The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  “I told you, my youngest boy is thirty-eight.”

  “And you realize that if he wanted to marry my daughter I’d be upset, the age difference there being what it is.” Ballinger’s wife moved to his side, drying her hands on a paper towel, her face full of puzzlement and worry.

  “I told you, Mr. Ballinger, that I understood how you feel. The point is, we have a pregnant woman here and we both love her.”

  “No,” Ballinger said. “That’s not the point. The point is that you, sir, are not much more than a goddam statutory rapist. That’s the point.” His wife took his shoulder. He looked at her and shook his head.

  “What?” she whispered. “Is Melanie all right?”

  “Well, this isn’t accomplishing anything,” the voice on the other end of the line was saying.

  “Just a minute,” Ballinger said. “Let me ask you something else. Really now. What’s the policy at that goddamn university concerning teachers screwing their students?”

  “Oh, my God,” his wife said as the voice on the line huffed and seemed to gargle.

  “I’m serious,” Ballinger said.

  “Melanie was not my student when we became involved.”

  “Is that what you call it? Involved?”

  “Let me talk to Melanie,” Ballinger’s wife said.

  “Listen,” he told her. “Be quiet.”

  Melanie was back on the line. “Daddy? Daddy?”

  “I’m here,” Ballinger said, holding the phone from his wife’s attempt to take it from him.

  “Daddy, we’re getting married and there’s nothing you can do about it. Do you understand?”

  “Melanie,” he said, and it seemed that from somewhere far inside himself he heard that he had begun shouting at her. “Jee-zus good Christ. Your fiancé was almost my age now the day you were born. What the hell, kid. Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind?”

  His wife was actually pushing against him to take the phone, and so he gave it to her. And stood there while she tried to talk.

  “Melanie,” she said. “Honey, listen—”

  “Hang up,” Ballinger said. “Christ. Hang it up.”

  “Please. Will you go in the other room and let me talk to her?”

  “Tell her I’ve got friends. All these nice men in their forties. She can marry any one of my friends—they’re babies. Forties—cradle fodder. Jesus, any one of them. Tell her.”

  “Jack, stop it.” Then she put the phone against her chest. “Did you tell her anything about us?”

  He paused. “That—no.”

  She turned from him. “Melanie, honey. What is this? Tell me, please.”

  He left her there, walked through the living room to the hall and back around to the kitchen. He was all nervous energy, crazy with it, pacing. Mary stood very still, listening, nodding slightly, holding the phone tight with both hands, her shoulders hunched as if she were out in cold weather.

  “Mary,” he said.

  Nothing.

  He went into their bedroom and closed the door. The light coming through the windows was soft gold, and the room was deepening with shadows. He moved to the bed and sat down, and in a moment he noticed that he had begun a low sort of murmuring. He took a breath and tried to be still. From the other room, his wife’s voice came to him. “Yes, I quite agree with you. But I’m just unable to put this …”

  The voice trailed off. He waited. A few minutes later, she came to the door and knocked on it lightly, then opened it and looked in.

  “What,” he said.

  “They’re serious.” She stood there in the doorway.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She stepped to his side and eased herself down, and he moved to accommodate her. He put his arm around her, and then, because it was awkward, clearly an embarrassment to her, took it away. Neither of them could speak for a time. Everything they had been through during the course of deciding about each other seemed concentrated now. Ballinger breathed his wife’s presence, the odor of earth and flowers, the outdoors.

  “God,” she said. “I’m positively numb. I don’t know what to think.”

  “Let’s have another baby,” he said suddenly. “Melanie’s baby will need a younger aunt or uncle.”

  Mary sighed a little forlorn laugh, then was silent.

  “Did you tell her about us?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t get the chance. And I don’t know that I could have.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s going to matter much to her.”

  “Oh, don’t say that. You can’t mean that.”

  The telephone on the bedstand rang, and startled them both. He reached for it, held the handset toward her.

