A Way Home

by Theodore Sturgeon

  But it was only a part of his procrastination. (He called it that at first: sooner or later, he thought, there would be changes made.) Largely, he delayed because of this accursed empathy. Beverly was so happy. She was happy and proud. If he became unaccountably silent, she tiptoed about the place, quite convinced that the great man was dreaming up something else for the suggestion box. If he was short-tempered, she forgave. If he bought her something, or approved something she had bought, she was grateful. Home was harmonious; Beverly was so happy she sang again. He realized that it had been a great while since she had sung.

  And all the while he knew how she felt. He knew it surely and painfully, and was fully aware of the impact she would suffer if he broached to her his inner thinking. He’d do it; oh yes, he’d do it, some day. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt anything if she got that new winter coat she had eyed so wistfully in the Sunday paper....

  So a year went by and he did nothing about the matter. Actually, he thought less about it after a year, though there were moments...But work was more engrossing than ever, and home was such a pleasure—though a quiet one—and Beverly was fairly blooming. If a man has the virtue or the curse of empathy, he has to be kind. He must, for the most selfish of reasons: any time he kicks out at another human, he will find bruises on his own shins.

  Once, suddenly, he asked her, “Beverly, have I changed?”

  She looked puzzled, so he enlarged it. “Since last year, I mean. Do I seem different?”

  She thought about it. “I don’t know. You’re—nice. But you were always nice.” She laughed suddenly. “You can catch flies,” she teased. “Why, Yance?”

  “No reason. The new job, and all.” He passed the reference to flies. One had been bothering her last fall and he had absently reached out and caught it on the wing. It was the only time he had come near betraying some of his new talents. She had been astonished; in eight years he had never demonstrated coordination like that. She would have been more astonished if she had noticed that he caught the fly between his thumb and forefinger.

  “The new job hasn’t gone to your head,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  He maneuvered a situation in the office which required attention in an out-of-town branch and arranged matters so that sending him out there was only logical. He was gone two weeks. He had seen to it that it was not the kind of task that required genius, just application and good detail work. He met two girls while he was there, one brilliant and high in the company, the other far better than anything the company would ever be able to hire. He left them alone, disliking himself not a little because he knew, in his heart of hearts, whom he was being faithful to.

  And it was good, good to get home. Due to what he had done out of town, he was raised another notch but had to reorganize his new office, so there was no vacation that year. He could easily have analyzed this development, and determined for himself whether he had purposely avoided a vacation, but he did not. He’d rather not know.

  There was a company picnic, and Beverly sang. People reacted so enthusiastically—especially to Yancey, as if he had invented her—that he coaxed and goaded her into auditioning for a television show. She won the audition and appeared. She lost the audience vote to an eight-year-old boy with an accordion, but she was incandescently happy because Yancey had cared, Yancey had helped.

  In the matter of Beverly, Yancey began to like himself.

  That, in Yancey’s private code, was the Year of the Big Christmas. They took a week off and went to a ski lodge in New Hampshire. They did a number of things together, and nothing was wrong about any of it. And one night they sat before a Christmas-card kind of fireplace with a crowd of kindred souls, drinking glögg and roaring carols, until they were too sleepy to move. After everyone else had gone to bed, they sat holding hands silently and watching the fire go out. As it will at such moments, when one is living, not dying, his life whisked across his inner eye and stopped here at this hearth, and on it was superimposed the uneasy question What am I doing here? Over him came a flood of tenderness for Beverly, poor Beverly. For the first time it occurred to him that the fantastic thing that had happened to him might have a grim and horrible result. His metabolic efficiency, his apparent immunity to everything from the common cold up, his outright inability to get too little rest or too little food...suppose he should live—well, not forever, but—

  He glanced at his wife, and though she was young-looking for her age, his quick mind vividly supplied a wrinkle here and there, a little sag. He’d be able to conceal his feelings about it, of course, but would she? Empathetically, he went through a brief torture with her future, seeing her wither while he went on as he was.

  He averted his face, and his eyes filled with tears.

  Gently she disengaged her hand. He felt it stroking, stroking his wrist. And she had the wit, or the luck, to say absolutely nothing as she did it.

  When he thought back on it, much later, he thought too that though there were many women who could do many things Beverly couldn’t do, not one of them would have done just that, just that way.

  In the spring he turned, down a promotion, sensitive as he was to the feelings of his co-workers; this would benefit him far more in the long run. And again it was summer, and this time there would be a vacation.

  Well—where? He would choose a place, and Beverly would say, “If that’s what you want, darling,” and off they’d go. He thought, and he thought about it. With his total recall, he recreated a great many scenes for himself. He all but decided, and then he hesitated; and then, sitting at his desk in the office, he said aloud, “No! No, not yet,” and startled some people.

  They went to New England, to a place new to them, craggy, rugged, sparkling, where sailboats notched the skyline and the wind smelled clean and new and quite unused by anyone else. For four days they fished and swam, danced, and dug little-necks. On the fifth day they stayed snugly indoors while the sky pressed down like a giant’s palm. At three o’clock the small-craft warnings went up. At four the Coast Guard called and warned them away from their rented shack; yes, it was a hurricane, a real hurricane and not just a storm.

