Back in the World: Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  “I’m a sight,” she said.

  “You should have that burn looked at when you get home.”

  She shrugged. “It’s going to peel whatever I do. In a couple of weeks I’ll be back to normal.” She tried to smile and gave it up. “I thought I’d at least come home with a tan. This has been the worst vacation. It’s been one thing after another.” She picked at the covers. “My second night here I lost over three hundred dollars. Do you know how long it takes me to save three hundred dollars?”

  “This is an awful place,” Father Leo said. “I don’t know why anybody comes here.”

  “That’s no mystery,” Sandra said.

  “The whole thing is fixed,” Father Leo said.

  Sandra shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.”

  Father Leo went over to the sliding glass door. He opened it and stepped out onto the balcony. The night was cold. A mist hung over the glowing blue surface of the pool.

  “You’ll catch your death out there,” Sandra called.

  Father Leo went back inside and closed the door. He was restless. The room smelled of coconut oil.

  “I have a confession to make,” Sandra said. “It wasn’t a coincidence when I came out to the pool today. I saw you down there.”

  Father Leo sat in the chair next to the TV. He rubbed his eyes. “Did somebody really try to break into the room?”

  “I thought so,” Sandra said. “Can’t you tell I’m scared?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then what difference does it make?”

  “None,” Father Leo said.

  “This has been the worst vacation,” Sandra said. “I won’t tell you all the things that happened to me. Let’s just say the only good thing that’s happened to me is meeting you.”

  “This is a terrible place,” Father Leo said. “It’s dangerous, and everything is set up so you can’t win.”

  “Some people win,” she said.

  “I haven’t seen any winners. Do you mind if I use your phone?”

  Sandra smoked and watched Father Leo while he talked to the desk clerk. Jerry had not called back. Father Leo left Sandra’s room number and hung up.

  “You told him you were here?” she said. “I wonder what he’ll think.”

  “He can think whatever he wants to think.”

  “He probably isn’t thinking anything,” Sandra said. “I’ll bet he’s seen it all.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “It’s strange,” she said. “Usually, when I’m about to go home from a vacation, I get excited—even if I’ve had a great time. This year I just feel sad. How about you? Are you looking forward to going home?”

  “Not much,” Father Leo said.

  “Why not? What’s it like where you live?”

  Father Leo thought of the noise in the refectory, Sister Gervaise shrieking at one of her own wisecracks. Then he saw her face go white as she listened to the lie he’d told Jerry. It would be all over the convent by now, and there was no way to undo it. When you heard a story like that it became the truth about the person it was spoken of. Denials would only make it seem more true.

  He would have to live with it. And that meant that everything was going to change. He saw how it would be. The hallways empty at night and quiet. The sisters falling silent as he walked past them, their eyes downcast.

  “What are you smiling at?” Sandra asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just a thought.”

  Sandra stubbed her cigarette out. “The way I’ve been acting, you must think I’m completely pathetic. I just want you to know that I’m not.”

  “I never thought that,” Father Leo said.

  “Yeah, yeah. You’ll say anything to keep me quiet.”

  Father Leo made sounds of denial.

  “I’m not a pathetic person,” Sandra said. “I have a life. It’s just that with one thing and another I was feeling low, and you struck a chord.”

  “You don’t know me, Sandra.”

  “Not in the usual way, maybe. But I recognize you, the kind of person you are. Gallant.”

  “Gallant,” Father Leo said.

  Sandra nodded. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  A group of people went past the door, talking loudly. When it was quiet again, Sandra said, “Is it okay if I ask you a personal question?”

  “I guess so,” Father Leo said. “Why not?”

  “Do you think you could love me? If the circumstances were changed?”

  “The circumstances aren’t going to change,” Father Leo said.

  “I understand that. I understand that absolutely. But speaking in a hypothetical way, do you think you could? Don’t worry about hurting my feelings—I’m just curious.”

  Hypothetically, Father Leo supposed it was possible for him to love anyone. But she didn’t really mean that. He thought about it. “Yes,” he said.

  “What for? What is it about me that you would love if you loved me?” She clasped her arms around her knees, and watched him.

  “It’s hard to put into words,” Father Leo said.

  Sandra said, “You don’t have to.” She shook another cigarette out of the pack, stared at it, and put it down on the night table.

  “I like the way you talk,” Father Leo said. “Straight out—just what’s on your mind.”

  She nodded. “I do that, all right. Let the chips fall where they may.”

  “Your spirit,” Father Leo said. “Coming here all alone the way you did.”

  “I got a good deal on the trip.”

  “So did I,” Father Leo said.

  They both laughed.

  “I thought of going home early,” Sandra said, “but once I start something I have to finish it. I have to take it to the end and see how it turns out, even if it turns out awful.”

  “I know what you mean,” Father Leo said. “I’m the same way.”

  “So what else do you like about me?”

  “How friendly you are. The way you listen.”

  She leaned back against the pillow.

  “Your eyes.”

  “My eyes? Really?”

  “You have beautiful eyes.”

  Father Leo went on. His voice made a cool sound in the stuffy room. After a time Sandra whispered, “You won’t leave, will you?”

