Divorce

"Why oh why?"
"Why?"
"Why would he?"
"Why would she?"
Together - different places, different voices, but the same word, "leave?"

Helen sank onto the austere black and white tile of the enormous entryway, the great vaulted ceiling soaring above her, uncaring. Her large skirt billowed around her as she sank onto the cold, and the letter fluttered from her fingers, her eyes filling with angry and unexpected tears.

Robert let the letter fall without caring to the desk in his club. And with a dark brow, he swallowed hard for what seemed like hours. He strode to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass with enormous, frightening calm.

It had only been a few weeks since their wedding, a wedding that had been the product of a very short courtship - both parties and the bride's family encouraging the union wholeheartedly. She was the product of good breeding and a marvelous education, and his background though perhaps not as lofty as hers, was without blemish and his fortune could not be questioned.

The honeymoon had been in Italy, and it had been tireless - a journey without end to all the major sites, planned (unbenowenst to Robert) entirely by the bride's mother, rather than the bride herself, living out the dreams of a woman without a spouse adventurous enough for continental travel. Each supper had been delicious, each site had been inspiring, and Helen had soaked it in with inner joy fighting the trepidation and anxiety she felt around her husband. And yet, when he reached for her gently, she went to his breast without question, and felt more alive there than she had ever before. Young, sensitive, she had never had the opportunity in their travels to quiet with him for long enough to show him her laughter, her joy, and her inner mischief. Rather, she had played the perfect wife, and over his newspaper he had studied her small, nervous movements fighting her natural grace and ingenuousness. Each time he viewed her struggle, he played the gentleman and offered patience, while she blushed at her own clumsiness and wondered if she would ever grow up and be like the women who eyed her husband so confidently from beneath their dark lashes on the Roman streets.

Upon their return, she had dealt efficiently and naturally with all the new challenges of a rather large household with entrenched and loyal servants. Rather than feeling the lady of the house, she wondered if she would be able to respect boundaries of servant/lady relations that seemed unnatural in the early 50s. Her family, though traditional, had held a certain lack of concern over lines that Robert's household held onto with the grit of those who were making up for bloodlines with traditional manners. Bored but hoping to start as she meant to go on, Helen committed herself to her new role, including the separate bedrooms and stilted meals. And when Robert didn't visit her at night, she longed for his stranger's arms to at least alleviate her loneliness. Over breakfast, she admired his interest in foreign affairs, and secretly read the newspaper after him to satisfy her own interests in the cultural pages and what was happening in post-war France. As mother had always said, though, a lady does not read.

Here and there he would catch a glimpse on the stairs as she skipped down them when she thought no one was looking, or when she sang in the library looking for books, or sometimes when she was truly alone, (once at least he had caught her), twirling around the big entry hall on the black and white tiles. At these moments, he would swear again to himself to bring her out of her shell through the best expedient he knew: gentility and time. But why would she not ask him a question? Perhaps she was simply not interested in him - the reality of marriage not fulfilling her girlhood expectations. A product of a cool union himself, he wondered why he felt this was so unnatural, and simply hoped one day to find that she was interested in something more than appearing shy on his arms at parties, looking often a little frightened by his friends.

Two weeks since, they had gone to a route at the Plennningtons, only to find a group of distant cousins whom he had not seen for some time. She had quietly excused herself, and he had seen her retire to the edge of the room, sipping champagne. A few moments later, she was in conversation with one of his cousins, a lightly balding man with a sharp wit and a number of notches on his bedpost from his college days. Soon, she was laughing lightly, and her eyes were alive in a way he had not seen them in years. Burning with a new and unfamiliar anger, he had excused himself, and extricating her from the pleasant conversation, had taken her out to a late supper, hoping her eyes would sparkle for him, but she only returned to her shy and quiet self. Frustrated, he dropped her at home and went out to his club, where he got roaring drunk and placed a rather enormous sum on an unfortunate horse for the following day's races.

