by Packer, Vin
“You see,” said Lou Hart, “it’s really Tonley. I made a mistake. I was just curious.”
“I’ll change it, Doctor.”
“No, it doesn’t matter all that much. I just wanted to see the card.”
She gave him a wry little smile. She had thick glasses, so thick that Lou could see only whirls and spools of glass where her eyes were. “My husband said you was awful tired or somethin’ when you checked in,” she said.
He thanked her and went out to his car. He knew, of course, how the name Tondley had come out, but the Duncan was an enigma. He knew no one by that name. It was a silly name, one he never thought about.
3
Joseph often thought back on that night with Varda, after the Wallace rally, but even that did not help him Saturday evening. Maggie sat up and lit a cigarette, and switched on the radio beside the bed. A giddy chorus of women were singing about the fact that a customer at a certain bargain centre had “all next year” to pay for Christmas presents. Joseph reached for a pamphlet he had been reading earlier that evening, a study of the Persian origin of the pomegranate and other “Dutch” motives in painted tinware.
“Well, I just hope he’s home by now,” Maggie said.
The phone call from Janice Hart, at noon, had snapped Maggie’s mood from one of nagging anger to one of maudlin sweetness. The news that Lou Hart had not come home all night had launched Maggie on a sea of sugar-coated clichés.
“I guess we never know how fortunate we are until we hear how unfortunate others are,” was one of them.
Another: “We may not have the perfect marriage, but we’re a lot better off than some people, aren’t we, Joseph?”
She was very nearly elated. It repelled Joseph. It reminded him of times past when she would have this same reaction after a horrible plane crash, or an earthquake, or a close friend’s divorce. She would change from the strong Maggie to the weak Maggie, affecting a certain togetherness with Joseph which had an undertone of desperateness, as though they were shipwrecked together, and stunned somehow into a perverse sense of gratitude at the fact that they had a three-day water supply.
“What are you reading, Joseph?” she said.
He began to read aloud, “Like so many motives in our art, the pomegranate harks back to an East more easterly than Biblical lands, to Persia, where — ”
“All right! All right!”
He knew he was not behaving in any way that went along with her present fantasy about them. “Well, dear,” he should have said, “this is a very fascinating pamphlet on ‘Dutch’ motives. I think it would interest you to know that — ”
“Sometimes,” she said, “he goes off for days without a word to Janice. She told me that. I’d leave him flat, if I were Janice!”
“I feel no sympathy for her. What did she let him kick the dog for? If they want to fight between themselves, let them, but why does an innocent animal have to be involved!”
“I knew if I repeated that part of the conversation, that’s all you’d remember. Here a man — a doc-tor, has gone off drunk and no one knows where he is, and his wife is frantic, and you think of the goddam dog!”
Joseph turned the page of the pamphlet as though he were reading it. All day he had been turning pages that he had not read, just going through the motions of life. He had a headache too; he had not had a headache in years, not since those days when he would drink alone, wake up the next morning to find a strange packet of matches on his bureau, or the blood on his collar; unable to remember where he had gone the night before. He could very easily have turned into a Lou Hart, had he not brought himself under control. Those days were unreal to him now; he could not imagine himself that way. He believed he very possibly might have been suffering from a nervous breakdown of some kind, without even knowing it. Only his sharp instinct for self-preservation had saved him. He thought of it now as a “stage” he had gone through. When his headache began at noon, he was shocked by it, for it was a surviving trace of a time past. Something else shocked Joseph Meaker, a dream he had had last night. It was funny that when he had awakened he did not remember it; but at noon, when he picked up the butter knife to spread jam on his toast, it came back to him.
He had dreamed of Dr. Saperstein, his dentist, the man who had stood up for him when he married Maggie. Saperstein knocked on the front door in the dream, and when Joseph opened it, Saperstein said he wanted back the gold stickpin he had made for Joseph.
“That’s not very fair,” Joseph had told him. “It was a gift.”
“But you never wear it, and I need the gold for a filling.”
