Living in the Weather of the World

by Richard Bausch

  “All those broken promises,” she says. “Whose were they?”

  “I’m talking about life. And—and happiness.”

  “But you made promises, too.”

  “What’re you getting at?”

  “I’m just responding to you, sweetie. You said broken promises.”

  “All right. Mine, too. My whole life—”

  She takes a last bite of her salad, and then finishes the wine in her glass. She shakes her head, setting the glass down soundlessly on the table.

  “But all that’s done with now, and we’re free,” he says.

  She murmurs, “Oh.” Then: “God.”

  “I know,” he tells her. “But it was coming to this and we knew that.”

  “I guess we did.”

  He pours a little of the wine and drinks it down.

  “You’re so hurt, my darling. Look at you. You look like death.”

  “Let me get a real drink.” He signals the waiter across the room. The waiter knows them from previous visits. He walks over. Breskoff orders a scotch, double.

  She waves away anything else for her and sits there looking at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, playing it. “Really. I’ll be fine. This is a good thing. It’s what we’ve wanted for so long. It’s freedom.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe it.”

  “It’s not a matter of faith.”

  She’s silent.

  “Is it.”

  Presently the waiter brings the drink. Breskoff takes a long swallow of it. “I guess I thought it would play out a little less—I don’t know, less abruptly.”

  “Abruptly. What an odd word that is. I think that is really such a very odd word.”

  “It’s a word.”

  She pours more wine into her glass and sips it, gazing at him over the lip of the glass.

  He leans forward, to click his glass against hers. “To freedom.”

  She says, “Yes, freedom.” They touch glasses and drink.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “You sound like someone bringing death news.”

  “I love you,” he says again.

  “Maybe this isn’t the time to talk like this. You said it was a little sudden for you. I mean abrupt. Sorry.”

  “It was upsetting. Yes. The way it all just came tumbling out. But it’s done.”

  She reaches across the table and puts her hand on his. “I feel awful, honey. But I can’t stay here.”

  He says, “What?”

  “I can’t. I feel ill.”

  She does not look ill. Her eyes glitter. He says, “Don’t you understand what this means? Cathy knows. She’s leaving me. It’s done. I can come home with you tonight.”

  “But do you hear what you just said?”

  He looks down at his hands where they cradle the drink.

  “She’s leaving you.”

  “But it’s—it’s what we wanted. What I wanted anyway.”

  “No. You’re not listening.”

  “What difference does all that make? We’re free now.”

  “When you got out of that car and started in here, you looked like a man who had just learned he was going to die in the morning. You were scared down to your bones.”

  He drinks. Then: “Jesus Christ, Tina.”

  “The look on your face as she drove away.”

  “Baby,” he says. “It was upsetting, sure—”

  She interrupts him. “No. You were a man who was realizing something terrible. It was all over you like a—like a light.”

  The waiter comes to ask what he wants to eat.

  “I’m not hungry,” Breskoff says.

  “Put the whiskey on mine,” she says. The waiter leaves with her credit card. The two of them sit there while the others in the place talk and laugh.

  “I’ve taken a job in LA,” she says. “I couldn’t turn it down.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. Bicoastal is possible, right? Lots of people do it.”

  “Bi—” he begins.

  “I really literally couldn’t turn it down.”

  It occurs to him, with exactly the same level of annoyance that might be caused by the erratic lifting and settling on his skin of a housefly, that he has never liked the frequency with which she uses the word literally.

  “Anyway, I think it’s best.” She takes the last of the wine.

  On the other side of the room, a man sings part of a song to two couples. The two couples join in. They’re obviously old friends. Others nearby toast the good spring weather, agreeing that it has been a long, terrible winter. At the entrance to the restrooms, a waitress drops a tray with two glasses on it. A man at the nearby table helps her pick it up.

  The waiter brings Tina her check. She signs it.

  Breskoff looks out at the street. Many people hurrying by in the bright sun, and cars stopping and then idling forward. The glass on the storefronts across the way glares at him.

  She stands, and then leans down and barely brushes his forehead with her cool lips. “Bye, lover. I’ll be in touch. I need some time. I think maybe we both need some time.”

  “Wait,” he says. “What?”

  “I’ll call you,” she says. “Really.”

  “Tina?”

  “Promise,” she says.

  He can’t catch his breath, can’t speak, can’t think. The words die at his lips. He watches her stride out into the sunny street and on, disappearing into the busy press of strangers going to and fro. The sun gleams on the blond crown of her head. This firelike light, this shimmer, is what he’ll remember about her through all the years left to him.

  NIGHT

  At last, he’s asleep, one heavy leg over her thigh. He snores and sighs, sounding afraid and small. She lies quiet, nursing a cut on the left side of her mouth that hurts every time she stretches it in the grimace that comes with the other pains, the twisted joint of her elbow, the swollen place on the side of her head above the ear. She strives for absolute stillness, but winces, breathing, from the bruised bones in her side.

