by Andre Dubus
When she became a regular with Greg at the bars, she began to see what was beneath the men’s stories, and their teasing each other about their mortality defined by their enlarged stomachs, and their hair graying or vanishing or both; and their other talk that was rarely serious, yet somehow was not dull either. They were trying to be entertaining, and hoping to be entertained. It was the reason they gathered to drink. And she began to think about Richie, as she stood at the bar, and during the days too, when she mused about this difference between men and women she had not remarked so clearly in Larry; for, like her, Larry had three close friends, and they talked seriously about acting and dancing, and death and love, and books they had read and movies they had seen. But in Richie and his friends she saw no difference at all, except alcohol and tobacco, from Greg and his friends. The essence of the friendships was sharing a game or sport or beer-drinking, and she could no more imagine Greg talking soberly and deeply with one of his friends than she could imagine Richie sitting in a living room and talking quietly with one of his about what he wanted and loved and feared.
My God, there was something about boys that domestic life and even civilization itself could not touch, and often they were infuriating and foolish, and yet when they lost that element, as boys or men, they became dull. So as a woman you were left having to choose between a grown boy and a flat American male, and either was liable to drive you mad, but at least with the boy your madness was more homicidal than suicidal, as it was with the other. No wonder the men at the bar, and on the hunting and fishing trips, called themselves the boys. They said: I’m going to have a beer with the boys; I’m going fishing with the boys, and in their eyes there was a different light, of distance, of reverie, and of fondness, as if they were unfolding a flag they had served when they were young.
And Greg still fought. His friends did not; and after the one fight she saw, they had patted him, squeezed him, and laughed and told him he’d better leave that stuff to the kids, or get himself a younger heart. He had won. He told Brenda once that his ex-wife Joan had said to him, many times: The trouble with you is nobody’s ever beaten you. Brenda said: Is that true? and he told her he thought it probably was, because he could remember getting the shit kicked out of him, but never losing. She was surprised by the fight she saw, in the bar near the beach store, because she was neither frightened nor scornful nor compassionate. She watched with excitement yet from an odd distance, as though watching two strangers have an equally-matched marital quarrel. The reason for the fight was as shallow as the other exchanges in that bar, and later she knew the true reason was simply a need they had not outgrown. The other man, in his late twenties or early thirties, said to the bartender that she—and he looked down the bar at Brenda—was too young and pretty to have all them old turkeys around her. He said it loudly, and he meant to say it loudly, and Greg was gone from her, was up the bar and turning the man to face him, then they were like two male dogs. They did all but sniff asses and scratch the earth: they growled and snapped and pushed, and she watched, and Greg’s friends watched, and everyone else watched, save the bartender who talked too, tried from across the bar to at least try to stop what he knew he could not. Then Greg swung and the other did and they punched and grappled and fell holding each other to the floor, and by then she knew, without knowing how she knew, that also like dogs they would not hurt each other. That was when she understood why they were fighting. They rose from the floor punching, then the young man went backward and down, got up quickly, and men grabbed him from behind, Greg’s friends held him, and the two yelled at each other till the bartender, still at his post, yelled louder and told them both to shut the fuck up. Then he told the young man to leave and come back another night when he didn’t want trouble. The bartender was not young either. That’s probably why he told him to leave, Greg said later, and because anyway the guy had started it and he wasn’t a regular. The young man took his change from the bar and left without looking at anyone, and Brenda watched his face as he walked, the blood over one eye and at his mouth. Greg was not bleeding, and he was laughing and buying a round for her and his friends, then he said make it a round for the house, and he overtipped the bartender, as he always did. Once she had told him he tipped too much, from sixty to a hundred percent, and he had said he had the money and the bartenders needed it and worked for it, and if he wanted to save money he’d buy a six-pack or two and drink them at home.
