DESMOND Chapter Five
Chapter Five
1958
Wendy on the couch, talking. Alan in his chair, taking notes. So boring, always the same. But she knows she needs to talk. And the sameness, after all that she had gone through; one would think she would welcome that. That's what she's been told - that a routine, a sense of sameness, was precisely what she needed right now. But she was so bored with everything, and along with her boredom was a knowledge that was all the more powerful for how it contradicted that boredom. The knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.
"About twenty minutes later, Desmond came back to me. Armstrong and his goons were nowhere to be seen. I tried to get him to talk about it, but he only said that everything was going to be okay…"
Alan looks up from his notes. Wendy casts a sardonic glance his way.
"Yeah, exactly. Didn’t make me feel any better…" She casts a glance over at her purse, thinking of the cigarettes within. But she's trying to cut down. She really should quit. "Anyways, after that Desmond cancelled the rest of the book tour and we went home. He said that we were going to take his theories to the next level. I asked him what we were going to do for money, but he said not to worry about it."
The doctor peers at her over his wire rimmed glasses. "So you’re saying-"
"Oh I’m not saying anything, Doctor." Wendy cuts in. "Desmond was crystal clear about that. As far as I’m concerned, he and Jimmy made some sort of deal for an advance, understand?"
Alan sits back and writes a few more notes. To hell with it. Wendy reaches for her purse and her cigarettes.
1955
Standing in the centre of the basement of their home, surrounded by workmen carrying boxes and unloading equipment, Desmond is happy right now, she can see. In charge and directing orders to the men. Wendy sits down on the top step of the stairs and watches him for a while, watches him being happy.
Quite some time since he's been this way, at least around her. Ever since that night with Armstrong. He hadn't told her much in the weeks that followed, but after she had persisted - hell, let's face it, after a few barnstormer fights - he had finally relented and told her that Armstrong was financing the completion of his work.
My life's work! he had exclaimed, eyes shining with excitement. We're going to take it to the next level! But then in the months since, he had been nothing but miserable. The long nights of work, sleeping in for most of the day, withdrawing from their friends. His work.
And then there were the meetings with Armstrong. Armstrong, who never visited the home, who always made Desmond go to God knows where to see him. The ghost in the suit, the shadow gliding through a cloud. Desmond was always at his worst after these meetings, tense and nervous with exhaustion rimming his eyes for days. And hovering in the air between them, the unspoken question: Why? Why is Armstrong - why is the government funding Desmond's work? Do they really believe that he can pull it off? Out here in the suburbs? It all seems too ridiculous, completely implausible, in fact. But of course she can't bring herself to mention any of this to Desmond, because she knows exactly how he'd react, the defensive posturing and brick wall of denial that he'd put up before her. What was the point?
Of course she knows why he's been so wretched as of late. It's because he's had to answer to someone, now. To Armstrong.
But there's more, something else in all of this that's been wearing him down, and this is the thing that he is really keeping from her, telling her things she could easily figure out herself, just to create a semblance of transparency, of communication. Never truly letting her in at all. Is he protecting her? Or does he not consider her worthy of his trust? Up until this they had been partners in everything, making all of the important decisions together, or so it had seemed. So it had seemed…
"Heads up!"
Wendy turns her head to see two workmen standing behind her in the doorway, holding a large wooden crate between the two of them. She hops up from her seat and hurrying down the stairs in front of them, then steps aside at the foot of the stairs to let the two men pass by.
Desmond looks over and his face brightens up. "Ah there she is!"
For a moment Wendy thinks that he is talking about her, but then he walks up and places both hands on the crate as the workmen continue to strain and sweat from holding it aloft. He runs his hands along the surface of the crate, gazing down admiringly, oblivious to both the workmen's discomfort and his wife's own presence.
"You can just set her down here, boys!"
The crate thumps heavily on the basement floor as the workmen set it down. They walk away sullenly, leaving Desmond to continue staring down at the crate with the smile of a boy on Christmas morning. Wendy decides to approach him.
She tries on a smile of her own and speaks up. "So I guess this is the next level you were talking about, huh?"
Desmond glances up at his wife with distracted annoyance, then goes back to admiring the crate. Wendy looks around the room.
"Are you sure we have enough space down here for everything?"
