The Only Pure Love

Sally Dennis was a very pretty young matron, with a neat small face and a great luxuriance of hair, sleek, healthy, most remarkable. In corduroy pedal pushers behind the cart in the supermarket at the corner of Columbus and Taylor in San Francisco, she could pass for somebody's teenage daughter. Then, abruptly, after a few minutes before the mirror, her gamine oddity -- pale small face framed by that dark hair -- might be transformed for the evening into the teasing mystery of the girl in a dream of violation. She had teeth for biting. In pleasure, she sometimes lost consciousness entirely. She would wake in the darkness, smiling with those teeth.

"You bit me," her husband said. "It's going to show again. They tease me about it a lot, but Sally? I like it."

"Where was I? Who are you?" she asked. "Oh, Bill ..."

"You tease, you're always teasing," he said.

She came awake. "It's Bill, it's just plain Bill. Yes. What did we do tonight? Was it fun? Was it fun for you, just plain Bill?"

"Sally. Sally. Sally honey."

Many thought her beautiful, she even thought herself beautiful, her husband loved her, the days stretched out smooth and easy on a sunny slope of Telegraph Hill, and she was ready to blow her life to splinters. Sick with boredom, sick with spite, she believed that her husband loved her, but did not love her enough. It was worse that way. She did not know how to quarrel with him. She had the idea that she could do better than Bill Dennis, big sprawling Bill with his battered Chevy and his lazy ways, his willingness to settle for steaks and laughs and day-to-day ease, his pride in the rending marks of her teeth and nails when she fell protestingly into unconsciousness under his beefy heft. She did not know how to leave him. She did not know how to punish him enough for failing to be the man of her secret intention.

Bill just put her to sleep, it seemed. She lacked terribly the promises which life was supposed to keep. She missed reality. Life had faulted her. She missed reality. Life had faulted her. She missed strong feeling -- suffering, hatred, desire and pleasure. Someone, somehow, must penetrate the dim corridors of feeling and lead her out into the light. Beneath the yellow-gray sky of San Francisco, on the crumpled slope of Telegraph Hill leading down toward North Beach, within a shingled wooden apartment house painted battleship gray, Sally passed her days doing nothing and waiting for pure love to find her. Loved by her husband, Sally crouched within Sally, waiting.

Naturally, for a case like this, tradition has provided many solutions. The lady is ready for the enthusiasm and gratitude of the misunderstood husband down the block, the college sweetheart now living in Sausalito, the visiting entertainer taking his breakfast at two in the afternoon on the terrace at Enrico's (blinking in the sun, smiling at the sulky little lady, explaining that perhaps she had caught his act at the i or seen him on television and that's why his face looks familiar); a lady looking for the seam in a seamless, plasticene life might even let herself be tumbled by a repairman or a delivery boy, blessing his luck.

No. Not Sally. She had a horror of dirt, of excess, of the slime of lovemaking, of the violation of her physical perfection. She would not be filthied. She would not be ridiculous. She could not accept the banal relief with which other women made do. Even the idea seemed to dirty her -- unclean. Pure love would take her unawares, would surprise her and sweep away the debris of Bill's steak-and-laughs term on earth.

Was there anything she could do meanwhile? She could wait and be perfect. She could make herself ready. She could disappear into unconsciousness when Bill made love on her, in her, through her; she could just hide and wait.

Nevertheless, one day while jittery from too much smoking, too much black coffee -- Bill was away on one of his frequent sales trips -- she had like a little idea. Like many good ideas, it represented a compromise. She would receive a letter, a love letter, from the man of whom she dreamed -- the brilliant and passionate man for whom the Sally down the long corridor within Sally had always been intended. She knew his habits and his very gestures as well as if he really existed. He was her slave -- and she belonged to him utterly. It would be her art to create him. Just as the Sally within Sally was more real than Bill's wife, so her lover was only waiting to be called forth. She would invent him in pure silence and hope. Like her, he would be a solitary dreamer. And like her, he would long for perfection. She even had a sense for the quirks of his literary style. (She blushed for him. He was a bit gauche with words; he was a man of long silences and sudden longing rushes of talk; and there was the delicate touching of a quick and patient desire, very quick and light, patient and searching ...)

