I sat waiting in the deepening November twilight for Jack’s return. Embarrassingly enough, it was the high spot of my day. Today the wait seemed longer than usual, and I shifted impatiently on the car seat, trying to push my mind ahead to Jack’s arrival. But it kept slithering relentlessly back to Mother’s letter.
I was standing in the kitchen this afternoon, skimming through the mail, two bags of groceries still to put away, when a phrase in my mother’s letter stopped me. “Remember Lewis Russell?” she wrote. “Well, he and his wife are moving to your area…” I stood paralyzed. Being Mother, she rattled on. “I always rather hoped that one day you and Lewis…”
Yes, Ma, I know. Same old tune. Haven’t been many requests for that one lately, have there? And since Jack and I have been married for almost three years now, don’t you think we really might just drop it from the repertoire?
Lewis. Married. Well, of course he’s married, dummy; so are you, aren’t you? What did you think – that he lighted one white candle for you every cocktail hour?
Maybe not a white candle.
Oh, please.
But the truth was, it did surprise me. I visualized Lewis often – too often for any kind of successful resignation – but always as he was during our happy times. For me, he was suspended permanently against the old-gold autumn backdrop of my senior year at college. Behind my eyes I could see him, tall and thin and loose-jointed, scuffing through drifting leaves – his sweater ragged, his head at an arrogant angle, his eyes the same intense blue as the southern sky. It was a time of unbearable riches, a time when I lived so near the surface that the blazing beauty that was a quiet college town in Indian summer kept my eyes stinging with tears.
I had kept that memory cherished behind a pane, but now the pane was shattered. Framed in its shards I saw Lewis’ white face and heard his strained voice saying, “You can’t do it! You can’t! This isn’t your decision to make alone!”
And my voice, brittle and distant: “Well, I have decided. I can’t do it your way, Lewis. My God, I hate this too – don’t you see that? I just can’t do anything else, that’s all.”
There were quick tears in his eyes; his check muscles knotted under the skin. The look of pride and sureness I so loved was gone, leaving a pale and pleading boy, a stranger – and thus easy to withstand when he whispered, not looking at me, “Please, Nan. Please.”
“Lewis, no! Now, look, let’s not-“ Voice of sweet reason.
But suddenly the arrogant look was back and he wheeled on me. “You little bitch!”
He did not touch me, but the force of his anger sent me reeling back, stunned, and I stumbled. He put out a quick hand; then he jerked it back and turned on his heel and walked away through the spinning leaves. I called weakly after him, “Lewis, wait! Lewis?”
He must have heard. I swore to myself later that he must have heard. But he did not turn. Would anything be different if he had? I never knew the answer.
I stood in my tiny, littered kitchen, holding a head of lettuce, turning it in my hands, and suddenly I dug both thumbnails viciously into the crisp green leaves.
“Oh, Lewis,” I whispered. “Oh, Lewis.”
Jack was striding across the platform, coming toward me. I marveled as always that he could be so like the others – a drab, overcoated figure with a briefcase – and yet as soon as I recognized him, so different. He had such a sturdy individual walk. He tilted his head to one side and smiled the instant he caught sight of me.
“Hi.” I lifted my face for his kiss. It came. On such eternal verities is my security founded.
“Hi sweets. Slide over.”
“Oh, Jack, listen – I’m so sorry; I didn’t pick up your suit at the cleaners.”
“No big deal.”
“Well, I meant to. I just…”
“No points for good intentions!” Seeing my stricken expression, he laughed and said, “I’m just kidding, honey!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Did you have a good day?”
“Fairly awful. Gloria… The new girl? She’s leaving.”
“But you spent all that time breaking her in!”
“Well, but now she’s getting married. All starry-eyed, and stuff. I told her she could keep her job – I harbor no prejudices against the married – but her attitude is, she has move to the suburbs, fire off a few kids, do the thing right.” He laughed.
