Get Out of My Life

"The Thing About it is," the girl said, "I simply never could work up any sense of wrong about it. I know that's the classic thing to say, but you absolutely have to find it out for yourself. The only wrong thing, the really wicked part of it, it seems to me, is breaking it up."

She was pretty keyed up. Parmenter thought: but then you couldn't blame her, not after the last few days, not after this old-fashioned surprise he handed her.

"God, Parmenter," the girl said now. "Look at you. Just look at you. You weigh ten pounds more. You look ten years younger. You know," she said, pushing her purse and her gloves around on the white cloth of the table, "I had a beautiful romantic idea about it. I thought you would quit your job. I thought you were going to see exactly how good you are – oh, I know you're good and don't get that modest look on your face, that self-deprecating thing, I hate that. Anyway," she said, still moving restlessly, trying for size or for comfort, or for something to do with her hands, trying a sort of A-shaped prop with her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her knuckles. "I thought you were going to do something good and happy with your life."

"I know," Parmenter said, feeling inane in the face of her knowledge of him, "I know." He lifted his Martini to his lips as soon as the waiter set it before him and he and the girl nodded wordlessly, the way they'd always done right from the very first drink they'd had together, lifting the brimming and nearly colorless cocktails and looking straight into each other's eyes. In fact it had started with that first drink, at a purely business-lunch-conference, just one more of the hundreds of times Parmenter had bought a lunch for some girl who might have something for the firm, and toasted her pleasantly before hand. But in this case, and with this girl, Parmenter's cultivated and humorous reserve against entanglements had not broken down or been penetrated (that had happened a time or two in a minor way) but had ceased to exist, violently. Long before Parmenter could assemble any of those inner arguments, those formulations of conscience all handily listed, mentally, those considerations of a practical nature – long before any of this occurred, the whole thing had become an accomplished fact. It had become a series of facts. Now, rather late in the day, Parmenter was backing out.

"You know," the girl said, "I'm not really asking very much. I want you to get a divorce. I want you to marry me. I want it to go on and on and on, you see, so naturally I'd like that insurance. But I'm not asking for any of that. I'm just asking, please don't stop. Please don't stop because I don't want it to stop. And please don't stop because it's so good for you."

"Look," Parmenter said. "There's no use going over it again."

"No," the girl said. "You're loyal, Parmenter. You're uniquely loyal. I guess that's why I love you. One reason why, anyway. Even when you're being loyal against me." She put her hands, her wonderful wonderful loving hands, on the table. "Damn it," she said.

"You're being awfully good," Parmenter said; and they both knew what he meant. There weren't going to be any recriminations, especially not that basic-basic recrimination. That had been another old-fashioned surprise she'd had – they'd both had, in fact. Not that it wasn't all right now. It was absolutely all right now and no harm done whatever because she'd been sensible about it. She hadn't lost her head or anything: just moved fast, and told Parmenter about it after it was all fixed up.

The waiter, who knew them and who knew well the face of clandestine love and the atmosphere of love's unhappy ebbing, had put another drink before them. They were on 59th Street and October was across the street, in the park. For some reason Parmenter, who was 36 years old, was thinking that right now he was afraid, literally afraid, of walking out of this place and into an October evening. He raised his Martini and again they exchanged that little gesture, that they had made into something super-personal, and that had (oh God, thought Parmenter, his heart turning over, his craven heart wanting to break) come so quickly to mean so much.

Over the brim of the glass his eyes looked into hers. Her eyes were a clear blue. She was a stunning red-haired girl with that fine creamy skin the lucky red-heads have, instead of pallidness and freckles, and she had a fine receptive smooth active body and a fine smooth receptive and active mind. Parmenter had found out almost immediately that she wasn't red-haired at all. He had found out almost immediately, a great deal about her because that was the way she had told him. "I mean if you have to make reservations then you know you're making a mistake, it seems to me." But it was some time before Parmenter could view wholly the magnificent gift she was making of herself, and by then he was beginning to spoil it all with guilt.

"Go home," the girl said to him now. "You'd better go home, Parmenter. I know when I'm licked."

"Well, I guess I'd better," Parmenter said.

"Get out of my life," the girl said. "You haven't any guts. I hate you," she said, beginning to shake very violently, slopping her drink, sitting up with a terrible straightness. Parmenter distinctly saw the sudden appearance of red veins in the whites of her eyes.

"Well, all right," he said feebly.

"No, listen," the girl said. "I think you're brave to decide the way you did, Parmenter, but you are brave. Damn it," she said, "I can't think any wrong of you, you bastard. I wish I could yell out a whole string of dirty words, that's the way I feel, like bastard, that's a real tough hard-sounding word. So I love you Parmenter. That's one thing. And when a woman loves a man and she knows she's good for him and he throws it away anyway . . . Well. Just remember that I love you, darling. Dear darling. Nothing is going to change that, I can tell you with perfect assurance. And I'm no schoolgirl. I'm no fool, either, except in this respect. This has been the notable exception in my life," she said. "I ask you to be fully aware of it."

