III
I am confused.
About a small point, really.
Going back to last year, right after Hubert and I were married.
I asked him for money to buy clothes.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Hubert,” I said. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“What’s all that in your closet?”
“I need new clothes,” I said, as tears began forming in the outer corners of my eyes. It was the first time my husband had openly refused me, proof that he didn’t love me anymore.
“I never saw my father give my mother money for clothes.”
“She had an allowance,” I said, not knowing whether this was true, and also knowing that this statement was very brave indeed, as Hubert would probably take it as a criticism against his mother, which he did.
“What are you saying about my mother?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Then why did you bring her up?”
“I didn’t. You did.”
“You brought her up. You said, ‘she had an allowance.’ Didn’t you say that?”
“Ye-e-e-e-s,” I said. “But—oh, fuck you,” I said mildly, and ran into the bedroom crying. He didn’t come in right away the way he usually did, and when he did, he pretended to be getting a tie out of the closet.
“Hubert,” I said patiently. “I need clothes.”
“I don’t want a bunch of reporters following my wife around and writing stories on how much my wife spends on dresses. Do you want that?” he said. “Do you want to be the laughingstock of the papers?”
“No-o-o-o-o,” I sobbed, not wanting to point out that I was already beginning to be the laughingstock of the papers, so what difference did it make? I rocked back and forth on the bed, crying and crying like my heart was breaking, (which it was) thinking, What am I going to do now? What am I supposed to do now?
And now—ha ha—I am sitting here surrounded by strange new clothes. So in other words, everything that I was doing in the last year has finally resulted in getting my way. Which was wearing the same old simple black-and-white pieces I always wore before my marriage, until some fashion reporter wrote: “Can’t someone get this princess a new frock?” Which I didn’t have to point out to Hubert, because it was in the Styles section of The New York Times, and that’s the section he reads first on Sundays. Believe it or not. (I didn’t believe it myself, when I first met him: that and the way he secretly reads all the gossip columns, scanning the items for his name. No matter what is written, he never says anything about it; and his face always remains impassive, like he’s reading about somebody else, someone whom he doesn’t know.)
And yet, there is something insulting about all this. As if Hubert didn’t want to spend money on me for the first year of our marriage because he wasn’t sure he was going to keep me around.
(I so wish that we could talk about these things openly. I really did believe, when we first got married, that we would talk about everything honestly, but the opposite has occurred: We’re like two people on separate islands, with only tin cans and string as a means of communication.)
And so I must act slightly displeased by it all. Especially since it’s really D.W.’s doing. Including the short hair. I have short white hair, and when I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself. It’s part of their plan to wipe me out and start over.
And my husband is all for it.
“I’m on board,” he said.
(Ugh. I hate that expression. It’s so corporate America, which Hubert is not but likes to pretend he is.) “I’m on board. It’s good for you.”
“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to EXERCISE next,” I said.
“Exercise is good for you,” he said. At which point I told him that it’s very difficult to exercise when you’re so doped up you can barely lift your hand to your mouth.
When I said this, he said (suspiciously, I thought), “There is no reason to lift your hand to your mouth unless you’re putting food in it.” To which I smartly replied, “Actually, you have to lift your hand to your mouth to apply lipstick,” and that shut him up for a minute.