“Oh.” I thought of Gloria, a girl who knew where her duty lay.
Dinner was late, and nothing to shout about when it came. Jack polished his off with every appearance of sincere relish and asked for more.
“Oh, darling, I am sorry; there’s not any left,” I said. “This is all I fixed. I thought it would be enough. I really-”
“That’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
I stood at the sink with my head down, bear tears. Jack came and put his arms around me. “Anne,” he said gently, “why do you let this things bug you so much? You know they aren’t all that important.”
“I know, but-”
“I’ve been thinking,” he went on, smoothing my hair and rocking me a little back and forth. “Sometime we really are going to have to get on with it.”
“With what?”
“Oh, young ‘uns, suburbia, barbecue grill, PTA. You know – real life.” He grinned.
I turned away and began to scatter cleanser on the drainboard. “Like Gloria? Probably. One of these days.”
“I just thought you might have been thinking along those lines yourself.”
“No, not really. I sort of like us the way we are.”
“We do have a good time, don’t we?” He kissed my ear and went back to the evening paper.
I scrubbed relentlessly at the drainboard, my mind, like my hand, moving in tight, mechanical circles.
But I did think about it later, lying in my bed with Jack breathing peacefully beside me, and I could not account for the feeling of terror that gripped me – a half-dreaming feeling, like coils of rope looping themselves silently around my legs and arms and body until I was rendered entirely immobile. Having children seemed to me to be the most permanent thing in this life, and maybe… maybe even more irrevocable than a marriage vow.
It was a disloyal thought. I kissed Jack’s closed eyes. I do love you, Jack. I do. I swear.
But I lay awake for a long time, staring through the window at the street light, which was diffuse and glowing in an aureole of mist, and thinking, maybe one of these days…
I won’t run into Lewis, I assured myself. This is too big a town. Still, it was inevitable that I would see him sometime. And in the three weeks after Mother’s letter came I had not left the apartment once without applying my eye make-up. I would stare at my face in the mirror and want to jeer, but I put on the eye make-up anyway.
It was a Thursday afternoon, and I was downtown doing errands. I had just dashed into the branch bank to cash a check. Lewis was standing near the elevator, talking to two men.
I knew it was before I saw his face: the long, taut line of his body; the lift of his head. As though he felt my gaze, he turned his empty head abruptly and look straight at me.
I sat down in the nearest chair. I just sat there, not thinking, looking ahead, until I felt him cross the room and stand beside me.
“I’ll be damned. It is you.”
“Hello, Lewis.”
“I just can’t believe this.”
“I live here now.”
“Do you? I do too. Just moved here, actually. Come and have a lunch or a drink, or something.”
“I’ve had lunch, thanks.”
“Then you can watch me bolt a sandwich. I’m starving. Come on.” He held the door for me.
Alice, I thought dazedly, going through the looking glass.
He looked only a little different. Better kept, better cared for, scrubbed and brushed. His face in repose still had a rather proud, shut-away look; but his smile was open and unexpected.
This isn’t real, I thought. It doesn’t matter what I say, because this isn’t really happening; this is an episode in some soap opera.
“This is no soap opera, honey,” an inner voice said snidely; “this is your life.”
Oh, stop it.
“Club sandwich,” said Lewis to the waitress. “And… what? Whisky sour?”
I nodded.
“One whisky sour and one bourbon and water. Thank you.”
We smiled tentatively at each other.
“You look great,” he said.
At least, I thought, I had make-up on.
He began eating crackers, ripping them loose from a little cellophane packet, and soon the table was scattered with crumbs.
“So you’re married,” he said.
“Yes, and you too, huh?”
“Mm-hmm. Aren’t you going to eat any of these? You make me look like a glutton. Any children?”
“No. You?”
Brief pause. “No.” He hesitated. “It’s not-”
“No,” I said hurriedly. “Nothing to do with that.”
The waitress brought his club sandwich. He picked up one section by its cellophane-swathed toothpick and set it on a napkin in front of me.
