The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  “Go to sleep in there,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “Don’t make me have to come in there.” He listened. In a little while, he knew, they would begin it all again; they would keep it up until they got sleepy. He turned the television back on, so they wouldn’t have to worry that he might hear them, and then he lay back on the sofa, miserable, certain that he would be awake all night. But some time toward the middle of the late movie, he fell asleep and had another dream. It was, really, the same dream: he was with Jean and the kids in a building, and they were looking for a way out; one of the boys opened a door on empty space, and Casey, turning, understood that this place was hundreds of feet above the street; the wind blew at the opening like the wind at the open hatch of an airliner, and someone was approaching from behind them. He woke up, sweating, cold, disoriented, and saw that the TV was off. With a tremendous settling into him of relief, he thought Jean had changed her mind and come home, had turned the TV off and left him there to sleep. But the bedroom was empty. “Jean,” he said into the dark, “Honey?” There wasn’t anyone there. He turned the light on.

  “Daddy, you fell asleep watching television,” Michael said from his room.

  “Oh,” Casey said, “Thanks, son. Can’t you sleep?” “Yeah.”

  “Well—goodnight, then.”

  “Night.”

  So Jean is gone. Casey keeps the house, and the boys. He’s told them their mother is away because these things happen; he’s told them she needs a little time to herself. He hears Jean’s explanations to him in everything he says, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. It’s as if they were all waiting for her to get better, as if this trouble were something physiological, an illness that deprives them of her as she used to be. Casey talks to her on the phone now and then, and it’s always, oddly, as if they had never known anything funny or embarrassing about each other, and yet were both, now, funny and embarrassed. They talk about the boys; they laugh too quickly and they stumble over normal exchanges, like hello and how are you and what have you been up to. Jean has been working longer hours, making overtime from Dana’s husband. Since Dana’s husband’s office is right downstairs, she can go for days without leaving the house if she wants to. She’s feeling rested now. The overtime keeps her from thinking too much. Two or three times a week she goes over to the boys’ school and spends some time with them; she’s been a room mother since Michael started there two years ago, and she still does her part whenever there’s something for her to do. She told Casey over the phone that Rodney’s teacher seems to have no inkling that anything has changed at home.

  Casey said “What has changed at home, Jean?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

  The boys seem, in fact, to be taking everything in stride, although Casey thinks there’s a reticence about them now; he knows they’re keeping their feelings mostly to themselves. Once in a while Rodney asks, quite shyly, when Mommy’s coming home. Michael shushes him. Michael is being very grown up and understanding. It’s as if he were five years older than he is. At night, he reads to Rodney from his Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. Casey sits in the living room and hears this. And when he has to work late, has to leave them with a baby-sitter, he imagines the baby-sitter hearing it, and feels soothed somehow—almost, somehow, consoled, as if simply to imagine such a scene were to bathe in its warmth: a slightly older boy reading to his brother, the two of them propped on the older brother’s bed.

  This is what he imagines tonight, the night of the last performance of Swan Lake, as he stands in the balcony and watches the Hall fill up. The Hall is sold out. Casey gazes at the crowd and it crosses his mind that all these people are carrying their own scenes, things that have nothing to do with ballet, or polite chatter, or finding a numbered seat. The fact that they all move as quietly and cordially to their places as they do seems miraculous to him. They are all in one situation or another, he thinks, and at that instant he catches sight of Jean; she’s standing in the center aisle below him. Dana is with her. Jean is up on her toes, looking across to the other side of the Hall, where Casey usually sits. She turns slowly, scanning the crowd. It strikes Casey that he knows what her situation is. The crowd of others surges around her. And now Dana, also looking for him, finds him, touches Jean’s shoulder and actually points at him. He feels strangely inanimate, and he steps back a little, looks away from them. A moment later, it occurs to him that this is too obviously a snub, so he steps forward again and sees that Dana is alone down there, that Jean is already lost somewhere else in the crowd. Dana is gesturing for him to remain where he is. The orchestra members begin wandering out into the pit and tuning up; there’s a scattering of applause. Casey finds a seat near the railing and sits with his hands folded in his lap, waiting. When this section of the balcony begins to fill up, he rises, looks for Dana again, and can’t find her. Someone edges past him along the railing, and he moves to the side aisle, against the wall. He sees Jean come in, and watches her come around to where he is.

  “I was hoping you’d be here tonight,” she says, smiling. She touches his forearm, then leans up and gives him a dry little kiss on the mouth. “I wanted to see you.”

  “You can see me anytime,” he says. He can’t help the contentiousness in his voice.

  “Casey,” she says, “I know this is not the place—it’s just that—well, Dana and I were coming to the performance, you know, and I started thinking how unfair I’ve been to you, and—and it just doesn’t seem right.”

  Casey stands there looking at her.

  “Can we talk a little,” she says, “outside?”

  He follows her up to the exit and out along the corridor to a little alcove leading into the rest rooms. There’s a red velvet armchair, which she sits in, then pats her knees exactly as if she expected him to settle into her lap. But she’s only smoothing her skirt over her knees, stalling. Casey pulls another chair over and then stands behind it, feeling a dizzy, unfamiliar sense of suffocation. He thinks of swallowing air, pulls his tie loose and breathes.