  She used to spend these wakeful hours planning how to please him. Now she plans escape. When he moves and turns on his side, facing the wall, she gets herself to the farthest edge of the mattress. She dreams of getting away, but she’s caught, and this is only a child’s daydream of putting the world in the shape of her longing. He stirs, a quick movement at his ankles, and is still. If only she could sleep. It won’t come. The little boy in the other room, Mickey, six years old, moans and then cries out. A nightmare. It happens, and then there’s stillness, and it happens again. She gets carefully slowly soundlessly out of the bed and moves into the hall, to the doorway of his room. His toys are scattered on the floor, a litter she must negotiate to get to him.

  “Mickey.”

  “What.”

  “You had a bad dream. Do you want a glass of water? Want me to read you a story?”

  “No.” His eyes are wide in the dimness.

  “It’s okay, honey. Daddy’s just tired.”

  “I’m ascared.”

  “Nothing to be afraid of. I’ll sit here until you fall asleep.”

  “I wish Daddy would go away.”

  “Shh. Go to sleep.”

  “Why do daddies hit mommies?”

  “It’ll be all right, honey. He’s just very tired. Try to go to sleep now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can.” She bends down to kiss the side of his face, but her side catches and stops her. She takes a breath, then, moving slowly, manages it.

  “Mommy, can we go away?”

  “Don’t be silly. Try to go to sleep.”

  “I wanna go away.” He begins to sniffle.

  “Baby, please. Please be quiet.”

  He’s crying now. She pulls him to her, and they rock there on the edge of his bed. She thinks of picking him up and sneaking out to the car. But it’s his car, and there’s no money and nowhere to go, and nothing to do. Once she cal
led the police and they came and took him away for two hours and then he was back, and with one hand gripping her by the neck he asked if she wanted to press charges. She couldn’t get the air to say she wouldn’t tell, wouldn’t tell, wouldn’t tell.

  The boy sobs quietly, muffled against the cloth over her sore shoulder.

  “Honey, it doesn’t happen all the time.”

  He sniffles and wipes his palm across his nose.

  “Does Daddy have to go away soon?”

  “Yes. He has to make a trip next week.”

  The boy rests there in her arms, and in a while she feels him lapsing into a kind of exhausted dazed wakefulness, until at last he begins to drift. She hums a little, patting the back of his head.

  Finally, his breathing is regular. She gingerly sets him down, covers him, and rises, making her way soundlessly to the hall and on to the entrance of the bedroom. There’s no light; she has to feel her way. Coming to the edge of the bed, she lets herself down with great delicacy. Then she’s lying on her side, eyes open, crying without sound, looking at the subtle shifts of light on the wall and ceiling as traffic moves by on the road outside the window.

  Perhaps she sleeps. She sees her mother, who’s recently gone. It’s like a visit. Mother has come to her in the night to tell her about things. She has had this dream repeatedly over the past two months. Her mother comes to see her and they do not talk about marriage. It’s always the same. They do not talk about wedding plans. It’s all there in the background, eerily, while her mother goes on about people they both used to know. She tries to tell her mother that things aren’t always how they seem and it’s strange that one of the things she liked most about Nathan was how neat he was: socks lined up in the drawers, shirts pressed and ironed, ties in perfect rows according to color, everything so neat. She thought this was one of his good qualities, not a thing out of place. The very hairs of his head accounted for. Her mother goes on talking, hearing nothing. Mother shushes her even as the words come. She says it: It’s bad now, Mama. You should’ve looked out for me. You should’ve listened to me. You shouldn’t’ve shut me out about it. Everything had to be so pleasant and polite and you wouldn’t look. In the dream she tells her mother about all the hours of hiding and cowering and the time she went to the police and they came and took him away and in two hours he was out on bail and home and the night went on and on. She’s saying all this out, it seems, but also trying to fall asleep.

  And now something changes in the dreaming. She becomes aware of a stir, just inside the bedroom door, and thinks of the boy. But in half sleep she senses that it isn’t Mickey at all. A tall shadow is there, an intruder, certain as dying. Without will, still half sleeping, she sees herself rise and offer herself to him. Take me with you, she imagines saying. Take me.

  No sound comes but her breathing and the snoring beside her. She’s been asleep for hours. It’s getting light out. A shadow moves across the foot of the bed, and her own lack of fear surprises her. Maybe he’ll kill me.

  She knows with a shock that this thought is what her daily hours are made of, and that she has a little boy she must protect and keep. Dreaming, she sits up in the bed. The intruder is quite still. Quiet as a thought. She can smell his fear in the dream. Suddenly his stuttering breath comes toward her. But it’s her own breath, her own fear. She and the dream-someone are together in the terror of discovery, and then he turns and is gone and she’s awake. The room is empty, tinged with the slightest touch of light from the street. She believes it about the intruder and then does not believe it. He was a thing she saw out of hope that something would happen to change everything. That there has been no intruder in the night seems like the greatest sorrow. There is the rest of the night to do. She lies down in its mantle, and looks at the idea that she might have moved to make someone, the anyone of the dream, kill her. When at last she sleeps again, she doesn’t dream at all.

