a thing.'

  'Did she say that?' I asked. But Utch just put her head down and sighed, and I knew that was all I was going to hear.

  'Severin told you that,' I said. 'Edith wouldn't say that about me.' But when Utch lifted her face, she was crying.

  'Don't you see?' she asked. 'It just gets uglier. We've stopped it, but we can't stop it. It just goes on and on. You shouldn't let it.'

  'Utch, come here,' I said. I went toward her but she ran from me.

  'You haven't even noticed what's wrong!' she screamed.

  'What!'

  'I can't come,' she cried. I stared at her. 'I can't come!'

  'Well, you don't have to shout about it,' I said. She ran out the door into the yard yelling, 'I can't come! I can't come! I can't come!' Then she went into our bedroom and sprawled on our bed and cried. I left her alone.

  I called Severin and said, 'Look, how are you two getting along? Utch told me.'

  'Told you what?'

  'Edith told Utch what happened out there,' I said.

  'Oh, ja,' he said. 'Bender really blew it.'

  'Be honest with me, Severin,' I said. Then I told him the story I'd heard. He denied it, but of course he would deny it.

  A little later Edith called Utch and said that Utch had betrayed her. Apparently Edith had told her not to breathe a word to me - knowing Utch would breathe right away, of course. Utch answered that Edith had betrayed Severin's confidence by telling the story in the first place. Then I called Edith and told her I knew it was a lie.

  'Of course it is,' she said. But she meant that Utch had lied.

  'No, you lied,' I said.

  'Fuck you,' Edith said.

  We didn't see the Winters for weeks and when they invited us to dinner, we weren't sure what the dinner was for.

  'They're going to poison us,' I said, but Utch didn't smile. 'Severin likes to make everything official,' I said. 'He needs to hold a banquet to announce that everything is indeed over between us.'

  'Maybe they want to apologize.'

  'For what?' I said. 'For using us? I'm sure they're not sorry.'

  'Shut up,' Utch said. 'Maybe they want to try the whole thing again.'

  'Fat chance.'

  'And if they wanted to try it again,' Utch said, 'you'd jump at the chance.'

  'Like hell I would.'

  'Ha!'

  'Shut up.'

  When Severin greeted us at the door, he said, 'Edith's given up cigarettes, so we're not going to have a very long cocktail hour. That's when she feels most like smoking.' He kissed Utch on the cheek the way I'd seen him kiss his children and shook my hand. For a wrestler, Severin had a very weak handshake, as if he were trying to impress you with how gentle he was.

  Edith was eating a carrot stick in the living room; she turned her cheek and let me kiss her while both her hands clutched her carrot. I remembered the first evening we had eaten with them; they were both much freer with themselves.

  'We're having squid,' Severin said.

  'Severin spent the whole day cooking,' Edith said.

  'Actually, it's cleaning them that's the most time-consuming,' he said. 'First you have to strip the skin off. It's sort of like a film - a membrane - very slimy. Then you have to take the insides out.'

  'Squid are like prophylactics,' Edith said. 'It's like turning a rubber inside out.'

  'Edith helped me do it,' Severin said. 'I think she gets her rocks off turning squid inside out.' Edith laughed, and Utch snapped a carrot between her teeth like the neck-bone of a small animal.

  'How's the work coming?' I asked Edith.

  'I've just finished something,' Edith said. She was eating one carrot after another. I wanted to smoke but there were no ashtrays.

  'Have you put on weight since you stopped smoking?' Utch asked.

  'I only stopped a week ago,' Edith said. I couldn't tell about her weight; she wore a
shapeless peasant dress, the kind of thing she never wore. I felt that Severin had dressed her for the occasion, making certain that the outline of her taut body was not visible to me.

  'Time to eat!' Severin said.

  The squid was on a large platter in white ringlets and grayish clumps of tentacles in a red sauce; it resembled little snippets and chunks of fingers and toes. Upstairs we could hear Fiordiligi and Dorabella taking a bath together; splashes, the tub filling, their girlish voices, Fiordiligi teasing, Dorabella complaining.

  'I haven't seen the girls in a long time,' Utch said.

  'They're taking a bath,' Edith said. Stupidly, we all listened to them taking their bath.

