A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

“Eight now,” Judd said, and tilted his flask again.

She grinned. “That’s it. Albert’s just a problem in subtraction, right?”

Judd said nothing. Alcohol had stolen his vocabulary.

There were flashes of light and the mutter of thunder far off on the Sound. There was a tang of rain on the breeze.

“You’d better hurry,” she said.

Judd got on all fours and then hesitantly managed to get upright. “I fine,” he said.

She stood and hugged him. “I’m so glad you got jealous and found me.”

But Judd just turned away and lopsidedly tottered toward Port Jefferson in search of a taxicab.

In September 1926, Judd and Isabel spent Labor Day weekend visiting automobile dealerships in Newark and East Orange and purchased, for $595, a new, cream-colored, four-door Chevrolet Series V Touring convertible with whitewall tires, black fenders and running boards, and a black canvas top. Isabel finally consented to its extravagance when Judd mentioned how much fun Jane and her friends would have on jaunts with the roof down—“It would be like a hay ride,” he said—but he was in fact fantasizing about Ruth snuggling into him in the crisp autumn air, the front brim of his hat blown upright, and both of their woolen scarves sailing behind them.

Hearing about the convertible, Ruth pleaded girlishly over the phone, “Oh, I want to go with you on your next trip! Oh, can I, please—pretty please with sugar on it?” And in order that she could join Judd on his ten-day sales route through upstate New York in October, she convinced her husband she was going to Canada with friends, Mr. and Mrs. Kehoe. It was just a name she’d seen on a mailbox, but the lie scarcely mattered, for Albert took so little notice of what she did by then that he failed to cross-examine her; in fact, except for his worries about handling school days with Lorraine, he seemed relieved she’d be gone.

She was late, but on Monday, October 11th, she exited the subway in Newark in a green cloche hat and a knee-length coat of soft muskrat fur dyed to resemble mink. And she saw Judd smugly relaxing against his jazzy convertible in a raccoon coat and Yankees baseball cap. She asked, “What fraternity you pledging, college boy?”

He took the Hartmann suitcase from her and grinned as he swung it into the back seat. “Which one has the hosted bar?”

Riding north through the Hudson River Valley with Judd, she grimly told him The Governor and she had been arguing without letup since they returned from Setauket, and then she shifted to another mood, gladly reacting to the fall foliage as if she were seeing it for the first time, laughing as she called out the leaf colors as “carrot orange,” “saffron yellow,” “harlot red,” or “horse pee.” She was gay, hectic, joshing, tender, and so sexually insatiable that the judge at their Queens County trial threatened to forbid ladies to be seated in the courtroom when Judd gave his testimony about that jaunt through upstate New York.

Early on Ruth gave him fellatio as he drove, and after their luncheon in a village above Newburgh, she went with him into the wet moss and crackling leaves of the woods. Judd joked, “To err is human, but it feels divine.” And when they got in the car again, Judd was charmed to see her fling off her hat and lie down in the front seat, hugging her knees. She tranquilly slept just as Jane would on long trips, waking up, as Judd later wrote, pink and refreshed and happy as a baby.

At four thirty, Judd checked them into the Stuyvesant Hotel in historic Kingston, introducing Ruth as “Mrs. Gray,” and then sitting as formally upr

ight as a bailiff as he used the hotel room’s telephone to arrange the next morning’s sales calls. They strolled along Rondout Creek after dinner, Judd found a speakeasy that sold Taittinger champagne, and she wore him out with lovemaking until two in the morning.

She woke him in the middle of the night by saying, “Albert’s birthday!”

“Hmm?”

“It’s October twelfth, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“He’s forty-four today. I forgot to leave him a gift. Even a card.”

“Don’t feel guilty, darling.”

“Actually, I feel just the opposite. Ain’t that somethin’?”

Wanting sleep, Judd lit a cigarette instead, and Ruth held him in the night of the room, liking the softness of his English skin, the traffic of his breathing, the male scent that was not Albert’s. She said, “We married in my mother and father’s place in front of some minister I’d never met. Walking from the kitchen in my grandmother’s ugly old bridal gown and Al’s sister banging Wagner’s ‘Wedding March’ on the piano. And me thinking, Aren’t you supposed to love the groom? But I didn’t at all. I mean, Al was handsome and smart and talented, and I was full of admiration for him, but there was nothing else. And even as the minister was having us repeat the wedding vows, I was thinking, This doesn’t have to be permanent. I can divorce him. And then I got violently ill. Mama told Albert I had the flu so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt, and he went home alone that night. And I realized how jubilant that made me. After a few days I had to admit I was well again, and I found out the old grouch gave up on the idea of our Poconos vacation after canceling our hotel reservations, so we never had a honeymoon.” She kissed Judd’s cool shoulder. “This is my first. And I’m overjoyed.”

Judd exhaled smoke. “And that makes me happy.”

“I have never felt sexual pleasure with Albert, just disgust and … what’s that word for making you feel lousy about yourself?”

“Degradation?”

She snuggled into him. “Whenever he gets into bed with me, I feel like killing him.”

Judd was silent.

“Are you listening?”