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.An adulteress in the head.Many people are adulteresses.But until now I was not one of them and could not imagine becoming one of them.Now it is all I imagine.She, Margaret Nathan, was one of those hateful people—the doctors who let their wives support them through medical school, then messed around with someone younger.She was the father of three who decided to find himself with his daughter's best friend.She was a restless housewife who became a campaign volunteer only to run off with a losing senatorial candidate.She was a philanderer, a liar, and a cheat, the villain of every pop song ever written.In New York, away from statues and mute Frenchmen, Margaret waited for her intemperate, wanton mood to disperse.But it did not.I am obsessed, she realized.I think of nothing else.A visit to the fish market has become a bawdy escapade during which I look at young men in their running tights.I look at the man in Apartment 3E across the hall and I wonder if I will sleep with him.I look at Edward and wonder when I will betray him.She had always told Edward everything, but she certainly could not tell him this.He would laugh at first, then, when he understood, he would be disgusted and hurt.Margaret ate with him and slept with him, but she did not really talk to him.The only thing she had to say she could not say to him.It seemed impossible, to feel so distant from the man she loved.She had gone to Prague, seen some marble feet, and felt desire.So what? But her adventure played itself out in her imagination, over and over again.The man in the plane, asleep on her breast, burrowed deeper and deeper in her dreams."Look," Edward cried, pulling her to the window."Look outside." He showed her proudly, as if the deep blue sky, its clarity, its quick white clouds, were his, or at least his doing."Now out you go.A nice brisk walk.Do you good, darling.""I walked in Prague.In New York I sit.""Margaret, I'm worried about you.You're so glum and remote.You require cheering up.Shall we go out tonight? Do you want me to buy you a puppy?"Margaret sighed."A mink coat? Just like Mummy's?"Margaret thought of how they electrocute minks.One of Edward's students, the boy who had grown up on a mink farm, had described it to Margaret at dinner as one of Edward's other students, the adoring girl from the Boston suburb, had listened with a hurt, sad expression."Why are you being so nice to me?" Margaret asked Edward now."Yes, well, perhaps it was misguided.But I felt your absence deeply, Margaret.It's a relief to have you back with me."Felt her absence deeply? How deeply? Deeply enough to seek solace elsewhere? A relief to have her back? What did that mean? Why a relief?"Didn't you have your students to keep you company, to occupy you?" Margaret said."Well, I suppose."Aha! Margaret thought."But it's not really the same thing, is it?"Aha!She thought about Prague constantly, confused and simply embarrassed by what had happened there.Which was precisely nothing, she reminded herself.Yet that nothing filled her with shame.Then again, she thought, if I felt that way, if I felt overwhelmed by desire like that, then my marriage must be lacking.If my marriage is lacking, Edward is lacking.If Edward is lacking, I need something else, someone else.That certainly is sound, logical, circular reasoning.And anyway, who knows what Edward does with those adoring students of his? And if Edward thinks Walt Whitman is so great, then a little overwhelming sensuality and indulgence will strike him as healthful and grand, won't it? Not that he ever has to know.For weeks, she went over the same ground, becoming more and more resentful.She had been sexually attracted to a stranger on a plane! How could Edward do this to her?I am a fallen woman, she would think, and she would feel sick with a sense of her own dishonor.Edward, she would continue, the be-all and end-all of my existence, is not all, after all.He has failed me.And then she would become angry.One afternoon, as she walked toward the bus stop, seething with regret and fury, she saw a man drop a candy wrapper on the ground.Don't do that, you fool, she thought, outraged.There is a garbage can not two feet from you.Don't litter.And then she laughed at herself, a sinner worried about a litterbug.And then she laughed again out loud and felt a sudden sense of power [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]