Love Letters

Clara wanted Peter to like her moods. She wanted him to think she was cute--or dramatic, or mysterious--like a woman in a movie. But she knew he hated them. Dreaded them. Thought they were childish in the worst way. He would not humor her in the least, but that was to be expected. It was not his style to be generous. When he came home for dinner, she would tell him she was going to leave him.

He brought the dog in with him when he came.

He started shouting. “Clara? Clara? Where are you, pretty monkey? This thing hasn’t been fed!” Peter always shouted. Clara came down the stairs in her darkest dress, which was only navy blue, but managed to make her look striking anyway.

She said, “Peter, you have never understood me.”

He said, “Why didn’t you feed the beast?”

“The dog is of no consequence, Peter. I’m leaving you.”

“Nonsense, Clara. Come into the kitchen.” Peter disappeared down the hall, dragging the wet dog by its collar. For a moment, Clara wished she were old and ugly. She followed her husband. He was bent over the can opener, and she glared at the back of his black head.

He said, “I’ve had such a nightmarish day, Claire. Brighton and Hawkins are bending over backwards to make my life hell. Could you hand me the dish?” Clara folded her arms and fixed him with her iciest stare. It had little effect, as he still had his back to her, but she felt it necessary. When she spoke, it was with a slow dignity.

“Peter, after tonight, you will never see me again.” Peter shoved the can opener against the wall and stooped for the dog’s dish. He filled it, and set it near the door to the garage. The dog commenced eating. Peter looked at Clara. He said,

“It’s Wednesday. Do you want Chinese tonight?” There was an inordinate amount of hope in his voice. Clara removed her diamond and tossed it at him. It bounced off his right eyebrow and hit the tiles with a cracking sound. It startled the dog a bit. Clara pivoted on her slick-heeled right shoe and left the kitchen, left the house. Left Peter in his suit with an empty can of dog food in one hand.

It had effected him, perhaps, but things had not gone as she had planned. Clara felt particularly desperate as she cruised along Carter Avenue with all the windows down. She could barely see through the hair that billowed around her face, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care with a vengeance. She doubled the speed limit over the damp roads and felt for a fleeting moment like an untamed cat--a torn woman. At midnight, she went home.

Peter found her next to him when he awoke the following morning, curled up on her side of the bed in her white shorty pajamas. She didn’t rise until eleven o’clock, and then only to answer the telephone. It was a man with a southern accent trying to offer her a credit card, so she hung up on him without notice. She was bored. She took out her mother’s old community cookbook and made snicker doodles. She wrote a card to Peter:

Dear Husband,
Forgive me, my love! I would never leave you,
you know that. I have loved you since the day
we met. You are my life. Come home for dinner
at six o’clock, and I will make it up to you.

Your,
Claire

She drove downtown and gave the card to Peter’s secretary, who took it in a mechanical sort of way and told Clara she would see that Peter got it. Clara did not approve of Peter’s secretary. The woman was far too left-brained. Clara was proud to be right-brained to the core, and impulsive as a tornado. At the catering window of Mainstreet Grill, when the clerk went to answer the phone before ringing her up, she left a fifty dollar bill and took her purchases out the door with her. She laughed luxuriantly about this the entire way home, and pictured over and over again what the man’s face must have looked like when he saw it.

Peter arrived at six o’clock sharp, and kissed Clara first thing. Second thing, they ate. Peter said, “This was sporting of you, Claire.” He fed the dog steak under the table. Clara had recovered her ring from where Peter had left it on the kitchen floor, and she stretched her left hand toward Peter significantly. Peter took it. Clara said,

“A woman goes through stages, love-of-mine, but she always ends up realizing that her husband is right.”

Peter said, “Women are fine things,” but Clara detected amusement behind it. It was so very Peter to mock her in such a way. She removed her hand and said,

“Indeed.” If Peter had seemed amused before, he looked sufficiently grave now.

He said, “Clara, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

“Well?” She began wishing that her sleeves were long enough to cover the heels of her hands.

“Things aren’t going well at Hadley’s.” Peter worked at Hadley Insurance Agency. Clara had no notion of what he actually did there, only that he spent nearly all of his day there while she was left with the dog. She noticed a chip in one of the floor tiles.

“So?”

He snatched both of her hands over the table and got a bit of mashed potatoes on his sleeve in the process. “Let’s leave. Together. I’m dying here, Clara, I’m--”

“Are you--what?! What about--”

“--a pig in a pen, and Brighton and Hawkins are looming--”

“--money? And the house? I need a mild climate to--”

“--over me with a hatchet! Clara, please listen--”

“--relax my nerves, Peter, you know that!”

