Short Cuts Page 5

  After he stood the ironing board in its alcove on the porch, he sat down again and, when she came into the kitchen, he said, “Well, what else went on between you and Mitchell Anderson that night?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about something else.”

  “What?”

  “About the children, the dress I want Dorothea to have for next Easter. And about the class I’m going to have tomorrow. I was thinking of seeing how they’d go for a little Rimbaud,” and she laughed. “I didn’t mean to rhyme – really, Ralph, and really, nothing else happened. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He stood up and leaned against the wall by the refrigerator and watched her as she spooned out sugar into two cups and then stirred in the rum. The water was beginning to boil.

  “Look, honey, it has been brought up now,” he said, “and it was four years ago, so there’s no reason at all I can think of that we can’t talk about it now if we want to. Is there?”

  She said, “There’s really nothing to talk about.”

  He said, “I’d like to know.”

  She said, “Know what?”

  “Whatever else he did besides kiss you. We’re adults. We haven’t seen the Andersons in literally years and we’ll probably never see them again and it happened a long time ago, so what reason could there possibly be that we can’t talk about it?” He was a little surprised at the reasoning quality in his voice. He sat down and looked at the tablecloth and then looked up at her again. “Well?” he said.

  “Well,” she said, with an impish grin, tilting her head to one side girlishly, remembering. “No, Ralph, really. I’d really just rather not.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Marian! Now I mean it,” he said, and he suddenly understood that he did.

  She turned off the gas under the water and put her hands out on the stool; then she sat down again, hooking her heels over the bottom step. She sat forward, resting her arms across her knees, her breasts pushing at her blouse. She picked at something on her skirt and then looked up.

  “You remember Emily’d already gone home with the Beattys, and for some reason Mitchell had stayed on. He looked a little out of sorts that night, to begin with. I don’t know, maybe they weren’t getting along, Emily and him, but I don’t know that. And there were you and I, the Franklins, and Mitchell Anderson still there. All of us a little drunk. I’m not sure how it happened, Ralph, but Mitchell and I just happened to find ourselves alone together in the kitchen for a minute, and there was no whiskey left, only a part of a bottle of that white wine we had. It must’ve been close to one o’clock, because Mitchell said, ‘If we ride on giant wings we can make it before the liquor store closes.’ You know how he could be so theatrical when he wanted? Soft-shoe stuff, facial expressions? Anyway, he was very witty about it all. At least it seemed that way at the time. And very drunk, too, I might add. So was I, for that matter. It was an impulse, Ralph. I don’t know why I did it, don’t ask me, but when he said let’s go – I agreed. We went out the back, where his car was parked. We went just as … we were … didn’t even get our coats out of the closet, thought we’d just be gone a few minutes. I don’t know what we thought, I thought, I don’t know why I went, Ralph. It was an impulse, that’s all I can say. It was the wrong impulse.” She paused. “It was my fault that night, Ralph, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done anything like that – I know that.”

  “Christ!” The word leaped out of him. “But you’ve always been that way, Marian!” And he knew at once that he had uttered a new and profound truth.

  His mind filled with a swarm of accusations, and he tried to focus on one in particular. He looked down at his hands and noticed they had the same lifeless feeling they had had when he had seen her on the balcony. He picked up the red grading pencil lying on the table and then he put it down again.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Listening to what?” she said. “You’re swearing and getting upset, Ralph. For nothing – nothing, honey! … there’s nothing else,” she said.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She said, “What is the matter with us, anyway? Do you know how this started? Because I don’t know how this started.”

  He said, “Go on, Marian.”

  “That’s all, Ralph,” she said. “I’ve told you. We went for a ride. We talked. He kissed me. I still don’t see how we could’ve been gone three hours – or whatever it was you said we were.”

  “Tell me, Marian,” he said, and he knew there was more and knew he had always known. He felt a fluttering in his stomach, and then he said, “No. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s all right. Actually, I guess I’d just as soon leave it at that,” he said. He thought fleetingly that he would be someplace else tonight doing something else, that it would be silent somewhere if he had not married.