  I would have been grateful for the interruption of our awkward silence by the great shattering crash, except that I knew exactly what it was. There was a sound like the machine-gunning of several upstairs windows, followed in a split second by the shrieking of both children. The stem of Edith's wineglass snapped in her hand and she screamed terribly. Utch's hand jerked the serving spoon across the platter and sent the squid splattering on the white tablecloth. Severin and I were moving upstairs, Severin ahead of me, moaning as he ran, 'Oh God no, no, no - I'm coming!'

  I knew what had happened because I knew that bathroom, bathtub and shower as well as Severin; I knew my wet love nest. The crash had been the sliding glass door on the bathtub rim; many nights, Edith and I had precariously opened and closed it. Old-fashioned heavy glass, loose in its rusting metal frame, the door slid in a blackened groove, slimy with old soap slivers and tiny parts from children's bathtub toys. Twice the door had eased out of the groove and Edith and I had clutched it and kept it from falling as we guided it back in its proper track. I'd said to Edith, 'Better have Severin fix that. We could get hurt in here.' Time and time again, Severin had told her to get it fixed. 'Call a bathroom man,' he said absurdly.

  I had always known that if the door fell on Edith and me, Severin would at least delight in whatever injury it gave me. And if something were to be cut by the falling door, I never doubted what it would be.

  'I'm coming!' screamed Severin witlessly. I knew there would be blood but I was unprepared for how much. The bathroom looked like the scene of a gangland slaying. The old door had pitched into the tub and broken over the naked girls, the glass exploding from the frame, sending shards and fragments flying everywhere; it crunched under Severin's shoes as he plunged his arms into the tub. The tub was pink, the water bloody; you could not tell who was cut where. Out the faucet the water still poured, the tub a churning sea of glass and bleeding children. Severin lifted Dorabella out to me; she was quivering, conscious but no longer screaming; she looked nervously all over her body to see where she was wounded. I pulled the shower handle and doused us all so that I could see where her deepest cuts were. Hunting for severed arteries, Severin lifted the bent door frame over Fiordiligi's lovely head and held her under the shower while she howled and wriggled and he examined her body for cuts. Both of them had a multitude of flacklike wounds, boil-sized punctures and swellings on their arms and shoulders. I found one deep cut on Dorabella, in her sodden hair above one ear - a gash that had parted her hair and scalp, nearly as long as my finger but not quite as deep as her skull. It bled richly but slowly; there were no arteries there. Severin tied a towel around Fiordiligi's leg above her knee and twisted it into a fair tourniquet. A wedge of glass, like the head of a broad chisel, protruded from Fiordiligi's kneecap and the blood welled and flowed but never spurted. Both children were perhaps in shock and were in for a tedious and messy glass-picking session at the hospital. It would be long and painful, and there would be stitches, but they would be all right.

  I knew that Severin had feared one or both of them would bleed to death in his arms, or be already drowned and bled dry by the time he reached them. 'They're all right!' I yelled downstairs, where Utch was holding Edith, who would not move from her chair, sitting as if frozen, Utch said, waiting for the news. 'I'll call the hospital,' I said, 'and tell them you're coming.'

  Severin took Dorabella from me and carried both nude children down to Edith; white-faced and shaking, she reviewed each wound on each daughter with wonder and pain, as if she had caused them herself.

  'Please help yourselves to supper,' Edith said vacantly. She did not care. She was only aware of the priority of her children.

  Severin suddenly blurted, 'It could have happened to you.' Clearly he meant, to her and me; he meant should have.

  With a shock, I realized that I didn't care what they thought. I realized that my Jack and my Bart had taken baths in that hazardous tub; I was thinking only that it could have happened to them, and that it could have been much worse.

  We threw their coats around the children and Utch opened the car door for them. Edith never waved or said thank you as she sat with both her slashed daughters against her and let Severin drive them to the hospital, where they were to be picked clean and sewn back together, nearly as good as new. As the car backed out, I was glad to see that Edith was smoking.

  Utch insisted that we clean up the bathroom. We agreed that they shouldn't have to see all that blood when they came home. Together we lugged the heavy door frame and a few large pieces of glass to the trash pickup; together we vacuumed fragments from every crevice. I found a piece of glass lying across the bristles of a toothbrush; danger was everywhere. We scrubbed that bathroom spotless, drained the blood-filled tub, scrubbed the blood stains on the stairs, put all the stained towels in the washer and started it. With a screwdriver I gouged little slivers of glass out of the vile groove of the glass door. I remembered that Edith had once braced her heels against that door. I knew where the fresh linen was kept (You would, said Utch) and we put fresh towels on the racks. I hoped to myself that there might be a slice of glass left behind on the tub floor for Severin to sit on.

