Beginners

by Raymond Carver

  “ ‘No bother,’ I answered. ‘Have to find my wallet, anyway. Make yourself at home.’

  “ ‘Look here,’ I said, stopping by the kitchen door. ‘You hear about that big holdup back east?’ I pointed to the newspaper. ‘I was just reading about it.’

  “ ‘I saw it on television last night,’ she said. ‘They had pictures and interviewed the cops.’

  “ ‘They got away clean,’ I said.

  “ ‘Pretty slick of them, wasn’t it?’ she said.

  “ ‘I think everybody at some time or another dreams about pulling the perfect crime, don’t they?’

  “ ‘But not many people get away with it,’ she said. She picked up the paper. There was a picture of an armored car on the front page and the headlines said something like milliondollar robbery, something like that. You remember that, Les? When those guys dressed up as policemen?

  “I didn’t know what else to say, we were just standing there looking at each other. I turned and went on out to the porch and looked for my pants in the hamper where I figured your mother had put them. I found the wallet in my back pocket and went back to the other room and asked how much I owed.

  “ ‘We can do business now,’ I said.

  “It was three or four dollars, and I paid her. Then, I don’t know why, I asked her what she’d do with it if she had it, all the money those guys got away with.

  “She laughed out loud at that and showed her teeth.

  “I don’t know what came over me then, Les. Fifty-five years old. Grown kids. I knew better than that. This woman was barely half my age with little kids in school. She did this Stanley job just the hours they were in school, just to give her something to do. She got a little spending money from it, naturally, but mainly it was just to keep occupied. She didn’t have to work. They had enough to get by on. Her husband, Larry, he, he was a driver for Consolidated Freight. Made good money. Teamster, you know. He made enough for them to live on without her having to work. It wasn’t a have-to case.”

  He stopped and wiped his face. “I want to try and make you understand.”

  “You don’t have to say any more,” I said. “I’m not asking you anything. Anybody can make a mistake. I understand.”

  He shook his head. “I have to tell somebody this, Les. I haven’t told this to anybody, but I want to tell you this and I want you to understand.”

  “She had two boys, Stan and Freddy. They were in school, about a year apart. I never met them, thank God, but later on she showed me some pictures of them. She laughed when I said that about the money, said she guessed she’d quit selling Stanley products, and they’d move to San Diego and buy a house there. She had relatives in San Diego, and if they had that much money, she said, they’d move down there and open a sporting goods store. That’s what they’d always talked about doing, opening a sporting goods store, if they ever got enough ahead.”

  I lit another cigarette, glanced at my watch, and crossed and recrossed my legs under the table. The bartender looked over at us, and I raised my glass. He motioned to the girl who was taking an order at another table.

  “She was sitting down on the couch now, more relaxed and just skimming the newspaper, when she looked up and asked if I had a cigarette. Said she’d left hers in her other purse, and she hadn’t had a smoke since she left her house. Said she hated to buy from a machine when she had a carton at home. I gave her a cigarette and I held a match for her, but my fingers were shaking.”

  He stopped again and looked at the table for a minute. The woman at the bar had her arms locked through the arms of the man on each side of her, and the three of them were singing along with the music from the jukebox: That summer wind, came blowin’ in, a-cross the sea. I ran my fingers up and down the glass and waited sadly for him to go on.

  “It’s kind of fuzzy after that. I remember I asked her if she wanted any coffee. Said I’d just made a fresh pot, but she said she had to be going, though maybe she had time for one cup. We never mentioned your mother the whole time, either of us, the fact she may just walk in any minute. I went out to the kitchen and waited for the coffee to heat, and by that time I had a case of the nerves so that the cups rattled when I brought them in…I’ll tell you, Les, I’ll swear before God, I never once stepped out on your mother the whole time we were married. Not once. Maybe there were times when I felt like it, or that I had the chance…You don’t know your mother like I do. Sometimes she was, she could be—”