“Just one. Be good for you, Nan.”
I had to look away. In some history class Lewis had gleaned the fact that Anne Boleyn’s nickname had been Nan, and since then he had never called me anything else.
“Sadie, Sadie, married lady.” He shook his head, watching me. “So. Are you happy?”
“Yes.”
“You like it here in the North?”
“Oh, well…”
“It’s not home, is it?”
“No.”
“Are you working, or anything?”
“I have a part-time job at a real-estate office three days a week.”
“What about your art? Aren’t you doing anything with your art?” His tone was so indignant, I had to smile.
“I was never that good, Lewis. Run of the mill, that’s all.”
“Bull,” he said firmly. “You were lazy, that’s all.”
I said apologetically, “I keep meaning to get to my stuff out again. I’ll get around to it sometime.”
He made a skeptical face. “You are worthless – you know that, girl?”
I leaned back against the padded wall of the booth as he attacked his sandwich, thinking of the energy with which he bent life to fit him and reflecting that I had about as much quality myself as a piece of dough.
“What about you?” I said curiously. “Are you happy?”
“Yep,” he said easily. “I sure am.”
“Your wife – what’s she like?”
“Oh, blond, little…” He smiled. “Determined type – you know?”
I could aim nothing but uncharitable thoughts in her direction.
“It’s good to see you again,” I said, watching him.
“Been a long time, hasn’t it?” His face was suddenly serious. “I wondered about you a lot.”
“Did you?” I was touched.
He wasn’t looking at me. “Wondered what little kid would have been like, too, sometimes.”
“Lewis, my God.” My stomach clenched in pain. “Don’t!”
“Sorry.” He looked up in faint surprise and smiled. “I didn’t mean to be maudlin at lunch. Okay?”
He seemed so incredibly relaxed, at ease. I gave the barest of nods and said almost inaudibly, “Lewis – I’m really sorry about – about…”
“You ought to be,” he said calmly. “You little idiot.”
“You’re so casual.”
“ I was upset enough about it at the time, I promise you. It happened. And it hurt. But now” – he gave the ghost of a shrug – “it’s over.” He made an involuntary gesture of pushing something away. “Life goes on. Now, there’s a profundity.” He looked at me. “I’ve never understood, really, why you did it.”
“I was such a child,” I said desperately. “And scared. Scared of everything – of having a baby, of my family’s knowing, of what people would say if I dropped out of school and had to get married… I was scared of the alternative too, but sheer panic carried me through it, I guess.”
“You didn’t love me.”
“Lewis, I – that wasn’t it. Believe me.”
“Well, you didn’t love me enough, then, to take the responsibility for… The thing is, Nan, we knew the score and we took the risk. But then you tried to back out, run away, erase what happened.”
“Maybe I did,” I said, thinking that it was true. “But it doesn’t mean I didn’t love you. You talk as if love and responsibility were the same thing. They aren’t at all!”
“We’re talking about different kinds of love, I guess.”
“Love is love,” I said sullenly. “Don’t get all semantic about it.”
“And then too,” he went on inexorably, “you weren’t exactly the parental type, somehow.”
“And you were, of course!”
“Well, strangely enough, I think I am, you know. I’ve always rather wanted to have children.”
“And you give up your own life? Your freedom?” I thought of my dark dream, the coils of rope tightening around me.
“Well, okay – look,” he said impatiently. “You kept your precious freedom. You’ve still got it. What are you doing with it? You haven’t so much as picked up a paintbrush!”
I stared at him, unable to muster any defense for this new line of attack.
And then abruptly his tone changed. “Oh, Nan, hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rant and rave. I guess the truth is, I’ve probably nursed a small grudge since it happened. But it’s out of my system now.”
“But Lewis…” It trailed off.
“Have you finished chewing up that orange slice? I’ve got to get back. New boy has to work hard, you know.”
