“You sold the house,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“But you’re still there.”
“Only until Saturday. I’ve rented a big farmhouse in the country. I’m going to try and get my act back together.”
“Oh, Bart. That’s so wonderful. I’m so glad.” He realized why it was being so easy. She was being phony. She wasn’t glad or not glad. She had given up. “About the checkbook . . .”
“Yes.”
“You split the money right down the middle, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. If you want to check, you can call Mr. Fenner.”
“No. Oh, I didn’t mean
that.”
And he could almost see her making pushing-away gestures with her hands. “What I meant was ... you separating the money like that ... does it mean ...”
She trailed off artfully and he thought:
Ow, you bitch
,
you got me. Bull’s eye.
“Yes, I guess it does,” he said. “Divorce.”
“Have you thought about it?” she asked earnestly, phonily. “Have you
really
—”
“I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“So have I. It seems like the only thing left to do. But I don’t hold anything against you, Bart. I’m not mad at you.”
My God, she’s been reading all those paperback novels. Next she’ll tell
me
she’s
going
back to school.
He was surprised at his bitterness. He thought he had gotten past that part.
“What will you do?”
“I’m going back to school,” she said, and now there was no phoniness in her voice, now it was excited, shining. “I dug out my old transcript, it was still up in Mamma’s attic with all my old clothes, and do you know I only need twenty-four credits to graduate? Bart, that’s hardly more than a year!”
He saw Mary crawling through her mother’s attic and the image blended with one of himself sitting bewildered in a pile of Charlie’s clothes. He shut it out.
“Bart? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m glad being single again is going to fulfill you so nicely.”
“Bart,” she said reproachfully.
But there was no need to snap at her now, to tease her or make her feel bad. Things had gone beyond that. Mr. Piazzi’s dog, having bitten, moves on. That struck him funny and he giggled.
“Bart, are you crying?” She sounded tender. Phony, but tender.
“No,” he said bravely.
“Bart, is there anything I can do? If there is, I want to.”
“No. I think I’m going to be fine. And I’m glad you’re going back to school. Listen, this divorce—who gets it? You or me?”
“I think it would look better if I did,” she said timidly.
“Okay. Fine.”
There was a pause between them and suddenly she blurted into it, as if the words had escaped without her knowledge or approval: “Have you slept with anyone since I left?”
He thought the question over, and ways of answering: the truth, a lie, an evasion that might keep her awake tonight.
“No,” he said carefully, and added: “Have you?”
“Of course not,” she said, managing to sound shocked and pleased at the same time. “I wouldn’t.”
“You will eventually.”
“Bart, let’s not talk about sex.”
“All right,” he said placidly enough, although it was she who had brought the subject up. He kept searching for something nice to say to her, something that she would remember. He couldn’t think of a thing, and furthermore didn’t know why he would want her to remember him at all, at least at this stage of things. They had had good years before. He was sure they must have been good because he couldn’t remember much of what had happened in them, except maybe the crazy TV bet.
He heard himself say: “Do you remember when we took Charlie to nursery school the first time?”
“Yes. He cried and you wanted to take him back with us. You didn’t want to let him go, Bart.”
“And you did.”
She was saying something disclaiming in a slightly wounded tone, but he was remembering the scene. The lady who kept the nursery school was Mrs. Ricker. She had a certificate from the state, and she gave all the children a nice hot lunch before sending them home at one o’clock. School was kept downstairs in a made-over basement and as they led Charlie down between them, he felt like a traitor; like a farmer petting a cow and saying Soo, Bess on the way to the slaughterhouse. He had been a beautiful boy, his Charlie. Blond hair that had darkened later, blue, watchful eyes, hands that had been clever even as a toddler. And he had stood between them at the bottom of the stairs, stock-still, watching the other children who were whooping and running and coloring and cutting colored paper with blunt-nosed scissors, so
many
of them, and Charlie had never looked so vulnerable as he did in that instant, just watching the other children. There was no joy or fear in his eyes, only the watchfulness, a kind of
outsiderness,
and he had never felt so much his son’s father as then, never so close to the actual run of his thoughts. And Mrs. Ricker came over, smiling like a barracuda and she said:
We’ll have such fun, Chuck,
making him want to cry out:
That’s not his name!