  “Hello,” she said. Then: “Oh. Hi. Yes, well, here.” She gave it back to him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Melanie’s voice, tearful and angry: “You had something you said you had to tell me.” She sobbed, then coughed. “Well?”

  “It was nothing, honey. I don’t even remember—”

  “Well, I want you to know I would’ve been better than you were, Daddy, no matter how hard it was. I would’ve kept myself from reacting.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure you would have.”

  “I’m going to hang up. And I guess I’ll let you know later if we’re coming at all. If it wasn’t for Mom, we wouldn’t be.”

  “We’ll talk,” he told her. “We’ll work on it. Honey, you both have to give us a little time.”

  “There’s nothing to work on as far as William and I are concerned.”

  “Of course there are things to work on. Every marriage—” His voice had caught. He took a breath. “In every marriage there are things to work on.”

  “I know what I know,” she said.

  “Well,” said Ballinger. “That’s—that’s as it should be at your age, darling.”

  “Goodbye,” she said. “I can’t say any more.”

  “I understand,” Ballinger said. When the line clicked, he held the handset in his lap for a moment. Mary was sitting there at his side, perfectly still.

  “Well,” he said. “I couldn’t tell her.” He put the handset back in its cradle. “God. A sixty-three-year-old son-in-law.”

  “It’s happened before.” She put her hand on his shoulder, then took it away. “I’m so frightened for her. But she says it’s what she wants.”

  “Hell, Mary. You know what this is. The son of a bitch was her goddamn teacher.”

  “Listen to you—what are you saying about her? Listen to what you’re saying about her. That’s our daughter you’re talking about. You might at least try to give her the credit of assuming that she’s aware of what she’s doing.”

  They said nothing for a few moments.

  “Who knows,” Ballinger’s wife said. “Maybe they’ll be happy for a time.”

  He’d heard the note of sorrow in her voice, and thought he knew what she was thinking; then he was certain that he knew. He sat there remembering, like Mary, their early happiness, that ease and simplicity, and briefly he was in another house, other rooms, and he saw the toddler that Melanie had been, trailing through slanting light in a brown hallway, draped in gowns she had fashioned from her mother’s clothes. He did not know why that particular image should have come to him out of the flow of years, but for a fierce minute it was uncannily near him in the breathing silence; it went over him like a palpable something on his skin, then was gone. The ache which remained stopped him for a moment. He looked at his wife, but she had averted her eyes, her hands running absently over the faded denim cloth of her lap. Finally she stood. “Well,” she sighed, going away. “Work to do.”

  “Mary?” he said, low; but she hadn’t heard him. She was already out the doorway and into the hall, moving toward the kitchen. He reached over and turned the lamp on by the bed, and then lay down. It was so quiet here. Dark was coming to the windows. On the wall there were pictures; shadows, shapes, silently clamoring for his gaze. He shut his eyes,
listened to the small sounds she made in the kitchen, arranging her flowers, running the tap. Mary, he had said. But he could not imagine what he might have found to say if his voice had reached her.

  NOT QUITE FINAL

  The Ballingers’ daughter, Melanie, and her elderly husband made the move from Chicago in a little Ford Escort with a U-Haul trailer hitched to it. The trailer was packed to the brim with antiques, and, having stopped to give the baby to Melanie’s mother, they arrived at their new apartment building just as the moving van with all their other belongings pulled up. It was a steamy July dawn, and the movers, anxious to avoid the full heat of the day, hurried through the unpacking. In the process, they broke a chair and scraped plaster away from one of the walls in the hallway of the new apartment. “Dude,” one of them said to Melanie’s father, “are you good at, like, wallboard?”

  “No,” said Jack Ballinger, who was there in the first place because these same movers had already refused to carry the antiques in from the trailer, claiming that since the items in question had not been on their truck, they were not responsible. Ballinger had been dragooned into helping his daughter with these last pieces—a dresser, a table and chairs, a grandfather clock, a mahogany armoire, several boxes of glassware and miniature statuary, most of it belonging to Melanie’s husband, one of whose earlier wives had been a lover of antiques. Especially—”apparently,” Ballinger said—heavy oak.

