The 158-Pound Marriage by John Irving

  Utch was beginning to thrash, to actually bridge under me. She was coming - so quickly - and then I was aware of her keening, a high humming like a bee gone berserk in the hive. I thought of the pigeons in panic, and of Harvey, the watchman, crooning quietly in the darkness, masturbating on the soft dirt floor under the wrestling room. My God, I thought, so it was like this for them; Severin Winter knew all this.

  We seemed to be jammed into a far corner of the room; we had slid across two mats and were out of bounds, but Utch was still coming. I felt myself grow smaller inside her, and when she was done I had shriveled and completely lost contact.

  'I came,' Utch said.

  'You certainly did,' I said, but there was no concealing the jealousy in my voice and she knew that I had shrunk from her.

  'You can spoil anything you've made up your mind to,' she said. She got up, grabbed a towel from a stack in the corner and covered herself.

  'Is it time for a few light calisthenics?' I asked. 'Or should we run a few laps?'

  She had swept up her clothes and was moving out the sliding door. 'Turn off the lights when you leave,' she said.

  I went after her, around the sloping track. I picked up a splinter in my heel. By the time she reached the tunnel I had caught up; I followed her with my hand on her spine. 'Got a splinter,' I said. 'Damn track.'

  She sat in the corner of the sauna away from me, her knees drawn up, her head between them, the towel under her. I said nothing. When she went into the pool, I waited for her in the shallow end but she swam a few solitary laps.

  I was following her to the showers when she turned and threw something back into the pool. 'What was that?' I asked.

  'The keys,' she said. 'I'm not coming here again.'

  In the green underwater light I saw the key ring settle on the bottom of the pool. I didn't want to leave them there. I would rather have had them sent to Severin for Christmas, packed tightly in a tidy box full of turds. I don't know why I wanted them, frankly, but I dove into the pool and brought them up after Utch had gone into the showers.

  Which was how I came to have the keys, and they were in my pocket the night I went walking alone and saw Severin's car parked in the shadow of the gym. The light from the wrestling room shone like the pinhole-opening for a telescope in some mysterious observatory.

  So he doesn't go there anymore? I thought. And he hadn't come here alone, I was sure. I looked for cast-off, unmatched shoes, but there were no signs. Who was it this time? I wondered. I thought of going to get Edith - to show her how much her vengeance had accomplished. Then I thought of Utch at home, still so convinced of Severin's great suffering. She forgave him, but she had not forgiven Edith or me.

  All right, Utch, I thought; I'll show you what sort of suffering Severin's up to. As I ran down the footpath past the library, suddenly it was clear to me: Severin had been seeing Audrey Cannon all the while; he had never stopped seeing her. Did Edith know?

  'Utch is going to know!' I cried aloud as I panted past the new science building - wherein, no doubt, George James Bender was breeding fruit flies and pondering the predictable results.

  Utch was lying languidly in the bathtub. 'Get out,' I said. 'Put on anything - we'll take the car. Would you like to meet Audrey Cannon?' I held up the keys to the gym and wrestling room and waved them in her face like a gun. 'Come on,' I said. 'I'll show you who's retired.'

  'Whatever you're doing, stop it,' she said. 'Please don't be crazy.'

  'You think he's suffered so much,' I said. 'Well, come see him suffer. Come see what his whole problem is.' I yanked her out of the tub.

  'I don't like leaving the children without even telling Jack where we've gone.'

  'Stop stalling, Utch!' I yelled at her. 'Severin is getting laid in the wrestling room! Don't you want to see who he's fucking now?'

  'No!' she screamed at me. 'I don't want to see him at all.'

  I snatched up her blouse and handed her my writing pants; they always hung on the bathroom door. 'Get dressed,' I said; it didn't matter what she wore. I found my jacket with the leather elbow patches and made her put that on. She was barefoot but it wasn't cold outside, and we weren't going to be outside for long. She stopped resisting me, and at the car she slammed the door after herself and sat staring straight ahead while I slipped in beside her. I said, 'This is for your own good. When you see what a super bastard he is, you'll feel better about all of this.'

  'Shut up and drive,' she said.