And so it had been for some time - at least two months of it - strange, and breathless conversations that revolved around nothing at all, as Helen found herself forgetting to breathe, hoping endlessly that Robert would say something, anything, that might signal a warming, a lightening, a forgiveness for whatever unspoken thing she had done to keep him so distant. For wasn't it that he had been in love with her? Wasn't it that he had been in love with her that he had married her? And when she thought too hard about the possibility that perhaps it wasn't the reason at all, her whole world seemed to shimmer and fade like a worn-out mirage. So she quietly pushed it away and tried to enjoy the small moments when she held onto his arm as they entered parties, blushing lightly at the envious stares of women who thought perhaps she wasn't quite as good as they might be in the same position, and tried to enjoy, too, the little moments when he introduced her as his wife before the conversation turned to topics that she felt too deep for her to enter, in a circle where she did not belong.

The letter lay on the floor, unmoving, it's type set close and looking stingy and matter-of-fact as it spelled out the dissatisfaction she had feared from his side. The hope that he would one day care for her, would warm to her small ways and her long fingers, draw her out in conversation and tease her into revealing herself was lost. And she was entirely bereft, the cold of the stone reaching its long fingers into her even as the long, searing pain in her chest reached down to meet it. Searing, cold, and numbing. She didn't know how long she sat there, until a servant, seeing her there, came to ask her what was the matter, and in cool self-possession she replied nothing - she had received a shock was all - and she reached for the letter, and rose as gracefully as she was able, stating she was quite alright, after which she fled, fairly obviously in a state not to be disturbed.

The night bled into morning with sleep coming only fleetingly here and there, like a bird that refused to roost. The future stretched before her, a wilderness of unknown fears and shattered ideals. Not only the ruin of the relation itself, but also the ruin of her certainty of the future had been robbed of her. She would be a divorcee at twenty-four, a woman who would have to enter yet again into society with the ultimate intent of marriage. For the time being, she might be thrown back on her parents' good will -- or worse yet, have to endure the harsh and terrible prospect of lawyers ending in some sort of alimony. And all because, somewhere, somehow, she had not pleased him, had disappointed him, and he had changed his mind. From the promises made such a short while ago, he had changed his direction completely and simply, without bothering to let her know. Or perhaps he had assumed she knew the matter as well as he; she was not experienced to know if she should have been aware of something missing or not. She curled up into a ball of pain and pulled the blankets more securely around her. But the covers failed to shield her from the deep, undeniable gnawing ache inside her belly, and she moaned lightly and pressed her eyes closed more tightly to block out the growing, mocking daylight.

They met not long after at a party. Strangely, awkwardly, they passed by one another, the rest of the room silent to them both, the great bell of silence keeping both of their ears filled with each others' presence. Robert bowed slightly in acknowledgment, and Helen kept her eyes down, afraid to see him, ashamed of her own ignorance - only glancing at him through her lashes.That night she danced with more men than was her wont, usually, as being seen alone, many of Robert's friends took her for a spin if only to know what the gossip was. And because it was obvious he had said nothing, she, too, kept her own council and said not a word. And so the rumors spread that theirs was a marriage of convenience, and in the edges of the room, a wave of interest began to mount around them both, from opposite directions. To her, those that noted she was smooth-skinned and had the look of sorrow about her that might make her a wonderfully fulfilling companion to rescue, prey upon, or comfort, and to him, those ladies who found their own spouses - despite their fortunes - obnoxious to the extreme.

She had had a few glasses of champagne that evening, when, hot with her own sense of shattered dreams and betrayed faith, she allowed herself to become excited - that is, she allowed herself to anger. It was a place she did not visit usually, and one where she had not planned to travel. But the night had worn on with myriad looks and the perfume of speculation had become a nauseating incense that cleared her mind of common sense. And so, escaping to the darkness of the hall to cool her mind, she invited yet more comment, despite her own lack of knowledge regarding it. Robert, himself having drunken steadily throughout the night, watched her go with slitted, glittering eyes. And against his own better will, he, too, followed her, assuming assignations had already begun under his very nose.

The hall was shadowed, only dimly lit by a low lamp, and it was rather narrow; a forgotten piece of house-building that had originally let servants from one room to the next, but now had been appropriated for the gentry to access the toilet facilities and the upper rooms in a manner more felicitous to the modern spirit of economy and efficiency. As well, the back servants stairs had been mostly replaced by the expediency of a dumb waiter. Helen stood, slim and rather tall in her simple blue gown, leaning against the brocaded wall, her arms crossed in front of her, examining a dire future somewhere past the tips of her toes. The gnawing in her stomach had only increased, and promised to worsen if she did not press against it with her arms, and so she seemed very much as if she was endeavoring to retreat into the wall.

