by Oakley Hall
“Do you want a divorce?” she said casually.
Jack didn’t move. He didn’t seem to have heard. He sat motionless, turning slightly away from her, his head bowed between his shoulders, so the collar of his coat hunched up on his neck. Finally, he said, “No.”
Gene waited for him to go on. She could feel the tears aching in her eyes. Jack said, “We’re going away.” He leaned forward in the chair until she could not see his face.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going away. We’re getting the hell out of this town.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Jack.”
“I answered it. We’re getting away from here.”
“Where?”
“Pendleton, Oregon. I know where I can get a job up there.”
Ash from her cigarette spilled down her skirt and she brushed it away. She opened her mouth wide and rubbed her wrist over her eyes.
“We’ll leave this weekend,” Jack said.
“Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” Gene cried. “Don’t you even care enough to tell me anything? If you’re in love with someone else, I want to know. I don’t want to go on like this.”
Jack finished his drink and shook the glass in his hand, still leaning awkwardly forward. The ice clinked. He didn’t speak, and Gene felt the tears slipping from her eyes.
“Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?” she said. “Even a lie. Even a lie would mean you cared enough to say something! You can’t just come in here and say we’re going away. I’m a person, Jack. I’m beginning to think you don’t know that I’ve got to have something to hang onto.”
“Why can’t you trust me?”
She sobbed aloud at that, angrily. “Have you given me any reason to trust you?”
“I guess I haven’t.”
“Jack, please, why won’t you say something? If you’d just tell me…If you’d just tell me, maybe I could trust you!”
Jack’s head turned slowly toward her. His face was white. His eyes met hers impersonally then moved away. “Don’t cry,” he said, and when he said it she sobbed aloud.
“I can’t help it,” she sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “If you’d just say something.”
“All right,” he said huskily. “I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed as hell. Do you want me to crawl some more?”
She let her hands drop from her face. She said, “Do you love me, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to crawl. You don’t have to crawl at all. I just want to know about it. I have to know. Can’t you see that?”
“All right,” Jack said. “All right,” he repeated, half to himself. He took his feet from the ottoman and let them drop to the floor, leaning forward once more with his elbows on his knees and his head sunk between his hunched shoulders.
“Is it this Mrs. Denton?” Gene said.
His head jerked toward her and the cords in her throat stood out like taut wires. “How do you know about her?” he hissed. “Did V…?”
“Marian Huber saw you with her. She asked at the hotel.”
He stared at her and she saw his tight lips move before he turned his head again. He was cursing Marian silently; finally he said aloud, “It’s a girl I used to know. In Bakersfield. She’s married to some old guy from the valley now. I ran into her a while ago.”
He leaned back in the chair and put his hand to his cheek, running it slowly up and down. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he continued. “I don’t know how to explain it very well. See, it’s hard for me to stay away from her.… V. Her name’s V.” He turned toward Gene when he said it, as though this were important. “See, it’s all right if I can stay away from her. That’s why we have to leave San Diego.”
“Do you love her?” Gene whispered.
“No,” Jack said. “No, I guess I hate her.”
“Were—were you in love with her before?”
“Goddamn it, I don’t know!” His hand dropped from his cheek to the arm of the chair. The tendons stood out on it. “Listen,” he said softly. “I told you it was hard to explain. But, see, it was a bad kind of thing. It got started wrong. We hurt each other. I guess it got to be a kind of game. Whoever hurt the other one worst won. Just like a game. I’d hurt her and she’d hurt me and whoever hurt the other worst won. You see?”
Gene’s lips felt dry and cracked. “Jack,” she said. “Was I part of that?”
Again his head jerked around and his eyes blazed into hers. “No!” he shouted. “No, Goddamn it! Don’t you ever think that, Gene!”
Gene shut her eyes and pressed her elbows in tight against her sides. “You don’t still want her?” she said.
“No.”
“Does she still want you?”
“She doesn’t know what she wants. She just wants me because you’ve got me.”
“Have I got you, Jack?” she whispered.
“If you want me.”
But she shook her head and went on, “If it’s no good, say so, Jack. If you want this other girl, just say so and I’ll go away. I don’t want to go on like this if you…”
“Stop that!” he interrupted. “That’s no good. Listen, I want you. I want you for my wife and I don’t want anybody else and we’re getting to hell out of this lousy town.” He started to get up but she pushed herself forward and knelt beside his chair and threw her arms around his neck.
He pressed his face against hers, his beard scraped her cheek and his arms were hard and tight. When she started to speak he kissed her so that she could not speak, and she clung to him, the arm of the chair hurting her breast. She strained against him but the chair was between them. Her heart beat wildly against the arm of the chair.
7
Those six months in Oregon, the remembrance of them, was the only part of her life with Jack that had no stain on it. Those months were the reason she could never hate Jack; those months when she had realized that every moment he was trying to make her happy, to make up for what had happened, perhaps for what was still to happen, those months when there was no confused, nagging fear in her, when she did not feel like a fugitive, when there was no hand clawing at the window to get in.