  The light was still on in the wrestling room - they were having a long session - and I insisted that we wait for them at the pool. 'It might make him remember something,' I said. 'Caught twice at the same act! How stupid can he be!'

  'I'll look at whatever you want to show me,' Utch said, 'but just stop talking to me.'

  I couldn't find my way out of the locker room and through the showers, but Utch knew the way. We went up to the first balcony above the swimming pool and sat where I imagined Edith had once waited. I said, 'I should go get Edith too.'

  'It can't be Audrey Cannon,' Utch said. 'He's simply incapable of seeing her again.'

  'Then it's another Audrey Cannon,' I said. 'Don't you see? There's going to be one Audrey Cannon after another for him, because that's how he is. It's probably some volleyball player who's missing four fingers. It's Audrey Cannon again and again, with him. I know.'

  'You know you,' said Utch. 'That's all you know.'

  She huddled on the hard bench in her wet blouse, in my jacket with the elbow patches hanging at her wrists, in my pants with the crotch sagging to her knees. She looked like a clown whose house had burned down in the night and had only managed to get dressed in whatever was handy. I put my arms around her, but she struck at me, grabbed my hand and bit it hard so that I had to pull away from her.

  'Just wait and see,' I said.

  'I'm waiting.'

  We waited a long time.

  When I heard Severin singing in German in the shower, I realized that of course Utch would know the song, and that maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. Then the underwater lights flicked on and two naked bodies sprinted, laughing, across the tiles and into the water. Nobody had limped. The short, powerful, seal-like body that broke water at midpool and snorted like a walrus was Severin, of course, and the slim, graceful woman who glided through the green light and slid against him, her hand fondly cupping his balls, was Edith.

  'It's Edith,' I whispered.

  'Of course it is,' said Utch.

  They saw us as soon as we spoke. Edith swam to the far edge of the pool and hugged the curb. Severin, like a buffalo in his wallow, treaded water in the deep end and stared at us. No one spoke. I took Utch's arm, but she freed herself and walked down the balcony stairs. It took us forever to reach the shower door. My only thought was that our misunderstanding was now complete, because I was sure the Winters thought that Utch and I had just finished a ritual of our own.

  My last look at Edith was not returned. Her slim back was to me, her wet hair lay on her shoulders, her body was pressed against the side of the pool. Severin still bobbed out in the water, his round face puzzled, apparently finding the coincidence quite funny because he was grinning - or was he just straining to keep afloat? Who knows? Who knows what he ever thought?

  At the shower door I turned and flung the key ring at the tempting target of his head. He ducked and I missed.

  When we got home, Jack was awake, his narrow body like a knife in the shadow at the top of the stairs. 'Why are you wearing Daddy's pants?' he asked Utch. She slipped out of them right there on the stairs and kicked them away.

  'I'm not anymore,' she said. She led Jack back to his bed, his hand on her naked hip, though I've told her a hundred times that he's getting too old for her to be naked in front of him.

  'I didn't know where you were,' Jack complained. 'What if Bart had woken up? What if he'd had an earache or a bad dream?'

  'Well, we're home now,' Utch told him.

  'I wasn't really worried,' he sa
id.

  'Have a good dream,' Utch said. 'We're going to take a trip. Dream about that.'

  'Who's going to take a trip?'

  'You and Bart and me,' said Utch.

  'Not Daddy?' Jack asked.

  'No, not Daddy,' Utch said.

  'Whatever you're thinking,' I said to her later, 'there's no need to involve the children, is there? If you want to get away from me, leave the children here. Go off by yourself for a while, if that's what you want.'

  'You don't understand,' she said. 'I'm going to leave you.'

  'Go ahead,' I said. 'But Jack and Bart stay here.'

  It had been a wet spring, and a cool beginning to the summer, but the kids were happy to be out of school. When I took them to the University Club pool, I realized that the girl who followed after Jack; teasing him and allowing herself to be shoved in the pool, was Fiordiligi Winter. The scar that marred the knee of one lovely leg was the shape of a chicken's beak and the curious color of a trout's gills. I saw that Dorabella wore a bathing cap; probably her hair had not grown back. I didn't see whether Severin or Edith had brought them; I had a book with me, and I read it.

