by Oakley Hall
“Goddamn us both for this,” he said.
He crossed the room unsteadily and sat down in the big Monterey chair cradling the drink against his chest. He watched V. He studied every inch of her he could see, wishing he could see her face, wondering how she felt. He wondered if she felt anything of what he did, wanting suddenly, desperately, to know how she felt about this.
“Well, how do you feel?” he said aloud, and then he said, “V, I guess this tears it. I think I wanted that kid.”
She said something he couldn’t understand, her voice muffled in her hands. Her fingers kneaded her forehead. “I keep thinking up names for it,” he said. “I keep thinking about that.”
“Do you?” he heard her say.
“Well, we fixed it up, all right,” he said. “Just like everything else. We fix everything,” and all at once he was surprised he wasn’t blaming her. He didn’t need to hurt her for this. This was their doing, the two of them together. It was not just his fault, or her fault. This was the two of them and he could never blame her for anything again.
“Red and the kid, honey,” he said, to himself and to her. “Do you think we’re worth it? Do you think the two of us are worth the two of them?” He was glad he had not mentioned Denton.
“Now we have to be,” she said, and she turned and looked out the glass doors. It was a beautiful day—he hadn’t noticed it before—the sun was shining and the sky was a hot, light blue; the kind of day on which kids pile into their old jalopies and go out to the beach and everything is beautiful. He watched V’s back as she looked out at the sky and the ocean and the sandstone cliffs around the cove.
“No,” he said. “We’re not worth it,” and she turned back toward him. Her face was like a stiff mask with two dark eye-holes in it, her nose ridiculously caked with the white paste.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s only our fault. It’s always been our fault.” His glass was empty. It had left a wet circle on the dark arm of the chair.
V nodded. “I don’t know what to say to you,” she said. “Except…Except I know how you must feel. I’m sorry.”
“I know what to say. I’m going back to her. If she’ll have me, I’m going.”
V put her hand on the edge of the sideboard as though she would have fallen. “No! Jack!” she cried hoarsely.
“See, I have to make it up to her,” he said. “I owe her most now.”
“Jack!” she screamed at him, but then he couldn’t hear her anymore. He heard only her fist pounding hollowly on the top of the sideboard. He couldn’t see her anymore. He knew she was talking, crying out to him, but her voice seemed to come from very far away, and he wouldn’t let himself listen.
He helped himself up and made his way to the door. He turned the knob and opened it. He didn’t look back at V. She was calling to him but he didn’t hear. His legs were like rubber and he felt sick and hollow, but he felt strong in knowing what he had to do. When he closed the door behind him he found he still had the empty glass in his hand. He took it with him.
12
He was lying awake one night, staring at nothing and thinking of too many things. He wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t want to wake Gene. He could feel the feverish warmth of her body next to his, and he lay perfectly still, searching the darkness with his eyes.
Now he could make out the dim forms in the room; the dresser below the black pool of the mirror, the lighter shapes of the windows, the darker shape of the door to the living room, the chair over which his workclothes hung, the luminous hands of the alarm clock on the bedside table. He concentrated on the slow, sleepy sound the clock made, the sound of time being destroyed.
He turned as he felt a movement beside him. He could see Gene’s head on the pillow, the short, dark hair, the pale face. He felt her hand on him and her voice was blurred with sleep. “Are you thinking about V, Jack?”
He didn’t say anything. He put his arm under her head so that her face was pressed against his chest.
“You are,” she said, but her voice did not sound concerned. He could see the soft luster of her eyes. “Jack,” she said. “Trust me, won’t you? Don’t worry.”
“Sure,” he said.
Her arm crept around his neck and she pressed her thin body against him. She was unhealthily hot under her cotton pajamas. She was not well, he knew, had not been well since the abortion. She had lost weight and her eyes seemed to have been pulled deep into her head. But she never complained and he knew it was because she didn’t want to worry him.
“Honey,” he said, “why don’t you go to a doc?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said sleepily. “I feel better every day,” and she giggled. “Don’t pretend you were worrying about me, darling.”
“I was.”
“Too?” She laughed again. “She can’t fight the both of us, Jack. I’m too strong now. Don’t worry about her. Don’t worry about either of us.”
“Sure,” he said. “Go on back to sleep, Gene.” She smiled and closed her eyes and he kissed the end of her nose, feeling false, completely false, knowing she believed she had arrived at an understanding of this thing, but knowing she had not, because there was too much she could never understand.
She seemed to have come to look upon V as a kind of evil witch, whom he hated but under whose spell he was. She was protecting him from that witch. She seemed to enjoy the prospect of sacrificing herself for him in some way, and he could not tell her she was wrong.
He could not tell her that he had never wanted her as he wanted V. He could not explain that when she pressed against him in the night, or touched him, it wasn’t her he wanted. There was no way to make her know she had never satisfied him. He couldn’t even try. It was not her fault and he could not hurt her by trying to explain.