She asked for stationery from the desk at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel. She thanked the clerk, who was impressed by the hectic flush of her cheeks and the dark, brilliant, rigorously brushed hair. He smiled at her, but she did not smile back. He wished he were more of a man. Other men have all the luck.

She used a rented typewriter in the lobby. She made a very pretty picture of pensiveness -- a lovely young creature with delicate coloring in her face, thinking hard, with a pencil just tip-touching her lips, writing, then copying with the typewriter. Then she mailed the letter and went home.

The next morning she went for the mail with a quickened heartbeat and a strong flush at her cheeks. She knew there would be something important for her; she had an intuition. Deceived! No letter for her. Even the best of men have a harsh streak of cruelty in them. What was he trying to do to her? What was he trying to prove? She peered through the watery sunlight down the slope of Vallejo at the retreating gray back of the postman. She went back inside, thought of hotting-up the coffee, thought of going out to see an exhibit of old music boxes in a Grant Street gallery. She sat at the mirror and brushed her hair with long, practiced, soothing strokes.

The letter arrived the next day. Men do such things to women -- Sally understood the species -- they keep a girl waiting, they tempt and tease, they come to her in the dark when she can feel nothing. But this was not a surprise. And this time the waiting was worth it. She smiled at her own trembling as she slit open the envelope.

Sheraton-Palace Hotel

Dearest darling Sally,

Meeting you was exactly the good luck of a dream. I never knew such things were possible -- a dream, a reality. The first time is always dangerous between man and woman, but perhaps just once in a lifetime we have the right to absolute perfection, like the perfect starry night outside our window and that curtain blowing. You were all for me as I am for you, for you only.

I'll call you as soon as I can get back to town.

Dion

He was a bit too emotional, Sally decided, overcome, sentimental, not quite manly. That cliché about the starry night, for example. But he was awfully, awfully nice. She felt sorry for him and pleased because he wrote with so little thought to effect. He just poured out his full heart. She flushed. Of course he thought about his effect on her. Then she stood, hot and delighted, and read the letter again by the light of the day on Telegraph Hill at her window. She had a life downtown. She had a life elsewhere. She was glad he had that name -- Dion.

Then she put the letter in the upper drawer of her dresser. Bill sometimes looked into that drawer for a handkerchief.

As luck would have it, Bill came back from his trip with a cold. But either he did not find the letter or, too bewildered to react, unwilling to face the facts of his life, he said nothing.

In a few weeks, when Bill was again called away for a sales meeting, a pretty young woman again appeared at the desk of the Sheraton-Palace, asking for stationery. The desk clerk remembered her; delicate, girlish-looking women made him feel manly; but this time he did not risk a smile. She thanked him coolly for the paper.

This time she worked on the letter like a schoolgirl doing her Friday composition. It was more graceful. She put the endearments in French. She was improving Dion's style -- "tu es cette femme dont on rêve toute une vie, tous les nuits" -- and it seemed that he had majored in French in college. He had also traveled in Europe. He had seen much, done much, but only in this uniquely European of American cities had he found Sally, that creature, who, cruel, radiant -- well, Sally had a taste for the bizarre and knew that this must be put in French. She was beginning to catch glimpses of the darker side of Dion's nature.

When the letter arrived, she read it with a catch of delight in her throat.

She propped it up near her third cup of coffee on the dining-room table and read it again. If only every bored and unawakened young wife could find a man like Dion! Patient, steady, and willing to search out her impulse!

Most women lead lives of still concealment. They block up the passage to reality. All women hope for better. But only Sally had the courage to grasp perfect purity in love when it offered itself. She would not settle for less. There was no reason to settle. She put the letter with some unpaid bills in the drawer of the desk.

That afternoon she again dressed in her best silk frock, her hair brushed tight and rolled in a knot, gleaming with all its health, and returned to the Sheraton-Palace.