  “Well,” she says.

  “The performance is going to start any minute,” he says.

  “I know,” she says. “Casey—” She clears her throat, holding the backs of her fingers over her lips. It is a completely uncharacteristic gesture, and he wonders if she might have picked it up from Dana. “Well,” she says, “I think we have to come to some sort of agreement about Michael and Rodney. I mean seeing them in school—” She sits back, not looking at him. “You know, and talking on the phone and stuff—I mean that’s no good. I mean none of this is any good. Dana and I have been talking about this quite a lot, Casey. And there’s no reason, you know, that just because you and I aren’t together anymore—that’s no reason the kids should have to go without their mother.”

  “Jean,” he says, “what—what—” He sits down. He wants to take her hand.

  She says, “I think I ought to have them awhile. A week or two. Dana and I have discussed it, and she’s amenable to the idea. There’s plenty of room and everything, and pretty soon I’ll be—I’ll be getting a place.” She moves the tip of one finger along the soft surface of the chair arm, then seems to have to fight off tears.

  Casey reaches over and takes her hand. “Honey,” he says.

  She pulls her hand away, quite gently, but with the firmness of someone for whom this affection is embarrassing. “Did you hear me, Casey. I’m getting a place of my own. We have to decide about the kids.”

  Casey stares at her, watches as she opens her purse and takes out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. It comes to him very gradually that the orchestra has commenced to play. She seems to notice it too, now. She puts the handkerchief back in her purse and snaps it shut, then seems to gather herself.

  “Jean,” he says, “for God’s sweet sake.”

  “Oh, come on,” she says, her eyes swimming, “you knew this was coming. How could you not know this was coming?”

  “I don’t believe this,�
� he says. “You come here to tell me this. At my goddamn job.” His voice has risen almost to a shout.

  “Casey,” she says.

  “Okay,” he says, rising. “I know you.” It makes no sense. He tries to find something to say to her; he wants to say it all out in an orderly way that will show her. But he stammers. “You’re not having a nervous breakdown,” he hears himself tell her, and then he repeats it almost as if he were trying to reassure her. “This is really it, then,” he goes on. “You’re not coming back.”

  She stands. There’s something incredulous in the way she looks at him. She steps away from him, gives him a regretful look.

  “Jean, we didn’t even have an argument,” he says. “I mean, what is this about?” “Casey, I was so unhappy all the time. Don’t you remember anything? Don’t you see how it was? And I thought it was because I wasn’t a good mother. I didn’t even like the sound of their voices. But it was just unhappiness. I see them at school now and I love it. It’s not a chore now. I work like a dog all day and I’m not tired. Don’t you see? I feel good all the time now and I don’t even mind as much when I’m tired or worried.”

  “Then—” he begins.

  “Try to understand, Casey. It was ruining me for everyone in that house. But it’s okay now. I’m out of it and it’s okay. I’m not dying anymore in those rooms and everything on my nerves and you around every corner—” She stops.

  He can’t say anything. He’s left with the weight of himself, standing there before her. “You know what you sound like,” he says. “You sound ridiculous, that’s what you sound like.” And the ineptness of what he has just said, the stupid, helpless rage of it, produces in him a tottering moment of wanting to put his hands around her neck. The idea comes to him so clearly that his throat constricts, and a fan of heat opens across the back of his head. He holds on to the chair back and seems to hear her say that she’ll be in touch, through a lawyer if that will make it easier, about arrangements concerning the children.

  He knows it’s not cruelty that brought her here to tell him a thing like this, it’s cowardice. “I wish there was some other way,” she tells him, then turns and walks along the corridor to the stairs and down. He imagines the look she’ll give Dana when she gets to her seat; she’ll be someone relieved of a situation, glad something’s over with.

  Back in the balcony, in the dark, he watches the figures leap and stutter and whirl on the stage. And when the performance ends he watches the Hall empty out. The musicians pack their music and instruments; the stage crew dismantles the set. When he finally rises, it’s past midnight. Everyone’s gone. He makes his way home, and, arriving, doesn’t remember driving there. The baby-sitter, a high school girl from up the street, is asleep on the sofa in the living room. He’s much later than he said he would be. She hasn’t heard him come in, and so he has to try to wake her without frightening her. He has this thought clear in his mind as he watches his hand roughly grasp her shoulder, and hears himself say, loud, “Get up!”

  The girl opens her eyes and looks blankly at him, and then she screams. He would never have believed this of himself. She is sitting up now, still not quite awake, her hands flying up to her face. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, but it’s obvious that he did mean to scare her, and while she struggles to get her shoes on, her hands shaking, he counts out the money to pay her. He gives her an extra five dollars, and she thanks him for it in a tone that lets him know it mitigates nothing. When he moves to the door with her, she tells him she’ll walk home; it’s only up the block. Her every movement expresses her fear of him now. She lets herself out, and Casey stands in his doorway under the porch light and calls after her that he is so very sorry, he hopes she’ll forgive him. She goes quickly along the street and is out of sight. Casey stands there and looks at the place where she disappeared. Perhaps a minute goes by. Then he closes the door and walks back through the house, to the boys’ room.