“I will wear it!” Joseph had protested.
Saperstein had smiled in that polite way of his and answered quietly, “No, you won’t ever wear it. You’re afraid to. You’re afraid people will know you carry a knife.”
It was one of those illogical dreams, the sort Maggie was always repeating at breakfast, and Joseph almost never experienced. It bothered him, like some nasty buzzing fly in the bedroom at night. For a while it would go away and he would forget it; then it would dip down into his consciousness again and annoy his concentration.
Beside Joseph in the bed that night, Maggie was still carrying on a conversation. With herself, for all Joseph’s part in it.
“… and then I remember the time there was that big jet crash over in Staten Island, and what did you say? You said, ‘I bet there were animals on that plane.’ That’s what you said. That there were probably animals locked in the baggage compartment! Never mind the people being burned to a crisp! Let’s all cry over Fido!”
“There are always animals on planes,” said Joseph. “I see nothing strange in the remark.”
“You see nothing strange in anything about yourself! Strange people don’t!”
“That’s their compensation for being strange perhaps,” Joseph said.
“Animals on the plane! That’s you, in a nutshell!”
“… and my dear, I love your soul — profound, sad, wise and exalted like a symphony.”
Joseph felt a sudden fatigue, accompanied by the familiar loneliness. The only intruder was the headache. He got up and walked down the hall to the bathroom. Because it was Saturday night, near midnight, he very nearly expected to hear Maggie’s voice coming from the downstairs, when he passed the landing. He realized that he wished he could hear it, that he wished he could walk back into the bedroom and find no one there but Ishmael. Let Maggie have her great downstairs, and he would have his upstairs — and in the crook of his arm his cat would curl up, and it would be the way it used to be. Going down the dark hall, Joseph Meaker wished he could cry, cry as he had that night when he had picked up his pet from the road, and held it to him in its last breath of life. Now there was just this tender fullness inside of him, this huge aching that struggled for motion, this formless sensation waiting at the threshold of his control, like the genie not yet come to life in Aladdin’s lamp.
Chapter Twelve
On Monday morning Joseph woke up with the same headache, to the noise of Maggie on the telephone. It was ten minutes to seven and Maggie was telling someone that something was one hell of a goddamned good idea. Was it Tom Spencer calling? Amos Fenton? Was it about Risestaver Coffee? Picks Cigarettes? And was this to be the third consecutive day of the headache? Joseph lay on his back staring up at the ceiling, thinking about everything. All day yesterday Maggie had tried to get him to say he was not jealous of Amos Fenton. Joseph had refused, knowing that once he said he wasn’t, Maggie would imagine he was.
“Lord, Joseph, we’re old buddies, Amos and I.”
“I think that’s fine,” said Joseph.
“Then why the long face? Then Saturday night?”
“My face has always been long; it’s a characteristic of my face. As for Saturday night — those things happen.”
“Don’t you even wonder why they happen?”
“Not unless I think it’s about to be a matter of permanency.”
“Well, I c
an tell you why. You think something went on between Amos and me while you were upstairs Friday night.”
“I see.”
“So what if we have a few drinks and act a little affectionate! We’re very affectionate people. Amos and I are a lot alike. Some people are cold as January, and some aren’t; it’s just not their natures. They’re warm and outgoing!”
“Good for them.”
“Yes, good for them! It’s no reason to sit around and look daggers at someone all weekend.”
“Was I?”
“Were you?”