Now he knew the problem. It was so basic and simple that it took his breath away, and he had been searching for the answer without even knowing what the problem was. It was that he loved V. He loved V too much ever to love Gene enough. Trying to love and live with Gene was like walking a tightrope to which he could cling with nothing but his will. He had no feet, no arms, no hands, because they belonged to V; he had only his will to hold on with, and it was neither strong enough to let him make his way nor weak enough to let him fall.
With Gene there was not enough. He had to keep striving for something else outside his life with her. She had talked him into sending for a brochure on a correspondence engineering course. He had wanted to send for it himself, but he knew he could not be an engineer. He knew what he was. He was a cat skinner who was smart enough, who could handle men well enough, to be a grade foreman. Yet he had the feeling that he should strive to be more, not merely because of Gene, but because he felt the need of something else. He must try to be what he could not be.
Even though he knew the problem, that did not give him the answer. He knew what he owed V, but now he owed Gene more. He had left the one debt unpaid to pay the other in counterfeit coin.
The cruelty of it made him groan aloud, for none of it was Gene’s fault. He could love her in a way, but never completely. He wanted her to be well so they could have a child and maybe then it would be all right—it was a straw he grasped at desperately, but he knew it was only a straw.
And she wasn’t well yet. They would have to wait. He couldn’t have her if he had wanted her. He lay awake, listening to the clock grinding the seconds into the past, and each second came to seem to him a terrible loss that should be caught and drained of everything it held before it was gone.
13
When he went back to V again he wept for the first time since he had been a boy. He was not ashamed that V should hear him sobbing, heavy, unpracticed sounds that shook his body and left him gasping. V seemed to understand there was nothing else he could do. This feeling, that once would have found an outlet in furious anger, in a fight, in getting drunk, was now too huge, too complicated. There was nothing else he could do.
And when it was over h
e felt relieved. V was stroking his back and he took her hand between his and pressed it to his face, his face turned into the pillow. The end of the sobbing had brought a tired catharsis to his body and mind, and now he could think clearly, his mind washing clearly and quickly over the knots that had seemed unsolvable, like a mountain stream over the pebbles and boulders in the stream bed.
Shame was gone. Guilt was buried in the past. Everything was strange and new. This woman whom he could not see, but whose hand he clutched tightly to his face, was all that life had ever held for him, was life itself, and he was held to her by ties made up by both their lives. He realized he loved her completely and cleanly, had always, and the dirt of the guilt, the shame of the animal in himself, were washed away in the clear, cold stream of his mind. Everything he felt for her was purified and he saw the perfection he had only to close his hand upon.
Everything was simple now, turned into simple, understandable meanings and answers, and the torturing phantoms he had lived with so long were gone. The need for hurting V was gone. Guilt was gone; the death of Red, the murder of the unborn child, had been paid for now in his and V’s separate sufferings. They were separate no longer, but welded inextricably together.
The weight that had crushed him into a sobbing, grotesque caricature of himself was gone. He had felt it lift and dissolve into the air. He released V’s hand. He had wanted her fiercely, but suddenly he was no longer ashamed of the wanting. There was more than that for them; he knew it, yet now they did not need more, now they had not had time for more, they had had no chance for more. All that had held him from her in fear and hate was gone and what had thrust him to her only in wildness was gone, and it was as though his brain had burst free into a place where everything was calm and serene. He wished desperately he could tell V of this discovery, this change, the termination of the sentence, but he did not have the words. He could only run his hands over her body that was long and cool and clean, had always been so clean, that belonged to him and had always belonged to him, hearing the husky sound in her throat and feeling her arms come around his neck, arms that had known always that he belonged to her. He could not tell her, he could never hope to tell her. He could only show her, and feeling the aching pull again at his throat, he showed her; knowing that this was no animal, this was all of him, all of her was all of him, the wonder and the beauty of his life, that left him washed clean now and completely whole, that was his perfection, and exaltation, and apotheosis.
When it was over she lay with her face pressed against his chest. Her face felt wet but she made no sound. He looked down at her bare back and her brown arm flung out on the pillow, and stroked her hair, feeling the warm wetness of her tears on his chest.
Finally she said, “Will you go to her now?”
“Yes,” he said. “I can tell her now.”
V raised her head and pulled herself upright, her hands clutching his arms. “Will you?”
He nodded, trying to smile at her. He would go to Gene now and tell her. But V’s face was frightened. Her hair had slid around to cover one cheek and her mouth was trembling. She stared into his eyes and he could feel the sharp points of her fingernails digging into his arms.
“Yes,” he said. “I can do it now. I understand it now. I’ve been crazy too long, but I’m not anymore.”
She shook her head. The lock of blonde hair slid back and forth over her cheek. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve said that before. I’m afraid.” He thought she was going to say more, but she only repeated, “I’m afraid,” and shook her head again and bit her lip.
He freed his arms and put them around her and pulled her down. “Listen, V,” he said, speaking very slowly and carefully. “I’m going to Gene and tell her I want a divorce and she’s going to give it to me. Then we’re going to get married.” He shook her gently. “We’re going to get married,” he said.
