For forty-seven years they had been married. How deep back the stubborn, gnarled roots of the quarrel reached, no one could say -- but only now, when tending to the needs of others no longer shackled them together, the roots swelled up visible, split the earth between them, and the tearing shook even to the children, long since grown.
Why now, why now? wailed Hannah.
As if when we grew up weren't enough, said Paul.
Poor Ma. Poor Dad. It hurts so for both of them, said Vivi. They never had very much; at least in old age they should be happy.
Knock their heads together, insisted Sammy; tell 'em: you're too old for this kind of thing; no reason not to get along now.
Lennie wrote to Clara: They've lived over so much together; what could possibly tear them apart?
Something tangible enough.
Arthritic hands, and such work as he got, occasional. Poverty all his life, and there was little breath left for running. He could not, could not turn away from this desire: to have the troubling of responsibility, the fretting with money, over and done with; to be free, to be carefree where success was not measured by accumulation, and there was use for the vitality still in him. There was a way. They could sell the house, and with the money join his lodge's Haven, cooperative for the aged. Happy communal life, and was he not already an official; had he not helped organize it, raise funds, served as a trustee?
But she -- would not consider it.
"What do we need all this for?" he would ask loudly, for her hearing aid was turned down and the vacuum was shrilling. "Five rooms" (pushing the sofa so she could get into the corner) "furniture" (smoothing down the rug) "floors and surfaces to make work. Tell me, why do we need it?" And he was glad he could ask in a scream.
"Because I'm use't."
"Because you're use't. This is a reason, Mrs. Word Miser? Used to can get unused!"
"Enough unused I have to get used to already…. Not enough words?" turning off the vacuum a moment to hear herself answer. "Because soon enough we'll need only a little closet, no windows, no furniture, nothing to make work, but for worms. Because now I want room…. Screech and blow like you're doing, you'll need that closet even sooner…. Ha, again!" for the vacuum bag wailed, puffed half up, hung stubbornly limp. "This time fix it so it stays; quick before the phone rings and you get too important-busy."
But while he struggled with the motor, it seethed in him. Why fix it? Why have to bother? And if it can't be fixed, have to wring the mind with how to pay the repair? At the Haven they come in with their own machines to clean your room or your cottage; you fish, or play cards, or make jokes in the sun, not with knotty fingers fight to mend vacuums.
Over the dishes, coaxingly: "For once in your life, to be free, to have everything done for you, like a queen."
"I never liked queens."
"No dishes, no garbage, no towel to sop, no worry what to buy, what to eat."
"And what else would I do with my empty hands? Better to eat at my own table when I want, and to cook and eat how I want."
"In the cottages they buy what you ask, and cook it how you like. You are the one who always used to say: better mankind born without mouths and stomachs than always to worry for money to buy, to shop, to fix, to cook, to wash, to clean."
"How cleverly you hid that you heard. I said it then because eighteen hours a day I ran. And you never scraped a carrot or knew a dish towel sops. Now -- for you and me -- who cares? A herring out of a jar is enough. But when I want, and nobody to bother." And she turned off her ear button, so she would not have to hear.
But as he had no peace, juggling and rejuggling the money to figure: how will I pay for this now?; prying out the storm windows (there they take are of this); jolting in the streetcar on errands (there I would not have to ride to take care of this or that); fending the patronizing relatives just back from Florida (at the Haven it matters what one is, not what one can afford), he gave her no peace.
"Look! In their bulletin. A reading circle. Twice a week it meets."
"Haumm," her answer of not listening.
"A reading circle, Chekhov they read that you would like, and Peretz [Isaac Loeb Peretz, turn-of-the-century Russian writer of fiction in Yiddish]. Cultured people at the Haven that you would enjoy."
"Enjoy!" She tasted the word. "Now, when it pleases you, you find a reading circle for me. And forty years ago when the children were morsels and there was a Circle, did you stay home with them once so I could go? Even once? You trained me well. I do not need others to enjoy. Others!" Her voice trembled. "Because you want to be there with others. Already it makes me sick to think of you always around others. Clown, grimacer, floormat, yesman, entertainer, whatever they want of you."
And now it was he who turned the television loud so he need not hear.
Old scar tissue ruptured and the wounds festered anew. Chekhov indeed. She thought without the softness of that young wife, you in the deep night hours while she nursed the current baby, and perhaps held another in her lap, would try to stay awake for the only time there was to read. She would feel again the weather of the outside on his cheek when, coming late from a meeting, he would find her so, and stimulated and ardent, sniffing her skin, coax: "I'll put the baby to bed, and you -- put the book away, don't read, don't read."
That had been the most beguiling of all the "don't read, put your book away" her life had been. Chekhov indeed!
"Money?" She shrugged him off. "Could we get poorer than once we were? And in America, who starves?"
But as still he pressed:
"Let me alone about money. Was there ever enough? Seven little ones -- for every penny I had to ask -- and sometimes, remember, there was nothing. But always I had to manage. Now you manage. rub your nose in it good."
But from those years she had had to manage, old humiliations and terrors rose up, lived again, and forced her to relive them. The children's needings; that grocer's face or this merchant's wife she had had to beg credit from when credit was a disgrace; the scenery of the long blocks walked around when she could not pay; school coming, and the desperate going over the old to see what could yet be remade; the soups of meat bones begged "for-the-dog" one winter….
Enough. Now they had no children. Let him wrack his head for how they would live. She would not exchange her solitude for anything. Never again to be forced to move to the rhythms of others.
Excerpted with permission from Rutgers University Press.
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