The 158-Pound Marriage

'Time to eat!' Severin said.

The squid was on a large platter in white ringlets and grayish clumps of tentacles in a red sauce; it resembled little snippets and chunks of fingers and toes. Upstairs we could hear Fiordiligi and Dorabella taking a bath together; splashes, the tub filling, their girlish voices, Fiordiligi teasing, Dorabella complaining.

'I haven't seen the girls in a long time,' Utch said.

'They're taking a bath,' Edith said. Stupidly, we all listened to them taking their bath.

I would have been grateful for the interruption of our awkward silence by the great shattering crash, except that I knew exactly what it was. There was a sound like the machine-gunning of several upstairs windows, followed in a split second by the shrieking of both children. The stem of Edith's wineglass snapped in her hand and she screamed terribly. Utch's hand jerked the serving spoon across the platter and sent the squid splattering on the white tablecloth. Severin and I were moving upstairs, Severin ahead of me, moaning as he ran, 'Oh God no, no, no - I'm coming!'

I knew what had happened because I knew that bathroom, bathtub and shower as well as Severin; I knew my wet love nest. The crash had been the sliding glass door on the bathtub rim; many nights, Edith and I had precariously opened and closed it. Old-fashioned heavy glass, loose in its rusting metal frame, the door slid in a blackened groove, slimy with old soap slivers and tiny parts from children's bathtub toys. Twice the door had eased out of the groove and Edith and I had clutched it and kept it from falling as we guided it back in its proper track. I'd said to Edith, 'Better have Severin fix that. We could get hurt in here.' Time and time again, Severin had told her to get it fixed. 'Call a bathroom man,' he said absurdly.

I had always known that if the door fell on Edith and me, Severin would at least delight in whatever injury it gave me. And if something were to be cut by the falling door, I never doubted what it would be.

'I'm coming!' screamed Severin witlessly. I knew there would be blood but I was unprepared for how much. The bathroom looked like the scene of a gangland slaying. The old door had pitched into the tub and broken over the naked girls, the glass exploding from the frame, sending shards and fragments flying everywhere; it crunched under Severin's shoes as he plunged his arms into the tub. The tub was pink, the water bloody; you could not tell who was cut where. Out the faucet the water still poured, the tub a churning sea of glass and bleeding children. Severin lifted Dorabella out to me; she was quivering, conscious but no longer screaming; she looked nervously all over her body to see where she was wounded. I pulled the shower handle and doused us all so that I could see where her deepest cuts were. Hunting for severed arteries, Severin lifted the bent door frame over Fiordiligi's lovely head and held her under the shower while she howled and wriggled and he examined her body for cuts. Both of them had a multitude of flacklike wounds, boil-sized punctures and swellings on their arms and shoulders. I found one deep cut on Dorabella, in her sodden hair above one ear - a gash that had parted her hair and scalp, nearly as long as my finger but not quite as deep as her skull. It bled richly but slowly; there were no arteries there. Severin tied a towel around Fiordiligi's leg above her knee and twisted it into a fair tourniquet. A wedge of glass, like the head of a broad chisel, protruded from Fiordiligi's kneecap and the blood welled and flowed but never spurted. Both children were perhaps in shock and were in for a tedious and messy glass-picking session at the hospital. It would be long and painful, and there would be stitches, but they would be all right.

I knew that Severin had feared one or both of them would bleed to death in his arms, or be already drowned and bled dry by the time he reached them. 'They're all right!' I yelled downstairs, where Utch was holding Edith, who would not move from her chair, sitting as if frozen, Utch said, waiting for the news. 'I'll call the hospital,' I said, 'and tell them you're coming.'

Severin took Dorabella from me and carried both nude children down to Edith; white-faced and shaking, she reviewed each wound on each daughter with wonder and pain, as if she had caused them herself.

'Please help yourselves to supper,' Edith said vacantly. She did not care. She was only aware of the priority of her children.

Severin suddenly blurted, 'It could have happened to you.' Clearly he meant, to her and me; he meant should have.

With a shock, I realized that I didn't care what they thought. I realized that my Jack and my Bart had taken baths in that hazardous tub; I was thinking only that it could have happened to them, and that it could have been much worse.

We threw their coats around the children and Utch opened the car door for them. Edith never waved or said thank you as she sat with both her slashed daughters against her and let Severin drive them to the hospital, where they were to be picked clean and sewn back together, nearly as good as new. As the car backed out, I was glad to see that Edith was smoking.

Utch insisted that we clean up the bathroom. We agreed that they shouldn't have to see all that blood when they came home. Together we lugged the heavy door frame and a few large pieces of glass to the trash pickup; together we vacuumed fragments from every crevice. I found a piece of glass lying across the bristles of a toothbrush; danger was everywhere. We scrubbed that bathroom spotless, drained the blood-filled tub, scrubbed the blood stains on the stairs, put all the stained towels in the washer and started it. With a screwdriver I gouged little slivers of glass out of the vile groove of the glass door. I remembered that Edith had once braced her heels against that door. I knew where the fresh linen was kept (You would, said Utch) and we put fresh towels on the racks. I hoped to myself that there might be a slice of glass left behind on the tub floor for Severin to sit on.

When we were done, we weren't hungry. Severin's cold squid was not appealing; it lay dead on the tablecloth, where Utch had slopped it; Edith's spilled wine had bled into it. The dish looked like the terrible debris from an operation.

I hardly said a word as we drove home. Utch broke the silence once: 'Your children are more important to you than anything,' she said. I didn't answer, but it wasn't because I disagreed.

That night I woke up alone in the damp bed. A window was open and it was raining. I looked everywhere, but Utch was out walking. Where can she go in this weather? I wondered. I checked the children's windows and closed them against the rain. Bart lay sunk in his pillow like a hammer, his fingers bunching the sheet in his sleep. Slim Jack lay in his bed as perfectly as the dream of a dancer. But there was no sleep coming to me, I realized. I checked the children's breathing, regular and deep. I found the umbrella. Utch did not need it where she was. I knew that she had not returned her keys to the gym and wrestling room to Severin.

I thought, if Utch is going to take up walking, I can too. Outside in the rain I greeted insomnia like a peevish mistress neglected for too long.

10

Back to Vienna

'I JUST GO there to be alone,' Utch told me. 'It's a good place to think - to just rest.'

'And you just might run into him up there one night,' I said.

'Severin doesn't go there anymore,' Utch said. 'He's retired, remember?'

'I doubt that he's retired from that.'

'Come with me next time,' she said. 'I know what you think of that whole building but please come with me and see.'

'I wouldn't set foot in there at night,' I said. 'It's just a place full of old jock-itch germs running around in the dark.'

'Please. It's special for me, and I want you to see.'

'Yes, I'll bet it's special for you,' I said.

'It's almost the last place I had an orgasm,' Utch said. She was certainly not shy about it. 'I thought maybe we might try.'