400
PARTISAN REVIEW
The Carsons too were childless but would perhaps have defined their
condition in those terms, in weak moods at least. Hearing Paul speak so
indifferently of children the Carsons exchanged a glance almost of embar–
rassment.
Each hoped the other would not disclose any intimacy.
Ceci sipped at her drink and said, ''I'd have been willing."
Paul said, "[ wouldn't."
There was a brief nervous pause. The couples were sitting on the
Riegels' redwood deck in the gathering dusk.
Paul then astonished the Carsons by speaking in a bitter impassioned
voice offamilies, children, parents, the "politics" of intimacy.
In
any intimate
group, he said, the struggle to be independent, to define oneself as an
individ ual, is so fierce it creates terrible waves of tension; a field of psychic
warfare. He'd endured it as a child and young adolescent in his parents'
home and as an adult he didn't think he cou ld bear to bring up a child -
"especially a son" - knowing of the doubleness and secrecy of the child's life.
"There is the group life which is presumably open and observable," he
said, " - and there is the secret inner real life no one can penetrate." He
spoke with such uncharacteristic vehemence that neither of the Carsons
would have dared to challenge him or even to question him in the usual con–
versational vein.
Ceci sat silent, drink in hand, staring impassively out into the shadows.
After a while conversation resumed again and they spoke softly,
laughed softly. The handsome white wrought iron furniture in which they
were sitting took on an eerie solidity even as the human figures seemed to
fade; losing outline and contour; blending into the night and into one another.
Charlotte Carson lifted her hand registering a small chi ll spasm of fear
that she was dissolving but it was only a drunken notion of course.
For days afterward Paul Riegel's disquieting words echoed in her head.
She tasted something black and her heart beat in anger like a cheated child's.
Don't you love me then? Don't any of us love any of us?
To Barry she said,
"That was certainly an awkward moment wasn't it - when Paul started his
monologue about fumily life, intimacy,
all
that. What did you make of it?"
Barry murmured something evasive and backed off.
The Carsons owned two beautiful Siamese cats, neutered male and
neutered female, and the Riegels owned a skittish Irish setter named Poppy.
When the Riegels came to visit Ceci always made a fuss over one or the
other ofthe cats insisting it sit in her lap, sometimes even at the dinner table
where she'd feed it on the sly. When the Carsons came to visit the damned
dog as Barry spoke of it went into a frenzy of barking and greeted them at
the front door as ifit had never seen them before - "Nice dog! Good dog!
,
