by Andre Dubus
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.
VI
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 grey 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 Jenny 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, commanded 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.
Now he had a second cross, its weight pressing down on his shoulder here on the trail beneath the trees, pressing on his heart, really, so he thought: That’s it: being sad is the cross. And he knew that somehow he must not be sad, even though he was, and he thought of Larry standing at the fence around the indoor ring in winter, Sunday after Sunday, and the outdoor ring in warm seasons, all those Sundays Larry driving him to Ripley Farm and waiting. Yet he did not have to wait. Most of the children who rode with Richie were driven to the stables and then picked up, but always Larry waited, and he did that until Richie was old enough to ride his bicycle to his lesson, and still in winter or rain Larry drove him. He had been grateful but had never said so, and he had been grateful to Larry for teaching him to cross-country ski, and he saw Larry now skiing beside him, stopping to help him up when he fell on his back in the snow, his ankles turned with the skis he partly lay on, and he had never told Larry that either: how Larry had given him the two sports he most loved. He played softball and touch football, basketball and hockey with his friends in the neighborhood, and he played well enough to like these games, but he did not like the games enough to enjoy them unless he was playing with friends. This was what he loved: big strong Jenny under him, and the woods around and above him; and cr
oss-country skiing over the athletic field and into the woods on the trail marked with orange circles painted on trees. A small college was near his house, and the college owned the athletic field and woods, and the trails were marked for the students; so he saw them sometimes, skied around them or waited while they skied around him, but they did not disturb him any more than chipmunks running across the trail did here, or the male cardinal he saw leaving its perch, or the blue jay, or the two doves. In riding and skiing he had found an answer to one of his deepest needs, without even knowing he had the need, and so without even seeking an answer. He had learned to make his spiritual solitude physical and, through his flesh, to do this in communion with the snow and evergreens, and the naked trees that showed him the bright sky of winter; and with the body of a horse, and the earth its hooves pounded, the air it breasted, and this woods and his glimpses through leaves of the hot blue sky.
So he wondered what he had ever given Larry, and what he could give him now, what he could do without hurting Brenda, or his father. He patted Jenny’s neck, looked between her ears at the winding trail, and looked about him at the woods, with its air that was close and still, yet cool, and he saw the world as a tangle of men and women and boys and girls, thick and wildly growing as this woods; some embraced and some struggled, while all of them reached upward for air and rain and sun. He must somehow move through it, untouched by it, but in it too, toward God. He knew he could do that on a horse, and on cross-country skis, and at Mass when the Consecration sharpened his focus so that he was only aware of himself as a breathing heart, and two knees on the padded kneeler, and two arms resting on the wooden back of the pew in front of him; and then when he took the Body and Blood of Christ from the priest, and placed it on his tongue, and softly chewed as he walked back to his pew. At all those times, he was so free of the world and his life in it that he could have been in another country, in another century; or not even on the earth, and not mortal.
So it was people. They were the cross, and the sadness they brought you, and he could not spend the next five years, till he entered the seminary, on a horse or on skis or at Mass. From Christ he had to receive the strength or goodness or charity or whatever it was to give his father and Brenda more than forgiveness and acceptance. He had to love their days in the house with him, and they had to know he did. And he had to be with Larry outside of the house, as he saw his mother now. Saint Paul had written that all the works were nothing without love. He had to love them all, and he could do that only with Christ, and to receive Christ he could not love Melissa. He knew that from her scents this morning, and her voice, and her kiss.
VII
WHEN CAROL WAS a girl, and her father had spoken to her like this, his face and voice so serious, his speech slow and distinct, as though he studied each word before speaking, she had thought he was stern, and she was frightened. But now she was smiling. She knew she ought not to be, and when she was conscious that again her lips were spread, she drew them in, and tried to return his gaze whose parts were greater than mere seriousness: he was contrite, supplicatory, and he looked trapped too, as if he were lying to her. At twenty-six, she loved him from the distance of a grown daughter, and so more easily, warmly, perhaps more deeply. Yet she felt nostalgia too, a tangible sigh of it in her heart, for the love she had for him when she was a girl: when she believed he was the best father anyone could have, and the most handsome, and that he could do anything on earth she would ever need him to; and she believed that, more than Larry, more even than her mother, she possessed him. When she had outgrown those feelings she had outgrown her fear of him too, and if she had had a choice, she would have chosen the way she loved him now.