They had taken a trailer. Houses in Pendleton were too expensive to rent and apartments were impossible to find. It was a beautiful trailer, new and clean, with porthole windows rimmed with chrome. There was a bedroom with a double bed in the back, a couch in the front, a stove, icebox, cupboards, closets, a table that folded up against the side of the sink and two tiny chairs.
Later it seemed to her that it had rained almost every day. There had been many days when it had rained too hard for Jack to go to work, and then they would sit around drinking beer from quart bottles and playing cards with the Purdys, who had the trailer next to theirs. It all had a dreamlike quality to Gene, far away now, and sweetened and made hazy by time; the six months in Oregon spent in a trailer, where it had rained almost every day and she had to walk a hundred yards through the rain to the lavatory, where there was nothing to do while Jack was at work except listen to the radio with Suzy Purdy and sew and do the housework—the little movie house, the B.P.O.E. ballroom, Mrs. Anderson’s Tea Room, The Steak House, playing cards with the Purdys and going for rides in the green countryside on Sundays. Jack had tried so hard, so almost pitifully hard, to make her happy.
But June came, the work was almost done, and Jack would soon be out of a job. And then there was a letter from Smitty, saying that Hogan and Griffith had a big contract on North Island and he wanted Jack to come back as grade foreman. Jack showed her the letter. She read it through twice, slowly, and then she looked at him.
“Do you want to go?” she asked.
He was lying on the couch with his head propped up on the red bolster she had made, cleaning his fingernails with a matchstick. “I don’t know,” he said. Gene sat down beside him.
“Well, I guess so,” he said. “We might as well. It’s a lot better job than I can get around here.”
“Do you want to go?” she said again.
“It’ll be okay,” Jack said, still without looking at her. “It’s been six months.”
Holding the letter, Gene rose, stepped across to the stove and lifted the cover on the string beans. Steam drifted up into her nostrils and the cover burned her fingers, but she did not put it down right away. Finally she replaced it and turned around. “What about V?”
“She’s probably gone back to Bakersfield. The guy she married’s got a ranch up there.”
Gene sat down beside him again and looked around the trailer. It was so small. Everything was in its place. It was as though its smallness had thrown them into a closer relationship, as though in living so intimately they had become more intimate in all ways.
“It’s been nice here,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I hate to leave our trailer.”
Jack raised himself and put his arm around her back. “Listen, do you want to say here? I can get on as a skinner, maybe.”
“Oh, no. Not if it’s a better job.”
“The money doesn’t matter that much.”
She took a long breath and turned her head and smiled at him. “I didn’t mean I didn’t want to go,” she said. “It’s just that we’ve been so happy here.” She got up again and returned to the stove; there was nothing for her to do there, but she moved the pots around on the burners. Jack came over, turned her toward him and put his arms around her. He looked worried.
“Listen, damn it, Gene, if you don’t want to go, we won’t.” She leaned her head against his chest. He held one hand in the small of her back, pressing her to him, and she could feel the warmth of his body. She could feel his heart beating steadily against her cheek. “I love you, darling,” she said, into his chest.
Jack lifted her face and looked down into her eyes. She put her hand up to smooth his forehead. “Honey, are you worried about going back?” he said.
She shook her head, smiling at him.
“Aren’t you? Honest?”
“No,” Gene said. “Remember that night in San Diego when we talked about it before?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I trust you. I always will now. You’ve been wonderful, Jack.”
He was silent, holding her in his arms, and she leaned against him contentedly, feeling him breathe and trying to find with her ear the place where she had heard his heart beating.
So they went back. They stayed in a hotel until they found an apartment and could get their furniture out of storage. Gene wondered why she had dreaded this returning. She was sure V had gone, and V would never be able to find them again. She got her old job back with Hogan and Griffith and she and Jack were able to save two hundred dollars every month. In two or three years, with a G.I. loan, Jack would be able to buy the tractors he wanted.
8
On their first anniversary they drove out to La Jolla for dinner, to the Casa del Mar, where Jack had proposed to her. They went early and sat at one of the tables by the tinted, out-slanted windows, where they could watch the day fade and the waves moiling over the black-wet rocks beneath the window.
They had steaks smothered in some kind of honey sauce, and wine. The dining room was dark, each table lit by a cone of light from a shaded candle, and Gene watched the light flicker on Jack’s face; the shadows deep in his eyes, his chin and forehead highlighted, the thin, relaxed line of his mouth sharply etched. They talked about her job and his and about the tractors they were going to buy. They argued about the exact amount of money they had in the bank and Jack’s leg was pressed hard and tight against hers under the table, and she had never loved him so much.
When they had finished their steaks and had fallen silent, she said softly, “Jack, it’s been a good year.”
He put his hand across the table and she laid her hand in his and he closed his fingers around it. “Do you think so?” he asked.
“Don’t you?”
“We got off to a bad start,” Jack said, and he moved his head to one side so that the light lost his face.
“That doesn’t matter anymore. Everything’s perfect now.”