"Well," Parmenter said again.

"Oh come on," the girl said. "Pay the check and put me in a cab. I see the night is falling," she said, "and the month is October. I never knew I'd be starting my life all over again some October night."

She marched ahead of him, holding her long neck and her long back in that marvelously straight way; and Parmenter, who had always especially liked this view of her, felt terror. She was the very vessel of his life, found too late, too late.

There were three cabs ranked at the curb. The girl sort of sprinted across the sidewalk and by the time Parmenter had caught up with her she had climbed into one and was sitting huddled in a corner of the seat as though all of her strength had been exhausted now.

"I think I'll go to San Francisco," she said. "I think I won't be able to take New York any more. But you'll hear from me. You'll know where I am. I'm not running away from you."

Parmenter leaned into the cab. "Listen," he said. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to know infinitely, and now it was too late. "Thank you very much," Parmenter said.

He watched her cab pull out into the heavy eastbound stream of traffic and she kept waving to him through the window and Parmenter moved farther and farther out into the road until even that thread broke, and he was alone.

He began to walk east himself, cutting down by the Plaza, and trying to be careful and methodical in the rearranging of his mind. In the matter of living a double life and all the deceptions great and small that went with the living of a double life Parmenter had discovered a trick of the mind that had always seemed to work better and better the more he used it. Parmenter could go click in his mind and immediately turn off the happy illegal part of his life, could immediately become a typical tenthousand-a-year man with typical anxieties and typical frustrations; and with his own sad knowledge that somewhere along the line he had lost, or sacrificed, his strong sureness in himself.

And Parmenter, ah so recently, had also been able to go click in his mind and at once become no less than the lover of a fine clever red-haired girl, a believer in miracles and faith, the possessor of a brand-new second chance.

Click went Parmenter, walking down Fifth Avenue, click, goddamn it, click.

But the trick, seeming once so perfected and then failing him in his love, would not now rescue him from his love. He didn't even have that any more, Parmenter thought.

He hailed a cab after he'd walked a few blocks and gave the driver his Gramercy Park address. Presently his mind clicked all by itself and he began wondering if he should give up the New York apartment and move to, say Connecticut. Or even Jersey. There were some nice places in Jersey. Parmenter had been wondering about a move of this kind for years but he'd never done anything about it and probably wouldn't do anything about it because he knew it wouldn't solve anything. The thing he must always consider about Louise, Parmenter thought, was that nothing was going to change her now but if they ever started moving, if she ever started shooting her restless energy into new houses and new communities, well, there'd be no end to it. Parmenter knew that.

"Oh here's Harry now," Louise said when Parmenter let himself into the foyer of their apartment. She was talking into the telephone, her pointed heart-shaped pretty face very alive, her dark hair seeming alive and energetic of itself; and she held the telephone away from her and said: "Hurry, Harry. Change your clothes. The Davidsons are having cocktails and a buffet."

(I'll call you Parmenter. I'll call you Parmenter because I don't want to call you something that somebody else has called you, loving you.)

"OK," Parmenter said. Lights, he thought, music, loud noise and liquor. Very fitting. Kind of a wake. He walked into the bedroom, jiggling his key ring, listening to the sound of Louise's telephone voice, and knowing he was home. He sat on the edge of the bed and began taking off his shoes.

(Parmenter, you've only got one life. Oh, we're sinning, I guess. But it's a sin to waste away your life, too. That's a worse sin, darling.)

"Honestly," Louise said, coming into the bedroom in that unexpected, rushing way she had. "I don't know why you have to take out every damn visiting fireman the firm is interested in. I haven't been able to plan anything for months. Look at tonight. I had to phone and explain. And everybody will be miles ahead of us by the time we get (concluded overleaf) Get our of my life (continued from page 70) there."

Deception had been this easy. So pathetically easy, Parmenter thought, and with the hoariest of old excuses.

"Bill Davidson never runs out of liquor," Parmenter said.

"Oh God," Louise said, "don't tell me you're in one of your coarse moods tonight. Don't tell me you're all primed to be one of the boys."

"Well," Parmenter said, trying to be humorous about it, "I'll go as far as I can, darling. With you counting the drinks."

"I'm getting tired of never getting anywhere on time," Louise said. "I'm getting tired of making excuses for you. It's not," she said, "as though you were the president of the firm, or something. After all, an assistant art director should be able to come home at five o'clock."

"Well," Parmenter said, "I think I've managed to get off the hook about that."

