The End of the Road (15 page)

“What’s the matter, Rennie?” I took her shoulders and would have embraced her, only to steady both of us, but she jerked away, horrified, and fell into a chair. The intensity of her agitation increased my nausea: cold sweat ran under my clothes; I felt weak-kneed and ready to vomit.

“It’s incredible, Rennie!” I cried. She looked up at me but couldn’t speak, and tears sprang to my eyes. I had to sit down.

“God, I feel
weak
!” I said. The enormity of the injury I’d done Joe was almost too painful to bear. He never looked finer or stronger to me than at that moment when I thought of him at the Boy Scout meeting. “What in the world was I
thinking
of? Where in the hell
was
I?”

Rennie closed her eyes and whipped her head from side to side. After a moment she calmed herself somewhat and wiped her eyes with the top of her wrist.

“What are we going to do, Jake?”

“Does he know yet?”

She shook her head, pressing the butt of her hand against her brow.

“He worked terribly hard in Washington, to get enough material to last him awhile, and then when he came home”—she choked on it—“he was sweeter to me than he’s ever been before. I wanted to die. And when I thought—how I was carrying his child when it happened—”

I burned with shame.

“Do you know what I did? I went to our doctor this morning and asked him for Ergotrate to abort it. He was terrible to me. He’s known me since I was little, and he got angry and told me I should be ashamed.”

“Oh, God.”

“Then it turned out I didn’t need it. This afternoon I started menstruating. I wasn’t even pregnant; I was just late.”

She broke down again; apparently the fact that she wasn’t pregnant somehow made things worse.

“Will you tell Joe?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said dully. “I can’t imagine
never
telling him. God, the last thing we’d do is hide anything from each other! These five days have been terrible, Jake. I’ve had to pretend to be gay and alert all the time. I swear, the only reason I haven’t killed myself is that that would just be cheating him more.”

“How would he take it?” I asked sickly.

“I don’t know! That’s the terrible thing. I can imagine him doing anything from just laughing to shooting both of us. What’s terrible is that I don’t know
what
he’d do, and that’s because neither of us would ever dream of doing anything like this to the other! Do you think I should tell him?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but so unnerved was I by my guilt that the prospect terrified me.

“You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?” Rennie asked.

It was fortunate that she asked this, because although the taunt in her voice was slight—the real sense being that she too was afraid—nevertheless it was fundamental, perhaps the most fundamental taunt one human being can throw at another. I steadied at once.

“I’m afraid of violence,” I said. “I’m always afraid of any kind of violence, even violent emotions. But you have to understand that when anything that matters is concerned, I wouldn’t go an inch out of my way to avoid violence. Fear is different from cowardice. If I don’t want you to tell Joe it’s because I’m afraid of possible violence, but I’d never say a word to talk you out of telling him. There’s nothing a man can do about fear, but he has to choose to be cowardly.”

This was pretty much true; at least I felt it was at the time. I would not normally be cowardly unless taken by surprise. But I felt weak, pitifully weak: weak to have gone to bed with Rennie in the first place; weak not to have told Joe at once afterwards; weak now at being so afraid of his finding out. The violence was one thing; just as intense was my fear of his disappointment in me, his disapproval of me, and his disgust with me—I felt weak at being afraid of these things, which ordinarily would not bother me. I could account for all except the original weakness in having unthinkingly betrayed Joe, because one weakness spawns other weaknesses as one strength spawns other strengths; but there was no excusing that original one. I was miserable.

After a while Rennie said, “Joe will be coming home in a few minutes.”

I rose to leave.

“Rennie—God, I’m sorry. Do whatever you think is best.”

She didn’t look at me.

“I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling wonderful: he—we always sleep with our arms around each other—” This overwhelmed her for a moment. “Then I remember it, against my will, and I want to die. I wish I’d never waked up. I hardly believe it happened. I guess I don’t really believe it
did
happen. It
couldn’t
have happened, Jake: I couldn’t have hurt him like that.”

“That’s how I feel,” I said. I almost reminded her how much it would hurt him to find out, and checked myself just in time, afraid that if I said it she’d think I was trying to talk her out of telling him—precisely the truth—and therefore tell him. With all my heart I didn’t want her to tell him.