Jack took the wine bottle from the sweating bucket and filled their glasses. “Everything’s perfect now,” Gene said again. “Jack, I’m awfully glad we’re married, aren’t you?”
She saw him nod. After a moment, he said, “Gene, you’ve been damn fine.”
She closed her eyes and smiled and took a drink of her wine. She could feel herself getting tight but she didn’t mind tonight. When she opened her eyes the waiter had wheeled a table over next to theirs, and on the table was a huge crystal bowl of cherries. They had ordered Cherries Diablo; they hadn’t known what it was, but it was the most expensive dessert on the menu.
The waiter struck a match and lit the liquid around the cherries, and blue flames leaped up. The flames danced weirdly and sent shadows shivering across the ceiling and lit Jack’s face until he looked like a devil, and as they slowly died and the room was dark once more, Gene heard footsteps brush past and stop behind her.
When she had finished her cherries, she looked up at Jack. His leg had moved away and in the light of the candle his face looked hard and twisted and ugly. His lips were pulled back against his teeth and he was staring past her.
“Why, Jack, what’s the matter?”
His eyes flickered quickly to hers. He stared at her as though he hated her, and suddenly she was afraid. “Don’t you feel well, Jack?”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said harshly.
“But don’t you want any coffee?”
He flung his napkin onto the table. “Those damn cherries,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” He pushed his chair back and got to his feet, knocking against the table so that the cups rattled in the saucers.
He waited impatiently, almost angrily, until she rose, and then he followed her to the lobby, treading on her heels. In the lobby she turned and put her hand on his arm.
“Are you sick, darling?”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, and now his eyes avoided hers. His cheek muscles were bunched tightly, his mouth was thin and bloodless; she looked at him worriedly and then she went into the powder room to put on lipstick. When she came out he was gone and she waited in the lobby, watching the door to the men’s room. But suddenly he was at her side and he grasped her arm roughly and pulled her toward the door.
In the car he still did not speak, and he would not look at her. He was driving too fast and he cursed under his breath when they had to wait for a stop light. “Please, Jack,” Gene said. “What is it? Won’t you tell me?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Was it something I said?”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing, damn it. Nothing!”
And at the apartment he did not undress when she did, sitting in the big chair in the living room. He picked up a magazine, paged through it rapidly, and threw it down when she came in from the bedroom to turn on the light so he could see better. She had put on the nightgown she had pressed before he had come home that evening and carefully combed her hair, and she stared down at him, biting her lip. He sat slumped in the chair, his body somehow sunken in it, and his trousers were pulled tight over his knees. She knelt beside the arm of the chair; she could feel the tears pushing at the backs of her eyes.
“Tell me what’s the matter, Jack,” she pleaded.
His voice was harsh, and his glance was angry but at the same time ashamed. “Nothing,” he said. “Goddamn it, I told you there’s nothing wrong. Just leave me alone.”
The phone rang. He jumped up and snatched the receiver from the cradle. “Hello?” he said. He waited. “Yeah, yeah… Okay. Yeah, I’ll be right out.” He hung up and turned toward Gene as she slowly got to her feet.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, almost defiantly.
“Where? Out to the job?”
“Yeah.” He moved toward the door and Gene took a step after him.
“Jack, what’
s the matter? Jack, it’s our…” She stopped as blue, flickering terror gripped her heart and she felt as though she could not breathe. He had been talking to V; he was going to V.
He snatched his coat from the back of a chair. It skewed across his back as he thrust his hands at the armholes. The door slammed shut behind him.
Gene stood motionless, frozen. She heard the quick grind of the starter. She heard the motor race and the car rush off. She bent her head to look at the smooth silk of the nightgown that covered her body, and ran her hands down over her chest until they fell naturally to her sides. When she turned away from the door she was crying. Terrible sobs shook the body he did not want, and she stumbled toward the bedroom, weak with helpless rage and self-pity and hate.
9
When her anger had passed she was able to think coldly and clearly. She would get a divorce. She would get a divorce as quickly and with as little trouble as possible. She would go to Las Vegas and when it was over, if he would still have her, she would marry Charley Long.
But a thought nagged at her. She tried to thrust the thought from her mind but it kept returning and she had to consider it, and considering it she could not think coldly and clearly. She grew to like it more and more. It appealed to her: Jack was depending on her to save him from V. He needed her as a shield, if she left him she would be failing him, and somehow, with this, her dignity and self-respect were safe.
Each morning she got up and went to work and came home again to the often empty house, not because she was waiting for Jack to speak, but because she was turning the matter over in her mind. Gone was the cold determination she had had at first, and the more she thought that Jack must need her desperately, the stronger she felt. She liked the role she would soon be playing. And Saturday when the phone call came she almost welcomed it, although she was frightened and demoralized by the voice that came over the wire.
The woman’s voice was smooth and self-assured, strange to her, and yet she had known that voice for a long time. It was as though she had lived with that voice as long as she had lived with Jack, and hated it as long as she had loved him.