The Shrinking Man (21 page)

She stopped abruptly as a heavy shoe sounded on the trailer steps and there was a single knock on the door. A deep voice said, “Ten minutes, Clar.”

She started to answer, but the man was already gone. She sat there shivering, looking toward the door. Finally she turned to him. “Yes, she would be frightened,” she said.

Suddenly his hands tightened on her arms, his face grew hard. “I’m going to tell her,” he said. “I won’t leave you. I
won’t
.”

She threw herself against him, her breath hot on his cheek. “Yes, tell her,
tell
her,” she begged. “I don’t want her to be hurt. I don’t want her to be frightened, but tell her. Tell her what it’s like, how we feel. She couldn’t say no. Not when…”

She pulled away and stood, breathing harshly. Her trembling fingers ran down the front of her robe, undoing buttons. The robe slid, hissing, from her ivory shoulders, catching in the crook of her bent arms. She wore pale underthings that clung to the contours of her body.

“Tell her!” she said almost angrily. Then she turned and rushed into the next room.

He stood up, staring at the half-open door that led to the room she had entered. He could hear the quick rustle of clothes as she dressed for her performance. He stood there motionless until she came out.

She stood apart from him, her face pale now.

“I was unfair,” she said. “Very unfair to you.” Her eyes fell. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I—”

“But you’ll wait,” he interrupted. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it until she winced. “Clarice, you’ll wait for me.”

At first she wouldn’t look at him. Then suddenly her head jerked up, her eyes burned into his. “I’ll wait for you,” she said.

He listened to the faint clacking of her high heels as she ran down the trailer steps. Then he turned and walked around the small room, looking at the furniture, touching it.

Finally he went into the other room and, after a hesitant moment, sat down on her bed and picked up the yellow silk robe. It was smooth and yielding in his fingers; it still smelled of her flesh.

Suddenly he plunged his face into its folds, gasping in the perfume of it. Why did he have to ask? There was nothing left between Lou and him; nothing. Why couldn’t he just stay with Clarice? It wouldn’t matter to Lou. She’d be glad to get rid of him. She’d…

…be frightened, be concerned.

With a weary sigh, he put aside the robe and pushed to his feet. He walked through the trailer, opened the door, moved down the steps, and started back across the cold, night-shrouded earth. I’ll tell her, he thought. I’ll just tell her and come back.

But when he reached the sidewalk and saw her standing by the car, a heavy despair fell over him. How could he possibly tell her? He stood hesitantly; then, as some teen-aged boys started out of the carnival grounds, he darted into the street.

“Hey, ain’t that a midget?” he heard one of the boys say.

“Scott!”

Lou ran to him and, without another word, snatched him up, her face both angry and concerned. She walked back to the car and pulled opened the door with her free hand.

“Where have you
been?”
she asked.

“Walking,” he said. No! cried his mind. Tell her,
tell
her. The vision flitted across his mind; Clarice unrobed, saying it to him. Tell her!

“I think you might have considered how I’d feel when I got back and found you gone,” Lou said, pushing forward the front seat so he could get in the back of the car.

He didn’t move. “Well, get in,” she said.

He sucked in a fast breath.
“No,”
he said.

“What?”

He swallowed. “I’m not going,” he said. He tried not to be so conscious of Beth staring at him.

“What are you talking about?” Lou asked.

“I—” He glanced at Beth, then back again. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Can’t it wait till we get home? Beth has to go to bed.”

“No, it can’t wait.” He wanted to scream out in fury. The old feeling was coming back—the feeling of being useless, grotesque, a freak. He should have known it would return the moment he left Clarice.

“Well, I don’t see—”

“Then leave me here!” He yelled at her. There was no strength, no resolution now. He was the stringless marionette again, pulling for inconsequential succor.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked angrily.

He choked on a sob, cut it off. Abruptly he turned and started across the pavement.

“Scott!”

A mind-jarring flurry of sights and sounds; the roar of an oncoming car, a blinding glare of headlights, the crunch of Lou’s running heels, the bruising of her fingers on his body, the head-snapping jerk as she pulled him out of the car’s path and around to the back of the Ford, the screeching of the other’s car’s tires as it lurched across the center line, then back into the proper lane.