And when she put out her hand Charlie did not take it but only watched it so she stole his hand and began to pull him a little toward the others, and he went willingly two steps and then stopped, looked back at them, and Mrs. Young said very quietly:
Go right along, he’ll be fine. And
Mary finally had to poke him and say
Come ON, Bart
because he was frozen looking at his son, his son’s eyes saying,
Are you going to let them do this to me, George?
and his own eyes saying back,
Yes, I guess I am
,
Freddy
and he and Mary started up the stairs, showing Charlie their backs, the most dreadful thing a little child can see, and Charlie began to wail. But Mary’s footsteps never faltered because a woman’s love is strange and cruel and nearly always clear-sighted, love that sees is always horrible love, and she knew walking away was right and so she walked, dismissing the cries as only another part of the boy’s development, like smiles from gas or scraped knees. And he had felt a pain in his chest so sharp, so physical, that he had wondered if he was having a heart attack, and then the pain had just passed, leaving him shaken and unable to interpret it, but now he thought that the pain had been plain old prosaic good-bye. Parents’ backs aren’t the most dreadful thing. The most dreadful thing of all is the speed with which children dismiss those same backs and turn to their own affairs—to the game, the puzzle, the new friend, and eventually to death. Those were the awful things he had come to know now. Charlie had begun dying long before he got sick, and there was no putting a stop to it.
“Bart?” she was saying. “Are you still there, Bart?”
“I’m here.”
“What good are you doing yourself thinking about Charlie all the time? It’s eating you up. You’re his prisoner.”
“But you’re free,” he said. “Yes.”
“Shall I see the lawyer next week?”
“Okay. Fine.”
“It doesn’t have to be nasty, does it, Bart?”
“No. It will be very civilized.”
“You won’t change your mind and contest it?”
“No.”
“I’ll ... I’ll be talking to you, then.”
“You knew it was time to leave him and so you did. I wish to God I could be that instinctive.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Good-bye, Mary. I love you.” He realized he had said it after he hung up. He had said it automatically, with no feeling—verbal punctuation. But it wasn’t such a bad ending. Not at all.
January 18, 1974
The secretary’s voice said: “Who shall I say is calling?”
“Bart Dawes.”
“Will you hold for a moment?”
“Sure.”
She put him in limbo and he held the blank receiver to his ear, tapping his foot and looking out the window at the ghost town of Crestallen Street West. It was a bright day but very cold, temperature about 10 above with a chill factor making it 10 below. The wind blew skirls of snow across the street to where the Hobarts’ house stood broodingly silent, just a shell waiting for the wrecking ball. They had even taken their shutters.
There was a click and Steve Ordner’s voice said: “Bart, how are you?”
“Fine.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I called about the laundry,” he said. “I wondered what the corporation had decided to do about relocation.”
Ordner sighed and then said with good-humored reserve: “A little late for that, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t call to be beaten with it, Steve.”
“Why not? You’ve surely beaten everyone else with it. Well, never mind. The board has decided to get out of the industrial laundry business, Bart. The laundromats will stay; they’re all doing well. We’re going to change the chain name, though. To Handi-Wash. How does that sound?”
“Terrible,” he said remotely. “Why don’t you sack Vinnie Mason?”
“Vinnie?” Ordner sounded surprised. “Vinnie’s doing a great job for us. Turning into quite the mogul. I must say I didn’t expect such bitterness—”
“Come on, Steve. That job’s got no more future than a tenement airshaft. Give him something worthwhile or let him out.”
“I hardly think that’s your business, Bart.”
“You’ve got a dead chicken tied around his neck and he doesn’t know it yet because it hasn’t started to rot. He still thinks it’s dinner.”
“I understand he punched you up a little before Christmas.”
“I told him the truth and he didn’t like it.”