  “Ralph,” she said, “you won’t be angry, will you? Ralph? We’re just talking. You won’t, will you?” She had moved over to a chair at the table.

  He said, “I won’t.”

  She said, “Promise?”

  He said, “Promise.”

  She lit a cigarette. He had suddenly a great desire to see the children, to get them up and out of bed, heavy and turning in their sleep, and to hold each of them on a knee, to jog them until they woke up. He moved all his attention into one of the tiny black coaches in the tablecloth. Four tiny white prancing horses pulled each one of the black coaches and the figure driving the horses had his arms up and wore a tall hat, and suitcases were strapped down atop the coach, and what looked like a kerosene lamp hung from the side, and if he were listening at all it was from inside the black coach.

  “… We went straight to the liquor store, and I waited in the car until he came out. He had a sack in one hand and one of those plastic bags of ice in the other. He weaved a little getting into the car. I hadn’t realized he was so drunk until we started driving again. I noticed the way he was driving. It was terribly slow. He was all hunched over the wheel. His eyes staring. We were talking about a lot of things that didn’t make sense. I can’t remember. We were talking about Nietzsche. Strindberg. He was directing Miss Julie second semester. And then something about Norman Mailer stabbing his wife in the breast. And then he stopped for a minute in the middle of the road. And we each took a drink out of the bottle. He said he’d hate to think of me being stabbed in the breast. He said he’d like to kiss my breast. He drove the car off the road. He put his head on my lap.…”

  She hurried on, and he sat with his hands folded on the table and watched her lips. His eyes skipped around the kitchen – stove, napkin-holder, stove, cupboards, toaster, back to her lips, back to the coach in the tablecloth. He felt a peculiar desire for her flicker through his groin, and then he felt the steady rocking of the coach and he wanted to call stop and then he heard her say, “He said shall we have a go at it?” And then she was saying, “I’m to blame. I’m the one to blame. He said he’d leave it all up to me, I could do whatever I want.”

  He shut his eyes. He shook his head, tried to create possibilities, other conclusions. He actually wondered if he could restore that night two years ago and imagined himself coming into the kitchen just as they were at the door, heard himself telling her in a hearty voice, oh no, no, you’re not going out for anything with that Mitchell Anderson! The fellow is drunk and he’s a bad driver to boot and you have to go to bed now and get up with little Robert and Dorothea in the morning and stop! Thou shalt stop!

  He opened his eyes. She had a hand up over her face and was crying noisily.

  “Why did you, Marian?” he asked.

  She shook her head without looking up.

  Then suddenly he knew! His mind buckled. For a minute he could only stare dumbly at his hands. He knew! His mind roared with the knowing.

  “Christ! No! Marian! Jesus Christ!” he said, springing back from the table. “Christ! No, Marian!”

  “No, no,” she said, throwing he
r head back.

  “You let him!” he screamed.

  “No, no,” she pleaded.

  “You let him! A go at it! Didn’t you? Didn’t you? A go at it! Is that what he said? Answer me!” he screamed. “Did he come in you? Did you let him come in you when you were having your go at it?

  “Listen, listen to me, Ralph,” she whimpered, “I swear to you he didn’t. He didn’t come. He didn’t come in me.” She rocked from side to side in the chair.

  “Oh God! God damn you!” he shrieked.

  “God!” she said, getting up, holding out her hands, “Are we crazy, Ralph? Have we lost our minds? Ralph? Forgive me, Ralph. Forgive –”

  “Don’t touch me! Get away from me!” he screamed. He was screaming.

  She began to pant in her fright. She tried to head him off. But he took her by the shoulder and pushed her out of the way.

  “Forgive me, Ralph! Please. Ralph!” she screamed.

  II

  He had to stop and lean against a car before going on. Two couples in evening clothes were coming down the sidewalk toward him, and one of the men was telling a story in a loud voice. The others were already laughing. Ralph pushed off from the car and crossed the street. In a few minutes he came to Blake’s, where he stopped some afternoons for a beer with Dick Koenig before picking up the children from nursery school.