"I can hardly believe that," Louise said. "You've let them push you around too much for that to come true. Oh no," Louise said, "I know perfectly well that next week-end you'll have to fly to Boston or Baltimore or some other godforsaken place to contract somebody for twice as much money as you make yourself. Sometimes I think you like being humiliated like that. You enjoy it. I suppose," she said, "it's Freudian with you. You want to punish yourself."

"Yeah?" Parmenter said.

"'Yeah',"Louise mocked. She had taken off her housecoat and was dressing with that energy, that series of zips, snaps and tugs that made her seem to be attacking her underclothing. She put on a pair of stockings as though she wanted to destroy them. "I really love it," she said, "the way you dream up this brilliant repartee. 'Yeah'."

"Listen," Parmenter said, "let's lay off that tonight, huh? I'm beat tonight."

"You're always beat," Louise said. "Always tired out. What about me? It never seems to occur to you that I might be tired, that I might have had a tough day."

"Yeah?" Parmenter said, mystified as always when Louise challenged him with the hardships of her life. "What happened to you today?"

"Oh God," Louise said. "What happens to me every day. Nothing. Precisely nothing."

They were going out. They were going out for cocktails and a buffet or some equivalent maybe a thousand or three thousand times in their lives together. And Louise was getting up a head of steam. Parmenter knew the evening would be a flat failure for Louise unless she could whip herself up into something just this side of frenzy. Louise couldn't launch herself into a party cold.

"Oh my God," she said, beginning to laugh. (Wild ironic laughter always signified that she was building up a good pressure.) "That fool Ellen Davidson, when I called her to say we'd be late. She actually was idiot enough to ask me was I sure that it was all business with you. 'Maybe he's got a nice little blonde somewhere, darling. Or a red-head. Did you know there was a rage for red-heads?'" Louise said in a mimicking voice. "Well, I told her. I told her a thing or two."

Parmenter was silent. This was the point where he always felt pity for Louise, pity for himself. Pity for himself was a thing of the past. Now he began to wonder: where were the familiar stirrings of pity for Louise? He had taken off his suit and now he stood in front of the pier glass and took off his shirt.

"Oh stop admiring yourself," Louise said. "And hurry, Harry."

"You can set your mind at ease about that," he said.

"What?" Louise said, suspiciously. She was lightning-quick, Louise, on certain scents.

"Never mind," Parmenter said.

Louise worked at it, and then leaped to something else. "That Henderson girl and her husband are going to be there," she said. "We all have to be very nice to them."

"Yeah?" Parmenter said. "Why?"

"They lost their baby, that's why," Louise said.

Parmenter started for the bathroom. He didn't want to hear about babies around here.

"It's an awful thing, to lose a baby," Louise said, pursuing him.

"Well," Parmenter said, "I guess it is, all right."

"Guess is right," Louise said. "You certainly wouldn't know."

"No," Parmenter said, feeling some of the pity for her now, thinking OK, boy, now let's really get to work on this. Let's try to keep her from the worst part of it. "Aren't they the ones," he said, "that had a baby with that spinal thing?"

"Yes," Louise said. "It was incurable."

"Well," Parmenter said, "it's better off dead, isn't it? They're better off too."

"That's the attitude I might have expected of you," Louise said. "Well, let me tell you something. I envy that Henderson girl. I envy anybody like her."

"Now look," Parmenter said. "Don't be foolish . . ."

"I'm not foolish," Louise said. "I've just never had any children, that's all."

"We could have adopted some," Parmenter said.

"I don't want adopted children!" Louise was beginning to shout. "I want my own. I want them out of my own insides!"

"Now wait," Parmenter said. "Now look, darling."

But it was coming now and he couldn't stop it. It was coming, the thing that had streaked Parmenter's hair with premature gray, that had cost him three vice-presidential appointments in a row, the thing that had cost him faith and miracles and left him with nothing but pity.

"A sterile husband," Louise moaned. "You might as well be impotent, too."

"Look," Parmenter said desperately.

"No you look," Louise said. "That doctor swore to me. He swore to me on his honor when I told him how important it was for me to know. He swore there was nothing wrong with me.

"It's you," Louise said. "You can't even father a child, Harry. You can't even do that."

It had come, all right. But it had never come quite so badly as this before. Parmenter had a towel, a long bath towel, in his hands. He held it for quite a while, watching and listening to Louise getting ready for a party.

Then he threw the towel into a corner of the tub.

Shaking a little, he went through the bedroom and into the kitchen. "I'm going to have a drink," he called back. "You want a drink, darling?"

"A drink?" Louise said. "We're going drinking, aren't we?"

Parmenter brought in two shots anyway. "You better have one anyway," he said. "You might need it. You know," Parmenter said, sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling reasonably cheerful now in spite of the awesome vistas before him, in spite of the fact that here was the end of pity.

"You know," Parmenter said, "I think I have some news for you."

Altschuler