  It was my fifth historical novel, just out, and I was angry at how it was being distributed - as children's literature! My publisher insisted it was not really children's literature and that I had nothing to be upset about; he told me it was being suggested for pre-teens and older. How they could have made such a blunder was beyond me. The book was called Joya de Nicaragua, and it was about refugee Cuban cigar growers, after Castro, nurturing Havana seeds on plantations in Nicaragua. The book was concerned only with the Cubans who had died in Nicaragua. Joya de Nicaragua is the brand name of a quality Nicaraguan cigar. My editor admitted to me that they weren't actually 'pushing' the book very hard; my other four historical novels hadn't sold very well; not one of them had been seriously reviewed. A self-fulfilling prophecy if I have ever heard one! And my department chairman had once again failed to list my book among the members' new publications. In fact, my chairman had confided to me that he considered my only publication to be a small article published years ago, a chapter excerpted from my PhD thesis. The thesis was unpublished; it was called 'The Application of Bergsonian Time to Clerical Fascism in Austria'. Joya de Nicaragua is a much better book.

  When I brought the kids home from the pool, Utch had finished packing.

  'See you in a quick while!' Bart said to me at the airport.

  Jack, feeling grown up, wanted to shake hands.

  After I'd come home and searched the house for signs of them which Utch might have left me, I discovered Utch had taken my passport with her. That would make it difficult for me to follow her right away.

  I found her note pinned to the pillow that night. It was long and entirely in German. She knew very well that I wouldn't be able to read it. I picked over what few isolated words made some kind of sense, but it was clear that I needed a translator. One of the phrases was 'zuruck nach Wien'; I knew that meant 'back to Vienna'. Another word was 'Severin'. Who else had she meant for me to use as a translator? Of course she knew I couldn't ask just anybody who spoke the language; the note's contents might be embarrassing. Her intent was obvious.

  In the morning I took the note to him. A summer morning. Severin and his daughters were in the kitchen, where he was packing a lunch for them to take to the beach with friends. There was a strange car in the driveway; the car was full of children and the woman driver, whom I didn't recognize, looked like the sort of idiot who could actually have fun in a car full of children. She seemed to think it was uproarious that Severin was packing lunch and getting the girls off, though everyone who knew the Winters was aware that Edith never did that kind of thing.

  'Furthermore,' Severin grumbled to me as the car backed, honking, out of the driveway, 'it's a better lunch than she's made for her own kids. Drive carefully!' he bellowed suddenly; it sounded like a threat.

  'Edith is writing,' he told me in the kitchen.

  'I came to see you,' I said. 'I need a little help.' I handed him the note.

  Still reading it, he said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't think she'd leave.'

  'What's she say?' I asked.

  'She's gone to Vienna.'

  'I know that.'

  'She'd like you to leave her alone for a while. She'll write you first. She says she's perfectly responsible, and that you shouldn't worry about the children.'

  It was a longer note than that. 'Is that all she says?' I asked.

  'That's all she says to you,' he said.

  There was a long, thin knife spangled with fish scales on the cutting board; it shone in the sunlight through the kitchen windows. He must have been preparing fish for supper. Severin was so singular a sort that he could hack open raw fish in the morning. While I was staring at it he picked up the knife and plunged it into the soapy water in the sink.

  'Just give her a little time,' he said. 'Everything will straighten out.'

  'There's something in the note about chickens,' I said. 'What is it?'

  'That's just a phrase,' he said, laughing. 'It doesn't have anything to do with the word in English.'

  'What's it mean?'

  'It's just a phrase,' Severin said. 'It means, "It's time to move, time to go," something like that.'

  I picked up the slimy cutting board and swung it around as if it were a tennis racquet. 'What exactly is the phrase?' I asked him. 'I want a literal translation.' I couldn't seem to stop trembling.

  '"Saddle the chickens,"' he said. '"We're riding out."'

  Staring at him, I kept waving the fish-smeared cutting board. '"Saddle the chickens, we're riding out"?'

  'An old Viennese joke,' Severin said.

  'Some sense of humor you Viennese have,' I said. He held his hand out and I gave him the cutting board.

  'If it helps you to know,' he said, 'Utch hates me.'

