Now I Am Married
Mary Gordon
I AM the second wife, which means that, for the most part, I am spoken to. This is the first visit of my marriage and I am introduced around, to everyone's slight embarrassment. There is an unspoken agreement among people not to mention her, except in some clear context where my advantage is obvious. It would be generous of me to say that I wish it were otherwise, but I appreciate the genteel silences, and, even more, the slurs upon her which I recognize to be just. I cannot attempt to be fair to her: justice is not the issue. I have married, and this is an act of irrational and unjust loyalty. I married for this: for the pleasure of one-sidedness, the thrill of the bias, the luxury of saying, "But he is my husband, you see," and thereby putting to an end whatever discussion involves us.
My husband is English and we are staying in the house of his family. We, do not make love here as we do at my mother's. She thinks sex is wicked, which is, of course, highly aphrodisiac, but here it is considered merely in bad taste. And as I lie, looking at the slope of my husband's beautiful shoulder, I think perhaps they are right. They seem to need much less sleep than I do, to be able to move more quickly, to keep their commitments with less fuss. I wish I found the English more passionate; surely there is nothing so boring as the reinforcement of a stereotype. But it is helpful to be considered Southern here: I am not afraid to go out on the street as I am in Paris or Rome, because all the beautiful women make me want to stay under the sharp linen of my hotel. No, here I feel somehow to have a great deal of color, which has, after all, to do with sex. The young girls I can see already turning into lumpish women in raincoats with cigarettes drooping from their lips. This, of course, makes it much easier. Even my sister-in-law's beauty is so different that it cannot really hurt me ; it is the ease of centuries of her race's history that gave it to her, and to this I cannot hope to aspire.
