The 158-Pound Marriage

'Not true!' Edith said. 'And when I'm familiar with something, do I throw it away?'

'Wait and see,' said Severin. Of course, he was looking at me, but I kept my eyes on Jack and Bart. I was impressed that two people I loved so much could be so different.

'That's not surprising,' Edith said.

'No,' Utch disagreed. 'There is one that you always love more.'

'Here we all are again,' said Severin Winter, 'stumbling toward profundity.'

Well, he could be funny. But at whose expense?

'He is not cruel,' Edith said once; she was angry. 'You should just stop trying to understand him. I stopped trying, and now I enjoy him much more. I hate it that men feel they have to understand everything.' She was depressed, she said, that Severin and I would never be friends.

Also, her writing was taking a turn. An off-turn, I thought, but she defended herself with surprising calm. In the beginning she had responded to my criticism; now she seemed to be going off on her own, and I felt it was due to his brainwashing - his 118-pound theorizing, his disparaging remarks about so-called historical novels.

I often heard Severin tell his wrestlers, 'If you can't get off the bottom, you can't win.' But that's another story.

I remember once when the four of us stayed overnight at the Winters' - all the children, too. We hauled mattresses into the TV room and parked the children there to be mesmerized by various Late Show horrors; they ate potato chips all night. In the morning, we couldn't find Severin. I was alone in one of the children's rooms; I'd crawled off from someone's bed to sleep by myself.

We looked and looked. Finally Edith discovered Severin in the TV room, all four children sleeping huddled round him, wedged against him, sprawled on top of him. He had appeared there in the early dawn hours when some Late Show ghoul had convinced my youngest son of another reality, and his howls had convinced the other children. Severin had staggered away from one of the warm women, grabbing the nearest garment handy, and had fallen among

them and promised not to leave until daylight. The garment was Edith's mauve dressing gown, a sheer, flowered, ankle-length thing. Edith called us all to come see. The groggy children were slowly waking; they curled and snuggled against him as if he were a large pillow or friendly dog - and Severin Winter lay among them in Edith's gown, looking like a transvestite weight lifter dropped through the roof of an elementary school like a benign bomb.

We drove our sons home, Utch wearing Edith's long wrap-around skirt because she'd been unable to find her own.

'I'm sure it'll turn up,' I said.

'I remember where I took it off,' Utch said, 'but it's not there.'

I drove with my hand on Utch's leg, on Edith's skirt. Everywhere, comparisons pleased me! But that was another time.

We returned from Cape Cod in a flood of headlights of other weekenders bathing our faces. Edith and I were in the rear seat; under my shirt, her fingers were cool against my stomach. There was a comfortable noise, tire-hum and engine-drone, so that I could speak to her in a normal voice without Utch and Severin hearing. Not that there was anything I wanted to say which wouldn't have been suitable for them to hear; the point is, it was intimate, riding at night that way. The impersonal quality of the flickering headlights illuminating us and leaving us in darkness made me feel isolated, overlooked, special. In the front seat, Utch and Severin sat chastely apart - more due to the design of his car than by choice, I was sure; it had bucket seats. Also, Severin insisted that everyone wear seat belts. In the back, Edith and I had slipped ours off so that we could sit closer together; he must have known. I could hear the singsong tones of his voice, occasionally rising above the engine, the tires, and my own voice, but when I strained to listen to him, I realized he was speaking German. A story? Another tale of Old Vienna? What did they talk about?

'Nothing,' Utch told me once. I thought she sounded bitter. 'Whatever Severin and I have in common is your idea. If you met another American when you were living, say, in Vienna, and the other American was from Cambridge, Massachusetts, would you assume you'd have much more in common than the English language and some regional characteristics?' Whew. Ask a simple question, receive a speech.

But I saw our bedroom after he left it; I saw my wife after he left her. I have seen their communication in the twin apple cores, empty bottles, bitten hunks of cheese and bread, the stems stripped of grapes, the sheets knotted like a great balled fist which I imagine pounding the mattress askew! I have found pillows in distant corners of the room, and once I found the frail chair I usually throw my pants on stuffed upside down in the laundry hamper. On each of the chair legs dangled a shoe (my shoes), so that it resembled a four-legged creature with human feet, perhaps murdered violently and inverted to bleed among our dirty clothes.

'It looks like you two have some rapport,' I said to Utch.

She laughed. 'I think,' she said, giving me a soft poke on the nose, 'that you should think what you want to think' - interrupted by a gentle punch on the arm - 'because you will anyway.' She had never indulged in those damn locker-room physicalities, those chin-chucks and rib-pokes and ear-cuffs, until she met him.

Past Boston the traffic thinned out, and we were driving for the most part in darkness. I stopped talking. Severin's German was music. I could tell we were both listening though Edith never understood the language any better than I did. Utch wasn't answering; he was just going on and on. I couldn't remember when he had turned the radio off (to listen to what I was saying to Edith? To make us listen to him?), but Edith asked him to turn it back on. She had to lean forward to make him hear, and she kissed the back of his neck.

'Put your seat belt on,' he told her.

'Can we have some music back here?' Edith asked, ignoring him.

'No,' he said. 'Not unless you put your seat belt on.'

Utch did not turn in her seat.

After a while, Severin turned the radio on; Edith had waited as if she knew he would, but she didn't settle back against me until the music was playing. She didn't put her seat belt on. Severin stopped talking at last. I touched Edith's breasts very softly, I pinched her nipples; I was trying to make her laugh, but she sat stiffly against me as if she were still waiting for the radio. The music was terrible and the station wasn't coming in well. Finally Utch fixed it. She had to take her seat belt off to fiddle with the dials, and when she started to put it back on, Severin spoke a little German to her. She answered and he argued with her; she left her seat belt off, and he took his off, too. Edith squeezed my hand; she was rigid. Severin spoke again to Utch. 'Nein,' she said.

We were driving faster. I looked between their shoulders at the lengthening red tongue on the speedometer. When he dimmed the dashboard lights, I felt Edith tense against me and heard Utch quietly say something in German. I found myself thinking of Severin Winter's psychological coaching method, his tunnel-walk in the imposed darkness. I felt we were moving at great speed and at any moment would burst into harsh public light and the roar of a crowd. Utch repeated whatever she'd said in German. I felt Edith was about to reach forward - and do what? Tap his shoulder, kiss his neck, fasten Utch's seat belt?

When Severin Winter spoke again, this time Utch didn't say 'Nein.' She lay across the front bucket seats and put her head in his lap. I saw her soft green sweater flow past the space between the seats like water. The dashboard was black. The speed felt the same. Edith pulled away from me, found her seat belt and clamped it shut around her waist; the metallic joining seemed exaggerated. Did Utch have him in her mouth? She wouldn't! Not with Edith and me right there. But did Severin want us to think that she did?

I couldn't let it go on. But I know the value of obliqueness. I said, 'How do you think the children are doing?' Edith smiled; I knew I had him. 'Does it bother you to leave them overnight, to be so far away from them? It gets easier as they get older, but don't you worry even so?' The questions were for Severin; Edith, of course, didn't answer me. Utch glided back to her bucket seat and sat up. Later she said, 'I should have rolled down the window and spat right after I sat up. That would have fixed you. That's what was on your mind, wasn't it? If that's what you were thinking, I should have let you really think it.'