  In the morning, a single sparrow beats at the window, over and over—begging entry, wanting in, believing this is safety.

  THE KNOLL

  Nov. 22, 1963

  The two men did not know each other. There had been several meetings where they were both present, and they had spoken once near the coffee machine during a break in the planning. A simple nod and hello. Nobody confided anything then. The planning sessions had gone on and on, through every possible contingency, the session leaders always shifting, different ones each time, from first briefings to field exercises—each one seeming more nervous than the one who preceded him, trying to anticipate everything, reduce it all to a perfectly understood series of steps, and always in possession of further dark information concerning the organization’s peril.

  His part was simple: dismantle and pack the article of utility—as it was called—collect all discharged shells, and move off. He had practiced with several other men, never the same one twice, and he knew what to expect. The “Utilizer” would utilize, then hand him the article of utility and head for the end of the fence to intercept any curious bystanders with his Secret Service badge and his air of authority. Dismantle and pack the article of utility, collect all discharged shells, and move off. Except that now he was standing here in the broken sunlight, under the shade of the live oak tree, with this other, who was easily in his late forties. A World War II veteran, then. They hadn’t spoken yet, had only traded silent recognition of each other.

  The older man now checked his watch, kneeled, and set his suede case down at the base of the fence under the shrubs there, looking around. There were railroad cars a few feet away, as in the drawings. The sun was too bright at the edges of the shaded places in the yard.

  “So,” the older man said. “Nice bright day.”

  No answer seemed necessary.

  “I said, ‘Nice bright day.’ ”

  “Okay,” said the younger man. “Didn’t think you required an answer.”

  “You a college boy?”

  “No.”

  “Sound like a college boy.” The older man offered his hand. “Utilizer.” So he was going to use his code name.

  “Okay. Sanitation.”

  “You sound like a college boy, Sanitation.”

  “Didn’t go.”

  “Really.” The older man, Utilizer, said. “Sound like a college boy.”

  Beyond the fence, down the small partly shaded embankment, people were gathering. Along either side of the street they took their places—men and women and babies in strollers. Children ran and played and chased one another in the grass. Secretaries and office people, people with welcome signs and carrying cameras, sat on the curb.

  “Were you in the war?” Sanitation asked.

  The older man stared at him.

  “Hey. Just making conversation.”

  “Passing time, huh.”

  “Yeah, okay, sure.”

  “It passes quick, don’t it. Too much talk. You see the paper this morning?”

  In the newspaper there had been a picture of the Designated Item inside a red target with words calling for his impeachment.

  “I saw it.”

  “Big talk,” Utilizer said.

  Sanitation nodded. “Bad use of space, too. Useless.”

  “Yeah,” said the other. “Cheap goddamn running of the mouth.”

  “Loose lips sink ships, right? Isn’t that what they said in your war?”

  Utilizer seemed not to have heard.

  Presently, Sanitation said, “So were you in the war?”

  “Was I in the war.”

  “That’s my question.”

  “All right. Let’s say I was in the wars.”

  “Germans or Japs?”

  Again, the older man stared.

  “Just polite talk,” Sanitation said, and smiled.

  “Okay. I fought the Japs. The Asians.”

  “The Pacific.”

  “Yeah, and Korea, too.” There was a pocked, eroded look to Utilizer’s cheeks, and his eyes were faintly yellow around the irises. It was Sanitati
on’s guess that he was a drinker.

  “I haven’t fought in any wars,” he told him.

  Utilizer nodded. “Yeah, you’re a young fella.”

  “Not that young.”

  “College kid.”

  “No.”

  “Hell, boy. It’s all over you.”

  “Told you I didn’t go to college,” Sanitation said.

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  He now took his own small leather case out of his coat. The other was still kneeling. The grass here was burned by the sun, which came in under the shade, through the spaces between branches. The ground all around them was littered with bright fallen leaves. Utilizer opened his case, took one look around himself, then removed the rifle from it. The barrel was oiled, and it shone in the sunlight. He sighted along the barrel, put it on its stock, and got slowly to his feet. “Damn knees. Okay, let’s have the scope.”

  Sanitation handed it to him, and he attached it to the rifle. “Good. Well, the real reason I thought you were a college boy is you got that college-boy haircut. You got that look, you know. And you do sound like it.”

  “Don’t let the look—or the talk—fool you.”

  “Hey, I like college boys. College is good for you. Couldn’t get my son to see that.”

  “What’s he do.”

  “You college boys are just full of questions.”

  “Like I said, man, I didn’t go. I guess your son didn’t, either. Wondered what he did instead.”

  “Well, he’s not in the battle to save Democracy, I’ll tell you that much.”

  The younger man said nothing.

  “He works in a goddamn grocery store when he works at all.”

  “A grocery store? One of these new chain stores?”

  “A chain, yeah—when he works at all. Mostly just hangs around the house and gets in the way.”

  “You don’t get along.”

  “You writing a book, college boy?”