But I was thinking about William’s night terrors: how he said that he pictured the gas chambers and crematoriums.
And I thought how when William came into money from his grandfather who had profited from the war, and Catherine was still alive at that time, she had said very little about it. But she did say to me, lying on the tangerine couch, not long after this had happened, “It’s dirty money. He should give it all away.”
But William did not give it all away; he became very rich. Although, as I have said, he does give money away. When I had asked William about the money—and what he would do with it—he was always closed off. “I’m keeping it,” he said. And he did. I have never understood this, but now I wonder if perhaps he thought something was owed to him. Was this because his father had died when William was so young? I know that people, when they have had a loss, sometimes unconsciously believe that they should then take something in return. But it was many years later that William got this money, although that sense of loss I think is always there. But I do think now there was—and still is—some sense William had that he was owed something.
* * *
—
Catherine and her husband never went together to Germany. And I thought about how neither of them—except when Wilhelm went back to Germany after the war—ever returned to the scenes of their childhood again. They had had that in common.
* * *
—
But it came to me, as I put a nightgown into my suitcase for our trip to Maine, it came to me suddenly that this is what William’s life rumbled over, like a train on loose tracks: the images from Dachau that would not leave his brain after he had gone there with me so many years ago. He had been petrified by what he saw there in Germany. He must have been deeply haunted by his father’s role in it. Unspeakably frightened. It had unmoored him.
This is what I thought.
Perhaps he felt—if he allowed himself to think about it—that this experience had changed him in some way more than any other, perhaps even more than his mother’s death?
And yet it was after his mother’s death—I think this, anyway—that he had started with the women, and with Joanne.
I am only saying: I wondered who William was. I have wondered this before. Many times I have wondered this.
* * *
I should mention:
I never told the girls about their father’s affairs. I thought: They will never hear about this from me. And so I never told them, even after I had left William, I still did not tell them about their father’s affairs.
And then one day—it was not even that long ago, maybe six or seven years now—we had gone to Bloomingdale’s together, the girls and I, and afterward we went for a glass of wine at a restaurant nearby. When we sat down they glanced at each other and then Chrissy said, “Mom, did Dad have an affair when you guys were married?”
For many moments I said nothing, I just watched them watching me with their clear eyes. Then I said, “Are you ready for this conversation?” And they both said yes.
So I said, “Yes, he did.”
And Becka said, “With Joanne?”
And I said, “Yes.”
And then I said—I wanted to be fair—I said that I had been having an affair when I left their father. I looked from one girl to the other and I said that at that time I had fallen in love with a writer from California and I was having an affair with him. I told them this writer had been married, and then I said, “And he had kids. So I did that. You should know.”
They seemed more interested than surprised by this—which surprised me—and Chrissy said, “What happened?” And I said, “Well, his marriage eventually ended, but— Well, I mean, I knew that I wouldn’t end up with him, and I didn’t. But I knew I couldn’t stay with your father after that.” What most surprised me about their response was how little they seemed to want to know about this. Chrissy wanted to know more about Joanne. “How long?” she asked, and I said that I did not know.
Becka said, “I used to like her.” And Chrissy turned to her and said, “You loved her,” almost angrily, and I said, “Well, why wouldn’t you, I mean you didn’t know.”
They sat there quietly and then Becka shook her head and said, “I don’t understand anything in this life.”
I said, “I don’t either.”
When we parted, the girls kissed me and hugged me and told me they loved me. I was terribly shaken by our conversation, and they did not especially seem to be. This is what it seemed like to me.