There were a few more letters before the matter came up between Sally and Bill. He raged and wept and even slapped her. Brute, jealous brute. She denied everything, of course. Dion was just ... was just ... just a friend. But he was lonely, unhappy, burdened by feeling and unable to spend it in casual love affairs. He too sought purity in love. He believed that Sally had been marked out for him from the beginning of time. Bill couldn't understand this kind of beautiful emotion in a man. She hadn't said anything to him about Dion because it would only make him angry, she knew it -- just plain Bill would grow just plain suspicious; but there was nothing like that between Dion and her. He ought to know his wife better than that. Really, there was another interpretation to everything Dion said. He was lonely was all. He would come through town and they would have a cocktail together was all. Did Bill, just plain dear sweet Bill, expect her to sit home crocheting pillow slips on Telegraph Hill while he went off on expense-account trips to Seattle and Los Angeles?

This was merely a harmless distraction. Girls are like that. They seek a little romance, a little flattery. They are so susceptible in their untouched inner natures.

Bill wanted to believe her. He paused.

She gave a little secret smile, showing the tips of teeth. She shrugged. "What do you want from me?"

"Sally, I love you ..."

There was a reconciliation, there were promises. Poor Bill, he thought dinner by candlelight in a little Italian restaurant in North Beach would prove that he too was romantic and had an inner nature. Spaghetti, red wine, and an inner nature. And then home to that same old thing, Bill's unquenchable mere health. He plunged at her, and Sally plunged into unconsciousness. It was as if nothing had happened to her, or rather, as if she were sent back down the corridor to her own dream of love. Afterward, exhausted, shaking with fatigue, quenched despite his crude health, Bill stared at her in the dark and said, "What are you thinking about, Sally? Are you thinking about me?"

"Oh, nothing. I think I was asleep. Go to sleep now, Billy. It's all right."

Bill wanted to find Dion and confront him, but the man traveled constantly, he had no permanent address, it was no use. Best just to forget about it. Bill tried to master his feelings and believe Sally. Just drinks was all. The letters were mere smoke, the vain posturing of a silly spoiled boy. Flushed and calmed with the pleasure of Bill's exacerbated passion for her, Sally stroked him, comforted him. There was a slight gain in feeling. He had learned to fear her.

The next time Bill went on a buying trip, he suggested that Sally come with him. It would be pleasant to drive through the desert, spend a night in Carmel, and have a kind of second honeymoon together. "Let's," he said, "let's." At last there were lines on his face caused by more than good eating and vain smiling.

"Oh I'd really love to, darling," she said, "but we really can't afford it. And my class--" She was studying ceramics.

You should have thought of this two years ago, Sally was thinking. But on the other hand, just plain Bill, it would not have changed things deep and dark within.

When he returned on a Thursday morning, he found another letter in the mailbox. Apparently Sally had slept late and not gotten to the postman in time. It was clear that Dion had come for her at her ceramics class. He had rented a car and put the top down -- "décapotable," he wrote, as if the word "convertible" wasn't good enough for him -- and they had driven across the Golden Gate Bridge to a country inn, the Mountain View Tavern, above the mists over Muir Woods. His references to the end of the evening were fragmentary and unspecific. But they made Bill physically ill, as if he had been kicked in the spleen.

There was no more hope for them now. They agreed about the divorce although Sally went on insisting that it was all Bill's fault, it was all a great mistake, Dion meant nothing to her, they were just friends and he helped amuse her in her lonely moments; it wasn't her fault if he fell in love and wouldn't stop writing those letters. It was just words, words. How silly of just plain Bill to get so complicated about just plain words.

"Then why can't you give him up if he means so little to you? Why do you keep lying? Why won't he ever face me like a man?" Bill demanded in a last furious effort to hold her.

"You have no right to make such demands on me. I don't tell you about him because you are insanely jealous -- really, Bill, you should get psychiatric help. I heard of a good man at the Langley-Porter Clinic, a Doctor Berman --" She saw there was no use discussing it with him in his present mood. "Anyway," she said, "I suppose Dion is embarrassed at the idea of meeting you. He's afraid of you. Not afraid, Bill, but you know, the unpleasantness. After what you've said you would do to him -- naturally I've told him --"

And so they were divorced. They agreed that Bill would be charged with mental cruelty. He balked for a day at this label, but both lawyers explained that a divorce is a legal arrangement in which a series of lies and insults lead to peace and freedom. He agreed to whatever they asked. At the hearing before the judge, Sally's eyes burned, she buried her head in her hands; but suddenly the Sally within began to laugh and the tears which were so close disappeared before her eyes had even begun to glisten. She kept her head in her hands to contain the laughter. A lawyer gently patted her shoulder. She looked up and smiled gratefully and impartially at the lawyer, at the judge, and at Bill Dennis.