  When we were done, we weren't hungry. Severin's cold squid was not appealing; it lay dead on the tablecloth, where Utch had slopped it; Edith's spilled wine had bled into it. The dish looked like the terrible debris from an operation.

  I hardly said a word as we drove home. Utch broke the silence once: 'Your children are more important to you than anything,' she said. I didn't answer, but it wasn't because I disagreed.

  That night I woke up alone in the damp bed. A window was open and it was raining. I looked everywhere, but Utch was out walking. Where can she go in this weather? I wondered. I checked the children's windows and closed them against the rain. Bart lay sunk in his pillow like a hammer, his fingers bunching the sheet in his sleep. Slim Jack lay in his bed as perfectly as the dream of a dancer. But there was no sleep coming to me, I realized. I checked the children's breathing, regular and deep. I found the umbrella. Utch did not need it where she was. I knew that she had not returned her keys to the gym and wrestling room to Severin.

  I thought, if Utch is going to take up walking, I can too. Outside in the rain I greeted insomnia like a peevish mistress neglected for too long.

  10

  Back to Vienna

  'I JUST GO there to be alone,' Utch told me. 'It's a good place to think - to just rest.'

  'And you just might run into him up there one night,' I said.

  'Severin doesn't go there anymore,' Utch said. 'He's retired, remember?'

  'I doubt that he's retired from that.'

  'Come with me next time,' she said. 'I know what you think of that whole building but please come with me and see.'

  'I wouldn't set foot in there at night,' I said. 'It's just a place full of old jock-itch germs running around in the dark.'

  'Please. It's special for me, and I want you to see.'

  'Yes, I'll bet it's special for you,' I said.

  'It's almost the last place I had an orgasm,' Utch said. She was certainly not shy about it. 'I thought maybe we might try.'

  'Oh, no,' I said. 'I don't go that way. That's not my style.'

  'Please just try,' Utch said. 'For me.'

  I hated Severin Winter for
making my wife pathetic in my eyes. But what could I do? I took her to the gym.

  In the darkness the great cage hulked like an abandoned beehive, its dangerous sleepers fled from their cells. In the new gym my shin struck an open locker door, and a tin whang! echoed among the sweat-stiff socks hung up to dry, the hockey sticks leaning in corners, the kneepads and bandages at rest. Utch said, 'Ssshhh! Don't let Harvey hear us.'

  'Harvey?' I thought of a watchdog prowling in the dripping showers.

  'The watchman.'

  'Well, surely he knows you,' I said, colliding with a low bench and greeting the cool cement floor with my cheek. There was a film of powder on the floor, a sort of deodorant designed for whole buildings. 'For Christ's sake, Utch,' I whispered, 'hold my hand!'

  She led me to the tunnel. Passing the little cave doors, I thought of the squash courts harboring bats. The air was stale. When we emerged into the moonlit cage, the pigeons stirred. Around the groaning board track, I lurched after Utch. 'I think I lost the keys,' I said.

  'I have the keys,' she said.

  When she slid open the wrestling-room door the rubbery blast from the heaters hit us. I shut the door and she turned on the lights. I knew that from outside one cell of the beehive was brightly lit, like the eye of a domed prehistoric animal.

  'Isn't the moonlight enough to see by?' I asked.

  She was undressing. 'It's not the same,' she said. I looked at her strong, round body; she was a ripe, firm woman but she still moved like a young girl. I felt a fresh want for her, like what Severin would have felt if he could only have forgotten himself and let himself go. Maybe he did, I thought. I looked at a stranger watching me undress.

  Utch tackled me! By mistake my elbow caught her in the mouth and made her bite her lip; she said, 'Not so rough. Be easy, be smooth.'

  Don't coach me, I thought, but I wriggled against her. I touched her; she was already wet, and I knew in that instant that there were men - or ideas of men - who could make her come with no effort at all. She slipped me into herself so quickly that I hadn't yet reacted to the mat; it itched; it smelled like a foreigner's refrigerator. She was sliding us across the white-lined inner circle toward a padded wall, and I steered her back to the center, as so often I'd heard Severin holler to his wrestlers, 'Don't let him get off the mat!'