  “That’s enough of that,” I said. “You don’t have to say another word in that direction.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by that. I loved your mother. You don’t know. I just wanted you to try and understand…I brought in the coffee, and Sally’d taken off her coat by then. I sat down on the other end of the couch from her and we got to talking more personal. She said she had two kids in Roosevelt grade school, and Larry, he was a driver and was sometimes gone for a week or two at a time. Up to Seattle, or down to Los Angeles, or else to Phoenix, Arizona. Always someplace. Pretty soon we just began to feel good talking with one another, you know, and enjoying just sitting there talking. She said her mother and father were both dead and she’d been raised by an aunt there in Redding. She’d met Larry when they were both going to high school, and they’d gotten married, but she was proud of the fact she’d gone on to school till she finished. But pretty soon she gave a little laugh at something I’d said that could maybe be taken two ways, and she kept laughing, and then she asked if I’d heard the one about the traveling shoe salesman who called on the widow woman. We laughed quite a bit after she told that one, and then I told her one a little worse, and she giggled at that, and then smoked another cigarette. One thing was leading to another, and pretty soon I’d eased over beside her.

  “I’m ashamed telling you this, my own flesh and blood, but I kissed her then. I guess I was clumsy and awkward, but I put her head back on the couch and kissed her, and I felt her tongue touch my lips. I don’t, don’t know quite how to say this, Les, but I raped her. I don’t mean raped her against her will, nothing like that, but I raped her all the same, fumbling and pulling at her like a fifteen-year-old kid. She didn’t encourage me, if you know what I mean, but she didn’t do anything to stop me either…I don’t know, a man can just go along, go along, obeying all the rules and then, then all of a sudden…

  “But it was all over in a minute or two. She got up and straightened her clothes and looked embarrassed. I didn’t really know what to do and I went out to the kitchen and got more coffee for us. When I came back in she had her coat on and was ready to leave. I put the coffee down and went over and squeezed her.

  “She said, ‘You must think I’m a whore or something.’ Something like that, and looked down at her shoes. I squeezed her again and said, ‘You know that isn’t true.’

  “Well, she left. We didn’t say good-bye or see you later. She just turned and slipped out the door and I watched her get into her car down the block and drive off.

  “I was all excited and mixed up. I straightened things around the couch and turned over the cushions, folded all the newspapers and even washed the two cups we’d used, and cleaned out the coffee pot. All the time I was thinking about how I was going to face your mother. I knew I had to get out for a while and have a chance to think. I went down to Kelly’s and stayed there all afternoon drinking beer.

  “That was the way it started. After that, nothing happened for two or three weeks. Your mother and I got along the same as always, and after the first two or three days I stopped thinking about the other. I mean, I remembered everything all right—how could I forget it?—I just stopped thinking about any of it. Then one Saturday I was out working on the lawn mower in the front yard when I saw her stop on the other side of the street. She got out of the car with a mop and a couple or three little paper bags in her hand, making a delivery. Now your mother was right in the house where she could see everything, if she just happened to look out the window, but I knew I had to have a
chance to say something to Sally. I watched, and when she came out of the house across the street I sauntered over as ordinary-looking as I could, carrying a screwdriver and a pair of pliers in my hand like I might have some kind of legitimate business with her. When I walked up to the side of the car she was already inside and had to lean over and roll the window down. I said, ‘Hello, Sally, how’s everything?’

  “ ‘All right,’ she said.

  “ ‘I’d like to see you again,’ I said.

  “She just looked at me. Not mad-like, or anything, just looked at me straight and even and kept her hands on the wheel.

  “ ‘Like to see you,’ I said again, and my mouth was thick. ‘Sally.’

  “She pulled her lip between her teeth and then let go and said, ‘You want to come tonight? Larry’s gone out of town to Salem, Oregon. We could have a beer.’

  “I nodded and took a step back from the car. ‘After nine o’clock,’ she added. ‘I’ll leave the light on.’