  They loaded the car haphazardly and tumbled into it, and already there was a blinding fog of spume blowing horizontally across the coast road. They ground up the hill to the town and pulled into the hotel yard.

  The hotel, of course, was full, with a bed laid in the linen room and a cot set up behind the desk.

  “What are we going to do?” Beverly wailed. It was not distress, not yet. This was exciting.

  “We’re going to have a drink. Then we’re going to have some hot chowder. Then we’re going to think about what we’re going to do.”

  With their lungs full of ozone and their eyes full of sparks, they went to the dining-room.

  There was a picture which, say, a year ago, Yancey used to call to mind so often that it was as familiar as his safety razor. A slim back, wide shoulders clad in rich brown moleskin; lamplight glancing from dark obedient hair, and a long brown hand resting lightly against an ivory cheek. When he saw it now, right before his eyes, he discounted it as an unwelcome phantom, a trick of the charged air. But Beverly squeezed his elbow and cried, “Yance—look!” and before he could draw a breath she sprang away from him to the table.

  “Lois! Lois, whatever in the world are you doing here?”

  This, Yancey told himself heavily, just had to happen. He went forward. “Hello, Lois.”

  “Well...!” It was a single syllable, but it contained warmth and welcome and...but how would you ever know, even when she smiled? A mask can smile. “Sit down, please sit down, Beverly. Yancey.”

  There was a rush of small talk. Oh, yes, she had sold the resort, last spring. Worked for a while in town. Resigned, looking for something better. Came up here to let the wind blow the smog out of her hair. “Now I’m afraid it’ll take the hair too.” Oh yes, Beverly was saying, so warmly, so proudly...two promotions...turned down another one too; he’ll r
un the place in another year, just you watch...and a good deal more, while Lois watched her hands and smiled a small smile. “What about you, Lois, are you married or anything?”

  “No,” said Lois huskily, “I’m not married”—and here Yancey dropped his eyes; he couldn’t bear to meet hers while she said it—“or anything.”

  They had a drink, and another, and then some superlative New England chowder, and beer, and another drink. And then it was over, and Yancey, paying the check, was telling himself glumly, “You did fine, boy; so if you’re a little on the silent side for a day or two, what’s that? I’m glad it’s over. But I wish...”

  Rising, Beverly said, “You’re staying here?”

  Lois smiled oddly. “There’s nothing they can do about it.”

  Before he could stop himself Yancey said, “Now what exactly does that mean?”

  Lois laughed quietly. “I just got in an hour and a half ago. I never dreamed I’d need a reservation—funny, isn’t it, after my experience? Anyway, they’re full up. I shall just sit here until they want to close the place. I will then be a problem, and it’ll be up to them to solve it.” She laughed again. “I’ve solved worse ones in my time.”

  “Oh, Lois, you can’t! They’ll make you sleep on the bar!”

  She shrugged, really not caring.

  “Yancey,” said Beverly. She was flushed and urgent. “Do you remember a time when two wet strangers couldn’t find their beds, and what happened to them?”

  He did meet Lois’ eyes this time. This was when his heart began hammering.

  Beverly said, “It’s our turn. We’re going down the coast. We’ll find a place. Come on. Come on, Lois!”

  Yancey thought, listen to her, taking the bit in her teeth. Doesn’t she usually find out first what I want? And he answered himself, no; most of the time she just does what I want without asking. And he told himself further, stop talking like a damn fool.

  Ten miles south there was a town with a hotel. Full up. Four miles further, a motel. Packed to the eaves. The next stretch was twenty miles, and it was getting late. It was raining the kind of rain they had slogged through to Lois’ cabin two years before, but this time they had a howling gale along with it.

  And by the time they reached the next town, the warnings were in; the hurricane, true to its unpredictable breed, had swung east leaving rain and a maddened sea, but no further danger. So they drove into the slick shining streets of a city still quaking in its boots, but vastly relieved.

  Here and there a store was open. There were three hotels, two of them full. They stopped at an all-night drugstore to ask directions to the third and Lois bought cigarettes and Beverly found a book-club edition of Anna Karenina and scooped it up with joy; she said she’d always wanted to read it.

  The third hotel had one double with bath.

  “Twin beds?”

  The clerk nodded. Yancey looked at Lois but her eyes were cloaked. He looked at Beverly and she said, “Why not? We can fit in a twin bed. I’m not very big.”

  No, Bev, he thought, you’re not.

  Lois said, “Beverly—”

  “Shh,” said Beverly. “We’ll take it,” she said to the clerk.

  Lois turned again. Now she was looking up at the ceiling with him. Think of that! he thought acidly, here we are sharing some antiseptic moonbeams.

  His biting thought was protection for a very brief while. His heart began again. It shook him with each beat. It shook the bed, the walls, the building, the beaten cliff outside, making it hurl back the sea with even greater violence.

  There was the softest butterfly-wing touch on his chest. Beverly had opened her eyes.