  Melanie’s husband was suffering from arthritis in both knees, and packing the trailer in Chicago had caused a flare-up. He could not do any lifting for a time. “It’s from staying inside and sitting at the computer too much,” Melanie told him.

  “No,” he said with a little smile. “It’s being sixty-four years old.” He sat on a lawn chair in the July sun, watching them work. Then he moved to the shade. The heat was bothering his asthma, and Melanie fussed with him, trying to get him to go inside where it was cool. But he wouldn’t budge. “Make him listen to reason,” she said to her father.

  Ballinger spoke with a deference he didn’t feel. “It’s not helping us to sit out here cooking in the heat.”

  “I won’t be inside in the cool while you two are working like this,” William Coombs said. “Please understand.”

  The whole thing became an embarrassment that worsened as the sweltering morning wore on. Ballinger and his daughter had got the table and chairs in, the armoire, the clock. They were trying now to move the dresser, the largest of the pieces. It was almost as tall as Ballinger, who put his shoulder against the wood and strained, lifting it. The suntan lotion with which he had covered his face ran into his eyes, stinging. Melanie groaned, inching along the sidewalk, a bright blur of color in front of him, partially blocked by the dresser, whose drawers had been removed, exposing little nails on the inside frame.

  “Wait,” Melanie said. “Put it down.”

  Ballinger let it drop, and it made a bad cracking noise.

  “Daddy, it’s no use bringing it in if we’re going to break it into pieces on the way.”

  “Wish I could help,” William Coombs called with false cheer, from his seat in the hot shade.

  “You could’ve helped,” Melanie said. “You could’ve gone inside.” She looked at her father. “Ready?”

  Ballinger lifted again, feeling the older man’s eyes on him. The bottom of the dresser kept hitting his legs at the shin. “Hold it,” he said. “Let me …” They set it down.

  “Why don’t you both rest a while?” said William. “I feel so absurd.”

  “This isn’t about what you feel, William.”

  “We’re taking it easy,” Ballinger got out. “Nothing to it.”

  William stood with some difficulty. “Anybody want a cold drink of water?”

  “William, please,” Melanie said.

  “Hey,” said Ballinger, trying for a lighter tone. “Ease up on the guy.” He leaned into the dresser, gripped it low.

  Melanie stepped back and brushed the hair out of the perspiration on her forehead. “Wait.”

  Had he gone too far? He wiped his forehead with his forearm and pretended to be thinking only of the task in front of him. His daughter took a breath, stood back with her hands on her hips. She had spent most of the journey home in the backseat, tending to the new baby, who was eleven months old and perpetually cranky. Melanie had missed a lot of sleep in the past few months and had not slept at all during the long night drive to Virginia. Now she braced herself. She had only wanted to rest a little before starting in again. “Okay.”

  They bumped up the walk, and the three steps to the open doorway, and in, where they set the dresser down and rested their arms on the top of it. “God,” she said, “I’m not up to this. My back hurts.”

  Ballinger went into the small kitchen, where there were already several dozen boxes stacked. Reaching into one, he brought out a glass, went to the sink, and tried to run the tap. The pipes gave a clanking sound; a rusty trickle came forth, then stopped.

  Melanie came to the doorway and looked at him. “No water, right? I told him to call and have them turn it on this morning.”

  “Morning’s not over. Maybe they’re just slow.”

  William made his way inside, limping, edging past the dresser. “Oh, hell,” he said, looking at them both. “I forgot to make the damn call.”

  Melanie sat down on one of the boxes and fanned herself with a folded piece of paper. She shook her head and seemed about to cry. “I don’t know why you have to call in the first place. There ought to be something here under the sink to turn it on.”

  “I’ll run to the store and get some bottled water. Ice cold. It’ll only take a minute.”

  Melanie said, “You’ll run.”

  Ballinger saw them both seem to pause. No one said anything for a moment. “I’ll drive,” William said. Then: “Dear.”