  “I nodded again, and she started up and pulled away, dragging the clutch. I walked back across the street, and my legs were weak.”

  Over near the bar a lean, dark man in a red shirt began to play the accordion. It was a Latin number and he played with feeling, rocking the big instrument back and forth in his arms, sometimes lifting his leg and rolling it over his thigh. The woman sat with her back to the bar and listened, holding a drink. She listened to him and watched him play and began to move back and forth on her stool in time with the music.

  “Some live music,” I said to distract my father, who merely glanced in that direction then finished his drink.

  Suddenly the woman slid down off the stool, took a few steps toward the center of the floor, and commenced to dance. She tossed her head from side to side and snapped her fingers on both hands as her heels hit the floor. Everyone in the place watched her dance. The bartender stopped mixing drinks. People began to look in from outside and soon a little crowd had collected at the door to watch, and still she danced. I think people were at first fascinated, but a little horrified and embarrassed for her, too. I was, anyway. At one point her long red hair pulled loose and fell down her back, but she only cried out and stamped her heels faster and faster. She raised her arms above her head and began to snap her fingers and move about in a small circle in the middle of the floor. She was surrounded by men now, but above their heads I could see her hands and her white fingers, snapping. Then, with a last staccato stamping of her heels and a final yip, it was finished. The music stopped, the woman cast her head forward, hair flinging out over her face, and dropped to one knee. The accordion player led the applause, and the men nearest her backed away to give her room. She stayed there on the floor a minute, head bowed, taking long breaths, before she got to her feet. She seemed dazed. She licked the hair that clung to her lips and looked around at the faces. Men continued to applaud. She smiled and nodded slowly and formally, turning slowly until she had taken in everyone. Then she made her way back to the bar and picked up her drink.

  “Did you see that?” I asked.

  “I saw it.”

  He couldn’t have appeared less interested. For a moment he seemed utterly contemptible to me, and I had to look away. I knew I was being silly, that I’d be gone in another hour, but it was all I could do to keep from telling him then what I thought of his dirty affair, and what it had done to my mother.

  The jukebox started in the middle of a record. The woman sat at the bar still, only leaning on her elbow now, staring at herself in the mirror. There were three drinks in front of her, and one of the men, the one who had been talking to her earlier, had moved off, down toward the end of the bar. The other man had the flat of his hand against the lower part of her back. I drew a long breath, put a smile on my lips, and turned to my father.

  “So that’s the way it went for a while,” he started in again. “Larry had a pretty regular schedule, and I’d find myself over there every night I had the chance. I’d tell your mother I was going to the Elks, or else I told her I had some work to finish up at the shop. Anything, anything to be gone a few hours.

  “The first time, that same night, I parked the car three or four blocks away and walked up the street and then right on past her house. I walked with my hands in my coat and at a good pace and walked right on by her house, trying to get my nerve up. She had the porch light on all right, and all the shades pulled. I walked to the end of the block and then came back, slower, and walked up the sidewalk to her door. I know if I’d found Larry there to answer the door, that’d been the end of that. I’d have said I was looking for directions and gone on. And never come back. My heart was pounding in my ears. Just before I rang the bell, I worked the wedding ring off my finger and dropped it in my pocket. I guess, I guess right then, that minute on the porch before she opened the door, that was the only time I considered, I mean really considered, what I was doing to your mother. Just in that minute before Sally opened the door, I knew for a minute what I was doing, and that what I was doing was dead wrong.

  “But I did it, and I must have been crazy! I must have been crazy all along, Les, and didn’t know it, just laying in wait for me. Why? Why’d I do it? An old bastard like me with grown kids. Why’d she do it? That son-of-a-bitching slut!” He set his jaws and brooded for a minute. “No, I don’t mean that. I was crazy about her, I admit it…I was even over there days when I had the chance. When I knew Larry’d be gone, I’d slip out of the shop in the afternoon and beat it over there. Her kids were always in school. Thank God for that, I never bumped into them. It’d be a lot harder now if I had…But that first time, that was the hardest time of all.