He stood up and shrugged carelessly into his tweed coat. I wondered fleetingly if his wife had helped choose it.
He tucked my arm through his as we walked back down the sidewalk. The dead leaves swirled around us, as dry as ashes. It was getting colder.
“Guess what!” said Lewis confidingly, “Kay says she thinks she might be pregnant. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“That’s wonderful,” I murmured.
“You know,” he went on in the same soft, hesitant voice, “this might sound dumb, but for a while I was scared she couldn’t have any. I thought it was some kind of Biblical retribution, or something.”
I stared at him. “But you can’t really think… Anyway it was me, not you.”
“Well, but I let you. And maybe I could have changed your mind.” He looked at me and I knew he was hearing my voice calling him back.
“You couldn’t have,” I said urgently.
“Well. Anyway…”
I could see he was thinking that it no longer mattered.
We stood outside the bank, buffered by the cutting wind. He looked down at me, and there was affection in his eyes as well as sadness, and an indefinable something else, but no regret. He hugged me, and I felt the coat that his wife had probably chosen scrape briefly against my cheek.
Then he was gone.
I ran, shivering violently with cold and tension, feeling that the chill had sliced into my bones.
As I drove to the station I kept thinking about Lewis, seeing him more clearly than I ever had before. He grappled with life, met it head on; he was no drifter. And the things he’d said to me- little truths that nicked and stung. He called them the way he saw them, that was all.
But what Lewis had not said – hadn’t said but must have guessed – was that now I was doing the same thing to Jack that I once had done to him.
I thought of the sterility of what I had given Jack, and I wanted desperately to tell him how sorry I was. But what good would that do? Only in time…
Maybe, I thought wearily – maybe love and responsibility are the same thing after all. Now, there’s a profundity, as Lewis says.
I sat waiting for Jack. I always seemed to be waiting, hedging, postponing life. I saw Jack coming down the platform. He looked tired; his face was drawn and his shoulders were hunched against the wind. He spotted the car and waved. And he looked a little surprised, but pleased, as I got out and went to meet him.
I was standing in the kitchen this afternoon, skimming through the mail, two bags of groceries still to put away, when a phrase in my mother’s letter stopped me. “Remember Lewis Russell?” she wrote. “Well, he and his wife are moving to your area…” I stood paralyzed. Being Mother, she rattled on. “I always rather hoped that one day you and Lewis…”
Yes, Ma, I know. Same old tune. Haven’t been many requests for that one lately, have there? And since Jack and I have been married for almost three years now, don’t you think we really might just drop it from the repertoire?
Lewis. Married. Well, of course he’s married, dummy; so are you, aren’t you? What did you think – that he lighted one white candle for you every cocktail hour?
Maybe not a white candle.
Oh, please.
But the truth was, it did surprise me. I visualized Lewis often – too often for any kind of successful resignation – but always as he was during our happy times. For me, he was suspended permanently against the old-gold autumn backdrop of my senior year at college. Behind my eyes I could see him, tall and thin and loose-jointed, scuffing through drifting leaves – his sweater ragged, his head at an arrogant angle, his eyes the same intense blue as the southern sky. It was a time of unbearable riches, a time when I lived so near the surface that the blazing beauty that was a quiet college town in Indian summer kept my eyes stinging with tears.
I had kept that memory cherished behind a pane, but now the pane was shattered. Framed in its shards I saw Lewis’ white face and heard his strained voice saying, “You can’t do it! You can’t! This isn’t your decision to make alone!”
And my voice, brittle and distant: “Well, I have decided. I can’t do it your way, Lewis. My God, I hate this too – don’t you see that? I just can’t do anything else, that’s all.”
There were quick tears in his eyes; his check muscles knotted under the skin. The look of pride and sureness I so loved was gone, leaving a pale and pleading boy, a stranger – and thus easy to withstand when he whispered, not looking at me, “Please, Nan. Please.”