“Do whatever you have to do,” I said. “Be strong as you can.”

I left and drove back to my room. It was useless to try to read or sleep: there was no slipping into someone else’s world or otherwise escaping my own, which had me by the throat. All I could think of was Rennie there in the house with Joe, perhaps in bed with him; I wondered how long her strength would last against his embraces, his sleeping with her in his arms, his new sweetness. My heart was filled equally with profound sympathy for Rennie, whom I felt I’d placed in that position, and with fear that she’d tell him what we’d done. He must have walked in about ten minutes after I left—I perspired to think I’d got out just in time.

It occurred to me that, granted all this profound sympathy, tenderness, and general concern for Rennie, I could have stayed to face Joe directly myself and tell him everything. Every passing minute added to my deception. So, then, it seemed I had to admit that I
was
a coward after all: an adulterer, a deceiver, a betrayer of friends, and a coward. And now I was self-conscious again; I watched myself refuse to recognize that beside my bed was a telephone by means of which one could call Joe Morgan; that parked out front was a Chevrolet by means of which one could drive out there. Cowardice, apparently, is as proliferous as is weakness. The act of will required to make the tiny motion of lifting the telephone was beyond me.

My curiosity returned with my self-consciousness. I placed my hand on the telephone and for some time studied with interest the blushing, uncomfortable fellow who would not pick it up.

SUCH GUILT AS I FELT COULD NOT BE SUSTAINED, NOR COULD SUCH SELF-CONTEMPT.
Killing it with sleep was out of the question, because I couldn’t sleep, except fitfully. No great activity or overwhelming new mood appeared, to remove it from my mind. The loathing that I felt for myself soured my digestion, so that food lay like clay in my stomach; poisoned my consciousness, so that attempts at diversion—books or movies—were agonizing, and acting the professor was a bitter farce. As though to complement my mood, it rained for the next three days: one got soaked running from cars to buildings and from buildings to cars; the classrooms smelled of wet clothing, chalk dust, and stale air; students stared sullenly out the windows. To hear my own voice, prating of adverbs and prepositions like an insane parrot, sickened me; no one paid attention. Penned in my room alone with myself, I was frantic.

I believe a week of such self-revulsion would have brought me to suicide: certainly that was what occupied my mind a great deal of the tune. I envied all dead things—the fat earthworms that lay squashed all over the wet sidewalks, the animals whose fried bodies I chewed at mealtimes, people decomposing in muddy cemeteries—but I had at hand no means of self-destruction that I was courageous enough to use.

Stendhal claims to have once postponed suicide simply out of curiosity about the contemporary political situation in France: he wanted to see what would happen next. And, apart from cowardice, there was a similar thing that stayed my hand—since the evening of my last interview with Rennie, Joe had not been to school. Shirley, Dr. Schott’s secretary, announced that Mr. Morgan was ill, but that he was expected to return to work any day. The suspense involved in his absence was torturous, to be sure: was he actually ill, or had Rennie confessed her adultery? What was the specific connection between her confession and his absence? Most important of all, what would his reaction be? These were terrifying questions, but while they made me shrink at the thought of finally coming face to face with him, they also worked counter to any suicidal impulses; I could not kill myself at least until they were answered, if for no other reason than that from one very special point of view I would never learn whether doing away with myself had been
called for.

On the third day, after lunch, Joe appeared at school and taught his afternoon classes. I paled when accidentally I met him in the main hallway between periods; my nervousness was made more excruciating by the fact that we had time to do no more than say hello to each other. He was entirely calm, but my feelings must have shown all over my face. I’ve no idea how I managed my last two classes.

At four o’clock I went to my office to grade my first batch of compositions, and a few minutes later Joe walked in. The two men who shared the office had gone home. Joe sat on the edge of the desk next to mine.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

I shook my head, aching to tell him everything before he could tell me he already knew; but by this time I was so demoralized and confirmed in my weakness that all I could see was the remote possibility that he still didn’t know. As long as this possibility still existed I was not strong enough to confess, and yet I knew very well that whatever happened to remove it would at the same time render my confession pointless.

“First batch of themes,” I said, keeping my eyes on them. “How do you feel? Shirley said you’ve been sick.”

