The Other Side of Midnight

"I'm ready for anything now," she said joyfully. "Give me five minutes." She smiled warmly as she thought of what Fraser had done and how much trouble it must have cost him. He was the dearest man she had ever known. Next to Larry, of course.

Catherine had visualized Larry's arrival so often that the arrival itself was almost an anticlimax. Bill Fraser had explained to her that Larry was probably coming home in an Air Transport Command plane or a MATS plane and they didn't run at fixed times like commercial scheduled airlines. You conned a ride on the first flight you could get on--and it didn't matter too much where the plane was headed--just so it was flying in the right general direction.

Catherine stayed home all day waiting for Larry. She tried to read, but she was too nervous. She sat and listened to the news and thought about Larry returning home to her, this time forever. By midnight, he had still not arrived. She decided he probably would not be home until the next day. At two in the morning, when Catherine could keep her eyes open no longer, she went to bed.

She was awakened by a hand on her arm and she opened her eyes and he was standing over her, her Larry was standing there, looking down at her, a grin on his lean, tanned face, and in a flash Catherine was in his arms and all the worry and loneliness and pain of the past four years were washed away in a cleansing flood of joy that seemed to fill every fiber of her being. She hugged him until she was afraid that she was going to break his bones. She wanted to stay like this forever, never letting him go.

"Easy, honey," Larry said finally. He pulled away from her, a smile on his face. "It's going to look funny in the newspapers. 'Flyer comes home safely from the war and gets hugged to death by his wife.'"

Catherine turned on the lights, every one of them, flooding the room so that she could see him, study him, devour him. His face had a new maturity. There were lines around his eyes and mouth that had not been there before. The overall effect was to make him hand-somer than ever.

"I wanted to meet you," Catherine babbled, "But I didn't know where. I called the Air Corps and they couldn't give me any information at all, so I just waited here and..."

Larry moved toward her and shut her up with a kiss. His kiss was hard and demanding. Catherine had expected to feel the same physical eagerness for him and she was surprised to find that this was not so. She loved him very much and yet she would have been content to just sit with him and talk, instead of making love as he so urgently wanted to do. She had sublimated her sexual feelings for so long that they were deeply buried, and it would take time before they could be aroused and brought to the surface again.

But Larry was giving her no time. He was throwing off his clothes and saying, "God, Cathy, you don't know how I've dreamed about this moment. I was going crazy out there. And look at you. You're even more beautiful than I remembered."

He ripped off his shorts and was standing there naked. And somehow it was a stranger pushing her down on the bed, and she wished that Larry would give her time to get used to his being home, to get used to his nakedness again. But he was getting on top of her without any preliminaries, forcing himself into her and she knew that she was not ready for him. He was tearing into her, hurting her and she bit her hand to keep from crying out as he lay on top of her, making love like a wild animal.

Her husband was home.

For the next month with Fraser's blessing Catherine stayed away from the office and she and Larry spent almost every moment together. She cooked for him all of his favorite dishes, and they listened to records and talked and talked and talked, trying to fill in the gaps of the lost years between them. At night they went to parties or to the theater and when they returned home, they made love. Her

body was ready for him now and she found him as exciting a lover as always. Almost.

She did not want to admit it even to herself, but there was something indefinably changed about Larry. He was more demanding, less giving. There was still foreplay before they made love, but he did it mechanically, as though it were a duty to be disposed of before he went on to the sexual attack. And it was an attack, a savage and fierce taking, as though his body were seeking vengeance for something, meting out punishment. Each time they finished making love, Catherine felt bruised and battered, as though she had taken a beating. Perhaps, she defended him, it's just because he's been so long without a woman.

As the days passed, his lovemaking remained the same and it was that fact that finally led Catherine to look for other changes in Larry. She tried to study him dispassionately, tried to forget that this was the husband whom she adored. She saw a tall, well-built, black-haired man with deep dark eyes and a devastatingly beautiful face. Or perhaps "beautiful" no longer applied. The lines around his mouth had added a harshness to his features. Looking at this stranger, Catherine would have thought, Here is a man who could be selfish and ruthless and cold. And yet she told herself that she was being ridiculous. This was her Larry, loving and kind and thoughtful.

She proudly introduced him to all her friends and the people she worked with, but they seemed to bore him. At parties he would wander off into a corner and spend the evening drinking. It seemed to Catherine that he made no effort to be sociable. "Why should I?" he snapped at her one evening when she tried to discuss it with him. "Where the fuck were all those fat cats when I was up there getting my ass shot at?"

A few times Catherine broached the subject of what Larry was going to do with his future. She had thought that he would want to remain in the Air Corps, but almost the first thing Larry did when he returned home was to resign his commission.

"The Service is for suckers. There's nowhere to go but down," he had said.

It was almost like a parody of the first conversation Catherine had had with him in Hollywood. Only then, he had been joking.

Catherine had to discuss the problem with someone and she finally decided to talk to Bill Fraser. She told him what was troubling her, leaving out the more personal things.

"If it's any consolation to you," Fraser said sympathetically, "there are millions of women all over the world going through what you're going through now. It's really very simple, Catherine. You're married to a stranger."

Catherine looked at him, saying nothing.

Fraser stopped to fill his pipe and light it. "You can't really expect to pick up where you left off when Larry went away four years ago, can you? That place in time doesn't exist any more. You've moved past it, and so has Larry. Part of what makes a marriage work is that a husband and wife have common experiences. They grow together and their marriage grows. You're going to have to find a common meeting ground again."

"I feel disloyal even discussing it, Bill."

Fraser smiled. "I knew you first," he reminded her. "Remember?"

"I remember."

"I'm sure that Larry's feeling his way, too," Fraser continued. "He's been living with a thousand men for four years and now he has to get used to living with a girl."

She smiled. "You're right about everything you said. I suppose I just had to hear someone say it."

"Everyone's full of helpful advice about how to handle the wounded," Fraser remarked, "but there are some wounds that don't show. Sometimes they go deep." He saw the look on Catherine's face. "I don't mean anything serious," he added quickly. "I'm just talking about the horrors that any combat soldier sees. Unless a man is a complete fool, it's bound to have an enormous effect on his outlook. You see what I mean?"

Catherine nodded. "Yes." The question was: What effect had it had?