A year passed. A delicate little divorcee like Sally is seldom lonely long. She even heard that Bill was still carrying the torch for her. Vulgar phrase, "carrying the torch" -- she would never think of using it. It was a friend of Bill's who made this observation. He had met him drinking in a Market Street bar.

Sally, of course, sometimes felt melancholy and blue; that's only human; but plenty of distractions offered themselves by telephone and cocktail party, by friends and friends of friends. Everyone admired how she had ridden proud and sweet through this distressing experience. She took good care of herself. Her posture was good. She still looked like someone's teenage daughter dressed up for a Saturday night at the hungry i or for a Sunday afternoon's sail from the yacht harbor in Sausalito.

She chose wisely the next time. She knew that she needed a man of more exciting and imaginative temperament than stolid, stubborn Bill. Peter Rollins was an artist, perhaps the best young painter in the Bay Area, with a growing national reputation. "Figurative painter," he said, "I paint things. Anyway, don't call me 'best.' There is no best. There are approaches to some kind of undefined ideal, but best is only a word, Sally."

"Yes," she said submissively, and folded her hands.

Was she putting him on? He studied her a moment and then gave it up to go growling in her hair. He liked teaching her things, but he liked even more the girlish stubbornness with which she followed her own line. She seemed as fresh as the fields. And yet she did try to listen to him. She stroked his face and stared into his eyes and asked with a desperation that was more than girlish to be penetrated by another soul. She had been alone all her life. She had been mistreated by her husband. She had had to be self-sufficient, self-generating, even selfish, but now she wanted to give it up for him.

When she said Yes to him, she was yearning for him.

No, she was not putting him on.

They were marvelously happy together. Sally blushed when she recalled her girlish foolishness; it seemed as if another creature had done it to her; but she was grateful to that other wicked Sally, anyway. Thanks to her, her life had finally turned bright and for real. Sometimes dreams come true, for dreaming is a way of planning. Peter was tender, ardent and possessive. He filled out her fantasy; she believed in happiness once more. She cut her thick hair and wore it with a wild, tawny look. More grown-up, animal, pleasured. Peter liked to look at her hair, thick and mussed against the sheets, and when he kissed her, he said, "Don't close your eyes. Look at me."

"I'm here, darling."

"Look. I'm with you. See. I'm with you."

That foolishness of hunting an ideal was over. Peter cared for her utterly. After he made love to her, he sat looking at her, and after he looked at her, he painted her, and after he painted her, he made love to her. She was caught in a perfect circle. At last the secret Sally within, down the dark corridor, was appeased.

But then, on the occasion of Peter's trip to UCLA to give a lecture, the first one came, almost lost among the miscellaneous Monday circulars and bills:

My only darling Sally.

Seeing you again after all this time was like a dream come true. And that the fires still burn as high and bright as ever is much more, perhaps, than two such cheaters in life deserve -- tricheurs nés -- but can we not accept the brand defiantly and make our way according to our own design ...?

A chill spot of numbness spread through the hand which held this first new letter. She did not even remember writing it. Could Bill have written it? No. He was not capable of such frightful understanding. Only one person in her life could be so deceitful. She went to the blank white-tile wall of the bathroom and, for a long moment, looked straight into horror. She saw no reflection, only a dull shadow over tile. The mirror was behind her for only a moment.

If she could not remember writing the letter, how then could she stop those which would follow as surely as emptiness follows pleasure, as surely as disappointment follows hope?

Nothing delicate Sally could do.

Now she smiled into the mirror. Her teeth were a good feature. Seeing them helped her think. Mixed with the horror and dread, she felt a subtle lift of pride. Why on earth did Dion always insist on this flowery style in his letters? Why did he follow her so closely, so insistently? Oh, there was but one possible explanation. Dion's little girl knew the answer. He must love her very much.