“Truth’s a slippery word, Bart. I would think you’d understand that better than anyone, after all the lies you told me.”
“That still bugs you, doesn’t it?”
“When you discover that a man you thought was a good man is full of shit, it does tend to bug one, yes.”
“Bug one,” he repeated. “Do you know something, Steve? You’re the only person I’ve ever known in my life that would say that. Bug one. It sounds like something that comes in a fucking aerosol can.”
“Was there anything else, Bart?”
“No, not really. I wish you’d stop beating Vinnie, that’s all. He’s a good man. You’re wasting him. And you know goddam well you’re wasting him.”
“I repeat: why would I want to ‘beat’ Vinnie?”
“Because you can’t get to me.”
“You’re getting paranoid, Bart. I’ve got no desire to do anything to you but forget you.”
“Is that why you were checking to see if I ever had personal laundry done free? Or took kickbacks from the motels? I understand you even took the petty cash vouchers for the last five years or so.”
“Who told you that?” Ordner barked. He sounded startled, off balance.
“Somebody in your organization,” he lied joyfully. “Someone who doesn’t like you much. Someone who thought I might be able to get the ball rolling a little in time for the next director’s meeting.”
“Who?”
“Good-bye, Steve. You think about Vinnie Mason, and I’ll think about who I might or might not talk to.”
“Don’t you hang up on me! Don’t you—”
He hung up, grinning. Even Steve Ordner had the proverbial feet of clay. Who was it Steve reminded him of? Ball bearings. Strawberry ice cream stolen from the food locker. Herman Wouk. Captain Queeg, that was it. Humphrey Bogart had played him in the movie. He laughed aloud and sang:
“We all need someone to Queeg on, And if you want to, why don’tcha Queeg all over me?”
I’m crazy all right, he thought, still laughing. But it does seem there are certain advantages. It came to him that one of the surest signs of insanity was a man all alone, laughing in the middle of silence, on an empty street filled with empty houses. But the thought could not still his humor and he laughed louder, standing by the telephone and shaking his head and grinning.
January 19, 1974
After dark he went out to the garage and brought in the guns. He loaded the Magnum carefully, according to the directions in the instruction pamphlet, after dry-firing it several times. The Rolling Stones were on the stereo, singing about the Midnight Rambler. He couldn’t get over what a fine album that was. He thought about himself as Barton George Dawes, Midnight Rambler, Visits by Appointment Only.
The .460 Weatherbee took eight shells. They looked big enough to fit a medium howitzer. When the rifle was loaded he looked at it curiously, wondering if it was as powerful as Dirty Harry Swinnerton had claimed. He decided to take it out behind the house and fire it. Who was there on Crestallen Street West to report gunshots?
He put on his jacket and started out the back door through the kitchen, then went back to the living room and got one of the small pillows that lay on the couch. Then he went outside, pausing to flick on the 200-watt yard light that he and Mary had used in the summer for backyard barbecues. Back here, the snow was as he had pictured it in his mind a little more than a week ago—untouched, unmarred, totally virgin. No one had foot-fucked this snow. In past years Don Upslinger’s boy Kenny sometimes used the backyard express to get up to his friend Ronnie’s house. Or Mary used the line he had strung kitty-corner between the house and garage to hang a few things (usually unmentionables) on days when it was too warm for them to freeze. But he himself always went to the garage by the breezeway and now it struck him as sort of marvelous—no one had been in his backyard since snow first fell, in late November. Not even a dog, by the look of it.
He had a sudden crazy urge to stride out into the middle, about where he set the hibachi every summer, and make a snow angel.
Instead he tucked the pillow up against his right shoulder, held it for a moment with his chin, and then pressed the butt plate of the Weatherbee against it. He glared down the sight with his left eye shut, and tried to remember the advice the actors always gave each other just before the gyrenes hit the beaches in the late-night war movies. Usually it was some seasoned veteran like Richard Widmark talking to some green private—Martin Milner, perhaps:
Don’t jerk that trigger, son-SQUEEZE it.