She had cleaned her apartment for his visit, and put on a dress, but that was pride, not fear. She had even picked up two blouses and a pair of jeans that had fallen to the closet floor some time ago, and placed them on hangers, and she had slid the closet door shut, which she would have done anyway, but she knew she was doing it to hide two of René’s shirts hanging among her clothes, the shirts touching a blouse on one side and a dress on the other, a charade of their owners. All of this was so foolish and, besides, even if he did peer into her closet like some prying detective of a father, which he was not, René’s shirts were small enough to be a woman’s. So maybe there was still fear, a trace of it, but more likely it was the habitual defense through privacy that one maintained against parents. She had been anxious, though, because of his voice on the phone that morning, and his refusal to tell her why he was coming, save to assure her that the family was in good health, there was nothing to worry about, nothing terrible had happened. Still, when she cleaned her dressing table, she opened the drawer and looked at the vial of cocaine and packet of marijuana. She sat, trying to decide which to employ, before she remembered she had begun by trying to decide whether to use any drug at all. She closed the drawer, stood and glanced about her bedroom whose windows looked out at treetops and down at Beacon Street. She worked for a travel agency and could not afford the apartment but it was worth it and she thought no more about that. She went to the living room, saw on the mantel a Gauloise pack René had forgotten, and brought it to the bedroom and put it in the drawer with the cocaine and marijuana. As she had all her life, she saw this recurrence as a sign: it was meant for her to reach for either the marijuana or the cocaine. But she shut the drawer and sat in the living room, in a wing-backed chair, and waited. Now she was drinking her second Stolichnaya; so was her father, and she watched the level in his glass. She did not want to finish first, and she wished he would hurry.
It was not the vodka that gave her mouth control of itself, so that it smiled when it should not. At times she even laughed, and brought her hand to her mouth, and cleared her throat, and he looked relieved, though puzzled. She felt herself blush too, when she laughed, but there he sat in the old leather-cushioned rocker she had bought from Diana, last year’s roommate who had left to live with her boyfriend in Brookline; they had believed they would remain close friends, but Carol had not seen her since winter, and that once was by chance. So the rocking chair often reminded her of Diana, and of the death of friendship that lovers so often caused, and he sat in that chair and talked about Larry and Richie and his friend Brady the state representative, and she not only felt mirthful but could not keep from showing it. Finally his face became more quizzical than anything else, and he stopped talking, looked at her for a moment, then with two swallows finished his drink while she held in her mouth and savored the last of hers.
“You taught me to dance on your toes,” she said, and took his glass and went to the kitchen. At the sink she ate his onions and tossed out the ice, put in new cubes, poured vodka from the bottle in the freezer, and forked onions from a jar into the glasses, ground pepper over the ice, then in the doorway she stopped and let the smile come and stay.
“You stood on my feet,” he said. “How old were you?”
“Eight. No, nine.”
She brought him the drink and sat looking at him.
“That was good,” he said.
“It was. Remember, we’d do it late into the night? Even after Mom went to bed. And I thought Mom was jealous. I thought I could see it in her face at breakfast.”
“You probably did.”
“Was she?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Did you ever?”
“Ask if she was jealous? No.”
“Ask her anything.”
He lit a cigarette, and she knew it was to shift his eyes and his face, and to use his hands, but she quietly waited. How confused they became, these men. For so long she had not known it, even when she first had lovers (not lovers, boys: high school boys), but in college or in her early twenties, she could not recall precisely when, or even what man she had learned it from, she knew with the sudden certainty of one who wakes with the answer to last night’s enigma. No matter how old they were, there was something in them that stopped aging at nineteen and, if they loved her,
she could summon it from them at will.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.
“Which way?”
“Trying to blame you. It was affectionate. You see, it’s so funny. That’s why I keep laughing like an idiot. You’ve always been—you know what you’ve been. I don’t know about you and Mom. But I’m sure of one thing. If you ever asked her how she felt about something, whatever she said wouldn’t stop you.”
His face reddened and he smiled and looked down at his drink, pinched an onion out of it and put it in his mouth.
“So I’m a selfish bastard,” he said, and chewed and watched her. But she knew he did not mean it, for she had seen in his lowered face, and his smile, that look men wore when they knew they were bad boys yet were loved by a woman anyway. At once she saw him in bed with Brenda, and she glanced at his crotch, then looked at her cigarette, drew from it, seeing him as he must be in Brenda, an aging and grateful bear.
“I always thought of you as a bear,” she said.
“A bear?”
“A wiry bear. Just wandering through the woods like it’s all his. Eating berries. Catching fish. But don’t fuck with him.”
“Sounds like a grizzly.”
“That’s when I was a little girl.”