“Lewis, no! Now, look, let’s not-“ Voice of sweet reason.
But suddenly the arrogant look was back and he wheeled on me. “You little bitch!”
He did not touch me, but the force of his anger sent me reeling back, stunned, and I stumbled. He put out a quick hand; then he jerked it back and turned on his heel and walked away through the spinning leaves. I called weakly after him, “Lewis, wait! Lewis?”
He must have heard. I swore to myself later that he must have heard. But he did not turn. Would anything be different if he had? I never knew the answer.
I stood in my tiny, littered kitchen, holding a head of lettuce, turning it in my hands, and suddenly I dug both thumbnails viciously into the crisp green leaves.
“Oh, Lewis,” I whispered. “Oh, Lewis.”
Jack was striding across the platform, coming toward me. I marveled as always that he could be so like the others – a drab, overcoated figure with a briefcase – and yet as soon as I recognized him, so different. He had such a sturdy individual walk. He tilted his head to one side and smiled the instant he caught sight of me.
“Hi.” I lifted my face for his kiss. It came. On such eternal verities is my security founded.
“Hi sweets. Slide over.”
“Oh, Jack, listen – I’m so sorry; I didn’t pick up your suit at the cleaners.”
“No big deal.”
“Well, I meant to. I just…”
“No points for good intentions!” Seeing my stricken expression, he laughed and said, “I’m just kidding, honey!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Did you have a good day?”
“Fairly awful. Gloria… The new girl? She’s leaving.”
“But you spent all that time breaking her in!”
“Well, but now she’s getting married. All starry-eyed, and stuff. I told her she could keep her job – I harbor no prejudices against the married – but her attitude is, she has move to the suburbs, fire off a few kids, do the thing right.” He laughed.
“Oh.” I thought of Gloria, a girl who knew where her duty lay.
Dinner was late, and nothing to shout about when it came. Jack polished his off with every appearance of sincere relish and asked for more.
“Oh, darling, I am sorry; there’s not any left,” I said. “This is all I fixed. I thought it would be enough. I really-”
“That’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
I stood at the sink with my head down, bear tears. Jack came and put his arms around me. “Anne,” he said gently, “why do you let this things bug you so much? You know they aren’t all that important.”
“I know, but-”
“I’ve been thinking,” he went on, smoothing my hair and rocking me a little back and forth. “Sometime we really are going to have to get on with it.”
“With what?”
“Oh, young ‘uns, suburbia, barbecue grill, PTA. You know – real life.” He grinned.
I turned away and began to scatter cleanser on the drainboard. “Like Gloria? Probably. One of these days.”
“I just thought you might have been thinking along those lines yourself.”
“No, not really. I sort of like us the way we are.”
“We do have a good time, don’t we?” He kissed my ear and went back to the evening paper.
I scrubbed relentlessly at the drainboard, my mind, like my hand, moving in tight, mechanical circles.
But I did think about it later, lying in my bed with Jack breathing peacefully beside me, and I could not account for the feeling of terror that gripped me – a half-dreaming feeling, like coils of rope looping themselves silently around my legs and arms and body until I was rendered entirely immobile. Having children seemed to me to be the most permanent thing in this life, and maybe… maybe even more irrevocable than a marriage vow.
It was a disloyal thought. I kissed Jack’s closed eyes. I do love you, Jack. I do. I swear.
But I lay awake for a long time, staring through the window at the street light, which was diffuse and glowing in an aureole of mist, and thinking, maybe one of these days…
I won’t run into Lewis, I assured myself. This is too big a town. Still, it was inevitable that I would see him sometime. And in the three weeks after Mother’s letter came I had not left the apartment once without applying my eye make-up. I would stare at my face in the mirror and want to jeer, but I put on the eye make-up anyway.
It was a Thursday afternoon, and I was downtown doing errands. I had just dashed into the branch bank to cash a check. Lewis was standing near the elevator, talking to two men.