  She said, “Sorry.”

  “I’ll call the water people from the drugstore.” He shuffled out. There was something faintly sheepish about it.

  “Close the door,” she said. “The air conditioner’s on.” “I was doing just that, dear.” He limped out.

  She stood, sighing, then opened one of the boxes and began putting dishes into the cabinet. Ballinger watched her, feeling dimly frustrated and sorry. There was nothing he could imagine saying to her beyond dull commenting on the hot day, the furniture, the work ahead. “Christ,” she said, “I have to wash these cabinets. I can’t do anything until we get the water going.” She put the dishes back in the box and sat down.

  Ballinger leaned against the counter, his hands down on the edges, appreciating the cooler air. “I always hated moving,” he ventured.

  “I wonder how Mom’s doing with the baby.” She glanced at him, then ran part of her shirttail over her face, bending low. “It’s been a while since she had one to contend with.”

  “She’ll manage,” Ballinger said.

  The crown of his daughter’s hair was darker than the rest—a richer, deeper brown. She was a very pretty girl, already a mother. This fact was anything but new to him, yet it had the power of a revelation each time he remembered it. When the baby had arrived, last June, Melanie had asked for her mother to come out and stay for a week. It made more sense, of course: the visit was practical, having to do with the baby’s first days home. Ballinger had spoken with Melanie on the telephone and planned a later trip out, but then Melanie, Mrs. William Coombs, had called to say that she and her husband and baby were moving to Virginia.

  Now she said, “I told Mom to come here for dinner. Will you stay? I’d like you to. We’ll order out.”

  “I don’t think so, darling.”

  She smiled at him. “It was her idea, Daddy.”

  There were chairs set upside down around the table, and he picked one up, turned it right, set it down, and straddled the seat, resting his arms on the back, facing her. “How are you, anyway?” he said.

  She offered her hand, and he took it. “Fine, thank you,” she said. “And you?”

/>   “Well, I’ve been going through this divorce.”

  “So I heard.”

  He let go of her hand. “Guess it’s nothing to kid about, is it.”

  “Mom seems really happy.” She appeared briefly confused. “I mean, getting to see the baby and all.”

  “It’s probably the divorce,” he said. “She did say she wanted me to stay here for dinner, huh?”

  “Yes. And I didn’t mean anything, Daddy.”

  “You mean it doesn’t mean anything, her wanting me to stay.”

  “I mean I didn’t—I mean that she seemed happy with the baby. I wasn’t saying anything else, okay?”

  “Well, me,” he said, “I’ve been just giddy all year, you know. I have this nice—uh, room. In the basement of a woman’s house near the school. Walking distance. Woman’s a lonely widow. I think she has designs on me. Looks like a movie star, too.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah,” Ballinger said. “Ernest Borgnine. Really strong features, you know.”

  She said nothing, gazing at him with a slightly sardonic smile.

  “This’ll be a nice place,” he said, looking around the room. “Cozy.”

  “Just the three of us.”

  He thought he heard something in her voice, a trace of irony. He cleared his throat and went on: “I was awful glad to hear you were moving back home. You can’t imagine how we’ve—how I’ve missed you, kiddo.”

  She smiled. “I missed you guys, too.”

  They were quiet again.

  “He forgets to do things,” she said. “The absent-minded professor. It gets on my nerves sometimes.”

  Ballinger kept still.

  “There’s no point in denying it,” she said. “And then I end up being”— she paused—”impatient.” She seemed to be waiting for a response, and when none came, she went on: “He can remember the whole of Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’ He reminds me of you—a lot, Daddy.”

  “A much older version of me.”

  “You’re not going to start on that shit, are you?”

  Ballinger stood. “Well, but do me a favor, darling. Don’t say he reminds you of me. I’ve been married once. To your mother. I loved her so bad it hurt. And then it ran into trouble that neither of us could explain, and it’s gone to pieces, but there was nothing remotely casual about it, you know?”