She watched his back; he still looked down at the water in the fountain, and it occurred to her that she had never watched him when he was oblivious of her. She had watched him when he pretended not to know she was, while he worked in his stores. But always she knew he felt her eyes on him. Perhaps he did now too. Though she did not think so, for he was a tired-looking man of forty-seven (forty-eight soon, in November) whose back and shoulders and lowered head showed weariness as a face does. Had he known she was watching, he would be standing tall now, and he would have crossed the lawn minutes earlier with quickened movements, for he was proud that she loved him. He had sculpted a style for himself, until he became that style, or most of him did, so he could take money from the world and hold onto enough of it to allow him to walk its streets with at least freedom from want and debt and servitude. On some nights, in her bed, when he had drunk enough, that style fell away like so much dust and he spoke softly to her, his eyes hiding from hers, and told her how happy he was that she loved him, how he woke each morning happy and incredulous that this lovely young woman loved him; told her that when he first saw it lighting her eyes, when he and Richie and she were eating dinners after the marriage, all of his thinking told him what he saw in her eyes could not be there, not for him; and his heart nearly broke in its insistence that he did see what he saw, and that he loved her too. And he said he would not blame her if she woke up one morning knowing it was all a mistake, that he was just someone she had needed for a while, and left him. Never, she said to him. Never.
Nor did she know why. He was good to her, and he made her laugh. He liked to watch her dance. He had watched Larry, as a father will watch a son perform anything from elocution to baseball to spinning a top. But that was not why he liked to watch her. Nor was it the reason he understood what she was trying to do with her body, and the music, on a stage or here in her living room. His senses told him that. And he knew why she danced, and why she had to keep dancing, while other people—her parents in Buffalo, and her two older sisters whose marriages had taken one to Houston, and the other to Albuquerque, and some of her friends too, though not the close ones—did not understand why she worked so hard at something and was content to remain an amateur. But Greg did. He was neither surprised nor amused when she told him she taught dance to make a living, but she could not remember ever wanting to be a professional dancer, though she had to dance every day, whether she was working with a company or not. She had seen recognition in his eyes. He listened, and nodded his head, and stroked his cheek, then said: Some people have things like that, and they don’t have to make money at it. It’s something they have to do, or they’re not themselves anymore. If you take it away from them, they’ll still walk around, and you can touch them and talk to them. They’ll even answer. But they’re not there anymore. She said: Are you talking about yourself? His eyes shifted abruptly, toward hers, as if returning from a memory. Me? No. I was thinking what Richie would be like, if they shut down the stables, and Catholic churches, and banned cross-country skiing. He had been sitting on this couch, and she had been standing in front of him. Then she sat beside him. What’s yours? she said. I don’t have one, he said. My father did. He was a carpenter. She said: I thought he worked for the railroad. He smiled and touched her cheek. He did, he said. He was a carpenter at home. At night, and on the weekends. God, you should have seen that house grow.
Now he turned from the fountain, and with her heart she urged him to straighten and stride with energy, but he did not, and he seemed to fade past the window and out of her view. She stood and we
nt to the refrigerator and got two bottles of beer, opened them, went back through the living room, and reached the door before he did. He smiled at her through the screen, and came in, and she kissed him over the bottles, felt his hold on the beer in her left hand, and released it to him; kissing him and feeling the cold bottle leave her fingers, she was struck by a sadness that was sudden yet so familiar now that she did not even have to call it death anymore. She looked up at him.
“I’ve been watching you,” she said.
“And?”
She smiled.
“I was trying to figure out why I love you.”
“And?”
“I just do. Come hold me, and tell me about your terrible day.”
“How do you know it was terrible?”
“I’ve been watching you. Come on.”
She put her arm about his waist and they went to the couch and sat, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Richie this morning,” he said, above her head.
“How was he?”
“He’s tough.”
“That’s good.”
“I wish to fuck he didn’t have to be.”
She nodded and nestled against him.
“He’ll be all right,” he said.
“Larry was here.”
“Was it bad?”