  “I’ll be right here,” he said.

  She slept. Father Leo turned off the lights and moved his chair in front of the door. He sat and listened. Every so often, faintly, he heard the elevator open at the end of the hall. He listened for sounds in the corridor. Several people went by Sandra’s door. Nobody stopped.

  The only sounds in the room were his own and Sandra’s breathing; hers ragged, his deep, almost silent.

  After a few hours of this he began to drift. Finally he caught himself dozing off, and went outside onto the balcony. A few stars still glimmered. The breeze stirred the fronds of the palm trees. The palms were black against the purple sky. The moon was white.

  Father Leo stood against the railing, chilled awake by the breeze. A car horn honked, a small sound in the silence. He listened for it to come again but it didn’t, and the silence seemed to grow. Again he felt the desert all around him. He thought of a coyote loping home with a rabbit dangling from its mouth, yellow eyes aglow.

  Father Leo rubbed his arms. The cold began to get to him and he went back inside.

  The walls turned from blue to grey. A telephone started ringing in the room above. There were heavy steps.

  Sandra turned. She said something in her sleep. Then she turned again.

  “It’s all right,” Father Leo said. “I’m here.”

  Say Yes

  They were doing the dishes, his wife washing while he dried. He’d washed the night before. Unlike most men he knew, he really pitched in on the housework. A few months earlier he’d overheard a friend of his wife’s congratulate her on having such a considerate husband, and he thought, I try. Helping out with the dishes was a way he had of showing how
considerate he was.

  They talked about different things and somehow got on the subject of whether white people should marry black people. He said that all things considered, he thought it was a bad idea.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Sometimes his wife got this look where she pinched her brows together and bit her lower lip and stared down at something. When he saw her like this he knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he never did. Actually it made him talk more. She had that look now.

  “Why?” she asked again, and stood there with her hand inside a bowl, not washing it but just holding it above the water.

  “Listen,” he said, “I went to school with blacks and I’ve worked with blacks and lived on the same street with blacks and we’ve always gotten along just fine. I don’t need you coming along now and implying that I’m a racist.”

  “I didn’t imply anything,” she said, and began washing the bowl again, turning it around in her hand as though she were shaping it. “I just don’t see what’s wrong with a white person marrying a black person, that’s all.”

  “They don’t come from the same culture as we do. Listen to them sometime—they even have their own language. That’s okay with me, I like hearing them talk”—he did; for some reason it always made him feel happy—“but it’s different. A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know each other.”

  “Like you know me?” his wife asked.

  “Yes. Like I know you.”

  “But if they love each other,” she said. She was washing faster now, not looking at him.

  Oh boy, he thought. He said, “Don’t take my word for it. Look at the statistics. Most of those marriages break up.”

  “Statistics.” She was piling dishes on the drainboard at a terrific rate, just swiping at them with the cloth. Many of them were greasy, and there were flecks of food between the tines of the forks. “All right,” she said, “what about foreigners? I suppose you think the same thing about two foreigners getting married?”

  “Yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact I do. How can you understand someone who comes from a completely different background?”

  “Different,” said his wife. “Not the same, like us.”

  “Yes, different,” he snapped, angry with her for resorting to this trick of repeating his words so that they sounded crass, or hypocritical. “These are dirty,” he said, and dumped all the silverware back into the sink.

  The water had gone flat and grey. She stared down at it, her lips pressed tight together, then plunged her hands under the surface. “Oh!” she cried, and jumped back. She took her right hand by the wrist and held it up. Her thumb was bleeding.

  “Ann, don’t move,” he said. “Stay right there.” He ran upstairs to the bathroom and rummaged in the medicine chest for alcohol, cotton, and a Band-Aid. When he came back down she was leaning against the refrigerator with her eyes closed, still holding her hand. He took the hand and dabbed at her thumb with the cotton. The bleeding had stopped. He squeezed it to see how deep the wound was and a single drop of blood welled up, trembling and bright, and fell to the floor. Over the thumb she stared at him accusingly. “It’s shallow,” he said. “Tomorrow you won’t even know it’s there.” He hoped that she appreciated how quickly he had come to her aid. He’d acted out of concern for her, with no thought of getting anything in return, but now the thought occurred to him that it would be a nice gesture on her part not to start up that conversation again, as he was tired of it. “I’ll finish up here,” he said. “You go and relax.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll dry.”

  He began to wash the silverware again, giving a lot of attention to the forks.

  “So,” she said, “you wouldn’t have married me if I’d been black.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Ann!”

  “Well, that’s what you said, didn’t you?”

  “No, I did not. The whole question is ridiculous. If you had been black we probably wouldn’t even have met. You would have had your friends and I would have had mine.”

  “But if we had met, and I’d been black?”

  “Then you probably would have been going out with a black guy.” He picked up the rinsing nozzle and sprayed the silverware. The water was so hot that the metal darkened to pale blue, then turned silver again.

  “Let’s say I wasn’t,” she said. “Let’s say I am black and unattached and we meet and fall in love.”