“What in God’s name!” Her voice was furiously agitated. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I wish it had hit me!” Everything flooded out in his voice, all the anguish, the fury, and the shattered hopes.

“Scott!” She crouched down so she could speak to him. “Scott, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he said. Then, almost immediately, “I want to stay. I’m
going
to stay.”

“Stay where, Scott?” she asked.

He swallowed quickly, angrily. Why did he have to feel like a fool, like an unimportant fool? It had seemed so vital before; now it seemed absurd and trashy.

“Stay
where
, Scott?” she asked in failing patience.

He looked up, stiff-faced, going on with it willessly.

“I want to stay with… her,” he said.

“With—” She stared at him and his gaze fell. He looked along the broad length of her slack-covered leg. He gritted his teeth and pain flared along his jawline.

“There’s a woman,” he said, not looking up at her.

She was silent. He glanced up at her. In the light of a distant street lamp he could see the glow of her eyes.

“You mean that midget in the sideshow?”

He shuddered. The way she said it, the sound in her voice, made his desire seem vile. He dragged his teeth across his upper lip. “She’s a very kind and understanding woman,” he said. “I want to stay with her for a while.”

“You mean overnight.”

His head jerked back. “Oh, God, how you can—!” His eyes burned. “You can make it sound so—”

He caught himself. He stared down at her shoes. He spoke as distinctly as possible.

“I’m going to stay with her,” he said. “If you’d rather not come back for me, all right. Leave me. I’ll get by somehow.”

“Oh, stop being so—”

“I’m not just talking, Lou,” he said. “I swear to God I’m not just talking.”

When she didn’t reply, he looked up and saw her staring down at him. He didn’t know what the expression on her face meant.

“You don’t know, you just don’t know any more,” he said. “You think this is something… disgusting, something animal. Well, it isn’t. It’s more—much more. Don’t you understand? We’re not the same any more, you and I. We’re apart now. But you can have companionship if you want. I can’t. We’ve never spoken of it, but I expect you to remarry when this is done—as it
will
be done.

“Lou, there’s nothing for me now, can’t you see that? Nothing. All I have to look forward to is dissolution. Going on like this, day after day, getting smaller and smaller and—lonelier. There’s nobody in the world who can understand now. Even this woman will one day be as… be beyond me. But now—for
now
, Lou—she’s companionship—and affection and love. All right, and love! I don’t deny it, I can’t help it. I may be a freak but I still need love and I still need—” He drew in a quick, rasping breath. “One night,” he said. “It’s all I ask. One
night. If it were you and you had a chance for one night of peace, I’d tell you to take it. I would.”

His eyes fell. “She has a trailer,” he said. “It has furniture I can sit on. It’s my size.”

He looked up a little. “Just to sit on a chair as if I were a man and not…” He sighed. “Just that, Lou. Just
that”

He looked up at her face finally, but it wasn’t until a car drove by and the headlights flared across her face that he saw the tears.

“Lou!”

She couldn’t speak. She stood biting at a fist, her body shaking with noiseless sobs. She struggled against them. She took a deep breath and brushed away the tears while he stood beside her, staring at her even though it hurt his neck muscles to look up so high.

“All right, Scott,” she said then. “It would be pointless and—and cruel of me to stop you. You’re right. There’s nothing I can do.”

She breathed in laboredly. “I’ll come back in the morning,” she blurted then, and ran to the car door.

He stood in the wind-swept street until the red taillights had faded out of sight. Then he ran across the street, feeling ill and miserable. He shouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t the same now.

But when he saw the trailer again, and the light in the window, and the little easy steps that led up to her, it all returned. It was like stepping into another world and leaving behind all the sorrows in the old one.

“Clarice,” he whispered.

And he ran to her.

He was sitting on one of the broad slats that formed the seat of the lower lawn chair, leaning against a tree-thick arm support, and chewing on a piece of cracker. He hadn’t touched the sponge except to squeeze a few drops from it halfway up the first stage of the climb. By his side lay the coils of thread, the pin hook attached to them, and the long, shiny pin spear.