  Yancey thought madly, it’s like one of those meaningless conjugations they give you in first-year French. I stare up into the darkness, you stare up into the darkness, she stares up into the darkness...

  Beverly moved. She wriggled up closer. She put her hand behind his head, pulling it toward her. She put her mouth on his ear. He felt her warm breath. Barely audible, her breath said, “Darling. What is it? What do you want?”

  What did he want? Nothing, of course. Nothing he could have. Nothing, certainly, that he should have. He shook his head.

  Beverly crept back until her head was on his shoulder again. She lay still. She slid one hand over his chest, to rest lightly on his hammering heart.

  Lois sighed quietly and turned over, away from them. The wind laughed and laughed outside, and another breaker smashed and spouted. The room grew black, then silver again.

  Abruptly Beverly sat up. “I can’t sleep,” she said clearly.

  Lois was silent. Yancey watched Beverly. The silver light made everything in the room look like an overexposed photograph, but Beverly’s flesh seemed pink—the only thing in the whole mad, pulsing world that had any color but grey or black.

  Beverly swung her legs out, stood up, and stretched in the moonlight. She was small and firm and—pink? Was she really pink, or was that a memory too?

  What a beautiful complementation, he thought hotly; how balanced an equation expresses this chaos! Beverly, small and fair; open, simple, direct. Lois, tall, slender, dark, devious, complex. And each so clearly lacking just what the other had.

  Beverly said, “I have nineteen chapters of Anna Karenina to read. Take me about an hour.” She knelt on Yancey’s bed briefly, reached across to the night table, and scooped something up. Then she went to the highboy and got the book. She went into the bathroom. Yellow light appeared starkly under the closed door.

  Yancey lay quite still, looking at the line of yellow light.

  At last he rolled over and looked at her. He could see the sliver of yellow again, across her eyes. She was half sitting, resting her weight on one slender arm. She was looking at him.

  “What was it she picked up from the night table, Yancey?”

  “Her watch.”

  Lois made a sound, perhaps “Oh.” She sank down slowly, until she rested on her elbow. She was looking at him now.

  He lay still, wondering if Lois could hear his heart. She probably could. Beverly probably could, through the door. He wondered, with shattering inconsequentiality, whether Beverly liked red curtains.

  Lois made a slight motion with her chin toward the yellow gleam. She whispered, “I couldn’t do that.”

  A great hungry yearning came over him, but at the moment, incredibly, it seemed to have no direction. It yawned somewhere beneath him, waiting to engulf him. A puzzlement plucked at him, and then, seeing the polished yellow lines in Lois’ eyes, it came to him which of these women was simple and direct, and which was subtle and deep and complex.

  “I couldn’t do that,” Lois had said. How many other things could Beverly do that Lois could not?

  What kind of a woman was Beverly?

  For the very first time Yancey Bowman asked himself what had happened to Beverly the day he was killed. He’d assumed she was simply in cold storage while they put him back together. He’d assumed...how could he assume such a thing? He had never even asked about her. That was impossible! Unnatural!

  But of course—he wasn’t to ask. He would not have thought of it, and the chances were that he could not have asked her.

  It must be time to think of it. Something had happened to him, permitting him to. Qualifying him to. But he hadn’t changed; he couldn’t change. He was built and rebuilt and designed and redesigned, to be Yancey-Plus. What change could...

  Supposing, he told himself, they had a very young thing to rebuild. Wouldn’t they build it so that it could go on growing? Then he could have grown. How? How?

  Well, what would he have done in this same mad situation, two years ago, even after he left the space ship? He wouldn’t have lain here these swift seconds, speculating.

  “I couldn’t do that.” Lois had whispered. Supposing Beverly had been killed too, and changed as he had been changed. He had never told her what he knew; why would she have told him? Wasn’t the prime purpose to improve a little, but to change
nothing? He was Yancey-Plus, who went right ahead ruling the roost, accepting his wife’s quiet variety of slave labor. Wouldn’t she go right on being Beverly, giving him always what he wanted?

  And suppose she hadn’t been killed, hadn’t been changed. What kind of a woman was she, who could do what Lois could not do, what—it painfully occurred to him—he himself, with all his powers, could never do? Was the original Beverly a bigger person than Yancey-Plus?

  Then it was, with a surge of relief that made his head spin, that his heart eased and he smiled. He knew now how he had changed, how he had grown. He knew, all at once, what to do now and what to do for the rest of his life with Beverly. Up to now he had not been able to ask her if she was the same Beverly he had married. Now, by choice, he never would ask her. Their marriage would be spiced and underscored and made most beautiful by that one mystery between them.

  All this in seconds, and he became aware again of the yellow lights in Lois’ long eyes. Quite changing the subject, he used her exact words. “I couldn’t do that.” he whispered.

  Lois nodded slowly. She sank back on the pillow and closed her eyes. He thought she trembled. He didn’t know. He didn’t much care. He turned over and filled his lungs, as he had not been able to do for more than an hour because of his leaping heart. “Beverly!” he bellowed.

  The book fell on the tiles. There was silence for a moment, and then the door opened.