  'Not likely.'

  'Look,' he said, 'she just needs to get her pride back. I know, because I have to get my pride back, too. It's really very simple. She knows I didn't really want the whole thing, and she knows you were thinking more about yourself than about her. We were all thinking more about ourselves than about Utch. And you were all thinking more about yourselves than about me. Now you just have to be patient and continue to do as you're doing - only a little less aggressively. Help her to hate me, but do it easy.'

  'Help her to hate you?'

  'Yes,' he said. 'Edith will hate you too after a while; she'll be sorry about the whole thing. And I'll help her to be sorry. It's already beginning.'

  'All this hatred isn't necessary,' I said.

  'Don't be stupid,' Severin said. 'You're doing it yourself. You're trying to make Utch hate me, and you'll succeed,' he said cheerfully. 'Just be patient.' Severin Winter was at his most obnoxious when he thought he was doing you a favor.

  'Where is Edith?' I asked.

  'Writing. I told you,' he said, but he could see I didn't believe him. He shrugged and led me to the foot of the stairs, where he gestured that I remove my shoes. Silently we crept upstairs, through their tousled, strewn bedroom - the melted candle gave me a strong twinge - to the door of Edith's study. Music was playing. She could never have heard our voices down in the kitchen. Severin pointed to the keyhole and I looked in. She was sitting very still at her desk. Suddenly she typed rapidly three or four lines. Then her movement was again arrested and she seemed to hang above the machine with the perfect concentration of a seagull suspended over water - over its food, its whole life source.

  Severin motioned me away and we tiptoed back to the kitchen. 'She just sold her novel,' he said. He might as well have slapped me with the cutting board, stunned me like a fish and slit me open.

  'Her novel?' I said. 'What novel? I never knew she was working on a novel.'

  'She didn't show you everything,' Severin said.

  That night I tried to take up sleeping again. I found an old slip of Utch's in the laundry basket and dressed a pillow in it and slept aga
inst it, smelling her smell. But after a few nights it smelled more like me - more like the whole bed and the whole house - and after I washed it, it simply smelled like soap. The slip became stretched and tore a shoulder strap, but I took to wearing it myself in the mornings because it was nearest me when I woke up. I also found Bart's striped T-shirt with a smiling frog face on it and a silver cowboy jacket that Jack had outgrown. In the morning while I ate breakfast I hung Bart's T-shirt over the back of one chair and Jack's cowboy jacket over another, and sat down to eat with them in Utch's old torn slip. I was sitting that way the morning Edith rushed in and told me they were all going to Vienna, and did I have any message for Utch?

  Vaso Trivanovich and Zivan Knezevich, those diehard Chetnik Olympians, had died within two days of each other. Frau Reiner had cabled. Severin was the executor of their will, which included more awful paintings by Kurt Winter.

  'Isn't it ironic?' Edith asked. 'Schiele's wife died of the Spanish flu in the 1918 epidemic, and Schiele died just two days later. It's just like Vaso and Zivan. And Schiele's wife's name was Edith, too.'

  I realized she wasn't making any sense because of me. She was staring at the kitchen chairs dressed like children and at Utch's old slip, and I knew that she was embarrassed and couldn't wait to get away from me; that whatever Severin had failed to convince her of about me I was demonstrating for her now.

  'No message,' I said. I had heard twice from Utch; she'd said the children missed me and that she was doing nothing to make me ashamed of her. In her second letter she had sent me back my passport, but with no invitation.

  'I decided to go with Severin because it's summer, after all, and the kids have never seen where their father's really from, and it might be fun to go back,' Edith babbled. 'No message?' she asked. 'Really?' She was scatter-brained. I realized that she could see through Utch's slip, so I remained sitting down. I was embarrassed too, and wanted her to leave. I had to keep myself from asking her about her novel; I wanted to know who was publishing it, and when it would be out, but I didn't want her to know that I wanted to know. She hadn't said a word to me about Joya de Nicaragua; I knew she hated it - if she had even read it. She was looking at me as if she thought I was pathetic and there was nothing to say.

  'Saddle the chickens,' I said. 'We're riding out.' Which must have convinced her of my lunacy, because she turned and left as quickly as she'd come.