Desmond doesn't even look up from the crate. "Listen Wendy, I’ve put a lot of thought and energy into this and for the time being I’d appreciate it if you could just stay out of the way." Now his eyes snap up and meet Wendy’s.
"Okay?"
Wendy stares back into her husband's eyes. She isn't staring back to challenge him; she just wants to see what is going on in there. She sees nothing but a simmering anger, faltering then coming back more intensely. He leans forward and grips the sides of the crate, reminding her of the night he had made his speech at the Lecture Hall. The night of Armstrong.
She studies his face, tries to reach him. But she can't.
Wendy turns on her heel and walks to the stairs. She looks back at him, sees that he is watching her leave. He takes a deep breath and looks back down at the crate.
Wendy turns away and begins to make her way back upstairs.
1958
The office is drenched in muted yellow from the lowering sun's glow, through the partially opened blinds. An afternoon appointment, this time. A way to keep her from getting into a rut, he'd said.
"Mrs Roberts, do you know how many degrees your husband held?"
Wendy smiles. "He had three PHD’s... One in Particle Physics, one in Chemistry, and one in Psychology."
"And... what is the extent of your education, Mrs Roberts?"
"I hold a Masters in Computer Engineering."
Alan smiles at Wendy. "Quite the “power couple”, weren’t you?"
Wendy grins shyly and smooths out her skirt with both hands. "There you go again with these sayings of yours, Doctor. If this head shrinking business doesn’t work out for you, I think you just might have a future in the advertising game…"
Doctor Alan chuckles briefly at this.
"So... who had the power?
Wendy looks up, surprised. Doctor Alan is leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. Watching her intently, reading her.
Wendy straightens up, composing herself. "Well, Doctor, he was my husband. He’s supposed to be in charge."
"Mmm hm. Plus all that extra education…"
"Sure…"
"Not to mention celebrity…"
She knows what he's trying to do, but enough is enough. "Doctor Alan, I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest, but I was - I am proud of my husband. Any good wife would be."
How could he argue with that? In fact, it seemed rather presumptuous of him to be making value judgements about their marriage at all. All this psychotherapy was well and fine, but there are boundaries, or so she had thought. What she had thought was that a marriage is a sacred thing, not a thing to be pried open by some... professional for whatever reason he so chooses.
And then it occurs to Wendy just how she had ended up as Doctor Alan's patient in the first place. And as this occurs to her she is reminded of a simple fact – that for all this talk of her need for therapy, for all the concern for her well being, there had been little to no regard as to her choice in this matter. Given the circumstances.
Alan has been regarding Wendy for a long moment. "Of course. And just as any good wife would, you’ve stood by him."
Wendy nods her head slowly.
"Just like you stood by him before." The Doctor's voice has lowered to barely more than a whisper.
Wendy shifts uncomfortably in her seat. She reaches in her purse and begins to fumble for her cigarettes.
"When he lost his tenure, " he continues, "at Stanford."
Wendy abruptly stops fumbling through her purse. She looks up slowly and casts a baleful glance at Alan. Then she has to squeeze her eyes for a second before she speaks, to control her voice.
"That was political."
"Was it?"
Wendy looks down again, to find her cigarettes. "Yes." She finds her pack, pulls a cigarette out. "Those... people were unable to accept Desmond’s ideas."
Alan leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other.
"The girl involved gained nothing from exposing him…"
Wendy’s eyes flash in a sudden jolt of rage. Her cigarette quivers between her fingers.
"She wanted the attention! She wanted it from him, and when she couldn’t get it, she turned to the administration."
Wendy lights her cigarette, shakes out her match and flicks it purposely onto Doctor Alan's varnished hardwood floor. She leans back and takes a drag, exhales the smoke and shakes her head ruefully. "It’s sad, really. I feel sorry for her. Just a lonely girl wanting attention…"
1953
She watches him as he sleeps. Sweat long cooled now, their bed has fallen silent and still, save for the rise and fall of his slowly breathing chest. She gazes at him and thinks of the energy rising and falling within... Who is this man? She wonders to herself.
How could I have fallen in love this way? What was I thinking?
1958
The anger roils in Wendy's gut as she drives into the early shades of the evening dusk. Her hands tighten on the wheel, and she leans forward and presses the gas, speeding the car further towards the edge of town. Suburbs fade into industrial land, then the trees begin to press against the sides of the road, blurred walls of darkening green. Desmond casts his head back and forth excitedly as the landscape draws around them.The wind rushes in through the open windows, spinning Wendy's hair into a maelstrom of yellow fury. She glances over at her husband with a ferocious grin.
