In All Fairness

In All Fairness John Quinn Boulder City, Nevada Her children were down on the beach with their buckets and shovels. Jackie was showing his little sister how to build castles in the sand. She could see a head bob up from the driftwood at the high water line whenever one of them stood up. Once Jackie ran to the water's edge and filled his bucket to wet the sand they were working. He waved gaily toward the house as he ran back, trusting that she was there at the window watching. She stood inside the patio doors talking on the telephone. It was about money. It was always about money. She turned and slumped against the wall, staring into the kitchen where her wine sat on the drain board losing its chill. The man was boring. Terminally boring. She wondered for the millionth time what she had ever seen in him. But she had been every bit as foolish as he was full of whatever sort ofperversity it took to dedicate six years ofyour life to a doctorate in clinical psychology with just about zero chance of gainful employment anywhere down the line. She could even see where her capitulations, from giving up her own studies to putting off having children, had been as destructive to the marriage as his phoney intellectualism. But that still didn't make him interesting. It's not like I'm some kind ofmillionaire," he was saying. "I mean, I make a decent living, but I'm not some kind of millionaire . . ." Looking back toward the ocean, she wondered briefly what such a bundle of self-absorption might consider a decent living, but she bit back the urge to ask. Out beyond the mouth of the cove the big Pacific rollers—all the way from China, as her father would say if he were there—tumbled brilliantly in the sun. The sea had always excited her. And the serenity of the kelp-lined cove at Neskowin, with its gray sand beach and weathered houses, had always reassured her. Shelter—she thought of the line from Bob Dylan's song—shelter from the storm. She smiled at the thought of her children hunkered down out there in the sand, serious as anything, building away at their castles. At the other end ofthe line, her ex-husband droned on about how, in all fairness, she knew as well as he did the settlement had been one-sided, how it wasn't the money—he was willing to support his 45 46Rocky Mountain Review own children, for God's sake—he was just trying to get her to acknowledge the principle of the thing—for the good of the children, as much as for her own. It struck her how much he must miss her lovemaking. She laughed aloud at the thought. ". . . huh? What did you say?" "Nothing whatsoever." "You laughed." "I know I did." "What do you mean by that?" "Not a thing in the world. But ifit bothers you, why don't youjust put the check in the mail, and be done with it?" "You know that's not what I'm talking about," he moaned. "Jesus, if you would just once listen to what I'm saying instead of what you think I'd be saying if I were some kind of an asshole." He would always screw something up—something like her birthday—and then he would whimper self-righteously for hours about how nobody understood what it was he was trying to do, or appreciated how difficult it was, or how important it was—until he finally worked himself into such a funk she couldn't stand it any longer, and would make love to him. It had become a ritual. They didn't fight. He would do his soliloquy, taking both parts—the wounding husband and the wounded wifeabsolving , with every glib stitch of his treacherous wit, the husband of his wounding, and damning at devious length, for all her guilty passivity, the wife. Things had finally reached a point in their marriage where simply getting him to shut up interested her more than having sex with him. Wherever they were...