It was true that Edward was going to be forty in a few months. Perhaps that was it. Everyone knew what that meant, every American anyway. Forty meant mid-life. And mid-life meant mid-life crisis. Husbands chased young girls in order to deny their own mortality. They moved to faraway places with warm climates. They quit their jobs. They chased more young girls to deny their own mortality even more in faraway places with warm climates, where, without jobs, they had plenty of leisure time in which to chase young girls. In the sun. It was almost inconceivable that this was happening to her husband, her Edward, who didn't much care for young girls or tropical vacations, whom she had trusted so completely—but not inconceivable enough.
Margaret was going to be thirty. In two years, anyway. Being so much younger than Edward had always seemed such a good idea, a deterrent to this absurd phenomenon. But thirty, while still two years away and ten years younger than forty, no longer struck her as being all that young. Edward was going to be forty and have a mid-life crisis. It said so in every pop psychology book in every rack in every airport gift shop. No wonder she was angry at him, Margaret thought.
"It's bloody awful out there," Edward said one day, his eyes red and teary from the sub-zero wind.
"What do you mean? It's March. What do you expect. The seasons are very important. It's boring to live in an unchanging climate, day after day, sunny, sunny, sunny. It's enervating and debilitating. The British Empire wasn't built by beachcombers."
"The British Empire has collapsed, and I'm thinking of joining it. What a ghastly day."
"I think it's lovely outside. Invigorating," Margaret said.
"Yes. You are young and foolhardy. But now you have inspired me. What is a little cold to an Englishman? Even an aging Englishman like me? Come, Margaret. A stroll!"
"I suppose you want to move to Tahiti. You want to retire, don't you?" she said.
"The women there are far too voluptuous for my taste," Edward said. "But it's a thought."
Margaret watched him drink a cup of tea and remembered when they had been married only a few weeks, how she would wake up and wonder where she was and look at him with a sudden, powerful recognition and wonder how this had happened to her, how she had wound up beside someone she loved so much that she wanted to wake up beside him forever.
MARGARET POURED her coffee and turned on the TV in the kitchen. Seated in an armchair by a coffee table, a woman in a navy blue dress and pearls sat demurely reciting obscene rap lyrics. Was she the wife of a senator? An enraged mother moved to unaccustomed political action? A new, white female rap singer with an ironically understated style?
"Face down, ass up, that's the way we like to"—she paused, gave a small smile, and said in a quiet, refined voice—"F-curse." Her hands were folded in her lap. "Now, does the first amendment require that we expose our children to violence and demeaning sexual rhetoric?" She shook her head slightly. "I don't think so."
She smiled pleasantly, then lifted up a magazine and began waving it. The magazine looked familiar to Margaret.
"I would like to refer you to the work of the distinguished historian of ideas, Margaret Nathan, who has shown that pornography has served as a destructive, revolutionary force, leading directly to an epidemic of bloody excess during the French Revolution, to mob violence, to oppression and the destruction of the very freedom these irresponsible young people use as a shield for their unsavory music..."
Edward laughed. He was just back from running, his sweatshirt hood still up. "Margaret Nathan, public enemy of Public Enemy."
Margaret turned the set off. This was the final humiliation.
"Rapping, the root of eighteenth-century chaos, cause of the Terror," Edward went on. With his long red face and tight hood he looked like an emaciated baby. "I always suspected something of the sort. Disc master Robespierre. I wish people would misquote me on television."
"What do they want from me?" Margaret said, not because it related directly to the immediate situation, but because it was what her grandfather had always said when anything was wrong in any situation. "What do they want from me?"
Edward said, "Whatever it is, they certainly can't have it. You're mine, mine, mine."
Margaret wondered what he wanted with her, what he wanted with what was his, his, his. She had been cold and unpleasant to him for weeks. She no longer laughed at his stupid jokes or bothered to ask who he was quoting or told him about her work that day or asked him how to spell a word.
"I've been very unpleasant," Margaret said. "I'm sorry." She was sorry. But she knew she would continue to be unpleasant. She was angry at Edward. Couldn't he see that? Didn't he notice what a bitch she was? Why did he continue to be nice to her when she was behaving so badly?
"Yes, well, I think of marriage as being quite like the weather, you know, in that it changes frequently, it's unpredictable, and I just happen to live in a particularly stormy climate. But then I rather like storms. Beautiful, exciting. And then the sun comes out."
Margaret stared at him, moved and infuriated. Storms indeed. He should only know from storms. The fire next time, pal.