The Graduate by Charles Webb

you don’t sleep in the same room.”
    “We don’t.”

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    “So you don’t ... I mean I don’t like to seem like I’m prying but I guess you don’t sleep together or anything.”
    “No we don’t,” she said, unbuttoning the final button.
    “Well how long has this been going on.”
    “What.”
    “That you’ve been sleeping in different rooms. Different beds.”
    Mrs. Robinson looked up at the ceiling a moment. “About five years,”
    she said.
    “Oh no.”
    “What?”
    “Are you kidding me?”
    “No.”
    “You have not slept with your husband for five years?”
    “Now and then,” she said, removing the blouse. “He gets drunk a few times a year.”
    “How many times a year.”
    “On New Year’s Eve,” she said. “Sometimes on his birthday.”
    Benjamin shook his head. “Man, is this interesting,” he said.
    “Is it?”
    “So you don’t love him. You wouldn’t say you—”
    “We’ve talked enough, Benjamin.”
    “Wait a minute. So you wouldn’t say you loved him.”
    “Not exactly,” she said, slipping out of her skirt and putting it on the hanger.
    “But you don’t hate him,” Benjamin said.
    “No Benjamin, I don’t hate him. Undo my bra.” She backed up to the chair.
    “You don’t hate him and you don’t love him,” Benjamin said, reaching up to unfasten the two straps of her bra.
    “That’s right.”
    “Well how do you feel about him then.”

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    “I don’t,” she said. She dropped the bra on the bureau.
    “Well that’s kind of a bad situation then, isn’t it.”
    “Is it?”
    “I mean it doesn’t sound like it could be much worse. If you hated him at least you’d hate him.”
    She nodded and removed her slip.
    “Well you loved him once, I assume,” Benjamin said.
    “What?”
    “I say I assume you loved your husband once. When you first knew him.”
    “No,” she said.
    “What?”
    “I never did, Benjamin. Now let’s—”
    “Well wait a minute,” he said. “You married him.”
    She nodded.
    “Why did you do that.”
    “See if you can guess,” she said. She unfastened her stockings from their clasps and began peeling them down over her legs.
    “Well I can’t,” Benjamin said.
    “Try.”
    “Because of his money?”
    “Try again,” she said. She began forcing the girdle down around her legs.
    “You were just lonely or something?”
    “No.”
    Benjamin frowned. “For his looks?” he said. “He’s a pretty handsome guy, I guess.”
    “Think real hard, Benjamin.”
    Benjamin frowned down at one of her feet, then shook his head. “I can’t see why you did,” he said, “unless . . . you didn’t have to marry him or anything, did you?”

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    “Don’t tell Elaine,” Mrs. Robinson said.
    “Oh no.”
    She nodded.
    “You had to marry him because you got pregnant?”
    “Are you shocked?”
    “Well,” Benjamin said, “I never thought of you and Mr. Robinson as the kind of people who . . .” He shook his head.
    “All right,” she said. “Now let’s go to bed.”
    “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So how did it happen.”
    “What?”
    “I mean do you feel like telling me what were the circumstances?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “I mean what was the setup. Was he a law student at the time?”
    She nodded.
    “And you were a student also.”
    “Yes.”
    “At college.”
    “Yes.”
    “What was your major.”
    She frowned at him. “Why are you asking me all this.”
    “Because I’m interested, Mrs. Robinson. Now what was your major subject at college.”
    “Art.”
    “Art?”
    She nodded.
    “But I thought you—I guess you kind of lost interest in it over the years then.”
    “Kind of.”
    “So,” Benjamin said. “You were an art major and he was a law student.
    And you met him. How did you meet him. At a party or at a dance or—”

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    “I don’t remember, Benjamin,” she said, removing her bobby pins and shaking her head to let the hair fall down