“I have,” Joe said. No doubt his face would have told me how to understand this reply, but I couldn’t look him in the face. I pretended to examine a theme paper, and clutched at title hope that he was speaking literally.

“How about you?” he asked; there was no sarcasm in his voice, only curiosity. My heart lifted.

“Oh, as usual.”

“No colds from all this rain?”

“Nope. I don’t take cold easily.” I could have laughed aloud with relief! Shame I would doubtless feel later, but just then the narrowness of my escape exhilarated me. He didn’t know! Silently I thanked Rennie with all my heart—almost loved her at that moment.

“What’d you have?” I asked, more steadily and cheerfully. “Mononucleosis or gonorrhea?” Now I even dared glance at him to see his response to my slight joke.

“Horner,” he said painfully, “why in the name of Christ did you fuck Rennie?”

The question was like a blow to the head: I grew dizzy, and my stomach knotted up. For a moment it was impossible to talk. He waited, regarding me with, I think, fascinated disgust.

“Lord, Joe—” I croaked. At the first sound of my voice, at the sheer effort of speaking, tears filled my eyes, and I blushed and sweated. I had nothing to say.

Joe pushed his glasses back on his nose.

“Why’d you want to do it? What was your reason?”

“Joe, I can’t talk now.”

“Yes, you can,” he said evenly. “You talk now, or I’ll knock the crap out of you.”

This, I should say, while entirely in keeping with his frank nature, was a double tactical error on Joe’s part. In the first place, although the threat of violence frightened me, it also put me immediately on the defensive, and if defensiveness is an indication of guilt feelings, it is at the same time a release from them: a murderer bent on escaping punishment has little time to contemplate the vileness of his deed. Second, it seems to me that, generally speaking, the only way for a person to get truly honest answers from another person, and be confident of their honesty, is to create the suggestion that any answer will be received cordially, without punishment.

“I didn’t
want
to do it, Joe. I don’t know why I did it.”

“Horseshit. Maybe you don’t
approve
of what you did, but you obviously wanted to do it, or you wouldn’t have done it. What a man ends up doing is what he has to take responsibility for having wanted to do. Why did you
think
you were doing it?”

“I wasn’t thinking, Joe. If I’d been thinking I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Did you think I’d like the idea? What kind of a guy did you think I was?”

“I didn’t think, Joe.”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse, Horner, and that irritates me.”

“Maybe obtuse, but not deliberately. I don’t know what unconscious motives I might have had, Joe, but whatever they were, they were unconscious, so I can’t know anything about them.” And, I was thinking, can’t be held responsible for them. “But I swear I had no conscious motives at all.”

“Don’t you
want
to be held responsible?” Joe asked incredulously.

“I do, Joe, believe me,” I said halfheartedly. “But I can’t give you reasons when I didn’t have any. Do you want me to make up reasons?”

“What kind of picture did you have of Rennie and me, for God’s sake?” Joe said, exasperated. “The thing that appalls me most is what you must have thought of our relationship, to pull a stunt like that! I know you made fun of a lot of things about us—I always had to excuse a lot of your crap because I was interested in you. Did you decide that Rennie was easy game because I was driving her hard, or what? And don’t you draw any distinctions between easy game and fair game? Did you really think you could split her off from me to the point where she’d keep something like that a secret?”

“Joe, for God’s sake, I know it was a hell of a thing to do! I’m not defending adultery and deception.”

“But you committed them. Why did you do it? Do you think I care what you think about the seventh commandment? I’m not objecting to adultery and deception as sins, Horner; I object to your screwing Rennie and then trying to get her to hide the fact from me. Listen, I don’t give a damn about you. You’ve already forfeited any claims you might have thought you had to my friendship. On that level I’m through with you. It may well be that I’m through with Rennie, too, but I can’t tell until I’ve heard the whole story. I want to hear your version of the business, if you’ve got one. I’ve already heard Rennie’s—that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three days. But her memory’s not perfect, and like anybody else’s it’s selective. Naturally, what I’ve heard puts the best possible interpretation on what she did, and perhaps the worst possible on what you did. Remember, boy,
I wasn’t there.
Rennie’s not playing innocent, but I want all the facts and all the interpretations of the facts.”