  Rodney is in Michael’s bed with Michael, the two of them sprawled there, arms and legs tangled, blankets knotted and wrapped, the sheet pulled from a corner of the mattress. It’s as if this had all been dropped from a great, windy height. Casey kisses his sons, and then gets into Rodney’s bed. “Odney,” he whispers. He looks over at the shadowy figures in the other bed. The light is still on in the hall, and in the living room. He thinks of turning the lights off, then dreams he does. He walks through the rooms, locking windows and closing doors. In the dream he’s blind, can’t open his eyes wide enough, can’t get any light. He hears sounds. There’s an intruder in the house. There are many intruders. He’s in the darkest corner, and he can hear them moving toward him. He turns, still trying to get his eyes wide enough to see, only now something has changed: he knows he’s dreaming. It comes to him with a rush of power that he’s dreaming, and can do anything now, anything he wants to do. He luxuriates in this as he tries to hold on to it, feels how precarious it must be. He takes one step, and then another. He’s in control now. He’s as quiet as the sound after death. He knows he can begin, and so he begins. He glides through the house. He tracks the intruders down. He is relentless. He destroys them, one by one. He wins. He establishes order.

  WISE MEN AT THEIR END

  Theodore Weathers would probably have let things lapse after his son—the only one with whom he had any relations at all—passed away, but his daughter-in-law had adopted him. “You’re all the family I’ve got left,” she told him, and the irony was that he had never really liked her very much in the first place. He’d always thought she was a little empty-headed and gossipy—one of those people who had to manage everything, were always too ready to give advice, or suggest a course of action, or give an outright order. She was fifty-two years old and looked ten years older than that, but she called him Dad, and she had the energy of six people. She came by to see him every day—she seemed to think this was something they’d arranged—and she would go through his house as if it were hers, setting everything in order, she said, so they could relax and talk. Mostly this meant that she would be telling him what she thought he could do to improve his life, as if at eighty-three there were anything much he could do one way or the other.

  She thought he spent too much time watching television, that he should be more active; she didn’t like his drinking, or the fact that he wasn’t eating the healthiest foods; it wasn’t right for a person to take such poor care of himself, to be so negligent of his own well-being, and there were matters other than diet or drink that concerned her: the city was dangerous, she said, and he didn’t have good locks on his doors or windows; he’d developed bad habits all around; he left the house lights burning through the night; he’d let the dishes go. He never dusted or tidied up enough to suit her. He was unshaven. He needed a haircut. It was like having another wife, he told her, and she took this as praise. She never seemed to hear things as they were meant, and it was clear that in her mind she was being quite wonderful—cheerful and sweet and witty in the face of his irascibility and pigheadedness. She said he was entitled to some measure of ill temper, having lived so long; and she took everything he said and did with a kind of proprietary irony, as if another person were there to note how unmanageable and troublesome he could be. At times it seemed that any moment she might turn and speak to some unseen auditor: “You see, don’t you? You see what I have to go through with this guy?”

  He had never considered himself to be the type of man who liked to hurt other people’s feelings, but he was getting truly tired of all this, and he was thinking of telling her so in terms that would make her understand he meant business.

  Lately, it had been the fact that he was living alone. There was a retirement community right down the street: a room of his own; games, movies, company, trips to other cities, book clubs, hobbies, someone to get the meals. She went on and on about it, and Theodore would close his eyes and clap his hands over his ears and recite Keats, loudly, so he couldn’t hear her. “‘My heart aches, and a drousy numbness pains my
sense,’” he would shout, “‘As though of hemlock I had drunk.’ As though of hemlock, Judy. Hemlock, get it? Hemlock.”

  “All right,” she would say, “All right, all right,” and she would move about the house picking things up and putting them down, her mouth set in a frowning narrow line.

  But of course there was always the next round, and when her temper had cooled she seemed to enjoy getting back into it—she hadn’t spent a lifetime telling other people what to do without having developed a certain species of hope or confidence in her ability to bend someone else’s will to her own. He had watched her lead her husband around like a puppy most of his poor, cut-short life, and he told her so.

  “John was happy with me, which is more than I can say for his mother when she was with you,” she said. “He had a good, rich, full life.”

  “Sixty-six years is not a rich full life in my book.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be, in your book.”

  “Maybe Margaret wasn’t happy with me because I wouldn’t let her lead me around like a damn puppy dog all the time.”

  “No, and she wouldn’t let you lead her around, either.”

  “It was twenty years ago—who can remember who led who?”

  “Speaking of remembering things, you have two sons still living in Vermont, and time isn’t standing still. Don’t you think it would be a good thing for you to reopen lines of communication? Maybe get on a plane and go see them. I thought you might make things up at John’s funeral, and I was very sad to see that you didn’t. John would’ve liked it if you had. Why don’t you go visit them in their homes—see what their lives are like. They have children you’ve never seen, wives you haven’t met.”