Part 33 (2/2)
”Why did you and your wife separate?”
Grigsby's chest suddenly clenched up on him. He inhaled some more smoke, exhaled it. He shrugged. ”Things just didn't work out.”
”And why not?”
”It's a kinda boring story, Mathilde.”
She smiled. ”Which is to say, you do not wish to tell it.”
He shrugged again. Why not? The whole town of Denver knew. ”She found out I was seein' another woman.”
She looked puzzled, head tilted, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. ”Seeing?”
”Sleepin' with.”
”She learned that you were making love to some other woman? And for this she left you?”
Grigsby didn't think it was fair to Clara for him to talk about her behind her back, even though her back happened to be a thousand miles away; but on the other hand he didn't think it was fair to Clara for Mathilde to start judging her, either. As nice a woman as she was, Mathilde was a stranger to the situation, and a foreigner to boot, with a foreigner's funny notions. ”Well, see, what you gotta understand about Clara is that she was just naturally a real jealous woman. She's one of the smartest women I ever knew, maybe the most levelheaded woman I ever knew, except for this one little thing. This jealousy.”
”You think of jealousy as a little thing?”
”Well, yeah. It was. At first, anyway. Everything else about her was ... just what I wanted.” He had nearly said perfect, but in his experience it was seldom a slick move to call one woman perfect to another woman's face. Especially when the other woman's face was attached to a body you happened to be lying in bed with.
”If she was everything you wanted, why then did you make love to someone else?”
”Well, see, I didn't. Not for a long time.” Grigsby turned, stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and lifted the tobacco pouch and a match from the table. He sat back against the pillow.
”After a while, see, it started to bother me. The jealousy.” He drew up his feet and propped the balloon gla.s.s against his thigh, then poured tobacco into a slip of paper. ”Every time I was a few minutes late for supper, she was sure I was off screwin' around.”
”And were you?”
”No. Leastways not at first.” He rolled the paper, stuck the cigarette between his lips.
”For how long were you faithful?”
He snapped the match alight, held it to the cigarette. ”Five years.”
”You were unfaithful only once?”
Grigsby inhaled, exhaled. ”Nope. Maybe once a year for the next four years. I never looked for it, never went out huntin' it, but when it showed up on my doorstep, I didn't go runnin' away from it, neither.”
”Five years,” said Mathilde, ”is a long time to be faithful.”
He exhaled. ”It is when you're hangin' by your thumbs. 'Cause the thing of it is, see, this faithfulness, it's not an item comes real easy to me. Problem is, I purely do love women. It's like a sickness with me, almost. Shoot, maybe it is a sickness. Clara surely thought it was.”
”How do you mean, exactly, love them?”
”What I say. I love everything about 'em. I don't just mean the stand-out things, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and b.u.t.ts and all, although Lord knows I love all that, too. I mean everything. Their hair and their mouths and their ears. Their eyelashes, even. Their chins. Their noses.”
He inhaled, slowly exhaled, and smiled at her. ”You take noses now. Women got all kinds of noses. Big ones, small ones, narrow ones, thick ones, pointy ones, ones with a kind of b.u.mp in the middle, ones that got a kinda sideways turn to 'em, left or right. And the thing is, I love all of 'em. The only kind I'm not real partial to is the kind that twists up at the end and makes a woman look like she stands a good chance of drownin' in a downpour.”
”Retrousse.”
”Huh?”
”In French we call this type of nose retrousse. Turned up. Upturned.”
”Whatever. But even there, see, I been known to make exceptions. It's just one little ole thing, and they got so much else, and I love it all. Like I say, everything. The way their eyes move and the way they hold a cup of coffee. They way they talk and the way they think and the way they smell. Smell, Lord, I'll tell ya. Sometimes I'll be walkin' along on the sidewalk, in the springtime, say, and the wind'll kick up a whiff of perfume and carry it on over my way and, G.o.d's honest truth, it's like I got kicked in the chest by a horse.”
”Perhaps,” she said, ”you want their approval. Perhaps you feel you need it.”
Grigsby grinned. ”I want everything they got, and I'm plumb grateful for anything I get.”
She smiled. ”Did your wife not understand this about you?”
”Course she did. And that just made the jealousy worse. I'm walkin' around thinkin' I ought to be gettin' some kinda congressional medal of honor for bein' such a hero-for not screwin' around. And instead, ever' time I get home, she jumps all over me because she thinks I am screwin' around.”
”So you decided, finally, that if you were going to be accused of infidelity, you might as well commit it.”
Looking at her sideways, Grigsby smiled. ”You heard this story before, huh?”
She smiled back. ”Several times. Bohb, do you not see that this is exactly what I was talking about yesterday? How we are attracted to precisely the people who will provide us with pain?”
”Don't see it that way. I mean, I fell in love with Clara in spite of how she was jealous, not because of it.”
”And she fell in love with you in spite of your womanizing, and not because of it.”
”Right.”
She nodded. ”And now that you are separated, both of you are miserable.”
”I can't speak for Clara. But me, I tell ya, sometimes I feel like I got a hole in my chest the size of Nebraska.”
”But I believe, you see, that perhaps this hole was there even before you met your Clara. And that perhaps a part of you wished you to become aware of it, and so selected Clara.”
Grigsby smiled. ”And Clara chose me because I was gonna screw around on her?”
”Perhaps, yes. I think that jealousy has nothing to do with love. It has to do with fear, with the fear of betrayal. And I think that for many of us, our private wound is exactly this-a sense of betrayal, deep within us. It is perhaps common to all of us. Perhaps your Clara dealt with her fear of betrayal by expressing it as jealousy. Perhaps you dealt with yours by an inability to remain with only one woman.”
”But I did remain with just one woman. I mean, for five years I was as faithful to Clara as an old c.o.o.ndog.”
”And the woman with whom you remained was a woman of great jealousy. Do you not perceive that, on one level, a jealous woman is the safest of wives? If she is so preoccupied by the possibility of your betraying her, she is unlikely, herself, to betray you.”
”Well, now-”
”And yet, of course, sooner or later the tensions become unbearable. The situation explodes. You betray her by making love to someone else, and she betrays you by leaving you. And you see, my belief is that, in a way, this was precisely the point of the entire exercise. For both of you to experience your inner pain. To feel it.”
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