  It was dark inside. Candles flamed in long-necked bottles at the tables along one wall. Ralph glimpsed shadowy figures of men and women talking, their heads close together. One of the couples, near the door, stopped talking and looked up at him. A boxlike fixture in the ceiling revolved overhead, throwing out pins of light. Two men sat at the end of the bar, and a dark cutout of a man leaned over the jukebox in the corner, his hands splayed on each side of the glass. That man is going to play something, Ralph thought as if making a momentous discovery, and he stood in the center of the floor, watching the man.

  “Ralph! Mr. Wyman, sir!”

  He looked around. It was David Parks calling to him from behind the bar. Ralph walked over, leaned heavily against the bar before sliding onto a stool.

  “Should I draw one, Mr. Wyman?” Parks held a glass in his hand, smiling. Ralph nodded, watched Parks fill the glass, watched Parks hold the glass at an angle under the tap, smoothly straighten the glass as it filled.

  “How’s it going, Mr. Wyman?” Parks put his foot up on a shelf under the bar. “Who’s going to win the game next week, Mr. Wyman?” Ralph shook his head, brought the beer to his lips. Parks coughed faintly. “I’ll buy you one, Mr. Wyman. This one’s on me.” He put his leg down, nodded assurance, and reached under his apron into his pocket. “Here. I have it right here,” Ralph said and pulled out some change, examined it in his hand. A quarter, nickel, two dimes, two pennies. He counted as if there were a code to be uncovered. He laid down the quarter and stood up, pushing the change back into his pocket. The man was still in front of the jukebox, his hands still out to its sides.

  Outside, Ralph turned around, trying to decide what to do. His heart was jumping as if he’d been running. The door opened behind him and a man and woman came out. Ralph stepped out of the way and they got into a car parked at the curb and Ralph saw the woman toss her hair as she got into the car: He had never seen anything so frightening.

  He walked to the end of the block, crossed the street, and walked another block before he decided to head downtown. He walked hurriedly, his hands balled into his pockets, his shoes smacking the pavement. He kept blinking his eyes and thought it incredible that this was where he lived. He shook his head. He would have liked to sit someplace for a while and think about it, but he knew he could not sit, could not think about it. He remembered a man he saw once sitting on a curb in Arcata, an old man with a growth of beard and a brown wool cap who just sat there with his arms between his legs. And then Ralph thought: Marian! Dorothea! Robert! It was impossible. He tried to imagine how all this would seem twenty years from now. But he could not imagine anything. And then he imagined snatching up a note being passed among his students and it said Shall we have a go at it? Then he could not think. Then he felt profoundly indifferent. Then he thought of Marian. He thought of Marian as he had seen her a little while ago, face crumpled. Then Marian on the floor, blood on her teeth: “Why did you hit me?” Then Marian reaching under her dress to unfasten her garter belt! Then Marian lifting her dress as she arched back! Then Marian ablaze, Marian crying out, Go! Go! Go!

  He stopped. He believed he was going to vomit. He moved to the curb. He kept swallowing, looked up as a car of yelling teenagers went by and gave him a long blast on their musical horn. Yes, there was a great evil pushing at the world, he thought, and it only needed a little slipway, a little opening.

  He came to Second Street, the part of town people called “Two Street.” It started here at Shelton, under the streetlight where the old roominghouses ended, and ran for four or five blocks on down to the pier, where fishing boats tied up. He had been down here once, six years ago, to a secondhand shop to finger through the dusty shelves of old books. There was a liquor store across the street, and he could see a man standing just inside the glass door, looking at a newspaper.