“--I need your help.”

Clara wrenched her hands free of his and crossed to the sideboard. Her heart was pounding. She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and everything faded into darkness.

Thin streams of streetlight were lining the walls when Clara awoke beside Peter. Peter’s lips looked large and even more red than usual. Clara swung her legs off on her side of the bed and lowered her bare feet onto the cold tiles. She could hear the wind circling the house and the chimes in her garden were tinkling awkwardly. She went down a floor and let herself onto the balcony.

Icy wind met her and chilled her bare neck and arms and legs. Her ears and face felt wet. She threw her head back and revelled in it. Perhaps Peter would wake up and come down to find her there--a delicate creature in the grips of a vicious storm. But Peter wanted her to leave. She had known Peter since her sophomore year in high school, when they were assigned as scene partners in drama class. They had been Isabella and Angelo, and she had shivered at his touch. The scene had won the class competition, though Peter was not really an actor. Clara had carried it.

Her ears stung.

She felt wild. She stretched her legs over the railing and the cold metal bit into her thighs. She rocked in the wind. She felt extraordinary. She imagined herself spread out below on the garden stones. When the cold began to seep into her bones, she went back inside.

Friday Clara dressed in angora and sat in the den reading magazines all afternoon while the rain darkened the sidewalks outside. In the evening, Peter called.

He said, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it for dinner tonight, Claire, I have--”

Clara said, “I wasn’t planning on cooking.” There was a pause before Peter spoke again, quietly.

“I’ll be home late.” Clara replaced the receiver and put the dog outside. She had never known Peter to work late before. She dressed up and took herself to Rock Center Playhouse. She needed to walk on red carpet for awhile. The show bored her, and by ten o’clock she was in a state. She pretended not to hear the actor that asked her name as she passed by him on the way out. She had decided to leave Peter for good. First, she drove out to the shore and ruined her velvet dress in the drizzle.

She packed up a few things--underwear, a couple of fitted blouses, a skirt, make-up--and called the Gibraltar Hotel for a reservation. The car whistled along the wet highway. Her dress clung to her and her legs and stomach felt itchy. She listened to piano and jazz.

Her room was green with black trim, but she didn’t stay there long. She changed and went down to the lobby and watched people come in and out. Three business man passed, talking loudly. A woman in a leopard skin dress walked from the elevator into the hotel’s club and restaurant. Clara noticed that there were others like herself, just observing. One of them asked her to dinner, but she declined with dignity. She thought about Peter. He bored her. Everything bored her. A gilded angel might have come down to give her a message, and it would have bored her.

She wished she were a mountain lion. She felt restless enough to be one. She slipped into the club for a moment and secured a steak knife. She could be more like a great cat with that knife. Clara wanted Peter to see her with the knife tucked away under her arm. She wanted him to know where she was--to know that she was nearly alone in a shadowy lobby with the knife. She got tired of it after a while and left it underneath a potted palm tree.

The night seemed endless to Clara. She went up to her room several times and attempted to sleep, but she had forgotten her pajamas. She had conversations with strangers that lasted only briefly and made her feel cheap and ordinary. A woman asked her where she had her hair done. Clara said, “I usually do it myself,” and the woman smiled and walked away.

Mostly it was men that talked to her though. Some were nice, and asked her if she needed anything, but she still hated them. The rest were horrid, but she could stand them more easily than the gentlemanly ones. The horrid ones knew that she was something dangerous like themselves. They knew she was a mountain lion. Peter didn’t know that, and she had finally come to the conclusion that he never would. She didn’t even call him to tell him where she was. She fell asleep in the lobby on a green bench.

Saturday morning Clara awoke to the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Her hair was tangly and she went up to her room to shower. The drive home was a long one, but the rain had cleared. Sunshine played on her newly washed hair. The house itself looked new. It sparkled with water as she pulled up and into the driveway.

The dog was inside. Clara tossed her velvet dress into the garbage and ate a couple of snicker doodles. She extracted a pan from underneath the stove and started it heating. She sang.

When the eggs and toast were hot and waiting on the table, she ran up the stairs to wake Peter. The bed was blue and unruffled. The wind began ringing the chimes in the garden again. An envelope rested on her pillow, with her name scrawled in Peter’s tall handwriting. Clara did not touch it. She put the dog out. Then she strolled into the kitchen and ate her breakfast.