She thrust her damp face into his throat, and he could feel her breath when she spoke. “I’ve thought about it so much,” she whispered. “I build it up and think we’ve got it now—that it’s finally going to be…and then it always falls apart again. I believe you now, when I hear you say it like that and see it in your face, but when you go away I’ll die and die and die, because I know it won’t be true.”
“Shut up with that,” Jack said. “Knock that off. I’ll cut off an arm and leave it here with you so you’ll be sure.” He shook her again. “Listen, V,” he said. “Where’ll we go? Back to the Valley?”
She laughed softly. “We can go anywhere. Haven’t you ever thought of that? I’ve got quite a lot of money. We can go anywhere and do anything we want to.”
“What would you want to do?”
She shook her head, her hair tickling his shoulder. “What do you want to do?”
“Buy a couple of cats. Rent them around. After a while buy some more equipment and get a little business going.”
“We could buy a lot of cats. Right away.”
“Just two,” Jack said. “Two big yellow D-8 dozers. I want there to be more because of my being smart enough, not because of your dough.”
“Maybe they’d have a little cat,” V said. She laughed breathlessly, and moved her face so that she was looking up at him. He had never seen her eyes look so big and dark. Her nostrils were stretched taut, as though she were holding her breath.
“There’ll be a lot of little cats,” Jack said. He laughed too. The laughing bubbled up inside him and made him shake all over. He thought of Gene; but that didn’t matter now. Nothing else mattered.
V laughed the breathless laugh. “How bourgeois,” she said shakily. “How completely beautifully perfect and bourgeois.” He didn’t know the word. His breath caught in his throat as he stared down at her; how much more did she know that he didn’t know? How much was she used to that he was not? How could she want what he wanted? Suddenly he was afraid.
“V, is that what you want, too? You don’t just want to go somewhere and be big time, do you? You…”
“No,” she said.
He shook his head at her. “You could; I guess you know that. But I never could. You know that. You know what I am. Just…”
“You shut up,” V cried. “Haven’t I ever told you all I wanted?”
He nodded seriously, and then he grinned. V smiled back at him.
“You’re my big time,” she said. “And how I’ve tried to make it!”
He moved his face until his cheek was against hers and she was pressed against his chest. Her body felt tight and hard, as though every muscle was being strained, and she pushed him away again. “Is this it?” she whispered, her eyes probing his. “Really? Really?”
“Really, damn it!” He pulled her roughly back. Her body relaxed and she clung to him.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. I know it. But when you go away now, I’ll die. I’ll…”
He covered her mouth with his hand. “Goddamn it,” he whispered in her ear. “I mean this.” He brushed the blonde hair away from her ear and put his lips against it and whispered, “Something happened to me just then. Something broke. There’s nothing else now. There’s nobody else now.” He felt her hands tighten on his back and he removed his hand from her mouth and covered it with his mouth, feeling her strong arms on his back and pulling her to him and trying to make her know that it was now; it was now, and there would never be anything that could get between them again, because now there were only the two of them, there was nothing else; because now he knew what she was to him, and he could not live without her.
He left her sleeping to go back to the job. He wanted to go to work. He drove up beside the bulldozer, called to Danny Snyder to get down, and climbed up on the cat himself. He ran it all the rest of the afternoon, working as deftly and as surely as he had ever worked, enjoying hugely the dust in his nostrils and the trembling of the clutch levers and the dozer control under his hands, feeling his own sure power, his own narrow but complete skill, transmitted through the enormous power of th
e cat.
When the five-o’clock whistle blew he leaped down off the cat tracks. Danny waved and when Jack came over to him, said, “Hey, Jack, you should have been a cat skinner.”
14
He drove through San Diego and onto the Coronado ferry, thinking about Gene. He had not avoided thinking about her that afternoon. She was only another problem that was newly simple too, and did not bother him. Now that he knew his own mind, now that he knew himself and V, he would just have to go to Gene and tell her, as he should have told her the first time, that they had to get a divorce. He would let her keep everything they owned, for he needed nothing. She would be hurt, he knew, but hurt less than if this were to continue, and he could only try to tell her how sorry he was. And Gene was young yet and attractive enough. She would soon forget him and marry again and be happy the way he could never make her happy. He was completely confident he could make her see why it had to be this way.
But Gene was not at the apartment.
He felt puzzled and vaguely worried, he was sorry it had to be put off, but his mood was not affected. He took the ferry back to San Diego and drove out to La Jolla with the radio playing, tapping his foot in time to the music. Wind from the open wind-wing was shunted onto his face and he had never felt so completely free.
He grinned at the operator as he got into the elevator. He walked down the carpeted hall of the fifth floor with long strides. Then he heard the sound.
First it was just a harsh, echoing whack, something he’d vaguely heard before. Then it was a shot. His legs became leaden as he realized it. He stopped. He moved forward again and ran the few steps to the door. He put his hand on the brass knob, he turned it, pushed. The door opened.
Through the great glass doors light streamed into the room and stabbed his eyes and burst in his head. He stood in the doorway, holding the edge of the door with a hand that felt like a steel hook. A meaningless sound rasped in his throat as he looked down at the crumpled shape on the floor, and the blood.