  A bell over the door tinkled. Ralph almost wept from the sound of it. He bought some cigarettes and went out again, continuing along the street, looking in windows, some with signs taped up: a dance, the Shrine circus that had come and gone last summer, an election – Fred C. Walters for Councilman. One of the windows he looked through had sinks and pipe joints scattered around on a table, and this too brought tears to his eyes. He came to a Vic Tanney gym where he could see light sneaking under the curtains pulled across a big window and could hear water splashing in the pool inside and the echo of exhilarated voices calling across water. There was more light now, coming from bars and cafés on both sides of the street, and more people, groups of three or four, but now and then a man by himself or a woman in bright slacks walking rapidly. He stopped in front of a window and watched some Negroes shooting pool, smoke drifting in the light burning above the table. One of the men, chalking his cue, hat on, cigarette in his mouth, said something to another man and both men grinned, and then the first man looked intently at the balls and lowered himself over the table.

  Ralph stopped in front of Jim’s Oyster House. He had never been here before, had never been to any of these places before. Above the door the name was spelled out in yellow lightbulbs: JIM’S OYSTER HOUSE. Above this, fixed to an iron grill, there was a huge neon-lighted clam shell with a man’s legs sticking out. The torso was hidden in the shell and the legs flashed red, on and off, up and down, so that they seemed to be kicking. Ralph lit another cigarette from the one he had and pushed the door open.

  It was crowded, people bunched on the dance floor, their arms laced around each other, waiting in positions for the band to begin again. Ralph pushed his way to the bar, and once a drunken woman took hold of his coat. There were no stools and he had to stand at the end of the bar between a Coast Guardsman and a shriveled man in denims. In the mirror he could see the men in the band getting up from the table where they had been sitting. They wore white shirts and dark slacks with little red string ties around their necks. There was a fireplace with gas flames behind a stack of metal logs, and the band platform was to the side of this. One of the musicians plucked the strings of his electric guitar, said something to the others with a knowing grin. The band began to play.

  Ralph raised his glass and drained it. Down the bar he could hear a woman say angrily, “Well, there’s going to be trouble, that’s all I’ve got to say.” The musicians came to the end of their number and started another. One of the men, the bass player, moved to the microphone and began to sing. But Ralph could not understand the words. When the band took another break, Ralph looked around for the toilet. He could make out doors opening and closing at the far end of the bar and headed in that direction. He staggered a little and knew he was drunk now. Over one of the doors was a rack of antlers. He saw
a man go in and he saw another man catch the door and come out. Inside, in line behind three other men, he found himself staring at opened thighs and vulva drawn on the wall over a pocket-comb machine. Beneath was scrawled EAT ME, and lower down someone had added Betty M. Eats It – RA 52275. The man ahead moved up, and Ralph took a step forward, his heart squeezed in the weight of Betty. Finally, he moved to the bowl and urinated. It was a bolt of lightning cracking. He sighed, leaned forward, and let his head rest against the wall. Oh, Betty, he thought. His life had changed, he was willing to understand. Were there other men, he wondered drunkenly, who could look at one event in their lives and perceive in it the tiny makings of the catastrophe that thereafter set their lives on a different course? He stood there a while longer, and then he looked down: he had urinated on his fingers. He moved to the wash basin, ran water over his hands after deciding against the dirty bar of soap. As he was unrolling the towel, he put his face up close to the pitted mirror and looked into his eyes. A face: nothing out of the ordinary. He touched the glass, and then he moved away as a man tried to get past him to the sink.

  When he came out the door, he noticed another door at the other end of the corridor. He went to it and looked through the glass panel in the door at four card players around a green felt table. It seemed to Ralph immensely still and restful inside, the silent movements of the men languorous and heavy with meaning. He leaned against the glass and watched until he felt the men watching him.

  Back at the bar there was a flourish of guitars and people began whistling and clapping. A fat middle-aged woman in a white evening dress was being helped onto the platform. She kept trying to pull back but Ralph could see that it was a mock effort, and finally she accepted the mike and made a little curtsy. The people whistled and stamped their feet. Suddenly he knew that nothing could save him but to be in the same room with the card players, watching. He took out his wallet, keeping his hands up over the sides as he looked to see how much he had. Behind him the woman began to sing in a low drowsy voice.