Weariness eased slowly from his relaxing muscles. Slowly he reached down and rubbed at his knee. It was a little swollen again. While he was climbing the thread, he’d banged the knee against the chair leg. A wince drew back his lips as he rubbed. He hoped it wouldn’t get worse.

It was quiet in the cellar. The oil burner hadn’t roared on once in the past hour. It must be warm out, he thought. He glanced far across at the window over the fuel tank. It was a shimmering square of light. He closed his eyes. He wondered why Beth wasn’t out in the yard playing. The water pump hadn’t started lately, either. Lou and Beth probably weren’t home. He wondered where they might be.

Warned by the stirring of uneasiness. in his chest, he blanked his mind to thoughts of sunlight and outdoors, of his wife and child. They were not a part of his life now, and it was a senseless man who dwelt on things that were not a part of his life.

Yes, he was still a man. Two-sevenths of an inch tall and still a man.

He remembered the night he’d been with Clarice, and how, then too, it had come to him that he was still a man.

“You aren’t pitiful,” she whispered to him. “You’re a man.” She’d dragged tense fingers across his chest.

It had been a moment of decisive alteration.

Almost all night, lying beside her, feeling the warm flutter of her breath against his shoulder, he had lain awake, thinking of what she’d said.

It was true; he
was
still a man. Living beneath the degrading weight of his affliction, he had forgotten it. Looking at his marriage and his inadequacy in it, he had forgotten it. Looking at his life and the barrenness of that life’s achievements, he had forgotten it. The diminishing effect that the size of his body had had on the size of his thoughts had made him forget it. It had not been just introspection. All he’d had to do was look into a mirror to know that it was so.

And yet it was not so. A man’s self-estimation was, in the end, a matter of relativity. Here he lay in a bed in which he was full size and there was a woman held in his arms. It made all the difference. He could see again.

And he saw that size had changed nothing essential; he still had his mind, he was still unique.

In the morning, lying in the warm bed with her, bars of butter-colored sunlight across their legs, he’d told her of his thoughts and the change in his thoughts.

“I’m not going to fight it any more,” he said. “No, I don’t mean I’m giving up,” he’d added hastily, seeing the look on her face. “I mean I’m going to stop struggling against the part of it I can’t beat. I know I’m incurable now. I can say it; even that’s an accomplishment. I’ve never really admitted it before. I was so afraid I’d find out I was incurable that I even left the doctors once. I said it was because of money, but it wasn’t; I know that now. It was because I was terrified of finding out.”

He’d lain there, staring at the ceiling, feeling Clarice’s small hand on his chest, her eyes watching him.

“Well, I accept it,” he’d finally said. “I accept it and I’m not going to scream at fate any more. I’m not going to go down hating.” He’d turned to her suddenly. “You know what I’m going to do?” he asked, almost excitedly.

“What, dear?”

His smile had been quick, almost boyish. “I’m going to write about it,” he said. “I’m going to follow myself as far as I can. I’m going to tell about everything that happened to me, and everything that’s
going
to happen to me. This is a rare thing; I’m going to look at it as rare—as a thing of potential value, not just as a curse. I’m going to study it,” he said. “I’m going to tear it apart, see what there is to see. I’m going to live with it and beat it. And I’m not going to be afraid.
I’m not going to be afraid
.”

He finished the bit of cracker and opened his eyes. Reaching into his robe, he drew out the piece of sponge and squeezed a few drops of water into his mouth. They were warm and brackish, but they felt good in his dry throat. He put the sponge back. There was still a long climb ahead.

He looked at the pin hook. It had been spread apart a little by the dragging weight of his body. He ran a hand over its smoothness. Well, he could probably rebend it somehow if it became necessary.

He thought he heard a noise overhead and his head jerked back.

There was nothing. But that didn’t make his heartbeat any slower. It was a grim reminder of what was waiting up there for him.

He shuddered and a mirthless smile moved his lips.
I’m not going to be afraid
. The words mocked him. If I’d known, he thought. If he’d known the moments of rank terror he was still to experience, he’d never have made it. Only the blessing of an unknown future enabled him to keep the promise he had made to himself.