“He wasn’t. It was.”
“Jesus. Tonight I see Carol. After dinner.”
She looked at the moving curtains and the bird-bath and fountain. Then she said: “I’m lucky. Wickedly lucky.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m going to enjoy telling my family.”
“On the phone.”
“No. I’ll write letters.”
“You’ll enjoy that?”
“They never have known me. They might as well keep on, or start trying.”
“Do you love them?”
“Sure I do. But I love them better by mail. I need a shower.”
“I need another beer. At least.”
He went to the kitchen; in the bedroom she pulled the leotard down over her breasts and hips, and stepped out of it as he came in. He arranged two of her four pillows, then lay on the bed, his shoulders propped up so he could drink.
“I’ve seen worse,” he said.
“You’ve probably fucked worse.”
“I have,” he said, as she walked away from him, the sadness gone as she felt, because he watched her, the grace of her flesh, and its colors from the sun and her bikini. He had showered here last night, so she lowered the nozzle to keep her hair dry, and waited outside the tub till the water was hot. She stepped in and turned her breasts to the spray and closed her eyes, as she always did, not to keep water from them, but because she shut them to nearly all sensuous pleasures: lying in the sun and dancing alone in her living room and masturbating and making love. Only smoking and drinking and eating were better with your eyes open, and sometimes when she first inhaled or sipped or chewed, she closed her eyes then too. She turned her back to the water and soaped herself, and turned again and rinsed, and stayed, contained by the shower curtain and the hot water, until it began to cool. Then she turned the handle and lifted her arms as cold water struck her breasts and stomach, and she circled in it, her arms above her head, till the cold drew from her an exhaled sound, soft yet shrill, like a bird’s. She turned off the water and stepped out, rubbed her cool skin with a thick dark blue towel, then wrapped it around her body, from the tops of her breasts to her thighs, and went to the bedroom.
He had brought her a beer, set on the table at her side of the bed, and the other two pillows were waiting. She lay beside him, leaned against the pillows, and drank. He lit one of her cigarettes and gave it to her, then slid his leg toward hers so they touched. She said: “Maybe next summer I’ll be pregnant.”
“It’s better in winter, when it’s not so hot.”
“Then maybe next summer I’ll have a baby.”
“Why not.”
“Damned if I know,” she said. “So why not.”
The ashtray rested on his chest, and moved with his breathing. They lay quietly, as she felt the evening cool coming now to the lawn, and through the window behind the bed. She listened to the silence of the room, and their smoking and swallowing and quiet breath, and she felt held by tranquility and shared solitude, as the hands of her parents had held her on the surface of water when she was a child. She wanted to tell him that, but she did not want to speak. Then she knew that he sensed it anyway, and she lay, her bare leg touching his trousered one, her eyes closed, in the cool silence until he said he had to go now, he had to cook dinner for Richie.
SIX
BETWEEN RICHIE’S SQUEEZING thighs and knees, the sorrel mare Jenny turned with the track, and he saw the red barn, then she was cantering straight toward the jump, and over her head he saw Mr. Ripley’s white house and a flash of green trees and blue sky beyond its dark gray roof. He fixed his eyes at a point on Mr. Ripley’s back wall, directly in line with the middle of the upright posts. He held the reins with both hands, his leather riding crop clutched with his right, angling down and backward over his thigh, and with the kinetic exhilaration that years ago he had mistaken for fear, he glimpsed at the bottom of his vision Jenny’s ears and the horizontal rail. Then he was off the earth, flying with her between the uprights, his eyes still on that white point on the wall, his body above the saddle as though he sat on the air they jumped through. When her front feet hit he rocked forward and to the left but only for an instant, then he was in position again, his knees and thighs holding, and he leaned forward and patted her neck as she entered the curve of the oval track, and spoke to her: Good girl, Jenny. Good girl. Then she was around the curve and approaching the other jump; beyond it were the meadow and woods, and he found the top of the pine rising above clumped crowns of deciduous trees, and held his eyes on its cone of green. He listened to Jenny’s hooves as their striking vibrated through him like drumbeats, listened to her breathing as he felt it against his legs, and listened to his own quick breath too, and the soft motion of air past his ears: a breeze that was not a breeze, for he and Jenny were its sources, speeding through air so still that no dust stirred from the track before them. Then he was in it, in the air, the pine blurring in the distance, and down now, a smooth forward plunge that pulled his body with it, but this time he held, and when Jenny hit, his body did not jerk forward but flowed with hers, in horizontal cantering speed down the track, as he patted her neck, and spoke his praise. He did not take her into the leftward curve. He was still looking at the pine, and with his left knee he guided her straight on the track, then off it, past the curve and toward the woods. Because Mr. Ripley had said it was awfully hot for both him and Jenny, and if he wanted to, he could jump her for fifteen minutes and then take her on the trail to cool down, and pay only eight dollars instead of the ten for an hour’s jumping.