Joseph turned over in bed, trying to shut out the memories of yesterday’s conversations with Maggie. It was not that they annoyed him per se; quite the contrary. They seemed to have nothing to do with him, yet he knew somehow he was involved. Towards the end of Saturday and then all yesterday, Joseph had felt an estrangement from anything and anyone around him. He had the headache, for one thing; but it was more than that. It was a feeling of simply not caring, not being interested — not in Maggie or his life with her — not in Lou Hart or what was happening to him — not in his work — not even in his daydreams or the Varda file. He had moods in the past which bore a thin resemblance to yesterday’s, but there was a difference. In the past, it was emptiness he always felt, a hollowness. Yesterday he had felt full, nearly brimming over with something. Whatever it was, there was an urgency about it that would not let him sit still and read, or work, or paint, or do anything in any way distracting. Joseph likened it to the days back in college when it was almost time for Varda to come to his room, but not quite. During that small space of time he waited, he was never able to do anything. He would listen for her, imagine what it would be like when she got there, then listen for her, then imagine, then listen, and on and on until she was there. Yesterday was like that, wasn’t it? It was as though he were waiting for someone. Never mind who, what, why — that was Maggie’s kind of asinine analyzing; it was just the feeling he had, the fact that that was what it was like.
• • •
As he lay in bed wondering if his headache would persist that day, he thought of going somewhere; perhaps that would help. He had a second’s thought that he did not want any help, that he wanted only to let something come about (but what?) and that he must wait and be patient and it would. The thing was, he could not bear the headache and that seemed to be part of it. He decided to go to the cloisters in Ephrata, to have another look at them. In his mind he pictured the blank, grim and grey buildings, their steep-pitched roofs and worn, patched sides, as bare of paint today as they were two centuries ago. He remembered the doorways of the cloisters, five feet high only, built low to teach humility; a foot and a half in width, in reminder of the straight and narrow way. Inwardly he snickered remembering Louis Hart’s comment that that way of life was “the answer.” Hypocrite — with his Mercedes Benz and his three-day drunks! Oh, the hypocrisy! He hoped Louis Hart would run his Benz off the road! Yesterday Janice had phoned to say he still was not home. Joseph was unable to care. It was simply another annoyance, the same as Maggie’s periodic announcements of her non-involvement with Amos Fenton. And today? How did he feel today?
Maggie appeared in the bedroom then, a cigarette dangling from her lips, her face fresh with the excitement of whatever it was that was one hell of a goddamned good idea.
“Well!” she said, “that was Janice!”
No matter the news, Maggie was the type of person who revelled in being its bearer. Joseph remembered one night when he was working in his study, and Maggie had rushed up from the downstairs to announce Clark Gable’s death to him. The fact that she had been the one to bring the news gave her a certain air of personal involvement with the movie actor, and she sat beside Joseph rattling off Gable’s triumphs and telling of how an era had passed, offering to get Joseph a cup of hot coffee; then coming back with the coffee for more talk of Gable. She had colour in her cheeks and a flash to her eyes, and Joseph could see she was in the midst of a heady excitement. He remembered wondering what that was like, that feeling; and whether it was good or bad? Somehow it depressed him, he remembered.
That morning after Maggie announced that it was Janice on the telephone, she sat beside Joseph again, on the bed this time. It was like a monologue, “Well, why shouldn’t she?” she said. “He finally phoned again and said he was coming home. Well, Janice isn’t going to be there, that’s all! She’s going to ride into the city with me. We’ll need the car, Joseph. And she’s going to have a nice day in the city! Shop and have lunch and the hell with him! What should she do? Wait quietly with folded hands until he shows up? Then make him breakfast, I suppose. Well, that’s what he thinks! I don’t blame her one single — ”
Joseph sighed and realized he could not go to Ephrata. The cigarette between Maggie’s fingers was burning down dangerously close to her flesh, and it startled Joseph. He waited, watching it, and when it did burn her. she brushed her skin absent-mindedly and ground out the cigarette in the ashtray. She was that out of control! He had seen her do that when she was drinking, but now it was simply a case of sheer excitement that insensitized her. It gave him a strange feeling, in the light of all that was happening around him, a feeling that everyone was letting go, in little ways and big ways, and only he was still hanging on. To what? His headache was very bad now. To myself, he thought; I’m hanging on to myself. Maggie was telling him she was going to fix French toast for breakfast, as a special treat. She was pulling her nightgown over her head, telling him they would have thick bacon, the new pure maple syrup she had ordered from Vermont, and French toast! A special treat, she repeated. In honour of the fact Louis Hart is corning home to find his wife gone, Joseph thought; in honour of the fact Maggie is so wildly happy at others’ misery that she cannot feel her cigarette burn her. He tried to remember something from the Varda file, something to take his thought off this moment, but he could remember nothing to appease himself. He felt a strange nervousness start to invade his thoughts, so that they were all mixed up. There was one thought that stood impervious to the confusion, the thought that everything was a façade. In his mind he pictured a castle’s façade; he had seen a hamburger house on the road from Trenton, with a castle’s façade hiding it from view. A huge many-towered golden castle, and behind it, a squat little hamburger stand. Was that the sort of façade he meant? A big one with nothing behind it? Or was it one of an entirely different nature — one that looked innocent and was treacherous. Lou Hart’s face. Maggie’s — Amos Fenton’s — his thoughts began to race, mixed-up, crazy. His headache, worse. Across from him Maggie was naked before the mirror.