One look and Robert realized that an assignation was most probably not the reason of her evening escape, but incensed and tipsy, uncharacteristically slow of reason and unwilling to leave her once he was close to her again, he strolled toward her coolly and placed himself at her shoulder. "Cigarette while you wait?" he queried, pulling out the silver case he had received from her (mother) upon the eve of their engagement. Helen had picked out her favorite book to give him, but her mother had vetoed the idea at once, citing the fact that he would have a lifetime's worth of hours to know her better once they had signed the union into reality.  "Wait?" she asked, innocently, her eyes rising to his and then immediately lowering again, a blush creeping up her cheeks, unbidden, in the knowledge that she hated him now as much as she might have ever hated anyone in her life. That she did, in fact, desire to hit him, and that, also, she was very confused by his question and didn't give a damn what he meant.

"Are you not waiting for someone? It was, of course, what everybody thought, seeing you slip away like this," he said, coldly, not bothering to keep the venom from his voice. She shook her head tiredly.
"Of course," she said, "of course - why would I need a moment to myself?"
"The need for solitude is not often understood nor respected in circles such as these," he replied quickly, without thinking, and then, realizing he had said something quite kind, he turned toward her and gripped her arm, looking deep into her eyes. "Don't you think it's time you simply cut the line, my girl? Your act may be convincing, but I think it's time, don't you?"
She shook her head, entirely at a loss. "I don't know what you mean, sir, but I will tell you," and she bridled, pulling herself to her full height, her eyes flashing into his, "that this - this - scandal is of YOUR making! And if you cannot own to it, God knows I will not take the blame."
His eyes narrowed. "And what, exactly, my dear," he took an elegant pull on his cigarette, "do you think it is that I have done?" He looked at her insolently for a moment, taking in her fine wrists and the angle of her neck, and suddenly she began to feel very warm indeed.
She looked a question at him, but refused to retreat. "You? You? You have played me along in this game of yours, and now, here I am, at your mercy and at your will. What would you that I do, sir? I beg of you, let me know what I may do," her eyes sparkled coldly, and her heart beat in her chest.
He came closer, trapping her almost against the wall, and his hand on one side of her pressed against the rough fabric of the wall covering. "You may tell me what this nonsense is," he growled, between his teeth.
"Ah! Finally willing to touch me now that you don't want me?" She said, querilous, and the moment she said it, she wished it back again. His hand dropped from the wall, and he took a step back, quizzical.
"What, my dear, the hell do you mean by that?" He asked after a moment, and she, already close to tears, began to dissolve from within so that she could only shake her head. And so she turned, looking for a corner to flee to, and found only a door to her right, whose handle gave way underneath her turning fingers, and so she slipped into it, and slammed the door behind her as hard as she could, and hoped that, somehow, he might be on the other side of it, and knock. But only silence greeted her, and after her bought of tears had subsided, she found she was in a small linen closet, with invitingly large piles of linens lying here and there. And so she sat upon one and simply calmed her breathing until she felt she might possibly be presentable.
"Well," she commented to herself aloud (something she had never dared to do before), "now they will truly think I have carried on." And she wished, dearly, that she smoked.
The next day she was all alone. The sky was iron and gray, and when she went out for a walk, she wandered without goal along paths that were familiar and unfamiliar at once. The great, gnawing feeling of loneliness swept up in her and she could do little let it wash over her in undulating waves. She hunched her shoulders slightly against the pain and walked on. What next? What next after this? A great, burning, haunting feeling rose in her, even as the clouds became yet thicker. She refused to go to her parents; and divorce? What kind of money could she expect from that? What could she expect at all? She wondered about the lawyer, and shivered to think that his kind, staid face, the one that had drawn up their marriage agreements would now be looking over the details of their divorce. And for what reason? She didn't know. Slowly, she turned for home. The depths of her gloom were not lightened by finding on the entry table a card from one of the gentleman of last night's party. Ah. He had 'phoned, had he? She felt as incapable of speaking with him as she did of doing anything else, and proceeded to the library where she drank in the scent of Burberry that Robert always wore from the faded tartan cushions on the sofa. It was that moment when she realized she had loved him. And that moment also when her deep sorrow turned to anger.