Let’s walk.” Sylvia didn’t mind walking. We’d gone only a few blocks when it began to drizzle. The sidewalk became slick. She tripped, soiled her white dress, and tore the strap of her sandal. I thought she’d blame me, but she didn’t. She was ready to go on walking. I wasn’t. I hailed a cab. As we were driving down Broadway, the cab rattling and clicking, the wide streetshining on either side, I saw that in her soiled white dress, her black hair sparkling with rain, she was very pretty. I looked at her, memorizing the shape of her neck and mouth and the bones of her face, and I thought, She is my wife. I am leaving her. Sometimes, after a fight, we went to the movies. It was like going to church. We entered with the people, found our seats, faced the light, and succumbed to the vast communal imagination. We came away feeling affectionate and good, wounds healed. In the all-night movies on 42nd Street, we’d sit in the balcony with the great smokers and popcorn people, their fingers scrabbling, mouths gnashing. Others sucked chocolate, licked ice cream, and rattled candy wrappers. There were drunks and half-wits who talked to the screen. Bums spit on the floor. This was honest-to-god-movies, place of Manhattan’s sleepless people, like a zoo but in its massive anonymity, private-feeling. We could go to the movies together even though, twenty minutes earlier, we’d been screaming murder. In the silent desolation after a fight, I might say:
“You want to go to the movies?”
Sylvia would straighten her clothes, check her face in the bathroom mirror, grab her leather coat and tie the wraparound belt as we went out the door. I loved seeing her quickness, particularly in her hands, when she gave herself to something. We’d hurry off to the subway without finding out when the movie began, because there would always be two movies. We could watch at least one from the beginning.
Sitting in the balcony, the eating and smoking all around, I sank into creaturely happiness, and then I noticed my arm was around Sylvia’s shoulder, and she had leaned her head on my arm. Our bad feelings were annihilated by big faces of love shining on the wall. Later, back in the street world, electricity lashed at our eyes, crowds mauled us, traffic wanted to kill us, and evil birds of marriage, black flecks soaring high in our brains, threatened to descend, but we were going home, we’d soon be in bed, hidden, pressed closely together.
A few years earlier, in 1959, I had stood in line to buy tickets outside the Guild, a movie house in Berkeley, owned by Pauline Kael. Her brief movie reviews, posted near the box office, were masterpieces of tone, often better than the movies. She made them feel crucially personal, like novels and poems. Walker Percy’s novel
The Moviegoer
, published in 1961, about the time Sylvia and I got married, said movies were personally redemptive; in the loneliness of an American life, moments of grace.
Teddy asked if I would do him a favor and listen to him read a chapter of his dissertation aloud. I told him I would come to his place this afternoon. Spending time with Teddy, without Sylvia present, felt awkward, as if I were betraying her. She’d be resentful. She likes Teddy. He’s attractive and smart, and he flatters her with small attentions, laughing at her least joke. She’d feel left out. Teddy read for almost anhour. It was a great pleasure. Two of us in a room thinking about literature as if nothing could be more serious. Teddy says when the ghost in
Hamlet
walks onto the stage, one kind of hero becomes another in tragedies of revenge. I wanted to applaud. In my excitement I blurted out, “The ghost is wearing armor, he’s dressed for battle, but he can’t do anything except talk and scare people. He’s just like his son.” Teddy looked as if I’d made him sick. I should have listened, and said his ideas are good, that’s all. My enthusiasm had been wrong in spirit, a touch
“You want to go to the movies?”
Sylvia would straighten her clothes, check her face in the bathroom mirror, grab her leather coat and tie the wraparound belt as we went out the door. I loved seeing her quickness, particularly in her hands, when she gave herself to something. We’d hurry off to the subway without finding out when the movie began, because there would always be two movies. We could watch at least one from the beginning.
Sitting in the balcony, the eating and smoking all around, I sank into creaturely happiness, and then I noticed my arm was around Sylvia’s shoulder, and she had leaned her head on my arm. Our bad feelings were annihilated by big faces of love shining on the wall. Later, back in the street world, electricity lashed at our eyes, crowds mauled us, traffic wanted to kill us, and evil birds of marriage, black flecks soaring high in our brains, threatened to descend, but we were going home, we’d soon be in bed, hidden, pressed closely together.
A few years earlier, in 1959, I had stood in line to buy tickets outside the Guild, a movie house in Berkeley, owned by Pauline Kael. Her brief movie reviews, posted near the box office, were masterpieces of tone, often better than the movies. She made them feel crucially personal, like novels and poems. Walker Percy’s novel
The Moviegoer
, published in 1961, about the time Sylvia and I got married, said movies were personally redemptive; in the loneliness of an American life, moments of grace.
Teddy asked if I would do him a favor and listen to him read a chapter of his dissertation aloud. I told him I would come to his place this afternoon. Spending time with Teddy, without Sylvia present, felt awkward, as if I were betraying her. She’d be resentful. She likes Teddy. He’s attractive and smart, and he flatters her with small attentions, laughing at her least joke. She’d feel left out. Teddy read for almost anhour. It was a great pleasure. Two of us in a room thinking about literature as if nothing could be more serious. Teddy says when the ghost in
Hamlet
walks onto the stage, one kind of hero becomes another in tragedies of revenge. I wanted to applaud. In my excitement I blurted out, “The ghost is wearing armor, he’s dressed for battle, but he can’t do anything except talk and scare people. He’s just like his son.” Teddy looked as if I’d made him sick. I should have listened, and said his ideas are good, that’s all. My enthusiasm had been wrong in spirit, a touch
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