“God,” she said, “I’m getting stretch marks.”
2
After Maggie left, Joseph was alone for two hours. Again he tried to read without success. He made some notes on the pamphlet about the Persian origin of the pomegranate, which he had looked at Saturday night, but he realized that he had read it without concentration and he could remember very little. He remembered that for Christmas Maggie had said she would love a sketch of the house, and he thought of taking his sketch pad out and starting to work on it, but her attitude that morning had so disgusted him, he could not bring himself to do that for her. For a while he sat in the living room wondering if everyone was like Maggie, or if Maggie’s ways were unique. Callous. That was the word for her. For everyone as well? It seemed so; look at them — begin with Tom Spencer and his grovelling after money, accounts, a place on Madison Avenue; remember him sitting up all night to gripe about his wife not understanding him, callous at her loneliness upstairs, waiting for him to come to bed. Louis Hart with his immaculate Mercedes Benz, his filthy hole of an office; killer-doctor, that was a doctor, for you, wasn’t it? Ah, Amos Fenton — there goes Amos Fenton, a fellow with real character. Take Janice Hart, take — God! Joseph got up and walked across the living room. Music. That was what he needed. Music.
He chose Bach. Christ Lag in Todesbanden. He thought of nothing else but the music. He listened t
o the brooding, solemn start of the Sinfonia, then sang a bit with the chorus. “Er ist wieder erstanden;” his hands conducting the melody, oblivious, oblivious — until the third verse, until those words “da bleibet nichts den Tod gestalt”, with the violin’s brutal four-part chords. He could not stand to listen any longer. Was everything taken up with violence, brutality? Everything? Death? Strip death of its power — ha! Ha! He began to laugh, but he did not want to; he felt himself doing it, but he deplored it. Then as soon as it had started, he stopped it. He would put his hat and coat on and take a walk. He felt reassured by his decision not to stay in the house. It was all right to be nervous, and he was not blaming himself, but he was not going to let it get out of hand.
He was outside about twenty minutes when he saw the man walking towards him. There was something familiar about him, he could not think what it was. As the man came closer, Joseph saw that he was carrying some rope in his hand, that he was wearing a heavy outside flannel shirt, high boots that laced, and a battered brown fedora. He waved at Joseph. By the barn, Joseph waited for him. Then when the man was nearly within six feet of Joseph, Joseph remembered where he had seen him. At Tidd’s Woods last Friday. He was the man whose pheasant Joseph had taken. A shiver went through Joseph. The man was standing right in front of him now — but he was holding out his hand to shake with Joseph, and he was smiling. A trick?
“Hello? Name’s Billy Duncan, from over in Lambertville. Wonder if you’d do me a favour?”
“What is it?” said Joseph.
“I been hunting down in Tidd’s since eight-thirty. Got a deer back there. I put my gun across it, but I had some trouble that same place last Friday, and I don’t want to leave my gun or my deer too long.” The man smiled again. “So I was wondering if I could drag my deer here? Leave it while I get my car down the way?”