  “We were both pretty nervous. We sat up for a long time in the kitchen drinking beer, and she began to tell me a lot about herself, secret thoughts, she called them. I began to relax and feel more at ease too, and I found myself telling her things. About you, for instance; you working and saving your money and going to school and then going back to Chicago to live. She said she’d been to Chicago on a train when she was a little girl. I told her about what I’d done with my life—not very much until then, I said. And I told her some of the things I still wanted to do, things that I still planned on doing. She made me feel that way when I was around her, like I didn’t have it all behind me. I told her I wasn’t too old to still have plans. ‘People need plans,’ she said. ‘You have to have plans. When I get too old to make plans and look forward to something, that’s when they can come and put me away.’ That’s what she said, and more, and I began to think I loved her. We sat there talking about everything under the sun for I don’t know how long, before I put my arms around her.”

  He took off his glasses and shut his eyes for a minute. “I haven’t talked about this to anybody. I know I’m probably getting a little tight, and I don’t want any more to drink, but I’ve got to tell this to somebody. I can’t keep it in any longer. So, so if I’m bothering you with all this you’ll just have to, you’ll just have to please oblige me by listening a little longer.”

  I didn’t answer. I looked out at the field, then looked at my watch.

  “Listen!—What time does your plane leave? Can you take a later one? Let me buy us another drink, Les. Order us two more. I’ll speed it up, I’ll be through with this in a minute. You don’t know how much I need to get some of this off my chest. Listen.

  “She kept his picture in the bedroom right by the bed…I want to tell it all, Les…First it bothered me, seeing his picture there as we climbed into bed, the last thing I saw before she turned out the light. But that was just the first few times. After a while I got used to having it there. I mean, I liked it, him smiling over at us, nice and quiet, as we got into his bed. I almost got to looking forward to it, and would have missed it if it hadn’t been there. Got to where I was even liking to do it best in the afternoons, because there was always plenty of light then, and I could look over and see him whenever I wanted.”

  He shook his head and it seemed to wobble a l
ittle. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Don’t hardly recognize your father anymore, do you?…Well, it all came to a bad end. You know that. Your mother left me, as she had every right to do. You know all that. She said, said she couldn’t bear to look at me anymore. But even that’s not so important.”

  “What do you mean,” I said, “that’s not important?”

  “I’ll tell you, Les. I’ll tell you what’s the most important thing here involved. You see there are things, things far more important than that. More important than your mother’s leaving me. That’s, in the long run, that’s nothing…We were in bed one night. It must have been around eleven o’clock because I always made it a point to be home before midnight. The kids were asleep. We were just laying there in bed talking, Sally and me, my arm around her waist. I was kind of dozing, I guess, listening to her talk. It was pleasant just dozing and kind of half listening. At the same time, I was awake and I remember thinking that pretty soon I’d have to get up and go on home, when a car pulled into the driveway and somebody got out and slammed the door.

  “ ‘My God,’ she screams, ‘it’s Larry!’ I jumped out of bed and was still in the hallway trying to get my clothes on when I heard him come onto the porch and open the door. I must have gone crazy. I seem to remember thinking that if I ran out the back door he’d pin me up against that big fence in the backyard and maybe kill me. Sally was making a funny kind of sound. Like she couldn’t get her breath. She had her robe on but it was undone, and she stood in the kitchen shaking her head back and forth. All this was happening all at once. There I was, half naked with all my clothes in my hand, and Larry was opening the front door. I jumped. I jumped right into their big front-room window, right through the glass. I landed in some bushes, jumped up with the glass still falling off me, and started off running down the street.”

  You crazier than hell old son of a bitch, you. It was grotesque. The whole story was insane. It would have been ludicrous, all of it, if it hadn’t been for my mother. I looked at him steadily for a minute, but he didn’t meet my eyes.