I knew it was before I saw his face: the long, taut line of his body; the lift of his head. As though he felt my gaze, he turned his empty head abruptly and look straight at me.
I sat down in the nearest chair. I just sat there, not thinking, looking ahead, until I felt him cross the room and stand beside me.
“I’ll be damned. It is you.”
“Hello, Lewis.”
“I just can’t believe this.”
“I live here now.”
“Do you? I do too. Just moved here, actually. Come and have a lunch or a drink, or something.”
“I’ve had lunch, thanks.”
“Then you can watch me bolt a sandwich. I’m starving. Come on.” He held the door for me.
Alice, I thought dazedly, going through the looking glass.
He looked only a little different. Better kept, better cared for, scrubbed and brushed. His face in repose still had a rather proud, shut-away look; but his smile was open and unexpected.
This isn’t real, I thought. It doesn’t matter what I say, because this isn’t really happening; this is an episode in some soap opera.
“This is no soap opera, honey,” an inner voice said snidely; “this is your life.”
Oh, stop it.
“Club sandwich,” said Lewis to the waitress. “And… what? Whisky sour?”
I nodded.
“One whisky sour and one bourbon and water. Thank you.”
We smiled tentatively at each other.
“You look great,” he said.
At least, I thought, I had make-up on.
He began eating crackers, ripping them loose from a little cellophane packet, and soon the table was scattered with crumbs.
“So you’re married,” he said.
“Yes, and you too, huh?”
“Mm-hmm. Aren’t you going to eat any of these? You make me look like a glutton. Any children?”
“No. You?”
Brief pause. “No.” He hesitated. “It’s not-”
“No,” I said hurriedly. “Nothing to do with that.”
The waitress brought his club sandwich. He picked up one section by its cellophane-swathed toothpick and set it on a napkin in front of me.
“Just one. Be good for you, Nan.”
I had to look away. In some history class Lewis had gleaned the fact that Anne Boleyn’s nickname had been Nan, and since then he had never called me anything else.
“Sadie, Sadie, married lady.” He shook his head, watching me. “So. Are you happy?”
“Yes.”
“You like it here in the North?”
“Oh, well…”
“It’s not home, is it?”
“No.”
“Are you working, or anything?”
“I have a part-time job at a real-estate office three days a week.”
“What about your art? Aren’t you doing anything with your art?” His tone was so indignant, I had to smile.
“I was never that good, Lewis. Run of the mill, that’s all.”
“Bull,” he said firmly. “You were lazy, that’s all.”
I said apologetically, “I keep meaning to get to my stuff out again. I’ll get around to it sometime.”
He made a skeptical face. “You are worthless – you know that, girl?”
I leaned back against the padded wall of the booth as he attacked his sandwich, thinking of the energy with which he bent life to fit him and reflecting that I had about as much quality myself as a piece of dough.
“What about you?” I said curiously. “Are you happy?”
“Yep,” he said easily. “I sure am.”
“Your wife – what’s she like?”
“Oh, blond, little…” He smiled. “Determined type – you know?”
I could aim nothing but uncharitable thoughts in her direction.
“It’s good to see you again,” I said, watching him.
“Been a long time, hasn’t it?” His face was suddenly serious. “I wondered about you a lot.”
“Did you?” I was touched.
He wasn’t looking at me. “Wondered what little kid would have been like, too, sometimes.”
“Lewis, my God.” My stomach clenched in pain. “Don’t!”
“Sorry.” He looked up in faint surprise and smiled. “I didn’t mean to be maudlin at lunch. Okay?”
He seemed so incredibly relaxed, at ease. I gave the barest of nods and said almost inaudibly, “Lewis – I’m really sorry about – about…”
“You ought to be,” he said calmly. “You little idiot.”
“You’re so casual.”