  He glanced over at her. She was watching him and her eyes were bright. “Look,” he said, taking a reasonable tone, “this is stupid. If you were black you wouldn’t be you.” As he said this he realized it was absolutely true. There was no possible way of arguing with the fact that she would not be herself if she were black. So he said it again: “If you were black you wouldn’t be you.”

  “I know,” she said, “but let’s just say.”

  He took a deep breath. He had won the argument but he still felt cornered. “Say what?” he asked.

  “That I’m black, but still me, and we fall in love. Will you marry me?”

  He thought about it.

  “Well?” she said, and stepped close to him. Her eyes were even brighter. “Will you marry me?”

  “I’m thinking,” he said.

  “You won’t, I can tell. You’re going to say no.”

  “Let’s not move too fast on this,” he said. “There are lots of things to consider. We don’t want to do something we would regret for the rest of our lives.”

  “No more considering. Yes or no.”

  “Since you put it that way—”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Jesus, Ann. All right. No.”

  She said, “Thank you,” and walked from the kitchen into the living room. A moment later he heard her turning the pages of a magazine. He knew that she was too angry to be actually reading it, but she didn’t snap through the pages the way he would have done. She turned them slowly, as if she were studying every word. She was demonstrating her indifference to him, and it had the effect he knew she wanted it to have. It hurt him.

  He had no choice but to demonstrate his indifference to her. Quietly, thoroughly, he washed the rest of the dishes. Then he dried them and put them away. He wiped the counters and the stove and scoured the linoleum where the drop of blood had fallen. While he was at it, he decided, he might as well mop the whole floor. When he was done the kitchen looked new, the way it looked when they were first shown the house, before they had ever lived here.

  He picked up the garbage pail and went outside. The night was clear and he could see a few stars to the west, where the lights of the town didn’t blur them out. On El Camino the traffic was steady and light, peaceful as a river. He felt ashamed that he had let his wife get him into a fight. In another thirty years or so they would both be dead. What would all that stuff matter then? He thought of the years they had spent together and how close they were and how well they knew each other, and his throat tightened so that he could hardly breathe. His face and neck began to tingle. Warmth flooded his chest. He stood there for a while, enjoying these sensations, then picked up the pail and went out the back gate.

  The two mutts from down the street had pulled over the garbage can again. One of them was rolling around on his back and the other had something in its mouth. When they saw him coming they trotted away with short, mincing steps. Normally he would heave rocks at them, but this time he let them go.

  The house was dark when he came back inside. She was in the bathroom. He stood outside the door and called her name. He heard bottles clinking, but she didn’t answer him. “Ann, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “How?” she asked.

  He wasn’t expecting this. But from a sound in her voice, a level and definite note that was strange to him, he knew that he had to come up with the right answer. He leaned against the door. “I’ll marry you,” he whispered.

  “We’ll see,” she said. “Go o
n to bed. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He undressed and got under the covers. Finally he heard the bathroom door open and close.

  “Turn off the light,” she said from the hallway.

  “What?”

  “Turn off the light.”

  He reached over and pulled the chain on the bedside lamp. The room went dark. “All right,” he said. He lay there, but nothing happened. “All right,” he said again. Then he heard a movement across the room. He sat up but he couldn’t see a thing. The room was silent. His heart pounded the way it had on their first night together, the way it still did when he woke at a noise in the darkness and waited to hear it again—the sound of someone moving through the house, a stranger.

  The Poor Are

  Always With Us

  The trouble with owning a Porsche is that there’s always some little thing wrong with it. This time it was a sticky brake pedal. Russell had planned a trip for Easter weekend, so he left work early on Friday afternoon and drove up to Menlo Park to have Bruno, his mechanic, take a look at the car. Bruno was an Austrian. The wall behind his desk was covered with diplomas, most written in German, congratulating him on his completion of different courses in Porsche technology. Bruno’s office overlooked the bay where he and his assistant worked on the cars, both of them wearing starched white smocks and wielding tools that glittered like surgical instruments.

  When Russell pulled into the garage, Bruno was alone. He looked up, waved, and bent back down under the hood of a vintage green Speedster. Russell walked around the Speedster a couple of times, then watched over Bruno’s shoulder as Bruno traced the wiring with a flashlight whose thin silver beam looked as solid as a knitting needle.

  “So?” Bruno asked. After Russell described the trouble he was having, Bruno grunted and said, “Sure, sure. No sweat, old bean.” He said that he would get to it as soon as he was done with the Speedster—forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. Russell could wait or pick it up on Monday.

  Russell told him he would wait.

  There were two men in Bruno’s office. They glanced at Russell when he came in, then went on talking above the noise of a radio on Bruno’s desk that was playing music from the 1950s. Russell couldn’t help listening to them. They were friends; he could tell that by the way they kept insulting each other. They never let up, especially the bigger of the two, a black guy who wore sunglasses and a safari jacket and popped his knuckles steadily. Whenever the white guy got off a good line the black guy would grin and shake his head and get off a better one. Twice Russell laughed out loud, and after the second time the white guy turned and stared at him. He had red-rimmed eyes that bulged as if some pressure inside him were forcing them out. His skin was tight-looking, drawn so severely over the bones of his face that even now, unsmiling as he was, his teeth showed. He stared at Russell and said, “Little pitchers have big ears.”