The house was silent.
Good god, he thought. We’re through. My marriage is over. Where am I? What’s happened?
While he sat there, Gwen reappeared. “I’ll go,” she said. “So you won’t have to be away from her. I’ll go to Sacramento and stay with my family. Can I take the can?”
“If you take the car,” he said, “how can I get to work?” His heart beat so fast and so hand that it was a great effort to speak; it cost him all his energy and after each word he had to rest.
“Then drive me to Sacramento and come back,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
“Let me see what I have to take,” she said. “I won’t try to take everything tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe I won’t go to Sacramento tonight. It’s too far. It would take all night to get there. I’ll stay in a motel. There’s one in Point Reyes, night here.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll take you to Sacramento.”
She studied him and then, without a word, she went into the other room again. At first he heard nothing, and then he realized that she was beginning to get things together. He heard the sound of a suitcase being dragged from the closet.
“I’ve decided you’re right,” he said, staying where he was. “I can’t drive you to Sacramento tonight. Wait until tomorrow — sleep here, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Gwen said from the other room, “I’m not sleeping with you tonight. You go over to her house and sleep, if you want me to stay here.”
“You can sleep on the couch,” he said. “Or I will.”
“Why don’t you go back there?” Gwen appeared in the doorway. “Why did you come home so early?”
He said, “We had a fight.” He did not look at her but he could feel her eyes on him. “Nothing important. There was a lamb born dead and it upset her. It was horrible; it looked like a thing made out of wet tar.” He began, then, to tell her about it. For a moment she listened, and then she disappeared. She had gone off and resumed her packing. Feeling rage, he leaped up from the bed and followed after her. “Don’t you want to hear?” he demanded.
“I have enough to think about,” Gwen said.
“You could listen to this,” he said, standing in the center of the room while she packed. “Why won’t you listen? It seems a hell of a thing to me, one hell of a thing, that you won’t even listen. It really makes me feel bad.”
“I’m sorry about the dead lamb,” Gwen said. “But I don’t see what it matters. I let you go and stay with her, and I never said anything; I let you do what you wanted, and when people came by and wondered where you were I said you were down in Mill Valley working late; I never told anybody about you and her.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do when he gets back from the hospital,” Gwen said. “What are you going to do? Won’t he find out? Somebody’ll tell him — you know nobody can keep things a secret in these little towns. Everybody knows everybody.”
“If you leave,” he said, “then there won’t be any doubt of it. No doubt at all.”
“You want me to stay,” she said, “to save you from being killed on whatever he’s going to do when he gets home?”
“He won’t do anything,” he said. “He’s a sick man. He’ll be in bed for months, recuperating. He almost died. He could still die. It wouldn’t take much.”
Bitterly, Gwen said, “Maybe the shock of finding out will be enough. Then you’ll have clear sailing.”
“I love her,” he said. “I want to marry her. This is all something I feel proud of. I know that sounds incredible –”
“No,” Gwen said. “It doesn’t sound incredible. You’re drawn to her because you see the children, and I know you want children, but we couldn’t have them because of your school. Is she going to put you through school? This way you can have both — you can go to school and at the same time have a big nice house and kids and everything else you want. 1-bone steaks for dinner. Right?”
“I want a stable home and family,” he said.
“You know what I think will become of you if you marry her?”
He could not keep himself from saying, “What do you think?”
“You’ll be a handy man and domestic servant, keeping that place going. Keeping her house going. You’ll balance her budget, turn down the thermostats to save money on the heating bill –”
“No,” he interrupted. “Because it’s off. I’m not seeing her again. We broke up.”
“Why?”
He said, “Because of what you said just now. I don’t want to wind up a domestic servant, doing her dishes for her.” As he said it he felt the full weight of his disloyalty fall on him. His treason to Fay, not to his wife; it was Fay that now held his loyalty, his sense of being morally obligated. Standing there in his own living room, with his own wife, telling his wife that he was through with Fay, he knew that he was not through with her, not if he could help it. The pull was too strong. He yearned for her. He yearned to be back in that house with her. The rest was talk.
“I don’t believe it,” Gwen said. “You’ll never have the strength to break off with her. She’s got you completely tied up. She always gets her way; she’s got the mind of a two-year-old child — she wants what she sees and she gets it because she rides rough shod over everybody else.”
“She recognizes that,” he said. “That’s why she goes down to Doctor Andrews. She’s struggling with it.”
Gwen laughed. “Oh?” she said. “You’re optimistic? Then why are you breaking up with her?”
To that, he could give no answer.
“I don’t see how you could get involved with a woman like that,” Gwen said. “Do you want to be bossed the nest of your life? Do you crave to be back in a child-parent relationship?”
“I’m tired of hearing about it,” he said.
“I’m not surprised that you’re tired of hearing about it,” Gwen said. “What I wonder is will you even be tired of living it.”
Going outside, he sat in the car and waited while she packed.
( fourteen)
In his hospital bed, Charley Hume looked up with surprise to see Nathan Anteil entering the room.
“Hello, Charley,” Nathan said.
“I’ll be darned,” Charley Hume said. He lay back again.
Nat said, “I brought you a couple of magazines to read.” He laid a copy of Life and True on the table beside the bed. “They say you’re going to be coming home in a couple of days.”
“Right,” Charley said. “I’m about ready for the big moment.” He lay watching Nathan. “Nice to see you,” he said. “What brings you down here to San Francisco?”
“Just thought I’d drop by,” Nat said. “It occurred to me that I’ve only been down to visit you one or two times, and then with someone else. You’re looking good. You know that?”
Charley said, “I’ll be on a diet. Isn’t that a hell of a thing? A real lousy one. To keep my weight down.” He reached out and picked up the magazines, noticing as he did so that he had read the Life. His brother-in-law had brought it from the library on his last trip. But nevertheless he went through the motions of glancing over it. “How’s everything been going?” he said finally.
“Fine,” Nat said.
“World treating you okay?”
“No reason to complain,” Nat said.
“Listen, boy,” Charley said. He took the bull by the horns, then. “I know about you and my wife.”
Across from him he saw Nathan’s face speckle with shock. “Is that so?” Nathan said. He pressed his hands together, clasping and intertwining … the flesh became white as he pressed. He did not look at Charley for a moment, and then he raised his head, saying, “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to come out and tell you, face to face.”
“Hell no,” Charley said. “That’s not why you’re here; you came down here to find out what I’m going to do when I get back up there. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. When I get back –” He lowered his voice and peered past Nathan, to see if anyone were passing the open door to the hall. “Want to close that door?” he said.
Getting up, Nathan went and shut the door and returned.
Charley said, “When I get back up to Drake’s Landing I’m going to kill that woman.”
After a long pause Nathan licked his lip and said, “Why? Because of me?”