“ I was upset enough about it at the time, I promise you. It happened. And it hurt. But now” – he gave the ghost of a shrug – “it’s over.” He made an involuntary gesture of pushing something away. “Life goes on. Now, there’s a profundity.” He looked at me. “I’ve never understood, really, why you did it.”
“I was such a child,” I said desperately. “And scared. Scared of everything – of having a baby, of my family’s knowing, of what people would say if I dropped out of school and had to get married… I was scared of the alternative too, but sheer panic carried me through it, I guess.”
“You didn’t love me.”
“Lewis, I – that wasn’t it. Believe me.”
“Well, you didn’t love me enough, then, to take the responsibility for… The thing is, Nan, we knew the score and we took the risk. But then you tried to back out, run away, erase what happened.”
“Maybe I did,” I said, thinking that it was true. “But it doesn’t mean I didn’t love you. You talk as if love and responsibility were the same thing. They aren’t at all!”
“We’re talking about different kinds of love, I guess.”
“Love is love,” I said sullenly. “Don’t get all semantic about it.”
“And then too,” he went on inexorably, “you weren’t exactly the parental type, somehow.”
“And you were, of course!”
“Well, strangely enough, I think I am, you know. I’ve always rather wanted to have children.”
“And you give up your own life? Your freedom?” I thought of my dark dream, the coils of rope tightening around me.
“Well, okay – look,” he said impatiently. “You kept your precious freedom. You’ve still got it. What are you doing with it? You haven’t so much as picked up a paintbrush!”
I stared at him, unable to muster any defense for this new line of attack.
And then abruptly his tone changed. “Oh, Nan, hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rant and rave. I guess the truth is, I’ve probably nursed a small grudge since it happened. But it’s out of my system now.”
“But Lewis…” It trailed off.
“Have you finished chewing up that orange slice? I’ve got to get back. New boy has to work hard, you know.”
He stood up and shrugged carelessly into his tweed coat. I wondered fleetingly if his wife had helped choose it.
He tucked my arm through his as we walked back down the sidewalk. The dead leaves swirled around us, as dry as ashes. It was getting colder.
“Guess what!” said Lewis confidingly, “Kay says she thinks she might be pregnant. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“That’s wonderful,” I murmured.
“You know,” he went on in the same soft, hesitant voice, “this might sound dumb, but for a while I was scared she couldn’t have any. I thought it was some kind of Biblical retribution, or something.”
I stared at him. “But you can’t really think… Anyway it was me, not you.”
“Well, but I let you. And maybe I could have changed your mind.” He looked at me and I knew he was hearing my voice calling him back.
“You couldn’t have,” I said urgently.
“Well. Anyway…”
I could see he was thinking that it no longer mattered.
We stood outside the bank, buffered by the cutting wind. He looked down at me, and there was affection in his eyes as well as sadness, and an indefinable something else, but no regret. He hugged me, and I felt the coat that his wife had probably chosen scrape briefly against my cheek.
Then he was gone.
I ran, shivering violently with cold and tension, feeling that the chill had sliced into my bones.
As I drove to the station I kept thinking about Lewis, seeing him more clearly than I ever had before. He grappled with life, met it head on; he was no drifter. And the things he’d said to me- little truths that nicked and stung. He called them the way he saw them, that was all.
But what Lewis had not said – hadn’t said but must have guessed – was that now I was doing the same thing to Jack that I once had done to him.
I thought of the sterility of what I had given Jack, and I wanted desperately to tell him how sorry I was. But what good would that do? Only in time…
Maybe, I thought wearily – maybe love and responsibility are the same thing after all. Now, there’s a profundity, as Lewis says.
I sat waiting for Jack. I always seemed to be waiting, hedging, postponing life. I saw Jack coming down the platform. He looked tired; his face was drawn and his shoulders were hunched against the wind. He spotted the car and waved. And he looked a little surprised, but pleased, as I got out and went to meet him.
Virgil
Scott, David Madden. Studies in the short story, 5th edition. (1980_Holt,
Rinehart and Winston)
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