He veered right, away from the pine, and angled her across the meadow, then slowed her to a trot and posted, his body moving up and down in the rhythm of her strides. He looked at the sky above the woods, then around him at the weeds and short grazed-over grass of the meadow. For a quarter of an hour he had smelled Jenny and leather, and now that they were moving slowly, he could smell the grass too. The two-thirty sun (though one-thirty, really: daylight savings time) warmed his velvet-covered helmet, and shone directly on his shoulders and back, like the hot breath or stare of God. For he felt always in God’s eye, even when he heard sirens, and knew from their sounds whether it was a fire truck or ambulance or police car, and he imagined houses burning, and bleeding people in crumpled and broken cars, and he knew God saw and loved those who suffered, yet still saw and loved him, and heard his silent prayer for the people at the end of the sirens’ long and fading sound. Sister Catherine had taught them that, in the fourth grade: whenever they heard a siren, she told them to bow in prayer at their desks, to pray for those who were suffering now. He reached the entrance to the trail cut into the woods, and Jen
ny went on her own between the trees, turned left, and slowed to a walk, into the deep cool shade. He settled into the saddle, and shifted his weight to his hips.
He knew that God watched him now, had watched him all day, and last night as he listened on the stairs, then in his room; had watched him on this day from the beginning of time, in the eternal moment that was God’s. As soon as He made Adam or started the evolution that would end with people who stood and talked—and loved, he thought, loved—He had known this day, and also had known what Richie did not: what he would do about it, how he would live with it. Richie himself did not know how he would live with it. Everyone had to bear a cross as Christ did, and he lived to prepare himself for his, but he saw now that he had believed he had already borne the one for his childhood. Nobody had ever said you got one as a child and one or even two when you grew up, but there it was: he had felt spared for a few more years. Two years ago his mother moved out and then they were divorced and he carried that one, got himself nailed to it, hung there in pain and the final despair and then released himself, commended his will and spirit to God, and something in him died—he did not know what—but afterward, like Christ on Easter, he rose again, could love his days again, and the people in them, and he forgave his parents, and himself too for having despaired of them, for believing they could never love anyone and so were unworthy of love, of his love too, and unworthy even of the earth, and its life. Had forgiven himself through confession to Father Oberti one winter morning before the weekday Mass, while snow fell outside, so he had to walk to the church, and snow melted on his boots in the confessional, and he whispered to Father Oberti what he had felt about his mother and father, and how he had also committed the sin of despair, had believed that God had turned from him, that he could never again be happy on this earth, and had wished for his own death, and his parents’ grief; had imagined many times his funeral, and his parents, standing at opposite sides of the grave, crying. Father Oberti had said it was a very good confession, and a very mature one for a young boy. Behind the veil between them, Father Oberti looked straight ahead, his cheek resting on his hand, and did not know who Richie was, but Richie had said, at the beginning, Bless me, Father, for I have sinned; I’m ten years old.