“Do you like it?” She shouts over the wailing wind. Desmond peers around with wide eyed wonder. Wendy laughs into the wind and honks the horn. Desmond jumps a bit in his seat and lets out a little yelp. She honks the horn again and they both yelp together. One more blast from the horn for good measure, and a big long howl from the both of them. Wendy laughs and reaches over to slap Desmond on his shoulder, and it seems almost as if he is smiling back at her, but she doesn't check too close, just accepts him as he is right now.
What does it matter what people think, the questions and manipulations of doctors and neighbours? Right now they really are happy, right now there is joy for the both of them.
Wendy slows the car down and turns off the main road, onto a smaller dirt road that leads them to wind their way upwards, into the hills. The lowering sun bursts through the trees in bright flashes as they climb. She realizes that she is racing the sun, but that by rising up she is cheating the race; there will be enough time to reach her destination before dark. She begins to relax.
What did he know, anyway, this Doctor? The more she thinks of it, the more absurd it seems that she should even let him get to her that way. She doesn't need to protect her marriage from the likes of him, because there was no way he could understand, no way that any one else could understand a marriage. It was hard enough for the people inside of it to know what was going on. Perhaps that is part of it's sanctity. It's sense of being unknowable, in a way.
As she tries to think back on what they'd had, how their relationship had grown, Wendy realizes that most of the time it was just that, passing time. Time passed together.
A few instances of the bond between them still could rise up from the shadows of memory. For Wendy these would be moments of worth for her, when the veneer of Desmond's stern authoritarian dominance had yielded, ever so slightly. Like the time when she'd taught him math.
She smiles to herself. Of course she didn't really teach him how to do math in the literal sense. It was in the early stages of his first book, and he'd asked her to help him out with the calculations. They had been dating for a few months, still living separately. She'd been delighted to help, to show off some of her own area of expertise – and one night, in his cramped downtown apartment, after several hours of writing out equations and explaining their connection to his theories, several hours of brainstorming and learning and teaching, he had leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses with one hand and reached out and rubbed her shoulder with the other hand.
You're so smart.
She had felt herself blush and then she looked at him, and he was seeing her, it had seemed. She was so... all over the place, most of the time, then and now, really. But the math, it had calmed her, centred her, because when things added up she could just settle on that one thing and not let anything else matter. And he seemed to understand that, looking at her, together with her at his desk.
That had been a good night. And there had been other times, other instances of understanding that told her why she had chosen to marry him. But for the most part – except for the troubles that had happened, but she doesn't really want to think about that right now – for the most part it was just the accumulation of time spent together. Just like now. That's what they are doing, right now. Spending their lives together. They're still a couple, same as always. Time is still passing and nothing has really changed.
And now they have arrived, they've reached their destination – a small parking area amidst a grove of trees, overlooking the river valley. They move slowly across the parking lot, bits of gravel popping beneath the tires. The sun is still barely up in the sky, across the valley.
She pulls the car up to the edge of the cliff and sets it into park. The valley sprawls out below, a panoramic view emblazoned across the windshield. Desmond goggles at the sun as it begins to set, across the valley, dipping below the carpet of trees that line the opposite ridge. Birds coast and soar in the sun's dwindling rays. The river winds and meanders across the valley below. Lover's Lane. They had come here so long ago, when they had first started dating. Wendy reaches out and takes her husband's hand. He continues to watch the birds.
Now that she is feeling calmer, Wendy can allow herself to think back again on the session with the doctor. Funny thing, at this point most of it doesn't seem to register much in her mind, not right now, anyways. Of course the part of the conversation when Mister Doctor Alan had really gone too far inquiring about their troubles, that she can remember well enough, thank you – that bit seemed to have woken her up quite enough, and she has to remind herself that it doesn't matter, after all. But before those tense moments it had been kind of fuzzy, their talk in his office. What had she said to him? She supposes it was about the same thing as always, her feelings for Desmond. But it's all really quite simple. You got used to someone, that's it. That's all love is. That's all that it needs to be. Just that one thing.
The suns dies, alone at the edge of the world. Wendy and Desmond sit in their car at their lover's spot and watch the valley's shadows rise like steam into the deepening night.
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